If scientific eugenics can put a stop to the contra-selection
incidental to civilization, Man will recover the plasticity and
the progressiveness he once possessed, and will be able to evolve
further--in whatever direction seems to him best. We need not take
alarm at this possibility, for with his superior knowledge he may
surely be trusted to make a better job of his evolution than the
_Lemur_ and the _Pithecanthropus_, who were our progenitors and managed
to evolve into modern man.
But the process will necessarily be a slow one, even though a
comprehensive scheme of eugenics will be providing simultaneously _two_
sources of improvement, by the elimination of defectives at the bottom
of the social scale, and by the increase of ability at the top. As,
moreover, time presses, and sheer destruction may overtake us before
eugenics have made much difference, it would be highly desirable if
some means could be found to accelerate the change of heart required.
For this purpose, I am much less inclined to put my trust in the
advance of pharmacology than Mr Haldane and Mr Russell.[D] Hitherto
new drugs have only meant new vices, sometimes (like cocaine) of so
fascinating a character as to distract the whole police force from
their proper function of repressing crime. So it seems legitimate to
be very sceptical about moral transformation scenes to be wrought by
pills and injections.
On the other hand there does seem to be a science from the possible
progress of which something of a sensational kind might not
unreasonably be expected. It is, moreover, the science most directly
concerned with affairs of this sort. Psychology, the science of human
mentality, is, by common consent, in a deplorably backward state. It
has remained a ground for metaphysical excursions and a playground for
the arbitrary pedantries of classificatory systematists. Its efforts
to become scientific have only led it to ape assumptions and to borrow
notions found to be appropriate in sciences with widely different
problems and objects. The results, as the psychologists themselves
confess, are meagre and disappointing; which, of course, only proves
that the borrowed notions are inappropriate and incapable of making
Psychology into an effective science. But if psychologists should
take it into their heads to settle down to business, to recognize
the primary obligation of every science to develop methods and
conceptions capable of working upon its subject-matter, and so tried
to authenticate their ‘truth’ after the ordinary fashion of the other
sciences, namely by the pragmatic test of successful working, some
surprising effects might be elicited even from the actual human mind.
For there is reason to suppose that its present organization is very
far from being the best of which it is capable. It has come about in a
very haphazard manner, and we are not at present making anything like
an adequate use of all our powers. Hence by changing the gearing and
re-arranging the traditional coupling, so to speak, of our faculties,
improvements might conceivably be wrought which would seem to us to
border on the miraculous. Thus a pragmatically efficient Psychology
might actually invert the miracle of Circe, and really transform the
Yahoo into a man.
X
I have endeavoured in this very summary sketch to show that the doom of
Tantalus is by no means unconditional, and that he can save himself if
he chooses, and that by no superhuman effort, but merely by recognizing
facts that are right before his nose and well within his comprehension,
and by a little clear thinking upon their import. But I would not
presume to predict that he _will_ save himself: history affords no
unambiguous guide. It seems to show that something worse and something
better than what actually happens is always conceivable, and that
neither our hopes nor our fears are ever fully realized. If so, poor
Tantalus, hoping against hope, fearing against reason, may muddle along
for a good while yet, without repeating either his ancient error of
imagining that he could sup with the gods, or his modern folly of using
his reason, as Goethe’s Mephistopheles declared, only to become more
bestial than any beast!