When in 1909 “Philistine and Genius” was delivered by me in the form of
a Commencement address before the Harvard Summer School, my prediction
of the coming European war storm was regarded by everybody as dream and
fancy. My best friends and sympathisers thought my foreboding
unjustified and ill-founded. I was an alarmist, a Cassandra, when I
spoke of the coming catastrophe which was to shake Europe to its very
foundation. When “Philistine and Genius” was published in 1911 the
American and European press, dealing with the views advanced in this
little volume, completely ignored the following warning given by me:
“About the middle of the nineteenth century Buckle made the prediction
that no war was any more to occur among civilized nations. Henceforth
peace was to reign supreme. ‘The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the
leopard shall lie down with the kid; their young ones shall lie down
together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.... Nations shall
beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning
hooks. Nations shall not lift up swords against nations, nor shall they
learn war any more.’ This prophecy was rather hasty. We have had since
the Civil war, the Franco-Prussian war, the Spanish-American war, the
Boer war, the Russo-Japanese war, not counting the ceaseless wars of
extermination carried on by civilized nations among the various
semi-civilized and primitive tribes. Civilized nations do not as yet
beat their swords into ploughshares, but keep on increasing the strength
of their ‘armed peace,’ and are ready to fight bloody battles in the
quest of new lands and the conquest of new markets.
“In spite of the Hague conference, convoked by the peace-loving Czar, no
other age has had such large standing armies provided with such costly
and efficient weapons of execution ready for instant use. The red
spectre still stalks abroad claiming its victims. We still believe in
the baptism of fire and redemption by blood. The dogma of blood
redemption is still at the basis of our faith, and, consciously or
unconsciously, we brand that sacred creed on the minds of the young
generation.”
The present European upheaval has finally disclosed to the impartial
observer the fearful state of Europe as the final outcome of its “armed
peace.” Instead of realizing the dangers of armed peace or of
“preparedness,” we are ready to become a military democracy in which
every able-bodied man is a soldier or a sailor, every child is a scout,
and every woman a nurse or a munition worker. We are anxious to waste
our resources on preparedness rather than on the education of the young.
We hanker for the greatest navy in the world at a cost of several
billions of dollars. We aspire after a million headed, billion armed
navy and army. We clamor for universal, compulsory, military service in
which our children should be drilled for murder and slaughter at the
decree of a few autocratic officials and officers. We imitate Europe
slavishly, in spite of the fact that the policy of preparedness or of
“armed peace” has kept Europe in a state of turmoil for generations, has
brought her to the brink of ruin, and has plunged her into the most
cruel and most destructive war ever waged by man.
The recent estimate of Count von Roedern, Secretary of the Imperial
German Treasury, puts the total cost of the war to date, the end of
1916, for all the belligerents, at fifty-nine and a half billions of
dollars. The Mechanics and Metals National Bank of New York City figures
that seventy-five billion dollars will be spent for direct military
purposes, if the war lasts another year. The enormity of that
expenditure can only be realized if we consider that the total wealth of
Great Britain and Ireland is eighty-five billions of dollars, that of
Germany eighty billions, that of France fifty billions, that of Russia
forty billions, that of Austria-Hungary twenty-five billions, and that
of Italy twenty billions. Such waste is appalling!
According to the figures given by Mr. Frank H. Simonds, eighteen and a
half million casualties, of which deaths make up nearly one-quarter, is
the toll already levied on the fighting men of all the belligerent
nations by twenty-six months of war. More than any other war the present
European struggle squanders the wealth of empires and sacrifices the
lives of nations.
Our social status is a reversion to savagery of the most degenerate
type, an atavistic lapse towards the paleolithic and eolithic man, only
more brutal, on account of the greater power for evil possessed by
modern man. What Hun or Vandal ever dreamt of such colossal destruction!
The fame of Attila, Jenghiz Khan, Batu, and Tamerlane pales and fades
before the glory of the Kaiser. In a couple of years the aggressive
German “Kultur” has caused more ruin to humanity than all the invasions
of the yellow peril in the history of mankind. Can we take issue with
the late Professor Royce of Harvard when he declares the German Empire
to be “the wilful and the deliberate enemy of the human race”?
Some future historian in describing our times will place us below the
moral level of our contemporaries, the Bushman and the Hottentot. He may
say: “Towards the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the
twentieth century there took place a vast accumulation of wealth, due to
a rapid development of science and practical arts. Instead, however, of
improving their condition, European nations deteriorated morally and
intellectually.
“Liberal education gave way to technical training. Science served greed.
Education became mechanical and military in character. The successful
banker, the greedy usurer, the commonplace storekeeper, the mediocre
shopkeeper, the philistine patriotic business man became the patterns,
the ideals, the guides, and leaders of commercialized nations.
Advertising and notoriety became the rage and the bane of society. The
thinker gave way to the tinker, the scientist to the mechanic, the
artist to the artisan, the genius to the philistine. False patriotism of
the jingo type, controlled and animated by industrial and commercial
interests, became the standard of nations. An insane frenzy of
militarism seized on the minds of nations. Blind obedience became a
virtue.
“The state enslaved the individual. Drill and discipline stupefied
people. Nations boasting of scientific efficiency and ‘kultur’ broke
treaties, attacked, destroyed, deported, enslaved whole populations of
small, weak, neighboring countries. Women and babes were drowned like
rats in the middle of the ocean. Aeroplanes and Zeppelins showered
explosive missiles on defenceless people. For such cowardly, inhuman,
and diabolical acts the miscreants were decorated and honored as heroes
by their alleged superiors. Man could not have fallen to any lower
level.
“The elements of nature were let loose for the ruin of nations. Man
gloried in his devilish, military, inventive power of destruction.
Professors, carrying high the banner of ‘kultur,’ exulted in the
degrading, vicious process of training by which the individual is
hypnotized and narcotized into submission to a brutal organization of
military junkers, hallowed by the name of State. All conception of free,
individual development was lost among the Germanic tribes of Central
Europe. It was the darkest period in the history of mankind. Assaults on
countries, massacres of nations, deportation of populations into slavery
for powerful munition interests, all such outrages, dignified by the
name of war for the defense of the Fatherland, had not their parallel
even in the most degrading period of the history of humanity. Man was
crazed with the lust of blood, frenzied with rapine and slaughter.”
Such will be the just estimate of our times by a future impartial
historian.
We possess indeed vast stores of wealth, but we have not as yet learned
their use. Like silly upstarts, we use our wealth for dissipation and
ruin. Our greed and cruelty seem to grow with our possessions. Greed
with its army and navy is like the Biblical horseleech that “hath two
daughters crying, ‘Give, give.’” Human life, man’s genius, we hold in no
esteem. We sink the value of man in the price of his product. We raise
the value of stock, but lower the worth of man. Our young generation is
trained by fear into discipline and obedience. We suppress the genius in
the child, raise mediocrity, and cultivate the philistine.
“Obedience and discipline are the mainstay of family and school,” told
me an otherwise intelligent schoolmaster. “I control my children with
kindness, if possible, and if needs be, with force.” The child is
trained to act not by the light of reason, but by the command of
superior force. The child is ruled by fear!
As a protection against fear the child learns to be secretive, evasive
of truth, and cowardly of action. These traits of character, acquired in
early childhood, become basic. The child will never fully rid himself of
fear and its distressing consequences. Fear will stay with him, and dog
his steps all his life long.
Fear is one of the most fundamental of animal instincts, it is the
companion of the most primitive impulse of self-preservation. Once this
fear instinct is aroused, it grows like an avalanche in its downward
course. In later life this fear instinct becomes manifested in various
ways, giving rise to the most distressing nervous and mental symptoms.
In my medical practice, as specialist of nervous and mental diseases, I
have traced again and again the worst forms of maladies to the fear
instinct aroused in early childhood.
Training by fear, submission, and obedience opens the door wide to all
kinds of nervous and mental germs, weakening the mental and moral
constitution of man. Man becomes unreasonable, capricious, driven by the
impulse of self-preservation and by the furies of the fear instinct. The
impulse of self-preservation with its satellite the fear instinct
becomes predominant in character which lacks the stamina of sturdiness,
frankness, openmindedness and independence.
A person brought up in the school of fear and blind obedience lacks
steadiness of purpose, courage, independence, critical judgment, becomes
bigoted and intolerant. He falls an easy prey to the suggestions of his
times and surroundings, succumbs to the influence of unscrupulous
leaders. Such a person lacks mental and moral poise, he is wanting in
the true courage of reason, present in the fully developed man and
woman. He can not withstand the pressure of social opinion, being unable
to stand by his post in the face of threatening social opposition. Ruled
by fear at home, he is governed by terror in society. He is afraid of
social punishment, “of losing face,” as the Chinese say, with his
neighbors, gossips, circles and clubs. He dreads above all the judgment
of the crowd, and is scared by the jeers and ridicule of the mob. Human
life interests become limited by the narrow horizon of a mob-ruled
personality. The unceasing obedience to the suggestions of the crowd
weakens and loosens the reasoning and moral fibre, reduces the energies
of the mind to the animal level, controlled by self-preservation and
fear.
With reduced and impoverished energies, the person, in case of trouble
and misfortune, is unable to fall back on his inner resources, he falls
a prey to worry, fear, anxiety, and disease. In other cases the
intellectual and moral powers are enfeebled by the rigid discipline and
by the course of enforced obedience, the person falls a victim to all
forms of temptations. With no principle to guide him, with no will to
stay him, the person drifts helplessly on the stream of life. Lured by
seductive sirens, his life is finally wrecked on the rocks and reefs of
vice, sin, crime, and disease.
Where stumbling on vice, disease, and crime is avoided, the person
inevitably lands on the dull shores of the Lotophagi. Ideas and ideals
are forgotten and forsaken in the routine of animal existence. This is
the land of Philistinism, a land where all human, humane interests,
independent thought, and courageous action are wanting. Philistines are
uncritical, unconscious of defects and faults, living in the mire of
self-contented stupidity and mediocrity. They cease to grow mentally and
morally. Their intellectual and moral capacities become paralyzed,
atrophied. _Man becomes the equal of the brute._
With a philistine education and training, man is fit to become one of
those unfortunate and pitiful European pawns and automata who obey
blindly the commands of their superior officers. Philistines shoot,
stab, poison, pillage, bum, outrage, and murder at the command of
unscrupulous, self-seeking leaders, brutal junkers, bloodhounds of
empires.
Brought up in a school of fear, obedience, and suggestibility, the
philistine, like Cain, murders his brother without aim and without
understanding the full significance of the awful deed. He is no more
responsible than is the machine gun which he accurately trains and
points at his supposed enemies. Philistines are led to the battlefield
like cattle to the slaughter house. Philistines have no personality, no
individuality, they are cogs in wheels, links in chains of monster
mechanisms.
The philistine, the product of our home and school, is suggestible and
gullible, he is always on the lookout for authority, for a leader whom
he should worship, by whose opinions and conviction he is ready to
swear, whose command he is ready and proud to follow. The philistine is
good material for mobs, for mental epidemics, for religious crazes, and
for all kinds of hysterical movements in which not reason but emotional
automatism is in the foreground. _Philistinism, stupidity, and implicit
obedience of a monstrous, efficient war machine are intimately
interrelated. The individual becomes a private, the nation an army, and
the country a camp._
Do we as parents wish to bring up our children as soulless, willless
machines? Do we wish them to be without good judgment, without personal
convictions? Do we wish them to be led about like cattle? We certainly
wish them to be of strong nature and sturdy character, able to stand by
their convictions, able to use their critical judgment, able to
discriminate the right from the wrong, able to love the good and avoid
the evil.
In _The Psychology of Suggestion_, published by me in 1897, I arrive at
the conclusion that “Personality is suppressed by the rigidity of social
organization; the cultivated, civilized individual is an automaton, a
mere puppet.”... Again, “Under the enormous weight of the sociostatic
press ... the personal self sinks, the suggestible, subconscious,
social, impersonal self rises to the surface, gets trained and
cultivated, and becomes the hysterical actor in all the tragedies of
historical life.”... In recent European events the suggestible, social
self plays the chief rôle.
In the same work I come to the following conclusion: “When social
conditions are of such a nature as to charge society with strong
emotional excitement, or when institutions dwarf individuality, when
they arrest personal growth, when they hinder the free development and
exercise of the personal, controlling consciousness, then society falls
into a hypnoid condition, the social mind gets disaggregated. The
gregarious self begins to move within the bosom of the crowd, and
becomes active; the demon of the demos emerges to the surface of social
life, and throws the body politic into convulsions of demoniac fury.”
The European horrors, atrocities, and brutalities, dignified by the
stupefying and hypnotizing slogan “Kultur, Patriotism,” are due to the
early training, by fear and force, of the individual into submission to
superior authority. Such pernicious training sacrifices the genius of
the child, the originality of the man, to a highly efficient, but brutal
and blood-thirsty Moloch State. The European war is a mental plague
which attacks gigantic, social aggregates when their ultimate
constituent units, the individuals, are deprived of independent thought
and liberty of decision and action, when men are swayed by hypnotizing
suggestions of “superior leaders” who represent the interests not of
every individual at his best, but of high noble castes and of commercial
classes. The organized murder of European nations is due to the stifling
of human genius by the cultivation of mob spirit which is the cause of
all forms of social insanity and mental epidemics.
In the stifling of the genius of the child and the cultivation of the
mob spirit America does not lag behind Europe. Mental epidemics, excited
by the fear instinct and by the impulse of self-preservation, are
prevalent in the States. As described by me in _The Psychology of
Suggestion_: “American society oscillates between acute financial mania
and attacks of religious insanity. No sooner is the business fever over
than the _delirium acutum_ of religious mania sets in. Society is thrown
from Scylla into Charybdis. From the heights of financial speculation
society sinks into the abyss of revivalism. _American society seems to
suffer from circular insanity._”
Revivalism, a mental frenzy to which the American mob mind is specially
prone, is a resurrection of Greek Bacchanalia and Roman Saturnalia.
Revivals are emotional debauches, religious orgies. As I had pointed out
in the same work: “Revivalism is far more dangerous to the life of
society than drunkenness.... As a sot man falls below the brute; as a
revivalist he sinks lower than the sot.”
If Europe is in violent convulsions of war insanity, America suffers
from no less serious mental maladies,—speculation frenzies, revival
manias, and preparedness plagues. Mental epidemics are ineradicable
afflictions of the highly evolved mob spirit characteristic of the
philistine. The evolution of the philistine is the involution of genius.
Philistinism is social decay. _The progress of humanity is from brute to
man, from Philistine to Genius._
Boris Sidis.
_Sidis Institute,_
_Maplewood Farm,_
_Portsmouth, New Hampshire._