Human nature and the social orderCooley, Charles Horton
Science
Human nature and the social order
Cooley, Charles Horton
Individualism; Social psychology; Sociology
Apparently, then, voice, facial expression, gesture, and the like, which
later become the vehicle of personal impressions and the sensible basis
of sympathy, are attractive at first chiefly for their sensuous variety
and vividness, very much as other bright, moving, sounding things are
attractive; and the interpretation of them comes gradually by the
interworking of instinct and observation. This interpretation is nothing
other than the growth, in connection with these sensuous experiences, of
a system of ideas that we associate with them. The interpretation of an
angry look, for instance, consists in the expectation of angry words and
acts, in feelings of resentment or fear, and so on; in short, it is our
whole mental reaction to this sign. It may consist in part of
sympathetic states of mind, that is in states of mind that we suppose
the other to experience also; but it is not confined to such. These
ideas that enrich the meaning of the symbol—the resentment or fear, for
instance—have all, no doubt, their roots in instinct; we are born with
the crude raw material of such feelings. And it is precisely in the act
of communication, in social contact of some sort, that this material
grows, that it gets the impulses that give it further definition,
refinement, organization. It is by intercourse with others that we
expand our inner experience. In other words, and this is the point of
the matter, the personal idea consists at first and in all later
development, of a sensuous element or symbol with which is connected a
more or less complex body of thought and sentiment; the whole social in
genesis, formed by a series of communications.
What do we think of when we think of a person? Is not the nucleus of the
thought an image of the sort just mentioned, some ghost of
characteristic expression? It may be a vague memory of lines around the
mouth and eyes, or of other lines indicating pose, carriage, or gesture;
or it may be an echo of some tone or inflection of the voice. I am
unable, perhaps, to call up any distinct outline of the features of my
best friend, of my own mother, or my child; but I can see a smile, a
turn of the eyelid, a way of standing or sitting, indistinct and
flitting glimpses, but potent to call up those past states of feeling of
which personal memories are chiefly formed. The most real thing in
physical presence is not height, nor breadth, nor the shape of the nose
or forehead, nor that of any other comparatively immobile part of the
body, but it is something in the plastic, expressive features: these are
noticed and remembered because they tell us what we most care to know.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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