BIBLIOGRAPHY
The only general survey is Don H. Wolfe, The Image of
Man in America (Dallas, 1957; New York, 1970), which,
drawing on both social science material and belles lettres,
focuses on ideas about “creativity” in the human person
ality. Several articles on the idea of human nature in west-
ern thought bear on the American discussion of it. The most
useful are John Dewey's article in the Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences (1935), VII, 531-36; James Luther Adams,
“The Changing Reputation of Human Nature,” Journal of
Liberal Religion, 4 (Autumn 1942), 59-79; 4 (Winter 1943),
137-60; and Merle Curti, “Human Nature in American
Thought,” Political Science Quarterly, 68 (Sept. 1953),
354-75; (Dec. 1953), 493-510.
In terms of the discussion of the idea of human nature
in formal psychology the most useful general accounts are
E. G. Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology (New
York, 1950); Carl Murchison, ed., A History of Psychology
in Autobiography, 5 vols. (Worcester, Mass., 1930-52); and
Henryk Misiak and Virginia Staudt Sexton, History of Psy-
chology:—An Overview (New York, 1966). Notwithstanding
the merits of this specialized account of American psychol-
ogy, Jay Warton Fay, American Psychology before William
James (New Brunswick, N.J., 1939), it is not satisfactory.
Special note should be made of R. C. Davis, “American
Psychology 1800-1885,” Psychological Review, 43 (Nov.
1936), 471-93.
For the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the most
important primary sources are The Journal of John
Winthrop, ed. James K. Hosmer, 2 vols. (New York, 1908);
Charles Morton, Compendium physicae, Publications of the
Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 33 Collections (1940), ed.
Theodore Hornberger; Thomas Clap, An Essay on the Na-
ture and Foundation of Moral Virtue (New Haven, 1765);
Jonathan Edwards, Works, 5 vols. (London, 1840); Paul
Ramsey's edition of Edwards' Freedom of the Will (New
Haven, 1957); Samuel Johnson, President of King's College.
His Career and Writing, ed. Herbert and Carol Schneider,
4 vols. (New York, 1929); John Woolman, Essays and Jour-
nals (New York, 1922); and titles of sermons and other pieces
cited in the text. Benjamin Rush's Medical Inquiries and
Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (Philadelphia,
1812), has been reissued, with an introduction by S. Barnard
Wortis, in the History of Medicine Series, No. 15 (New York,
1962). It may be supplemented by The Autobiography of
Benjamin Rush, ed. George W. Corner, in Memoirs of the
American Philosophical Society, 45 (Princeton, 1951).
Secondary material includes Perry Miller, The New
England Mind. The Seventeenth Century, (New York, 1938),
esp. Ch. 9; and idem, The New England Mind, From Colony
to Province (Cambridge, Mass., 1953); Claude M. Newlin,
Philosophy and Religion in Colonial America (New York,
1962), and the earlier work of I. Woodbridge Riley, Ameri-
can Philosophy. The Early Schools (New York, 1907). The
second chapter in Arthur O. Lovejoy's Reflections on Human
Nature (Baltimore, 1961), shows how theories of human
nature entered into the making of the Constitution of the
United States. Also useful is Adrienne Koch, The Philosophy
of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1943). An interesting exam-
ple of an effort to apply modern psychological concepts
to an eighteenth-century American's thought about the
nature of man is Richard I. Bushman, “On the Use of
Psychology: Conflict and Conciliation in Benjamin
Franklin,” History and Theory, 5 (1966), 225-40. For the
use by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century historians of
concepts of human nature see Merle Curti,
Human Nature
in American Historical Thought (Columbia, Mo., 1968).
The discussion of human nature in the literature of
transcendentalism can best be understood through the writ-
ings of the transcendentalists themselves, although the
standard biographies are also useful. Joseph Dorfman's The
Economic Mind in American Civilization, 5 vols. (New York,
1946-59), is a good guide to the economic writings in which
theories of human nature are explicitly or implicitly
accessible. Also relevant is Wesley C. Mitchell's Lecture
Notes on Economic Theory (New York, 1949). The standard
authority on phrenology is John D. Davies, Phrenology: Fad
and Science; A 19th Century American Crusade (New
Haven, 1955).
Also important are Edward Youmans' essay in The Culture
Demanded by Modern Life (New York, 1867; 1900), and John
Dewey's “The New Psychology,” Andover Review, 2 (Sept.
1884), 278-91. Much basic material is at hand in the
autobiographies of pioneer psychologists, in Carl Murchison,
cited above; in R. B. Perry, Life and Letters of William
James, 2 vols. (Boston, 1935); and in G. Stanley Hall, Life
and Confessions of a Psychologist (New York, 1923). The
files of the American Journal of Psychology (1887—) and
the Psychological Review (1894—) are, of course, indis-
pensable.
The most useful brief account of the relation between
Darwinism and concepts of human nature is E. G. Boring,
“The Influence of Evolutionary Theory upon Psychological
Thought in America,” in Stow Persons, ed., Evolutionary
Thought in America (New York, 1956), pp. 268-98. The best
analysis of Chauncey Wright, William James, C. S. Peirce,
and John Fiske in the context of their evolutionary, prag-
matic, and idealistic philosophy in relation to the idea of
human nature is that of Philip P. Wiener, Evolution and
the Founders of Pragmatism (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), pp.
31ff. Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American
Thought 1860-1915 (New York, 1944; 1959); and Mark
Haller, Eugenics; Hereditarian Attitudes in American
Thought (New Brunswick, N.J., 1963), are standard accounts.
Nicholas Pastore, The Nature-Nurture Controversy (New
York, 1949), documents the conservative-liberal alignment
of hereditarians and environmentalists.
For the functional psychology see James R. Angell, “The
Province of Functional Psychology,” Psychological Review,
14 (March 1907), 61-91. Benjamin Wolstein's “Dewey's
Theory of Human Nature,” Psychiatry, 12 (Feb. 1949),
77-85, is, of course, only one of a great many valuable
commentaries on Dewey's philosophy, social ideas, and
psychological contributions. Dewey's own most relevant
writings are Human Nature and Conduct (New York, 1922),
and Freedom and Culture (New York, 1939).
Watson's most important writings are Psychology from
the Standpoint of the Behaviorist (Philadelphia, 1919; 2nd
ed. 1929), and Behaviorism (New York, 1925; rev. ed., 1930).
For more recent developments see the papers in “Psychol-
ogy: a Behavioral Reinterpretation,” Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society, 108 (Dec. 1964), 151-85;
and C. L. Hull, Principles of Behavior (New York, 1943);
idem, A Behavior System (New Haven, 1952); E. C. Tolman,
“Principles of Purposive Behavior,” in S. Koch, ed., Psy-
chology: a Study of a Science, 3 vols. (New York, 1959),
II, 92-157; and B. F. Skinner, Walden Two (New York, 1948);
idem, Science and Human Behavior (New York, 1953). See,
among secondary studies, John C. Burnham, “The Origins
of Behaviorism,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral
Sciences, 4 (April 1968), 143-51; and Gustav Bergmann,
“The Contribution of John B. Watson,” in John M. Scher,
ed., Theories of the Mind (New York, 1962), pp. 674-87.
Mention should be made of Donald H. Fleming's introduc-
tion to Jacques Loeb, The Mechanistic Conception of Life
(Cambridge, Mass., 1964), which is a basic contribution to
behaviorism.
For the reception and influence of Freud consult John
C. Burnham, Psychoanalysis and American Medicine
1894-1918, Psychological Issues, Monograph 20 (Pittsburgh,
1968); and idem “The New Psychology: From Narcissism
to Social Control,” in Braeman, Bremner, and Brody, eds.,
Change and Continuity in Twentieth-Century America: the
1920s (Columbus, Ohio, 1968), pp. 351-98; Clarence P.
Oberndorf, A History of Psychoanalysis in America (New
York, 1953); Merle Curti, “The American Exploration of
Dreams and Dreamers,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 27
(July-Sept. 1966), 391-416. Frederick J. Hoffman, Freudian-
ism and the Literary Mind (Baton Rouge, 1945); and idem,
The Twenties; American Writing in the Post-War Decade
(New York, 1955).
The literature of the behavioral sciences is too vast to
do more than offer a very few samples: Leonard D. White,
ed., The State of the Social Sciences (Chicago, 1956); idem,
The Social Studies and the Social Sciences (New York, 1962);
and Merle Curti, “The Changing Concept of “Human Na-
ture in the Literature of American Advertising,” Business
History Review, 41 (Winter 1967), 335-57. For a criticism
of the behavioral sciences from a “humanistic” point of view
consult Floyd W. Watson, The Broken Image, Man, Science
and Society (New York, 1964).
MERLE CURTI
[See also Deism; Education; Evolutionism; Genetic Con-
tinuity; Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics; Man-
Machine; Organicism; Perfectibility; Philanthropy;
Prag-
matism; Progress;
2">Psychological Schools in European
Thought; Sin and Salvation.]
