Undoubtedly psychological rumors that have trickled into town have had an influence. Everybody who has an articulate desire to be modern is thinking about human nature in terms that he supposes to be those of the psychologist. In particular, three propositions have attained some vogue: That men are moved by the same instincts as the lower species; that instinctive conduct is mechanically determined; and that the reasons conventionally given for conduct are mostly sophistical “rationalizations” (that is, merely supposed reasons for that which in reality is determined by emotion rather than thought). These ideas give support to the current mood, but they cannot have had much to do with creating it. As here used, they are themselves “rationalizations.” The basis of the mood is some form of common or at least wide-spread experience. No great ground-swell of popular sentiment ever originated from anything else. Indeed, can we reasonably assume that the wind blows in only one direction--from psychology to popular opinion, but not from the popular mood into the psychology laboratory? Surely psychologists are human, which is to say that we need a psychology of their psychologizing. Here is an item of it: (1) The area that one chooses for investigation; (2) The questions that one asks; (3) The facts that one notices or fails to notice; (4) The values that are noticed in the work of another; and (5) The apparent size of the sphere within which one acts--all these are influenced by some interest then and there present. Now, interest can be awakened in all sorts of ways. The spirit of the times can shunt research onto this track or that, and it can make this datum or that prominent in the mind of the researcher. It is easy, in fact, to trace to their origin several of the dominant interests of psychology. Thus it struggled for scientific standing at a period when “science” connoted, most clearly of all, physical science; at a time when the biological concept of evolution filled the sky; at a time when it was necessary, in order to be let alone, to seem not to meddle with theological interests; and, above all, at a time when industrialism was rushing swiftly towards its present climax. We shall do no despite to science nor to any of its devotees if we say that there is a subtle connection between the dominance of machinery in our civilization, the prominence of a machine-like view of motivation in the many works on psychology, and the predilection of the popular mood for just this idea of human nature. VII ACCORDING TO INDUSTRIALISM, WHAT IS MAN? An ancient poet celebrated the greatness of man in the following glowing words: