ABSTRACT
Human nature is an idea that dies hard. Its persistence can be measured by the proverbs and platitudes that reflect our belief in an unvarying, universal human type. The argument over man's nature enters into every arena of public debate. Scientists who speak of innate characteristics or of intelligence as genetically transmitted are reviled as agents of neofascism and racism. David Hume took this ability to understand other periods of history as the strongest kind of evidence for the constancy of human nature. More than one school of psychological thought —Aristotle and Kant, for example —take the opposite view that human understanding is possible if and only if men are born with certain innate categories of time, space, and relation. Cultural arguments, employed by many anthropologists, social psychologists, and sociologists, are the most widespread and the most convincing. At bottom, they are simply the psychological argument restated in relation to culture.
