J.—PSYCHOLOGY 185 
comparisons between individuals and between peoples as to the strengths 
of these tendencies will remain difficult and unreliable. 
Such methods will probably be devised in the course of time: as 
regards the temperamental traits, which are believed to be important for 
social life, some crude beginnings have already been made with the so- 
called rating scales. Certain qualities of mind, such as impulsiveness, 
steadiness, and cheerfulness, are selected and each person under investiga- 
tion is rated in respect of each trait on, say, a five-point scale, that is, he is 
put into the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth class, the classes being 
chosen so that in a representative sample of the population the numbers in 
them will form a distribution that is approximately normal. ‘The success 
of this method obviously depends on the sagacity and experience of the 
examiner: it gives a partially controlled subjective estimate which is 
probably accurate enough for some purposes and very much better than 
a haphazard uncontrolled judgment, but is somewhat unreliable when 
estimates by different people are pooled or compared, as anyone can dis- 
cover for himself by getting estimates made in this way by different 
observers on the same group of people. The method is promising: it 
would be completely successful if the estimates were based on adequate 
descriptions of systematic direct observations of behaviour. 
While it is true that racial inborn tendencies to activity, such as aggres- 
siveness and curiosity, are of great social importance, it is equally true, 
and perhaps more important for practical life, that these tendencies, as 
they appear in man, are ill-defined as regards both the stimuli which excite 
them and the actions in which they issue, and that they are easily directed : 
this is important for social life because it is an essential condition of 
educability. It is in this respect that human innate tendencies differ 
from those of the lower animals. After all, a human community 7s different 
from a mere animal herd ; even an undisciplined, brutal and stupid mob 
is not quite so stupid as a herd of animals. With rare exceptions all the 
members of an animal herd appear to feel and act in the same way : they 
hunt or browse together, apparently enjoying one another’s society and 
protection, but there appears to be very little co-operation between them : 
for this there is needed diversity of ability as well as a common purpose, 
and it is just this which distinguishes a human group from most non- 
human groups, with the possible exception of such groups as those of ants 
and bees, which, however, are physiologically so far removed from us 
that it is futile to attempt to compare their mentality with our own. A 
typical human group is not the squad on the parade ground where every 
man is expected to make the same movement at exactly the same time, 
but rather an army in action where each man’s work is different from that 
of his neighbour, but all are interdependent and working for a common 
purpose. A human community, in fact, implies variety of ability and 
effort, organisation, and an appreciation, more or less clear, of relationship 
_ to the group, and its success depends very largely on its intelligent use of 
its resources. 
Social problems can be approached either from the point of view of the 
individual or from that of the group to which he belongs. Neither approach 
can be consistently maintained to the exclusion of the other, for the 
