The social group, in its descent from the herd, has become an intensely competitive, highly cooperative organization. There are two sets of qualities essential to those phases of society that concern us as students of character.
Out of the mass there come the leaders, those who direct and organize the thought and action of the group. The leader, in no matter what sphere he operates, excels in some quality: strength, courage, audacity, wisdom, organizing ability, eloquence,--or in pretension to that quality. The leader is a high variable and somehow is endowed with more of a desired or desirable character than others. As fighter, thinker or preacher he has made the history of man. A dozen million common men did not invent the wheel; it was one aboriginal genius who played with power and saw that the rolling log might transport his goods. The shadow may have interested in a mild way every contemporary and ancestor of the one who discovered that it moved regularly with the sun. And when a group is confronted by an unknown danger, it is not the half-courage of the crowd that adds up to bravery and fearless fighting spirit; it is the one man who responds to the challenge with courage and sagacity who inspires the rest with a similar feeling. The leaders of the world stand on each other's shoulders, and not on the shoulders of the common man. Democracy does not lie in an equal estimate of men's abilities and worth; it is in the recognition that the true aristocrat or leader may arise anywhere; that he must be allowed to develop, no matter who his ancestors and what his sex or color may be; and that he has no privileges but those of service and leadership.
The leadership qualities will always be determined by the character of the group that is to be led and the task to be performed. Obviously he who is to lead a warrior group of small numbers in a fray needs be agile, quick of mind, strong and fearless, whereas a general who sits in a chair at a desk ten miles from the fighting front and controls a million men fighting with airships, guns and bayonets must be a technical engineer of executive ability and experience. The leader whose task is to exhort a group into some plan of action--the politician, the popular speaker--needs mainly to appeal to the sympathies and stir the emotions of his group; his desire to please must be efficiently yoked with qualities that please his group, and those qualities will not be the same for a group of East Side immigrants as for a select Fifth Avenue assemblage. In the one instance an uncouth, unrestrained passion, fiercely emphasized, and a bold declaration of ideals of an altruistic type will be necessary; in the second all that will be ridiculous, but passion hinted at with suave polished speech and a careful outline of practical plans are essential. The labor leader, the leader of a capitalist group, will be different in many qualities, but they will be alike in their vigor and energy of purpose, in their aggressive fighting spirit, their proneness to anger at opposition but controlled when necessary by tact and diplomacy. They will impress the group they lead as being sincere, honest, able, knowing how to plan, choose and fight. These last three qualities are those which the members of the group demand; the leader must know how to plan, choose and fight for them. Nor, if he is to succeed easily, must he be too idealistic; he must not seek too distant purposes; the group must understand him, and though he must keep them in some awe and fear of him, yet must they feel that he represents an understandable ideal. The leader who preaches things out of comprehension arouses the kind of opposition which finally crucifies him.
The leader must feel superiority to his group, and whether he proclaims it or not, he usually does. Now and then he is a cold, careful planner, an actor of emotions he does not feel, a cynic playing on passions and ideals he does not share. Usually he is deeply emotional, sometimes deeply intellectual, but not often; generally he has his ears to the ground and listens for the stir that tells the way men wish to be led. Then he mounts his horse, literally or figuratively, brandishes his sword and shouts his commands.
A leader springs up in every group, under almost all kinds of circumstances. Let ten men start out for a walk, and in ten minutes one of them, for some reason or another, is giving the orders, is choosing and commanding. Often enough the leadership falls to social rank and standing rather than to leadership qualities. In fact, that is the chief defect in a society which builds up rank and social station; leadership falls then to men by virtue of birth, financial status or some non-relevant distinction. All one has to do is to read of the misfit leaders England's "best" turned out to be in the early part of the late war to realize how inefficient and untrustworthy such leadership may be. One meaning of democracy is that no man is a leader by virtue of anything but his virtues, and that opportunity must be given to the real leader to come into his own.
Leadership means neither selfishness nor altruism, nor does it connote wisdom. A leader may be rankly egoistic and careless of the welfare of his people--Alexander, Napoleon--or he may be imbued with a mission which is altruistic but unwise. Such, in my opinion, was Peter the Hermit who started the Crusades. The wise men of the world lead only indirectly,--by a permeation of their thoughts, slowly, into the thought of the leaders of the race and from them downwards. Adam Smith exerted a great influence. But how many read his books? The leaders of thought did, and they extended his teachings into the community, but certainly not as Adam Smith taught. Christ made an upheaval in Jerusalem and its vicinity; a few leaders taught revisions of His doctrines, and as the doctrines passed along, they became institutionalized and dogmatized into a total, made up as much of paganism as of Christ's teachings. It is the tragedy of those whose names exercise authority in the world that their teachings are often without great influence. For all of Christ's teachings, the Christian nations plunge into great wars and repudiate His doctrines as applicable neither to industry nor international relations.
If the leader needs certain qualities, the follower needs others. He must be capable of attachment to the leader or his institution; he must possess that quality called loyalty. Loyalty is the transference of the ego-feeling to the group, an institution or an individual. It has in it perhaps the self-abasement principle of McDougall, but perhaps it is just as well to say that admiration, respect and confidence are basic in it. Loyalty differs from love only in that there is a sort of inferiority denoted in the first. If you feel yourself superior to the person or institution claiming your loyalty, you are not loyal in feeling, though you may be in act; you are bound by honor or love and not by loyalty.
Loyalty in the inferior may be awakened by many things, but to be permanent the follower must sooner or later feel himself a part of the program. He must have not only duties and responsibilities but benefits, and he must be given a visible symbol of membership. A child becomes loyal when he is given a badge or title, and so do men. This is the meaning of uniforms, badges, titles and privileges; they are symbols of "belonging" and so become symbols of loyalty. From the higher intellects loyalty can only be won if they have a share in conference, in the exertion of power and in identification with the institution in a privileged way. Though cash and direct benefit do not insure loyalty, they go a long way toward getting it. Many a man who is a rebel as a workman is loyal as a foreman, and while here and there is one who is loyal and leal{sic} whether the wind blows good or ill, the history and proverbs of men tell very plainly that loyalty usually disappears with the downfall of the leader, or when benefits of one kind or another are too long delayed. A man may be loyal to the leader or institution powerful and splendid in his youth (usually pride is as much involved as loyalty), but his children never are.
Disciplinability is a quality of the follower. He must be willing to sacrifice his freedom of action and choice and turn it over to another. Rules and regulations are necessary for efficiency. In a larger sense, they become laws, and the law-abiding are the disciplined, ready to obey whatever law. Thus the reformers do not come from the law-abiding in spirit; it is the rebel who changes laws. Without the law-abiding, disciplined spirit there would be only anarchy, and though men have obeyed frightful laws and still do, this is better than no social discipline. A revolution occurs when the discipline, i.e., the rules and regulations and the rulers and regulators, have not kept pace with the new ideas that have permeated society. Men are willing to be governed; nay, they demand it, but there must be at least a rude conformity between the governed and the laws by which they are governed. In other words, discipline of any kind is welcome if the disciplined believe it to be right and just. Men accept punishment for infraction of a law if they believe themselves to be rightfully punished, but rebel against unjust discipline.
There are those who deny either openly or covertly the right of society to regulate their lives or desires. In modern literature this type of rebel is quite favor, ably depicted, although he is usually represented as finally punished in one way or another. Where a man rebels against a specific type of restriction but favors another kind he is a reformer; if however he favors merely the removal of restriction and regulation[1] he is an anarchist and, in my opinion, without real knowledge of life. While the rebel who denies the right of discipline exists, he is rare; the commonest rebel does not deny society's right to regulate but either will not or cannot keep his rebel desires in conformity. Most criminals are of this type, and the inability to conform may arise from many defects in training or original character.
[1] Watch a busy crossing when the traffic policeman is at work, regulating and disciplining. Everything is orderly, smooth-working, and no one complains. Let him step away for a moment; at once there is confusion, danger and the intensely competitive spirit of the drivers comes out, with the skillful and reckless and selfish invading the rights of the less skilled, timid and considerate. The policeman's return is welcomed by the bulk of the drivers. There are very many points of similarity between society and the busy crossing which need no elaboration on my part.
In fact, though we may rebel against discipline and its various social modifications, most of us are quite anxious that others shall be disciplined and raise the hue and cry at once when they rebel. Behind this dislike of the rebel is certainly the feeling that he predicates a superiority for himself by so doing, and this injures our self-esteem. Of course there is and may be a genuine belief that he menaces society and its stability, but those who raise this cry the loudest are usually themselves menaced either in authority and power or in some more direct cashable value.
The qualities which are now to be briefly discussed are in the main great inhibitions. The moral code is in great part and by the majority of men understood as inhibition and prohibition. A man is held to be honest if he does not steal and truthful if he does not lie. In reality this conception is largely correct, and it is as we extend our ideas of stealing and lying that we grow in morality.
Honesty, in relation to property, is the control of the acquisitive impulses and instincts and is wrapped up with the idea of private property. The acquisitive impulses are very strong in most people but not necessarily in all, and we find great variability here as elsewhere in human character. One child desires everything he sees, wants it for his own and does not wish others even to touch it, while another gives away everything he has. The covetous, the indifferent, the generous, the hoarders, the spenders,--these are a few of the types one finds every day in relation to the property and acquisitive feelings.
The spirit of "mine" needs on the whole little encouragement, though the ways to achieve "mine" are part of education. Mainly the spirit of "thine" needs encouragement, and most of our law, as differentiated from religion and ethics, has been built up on settling disputes in this matter. In its primary form, honesty in relation to property is the willingness to conform to society's rulings in this matter, e.g., the belief in ownership as sacred and that to acquire something desired one must (ethical must) go through certain recognized procedures. The whole conception rests on the social instinct's inhibitions of the acquisitive instinct and in the growth and strength of feelings of conscience and duty as previously described. Social heredity and tradition operate very powerfully in the matter of this kind of honesty; to steal, as we see it, from neighboring tribes is ethical for savage races, and even to steal such property as women. Throughout the ages the booty of war was one of the recognized rights of warriors, and even though to-day we have conventions protecting the private property of the enemy, this is one of those rules definitely understood as made to be broken.
Stealing is very common among children, who find their desire for good things too strong to be inhibited. But very quickly the average child learns control in so far as certain types of stealing are concerned. Some, however, never cease to steal, and in my opinion and experience this is true of those who become thieves later on. In very few cases do those who are eventually pickpockets and second-story men first develop their art in adolescence or youth; they have stolen from earliest childhood. Those who steal for the first time in adult life are usually those exposed to great temptations and occupying a position of trust, such as the bank officer or the trusted employee. Here the stress of overexpensive tastes, of some financial burden or the desire to get rich quick through speculation overcome inhibition, especially as it is too often assumed by the speculator that he will be able to return the money.
How widespread petty stealing is will be attested to by the hotel keeper and high-grade restaurant owner, whose yearly losses of linen, silver and bric-a-brac are enormous. The "best" people do not think it really wrong to do this, especially if the things taken have a souvenir value. Farmers whose fruit trees adjoin a public thoroughfare will also state that the average automobilist has quite a different code of morals for apples and pears than for money and gasoline.
"Caveat emptor"--let the buyer beware! This has been the motto of the seller of merchandise since the beginning of trade. It has made for a lot of cheating of various kinds, some of which has persisted as part of the practice of at least many merchants up to this day. Cheating in weight or quantity led to laws; and there cannot be any relaxation in these laws, or false scales and measures immediately appear. Cheating in quality led to adulterations in food stuffs which were veritably poisonous, so that it became necessary for each great nation to pass stringent laws to prevent very respectable and very rich men from poisoning their customers. Cheating in fabrics still flourishes and in unsuspected quarters, not always those of the small dealer. And, misrepresentation flourished in advertising openly and blatantly until very recently. It is true that advertising has changed its tastes and uses dignified and high-flown language, protesting the abnormally virtuous ideal of service of the article advertised; but can it be true that the makers of every car believe it to be so remarkable in performance and appearance?
To the credit of American merchants let it be stated that a widespread improvement has taken place in these matters, and that on the whole there never was a more unanimous determination to render service as at present. Yet while the goal of business is profit, and the goal of the buyer is the bargain, so long will there be a mutual over-reaching that does not fall far short of dishonesty.
There are types that are scrupulously honest in that they will not take a penny of value not obtained in the orthodox way of buying, trading or earning, who will take advantage of necessity, whose moral code does not include that fine sense of honor that spurns taking advantage of adversity. These are the real profiteers, and in the last analysis they add to their dishonesty an essential cruelty, though often they are pillars of the church.
I have dwelt on the dishonest; the types of honest men and women who give full value in work and goods to all whom they deal with are of course more numerous. The industrial world revolves around those who resist temptation, who work faithfully, who give honest measure and seek no unfair advantage. But that business is no brotherhood is an old story, and poor human nature finds itself forced by necessity and competition into ways that are devious and not strictly honest. It's the system that is at fault, for men have formed a scheme of creating and distributing values that severely tries and often weakens their ideals.
Truth in the sense of saying what is true and truth in the sense of getting at ultimate relations are two different matters. The first kind of truth is the basis of social intercourse, the second kind the goal of philosophic efforts.
Speaking the truth invariably is not an easy matter and in the strictest sense is quite questionable as to value. The white lie, so-called, the pleasant, assumed interest, the untruth intended to smooth social relations are shock absorbers and are part of the courtesy technique.
In a more technical sense, the untruth told to obtain some advantage or to escape the disagreeable in one form or another is held to be dishonorable, but is very widely practiced. People are enraged at being deceived if the deception is the work of an outsider or one not liked; they are shocked if deceived, lied to, by one they love. The lie stands as the symbol of weakness, but to be "taken in" has more than the material hurt the lie inflicts; it wounds vanity and brings doubt and suspicion into social relations, all of which are very disagreeable. It is held by ethical teachers to be worse to lie about faults than to have committed the faults, though this may be modified to mean only the minor faults.
All judges and lawyers will testify that "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" is very seldom told in court. Controversy is the enemy of truth, and when the fighting spirit is aroused, candor disappears. Where any great interest is involved, where the opponent is seeking to dispossess or to evade payment, or where legal punishment may be felt, the truth must be forced from most people. Moreover, passion blinds, and the natural and astonishing inaccuracy in observation and reporting[1] that every psychologist knows is multiplied wherever great emotions are at work. If perjury were really punished, the business of the courts would be remarkably increased.
[1] Not only is this true in law but in all controversy, whether theological, scientific, social or personal, the ego-feeling enters in its narrowest and blindest aspects to defeat honor, justice and truth.
All this is normal lying,--not habitual but occurring under certain circumstances. As clearly motivated is the lying of the braggart, the one who invents stories that emphasize his exceptional qualities. The braggart however is a mere novice as compared with the "pathological liar," who does not seem able to tell the truth, who invents continually and who will often deceive a whole group before he is found out. The motive here is that curious type of superiority seeking which is the desire to be piteously interesting, to hold the center of the stage by virtue of adverse adventures or misfortunes. Hence the wild white-slave yarns and the "orphan child" who has been abused. Every police department knows these girls and boys, as does every social service agency.
I am afraid we all yield to the desire to be interesting or to make artistic our adventures. To tell of what happens to us, of what we have seen or said or done exactly as it was, is difficult, not only because of faulty memory, but because we like to make the tale more like a story, because, let us say, of the artist in us. Life is so incomplete and unfinished! We so rarely retort as we should have! And a bald recital of most events is not interesting and so,--the proportions are altered, humor is introduced, the conversation becomes more witty, especially our share, and the adventure is made a little more thrilling. And each who tells of it adds little or much, and in the end what is told never happened. "The Devil is the father of lies," runs the old proverb. If so, we have all given birth to some of his children.
Though direct lying is held to be harmful and socially disastrous, and evidence of either fear and cowardice or malevolence, the essential honesty of people is usually summed up in the term sincerity. The advance of civilization is marked by the appearance of toleration, the recognition that belief is a private right, especially as concerns religion, and that sincerity in belief is more important than the nature of belief. What is really implied by sincerity is the absence of camouflage or disguise, so that it becomes possible to know what a man believes and thinks by his words and his acts. As a matter of fact, that ideal is neither realized nor desirable, and it is as wise and natural to inhibit the expression of our beliefs and feelings as it is to inhibit our actions. To be frank with a man, to tell him sincerely that we believe he is a scoundrel, and that we hate him and to show this feeling by act, would be to plunge the world into barbarism. We must disguise hate, and there are times when we must disguise love. Sincerity is at the best only relative; we ought to be sincere about love, religion and the validity of our purposes, but in the little relationships sincerity must be replaced by caution, courtesy and the needs of efficiency. In reality we ask for sincerity only in what is pleasant to us; the sincere whose frankness and honesty offend we call boors.
Sincere self-revelation, if well done, is one of the most esteemed forms of literary production. Montaigne's preface to his "Essays" is a promise that he lived up to in the sincerity and frankness of his self and other analysis. "Pepy's Diary" charms because the naked soul of an Englishman of the seventeenth century is laid before us, with its trivialities, lusts, repentance and aspirations. In the latter nineteenth century, Mary MacLane's diary had an extraordinary vogue because of the apparent sincerity of the eager original nature there revealed. We love young children because their selfishness, their curiosity, their "real" nature, is shown to us in their every word and act. In their presence we are relaxed, off our guard and not forced to that eternal hiding and studying that the society of our equals imposes on us.
We all long for sincerity, but the too sincere are treated much as the skeptic of Bjoriasen's tale, who was killed by his friends. As they stood around his body, one said to the other, "There lies one who kicked us around like a football." The dead man spoke, "Ah, yes, but I always kicked you to the goal." The sincere of purpose must always keep his sincerity from wounding too deeply; he must always be careful and include his own foibles and failings in his attack, and he must make his efforts witty, so that he may have the help of laughter. But here the danger is that he will be listed as a pleasant comedian, and his serious purpose will be balked by his reputation.
Sincerity, thus, is relative, and the insincere are those whose purposes, declared by themselves to be altruistic, are none the less egoistic, whose attachments and affections, loudly protested, are not lasting and never intense, and whose manners do not reflect what they themselves are but what they think will be pleasing and acceptable to others. The relatively sincere seek to make their outer behavior conform, within the possibilities, to their inner natures; they are polite but not gushing, devoted to their friends at heart and in deed, but not too friendly to their enemies or to those they dislike, and they believe in their own purposes as good. The unhappiest state possible is when one starts to question the sincerity and validity of one's own purposes, from which there results an agonizing paralysis of purpose. The sincere inspire with faith and cooperation, if there is a unity of interest, but it must not be forgotten that others are inspired to hatred and rivalry, if the sincerity is along antagonistic lines. We are apt to forget that sincerity, like love, faith and hope, is a beautiful word, but the quality of sincerity, like the other qualities, may be linked with misguided purpose. No one doubts the sincerity of the Moslem hordes of the eighth century in desiring to redeem the world for Mahomet, but we are quite as sincerely glad that sturdy Charles Martel smashed them back from Europe. Their very sincerity made them the more dangerous. In estimating any one's sincerity, it is indispensable to inquire with what other qualities is this sincerity linked,--to what nouns of activity is it a qualifying adjective?
Honesty, truthfulness and sincerity are esteemed because there is in our social structure the great need that men shall trust one another. The cynic and the worldly wise, and also the experiences of life, teach "never trust, always be cautious, never confide in letter or speech," curb the trusting urge in our nature. The betrayal of trust is the one sin; all other crimes from murder down may find an excuse in passion or weakness, but when the trusting are deceived or injured, the cement substance of our social structure is dissolved and the fabric of our lives threatened. To trust is to hand over one's destiny to another and is a manifestation of the mutual dependence of man. It is in part a judgment of character, it is in part an original trait, is an absence of that form of fear called suspicion and on its positive side is a form of courage.
Since it is in part a judgment of character in the most of us, it tends to grow less prominent as we grow older. The young child is either very trusting or entirely suspicious, and when his suspicions are overcome by acquaintance and simple bribes, he yields his fortunes to any one. (It is a pleasant fiction that children and dogs know whom to trust, by an intuition.) But as life proceeds, the most of us find that our judgment of character is poor, and we hesitate to pin anything momentous on it. Only where passion blinds us, as in sex love, or when our self-love and lust for quick gain[1] or hate has been aroused do we lose the caution that is the antithesis of trust. The expert in human relations is he who can overcome distrust; the genius in human relations is he who inspires trust.
For the psychopathologist an enormous interest centers in a group of people whom we may call paranoic. In his mildest form the paranoic is that very common "misunderstood" person who distrusts the attitude and actions of his neighbors, who believes himself to be injured purposely by every unintentional slight, or rather who finds insult and injury where others see only forgetfulness or inattention. Of an inordinate and growing ego, the paranoic of a pathological trend develops the idea or delusion of persecution. From the feeling that everything and every one is against him, he builds up, when some major purpose becomes balked, a specific belief that so and so or this or "that group is after me." "They are trying to injure or kill me" because they are jealous or have some antagonistic purpose. Here we find the half-baked inventor, whose "inventions" have been turned down for the very good reason that they are of no value, and who concludes
[1] All the great swindlers show how the lust for gain plus the wiles of the swindler overcome the caution and suspicion of the "hard-headed," The Ponzi case is the latest contribution to the subject.
that some big corporations are in league with the Patent Office to prevent him from competing with them; here we have the "would-be" artist or singer or writer whose efforts are not appreciated, largely because they are foolish, but who believes that the really successful (and he often names them) hate and fear him, or that the Catholics are after him, or perhaps the Jews or the Masons.
In its extreme form the paranoic is rare just as is the extremely trusting person of saintly type. But in minor form every group and every institution has its paranoic, hostile, suspicious, "touchy," quick to believe something is being put over on him and quick to attribute his failure to others. In that last is a cardinal point in the compass of character. Some attribute their failure to others, and some in their self-analysis find the root of their difficulties and failures in themselves.
Under the feeling of injustice a paranoid trend is easily aroused in all of us, and we may misinterpret the whole world when laboring under that feeling, just as we may, if we are correct, see the social organization very clearly as a result. Therein is the danger of any injustice and seeming injustice, As a result condemnation is extreme, wrongly directed and with little constructive value. We become paranoid, see wrong where there is none and enemies in those who are friendly.
The over-trusting, over-confidential are the virtuous in excess, and their damage is usually localized to themselves or their families. They tell their secrets to any one who politely expresses an interest, they will hand over their fortunes to the flattering stranger, to the smooth-tongued. Sometimes they are merely unworldly, absorbed in unworldly projects, but more often they are merely trusting fools.
Man the weak, struggling in a world whose forces are pitiless, whose fairest face hides grim disaster, has sought to find some one, some force, he might unfailingly trust. He raises his hands to heaven; he cries, "There is One I can trust. Though He smite me I shall have faith."