Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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Popular Science Monthly

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civilization, because the essential condition of the intelligent and effective regulation of life. The one of these prophets among biologists, President G. Stanley Hall, has lived to see his faith in the practical importance of the intensive study of childhood and adolescence justified by radical reforms in school and home. Hall should be revered by all lovers of youth as the apostle to adolescents. The other, Professor William McDougall, has done much to convince the thinking world that all of the social sciences and technologies must be grounded upon an adequate genetic psychology--a genetic psychology which shall take as full and intelligent account of behavior as of experience; of the life of the ant, monkey, ape as of that of man; of the savage as of civilized man; of the infant, child, adolescent as of the adult; of the moron, imbecile, idiot, insane, as of the normal individual; of social groups as of isolated selves. It is to McDougall we owe a most effective sketch--in his introduction to Social Psychology of the primary human emotions in their relations to instinctive modes of behavior. Hall, McDougall and such sociologists--lamentably few, I fear--as Graham Wallas would agree that for the attainment of peace we must depend upon some primary human instinct. I venture the prediction that no one of them would select fear as the safe basis. Instead, they surely would unite upon sympathy. Among animals preparedness for struggles is a conspicuous cause of strife. The monkey who stalks about among his fellows with muscles tense, tail erect, teeth bared, bespeaking expectancy of and longing for a fight, usually provokes it. We may not safely argue that lower animals prove the value of preparedness for war as a preventive measure! Among them, as among human groups, the only justification of militarism is protection and aggression. Preparedness for strife is provocative rather than preventive thereof. As individual differences, and resulting struggles, are due to ignorance, misunderstanding, lack of the basis for intelligent appreciation of ideals, motives and sympathy, so among nations knowledge of bodily and mental traits, of aims, aspirations, and national ideals fosters the feeling of kinship and favors the instinctive attitude of sympathetic cooperation. Every student of living things knows that to understand the structure, habits, instincts, of any creature is to feel for and with it. Even the lowliest type of organism acquires dignity and worth when one becomes familiar with its life. Children in their ignorance and lack of understanding are incredibly cruel. So, likewise, are nations. The treatment of inferior by superior races throughout the ages has been childishly cruel, unjust, stupid, inimical to the best interests not only of the victims, but also of mankind. This has been so, not so much by reason of bad intentions, although selfishness has been at the root of immeasurable injustice, but primarily because of the utter lack of understanding and sympathy. To see a savage is to despise or fear him, to know him intimately is to love him. The same law holds of social groups, be they families, tribes, nations or races. They can cooperate on terms of friendly helpfulness just in the measure in which they know one another's physical, mental and social traits and appreciate their values, for in precisely this measure are they capable of understanding and sympathizing with one another's ideals. Selfishness, the essential condition of individualism and nationalism, must be supplanted by the sympathy of an all inclusive social consciousness and conscience if lasting peace is to be attained. To further the end of this transformation of man we should become familiar with the inborn springs to action, those fundamental tendencies which we call instincts, for we live more largely than is generally supposed by instinct and less by reason. All of the organic cravings, hungers, needs, should be thoroughly understood so that they may be effectively used. And, finally, the laws of intellect must be at our command if we are to meet the endlessly varying and puzzling situations of life profitably and with the measure of adequacy our reason would seem to justify. Clearly, then, the least, and the most, we can do in the interest of peace is to provide for the study of life, but especially for the shamefully neglected or imperfectly described phenomena of behavior and mind, in the measure which our national wealth, our intelligence and our technical skill make possible. For one thing, it is open to us to establish institutes for the thorough study of every aspect of behavior and mind in relation to structure and environment, comparable with such institutions for social progress as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. The primary function of such centers for the solution of vital problems should be the comparative study, from the genetic, developmental, historical, point of view of every aspect of the functional life of living things, to the end that human life may be better understood and more successfully controlled. Facts of heredity, of behavior, of mind, of social relations, should alike be gathered and related, and thus by the observation of the most varied types, developmental stages, and conditions of living creatures there should be developed a science of behavior and consciousness which should ultimately constitute a safe basis for the social sciences, for all forms of social endeavor, and for universal and permanent peace. I submit that such centers of research as the psycho-biological institute I have so imperfectly described are sorely needed. For it is obvious that the future of our species depends in large measure upon how we develop the biological sciences and what use we make of our knowledge. I further submit, and therewith I rest my case, that familiarity with living things breeds sympathy not contempt, and that sympathy in turn conditions justice. May it be granted us to work intelligently, effectively, tirelessly for world-wide peace and service. not by the suppression of racial and national diversities, the leveling of the mass to a deadly sameness, but through steadily increasing appreciation of racial and national traits. May the world, even sooner than we dare to hope, be ruled by sympathy instead of by

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