INDIVIDUALITY AND WORLD 637 



but the knowledge thus gained is used in the social and natural struggle, 

 not only for helpful but also for destructive purposes. Similarly, biological 

 concepts are employed not only for the alleviation of the cruelties of the 

 social and natural struggle, but also as weapons in the social struggle, which 

 serve to aggravate the latter and to introduce into it added cruelties and to 

 intensify the unbalance of the mind as well as of the body. Thus the science of 

 genetics in its applied form as eugenics has been, in certain instances, used by 

 scientists themselves, as well as by others, in the interest of nationalistic tenden- 

 cies in a struggle for distinctive psychical class goods and for economic ad- 

 vantages. 



The same tendency reveals itself in still other ways. There are certain 

 concepts which play a great role in the social struggle and in the adaptation 

 to the painful realities of the natural struggle. Man constructed in early 

 times the thought of something which is not subject to the sorrows and 

 destruction that we experience in actual life, a spirit within us whose ex- 

 pression is free will. Since free will involves intention on the part not only 

 of ourselves but also of the other individual, the exercise of it may affect 

 most keenly the social struggle ; whether we consider an act as hostile or not 

 depends in many cases not so much on the act itself, as upon the intention 

 which inspired it. The idea of intention, 'furthermore, is intimately connected 

 with that of responsibility, hence we mete out gifts to one who is helpful 

 and virtuous, and punishment to an offender. These thought-constructions 

 represent an adjustment, by means of which we uphold our individuality in 

 its more primitive needs, but at the same time they may lead to cruel re- 

 pressions or to undue elevation, effects which often aggravate the social 

 struggle. Into such a mental environment of the egocentric world the scientist 

 is born, as are other human beings, and he, too, often upholds these concepts 

 which are active in him as suggestions. On the other hand, the application of 

 the concepts of science, based on an increasing understanding of the springs 

 of human behavior, tends to substitute understanding, prevention and cure 

 for punishment and suppression, and thus to mitigate the harshness of the 

 social struggle. 



Human life, then, may be considered essentially as a struggle with nature 

 and as a struggle with other human beings — a natural and a social struggle. 

 The natural struggle is a struggle for the maintenance of our organism, 

 which is so constructed that it gradually deteriorates, ceases ultimately to 

 function and dies. It concerns itself with the satisfaction of material needs 

 in an environment to which we are only incompletely adapted and which only 

 by degrees we learn to know. In certain respects there is an antagonism be- 

 tween us and nature, which ends with our destruction. At the same time, 

 we interact with other human beings and in this interaction a complex social 

 structure has been built up; to this also we are insufficiently adapted. Thus 

 the struggle for our preservation, which under more primitive conditions was 

 largely a struggle with nature, becomes, over a wide range of life, a competi- 

 tive social struggle for material goods, and there is added to this, more and 

 more, a struggle for psychical goods. This struggle for psychical goods, 



