This insightful treatise on the essential components of human nature by the great American philosopher and educator John Dewey, in his own words, "sets forth a belief that an understanding of habit and of different types of habit is the key to social psychology, while the operation of impulse and intelligence gives the key to individualised mental activity." Some eighty years after its original publication, during which time psychological theories have proliferated in ever-more arcane flights of abstraction, it is refreshing to read Dewey's commonsensical views rooted in experience and objective observation. This classic work still has much to recommend it to students of ethics, psychology, and sociology.