佚名/Anonymous
Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner balance and can contribute to the well-being of society.
It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its evaluation of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept "society" means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence— that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is "society" which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word "society".
人類既具有獨立性，又具有群居性。作為一個獨立的個體，他試圖保護自己以及身邊最親近的人的生活，同時滿足自己個人的願望，發展自身的內在潛能；作為群居者，他試圖獲得其他人的認同和友愛，希望他們分享自己的快樂，安慰自己受傷的心靈，同時改善他們的生活條件。一個人的個性正是在這些複雜多變、衝突頻繁的抗爭中顯現出來的。兩者的特定結合決定了一個人維持內心平衡的程度，以及他對社會作出貢獻的大小。