He well-nigh disdains food and sleep in the
intensity of his interest. Is this particular episode in his life merely
happening, or does some causative influence lie back of this event
somewhere in the years? Did some influence of home, or school, or
playground give him an impulse and an impetus toward this event? Or, in
other words, are the activities of his earlier life functioning on the
bit of paper before him? If this is an effect, what and where was the
cause? In the case of any type of human behavior can we postulate
antecedent causes? If a hundred musicians were writing musical
compositions at the same moment, would they offer similar explanations
of their behavior?
=Leadership.=--As a working hypothesis, it may be averred that ability
to influence environment betokens leadership. With such a measuring-rod
in hand we may go out into the community and determine, with some degree
of accuracy, who are leaders and who are mere followers. Then we should
need to go further and discover degrees of leadership, whether small or
large, and, also, the quality of the leadership, whether good or bad,
wise or foolish, selfish or altruistic, noisy or serene, and all the
many other variations. Having done all this, we are still only on the
threshold of our study, for we must reason back from our accumulated
facts to their antecedent causes. If we score one man's leadership fifty
and another's eighty, have we any possible warrant for concluding that
the influences in their early life that tend to generate leadership were
approximately as five to eight?
=Restricted concepts.
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