THE GLANDS REGULATING 

 PERSONALITY 



INTRODUCTION 



ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 



The Case Against Human Nature 



Man, know thyself, said the old Greek philosopher. Man per- 

 force has taken that advice to heart. His life-long interest is his 

 own species. In the cradle he begins to collect observations on 

 the nature of the queer beings about him. As he grows, the 

 research continues, amplifies, broadens. Wisdom he measures by 

 the devastating accuracy of the data he accumulates. When he 

 declares he knows human nature, consciously cynical maturity 

 speaks. Doctor of human nature — every man feels himself 

 entitled to that degree from the university of disillusioning expe- 

 rience. In defense of his claim, only the limitations of his ar- 

 ticulate faculty will curb the vehemence of his indictment of his 

 fellows. 



For all history provides the material, literature the critique, 

 biology the inexorable logic of the case against human nature. 

 The historical record is a spectacle of man destroying man, a 

 collection of chapters on man's increasing cruelty to man. Limi- 

 tations of time and space have been shortened and eliminated. 

 Tools of production have been multiplied and complicated. The 

 sources of energy and power have been systematically attacked 

 and trapped. But the nature of man has remained so unchanged 

 that clap trap about progress is easy target for the barrage of 

 every cheap pamphleteer. 



The naturalist probes into codes of conduct, systems of moral- 

 ity, structures of societies, variations in the scales of value that 

 individuals, races and nations have subjected themselves to as 

 custom, law and religion. Again and again the portrait is 

 presented of man preying upon man, of cunning a parasite upon 



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