“HUMAN NATURE BEING WHAT IT IS” Two lines of thought are discernible in the minds of those who judge that human motivation is and must remain of low quality, namely, generalizations from direct observation of the life about us, and inferences from the truth that we are a part of nature and a manifestation of her unchanging laws. Both these grounds must be considered. I shall show, in the present section, what is implied as to motivation in our being enmeshed in the totality of animate nature; in the following section attention will be given to the bearing of current psychology upon our problem, and afterwards, I shall endeavor to pluck some of the fruits of direct observation. For more than half a century, now, naturalistic views of man have had their center in the theory of evolution. We have come to know ourselves as blood relatives of the species that we call lower, and “blood relative” has come to mean not only bodily but also mental kinship. This, of itself, would scarcely argue anything as to the level of our capacities as compared with the level of the beasts, for various levels of conduct and apparently of capacity exist within our own species. It is not the fact of kinship, but the fact of law and continuity within this kinship that seems to furnish a basis for moderating our self-respect. Law is interpreted as if we were fatalistically assigned our place, and continuity is interpreted in the sense of sameness with that from which we have sprung. Hence the notion that, “human nature being what it is” by virtue of our place in the evolutionary order, our motives are only complex forms of the impulses that we find in the lower animals. Yet the story of development is a story of variation, of variation piled upon variation, and of sudden mutations. The continuity that pervades the whole is continuity of process, not the perpetuation of sameness. The connectedness of nature’s forms is like the connectedness of a merchant’s goods--all were acquired by purchase, all will be disposed of by sale; all appear in the same inventory and upon the same ledger; they have all this in common, and there is this continuity from one piece of merchandise to another. But this says nothing as to the range of differences. It was said of one of the great London “stores” some years ago that it would accept orders for any kind of commodity known to man.