CHAPTER XIII. Estimates and Values

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.