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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77481 ***
+
+
+
+
+THE MISBEHAVIORISTS
+
+
+
+
+ THE MISBEHAVIORISTS
+
+ PSEUDO-SCIENCE
+ AND THE MODERN TEMPER
+
+ BY
+ HARVEY WICKHAM
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+ NEW YORK
+ LINCOLN MAC VEAGH · THE DIAL PRESS
+ LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY
+ TORONTO
+ 1928
+
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY DIAL PRESS INCORPORATED
+
+ MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+ BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+ TO ALL ENQUIRING MINDS, AND TO THOSE DISTURBED
+ BY THE APPARENT LOGIC IN MANY
+ CURRENT THEORIES HOSTILE TO THEIR
+ DEAREST CONVICTIONS, THIS BOOK IS
+ DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ CHAPTER I--THE MODERN TEMPER                                       13
+
+ CHAPTER II--BEHAVIORISM FROM THE STANDPOINT OF A PSYCHOLOGIST      22
+   1. The Missing Mr. Mind                                          22
+   2. An Undecided Synapse                                          35
+   3. Eliza Does not Cross the Ice                                  43
+   4. Tinks! Tinks! Kwaks! Kwaks!                                   54
+
+ CHAPTER III--DR. MCDOUGALL’S X                                     67
+   1. At the Beck of Thirteen Masters                               67
+   2. Psyche Wields the Broom                                       79
+
+ CHAPTER IV--A SLAVE TO DREAMS                                      88
+   1. The Confessions of Sigmund Freud                              88
+   2. The Elaboration of a Fiction                                 104
+   3. Two Oft-Thwarted Passions                                    108
+   4. More Suppositions                                            117
+   5. Freud the Metaphysician                                      129
+
+ CHAPTER V--THE FAIRY HALLS OF SCIENCE                             139
+   1. The Idols of the Tribe                                       139
+   2. Some Nebulous Matters                                        150
+   3. The Bed of Procrustes                                        159
+   4. The New Physics                                              164
+   5. Chance                                                       174
+
+ CHAPTER VI--THE FAMILY TREE                                       186
+   1. Are Monkeys People?                                          186
+   2. Burbanking the Human Race                                    201
+   3. Salvation by Who’s Who                                       213
+
+ CHAPTER VII--THIS UNBELIEVING WORLD                               225
+   1. Dorsey                                                       225
+   2. The Brazen Bough                                             242
+   3. St. Paul as Scapegoat                                        258
+   4. The Church as Scapegoat                                      267
+   5. The Stories of Duran                                         280
+
+ CHAPTER VIII--THE ANCIENT TEMPER                                  292
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ PORTRAIT OF                      TO FACE PAGE
+
+ DR. JOHN WATSON                            56
+   “Give me the baby”
+
+ PROFESSOR WILLIAM MCDOUGALL                74
+   Are we trying to say something?
+
+ DR. SIGMUND FREUD                         104
+   He tells us his dreams
+
+ ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM                      202
+   The Devil take the hindmost!
+
+ DR. GEORGE A. DORSEY                      238
+   “We do not use the brains we have”
+
+ LEWIS BROWNE                              250
+   Stranger than fiction
+
+ WILL DURANT                               280
+   Almost an institution
+
+
+
+
+THE MISBEHAVIORISTS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE MODERN TEMPER
+
+
+The past appears to be dead.
+
+“If the world of poetry, mythology and religion represents the world
+as man would like to have it, while science represents the world as he
+gradually comes to discover it, we need only compare the two to realize
+how irreconcilable they appear,” says Joseph Wood Krutch, associate
+editor of _The Nation_ and the author of a biography of Poe, writing
+in _The Atlantic Monthly_ for February, 1927. “The romantic ideal of
+a world well lost for love, and the classic ideal of austere dignity
+seem equally ridiculous, equally meaningless when referred, not to the
+temper of the past, but the temper of the present.”
+
+Hilaire Belloc is equally insistent as to the existence of this modern
+temper, for he remarks in the course of some “Cheerful Thoughts on
+Christmas.”[1]
+
+“I think it foolish to disguise from ourselves the plain fact that,
+in the societies which abandoned the Faith in the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries, the last supports of Christian doctrine are
+breaking down very rapidly indeed. Of the doctrines themselves there is
+little left ... while the minority, which still feel some attachment
+to some few of these doctrines, feel that attachment in a decreasing
+degree and more and more as a vague, dissolving sentiment; less and
+less as a principle.
+
+“The old feeling that the doctrines were sacred and intangible, and
+that attack upon them was intolerable, has so utterly passed that the
+modern generation does not even understand it.... There has been hardly
+any defense, hardly any resistance; the last remainder of the creed ...
+has been allowed to slip away unnoticed like the last few coins of a
+fortune dissipated by a man so debauched as to have lost his memory.”
+
+Both Belloc and Krutch, it will be observed, agree that the world has
+changed--that is, that the popular idea as to what life really is,
+has changed. They differ only as to the sentiment with which the mass
+of the population are supposed to regard the alterations which have
+taken place in the view. Belloc, who is a Catholic, believes that
+Protestants at least are quite satisfied to have lost the world of
+“poetry, mythology and religion”; have in fact “allowed it to slip away
+unnoticed.” Krutch, the radical editor, suggests that there has been a
+struggle, that science has forced man to give up the world as he would
+like to have it and to accept the world as he has gradually come to
+discover it--not by making the lost world undesirable, but by making it
+seem ridiculous and without actuality.
+
+Krutch, I think, is right, in so far as the vast majority are
+concerned. They have resisted, Protestants as well as Catholics,
+and many who are neither Catholic nor Protestant but merely lovers
+of tradition and of the classic ideal of austere dignity and of the
+romantic ideal of a world well lost for love. They have struggled.
+They still struggle. But there is an ever increasing demand from some
+quarters that the struggle be given up in despair.
+
+Now if science indeed represents the world as man gradually comes to
+discover it--that is, if science represents the world as it is; and if
+the testimony of scientists as to the nature of this reality be fairly
+uniform and uncontradictory, with a growing unanimity promising to
+bring an eventual unison out of such discords as may still exist, then
+the only thing for the sensible citizen to do is to let the dead past
+bury its dead, turn from the grave with as little moaning as possible,
+and adapt himself with all speed to changed conditions. The advice,
+“Do it now!” is being hurled at him. Why should he not heed it? Nobody
+wants to be a mere reactionary, still less to live in a fool’s paradise.
+
+But does science represent the world as the world really is? Can we
+say that there is any likelihood of the scientific picture being
+more photographically perfect than is, or was, the romantic picture?
+Are scientists in agreement, so that there is little or no choice or
+opinion offered? Are their theories themselves logically consistent?
+What, precisely, is science? And finally, have its findings been
+faithfully reported to us?
+
+These are some of the questions which this book attempts to answer.
+But before plunging merrily into such a task it may be well to pause
+and consider yet further the testimony of Belloc. He may be mistaken
+as to people in general, but he is almost incredibly correct in regard
+to a small but very influential body of conspicuous persons who may
+be described as the Materialistic Philosophers. Scientists some of
+them call themselves, and scientists they are--of a sort. But as
+they permit themselves to be perpetually hag-ridden by questions of
+eschatology--doctrines relating to that ultimate dim Thule towards
+which the whole creation does or does not move--philosophy is what they
+chiefly have to offer, no matter by what other name they seek to give
+it a more modern and therefore presumably sweeter odor.
+
+The ultimate nature of things engrosses them, and just how little they
+struggle against the threatened loss of a world of poetry, mythology
+and religion may be seen by a quotation taken at random, or, to be
+more specific, from “The Mechanist Conception of Life,” by a veritable
+general in the materialistic army, Prof. Jacques Loeb, formerly of the
+University of California.
+
+“Our wishes and hopes, disappointments and sufferings,” he says,
+“have their source in the instincts which are comparable to the light
+instincts of the heliotropic animals.”
+
+A tropism, it should perhaps be explained for the benefit of the older
+generation, is a tendency to move toward or away from any external
+object, the operation being carried out by means of chemical and
+mechanical changes within the subject. Thus the heliotrope, which
+always strives to turn towards the sun, got its name. It is said to be
+positively tropic to light. Prof. Loeb, however, seems to be negatively
+tropic in this regard, for he continues:
+
+“The need of the struggle for food, the sexual instinct with its poetry
+and its chain of consequences, the maternal instincts with the felicity
+and the suffering caused by them ... are the roots from which our inner
+life develops. For some of these instincts, the chemical basis is at
+least sufficiently indicated to arouse the hope that their analysis
+from the mechanistic point of view is only a question of time.”
+
+“Hope,” he says. The second of the virtues, once set between Faith
+and Charity, is here involved to express the author’s reaction to the
+prospect that some day all the movements of the inner life may be
+reduced to the level of so many warping planks exposed to variations
+in humidity and to changing temperatures. The modern temper, as it
+exists in the minds of those who seek to create and control it,
+certainly seems to have become emotionally adjusted to an abandonment
+of the classic idea of dignity. Heretofore man has based his pride
+chiefly upon his intelligence, the freedom of his will, his possession
+of a soul, and his conviction that he was made in the image of God. But
+according to the materialists, no mind, no will, no soul exists, and
+God is merely the “behavior of the universe.”[2]
+
+“There is no such thing as mind in the old sense of the word,” says J.
+B. Eggen.[3] And what is it in the new sense of the word? “It cannot be
+considered as ... separate from the body,” Mr. Eggen goes on. Is it the
+brain, then--the brain in the old sense of the word? By no means. “The
+mind is not a thing with which we react, it is a form of reaction. We
+do not think with our brain; there is nothing inside the brain but a
+lot of neurones.”
+
+The mind cannot be considered as separate from the body, neither do we
+think without brain. With what, then, do we think? Obviously we do not
+think at all in the old sense of the word. Thinking, we are about to be
+told, is only a collection of motions. And he who “thinks” the theory
+cannot be made plausible has yet to read Eggen’s illustrious masters.
+But is this science? That same science which has transformed the
+appearance of the world and given us the telegraph, the telephone, the
+phonograph, the automobile, the electric light, the air-plane, radio,
+and television? We shall see.
+
+“The Approaching Crisis” would seem to be well named, and in it Mr.
+Wieman, who is also the author of “Religious Experience and the
+Scientific Method,” informs us that the decline of religion has been
+largely due to its “inadequate adjustment to scientific method and
+discovery.” Adding, “At the present time it is research in the field
+of psychology and sociology which is demanding a transformation in our
+thinking,”--that is, in our notions. Psychology is unquestionably the
+most popular form of that “challenge to fundamental beliefs” of which
+so much is heard. And Dr. John B. Watson, editor of the _Journal of
+Experimental Psychology_, and formerly Professor of Psychology at Johns
+Hopkins, makes all former challenges seem weak, for he says--in the
+first chapter of his “Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist”:
+
+“Psychology, up to very recent times, has been held so rigidly under
+the dominance both of traditional religion and of philosophy--the two
+great bulwarks of medievalism--that it has never been able to free
+itself and become a science.... In the late sixties an attempt was
+made” to make it such. “The boast was voiced that psychology ... had
+become a science without a soul--that is, a natural science.” But
+“notwithstanding the many laboratories here and abroad, it has never
+been able to substantiate this claim.... The psychology begun by Wundt
+has failed to become a science,”--apparently because some remnants of
+soul still cling to it. And Dr. Watson concludes, “Before progress
+could be made in astronomy, it had to bury astrology; neurology had
+to bury phrenology; and chemistry had to bury alchemy. But the social
+sciences, psychology, sociology, political science and economics, will
+not bury their medicine men.”
+
+He is speaking, of course, of psychology prior to Dr. Watson, of the
+psychology of Wundt, which resulted in the Binet intelligence tests.
+This in its day was considered a very materialistic psychology indeed,
+superseding the psychology of the William James or the Herbert Spencer
+type, which also in its day voiced the boast that it was a science,
+tough, and without bowels of compassion. How rapidly we progress. James
+lived until 1910, Spencer until 1903. It was not until 1912, when,
+according to Dr. Watson, “behaviorism first showed its head,” that
+the burying of the medicine men began. And two years later came the
+War! The boast can now be voiced without fear of contradiction that
+psychology has no soul.
+
+Still if it be true science, and if science be but another name for
+reality, I for one am going to get at the burying of my own medicine
+men without further delay. I notice a considerable amount of such
+burying going on about me. Men are hurrying with the work as if afraid
+of being caught with a corpse or two on their hands and undisposed of.
+A sort of terror is stalking through the land, afflicting especially
+the writers of books and magazine articles--the terror of not being
+able to keep up with the Joneses in their employment of the undertaker.
+The famous Experimental Method, but late a fugitive, hounded from hole
+to corner and from corner to hole, has found influence and capital. It
+wields a big stick, or at least a big stick is being wielded in its
+name.
+
+It was once said, “Wisdom crieth in the streets, How long ye simple
+ones will ye love simplicity?” And now a voice, still purporting to be
+Wisdom’s, fairly yells: “Bring us your dead!” One would think that a
+pestilence was abroad. Possibly there is. Formerly men bowed down to
+the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up, or cast their babes
+before the car of Juggernaut. Today they would rather die, some of
+them, than be found obstructing the wheels of progress. Science, grown
+rich, has acquired such prestige as was once accorded only to Cæsar.
+
+And no wonder. It has given us Copernicus, Galileo, Galvani, Volta,
+Faraday, Pasteur, the Curies, Edison, Marconi, Westinghouse, Burbank,
+and thousands of others--men for the most part personally poor, but
+adding without measure to the material wealth of the world. If all
+these men are back of the big stick; if it be they who bid us give up
+our God, our souls, wills and even our minds, ordering us to become
+accustomed to the idea that we are but machines--and if in doing so
+they are sticking to their business and not wandering off into fields
+they have failed to make their own, it might (perhaps) be folly to
+disobey.
+
+But let us first make certain as to whose voice is on the air. We
+have, all of us, a few more or less cherished beliefs. We have grown
+up leaning upon--call them props and crutches if you will. Some of us
+have even been riveted to moral scruples which, when we try to go in a
+direction they forbid, dog us with the clanking hinderance of a ball
+and chain. We doubt if we could continue to be good citizens without
+them. We do not even know if good citizens, in the old sense of the
+word, are any longer desired. Without our props we are likely simply to
+fall--and we have never yet seen people walking upright without props
+of some sort. We actually doubt the advisability of trying to progress
+on all fours.
+
+There are new props, better than the old? Good! Let us see them. Let
+us test them, and make sure that they be indeed from science’s own
+workshop. And having mentioned the Watson brand of artificial limb, we
+may as well begin by experimenting with that, finding out by what still
+waters and into what green pastures we may wander with its aid.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _America_, December, 4, 1926.
+
+[2] “The Approaching Crisis,” by Henry Nelson Wieman, teacher of
+philosophy at Occidental College, Los Angeles, _Century Magazine_,
+November, 1926.
+
+[3] _Current History_, September, 1926.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+BEHAVIORISM FROM THE STANDPOINT OF A PSYCHOLOGIST
+
+
+1. THE MISSING MR. MIND
+
+Dr. Watson practically begins his best known book, “Psychology from
+the Standpoint of a Behaviorist,” with the statement that he is not
+concerned with problems of consciousness. And one at first understands
+him to mean that in his capacity of behaviorist he is not concerned
+with problems of this sort. He knows as a human being, one supposes,
+that he is alive. He does not, presumably, address his books to people
+in a state of coma. So it would seem that, as a man, he is concerned
+not only with his own consciousness but with the consciousness of
+others; that he is like the judge who knew something when off the Bench
+but refused to know it when on.
+
+As we read, however, this kindly interpretation becomes untenable.
+
+“Consciousness ... is but an indefinable phrase.... Even if [objective
+proofs of consciousness] existed, they would exist as isolated,
+unmeasurable ‘mental curiosities.’... The behaviorist finds no
+evidence for ‘mental existences’ or ‘mental processes’ of any kind....
+If behaviorism is ever to stand for anything ... it must make a
+clean break with the whole concept of consciousness.” Our thinking
+processes “are not different in essence from tennis-playing, swimming,
+or any other activity.... Meaning ... never arises in the scientific
+observation of behavior.”
+
+Thus far he goes in this one book. In a previous volume[4] he merely
+concluded that “one can assume either the presence or absence of
+consciousness ... without affecting the problems of behavior by one
+jot or one tittle.” But in “The Myth of the Unconscious”[5] he throws
+subterfuge to the winds and says plainly:
+
+“The behaviorist finds no ‘mind’ in his laboratories, sees it nowhere
+in his subjects ... if the behaviorists are right, then ... _there can
+be no such thing as consciousness_.”
+
+Why? Because “personality ... is the reaction-mass as a whole.” Can you
+put marbles in a bag and shake them till the mass of their reactions
+becomes aware of itself? Obviously not. Accepting for the sake of
+argument the definition of personality as it appears from the Watson
+“standpoint,”--there is no argument. Logic leads us straight into
+nothing. This is also the conclusion of J. S. Moore, who contends
+that _content_ when accented upon the first syllable signifies merely
+_context_--not the thing inside (there is no thing inside) but the
+things around it. Which makes it clear that I have been guilty of gross
+presumption in even trying to attach meaning to “psychology from the
+standpoint of a behaviorist.”
+
+This may sound like an attempt to be funny, to make cheap humor out of
+random extracts from a book half or not at all understood, but whether
+I understand psychology from the standpoint of a behaviorist or not, I
+was never more serious in my life. Not only Dr. Watson but many other
+adult men are solemnly asking us with perfectly straight faces if we
+dare to call not our souls but ourselves our own. And if we nod an
+affirmative, they smile in their beards, and imply that we must have
+lacked early advantages.
+
+But it will be urged it cannot be that so large a number of university
+professors have gone mad. They must have some way of deceiving
+themselves. And indeed they have. Metaphysics has been defined as
+the art of befuddling one’s self methodically, and of metaphysics of
+this sort none are so fond as those who decry metaphysics altogether.
+“Reaction-mass as a whole” sounds like a reasonable expression, does it
+not? Abstractions always do. And yet reactions can have no mass. They
+are only movements, not the things which move. Try and get any meat out
+of a movement and see what you have for dinner.
+
+But these fallacies do not usually travel alone. Watsonianism in
+particular is fond of the company of facts. It mixes up Behaviorism,
+as a mere study of behavior, in a vast confusion of Psychology,
+Physiology, Ethics and irreligion. It seeks now to blind us with
+passion, now to swamp us in detail--lest we remember what we are
+talking about.
+
+Thus Dr. Watson’s great book bristles with facts--pages and pages of
+them taken straight from physiology. He divides our bodies into three
+groups of parts, according to function--receptors, conductors and
+effectors. The receptors receive impressions from the outer world and
+are nothing but our old friends, the five senses--eyes, ears, nose, the
+taste-buds of the tongue, and those areas (chiefly of cuticle) which
+are sensitive to touch. The conductors are the nerves. The effectors,
+or the bringers about of effects, are the muscles and glands. Now
+the glands, at least those of the endocrine or ductless variety, are
+comparatively new-comers in the world of knowledge. But the other
+things are as familiar as doctors’ bills. There have been changes in
+nomenclature, nothing more.
+
+Yet these changes are significant. Receptors take the place of the
+senses because (in all seriousness) the behaviorist wishes to get rid
+of that hateful word “sense” and its implications. A similar motive
+must have been active when it came to naming the secretions from the
+ductless glands. They used to be called Hormones, meaning “I stir up.”
+This no doubt was objectionable, because some of the hormones do not
+stir us up; they quiet us down. Dr. Watson knows them all as autocoids,
+which has the advantage of being non-committal in this regard. What is
+more to the point, it implies something automatic. Let us see how they
+work.
+
+But right here we are met by a lack of knowledge. The secretions from
+only a few of the endocrines (notably andrenin and thyroxin) have as
+yet been isolated and analyzed. But there is good reason for believing
+that they regulate, to a certain extent at least, not only the ductless
+glands among themselves but (through the sympathetic nerves) the action
+of the unstriped muscles which control the stomach, intestines and
+various other unconscious or vegetative processes.
+
+Autocoidal secretion seems to be very much at the beck and call of our
+emotions, or else our emotions are very much at the beck and call of
+our autocoids; but whether you hitch the cart before the horse or the
+horse before the cart, the believer in human freedom need be no more
+alarmed over the autocoids than he is over the fact that drugs have
+certain effects when taken into the system. It was known even in the
+ages of faith that a man was not quite himself after partaking too
+freely even of a drug so charmingly outward mannered as is alcohol.
+
+The behaviorism of the autocoids is more obscure. They become
+conspicuous chiefly by their absence. Thus the removal of the
+parathyroids (part of the thyroid apparatus situated on either side
+of the larynx and windpipe) produces convulsions. Its autocoid is
+therefore believed to be of a restraining type. The removal of the
+thyroids themselves produces cretinism, and thyroxin, their active
+principle (it is sixty percent iodine) was isolated only recently by
+E. C. Kendall, of the Mayo Foundation. Suprarenal extract (from the
+suprarenal apparatus near the kidneys) aids in recovery from fatigue.
+
+As to the pituitary apparatus at the base of the brain, “gigantism is
+supposed to be due to an overactive anterior lobe; obesity and sexual
+infantilism to the lack of secretion of the posterior lobe.” (Watson.)
+The thymus gland (in the neck near the thyroids) is believed by Dr.
+Walter Timme to be linked with the pineal (which is a part of the brain
+structure) in a related system dominating the life cycle from birth to
+puberty. If the function of the pineal is disturbed in children, “there
+is a rapid development of the reproductive organs, precocity, and an
+increased growth of skeleton. It is thus supposed that this gland
+furnishes an inhibitory autocoid.” (Watson.)
+
+To the absence of the puberty gland (also called the interstitial, and
+endocrine not to be confounded with the gonads, or true sex cells,
+to which is entrusted the reproductive function)--to the absence of
+the puberty gland is attributed the observed effects of castration,
+and “there is a growing tendency on the part of investigators ...
+to believe that man is as old as his glands.” Therefore, “since the
+remaining glands apparently cannot stay youthful in the absence of
+a sufficient output from the puberty glands, it is only natural to
+connect senescence or old age with the decline in the output from
+this gland.” (Watson.) Hence all the experiments in rejuvenation, the
+transplantation of glands from monkeys and goats, made from the days
+of Brown-Sequard (famous about the year 1889) down to those made by
+Steinach, Voronoff and many others of the present time. Thus the simian
+becomes our “glandcestor,” so to speak, whether he be our forbear or
+not.
+
+But let us take leave of all this physiology and observe what sort of
+psychology we can get from our receptors, conductors and effectors
+under experimental conditions.
+
+For convenience sake, the behaviorist calls whatever happens to the
+victim of an experiment the “stimulus” or “situation,” and whatever
+the victim does in consequence the “response.” So we will imagine
+that a stimulus of some sort, say the spectacle of Eliza crossing the
+ice, impinges upon a receptor--in this case the retina. Physically,
+this is a light stimulus, and for a brief instant Eliza may be said
+to be all in your eye. But a conductor (the optic nerve) takes the
+matter up and transmits an impulse (in the form of a “wave of chemical
+decomposition”) to the brain. Here it encounters a lot of cells, called
+neurones. If J. B. Eggen be right in saying that “there is nothing
+inside the brain but a lot of neurones,” it could not well encounter
+anything else.
+
+A neurone under the microscope looks somewhat like a bush which
+has been pulled up by the roots. The ball of earth adhering to it
+represents the nucleus, or brain-cell proper. The branches are called
+dendrites, and in the human body they extend from sometimes less than
+a millimeter to sometimes more than a yard in length--in the latter
+case becoming what the layman usually means when he says “nerves.” Each
+nucleus possesses several, often a great number, and it is through
+these dendrites that it receives the neural, or nervous, impulse
+which it passes on through its axone to the next cell. There should
+be a small tap-root to our bush, terminating in brush-like fibres, to
+represent this axone. Usually there is but one to a cell, though it may
+send off collaterals.
+
+We have many millions of these neurones, each one complicated beyond
+belief if examined in detail. But let us not venture too far into that
+awful tangle of vaguely definable structures where even the neurologist
+gropes with difficulty, and about which he is constrained to make his
+tentative conclusions with bated breath. But it may be well to note
+that neurones are of three sorts. Let us call them receiving neurones,
+association neurones, and sending neurones; and let us liken them to
+three lines of soldiers, the receivers busily getting information from
+No Man’s Land, the associators passing it on to the senders operating
+the artillery. Receptors, conductors and effectors again. But out of
+fairness to Dr. Watson it should be said that he calls them nothing of
+the sort. In fact, he thinks that “entirely too much” has been made of
+the association neurone, and “of the whole localization of function.”
+The brain is not popular with behaviorists anywhere, for sometimes it
+shows a tendency to upset their most cherished theories.
+
+Nevertheless the brain is there, and Eliza is crossing the ice. The
+brain sees her. How? Through its receiving neurones. A soldier out
+in No Man’s Land holds a camera (the eye) in his hand, or dendrite,
+and takes her picture, which he transfers to his other hand, or axone,
+ready to pass on. It is like one of these very modern pictures sent by
+telegraph, for all he receives or passes on is a series of shocks, or
+“waves of chemical decomposition.” The effect would be the same if the
+soldiers communicated by means of hand-clasps, a Morse code of squeezes
+or taps,--something like that.
+
+The second soldier (association neurone) having possessed himself of
+the picture, relays it in turn to the third--one who is in touch with
+the guns, which in this case are the muscles and glands. The truth,
+of course, is not quite so simple as this. There are probably nine
+billion neurones to begin with, each supplied with numerous arms. Any
+association neurone appears to be able to get in touch with every other
+neurone in either of the other two classes, and even the simplest
+picture or bit of information must manifest itself in an unconscionable
+number of waves or impulses, each one quite meaningless in itself.
+What a wild tumult of activity must be taking place within us when the
+battle outside waxes hot!
+
+Nor are all the observation posts outside. Many are within the body.
+And from the data which they all transmit emotions and coördinate
+actions are born--at least so behaviorists would have us believe. The
+striped muscles twitch, and bones are jerked about. The unstriped
+muscles are stimulated to action, and the viscera are affected. The
+ductless glands increase their secretions, or suspend them. This, say
+the behaviorists, is what makes us brave; or cowardly; wild with rage
+or tender with love. Our bowels of compassion are moved. Perhaps we
+have no stomach for a fight. If we run away the vulgar will declare
+that we have no guts.
+
+But we cannot always be thinking of neurones individually, so we think
+of them in chains. When two get in touch with each other (through the
+axone of the one and the dendrite of the other) the connection is
+called a synapse. When the chain includes all three sorts of neurones,
+it is called a reflex arc.
+
+A reflex is what happens when you strike the patellar tendon of the
+knee with the side of your hand, with a tack-hammer, or with what Dr.
+Watson prefers to call “a percussion hammer.” The leg registers a
+kick, because the blow sets up a wave of chemical decomposition in the
+dendrites of the receiving neurones which are nearest concerned; the
+wave passes to certain association neurones, and by them is passed to
+the kicking (striped) muscle. That is, it passes through a reflex arc,
+one of the several reflex arcs which are already in working order when
+we are born. Which means that the association neurones here involved
+have somehow already been educated to relay all despatches to the
+neurones which operate the kick--and to none other. So this reflex arc
+is called “unconditioned,” and the stimulus which sets it in motion is
+said to be a “natural” stimulus. An unconditioned reflex is practically
+a tropism. Prof. Loeb ordered it to get busy and account for all
+behavior, human and other. It fell down on the job. We have not, it
+seems, enough knee and similar jerks to enable us to write a Ninth
+Symphony with their aid alone. Some other trifle was needed.
+
+Dr. Watson says he has it--in the conditioned reflex. It is possible,
+we find, to get a reflex to respond to a stimulus which is not its
+“natural” stimulus. Food, for example, is the natural stimulus of the
+reflex arc operating the salivary glands. The mouth waters when we
+begin to eat. But the Russian, Pavlov, bored holes in the cheeks of a
+dog, brought the salivary ducts into the open, and discovered that not
+only would the dog’s mouth water at the contact of food, but that it
+would water at the mere sight of food. Then he rang a bell for several
+days at feeding time, and had the satisfaction eventually of seeing
+the dog’s mouth begin to water when the bell was rung and no food was
+anywhere about.
+
+Prof. Lashley, of the Hopkins Laboratory, has since invented an
+instrument which can be fastened to the inside of the cheek by means of
+suction, so that the secretions may be led to a tube without a surgical
+operation--which is a convenience when the victim is human. He has thus
+ascertained how many drops per minute was the normal slaver, and that
+chocolate in the (human) subject’s hand increased it from three to five
+times; the smell of chocolate, five times; chocolate brought to the
+lips, nine times. “It may be said,” observes Bertrand Russell[6] “that
+modern psychology consists of the discovery by the professors of what
+everybody else has always known.”
+
+Yet it must be confessed that we did not know the number of drops
+of saliva which lay behind the licking of our chops in the presence
+of something good, or that the sight and smell of chocolate were
+“unnatural” or “substituted” stimuli--still less that the substitution
+of unnatural for natural stimuli was both the foundation and
+superstructure of “education.”
+
+But we know now that we can obtain the knee-jerk by blowing a whistle,
+or cause the iris to contract at the smell of asafœtida. We have but
+to flash a bright light every time the herb is introduced into the
+vicinity; or (if I may use such old-fashioned language), associate
+whistles with percussion hammers in the “mind” of the subject.
+
+Association is all it is. If you have learned to expect to be blinded
+by radiance every time you get a whiff of asafœtida, your eyes will
+begin to protect themselves even in the dark. If the sound of a whistle
+leads you to anticipate a blow on the patellar tendon, your leg will
+fly forward--at least theoretically. To get practical results, this
+education must begin very early.
+
+But I have used the words “mind,” “expect,” “anticipate,” and many
+expressions which imply conscious intelligence. In behaviorism all
+these are barred. The new stimuli are said to be “grafted” on the old
+stimuli, not upon the consciousness. All that can be said, then, is
+that when two stimuli, one natural and one unnatural, happen at the
+same time on a sufficient number of occasions, the reflex becomes
+conditioned so that it will do its stuff when the unnatural stimulus
+happens alone.
+
+One other item and the mechanical foundation of psychology from the
+standpoint of a behaviorist will be complete. There are certain
+reflexes called “emotional reflexes.” These are the things we do when
+we are afraid, angry, or in love--for Dr. Watson traces all emotions
+back to one of these three. Some go further, lump fear and anger
+together, and give us an emotional outfit reducable to likes and
+dislikes.
+
+The new-born babe, Dr. Watson tells us, is afraid of nothing but loud
+noises and the sudden loss of physical support. These, then, are
+the natural stimuli of fear. Nothing but restraint makes him angry.
+Restraint, therefore, is the natural stimulus of fury. To prove it,
+the behaviorist drops a baby face downwards on a pillow, and notes that
+it clenches its hands as if in the attempt to grab something to prevent
+itself from falling. He hammers on an iron bar behind the infant ear,
+and observes that there is crying and shrinking away. He grips the
+little arms, and a struggle ensues.
+
+As to love, Dr. Watson is not so clear. In one place he speaks of
+the reaching out of the baby arms as being prophetic of the nuptial
+embrace. In another he describes the natural love stimulus as a
+stroking of the erogenous zones. These zones, to be blunt, are the
+genitals, the breasts, the anal region and certain other portions of
+the surface of the body especially sensitive to touch. Perhaps there
+are two sorts of love, the active and the passive; just as there may
+be two sorts of dislike, shrinking fear and self-assertive rage. The
+former professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins can hardly be blamed
+for not making it plain. He is not the first who has been obfuscated by
+love.
+
+But whatever love may be, the love-reflex, like the fear-reflex, the
+anger-reflex, or the unemotional motor-reflexes such as the knee-jerk,
+may be conditioned by having unnatural stimuli grafted on to their
+natural stimuli by bringing the natural and unnatural together in the
+field of their experience.
+
+Albert, for example, the eleven-months old infant of a wet-nurse in the
+Hopkins Laboratories, was not naturally afraid of rats, a rat being
+neither a sudden loss of support nor a big noise. He reached out for
+a rat as readily as he reached for anything else. But every time he
+reached, an operator standing out of sight beat heavily upon an iron
+bar. So the reflex arc, beginning with the ear and ending in such
+glands as distill cowardice or inhibit courage, grafted itself on to
+the reflex arc beginning with the rat-wave coming through the eye and
+terminating in the striped muscles that jerk the hand forward. And, as
+often happens, the grafter eventually won the day.
+
+“At the first experiment,” rat and noise being presented together,
+“the infant jumped violently and fell forward, burying his face in the
+mattress--he did not cry, however.” But “at the eighth experiment,”
+seven days later, when the rat alone was shown, “the baby began to cry.
+Almost instantly he turned sharply away, so rapidly that he was caught
+with difficulty before he reached the end of the table.”[7]
+
+Albert is now afraid of rats, there is no least doubt of that. You may
+throw your bang-bang instrument away, he will continue to recoil from
+rats. And not from rats only. The fear extends to furry animals of
+all sorts, to human hair, to cotton wool. In this instance it did not
+extend to the nurse, but sometimes it does. The fear stimulus is apt to
+graft itself on to whatever other stimuli happen to be operating.
+
+Thus are emotional reflexes conditioned--by a performance which has
+a remarkable resemblance to the old method of punishing a child for
+wrong-doing, except that wrong-doing on the child’s part is omitted as
+a necessary condition precedent.
+
+This is psychology from the standpoint of a behaviorist. From the
+standpoint of a psychologist it looks as if all trace of psychology had
+thus far been carefully left out; for psychology is the study of the
+psyche, the soul, of the conscious self, or that part of the self which
+has at least the capacity of becoming conscious. Dr. Watson says not.
+He thinks that psychology is the study of the reaction-mass. Anyway, he
+is convinced that reaction-mass psychology is all the psychology needed
+to explain everything. Mr. Mind may be missing, but he never will be
+missed. “The behaviorist asks for nothing to start with in building
+a human being but the squirmings everyone can see in the newborn
+infant.”[8]
+
+It is not asking for much, so we will now let him try.
+
+
+2. AN UNDECIDED SYNAPSE
+
+Eliza is still crossing the ice. The spectacle (in the form of a series
+of waves of chemical decomposition) is on its way, through reflex arcs,
+to striped and unstriped muscles; to ductless glands; to effectors, in
+short. It is time that some action ensued, that behavior on Eliza’s
+part resulted in behavior on the part of the spectator.
+
+Let us suppose that the spectator most interested is a bloodhound. “The
+behaviorist,” we learn from Dr. Watson[9] “recognizes no dividing line
+between man and brute,” save (he adds later) perhaps in the matter of
+“language.” As the occasion here affords no time for talk, a bloodhound
+will serve as well as Senator Borah. Now what will the bloodhound do?
+
+Were his reflexes unconditioned, he would do nothing of any
+consequence. On the unlikely chance of Eliza throwing a stone and
+hitting him on the patellar tendon, he might do a knee-jerk. Or, should
+her shadow come between him and the sun, the iris of his fearful eyes
+might contract. But none of these things happen. Eliza furnishes no
+natural stimuli upon which an unconditioned reflex could act. Prof.
+Loeb, with all his tropisms, would be able to bring no real drama about.
+
+This is a Watson bloodhound, however--a trained dog. All sorts of
+unnatural stimuli have been grafted upon his reflexes. For one thing,
+he has had the sight of little girl and the taste of little girl
+brought simultaneously into his experience a great many times. So the
+glands in his cheeks advance immediately from a salivary output of,
+say, five drops per minute, to some forty-five. He probably snaps his
+jaws, a “seeking motion” prompted by the emotion of love--for meat. Not
+only that, but he bounds forward--another seeking motion, which was
+once, I presume a puppy squirm. Anyway he bounds forward, and Eliza
+is caught. Or else he does not bound forward, but stands and sniffs,
+whines, or gives tongue, thus bridging the space between animal and
+man, but flatly refusing to attempt to leap the space of open water
+between dog and Eliza’s cake of ice.
+
+But why? Why does not the dog act automatically in obedience to
+the waves of chemical decomposition faithfully transmitted to his
+effectors? The villain of uncertainty lies in that intermediate set
+of neurones--those association neurones which Dr. Watson thinks have
+received already altogether too much attention. Some of their dendrites
+have made synapse with axones laden with the fear of the cold wetness
+of ice-water, and have communicated, not with the leaping but with the
+sniffing, whining and baying muscles, leaving the legs merely trembling.
+
+What? Have the association neurones some choice as to the synapses
+they shall make? Is it left to them to say which, of a multitude of
+differently charged axones, their dendrites shall shake hands with?
+Does not mechanics govern the connection which the association neurone
+effects with a million waiting dendrites already linked with a million
+different effectors? Is our soldier in the middle row permitted to suit
+himself as to what listening-post he shall get in touch with, and is he
+then allowed to do as he likes with the information?
+
+What was lately a mere relay instrument seems suddenly to have been
+endowed with strange powers. If ever an arrangement was devised to
+look like the physical embodiment of consciousness and free will,
+this certainly is it. No wonder Dr. Watson would prefer to have us
+regard these brain areas as vague “silent” ones, wherein no function
+can be “localized.” A behaviorist who should lose his unconsciousness
+would be more frightened than was Peter Schlemihil when he lost his
+shadow to the devil. The mere suggestion that the association neurone
+might be the Achilles’ heel of insensibility must have shocked many
+a conditioned reflex back into infantilism. Dr. Watson remained and
+remains calm and aloof in the midst of his “silent areas.” But others
+bestirred themselves with considerable zeal if not discretion. The
+problem was to find some purely blind and mechanistic agent capable of
+regulating the resistance of the synapse.
+
+For that is the best way to think of it--as a resistance. A neural
+impulse will go farther in a given time along a simple nerve than it
+will along a route interrupted by neurones with little gulfs between
+them. Not only that, but when it comes out it is found to be measurably
+weaker than when it went in. Almost immediately it picks up again, and
+goes on, full speed ahead, as if somebody had stepped on the gas. How
+this little miracle is accomplished, nobody knows; nor whence comes
+the added force. Doubtless, however, it comes from the body in some
+perfectly natural and ascertainable way. Certainly it has nothing to
+do with the will.
+
+Has the synapse? That depends upon what causes its resistance to vary.
+The association neurone itself cannot possibly be the will. The very
+fact that it is observable under the microscope proves that. The most
+hopeful field of inquiry, therefore, is that of the resistance which
+is offered the neural impulse on its way from one neurone to another.
+If this resistance varies--and it does--it is possible to conceive how
+the disturbances from the outside world may be sifted, some ignored
+and some allowed full play in the responses which follow. Here would
+be Psyche, locking and unlocking her doors. I do not say that this
+is exactly what happens. Our knowledge of the brain, though vastly
+more complete than it was ten years ago, is still far too fragmentary
+to permit of the localization of function to this extent. I am only
+offering a hypothesis to explain the workings of a belief arrived at in
+quite another fashion from the one we are following here.
+
+The synapse offers the least resistance in what used to be called
+the field of conscious attention; and by fancying that attention
+moved about from one brain-area to another without constraint and in
+conformity with some non-physical law, we used to, in the good old
+days, be able to picture free will in action--not with much pretense to
+accuracy of detail, but in a way which was at least intelligible.
+
+Physical scientists never liked this loose-footed field of attention.
+If it moved about, they wanted to know what moved it. Even if attention
+be only an area of super-“neutrition,” it could hardly move without
+force--a fact which some psychologists, desperately anxious to be free
+but having no force to put at the will’s disposal, have tried in vain
+to get around.
+
+But behaviorists will have nothing to do with conscious attention,
+free or bound. And as it was obviously necessary to find something to
+regulate synapsial resistance, they proceeded to find it.
+
+It was soon discovered that the neural impulse, having once traversed a
+particular route, found the way thereafter easier, just as we find it
+easier to walk through snow after somebody has broken a trail. Repeated
+synapses, therefore, may be left in charge of Habit. But there has to
+be a first time. Habit, itself, depends upon this first time for its
+own direction; for habit follows the line of least resistance which
+this very first time creates. And the first time, the time of times,
+which determines all other times by wearing the initial path through
+the cranial snow, is--behavioristically speaking--determined by Chance!
+
+What behaviorists wanted was to have nothing determine the first
+synapse, and not being mathematicians they fell into the error of
+supposing that chance was nothing, or the next thing to it. In reality
+they could not have made a worse selection. But, granting their
+premises, there was really nothing else to choose.
+
+But let us call to the stand a distinguished witness as to the reality
+of the choice having been made. Chance leads me to select Prof. C. H.
+Warren, whose “A Study of Purpose” was first published in the _Journal
+of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Method_.[10] It chances that
+I have access to certain passages from this paper. Also he happens not
+to be a thoroughgoing behaviorist, as may be seen from the fact that
+he speaks of “purposive action” and of “ideas.” Bertrand Russell is
+of the opinion that there is only one thoroughgoing behaviorist in
+the world--Dr. Watson, to wit. I even hope to show that Dr. Watson
+steps out of his rôle in certain desperate pinches. But Prof. Warren
+is sufficiently mechanistic to warrant his being heard. He says:
+“The notion of purpose arose from a certain definite type of human
+experience. The typical purposive experience consists of a thought of
+some future occurrence followed by a series of actions which culminate
+in the very situation which the original idea represented. A human act
+is said to be purposive when it is preceded by an idea representing the
+situation which the act itself brings about.”
+
+Not quite as clear as a crystal, but it means that I light my pipe,
+not because I want to smoke but because I foresee that I will light
+it. Dr. Watson says practically the same thing, only he points out
+that the motions which provoke desire are small, observable only by
+means of instruments. “Visceral phenomena,” for instance. And he
+makes the statement thoroughly behavioristic by adding that these
+visceral phenomena _are_ desire, the only kind of desire which
+exists. But causes must precede effect, so Prof. Warren is trying to
+make “foreknowledge” serve for the needed something to touch off the
+visceral phenomena and bring desire into being.
+
+He goes on to describe how he turns on the electric light in his
+study--not because he wants to read, but because he foresees that he
+is going to press the button and that then there will be light--in a
+physical sense, at least. He admits “desire” into the realm of being
+only after the action has begun, and explains it as a “kinesthetic
+image,”--that is, an image derived from the muscular sense. Which means
+that he begins to want to read, and that I begin to want to smoke,
+only after our muscles are on the way to produce smoke and light in
+available quantities. And he further testifies. “If the thought of an
+action leads to the production of that particular action ... rather
+than to any one of the thousands of other kinesthetic experiences,
+the reason is that a definite association has previously been formed
+between this particular thought and this particular impulse. The origin
+of such an association _may be attributed to chance occurrence_.”
+
+It is interesting to speculate upon what would have occurred had Prof.
+Warren chanced first to associate the electric light button with
+kinesthetic experiences originating in his feet instead of in his
+hands. What if he had been standing on his head amusing the children on
+that momentous day? Or, since he probably made his first acquaintance
+with electric light early in life, what if when playing circus as a boy
+he had accidentally _kicked_ the button from “Off” to “On”? Obviously
+he would have obtained the fateful foresight that kicks will produce
+light. And he would have been destined all his life to play the acrobat
+before ever the kinesthetic experiences of his muscles could instigate
+in him the desire to read after dusk. Nor is it possible that he could
+have been rescued from his fate save by another chance experience yet
+more kinesthetically violent.
+
+“The synapse,” says Professor Pillsbury, sensibly enough, “is the
+point where action leaves its impress upon the nervous system.” But he
+does not grow lyrical about it. For lyricism we must go to Miss Clara
+Stevens, a real behaviorist. She thus deposes and sings in _The Open
+Court_:[11] “Here [in the synapse] lies the basis of character and
+destiny. No need of a recording angel to set down our shortcomings
+against us. The mystic synapse is recorder; and avenger as well. Its
+use renders it all-powerful ... its neglect bars further way for either
+temptation on the one hand or profitable deeds on the other. We can
+only act and think in the future as we have habituated the synapse in
+the past.”
+
+Surely the lady has allowed her enthusiasm to carry her too far. How
+can we have anything to do with the habituating of a synapse which is
+governed by chance? She tries to find a way out by maintaining that
+the original neural impulse may be determined “by such a material fact
+... as nutrition supplied or withheld by the cell-body.” Does the
+cell-body, then, have a will of its own, so that it can either issue or
+withhold supplies? That were power indeed. And she speaks throughout
+her article of “mystery,” “inclination,” “motives,” “ambitions,”
+“tolerance,” “bigotry,” “principle,” “idealistic acts,” “clearness of
+judgment,” and “firmness of purpose.”
+
+I have wronged her. Here we have no behaviorist, but a good woman
+trying to be a behaviorist but unable to leave all her commonsense
+behind her--a woman born, happily, without a trace of logic, and spared
+by chance from acquiring any. Not that Miss Stevens is one whit more
+illogical than is Dr. Watson. She is merely less obscure. On pages 319
+to 321 of “Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist” we are
+given a list of six “determiners of acts,” and told that “of course
+the most important determiner is the life-history of the individual.”
+And the other five are mere portions of life-history. Dr. Watson is
+fond of the word Genetics, yet he carefully avoids the subject of true
+beginnings.
+
+And Eliza still is crossing the ice. The bloodhound still is doing
+something or nothing. Somehow, with all this “psychology” and with all
+Dr. Watson’s mass of reactions at our disposal, we cannot get things to
+move. It will be necessary to try again.
+
+
+3. ELIZA DOES NOT CROSS THE ICE
+
+“The behaviorist,” Dr. Watson assures us,[12] “can take [the]
+squirmings of the new-born--his unorganized finger movements, the
+movements of his arms, legs, feet and toes, the squirmings in his
+trunk, and weave them into highly complicated acts of sport, of
+skill--such as driving a nail with a hammer, carving with a knife,
+shooting with bow and arrow, or tennis-playing, climbing, crawling,
+running and walking. [He] can take the squirmings of the throat
+muscles, and weave them into those highly organized acts we call
+talking and singing--and, yes, even thinking. [He] can take the
+infantile squirmings of the gut--the unstriped muscular tissue of the
+alimentary tracts, diaphragm, heart, respiration, etc.--and actually
+organize them into those complicated emotional responses we call fears,
+loves and rages.... Give [him] just one hundred ‘squirmings’ ... and
+let [him] tie them together by [his] methods, and [he will] have more
+than enough.”
+
+This is a comprehensive programme; if it is carried out it ought
+to be able not only to get Eliza across the ice but to produce the
+whole play of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Certainly one hundred squirmings are
+enough--enough of squirming. Their mere combination would produce an
+untold number--of squirms. And lest some might doubt as to this, Dr.
+Watson calls attention to that mathematical formula known as “factorial
+n.”
+
+By factorial n one can determine the number of ways in which a given
+number of things can be put together. The calculation is accomplished
+by taking the given number and multiplying it by a number one less than
+itself; and then multiplying this result by a multiplier less by one
+than the first multiplier; and so on, the multiplier shrinking until
+it reaches zero. For instance, how many ways are there of arranging
+six books upon a shelf? The answer is amazing enough. For six times
+five times four times three times two, equals seven hundred and twenty,
+and we have limited the combinations to arrangements along a single
+straight line. One hundred squirms may be combined in enough different
+ways to satisfy the most captious. Factorial one hundred would, if
+worked out, look like an inter-allied debt.
+
+But are squirms all we are looking for? What does Dr. Watson mean by
+“those complicated emotional responses we call fears, loves and rages?”
+He has used such words before, and it is time he were called to an
+account. There is no such thing as consciousness. Can there still be
+such a thing as an emotion? Yes, says Dr. Watson.
+
+We are now in the presence of one of the most preposterous attempts at
+hocus-pocus ever recorded in the history of the human race. William
+James prepared the way by saying, “We feel sorry because we cry,
+angry because we strike,” etc. But with James there was always the
+possibility of assuming that an emotion is what we feel of the various
+motions involved. At worst it was but the natural order of things
+reversed. And in James, if one does not like his philosophy of the
+moment, the totally different philosophy of some other moment is never
+far to seek. But now that there is no such thing as consciousness,
+there would seem to be no way of feeling even a motion. Ergo, an
+emotion is merely motion. Squirms. The behaviorist asks for nothing
+else. Does he not?
+
+“An emotion,” says Dr. Watson,[13] “is an hereditary ‘action pattern’
+involving profound changes of the bodily mechanism as a whole, but
+particularly of the glandular systems.” This is at least consistent. An
+emotion is a group of motions which have been somehow linked together
+into a pattern by reflex arcs before we were born. He then speaks of
+emotion as a raising of the “bodily tone,”--that is, a speeding up,
+an increase in the general average and celerity of motions. Still
+consistent, however absurd. But why did Albert, the eleven-months old
+infant of that wet-nurse at the Hopkins Laboratories, “turn sharply
+away” at the eighth experiment, when the rat alone was shown him?
+Because he had learned to associate rats with a loud noise of which he
+was afraid. But does not this imply that he _disliked_ the noise?
+
+By a wild stretch of the imagination, I think I can almost see what is
+in the behaviorist’s mind when he bids us believe that like and dislike
+can exist in a creature without consciousness. He means that there is
+no like or dislike about it; that what we call likes and dislikes are
+certain chemical changes which make us move either towards or away
+from objects. Tropisms, in short. I do not quite see how the mechanism
+for such phenomena could be arranged, but this may be merely because
+the mechanism of a tropism is too complicated for my comprehension.
+Likes and dislikes vary so much even when the same objects and the same
+people are involved. We are not simple in the way that a mariner’s
+compass is simple, its north pole always liking the south pole of a
+magnet, always disliking its fellow.
+
+Consciousness itself is a complicated matter. For instance, we are
+never directly conscious of it; we are only conscious of objects. Our
+inmost self can only contemplate that which is not our inmost self. The
+eye does not see the eye, though it can observe its reflection in a
+mirror.
+
+Things also happen of which we are not centrally conscious at
+all--things, for example, to which we are paying no attention. They
+yet have their effect. Can likes and dislikes perform their functions,
+then, without our knowing anything about it? I am for the moment quite
+willing to admit it--in the case of Dr. Watson. For all I know to
+the contrary, he may never be conscious. He would not be the first
+epistemologist who has made such a claim. But he does not claim just
+this. The behaviorist finds no consciousness “in his laboratories,”
+none “in his subjects.” He implies that _I_ am never conscious, and
+there I know he is wrong.
+
+Now since consciousness exists, in me at least (the reader must speak
+for himself), it probably has a function. So far as I am concerned, it
+is the one important--the only important--thing in life. Why, then, try
+to leave it out of the explanation of Albert’s acquired dislike for
+rats?
+
+It might have been well enough to leave it out of the description of
+Albert’s behavior. If behaviorism were merely what its name implies,
+the detailed study of the way people other than the observer behave, it
+might be useful and certainly would not be ridiculous. But it seeks to
+be psychology and philosophy as well. It assumes, as we soon shall see,
+to instruct us in ethics and to overthrow religion. It fancies that it
+has deprived us of will.
+
+Your consciousness and mine are of course two different phenomena,
+severed by the gulf which yawns between _meum_ and _tuum_. I do not
+know that you are aware in the same way that I know that I myself am
+aware. I merely assume that you are. You look much like me. You behave
+much as I do. Therefore, as an act of courtesy, I grant that you are
+probably sentient and know what you are about--for the simple reason
+that I feel sure that I am sentient and know what I am about.
+
+But all I am positively and subjectively certain of, as to you, is
+what I observe you to do. This observation may be extended, with
+your permission, to your insides. I may insert tubes which tap your
+glands. I may induce you to swallow rubber balloons, which I then fill
+with hot water (an experiment mentioned by Dr. Watson), and note the
+resultant reactions upon your muscles, smooth and striped. Still, all
+I know about you is what strikes my senses, which in the last analysis
+resolves itself into motions, large or small, of your body and members.
+The behaviorist’s contention that an individual is merely the sum
+of his acts fits you well enough from my point of view. Were I not
+conscious myself, I would never even dream that you are conscious. If I
+did not reason, I would not be wise enough to suppose that you do. Did
+I not feel emotion, pleasure, and pain, I would be the last person to
+accuse you of feeling them.
+
+Now Dr. Watson, when he assumes that because he finds no consciousness
+in his subjects there is therefore no such thing as consciousness, is
+entirely justified--if he is himself an unconscious man. But I fancy
+he is merely paying us the compliment of confusing himself with us.
+He is unable to put his hands upon _our_ minds or feelings because
+they are forever hidden within us, and will never, never, never
+permit themselves to be isolated, taken apart and chemically analyzed.
+That which is objective is conduct--it is not feeling. Certain light
+waves are felt as redness--but the waves are not the redness. Outside
+ourselves, everything of red exists, saving and excepting only its
+redness. Now is or is not redness an important part of red?
+
+The brain is indeed but a few billion neurones, slightly damp. Dr.
+Watson, fumbling among them, sees only certain motions of matter.
+Naturally he sees no mind. But he modestly forgets that all the while
+he is observing these motions of ours and attributing them to other
+motions, and these to yet other motions, and so on _ad infinitum_, he
+is using his own mind--and a very ingenious mind it is, thus to reason
+itself out of existence. We all remember how granny used to lose her
+specs and look for them everywhere--through the very specs in question,
+which were all the while on the end of her nose.
+
+Consciousness is a fact of consciousness, the most obtrusive fact in
+all the world. But it is not a fact outside of consciousness. There it
+is only an inference. Should Dr. Watson get hit on the head by a brick
+falling from his laboratory chimney (which God forbid!), he would not
+be immediately able to observe whether a dog’s salivary secretions were
+increased by the sight and smell of chocolate or not.
+
+Knowledge of glands can “amplify our conception,”[14] says Levine, “but
+it by no means abolishes the need for a mental state.”
+
+“Not even by poetic license,” adds Sidney Hook,[15] “can the earth be
+created through a deft masonry of its derivative effects.” Neither
+can the mind. Or as J. R. Kantor, of the University of Indiana,
+expresses it in his “Principles of Psychology,”--“The writers who
+hold such doctrines [that psychology is a matter of neuro-muscular
+or neuro-glandular responses] inevitably face the consequence of
+neglecting the description of most of the actual content not only of
+human but of animal psychology.”
+
+Says William James,[16] “Cases ... prove the existence in our mental
+machinery of a sense of present reality more diffused and general than
+that which our special senses yield.... Nothing would be more natural
+than to connect it with the muscular sense.... But our interest lies
+with the faculty rather than its organic seat.... Something in you
+absolutely _knows_ that result to be truer than any logic-chopping,
+rationalistic talk, however clever, that may contradict it.”
+
+Naturally, James H. Leuba, professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr, takes
+exception to such language on the part of James. Prof. Leuba has been
+attempting--in his “Psychology of Religious Mysticism”--to prove that
+holiness is a form of hysteria. He uses the old method of those who
+would define red without taking account of redness. That is, he leaves
+holiness out of the question, and then shows that the residue and
+hysteria (whatever that may be) have much in common.
+
+“It is fortunate for science and philosophy,” he says in a footnote
+to page 293, “that this passage does not represent William James
+completely. It expresses only one, or perhaps two, of the several moods
+or attitudes of this gifted writer.”
+
+This is quite true. The passage does not represent James entirely.
+I know of no passage which does. But does saying so dispose of the
+attitude? The reader must judge for himself whether he has any inner
+conviction, or state, which will warrant him in saying he has it.
+Well may Prof. Kantor ask, “Is it not the attempt to biologize human
+phenomena which has resulted in handing over to novelists [to say
+nothing of novelists’ brothers] the sole guardianship of the problems
+of human behavior and human personality?”
+
+And since we have now allowed novelists to get in, we may as well
+listen to Stewart Edward White, who is not only a novelist but a
+journalist to boot. And he complains that “it is the habit of science
+to thrust in the background that which it is unable to weigh and
+measure and understand, which is the same as saying that it is the
+habit of science to be unscientific.” It is certainly the habit of Dr.
+Watson. The hunting of big game seems to have given White most accurate
+powers of observation. Lions have this advantage over fallacies--they
+are able to kill off those who do not see them right and in time.
+
+George A. Dorsey, whose “Why We Behave Like Human Beings” I shall
+venture to take a shot at before I finish, attempts to come to Dr.
+Watson’s rescue and to save emotion for behaviorism without admitting
+any of its troublesome implications. So Dorsey tells us not to be
+puzzled; that emotions are like any of the other circumstances which go
+to make up a situation to which our mass of reactions must react. We
+“feel” them, he adds. Now as Dr. Watson’s main contention is that we
+do not feel them, the admission of feeling is like permitting a wooden
+horse to be carried into the mechanistic Troy.
+
+It may be argued (but not by behaviorists) that though Dorsey is not
+talking good Watsonianism, he is at least talking sense. And of
+course he is when he speaks of emotion as a feeling. But he is talking
+nonsense when he claims that emotion is a factor like any other factor
+in a situation. And for this reason. The other factors may be viewed
+both objectively and subjectively, while if we attempt to objectify an
+emotion--to drive it into the open--it ceases to exist. It becomes a
+bundle of its own causes--autocoids, or what have you? Or of its own
+effects--yowlings, scratchings, clenchings of fists, grittings of the
+teeth, and other alterations in bodily positions, tensions, together
+with such chemical changes as may accompany them.
+
+The fact that certain secretions from the ductless glands keep pace
+with certain emotions does not even prove that secretions cause
+emotion. An emotion that can be felt may cause the secretions. Still
+less does it prove that the secretion is the emotion. A scolding by
+your grandmother may also give you an emotion. Does that prove that the
+emotion was your grandmother? Emotion tends to release adrenin from the
+adrenal apparatus, which in turn acts upon the liver’s surplus supply
+of sugar. This sugar gets into the blood, and the increase of sugar in
+the blood is therefore evidence that you have experienced an emotion.
+Even if you want to say that what you felt was sugar, need you add that
+the feeling _was_ sugar?
+
+A cat, we will say, is sitting on the table. Can we also say that there
+is an emotion sitting there beside the cat? An emotion belonging to
+you or to me, and not to the cat? Let us suppose that the cat has just
+upset a vase which you and I both prize. Behavioristically speaking,
+our reflexes are similarly conditioned in regard to it. So we both are
+grieved.
+
+The cat exists subjectively within us (or at least within me) in the
+form of a group of ideas of cat--or as Dr. Watson would insist, in
+the form of certain squirmings of particles, members, atoms, and such
+things. We seem to experience cat as a group of sensations of form,
+color, of cat-movements, etc. But if I shut my eyes, put cat out of my
+mind (i. e., shut off cat-stimuli from my receptors), I seem to cease
+to feel or think or to be aware of cat. Then, from some remark you
+make, I infer that you have kept your eyes open, and are still cat-wise
+_en rapport_. So I infer that your awareness of cat (no matter what
+“awareness” is) does not depend upon my awareness, or even upon your
+awareness of my awareness. So I assume that the cat has an objective
+existence, outside of us, and is a real cat. I assume also that the cat
+itself is the cause of our awareness of it; and I feel certain that
+while there may be as many awarenesses as there are people who are
+aware, there is only one cat in the room.
+
+There is also but one broken vase. And it, too, is the cause of our
+being aware of it. Cat and vase are evidently of the same order of
+things to the extent that they both have an existence within the
+beholder (which the beholder knows through consciousness), and a
+certain inferred existence of their own. But how about the emotion
+awakened by the broken vase? Has that an existence independent of those
+experiencing it?
+
+Ever since the days of ancient Greece, and probably since long before,
+certain philosophers have been trying to prove that not even the cat
+has such an outside existence. Things exist only in the philosopher’s
+mind, and therefore the one thing which exists is the philosopher. The
+only way to refute this theory is by using your brains to an extent
+sufficient to arrive at the conclusion that, since some of the things
+you see look amazingly like yourself, and react much as you do to yet
+other things, then it is at least highly probable that these other
+people and other things actually are.
+
+Now the behaviorist’s contention is merely the reverse of this
+all-in-the-mind theory--and is equally absurd. To him there is nothing
+in the mind; there is no mind. Instead of all being inside, all is
+outside.
+
+Yet Dr. Watson considers himself privileged to speak not only of
+emotions and emotion-reflexes, but of “purpose,” “failure,” and
+“success.” We begin with “random” squirms, he says, and now and then
+one of these “random” squirms is “successful,” it accomplishes its
+“object.” Unconscious “seeking motions” are continued until they are
+“satisfied.” Such expressions are to be found scattered through all his
+writings.
+
+But a seeking motion must be a motion which seeks something. If the
+babe be unconscious, how does it know when the seeking has been
+successful? Does it move in hopes of finding pleasure or of avoiding
+pain? It can feel neither pleasure nor pain. Does it squirm to improve
+its general welfare? That is what the tropism theory assumes. But
+without consciousness there can be no such thing as welfare. It makes
+no slightest difference to the organism what happens to it, whether it
+lives or dies.
+
+Our unconscious Eliza refuses to cross the ice, even when bayed at
+by an unconscious bloodhound. There is no reason why she should. An
+unconscious Eliza would be as comfortable inside of a bloodhound as
+anywhere else. And an unconscious bloodhound is as comfortable fasting
+as when fed.
+
+Nevertheless, Dr. Watson, who is “not concerned with problems of
+consciousness,” is about to introduce us to language, morality and
+reform!
+
+
+4. TINKS! TINKS! KWAKS! KWAKS!
+
+“Give me the baby,” Dr. Watson begs,[17] “and I’ll make it climb and
+use its hands in constructing buildings of stone or wood.... I’ll make
+it a thief, a gunman, or a dope fiend. The possibilities of shaping in
+any direction are almost endless. Even gross difference in anatomical
+structure limit us far less than you may think.... Make him a
+deaf-mute, and I will still build you a Helen Keller.... Men are built,
+not born.”
+
+Shall we indeed give Dr. Watson the baby? Not yet. If baby is as
+plastic as he would have us suppose, the choice of a teacher carries
+with it momentous consequences. You see, we don’t want him to make a
+thief, a gunman, or even a dope-fiend. This is just an old-fashioned
+prejudice, a hang-over from the days of consciousness. But we have it.
+A Helen Keller, a carpenter or a good stone-mason will do very well.
+We must, however, be reassured as to teacher’s intentions. He has, no
+doubt, some high principle to guide him. Let him reveal it.
+
+“The psychologist, having chosen human behavior as his material, feels
+that he makes progress only as he can manipulate and control it.”[18]
+Very good. But this is not quite the point.
+
+“In this work there is involved not only ability to predict situation
+from response, and the probable response given the situation, but the
+experimental manipulation of stimulus and the creation of response....
+Stimuli must be added to or subtracted from until appropriate response
+is attained.”[19]
+
+The method at least is plain. Baby is helpless protoplasm in the grip
+of whatever situation he finds himself. Dr. Watson does not allow even
+chance to interfere with those all-important initial synapses which,
+once made, will turn conduct over to habit. Baby is a mechanism, with
+no ability save that of wax to receive. His only “chance” is that
+the situation shall be all that could be desired. Not even the word
+“probable” placed before response promises any individual initiative,
+since the psychologist proposes to predict (he clearly means “work back
+to”) the situation of which any given response was the answer. One
+wonders where the teacher’s initiative is to come from, whether he too
+is the inevitable result of a chain of situations reaching back to the
+beginning of time; and if so, where the first situation came from--to
+say nothing of the first baby. But, which is more to the point, what
+is the meaning of that word “appropriate” preceding “response”? What
+makes a response “appropriate”? Obviously an appropriate situation. And
+we cannot tell whether a situation is appropriate or not until we know
+what response we wish to produce.
+
+“Until we know more about the control of behavior during the tender
+years of infancy, it seems almost a dangerous experiment to bring
+up a child. The old argument that a good many millions of children
+have been successfully reared in the past few millions of years has
+just about broken down in the light of the now generally recognized
+lack of success of most people in making satisfactory adjustments to
+society.”[20]
+
+What has also just about broken down is the argument that it is not
+a dangerous experiment to bring up a child--for the reason that no
+sane parent ever thought that it was not a dangerous experiment, quite
+the most dangerous and gloriously all-important experiment which life
+affords. If the child has no will or say in the matter, parenthood
+involves a higher responsibility even than that which a man has for
+his own soul--though of course the behaviorist will plead that he has
+no soul to be responsible for, and that--but there is no use going
+back again to the beginning of time. We shall have to give the teacher
+not only a soul but a free will, _pro tempore_, or he will stick on
+our hands just as Eliza stuck on the ice, and refuse to move. Things
+are not moving very rapidly as it is. What, for instance, is meant by
+“satisfactory adjustments”? Is there some doubt, after all, how baby
+will adjust himself to what is happening around him? No, says Dr.
+Watson.
+
+“Without going too far beyond our facts [how far would be ‘too far’?]
+it seems possible to say that the stimulus is always provided by the
+environment, external to the body, or by the movements of man’s own
+muscles and the secretions of his glands; finally, that response always
+follows relatively immediately upon the presentation or incidence of
+the stimulus.... These are really assumptions, but they seem to be
+basal ones for psychology.”[21]
+
+[Illustration: DR. JOHN B. WATSON
+
+“Give me the baby”]
+
+Since they are basal we will have to grant them, else we will be left
+relatively immediately without any psychology at all. A satisfactory
+adjustment, then, must be the usual and inevitable adjustment, but to
+a satisfactory situation. Those children who were successfully reared
+during the past few millions of years must have had satisfactory
+situations to begin with. And it is “now generally recognized” that
+they were exceptions, and not “most people.” There must be some
+criterion, then, by which a satisfactory situation--that is, one
+producing satisfactory response, or conduct--may be recognized. Has
+Dr. Watson any such criterion to offer? No. He says on page twelve
+of this same book, which gives us his “standpoint”: “Psychology is
+not concerned with the goodness or badness of acts, or with their
+successfulness, as judged by occupational or moral standards.”[22]
+
+I am afraid, then, it will not be possible to let Dr. Watson have the
+baby after all. Behaviorism has no ethics; no standard of conduct.
+Yet behaviorists are preparing to build “infant laboratories,” and to
+save children from “unscientific parents.” Dr. Watson, in particular,
+calls upon us to make “systematic, long-sustained genetic studies
+upon the human species, begun in infancy and continued until past
+adolescence,”--an excellent idea. And he demands it because only thus
+can we gain that “experimental control over human conduct so badly
+needed both for general social control and for individual happiness.”
+He has, then, ethical notions, though he nowhere explains how he came
+by them. What are they? This question at least can be answered by
+noting what sort of conditioning he wishes to give the reflexes. And of
+these, love should be the most important.
+
+“The original situation which calls out the observable love responses
+seems to be the stroking or manipulation of some erogenous zone,
+tickling, shaking, gentle rocking, patting and turning upon the stomach
+across the attendant’s knee,” so psychology from the standpoint
+of a behaviorist would have us believe. And sex emotions, however
+understood, become later on the touch-offs of the gonads and of the
+interstitial glands. How are these reflexes to be conditioned so as to
+act in response to something besides tickling, shaking, gentle rocking,
+patting and turning upon the stomach across the attendant’s knee? They
+are not to be conditioned at all. The behaviorist wants to condition
+fear and rage as much as possible, but he advises that love be left
+where we find it soon after birth.
+
+“In our opinion,” says Dr. Watson (still in this same book)
+“conditioned love responses [i. e. responses awakened otherwise than
+directly through the aforementioned zones], especially those directed
+[towards] father and mother, breeding too great dependence upon parents
+as they do, are probably the most sinister factors in the whole system
+of human organization.” And he laments the fact that such conditioning
+is not only tolerated by society, but actually encouraged by it. This
+is a most melancholy philosophy, and seems to put masturbation above
+marriage.
+
+And what of the future? “The research psychologists in the
+infant-behavior laboratories, once they are established, will in time
+learn how to remove these conditioned emotional reactions.”
+
+No doubt parents frequently do make their children too dependent. So
+Dr. Watson advises that babies be hard-boiled; for the conditioning
+which he objects to takes place, according to his own account, chiefly
+during the second year.
+
+A certain physician in a once-notorious book, entitled “_Les
+Civilisées_,” insists that another of the characters, generally
+considered much debauched, is entirely normal and healthy, “_parce
+qu’il ne cherche pas les femmes que par le coït_.” Our leading
+behaviorist is more civilized still, for he says:[23]
+
+“In observing the two-year-old only child brought up by an unscientific
+mother, we find that the child cries unless held in the lap of
+the mother ... will sleep only when in bed with the mother....
+Verbalization [speech] begins: it clusters around the mother just as
+... manual and bodily activity clusters around the mother. In a similar
+way the gut reactions have their center of reference in the mother.
+Manual, verbal and emotional reactions are tied together by this one,
+all-exciting stimulus,”--the mother, to wit.
+
+Which means that the gut-reactions, or the stir of the unstriped
+muscles along the intestinal tract, are what the child feels when it
+loves its mother, or would be if it could feel anything; and that if
+the mother be not scientific and careful, there is apt to ensue a
+“conditioning” likely to depose the gut from its position of supremacy.
+Unless the behaviorists can save us, our native, purely physical,
+almost mechanical lust runs the danger of being swallowed up by
+sentiment and affection.
+
+This danger has been avoided in some parts of the world. Katherine
+Mayo, whose book, “Mother India,” has received deserved attention,
+says that the “whole pyramid of India’s woes, material and spiritual
+poverty, sickness, melancholy, ineffectiveness, not forgetting the
+subconscious conviction of inferiority which [the Hindu] forever bears
+and advertises by his gnawing and imaginative alertness for social
+affronts,” is due to an excess of tumescence, to sex dominant and
+rampant in Indian life. She is not speaking of the India of dreaming,
+Vedantic philosophers, but of the real India of every-day life, which
+she has studied at first hand. There sexual impulses, indulged in
+upon a purely erogenous plane, are fostered and encouraged even by
+religion--by the Kali belief; by the “phallic cult for females”; by
+the training of girl babies so that they may become the playthings
+of the carnal passions of men. I do not see where we could find a
+better picture of what is likely to happen to us when Dr. Watson’s
+“infant-behavior laboratories” once accomplish their task.
+
+And now, having measured the loveliness of sex by the degree of
+excitement existing in the erogenous zones, Dr. Watson offers us
+another test for the excellence of conduct in general.
+
+“In my opinion, one of the most important elements in the judging of
+personality, character and ability is the history of the individual’s
+yearly achievements. We can measure this objectively by the length
+of time the individual stayed in his various positions--the yearly
+increases he received in his earnings.... If the individual is a
+writer, we should want to draw a curve of the prices he gets for his
+stories year by year. If from our leading magazines he receives the
+same average price per word for his stories at thirty that he received
+at twenty-four, the chances are he is a hack writer and will never do
+anything but that.”
+
+Bertrand Russell (upon whose authority I take this quotation) has
+tried to apply this criterion to “Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Milton and
+Blake,” and confesses himself staggered by the result.
+
+It seems strange that Dr. Watson should have selected excellence in
+writing--even excellence marked in dollars--as an instance of a
+workable, objective substitute for those old and by him discredited
+subjectivities, right and wrong. “A word,” he says,[24] “is just an
+explosive clutter of sound made by expelling the breath over the
+tongue, teeth and lips whenever we get around [near to?] objects.” It
+does not appear how the clutter can be much improved when we express it
+in written symbols. In neither case does it mean anything.
+
+“Meaning,” according to “Psychology from the Standpoint of a
+Behaviorist,” “never arrives in the scientific observations of
+behavior.... An animal or human being ‘means’ what he does.” That is,
+he does not mean what he does. His doing is his meaning. If he makes a
+clutter of sounds, that is all there is to it. “It is often said that
+thinking somehow peculiarly reveals meaning. If we look upon thinking
+as a form of action ... such speculations concerning meaning lose their
+mystery and hence their charm.”[25]
+
+“To answer what the church means to men,” he continues, “it is
+necessary to look upon the church as a stimulus and find out what
+reactions are called out, [and] why.... This might lead us into
+folklore ... into the influence of parents upon children, causing
+the race to project the father and mother into a heavenly state
+hereafter ... finally into the realms of the incest-complex, homosexual
+tendencies, and so on.”
+
+I do not comprehend the “and so on.” It would seem that we had
+already gone on about as far as we could go. This passage, unlike our
+speculations concerning meaning in thinking, has not lost its mystery.
+Its charm speaks for itself. But one thing is clear. Thinking is
+speaking, and a word is an explosive clutter of sound.
+
+Not always audible, however. Dr. Watson reduces the greater part of
+our thought to what he terms “sub-vocal speech.” And Mr. Eggen agrees.
+“We do not think with our brain ... we think with our muscles,” he
+says.[26] The yokel, always suspected of thinking with his feet, thus
+comes into his own.
+
+“Thinking,” says the behaviorist,--and I now quote from David Wechsler,
+“Psychology as a Practical Science in Modern Life,”[27]--“thinking
+is but a sub-vocal speech--that is, it consists of certain muscular
+movements of the throat and chest [like those observed in a
+semi-literate man when he is attempting to read to himself] which are
+not accompanied by the production of sounds.” _Id est_, they are not
+_always_ accompanied by sounds, and some of them are observable only by
+means of instruments. The child, we are told, begins by doing all his
+thinking aloud--but some of us eventually learn to do it without noise.
+Prof. Wechsler adds that the muscular theory of thinking is “not as
+far-fetched as it seems.”
+
+Why is it not? Because these sub-vocal movements seem always to
+be going on when we are thinking, and to some minds--or should I
+say muscles?--it seems logical to say that an accompaniment or a
+consequence is a cause. The same sort of sub-vocal speech will lead us
+to conclude that the foam in the wake of a steamer is what causes the
+vessel to go. I have often noticed that a little troupe of dogs usually
+accompanies Mrs. Belfeather in her walks in the park. I now learn that
+these dogs _are_ Mrs. Belfeather.
+
+That great psychologist, Eric Peters, once said to Chlorine Garnet,
+“I uses my eyes to see with an’ my brains to think thoughts.”[28]
+Evidently Peters is not a behaviorist. Neither was Shenute, who died
+in the year 451, famous for his anti-pagan propaganda among the Copts
+of Egypt. But he seems to have had some of our moderns in mind, for
+he said: “They also make the sound of birds, having filled books,
+for themselves and you, with vain words: Tinks! Tinks! Kwaks! Kwaks!
+saying: We are making the sound of birds.”
+
+“What possible good does it do,” demands Dr. Watson,[29] “when
+discussing brick-laying or sub-vocal arithmetic to guess at what goes
+on in the synapse, in the efferent or afferent leg of the reflex arc,
+or in the muscle itself?” Such problems, he adds, “belong to the realm
+of physiology, and this section of physiology has not yet been written.”
+
+So he proceeds to write it, not as physiology, but as behaviorism.
+These “Kwaks! Kwaks! Tinks! Tinks!” and explosive clutterings of ours
+must be conditioned. And they begin to get conditioned the moment the
+parents begin to pay some attention to them--which usually happens
+without delay. Snoodlekins explodes, “Dada! Dada!” Paterfamilias is
+brought into the presence. Wrong! The explosions continue. A watch is
+displayed and dismembered. Wrong again! Then somebody hits upon the rag
+doll in the corner. It fills the bill. Silence reigns, interrupted only
+by goo-goos. And if the parents or other attendants did not afterwards
+undo this conditioning by beating upon iron bars or what not, and so
+insist upon the rising generation adapting its language to the usages
+current among the old, “dada” would become the child’s word for doll.
+This is a faithful translation into every day kwaks of what Dr. Watson
+says in the more refined tinks of the scholar, and I do not wish for a
+moment to deny that things happen much as he says they do.
+
+But the point is, Snoodlekins discovers through the trial and error
+method that explosive clutterings of sound will cause things to move
+around the house. He finds that if he says “doll,” slaves will hurry to
+place a doll in his hands. Does this not give the word a meaning, in
+the meaningful sense of the term? Does it not imply will and purpose
+upon the baby’s part; consciousness, likes, dislikes; the ability to
+feel pain and pleasure; the desire to eschew the one and pursue the
+other? And do we not by implication admit similar intelligence and
+emotional capacity on the part of the parents and attendants? Otherwise
+why should they care whether a yell or a coo assaulted their ears?
+
+“Every time I question young children, or even college graduates,” Dr.
+Watson complains,[30] “I am struck by their dumbness.” But surely they
+are not as dumb as this. By dumb presumably he means unverbalized,
+speechless. But of what use is speech to an unconscious, will-less
+piece of protoplasm without a mind? Can the imagination of even
+the least dumb among us see how or why a speech-mechanism has been
+developed and an almost infinite number of reflex arcs conditioned to
+respond to its innumerable demands if there be nobody anywhere in a
+condition to know whether silence or bedlam reigns?
+
+Dr. Watson objects to the evidence of “journalists” being received
+upon any matter involving human conduct, because they always make
+their depositions “in terms of some phases of the original nature of
+man.” But nobody can say anything otherwise. A man born deaf could
+understand Beethoven’s “Choral Symphony” in terms of acoustics, because
+on that side he would not be “dumb.” But could he understand what it
+is which the world prizes in the melody that lifts up Schiller’s “Ode
+to Joy” in the last movement? And yet acoustics explains everything in
+music--except the music. Trying to describe human conduct except in
+terms of the nature of man is like trying to dip a net into the sea
+without getting it wet.
+
+“Consider for a moment what people mean, or at least should mean,
+when they say they are conscious or have consciousness,” the “Myth”
+proceeds. “They mean, in the words of the behaviorist, that they can
+carry on some kind of brief sub-vocal talk with ‘themselves’ behind
+the closed doors of the lips.” Do they, Dr. Watson? But what do you
+mean, “mean”? Have you not told us that “meaning never arrives in the
+scientific observations of behavior”? Have you not told us that we are
+nothing but a mass of reactions? Can one reaction “mean” anything to
+another reaction?
+
+And why tell us that we “should” do this or that? You have given us
+only our “life history” as the determiner of our acts. That history
+found us with certain reflexes with which we had nothing to do; certain
+“situations” arose to which we automatically responded; our reflexes
+became “conditioned” in a way that we could neither help nor hinder. In
+“Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist” you say, “A host of
+stimuli act concurrently, but the organism reacts now to one, now to
+another, depending upon which group of stimuli becomes prepotent.” It
+does not depend upon us, you see. The credit or the blame rests either
+with our original protoplasm or with the stimuli which have made up its
+life history. If slaves we were born, if in slavery we have grown up,
+you cannot set us free and make us morally responsible now by letting
+us talk a little sub-vocally to selves which do not exist.
+
+Yet this is precisely what Dr. Watson attempts to do--or at least
+he warns us how helpless we will be if we don’t learn to talk. The
+old Chinese philosopher, Lao Tse, once said, “Those who do not know,
+talk; those who know keep silence.” Dr. Watson says, going on with his
+Myth of the Unconscious--calling it mythical because he prefers the
+no-conscious: “The child brought up in isolation or among taciturn
+parents or in groups where verbalization is frowned upon ... can
+only act when brought face to face with objects in their appropriate
+settings.” That is, he cannot think. “This is typical of the behavior
+of animals. It is typical of the behavior of many primitive peoples; of
+men like Jack Dempsey, Calvin Coolidge, or a great many athletes and
+acrobats.”[31]
+
+If the acrobatic, athletic, primitive, Dempsey-like Calvin Coolidge has
+to be content not to think of consequences it is no great wonder that
+we could not get Eliza logically and behavioristically across the ice.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] “Behavior, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology,” New York,
+1914.
+
+[5] _Harper’s Magazine_, September, 1927.
+
+[6] “The Training of Young Children,” _Harper’s Magazine_, August, 1927.
+
+[7] From Dr. Watson’s own account of these experiments in “Psychology
+from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist.”
+
+[8] “The Behaviorist Looks at Instincts,” _Harper’s Magazine_, July,
+1927.
+
+[9] “Behavior, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology,” p. 1.
+
+[10] Vol. XIII.
+
+[11] September, 1926.
+
+[12] “The Behaviorist Looks at Instincts,” _Harper’s Magazine_, July,
+1927.
+
+[13] “Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist,” p. 215.
+
+[14] “The Unconscious,” p. 59.
+
+[15] “The Metaphysics of the Instrument,” in _The Monist_, July, 1927.
+
+[16] “Varieties of Religious Experience,” Lecture III, “The Reality of
+the Unseen.”
+
+[17] “The Behaviorist Looks at Instincts,” _Harper’s Magazine_, July,
+1927.
+
+[18] “Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist,” p. 7.
+
+[19] “Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist,” p. 8.
+
+[20] _Ibid._, p. 8.
+
+[21] “Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist,” p. 10.
+
+[22] _Ibid._, p. 8.
+
+[23] “The Myth of the Unconscious,” _Harper’s Magazine_, September,
+1927.
+
+[24] “The Myth of the Unconscious,” _Harper’s Magazine_, September,
+1927.
+
+[25] _Op. cit._, p. 355.
+
+[26] _Current History_ for September, 1926.
+
+[27] _Ibid._, December, 1926.
+
+[28] “The Trained Flea,” by Octavus Roy Cohen, _Saturday Evening Post_,
+December 17, 1927.
+
+[29] “Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist,” p. 372.
+
+[30] “The Myth of the Unconscious,” _Harper’s Magazine_, September,
+1927.
+
+[31] _Harper’s Magazine_, September, 1927, page 104, col. 2.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DR. McDOUGALL’S X
+
+
+1. AT THE BECK OF THIRTEEN MASTERS
+
+Dr. William McDougall, once of Oxford and Harvard, now of Duke
+University in North Carolina, came to America as one of England’s
+leading psychologists. If he is less well known to the public than some
+other psychologists, it is because he is less eminently “verbalized”
+along the lines of gripping, every-day speech. As an example of his
+literary style, as well as of his philosophy, take his definition of
+Instinct.
+
+“An inherited or innate psycho-physical disposition which determines
+its possessor to perceive, and to pay attention to, objects of a
+certain class, to experience an emotional excitement of a particular
+quality upon perceiving such an object, and to act in regard to it in
+a particular manner, or, at least, to experience an impulse to such
+action.”
+
+McDougall is nothing if not cautious. His subtile mind foresees every
+objection which can be made, and tries to forestall it. The result is a
+labyrinth in which even a professor, lacking a golden thread from the
+head of Ariadne to guide him, must--and does--frequently get lost. And
+yet all that this famous definition actually means is that we are born
+in such a way that we act in such a way.
+
+As to whether the way is marked by physical roads or by roads which
+are something else; as to whether these roads are bequeathed to us
+by our ancestors, or whether we just have them, McDougall does not
+commit himself. But he implies that there is something in us which
+pays attention or does not pay attention, and that this something does
+not always follow a road even if it sees it. Sometimes it merely wants
+to follow, but forbears. Each road, we learn as we continue to read
+from this, his “Outline of Psychology,”[32] has a lure of its own--as
+roads are apt to have--something which he calls the “hormic impulse,”
+or “hormic faculty.” And sometimes, instead of having it always acting
+from the roads themselves and moving us with a pull, he seems to
+think of it as in or behind us and giving us a push. In its latter
+position it can easily be mistaken for a will--even for a free will. To
+experience an impulse to act, and then not to act as the impulse would
+have you--is not that to be free to act as you like?
+
+Yes; but what determines the like? Has the slave-driver gone, or has he
+merely stepped into the background?
+
+A hormic impulse is a “striving” impulse. We are born with these
+impulses, therefore they are “instincts.” William James gave us
+twenty-four--the instincts of climbing, imitation, emulation, rivalry,
+pugnacity, anger, resentment, sympathy, hunting, fear, approbation,
+acquisitiveness, kleptomania, constructiveness, play, curiosity,
+sociability, shyness, cleanliness, modesty, shame, love, jealousy,
+parental love. Dr. Watson says he has been able to find none of them.
+Dr. McDougall rejects some and discovers several new ones, leaving
+thirteen in all--which was for him an unlucky number.
+
+Instead of being free, we have now thirteen masters, always wrangling
+among themselves, it is true, but never consulting us about their
+decisions. If we hesitate to obey one of them it is only because
+some other happens for the moment to be stronger. Or we are mastered
+by a combination; by a bloc. If we decide to move from the city to
+the country, it is probably a farm bloc. According to this theory, a
+sufficiently knowing person could calculate your conduct in advance.
+
+Draw two straight lines of the same length, or of different lengths,
+as you prefer, from a single point; call that point yourself; let the
+direction of the lines represent the direction of the instincts, and
+let the relative lengths of the lines represent the relative strength
+of the instincts. If you then draw two other lines, each one parallel
+to one of the first two, and if you finally draw a diagonal from the
+original point to the opposite corner of the parallelogram you have
+just constructed, this diagonal will represent the action you will take
+when played upon by two hormic impulses at the same time.
+
+But is this not free will, to do as you are moved to do? It was
+Schopenhauer, I think, who said that if a stone thrown through the air
+could be conscious, it would imagine that it was free; would translate
+gravity, momentum, resistance and the like into terms of personal
+desire. And it was Will Durant who, in his “Story of Philosophy,” said
+that Schopenhauer was right. This, of course, is but another way of
+saying that free will is an illusion. It seems to come from within us,
+but in reality comes from without. And so it must be if we are the
+playthings of these hormic, instinctive impulses with which we are said
+to be born.
+
+McDougall has specifically repudiated this interpretation of his
+theory. He calls himself a “Vitalist”; a believer in an active
+“life-principle,” in something which, if not an actual soul, is at
+least a mind. But being an eminently fair-minded gentleman, he has
+been at pains to marshal together all the objections to his own views
+which he can think of, and he has proven himself to be a better enemy
+propagandist than defender of his own territory.
+
+Thus C. E. M. Joad, a British writer, author of “The Babbitt Warren,”
+in his essay, “The End of Ethics,”[33] compared McDougall to Watson
+and to Freud, and finds that one and all “preclude free will.” And he
+adds: “Whether ... the conscious will overcomes the unconscious desire,
+or whether the unconscious desire overcomes the conscious will, is a
+matter which appears to lie outside our control.”
+
+Mr. Joad does not go half far enough. Under the McDougall hypothesis,
+the conscious will overcoming the unconscious desire is a matter
+which can never happen. Will is merely the conscious result of a war
+of unconscious impulses. But he is quite right in believing that it
+makes no difference whether a striving be called an “instinct,” as by
+McDougall; an “emotion-reflex,” as by Watson; or a “libido,” with or
+without a “complex,” as by Freud. If we were born with it, or found
+it innate within us, or acquired it through circumstances not of our
+making, then we are its puppets or the puppets of its fellows. So Mr.
+Joad quite logically groups McDougall, Watson and Freud together as
+determinists, all the protests of the eminent English professor to the
+contrary notwithstanding.
+
+McDougall nevertheless is possessed by an idea which negatives such a
+conclusion, negatives his whole philosophy; but he has never let it
+possess him wholly. That is why he has become so subtile, so difficult
+to read. Among those objects “of a certain class” which his thirteen
+innate or inherited instincts have moved him to pay attention to, is
+the materialistic physical science of the nineteenth century. And the
+conclusions of that science emphatically forbid the conclusion which he
+longs to arrive at in his own particular sphere. He wants to be free;
+to have a soul. And this old science tells him that he can’t be free,
+nor have anything of the sort.
+
+The trouble, of course, comes from the “law” of the Conservation of
+Energy--the idea that force is incapable of being either increased or
+diminished; that the amount of power which enters into anything is the
+amount of power which eventually issues from it, no more and no less.
+If will be anything but the net result of a group of pushes and pulls,
+it obviously contravenes this law by “creating” enough force to upset
+the balance--that is, unless we interpret the law very liberally and
+take it to mean that the sum total of the force of the entire universe
+alone is constant. In that case, if the will can smuggle in a little
+energy without having to pay for it, so to speak, it could be free to
+that extent.
+
+The nineteenth century provided against this catastrophe by making
+matter indestructible. No particle of it was to be permitted to give
+up the ghost--a ghost which might be snatched by the will and used to
+wreck the materialistic machine. So even if matter had some energy
+locked up in it somehow, it was going to stay locked up. Those were
+the days of a static universe; of a world completely finished, set
+going and deserted by a God who had gone out of business and was never
+expected to return. And to prove it, scientists devised instruments,
+measured the energy--income and output, found that the two balanced,
+and boldly announced that they always “must” balance.
+
+Naturally, McDougall is not so crude as to accept either those
+experiments or those theories today. It takes a popular author to
+do that--one whose reading stopped or was curtailed many years ago.
+After saying that the only ground for doubting the freedom of the
+will is that offered by the strict determinists who contend for the
+universality of the Law of Causation--a dependent brother of the Law of
+Conservation,--after saying this, he boldly adds that this law “is not
+susceptible of being proved”; has “had its day”; and “is merely a clog
+on speculation.”
+
+Nothing could be more hopeful. We seem to be setting out on a
+magnificent, unincumbered highway. But McDougall is a born reconciler
+of irreconcilables. He can not abandon Conservation even after having
+repudiated it. Earlier predilections, no doubt, bar the way. So he
+seeks to retain both his Will and the Law which forbids it. Fit
+successor to James and to Santayana, he presents the spectacle of a
+house divided against itself. Yet he lacks the wistful melancholy of
+the unbelieving Catholic, who found the intellect so hard and dry and
+useless when made supreme over all, but strove faithfully to worship it
+nevertheless. Nor has he the reckless inconsistency of the unbelieving
+Protestant, James, who could say one thing heartily, and then, in
+another mood, say something quite the opposite--no less heartily.
+
+McDougall is neither hearty nor melancholy. He has partially
+accepted Freud, and has worked in the same clinic with Jung. He is
+a psychiatrist. His important contributions to knowledge all deal
+with the abnormal. He has studied insects and animals. But such
+thirst for the human as he owns to has been largely satisfied by his
+practical ministrations to the sick and semi-demented. Therefore he is
+able to weave his intricate patterns of words about the incompatible
+presumptions of his argument with a certain appearance of enjoyment,
+and seems to fancy that when the thread of the discourse has become
+sufficiently tangled it will have brought the incompatibles together.
+
+“Resolutions of the will are not bolts from the blue,” he asserts.[34]
+And he does not see that this commits him hopelessly to the mechanistic
+camp. For resolutions of the will must be bolts from the blue--just
+that, exactly--or they do not transcend the law of the Conservation of
+Energy. And if they do not add a jot or tittle by way of effect to what
+is already found in the cause, they are not free.
+
+“Shall we say that Divine [clearly he means ‘human’] Reason sits at the
+head, controlling the fierce passions that reside in the belly as a
+charioteer controlls a team of savage steeds?” asks McDougall.[35]
+
+“Aye!” cried the great Aristotle, centuries ago.
+
+“Hardly!” exclaims our Carolina professor. “Reason is not a conative
+[i. e. striving] energy that may be thrown on this side or that in our
+moral conflicts.”[36] “Reason is not that X of which we are in search,
+though it plays an important part in bringing that X to bear.”[37]
+
+It begins to have the interest of a detective story. X marks the spot
+where the Will is to be found--and if X is something superior to
+Reason, all the better. But it is clearly asserted here that the Will
+is not the Reason; that Reason merely plays a part in bringing the
+Will to bear. That is, Reason guides, directs, aims the Will? No; for
+in such a case Reason would be the master, the mysterious Mr. X after
+all--which is contrary to the hypothesis. Is Reason, then, a channel of
+information, an open book where the Will reads the latest returns from
+the environment, so that there may be no action without knowledge? It
+looks that way for the moment. But McDougall goes on: “The X of which
+we are in search is always an impulse awakened within the sentiment
+of self-regard. It is the desire that I, the precious self ... shall
+realize in action the ideal of conduct which it has formulated and
+accepted.”[38]
+
+So X is an impulse wakened within a sentiment, which[39] he tells us is
+the “most general term to denote all acquired conative (i. e. striving)
+trends.” This makes X an impulse wakened within an acquired striving
+trend. And if we turn back to the definition of instinct we are
+reminded that a disposition to experience an impulse is an instinct,
+and therefore not acquired. So the impulse must have slumbered in
+a disposition before the sentiment within which it eventually woke
+had been acquired. X is also a desire belonging to an “I” which has
+formulated and accepted an ideal of conduct. Are we ringing the changes
+upon an octave of bells, or are we trying to say something?
+
+[Illustration: PROFESSOR WILLIAM MCDOUGALL
+
+Are we trying to say something?]
+
+Here we have Reason, Desire, Impulse, Instinct and Sentiment, not to
+mention Trend, all getting together and trying to make a Will with the
+help of an X and an I. We were out fishing, and just when the prospect
+seemed encouraging for a bite of something edible, we catch a wad
+of verbal flounces, beneath which if anything be concealed it looks
+strangely like a gudgeon in the shape of Nietzsche’s “Will to Power”
+rechristened as the Sentiment of Self-Regard. Or it may be the “libido”
+of Freud, or the “egotistic impulse” of Dr. Alfred Adler, of Vienna,
+which even Freud has denounced as “founded entirely upon the impulse of
+aggression,” leaving “no place at all for love.” It is a Will such as
+Dr. Watson might have made, had he been making one. But at least, you
+will say, it is a Will. Yet is it?
+
+A Will must have power, else it cannot move at all. And it must have
+the direction of that power, else it has no choice as to the way in
+which it shall move. X, being an impulse and a desire, may be said to
+have power. But McDougall puts it within an acquired striving trend,
+and my dictionary tells me that a trend is an inclination to move in
+a particular direction--which is precisely what an instinct is. The
+channel, you will note, has already been dug. Whatever was acquired
+was foredoomed to be acquired. The ideal of conduct which the “I”
+formulated and accepted lay hidden from the first, with no possibility
+of its being rejected in favor of some other ideal. The “balance sheet”
+of the Law of Conservation has been retained, all protestations to the
+contrary notwithstanding.
+
+McDougall has also attempted to make a Will out of attention.
+
+Now attention is probably the slightest piece of luggage of all our
+inner impedimenta. It is such a little thing. It weighs almost nothing.
+Can’t we get at least “attention” past the old-fashioned scientific
+custom-house without paying duty under the Conservation law? This looks
+at first like a feasible scheme. But the customsmen are lynx-eyed.
+Once we submit to their jurisdiction they will let nothing pass, though
+it weigh less than the tiniest bit of fuzz off the end of a feather
+boa. Thus far McDougall has been held up as an undesirable citizen by
+these hoary custodians, and not allowed to land in Mechanistia. They
+have been alarmed by the suspicious manner of the traveler. But in
+thinking that he has any free will hidden in his theoretical baggage
+they are deceived.
+
+This “interest” or “attention” with which we have to deal, is
+“conative.”[40] And conation is “a convenient Latin word ... to denote
+the striving aspect of the mental processes.”[41] I am afraid that it
+is all it is, a convenient Latin word. For “instinct” too is a “direct
+conative trend.”[42] Here we have two kinds of striving, only one of
+which is said to be direct, that is to have a direction. But this
+directed striving comes first; it is in-born, instinctive. Naturally so
+is instinct, “a disposition which determines its possessor to perceive,
+and to pay attention to, objects of a certain class.” But in trying to
+find a Will it is precisely this determining which we are interested
+in. We don’t care what makes the water run in the ditch, we want to
+know what digs the ditch. In McDougall it is always instinct. He has
+studied insects too much. He has seen too many lunatics whose wills
+were paralyzed. “Instinctively” he gives us only the mechanisms which
+he thinks he finds in grasshoppers.
+
+Once, indeed, he does get up to the level of birds. On page 255 of the
+book[43] which contains the most complete expression of his theories,
+he says: “The only instance of pure cognition, as distinct from
+recognition, are those in which a creature is confronted for the first
+time with an object of the kind that evokes an instinctive reaction....
+As when the hen nightingale hears for the first time the song of the
+male.”
+
+We are back to a first time, so for the moment are freed from habit.
+But “instinctive reaction” evoked by an object in the environment
+promptly takes us in charge. If the hen nightingale has no X, neither
+have we. She is merely a concrete example of the class “creature,”
+to which we unquestionably belong. And obviously the hen can pay no
+attention to objects in which she has no instinctive interest, since it
+is instinct which “determines” the disposition to attend.
+
+But what if the hen sees a snake as well as hears a song? Can reason
+dig a channel for her striving which will lead her to make a detour on
+her way past snake towards song? Is Reason the X? Impossible. “Reason
+is not a conative [striving] energy.” Then it has no power, it cannot
+dig ditches.
+
+It cannot even control attention, since that is the yes-man of
+instinct, the only thing having power which we have yet encountered.
+So if the hen nightingale decides to risk the possibility of laying
+unfertilized eggs rather than the possibility of making a snake’s
+dinner--if she turns a deaf ear to the song of the male and simply goes
+away from there, it will be because her instinct of self-preservation
+proved a stronger and a quicker ditch-digger and trend-giver for her
+hormic impulses than did her sexual or maternal instincts. Or perhaps
+it was her instinct of self-regard which led her to take wing.
+
+No doubt it will be argued that it was Reason which put before her
+the probable consequences of coming too close to a snake, reason
+based on experience or observation. Let us suppose that Reason did
+have this information--though I don’t see how a powerless reason could
+acquire anything,--what is it going to do with it? Call it to the hen’s
+attention? It cannot. Her attention wears the shackles of instinct. She
+moves without waiting to know. Moving without knowing why is the very
+core of instinctive behavior.
+
+And yet McDougall assures us[44] that “conative [striving] behavior is
+indicative of an energy that works teleologically [i. e. purposefully]
+and which is therefore radically different from the energies which
+physical science conceives as working always mechanistically.” He
+loves to console himself with sentences like this one. We grow more
+rational and less instinctive as we grow older. How perfectly true. But
+McDougall brings it about by having Reason “waken” in a world where no
+energy is required to amass and classify data and then bring them to
+the attention of an X in the face of thirteen instincts which among
+them possess all the power there is.
+
+If Reason only were a bolt from the blue! Or if X were such a bolt and
+could lend Reason a little current! But X itself wakens in a particular
+instinct, self-regard, and it is wakened by nothing. X does not mark
+the place where the will is to be found, it marks the place where the
+_body_ is to be found. And what is McDougall’s conclusion of the whole
+matter? What one might expect. “The stallion arches his thick neck ...
+the bull bellows; the lion roars; the cat caterwauls; and the young man
+curls his mustache.”
+
+
+2. PSYCHE WIELDS THE BROOM
+
+In an unclaimed desert anyone may erect fences, but it is difficult
+to see how fences, especially when they are only imaginary, can
+earn dividends if they enclose no cattle. McDougall introduces us
+to a region where there is not even sand--only words. And nothing
+is required of these words, whether they be conveniently Latin or
+less conveniently English, except that they follow one another in
+grammatical order. He makes distinction after distinction; and as they
+are verbal distinctions merely, all that ensues when they contradict
+each other is a conflict like that of several contending currents of
+air.
+
+We see now why Dr. Watson so much objected to the introspective method.
+In truth, “introspective” is an unhappy term. We may note what goes on
+inside of our bodies, and even of our brains to a certain extent; and
+give names to various thoughts, feelings and sensations, or to what
+we take to be such. We can tell in what order they occur. But this is
+not introspection in any literal sense, it is simply paying attention
+to things which are intimate and near. Actually to try to look inside
+of “ourselves,” implies that “we” are standing outside and looking
+in--an impossible situation. Its physical counterpart is the attempt to
+roll the eyeballs so as to get a view of the interior of the skull--a
+performance not to be recommended.
+
+The outer world, physicists tells us, is a “continuum,” something all
+of a piece. A chair and the air around it are not so separate as one
+might suppose. It is the sense of touch and the sense of sight which
+distinguish so sharply between one and the other. Make the chair of
+glass, and the eye is not so certain. Lenses and mirrors can be so
+arranged as to project a visible chair which the hand cannot feel.
+Make the chair of aromatic wood and the sense of smell will perceive it
+as pervasively emanating from a vague center yet permeating the whole
+room.
+
+But in dividing such a continuum we have at least the warrant of our
+senses. We remain practical. When we attempt to divide up the continuum
+perceived only by the inner self, such guides are lacking. We have
+to depend upon psychologists. And if we try to go further and cut
+the inner self, itself doing the cutting, we only commit subjective
+_hari-kari_, the sensation of which is very uncomfortable. This is the
+sort of metaphysics which is indeed but methodical befuddlement. Yet
+it is practiced, not by metaphysicians but by men calling themselves
+scientists; men who profess for the most part to despise both
+metaphysics and philosophy--dogmatic men, who never lose an opportunity
+for expressing their horror of dogma. Such misbehavior entitles anyone
+to the title “misbehaviorist,” whether he be a Watsonian or a Freudian,
+and McDougall, for all his agreeable manners, will have to be convicted.
+
+R. H. Hingley, B.A., who signs himself a “research student in
+psychology, Edinburgh University,” picking and choosing such
+verbalization as pleases him, even attempts to reconcile McDougall
+with the impalpable Boris Sidis. Hingley writes as a friend of the
+accused, and in his book, “Psycho-Analysis,” proves it by defining
+“self-consciousness” as “a recognized and acknowledged synthesis of
+... impulses.”[45] If that is all self-consciousness is, it is this
+same familiar nothing with which we have already had so much to do.
+Can you imagine a “synthesis” as existing by itself? In the case of
+gin, perhaps, for the atoms in synthetic gin are real atoms in good
+standing in their several communities brought together by no fault
+of their own. Nor even yet do they exist as gin except as there is
+something outside of themselves capable of conceiving of them as gin.
+They belong to the physical continuum--and generally it is safer to
+leave them where they belong.
+
+I won’t ask what is to be expected of a synthesis of McDougallian
+hormic impulses. Another verbal whirlwind threatens to blow, and it
+will be better to keep out of it. But let us make a synthesis of
+matches.
+
+Arrange a number of matches on the table before you so that they form
+a cross, a star, or any other geometrical figure. Then sweep them up
+in your hand and forget all about it. Where is the figure now? What
+has become of it? Have you at last succeeded in defying “natural
+law,” and annihilated something? No; the figure did not exist, as a
+figure, except in you. And if some trace of it be not in you now, as an
+“unconscious idea” or what not, it can be nowhere. It was only a form,
+and form is an entity only by grace of the perceiver of form.
+
+It was you who perceived certain relations among the matches. The
+relations were not in the matches. Unless the matches managed somehow
+to get outside of themselves, they had no idea that they were parts
+of a cross, a star, or a triangle. And when this form is “destroyed”
+they are conscious of no loss. Now a self, or a self-consciousness
+which is only a form made out of the things which constitute it and not
+perceived by anything else, is less a self than a piece of bread rubbed
+on the outside of an empty closet door is a cheese sandwich.
+
+This habit of playing with words signifying a multitude of things
+conceived of as a unit, is evident in all the literature of mechanist
+thinking. As soon as such a word is found, the group of things is
+treated as if it were a force, an entity, or even an intelligent
+creature standing on its own legs. And usually the things in the groups
+are also but words.
+
+Dr. McDougall, for instance, says that a man in the presence of a great
+work of art is being played upon by a “fusion” of the “instincts” of
+“curiosity” and “wonder,” fused in their turn with the instinct of
+“submission.” It is a predicament in which no one should lightly wish
+to find even an art critic.
+
+But if we have thirteen instincts, why not fourteen? Why not the whole
+twenty-four listed by James? Why not twenty-five? If I can be played
+upon by a fusion of curiosity, wonder and submission, all instinctive,
+why cannot I be played upon by the instinct to light my pipe at three
+o’clock in the afternoon of Friday, the Thirteenth of January? Think of
+a self-conscious synthesis of unconscious impulses being played upon
+by a fusion of unconscious determining impulses wakened in an innate
+psycho-physical disposition to pay attention!
+
+But let us abandon the materialistic hypothesis, however disguised.
+Let us say that it was Psyche who built her house, not the house which
+built Psyche--and how the situation changes! She cannot have built it
+out of nothing, it is true. So let Dr. Watson give her a dwelling with
+only the foundation reflex courses laid, or let Dr. McDougall escort
+her into a completely and instinctively furnished apartment. In either
+case, she begins at once to make alterations, for she is a “choosy”
+woman, this Psyche of ours. She has power in her right arm, and does
+not care a tinker’s dam about the conservation of energy.
+
+So she proceeds in her disposition to pay attention to objects “of
+a certain class,” and totally to ignore others. Things progress
+from a “predominantly mechanical to a predominantly teleological
+determination.” Pure instincts, the original furnishings of the flat,
+become modified by experience and rational reflection. Dr. Watson[46]
+says “there is no mystery in building the human being into as
+complicated an organism as he is.” Avowed mechanists are never tired of
+telling us this, and they are right. There is no mystery at all--save
+in Psyche herself. And she is all mystery. I would no sooner think of
+trying to explain her than I would think of explaining myself. For she
+_is_ myself. And she and I, like Drs. Watson and McDougall, are totally
+inexplicable. Not even we understand in the least.
+
+What is explanation? Let us explain a sunset. It is caused, we will
+say, by the earth turning upon its axis, so that the sun, which at
+noon was overhead, seems to sink to the horizon. Actually, it is the
+horizon which rises and obscures the sun--no matter. The rays which
+were perpendicular, become slant. They encounter drops of water in the
+atmosphere--encounter too the laws of refraction, and break up into
+gorgeous yellows and purples. Follow the rays in one direction, and
+you come to the “rods” in the eye; the optic nerve; the brain; and to
+Something which translates the result into the color sensations, and
+these, perhaps, into a fusion of wonder, curiosity and submission--and
+these into a lot of theories.
+
+Follow the rays in the other direction, and you arrive at the sun,
+and are tempted to construct various theories of light. Whence came
+the sun? Whence came these primal particles or protons of which it
+is theoretically composed? We know of the sun’s existence only from
+what Psyche perceives--through her senses or otherwise. Imagine
+that neither Psyche nor the sun exists. Start now and try to imagine
+yourself creating either or both. Why, you cannot even make a
+beginning. You have nothing to imagine with. You are lost between the
+impossibility of existence and the impossibility of non-existence. Did
+you ever stop to think how utterly impossible is either of these two
+opposite impossibilities? And yet--here we are!
+
+Explanation, then, consists in nothing but the addition to one
+mysterious experience of Psyche certain other mysterious experiences
+which precede, accompany or follow it. And as they usually precede,
+accompany or follow in much the same order, we call them causes,
+controlling circumstances, and effects. But instead of explaining the
+mystery away, we have merely heaped Pelions and Ossas of mystery all
+about it. And so we often manage to hide it, and to fancy that there
+is no mystery at all. Would it not be wholesome exercise occasionally
+to admit openly that we do not know what we are talking about? Why not
+for once exclaim with Dr. Bertry, in “_L’évasion_,” by Brieux, “_On ’s
+imagine savoir des millions de choses!--on veut formuler les lois de la
+vie--et l’on assiste impuissant à sa propre agonie!--Nous ne comprenons
+rien à tout ce qui se passe autour de nous, rien à ce que se passe en
+nous_”?
+
+So far as the mind is concerned, this is undoubtedly true. The mind
+can know nothing of the proper essence of that which surrounds us. The
+mind, says Newman, cannot comprehend even its own activities to the
+full. So we “do but assist at our own agony.... Why is it that I die?
+The scelerose invades the arteries. Why? What is the scelerose?” And
+Dr. Bertry continues: “Do you wish me to tell you? We know nothing
+about it--nothing! We have found nothing about it--but words.”
+
+That is no reason, however, why we should use yet other words to create
+mysteries of our own--like the unconscious emotions of Dr. Watson, or
+the enslaved freedom of Dr. McDougall. And this is my answer to those
+who will object that my explanation, too, is incomprehensible. Its
+incomprehensibility comes from the facts, not from my contrivance. The
+metaphor of Psyche grants the natural mystery by making our inner self
+a human being, which, after all, is what it is. And with this for a
+start, the reason can work--at the only job for which it is fitted.
+
+It does not follow that Psyche discovers nothing which is of any use.
+Knowledge is relative, but Truth is not--Pragmatism or no Pragmatism.
+And she soon discovers, let William James have said what he may have
+said, that it makes a great difference whether her approximations are
+more or less wide of the mark. Which is to say that she profits by
+experience. Her original house does not suit her. She makes certain
+rearrangements. They suit her better, but not to perfection. She
+continues to rearrange and to build, with such material as life affords
+her. That, I fancy, is what she is here for--to learn how to keep
+house. For though the house be not Psyche, any more than your house
+or your body is you, do not think for a moment that it is useless. As
+well say that the parallel bars in the gymnasium are of no use to the
+athlete for whom they afford the opportunity of exercise.
+
+Scientists at one time used to exercise--not their powers of
+observation, but their verbal ingenuity--upon a set of bars of their
+own which they called the psycho-neural parallel, saying that inasmuch
+as two parallel lines can never touch, so neurology and psychology,
+nerves and mind, matter and the immaterial, can never influence one
+another. According to this theory, there were two eternally separate
+twins dancing along, each on its own line of the parallel, forever
+aping each other as our reflections ape us in a mirror. And it was
+strictly forbidden to cross the track!
+
+The materialists have repealed this “law,” on the ground that there is
+no psychic rail out of which to make the right hand parallel. Others
+would repeal it, saying that there is no left-hand rail. The rails are
+there, nevertheless. What is not there nor anywhere is the prohibition
+against crossing. The idea that the immaterial cannot influence the
+material because spirit and matter are things of different orders comes
+from the same sort of logic as would maintain that waves cannot rock a
+boat because wood and water, too, are of different orders of things.
+
+But, think you, this is merely human experience and common sense, not
+science? That there is no Scientific Psyche? That the idea of there
+being somebody at home within us is a sweet but forbidden doctrine;
+something forever outlawed by the experimental method? On the contrary,
+it was the experimental method which first made us aware of this state
+of things. And the experimental method in its most modern, scientific
+form, politely lifts its hat to the Housekeeper whenever she appears.
+It was only during a decade or two--the decade or two when most of
+our psychologists were young and learned all they ever did learn of
+physics--that science forgot her manners. If you want to be in style,
+do not continue to wear your hat in the house. In the best circles it
+is no longer done.
+
+We are not ready yet, however, to enter the best circles. We have first
+to pass through the fires of passion, of madness and dreams.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[32] My quotations are from the edition of 1925.
+
+[33] _Harper’s Magazine_, August, 1927.
+
+[34] “Outline of Psychology,” p. 446.
+
+[35] _Ibid._, p. 439.
+
+[36] _Ibid._, p. 446.
+
+[37] _Ibid._, p. 440.
+
+[38] “Outline of Psychology,” pp. 140 and 141.
+
+[39] _Ibid._, p. 418.
+
+[40] “Outline of Psychology,” p. 274.
+
+[41] _Ibid._, p. 418.
+
+[42] _Ibid._, p. 418.
+
+[43] _Op. cit._
+
+[44] “Outline of Psychology,” p. 317.
+
+[45] “Outline of Psychology,” p. 18.
+
+[46] “The Behaviorist Looks at Instincts,” _Harper’s Magazine_, July,
+1927.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A SLAVE TO DREAMS
+
+
+1. THE CONFESSIONS OF SIGMUND FREUD
+
+Psycho-analysis, we are told by Hingley[47] began with a “very
+interesting case of hysteria” suffered by a patient of Dr. J. Breuer,
+of Vienna. Sigmund Freud, then a young man, was in Paris, studying
+with Charcot at the Salpêtrière. The patient lost the use of the right
+arm, lost the power to drink; but recovered both when Dr. Breuer,
+resorting to hypnotism, revived the memory of a painful experience in
+the patient’s childhood.
+
+Mesmer, with his magnetic fluid and his “passes,” had almost been
+forgotten, but in France the hypnotists of the Salpêtrière were still
+battling against the “suggestion” school of Nancy--as in deed they are
+today. Here, therefore, was a case after Freud’s own heart. He hurried
+back home.
+
+The two doctors worked for a while in harmony, and soon arrived at the
+conclusion that to cure hysteria it was not sufficient to revive the
+past. Patients must re-live the painful experience in all its original
+emotional intensity. Thus the ground was prepared for the later
+Naturopaths, who insist that one must have all one’s diseases over
+again in inverse order, avoiding remedies as these merely “suppress the
+symptoms.”
+
+But some people have had diseases which they do not care to have over
+again, and prefer suppressed symptoms to almost any other kind. So
+Naturopathy has had a hard row to hoe. At first there was the same
+reluctance on the part of the public in regard to painful emotional
+experiences. Not until Freud, abandoned by Breuer but accompanied by
+a disciple named Jung, visited America in 1919, was sales-resistance
+finally overcome. By this time it was generally known that, though the
+method was called the “cathartic method,” no cathartics were used;
+and that the “painful experiences” to be re-lived were all sexual
+experiences, painful only in a Pickwickian sense.
+
+For he came with the announcement that there was within each one of us
+a bogie, or endo-psychic censor, which prevented us from dwelling with
+any real enjoyment upon the more unsavory episodes of the past; that
+it was this spoil-sport which made us ill; and that it could be put to
+rout by “Psycho-Analysis.”
+
+Soon it was discovered that an outer censor, familiarly known as
+Anthony Comstock--a rather ignorant gentleman with the annoying habit
+of sending policemen after those who published what was, in those days,
+quaintly termed “pornographic literature,”--could be floored by the
+same means. Psychology was not “literature.” Therefore it could not be
+“pornographic literature,” within the meaning of the law. The Venusburg
+_motif_ shivered with joy. The Pilgrim’s Chorus sank to a gruff base.
+So the Austrian became a best-seller, out-vending even Havelock Ellis,
+who had previously had our perversions pretty much in his politer
+charge. Dr. Breuer, on the contrary, clinging to hypnotism, which Freud
+had discarded, and more or less discarding the eroticism to which
+Freud had nailed his colors, sank back straightway into his native
+oblivion, a warning to all.
+
+It need not be thought that the cathartic method did us no good. The
+United States, just emerging from the taboos of Queen Victoria, was
+in need of hyssop. Some of us, brought up among tables and chairs
+having limbs in lieu of legs, were really in a bad way. But Freud has
+become much more than a physician. Through books which sell in hundreds
+of thousands, he seeks to officiate as a pedagogue, a scientist, a
+philosopher and a priest.
+
+Therefore it may not be amiss to enquire into his antecedents and his
+character, and then to ask ourselves what his teachings amount to as
+theory and how they influence our lives if put into practice.
+
+In order to be perfectly fair, I shall confine myself almost
+exclusively to the analysis of a single book, the master-piece into
+which he has put his most fully elaborated and carefully worked out
+speculations, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” using the third edition
+of the authoritative English translation of A. A. Brill.
+
+This work, whatever it may be as psychology, is certainly one of the
+greatest autobiographies in existence; for in it Freud not only tells
+us his dreams--which alone would tell us nothing--but the incidents
+from which he deems the dreams to have sprung, and the thoughts and
+memories which his study of the dreams have brought to mind. It is a
+method to be recommended for those who wish to stand quite naked before
+the world. By the time he has done, not even Rousseau or Benvenuto
+Cellini are better revealed.
+
+“When I was six years old,” he writes,[48] “and was receiving my first
+instructions from my mother, I was asked to believe that we are made
+of earth, and that therefore we must return to earth. But this did not
+suit me, and I doubted her teaching. Thereupon my mother rubbed the
+palms of her hands together--just as in making dumplings, except that
+there was no dough between them--and showed me the blackish scales of
+epidermis which were thus rubbed off as a proof that it is earth of
+which we are made. My astonishment at this demonstration _ad oculos_
+was without limit, and I acquiesced in the idea.”
+
+And so, in maturer years, when he came to dream of a woman rubbing her
+hands together, the incident was recalled, and he identifies the dream
+woman as one of the Fates!
+
+For once his conclusion is not far-fetched. One of the Fates, indeed!
+To speak his own jargon, it may have been from those blackish scales
+of epidermis that he received the psychic blow which resulted in his
+life-long anti-religious mania. His love of God (he once used to
+read Philippson’s Bible, and to dream of the illustrations) was made
+ashamed by this ridiculous demonstration _ad oculos_, and forced out
+of consciousness. The course of history was turned on a certain famous
+occasion by the cackling of a flock of geese. It might have been turned
+again by the timely use of a cake of soap upon a maternal epidermis.
+
+Freud describes the inability of a child to detach its “libido” from
+the parent whom he asserts first awakens it, as a “mother-fixation.”
+His own mother-fixation takes the following startling form:[49] “It is
+only of late that I have learned to value the significance of fancies
+and unconscious thoughts about life in the womb. They contain the
+explanation of the curious fear felt by so many people of being buried
+alive, as well as the profoundest unconscious reason for the belief in
+a life after death, which represents nothing but a projection into the
+future of this mysterious life before birth. The act of birth [he means
+the act of being born] is the first experience with fear, and is thus
+the source and model of the emotion of fear.”
+
+Here emerges his marvelous gift for the enunciation of inconsistent
+formulas. Birth, the “first experience with fear,” is the “source and
+the model of all fear.” Yet it is the pre-natal life, which knew no
+fear, which is the source of the fear of being buried alive. Moreover,
+unconscious thoughts about this happy life _in ventro_ have but to be
+projected into the future to become the source of a belief in a life
+after death--a belief which is fraught both with fear and hope to all
+those who entertain it.
+
+Then, to make his inconsistency complete, he maintains (in his essay
+on “The Anxiety Neurosis,” and in many other places) that “neurotic
+fear has its origin in the sexual life and corresponds to a libido
+which has been turned from its object.” From what object? One of the
+erogenous zones. Birth thus ceases to be the source of fear--at least
+of “neurotic” fear--unless we assumed that it was a the moment of birth
+that erotic passion was first awakened.
+
+Dr. Ernest Jones, in “_Zur Psycho-analyse der Kriegsneurosen_,” says
+that all fear is due to suppressed libidinousness, but adds that
+fear consists in anxiety lest the suppression be overcome and the
+erotic demon escape control. The natural hero, then, would be the
+man who either had no erotic impulses or was indifferent as to when
+and where and how they manifested themselves. Freud, perhaps, agrees
+with this. Yet evidently, like Hamlet (to whom also he attributes a
+mother-fixation) he still carries with him another fear--a “fear of
+something after death,” an apprehension of such “dreams” as may come
+in such a “sleep,” baffling all psycho-analysis and worse than the
+delusions of a suppressed libido--and this notwithstanding the blackish
+scales in the demonstration _ad ocolus_ and the incredible reasons
+which he gives for his “symptom.”
+
+Freud hates to abandon anything altogether. He likes to keep a little
+fear, a little shame--not enough to control conduct, but just enough to
+lend a thrill to transgression. “The original situation which calls out
+the observable love-responses ... the stroking or manipulation of some
+erogenous zone, tickling, shaking, gentle rocking, patting and turning
+upon the stomach across the attendant’s knee,” would become intolerably
+monotonous if sought to be prolonged for a lifetime. Anatole France’s
+penguins were not “excessively occupied” by it even after they became
+human, before they learned to wear clothes. Dr. Watson, could he
+really prevent other stimuli from being “built in” or “grafted upon”
+this unconditioned reflex, would reduce all love-interest to that
+seasonal intermittance owned to by the beasts of the field--with
+what consequences to the film industry, who can say? Freud, though
+he prefers the words “mother-fixation” to “gut-reaction,” and
+“polymorphous perverse” to “unconditioned reflexes,”--to say nothing of
+“original sin”--agrees perfectly with the behaviorist as to what the
+natural stimuli are and that they should be spared all interference.
+But he can never quite get over the idea that, though natural, they
+are wrong. He speaks sometimes of “pollution” and of “filth.” The
+love-adventure thus becomes as exciting as a pact with the devil. At
+the same time he drives us to it with the threat of psycho-neurosis and
+possible paralysis if we refrain. In his hands, psychology becomes an
+aphrodisiac.
+
+From this same autobiography we learn that he was once actually in a
+grave, though only “an empty Etruscan grave near Orvieto.” And when he
+dreams of death, it is, he sometimes thinks, from a wish that _if_ he
+must go (“if” is the word he uses!) it may be to a grave something like
+this “pleasant one.”
+
+For a moment one thinks that the uterine obsession has abated. Yet I
+remember that somewhere he explains that the fondness of youths for
+flinging themselves down in the open is due to the fact that the ground
+is “the womb of mother earth,” and to a longing for return--whether in
+a fœtal or other capacity I do not recall. The Etruscan tomb-dream is
+not so pastoral as it seems.
+
+“Dreams which are conspicuously innocent,” he warns us,[50] “invariably
+(sic!) embody coarse erotic wishes.” Note the word “coarse,” a term of
+condemnation. And yet if we refine them we go mad!
+
+He can look forwards at times, for he asks,[51] “Is not the having of
+children the only access to immortality for us all?” Which is certainly
+an inadequate--no man really “lives again” in his children--yet a
+better explanation for the general belief in immortality than the
+extremely psycho-analytic idea that it comes from thoughts and memories
+of the unborn state. But the mother hypothesis seizes him again when
+he comes to interpret dreams “about landscapes and localities in which
+emphasis is ... laid upon the assurance” that one has “been there
+before.” For he adds, “the locality [indicated] is always the genital
+organ of the mother.”
+
+Freud was born in a little village of Moravia, “inhabited by Slavs,”
+and “must have understood the Czech language during the first three
+years of childhood.” Until the end of his third year, his “inseparable”
+companion was his nephew, John, a boy about a twelvemonth older than
+himself. John occasionally took advantage of signority, treating the
+future psychiatrist “very badly”; and the memory of this association
+has, in his own opinion, “colored” Freud’s relationships with people of
+his own age ever since.
+
+He had, when he was fourteen, the pleasure of playing Brutus to the
+hated and beloved playmate’s Cæsar--not in Shakespeare’s drama but
+in Schiller’s poem--the audience being composed of children. Long
+afterwards he dreams of the event, and connects up the “associations”
+in characteristic style. The dream-month, it seems, was July--named
+after the mighty Cæsar himself. Which leads him at once to Brutus’
+speech in Shakespeare: “As Cæsar loved me, I weep for him; as he was
+fortunate, I rejoiced at it; as he was valiant, I honor him; but as he
+was ambitious, I slew him.” So old scores are evened, if only in that
+thing less than a dream--dream-analysis. Freud’s favorite method of
+taking revenge is in his sleep.
+
+Yet there is a certain truculence in his waking character too, a
+_Schlagerfertigkeit_ which he acknowledges to be his. This seems to owe
+its origin not so much to the teasing John as to a conversation which
+took place when Freud was ten or twelve. His father was telling him
+how, in his own youth, he was walking on a Saturday through a street in
+the village where Freud was born.
+
+“Along comes a Christian,” says the father to the boy, “knocks my cap
+into the mud with one blow, and shouts, ‘Jew, get off the sidewalk!’”
+Sigmund asks, “And what did _you_ do?” his eyes big with wonder and the
+hope for some happy issue. But the father answers simply, “I went into
+the street and picked up the cap.”
+
+Here was born another complex--this time an inferiority complex--with
+which all right-minded persons must sympathize. Stoutly has he sought
+to fight it off, to assert himself. But it is easy to see how he has
+been hurt by the anti-Semitic feeling which from time to time has
+disgraced Austrian politics; how he hates the white carnations that, in
+Vienna, are the insignia of the Jew-baiters.
+
+But with what gusto he tells us of the old peasant midwife who assisted
+at his “first experience with fear” and prophesied, after the manner
+of her kind, that he would become “a great man!” His father, not to
+be outdone, was of the opinion that he was “poetically gifted” from
+the start. The idea of anticipated power may also lie behind the fact
+that the favorite toy of his babyhood was a yellow porcelain lion. And
+were I to follow his own method of the free association of ideas yet
+further, I might suggest that it was this lion which afterwards led him
+to visit England.
+
+In any case, visit England he did, when he was nineteen, and spent a
+day on the shore of the Irish sea, amusing himself by catching the
+“sea animals” left behind by the waves. A pretty little girl, seeing
+him engaged with a starfish, approaches and asks, “Isn’t it alive?” He
+answers in halting English but correctly enough, “Yes, he is alive.”
+And now the adult Freud must needs spoil this idyl by explaining that
+he was much embarrassed by his grammatical “mistake,” and hastened to
+substitute an _it_ for the _he_, fearing that the slip of the tongue
+in dealing with gender had already betrayed the improper meaning which
+in his thoughts he had attached to the masculine pronoun. Really, at
+times Freud is quite intolerable--and he seems to fancy, even yet, that
+he improved matters by his “correction” of himself.
+
+Since visiting England, he has always wanted to visit Rome, but has
+never done so, pretending to himself that Rome is not healthy in
+summer, the only time he is free to travel. He knows quite well that
+this excuse is about a hundred years out of date, but appears to be
+prevented by a complex from entering the Eternal City. For Freud, all
+roads lead to sex, and no road leads to Rome--which becomes quite
+understandable when we learn that for him Rome meant Catholicism. And
+when he tells us further that he often dreams that he is Hannibal, whom
+he identifies as Judaism, he makes it plain that with him it is _aut
+Cæsar aut nullus_. He would like to enter Rome as Hannibal the Semitic
+commander, would have liked to enter it--in the rôle of conqueror. At
+present the Pope and Mussolini stand like inhibitions at the gate.
+
+At one time in Vienna he lived in a house having one set of rooms upon
+the ground floor, serving him for an office, and a second set upon the
+story above, where he had his domestic quarters. The two levels were
+connected only by an outside stairway, and it was his custom always to
+“jump over the steps,” two at a time, arriving at the top suddenly and
+out of breath. And from this he derives his unrepeatable description of
+the symbolism of staircases as seen in dreams, where he gives them a
+sexual, even a rhythmic, significance.
+
+It is also his custom, it appears, not only to run up stairs but to
+spit upon them as he goes. He does this, he says, even in the houses
+of patients unless spittoons are provided at convenient intervals. And
+on the occasions when he has been reproved by servants, he has always
+been able to retort that a spittoon was missing.
+
+As to his wife, we learn that he “kept her waiting five years” before
+he married her, but derived great satisfaction from the circumstance,
+soon evident, that the marriage was not to be unfruitful. And, being
+on a visit to Breslau and seeing the sign of a “Dr. Herrod” in an
+office window, he at once cried out, “I hope he is not a children’s
+specialist!” Since then Freud’s most likeable trait has been his
+anxiety over the future of his offspring. He seems to have worried,
+both sleeping and waking, because of the fact that, as they are Jews,
+he cannot give them “a native country of their own.”
+
+Concerned lest one of his sons should grow up one-sided either in
+mind or body, he dreamed that the boy said at first “salted” and then
+“unsalted.” This, he assures us, was a wish-fulfillment, because in the
+dream at least the boy was acting “in obedience to bilateral symmetry.”
+
+Freud’s incredible ingenuity never fails him. Nor is he, except when
+discussing metaphysics, lacking in abundant wit, humor, and other
+amiable qualities. He says that he will put in italics all the features
+of a certain young lady’s dream that have a sexual significance--and
+follows this up with two solidly italicised pages and no other remark.
+
+He tells with glee how a lady in the audience at one of his lectures in
+America interrupted him by exclaiming, “Maybe all Austrian dreams are
+erotic, but I am sure it is not so in the United States.”
+
+He is suffering from a boil, which had been poulticed, and dreams that
+he is in a saddle riding a horse, the poultice being the “day-remnant”
+now transformed into a saddle. He declares that the dream (which,
+among other things is “the guardian of sleep”) meant to say to him,
+“Keep on sleeping. You have no furnucle [boil] at all. You are riding
+on a horse, and with a furnucle where you [think] you have it, riding
+would be impossible.”[52] This also means that his friend, F., has been
+putting on airs, “riding the high horse” with him ever since he (Freud)
+superceded him in the treatment of a particular female patient. So the
+saddle becomes a side-saddle to indicate the lady, and the dreamer
+performs circus antics upon it as a dream-boast of the great things he
+had been doing for her while she was under his care. And to those who
+object to the super-abundance of his “associations” he retorts that it
+is always the rich who have the most money.
+
+Real money he seems to regard as “filthy lucre,” since he holds
+that “the uncleanliness of childhood is often replaced in the dream
+by greediness for gold.” His stout republicanism comes out in his
+statement that “aristocrats can be readily confounded with coachmen,”
+that their merit is “that they have taken the trouble to be born”; that
+“to us middle-class plebeians” an aristocrat is one who likes to put
+himself “on the driver’s seat,” as Count Thun once liked to drive the
+Austrian car of state.
+
+Much light is thrown upon the author’s environment, perhaps even some
+justification to be found for his American auditor’s exception to the
+inclusion of the United States in the all-erotic hypothesis, by such
+remarks as the one which distinguishes page 462: “That the sexual
+intercourse of adults appears strange to children who observe it, and
+arouses fear in them, _I dare say is a fact of daily experience_.”
+This, as they say in Vienna, must have been “grown on his own manure.”
+I have added only the italics. It also reminds one of a Hungarian
+proverb which Freud is fond of quoting, “Pigs dream of acorns, geese of
+maize.”
+
+In his part of the country, he informs us,[53] “It is hardly possible
+to go through a village ... without meeting a two-or-three-year-old
+tot who lifts up his or her shirt before the traveler, perhaps in his
+honor.” And lest there be any doubt about the sort of life with which
+Freud is familiar, his translator takes the trouble to note[54] the
+custom of _Fensterlein_ as practiced in the Schwarzwald. Lovers there,
+he says, are in the habit of mounting by ladders to the windows of
+their sweethearts, and “becoming so intimate that they practically
+enjoy a system of trial marriage.” And he adds, “The reputation of
+the young woman never suffers on account of _Fensterlein_ unless she
+becomes intimate with too many suitors.”
+
+Still, it is hardly fair to single out the Black Forest, which after
+all is not Vienna. Even the Welsh have their _carangwelly_; Irving
+found evidences of bundling in the history of Father Knickerbocker; and
+companionate marriage knows how to speak English.
+
+Freud himself has become a linguist, partly through searching for the
+“bad” sense of words in all languages, partly by looking for puns, the
+pun being one of the tools with which he digs out “meanings” from his
+patients’ dreams. A great mass of knowledge is required to trace some
+of these word-plays. For instance, a dream of a botanical monograph
+leads from cyclamen to cocaine, from cocaine to a _Festschrift_,
+and thence to Dr. Königstein, to Prof. Gartner and his _blooming_
+wife whose name is Flora, to Freud’s wife and her favorite flower,
+to his own favorite flower (the artichoke) and thus to Italy. To
+dream that there is “a terrible storm outside” may mean that somebody
+is superfluous, for everything is overflowing with water, “with
+fluid,”--“superfluid”--“superfluous.”
+
+“People who dream often of swimming, of cleaving the waves with great
+enjoyment, have usually been persons who wetted their beds, and they
+now repeat in the dream a _pleasure_ which they have long since learned
+to forego.” This also seems superfluous.
+
+He accuses people who form collections of neckties of using this bit
+of haberdashery as a sex-symbol. Nothing in Freud is harmless, though
+he professes that his constant digging for muck sometimes wearies him.
+Thus one day after a lecture upon the usual subject he felt a longing
+to get away “from rummaging in human filth,” and was reassured only
+when a student followed him to a café and told him that he was a great
+man. Filth and greatness are again associated in his dream of being
+Gulliver and cleansing a foul closet by the means used by that famous
+traveler in putting out a never-to-be-forgotten fire in the queen’s
+palace at Lilliput. In the same dream he became Hercules cleansing the
+Augean stables.
+
+Naturally he reads Rabelais; but he has also read C. F. Meyer’s “_Die
+Leiden eines Knaben_.” And when Louise N., a visitor to his home,
+asked for a book, he recommended Rider Haggard’s “She,” “which deals
+with the eternal feminine,” and the Haggard-Lang romance, “The Heart
+of the World,” which he attributes to Haggard alone. This may indeed
+be the eternal feminine, but it has at least undergone a charming
+sea-change--“she-change,” Freud undoubtedly would say. Strain a desert
+and the lions remain. Strain Freud, and if sex does not remain nothing
+does--except his wit. After all he is no _Deutzenmensch_, not of the
+sort who come in dozens, and is always rich enough, at least in humor,
+to be able to ask the price of Graz.[55]
+
+He adores the tale of the husband who said to the wife, “If one of us
+dies I shall move to Paris.” And the story of the dreamer, who, when
+asked “Are you asleep?” answered “No”; but at the words “Then lend
+me ten florins,” promptly responded, “Yes, I am asleep.” But some
+sexual implication of a sort lower than animal is liable to germinate,
+whatever the occasion, and rise, as he would say, “like a toadstool
+from its mycelium” to poison the air. In Vienna they employ an art
+called Gsnas, which consists in making “something valuable out of
+trifles.” Nothing valuable comes from the Freudian Gsnas, unless you
+count a bad conscience which uses vestigial inhibitions merely to
+heighten tumescence.
+
+He confesses that he was once “a green youth, full of the materialistic
+doctrine.”[56] What he does not seem to realize is that he has never
+recovered from this adolescent characteristic. But it is always a
+relief to turn from his “interpretations” to the honest facts of his
+life--to read that he once spent a “charmingly beautiful day” with his
+wife looking from the window of a hotel (evidently the Danieli) on the
+riva Schiavoni, at Venice, watching the English warships that were
+taking part in a _fiesta_; and to know that his wife was interested in
+the toilet-table of an “Etruscan lady” in a Venetian museum. It was “a
+rectangular black object with two handles, with little boxes for rouge
+and powders,” and the _gnädige Frau_ “thought it would be nice to have
+in the house.” By rare good fortune, Freud failed to dream of these
+little boxes, or at least forgot to mention it if he did.
+
+Upon a less happy occasion he becomes so vexed with Mrs. Freud that
+when she gives him a book as a present he immediately forgets it--thus
+living up to his absurd theory that we only remember things which
+have agreeable associations. Then his “beloved mother” falls sick,
+and his wife takes such “tender care of her” that the domestic breach
+is healed. So the victim of amnesia suddenly recovers his memory, and
+walks straight to the lost book, “like a somnambulist.”
+
+One likes also to turn to the amusingly recounted hardships of his
+student days, and to learn that the five years provided for the study
+of medicine was “as usual” not enough for the future great man. So
+he “worked along unconcernedly,” though “considered a loafer” by
+his associates, who doubted if he would ever “get through.” He had
+intended to study law, but was moved to take up science upon reading
+Goethe’s “beautiful essay on Nature.” He never did get through very
+far, and failed in his examinations for the degree of Doctor of Legal
+Medicine. Consequently, when he dreams of examinations the subject is
+invariably botany, zoology, chemistry or history--it being another of
+his contentions that no one ever dreams of examinations excepting those
+in which one has succeeded. On the other hand, one dreams only of the
+trains which one has missed, such dreams being “consolation” dreams,
+directed against the fear of dying. One missed the train--that is, one
+did not “depart,” did not die. Railroad travel seems to be dangerous in
+Austria.
+
+Freud always wanted to be “a professor _extraordinarius_,” but was held
+back by the fact that he was a Jew in a country where appointments were
+in the hands of Gentile politicians. By way of compensation he is now a
+doctor of laws, _honoris causa_.
+
+But first, what struggles! The “honored teacher” of his youth was
+Bruecke, who in his age had eyes which were “wonderfully beautiful,”
+yet was a terrible fellow in his prime. One morning Freud, then a
+demonstrator at the Physiological Institute, came late to work--and the
+eyes, not yet so beautiful, turned to a “terrible blue,” and before
+their glare the hapless demonstrator “melted away.” But Bruecke has his
+day; he dies. And Freud takes characteristic revenge by dreaming that
+he denounces him as a ghost before a group of living people with whom
+the deceased was presuming to mingle as an equal.
+
+It is interesting to note that “the first scientific task” at which
+Bruecke set him “was concerned with the nervous system of a fish--the
+Ammocœtes.”[57] Have we here the origin of the Freudian philosophy?
+It seems to me so, but perhaps this is merely because I have recently
+been reading Roland Pertwee’s inimitable “Fish are Such Liars,” in _The
+Saturday Evening Post_.
+
+
+2. THE ELABORATION OF A FICTION
+
+But it is time to leave the fascinating subject of Freud the man
+and turn to Freud the psychologist. Everybody understands his
+psycho-analysis in a vague, general way, but I know of no one who has
+ever taken the trouble to reduce its chaos to order and so expose the
+kind of “logic” which rules it. His disciples merely choose such bits
+as please them, add a rhetorical pæan, and say, “This is Freud!”
+Others skip all but the salacious passages. Let us take it fairly, the
+lean and the fat together. After all, it is important. For if this
+theory be “true” we must submit to it though the heavens fall. We are
+not “irrational” I hope.
+
+[Illustration: DR. SIGMUND FREUD
+
+He tells us his dreams]
+
+Psycho-analysis is based upon six main assumptions, but even
+assumptions deserve for once to be stated in plain language.
+
+_First Assumption_: That we are born with a certain equipment, called
+the Primary Psychic Apparatus, or the Unconscious Mind. This is much
+like the “Instinctive” apparatus of McDougall, or the “Unconditioned
+Reflex” apparatus of Watson. It has a certain resemblance to the Old
+Adam of popular speech, with that Flesh which was formerly associated
+with the World and the Devil. It is Psyche’s house as originally
+bequeathed to her.
+
+“We have elaborated the fiction of a primitive psychic apparatus whose
+work is regulated by the efforts to avoid accumulation of excitement,”
+says Freud.[58] “For this reason it was constructed after the plan of a
+reflex apparatus. The accumulation of excitement is perceived as pain
+and sets the apparatus in motion in order to reproduce a feeling of
+gratification in which the diminution of the excitement is perceived as
+pleasure.”
+
+This “fiction” then is Oriental. Pain is positive, pleasure merely the
+diminution of excitement. The logical procedure would be to get rid of
+such an apparatus, if in no other way then by committing suicide. But
+later we shall learn that notwithstanding its perception of pain and
+pleasure, the apparatus is unconscious. Freud and Watson together give
+us a no-conscious, an unconscious, and a pre-conscious, and not a bit
+of consciousness in any of the three.
+
+_Second Assumption_: That as we develop under stress of
+circumstances,--conform to our environment as a Darwinian would say,
+or in other words become educated--we develop a Secondary Psychic
+Apparatus whose emotional reactions are different from and often
+in opposition to the emotional reactions of the first. This is the
+non-instinctive, reasonable, or acquired mental equipment, the
+conditioned reflex system--what we ordinarily term our second nature.
+Freud divides it further into the Pre-Conscious and the Conscious--and
+here at last we become really conscious. But we shall be “compelled
+to build a series of new assumptions concerning the structure of the
+psychic apparatus,” he informs us.[59] And here they begin. “From the
+moment that we wish to penetrate deeper into the psychic processes
+... all paths lead to darkness.”[60] The darkness is about to be
+ours--darkness abundant, Stygian, Egyptian; darkness which may be felt.
+
+_Third Assumption_: That, owing to the emotional differences of the two
+psychic systems, the Second System offers a resistance to the desires,
+thoughts and memories (all unconscious) of the first. “Whenever a
+wish-fulfillment is unrecognizable or concealed, there must be a
+present feeling of repulsion towards the wish, and in consequence
+of this repulsion the wish is unable to gain expression except in a
+disfigured state.”[61] It is this resistance which he personifies as
+the Endo-Psychic Censor and imagines standing like a watch-dog at the
+threshold of the pre-conscious. He even imagines a second censor
+standing at the threshold of the conscious.
+
+Everybody must admit that this resistance, personified or otherwise,
+is a fact. The adult does acquire a distaste for childishness. He at
+times exercises upon himself a sort of discipline. He has different
+inclinations which are at war with one another. Freud’s contribution to
+psychology at this point consists in the discovery that such discipline
+is a perilous thing to indulge in. For--
+
+_Fourth Assumption_: A desire so disciplined does not cease to exist,
+but continues in being. The opposition of the Secondary Apparatus
+causes it to be forgotten, to became a part of the unconscious. But
+there it remains, “suppressed” but biding its time.
+
+These unconscious wishes “suffer the same form of annihilation as
+[do] the shades of the lower region in the Odyssey, who awoke to
+new life the moment they drank blood.”[62] Shall we then keep them
+away from blood? That is not the programme. But for the moment Freud
+merely says:[63] “Nothing can be brought to an end in the unconscious;
+nothing can cease or be forgotten.” Adding:[64] “I believe that these
+unconscious wishes are always active and ready for expression--the as
+it were immortal wishes from the unconscious.”
+
+This implies that a wish cannot be deflected, but persists as a desire
+for its original object--which is totally contrary to reason and
+common sense, to experience, and to physical science. It is the same
+as saying that a boy who was looking forward to a Saturday afternoon
+visit to his grandmother’s grave and was induced to go to the circus
+instead, would--especially if he suppressed his cemeterial inclination
+to the point of not telling the fellows about it--straightway forget
+everything but the circus, and yet be haunted by an unconscious desire
+for the grave. Nor could anything but a conscious visit to the scene of
+interment (or to a psycho-analyst) ever set the desire at rest.
+
+Such a suppressed, abashed and forgotten but far-from-done-with desire
+is called a “complex.” There are many complexes, but they all reduce
+themselves to two, the Œdipus and the Inferiority. Let us pause to
+consider them before going on to other suppositions.
+
+
+3. TWO OFT-THWARTED PASSIONS
+
+An inferiority complex originates in a blow to our self-love, to our
+sense of personal regard. And as Dr. McDougall is the most eminent
+godfather of this instinct, we had better go to him for a working
+example.
+
+A famous architect visits his alma mater after many years of successful
+post-graduate life. Suddenly he begins knocking men down right and
+left, shouting, and trying to climb over the head of the bed in
+spite of the efforts of three attendants to hold him within bounds.
+An old-fashioned expert would have pronounced him a paranoic, a
+megalomaniac, or something equally disagreeable. But Jung, McDougall’s
+one-time co-worker, was called in. He said that it was only a case
+of schizophrenia, and that what the patient needed was--not a
+straight-jacket but a quiz.
+
+By “free word-association” (Jung’s personal invention) it was
+discovered that the schizophreniac had once been jilted by a fair co-ed
+at the dear old school, and had quite sensibly forgotten all about
+it. But when he returned to the scene of his adolescent chagrin, it
+all came back--the very campus seemed to him suddenly to sway beneath
+a purple sea of emotion. He thought that the fair one was not really
+married to another after all, notwithstanding rumors which he had heard
+to that most likely effect, but was still waiting for him--waiting
+until he should prove himself a man. So he commenced knocking other men
+down. Proof enough. He even added song and gymnastics by way of good
+measure; and a second attack, like the first but milder, occurred upon
+his next visit to the fateful place.
+
+What had happened (internally) was this. The co-ed had given him a
+mental traumatism, a blow upon the solar plexus of his vanity. And
+he was so shamed that he could not bear to think of it. So he put it
+from his mind--as he fondly thought. But alas, there is no such thing
+as putting anything from one’s mind. Things so put only go into the
+unconscious mind, there to fester like a potato in a damp cellar. The
+psychiatrist digs it out, and all is well. This is the story as set
+forth (in quite other language) in McDougall’s “Outline of Abnormal
+Psychology.”
+
+Unquestionably it is a great discovery--that we are not always crazy
+when we appear to be. Introverts, schizoids, dreamy people (you may
+have your choice of terms) are especially to be congratulated. For
+they are apt to find themselves battling suddenly with a suspiciously
+insane looking bosom monster long hidden from themselves--the battle
+resulting in hysteria if they give way and in compulsion-neurosis if
+they resist. If one happens not to be a schizoid but an extrovert--that
+is, a commonplace, practical sort of person--a bad inferiority-complex
+merely leads to multiple personality, a splitting of individuality
+into parts, one of which may go about calling itself Smith, another
+Jones, another Brown.
+
+But what shall we do with our famous architects, introvert or
+extrovert, when they begin to misbehave along non-professional lines?
+McDougall quite rightly attributes the cure of the one in question
+to Jung’s showing him just how ridiculous he had been in laying the
+co-ed’s treachery so much to heart in the first place. He need not have
+been so rich in false pride, Jung seems to have told him; need not have
+been ashamed of being jilted. Into each life some rain must fall. His
+was but the common fate of all men in general and of undergraduates in
+particular. He should have laughed the incident off, or perhaps have
+sought relief in another bite from another vampire, on the homeopathic
+principle of _similia similibus curantur_. What he had needed as a
+child was not the indulgence of self-esteem, for life is not always
+kind, but early preventative measures tending to curb self-esteem’s
+abnormal growth.
+
+One may agree with the diagnosis and treatment of this case without
+difficulty. It was not a Freudian case. The wound was only remotely
+sexual, and McDougall manages to ignore its erotic elements altogether.
+He is always the Dr. Jekyll of the couple of which Freud is the Mr.
+Hyde.
+
+Jung, for some reason, also enjoys a Jekyllian reputation, but he
+hardly deserves it. Indeed, he frequently out-Hydes his former teacher.
+For Freud observes that the “significance of sexual complexes must
+never be forgotten, nor must they, of course, be exaggerated to the
+point of being considered exclusive.”[65] Jung on the other hand writes
+(I am certain of his words but have forgotten the book and the page),
+“I am often asked why it is just the erotic complex rather than any
+other which is the cause of the neuroses. There is but one answer. No
+one asserts that this ought to be the case.... But as a simple matter
+of fact, it is always found to be so, notwithstanding all the cousins
+and aunts, godparents and teachers who rage against it.”
+
+In another place, Jung declares quite sensibly that the real cause of
+trouble is “the non-fulfillment of life’s task.” He is, it seems, so
+anxious not to be lost beneath the shadow of the master that he seeks
+to outshine him even in the production of self-contradictions.
+
+What chiefly distinguishes this noted citizen of Zurich, however,
+is the vast array of complications which he has added to the map of
+our psychic “localities” by drawing in the “archetypes ... the great
+primordial images”; the “collective unconscious” (inherited or innate
+tendencies of various awesome shades); the “Persona,” or mask beneath
+which the developed self timidly confronts the world; the “Anima,”
+or submerged personality; the “Kabyr,” or undeveloped intuitive
+premonitions, and many other romantic features whose names seem to have
+been taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Yet his attempt to write
+as picturesquely as Freud is a failure, like his endeavor to evolve an
+independent philosophy. Jung is merely Freud, McDougall, and water.
+His principal Avatars in this country are Dr. Maurice Nicoll and Dr.
+Constance Long.
+
+And now for the Œdipus Complex.
+
+“King Œdipus, who has struck his father, Laius, dead and has married
+his mother, Jocasta, is nothing,” says Freud,[66] “but the realized
+wish of our childhood.... His fate moves us only for the reason that
+it might have been ours, for the oracle has put the same curse upon us
+... as upon him.” He adds that, unless we have become psycho-neurotics,
+we have since “succeeded ... in withdrawing our sexual impulses from
+our mothers and in forgetting our jealousy of our fathers,”--and
+presumably we have withdrawn, too, from the cousins, aunts, godparents
+and teachers listed by Jung. If these impulses have found their
+way into the unconscious, however, they must have become eternal.
+Psycho-analysis drags them into consciousness, not to kill them but to
+give them a transfer. The patient, it is said, always falls in love
+with the operator as a half-way step on the road to cure. But in regard
+to “falling in love with one member of the parental couple and hatred
+of the other,” Freud does not think that “psycho-neurotics are ...
+sharply distinguished from ordinary human beings.”[67] The only way to
+preserve normality, then, without calling in the doctor, would be never
+to lose consciousness of our original polymorphus perversities.
+
+In such a case, how is a transfer to be brought about? Not by
+discipline, evidently. Considering the dire horrors said to lie in the
+wake of any attempt to thwart the perversities in question, the natural
+conclusion is that children should just grow, like Topsy, without
+having to suffer the stern and perilous ordeal of being brought up. And
+does not such a scheme leave perversity in control?
+
+Certainly the effect of the study of Freudianism everywhere has been
+to make parents afraid of resorting to corrective measures when their
+children are “naughty.” A stern word, let alone a sound spanking, may
+(according to the Freudian theory) cause a suppression of desire, a
+thrusting of a native impulse into the Sheol of the lower psychic
+locality, “where ... wishes ... recall the legendary Titans who from
+time immemorial have borne the ponderous mountains which were once
+rolled upon them by the victorious gods, and which even now quiver from
+time to time from the convulsions of their mighty limbs.”[68]
+
+Must one, then, totally abstain from mountain-rolling for fear of
+earthquakes? A boy’s “libido” is first excited by his mother, so that
+he wants to murder his father because the fellow is this woman’s
+husband and the boy would like to be her husband himself. Is this to
+go on? And of the two ways out of the situation, which shall we chose?
+Let the boy murder the father? Or shall we let him marry the mother?
+It seems to be a Hobson’s choice. We do not want to run the risk of
+creating a “complex” by harshly thwarting either of these amiable
+desires, for a complex, Freud assures us, may produce psycho-neurotic
+symptoms ranging all the way from a mild hysterical excitement to
+paralysis, blindness and homicidal mania.
+
+If there happens to be a daughter born in the family before the murder
+can take place, another difficulty arises. For the daughter’s “libido”
+will be excited by the father even as was the son’s by the mother.
+So the girl will want to kill her mother for being the wife of the
+father--will want to become her own father’s bride. In case all these
+instincts are given sway, there will be two murders; but where are
+the weddings coming from? The boy now has no mother. His sister has
+murdered her to get her out of the way. And the girl has no father, he
+having been murdered by the jealous boy. Brother and sister have nobody
+left but each other. Ergo, they should make the easiest transference
+available, and live happily ever after.
+
+In some instances, due to circumstances over which the infants have no
+control, the libidos may not reach out to the parent of the opposite
+sex, but attach the daughter to the mother and the son to the father.
+But this only complicates the situation. The murders will take place
+as before, the murderers’ parts being merely exchanged, and in the
+end brother and sister will be left as before, the sole survivors of
+the massacre. And in this case they will have especial difficulty
+in making the necessary libidinous transference. They have, through
+some accident in the nursery bringing similars instead of dissimilars
+together in the field of desire, become homo-sexual. The future of the
+race is threatened. Either that, or we must run the risk of a race of
+maniacs by teaching the young that some things are--not “unspeakable,”
+“unverbalizable,” or “unthinkable,” but shameful--murder and incest
+being among the number. If they cannot endure the shock of such
+knowledge, driven home until it becomes effective, so much the worse.
+Freud leaves the prospect gloomy indeed. And yet David Seabury, author
+of “Unmasking our Minds,”--Seabury, whom William James is said once
+to have dandled on his knee--endeavors to convince us in an article
+entitled “The Bogey of Sex,”[69] that Freud has spent his life in
+beautifying and ennobling human love.
+
+Beautiful and ennobling or not, the assumption that a desire and its
+first object are a pair of Siamese twins incapable of separation, is
+the very father of fallacies. Nor does it become more reasonable if
+by object is understood a class of objects. In either case desire in
+general is cut up into particulars, each one deathless and indomitable.
+Why should those who deny free will to the individual be permitted
+thus to attribute all powerful will to his several reactions?
+
+Freudians always instance hunger as an example of a persistent
+desire. You want your dinner, they say, and you go to the theatre
+instead of dining. You forget all about food, but you still continue
+to crave it; and when the show is over you discover that you are
+starving. Incidentally, this desire persists even if not driven into
+the unconscious by shame beyond hope of easy recall--which somewhat
+enlarges the hypothesis. A further enlargement is made with the
+admission that the hunger here is not a desire for turkey, or for
+chicken, but merely for food.
+
+Now it must be admitted that the Freudian supposition so understood has
+the superficial appearance of truth. In a case of this sort it does
+look as if only a limited transference were possible. One dish may be
+served in place of another, but unless we eat we continue to be hungry.
+But do we?
+
+Had Freud known anything about fasting, had he been a good Jew and kept
+the Passover, he would have learned that the symptoms soon cease. The
+sensation of hunger is produced by certain tensions in the stomach.
+The glands containing the digestive fluids are distended. The forces
+designed to attack the food are mobilized, and where the food should
+be yawns only emptiness. But soon the digestive fluids dissipate
+themselves; in the course of a few hours the last feeling of appetite
+is gone. One does not have to be a Dr. Tanner to be aware of this. Many
+people have gone without food for long periods, and with little or no
+suffering or ill effects.
+
+It is not pretended that we can go without food forever. The body
+cannot be altogether ignored--not by the majority of us; and one
+must remember the farmer’s horse, who, taught to live upon one straw
+a day, was so inconsiderate as then to die. But even with this, the
+most fundamental and imperative of all the desires, discipline may
+operate to a great extent. Gluttony is not a _sine qua non_ of health.
+Indeed, if no discipline be exercised there is likely to ensue--if not
+psycho-neurosis at least another and most distressing symptom, known as
+gout.
+
+And how is it with sex-hunger? This not being actually necessary to
+the preservation of the earthly life of the individual, is even more
+amenable to the curb, and may be divorced altogether from its carnal
+object. We are certain of this because it has been done and is being
+done in innumerable instances.
+
+I am not claiming that sex should be suppressed by cold negation, any
+more than I hold that one ceases to be hungry if one has nothing to
+do but think about dinner. But there is such a thing as sublimation,
+which may be defined as a transference of libido upon such a broad
+and magnificent scale that we may say not only that one object is
+substituted for another but that one desire is substituted for
+another. Thus lust--and I use the word without implications of the
+unnatural--may be overwhelmed by love, and a lower love by a higher.
+
+Even without going very high we find that the ardently moved members
+of the endocrine system at times cease to trouble in the absence of
+exterior physical stimuli, and a different type of autocoid than
+the burning one makes its appearance in the blood-stream. Those who
+pretend that lack of indulgence perpetually increases the store of
+sexual desire and capacity, conscious or unconscious, run the risk of
+being likened to that boastful bridegroom so inimitably described by
+Montaigne, who, because of the sheer extravagance of his claims, was
+eventually adjudged “unfamiliar with the practice” under consideration.
+
+A particular wish, then, is a wish with a direction--a direction which
+may be changed. The belief that a grown man has an unappeased longing
+to be fed once more at the breast or the bottle--a longing suppressed
+in his primary psychic apparatus--deserves itself to be classed as a
+psycho-neurotic symptom.
+
+And now we may resume our suppositions.
+
+
+4. MORE SUPPOSITIONS
+
+_Fifth Assumption_: That dreams open the road for the discovery of
+festering wish-thoughts in the unconscious.
+
+“The dream is the distorted fulfillment of a suppressed wish.... The
+wish manifested in the dream must be an infantile one.”[70]
+
+The ingenuity which our author has expended in the attempt to prove
+that “dreams are never nonsense” passes belief. To begin, he makes a
+sharp distinction between “manifest” and “latent” content, between the
+dream as it appears and the dream as it secretly is. Then he divides
+the modes of disguise which this latent content or meaning of the
+unconscious mind adopts in sneaking its obscenities past the censor for
+the production of the manifest dream-show into three categories: (a)
+Condensation; (b) Displacement; (c) Regard for Presentability--which
+means presentability in pictures or symbols. The word “distortion”
+sufficiently covers these three processes. Then there is a fourth
+category, (e) called Secondary Elaboration.
+
+“A psychic function which cannot be differentiated from our waking
+thoughts may make contributions to the dream content.... It is an
+expression of the _esprit d’escalier_ on the part of the psychic
+censor.... The result is that the dream loses the appearance of
+absurdity and incoherence [given it by distortion] and approaches
+the pattern of an intelligible experience.”[71] That is, we half
+wake up, and give to the manifest dream a specious logic--which the
+psycho-analyst warns us to ignore.
+
+Now it is clear that the principle of symbolical interpretation, if
+once admitted, will open wide the gates for whatever “meanings” it
+is necessary to find in order to establish the general theory. For
+these are not “arbitrary” symbols, like “those used in stenography.”
+They are such symbols as may be taken from “folk-lore,” or any other
+available source, their meanings loosely worn. All that is required of
+them is that they shall yield a general sexual significance whenever
+sufficiently squeezed.
+
+For example,[72] an “intelligent and refined young lady” related the
+following dream to Freud: “Her husband asks: Should not the piano be
+tuned? She answers: It won’t pay; the hammers would have to be newly
+buffed.”
+
+This, we learn, “repeats an actual event of the previous day,”--for in
+every dream there is a “day-remnant” to furnish stuff for the manifest
+content, as well as a suppressed infantile wish to give it its real
+“meaning,” and some of this remnant at least must relate to the waking
+experiences of the past twenty-four hours. Once we grasp the general
+idea, we shall see meaning after meaning, each one deeper than the
+preceding, revealing itself like so many skins peeled from an onion.
+
+The lady’s husband had actually asked her about the piano; but that,
+being real, amounts to nothing. What is more significant is that the
+lady, lying upon Freud’s couch and relaxing, refers to the piano as “a
+disgusting old box,” and says that it was one of the things which her
+husband had before his marriage.
+
+The outer onion-skin has now come off. But it promises to be so
+unsavory that we would better drop this particular bulb and take up
+another. For dream onions are not only laminated, but there are always
+several onions to every dream. Let us regard the one from which sprang
+the phrase, “It won’t pay.” The outer skin here was a visit the patient
+had made the day before to a lady friend who asked her to take off her
+coat; but as she had to go in a moment she replied that it would not
+pay. And here again I am forced to drop the subject, or at least to
+avoid the line of thought which is immediately suggested by a knowledge
+of the symbolism here involved. Freud himself takes a new lead by
+remarking that during a previous analytical séance this same patient
+_had_ taken off her coat, “a button of which had opened,”--taken it
+off with a gesture which seemed to say, “Please don’t look in this
+direction; it won’t pay.” From which he concludes that among the many
+things which “disgusting old box” refers to is “chest,” or “bust.”
+
+Were this lady but an American we might now conclude (without
+exaggerating the Freudian procedure in the slightest) that this means
+“Pike’s Peak or Bust”; that this in turn recalls a bust which she went
+on when she was younger and in the neighborhood of 142nd street, New
+York, locally known as “Pike’s Peak”; that the peak of her ambition was
+to marry a Jew--with incidentally a hidden desire to be peeked at; and
+that because of her failure to realize these wishes she was piqued, and
+suffered accordingly.
+
+But as she seems to be an Austrian we must be content with the idea
+that “the interpretation of the dream leads directly to a time in her
+bodily development when she was dissatisfied with her shape.” She
+wanted to be fat--an eminently Austrian thought. And from here we
+are led to a yet earlier period. For the words “disgusting” and “bad
+tone,” make it necessary, Freud informs us, to remember “how often in
+allusions and in dreams the two small hemispheres of the ... body take
+the place--as a substitute and as an antithesis--of the larger ones.”
+That is, the piano was a dream disguise for the buttocks.
+
+It now hardly seems necessary to remark that “the dreamer, owing to
+a peculiar set of circumstances, may create for himself the right to
+use anything whatever as a sexual symbol.”[73] Still less to add that,
+generally speaking, “all elongated objects, sticks, tree-trunks and
+umbrellas, all sharp weapons, knives, daggers and pikes,” are masculine
+symbols; while “all little cases, boxes, caskets, closets and stoves”
+have a feminine signification; or that “stairways, stairs, ladders
+... or anything analogous to them” are to be regarded as specifically
+erotic suggestions. And to make the system complete, whenever a symbol
+refuses to fit in with the desired significance, we are at liberty to
+regard it as “misplaced emphasis” due to distortion, and to interpret
+it in an opposite sense. So pain may mean pleasure, and a crowd a
+secret.
+
+Nor is even this enough. He goes on and invents a veritable grammar
+of dreams. Logical connection (in the latent content) is rendered (in
+the manifest content) by simultaneousness; causation is expressed by
+succession; “either--or” by “and--and” (you dream of both alternates as
+being true); similarity or agreement is pictured by the concentration
+of several images into a fantastic unity, etc., etc.
+
+Freud commits the common and fatal error of proving too much. He should
+have been warned by the fate of the late Ignatius Donnelly, once
+Lieutenant-Governor of Minnesota. Donnelly, having shown that Bacon
+wrote Shakespeare’s plays, went on to show that he also wrote Burton’s
+“Anatomy of Melancholy” and Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” And having
+discovered that these works had all a sort of sense when read from left
+to right, proceeded to demonstrate (in “The Great Cryptogram”) that
+they had an even better sense when read more or less from right to left.
+
+Using the Freudian premises, we are forced to conclude that the average
+child’s aversion to the multiplication table is a blind to cover his
+unconscious but shamefaced eagerness for illegitimate parenthood. The
+very name, “Multiplication,” gives us the key. Freud has met this
+objection by saying that he does not permit himself to wander at random
+over the field of conjecture, but is always guided by a principle. What
+principle? That dreams come from suppressed erotic desires--the very
+principle he is trying to prove. No, the court does not admit evidence
+at random, it measures it by the supposition that the defendant is
+guilty.
+
+The Multiplication Table is quite admissible, for dreams are not the
+only things which may be subjected to dream-analysis. Waking thoughts
+are interpreted in the same way. If a patient refuses to dream,
+the analyst pounces upon his inventions, his replies to questions.
+The “Œdipus Tyrannus” of Sophocles and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” fall
+naturally into the dream category.
+
+“We are far too much inclined to over-estimate the conscious character
+of intellectual and artistic productions,” since “from communications
+of some of the most highly productive persons, such as Goethe and
+Helmholtz, we learn that the most essential and original parts in their
+creations came to them in the form of inspirations and reached their
+preceptions almost finished.”[74]
+
+But though a dream can compose a “Hamlet” or an “Œdipus,” it cannot
+compose a speech. “No matter how many speeches and answers may occur
+in dreams, analysis always shows ... that the dream has only taken
+... fragments of speeches which have been delivered or heard.”[75]
+What, then, is this dreaming faculty which is at once so competent and
+incompetent? Is it a gift, or a disease?
+
+“A dream,” says Freud, in the Introductory Remarks to the book we
+have been following, “is the first link in a chain of abnormal
+psychic structures whose other links [are] the hysterical phobia, the
+obsession, and the delusion.” Then on page 482 he declares, “The dream
+is not a pathological phenomenon and does not leave behind [it] an
+enfeeblement of the mental faculties.”
+
+Those whose mental faculties have not been too much enfeebled by the
+attempt to reconcile these two statements, may try their logic’s teeth
+upon page 437, where it is said that “in view of the complete identity
+[to be] found between the peculiarities of the dream-work and the
+psychic activity forming the psycho-neurotic symptoms, we shall feel
+justified in transferring to the dream the conclusions urged upon us by
+hysteria.” Or one may turn to page 471, and read: “It is condensation
+that is mainly responsible for the strange impression of the dream,
+for we know of nothing analogous to it in the normal psychic life
+accessible to consciousness.” Remember, too, that Freud does not think
+that in regard to “falling in love with one member of the parental
+couple and hatred of the other,” psycho-neurotics are “sharply
+distinguished from ordinary human beings.”
+
+Now if you are not very sharply distinguished from ordinary human
+beings you naturally indulge in “typical dreams,”--the dreams that
+everybody has. And among typical dreams is the Œdipus dream of the
+death of parents or other near relatives. But here a difficulty arises.
+
+“These dreams show the very unusual case where the dream-thought,
+which has been created by the repressed wish, completely escapes the
+censor, and is transferred to the dream without alteration.”[76] Is the
+theory then at fault? No; but the censor is. “There is no wish which we
+believe further from us.... The dream censor is therefore not prepared
+for this monstrosity, just as the legislation of Solon was incapable of
+establishing a punishment for parricide.”[77]
+
+Objections to the Freudian theory are vain; the theory bends to
+accommodate whatever it encounters, then straightens out and goes its
+way as if nothing had happened.
+
+If we are consciously anxious about our dear ones, the wily unconscious
+merely takes advantage of that fact to stage a dream about somebody’s
+death, well knowing that the conscious anxiety will blind us to the
+deep-down truth. But there is consolation in the thought that “if
+someone dreams ... that his father or mother, his brother or sister has
+died,” Freud does not “use the dream as a proof that he wishes them
+dead _now_.... The theory of dreams ... is satisfied with concluding
+that the dreamer has wished them dead ... at some one time in
+childhood.”[78] And to console us still further, he adds (p. 214) that
+a child has no idea “of the terror of the Infinite Nothing.”
+
+Pursuing the infinite nothing of this now happily satisfied dream
+theory, we discover that “dreams of the death of parents predominately
+refer to that member of the parental couple which shares the sex of the
+dreamer,” except, of course, in the case of the homo-sexual. Or, “to
+express the matter boldly, it is as though a sexual preference becomes
+active at an early period, as though the boy regards his father as a
+rival in love, and as though the girl takes the same attitude towards
+her mother ... a rival by getting rid of whom he or she cannot but
+profit.”[79] Dr. Watson, though he knew not the reason, was certainly
+right in saying that bringing up children was a perilous business. What
+else would the fate of Laius and Jocasta lead us to expect?
+
+To put the matter beyond doubt, Freud cites the case of an
+eight-year-old girl of his acquaintance, who, if her mother happens to
+be called away from the table, reveals her psychic enormity by saying,
+“Now I shall be Mamma. Charles, do you want some more vegetables?”[80]
+Freud is not a man to be deceived by the seeming innocence of play. And
+he blames “that sanctity which we have ascribed to the injunctions of
+the Decalogue”[81] for the dullness which keeps us from perceiving the
+incestuous and homicidal tendencies of our young.
+
+It may be admitted that “no other impulse has had to undergo so much
+suppression from the time of childhood as the sex impulse”;[82] and,
+the parental instinct of self-preservation being what it is, the fact
+is not surprising. And these suppressive tactics seem to have been in
+vogue from the earliest times. “The obscure and primitive ages of human
+society give us an unpleasant idea of the power of the father” and
+the ruthlessness with which it was used. Kronos devours his children
+as the wild boar devours the brood of the sow; Zeus [in the rôle of
+retributive justice] castrates his father ... and takes his place as
+ruler.”[83]
+
+Now, as I remember this legend, Zeus operated with a sickle--an
+immemorial image of Time. And as Kronos is himself a symbol of Time,
+I long supposed that here was a figurative way of saying that Time
+(Kronos), which devours all things (his children), shall himself
+eventually be devoured, as it were by himself--the sickle. But
+evidently the theory of dreams cannot be satisfied by symbols when they
+are used to interpret mythology.
+
+Evidently, too, the time has now arrived in this, our Freudian era,
+for Kronos to suffer again and as literally as before, notwithstanding
+the “frantic attempts” of modern parents to hold on to “whatever
+remnants of the ... _potestas patris_” remain. The newspapers certainly
+chronicle occasional incidents of this childish rebellion, if not of
+the frantic efforts which are being made to resist it. Freud even knows
+of a little girl--this one not yet three years old--who “tried to
+strangle a suckling in the cradle, because she suspected its continued
+presence boded her no good.”[84] So not the parents alone are in
+danger. In the case of his own children, “who followed one another
+rapidly,” he “missed the opportunity to make such observations,” the
+supplanted baby always being too young to be dangerous at the time when
+its nose was broken--another argument in favor of large families.
+
+He foresees, however, what is to be dreaded later, for he describes the
+predicament of a man of 31 who had a compulsion-neurosis which took
+such a pronounced homicidal form that he (the young man) was forced
+to lock himself in his room and to give the housekeeper the key for
+fear that he should one day commit a murder. The father in this case
+was dead and beyond the reach of reprisals, so “the obsessive reproach
+transferred itself to strangers.”[85]
+
+I do not wish for a moment to suggest that this case was unreal or to
+belittle its horror. I am dealing merely with a peculiarity of the
+diagnosis. You will observe that the blame is laid to a “reproach.” Had
+the patient never reproached himself he would have remained normal.
+Now if he was guilty of nothing but some childish fit of temper, and,
+because of some senseless system of early training, led to magnify it
+beyond all reason, the diagnosis may be sound. The danger comes from
+the attempt to elaborate from these instances of abnormality a general
+system of philosophy applicable to life in general. The implication
+that reproaches should give way and any sort of conduct spared even
+criticism, is inescapable. For example, Freud says[86] that “a
+compulsion-neurosis ... corresponds to a super-morality, imposed upon
+the primary character.” He chooses morality by name as the target of
+_his_ “reproach.”
+
+In the case under consideration, the patient remembered, under
+psycho-analytic treatment, that at the age of seven he had “expressed
+enmity” towards his father, and (still under treatment) at once
+“realized that the hatred lay much deeper still.” Remorse, awakened
+by the father’s painful last illness, had brought about that
+fatal “super-morality,” without which the son might have remained
+unrepentant, normal and happy. “Anyone,” Freud ominously adds, “capable
+of wishing to push his own father from a mountain-top into an abyss is
+certainly not to be trusted to spare the lives of those not so closely
+bound to him. He does well to lock himself into his room.”[87]
+
+Here the psychiatrist distinctly gives to the childish wish that very
+importance which would naturally lead to excessive repressive measures
+and to abnormal interior reproach. Moreover, it follows that all of us
+who are not “sharply distinguished from ordinary human beings” would do
+well to lock ourselves up. For we are not only capable of entertaining
+such a wish, we have--so Freud has been telling us through fifty or
+sixty pages--already entertained it, time and time again. Which brings
+us to our--
+
+_Sixth and Last Assumption_: That the cure for hysterical symptoms (and
+these include most of the ills to which flesh is heir) is the recapture
+by consciousness of the lost knowledge of that circumstance which drove
+the original wish-thought into the limbo of the lower psychic locality.
+
+The procedure is for the patient to dream a dream, or if he cannot do
+this to make up a dream, which the psychiatrist “analyzes.” Then the
+patient lies down on a couch, “relaxes,” and repeats whatever random
+thoughts come into his head as the various parts of the dream are
+brought to his attention. These “associated” thoughts are analyzed
+in their turn. If there is reluctance, the operator knows he has
+encountered modesty (“resistance,” he calls it) and has got the range.
+He can now tell where to train his guns. For all these neuroses,
+psychoses and psycho-neuroses (mental troubles in general and their
+physical results) are, according to the hypothesis, the children of
+shame. Kill shame, and the brats perish. That is what it amounts to.
+
+It may have seemed unaccountable that it should have been thought
+necessary to invent an elaborate system of dream interpretation when
+the psychiatrist is convinced from the moment his office door-bell
+rings that he is about to be confronted with a case of suppressed
+incest. But the hocus-pocus serves its turn. Never has the ingenuity
+of man devised a more effective excuse for the discussion of the
+abominations of the human heart.
+
+“But,” cries Freud, “my analyses bring about cures!”
+
+Granted. But that only proves that Freud the man is better than Freud
+the scientist and philosopher.
+
+The world is full of miserable wretches whose early education was of
+the most atrocious kind; who were first permitted improper contacts,
+and then taught that their infantile imaginings were unpardonable
+sins. The doctor poo-poos the whole matter, and they are relieved. In
+other words, if he is a wise doctor, he tries to remedy the defects
+of education by re-education. So long as he has to deal with those
+suffering from abuse, or from starvation of natural desires--desires
+which have failed of their ordinary satisfaction without having been
+sublimated by devotion to higher aims--so long as he deals with these
+unwilling anchorites and pitiable social victims, he does well.
+
+But what if he writes books, circulating in huge editions among the
+normal and spreading the doctrine that mental disease comes from
+restraint, and not from the rank growth of passions, undisciplined or
+merely balked?
+
+As to this, I will quote the opinion of Judge William McAdoo, Chief
+Magistrate of the City of New York. The Judge sees some half-million
+criminal cases pass through the courts every year, so can hardly be
+accused of speaking without opportunities for gathering information.
+And he says in a recent article[88] that psycho-analysis is one of the
+most “active” evils “effecting modern youth.” Parents, he tells us,
+have been led to believe that any attempt to “suppress” the desires of
+their children is likely to lead to dangerous “complexes.” Hence “the
+complete collapse of parental authority,” of what Freud himself has
+called “the antiquated _potestas patris_.”
+
+But Freud is but one of the figures in a movement, and by following
+his dreaming for a few more pages we shall be able to learn yet other
+strange things which are not so, and some--yet stranger--which are.
+
+
+5. FREUD THE METAPHYSICIAN
+
+Superficially considered, Freud is the very antithesis of Dr. Watson.
+The behaviorist, indeed, will have none of him. In his “Myth of the
+Unconscious” he accuses him of having “resorted to voodooism instead of
+falling back upon his early scientific training.”[89] He even suggests
+that the psychiatrist was “much influenced in his youth by the fable
+of the devils who took flight into the Gadarene swine.” Nevertheless,
+Watsonianism and Freudianism are parts of the same gigantic piece of
+mystification.
+
+Freud may speak of the “unconscious” and Dr. Watson of the
+“unverbalized”; the one of “unconditioned reflexes,” the other of “a
+primary psychic apparatus”; but both agree in effect that the will is
+a mere phenomenon resulting from the preponderance of forces, that the
+self is a collection of movements after the things which move have been
+taken away. In other words, both are mechanists. Their difference is in
+temperament.
+
+Nor is even this difference very profound. The two philosophies
+have but one effect--to sanction _laissez-faire_ in matters of sex.
+A verbalized but otherwise unconditioned “gut-reaction” is but a
+conscious “libido” freed from the suppression which might create
+a “complex.” Dr. Watson’s superiority lies in his insistence upon
+education where sex is not involved. Freud’s superiority is literary.
+
+But there are two Freuds, the literary and the metaphysical. In
+telling dreams no mortal ever dared to tell before, he uses language
+that he who runs may read. In his book on “Wit in its Relation to the
+Unconscious”--one of the most complete compendiums of smutty stories in
+the world--he proves himself a lively raconteur. But when he seeks to
+plunge deep down to the roots of things, his style suddenly becomes a
+Chinese puzzle. Take, for instance, the following paragraph from pages
+478 and 479 of “The Interpretation of Dreams”: “When I termed one of
+the psychic processes in the psychic apparatus the primary process,
+I did so not only in consideration of the order of precedence and
+capability, but also as admitting the temporal relations to a share
+in the nomenclature. As far as our knowledge goes there is no psychic
+apparatus possessing only the primary process, and in so far it is a
+theoretic fiction; but so much is based on fact, that the primary
+processes are present in the apparatus from the beginning, while the
+secondary processes develop gradually in the course of life.”
+
+In the original German this seems, to me at least, even less like
+language than it does in the Brill translation. So much less that one
+evening as I was puzzling over it, trying in vain to make it fit into
+any conceivable sense, I fell asleep. And as I slept I dreamed; and as
+I dreamed Freud appeared to me, and, after considerable persuasion,
+proceeded to re-translate:
+
+“When I said that one of the psychic processes was the primary process,
+I meant that it was not only first in capacity but first in the time of
+its appearance.”
+
+“Very good,” said I. “Kindly go on.”
+
+“As far as we know,” he did go on, “there is no psychic apparatus in
+existence, and there never was one, which possesses only the primary
+process. Therefore it is a theoretic fiction to suppose that there can
+be a primary process standing alone.”
+
+“Why then,” I interrupted, “do you complicate matters with a theoretic
+fiction when they are complicated enough, in all conscience, if we
+bother only with facts?”
+
+“Because,”--and his tone showed some asperity, as if he were addressing
+a stupid pupil, “because the primary processes are present in the
+apparatus from the beginning, while the secondary processes develop
+gradually in the course of life.”
+
+I gasped. “According to that there _is_ a time when the primary
+apparatus _does_ stand alone, viz, the time before the secondary
+process develops. I thought you just said there was no such time?”
+
+“You needn’t be rude,” said the great man. “Nobody is supposed to read
+these obscure passages. But I have to write them, just as a doctor
+has to talk a little Latin when you go to him for a prescription. You
+wouldn’t respect him if he didn’t. Besides, what difference does it
+make whether the primary apparatus ever stands alone or not?”
+
+In my dream I pondered this for a long time before replying:
+
+“Perhaps it doesn’t make any difference, in a theoretic fiction. But if
+you mean that the primary apparatus is real, the idea that it can come
+first and stand alone seems to imply that it really comes first and
+really stands alone, not only in the individual but in the universe.
+That would mean that the universe was built from the bottom upwards.”
+
+The Freudian dream-image nodded. “Of course--just the way we build a
+house.”
+
+“But,” I objected, “if we build a house _we_ build it--the house does
+not build itself. Therefore the house begins with something even higher
+than its roof. So it is really built from the top down. So is the
+cosmos, if you will admit that its builder and maker was God. But if I
+let you build a man from his primary psychic apparatus up, you will be
+saying next that the universe was built from _its_ primary apparatus
+up--that is, from a theoretic fiction.”
+
+Freud lighted a dream-cigar and sat down. “I’m no worse than the
+theologians,” he smiled. “They say the universe was created out of
+nothing.”
+
+“What theologian,” I retorted, “ever said that the universe created
+itself out of nothing? Your own Old Testament suggests that God created
+the universe out of nothing but Himself.”
+
+“And you profess to understand that?”
+
+“Certainly not. The beginning and the end are postulated together in
+one great mystery. But it isn’t a mystery which we invented. We found
+it here. It is a mystery with force in it--something which goes.”
+
+“We are such stuff as dreams are made of,” said Freud. “And dreams come
+from a suppressed libido.”
+
+“So? How about a dog’s dream?” I suddenly asked. “Does that, too, come
+from a suppressed libido--a suppressed puppy libido? Or is it due to a
+super-morality restraining a mother-fixation?”
+
+“How do you know that dogs dream?”
+
+“In the same way I know that you dream. I infer it from the way you
+act.”
+
+“To dream of a dog,” he responded heavily, paraphrasing one of his own
+pages, “is to dream of the major function--French, _chien_; German,
+_Chier_.” He had willfully missed the point.
+
+And so the dream went on and on, until I finally woke up and began idly
+to turn the pages of the great Dream Book itself. It was difficult
+to believe that I was not still asleep, for I kept coming upon such
+passages as the following, from page 442: “To speak figuratively,
+it is quite possible that a day-thought plays the part of the
+contractor (_entrepreneur_) in the dream. But ... no matter what idea
+the contractor may have in his mind, and how desirous he may be of
+putting it into operation, he must depend upon a capitalist to defray
+the necessary expenses; and this capitalist ... is invariably and
+indisputably a wish from the unconscious. In other cases the capitalist
+himself is the contractor for the dream; this, indeed, seems to be the
+more usual case. An unconscious wish is produced by the day’s work,
+which in turn creates the dream. The dream processes, moreover, run
+parallel with all the other possibilities of the economic relationship
+used here as an illustration. Thus the _entrepreneur_ may contribute
+some capital himself, or several _entrepreneurs_ may jointly supply the
+capital required by the _entrepreneur_.”
+
+This is certainly a moving picture. We seem to be looking upon
+a lively scene in the financial district, with contractors and
+capitalists running hither and thither, forming combinations for the
+prosecution of great works. Yet it is a scene which belongs properly
+to “Alice in Wonderland,” not in a book purporting to be scientific.
+It is a conjurer’s trick, worked by that initial phrase, “To speak
+figuratively.”
+
+Now anybody who admits the existence of God, of a life which is vital
+rather than mechanical, has the right to speak figuratively. With him
+figures are the signs and symbols of real things. They have force
+because they are the personifications of real forces whose existence he
+is prepared to admit outside of metaphor.
+
+But with the materialist, figures of speech are dishonest subterfuges.
+They make the impossible seem possible and reasonable. By being
+admittedly figures of speech, they escape criticism when they come upon
+the stage. And once there, they act parts possible only to entities
+possessing energy and will--the very things which the mechanistic
+hypothesis professes to exclude from the picture. And in the end it
+is claimed that all things which may be done by these flesh and blood
+actors may be done by the nothings which they stand for.
+
+This psychic contractor of Freud’s has something “in his mind” which
+he is “desirous” of putting into operation! On the stage he is as full
+of reason, consciousness and vim as is Mr. Douglas Fairbanks. But in
+the Freudian philosophical system, literally considered, he is one of
+the processes of a primary psychic system standing alone--that is, a
+process in a state of things admittedly fictitious.
+
+But the Great Man goes on:
+
+“The story of Œdipus is the reaction of the imagination to these two
+typical dreams [of murdering one’s father and marrying one’s mother].
+And just as the dream when occurring to an adult is experienced
+with feelings of resistance, so the legend must contain terror and
+self-chastisement. The appearance which it further assumes is the
+result of an uncomprehending secondary elaboration which tries to
+make it serve a theological purpose. The attempt to reconcile divine
+omnipotence with human responsibility must, of course, fail with this
+material as with every other.”[90]
+
+So it is an “uncomprehending” elaboration which busies itself with
+trying to reconcile divine omnipotence with human responsibility. One
+would hardly expect an uncomprehending elaboration to succeed in such a
+task. As to actual incompatibility of the two ideas, it is such a large
+question that I prefer to consider it later under another head. Freud
+goes on:[91]
+
+“The unconscious idea, as such, is altogether incapable of entering
+into the foreconscious, and ... it can exert an influence there only by
+uniting with a harmless idea already belonging to the foreconscious, to
+which it transfers its intensity and under which it allows itself to be
+concealed.”
+
+“Allows itself to be concealed!” It has intelligence and purpose, this
+unconscious thought. A cunning fellow for a mere reflex in a process
+antedating memory and reason. But the theatre has suddenly become dark
+with purple shadows through which absurdity stalks, obscure but naked
+and unashamed. The unconscious wish is incapable of entering into the
+foreconscious, but, without entering it, nevertheless manages to exert
+an influence there, by means of what go-between Freud only knows; for
+the “harmless idea” with which union is to be made is already beyond
+reach in the foreconscious. Nor is this all.
+
+“The relations existing for the repressed idea are similar to the
+situation existing in Austria for the American dentist, who is
+forbidden to practice unless he gets permission from a regular
+physician to use his name on the public signboard and thus cover the
+legal requirements. Moreover, just as it is naturally not the busiest
+physicians who form such alliances with dental practitioners, so in
+the psychic life only such foreconscious or conscious ideas are chosen
+to cover a repressed idea as have not themselves attracted much ...
+attention.”[92]
+
+The _entrepreneur_ (French for “undertaker”) has now become a dentist,
+and the entire Austrian code of civil procedure has been introduced
+into the psychic apparatus. Yet, such is the lure of figurative speech,
+so easy is it to fancy that whatever can be true of the figure is
+necessarily true of the abstraction for which it “doubles,” that even
+Freud obviously thinks he is saying something.
+
+He proceeds to speak of “occupation,” meaning not occupation but the
+possession of energy. And in this way we come to the problem of Will,
+in these words:[93] “It is probable that the principle of pain first
+regulates the displacements of occupation automatically, but it is
+quite possible that the consciousness of these qualities adds a second
+and more subtile regulation which may even oppose the first.... The
+automatic control of the primary principle of pain and the restriction
+of mental capacity connected with it are broken by the sensible
+regulations which in their turn are again automatisms.” And again: “The
+mental processes are in themselves devoid of quality except for the
+excitement of pleasure and pain accompanying them,” which, as we know,
+are to be held in check as possible “disturbers of thought.”[94]
+
+This, if it means anything, means that energy in the primary psychic
+system is automatically regulated by pleasure and pain. But the primary
+processes are not only unconscious, they are incapable of becoming
+conscious. “There are,” we are told,[95] “two kinds of unconscious
+... both are unconscious in the psychological sense; but in our sense
+the first, which we call the unconscious, is likewise incapable of
+consciousness.” Freud, like Dr. Watson, attempts to conceive of
+pleasure, pain and unconsciousness altogether. He, like the great
+behaviorist, subtracts the quality of painfulness from pain and the
+quality of pleasurableness from pleasure, and fancies that he has
+something left--something capable of regulating our unconscious conduct
+automatically.
+
+Even when we come to the secondary process, with its “sensible
+regulation,” these “in their turn are again automatisms.” And though
+they have no quality except as exciters of pleasure and pain, this
+excitement must be held in check as a possible disturber of thought--of
+the sensible regulations. So these higher mental processes, which
+have no quality save the one of which they are deprived, yet
+exercise a control at once “sensible” and “automatic” over their more
+humble neighbors in the psychic basement. And somewhere there is “a
+restriction of mental capacity.” With this last statement I have no
+quarrel.
+
+“What part,” Freud wants to know,[96] “now remains in our description
+of the once all-powerful and all overshadowing consciousness?” Very
+little, one would think. “None,” he says, “other than that of a sensory
+organ for the perception of psychic qualities.... The psychic process
+which is turned to the outer world is itself the outer world for the
+sensory organ of consciousness.”
+
+So the lower sensory organ, turned towards the world, is unconscious.
+And the higher sensory organ, turned towards the lower, is an
+automatism. No doubt it is true that “the most complex mental
+operations are possible without the cooperation of consciousness,” and
+that “the state of becoming conscious depends upon the exercise of a
+certain psychic function, viz, attention.”[97] But not even attention
+can be moved about by nothing. And one complex mental operation which
+cannot operate without consciousness is rational control. To suppose
+that the boss of a job does not know what he is doing is to suppose
+that the job is without a rational boss.
+
+For yet another time the attempt to create a psychology without a
+veritable Psyche falls to the ground. Freud’s fictional apparatus lands
+him squarely upon the spot marked by Dr. McDougall’s X. Once more
+his verbalization has brought him into complete agreement with the
+unappreciative Dr. Watson. But what has all this to do with science?
+Let us find out.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[47] “Psycho-Analysis,” by R. B. Hingley, B.A., Edinburgh, second
+edition, 1922, p. 17.
+
+[48] “The Interpretation of Dreams,” p. 172.
+
+[49] _Ibid._, p. 244, note.
+
+[50] _Op. cit._, p. 241.
+
+[51] _Ibid._, p. 388.
+
+[52] _Op. cit._, p. 195.
+
+[53] _Op. cit._, p. 106.
+
+[54] At the bottom of p. 171.
+
+[55] “What is the price of Graz?” An expression used by the Viennese
+when they wish to boast of wealth.
+
+[56] _Op. cit._, p. 179.
+
+[57] _Op. cit._, p. 325.
+
+[58] _Ibid._, p. 474.
+
+[59] _Op. cit._, p. 405.
+
+[60] _Loc. cit._
+
+[61] _Op. cit._, p. 120.
+
+[62] _Op. cit._, p. 439, note.
+
+[63] _Ibid._, p. 456.
+
+[64] _Ibid._, p. 439.
+
+[65] “The Interpretation of Dreams,” p. 240.
+
+[66] _Op. cit._, p. 224.
+
+[67] _Op. cit._, p. 221.
+
+[68] _Ibid._, p. 439.
+
+[69] _The Century Magazine_, September, 1927.
+
+[70] “The Interpretation of Dreams,” p. 136.
+
+[71] _Op. cit._, p. 390.
+
+[72] _Vide_ p. 155.
+
+[73] _Op. cit._, p. 246.
+
+[74] _Op. cit._, p. 486.
+
+[75] _Ibid._, p. 329.
+
+[76] _Ibid._, p. 226.
+
+[77] _Ibid._, p. 226.
+
+[78] _Op. cit._, p. 211.
+
+[79] _Ibid._, pp. 216-217.
+
+[80] _Ibid._, p. 218.
+
+[81] _Vide_ _op. cit._, p. 217.
+
+[82] _Ibid._, p. 240.
+
+[83] _Ibid._, p. 217.
+
+[84] _Ibid._, p. 213.
+
+[85] _Op. cit._, p. 221.
+
+[86] _Ibid._, p. 212.
+
+[87] _Ibid._, p. 221.
+
+[88] _The Ladies’ Home Journal_, October, 1927.
+
+[89] _Harper’s Magazine_, September, 1927
+
+[90] _Op. cit._, p. 224.
+
+[91] _Ibid._, p. 443.
+
+[92] _Op. cit._, p. 444.
+
+[93] _Ibid._, p. 388-489.
+
+[94] _Ibid._, p. 490.
+
+[95] _Ibid._, p. 488.
+
+[96] _Op. cit._, p. 489.
+
+[97] _Ibid._, pp. 469-470.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE FAIRY HALLS OF SCIENCE
+
+
+1. THE IDOLS OF THE TRIBE
+
+Whenever I stand beside one of those wonders of modern achievement, a
+great turbine engine, for example, smoothly and silently performing
+the work of a myriad men, I feel like taking off my hat to the
+geniuses (for the most part unnamed and unknown) who have made such
+a thing possible. There may be two opinions about the social effect
+of machinery, but there can be no two opinions about the prodigies of
+intelligence which have gone into its making.
+
+Everybody knows that machinery is scientific. And because of the vast
+esteem which our master mechanics rightly enjoy, the word Science has
+come to command a reverence once accorded only to the name of God.
+It is no longer possible to advertise a toy or a tooth-brush without
+calling it “scientific.”
+
+But what is Science? Is it a synonym for Truth? By no means. It is not
+even a search for truth. Truth is something general; the highest truth
+is universal. The search for it is called Philosophy. Science, as we
+now understand it, did not begin to have an independent existence until
+it definitely abandoned Truth as its province and devoted itself to the
+study of those--not general but particular phenomena known as facts.
+When we say that Science is classified knowledge we mean that it is
+our classified knowledge of facts. And in that word “classified” lies
+the root of its only difference from common sense.
+
+Science is also a method for ascertaining new facts as well as the
+classification of those we already know. What do we mean when we say
+that science is a method? What is its method? Every schoolboy can
+answer, “The method of science is the experimental method.”
+
+The experimental method itself is less generally understood. To
+experiment without an object in view is like starting on a journey
+with no destination in mind. In the vernacular phrase, it does not
+get you anywhere. The object of an experimenter is always to prove or
+to disprove something. And what is there for him to prove? A fact,
+once established, is already proven. But behind one fact there always
+lies another, and behind that yet others. We soon leave the world of
+certainty and find ourselves in the world of theories. It is a theory,
+then, which the experimentalist seeks to prove--his own theory, while
+disproving that of somebody else. Theories, dignified by the name
+hypotheses, are as necessary to science as are microscopes and scales.
+They are invented generalities used as conveniences in a region where
+Truths are too much to expect. A hypothesis does not even pretend to
+be true. It is merely the best approximation, the best guess, possible
+under the circumstances.
+
+Every scientist worthy of the name has at one time or another said
+something like the following: “The only thing we positively know about
+a hypothesis is that it is to a certain extent wrong. Progress is made
+by gradually substituting the less erroneous for the more erroneous,
+until the hypothesis is finally established in a modified form as a
+fact, or becomes so untenable that it must be abandoned altogether. In
+either case, it has served its turn.” Thus Darwin, true scientist that
+he was, characterized his theories as to the descent of man as “highly
+speculative,” adding, “Some will no doubt prove erroneous.”[98]
+
+The ideal scientist, therefore, never becomes dogmatic, never cocksure.
+He knows that though Truth be not relative, Knowledge is. He forever
+deals with conclusions which are highly tentative, and constantly
+waits for that appeal to experience which will reveal his mistakes.
+Unfortunately, scientists are but men, and the ideal scientist no more
+exists than does the ideal Christian. Only those whose specialties keep
+them constantly close to experience remain truly scientific for any
+length of time--which is one of the reasons why most of our progress
+has been made in physics and chemistry.
+
+Francis Bacon, who is generally credited with having first put science
+upon the firm ground of inductive reasoning, or generalizing from
+observed particulars, says in his _Novum Organum_:[99] “Having first
+determined the question according to his will, man then resorts to
+experience; and bending her into conformity ... leads her about like a
+captive in a procession.”
+
+How well Bacon understood our human nature’s proneness to determine
+questions according to its will, and then to bend experience to fit
+the occasion! But he did not call this method the scientific method.
+On the contrary, he described it as one of those “Idols of the Tribe,”
+or habits leading to error, to which everybody is subject. And he only
+_hoped_ that science would avoid it as much as possible.
+
+True science has avoided it--as much as possible. But how little
+true science we have! The experimental method is so limited in its
+application that there are few matters important to human life which
+can be put to the test of immediate experience. We must wait long
+years for experience in general to tell its tale, and even then its
+conclusions are not always convincing. To be convincing, experience
+must take place under conditions of our own contriving, every unknown
+influence eliminated. And the experience must be repeated time and
+again. The field of true science is, therefore, one of the narrowest in
+the world. Much that goes by the name of science is but semi-science,
+pseudo-science, false science, or no science at all.
+
+The ideal scientist, having suffered an initial experience, then forms
+a tentative hypothesis merely to direct his subsequent experiments,
+and never for an instant permits his enthusiasm for theory to warp his
+judgment regarding fact. But as there are no ideal scientists, what is
+to be done? Bacon thus notes what is to be expected:
+
+“The human understanding, when any proposition has been once laid down
+... forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation: and
+although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary,
+yet [the understanding] either does not observe, or despises them, or
+it gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and
+injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first
+conclusions.”[100]
+
+How highly fateful, then, must have been those first propositions
+which modern science laid down in its infancy. But man is not to be
+balked by his own infirmities. Since he cannot hope to abolish the
+worship of this particular Idol of the Tribe, cannot hope to be led by
+non-existent ideal scientists, he will make a virtue of his necessity
+and reap what good he may from his very shortcomings. Men will not
+abandon their fetishes and become reasonable. Very well, then, we
+will incorporate the Idol of the Tribe in our general method, and let
+abuses correct themselves. We will give them rope until they are hanged
+thereby.
+
+This is precisely what has been done. Bacon’s Idol of the Tribe, the
+human tendency to bend experience to suit theory, has been put upon a
+pedestal and crowned with the high-sounding name of a principle called
+“The Economy of Hypotheses.”
+
+Of two possible explanations of a phenomenon, that one is chosen which
+requires the fewer suppositions, the least departure from hypotheses
+already existing.
+
+This is nothing more nor less than the principle of conservatism,
+and probably, in the long run, it does more good than harm. It is a
+protection against wild and radical theories. It gives men a chance
+for that long and intense application which they will give to nothing
+but to the defense of old and cherished beliefs. But it makes the
+correction of a fundamental error a very slow business, and though a
+part of the now recognized methods of science, it is not scientific.
+
+It is, however, immensely popular, this principle of the economy of
+hypotheses. The other ideal--that of submitting continually to the
+stern discipline of trial--never appealed to the man in the street.
+For ages he was prejudiced against science altogether. He left it to
+monks and such people. Then, finally--and not so very long ago--the
+idea, having proved a money-maker, was “sold” to him. He swallowed it
+hook, line and sinker, until today he will not admit that he has a
+pain in the stomach unless he finds in his basic theories something
+which will let him account for it. What we need now is to be reminded
+to be economical not with our hypotheses but with our credulity, our
+acceptance of hypotheses as final. For there are still many things in
+heaven and earth not dreamed of in our major syntheses.
+
+A major synthesis, of course, is that broadest, most shadowy, least
+dependable, but widely inclusive hypothesis by which it is sought to
+bind all minor theories into one more or less coherent system. It is
+the point where science most nearly approaches to philosophy, the
+point where, according to its own premises regarding the authority of
+experience, it should be most cautious and humble. The making of a
+major synthesis is an awesome business. The fall of a major synthesis
+marks the end of an epoch. We are now living at the end of such an
+epoch, though the pseudo-scientists do not appear to be yet aware
+of the fact. And the major synthesis which has fallen is that which
+sought to bind all phenomena together as manifestations of matter--the
+Mechanist Hypothesis.
+
+That the Mechanist Hypothesis should be the first generalization of
+modern science was inevitable. It began with astronomy, the first
+science to dare to call itself “exact.” In astronomy we cannot
+experiment. We cannot take planets and comets and suns, and subject
+them to laboratory conditions. But we can at least make observations;
+and what we observe appears to be matter, pure and simple.
+
+Then came physics and chemistry, throwing off the attempt to be magic
+and buckling down to practical jobs. Both experiment and observation
+were possible here--and still matter held the field. Matter, it was
+soon noted, had exceedingly regular habits. And when it failed to
+follow one habit, continued observation would discover that it was only
+following some other. These habits came to be called laws, and it was
+practically impossible not to confound laws with force.
+
+In the back of the scientific mind were those human laws--customs,
+behind which was Government, always ready to manifest itself as the
+force in a policeman’s club. And back of that was the idea of the laws
+of God--of a real God with all the force of the universe in His hand.
+
+“Our laws are the laws of God,” said the early scientist, quite
+rightly. And then, after he had abandoned that ancient idea, the
+“hypothesis of a God,” he continued to say it, not realizing how
+ridiculous and empty his notion of “law” had become. Eventually he
+did begin to see this, and was minded to drop force altogether. A law
+became merely the way things acted under given circumstances, and force
+merely a persistence in such action--in other words, the way in which
+other things would act which stood in the way.
+
+A given amount of some substance put into a scale pan will lift the
+same amount of the same substance to a level with it, and this behavior
+of the substance in the second pan is the measure of the “force” of
+gravity moving the substance in the first pan. As to the nature of
+force itself, the scientist came to say that it lay outside of his
+province--which was well and good. Pseudo-sciences went further, and
+said that there was no such thing as force--quite another pair of
+shoes. But long before this, which marks the end and not the beginning
+of the last scientific epoch, the Mechanist Hypothesis had been
+formulated in terms recognizing both force and matter, and brought to
+the attention of the average man through the writings of Newton.
+
+Sir Isaac Newton had one of the greatest minds granted to a human being
+since the Reformation; yet inadvertently he did his fellows about the
+most evil turn which modern history records. He robbed them of their
+belief in free will--or if not quite that, he at least induced them to
+abandon those fundamental propositions upon which alone the belief in
+free will can reasonably be based.
+
+Free will presupposes force--real force--at the disposition of the
+will. A will without force is a powerless will--no will at all. And
+a man without will is not a man; he is not even an animal. He is on
+a level with his own lawn-mower. Upon free will depends not only all
+religion, all ethics, all sense of human responsibility, but our
+physical and mental well-being, our happiness, our very self-respect.
+If we are but weathercocks, blown this way and that by every breeze,
+it is folly to talk of striving; of reasoning; of good or of evil; of
+loyalty or of treason; of anything which makes us act indeed like human
+beings. It is folly to speak even of consciousness. What good could
+it do us? We might as well surrender to Dr. Watson at once--and it is
+folly for him to write books to tell us so, though a folly which he
+cannot help. To rob man of his will would be to rob him of his life,
+and to rob him of his belief in the freedom of his will is to rob
+him of all faith in any means proposed to make life better. Yet our
+mechanists one and all pretend to be philanthropists, and nearly all
+are reformers. Every day of their lives is a self-contradiction.
+
+Sir Isaac Newton, when he saw the apple fall and deduced the law of
+gravitation, did not intend to precipitate another Fall of Man. He
+seems to have been quite unmindful of the evil reputation of the fruit
+in question. Nor would much harm have been done had not his discovery
+been one of those rare scientific ventures which are “good theatre.”
+Everybody has seen apples fall. Nobody can ignore gravity. The law
+was the best newspaper story of a scientific sort since Copernicus and
+Galileo dislodged the earth from the center of the universal stage. It
+gave Newton such prestige that his slightest word became Gospel.
+
+Much of this prestige was deserved. His laws were, and still
+are, mighty monuments of human genius. The trouble came from the
+implications that were drawn from them. The mechanistic hypothesis
+had long been in existence--no fruit of science, but both root and
+branch of an old mechanistic philosophy. Descartes had brought it up
+to date. So Newton adopted it in preference to any other philosophy.
+And his worship of that Idol of the Tribe, the economy of hypotheses,
+led him to arrange his laws so as to cause as little disturbance to
+Cartesianism as possible.
+
+The result was a world in which the Conservation of Energy was the only
+real God. Neither energy nor matter could be created or destroyed.
+Whatever went into anything, that or its equivalent came out. A “free”
+creature gives out more energy than it receives. Therefore to believe
+in freedom was to be crazy.
+
+Moreover, the “laws” did account very well for most of the known
+physical phenomena of the day. There were then no Becquerel rays,
+X-rays, actinium, radium, protons, electrons, quanta or ultramicroscopy
+to be dealt with. Accurate observation was in its infancy. Materialism
+was in the very air. Had not science won its first triumphs by looking
+at matter and ignoring everything else? Newton lived some two hundred
+years ago. His “closed system” of a universe in which all creative
+activity had ceased, though it gave us a life without a future, a
+life wherein everything had already as good as happened, a life that
+was really a moving death with its future behind it--this all fitted
+amazingly well with the static ideas of the age. It was a Calvin’s
+universe, unlit by the fires even of fanaticism. Prayer was futile.
+Initiative an illusion. Heaven and hell either non-existent or
+foredoomed. We were here but to turn the pages of a book printed long
+before we were born.
+
+Actual mechanics, busy at their work-benches, satisfied with a
+hypothesis which was accurate enough for their immediate needs, thought
+very little of these far-reaching implications. But here were weapons
+forged to a nicety for the hands of the leaders of that vast movement
+which today we loosely and inaccurately call modern paganism--it
+being neither pagan nor modern, but an old, old disease marked by
+the hardening of the arteries of the soul self-deprived of conscious
+communion with God. Pains were taken to bring Newton’s findings home
+to every intellect. Popular science became intensely interesting,
+and hot with fervor; for in reality it was not science at all but
+anti-religious propaganda--and this even when it sugar-coated itself,
+as it sometimes did, with phrases having what might pass for a pious
+taste.
+
+But it was more than even the “tough-minded”--that is to say,
+sclerotic-brained--long could endure. Oliver L. Reiser, of the
+University of Pittsburg (a writer for _The Monist_) goes so far as
+to say that “had Newton been able to foresee the inevitable logical
+consequences of his doctrine in the godless universe of Laplace, he
+might have been constrained towards a more hospitable regard for the
+views of Leibniz”--the reference, of course, being to the attempt of
+Leibniz to reconcile the mechanical Cartesian universe with the idea
+that creation, after all, has a meaning and a purpose. Newton, indeed,
+might have done even more than this.
+
+But he died leaving us nothing but a big machine which continued
+to dominate men’s minds until about the year 1890, when the whole
+thing suddenly broke down. Says R. A. Millikan, of the Norman Bridge
+Laboratory of Physics, writing recently for _Scribner’s_: “In [the
+discovery of radio-activity and the electrical constitution of
+matter] the physical world changed in our thinking over night in its
+fundamental elements from a fixed, changeless, static, dead thing,
+to a changing, evolving, dynamic, living organism. Two principles,
+conservation of mass and conservation of energy, are now gone, clean
+gone, as distinct and separate verities.” In other words, matter and
+energy are now thought to be capable of changing, the one into the
+other. In the opinion of G. Urbain,[101] the experiments of Rutherford
+entitle us to say that there are “two chemical elements, the electron
+and proton, out of which the universe is made.” But--“we physical
+chemists of today do not tell what matter is.... The least metaphysical
+among us all see in electrons and protons merely centers of convergence
+of lines of force. That evidently explains nothing fundamental....
+It makes for us a world formed of minute hairy points, the hairs
+strikingly abstract.”
+
+So matter itself is force and nothing else--or rather it is two forces,
+electrons (negative electricity) and protons (positive electricity)
+locked together in a strange conflict whose resistance to interference
+gives tangibility and “hardness” to the things of the world--all of
+which sounds rather as if it had been translated from the Rig-Veda.
+Gone by the board is the idea that matter is the fundamental reality,
+that nothing can happen in the mind but what has first happened in the
+brain.
+
+But has mind itself to obey the old law? Is it but a more subtile
+manifestation of the preponderance of exterior forces? We shall have to
+penetrate yet farther into these fairy halls of science before finding
+an answer to that question.
+
+
+2. SOME NEBULOUS MATTERS
+
+Of all the facts of the old science, none was more firmly established
+than what was known as the “Nebular Hypothesis.” The name “hypothesis”
+clung to it always, because “nebular hypothesis” makes an imposing
+mouthful of syllables. Yet it was everywhere treated as a fact. Indeed,
+after the “fact” of the conservation of energy, it was just about the
+fact of facts. What has become of it now?
+
+A. Vibert Douglas, M.B.E., M.Sc., writing in _Discovery_ for August,
+1925, says, “The nebular hypothesis of Laplace and the planetesimal
+hypothesis of Chamberlain have gone into the history of science as
+great and lasting _monuments_ to their originators.”
+
+Monuments! Memorials marking the last resting place of things now dead.
+
+How carefully Herbert Spencer used to explain the manner in which a lot
+of star-dust, scattered somehow through the space marked roughly by the
+orbit of the planet Neptune, started to contract, revolve, grow warm,
+and to throw off rings (since known as Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Earth,
+Mars, _et cetera_) and ended by central concentration in our glowing
+sun. There was nothing difficult to understand about the theory except
+the language in which Spencer couched it--that is, unless one tried to
+look beyond and into some of the things which it took for granted. In
+that case certain questions arose. What scattered the dust in the first
+place? Would it scatter it again, again, and yet again, thus creating
+the universe of recurrent phenomena imagined by the horror-loving
+Nietzsche? What force separated the rings from the mass and rolled them
+neatly up into planets? Why haven’t Saturn’s rings rolled up? Will
+they, in time? What is keeping them back? These matters, and various
+details which had been observed but by few, troubled the mathematicians.
+
+They hardly caused the average citizen to lose a wink of sleep. Saturn
+looked like a working model preserved for school-room purposes. And
+the nebular hypothesis was a pleasant story to tell to children. But
+the contrary observations increased and multiplied--for the most part
+without getting into the newspapers--until now we have Vibert, with
+a host of competent astronomers ready to echo his words, saying, “A
+nebula giving rise to a solar system [is] an impossible hypothesis in
+the light of modern knowledge.”
+
+The hypothesis itself has not been altogether carried away to the
+bone-yard. Like an old and faithful horse, it has been taken from the
+shafts and turned out to grass so that it may enjoy its declining years
+in comparative peace. The latter pastures of the nebular hypothesis
+are sufficiently large, for it is being used now to help make stellar
+systems. As there is little in this far region save assumptions to
+drag around, the work is light. Fit ending for an honorable career.
+But astronomers have grown cautious. It is not likely that any of them
+will be rash enough ever again to impose the weight of a real star,
+let alone a system, upon the already broken back. They at least know
+the hypothesis for what it is--a hypothesis, and a dying one. Only
+laymen, half asleep over their Sunday supplements, now think it was
+ever anything else.
+
+And what has come to take its place? The “Big Star Theory.” An
+astronomer named Jeans brought forward this entry in 1919. He said
+that if a big star had ever come near enough to the sun, it might have
+caused a fearful tide of solar substance--a long arm of stuff more or
+less gaseous and very hot--to reach out millions of miles into space.
+And from this hypothetical arm (there were really two, but let us not
+complicate matters with details), broken into several pieces, the
+planets might have originated.
+
+This time there was plenty of force at hand, enough to satisfy all the
+equations which the mathematicians were likely to contrive. No need
+to try to think how the dust had been scattered. The force came from
+the big star, which Jeans made a very big star indeed, with a diameter
+of eight thousand million kilometers--say about twice the distance of
+the farthest planet from the sun. Anyway, there was a very big star
+concerned. Too big. The mathematicians could not use all the force thus
+put at their disposal. Dr. Harold Jeffers therefore reduced the mammoth
+to a diameter of a mere forty million kilometers.
+
+The mathematicians still objected. It was no longer a question of
+force. But the theory of probability, they said, made it almost
+unreasonable to suppose that a collision or near collision could
+actually have happened within the lifetime of the sun. So astronomers
+set to work again, some of them to lengthen the past life of the sun,
+others to bring the stars in general closer together so as to increase
+the risks of collision. Both parties succeeded admirably. Jeans himself
+published a calculation which made the sun a million million years
+of age--seven thousand times older than any other calculation had
+ever made it. There were now seven thousand times more chances of a
+collision having taken place than there had been when he started.
+
+Others (you may read an account of their observations in an article
+on the Spiral Nebulæ, by C. Wirtz, in _Scientia_, November, 1925),
+discovered that when you look long enough and deep enough into the gulf
+of space (about three hundred thousand light-years is as far as you
+need to go), it looks as if all matter were outward bound, and moving
+faster and faster all the time. Therefore the stars used to be much
+more thickly placed here around home than they are now. A collision
+becomes easy to imagine.
+
+But why is matter going away from here? Apparently for the same reason
+that rats leave a sinking ship. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, ought
+to be five times more thickly settled with stars. As things stand, it
+is much too light for its size. It cannot hold itself together and is
+being deserted by its outer fringe of suns all the time. Nor is this
+the worst of it. The very matter of our solar system is fifty-two times
+less dense than it should be. Its critical point--that is, the point
+where it will fly to pieces at the slightest provocation--has long
+since been passed. Some day, a few million years hence, when you get up
+in the morning the morning is likely not to be there. This is not such
+a good story to tell to the children.
+
+Nor is the situation any better if you turn your back to the stars, and
+look at those little stars within things which we call atoms. Very much
+to the contrary. Some meteorologists created considerable consternation
+a few years ago by prophesying that one of the glacial epochs, probably
+the last one, was coming back to play a return engagement--decidedly
+not by request. But what is a glacial epoch or two compared with atoms
+in the state ours are in?
+
+“We owe to Sir Ernest Rutherford [the great English physicist] what
+is basic in our actual ideas about atoms,” says Urbain.[102] This
+savant was once a pupil of Pierre Curie, discoverer of radium, and
+speaks with authority. And he asks: “As to the atom, have we attained
+something real, or only a model, symbolic of observed phenomena?” He
+then answers his own question by declaring that “it is difficult to
+say.... Rutherford allowed the electrons [in the atom] to radiate,
+since it was supposed that the model must obey the standard laws.” The
+difficulty was that such an atom as Rutherford’s ought, all agreed,
+to be luminous. And all atoms are not luminous. Another difficulty
+was this. “Each outer electron must gradually approach the central
+nucleus,”--I still quote from Urbain--“finally falling into it, which
+means death.” Presumably it is not intended to be implied that the same
+electrons which were allowed to radiate ended by falling into the thing
+they radiated from. Anyway, Urbain continues: “We might have accepted
+the death of the stars ... but we cannot that of the atoms. That would
+mean a definite death of the universe.”
+
+For once, even scientists were appalled. What was to be done?
+Something, evidently. So an astronomer named Bohr rose to the occasion.
+He constructed--not another atom, but another “model.” This one was
+guaranteed to last forever, and if real atoms would only conform to it
+all would be well.
+
+“Bohr’s atom,” says Urbain, “is not a clear explanation, for the
+privileged orbits [he gave the electrons ‘privileged orbits’ to keep
+them contented without either flying off into space or into the
+deadly nucleus] are not understandable in themselves; neither are
+the quanta of energy set free by the electrons in leaping from one
+privileged orbit to another.... Bohr’s models have their own laws with
+no necessary relation to the law of ordinary experiments, and he thus
+turned scientific thought into a new and unknown direction.... In the
+future are theories to be built upon such contradictions?”
+
+Apparently they are. We have now observed so many things that it is
+flatly impossible to grapple with them, or to find out which ones
+are so and which are not. The “new and unknown direction” into which
+scientific thought has been turned is clearly that of imagining
+artificial working-models known to be at variance with reality, getting
+what satisfaction can be had from the models, and leaving reality to
+shift for itself until some really serious collision with fact damages
+the model beyond repair. It is not such a new direction, after all,
+but merely a new frankness which acknowledges the shortcomings of a
+hypothesis from the start without a period of pretending that it is
+a genuine “explanation.” Every new discovery makes the universe--not
+easier, but more difficult to explain. Progress uncovers our ignorance
+much faster than it brings us knowledge--arm-chair progress, of course
+excepted.
+
+So Urbain is thankful for the new model atom, and says that “Bohr, in
+reviving our hopes, is a great benefactor.” Adding, “It seems necessary
+either to resign ourselves to not understanding, as Bohr has done, or
+to resign ourselves to a model in flagrant violation with experience.”
+
+Those sufficiently resigned to not understanding I now ask to return
+with me for a short and final visit to those suburban stellar districts
+situated some three hundred thousand light-years from our sun, where
+matter is moving ever faster and faster away from us. By a strange
+contradiction, time in those regions seems to be moving slower and
+slower, as if tired with the long journey and no longer able to keep
+up the killing pace set by the stars. Light, too, appears to be
+losing the race. Professor Michelson, of the University of Chicago,
+established the velocity of light not long ago at 299,796 kilometers
+per second--roughly 186,000 miles. But now Monsignor E. J. Gheury
+de Braye, in an article in _L’Astronomie_, official organ of the
+Astronomical Society of France, declares that the velocity of light
+decreases by four kilometers every second. We may perhaps grasp a
+moment’s understanding by saying that this is relativity, that light
+merely travels slower in comparison with the quickened pace of time and
+matter in the outer stellar spaces.
+
+This, however, will not serve us long, for W. de Sitter, the Dutch
+astronomer, taking all these things into consideration, must needs
+offer an “explanation.”
+
+“The world of de Sitter,” says Wirtz in summing it up, “is a
+four-dimensional continuum of space and time, forming the surface of a
+sphere in five-dimensional co-ordinates.”
+
+If you look wise and pretend in scientific circles that you understand
+this, you go to the foot of the class. A four-dimensional sphere with
+a surface in five-dimensional co-ordinates does not pretend to be
+comprehensible. To declare it to be graspable by the human mind is to
+insult it. But it can be used in equations, like any other “imaginary”
+quantity, though--again like any other imaginary quantity--it is quite
+unimaginable.
+
+Imaginary quantities are not such awesome nonentities. Anybody can
+make a few for himself and play with them as well as can anybody else.
+Let us take nothing to begin with, thus--0. Write a 2 under it--0/2.
+We have now one-half of nothing. Now multiply a cipher by 2, and we
+have twice nothing, or 2(0)--not for a moment to be confounded with
+twenty. Then one half of 2(0), or twice nothing, equals two times 0/2,
+or one-half of nothing, because each is equal to nothing at all and
+things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other--and
+for various other reasons.
+
+Abstractions are other imaginary no-things which cannot be imagined.
+A mathematical point has, by hypothesis, neither length, breadth nor
+thickness. We always think of it as a very small dot, having all three.
+Yet in dealing with it, mathematically, we ignore these dimensions in
+the result. A line has length, but no breadth or thickness. We think
+of it as something long and very slender. It is the edge of a solid. A
+plane has length and breadth but no thickness, theoretically speaking.
+We think of it as a very thin slice of a solid. Try to think of the
+surface of a solid without thinking of the solid! Abstractions are
+conveniences when we wish to travel light without carrying all the
+mystery of material reality about with us. They are like Bohr’s model
+atoms. And like all other unreal things, they have a danger of their
+own.
+
+The practical man, especially if he be a physicist or a chemist, a
+worker in those domains where our greatest scientific triumphs have
+been won, has experience always at his elbow ready to correct his
+errors whenever they pass beyond a certain point. Invent a machine, or
+a shaving soap, and you are immediately compelled to prove that your
+invention will work. And the only proof which those who invest in such
+things will accept is the sort of proof which we require of a pudding
+when we eat it.
+
+Experience has shown that not even the best calculations ever quite
+verify themselves when put to the test of novel circumstances. A small
+model may run smoothly, yet a large machine made in the same way will
+develop unexpected flaws. Even increased size is sufficient to upset
+the forecast. A machine may run for a week, yet become cantankerous
+if we try to make it run for a year. Time adds a new element. So does
+speed. Chemical compounds which cannot be made to explode in minute
+quantities--coal dust, for example--sometimes work havoc in large
+quantities.
+
+Now the physical sciences, like chemistry and astronomy, deal with the
+simplest and most tangible things of which we have any knowledge. Yet
+those who make them their study confess themselves baffled at every
+turn. In these dreadful regions, Science, the real Simon Pure, humble,
+beautiful and courageous, tries to maintain itself under the pitiless
+bombardment of facts, smoky with the infinite mystery from which they
+come, that rain every year more violently upon its defenseless head.
+
+What has become of the Sunday-supplement, positive, dogmatic,
+you-are-a-fool-if-you-do-not-agree-with-what-I-say attitude? These
+men, who do not wish to be mystics, engage in more ghostly talk than
+did the delegates to the Meta-Physic Congress which met last year
+at the Sorbonne in Paris to discuss telepathy, haunted houses, and
+kindred matters. Gone is the cocksure vanity of the closing nineteenth
+century. Gone is the God-defying materialistic impiety, the arrogance,
+the hard-heartedness of an older and more ignorant day. In this
+ultimate dim Thule where the higher syntheses are born, kissing the
+dust is today the only permitted posture. Hypotheses hardly dare to
+call themselves even hypotheses any more. They are content to be known
+as assumptions, postulations, fancies, guesses, and thankful if they
+may be allowed to live their unreal existences from the time of the
+publication of one pamphlet to that of the next. Early modern science
+was drunk with victory. New science is dizzy with awe.
+
+How comes it, then, that our Dr. Watsons can say that there is no
+mystery in the building of a man? A man! Ah, that is different. We have
+as yet hardly touched upon those positively certain “sciences” which
+deal with human nature, with love, life and destiny.
+
+
+3. THE BED OF PROCRUSTES
+
+Hans Driesch, at Jena, working in the very laboratory of Ernst Haeckel
+shortly after the death of that master argument-maker for the mechanist
+conception of life, inadvertently broke a fertile egg in two--and
+thereby broke not in two but into smithereens the whole mechanism of
+the mechanist which he had been taught to defend. For the egg hatched,
+each half producing a perfect creature as if nothing had happened.
+
+Driesch then reduced a fertile egg fairly to hash--and still each
+fragment functioned like a whole egg. As long as the egg was not
+killed--and the eggs of primitive creatures are tough eggs except
+where temperature and certain poisons are concerned--hashing merely
+multiplied the hatch.
+
+The biologist was much disturbed. For it seemed fairly obvious that
+if the design which growth was to follow lay anywhere in the material
+of the eggs, division of said eggs would--if it did not bring the
+whole vital process to an end--result at least in the division of the
+incubated organisms. One half of an egg should, if it hatched at all,
+hatch a head; the other half a tail--and so on. But this not being
+what happened, design could no longer be located in egg material. Any
+part of the material was ready to develop into either head, or tail, or
+wing, or antennæ, or what not, according to the direction of something
+beyond the dividing process--something which remained whole in each
+part.
+
+Perhaps the experiment was not conclusive. In these days of model
+atoms no doubt somebody can construct a model egg, each atom of which
+is, potentially, a complete chicken. But what troubled Driesch was
+the immediate necessity of violating a primary principle and being
+compelled to be extravagant in the matter of hypotheses. Even a model
+egg required a great many changes in Haeckelianism.
+
+Now if Driesch had been of an older generation or of a different
+persuasion, he would have found the ideas of Haeckel, not the idea of
+exterior design, extravagant. For one of the most ancient hypotheses
+in the world assumes that the design for everything lies outside of
+its material self. And I sometimes wonder if the principle of economy
+should not have been earlier applied, before so many of us abandoned
+this grand old major synthesis which found its highest expression in a
+belief in God. If it did not explain everything, it at least left room
+for the explanation of everything. All we had to do was to struggle
+for a truer and clearer conception of what it meant. Astronomers,
+for instance, would not now be so hard put to it in the matter of
+inventing Big Star theories, nor physicists in making model atoms
+which neither work nor exist, if they were at liberty to suppose that
+a forceful spirit lay behind phenomena, lending a guiding hand to all.
+Intellectually that would be at least as satisfactory as points of
+force surrounded by highly abstract hairs.
+
+But the idea of God as it emerged from the nineteenth century presented
+itself to many minds as the idea of a rather ridiculous monster--the
+monster that Sinclair Lewis dared to strike dead,--the monster that
+Stephen Crane once fancied as lying “dead in heaven,” and at another
+time warned not to shake its bloody spears at him if its “sublime
+ears” did not wish to “hear curses.” Neither Crane nor Lewis need have
+shocked anybody. They had each seen a straw man set up, and were but
+proceeding to knock it down. The only shocking thing was the idea, the
+deformity, which had been presented to them. Where it came from it is
+not my present purpose to enquire.
+
+Astronomers and physicists have now gone far beyond Crane and Lewis
+and are looping back--saving their faces (i.e., hypotheses) as much
+as possible--and picking up ever more and more of the ancient belief
+thrown away in the hour of materialistic extravagance. Chemists, too,
+are beginning to realize that there is no use going on and pretending
+that our thoughts, our feelings, our every manifestation, can be
+reduced to a mechanical basis, since not even a sea-urchin or a pismire
+can be so reduced.
+
+This something which we call life shows itself, ordinarily at least,
+only when certain physical elements are present. But it shows
+sufficient independence of these elements to make it impossible for any
+rational, unprejudiced being with the facts before him to continue to
+confound life with matter.
+
+Yet many learned professors do continue to confound them. Why? In
+some cases it is, perhaps, not too much to say that the holder of a
+university degree is not necessarily in possession of all the facts.
+And very few of us, professors or not, are without prejudice. We must
+remember the Idol of the Tribe, the capacity of the mind to become so
+clouded by passion and biased zeal that it sheds unwelcome evidence as
+readily as a duck’s back sheds water.
+
+It was Herbert Spencer who first popularized the notion that
+materialistic science could explain everything. It had not been
+invented with an eye to explaining everything--only a few things, with
+the hope of getting hold of them in a way that might be useful. But so
+great was the success of the early applications of the method that the
+temptation to turn it into a synthetic philosophy was too great for
+mortal to resist. Spencer had the advantage of not knowing very much.
+His early education had been neglected. And his powers of invention
+were practically without limit.
+
+It is always easier to explain when not burdened with too much
+first-hand knowledge. Hearsay, and what we learn from books, is the
+stuff for theories. But the facts which have entered intimately into
+our own lives are stubborn. We are too familiar with their edges to
+fancy that they fit into whatever space may be contrived for them.
+Ignorance is satisfied with almost any account. Those who deal a good
+deal with retorts and crucibles may speak of men and women as retorts
+and crucibles. This is impossible to those whose knowledge of human
+nature has made them distinguished in affairs. The books of a closet
+economist satisfy everybody but business men.
+
+If you have spent much of your time in observing, say, the behavior
+of rats on inclined planes, you may come to think of animals as
+machines. One such investigator has recently discovered that rats are
+“negatively geotropic.” That is, they are afraid of falling; and when
+the plane is tipped will scramble away from the lower edge. A pet rat
+would have taught him not only this, but that, under kind treatment,
+the rat is one of the cleverest and most affectionate four-footed
+creatures in existence. A scientist bores holes in a dog’s cheek to
+measure his autocoid secretion; or he removes part of a dog’s brain,
+scratches the animal’s leg, notes that a kick results, and comes out
+of the laboratory convinced that we all walk--not with a desire to get
+anywhere, but because of the irritating effects of the ground on the
+soles of the feet. Go tell that story to a man who knows dogs!
+
+Those who love and understand animals cannot be made to believe that
+animals are devoid of sense and feeling, or act blindly in response
+to stimuli. Why then should we listen only to those who know nothing
+of animals and care less? Lovers of flowers will even go so far as
+to attribute a sort of sentience to vegetation. Are they necessarily
+wrong because their opinions are contradicted by teachers in flowerless
+school-rooms?
+
+J. C. Bose, the great Hindu scientist, has lately intrigued the whole
+world by writing a book in which he shows that trees have eyes, nerves,
+veins, something which corresponds to a heart; are capable of pain;
+of fatigue; can be poisoned; and to a certain extent seem to remember
+what has happened to them. What is the result? Why, our mechanists have
+hurried to invert the Bose philosophy and to describe it with its heels
+in the air. It is “_la fin du mythe de la force vitale_,” cries Pierre
+Guitet-Vauquelin.[103] Bose, according to this ingenious writer, has
+discovered “_l’unité de la matière vivante et non vivante_,” and the
+conclusion is drawn that said unity has been arrived at by making the
+_non vivante_ universal.
+
+The Idol of the Tribe, the economy of hypotheses, has become a
+Procrustean bed, to which everything must be stretched or cut to
+fit. But unfortunately this particular bed was made by chemists and
+physicists in Newton’s time to fit certain facts and approximations
+to truth in which they were dealing for the moment. It was then a
+convenient bit of furniture. Now it is very awkward. We cling to it
+only for old time’s sake.
+
+The modern experimental method as at first developed has proven
+woefully inadequate when universally applied. Even the study of outward
+behavior is very difficult, especially if the subject be human, for
+we cannot duplicate in the laboratory the exact circumstances of real
+life--and every variation is fatal to accuracy, especially as its
+influence is often unsuspected and totally unknown. We cannot control
+our own species, because we are not placed above it--though many of us
+would like to be.
+
+This entails another difficulty. As we are not above it in power, so
+we are not above it in intelligence. The mind in attempting to study
+itself has the disadvantage of being both the eye and the picture.
+No wonder the so-called social sciences have failed to duplicate the
+triumphs of physical science. They have tried to steal a prestige which
+they have not earned, to work with borrowed tools instead of developing
+proper tools of their own.
+
+But since it is the habit of the age to look below for its sanctions,
+let us look a little more intently--at the findings of the new science.
+
+
+4. THE NEW PHYSICS
+
+Unfortunately, the new physics is difficult, or at least can be made
+to seem difficult. Few lay readers have any first-hand knowledge of
+it; few lay readers have ever read a book of science in their lives,
+new or old. In fact science does not publish itself directly in books,
+but in short monographs, editions limited to two or three hundred
+copies. At best these papers make their appearance in small, specialist
+magazines. And they are couched almost entirely in mathematical symbols
+interspersed with long words barbarously derived from the Greek and
+Latin. True scientists have not yet learned to advertise.
+
+We are therefore at the mercy of the popularizer, and the popularizer
+is under every temptation to bolster up popular prejudices and
+misconceptions. There is also the “story interest” which he must
+consider.
+
+These are times when government is not by reason, by principle, by
+expedience, or by experience. We are governed by story interest--the
+thrill such as we get from a good detective yarn. Most of us must get
+the bulk of our information from the newspapers, magazines, and the
+most accessible and widely distributed of books. These depend upon
+story interest for their sales. We buy those periodicals and those
+volumes which promise to thrill us most; it is so much more pleasant to
+be thrilled than not to be thrilled. Thus it becomes to the interest of
+editors to see that we are thrilled as much as possible, without regard
+to ultimate consequences. Fiction tends ever more and more to become
+the moulder of public opinion.
+
+It is of course a better story if Voronoff’s transplantations of goat
+and monkey glands result in prolonged life than if they do not so
+result. To say that chemicals will take the place of male sperm in the
+fertilization of sea-urchins’ eggs (as Loeb, a few years ago, used to
+claim) produces a greater thrill than to say that this consummation so
+devoutly wished by some has yet to materialize. It is even thrilling
+to be told that life is mechanical, for that gives man the flattering
+idea that some day he will be able to create life in his own workshops
+and set up an independent business as a god. We do not stop to think
+of all the implications of such a theory--and we buy the paper. We go
+further, and enact laws which take the truth of the articles in the
+paper for granted.
+
+So, when the modern popularizer deigns to give his attention to modern
+physics, he has a single eye to the “story.” The difficult parts, the
+parts expressing doubt, the parts which do not fit with the pet fads of
+his readers, he can omit. Or he can take an entire theory and stand it
+on its head. The effect will be exciting--and marvelous.
+
+There are those who are becoming tired of this childish procedure,
+those who would really like to know what is going on without having to
+perfect their Greek and Latin or master the higher mathematics. They
+would even like to know if it be true, as has been claimed, that the
+attempt to reconcile the omnipotence of God with human free will and
+responsibility has always been found scientifically impossible--to know
+if belief in either will or God be in itself unscientific and contrary
+to mathematics. Probably they will go on believing in God and free-will
+anyway--for those who do not have not yet become tired of childish
+procedures. But it will be with a certain sadness. The man who must
+hide his faith from his reason in fear of attack, is not a complete or
+a happy man. Few of us realize how much depends upon our conception of
+the fundamental truths of physics, how we lean upon what we understand
+to be the laws underlying the material world.
+
+The Scholastics claimed that the existence of God--even the great
+truths of Christianity--could be demonstrated by reason alone; but few
+have sufficient philosophical training or inclination to follow such
+arguments to their end. Science, while it has often claimed to be able
+to disprove religion, has never claimed to be able to establish either
+religion in general or any one religion in particular. The most that
+can be asked of it, I think, is the removal of those barriers which,
+some time since, it erected in the way of belief in the supernatural.
+
+Science has always had its Mendels, its Voltas, its Galvanis, its
+Ampères, its Pasteurs--men who believed as heartily in God as they
+believed in his works. But I do not wish to discuss the religion of
+scientists. It will be enough to show the bearings of recent science
+upon an antiquated but still pretendedly scientific materialism. So let
+us chose a single paper by a modern worker--a man comparatively obscure.
+
+He will of necessity be comparatively obscure, for no one can be a
+scientist pure and simple and be widely known unless he has invented
+a popular mechanical appliance, advertised a cure for some common
+disease, wandered into a foreign province as a prophet, or had the luck
+to say something startling--such as, “Man descended from a monkey,” or
+“Everybody can live to be a hundred years old,”--and even then fame
+usually takes time to accumulate.
+
+Ralph S. Lillie has as yet written no good story. But he has an
+interesting article, entitled “Physical Indeterminism and Vital
+Action,” in _Science_ for August 12, 1927.
+
+Mr. Lillie, a worker in the Marine Biological Laboratory, is the author
+of “Protoplasmic Action and Nervous Action,” and his very occupation
+shows that he is engaged in the business of wrestling knowledge rather
+than thrills from the phenomena of the world. What he says, however, is
+much more thrilling than the most incestuous dreams ever dreamed by
+a Freudian, or all the discoveries ever made by dropping babies upon
+pillows in the laboratories of Dr. Watson.
+
+For he says that we are free; that there has been observed under the
+microscope certain actions which look much like the veritable finger of
+God, glimpsed for an instant through the screen of matter behind which
+His power forever works--a power that we so often fail to recognize
+because, from our infinitesimal observation of it, it acts according
+to laws--laws we have for the most part made ourselves and to which we
+almost invariably give a personality and an omnipotence we would feign
+deny to the Deity whose doings they so imperfectly record.
+
+But how does Lillie say all this? In the most lamentable manner--in
+Scientese. You will not wonder why I called him obscure after you read
+the following sample paragraph:
+
+“Science and philosophy, but especially science, have found great
+difficulty in reconciling the apparent indeterminism of many vital
+manifestations, particularly voluntary action, with the strict
+determinism of physical science. The traditional problem of freedom,
+with all its implications, is the classical expression of the
+difficulty.”
+
+True, this is by no means as cloudy as Freud when Freud plays
+schoolmaster and propounds incomprehensible metaphysics intended
+to inspire our awe. It contains no confusion of thought. But it is
+sufficiently cold and forbidding. Lillie totally lacks the literary
+ability of Freud, the raconteur of spicy stories. It is evident,
+however, that he means to point out the difficulty which science
+has found in reconciling the doctrine of blind reaction with that
+appearance of choice which is often to be noted in the conduct of the
+higher forms of matter. Living matter, apparently, does not respond
+to external stimuli as mechanists think it ought to. It is inclined to
+behave as if it had some force, some will of its own. In other words,
+it seems to a certain extent to be interiorly determined.
+
+There would, of course, never have been any controversy as to this had
+those who took the negative been honest enough to accept a rational
+definition of will and of freedom. Nobody ever claimed that the will is
+free in all respects. Nobody supposes that a man set upon by a mob can
+go his way as if nothing had interfered with him. He may be dragged to
+the stake or the scaffold. Physically, there are circumstances in which
+his movements are most certainly exteriorly determined. The most that
+he can do is to refuse his consent to those motions he is forced to
+perform, so that the resulting conduct is none of his.
+
+But psychologists have assured us that the giving or withholding of
+this consent is automatic; that physical forces are still at work;
+that a man has a mob inside of his head even when there is no mob
+without; and that what he does seemingly of his own volition is but
+the net result of the pullings and haulings of this interior horde of
+instincts, desires and stimulators. Moreover, these forces themselves
+came either from parents or environment, and the man himself is but
+their sum--he is his own inner mob. Nor can it be denied that the
+law of the Conservation of Energy gave psychologists the right of
+the argument. Since Newton, only the very wisest of men have had any
+intellectual excuse for believing themselves either real or free.
+
+“Analysis, in tracing down the sources of [physical action],” says
+Lillie, “seems always to restate determinism; it shows the will to be
+motivated; motives have their natural origins; actions not consciously
+motivated are either habitual and referable to past motivation, or are
+instinctive and determined by heredity. In either case we seem to have
+a mechanistic determination.”
+
+Having thus fairly stated the enemy’s argument, he goes further and
+admits that “although voluntary action affects mechanical change and
+seems free, the ‘energy balance sheet’ of a man shows no conflict
+with the law of conservation, indicating that there is no creation of
+energy within the organism.... Classical physics thus seems definitely
+incompatible with the idea of freedom. Accordingly, scientific
+men--and somewhat curiously biologists in larger proportion than
+physicists--have commonly regarded freedom as a delusion. In so doing
+they have created more difficulties than they have resolved; certainly
+the inner conviction of freedom has not been abolished in the minds of
+most thinking men.”
+
+There are one or two points to be noted here. “Somewhat curiously,
+biologists in larger proportion than physicists” have been willing to
+abandon the free-will hypothesis. He doubtless means comparatively
+recent biologists, men who have taken their foundation physics from the
+books regarded as authoritative in their school days. Or perhaps there
+is another reason. Following the Idol of the Tribe, they look below
+them for their models, and seem to feel obliged to make their subjects
+as much like the machinist’s subjects as possible. And when they deal
+with man they are shut off from the corrective influences of free
+experiment. Mistakes in speculative biology are not at once apparent.
+They are not immediately applied, and returns are slow in coming in.
+But I am willing that the enemy should take what comfort he can from
+the biologists. He may say, if he likes, that biologists are the ones
+who call life mechanical because biologists are the ones who work
+closest to life. Lillie happens to be a biologist himself--a biologist
+of details, not of generalities.
+
+As to the “energy balance sheet” of the individual, I think he leans
+over backward in his endeavor to be fair. Considering the exceedingly
+minute quantities of energy involved, it cannot rightly be claimed
+that the energy balance sheet even of a wayside daisy has ever been
+experimentally worked out with an accuracy fit to be called conclusive.
+Only recently have we even begun to measure quantities of this order
+of magnitude. Only recently did we know how very little energy we
+needed at our disposal in order to rid our inner conduct of external
+compulsion--and it is inner conduct alone with which we are here
+concerned. We do not ask to be able to shake a physical leg at will,
+but merely to be capable of shifting our attention to legs if and when
+we chose, or to entertain the desire to shake.
+
+But once more let us grant the point to the adversary. Let him prove
+the balance sheet of the individual if he can--it will avail him
+nothing. Lillie, in seeming to leave intact the Law of Conservation,
+is but planning a flank attack. For a curious reason soon to appear,
+the law may rule and yet leave us free. It will then cease to be of
+moral importance. Our biologist goes on: “We must regard it not as
+a coincidence but as highly significant that the only region where
+physical science gives evidence of ... externally uncontrolled, or
+individual, action, is in the field of ultra-microscopic phenomena.”
+
+Nevertheless, there is a coincidence here. The field where Lillie has
+noted externally uncontrolled individual action is his own field. As a
+worker in a marine biological laboratory, the minutest forms of life
+are objects of his daily study.
+
+If I wanted to settle the question by authority and a show of
+erudition, I could now quote from Jordan’s “The Philosophical
+Foundations of the Quantum Theory.”[104] While if it depends merely
+upon famous names I could cite Einstein and Smoluchowski, who have
+found that the second law of thermo-dynamics (according to which heat
+is said to pass from higher to lower temperatures in direct proportion
+to the energy which is extracted from it--another way of expressing our
+old friend, Conservation) does not hold true when the time and space
+involved are sufficiently small. And to this Svedberg, in his “Colloid
+Chemistry,” agrees by saying that in microscopic systems it is obvious
+that “fluctuations of entropy” (variations in the amount of a given
+energy which is found to be “available”) undoubtedly occur.
+
+But there is no need to follow such a thorny path as this. Lillie
+sufficiently sums up the situation by declaring that “the universality
+of the rule of physical determination” as regards very minute, or
+“quantum” phenomena, is now subject to question; and that “in the
+highest manifestations of life, prediction [that is, the discovery
+of a mechanical law governing conduct] is not possible at all.” And
+he adds: “It follows that the regularity of macroscopic [or large]
+phenomena, in which determinism is for all practical purposes complete
+and trustworthy, is in reality a _statistical regularity_.”
+
+What can he possibly mean?
+
+Here is in reality a flash of light in darkness, the gist of the whole
+matter, the way out, the explanation of a thousand riddles. And he must
+put it in such language as this!
+
+For a statistical regularity is of course nothing but the regularity
+to be observed in averages. Individuals vary in a way which groups do
+not. No one is compelled to commit suicide this year. If I do such a
+thing it will be because I am individually a fool. And nobody knows
+whether my good sense is going to last another twelvemonth or not. Yet
+every actuary in every life-insurance company’s office in the world
+knows how many people are going to commit suicide this year, and next
+year, and the year after; and the quota which each civilized country
+is going to furnish. Their knowledge may not be absolutely accurate
+as to the last digit. There is a very slight margin for mistake. But
+they are almost as certain of the figures as they are of the figures
+for last year, or the year before. Mass action is sufficiently regular
+to make calculations based upon a comparison of its future with its
+past exceedingly profitable. Groups, and groups alone, obey the Law
+of Conservation. It was group action observed among atoms which gave
+rise to the formulation of that law. Individuals behave capriciously,
+obeying the laws of their unique natures, laws known only to God.
+
+But it will be objected: is not man a mass of atoms, or a mass of
+whatever ultimate particles science finally arrives at? And the answer
+is an emphatic _no_. His body is such a mass, but it is so formed as
+to be controlled, in so far as its movements are voluntary, by an
+individual self whose inner essence is single. The only way to make
+group action out of one man’s conduct is to observe him over a long
+period of time. His average may be guessed at. But nobody can say how
+he will act in a new and unusual circumstance.
+
+
+5. CHANCE
+
+Pious people have always been prone to declare that there is no such
+thing as chance. They have been afraid that belief in chance implied
+a disbelief in the omnipotence of God. Never were pious people more
+mistaken--or perhaps I should say misinformed. The doctrine of
+probabilities is one of those things belonging to mathematics which
+the pundits have decided it were better for us common people not
+to understand. So they have carefully refrained from stating it in
+interesting, or even human, language, pretending that we were barred
+from comprehension by the inadequacy of our intelligence and education.
+
+Nevertheless we all inhabit a world upon the phenomena of which the
+doctrine of probabilities is founded. We are compelled to live every
+day surrounded by events “obeying” the Law of the Greatest Probability.
+And those of us who have made any success in life have become pretty
+good mathematicians, though we may know no mathematical symbols beyond
+the signs of addition, subtraction and division.
+
+It is of course misleading to say that events _obey_ the law of the
+greatest probability. Events do not obey any of the laws which science
+has formulated. On the contrary, the laws were, in so far as they are
+laws and not mere errors, formulated in obedience to the events. But
+to say that there is no such thing as chance is to say that there is
+no such thing as ignorance, which to my mind is hardly a pious idea.
+For chance, rightly understood, is but the measure of our ignorance.
+Nothing more.
+
+Given total ignorance, the chance of guessing right is too remote to
+be calculable and can be expressed only by the meaningless formula,
+“nothing to infinity.” Given total knowledge, certainty leaves no room
+for probability. In all other circumstances, chance is the balance in
+which we weigh what we know against what we do not know. Gambling is
+called a vice because nobody ever uses the word except to describe some
+form of chance-taking which he considers vicious--the vice usually
+consisting in a foolish attempt to get something for nothing. It is
+considered particularly immoral to lose. But in a broad sense, everyone
+gambles who lives. I hope I will be pardoned, then, if I take my
+illustrations from actual games.
+
+If we know that a penny is a disk of equally weighted sides and is to
+be tossed in the air by an unknown amount of force which will cause it
+to turn over an unknown number of times, the chance of its falling head
+up is the same as that of its falling head down. We say the odds are
+even. If we do not know what a penny is, we cannot reckon the odds. If
+we know exactly what a penny is, know its present position in relation
+to the table-top, and know that it is going to turn over three times,
+say, there are no odds to calculate. Ignorance has been supplanted by
+knowledge.
+
+But why do we say that an even-sided disk, thrown at hap-hazard, is as
+likely to fall head up as it is to fall tail up? Because observation
+in the past has taught us that such is the case. We may reason
+subsequently about momentum, gravity, and the like, but observation
+lies at the bottom of our knowledge. Very well. The sun rose this
+morning. I know that. What is the chance of its rising tomorrow morning?
+
+If I know nothing but what I have stated, the chance, from my point of
+view, is as one to one. The odds are even, nothing more. It is just
+as likely not to rise as it is to rise. From the standpoint of an
+Omnipotent God, this is not the case. He knows whether it is going to
+rise or not. To God there is indeed no chance.
+
+But to mankind at large? Surely the chances of the sun rising tomorrow
+are better than even? To be sure they are. For mankind at large knows
+not only that the sun rose yesterday morning, but the morning before
+that, and on ever so many other mornings. How many? Upon the answer
+to this question rests the actual chance of its rising again, for the
+answer shows the amount of our knowledge. The more knowledge, the more
+certain the chance.
+
+Let us say we know that the sun has risen for a billion mornings.
+Tomorrow, if there be a tomorrow, will mark a billion and one. Then
+there are a billion and one events, or sunrises, under consideration,
+and only one of them is still in doubt. The chances of the sun’s rising
+tomorrow are therefore a billion to one. If we know it has already
+risen a trillion times, they are a trillion to one. As knowledge
+increases, certainty approaches.
+
+I have heard it objected that, according to this theory, the chance
+of a one-year-old child to live another year must be only even, while
+a man of 99 has 99 chances in a hundred of rounding out his century.
+This would indeed be true if we knew nothing about either babes or
+nonogenarians but their years. But we have a great deal of other
+information--statistics--bills of health. We must put all of our
+knowledge into the calculation.
+
+Almost everybody is now willing to admit this method of reckoning
+probability when it is applied to dawns or to life insurance. It seems
+quite natural to say that we know the sun will rise again because,
+so far as we know, it always has risen; or to say that a baby has
+a longer prospect of life than has a very old man because we have
+observed that babies generally live, while very old men generally
+die. But when we apply the same method to the calculations of certain
+other things--the behavior of our penny, for instance--we shall meet,
+strangely enough, with a lot of heretics. If a penny has fallen heads
+for twenty times in succession, there are those who will say that the
+chances of heads coming on the next throw are much worse than one to
+one. “It is time for a change,” they will contend. And nothing can
+keep them, if sportingly inclined, from wagering their money on tails.
+But a mathematician will coldly bet on heads. _He knows that there is
+something the matter with that penny!_
+
+So come what are known as “runs of luck,”--a subject apparently remote
+from that of free will, but not so remote as it seems. Runs of luck are
+the result of unknown influences; for if the influences are known we do
+not say “luck,” we use a harsher term. The oftener a thing has happened
+before, the more likely it is to happen again. Some large force must
+be at work, or there would not have been the run. This is such an
+important rule that anyone who doubts it would do well to convince
+himself of its validity. He will in that way not only improve his mind,
+he will save money be he never so little of a “gambler” in the vicious
+sense of the term. Losers are always playing the stock-market and the
+world for “reactions” that “must come.” Winners always “go with the
+trend.” They are vicious only when their prizes are evil.
+
+“But what,” some will say, “of the change of luck which wipes out the
+winnings? What of those larger cycles which bring the smaller cycles
+to an end?” Just this. We know nothing of the larger cycles until we,
+or somebody whose word we can trust, has begun to experience them.
+Therefore our ignorance is complete in most cases, and we have no
+chance against the larger cycles or rhythms at all--which is why
+sensible people usually keep out of the stock-market. Doubtless there
+is some larger cycle in cosmic events which will some day put out the
+sun. But unless we have somehow been able to put our finger already
+upon its pulse, we must ignore it in our calculations. We cannot bring
+it to book. When any one cycle has kept up a faithful performance as
+long as the sun has kept on rising, it must be a rather large cycle and
+is pretty safe to depend on for our remaining days.
+
+But I did not enter into this digression merely to give a few tips
+on gambling, or the advice not to gamble at all when gambling can be
+avoided. The calculation of probabilities is of vast utility in matters
+infinitely more important than markets or games. With it mathematicians
+have put mere telescopists to shame. Give a mathematician the past
+course of a planet, and he will calculate its future course without
+taking the trouble to find out a thing about the nature of planets.
+This is no chimera. It has been done. The vagaries of the motions of a
+heavenly body fall into series; into cycles; into cycles within cycles.
+Accuracy in prediction is determined by accuracy and amount of past
+observations, and by nothing else.
+
+But what has this to do with the human will? Everything. The so-called
+“laws” of science, including the Law of Conservation, are the laws
+of chance, nothing more. They are founded upon the behavior of great
+masses of particles, or the behavior of one or a few particles (more
+accurately, _particulars_) over long periods of time. As Lillie phrases
+it, the regularity of nature is a “statistical regularity,” like the
+regularity of the statistics of suicide. It does not interfere with the
+freedom of the individual, of the particular. Here is the answer to
+Freud’s absurd statement that the attempt to reconcile human free will
+with divine omnipotence is always a failure. The actuary calculates the
+number of suicides that are going to take place--does he thereby compel
+you to kill yourself?
+
+There is, of course, this difference between an actuary and
+Omniscience. The actuary only knows the total result. Omniscience must
+know the individuals who will help to make up that result. Omniscience
+knows just what we are, individually. Omniscience knows every Psyche,
+and knows what it will chose. I may know that a pair of dice are so
+loaded that they will always come up sixes. Is it my knowledge which
+compels them so to fall?
+
+But some will say that if our human dice are loaded, it must have been
+God who loaded them, and that beneath that load free will disappears.
+
+It might have been that way, I will admit. Omniscience, being also
+Omnipotence, might have loaded the dice, beyond question. Omnipotence
+was under no compulsion to grant free will to anything. But by the
+same reasoning, Omnipotence was free to withhold Its hand, and to let
+us determine to a certain extent our actions for ourselves. Even the
+finite mind has been able to see how this can be without interfering at
+all with that regular march of events which characterizes a cosmos in
+distinction from a chaos. A cosmos of free particulars will still have
+a “statistical regularity.”
+
+As a matter of fact, this system of delegated authority, of
+limited grants of real power, seems to run through all nature. The
+Commander-in-Chief leaves certain details to his generals; the generals
+leave certain details to their captains, the captains to their
+lieutenants. The private soldier has his particular duty to perform.
+And each one is held responsible for the performance of his own duty
+within his own limited sphere of action--a duty which he is free to
+perform or to leave undone. Whenever an individual is rewarded or
+punished for something which he was not free to do or not to do, our
+natures recoil from what we term an “injustice.” With no free will at
+all, any reward or punishment would be unjust. And it is to this sort
+of a world our materialistic psychologists and philosophers have been
+trying to introduce us. No wonder they shied away from the conception
+of consciousness. Sentience without freedom seems unjust. Even with
+limited freedom, it seems unjust. Man’s sense of justice, therefore,
+has compelled him to regard this life as a fragment; to say that only
+willfully endured or provoked pains and privations are deserved, to
+believe in another life beyond the grave without waiting for further
+proof of it. Thus Dante was constrained to write even over the gates of
+Hell, “_Giustizia mosse ’l mio Alto Fattore_.”[105]
+
+If we return now to the doctrine of probabilities and to Lillie we
+shall find him nodding, for he says: “It already seems clear that
+many of the physical laws with which we are familiar in the realm of
+microscopic phenomena cease to apply on the scale where events are
+determined by the ‘chance’ fluctuations of molecular movement.”
+
+Chance here is clearly not the proper word. It contradicts his whole
+argument. Obviously he is using it in a very loose sense--much
+as behaviorists use it when they say that the first synapse
+between dendrite and axone in the brain is chance-determined. As
+a mathematician he must know that these isolated phenomena of
+the exceedingly minute are precisely those to which the law of
+probabilities cannot be applied. As much cannot be said of the
+behaviorists. Their attaching of the word “chance” to the word
+“synapse” is due to no slip of the pen, but rather to some regrettable
+individual action behind the synapse itself.
+
+“Ultra-microscopic phenomena,” Lillie goes on, in a way which quite
+confirms the foregoing explanation of his lapse, “thus give evidence
+... of control by individual action rather than by statistical or mass
+action. The laws relating to such [microscopic] action ... assuming
+such laws to exist ... are as yet imperfectly known. But they are
+certainly entirely different from physical laws.”
+
+This may seem remarkable, but after all it is only what we should have
+expected. In the ultra-microscopic world we are approaching individual
+action and leaving mass action, the average action of many individuals,
+behind. The illusion of bondage begins to disappear.
+
+What makes this so important is the fact that we are so built that
+the minutest imaginable interior events may determine our largest
+actions. I lift a pound weight, but it was the movement of the all but
+impalpable particles of the brain which decided what the movement was
+to be. A touch upon the trigger fires the gun. And the force at the
+disposal of will needs to be only enough to move these tiny particles
+in the vital field. The trigger-touch, the precipitating circumstance,
+is traceable, says Lillie, “to ultra-microscopic events in the nerve
+cells.” And it is precisely this fact, with the opportunity it offers
+for central control, which makes a man’s behavior, even as to his body,
+something other than the result of a struggle of blind forces. Man is
+not a mass of particles like a dumb-bell.
+
+There is, Lillie contends (and he is supported by Maxwell and
+Boltzman), “a smoothing off, or obliteration of detail” in “effects
+controlled by mass action.” So we say that we lose ourselves in a
+crowd. “Mass action” represents the “sum of numerous fluctuating
+minutiæ.” What we see is like a composite picture, with individual
+traits more or less obliterated. Excess in one unit is off-set by
+deficiency in another, so to our sight the individual is obscured. “The
+relation between a smoothed curve and the distribution of the points
+showing the individual data is a relation of a similar kind,” he adds
+for the mathematically minded. And then he throws an almost literal
+bombshell into the determinist camp, with these words:
+
+“Every now and then an unexplained catastrophe occurs in stores of high
+explosives. We know from observation ... as well as from theoretical
+considerations of probability, that at infrequent intervals an internal
+molecular movement of unusual amplitude occurs. Such a movement
+may exceed the critical minimum below which no chemical reaction
+results,”--and so blow up the whole mass.
+
+But what we are here interested in is that unexplained molecular
+movement of unusual amplitude. It is almost like coming upon the
+creative spark itself, and--as is frequently the case with creative
+sparks--the immediate result is destructive to existing conditions.
+
+Not that I think that here is actually the naked finger of God. I am no
+Monist. So far as human experience, at least, is concerned, I believe
+that however far we pursue matter, either into its minute or its starry
+depths, it remains matter; and that spirit is separate and apart from
+it. The ultimate knot cannot be untied. The seamless veil has been
+drawn too tightly across the face of Deity for it ever to be penetrated
+by physical science.
+
+Call matter but force, if you will. Admit that even material force is
+of a spiritual nature, that its materiality consists in what we call
+its material effects. Nevertheless there is a gulf between those locked
+forces and spirit properly so-called. Saying that everything is God is
+only an indirect way of saying that there is no God--no God but what is
+locked up.
+
+If all be matter, how can we, who too must then be matter, manage to
+contemplate the universe? We must conclude with Dr. Watson that we do
+not contemplate it. The same thing cannot at once be both subject and
+object. If all be spirit, then what separates us from the Great Spirit?
+Why is not our knowledge and comprehension, our power and our duration
+of days infinite and commensurate with ourselves here and now? For in
+the case supposed, we would ourselves be God. There would be nothing to
+come between.
+
+Spinoza, who claimed that all is God, contradicted himself by calling
+his philosophy a philosophy, a search for truth. Were his theory true,
+we should not have to search. We would be already one with the All.
+Nor could any of the diverse phenomena of creation exist. There could
+be no separation between part and part, even in our sense perceptions.
+With nothing but spirit, out of what could those shadows, those lapses,
+those ignorances between this and that be made? Of nothing? But nothing
+is nothing. It is not even empty space, nor darkness, nor a shadow.
+Even the Vedantic philosophers had the wit to see that there must
+be a gulf between Brahma on the one hand and Vishnu and Siva on the
+other. They had no explanation to offer. Modern would-be Brahmins
+have assumed that there is no inexplicable. Instead of rising to the
+Gospels, they have fallen below the Vedas.
+
+Lillie seems not to have fallen into this error, for he says that
+“microscopic events” are determined by “sub-microscopic events”; that
+“behind or internal to the sub-microscopic events, we must assume a
+series of ultra-microscopic events reaching back by convergence into
+the field where the known types of physical determination are replaced
+by another type of determination, the special conditions of which we do
+not know.” But as the action of the brain-cell determines the motion
+of the arm, so the action of something yet more minute determines the
+action of the cell, and so on until we come to the ultimate physical
+basis of the series. In this field of the physically ultimate, events
+are self-determined. They occur through no compulsion from without.
+
+“If by free we mean externally uncontrolled, it would appear that the
+ultimate local centers or units of action should be independent of
+one another, i. e., a radical discontinuity should exist at the base
+of physical reality. Something of the kind seems to be indicated by
+quantum phenomena,”--phenomena of an ultra-minute variety. Men have
+often spoken of the eternal loneliness of the soul. Here we see that in
+this very loneliness lies its freedom. If it chooses to surrender this,
+for good or for evil, its surrender is still a choice.
+
+And in conclusion, Lillie most rightly adds that one may “hesitate to
+call [this ultimate physical field]” the “metaphysical field,” or the
+field beyond matter. Our author makes no attempt to taper his matter
+off into spirit merely by subdividing it. And he goes on:
+
+“If would seem, however, that there must be some final support or
+substratum of the physical to which only the term metaphysical can be
+applied.” Which I take to mean that he believes in a substratum which
+is not physical. And having thus shown that back of matter experimental
+science feels that there is something else, and that we in our inner
+selves are quite free from external control, whatever compulsion may be
+put upon the actual motions of our bodies by things beyond our power,
+he rounds out his argument by saying:
+
+“There is also the general philosophical position that the universe,
+considered in its totality, must be the expression of free action,
+since an all-inclusive whole cannot be determined externally, i. e., by
+conditions outside of itself,”--there being nothing outside of itself.
+In other words, not only are we free, but God is omnipotent; and the
+two facts, instead of being contradictory, are found to be but the
+different ends of the same chain of reasoning. Freud’s dictum proves
+to be not quite so final as it seemed. Lillie has torn it to bits in a
+single article.
+
+And had we not gone to Lillie we might have gone to Cassier, LeBon,
+Claude Bernard, Lucien Poincaré, or to any of a multitude of
+clear-headed scientists, philosophers and mathematicians. They may not
+give us all we seek, but they at least give us this. Let behaviorists
+and psychoanalysts say what they will, reason has not yet vanished from
+the world. Neither has unreason, for that matter--as the next chapter
+will show.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[98] “The Descent of Man,” p. 780.
+
+[99] “The _Novum Organum_,” i. 63.
+
+[100] _Op. cit._, i. 45.
+
+[101] _Vide Le Recueil des travaux des Pays Bas_, No. 44, pp. 281 to
+304, for the year 1925.
+
+[102] _Le Recueil des travaux des Pays Bas_, No. 44, pp. 281 to 304,
+1925.
+
+[103] In the Paris _Matin_, September 4, 1927.
+
+[104] _Nature_, vol. 119, 1927, p. 566.
+
+[105] “Justice moved my High Maker,” Dante’s “_Inferno_,” canto III,
+line 4.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE FAMILY TREE
+
+
+I. ARE MONKEYS PEOPLE?
+
+Nobody was ever humiliated by the seventh verse of the second chapter
+of Genesis, which says, “God formed man of the dust of the ground.”
+But when Darwin wrote,[106] “There can ... hardly be a doubt that
+man is an offshoot from the Old World simian stems; and that, under
+a genealogical point of view, he must be classed with the catarrhine
+division,”--when Darwin wrote that the offense was general. Why?
+Certainly a catarrhine ape is higher in the scale of being than is the
+dust of the ground.
+
+But the Bible account had added, “And [God] breathed into his nostrils
+the breath of life.” Darwin left out any saving addition. So those who
+say today, “We came from the monkey,” invariably mean that we were
+contained in the monkey even as an oak is contained in an acorn.
+
+As a matter of fact, the oak is not contained in the acorn. An acorn is
+merely the means through which an oak may eventually become manifest.
+It is an instrument which enables an oak to become. The substance of
+the oak is still widely scattered when the acorn which is to be its
+parent falls from the tree. Some of it is in the soil; some of it is
+in the air; some of it is far off in the sun. The acorn is like a lens
+through which light bends to a focus. It is something which brings
+together parts of the earth, the air and the sun and welds them into
+the body of a tree. That something which we call life uses the acorn
+as a business man uses a little shop, a going concern which he buys as
+the foundation of a great department-store. But the shop could never
+become the store did the business man add nothing to it. The question
+therefore is, was the catarrhine ape the lens through which the
+elements of man were brought together? And what, if anything, was added
+which were not added in the case of the ape itself?
+
+So stated, Darwin’s theory loses most of its religious and therefore
+its popular significance. For the public in general is not interested
+in biology, it is interested only in God and in man’s relation to God.
+Even atheists are interested chiefly in God, or they would speak of
+other matters and spend less time in denying Him. Even biologists and
+psychologists are interested chiefly in God, not in their own subjects.
+Otherwise they would not be forever straining to make a theology,
+though but a negative or devil’s theology, out of what pretends to be
+science.
+
+Whether it is orthodox to believe that we number monkeys among our
+ancestors, theologians must decide. Certainly the Church would not have
+to alter a single one of its major tenets nor a line of its ritual in
+order to include Darwinism among the articles of faith. Whether the
+dust of the ground evolved into ape before it evolved into man during
+those long periods which the laconic poetry of Genesis allows to slip
+by between the lines, or whether the change from dust to man was
+immediate, is immaterial to the doctrine of the Fall of Man, which
+concerns man’s subsequent history alone.
+
+Darwin, himself, regarded his views of human descent as mere theories,
+useful for biological purposes. “Many of the views which have been
+[here] advanced,” he wrote[107] “are highly speculative, and some no
+doubt will prove erroneous.” Had the modesty of the great scientist
+been emulated by his disciples, we would have had no Scopes trial, and
+few of us would ever have heard of Evolution.
+
+Even now that we have heard so much, few of us seem willing to take
+the trouble to find out what it is, or even to learn to distinguish
+between the theory of evolution in general and that particular theory
+of evolution which Darwin advocated. Considered broadly, evolution is
+merely the idea that living things--and even things which we do not
+ordinarily call living, including, perhaps, intangible things, like
+thoughts and feelings--appeared on earth in a certain order, the lower
+and simpler ones first. This idea is as old as the hills, and was fully
+set forth in Moses’ account of creation.
+
+Moses held further that the upward climb was interrupted at a certain
+point, and that another cycle, another upward climb, then began. But
+as neither the Fall nor Redemption are supposed to be biological, this
+line of thought does not concern us here.
+
+A more narrow view of evolution regards the resemblances to be noted
+among things as the resemblance of children to parents. According to
+this theory, the tie which binds the universe together is the tie of
+heredity. Nebulæ give birth to suns, suns to planets, planets to the
+lower forms of life, the lower forms to the higher. The notion is
+not so popular among astronomers as it used to be, but it is still
+dominant among scientists in general and biologists in particular.
+Nor can there be any doubt that evolution in this sense has been the
+supreme hypothesis of modern times. Curiously enough, the most extreme
+Darwinians among our literary scientists usually balk at it, holding
+that while man certainly must have had an ape for ancestor, thoughts,
+customs and sentiments can be generated spontaneously. They trace their
+brains straight back to the amœba, but claim to have minds which are
+brand new. They scorn any philosophy which cannot prove that it was
+born yesterday--or at least since the present period of prosperity
+began in the United States--and born out of nothing. “Men,” says Albert
+Edward Wiggam, in “The New Decalogue of Science,”[108] “have never been
+really righteous because they did not know how.” Meaning, of course,
+that they didn’t know how until the “New Decalogue” was published,
+which was in 1922.
+
+Darwinism, itself, is the belief that the different species originated
+not only one from another, but that the difference now existing
+between one species and another is due to the slow accumulation of
+those minute particulars in which children do _not_ resemble their
+parents; and further that these differences were preserved and added
+one to another through succeeding generations because they were useful
+from the first, increasing the likelihood that their possessors would
+survive and breed; while those not born with these variations, or had
+variations which were useless or perhaps harmful, would be killed off
+in the struggle for existence. This selection of fortunate individuals
+in a world where there is not room enough for all is called “natural
+selection,” and variations which increase the chances of survival
+are said to have a “survival-value.” Darwin did not pretend to know
+what caused variations. Darwinism is merely the theory that species
+originate by the accumulation of useful variations through natural
+selection, and that intermediate forms then die out, leaving gaps. Were
+none of the links missing from the record Darwin believed that it would
+now be impossible to tell where one species began and another left off.
+
+The hypothesis itself was but a variation of an older one. Lamarck
+had taught that species originated gradually, but he held that it
+was chiefly through the inheritance of “acquired characters.” Now an
+acquired character is something we are not born with, as for example,
+the ability to play the piano; and if it could have been proved that
+such acquirements descend from parent to child, Lamarckianism would
+have had smoother sailing.
+
+But great pianists persist in having children born without the ability
+to play the piano, children who have to begin at the beginning just
+as the great pianists themselves did. Every effort has been made to
+demonstrate the contrary, but the facts are stubborn. The best that
+can be said for the theory of the inheritance of acquired characters
+is that, in some instances, if a single character is acquired by a
+sufficient number of generations there is a slight possibility that
+eventually it may begin to leave some trace of a hereditary nature.
+Hundreds of generations of rats have had their tails cut off without
+producing a natural-born tailless rat.
+
+What looks like the inheritance of an acquired character always turns
+out to be a phenomenon which can be accounted for by early education.
+The Bach family was a family of wonderful musicians, but the Bach
+children all received the best of musical training from the moment
+they could begin to lisp.
+
+But Darwinism, though it would profit greatly could the heritability of
+acquired characters be proven, was especially constructed to get along
+with the heritability of inborn characters. To be a Darwinian it is not
+necessary to believe that the giraffe originated by the neck-stretching
+of a lot of prehistoric calves anxious to feed as high as possible
+upon the trees of the pasture. It is enough to believe that the calves
+who happened to be born with the longest necks were the most apt to
+survive, and that they passed their longer necks on, minus any acquired
+stretch, so that in each generation the accidental or unaccountable
+long-neck variations could begin at a higher level--and so on down, or
+up, to the present.
+
+The theory works very well with the giraffe. Every fractional inch of
+additional neck seems to have a survival value. But unfortunately for
+Darwin, this is not the case with all variations. Many are useless or
+positively harmful until their accumulation has gone on until a new
+and workable mechanism is formed, and it is beyond the imagination of
+man to devise a way in which they can have been accumulated by natural
+selection. Fabre, the great French naturalist, pointed out hundreds of
+instincts among insects which could have had no survival value unless
+they were complete at the start--whole chains of instincts, each link
+positively worthless in itself. We are forced to believe that all the
+links arrived on the scene simultaneously and in perfect working order.
+
+The body of man, to take another example, is--in so far as it varies
+from an ape’s body--a variation in the direction of weakness. If the
+catarrhine, old world Simians began once upon a time to have children
+a little more human in body than the catarrhines themselves, they at
+that very moment began to have weaker and shorter-armed children, less
+well calculated to survive in the struggle for existence. It may be
+argued that the half-human children survived because they had better
+brains. And it may be argued further that it was the deflection of
+energy to the brain which caused the rest of the body to shrink. This
+is at least imaginable. What is lacking is any positive evidence that
+half-human children ever arrived upon the worldly scene through the
+genitals of monkeys. The theory is merely a working hypothesis which
+works somewhat less well every day.
+
+Will Durant, writing of Bergson,[109] says that “all his (Bergson’s)
+criticism of Darwin has proved effective; the specifically Darwinian
+features of the evolution theory are now generally abandoned.” This is
+too sweeping a statement. Hilaire Belloc hews closer to the line of
+truth when, in “A Companion to H. G. Wells’ ‘Outline of History,’”[110]
+he names 41 outstanding scientists who hold with Bateson that “for men
+of clear intellect Darwinism has long been dead.” In other words, the
+old jolly row is still on, with the anti-Darwinians gaining ground but
+the pros still flying their flag. The flag, itself, however, shows some
+sign of accumulating variations.
+
+This makes it the more surprising that Sir Arthur Keith should
+have seen fit, upon his election to the presidency of the British
+Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1927, to say in his
+Inaugural Address, “So strong has his [Darwin’s] position become that I
+am convinced it can never be shaken.” A hypothesis which could not be
+shaken would be a unique thing in the history of science. And for his
+remark, Sir Arthur received the following congratulatory telegram: “We
+hail with joy your uncompromising championship of the ape ancestry of
+man. Your boldness and plain speaking will encourage atheists the world
+over.”
+
+No, this is not a message from a learned society. It came from The
+American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, popularly known
+as “The Four A’s,” an incorporation parented by Charles Smith, an
+attorney of Oklahoma, and Freeman Hopwood, of New Jersey. It claims
+a number of branches or chapters among the undergraduates in various
+colleges--chapters bearing such names as “The Damned Souls,” of the
+University of Rochester; “The Devil’s Angels,” of Los Angeles, and
+the like. From time to time gems of thought reach the world from the
+Association’s Headquarters, such as: “Edison believes in a Supreme
+Intelligence, but is a vice-president of the Thomas Paine National
+Historical Association.” “Aristotle was what today would be called
+an atheist.” “No wonder people above the intellectual level of a
+paramecium don’t take any stock in Christianity.”
+
+The reckless use of language makes strange bedfellows. Surely Sir
+Arthur must have been a little intoxicated with his new honors to speak
+so much in the manner of a Grand Kleagle. He even went on and compared
+vital activity to what takes place in an automobile factory. “In ...
+this factory,” he said, “there is no apprenticeship.... Every employee
+is born, just as a hive-bee is, with his skill already developed. No
+plans or patterns are supplied; every workman has the needed design in
+his head from birth.... There is neither manager, overseer nor foreman
+to direct and co-ordinate the activities of the vast artisan armies....
+And yet there must be some method of co-ordination.”
+
+This factory without patterns or overseer, co-ordinated by a “method”
+with nothing to carry it out, must have been located in Russia in the
+days of Lenin. Even there we have yet to see automobiles producing
+spontaneous variations of a survival value, or big trucks begetting
+little roadsters which grow upon gasoline till they reach the size of
+their ancestors. We therefore seem to be a long way from the factory
+of life. But instead of myself attempting to take Sir Arthur to
+task, I prefer to compile a little dialogue out of extracts from his
+speech interlarded with quotations from a review of it written by the
+biologist, Francis P. LeBuffe.[111]
+
+_Keith_ (third paragraph of his address): “Owen ... cited evidence
+which suggested a much earlier date for the appearance of man on earth
+than was sanctioned by Bible records.”
+
+_LeBuffe_ (who is a member of the Society of Jesus): “He [Sir Arthur]
+ought to know that whatever calculations as to the age of man have been
+made from ‘Biblical records’ are entirely problematical, and that the
+6006 years so frequently adduced as Biblical is merely the inference of
+scriptural scholars years ago.”
+
+_Keith_: “Darwin ... succeeded in convincing himself that, immeasurable
+as are the differences between the mentality of man and ape, they
+are of degree not of kind. Prolonged researches made by modern
+psychologists have but verified and extended Darwin’s conclusions.
+Huxley’s ‘Evidence of Man’s Place in Nature’ ... settled for all time
+that man’s rightful position is among the primates and that ... his
+nearest living kin are the anthropoid apes.”
+
+_Le Buffe_: “That man is a primate is as true in the doctrine of
+immediate creation as it is in the theory of evolution; and while a
+non-evolutionist would dispute the statement that the ape is man’s
+nearest kin, he would admit that he is the animal that is the most like
+him.”
+
+_Keith_: “The evidence of man’s evolution from an ape-like being
+obtained from the study of fossil remains is definite and irrefutable.”
+
+_Le Buffe_: “Let us take up the ‘irrefutables’ one by one.”
+
+And he does, describing minutely how the hunt for the “missing link”
+now stands. For brevity’s sake I paraphrase his text as follows:
+
+First Irrefutable: _Pithecanthropus erectus_, “one time inhabitant of
+Java.” Irrefutable? Then why did Dr. Moir[112] state before the Berlin
+Anthropological Society that it did not differ essentially from other
+types of human skulls, and that it coincided very closely with that of
+Aurignacian man? Scott Elliot says, “The skull is considered a human
+skull by six ... celebrated authorities, who for the most part are
+English. It is thought to be a missing link by eight, mostly French.
+It is considered an ape’s skull by six others, mostly German. Only one
+authority makes the femur that of an ape, thirteen consider it human,
+and six make it out intermediate.”
+
+Second Irrefutable: Dawson’s “Dawn Man.” Irrefutable? What have we
+here? A shattered, imperfect brain-case, part of the mandible and
+a canine tooth. Keith says that Sir Arthur Smith Woodward rightly
+recognized that the skull and jaw were part of the same individual.
+Then how do Waterson and Miller say that the jaw is a chimpanzee’s and
+does not belong to that skull? and Hrdlička that it is human, but again
+does not belong to that skull? and Ray Lankester, who wrote to one, H.
+G. Wells: “I think we are stumped, baffled?”
+
+And so on, until we have Keith repeating with approval the words of G.
+Elliot Smith, “The difference between the human and the ape brain is
+only quantitative.”
+
+And Le Buffe responding: “Then why did Dr. Arthur S. Woodward say ‘We
+cannot of course go by the size, for the Neanderthal man has a larger
+brain cavity than some of us at the present day. It is quality not
+quantity that counts’? That is surely true, we hope, as the heaviest
+brain ever found (weight, 2850 grammes) was that of an epileptic idiot.”
+
+Here is a true picture of the state of modern science as it relates to
+man--a few disputed bones and any quantity of disputed conjectures.
+Keith’s picture is obviously false. He should visit the excavations at
+Glozel, France, where the findings are declared by some savants, “_du
+mérite le plus incontesté_,” to be of the “_époque néolithique_”; and
+by other savants, “_dont les travaux font authorité dans le monde_,” to
+pertain not to the neolithic but to the “_époque néo-fumiste_.”
+
+But what if someone were actually to find the missing link? It would
+be merely a skeleton intermediate between that of ape and man. It
+would prove nothing; settle nothing. What is needed is the spectacle
+of a female monkey in the act of giving birth to a human child; and as
+nobody claims that well-bred monkeys do that sort of thing nowadays,
+the prospect is not hopeful.
+
+Yet Albert Edward Wiggam says in “The New Decalogue of Science”[113]
+that the “Darwinian generalization,” after a “battle with entrenched
+opinion, authority, prejudice and vested interests, has at last
+received the universal assent of practically all educated men.”
+
+I do not see how a “universal assent” can include “practically all,”
+if by that is meant anything different from simply all. But this is
+tabloid, pre-digested science, with the hulls of opposing opinion
+carefully removed. The implication is that non-Darwinians, however
+eminent, are _ipso facto_, ignorant. Those who do not feel themselves
+properly brow-beaten must have thicker skulls than _Pithecanthropus
+erectus_. But I think Mr. Wiggam is here showing a variation from the
+paramecium of very doubtful survival-value.
+
+Since Darwin many efforts have been made to improve his theory by
+supplementing it with others. Hugo DeVries, for example, believed
+that he had solved the problem of the survival of variations which
+need to be complete before they can be useful. He discovered a bank
+of evening primroses on an English hillside which seemed to be in the
+very act of producing new species--not by degrees but all at once. It
+was announced throughout the world that organic evolution had proved
+itself experimentally, though not along Darwinian lines. The variations
+here were too marked to be called variations, so they were called
+“mutations.”
+
+But the primroses were but hybrids, and what had been seen was not
+the evolution of new species but the action of the law of mixed
+heredity long before formulated by Mendel. The new species were only
+throw-backs, revealing hereditary traits which had been latent in their
+immediate ancestors, as when a boy resembles not his father but his
+grandfather.
+
+More recently a school of biologists has risen whose members call
+themselves “Emergent Evolutionists.” According to their idea, the
+finger of God occasionally “emerges” so plainly that man can see it.
+Here again we have the idea of sudden mutations, where the ordinary
+course of events seems at certain points to be broken by the impulse of
+a higher law--as when life, sensation, reason, or man first appeared.
+Alfred Russell Wallace, Darwin’s co-discoverer of the “law” of Natural
+Selection, laid the foundation for this conception as long ago as 1889.
+More recently men like Lloyd Morgan; General Smuts; Herbert Spencer
+Jennings, of Johns Hopkins University; Sir Bertram C. A. Windel,
+professor of anthropology in Saint Michael’s College, Toronto, and many
+others, have sought to give Emergency its place among the recognized
+hypotheses of science.
+
+But, as far as I am aware, it has never yet been completely stated,
+nor any logical reason given why the emergence at one point in the
+evolutionary scale differs except in degree from the emergence of any
+event, even the most trifling. Once we accept the belief that matter
+is a mere instrument in the hands of something which is not matter,
+it seems necessary to regard all phenomena as the emergence either of
+the direct power of God or of the will of some creature to whom has
+been delegated a limited freedom. If this be the underlying idea, then
+a special emergence might be defined as one of so marked and rare an
+importance that it stands out from every day happenings, forming part
+of a broader rhythm whose beat is apparent only when all the great
+emergences of which we have evidence are taken together. Or it may go
+even beyond this, and stand as an event unique in man’s experience,
+constituting what we call a miracle.
+
+The advantage of the theory of emergent evolution is that it furnishes
+the evolutionary process with a power capable of bringing it about,
+while the idea of matter evolving itself implies a universe trying to
+lift itself by its bootstraps. It also removes the difficulties of time
+(of which there is never enough for thoroughgoing Darwinians) and of
+finding survival value for half-developed mechanisms.
+
+“_Bien des choses s’expliqueraient si nous pouvions connaître notre
+genéalogie véritable_,” wrote Flaubert--much more wisely than he knew.
+Perhaps not only many things but nearly everything will be explained
+from the moment our true genealogy is recognized. But it must be our
+true genealogy, not a part of it. Emergent Evolution permits us to have
+our place in the natural order, and yet remain children of God. The
+soul may be the greatest--or next to the greatest--emergence of all.
+
+Is it such a distressing idea? That should not trouble the realists,
+for they notoriously attribute reality to things in proportion to the
+amount of unpleasant odor which things exhale. Thus they unite with the
+Hindus in considering life a curse. Matter taken by itself certainly
+is either painful or boresome, and if one wishes to stop with the half
+and consider only matter as real, I know of no way in which one may
+logically escape despair.
+
+The trouble with the idea, then, is that it is not distressing. The
+moment we agree that something more divine may emerge through matter,
+or at least thrust up beneath it till matter rises here and there to
+a glorious psychic mountain peak (“emergence” is not quite the right
+word, for there still remains the material covering)--from that moment
+even evolution loses its repellent features. From that moment the
+greatest thinkers of all the ages are on our side--which is sometimes
+a comfort. We develop a strange capacity for happiness. Is this an
+evidence that we are fools?
+
+“_Le malheur_,” says Paul Bourget in “_L’étape_,” “_démontre l’idée
+fausse, comme la maladie la mauvaise hygiène._”[114]
+
+That probably is not conclusive reasoning if you are not convinced
+beforehand. But why is happiness any more apt to be the result of
+illusion than is misery? We do not say that the best body is the one
+which suffers the most pain. Have not the pessimistic philosophers
+accustomed us to some strange and monstrous inversion of thought?
+
+Let emergence, then, have its way. We are no longer contained in our
+physical ancestors. The man is not even contained in the child. We
+change from day to day. There is a continuity, yet it is added to--or
+subtracted from. The soul accepts this and rejects that.
+
+So Psyche rebuilds her house, continually tearing it down and
+reconstructing it. Sometimes the lighting system gets out of order.
+Fuses blow out--and we say she is mad. Sometimes the house falls, or
+burns, or succumbs to a flood--and we say she is dead. And from the
+dead house some conclude a dead Psyche, or that there never was a
+Psyche--which is like concluding that, if the telephone line goes dead,
+it proves that there never was anybody talking at the other end except
+the batteries and the wires.
+
+No; monkeys are not people, no matter what kind of children they may
+have had. Nor are people monkeys--not to the extent which Mr. Wiggam
+seems to suppose.
+
+
+2. BURBANKING THE HUMAN RACE
+
+The effect of Darwinism has been to popularize an exaggerated idea of
+the importance of heredity. Darwin, of course, depended quite as much
+upon environment to select his variations as he did upon heredity to
+hand them down. But it is from Herbert Spencer, not Darwin, that most
+people have acquired their Darwinism, and it so happens that Spencer
+was not primarily a Darwinian but a Lamarckian. “The Origin of Species”
+was not published until Spencer was a middle-aged man.
+
+Therefore an immense amount of confusion has arisen in the minds of
+amateur biologists, and a tendency to believe in heredity as the
+destiny which shapes our ends. Hence the Eugenists. Hence this Mr.
+Albert Edward Wiggam, already referred to.
+
+The idea of dominant heredity is flattering to parents, who like
+to think that they live again in their children; who are unwilling
+to grant that children have souls of their own. It pleases those
+scientists who still hope to prove that acquired characters are handed
+down. It pleases determinists, who see here another way of making us
+slaves to something. It pleases those naturalists, who have acquired
+their ideas of man from the study of animals, plants and insects.
+And as animals, plants and insects form the readiest subject for
+experiment, it pleases materialistic biologists in general.
+
+But reasoning from lower forms of life to higher is reasoning by false
+analogy. Luther Burbank, a great artist with plants, worked wonders in
+his garden; and in his book, “The Harvest of the Years,” he expresses
+the regret that his methods could not at once be applied to human
+beings. But Burbank was not a scientist, not a thinker, but merely
+a super-gardener, incapable even of keeping an accurate account of
+his innumerable experiments. So it is not remarkable that he failed
+to realize that when we say what is sauce for the goose is sauce for
+the gander we are speaking of beings of the same order, while man and
+plants are not of the same order.
+
+If heredity be dominant in the garden, it does not follow that it is
+dominant even in the menagerie, let alone in the street. Conclusions
+arrived at in the study of insects are not necessarily true of Indians.
+Indeed, there is every reason to believe that man, because of his long
+period of infancy, is much less determined by heredity than is any
+other form of life. This in itself knocks the foundation from under
+nine tenths of the arguments we hear upon the subject.
+
+Even profound changes in the body may be produced by (or with the aid
+of) environment. The third generation of immigrants to America are said
+to have higher cheek-bones--that is, to be more like redmen--than the
+immigrants themselves. The discovery of the functions of the ductless
+glands shows how food, or the manner of life, may be at work in cases
+where germ-plasm used to get all the credit. The notion that heredity
+is destiny has altogether broken down.
+
+[Illustration: ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM
+
+The Devil take the hindmost!]
+
+Says Professor Herbert S. Jennings, of Johns Hopkins, in an article
+entitled “Heredity and Environment” in the _Scientific Monthly_ for
+September, 1924: “Clearly it is not necessary to have a characteristic
+merely because one inherits it. Or more properly, characteristics are
+not inherited at all; what one inherits is certain material that under
+certain conditions will produce a particular characteristic; if those
+conditions are not supplied, some other characteristic is produced.”
+Thus heredity becomes a mere capacity--and that we do inherit certain
+capacities need not be denied.
+
+The fundamental laws of heredity were first made known in 1866,
+when Gregor Mendel, a monk of the Augustinian order, read his now
+world-famous paper upon heredity in plants before the Naturalists’
+Society of the little town of Brünn, in Moravia. He had made more
+than 10,000 observations upon the peas growing in the garden of his
+monastery--wonderful observations. Their results, too complicated
+to be fully described here, may be sufficiently summarized in a few
+words--and in order that there may be no mistake, I shall take the
+words from Mr. Wiggam himself,[115] omitting only his running comment:
+
+“If you cross tall peas with dwarf peas the offspring will be as tall
+as the parents. The dwarfness has completely vanished. If you cross
+these tall offspring back with a dwarf, one-half of the offspring
+of this cross will be dwarfs and one-half will be talls. However,
+instead of crossing the talls back with dwarfs, if you place capsules
+over their blossoms so they will not get crossed, and then sow their
+seeds, one-fourth--not one-half--of their seeds will come up dwarf and
+three-fourths will come up tall.”
+
+In this case, tallness, because it supercedes dwarfness in the first
+generation, is called a “dominant” trait, and dwarfness, because
+it disappears, is called a “recessive” trait. As Wiggam correctly
+says,[116] the fundamental principle is that “the units contributed by
+two parents separate in the offspring without having had any influence
+on each other,” or practically none. A trait either shows in the
+offspring, or it does not show. And where the inheritance is hybrid,
+the reappearance or disappearance of traits may be calculated, given a
+sufficient number of instances, by application of the law of greatest
+probability.
+
+Everybody knows that one may inherit a Roman nose from a grandfather
+even though one’s father’s was a snub and one’s mother’s retroussé.
+The mathematical implications are amazing. But all that I wish to call
+attention to is the fact that we all are hybrids, and that unless our
+ancestry for many generations back is known to the minutest detail
+it is utterly impossible to calculate the hereditary phenomena to be
+looked for in our children.
+
+Mendel believed in unit characters, but it has been found that unit
+characters, such as blue eyes, are far from being units and are made
+up of an unknown number of smaller units. This greatly increases the
+difficulty of even guessing what hereditary possibilities the children
+of any given couple will receive. Nevertheless, twenty-three states
+have already, at the behest of eugenists, passed laws permitting the
+sterilization of the “unfit” by means of enforced surgical operations.
+And under these laws, 6244 operations have actually been performed--and
+my statistics are of the year 1927 and not complete at that! What is
+the idea? I will let Mr. Wiggam explain.
+
+“The Nordic elements of our population are being forced out by other
+races whose representatives in this country are of distinctly lower
+average mental alertness and of less social coherence and political
+capacity.”[117]
+
+“This race has contributed a vast share of all political wisdom and
+scientific discovery to the modern world. It is probably the one race
+on earth which has steadily advanced in these respects for the past
+several thousand years.”[118]
+
+“Cattell has shown that in America not a single day laborer’s son has
+become a man of scientific distinction. The wholesale rise of the
+masses to power may be the death knell of their biological progress.
+Like a bottle of old wine, which, when uncorked, for a time sparkles
+and fumes with life but soon becomes inert and stale, so it seems that
+men, when freed from oppression for a time, bubble with genius. But
+ambition is sterilized by its own success. Indeed, without biology as
+the basis of social processes, success spells failure and achievement
+brings decay. Like caged animals, those who rise cease to breed.”[119]
+
+“There were one hundred two Pilgrims who came over in the
+_Mayflower_.... No finer stock to found a great national breed of men
+and women ever set out to sea.”[120]
+
+“The genealogy of 12,722 New England wives of the old Colonial stocks.
+In one hundred twenty years their blood has been vanishing from the
+racial stream as follows: 1750-1799, children per family, 6.43 ...
+1870-1879, children per family, 2.77.... There is the story of the
+decline of the old American stock.”[121]
+
+“In 1920 the school-teachers of America who had had any children
+had given birth to 2.2 children per family; the bootblacks had come
+within one-tenth of giving birth to four!... This crude birth rate,
+however, does not measure to the full the relative contributions of
+bootblacks and school-teachers to the citizenship of tomorrow. Nearly
+all bootblacks marry and have children, while scarcely half our
+school-teachers ever marry at all.”[122]
+
+“In this same year, 1920, the lawyers and judges of America who had
+families had 2.2 living children, while janitors and sextons had 3.4;
+authors, editors and reporters had 2.1, workers in stone quarries and
+gravel pits 3.6.”[123]
+
+“Every school child knows that Burbank, Schull, Hanson, Davenport and
+others achieve their triumphs solely by selecting the best specimens
+as parents. Farmers ever since Eden have done the same thing.... But,
+suppose they bred chiefly from their worst! Well, that is precisely
+what America ... is doing.”[124]
+
+There is the situation. School teachers are practicing either celibacy
+or birth-control; bootblacks are not. Janitors and sextons and workers
+in gravel pits are breeding lawyers, editors, authors and reporters off
+the map. The masses are rising, like an uncorked bottle of old wine and
+bubbling with genius. Up till now they have not produced their first
+distinguished man of science, but there is no saying what may happen if
+the bubbling continues. Fecundity is passing from New England wives,
+from the captain’s lady, and descending to Mrs. O’Grady. The radio,
+invented by the “Nordic” Marconi sends out the S.O.S. What is to be
+done?
+
+The remedy is very simple. Castrate as many of the masses as may be
+necessary to enable the biologically “superior” to keep up in the race
+of life with biologically (and socially) “inferior.”
+
+No, Mr. Wiggam does not openly advocate any such crudely frank
+measure. In the first place, the operation is called asexualization,
+and leaves the subject free to uplift the morals of the community
+by sexual activity complete in every detail except the minor one of
+fruitfulness. And in the second, the choice of life-imprisonment is to
+be offered in certain instances to the eugenically condemned.
+
+Who is to do the condemning? And what are the requirements for passing
+the examination?
+
+“Unless you can measure men you cannot select them,” says Mr.
+Wiggam.[125] “It is often said that eugenics is hopeless because it
+does not know what it wants in human nature--it has no ideal. To this
+Dr. Morton Prince of Boston aptly replied: ‘Yes it has; it wants such
+men as William Graham Sumner and William James.’ This certainly sets a
+lofty ideal.... Yet, in all soberness it is doubtful if we want a whole
+race of such men. Men like these would doubtless clean our streets
+and remove our garbage a hundred times better than it is now done,
+but they could not at the same time be teachers, writers, lecturers
+and philosophers, unless perchance a society of such men would be
+so perfect that the street cleaner and philosopher would willingly
+interchange their tasks from hour to hour or from day to day. Pending
+such a possibility, however, eugenics is content with a much less
+but more inclusive ideal, namely, the increase of health, sanity and
+energy.”
+
+This is a little obscure to me. It is difficult to picture William
+James (or Henry, for that matter) as a superlative street-cleaner. But
+the goal of the eugenist seems clear--health, sanity and energy. These
+are excellent things. But as Mr. Wiggam estimates--by what method I do
+not know--that we owe to heredity fully nine-tenths of what we are, it
+would not seem advisable that the name of an invalid should be made to
+perish from the land of the living until we are able to know much more
+than we can as yet possibly know of the quality of the “germ-plasm” we
+are dealing with.
+
+Energy presents another difficulty. The rattlesnake possesses
+considerable energy, and is usually in good health. Chicago’s gunmen
+are energetic enough in all conscience. Obviously the direction of
+energy will have to be taken into consideration. And here again we are
+confronted by the question, Who is to decide what directions are right
+and what directions are wrong?
+
+“Let us,” says Mr. Wiggam,[126] “see to it that those to whom our
+sympathies have extended the privilege of a happy life instead of
+sounding for them the death knell of the jungle, shall not have the
+high biological privilege, which should always run parallel with social
+privilege and always be under social control, namely, the privilege of
+reproduction.”
+
+Never before in the history of the world has the idea of special
+privilege reached such heights as this. Through our “sympathies” we
+have, it appears, extended to certain persons we do not approve of the
+“privilege” of a happy life instead of killing them outright as we
+perhaps should have done. But we are not to allow our sentimentality to
+carry us so far that these persons shall have the further “privilege”
+of reproduction.
+
+In “The Fruit of the Family Tree,”[127] Mr. Wiggam, speaking to women
+voters, says that he does not care to outline for them “any complete
+eugenical program.” Then he continues: “The very nature of the vast
+problems themselves ... indicate what such a program is bound to be.
+As one first plank in her program, most assuredly, the woman voter
+should advocate a survey of the human family.... The pedigree of every
+family in America should be put on record.... These family histories
+would be among the most priceless archives of the nation, for it is
+upon the biological assets of the nation that all truly statesmanlike
+legislation must be based.”
+
+Legislation again! Mr. Wiggam does not favor the Eighteenth
+Amendment--for the curious reason that he believes alcohol dangerous
+to but a small fraction of the population and that indulgence by all
+would tend to exterminate those weaklings who do not carry their liquor
+well--doubly curious reasoning considering the splendid efficiency of
+prohibition liquor as an exterminator. He thinks (as I do, for that
+matter) that Prohibition was a great mistake. Yet he is doing more
+than any other one man in America today to further another prohibition
+movement compared with which Volsteadism is a mere trifle. His books
+sell by the tens of thousands. He has become one of the signs of the
+times. And he wants legislation to make the “privilege” of having
+children run parallel with “social privilege.” Family histories
+doubtless contain much interesting information--they have even been
+known to contain manufactured information. When they become the _sine
+qua non_ of full citizenship the artificial growing of suitable family
+trees will doubtless make bootlegging look like a very minor member of
+our great national industries.
+
+But we begin to see who is to do the choosing.
+
+“Another plank in woman’s eugenic platform should be the establishment
+in every state of a State Board of Heredity and Eugenics. This board
+would work in cooperation with the State University, the Boards of
+Charities and Correction, the State Prison Board, the Department
+of Public Health and indeed with every agency of social uplift and
+advancement. It would have on its staff expert psychologists [Freudians
+or Behaviorists?] biologists and statisticians for the direction of
+measures of public mental hygiene, the mental survey of schools and the
+prescription of minimum mental requirements for marriage.”[128]
+
+And these agencies (with of course the coöperation of the Eugenic
+Society) will measure our health, sanity and energy. The opportunities
+for graft are so staggering that it seems impossible that the more
+energetic among us will rest content till the whole plum is theirs--for
+as yet eugenic legislation applies only to the inmates of public
+institutions, like jails, poor-houses and asylums. Mr. Wiggam has shown
+the way to a mine that ought to be worth a mountain’s weight in solid
+radium.
+
+Under such circumstances it is perhaps idle to ask what is the
+biological warrant for this worship of heredity? We are face to face
+with a political and social, not a scientific, movement.
+
+Yet Mr. Wiggam is a good biologist--at least he is able to quote a
+great deal of good biology. And so long as he confines himself to
+observed facts he is both instructive and interesting. But biology
+mingles with the bread of its facts an intolerable deal of the sack
+of deduction, guessing, theory and surmise. Mr. Wiggam seems to state
+facts merely for the privilege of reveling in subsequent “reasoning.”
+And his reasoning is of such a character that for a long time I mistook
+him merely for one of those sprightly writers from whose mental
+equipment the handicap of logic has been happily left out. But I
+wronged him. There is method in his madness. He wishes, I believe, to
+camouflage the strong meat of his doctrine so that we babes may not too
+abruptly recognize what sort of cuts are being offered us.
+
+Thus he says,[129] “Eugenics is ... not killing off the weaklings. Not
+a scheme for breeding supermen.... Not a scheme for breeding human
+beings like animals.... Not a departure from the soundest ideas of sex
+morals.”
+
+Then what is it?
+
+“Eugenics is a method ordained of God and seated in natural law for
+securing better parents for our children.... Modernizing the definition
+of its great founder, Sir Francis Galton [who was a cousin of Darwin],
+eugenics is the study and guidance of all those agencies that are
+within social control which will improve or impair the inborn qualities
+of future generations.”[130]
+
+“Guidance,” again--i. e. legislation. But the bitter pill has been
+presented in a sugar-coating. And in another place in this same book
+he goes so far as to say, “Had Jesus been among us, he would have been
+president of the First Eugenics Congress.”[131]
+
+If I may be permitted to extend this gratuitous blasphemy so as to
+connect it with facts, I wish to point out that when Christ did live he
+was crucified by precisely the healthiest, sanest and most energetic of
+his contemporaries, measuring these qualities by eugenic standards. A
+bill declaring Him both insane and criminal could unquestionably have
+been put through the Jewish Sanhedrim without a dissenting vote.
+
+What is insanity? The sterilization of the insane is the strongest
+appearing plank in the whole eugenic platform. Yet even here troubling
+questions arise, bidding us stay the knife. And what is crime? For
+eugenists are sterilizing criminals also--and in at least one instance
+the crime was “drunkenness.”
+
+I once wrote to a prominent eugenist in hopes of finding out what makes
+a crime a crime--and I did find out. He told me that the essence of
+crime was non-conformity. He had hit the nail squarely on the head.
+That is the essence of crime exactly, non-obedience to some law. But
+what law? Here my correspondent showed himself to be entirely at sea.
+He could refer to nothing but the statute law momentarily in effect in
+the place where the crime was committed.
+
+Are we to preserve one sort of germ-plasm in California and another in
+Massachusetts? A willingness to conform to any and every statute which
+a legislature anywhere may see fit to pass is certainly a curious test
+of human virtue, of the right to leave an impress on future generations.
+
+As to the nature of insanity, my correspondent was willing to leave
+it to the doctors--more especially as Prof. Lombroso, then quite
+prominent, had lately identified it with genius. Mr. Wiggam has a
+theory of both crime and insanity which at least removes all vagueness
+from the terms. Whose germ-plasm is to be allowed to go on down the
+ages? The germ-plasm of those who have been able to get named in “Who’s
+Who!”
+
+
+3. SALVATION BY WHO’S WHO
+
+I admit that this is an exaggeration--at the present moment. Eugenists
+assure us that they mean to be very temperate. But we know from
+experience how temperate a reform movement is likely to become, once it
+is fairly launched.
+
+In substance, the “Who’s Who” theory of unnatural selection is actually
+developed in a series of articles by Mr. Wiggam reviewing Professor
+Lewis M. Terman’s “Genetic Studies of Genius,” which appeared in _The
+World’s Work_ during 1926. As usual, Mr. Wiggam beguiles us for a
+time with pleasant writing. In this instance it deals with the old
+legend of the poor country-boy and his supposed chance of becoming
+distinguished. A formidable array of statistics is brought out to show
+that it is not much of a chance. The advantage, it seems, all lies with
+city-children--stimulated, as they no doubt are, by breathing the fumes
+of gasoline.
+
+Three per cent of the people (and these belong to the “professional
+classes”) have in America produced nearly one-half of our artists,
+we are told. One third of the population (described as being “above
+early struggles”) have been responsible for three-fourths of America’s
+writers. Something must be the matter. Too much struggle it would
+appear. Writer-bearing strata are to be pampered. Good!
+
+Some, of course, will say that what American literature is waiting for
+is a few more words from the two-thirds of the population who are not
+above early struggles--that even some of our rich and famous authors
+wrote better when they were young and poor. But as I do not know the
+pedigree of these objectors I shall pass them by and follow the Wiggam
+argument as he finds it in Terman.
+
+“Superior intelligence,” says Professor Terman, himself, “is
+approximately five times as common among children of superior social
+status as among children of inferior social status.”
+
+The flaw in the argument here is of course forgetfulness of the fact
+that, whether intelligence descends or not, tradition undoubtedly does.
+This same flaw emasculates the eugenic argument everywhere. It saps
+the force from Mr. Wiggam’s eulogy of the Edwards family in the first
+chapter of “The Fruit of the Family Tree.” He himself admits that in
+Doctor Winship’s study, which he makes the foundation of his own, “the
+factor of heredity has not been completely separated from the factor of
+environment.”[132] And he goes on:
+
+“One can readily imagine that the twelve college presidents that have
+been in the [Edwards] line of descent might not all have been men
+who were really great educators or executives. Some of them may have
+attained the official position by the fact that their relatives may
+have been trustees of the various colleges, and simply voted them into
+office. Yet an immense part of the distinction of the Edwards family,
+beyond question, has been due to their superior natural qualities. We
+know this partly from the great achievements of many of the members;
+and also we know from studies of other families, where the factors of
+heredity and environment have been adequately separated.”
+
+Great achievements? Certainly. But does not family tradition, pride
+and culture play its part in great achievement? Did not Harry Leon
+Wilson’s immortal Bunker Bean do wonders spurred on by the mere
+illusion that he was descended from an Egyptian mummy? And who has
+“adequately separated” the factors of heredity and environment in the
+history of any family? If Freud and Watson have done nothing else, they
+have shown the immense importance of _very early_ training. The technic
+which will separate the effects of blood from those of education and
+example has yet to be devised. And tradition, or the lack of it, must
+be taken into account before we draw conclusions from the history of
+so-called “degenerate” families, the Kallikaks and the Jukses. Who can
+pretend to interpret the heredity of such unfortunates when the very
+point of the whole argument is the fact that they were prostitutes and
+thieves?
+
+Family tradition derives from the inexhaustible springs of human shame
+and human pride. The blood even of the super-man tends to get thin,
+very thin, through successive generations. “Conification” doubtless
+thickens it, for conification is the tendency of like to marry with
+like. Mr. Wiggam advocates cousin-marriages to help conification along.
+Logically he should advocate incest pure and simple. In discussing the
+Pharaohs he does have a good word to say for it, but he warns us that
+it is baneful when practiced by any but the best families.
+
+But one’s chief objection to the eugenist’s argument is its deficiency
+in good faith. Wiggam admits that he has presented only “star cases.”
+What he does not admit is that he has presented them incompletely. Thus
+of Elizabeth Tuthill, first wife of Richard Edwards, the Connecticut
+lawyer who founded the distinguished branch of the Edwards clan, he
+says only[133] that she was “a marvelous girl.” Horatio Haskett
+Newman, professor of Zoology in the University of Chicago, in chapter
+XLIV of his “Evolution, Genetics and Eugenics,”[134] adds the following
+details:
+
+“Elizabeth Tuttle [so he spells the name], grandmother of Jonathan
+Edwards ... is described as ‘a woman of great beauty, of tall and
+commanding appearance, striking carriage, of strong will, extreme
+intellectual vigor and mental grasp akin to rapacity, but with an
+extraordinary deficiency in moral sense.’ She was divorced from her
+husband on the ground of adultery and other immoralities. The evil
+trait was in the blood, for one of her sisters murdered her own son
+and a brother murdered his own sister. Richard Edwards married again
+after his divorce and had five sons and one daughter, but none of their
+numerous progeny rose above mediocrity.”
+
+Mr. Wiggam agrees with this latter estimate, for he says, “Later
+in life Richard Edwards married Mary Talcott. She was an ordinary,
+every-day, commonplace woman. She had ordinary, every-day, commonplace
+children. The splendid heredity of Richard Edwards was swamped by the
+mating.”[135]
+
+So, if the eugenists had been in control three hundred years ago,
+Mary Talcott would have been allowed to marry. But Elizabeth Tuthill
+would have been refused a marriage license even had she escaped a
+worse fate. Crime and insanity seemed to have marked her for their
+own. And yet it was from her, not from the normal Mary Talcott, that
+descended (I quote from “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” page 17):
+“Timothy Edwards, one of the founders of Yale University. He was the
+father of Jonathan Edwards. From Jonathan Edwards, who married also a
+wonderful woman, Sarah Pierpont, have descended 12 college presidents,
+265 college graduates, 65 college professors, 60 physicians, 100
+clergymen, 75 army officers, 60 prominent authors, 100 lawyers, 30
+judges, 80 public officers--state governors, city mayors and state
+officials--3 congressmen, 2 United States senators and 1 vice-president
+of the United States.” And he goes on to mention other notables in this
+line of the family, including Aaron Burr; Mrs. Eli Whitney; Winston
+Churchill; Edith Carow [widow of Theodore Roosevelt and mother of his
+daughter Ethel and of his four sons]; Robert Paine: the Marchioness of
+Donegal; the Fairbanks brothers (of platform-scales fame); Melville W.
+Bigelow; Morrison R. Waite (former Chief Justice of the United States);
+Bishop Vincent (founder of the Chautauqua movement); George Vincent
+(head of the Rockefeller Foundation); Grover Cleveland; and U. S. Grant.
+
+The only thing which Mr. Wiggam omitted was the trifling circumstance
+which shows that The Eugenics Society would, if it could, have
+inadvertently prevented each and every one of these notables from
+coming into being.
+
+Yet he thinks that he has discovered a way of distinguishing between
+the influences of heredity and of environment--when applied to families.
+
+“Environment,” he says,[136] “is important in determining character,
+but precisely how important I doubt very much if we have any means at
+present for determining, when it comes to one individual, whether we
+consider one particular act or the sum total of his character.... I
+doubt if we shall ever be able to determine whether a particular act
+by a particular individual, say whether he takes a drink of alcohol
+... or whether he commits a crime, is due to his heredity or to his
+environment. The causes are so hopelessly intertwined that no one so
+far as I am aware has presented the slightest hope of measuring the
+relative influence of the two forces _within the individual_.... For
+all we know a man may commit a particular crime or take a particular
+drink entirely from environment.... But when it comes to the question
+as to which one of two individuals is the more likely to commit a crime
+at some time in his life or take to excessive drink, we are in reality
+dealing with a different set of scientific problems. And when we come
+to the question as to which family is likely to have more members who,
+in any one age of the world, will be unable to adjust themselves to
+sound social behavior ... we are in a field where we can measure the
+factors involved by fairly exact methods.”
+
+That is to say, we can measure results--after they have happened. It
+may even be granted that we can calculate roughly a family’s likelihood
+of producing distinguished descendants, basing the calculation on past
+performance. But obviously this in no way decides between the relative
+importance of environment and heredity. The question as to whether the
+family’s distinction came from its blood or from its traditions remains
+precisely where it was. Mr. Wiggam’s reasoning is quite of a piece with
+his reliability. He himself exclaims[137] about “the very, very few
+people in the world who can think ... the enormous number of people
+who cannot think, but who think they can think, and who mistake their
+mystical half-knowledge for social wisdom and act upon it.”
+
+What “mystical half-knowledge” may be I do not know. Mystical
+knowledge, being intuitive knowledge of God, is by its very definition
+complete knowledge or nothing. One must accept or reject it _in toto_.
+Mr. Wiggam also uses this word as a term of reproach when[138] he
+says, “Vitalism usually leads its adherents to mysticism.” But he
+declares himself to be no mechanist. “I have no personal objection to
+a purely mechanistic description of the life process itself. I have
+been so far unable to see, however, how stimuli which are inconsistent
+and unrelated can build up consistent and controlled behavior.”[139]
+And he adds: “While I believe biology has triumphantly demonstrated
+the mechanistic nature of the life processes themselves, it has
+hopelessly failed so far to explain to me thought and behavior. I see
+no explanation of this except some sort of dualistic conception ... a
+universe in which there is something which is not aimless mechanical
+force. We can call this substance ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’ or any other
+convenient term.”[140]
+
+This is his perfectly valid objection to Watsonian behaviorism. But he
+does not seem to see that the use of such convenient terms as mind or
+spirit is in its very essence mystical, nor that admitting a mystic
+vitalism puts in his hand a means for freeing himself from the tyranny
+both of environment and heredity. If there be spirit, man may have a
+soul. It may be the choice of this very soul which controls the strange
+selection of traits from the parental “chromosomes,” or carriers of
+heredity, which he so eloquently describes. That this choice follows
+in the long run the law of the greatest probability is what such a
+hypothesis would lead us to expect. Thus Psyche would not only build
+and rebuild her house, but in a measure select her building materials
+from the very start. Mr. Wiggam thinks that the idea of a dominant
+environment flatters parents, just as I think that the idea of a
+dominant heredity flatters them. Perhaps we can both unite in believing
+that the idea of power-owning individual souls in children flatters
+nobody and appeals to something much higher than the instinct of
+self-regard.
+
+According to a statement prepared by Professor Irving Fisher, of
+Yale,[141] the Second International Congress of Eugenics appointed as
+long ago as 1921 a committee (of which he was chairman) to organize
+the eugenics movement in the United States. Since then the movement
+has been competently engineered, its avowed objects being education,
+selective immigration laws, the elimination of defectives, the
+“proper direction of research,” and the securing of legislative and
+administrative aid.
+
+Professor Fisher says, “The Eugenics Society would like to see every
+school, college and Chautauqua give regular courses in eugenics....
+Some laws need to be passed and a eugenical code established.... This
+depends very largely upon education of the legislators.”
+
+So “education” does not mean a campaign for human betterment through
+education. It means a campaign to educate people to vote for human
+betterment through eugenic means--such as “the elimination of
+defectives,” “selective immigration” and “proper” research. “By cutting
+off the defectives,” says Professor Fisher, “the general average of
+our people can ... be raised.” We know without telling, from memories
+of the prohibition campaign, how legislators can be “educated.”
+A “eugenical code” would naturally provide conditions under which
+marriage licenses would be granted. We are dealing here with no chimera
+but with a party with plenty of power, influence and money already at
+its disposal. The question of “who is to choose” seems already to have
+been settled. Further to determine who is to be chosen, we may go back
+for a moment to the “Who’s Who” method.
+
+Dr. Cyril Burke, the English psychologist, devised a problem (described
+by Mr. Wiggam in his review of the Terman volume already referred to)
+which he put before various classes of school children. Slum children
+required an average of 123 seconds to arrive at a solution, while
+merchants’ children took but 91, and “the children of professors
+and bishops” (presumably Anglican bishops) only 74. Nor do I wish
+to conceal the fact that “in the general run of people there is one
+eminent man out of every four thousand,” while “among the sons of
+English judges there is one eminent man out of every eight.” Ought we
+not to import some germ plasm from the British Bench? Anyway, all of
+the famous biologists and psychologists and sociologists upon whose
+findings the Wiggam arguments are based, took their successful men
+either from “Who’s Who,” from some dictionary of biography, or measured
+it frankly in dollars and cents.
+
+It might be suggested that not all desirable human traits are those
+which lead to wealth or conspicuous position. No Lives of the Saints
+are consulted to show the effect of poverty and self-denial upon the
+growth of holiness--holiness, presumably, not being hereditary, perhaps
+not even eugenic. Prof. Terman does say that nearly all gifted children
+come from good homes. But what is a good home? One which tends to
+produce Christians, or Mohammedans, or Methodists, or Christian
+Scientists, or Poets, or Plastic Dancers?
+
+Anyway, under democracy, according to Mr. Wiggam, the poor are being
+bled white and ever whiter through the opportunity given to the best
+of them to mount the ladder to something better still, leaving the
+residua to their poverty and shame. “Nothing on earth,” he says in the
+course of the _World’s Work_ articles, “would improve the condition
+of the poor as much or so permanently as decreasing their numbers....
+Just in so far as democracy works successfully in giving the masses
+opportunity, it defeats its own end, biologically.... Democracy and
+liberalism will fail and plunge men back into a social and intellectual
+Dark Ages unless they have the will and vision to provide a constant
+and adequate eugenical remedy for the biological disaster brought about
+by their own success.”
+
+And in “The New Decalogue” (G. Stanley Hall says “one lays it down with
+the feeling that biology is the basis of a new decalogue as important
+and as authentic as the old one.”): “Your wise men are searching for
+a cure for tuberculosis, insanity, etc.... Should they find such
+a panacea ... every biologist would apply it without a moment’s
+hesitation. But if you apply that panacea and do nothing else you will
+wreck the very race you have saved.”[142]
+
+What else must we do, then? It appears that we must first make the
+environment hard, so as to kill off the unfit, and then make it easy
+for the survivors. Do you get the point? And it is going to be made
+selectively difficult for those not approved of by the Eugenics
+Society. An easy environment is safe only for those who have passed
+their examinations.[143]
+
+Mr. Wiggam is planning for an army in which all are generals. Poverty,
+inconspicuousness, slummishness, are relative terms. No sooner have
+you eliminated one grade than you are logically bound to eliminate
+another. There will remain no hewers of wood and drawers of water--as
+if the world could exist for a day deprived of these blessed and humble
+“failures.” But in the eugenic utopia no more shall it be said, “if one
+cannot paint, one must grind the colors.” All must paint, or become as
+the barren fig-tree.
+
+But if the poor are to be eliminated, why not the recalcitrant? Why
+not those, who, in the old phrase of Grover Cleveland, show “offensive
+partisanship”--for some cause not approved of by the ruling party?
+Granted the principle, why should Protestants tolerate Catholics? Or
+Baptists Presbyterians? Or Old-School Baptists New-School Baptists?
+Why, even, should Professor Terman and Mr. Wiggam tolerate J. B.
+Eggen, who has written, “The long-standing problem of heredity
+versus environment has been solved in favor of environment?” Or, for
+that matter, Professor Terman Mr. Wiggam himself? If we are to have
+uniformity of this sort, let us have it. Let there be a driving from
+life’s stage of those who would presume to raise any chickens but
+Plymouth Rocks, and may the devil take the hindmost.
+
+Personally, I have nothing to fear. I am myself descended from our
+early English settlers--though, as I watch the antics of some of my
+remote cousins, I sometimes am anything but proud of the fact. Nor do I
+like to think that my blood shall flow down through the generations by
+any “privilege” granted by Mr. Wiggam and his ilk.
+
+He speaks of sanity as a test for survival, and then speaks of “the
+kind of peace that came to Nietzsche, bravest soul since Jesus.”[144]
+Does he not know that the only peace that ever came to Nietzsche was
+the peace of final mental decay? And what does he mean when he dares
+to exclaim:[145] “Oh, for a Socrates, a Seneca, a Pasteur, a Huxley,
+a Nietzsche, a Jesus in every nursery and school-room?” A Nietzsche
+and a Jesus! Has Mr. Wiggam never heard of that scourge of small cords
+which was once used upon the backs of those who sought to make of the
+Father’s house a den of thieves?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[106] _Vide_ “The Descent of Man,” second edition, Collier and Son,
+1905, vol. I, p. 205.
+
+[107] “The Descent of Man,” p. 780.
+
+[108] “The New Decalogue of Science,” p. 18.
+
+[109] “The Story of Philosophy,” p. 506.
+
+[110] _Vide_ the appendix, pp. 115 to 117.
+
+[111] _Vide_ _America_, September, 17, 1927.
+
+[112] Cf. _Journal of the American Association_, April 22, 1922.
+
+[113] “The New Decalogue of Science,” p. 91.
+
+[114] “Unhappiness indicates wrong thinking, just as ill health a bad
+regimen.”
+
+[115] “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” pp. 22 and 23.
+
+[116] _Op. cit._, p. 30.
+
+[117] “The New Decalogue of Science,” by Albert Edward Wiggam, p. 35.
+
+[118] _Loc. cit._
+
+[119] _Op. cit._, p. 38.
+
+[120] _Ibid._, p. 179.
+
+[121] _Ibid._, p. 180.
+
+[122] “The New Decalogue of Science,” p. 172.
+
+[123] _Ibid._, p. 173.
+
+[124] _Ibid._, p. 173.
+
+[125] _Op. cit._, p. 136.
+
+[126] “The Next Age of Man,” p. 126.
+
+[127] “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” p. 300.
+
+[128] “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” p. 301.
+
+[129] “The New Decalogue of Science,” p. 100.
+
+[130] _Ibid._, pp. 100-101.
+
+[131] _Ibid._, p. 110.
+
+[132] “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” p. 20.
+
+[133] _Ibid._, p. 16.
+
+[134] Page 602. He is quoting in substance from “Human Conservation
+from Genetics,” by Herbert E. Walter.
+
+[135] “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” pp. 16-17.
+
+[136] “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” pp. 332-333.
+
+[137] “The New Decalogue of Science,” p. 275.
+
+[138] “The Next Age of Man,” p. 133.
+
+[139] _Ibid._, p. 132.
+
+[140] _Ibid._, p. 134.
+
+[141] _Vide_ “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” appendix.
+
+[142] “The New Decalogue of Science,” p. 68.
+
+[143] See “A parable of Wheat and Men,” “The Next Age of Man,” p. 21.
+
+[144] “New Decalogue of Science,” p. 253.
+
+[145] _Ibid._, p. 278.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THIS UNBELIEVING WORLD
+
+
+1. DORSEY
+
+We have now to consider some of our minor misbehaviorists, and may
+as well begin with George A. Dorsey, Ph.D., former Professor of
+Anthropology at the University of Chicago, and author of “Why We Behave
+Like Human Beings.”
+
+I would hate to be asked to analyze this book or to reduce its contents
+to an understandable outline. No matter what philosophy I attributed
+to it, I could be flatly contradicted by quotations from the book
+itself. Thus in one place he says, “Biologically, rape and the theft
+of a loaf of bread are natural behavior; celibacy and asceticism are
+crimes against nature.” And in another place he describes the courtship
+habits of various mammalia, showing that rape at least is by no means
+biologically natural even among the lower animals. The author is an
+eclectic, wandering freely through the pages of Darwin, Bergson, Dr.
+Watson and many others, picking and choosing what for the moment
+pleases his fancy, untroubled by the clashing of the various views
+which his staccato style records.
+
+Dorsey, though he says nothing new, constructs a curious puzzle of
+inconsistencies, but Dr. Watson, I think, is the key. He even says
+that Dr. Watson read the last two chapters prior to their publication,
+which sounds like a claim that the great behaviorist approved of them.
+It would seem that he did not read them very carefully. Nevertheless,
+though marked by the bar-sinister, “Why We Behave Like Human Beings” is
+clearly a Watsonian child.
+
+It begins, as do so many of our “thoughtful” books, with anatomy,
+physiology, biology, a long history of the lower forms of life, of the
+protozoa and the amœba and their kin, of the physical details of the
+human body, in embryo and out of it. The public thirst for facts of
+this sort is too great not to be taken advantage of by all who have
+psychological or philosophical axes to grind.
+
+And having posed his facts, and duly mixed them with alleged facts, he
+proceeds in the time-honored manner to attribute to his own inferences
+the authority due only to the facts themselves. He also makes large
+use of the custom of speaking of alleged “mechanisms” in metaphorical
+terms, personifying them and thus making them “go” with an energy which
+they are not supposed to possess. Thus he lends a vividness as of life
+to what is in reality a picture of death. And having denied God in
+substance, he does not forget now and then to fling Him a kind word.
+
+Man, we have been told, cannot by taking thought add a single cubit to
+his stature. Other creatures seem to be more fortunate, for we learn on
+page 66 that “some Primates experimented in fingers.” And on this same
+page “a lemur lost his second finger.” No, he did not advertise. He
+lost it on purpose, the way Freud lost the book his wife gave him when
+he was vexed at her. But in this case the object was to “give the thumb
+more grasping space.” And “some tried claws instead of nails.”
+
+Thus are evolutionary processes given aims and wills of their own. As a
+mode of literary expression it would, of course, be proper enough did
+it not serve to smuggle into the argument a multitude of those vital
+things which the makers of such arguments are forever pretending to
+exclude. Could primates really “experiment” with their fingers the way
+a Curie can experiment with pitchblend, choosing, rejecting, moulding
+the very substance of themselves in accordance with some “purpose,”
+Darwin need not have troubled himself trying to discover how species
+originated. We would all know.
+
+What Dorsey really feels behind his smoke-screen of rhetoric can be
+seen on page XIII of his Preface, where he says:
+
+“As philosophy was moonshine before it began to investigate the
+elementary properties of matter and energy, so, I suspect, religion
+will be subject to quackery and hypocrisy until humanity itself becomes
+more human than human nature and religion itself ceases worrying
+about heaven and hell and devotes its energies to making this earth a
+paradise.”
+
+That is, when religion ceases to deal with the supernatural it will
+cease to be subject to quackery and hypocrisy. Very likely. It would be
+difficult for either hypocrisy or quackery to attach itself to anything
+which had ceased to exist. How, then, is this earthly paradise to be
+brought about? Dorsey does not tell us in so many words. But he says
+that we may soon hope for the discovery of a method whereby the several
+hundred ova of the human female may be removed and fertilized outside
+of the body.
+
+This method is already employed with fish in the modern hatchery.
+Its advantages are obvious. In the first place, we could almost do
+away with the necessity of raising males, or at least could let the
+surgeon see to it that few of them remained males. This would solve a
+great many social problems and release a lot of energy for industrial
+employment. As it is, millions of spermatozoa go to waste in every
+man. Also, the females, having furnished the ova, would no longer be
+females in any troublesome sense of the word. More saving. Nor should
+it be difficult to induce the Eugenics Society to superintend the
+whole business. Of course some will object that this is not a picture
+of a terrestrial paradise, that it looks more like some particularly
+repulsive corner of Hell which Dante forgot or forbore to describe.
+But such malcontents can be dealt with by removing their germ-plasm
+from the stream of our national life and refusing it a place in the
+government hatcheries. Progress of this sort need not be suffered to
+halt on account of the existence of a few persons not socially minded.
+
+But how about philosophy? It was moonshine until it began to
+investigate the elementary properties of matter and energy, and
+elementary properties are ultimate properties. And religion will be
+subject to quackery and hypocrisy until it ceases worrying about
+ultimate properties and busies itself with making earth a paradise. So
+moonshine mixed with quackery and hypocrisy is the substance of those
+movements having other than a narrow, earthly aim. No coins are liable
+to be counterfeited save those which are honored at some bank outside
+of our humdrum sphere. And as science is supposed to be matter of fact
+and practical, quack scientists become unthinkable.
+
+When, however, was it that philosophy left off being moonshine? It must
+have been some time ago, for even the ancient Greeks--to say nothing
+of the Hindus and Chinese--were eager to investigate the elementary
+properties of matter and energy. As they were in the habit of keeping
+their science a secret from the common man, we do not know how much
+science they had. But it is evident from their philosophy that they
+were always thinking about matter and energy. Their conclusions may
+sound quaint--though not quite so quaint today as a half-century
+ago--but it is certain that moonshine was largely mixed with
+observation until modern metaphysics, predominantly German, took the
+field. I cannot stop to prove this, but I refer Mr. Dorsey to any Story
+of Philosophy, even Will Durant’s. I also recommend that he read some
+good history of science, for he says on page 86: “Science knows nothing
+of the ultimate origin of the source of energy; it only accepts both
+facts [what facts?] and goes on with its business of trying to find out
+what matter is and what energy can do. In other words, the problem of
+the origin of life is locked up in the origin of matter and of energy.”
+
+One often hears this allegation--that science goes on with its own
+business, leaving the problem of ultimate origin aside. Yet every major
+hypothesis which science has ever constructed is an attempt to account
+for this very ultimate origin--or primal origin, if you prefer. It
+could not be otherwise. How could science try “to find out what matter
+is” without at the same time trying to find out how matter originated?
+Neither matter nor energy is a fact, isolated and handed out on a plate
+for human use. Science must needs attempt to discover the nature of
+that with which it works. And the only way to explain a fact, let alone
+acquiring the power of producing phenomena at will, is by discovering a
+preceding or accompanying fact.
+
+If we find the dead body of a man in the kitchen, and then find a knife
+sticking into his heart, the knife helps to explain the dead body.
+A bloody finger-print of the cook’s thumb helps further. If we then
+learn that the dead man had been the cook’s lover and that he had been
+flirting with the second-parlor maid, we have taken another step. But
+if we want to know how to prevent such incidents (or to bring them
+about, if that be our aim) we must go on and learn “Why We Behave Like
+Human Beings.” The very title of Mr. Dorsey’s book shows it to be a
+search for the ultimate. Does he wish us to understand that it is
+therefore unscientific moonshine?
+
+But let him proceed with his personifications. “Nature,” he says,[146]
+“can mean anything.” Whether he is referring to the word “nature” or to
+the sum of things commonly called “nature” I do not know. When we were
+talking of primates, the thing nature appeared to mean a great deal,
+since it could experiment with fingers and weigh nails in the balance
+against claws. Or was the primate an independent experimenter, and not
+a part of nature? Dorsey goes on by speaking of a certain development
+as being “an amazing tribute to the persistence of nature,” and of a
+time when “nature” began to branch out on “new lines.” Clearly nature
+here is something with will, force and purpose.
+
+He writes also of “the vertebrate idea,” as if it were an idea
+possessed by some backbone--in the days, too, when the only backbone in
+the world was a thread-like notochord, such as that of the amphioxus.
+So the idea was originally the notochord’s!
+
+But through all this verbal debris something seems to shine like a
+skeleton through the dark, which it is not difficult to recognize as
+the _élan vital_ of Bergson--that God which nothing developed out of
+nothing, which _inheres_ in things of an origin as tenuous as its own
+and is determined to go somewhere but is by no means certain where--nor
+can the imagination of man picture how.
+
+The motion pictures have accustomed us to demand a continuous stream
+of action, of facts or of what look like facts. Nothing but motion
+seems any longer to interest us. Probably we have fallen into the habit
+of ignoring all comment which may be made upon it. The danger is that
+the comment nevertheless may impress us, reaching our minds when our
+intelligence is off its guard, so that we end by mistaking comment for
+something else. We remember that we came upon it in company with facts;
+and are not conclusions, like men, to be judged by the company they
+keep?
+
+Unfortunately, facts cannot choose their company, and may be mustered
+in to screen the nakedness of any theory whatsoever. To discover
+the _non-sequitur_, the disharmony between the facts and their evil
+companions, requires mental effort--and against mental effort, also,
+the movie has somewhat prejudiced us.
+
+However, it does not require much mental effort to sift fact from fancy
+in Dorsey. “The drive for a mate,” he assures us,[147] “is backed by
+a sensori-motor mechanism which functions till the mate is secured.”
+But everybody knows that the mechanism in question does not continue
+to function until a mate is secured; lacking a mate (to say nothing of
+the possibility of sublimation), its force will eventually be drained
+away through other channels. He himself admits this a few lines later
+on. But first he must say (on this same page) that “the mate-impulse is
+driven by an unconscious mechanism, and not by any desire of offspring.”
+
+Let it be granted that sex will function without desire of
+offspring--even in the face of a deadly dread of offspring. If it
+were not so, contraceptive methods would hardly have been invented to
+sterilize the sexual act. But how about this precious “mechanism”
+being unconscious? Does he mean that the mechanism itself is
+unconscious? Or that it acts without our being conscious of it? He
+leaves us in the dark, and we are driven to seek such light as our
+own experience may supply. And why does he leave us in the dark?
+Because, regarding us as mechanisms, he sees no difference between
+unconsciousness in ourselves and unconsciousness in the sex-glands and
+their accompanying organs!
+
+So he leaves us with the biologically natural raper who is unconscious
+of his rapacity, or whose body is ignorant of its biological
+naturalness. We may take our choice of interpretations. To say that
+the knife is ignorant of the murder committed with it, and to say
+that the murderer is ignorant of the murder he commits with the
+knife, is therefore saying one and the same thing. Both knife and
+murderer are mechanisms. And so, it is to be hoped, is the murdered
+one. Unconsciousness on his part would certainly help murder to fall
+unnoticed into the procession of the biologically natural.
+
+And now we turn to page 434 and learn that “as one calls the roll of
+the men who have rendered useful social service, one is impressed by
+the notion that most of them have succeeded not because but in spite of
+their training.” Here is the behaviorist, who calls in Dr. Watson to
+read his manuscript, delivering us suddenly hand and foot over to the
+hereditarians, to the eugenists--whom on other pages he professes to
+abhor. For it is utterly impossible to suppose that Dorsey means that
+the great succeed in spite of all circumstances through exercise of
+individual will inherited from nobody, and all their own.
+
+Then, two pages further on, we come to the eternal question of woman’s
+sphere. “Freedom of movement is soon limited for girls. Some learn to
+skip the rope and play jackstones only under parental frowns.... And as
+for climbing trees, playing marbles, going off swimming, who ever heard
+of such a thing!”
+
+I turn at once to the date line at the end of the preface, and learn
+with astonishment that it reads, “New York City, June 1, 1925.” So New
+York parents are frowning--at least some of them are--when their girls
+skip the rope or play jackstones. Or were in 1925. What changes must
+recently have taken place, or how the newspapers of the world must
+have lied about New York! But anyway, this looks like a whole-souled
+endorsement of the more modern way of bringing up girls and a
+condemnation of the ultra-conservatism of New York--unless Dorsey was
+thinking of the girls of Thibet and forgot to mention it.
+
+He is still modern on page 439, where he says: “It is psychologically
+significant that children of both sexes are born with erogenous
+zones.... The sex-mechanism is inherently perfect at birth. The
+[interior] impulse for a mate appears later, at puberty. But the
+mechanism itself is so built into our structure that inaction is
+biologically abnormal. Yet we speak of ‘control’; and dose youth with
+endless formulæ.”
+
+Let us, then, cease to speak of control--at least long enough to
+enquire into the meaning of these Dorsey adjectives. Here we have
+“psychologically” significant, and “biologically” abnormal, with the
+adverb “inherently” attached to the word perfect. (I also note, on page
+103, that, “biologically,” immortality is a figure of speech.)
+
+Does he mean that the erogenous zones are insignificant when viewed,
+say, from a social rather than a psychological standpoint? Does he mean
+to admit that their inaction is normal if we could once get away from
+whatever is implied by this ubiquitous biology of his? And who is to
+guess what is meant by a perfection which inheres in anything at birth?
+
+To inhere, I believe, means to be fixed or to exist in something else;
+to be an essential part of; to be innate. At least my dictionary
+says it does. Now what is a perfection which inheres in a just-born
+erogenous zone? Does it mean that the zone is born ready to perform
+all its functions? But this is contrary to notorious fact. Or is the
+zone born imperfect, and permitted to use its inherent perfection
+only later? But we have just been told that inaction is biologically
+abnormal. If any meaning is to be supposed to inhere in words, Dorsey
+must here be trying to tell us that between the time of birth and the
+time of puberty, the erogenous zones should not be subjected to the
+biologically abnormal condition of inactivity.
+
+And yet, on this same page, he continues: “What happens to the
+sex-response mechanism between birth and marriageable age? Biologically
+nothing; nothing is expected of it.” That is to say, biologically
+speaking, nothing is expected of the erogenous zones before puberty
+except that they shall endure the biologically abnormal condition of
+inaction. But perhaps “biologically nothing” means just nothing, and
+perhaps just nothing is the meaning of the whole passage. Let us hope
+so.
+
+“Raise the standard of man’s morality!” he next admonishes us--we are
+now at pages 443 and 444. “But not by talk. Work will do it. Many a
+boy is so hard at work he has no further energy left. His sex-impulse
+is expended in life impulse activities.” Admirable! This is evidently
+biologically abnormal and in complete contradiction with what has gone
+before, but it is nevertheless good sense and capital ethics.
+
+“Girls begin to find outlets for their energy in action, in sports
+and games, and in the broader affairs of life interests.” Admirable
+again. But what has become of the frowns of their jackstone-hating
+parents? And the next line reads: “All-night dances can dissipate a
+lot of energy for both sexes.” Readers who doubt the existence of this
+line are referred to the book, page 444. The all-night dance has at
+last found its place among the means recommended for curbing sexual
+precocity.
+
+We skip a dozen pages, and read: “Until recently it was a woman-made
+world we lived in. The wife-mother was the center of the home.” This
+is refreshing. We have heard it so often said that until recently,
+when universal suffrage came to the rescue, this was a man-made world.
+Dorsey lays the blame on women, which is at least a change. But how
+came woman to make the world when it was the home and not the world
+which she was the center of? Be that as it may, “it was her interest to
+make [the home] a real center. It became a hive of industry and a swarm
+of children.” It certainly did. And we are back boosting the good old
+times again. Nor are they quite over yet, for “women generally married
+for love, as they do now if their mate-hunger is unimpaired.”
+
+That flicker of partiality for sports and games for girls seems to have
+died out. Dorsey returns to conservatism. And the argument proceeds:
+“Now women have their ‘rights.’ In obtaining ‘rights’ she abdicated
+a throne: she no longer rules by divine right. The children that
+‘bless the home’ are turned over to the nurse while mother presides at
+bridge.... All this, of course makes for ‘progress.’ But in our social
+progress we have acquired special schools where boys may learn to be
+pimps and girls to be prostitutes.”
+
+This seems to me a little severe. But at least we are sure of Dorsey
+now. Girls used to be restrained, and he favors restraint. “Social
+conditions are changing, but the average American girl still approaches
+her majority fitted for no economically independent career. Brought up
+as a social parasite, it is her belief and the all-around understanding
+that marriage is her career.”
+
+What does this mean? That marriage was a girl’s career was the
+all-around understanding in the days when the wife-mother was the
+center of a home that was a hive of industry and a swarm of children.
+And now we are asked to believe that girls still brought up with such
+ideas are social parasites. Was woman a parasite when she occupied the
+throne which some now have abdicated? This argument has gone insane.
+Girls must be brought up as social parasites or sent to schools for
+prostitutes. Are we in a woman-made world now, or in a man-made world?
+I confess that I do not know where we are. But I read on: “Many a
+mother nearly ‘dies of shame’ when Mamie bobs her hair and marches off
+in the garb of a girl scout. ‘Girls didn’t do such outlandish things
+in my day!’ They did not.” The jackstone-hating mother thus comes once
+more to the fore, and she believes that her girls are going to the
+devil in boy scout’s clothes with bobbed hair to the old swimming-hole.
+I hope those schools for prostitutes are not hard by.
+
+The girls, too, come in for their meed of shame. For after saying
+harsh things of Freud, Dorsey first writes, “It is natural for the
+boy to pattern his reactions towards his mother after his father; for
+the girl to prefer her father,”--which seems to have been taken from
+The Complete Freudian--and then clenches the matter by adding: “These
+innocent tendencies may be shamed into permanent attachments, making
+it difficult for the boy or girl later to make perfect substitutions.”
+
+Did Dr. Watson really read this chapter (it is the last in the book)
+and pass without remark the statement that a seeking-motion reflex
+like the foregoing may have a substituted stimulus built into it by
+_shame_? Or do he and Dorsey consider shame a pleasant emotion? No; we
+are here plainly in the presence of mother and father fixations, of the
+Œdipus complex--an innocent thing made dangerous and eternal by being
+driven into the unconscious mind by shame. And Dorsey believes in no
+unconscious mind, or in any other sort of mind. Usually he encloses the
+hateful word in quotation marks. But he says (on page 11), “We do not
+use the brains we have.” Is that the solution?
+
+These are deep waters, so let us get back to our girl scouts. “For
+we have to learn anew what our stone-ax ancestors knew. Girls can be
+as ‘outlandish’ as boys! The girls themselves are just beginning to
+discover it.” Are they? Bless their hearts! Everybody else has always
+known it. What follows, however, is news. “Marriage behavior is in for
+further conditioning. The sex-complex may become simple again.”[148]
+
+Dorsey’s attitude towards the woman question at last becomes clear. It
+is a return to the stone-age to which he hopefully looks forward--the
+stone age and the simple, unconditioned reflex of the erogenous zone
+stimulated by exterior contacts, with no inner-born, nonsensical,
+complex sentiments to render it biologically abnormal. We have finally
+re-established harmonious relations with the gut-reactions so much
+admired by Dr. Watson.
+
+Dorsey says that he does not see how the Darwinian theory of evolution
+by means of the accumulation of minor variations through natural
+selection can have worked unless the theory of the inheritance of
+acquired characters be taken for a fact. Nevertheless he informs
+us[149] that “our ancestral primate was a small, warm-blooded,
+primitive mammal with forty-four teeth, four short legs, all alike, and
+feet with five toes armed with claws.” This forbear “lived on insects,
+fruit and nuts. Who was _its_ ancestor? Where did it get its mammæ?” he
+then asks. And he answers himself: “Circumstantial evidence points to a
+dog-toothed, low-browed, Tirassic reptile, called Cynodont.”
+
+No, Dorsey has not become a convert to the theory of the inheritance
+of acquired characters. He does not much believe in heredity. Upon
+undivulged circumstantial evidence, however, he settles the moot
+question of human descent. And he calls his book a bit of “propaganda
+for _critical_ judgments.”
+
+He settles also the problem of will.
+
+“As for will, it is as free as air. And much more difficult to
+catch.”[150] The meaning here is itself a little difficult to catch.
+Nor is the following quite clear: “Our psychology is human, but our
+behavior is individual.” When did our psychology become human? It is
+welcome news. Our behavior has always been individual, of course. But
+Dorsey, as a behaviorist, should have said that it was the collectivity
+of our reaction-mass--which certainly cannot be either free, individual
+or human unless it is controlled by some psychic power.
+
+[Illustration: DR. GEORGE A. DORSEY
+
+“We do not use the brains we have”]
+
+“Psychic power?” Dorsey exclaims. “I know what power is; I know
+what psyche is; I also know that knowledge may be power. But I can
+discover only one way to get knowledge into my head: through my sense
+perceptions. And only one way to get any power out of that knowledge:
+by inference, by reason.... When I want magic I go see Houdini.”
+
+Good! But why, if reason can turn knowledge into power, go to Houdini
+for magic? Turning knowledge into power is real magic, glorious, white
+and true. It happens every day. Even Dorsey can lead us to the eternal
+verities, it seems. But he will not permit us long to remain even in
+their neighborhood. “We learn to think logically,” he declares, “just
+as we learn to speak correctly or to behave decently. I may think well,
+I may shave well ... who shall say? My way of thinking and my way of
+shaving are my own ways.... I may change both tomorrow; someone is
+always inventing new ways of adjustment, new ways of exciting human
+protoplasm to change its shaving soap. New thought also. Why not? We
+have new books, new scandals, new elements, new diseases, new razors,
+new glands, new logic.”[151]
+
+“The point is that there is no thought without muscular or glandular
+activity. This is true whether the stomach thinks hunger, the dreamer
+thinks air-castles, the prisoner thinks freedom, or the maiden thinks
+of her lover. Thinking is a bodily act as coughing or scratching one’s
+head. During thinking energy is consumed, mechanism is involved.”[152]
+
+Do you comprehend? The man who scratches his head has always been
+supposed to be thinking. Now we know that the scratching is the
+thinking--thinking is a bodily act. The rumbling of the bowels is
+thinking. The stomach thinks. Everything thinks but ourselves.
+
+No wonder we have new thoughts when so many new thinkers come forward.
+New logic. My stomach may think that the sum of the interior angles of
+a triangle is equal to twenty-three right angles, or that a bite of
+mince pie is bigger than the whole pie. It is _my_ stomach. What it
+thinks is nobody’s business. And by tomorrow my stomach’s protoplasm
+may become so excited that it will think some other way.
+
+I can see how we have new scandals at the same time that we have new
+books. But I don’t see how we are going to get back merely to the stone
+age by our new ways of thinking. They will certainly take us back much
+further than that. And I wonder what our physicians will say to the
+suggestion that our glands are new? They have been offered to us as
+new discoveries, but this Dorsey seems to hint that they may be new
+inventions. I “think” we might better have gone to see Houdini after
+all. For “rational conduct is a dream” on page 470, and on page 455 it
+is the only way of converting knowledge into power. Over this mystery I
+scratch my head in vain.
+
+Then there is the Church.
+
+“As a projector of unsocial behavior,” says Dorsey, “the so-called
+Christian Church, with its endless squabbles over forms, creeds and
+rituals, and its eternal betrayal of humanity, is not far behind.”[153]
+Not far behind what? Good form. For “good form is in the saddle; it
+is ruthless, it is mighty, and it does prevail. It is not founded on
+intelligence.”
+
+I am glad that the Church has at least good form to keep it company.
+But I confess that I do not know what church is the “so-called
+Christian” one; whether it is Protestant or Catholic; nor what the
+real, honest-to-goodness Christian Church, if any, calls itself in
+Dorsey’s mind.
+
+“Socially useful behavior is not more prevalent, because sociably
+fashionable behavior has a better lobby.”[154] Our Dorsey is now
+turning radical, for he goes on: “By Fashion I do not mean the, or a
+Four Hundred; I mean those in power of money and of government, our
+bosses; the people who are trying to make us buy their wares, join
+their club, vote their ticket, think their thoughts, and help them kill
+or cripple their enemies.” Radical and pacifist. But I had not heard
+that force was being used by anybody to make people join their clubs.
+
+“What,” the now thoroughly aroused former professor of anthropology
+demands--page 473--“can be of less consequence to you than whether I
+_believe_ in this or that kind of a God, Savior, government or society?
+What is of consequence to you, to society, and to me, is what I do.”
+
+Very true, Mr. Dorsey. And I for one apologize. But we were under the
+impression--seemingly mistaken--that your beliefs might, at times,
+influence your conduct, or even enable us to guess what, under given
+circumstances, you were likely to do before you actually did it and it
+was too late.
+
+I hope I have not given the impression that Dorsey is unimportant.
+He--like the one who is to follow--is immensely important. He has a
+large and enthusiastic public. I have never seen the rationality of his
+argument seriously questioned in any periodical of general circulation.
+And that fact, perhaps, is the most important one of all.
+
+
+2. THE BRAZEN BOUGH
+
+Lewis Browne’s “This Believing World,” which ran through four large
+printings within the first four months of its existence, is an
+interesting example of the sort of reasoning that passes with a
+generation devoted to materialism, mechanism, humanism, monism and the
+newer psychologies, and yet is not quite ready to pay the consequences
+of its position or to abandon altogether the banner of the cause which
+it has deserted.
+
+Browne is what may be termed an “admirer” of Jesus Christ. He treats
+him always with the utmost kindness, speaking of him[155] as “a gentle,
+loving, helpless youth ... the very incarnation of perfection,”--a
+perfection with which an “insistent pacifism” is soon included.
+“The spirit of Jesus,” it also appears, “was innately Jewish and
+puritanical.”[156] Moreover, “Jesus, one must remember ... like every
+other great Jewish prophet ... preached only ethics.”[157]
+
+Thus the great fame of the Nazarene, which rests upon the idea not
+that He was the incarnation of perfection but the Incarnation of God,
+is sought to be preserved and appropriated by an eclectic modernism
+which denies the very basis of His title to supreme distinction. Robert
+Ingersoll and Thomas Paine are thought to have been a little crude
+in some of their anti-religious tirades. But they addressed a people
+that was at least familiar with its Bible. They never presupposed such
+childish ignorance of history and scripture as is everywhere taken for
+granted in “This Believing World.”
+
+Browne, who naturally has small use for the Church of Rome, is
+sympathetic towards such leaders of the Reformation as Wycliffe,
+Huss, Luther, Zwingli and Calvin. But not even Protestantism wins his
+unqualified approval. He says[158] that “Protestantism includes every
+type of religious thought,” and “only slowly, and with many pangs” is
+“shaking off the religion about Christ. Only slowly, very slowly, is it
+beating its way back to the religion of Jesus.”
+
+This seems like a fairly clear thesis, uttered by one who has never
+read either the New Testament or the Old, and who consequently is
+able to look upon Christianity, or “the religion of Jesus” (i.e., the
+religion which he thinks was taught by Jesus), as an excellent system
+of human morality of which he has heard good report, and holds that it
+should not be confused with supernaturalism, or “the religion about
+Christ,” of which he has heard bad and understands has been invented
+somehow without historical warrant.
+
+Were this all, I might pass him unmentioned. One cannot stop to
+complain of every popular author who speaks without information. But
+the total depravity of the Browne method of thinking, of argument, of
+logic--to employ such words in his connection; the illimitable naïveté
+with which he propounds mutually exclusive and antagonistic assumptions
+in that agreeable and easy-flowing style of his, positively cries out
+for remark. How he “gets by with it,” is more than I can understand.
+“This Believing World” is logical only in two particulars. It follows
+the same author’s short history of the Jews, entitled, “Stranger than
+Fiction”; and it is dedicated to H. G. Wells. Such substance as it has
+marks it as a less aureate branch sprung from Fraser’s “The Golden
+Bough.”
+
+“In the beginning,” it begins, after certain preliminaries--we are now
+in fact on page 27,--“In the beginning was fear; and fear was in the
+heart of man.... Boulders toppled and broke his bones; diseases ate his
+flesh; death seemed ever ready to lay him low. And he, poor gibbering
+half-ape nursing his wound in some draughty cave, could only tremble.”
+
+Is it necessary to remark that there is no evidence whatever pointing
+to this as the early state of man? That it is merely an assumption
+assumed to help along one particular theory of evolution, and is
+contradicted by those modern researches tending to show that savages,
+when actually degraded, are degenerate rather than primitive? Yet
+Browne illustrates his text with an original pen-and-ink sketch of
+this Missing Link. The drawing is extremely good and spirited. One
+only wishes it were a photograph. And he continues: “Since blows could
+not subdue the hostile rocks or streams [the rocks were hostile,
+evidently, because they supplied caves, and the streams because they
+supplied fish], our ancestor tried to subdue them with magic....
+Self-preservation must have forced them to [the] certainty [that
+spells would work], for without it self-preservation would have been
+impossible. Man had to have faith in himself or die--and he would
+not die. So he had faith [in himself, you will note] and developed
+religion.”[159]
+
+This is so vivid that it sounds like the description of an eye-witness.
+And he goes on in a no less certain tone: “By the word faith we mean
+that indispensable--and therefore imperishable--illusion in the
+heart of man that, though he may seem a mere worm on the earth, he
+nevertheless can make himself the lord of the universe. By the word
+religion, however, we mean one special technique by which man seeks to
+realize that illusion. It was by no means the first such technique to
+be invented by man; and it may not be the last, either. Long before man
+thought of religion, he tried to control the ‘powers’ of the universe
+by [this] magic.”[160]
+
+Very well. Man, once half ape, has become, in seeming at least, a mere
+worm; but he entertains an indispensable and “therefore” imperishable
+illusion that he can make himself lord of the universe--certainly a
+strange conviction for either a worm or an ape to entertain. To support
+this illusion, he first invents magic, which is an attempt to coerce
+the “powers,” and then invents religion--which Browne later explains
+as an attempt to “cajole” the powers. Religion and magic are merely
+two different kinds of technic, each designed to fool the technician
+until by dint of fooling illusion becomes reality. The “powers” are not
+fooled because they are always enclosed in quotation marks, which I
+understand to indicate that they do not exist. What next?
+
+“He [‘dawn man’] saw on every side of him the fell and bewildering
+‘powers,’ and illogically but naturally his first concern was not how
+they worked but how they could be avoided.”[161]
+
+We thus make our acquaintance with the Browne idea of “logic.” A
+logical dawn man would have waited to be devoured by the fell powers,
+imaginary or not, before trying to avoid them. Logic would have
+compelled him to understand before doing anything else. Fortunately for
+us, dawn man was illogical. He escaped extinction.
+
+And so we read on, up to the beginning of the fifty-ninth page,
+becoming better and better acquainted with our ancestor all the while.
+The conviction grows that Browne was there. Then, suddenly, he tells
+us that, though he is aware that his narrative has made it seem “as
+though the writer knew for certain just what had happened ... actually
+he knows nothing of the sort. All he knows is what many learned
+anthropologists after much painstaking research, have _surmised_.” The
+italics are his own. “Of course,” thus begins page 60, “they may have
+surmised quite badly. Their underlying theory may be entirely wrong,
+and religion, instead of having been originally created to elude or
+conquer fear, may have arisen quite independently of it. Religion may
+be an altogether primal instinct in the human race--something just as
+old and fundamental and innate as fear itself. Who knows?”
+
+As candor, this is flawless. But it is disturbing. If learned
+anthropologists, after much painstaking research, can be entirely
+wrong (and indeed a great many other learned anthropologists, after
+equally painstaking research, have time and time again declared these
+particular learned anthropologists to be wrong altogether) why cannot
+the learned anthropologists and biologists who furnished the data for
+the spirited pen-and-ink sketch of our gibbering, half-ape _aïeul_ be
+wrong as well? What if this surmising about monkeys and worms be as
+badly done as may be this surmising about religion? And what is the use
+of going on with all this if it be just a guess?
+
+Shall we continue because it is stranger than fiction? But it is not in
+itself as interesting as is fiction. We were lured into reading by the
+idea that it was being presented as truth. And now we are haunted by
+the fear that it may be a blasphemous invention--that religion rather
+than this anthropology may have some truth in it.
+
+So we skip “What Happened in India,” “What Happened in China,” “What
+Happened in Persia,” and “What Happened in Israel,” since, after all,
+it may never have happened; and turn to part seven, “What Happened in
+Europe.” Here, as near home as this, we ought to be on safe ground,
+with dependable historians instead of surmising anthropologists to
+act as guides. This is the portion of the book which deals with the
+Christian religion, in itself of more interest to most than are the
+Shebatum taboos, Taoism, or the heliotropisms of Zoroaster. What, then,
+did happen in Europe in the days when Christianity was born?
+
+“The prologue of the story of that new religion opens in Galilee.
+Almost two thousand years ago there was born in the Galilean village
+of Nazareth, a Jewish child to whom was given the name of Joshua, or
+Jesus. We do not know for certain how the early years of this child
+[Browne adheres to the lower cases in all emergencies] were spent. The
+Gospels recount many legends concerning his conception, birth, and
+youth, but they are no more to be relied upon than the suspiciously
+similar legends told many centuries earlier about Zoroaster.”[162]
+
+The anthropologists were only possibly wrong; but the Gospels recount
+legends, and Browne here does not say maybe. Neither does he say where
+he gets his information concerning the birthplace of Christ. Had he
+ever read even the first Gospel he would have learned that Christ was
+born in Bethlehem of Judæa. Perhaps our author referred himself only
+to his own stranger-than-fiction history of the Jews.
+
+Anyway, he goes on to declare that this Child “cherished many of the
+primitive notions of the simple folk to whom he belonged, believing
+that disease and sometimes even death were caused by the presence of
+foul demons, and could be removed by prayer. He knew little if any
+Greek, and could never have even heard of Greek science or philosophy.
+All he knew was the Bible, and probably the text of that had been
+taught him only by rote.... Above all he must have been taught to
+prize as dearer than life the old obsession of his people that someday
+they would be miraculously freed by the Messiah. Indeed, so well was
+that last drilled into him that, as he matured, the hunger for the
+realization of the hope became his all consuming passion.”[163]
+
+We now have One “who preached only ethics,” and yet cherished an
+all-consuming passion for the realization of the obsessive hope of His
+people that someday they would be miraculously freed by a Messiah.
+
+If Browne will turn to another book with which he seems to be as
+unfamiliar as he is with the Bible, the dictionary, to wit, he will
+find ethics defined in some such manner as follows: “Ethics, the
+science that treats of the principles of human morality and duty; moral
+philosophy; morals.” An obsessive belief in miracles is something quite
+beyond ethics, either of a puritanically Jewish or any other variety.
+Nor do the cherished primitive notions of simple folk to the effect
+that diseases may be cured by prayer savor much of ethics. I do not of
+course mean that Christ had no ethics; but Browne has introduced Him
+to us as one who preached ethics only. Did He, then, keep his one “all
+consuming passion” out of his preaching?
+
+This attempt to distinguish between “the religion _of_ Jesus” and the
+“religion _about_ Jesus,” is as old as modern ignorance of the subject.
+But Browne, given all the ignorance in the world, seems unable to
+state it without letting it sting itself to death with its own tail.
+And he goes on, still further to murder the dead body of his own
+philosophy: “Now ... there was in the land an evangelist ... called
+John the Baptizer.... Jesus was for a time a follower of John, one of a
+multitude of young Jews and Jewesses who believed in the mission of the
+wild prophet. His gospel was much like that of his teacher. ‘The time
+is fulfilled,’ he cried, ‘and the Kingdom of God is at hand.’”[164]
+That is, the new gospel was the messianic gospel of a wild prophet--and
+the “follower” who preached it preached only ethics!
+
+And--“when the stories of that young preacher’s wandering [the
+reference is to Christ, not to John] were gathered together in later
+years and set down in writing, it was said that he performed all manner
+of miracles as he went about the land. Perhaps there is a fragment
+of truth in that tradition, for if people will only believe with
+sufficient faith, miracles become not at all impossible.... And Jesus
+could quite command implicit faith. He himself believed; with all his
+heart and soul he believed that soon would come the Great Release....
+He spoke without the slightest flourish, using plain words and homely
+parables. He indulged in no philosophy or theology, for, after all,
+he was an untutored toiler who knew nothing of such vanities. Nor,
+seemingly, did he preach any inordinate heresies.”[165]
+
+How does Browne know how He spoke? Surely he cannot be depending upon
+the “stories of that young preacher’s wanderings” that were “gathered
+together in later years and set down in writing,” for he has already
+told us that “they are no more to be relied on than the suspiciously
+similar legends told many centuries earlier about Zoroaster.” Again it
+seems to be suggested that Browne was there.
+
+But this at least seems clear: Browne holds that Jesus preached “The
+Kingdom of God is at hand”; that it is not at all impossible that
+He performed miracles, though only of the faith-cure sort (I have
+insufficient space for the discussion of miracles as distinguished from
+faith-cures); and that He did not preach “any inordinate heresies”
+from the Jewish standpoint. “He was not a heretic in the sense that
+Ikhanaton or Zoroaster were heretics. Outwardly he was distinctly a
+conforming Jew.”[166]
+
+“Yet [on the same page] for all his conformity ... Jesus was definitely
+a rebel.... His whole gospel was intended but to comfort the
+disinherited, for it declared that no matter how unlettered they might
+be they could nevertheless be taken into the Kingdom of God when it
+came.... Now such a gospel was literally saturated with heresy.”
+
+Saturated with heresy, but not with inordinate heresy--is that it?
+
+[Illustration: RABBI LEWIS BROWNE
+
+Stranger than fiction]
+
+“Because it [Christ’s gospel] denounced the rich and commanded them to
+divest themselves of all their possessions, it attacked the whole
+sacrificial cult.... A people without possessions could never possibly
+afford fat bullocks to burn or skins of oil to pour away.... Moreover,
+because this gospel minimized the importance of learning, and commanded
+men to keep merely the spirit of the law, it attacked the whole
+Rabbinical cult.”[167]
+
+Again I wonder where Browne obtained these details without having
+recourse to “legends.” And so he goes on down to the bottom of the
+page, by which time this same gospel has become “charged with quite
+devastating heresy.” Devastating, but not inordinate!
+
+If Browne’s mind works in this way, so presumably do the minds of
+his readers. Religion aside, not a few results may be expected from
+a “modern temper” of this sort--from the fact that there are in this
+Republic a large number of people incapable of being troubled by
+equivocations, by the glaring inconsistencies of flatly contradictory
+statements living at seeming peace in the midst of the same argument,
+or people incapable of remembering or too careless to remember more
+than one statement at a time.
+
+This “modern temper” makes it possible for men and women who do not
+accept the supernatural character of Christ to beg His authority for
+their own notions, no matter how opposed those notions may be to what
+is said in the New Testament records. In interpreting a statute one
+is compelled by a rule of law to consider all its parts together. In
+interpreting the Bible one indulges in the habit of selecting here a
+jot and there a tittle. Those selected become authority. Those rejected
+become legendary by the very act of rejection even at the hand of
+caprice or lack of information.
+
+Browne speaks, on page 268, of “the stupid and silly and gross
+extravagances,” the “pious embellishments and patent falsehoods
+that clog and confuse the Gospel accounts.” But the method for
+distinguishing the false from the true seems to be very simple. If a
+line of Scripture fits in with your preconceptions, it is wise and
+genuine. If not, it is either a forgery or the author was wrong. The
+principle of “the economy of hypotheses” is thus conserved.
+
+It will be objected that this is what we do with any book, and that one
+who does not attribute divine authority either to the Bible or to the
+Church which promulgated it as canonical scripture, is guilty of no
+intellectual malpractice in using individual judgment.
+
+But no ordinary book is treated in this way. An author whose good
+faith is impugned in one particular becomes a doubtful author. If he
+is convicted of one inaccuracy, his reputation for accuracy suffers to
+that extent. If his proofs have been carelessly read, one ceases to
+put much credence in individual words which possibly may be misprints.
+And if the book is suspected of being actually fraudulent in essential
+particulars, it ceases altogether to be of any documentary value except
+in so far as it be confirmed by other sources of information regarded
+as more trustworthy.
+
+But our Brownes call the Gospels stupid, silly, grossly extravagant
+legends piously embellished with patent falsehoods--and then proceed
+to quote them (though it may be at second hand) as conclusive evidence
+where such quotation suits their purpose. Where quotation does not suit
+their purpose, they use paraphrase. If that won’t do, they rewrite
+entire passages as they claim they should have been written, creating
+doctrines out of whole cloth, which, whatever may be the nature of
+the weave, certainly bear no evidence of having come from a scriptural
+loom. Everywhere the gospel according to Browne claims to be the Gospel
+of Jesus. It seeks protection beneath the shadow of the Cross. Why?
+
+It would seem that many who deny Christ’s divinity still regard Him
+with a sort of reverence, even a sort of fear. They would find it
+uncomfortable to think that they were not following His precepts. So
+they meet the admonitions of theologians with the allegation that
+said theologians have corrupted the intent of the sayings of this
+Great Teacher. These “individualists” are afraid to stand alone. They
+have ceased to follow the so-called “higher criticism.” It is apt to
+get too high. It has even been known to give aid and comfort to the
+theologians. The lower criticism, the no-criticism, is much easier.
+
+Thus we have come to have a public which buys the books of the
+Brownes--men and women who have habituated their minds to a scorn of
+those rational processes which would tell them that certain assumptions
+entail certain consequences. They want to hunt with the hounds, and
+also to run with the hares. Browne’s masterpiece of dual allegiance,
+however, relates, as we shall see, not so much to the Carpenter as to
+the Apostle to the Gentiles. But he is not yet ready for that bit of
+double-dealing. He first must say:[168] “What really marked Jesus as
+one unlike any preacher who had come before him was not so much what he
+said, as the particular authority on which he said it.” (The particular
+authority of a preacher of ethics?) “Every other prophet had uttered
+his heresies in the name of God.... But this carpenter from Nazareth,
+for all his meekness and humility, spoke only in his own name. ‘Take
+_my_ yoke upon ye,’ he said. So did he speak, not as the mouthpiece of
+God, but as one vested with an almost divine authority of his own....
+Such a tone would have sounded blasphemous ... even in a prince or a
+learned man.... But it ... created and sustained the impression that
+he was a transcendent person, and bestowed upon him the power to take
+cringing serfs and make them over into towering men. Only because he
+believed in himself so firmly ... could he make others accept his
+words. His tone was not that of a mere prophet, but almost that of God
+Himself.
+
+“It was not merely that he could perform what were thought to be
+miracles.... It was more that he could carry himself with the divine
+assurance of an ‘Anointed One.’”[169]
+
+Strange conduct, surely, for One who preached merely ethics; who went
+about crying, “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” and meant only that the
+Kingdom of Good Moral Conduct was at hand. Why not say that He meant
+“The Kingdom of Eugenics is at hand!” and be done with it? And what
+can Browne mean by an “almost” divine authority, or a tone “almost”
+that of God Himself? It would seem that Christ was the Son of God, or
+was not; that He claimed to be the Messiah, or did not claim to be the
+Messiah. Browne, ignoring the law of the excluded middle term, attempts
+to insert a middle term by means of the word “almost.” And he adds:
+“Whether Jesus himself was convinced he was the Messiah is a problem
+still unsolved.... Charlatans and madmen, arrant knaves and driveling
+fools, had time and again been hailed by the hysterical mob as the
+Awaited One. Is it any wonder therefore that an exalted person like
+this young carpenter, Jesus, should have been hailed likewise?”[170]
+
+But that is not the question. We are not concerned with what hysterical
+mobs may have thought about charlatans, madmen, arrant knaves and
+driveling fools, but with what Jesus thought about Himself. We are
+also concerned with what Jesus did when He was hailed as the Awaited
+One. It would seem that an exalted person, not self-convinced of his
+Messiahship, would have been constrained by his own exalted character
+to enter a disclaimer in such a case.
+
+Of course, if one could quote the Gospels without fear of setting
+Mr. Browne to thinking of “all the stupid and silly and gross
+extravagances, all the pious embellishments and patent falsehoods that
+clog and confuse the Gospel accounts,” one could prove even to him that
+Jesus actually claimed to be the Messiah. For in the Gospel According
+to St. John it is written,[171] “Jesus said unto him [Thomas], I am the
+way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me.”
+And, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”
+
+Doubtless Browne considers these and similar passages as suspiciously
+similar to certain legends told many centuries earlier about Zoroaster.
+But in any case his own argument should force him to conclude that
+Jesus was the Messiah; or was self-deluded; or was a charlatan. Or does
+Browne consider it possible to be a charlatan and an exalted person at
+one and the same time? Out of charity we must conclude that he decides
+in favor of the delusion hypothesis. Of the other alternatives, his
+text forbids one and his presumable sanity forbids the other. So it
+was the victim of a delusion which we are not even certain that he
+entertained who took cringing serfs and made them over into towering
+men.
+
+“This Believing World” continues: “By the time Jesus reached the
+capital his fame had already preceded him. A great mob rushed out ...
+wildly throwing their cloaks to the ground beneath the feet of the colt
+on which he rode. They hailed him as their Messiah.... ‘Hosanna!’ they
+cried, ecstatically, ‘Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the
+Lord!’”
+
+Browne quotes the Gospels! But what makes him think that this
+triumphant entrance into Jerusalem is not a pious embellishment, or
+even a patent falsehood? He only tells us that “One wonders whether
+those poor wretches out of the alleys and dunghills of old Jerusalem
+understood who the man Jesus really was. One wonders whether even his
+own disciples understood--or whether even his most pious devotees
+today understand. To that frantic mob, at least, he was simply an
+arch-zealot, a martial hero who had come to lead them in bloody
+rebellion against Rome.”[172]
+
+If this meant anything to the author it would mean that he himself was
+a believer in the divinity of Christ. He seems here to be chiding the
+Jerusalem mob, to say nothing of Christ’s pious devotees of today, for
+not being sufficiently aware of the spiritual nature of the miraculous
+Messiah’s mission. But no. Browne is thinking of a “gentle, loving,
+helpless youth”; of a spirit “innately puritanical,” a heretic who was
+outwardly “distinctly a conforming Jew” with an insistent pacificism,
+who adopted a tone that would have “sounded blasphemous even in a
+prince,” and surely was astonishing in a teacher of ethics.
+
+“The priests,” Browne goes on, “... were afraid of Jesus ... not
+merely because his heresies endangered their own position.”[173] “Had
+he been stronger in body no doubt he would never have joined the school
+of John the Baptist and become a saver of souls. Instead, he would have
+joined the Zealots, fighting with the sword against Rome.... From the
+beginning his strength must have been not the strength of the body but
+of the soul; and towards the end even that strength must have ebbed low
+in him.”[174]
+
+“And then he died. But he died only to come to life again, to come
+to a life more enduring, more wondrously potent than had ever been
+vouchsafed to him in the days before his shameful death. Indeed, he
+literally came to life again ... according to those who had most
+earnestly followed him.”[175]
+
+“It was enormously difficult to prove that he had really been the
+Promised One. No doubt that was why the disciples began to piece
+together those genealogies we find in the Gospels. No doubt that, too,
+was why those extravagant legends concerning the conception, birth,
+childhood, and ministry of Jesus began to be devised. Uncharitable
+critics may say the disciples resorted to fraud in these matters--but
+it was all intensely pious and well-intentioned fraud. Before the
+ordinary Jew could be made to accept Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus simply
+had to be proved a descendant of David.... The disciples may not
+have been even remotely conscious that they were departing from the
+truth.”[176]
+
+Thus Browne seeks to destroy all reason for admiring, and at the
+same time pretends to continue to admire. Such passages need no
+comment. Being no uncharitable critic myself, I will merely remark
+that the world now learns for the first time that the ordinary Jew
+can apparently be made to accept Jesus as the Messiah by means of the
+genealogies which are a part of the gospel story as it has come down to
+us. And what happened in Europe after this?
+
+
+3. ST. PAUL AS SCAPEGOAT
+
+“On a sudden--at least, so it seemed to those who had not marked the
+mounting of its steady ground swell,” Browne proceeds, “that little
+Nazarene sect,” the followers of Christ after the Crucifixion, “became
+a high sea that broke and rolled across the whole Roman Empire ...
+sweeping over one land after another until finally it had inundated the
+whole face of the West and half the face of the East.
+
+“To explain how that could have happened, one must remember what was
+going on just then in the Roman Empire. A great hunger was gnawing at
+its vitals, a desperate hunger for salvation.”[177]
+
+Now what does Browne mean by salvation in this instance? Ethical
+salvation? Salvation by law and order? Or salvation in the miraculous
+Christian sense, i.e., salvation from the macula of original sin? He is
+evidently writing from vague memories of what he has read and heard,
+from a host of facts, fancies and prejudices which he has uncritically
+allowed to find lodgment in his mind. It is not likely that he means
+anything in particular. But he tells us that--
+
+“The whole Roman world seemed to be writhing in the throes of death,
+and the fear of that death drove it to a frantic and panicky clutching
+after any and every chance of life. As a result, the mysteries, those
+secret cults [of Greece and Rome] which whipped men into orgies of
+hopefulness, flourished everywhere.... Those mysteries ... in origin
+... were largely Oriental, and in essence they grew out of the belief
+that by certain magic rites a man could take on the nature of an
+immortal god.... That same legend was told--with variations--concerning
+Dionysus, Osiris, Orpheus, Attis, Adonis, and heaven knows how many
+other such gods. Arising out of the common desire for an explanation of
+the annual death and rebirth of vegetation, that legend was common to
+many parts of the world.”[178]
+
+It seems that what so agitated the Romans was a desire to explain the
+annual death and rebirth of vegetation--a phenomenon almost unknown
+in the climate of Rome. Anyway, they ran to these explanations in the
+midst of their panicky fear. But surely those mad pagan orgies which
+whipped men into hopefulness were not puritanical, ethical orgies.
+
+Nor were early Christian orgies, according to Browne. For “By the
+first century of this era, the legend [of Christ] had spread to every
+civilized province of the Roman Empire ... and had everywhere made the
+people drunk with the heady liquor of its mystery salvation.”[179]
+
+So Browne now admits that Christianity, even in the first century
+of its era, had ceased to be a mere ethic and become a “mystery
+salvation.” Granting for the sake of an argument which is no argument
+that, coming from One whose “all consuming passion” was the obsessive
+hope of His people that some day they would be “miraculously freed”
+by the Messiah it could ever have been anything else--granting this
+self-contradictory assumption, where are we to suppose the heady liquor
+came from? Answer, “From more learned folk.” For--
+
+“Side by side with these religious cults flourishing among the lower
+elements ... different schools of philosophic thought flourished among
+the more learned folk. One of these was the philosophy developed in the
+city of Alexandria by an Egyptian Jew named Philo. According to this
+philosophy, God, the Father of All, manifested himself only through
+an intermediary called the Logos, the Word. This Logos, which was
+sometimes called the ‘Son of God,’ or the ‘Holy Ghost,’ had created the
+earth and was the sole mediator between it and heaven.”[180]
+
+So--“If in later years the Nazarene faith began to take on the color
+and shape of those heathen cults and strange philosophies, these
+Palestinian Nazarenes were not in the least responsible. It was one
+from outside the original brotherhood, a Jew from beyond the borders
+of Palestine, who was responsible. It was Saul of Tarsus [later called
+Paul] who brought on that change.”[181]
+
+You will note that St. Paul was responsible for coloring Christianity
+not only with the strange philosophy of learned folk but with the color
+of mystery cults which, originating in a desire to explain the annual
+death and rebirth of vegetation, whipped men among the lower elements
+of society into orgies of hopefulness. And he did this notwithstanding
+the fact that before his own conversion Christianity, originating with
+One who was a transcendant person who spoke in a tone “almost” that of
+God himself, and yet was but an ethical teacher, an insistent pacifist
+who but for bodily weakness would have taken up arms against the Roman
+Empire and perished by the sword--Christianity had already become drunk
+with the heady liquor of mystery salvation.
+
+There seems to be some idea floating around in Browne’s head. He seems
+vaguely aware that since the Crucifixion there had come a change.
+Indeed, there had. But it was not a change from ethics to religion,
+nor a change from a belief in a non-miraculous Messiah to a belief in
+a Messiah who was miraculous. Nobody ever believed in a non-miraculous
+Messiah. A non-miraculous Messiah is a contradiction in terms. But
+since the Crucifixion it had become evident even to charlatans, madmen,
+arrant knaves and driveling fools that Jesus was not to found a
+temporal, national kingdom of the Jews. Even the people were beginning
+to understand that Christ’s Kingdom was spiritual and at least as broad
+as the earth. And if the Palestinian Nazarenes were not responsible,
+it must have been because their own belief and their own preaching
+signally failed of effect.
+
+But let us get back to this Saul of Tarsus, who “must have had rather
+more than a passing acquaintance with Greek and Alexandrian philosophy.”
+
+“Most important of all, he must very early have learnt from slaves
+in the household or from Gentile playmates, of the mystery cults
+... and of the savior-gods in whom the masses put their impassioned
+trust.”[182] And Christianity was already one of these mystery cults,
+a heady liquor that was to become a high sea and break over all the
+West and half of the East by the end of the first century--or as soon
+as the disciples, who were not in the least responsible, had invented
+a sufficiency of legends to make up a technic capable of fooling the
+people. Or are we to understand that St. Paul wrote the Gospels?
+
+“Now Saul was a person of very violent likes and dislikes. He is said
+to have been an epileptic, and certainly he was a man of strange
+temperament. Whatever he did, he did with an intensity and extravagance
+that were distinctly abnormal.”[183] The Eugenics Society should take
+note of this, in case another St. Paul arises among us. “But on his way
+to Damascus [to persecute the Nazarenes] a queer thing happened.... He
+was suddenly overcome by a seizure of some sort.”
+
+Browne does not attempt to name it, but a “seizure” in an epileptic
+subject is usually called an epileptic fit. Why does he not name it?
+Because he wants to help folks believe that they may continue to call
+themselves Christians while assuming that everything which marks
+Christianity is a disease. But the disease must be a polite one.
+
+“And when, trembling and astonished, Saul came to himself, behold
+he was a changed man.... When he got to Damascus he ... had become
+a complete convert ... believing in the Messiahship of Jesus and in
+his resurrection.... He was but little interested in the gospel of
+the man Jesus,”--the ethics which cried, “Behold, the Kingdom of God
+is at Hand!”--he was interested only in the death and rebirth of the
+savior-god, Christ.... “Saul [under the name of Paul] became the great
+preacher of ‘Christ crucified.’”[184]
+
+“Jesus ... was not the founder of Christianity, but its foundling....
+Nor had his immediate disciples created the new faith.”[185] “The
+Messiah put forward by them had all along been the Jewish Messiah.”
+Thus once more Browne confuses the idea of a Jewish Messiah with
+non-miraculous morality. “Nor was it Saul, the studious young Pharisee,
+who founded the new faith, but his other self, Paul, the citizen of
+Rome.... It is unfair to compare Paul to Jesus, for the two belonged
+spiritually and intellectually to entirely different orders of men....
+The one was a prophet and a dreamer of dreams; the other was an
+organizer and a builder of churches.”[186]
+
+According to this, it was a prophet and a dreamer who inspired the
+early disciples with the idea that he was the Jewish Messiah--those
+same disciples who saw in him a teacher of ethics only, yet corrupted
+the Gospels in the attempt to prove that he was something more--those
+same disciples who were not in the least responsible for the belief in
+Christ as divine that afterward crept into the Church through the door
+of epilepsy. And this ethical teacher is the same Being who believed
+with all His soul in the Promised One and permitted Himself to be
+greeted as the Promised One!
+
+This amazing series of contradictions does not come from confronting
+Browne with other authorities, but merely from confronting Browne with
+Browne and without going outside of one chapter of one single book.
+Strange indeed is the behavior of those who seek to eat their cake and
+at the same time to throw it away.
+
+For Browne would have it that Jesus, the prophet, dreamer and inspirer
+of belief in His Messiahship, was made a foundling in his own
+spiritual house by His antithesis, Paul--who accomplished this feat of
+dispossession by winning general acceptance for the very belief in
+question. Or does Browne think that when the Jewish Messiah came to be
+understood as the Savior of the World, the idea was less dreamlike and
+prophetic?
+
+Paul is evidently now drunk with the heady liquor of mystery-salvation.
+He has had a seizure. But Browne has been telling us how Paul’s other
+self, Saul, the studious young Pharisee, has been listening all his
+life to tales of mystery-cults and savior-gods from the lips of
+household slaves and Gentile playmates; how he has acquired more than
+a passing acquaintance with the Logos philosophy of a Jew residing in
+Alexandria. All this is heady liquor. Jew and Gentile, high and low,
+slaves and playmates--none of them are exactly Puritans or ethical
+rationalists. And the new religion, most heady of all, appeals--not to
+the youthful Saul, who might supposedly be the dreamer of the pair,
+but to the more mature Paul, the Roman citizen, organizer and man of
+affairs.
+
+Of course it is historically correct to say that the new religion did
+appeal to Paul rather than to Saul. But what happened on the road
+to Damascus was not, even on Browne’s own showing, a change from a
+disbelief to belief in miracle religion, but a change from disbelief to
+belief in Jesus as the Son of God. An epileptic fit, we are about to be
+told, makes a common man over into a moral and intellectual giant. It
+transforms a listener to tales and mystical philosophies into a cold
+thinker. And this cold thinking leads to the acceptance of Christianity
+in its original form. I am not questioning that cold thinking might not
+lead to such a result; am not trying to intimate that there is anything
+antagonistic between a cold brain and a warm heart. Browne’s fallacy
+here is historical--the attempt to prove that Paul was a cold thinker
+and pretended to be nothing else.
+
+As to a touching belief in the efficacy of disease, we may find it in
+minds much less confused than Browne’s. It runs through such books as
+“The Psychology of Religious Mysticism,” by James H. Leuba, professor
+of psychology at Bryn Mawr. According to Browne, mental unbalance
+produces indomitable courage and inflexible will. According to
+Professor Leuba, the hysterical saints lived lives of “joyful activity,
+broken only by transports of surpassing love and peaceful rest.”[187]
+Not a very comprehensive description of the lives of saints. But if
+there be such hysteria as this, such epilepsy as Browne describes,
+it is a pity that the germs cannot be isolated, propagated, and sown
+broadcast.
+
+These authors are among those who ruin their hypotheses by
+inadvertently accounting for too much. Their hysteria and epilepsy,
+stretched to meet all demands, lose the quality of disease and take on
+the quality of genius. Would it not be well at least to distinguish two
+types of hysteria (some writers make even epilepsy hysterical), the
+malignant and the benign? Or if the word hysteria merely means emotion,
+why not recognize the fact that an emotion may indicate conditions as
+categorically opposite as those reflected in the sensations of pleasure
+and of pain? It is grossly irrational to narrow it down to a single
+sinister meaning if it is to be put forward as the “cause” and the
+“explanation” of such diverse effects as those which are clothed in
+the willing garb of a Sister of Charity and those which lead to the
+unwilling wearing of a straight-jacket.
+
+Nor is it any less absurd to say that St. Paul, having partaken of
+heady salvation-liquor such as was drunken of aforetime only by
+charlatans, madmen, arrant knaves and driveling fools, and adding to
+its potency by insisting upon its universal applicability--to say all
+this even by implication, and then to add as Browne does[188] that “in
+his own class, Paul was one of the stupendously great men of the earth.”
+
+“He was,” the narrative continues, “a superb statesman. And he was
+possessed of an energy, a courage, and an indomitable will, the like of
+which have rarely been known in all the history of great men.... Again
+and again he was scourged and imprisoned.... And yet he persisted,
+never resting from his grueling labor of carrying his Christ to the
+Gentiles, incessantly running to and fro, preaching, writing, arguing
+and comforting, until at last, a tired and broken man, he died a
+martyr’s death in the city of Rome.... It was in the year 67, according
+to tradition, that Paul was beheaded.”
+
+Once again Browne considers himself privileged to repudiate all that
+a man stands for, his sole claim to distinction, and yet to put him
+on a pedestal of insincere rhetoric. When he speaks of Paul’s “own
+class” does he mean the class of “charlatans, madmen, arrant knaves and
+driveling fools”? Indeed, St. Paul himself is reported to have said,
+“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most
+miserable.”
+
+But Browne has yet stranger things in store. He proceeds to write the
+history of the Church.
+
+
+4. THE CHURCH AS SCAPEGOAT
+
+Paul, says Browne, “had spent perhaps thirty years in the labor of
+spreading the idea of Christ, and by the time of his death that idea
+had already struck root far and wide in the Empire. It had divorced
+itself from Judaism, taking over the Sunday of the Mithraists in place
+of the Jewish Sabbath, and substituting Mithraist ritual for the Temple
+sacrifice.”[189] [The Mithraist ritual centered in the slaughter of a
+bull!]
+
+“Through Judaism, the religion of Persia left its mark also on
+Christianity; and not merely through Judaism, but also through
+Mithraism.”[190] [Mithra is personified diffused sunshine!]
+
+“In most of the cities there were already thriving christian
+brotherhoods, little secret societies much like those of the
+mysteries.... With the passing of the years, the pagan element
+grew.... The life-story of Jesus was embellished with a whole new
+array of marvels and miracles, and the man himself was made over into
+a veritable mystery savior-god. His character and nature fell into the
+maw of an alien philosophy, and then came drooling out in sodden and
+swollen distortion. He became the Lamb whose blood washed away all sin.
+He became the Son of God supernaturally conceived by the Virgin.... He
+became the Logos and the Avatar and the Savior.”[191]
+
+Browne here is complaining of alleged corruptions from Persian and
+other sources, all largely Oriental; as were in their origin the Greek
+and Roman “mysteries,” of which he has complained hitherto. But he
+goes on to allege that “Although the religion of Jesus and of the first
+disciples was distinctly Oriental, although the whole Messiah idea was
+markedly a thing of the East, the religion about a Savior Christ was
+largely European.... Indeed, one gravely doubts whether Jesus, the
+simple peasant teacher in hilly Galilee, would have known who in the
+world that Savior Christ was.”
+
+Geography is evidently too much for Browne. Persia has suddenly become
+European. And St. Paul, with his “more than passing acquaintance” with
+the Logos philosophy of Philo, the Alexandrian Jew, and his subsequent
+conversion to the “distinctly Oriental ... Messiah idea,” is of the
+West. Perhaps Alexandria was not in Africa in the early days of the
+Christian era, and maybe Persia was then in the extreme Occident.
+
+“It was inevitable for that change to come about. Christianity ... was
+gaining too many converts too rapidly.... It would not have been so
+bad had they been converts from a world of ignorance.... But they were
+converts instead from a world of what we would call stupidity.”[192]
+
+So preaching founded upon the epistles of St. Paul, a man “who was one
+of the stupendously great men of the earth,” and “a superb statesman,”
+appealed chiefly not to the ignorant but to the naturally stupid! “No
+such testaments [as the stupid epistles of St. Paul and the silly
+legends and pious frauds called the Gospels] could be offered by the
+priests of Mithra, Cybele or Attis. For their deities were after all
+mythical. Only the Christians had a real man to worship; a unique
+and divine man, it is true, but nevertheless a person who had known
+human woe and pain, who had suffered, and who had for at least
+three days been dead. That element of naturalism, of closeness to
+human reality, must have made Christianity a faith of extraordinary
+attractiveness.”[193]
+
+Surely Browne does not believe that a simple teacher of ethics, who,
+with good health, would have been a soldier, was actually dead and rose
+again, for he has told us that such a legend arose from pious frauds
+suspiciously like the frauds practiced long before in the case of
+Zoroaster. He must be meaning to say that the stupid followers of St.
+Paul and later preachers of miracle religion _believed_ Christ to have
+been a Divine Man who was once dead. They must, then, have believed in
+the Resurrection. Is that to be regarded as an element of naturalism?
+
+“There was a wondrous comfort in that religion”--of the stupid; “a
+mighty zeal that made it possible for the martyrs to go to their death
+actually with a smile on their lips. It took vile slaves out of the
+slums where they rotted, and somehow breathed supernal heroism into
+them. It told them that ... death for the truth would mean only life
+everlasting.”[194]
+
+“Then came Constantine, and, in the year 313, an end to the
+persecutions.”[195] An end to the persecution of a corrupt yet
+wonder-working Christianity originated by the abnormal St. Paul, you
+will observe, which must have worked through the powers of hysteria,
+epilepsy and suggestion. One would think that there was little harm
+left for Constantine to do. Nevertheless, “It was a costly triumph for
+Christianity, as every other such triumph has been in all history.
+What happened to Buddhism when it set out to conquer the Far East, now
+happened also to Christianity in the West.” What, did it lose its
+power? No. “It became an official and successful institution--and so
+degenerate.”[196]
+
+A Mithraist ritual, draped in the rags of dying pagan mysteries and
+Philo-Pauline doctrines from an European Africa, manages to degenerate!
+It staggers on its downward way, growing more and more drunken with the
+heady liquor of mystery salvation drawn from a Europe located in the
+Orient.
+
+“A faith cannot be institutionalized,” Browne informs us, “for it is a
+thing of the spirit.”
+
+An institution, then, is something which subsists in matter. Men with
+faith in anything cannot be drawn together into an institution. Only
+men who believe in nothing can belong to institutions.
+
+“Even dogmas or rites, which are things almost of the flesh, cannot be
+organized beyond certain bounds.”[197]
+
+What bounds? And within or without what bounds is it possible for a
+rite not to be organized? And to what extent is a dogma, like that
+of the Logos, for example, “almost of the flesh”? Anyway, “even
+after Christianity became primarily a thing of dogmas and rites, it
+nevertheless began to crack and crumble.”[198]
+
+Why “nevertheless”? After what he has said of dogmas and rites he
+should have said “because of.” And does he say “began” to crack and
+crumble when it had already suffered the corruptions of St. Paul and
+Constantine?
+
+Yes; and it begins to crack and crumble just as it is setting out as
+a tidal wave to overwhelm the West and half of the East! And as faith
+cannot be institutionalized, a sufficient lack of faith might have kept
+it from cracking and crumbling, also from “drooling out in sodden and
+swollen distortions.”
+
+“Paul,” continues our author, “had used his theological terms rather
+loosely.”[199] His stupendous greatness, then, was not as a teacher of
+religion. “Paul [same page] had spoken of Jesus as a savior.”
+
+Browne then tells of the controversies which arose over the doctrine
+of the Trinity and other matters, adding: “Scores of such questions
+arose.... Jesus had not been conscious of even the most ponderous of
+such questions. That dear, fervent young preacher, who had lived and
+died in the sublimity of a simple faith could never possibly have been
+conscious of them. Had he heard them posed, he would probably have
+shaken his head in mute bewilderment.... When one puts beside the
+Gospel accounts of the preaching of Jesus the official records of the
+wrangling and bickering of those church fathers, one feels that here
+is to be found the most tragic and sordid epic of frustration that the
+whole history of mankind can tell.”[200]
+
+Browne omits to name the church fathers he has in mind. But why put
+beside records, which are at least official, the silly legendary
+gospels which unconscious zealots corrupted into drooling distortions
+to suit their fancy?
+
+And if Jesus could not have been conscious of even the most ponderous
+of theological questions, what is he supposed to have thought of the
+multitudes who greeted his entrance into Jerusalem, shouting, “Hosanna!
+Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord!” That would seem to
+pose a rather ponderous theological question.
+
+Moreover, all histories of the Jews which are not stranger than fiction
+give the impression that the Scribes and Pharisees of Christ’s day
+were somewhat given to discussing theological questions, ponderous and
+other. One living in their midst and not being conscious of at least
+some of the questions that were to be debated later by the Church
+fathers must have been unconscious at all points.
+
+“More than sixteen hundred years have passed since Christianity was
+made the state religion in the decadent Roman Empire. Throughout
+all those years [notwithstanding its cracking and its crumbling]
+it has been extending its borders.... It is estimated that at the
+present time about one third of the entire population of the world is
+Christian--approximately five hundred and sixty-five million souls. And
+of course, it is to the spirit of Paul regnant in Christendom that one
+must credit that enormous expansion.... It is because countless monks
+and healers and warriors and saints have felt Paul’s call [sic!] to go
+out and win the heathen to Christ, that today more souls are turned to
+Christ than to any other deity on earth.”
+
+I do not know if Browne attributes the Pauline triumph to the Apostle’s
+loose handling of theological terms, but he says, “these wholesale
+increases in numbers were not made save at a high price.... Just as
+Buddha had to be idolized before he could conquer the East, so Jesus
+had to be idolized, too, for pagan Europe.”[201]
+
+Yet--“despite all these compromises, the new religion remained always
+heavens above the old [paganism]. By assimilating pagan rites and
+myths ... Christianity became at last almost completely pagan in
+semblance; but it never became quite pagan in character. The Old
+Testament puritanism which had so marked the life of Jesus was never
+routed.... If the spirit of Paul insisted that Cybele be taken over
+as the Mother of Christ, the spirit of Jesus insisted that her wild
+Corybantes with their lustful rites, and her holy eunuchs with their
+revolting perversions, be left severely behind. If the spirit of Paul
+demanded that the wild Celtic goddess named Bridget be accepted into
+Christianity, the Spirit of Jesus demanded that first she be made
+lily-white and a saint.... It [the Spirit of Christ] set its face hard
+against sacred prostitution and against all those other loosenesses
+and obscenities which arose out of the pagan’s free attitude towards
+sex.”[202]
+
+So it was the spirit of a man who was “in his own class” one of the
+“stupendously great men of the earth,” who favored prostitution,
+insisted upon taking Cybele into his loosely-worded theology,
+and--having failed to secure the lustful Corybantes and the holy
+eunuchs who still had a capacity for perversions--demanded and obtained
+the acceptance of a wild Celtic goddess named Bridget.
+
+Browne describes this Spirit-of-Paul’s Bridget. She was, it appears,
+one of three deities who “had already [2000 years ago] been
+sufficiently detached from their physical bodies to be thought of as
+remote gods and goddesses.” The other two were Ogmius and Maponus.
+
+At their festivals, “men and women lay together in the fields,
+and behaved as did all other primitive peoples in their religious
+festivals.... Not until the Christian idea of morality was brought to
+them did the Celts grow conscious of any wickedness in their old rites.
+And even then they did not give them up at once. Indeed, to this day
+their descendants have not given them up entirely.”[203]
+
+“The difference between [the] Babylonian cult of Ishtar and the
+primitive Celtic cult of Bridget was entirely one of degree.... Both
+were inspired by dread of the same evil, sterility: and both sought
+to attain one end, fecundity. But one, the Babylonian, was far less
+primitive ... far less wildly promiscuous and bestial. The Babylonian
+rites were conducted within the confines of stone temples, not out in
+the furroughs of the torch-lit fields.”[204]
+
+This undoubtedly gave the Babylonians the ethical advantage. And it
+seems that the Celtic gods and goddesses were not only primitive, but
+continually kept their followers alarmed lest they (the goddesses)
+should forget how to become fecund. The ritual in the furrows of the
+torch-lit fields, “to this day not given up entirely,” was for the
+purpose of overcoming the deities’ “bashfulness,” Browne tells us, and
+to set them an example of what was desired. And if the spirit of Paul
+could have had its way, such a ritual, though perhaps conducted within
+stone temples, would have been established in Rome! And there it would
+doubtless have been practiced today--as it is, I gather from Browne, in
+present-day Ireland!
+
+“The spirit of Jesus flickering in Christianity made it at least
+nominally a religion of ethics,” Browne goes on. “For Jesus, one must
+remember, had not been in the least concerned with ritual. Like every
+other great Jewish prophet, he had preached only ethics. And despite
+all the compromises of the world-conquering Pauls, that ethical
+emphasis of the teaching of Jesus persisted as a mighty leaven in the
+church. It gave to the early Christians that gentle nobility which
+history tells us graced their faith.”[205]
+
+When was this? Brown says that “of the life of the first Nazarenes we
+know exceedingly little.”[206] He gives the year 67 as the date of St.
+Paul’s martyrdom. Can it be that the early Christians were gentle and
+noble even after the loose sex ideas and loose theological terms of the
+great Apostle had been given a chance to begin their deadly work?
+
+“The church itself, with its foul record of crusades and inquisitions
+and pogroms, cannot be said to have ever been really civilized. But
+that admission does not at all discredit the potency of the spirit of
+Jesus.... True, there were indeed Dark Ages in Europe when the power of
+the Church was at its height. But who knows how far darker they might
+have been, and how much longer they might have endured, had the Church
+not existed?”[207] “One must remember that Christianity came into a
+world that was sinking.... It alone sought to keep civilization going.
+It failed. It could not keep from failing. But be it said to its glory
+that at least it tried.”[208]
+
+“The glory of trying to save the world from bestiality belongs
+primarily to but one element alone in Christianity; the original
+Nazerene element. And that element, one must remember, was never
+dominant in the faith save during those years before it was really
+Christian. Once Paul came on the scene, the light of the religion of
+Jesus began to fade, and the glare of the religion about Christ [that
+is, the doctrine that Christ was the Son of God and the Redeemer of the
+World] blazed over all.”[209]
+
+“Yet though the light from Galilee [the light of One who ‘like every
+other great Jewish prophet’ taught only ethics, yet believed with all
+his soul in the Messianic idea] faded ... it never was quite snuffed
+out.... For long centuries it smouldered.... And then slowly that
+forgotten spark began to brighten once more. A devastating incursion
+of Huns and Saracens blew the spark to a flame. As never before in
+full six hundred years, the Christians began to think again of their
+suffering Savior.”[210]
+
+This certainly is what Browne writes, incredible as it may seem. The
+Pauline doctrine “about Jesus” has been overshadowing the world,
+threatening to extinguish the spark of the merely ethical religion
+preached by Jesus himself. And now the spark blows into a flame--and
+lo! it, too, is a religion about Jesus! Men begin to think again of
+their suffering “_Savior_!” Moreover, Jesus was a pacifist, and all
+that was needed to fan the spirit of his teaching into a flame was a
+devastating incursion of Huns and Saracens. Was it the ethics of the
+invaders which did the trick?
+
+“Like a mad fire the hope spread over Europe that the year 1000 would
+see the return of the Redeemer.” Yes, the word is “Redeemer.” So Brown
+does know what “Savior” means. And we were right in thinking that he
+intends to say that the spark so long all but quenched by a religion
+about Jesus proved, when it revived, to be itself a religion about
+Jesus, a belief in Him as a supernatural Being, able, if he liked,
+to return--in short, the Logos, as had been taught by the “abnormal”
+St. Paul. And Browne appears to be utterly unconscious that he has
+stultified his whole argument. The fact that he has in effect said
+that the world expected a helpless teacher of ethics to return after a
+thousand years; and has also said that belief in this helpless ethical
+teacher constituted a belief in a miraculous Savior and Redeemer, which
+belief had been for hundreds of years all but stifled by the doctrine
+that he was indeed a miraculous Savior and Redeemer--all this troubles
+the Browne mind not at all.
+
+“The year 1000 passed, and no Redeemer came--but Europe was a little
+redeemed nevertheless.” By the ethical Huns and Saracens, apparently.
+“Men turned from what the Church of Christ insisted on offering them,
+and instead began to grope after the gospel of Jesus for themselves.
+They took to reading the Scriptures in their original tongues.” (The
+people did? Or does he mean in the vernacular? In either case it must
+have exposed them to what Browne gives us to understand is a mass of
+silly fables.) “And reading them they began to see at last how far the
+Church had wandered from the pristine truth.” (A truly wonderful feat
+of discriminating literary criticism. Were the people so familiar with
+Zoroastrian tales that they were able at once to discard all passages
+having a suspicious resemblance to them?) “They discovered at last how
+shamelessly the priests had substituted rite for right, how flagrantly
+they had ritualized all morality.... The clerical authorities took
+alarm. Despotically they issued proclamations prohibiting the laity
+from even glancing at the bible.”
+
+Browne owes it to the world to publish those despotic proclamations, so
+that we may know their authors. I have myself seen the Bible in chains
+in Italian churches, and I understand that chains were much more common
+in the middle ages than now. But if the object was not to keep the
+books from being stolen but to keep them from being read, the riveters
+of the chains were indeed stupid people. For they chained the books by
+the backs and in a manner which permitted them always to lie open.
+
+So--“the Bible was read nevertheless.... The flame of heresy burned
+on.” But why, if the Church was so opposed to it, did it gather the
+Bible together in the first place? Browne does not say. What he does
+say is that “In the fourteenth century, Wycliffe did godly mischief
+in England; in the fifteenth John Huss carried on in Bohemia; in the
+sixteenth Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin led the Protestant revolt.”[211]
+
+“But one must not imagine that Protestantism was ever purely
+Nazarene in spirit--any more than Catholicism was ever unrelievedly
+Pauline.” (True enough. I have even heard it said that Catholicism
+is to a certain extent Petrine.) “Protestantism includes every type
+of religious thought. Only slowly and with many pangs, is even
+Protestantism shaking off the religion about Christ.” (Then that
+revival of belief in a supernatural Savior and Redeemer, instituted by
+the Saracens and Huns, was not a flash in the pan, but carried over to
+a certain extent into the godly mischief of Wycliffe, Huss, Luther,
+Zwingli and Calvin!) “Only slowly, very slowly is it [Protestantism]
+beating its way back to the religion of Jesus.”[212] That is, to ethics.
+
+“Though the Church of Christ may stand guilty of untold and untellable
+evil, the religion of Jesus, ... has accomplished good sufficient to
+outweigh that evil tenfold.”
+
+If the evil referred to expressed itself in facts, why is it
+untellable? Browne, I think, should tell it, and in detail. He ought
+not to emulate St. Paul in the loose use of words. As the page stands,
+we cannot be sure that he does not refer to the Church of England
+and the hanging, drawing and quartering of Catholic priests during
+the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. But the “religion of Jesus,” i.
+e. ethics, “Has made life liveable for countless millions of harried
+souls. It has taken rich and poor, learned and ignorant, white, red,
+yellow, and black--it has taken them all and tried to show them a way
+to salvation. To all pain it has held out a balm; to all in distress it
+has offered peace. To every man without distinction it has said: Jesus
+died for you! To every human creature on earth it has said: You too can
+be saved! And therein lies Christianity’s highest virtue. It has helped
+make the weak strong and the dejected happy. It has stilled the fear
+that howls in man’s breast and crushed the unrest that gnaws at his
+soul. In a word it has worked--in a measure.”[213]
+
+I wish I might let this eloquent passage stand without comment. Taken
+by itself, it sounds almost like the words of a sincere believer in
+Christ as the supernatural Savior of Men. But, taken in connection
+with what has gone before, it seems to me abominable. Here is a man
+who has denied the supernatural nature of Christ time after time in
+the preceding 300 pages. And now he is using words which imply such
+a miraculous nature, or else mean nothing at all. Yes, they mean
+something. They mean that this light, this balm, this peace, this
+salvation which is Christianity’s highest virtue, is an illusion. To
+every man this Christianity has said: Jesus died for you! Here the
+doctrine of the Vicarious Atonement is indicated. And St. Paul, in
+preaching that doctrine, that “religion about Jesus,” founded a new
+faith and made Christ the mere foundling of Christianity! True, Browne
+has also said a great deal on the other side. That is precisely the
+trouble. He thinks it is possible to stand both with the sheep and with
+the goats.
+
+But the final chapter of “This Believing World” (for Christianity
+is not its climax) is consistent. It is entitled, “What Happened in
+Arabia.” And it thus concludes:
+
+“Islam ... has been one of the most effective civilizing forces in
+the history of Africa and Asia, and in a measure also in that of
+Europe.... The supreme gift of Islam was the idea of unity which it
+somehow drilled into the heads of a hundred races--not merely the
+unity of God, but even more the unity of mankind.... Every other great
+religion taught more or less the same doctrine [in regard to submitting
+to Allah], but none with such fierceness and unrestraint.... Islam
+excluded no man from the army of Allah.... And that is why to this day
+Islam can still win converts with twice the ease of any other religion.
+That is why to this day Islam is one of the mightiest institutions
+on earth for the ordering and beautifying of life in at least the
+‘backward’ lands.”
+
+In the beginning there was fear. In the end there is no God but Allah,
+and Mohammed is his prophet!
+
+
+5. THE STORIES OF DURANT
+
+It is with regret that I include Will Durant among the Misbehaviorists.
+He is no crude mechanist, and his popularity is so great that, like
+Sinclair Lewis, he has almost ceased to be a mere individual and
+become an institution. And in some respects his success is a most
+gratifying and hopeful sign of the times.
+
+[Illustration: DR. WILL DURANT
+
+Almost an institution]
+
+Some say that it was Durant who showed us that we were fond of serious
+reading and not of the light novels which the publishers for so many
+years fancied that we craved. But in reality it was “The Education of
+Henry Adams” which showed us that. And I am not so certain that a mere
+love of heavy reading is such a good sign. By the time reading becomes
+substantial it begins to make some difference what it is weighted with.
+
+I like to think that “The Story of Philosophy” has been bought in such
+quantities because it is, to a very great and very charming extent, The
+Story of the Philosophers. Durant’s ability as a writer of biography
+amounts almost to genius. Nor are his accounts of the philosophers’
+philosophies often other than good bits of skillful summing-up
+interspersed with apt quotations. My only misgivings revolve around the
+stories of Durant--those paragraphs of criticism and seemingly personal
+opinion with which he usually ends his chapters--around those and
+certain omissions. What have we here, the story of philosophy, or only
+the story of a certain bias purporting to be the story of philosophy?
+
+As was to be expected of a born biographer, Durant follows the method
+of using environment to explain belief. The pessimism of Schopenhauer
+is due to the fact that he lived in the first half of the nineteenth
+century, the age of the Holy Alliance, when Waterloo had been fought,
+the Revolution was dead, and the Son of the Revolution rotting on
+a rock in a distant sea. “Something of [Schopenhauer’s] despair
+came from the pathetic distance of St. Helena.”[214] And when “Mme.
+Clotilde de Vaux (whose husband was spending his life in jail) took
+charge of Comte’s heart, his affection for her warmed and colored his
+intelligence.” So Comte’s later Religion of Humanity was due to the
+happiness of his illegitimate union, just as his earlier Positivism had
+been due to the marital infelicity which led him to attempt suicide in
+the Seine.
+
+It is the method by which Taine years ago sought to explain all English
+literature. Durant is an environmentalist--which, after all, is better
+than being a mad hereditarian. One is tempted to enquire into his own
+environment, his college, his religious and philosophical surroundings,
+and to read dates and geography between his lines. But I cannot bring
+myself to apply either the environment or the heredity hypothesis to
+the exclusion of that entity which comes from neither, that ego which
+learns or does not learn from its contact with that which is not itself.
+
+That Durant is not himself a philosopher, is evident--and in his
+favor. We really do not need another philosopher just now--of the sort
+we would be likely to get. He has no system of his own, no universal
+touch-stone, no central thesis giving unity to his several beliefs. In
+his mind Kant, Darwin and Bergson meet, but no more mingle than do oil
+and water. An emulsifying _tertium quid_ is lacking. This lack should
+have made him an ideal historian of other men’s theories. And it almost
+did.
+
+But there is another lack. The complete historian should have a
+complete experience. He should have been submerged in the main stream
+of thought, even if he has failed to sound all its dead-waters to the
+bottom. And if environment and the accident of birth do not offer him
+such experience, he should have that thirst for knowledge which leads
+to exploration and discovery.
+
+The Durant ego lacks precisely that. It was born in a lake, and it has
+no thirst for the sea. Like certain aquatic creatures, it takes what
+floats into its mouth, but makes no explorations. What Durant has given
+us is simply not the story of philosophy. It is merely a series of
+interesting comments upon the curriculum of a certain type of college
+which does not even belong to the University of World Thought. This
+provincialism is unfortunate, for it is certain to deceive provincial
+readers with the idea that they have listened to the whole story.
+
+It is difficult, after the reading of a book which is an avowed
+recapitulation of many foreign opinions, to say what an author’s own
+opinions may be. It is evident that Durant is no Catholic; not quite
+so evident whether or no he is a believing Protestant. He seems to
+have little sympathy with Protestantism as a whole, and less yet with
+Fundamentalism. It may be safe to say that his personal bias takes the
+direction of a vague Humanism.
+
+To quote, without taking the greatest precaution not to pass off some
+mere explanatory paraphrase as the author’s own, would be so unfair
+that I hesitate to quote at all in proof of anything. There are,
+however, certain passages which are clearly Durant, and not Plato,
+Aristotle or Nietzsche boiled down--though even here we must be on
+guard lest what we see is Durant under the momentary influence of his
+subject, not Durant in his daily habit. It is the wind which does not
+blow, the things which he does not say, that speak most eloquently and
+surely of the man.
+
+Chapters, and most of them long chapters, are given to Plato,
+Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Voltaire, Kant, Schopenhauer,
+Herbert Spencer, Nietzsche; a chapter to three contemporary
+Europeans--Henri Bergson, Benedetto Croce and Bertrand Russell; and a
+final chapter to the three American moderns, George Santayana, William
+James and John Dewey. There are adequate pages devoted to Rousseau,
+Locke, Hegel, and many a lesser light. Some, you will note, are
+pre-Christian; some are atheistic; some deistic, monistic, or agnostic.
+It is a chorus which is irreligious with a vast predominance, with
+here and there a tolerant voice for modernistic Protestantism. Bishop
+Berkeley, represented by a few paragraphs, stands practically alone as
+the exponent of a particular faith.
+
+It will be said that this is the story of philosophy, not of theology.
+But I cannot see the force of the explanation. Theology is certainly
+philosophy; and why should one man be barred because he begins with the
+assumption that God has revealed Himself in an Incarnation, and another
+admitted who begins with the assumption that God has revealed himself
+in the human will of a super-man devoted satanically to selfish ends,
+or is in the process of revealing himself in an _élan vital_, or begins
+with the assumption that there is no God? Surely the historian is not
+bound to believe every philosophy he outlines. And surely the Christian
+assumption is no more of a foregone conclusion than are the others.
+
+Nor even if it be granted that the story of philosophy, because of the
+current use of the word, is naturally a story of secular philosophy,
+does Durant come off any better. The Chinese philosophers and the
+Vedantic philosophers of India may be said to be so widely separated
+from us in time and space that they do not belong in a history of our
+culture. That was more true in the days when Durant was a boy than it
+is today. But let it pass. What about the Scholastics?
+
+The Scholastics were not only theologians, but philosophers and
+scientists; they dominated the thought of Christendom for a thousand
+years, and still dominate a large section of Christendom, not counting
+their influence in quarters where it is felt rather than recognized.
+
+Durant admits that his treatment of Scholasticism is “inadequate,”
+but excuses himself with the plea that the inadequacy was due to lack
+of space. But he finds space for ten and a half pages about Benedetto
+Croce--and no page at all for St. Augustine, Albertus Magnus, or St.
+Thomas Aquinas.
+
+The Angelic Doctor’s name, however, is mentioned. It appears in a
+pictorial table of “philosophic affiliations,” constructed in the
+manner of a family tree. According to this table, Aquinas stems from
+Aristotle, who stems from Plato, who stems from Socrates, who stems
+from the Sophists. There is also a branch line of affiliation extending
+to the left like a bar sinister, connecting the great scholastic with
+Christian Theology followed by a question mark. I do not fathom the
+meaning of the question mark. But Christian Theology (?) itself stems
+from Zeno the Stoic, and he from Diogenes, and he from Antisthenes,
+and he from Heraclitus. There is yet another branch line leading from
+Antisthenes, touching Socrates, and ending in Aristippus, of the house
+of Democritus and Leucippus.
+
+So Aquinas appears to be quite free from any unquestioned philosophic
+affiliation with St. Augustine, Albertus Magnus, St. Paul, or even
+Jesus Christ. We begin to be glad that Durant had no room for an
+“adequate” treatment of the Scholastics.
+
+Unfortunately, he does not quite drop them with the chart. In a note
+“To the Reader” he refers to them as “half-legendary.” It is odd that
+a school which included the leading thinker, secular or sacred, of the
+Thirteenth Century, the age of Dante, should have become legendary in
+the New York of 1926, from which Durant dates his book.
+
+Turning from legends, we come to Benedetto Croce, who, writes
+Durant[215] “is a sceptic with an almost German gift for obscurity ...
+an anti-clerical who writes like an American Hegelian ... an Italian
+Catholic who has kept nothing of his religion except its scholasticism
+and its devotion to beauty.” And lo, we are back to legend again!
+“Perhaps the comparative infertility of Italy in the philosophy of
+the last hundred years,” Durant goes on, “is due in some part to the
+retention of scholastic attitudes and methods even by thinkers who have
+abandoned the old theology.” Adding,[216] “He [Croce] is, after all, a
+product of the scholastic tradition ... he is a germanized Italian.”
+
+Now it is quite true that, though Thomas Aquinas was a native
+of the Kingdom of Naples, he studied under Albertus Magnus at
+Cologne--probably during the year 1244; returned to Cologne in 1284;
+and perhaps visited it several times thereafter. But both he and his
+illustrious master were scholastics of the school of St. Augustine, who
+died in the year 430. The one German thing about St. Augustine is that
+Eucken, the German philosopher, says of him: “If our age wishes to take
+up and treat in an independent way the problems of religion, it is not
+so much to Schleiermacher or Kant or even Luther or St. Thomas that it
+must refer as to Augustine, and outside of religion, there are points
+upon which Augustine is more modern than Hegel or Schopenhauer.”
+
+Durant surely cannot mean that a living Italian has been “Germanized”
+through having absorbed the teachings of a master who died in 1280
+and was the follower of another master, in Hippo, who died in 430. As
+one of the chief tenets of Scholasticism is that the Christian creed
+can be proven by reason alone without recourse to Revelation, Croce
+of course had to repudiate his scholasticism, German or not, along
+with his religion. All that can remain to him, if anything remains,
+is a certain training of the mind. Whether he has shown the effects
+of such training, or made good use of it, is a matter of opinion.
+What Durant shows here is total unfamiliarity with his subject. He is
+merely applying certain notions which he picked up uncritically from
+unauthorative sources. But having mentioned this Scholasticism which
+he seems not to have read, he goes on, _re_ Croce, to ask: “How could
+an Italian be unkind to a Church that had brought all the world to
+Canossa, and had levied imperial tribute on every land to make Italy
+the art-gallery of the world?”
+
+My own rather extended acquaintance of the art-galleries of the world
+has heretofore inclined me to believe that Italy has been more sinned
+against than sinning in this regard--and that in Italy, itself,
+such stolen masterpieces as are to be seen were largely stolen from
+the Church and placed in galleries belonging to an anti-clerical
+state. But perhaps I am mistaken--and mistaken also in thinking that
+since 1870 the Pope has been self-imprisoned in the Vatican when in
+reality he has been roaming for the (until very recently) irreligious
+Italian Government abroad, stealing pictures. Or was it before 1870
+that the thieving from foreigners was done--during the days when
+Italy was overrun with foreign armies, and the term Italy was a mere
+“geographical expression?” Does he refer to the marble treasures of
+the Vatican rescued from war and neglect in Greece and elsewhere?
+Or were the thefts of a still earlier date, when most of Europe was
+comparatively barbarian? I can think of one such instance. Some of
+the decorations for St. Mark’s, Venice, were brought by the Venetian
+merchants from the Orient--as was the body of their patron saint.
+
+But Durant continues: “So Italy remained loyal to the old faith, and
+contented itself with the ‘Summa’ of Aquinas for philosophy.”
+
+When? Why, until Giambatista Vico came. He “stirred the Italian mind
+again; but Vico went, and philosophy seemed to die with him. Rosmini
+thought for a time that he would rebel; but he yielded. Throughout
+Italy men became more and more irreligious, and more and more loyal to
+the Church. Benedetto Croce (born in 1866) is an exception.”[217]
+
+What Durant must mean is that the more irreligious one becomes the
+more loyal one naturally is to the Catholic Church. If that be true,
+the Italian _Risorgimento_ (the political movement which led to the
+union of Italy under an anti-clerical government) was certainly most
+loyal--and it expressed its loyalty by taking the Church’s temporal
+empire away from it! But in what respect was Croce an exception to this
+devotion and this irreligion?
+
+For one thing, he was nearly killed beneath the ruins of a house at
+Casamicciola during the earthquake of 1883. For another, he was “given
+so thorough a training in Catholic theology that at last, to restore
+the balance, he became atheist.”
+
+But this, apart from the training, was precisely what the
+_Risorgimento_ did, so there is no exception here. The exception,
+then, must lie in the fact that he did not remain loyal. He could not
+get enough of the Catholic theology out of his system to be loyal to
+the Catholic Church--though he could be loyal enough to imitate the
+_Risorgimento_ in repudiating it! This, as Durant himself says[218] of
+Croce’s philosophy in general, “is as clear as a starless night.”
+
+I wish to record my entire agreement with this final verdict as to the
+Croce philosophy. From the most absurd premises in the world, Durant
+has somehow arrived at a correct and satisfactory conclusion.
+
+But he does not stop here. He goes on to say that Croce “slides easily
+into logical casuistry and refutes more readily than he can conclude.”
+It is easy to see that Scholasticism is being held to blame here.
+Durant does not like Scholasticism, and he does not like Croce. Not
+that there is the slightest evidence that Durant ever read a single
+scholastic author. I am merely assuming that he has. And he would like
+to derive the cause of one dislike from the source of the other. So he
+permits himself to use the word “casuistry” as loosely as Browne would
+have us believe St. Paul used theological terms--that is, he uses it
+as an old lady sitting by the fire might use it, to denote sophistry,
+and sophistry to denote an unsound argument. A philosopher could never
+have so forgotten the original meaning of casuistry as the art of
+dealing with cases of conscience, especially when writing of Croce with
+the idea that he was a scholastic. But perhaps it was the “German”
+scholasticism of his subject which fogged the Durant mind at this point.
+
+But how explain the following? He tells of Croce becoming Minister of
+Public Education and a Senator, and denouncing the World War. Then he
+adds: “But Italy has forgiven him now; and all the youth of the land
+look up to him as their unbiased guide, philosopher and friend.”[219]
+
+Had Durant but said, “The anti-fascist wing of the _Intelligencia_,
+most of whom are far from young and cling to the atheistic French
+Revolutionary philosophy of the _Risorgimento_, look up to Croce,”
+the statement would have been true--in so far as a member of the
+_Intelligencia_ may be said to look up to anybody. Every unbiased
+person who has spent much time in Italy of late knows that most of the
+youth of that country today look upon Mussolini, and not Croce, as
+their guide, philosopher and friend. And Mussolini is a Catholic. Has
+Durant never heard of the Black Shirts or of the March on Rome?
+
+But perhaps I am wrong in finding fault with Durant’s fondness for
+catering to popular misconceptions which no doubt he shares. He
+quotes his favorite Bergson as saying, “The time given to refutation
+in philosophy is usually time lost. Of the many attacks directed by
+the many thinkers against each other, what now remains? Nothing, or
+assuredly very little. That which counts and endures is the modicum of
+positive truth which each contributes.”
+
+One wonders how this modicum is to be discovered without criticism, and
+is informed (still by Bergson) that “the true statement is of itself
+able to displace the erroneous idea, and becomes, without our having
+taken the trouble of refuting anyone, the best of refutations.” Is
+this not saying that a garden will grow more flowers if one does not
+criticise it by trying to pull up the weeds? Is it not sheer nonsense
+to talk of erroneous ideas displacing themselves without anybody taking
+the trouble to refute anything, when there was never a time in the
+history of man when ideas, true and false, did not have to meet the
+objections of the fault-finder? No; Durant assures us that Bergson
+speaks with “the voice of wisdom herself,” and that when we “‘prove’ or
+‘disprove’ a philosophy we are merely offering another one.”
+
+Merely, you understand. Then all philosophies are indifferent mixtures,
+one as good as another. Here is pragmatism mixed with _laissez-faire_.
+And like pragmatism (which at one and the same time holds that whatever
+you think is true is indeed true for the moment and as far as you are
+concerned, and that nevertheless the test of truth is the fruit it
+bears), it does not understand itself.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[146] _Op. cit._, p. 83.
+
+[147] _Ibid._, p. 429.
+
+[148] _Op. cit._, p. 446.
+
+[149] _Op. cit._, page 71.
+
+[150] _Ibid._, p. 454.
+
+[151] _Ibid._, p. 155.
+
+[152] _Ibid._, p. 456.
+
+[153] _Op. cit._, p. 437.
+
+[154] _Ibid._, p. 473.
+
+[155] “This Believing World,” p. 298.
+
+[156] _Ibid._, p. 296.
+
+[157] _Ibid._, p. 297.
+
+[158] _Op. cit._, p. 300.
+
+[159] _Op. cit._, p. 29.
+
+[160] _Ibid._, pp. 29-30.
+
+[161] _Ibid._, p. 30.
+
+[162] _Op. cit._, p. 259.
+
+[163] _Op. cit._, pp. 259-260.
+
+[164] _Ibid._, p. 261.
+
+[165] _Op. cit._, p. 263.
+
+[166] _Ibid._, p. 264.
+
+[167] _Ibid._, p. 265.
+
+[168] _Op. cit._, p. 266.
+
+[169] _Op. cit._, p. 267.
+
+[170] _Ibid._, p. 267.
+
+[171] St. John, XIV.
+
+[172] “This Believing World,” p. 269.
+
+[173] _Ibid._, p. 271.
+
+[174] _Ibid._, p. 272.
+
+[175] _Ibid._, p. 273.
+
+[176] _Ibid._, p. 276.
+
+[177] “This Believing World,” p. 277.
+
+[178] _Loc. cit._
+
+[179] _Ibid._
+
+[180] _Op. cit._, p. 278.
+
+[181] _Ibid._, p. 279.
+
+[182] _Ibid._, p. 280.
+
+[183] _Op. cit._, p. 280.
+
+[184] _Ibid._, p. 281.
+
+[185] _Ibid._, p. 282.
+
+[186] _Ibid._, p. 284.
+
+[187] “The Psychology of Religious Mysticism,” p. 189.
+
+[188] “This Believing World,” p. 284.
+
+[189] “This Believing World,” p. 285.
+
+[190] _Op. cit._, p. 218.
+
+[191] _Ibid._, p. 285.
+
+[192] _Op. cit._, p. 287.
+
+[193] _Ibid._, p. 288.
+
+[194] _Ibid._, p. 289.
+
+[195] _Ibid._, p. 290.
+
+[196] _Op. cit._, p. 292.
+
+[197] _Ibid._, p. 292.
+
+[198] _Loc. cit._
+
+[199] _Loc. cit._
+
+[200] _Op. cit._, pp. 292-293.
+
+[201] _Loc. cit._
+
+[202] _Op. cit._, p. 296.
+
+[203] _Op. cit._, p. 64.
+
+[204] _Ibid._, p. 70.
+
+[205] _Ibid._, p. 279.
+
+[206] _Ibid._, p. 274.
+
+[207] _Ibid._, p. 277.
+
+[208] _Ibid._, p. 298.
+
+[209] _Ibid._, pp. 298-299.
+
+[210] _Op. cit._, p. 299.
+
+[211] _Op. cit._, p. 300.
+
+[212] _Ibid._, p. 300.
+
+[213] _Ibid._, p. 301.
+
+[214] “The Story of Philosophy,” p. 326.
+
+[215] _Op. cit._, p. 507.
+
+[216] _Ibid._, p. 511.
+
+[217] _Op. cit._, p. 509.
+
+[218] _Ibid._, p. 316.
+
+[219] _Op. cit._, p. 509.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ANCIENT TEMPER
+
+
+What now about that “modern temper,” which seeks to do away with the
+romantic ideal of a world well lost for love and with the classic
+ideal of austere dignity? We have followed it through many channels of
+expression, and have discovered that it was well described. Of either
+dignity or love it has not a shred.
+
+But we have discovered another thing. It is not being driven from the
+old ideals by science. Or rather there are two sciences, one modern,
+scientific and inspiring. The other not quite so modern in anything but
+the names which it applies to itself, not quite so scientific--indeed,
+no longer scientific at all.
+
+Its chariot comes thundering down Main street, and all are bidden to
+throw themselves before it and let its wheels pass over them. One would
+think it was the car of Juggernaut. But its license, when we come to
+look it up, proves to have been taken out by Propaganda.
+
+Sometimes these propagandists descend and try to persuade us with
+pleasant words. More often they prefer to threaten. Those who stand
+upright before them or try to block their passage are termed morons,
+or ignoramuses. To be snubbed by this new snobbery is almost like not
+being in society. Yet after all, a university professor is sometimes
+only a school-teacher, and not necessarily a good one. The letters
+PH.D. after a man’s name do not turn him necessarily either into a
+scientist or a Venerable Don Bosco. Beyond question, some of our
+Misbehaviorists would have constructed better theories had they come
+more in contact with other than diseased or adolescent minds.
+
+But why the propaganda? Why this endeavor to make man out a machine or
+worse? The ancient hypothesis was that such teachings emanated from
+the devil. To discuss that ancient hypothesis would take us beyond the
+limits of the present volume, but it cannot be denied that it seems
+rather to fit the case. Certainly the temper of these gentleman is no
+newer than is the temperament of Lucifer. Among the many things which
+distinguish man from the animals is this strange perversity, this
+ability to sink beneath himself.
+
+The “modern temper” then is but the ancient temper, and like the
+ancient it is of two sorts. This division also is old--as old as the
+distinction between good and evil.
+
+Fundamentally, man never changes. I do not mean the individual man. He
+may change immensely, and from having chosen to turn to the left may
+turn and choose the right. But this choice has always been open before
+him.
+
+Not even our fashions, our methods, our ways of doing things are quite
+as novel as we sometimes like to think. Albertus Magnus, though he
+died in 1280, laid down the principles of our cherished “experimental
+method,”--and they were already old. Says Fenelon, “If an enlightened
+man were to gather from the books of St. Augustine the sublime
+truths which this great man has scattered at random therein, such a
+composition ... would be far superior to Descartes’ ‘Meditations.’”
+That takes us back to before the year 430--and wisdom then was far from
+being a child. There is going on about us all the while a systematic
+falsification of history so that the present may seem to stand upon an
+isolated pedestal, or rest like a tumbleweed upon a heap of sand, or
+like a thistledown to float seemingly upon nothing. Probably this sort
+of thing, too, is coeval with the dawn of human life.
+
+Pyrrho, the Greek philosopher, who attained fame from having made the
+remark that “nothing is more one thing than it is another,”--in other
+words that black is no blacker than is white nor white whiter than
+black--Pyrrho died 270 years before Christ. He voiced the “modern
+temper” of his day as Watson and Freud voice it in ours. For we have
+seen that Psycho-Analysis and Behaviorism spring from the same root. It
+makes little difference to what we are slaves, whether to reflexes or
+passions. If there be but one stuff, it is the same stuff whether we
+call it spirit or matter. No man ever yet succeeded in thinking of an
+abstract triangle, let alone an impersonal God.
+
+So, of old time as today, reason was Psyche’s good servant but a sorry
+master. Then, as now, reason died with the fool who said in his heart,
+“There is no God.” Then as now Wisdom cried, not in the class-room but
+in the streets, and had its being in that Love--“_che muove il sole e
+l’altre stelle_”--which moves the sun in heaven and all the stars.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes
+
+
+ - Italics represented by _underscores_.
+
+ - Small caps converted to ALL CAPS.
+
+ - Footnotes renumbered consecutively and relocated to the end of each
+   chapter.
+
+ - Obvious typographic and grammatical errors silently corrected.
+
+ - Variations in hyphenation and spelling kept as in the original.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77481 ***