| Summary: | "If the authority of religion, philosophy, and traditional morality has somewhat abated in these days, not so the authority of science. The emblems of authority are now all its own. I have therefore attempted in the following pages to apply certain elementary principles of psychological science to the problems of social reconstruction. There is, of course, already an extensive literature on the psychology of social reform in its larger aspects. I have quoted from some of these writings in the pages which follow. While I have hoped to make a further slight contribution to this large subject, my immediate purpose has been the examination of some of the current and popular plans, for social reform in the light of recent psychological studies--particularly studies in certain forms of instinctive human behavior. The early chapters of the book are, therefore, largely negative. In the later chapters I have tried to indicate my own thought as to the direction social reconstruction should take, if it is to conform to the facts of human nature"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
|
|---|