ABSTRACT
Humanness involves two different but complementary social attitudes. To be human implies cultivating one's individuality as fully as possible, but it also means belonging to a collectivity and therefore accepting duties and behavioral constraints which limit individualistic expressions. The social unity of the tribe is determined in part by similarities in the ways of life of its members and in the use they make of local resources; it also results from shared assumptions about the origins of the world and about the goals and meaning of human life. In a primitive environment, the decisions and activities of each individual are determined less by his personal tastes and choices than by those of the collectivity as a whole. The experience of individuality depends upon a psychological separation from the external environment—in other words, upon an ability consciously to recognize as different from oneself all inanimate objects and living things, including other human beings.
