ESTIMATES AND VALUES
ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF THE HUMAN BRAIN
There is substantial evidence to prove that the brain passed through
many intermediate stages before it acquired sufficient power to enter
upon the latest stage of its progress. Wherever it has come down
into modern times, regardless of race or climate, it bears marked
similarities in its external appearance. In spite of this strong family
likeness, however, there are many individual variations. Some of these
variations are especially noteworthy. Certain of them are of utmost
importance because it is possible to discover in them the secret of
man’s highest achievements.
In the average human brain, as in these notable exceptions, the
principle of development remains unchanged. Expansion, the root and
base of this principle, has been most pronounced in the departments
capable of creating human supremacy. From order to order among the
mammals, increase in the size of the brain has been prominent.
Depending upon the specialization of the animal, this increase has
affected the area of vision, of hearing, of body sense, of taste, or
of smell. Only in the family of man has this expansion made itself
preëminent in the frontal region. Frontal growth is the dominant
character of man’s physical endowment. It seems reasonable, therefore,
to speak of the entire period of human existence as the Age of the
Frontal Lobe.
_The Frontal Lobe and the Expansion of Consciousness_
Selective development in the brain has had far-reaching effects. It
has provided for special adaptability. It has furnished one or more
of the senses with a particular degree of keenness. It has determined
the specific lines of reaction. These lines in all animal life express
themselves in three phases: (1) the approaching phase, (2) the avoiding
phase, and (3) the resting phase. In the vertebrates each phase depends
upon impulses which influence the nervous system, particularly the
brain. The approaching reactions embrace all efforts made by the animal
to reach out and acquire what it needs. In these reactions the hunger
impulse is the most primitive and the most important. It arises from
the necessity for food and depends upon stimuli from the entire body,
more especially from the gastro-intestinal tract. Another series of
approaching reactions takes origin in the herding impulse, which leads
to the gregarious association of animals of the same kind, such as
schools of fish, flocks of birds, herds of cattle. The stimuli for this
impulse come through the contact-receiving organs. Many approaching
reactions express the essential necessity of the muscles to contract,
as in activities without any other apparent objective. Still more
conspicuous are the approaching reactions caused by the mating
impulses which arise from sexual stimuli.
Impulses of each variety motivating these reactions of approach
ascend higher in consciousness, or acquire greater clarity, in direct
proportion to the brain capacity of the animal. Consciousness in fish
is of a relatively low grade. It becomes progressively more extensive
in amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, reaching its highest
development in the human cortex. The frontal lobe in man provides for
an incalculable expansion of these impulses in conscious clarity.
The avoiding reactions of animal life likewise depend upon fundamental
impulses whose essential stimuli arise from the hurt or painful
elements in sensation. All extremes of sensory stimulation may
contribute to impulses underlying the avoiding reactions. They form
the natural armament of protection upon which the animal depends in
adjusting itself to its surroundings. As in the case of the approaching
reactions, so the impulses necessary to avoidance are progressively
expanded through the vertebrates until they reach their highest clarity
in the human brain. The resting phase depends upon impulses derived
from the entire metabolism of the body.
These fundamental impulses which become clearer in consciousness
through the progressive stages of the animal kingdom tend to interact
in their correlations and determine combinations of great importance.
Avoiding impulses of a protective nature may combine with approaching
impulses to determine a reaction of attack in order to save the
animal from some threatening enemy. Thus a protective effort may be
a combination of an avoiding and an attacking attitude at the same
time, as when the mongoose, jumping backward in retreat from the
striking cobra, still maintains the pose of attack in the entire set
of its body. The resting phase may be employed as camouflage for an
avoiding reaction in what is commonly known as “playing ’possum,” or
it may be used as a decoy in preparation for aggressive activities of
attack, particularly as seen in the cat family. In man the range of
these combinations has attained the highest degree of development. The
frontal lobe furnishes an extensive equipment for this purpose. In
all modern races frontal capacity manifests but little difference. It
therefore seems clear that this common denominator of human success has
given man his power to hold his place in nature and to overcome the
difficulties which have beset his path.
_Caucasian Supremacy_
The greater apparent successes of the white race might presuppose a
greater degree of brain capacity and hence a better frontal lobe. But
the frontal superiority of the Caucasian peoples, if it exists, is at
best slight. The white man’s supremacy must, however, depend upon some
actual advantage. Although outnumbered two to one, he is to-day the
overlord of the world. Of the 1,700,000,000 human beings now living,
only 550,000,000 are Caucasians. The remaining 1,150,000,000 belong
to the yellow, black, and red races. In spite of this disparity, the
white man’s policies, his products, his projects, penetrate into every
angle of the earth whose climate, fertility, or hidden wealth may be
exploited by resources of the Caucasian brain.
Numerous facts indicate that in the white race there has been
an unusually large number of individuals with exceptional brain
development. Many Caucasians who have distinguished themselves
intellectually show conspicuous advantages in cerebral development,
especially in the richness of convolutions and fissures. The region of
the brain showing this richness particularly is the frontal lobe.
_Brains of Modern Races_
This lobe is much the same in all modern races of men. The Eskimo
brain, however, possesses frontal convolutions which are rather more
complex and tortuous than in the average whites (Hrdlicka). As a
whole, the brain of this northern race is heavier and larger than the
Caucasian. Its excess of weight over the average white man, according
to many observers, amounts to about 150 grams. The large Eskimo brain
is not out of proportion with the fact that these people are compelled
to contend with an exacting environment and require much ingenuity to
maintain themselves.
The brains of the aborigines in Andaman and Nicobar Islands weigh
somewhat less than the average white brain. The brain is broad and
short; the frontal lobes are a little less massive than in the
Caucasian. The fissures and convolutions are, if anything, slightly
less complex than in the white man, although the difference is not
striking (E. A. Spitzka).
The negro brain, for the most part, has the same outline as the
European brain (Tiedemann). The length and height of the hemispheres
do not differ visibly, and their breadth is only a little less. The
convolutions are large in the frontal regions and the sulci show a
greater degree of symmetry than is usually found in European brains.
Among the American Indians the average weight of the brain is somewhat
less than the Caucasian (H. B. Ferris). This is true both of the
North and South American Indian. On the other hand, the fissures and
convolutions, especially in the frontal region, correspond very closely
in complexity and dimension to those of the white man.
Examination of Mongolian brains shows that the average weight of the
Chinese brain is slightly less than that of the Caucasian (Kurz).
The Chinese brain is said to have a number of striking peculiarities
in which it differs from the brain of other races. One investigator
mentions thirty-three peculiarities of this kind, and yet when each
peculiarity is considered individually its prototype may be found in
an extensive group study of Caucasian brains. The frontal lobe is
richly convoluted and fissured. Kappers believes that the Chinese brain
retains a degree of infantilism, much of which is shown in the high
arching of the corpus callosum.
Accepting all of these differences in the several races of living men
as to weight, dimension, development of lobes, richness of convolutions
and fissures, and peculiarities in individual details, it becomes
clear that such differences as do exist are slight enough to be well
within the range of individual variation. In other words, when large
numbers of brains of the several races of modern men are compared,
the differences between them are almost certain to assume no great
importance. We may conclude that the Caucasian, Negroid, Mongolian, and
all other forms of the modern brain present a striking similarity in
their general appearance and characters.
_Brains of Distinguished Men_
When, however, we consider the brains of distinguished members
of the white race, we at once obtain the impression of striking
individual variations. The brains of many men of genius have been
carefully studied. Spitzka has collected the records of one hundred
such individuals to which he has added his own studies upon six
distinguished scientists. All tell the same story. These men, noted
as jurists, scientists, mathematicians, composers, dramatists,
physicians, journalists, statesmen, and historians, have with few
exceptions possessed brains which in weight exceed those of the rank
and file of the race. This is true of the brain of such outstanding
men as Beethoven, Cuvier, Turgenev, Daniel Webster, Lenin, Thackeray,
Joseph Leidy, William Pepper, Edward Cope, and many others. The brain
of the remarkable deaf, dumb, and blind girl, Laura Bridgman, has
been carefully studied by Dr. Donaldson. It is notable that in this
instance the frontal lobes, both in size and in the richness of the
convolutions and fissures, were well developed. It was in this region
that the brains of the distinguished contributors to human progress
already mentioned showed their greatest degree of expansion. Recently
reports on the brains of Sir William Osler, of Dr. G. Stanley Hall,
and of Dr. E. E. Southard have been published. In each of these
remarkable men the size of the brain and the unusual development of
the frontal lobe have been striking features. The brain of the great
German historian, Theodore Mommsen, was particularly notable because of
its frontal development, and so also was that of William Bunsen, the
scientist and discoverer.
In contrast to the massive brains of these other men of genius, there
has recently been brought to light the fact that the brain of a great
modern master of literature, Anatole France, was remarkably small,
weighing only 1017 grams. This weight is considerably below the average
for the white race (1300-1400 grams) and not much above the estimated
weight of _Pithecanthropus erectus_, the Java ape man. The difference
between the weight of Anatole France’s brain and that of the ape man is
77 grams, according to the estimated values. Sir Arthur Keith maintains
that in spite of this noted academician’s reputation, known the world
over for his writings as a novelist, philosopher, and savant, Anatole
France was actually an extremely primitive man. This position taken by
Keith would be difficult to support against the prevailing opinions
of the day. We should be more impressed by the degree of richness in
development of the frontal lobe and the complexity of its convolutions
and fissures than by the actual size of the brain. It would seem
most likely that a marked degree of frontal development has been the
decisive factor in the production of the exceptional brain. Most of the
great men who have left records in respect to their cerebral endowment
confirm Sir Arthur’s contention that a powerful brain is a large brain.
Individual variation may account for much, however, and a high grade
of frontal convolution, implying as it does a great cell richness
in a cortex, may make amends for many ounces of weight deficiency.
From the facts available it is clear that human greatness in the main
depends upon largeness of brain and extensive frontal development. The
possessors of such brains have been the leaders in the activities of
the white man, in every line of his progress, in every detail of his
success. They have been the Caucasian thinkers, the idealists, the
philosophers, the poets and artists; they have been the white man’s
pragmatists, his statesmen and builders of empire. They have also been
his spiritual pioneers, the founders of his religions and ethics. To
them has been given exceptional power of vision, with equally great
capacities for transforming what such vision revealed into benefits for
their race.
_Caucasian Leaders_
History gives them their proper places. Their dynamic personalities
have touched the earth and made it bring forth its seven wonders and
an increasing multitude of lesser wonders, each a marvel of human
ingenuity. As they touched the earth and made it produce, so they have
touched the hearts and imaginations of their fellow men until their
minds responded to new aspirations and nobler purposes, until the mark
of the beast was left farther in the distance and the ascendancy of
mankind became the most stirring theme of creation.
History also shows how these favoured elements of the race, under
the guidance of their leaders, have built brilliant civilizations,
compelling systems of religion, far-reaching codes of ethics. Nations
have risen, articulating the ideals of peoples scattered over vast
territories. Cities have come into existence filled with the treasures
of man’s imagination. The same aspiration shone through them all. It
was the spirit, the determination to reach out where man had never
reached before.
Whatever were his material successes, still more important was that
inner possession which came to man during his adventurous development
of civilization. However simple it may have been in the beginning, it
grew rapidly. This priceless possession was the human intellect. In
many tribes of men it manifested none of the expansion discernible
in the more progressive races. But with its fullest opportunity,
especially under the conditions of European environment, it developed
to the degree which created a new humanity. Man recognized his
interdependence with his fellow beings. His social qualities now began
to bear fruit in a new soil and in a more invigorating atmosphere. The
finer traits of his social nature grew abundantly. Broader conceptions
of responsibility to others, deeper understandings of sympathy, led to
new products of generosity and new vocations of social devotion. All of
the higher sentiments found easier means of expression. These were new
conceptions denied to lower animals and to the lower races of man.
Scarcely less substantial than the satisfaction derived from this deep
social sentiment was the gratification obtained from an appreciation of
the beauties of nature and from man’s own efforts to duplicate these
beauties in his art and literature. But his eyes have never contented
themselves with earthly attractiveness alone. When he had possessed the
earth he must still reach out in imagination to gain for himself the
assurance of kingdoms beyond his present state. In all his civilized
period and even long before man has peered acquisitively into the
unknown, to create for himself a future existence or the hope of such
existence. This yearning for another and an immortal life has been
the basis of his many religious beliefs. From this theme of religion
have grown the impulses for the best of human achievements. It has not
merely formed a halo about civilization, but has reached far inward to
exert control over almost every human relation. No influence has been a
greater force in the ennoblement of life. No creation of the brain has
been a more effective guide in directing human destiny. No incentive
has sustained human hope more consistently than the solace arising from
this deep source of faith.
_Age of the Frontal Lobe_
The frontal lobe, which has guaranteed such advantages to man,
brought him his spiritual understanding, his social attributes, and
his satisfactions from art and literature. It created the means
for him to gain a more adequate knowledge of the world in which he
lived and of the great cosmos of which his world is but a part. The
conquest of reality, the deeper appreciation of things as they are,
the broad expansion of his knowledge of all things in and about him,
have contributed deep satisfactions to human life. It is difficult
to estimate in this day the value of all the great contributions to
science. It is difficult also to state which product of man’s frontal
lobe, his social development, his religion, his art, his literature,
or his science, has meant most to the growth of that imposing figure
in which he now presents himself. No one of these elements may justly
deserve to be set above the others. Deprived of any of them, the
race might have been seriously impoverished; it might never have
attained that position which entitles it to be considered the supreme
achievement of creation. It is little wonder that the gods which man
set up for himself have been anthropomorphic, cast in his own image and
likeness.
In later days there were reasons for the Caucasian’s assurance, for
his self-reliance, for his faith in his own judgment and reason. Peace
and comity existed between the nations of the earth. Prosperity was
within their borders. Success and progress filled every walk of life.
Social order rested upon firm moral foundations. This was a human
establishment upon which to depend. But ultimately this record of the
white man, from the beginning of his civilized period down to the early
decades of the Twentieth Century, brings us to a fateful midsummer day,
the 1st of August, 1914.
_Old Sores and Liabilities_
Perhaps there are no good reasons for turning back to such old
sores. Can any conceivable advantage come of opening again those
vaults holding that which we would rather forget? With passing years
memory gradually relinquishes what should be the immortal lessons of
experience. The horror, the degradation, and all other outgrowths of
the protective mechanisms making for better judgment, for saner living,
for wiser avoidance, are soon forgotten. We look and see only the
whited sepulchre. The dissolution and disease, the lurking danger for
the future, are concealed. Yet these are our liabilities. If we drive
on blindly or with our eyes closed to them, such prosperity as we have
attained is destined to disintegrate.
It is the old formula over again that we see beginning to reproduce
itself on that fateful August afternoon. The expansive demand for
power, the will to dominate, the insatiable determination to possess,
are all disdainfully snapping their fingers in disregard of the rights
and peaceful pursuits of others. Sacred obligations are thrown to the
winds with the crackling of a scrap of paper. There are no obligations.
Lust, greed, and the dregs of human cruelty are seething in the
breasts of men turned animals, are ready to speak with the tongues of
every manner of ruthless torment. By armies men return to the filth
of the earth, living in the mire, breathing the stenches of their own
corruption, inhaling the gases of sadistic invention, meeting the flame
of an earthly purgatory, and inspired by the single indefatigable
impulse to kill. And for what purpose? None but the old one! To grasp,
to gain, to seize by force! There is no question of right or wrong. The
only question is right of possession. Both those who attack and those
who defend pray to the same God and pray the same prayer.
Here in our own days is the frontal lobe leading a great fraction
of the white race not merely into hell but to the brink of its own
undoing. If it failed in this leadership it was by the narrowest
margin. It has left us still gasping on the edge of the precipice into
whose depths we have gazed, wondering how long ere we see them again.
Courage, endurance, and heroic determination we say were the
compensating atonements for this madness, for this maniacal era of
wanton destruction. Nobility of purpose rang out in the defiance--“They
shall not pass!” Yet where was the nobility in that machine-made death
which swept regiment after regiment into oblivion by its withering
fire? Who now will claim the glory of 400,000 dead in less than a
lunar month, of 8,543,515 fighting men fallen in the early prime of
manhood in four years of war? Is this the chronicle for a great race to
glory in? It is rather the record of the white man at his lowest ebb,
dehumanized for a mere bauble of possession.
Thus, through four brief years, out of the unhallowed precincts of no
man’s land, the mark of the beast came back. The white man learned
that the cloak over his baser passions was a thin veneer. He learned,
or may have learned if there has yet been time to recover from the
overwhelming concussion, that he is not yet master of himself, that
the chief guide of his life may on slight provocation lead him not
rightly or well, but with unerring precision, into the pitfalls of
extermination.
_When the Pressure Comes_
We speak of loyalties and vocations of devotion. Where are these when
the pressure comes? Where are they when the man stands with his mob?
The greatest and best things in life at once take flight. There is not
even standing-room for them when hate and revenge are the passions of
the day. It is then that class stands against class. All that wealth
and culture and luxury have built through centuries finds no strength
against the ire galvanized by equal centuries of oppression. Those who
have suffered their silent agonies confront those who are about to die.
Such have been the tragedies of revolution. So it was in the French
Revolution, with its history of guillotine horrors. Such was the case
of Russia in revolt. Such it has always been wherever the privilege to
enjoy, concentrated for the benefit of the few, has worked disadvantage
to the many. Neither those who for the time enjoy, nor those who
are deprived, have sufficiently learned the lessons of moderation,
self-restraint, and control over the human spirit to hold in check the
baser impulses.
War, revolution, and other mass reactions in the interest of
readjusting man’s social conditions are not rare in our racial
experience. Since the beginning of historic times there have been
thousands of wars of greater or less magnitude. If, during the Roman
era, the gates in the temple of Janus stood open for centuries and
that great people were almost continuously at war without appreciable
cessation, we moderns would have no need for an energetic gatekeeper.
In one place or another, throughout the globe, we have been
continuously waging war or producing revolutions. Following the close
of the great World War, a little more than a decade ago, there have
been no less than sixteen wars, and seventy-five thousand men have died
as a result of warfare. Let those who philosophize in security call
war an activity essential to human progress. Those who know it through
suffering and loss will call it by its proper name. It is not, however,
in war alone that we may discern the results of our defective control
over human nature. We need turn but a few pages of history to encounter
many other sore spots. Among these blemishes are those arising from
a source which should have been our most unfailing, our deepest
consolation.
_Heresy and Retaliation_
The spiritual heritage bequeathed by the Great Galilean retained
its influence for little more than two centuries. Through the dark
Middle Ages Christianity wandered far from the path of its appointed
blessedness. To many it ceased altogether to be a blessing, and to
many others it became an actual curse, meaning for them torture,
imprisonment, starvation, humiliation, or death by burning at the
stake. There can be little wonder that heresies sprang up against the
inhuman conduct of the mediæval Church. Corruption, discrimination,
demoralization, abuse, and tyranny went unrebuked. The church
militant was infected by every sin that it was created to prevent.
Heresy was the reaction to such corruption, and the Inquisition
was the retaliation on the part of the Church to preserve itself
against heretical disintegration. The barbarous zeal which through
many centuries brought misery to mankind in the name of Christ has
been explained in several ways. Some have denounced it as mere
bloodthirstiness or lust of power. Some have traced it to the doctrine
of exclusive salvation. In order to understand it properly we must
comprehend the stage of civilization in which it flourished. The feudal
military spirit was everywhere dominant. Society relied more upon
force than upon persuasion. Industrial influences had not yet tempered
modes of thought and action. Throughout the Middle Ages men were
strangely pitiless in their dealings with each other. The wheel, the
cauldron of boiling oil, burning alive, burying alive, flaying alive,
and tearing apart with wild horses were the ordinary means by which
jurists endeavoured to deter crime. In England poisoners were boiled to
death as late as 1542 (Rouse and Margaret Davie). One woman, in 1726,
was burned at Tyburn. Minor crimes were dealt with with a harshness
unbelievable in this day, including such hideous procedures as
blinding, mutilation, tearing with hot pincers, breaking on the wheel,
and cutting out the tongue. People of all nations were accustomed to
this cruel savagery and accepted it in relation to crimes that were
thus punished. By popular detestation heresy was regarded not merely as
a sin but as the worst of all crimes. This belief was held with equal
tenacity both by the clergy and the laity. Under the influence of such
feelings the Church adopted the harshest measures and continued to grow
more cruel and more unchristian.
The Inquisition was not a local phenomenon. It became most intense in
Italy, where it gradually took shape. In time it spread into Germany,
into France, and into Spain. The Spanish Inquisition was employed for
the most part as a state institution to maintain the throne. It used
all of the ingenuity known to the ecclesiastical inquisitors and added
punishments of its own. The torture chamber, which at first was not
introduced as an inquisitorial instrument, soon established itself
as an indispensable accessory and flourished in many parts of Europe.
There was a furtiveness in the manner in which the Church doled out
these punishments. For the repentant heretic life imprisonment on
bread and water and in chains was not a criminal sentence; it was the
means of repentance and salvation for the unfortunate sinner. If the
heretic remained unrepentant the Church washed its hands of him as a
capital offender and turned him over to the secular authorities to be
burned at the stake. The dungeon in which the unfortunate victim was
imprisoned for life was a frightful chamber, damp, and infested by rats
and vermin. Confinement was solitary and various circumstances besides
pain and hunger were brought to bear upon the terrorized imagination
of the prisoner. These dungeons were often ingenious means of torture.
One in the Bastille at Paris had a floor which was conical and pointed
downward so that it was impossible to sit or lie in it. Another in
the Châtelet had a floor continually covered by water, compelling the
prisoner to stand erect. Persons convicted of heresy were also forced
to wear crosses of cloth, generally yellow, sewed upon their garments.
In this manner the symbol of Christian devotion was converted into a
badge of utmost shame. Confiscation was another penalty with frightful
effects. Upon arrest for heresy a man’s property was sequestrated,
and his family thrown into the street. After several centuries of
unremitting cruelty the Inquisition succeeded in suppressing the
various sects of heretics. For this advantage the Christian Church
paid an unnecessarily high price by gaining for itself a lasting stigma.
_Provocations of Circumstance and Time_
Such interludes as these in the course of man’s happiness and peace
may perhaps be regarded as unfortunate digressions from the scheme of
human behaviour. Their apology lies in the fact that they belong to
other times by contrast with which we have shown great improvement. We
are much changed for the better--so much changed that many of these
appalling episodes of history could not occur in this day. Reassurance
of this kind may comfort us, but it does not provide us with protection
against ourselves. For with due provocations of circumstance and
time there is no guarantee that we would not repeat or even amplify
the ghastly delinquencies of the past. The pride we feel in our
modern progress and prosperity elevates us to a plane of conscious
superiority. And yet this same pride experienced a sickening collapse
when no later than our own day and generation it was forced to witness
a phenomenon of eruptive brutality compared to which all former warfare
was insignificant. In spite of this recent experience we feel sure of
ourselves, confident in the great capacities which have made us men.
We possess this confidence, however unenlightened we may be concerning
the real power upon which we depend, especially as to its source, its
nature, its possibilities, and its proper management.
_Compounding the Essential Impulses of Life_
As no other members of the animal kingdom, we have compounded each
one of the essential impulses of life. Through our frontal mechanisms
we have raised these primitive drives to the most elevated planes of
consciousness. We have increased their clarity to the highest degree.
It was doubtless the introduction of symbols which first secured this
greater clarity. Later the development of spoken language established
the universal medium of exchange within the brain. Lower animals
evidently do not learn to speak. They only acquire the use of beast
cries by which to transmit warnings, sex invitations, or challenges to
combat. Such specific cries modified by the structural adjustments of
man may have been sufficient for the simple human language of earliest
times. There seems to be no actual barrier between the vocal activities
of birds, dogs, apes, and men except that superior mechanism of speech
provided by a progressively developing frontal lobe. From its first
introduction language was a societal phenomenon. All of its products
were likewise societal. If it raised man as an individual, its greatest
profits appeared in the elevation of the social order. Under this new
influence the primitive impulses of hunger, herding, mating, avoiding,
and the rest entered into complex combinations. In consequence, each
primordial drive was converted into a thriving industry in the interest
of further human satisfaction. Excessive growth in these industries
soon manifested many dangerous tendencies. New human expansions
developed out of the primitive impulse of hunger under the added
opportunities of the frontal lobe. Appetite and indulgence with their
tendencies toward excess came in conflict with sumptuary restrictions
and prohibitions. The effects of frontal expansion upon the herding
impulse contributed to the development of crime, to the creation of
mass phenomena under the influence of fear, hate, and hope, to the
epidemic spread of group manias and popular delusions such as were
the pilgrimages, crusades, and demonism of the Middle Ages, such
as was the extremity of ruthlessness manifested in the last great
war. The extension of the sex impulse through the mechanisms of the
frontal lobe is incalculable. From it have come crops of asceticism
and licentiousness, of poetry and sentimentality, of social order and
disorder, of philosophy and pure bunkum. The expansion of impulses
underlying the avoiding reactions has produced an unescapable blight
upon human life due to the extensive corticalization of fear. The fear
of bondage or slavery, of tyranny or cruelty, is no longer upon us.
A multitude of more subtle fears, engendered by modern civilization,
have produced our phobias, our irresistible compulsions, and our great
variety of somatic and psychic anxieties.
_Human Nature Has Not Changed_
The incentives of life have been magnified and multiplied upon the
screen of the frontal cortex. They have afforded man his powers of
judgment and reason, his greater capacities to enjoy existence, his
new aspirations of hope. They have supplied him with his broader
opportunities to order and adjust his life and with his stimulating
inspirations of learning. Each of these new capacities is conditioned
by the circumstance and fashion of a given age. There is no arguing
with such fashion. The _mores_ and the times, the customs and the
place, dominate the products of the frontal lobe and mold them in
constantly changing patterns. The fashion of yesterday is often
the laughing stock of to-day as that of to-day may be the jest of
to-morrow. These plastic patterns, which the frontal lobe produces
for the conduct of human affairs, have neither permanency nor assured
foundations. Great principles which we swear by now we know are wholly
transitory. While they last certain moral notions and devices are in
fashion, but these are conditioned by the times and customs. In such
facts as these may be recognized the variable quality of human wisdom.
Reason is likewise based upon conditioned reflexes which have grown out
of the _mores_ of the time and place. In this light, if man seems to
have come a long distance from his early beginning, the path measured
in units of real progress is surprisingly short. “Things happen,” says
Sumner, “which show us that human nature has not changed and that the
brute in each may awake at any time. It is all a question of time,
custom, and occasion and the individual is coerced to adopt the _mores_
as to these matters which are then and there current.”
Morals and manners, like speech, are societal adjustments. They are
highly conditioned reflexes acquired through generations of social
experience. Self-restraint, agreeability, and coöperation form the
basic currency of successful social intercourse. They are the artifacts
of group needs, the medium of exchange in all comfortable and safe
contacts between man and man. That these qualities are superficially
engrafted upon human nature is easily demonstrated. With adequate
provocation the individual discards restraint and reveals the grossest
traits of his aggressive reactions, the group is quickly resolved into
the lawless mob, and nations are easily excited to martial frenzy.
What benefits, therefore, will we obtain by further self-deceptions?
It is long overdue that we see through the thin fabric of traditional
delusions wherewith we have surrounded ourselves. It requires courage
to face the truth and an open mind to recognize it. But we cannot hope
to improve unless we see ourselves as we are, unless we appreciate our
inherent liabilities as well as our assets, unless, divested of angelic
or godlike disguises, we stand forth for our own inspection as human
animals occupying the foremost place among living things only by virtue
of the best brain thus far developed. Much that is animal within us
must remain unchanged despite our utmost strivings. All that is human
may be modified, enhanced, and brought to better fruition.
_Handicaps and Restraints_
Almost from its beginning the race has recognized its handicaps. It has
struggled in many ways against its own liabilities, especially those
due to increased brain power. By systems of philosophy the human spirit
has sought to show the reason and goal of life, has endeavoured to
envisage the most desirable pathway for existence.
Man has endeavoured to hold himself in check through religion, bowing
to the belief that for every human being there is some higher power
controlling destiny and for this reason entitled to obedient reverence
and worship. For his hour of need, however, philosophy and religion
offer no reprieve. The Great War comes, and assurances from these
sources of human reliance have no power to stay the catastrophe.
Man has experimented through societal organization, through the
formation of governments, through the establishment of laws, to
restrain the dangerous tendencies of his frontal lobe development. But
if his governments succeeded in utilizing effectively his efforts at
social order, they have also abused these efforts. In every societal
system there must be a ruling class. According to Professor Sumner,
no class can be trusted to rule society with due justice to all its
members. Whatever the sins of antiquity, modern society is ruled by
the middle class. It has to its credit the invention of institutions
securing civil liberty and the safety of person and property. Its
history is otherwise not satisfactory. It has demonstrated that in no
popular government could sufficient control be created to restrain the
abuses of special privilege, to avert the corruption of civic power
for graft, or to repress the selfish undertakings of cliques formed on
special interests for the purpose of public exploitation. When faced by
this test, all modern democratic states have failed. Plutocracy and the
unscrupulous powers of wealth are at the root of the financial scandal,
which is the blemish upon all modern parliamentary organizations. We
must recognize this defect not merely as a tendency of the times but as
a national disease. It spoils every institution and, extending from one
generation to the next, at length destroys in the masses the faculties
of ethical judgment.
_The Cult of Success_
By education man has likewise endeavoured to moderate the recognized
liabilities of his frontal lobe. But, like his customs, his education
has varied with the fashions of his time and place. With one brilliant
exception educational processes have too strictly been confined to
technological training, or to the inculcation of traditional cultures
or mediæval scholasticism. The ancient Greek alone dealt with his life
and its problems as we well might with ours. We are imitators and large
users of secondhand materials. He was an originator. His education was
an adventure of discovery, an absorbing search for the understanding
of what constituted the good life. Largely without traditions and upon
his own initiative he endeavoured to gain a critical attitude toward
all of his prejudices, to liberate himself from the dominance of herd
influence, and to adjust his conduct most intelligently for the welfare
of the state.
Modern education is especially in a state of confusion. It is almost
wholly devoid of any broader theme than that embraced in the purpose
to teach the individual the formulas necessary to make good. There
is little effort to inspire a larger point of view, to instill an
understanding of life’s values, an appreciation of its relations, and
of its truly human opportunities for intelligent living.
Philosophy, religion, societal order, government, and education have
failed to produce any entirely satisfactory solution of life. They have
scarcely recognized the existence of the frontal lobe, but, looking
beyond it to some intangible sources of power, they have neither
capitalized its assets nor reckoned with its liabilities. There is
probably a cause of long standing behind these several failures. For
centuries and ages the incentives of human efforts, even the best, have
laboured under a contaminating influence. This influence has touched
and tainted every aspect of life. During thousands of years men have
struggled to make good in Europe. The result has always been the same.
From time to time some section of the race has succeeded, later to
weaken, and in the end to succumb. In the past an invariable cycle of
rise, decline, and fall has dictated the course of life in Europe.
Such was the lot of the Neanderthals. Cromagnon and Neolithic men both
had their days of success and of disappearance. It was not different
with the Greeks or the Romans who rose and finally, under this spell
of Europe, passed into decline. In many respects the motive at work in
this destructive cycle seemed to act like some evil influence. It was
already well developed in the first trading exploits of the Phœnicians.
With them it began to migrate westward from harbour to harbour along
the Mediterranean. It implanted the germs of its spreading infection,
which came to be the dominant spirit of civilization--gold and a price
for everything. Nothing escaped the effects of this new standardization
of human enterprise. The pioneer Phœnicians carried this gold standard
of life far beyond the Pillars of Hercules to the shores of Britain
until it spread throughout Europe. The source of this influence
lies far back of these earlier civilizations. It had its origin
in those primitive days when Mousterian cave man tasted the first
drafts of power. The use of this power he justified by one standard
only--success. For three hundred thousand years the human brain
has been conditioned by this influence. Power increased, successes
multiplied, and the passion for possession became a frenzy. Thus it
was that those whom the gods would destroy they first made rich; and
thus also one civilization after another met its destruction. No other
solution can be worked out on this standard of existence. It will serve
to exploit nature, including human nature. It may bend the natural
forces one after another to man’s bidding. It may make him master
of the entire world except in one superlative detail--himself. In
proportion as it has been concentrated upon the conquest of the earth,
it has had little time for the mastery of the spirit. The old idea
is still at work with us to-day. We have found nothing new, nothing
better. We scarcely attempt to look. It is now our ruling passion. It
has been the contaminating influence which has for ages frustrated the
best human efforts.
Wealth, with the power to confer upon the greatest number the benefits
of true human satisfaction, is not to be condemned. Its acquisition
and proper distribution must be intelligently encouraged. Such wealth
is the just return on man’s efforts to make and maintain for himself
a wholesome place in nature. But riches, representing egocentric
aggrandizement and the upbuilding of special privilege for selfish
ends, are an open sore in all times and a most serious menace for the
future.
The ancient motive of possession is still the most powerful urge among
civilized peoples. It has exerted an increasingly evil influence upon
modern times. Its effects have been unfavourable because possession and
power depend upon the offensive and defensive mechanisms of aggression.
Such mechanisms are the progenitors of war. They promote the conflicts
of social rivalry between classes and incite the struggles for
competitive supremacy between nations. If the goal of such life is
success, the price of such success is strife. This is the standard
of existence which has prevailed for at least three hundred thousand
years. It seems irrevocable. Nothing visible in our modern world
suggests the cessation of its destroying influence. In the absence
of any present reassurance there is a strong probability that we are
following, to its bitter ends, a path long familiar to our race.