THE MOTIVES OF MEN BY GEORGE A. COE AUTHOR OF “WHAT AILS OUR YOUTH,” “A SOCIAL THEORY OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION,” ETC. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS Copyright, 1928, by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS Published October, 1928 Reprinted March, 1929 Printed in the United States of America PREFACE Now that the long labor of writing this book is done, what does it all amount to? Only the reader can answer this question; but perhaps the reader’s labor can be facilitated by knowing what moved the author to write. This, then, as nearly as I can tell the story, is the way it all happened. Imagine yourself to be the following kind of polyglot being: Your daily occupation is teaching the principles of education with particular reference to the formation of moral and religious character; you have taken some part in developing the psychology of religion, and you teach a class in this subject also; you are likewise keenly interested in the movements of the religious and social life of our time. On each of these three sides of you there emerges one and the same problem--the dynamics of mind, specifically the human mind. As teacher of education you must consider what motives are in operation in both adult life and child life, how selection among them is made, and how some can be caused to grow, and others not to grow. As student of the psychology of religion you must inquire what it is that allures men into their enormous involvement in religious practices and institutions. As churchman and as citizen of the world you pause before the waning influence of churches upon civilization, and before the waxing influence of industrialism; and you cannot ignore either the large-scale ignoble conduct that we are witnessing or the cynical explanations of it that are rife. Thus the task of identifying the good and the evil at the springs of conduct forces itself upon you. Scientific psychology meets your curiosity only half way, or less than half way. Until recently it has been too little interested in mental dynamics; it has felt a compulsion to generalize the human and sub-human, the mental and the biological, the biological and the physical, with no corresponding concentration upon the specific performances of the human mind; it has been, that is to say, _self-forgetting_; and, even now that the dynamic problem is coming to the fore, the question what we human beings specifically are, dynamically considered, has only begun to be asked.