638 THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF INDIVIDUALITY 



however, is closely associated with the struggle for material goods ; it also 

 affects our organism in its most vital functions and is, therefore, as is the 

 struggle for material goods, ultimately a contest for the upholding of our 

 individuality in both its bodily and psychical aspects. 



Our individuality requires consideration and respect ; it needs appreciation, 

 friendliness, friendship and love. These are primary needs, which provide 

 a favorable mental medium in which we can function and develop without 

 fears and inhibitions, and in which certain fundamental requirements in 

 social intercourse are satisfied. We may call the means by which this is accom- 

 plished simple psychical goods. On the whole, there is the possibility of taking 

 care of such general and basic needs of all, and the satisfaction of the re- 

 quirements of one should not exclude the others from receiving their share. 

 We can be friendly, courteous and understanding to everyone. However, some 

 distinction sets in even here. We cannot give friendship and love to everyone 

 to an equal extent. Certain individual distinctions are made ; but if they are 

 associated with the giving of the more common simple psychical goods to all, 

 with understanding and appreciation of all others, and if the latter also can 

 be supplied by those nearest to them with the needed individual psychical 

 goods in the form of friendship and love — which in a measure partake of the 

 character of what might be called individual distinctive psychical goods — no 

 injury should result. Still, even then the psychical balance may be imperfect 

 and the giving or withholding of such individual distinctive psychical goods 

 may, in many cases, lead to the bitterest struggles, even within the same family ; 

 intense mother-love may become so exclusive that it leads to bitter jealousy 

 and to severe antagonism towards those with whom she has to share the love 

 of her children. 



Of still greater significance perhaps as the source of severe social struggle 

 are the distinctive psychical class goods ; the latter usually appear as social 

 caste spirit, family and race pride, and nationalism. These lead to destructive 

 struggles of a political, economic and social character. They may end in war 

 and revolution. It is of interest that the struggle for these distinctive psychical 

 class goods is usually associated with a struggle for material goods ; these two 

 types are intimately connected, material goods being, to a certain degree, 

 valued for the sake of the distinctive psychical goods they provide, while the 

 possession of psychical goods often gives ready access to the acquisition of 

 material goods. Among the distinctive psychical class goods, those have an 

 especially devastating effect which make the possibility of acquiring these 

 goods a constitutional, inherited condition in certain classes of human society. 

 Under these circumstances no hope of improvement is conceivable. More- 

 over, the gain in distinctive psychical goods in some is predicated on the lack 

 of them in others, since if all possessed them they would lose their signifi- 

 cance as distinctive psychical goods. The effects on these others of social 

 humiliation, which is the consequence of the social recognition of distinctive 

 psychical class goods, are very injurious. They cause directly a serious inter- 

 ference with muscular coordination, with expression, initiative, controlled 

 imagination and action, and indirectly, an interference also with the functions 



