NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had
put it the other way around. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in
ourselves but in our stars" or better "in the Sun."
* * * * *
LATHAM. In the Sun?
NIEMAND. That's right, in the Sun. I suppose the oldest problem in the
world is the origin of human evil. Philosophers have wrestled with it
ever since the days of Job. And like Job they have usually given up in
despair, convinced that the origin of evil is too deep for the human
mind to solve. Generally they have concluded that man is inherently
wicked and sinful and that is the end of it. Now for the first time
science has thrown new light on this subject.
LATHAM. How is that?
NIEMAND. Consider the record of history. There are occasional periods
when conditions are fairly calm and peaceful. Art and industry
flourished. Man at last seemed to be making progress toward some higher
goal. Then suddenly--_for no detectable reason_--conditions are
reversed. Wars rage. People go mad. The world is plunged into an orgy of
bloodshed and misery.
LATHAM. But weren't there reasons?
NIEMAND. What reasons?
LATHAM. Well, disputes over boundaries ... economic rivalry ... border
incidents....
NIEMAND. Nonsense. Men always make some flimsy excuse for going to war.
The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go
to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over
which they have no control. By forces outside of themselves.
LATHAM. Those are broad, sweeping statements. Can't you be more
specific?
NIEMAND. Perhaps I'd better go back to the beginning. Let me see.... It
all started back in March, 1955, when I started getting patients
suffering from a complex of symptoms, such as profound mental
depression, anxiety, insomnia, alternating with fits of violent rage and
resentment against life and the world in general. These people were
deeply disturbed. No doubt about that. Yet they were not psychotic and
hardly more than mildly neurotic. Now every doctor gets a good many
patients of this type. Such a syndrome is characteristic of menopausal
women and some men during the climacteric, but these people failed to
fit into this picture. They were married and single persons of both
sexes and of all ages. They came from all walks of life. The onset of
their attack was invariably sudden and with scarcely any warning. They
would be going about their work feeling perfectly all right. Then in a
minute the whole world was like some scene from a nightmare. A week or
ten days later the attack would cease as mysteriously as it had come and
they would be their old self again.
LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of
modern life?
NIEMAND. I'm afraid that old stress-and-strain theory has been badly
overworked. Been hearing about it ever since I was a pre-med student at
UCLA. Even as a boy I can remember my grandfather deploring the stress
and strain of modern life when he was a country doctor practicing in
Indiana. In my opinion one of the most valuable contributions
anthropologists have made in recent years is the discovery that
primitive man is afflicted with essentially the same neurotic conditions
as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found
savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the
mountain tribes of the Elgonyi and the Aruntas of Australia. No, Mr.
Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk
pile along with demoniac possession and blood letting.