PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY

 BY

 HUGO MÜNSTERBERG

 [Illustration]

 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 1914

 _Copyright, 1914, by_ DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

 _All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian_

 To DR. I. ADLER IN FRIENDSHIP

 PREFACE

It has always seemed to me a particular duty of the psychologist fromtime to time to leave his laboratory and with his little contributionto serve the outside interests of the community. Our practical life isfilled with psychological problems which have to be solved somehow, and if everything is left to commonsense and to unscientific fanciesabout the mind, confusion must result, and the psychologist who standsaloof will be to blame. 

Hence I tried in my little book “On the Witness Stand” to discuss forthose interested in law the value of exact psychology for the problemsof the courtroom. In “Psychotherapy” I showed the bearing of ascientific study of the mind on medicine. In “Psychology and theTeacher” I outlined its consequences for educational problems. In“Psychology and Industrial Efficiency” I studied the importance ofexact psychology for commerce and industry. And I continue this seriesby the present little volume, which speaks of psychology's possibleservice to social sanity. I cannot promise that even this will be thelast, as I have not yet touched on psychology's relation to religion, to art, and to politics. 

The field which I have approached this time demanded a different kindof treatment from that in the earlier books. There I had aimed at acertain systematic completeness. When we come to the social questions, such a method would be misleading, as any systematic study of thesepsychological factors is still a hope for the future. Many parts ofthe field have never yet been touched by the plow of the psychologist. The only method which seems possible to-day is to select a fewcharacteristic topics of social discussion and to outline for each ofthem in what sense a psychologist might contribute to the solution ormight at least further the analysis of the problem. The aim is to showthat our social difficulties are ultimately dependent upon mentalconditions which ought to be cleared up with the methods of modernpsychology. 

I selected as illustrations those social questions which seemed to memost significant for our period. A few of them admitted an approachwith experimental methods, others merely a dissection of thepsychological and psychophysiological roots. The problems of sex, ofsocialism, and of superstition seemed to me especially important, andif some may blame me for overlooking the problem of suffrage, I can atleast refer to the chapter on the jury, which comes quite near to thismilitant question. 

Most of this material appears here for the first time. The chapter onthought transference, however, was published in shorter form in the_Metropolitan Magazine_, that on the jury, also abbreviated, in the_Century Magazine_, and that on naïve psychology in the _AtlanticMonthly_. The paper on sexual education is an argument, and at thesame time an answer in a vivid discussion. Last summer I published inthe New York _Times_ an article which dealt with the sex problem. Itled to vehement attacks from all over the country. The present longpaper replies to them fully. I hope sincerely that it will be my lastword in the matter. The advocates of sexual talk now have the floor;from now on I shall stick to the one policy in which I firmly believe, the policy of silence. 

 HUGO MÜNSTERBERG. 

 Cambridge, Mass. , January, 1914. 

 CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

PREFACE vii

 I. SEX EDUCATION 3

 II. SOCIALISM 71

 III. THE INTELLECTUAL UNDERWORLD 113

 IV. THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE 141

 V. THE MIND OF THE JURYMAN 181

 VI. EFFICIENCY ON THE FARM 205

 VII. SOCIAL SINS IN ADVERTISING 229

VIII. THE MIND OF THE INVESTOR 253

 IX. SOCIETY AND THE DANCE 273

 X. NAÏVE PSYCHOLOGY 291

 PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY

 I

 SEX EDUCATION

The time is not long past when the social question was understood tomean essentially the question of the distribution of profit and wages. The feeling was that everything would be all right in our society, ifthis great problem of labour and property could be solved rightly. Butin recent years the chief meaning of the phrase has shifted. Of allthe social questions the predominant, the fundamentally social one, seems nowadays the problem of sex, with all its side issues of socialevils and social vice. It is as if society feels instinctively thatthese problems touch still deeper layers of the social structure. Eventhe fights about socialism and the whole capitalistic order do not anylonger stir the conscience of the community so strongly as the graveconcern about the family. All public life is penetrated by sexualdiscussions, magazines and newspapers are overflooded withconsiderations of the sexual problem, on the stage one play of sexualreform is pushed off by the next, the pulpit resounds with sermons onsex, sex education enters into the schools, legislatures and courtsare drawn into this whirl of sexualized public opinion; theold-fashioned policy of silence has been crushed by a policy ofthundering outcry, which is heard in every home and every nursery. This loudness of debate is surely an effect of the horror with whichthe appalling misery around us is suddenly discovered. All which washidden by prudery is disclosed in its viciousness, and this outburstof indignation is the result. Yet it would never have swollen to thisoverwhelming flood if the nation were not convinced that this is theonly way to cause a betterment and a new hope. The evil was the resultof the silence itself. Free speech and public discussion alone canremove the misery and cleanse the social life. The parents must know, and the teachers must know, and the boys must know, and the girls mustknow, if the abhorrent ills are ever to be removed. 

But there are two elements in the situation which ought to beseparated in sober thought. There may be agreement on the one and yetdisagreement on the other. It is hardly possible to disagree on theone factor of the situation, the existence of horrid calamities, andof deplorable abuses in the world of sex, evils of which surely theaverage person knew rather little, and which were systematicallyhidden from society, and above all, from the youth, by the traditionalmethod of reticence. To recognize these abscesses in the socialorganism necessarily means for every decent being the sincere andenthusiastic hope of removing them. There cannot be any dissent. It isa holy war, if society fights for clean living, for protection of itschildren against sexual ruin and treacherous diseases, against whiteslavery and the poisoning of married life. But while there must beperfect agreement about the moral duty of the social community, therecan be the widest disagreement about the right method of carrying onthis fight. The popular view of the day is distinctly that as theseevils were hidden from sight by the policy of silence, the rightmethod of removing them from the world must be the opposite scheme, the policy of unveiled speech. The overwhelming majority has come tothis conclusion as if it were a matter of course. The man on thestreet, and what is more surprising, the woman in the home, areconvinced that, if we disapprove of those evils, we must first of allcondemn the silence of our forefathers. They feel as if he who sticksto the belief in silence must necessarily help the enemies of society, and become responsible for the alarming increase of sexual afflictionand crime. They refuse to see that on the one side the existing factsand the burning need for their removal, and on the other side thequestion of the best method and best plan for the fight, are entirelydistinct, and that the highest intention for social reform may gotogether with the deepest conviction that the popular method of thepresent day is doing incalculable harm, is utterly wrong, and is oneof the most dangerous causes of that evil which it hopes to destroy. 

The psychologist, I am convinced, must here stand on the unpopularside. To be sure, he is not unaccustomed to such an unfortunateposition in the camp of the disfavoured minority. Whenever a greatmovement sweeps through the civilized world, it generally starts fromthe recognition of a great social wrong and from the enthusiasm for athorough change. But these wrongs, whether they have political orsocial, economic or moral character, are always the products of bothphysical and psychical causes. The public thinks first of all of thephysical ones. There are railroad accidents: therefore improve thephysical technique of the signal system; there is drunkenness:therefore remove the whiskey bottle. The psychical element is by nomeans ignored. Yet it is treated as if mere insight into the cause, mere good will and understanding, are sufficient to take care of themental factors involved. The social reformers are therefore alwaysdiscussing the existing miseries, the possibilities of improvements inthe world of things, and the necessity of spreading knowledge andenthusiasm. They do not ask the advice of the psychologist, but onlyhis jubilant approval, and they always feel surprised if he has toacknowledge that there seems to him something wrong in thecalculation. The psychologist knows that the mental elements cannot bebrought under such a simple formula according to which good will andinsight are sufficient; he knows that the mental mechanism which is atwork there has its own complicated laws, which must be considered withthe same care for detail as those technical schemes for improvement. The psychologist is not astonished that though the technicalimprovements of the railways are increased, yet one serious accidentfollows another, as long as no one gives attention to the study of theengineer's mind. Nor is he surprised that while the area ofprohibition is expanding rapidly, the consumption of beer and whiskeyis nevertheless growing still more quickly, as long as the psychologyof the drinker is neglected. The trusts and the labour movements, immigration and the race question, the peace movement and a score ofother social problems show exactly the same picture—everywhereinsight into old evils, everywhere enthusiasm for new goals, everywhere attention to outside factors, and everywhere negligence ofthose functions of the mind which are independent of the mere will ofthe individual. 

But now since a new great wave of discussion has arisen, and thesexual problem is stirring the nation, the psychologist's faith in theunpopular policy puts him into an especially difficult position. Whenever he brings from his psychological studies arguments whichpoint to the errors in public prejudices, he can present his facts infull array. Nothing hinders him from speaking with earnestness againstthe follies of hasty and short-sighted methods in every concern ofpublic life, if he has the courage to oppose the fancies of the day. But the fight in favour of the policy of silence is different. If hebegins to shout his arguments, he himself breaks that rôle of silencewhich he recommends. He speaks for a conviction, which demands fromhim first of all that he shall not speak. The more eagerly he spreadshis science, the more he must put himself in the wrong before his ownconscience. He is thus thrown into an unavoidable conflict. If he issilent, the cause of his opponents will prosper, and if he objectswith full arguments, his adversaries have a perfect right to claimthat he himself sets a poor example and that his psychology helpsstill more to increase that noisy discussion which he denounces asruinous to the community. But in this contradictory situation thecircle must be broken somewhere, and even at the risk of adding to thedangerous tumult which he condemns, the psychologist must break hissilence in order to plead for silence. I shall have to go into all theobnoxious detail, for if I yielded to my feeling of disgust, myreticence would not help the cause while all others are shouting. Ibreak silence in order to convince others that if they were silent, too, our common social hopes and wishes would be nearer to actualfulfilment. 

But let us acknowledge from the start that we stand before anextremely complicated question, in which no routine formula can dojustice to the manifoldness of problems. Most of these discussions aremisshaped from the beginning by the effort to deal with the wholesocial sex problem, while only one or another feature is seriouslyconsidered. Now it is white slavery, and now the venereal diseases;now the demands of eugenics, and now the dissipation of boys; now theinfluence of literature and drama, and now the effect of sexualeducation in home and school; now the medical situation and thedemands of hygiene, and now the moral situation and the demands ofreligion; now the influence on the feministic movement, and now on artand social life; now the situation in the educated middle classes, andnow in the life of the millions. We ought to disentangle the variousthreads in this confusing social tissue and follow each by itself. Weshall see soon enough that not only the various elements of thesituation awake very different demands, but that often any singlefeature may lead to social postulates which interfere with each other. Any regulation prescription falsifies the picture of the true needs ofthe time. 

 II

We certainly follow the present trend of the discussion if we singleout first of all the care for the girls who are in danger of becomingvictims of private or professional misuse as the result of theirignorance of the world of erotics. This type of alarming news mostoften reaches the imagination of the newspaper reader nowadays, andthis is the appeal of the most sensational plays. The spectre of thewhite slavery danger threatens the whole nation, and the giganticnumber of illegitimate births seems fit to shake the most indifferentcitizen. Every naïve girl appears a possible victim of man's lust, and all seem to agree that every girl should be acquainted with thetreacherous dangers which threaten her chastity. The new programmealong this line centres in one remedy: the girls of all classes oughtto be informed about the real conditions before they have anopportunity to come into any bodily contact with men. How far theschool is to spread this helpful knowledge, how far the wisdom ofparents is to fill these blanks of information, how far seriousliterature is to furnish such science, and how far the stage or eventhe film is to bring it to the masses, remains a secondary feature ofthe scheme, however much it is discussed among the social reformers. 

The whole new wisdom proceeds according to the simple principle whichhas proved its value in the field of popular hygiene. The health ofthe nation has indeed been greatly improved since the alarmingignorance in the matters of prophylaxis in disease has beensystematically fought by popular information. If the mosquito or thehookworm or the fly is responsible for diseases from which hundreds ofthousands have to suffer, there can be no wiser and straighter policythan to spread this knowledge to every corner of the country. Theteachers in the schoolroom and the writers in the popular magazinescannot do better than to repeat the message, until every adult andevery child knows where the enemy may be found and helps to destroythe insects and to avoid the dangers of contact. This is the formulaafter which those reformers want to work who hold the old-fashionedpolicy of silence in sexual matters to be obsolete. Of course they aimtoward a mild beginning. It may start with beautiful descriptions ofblossoms and of fruits, of eggs and of hens, before it comes to theaccount of sexual intercourse and human embryos, but if the talking isto have any effect superior to not talking, the concrete sexualrelations must be impressed upon the imagination of the girl beforeshe becomes sixteen years of age. 

Here is the real place for the psychological objection. It is not truethat you can bring such sexual knowledge into the mind of a girl inthe period of her development with the same detachment with which youcan deposit in her mind the knowledge about mosquitoes and houseflies. That prophylactic information concerning the influence of the insectson diseases remains an isolated group of ideas, which has no otherinfluence on the mind than the intended one, the influence of guidingthe actions in a reasonable direction. The information about hersexual organs and the effects on the sexual organism of men may alsohave as one of its results a certain theoretical willingness to avoidsocial dangers. But the far stronger immediate effect is thepsychophysiological reverberation in the whole youthful organism withstrong reactions on its blood vessels and on its nerves. Theindividual differences are extremely great here. On every social levelwe find cool natures whose frigidity would inhibit strong influencesin these organic directions. But they are the girls who have least tofear anyhow. With a much larger number the information, however slowlyand tactfully imparted, must mean a breaking down of inhibitions whichheld sexual feelings and sexual curiosity in check. 

The new ideas become the centre of attention, the whole world beginsto appear in a new light, everything which was harmless becomes fullof meaning and suggestion, new problems awake, and the new ideasirradiate over the whole mental mechanism. The new problems againdemand their answers. Just the type of girl to whom the lure mightbecome dangerous will be pushed to ever new inquiries, and if thepolicy of information is accepted in principle, it would be only wiseto furnish her with all the supplementary knowledge which covers themultitude of sexual perversions and social malpractices of whichto-day many a clean married woman has not the faintest idea. But tosuch a girl who knows all, the surroundings appear in the newglamour. She understands now how her body is the object of desire, shelearns to feel her power, and all this works backward on her sexualirritation, which soon overaccentuates everything which stands inrelation to sex. Soon she lives in an atmosphere of high sexualtension in which the sound and healthy interests of a young life haveto suffer by the hysterical emphasis on sexuality. The Freudianpsychoanalysis, which threatens to become the fad of the Americanneurologists, probably goes too far when it seeks the cause for allneurasthenic and hysteric disturbances in repressed sexual ideas ofyouth. But no psychotherapist can doubt that the havoc which secretsexual thoughts may bring to the neural life, especially of theunbalanced, is tremendous. Broken health and a distorted view of thesocial world with an unsound, unclean, and ultimately immoral emphasison the sexual relations may thus be the sad result for millions ofgirls, whose girlhood under the policy of the past would have remaineduntainted by the sordid ideas of man as an animal. 

Yet the calamity would not be so threatening if the effect of sexualinstruction were really confined to the putrid influence on the youngimagination. The real outcome is not only such a revolution in thethoughts, but the power which it gains over action. We have only toconsider the mechanism which nature has provided. The sexual desirebelongs to the same group of human instincts as the desire for food orthe desire for sleep, all of which aim toward a certain biologicalend, which must be fulfilled in order to secure life. The desire forfood and sleep serves the individual himself, the desire for thesexual act serves the race. In every one of these cases nature hasfurnished the body with a wonderful psychophysical mechanism whichenforces the outcome automatically. In every case we have a kind ofcirculatory process into which mental excitements and physiologicalchanges enter, and these are so subtly related to each other that onealways increases the other, until the maximum desire is reached, towhich the will must surrender. Nature needs this automatic function;otherwise the vital needs of individual and race might be suppressedby other interests, and neglected. In the case of the sexual instinct, the mutual relations between the various parts of this circulatoryprocess are especially complicated. Here it must be sufficient to saythat the idea of sexual processes produces dilation of blood vesselsin the sexual sphere, and that this physiological change itselfbecomes the source and stimulus for more vivid sexual feelings, whichassociate themselves with more complex sexual thoughts. These in theirturn reinforce again the physiological effect on the sexual organ, andso the play goes on until the irritation of the whole sexual apparatusand the corresponding sexual mental emotions reach a height at whichthe desire for satisfaction becomes stronger than any ordinary motivesof sober reason. 

This is the great trick of nature in its incessant service to theconservation of the animal race. Monogamic civilization strives toregulate and organize these race instincts and to raise culture abovethe mere lure of nature. But that surely cannot be done by merelyignoring that automatic mechanism of nature. On the contrary, thefirst demand of civilization must be to make use of this inbornpsychophysical apparatus for its own ideal human purposes, and toadjust the social behaviour most delicately to the unchangeablemechanism. The first demand, accordingly, ought to be that we exciteno one of these mutually reinforcing parts of the system, neither theorgans nor the thoughts nor the feelings, as each one would heightenthe activities of the others, and would thus become the starting pointof an irrepressible demand for sexual satisfaction. The average boy orgirl cannot give theoretical attention to the thoughts concerningsexuality without the whole mechanism for reinforcement automaticallyentering into action. We may instruct with the best intention tosuppress, and yet our instruction itself must become a source ofstimulation, which necessarily creates the desire for improperconduct. The policy of silence showed an instinctive understanding ofthis fundamental situation. Even if that traditional policy had had nopositive purpose, its negative function, its leaving at rest theexplosive sexual system of the youth, must be acknowledged as one ofthose wonderful instinctive procedures by which society protectsitself. 

The reformer might object that he gives not only information, butdepicts the dangers and warns against the ruinous effects. Heevidently fancies that such a black frame around the luring picturewill be a strong enough countermotive to suppress the sensual desire. But while the faint normal longing can well be balanced by the trainedrespect for the mysterious unknown, the strongly accentuated cravingof the girl who knows may ill be balanced by any thought of possibledisagreeable consequences. Still more important, however, is a secondaspect. The girl to whom the world sex is the great taboo is reallyheld back from lascivious life by an instinctive respect and anxiety. As soon as girl and boy are knowers, all becomes a matter of nakedcalculation. What they have learned from their instruction in home andschool and literature and drama is that the unmarried woman must avoidbecoming a mother. Far from enforcing a less sensuous life, this onlyteaches them to avoid the social opprobrium by going skilfully towork. The old-fashioned morality sermon kept the youth on the paths ofclean life; the new-fashioned sexual instruction stimulates not onlytheir sensual longings, but also makes it entirely clear to the youngthat they have nothing whatever to fear if they yield to theirvoluptuousness but make careful use of their new physiologicalknowledge. From my psychotherapeutic activity, I know too well howmuch vileness and perversity are gently covered by the term flirtationnowadays in the circle of those who have learned early to conceal thetraces. The French type of the demi-vierge is just beginning to playits rôle in the new world. The new policy will bring in the great dayfor her, and with it a moral poisoning which must be felt in the wholesocial atmosphere. 

 III

We have not as yet stopped to examine whether at least the propagandafor the girl's sexual education starts rightly when it takes forgranted that ignorance is the chief source for the fall of women. Thesociological student cannot possibly admit this as a silentpresupposition. In many a pathetic confession we have read as to thepast of fallen girls that they were not aware of the consequences. Butit would be utterly arbitrary to construe even such statements asproofs that they were unaware of the limits which society demandedfrom them. If a man breaks into a neighbour's garden by night tosteal, he may have been ignorant of the fact that shooting traps werelaid there for thieves, but that does not make him worthy of the pitywhich we may offer to him who suffers by ignorance only. Themelodramatic idea that a straightforward girl with honest intent isabducted by strangers and held by physical force in places ofdegradation can simply be dismissed from a discussion of the generalsituation. The chances that any decent man or woman will be killed bya burglar are a hundred times larger than that a decent girl withoutfault of her own will become the victim of a white slavery systemwhich depends upon physical force. Since the new policy of antisilencehas filled the newspapers with the most filthy gossip about suchimaginary horrors, it is not surprising that frivolous girls who elopewith their lovers later invent stories of criminal detention, first byhalf poisoning and afterward by handcuffing. Of all the systematic, thorough investigations, that of the Vice Commission of Philadelphiaseems so far the most instructive and most helpful. It shows thepicture of a shameful and scandalous social situation, and yet, inspite of years of most insistent search by the best specialists, itsays in plain words that “no instances of actual physical slavery havebeen specifically brought to our attention. ”

This does not contradict in the least the indubitable fact that in alllarge cities white slavery exists in the wider sense of the word—thatis, that many girls are kept in a life of shame because the escapefrom it is purposely made difficult to them. They are held constantlyin debt and are made to believe that their immunity from arrestdepends upon their keeping on good terms with the owners of disorderlyhouses. But the decisive point for us is that while they are held backat a time when they know too much, they are not brought there by forceat a time when they know too little. The Philadelphia Vice Reportanalyzes carefully the conditions and motives which have brought theprostitutes to their life of shame. The results of those hundreds ofinterviews point nowhere to ignorance. The list of reasons forentering upon such a life brings information like this: “She likedthe man, ” “Wanted to see what immoral life was like, ” “Sneaked out forpleasure, got into bad company, ” “Would not go to school, frequentedpicture shows, got into bad company, ” “Thought she would have a bettertime, ” “Envied girls with fine clothes and gay time, ” “Wanted to go todances and theatres, ” “Went with girls who drank, influenced by them, ”“Liked to go to moving picture shows, ” “Did not care what happenedwhen forbidden to marry. ” With these personal reasons go the economicones: “Heard immorality was an easy way to make money, which sheneeded, ” “Decided that this was the easiest way of earning money, ”“Wanted pretty clothes, ” “Never liked hard work, ” “Tired of drudgeryat home, ” “Could make more money this way than in a factory. ” Onlyonce is it reported: “Chloroformed at a party, taken to man's houseand ruined by him. ” If that is true, we have there simply a case ofactual crime, against which nobody can be protected by mere knowledge. In short, a thorough study indicates clearly that the girl who fallsis not pushed passively into her misery. 

Surely it is alarming to read that last year in one single large cityof the Middle West two hundred school girls have become mothers, butwhoever studies the real sociological material cannot doubt that everyone of those two hundred knew very clearly that she was doingsomething which she ought not to do. Every one of them had knowledgeenough, and if the knowledge was often vague and dirty, the effectwould not have been improved by substituting for it more knowledge, even if it were clearer and scientifically more correct. What everyone of those two hundred girls needed was less knowledge—that is, less familiarity of the mind with this whole group of erotic ideas, and through this a greater respect for and fear of the unknown. Nobodywho really understands the facts of the sexual world with the insightof the physician will deny that nevertheless treacherous dangers andsources of misfortune may be near to any girl, and that they might beavoided if she knew the truth. But then it is no longer a question ofa general truth, which can be implanted by any education, but aspecific truth concerning the special man. The husband whom shemarries may be a scoundrel who infects her with ruinous disease, buteven if she had read all the medical books beforehand it would nothave helped her. 

 IV

The situation of the boys seems in many respects different. They areon the aggressive side. There is no danger that by their lack ofknowledge they will be lured into a life of humiliation, but thedanger of their ruin is more imminent and the risk which parents runwith them is far worse. Any hour of reckless fun may bring them a lifeof cruel suffering. The havoc which venereal diseases bring to the menof all social classes is tremendous. The Report of the Surgeon-Generalof the Army for 1911 states that with the mean strength of aboutseventy-three thousand men in the army, the admissions to thehospitals on account of venereal diseases were over thirteen thousand. That is, of any hundred men at least eighteen were ill from sexualinfection. The New York County Hospital Society reports two hundredand forty-three thousand cases of venereal disease treated in oneyear, as compared with forty-one thousand five hundred and eighty-fivecases of all other communicable diseases. This horrible sapping of thephysical energies of the nation, with the devastating results in thefamily, with the poisoning of the germs for the next generation, andwith the disastrous diseases of brain and spinal cord, is surely thegravest material danger which exists. How small compared with that thethousands of deaths from crime and accidents and wrecks! howinsignificant the harvest of human life which any war may reap! Andall this can ultimately be avoided, not only by abstinence, but bystrict hygiene and rigorous social reorganization. At this moment wehave only to ask how much of a change for the better can be expectedfrom a mere sexual education of the boys. 

From a psychological point of view, this situation appears much moredifficult than that of the girls. All psychological motives speak fora policy of silence in the girls' cases. For the boys, on the otherhand, the importance of some hygienic instruction cannot be denied. Aknowledge of the disastrous consequences of sexual diseases must havea certain influence for good, and the grave difficulty lies only inthe fact that nevertheless all the arguments which speak against thesexual education of the girls hold for the boys, too. The harm to theyouthful imagination, the starting of erotic thoughts with sensualexcitement in consequence of any kind of sexual instruction must bestill greater for the young man than for the young woman, as he ismore easily able to satisfy his desires. We must thus undoubtedlyexpect most evil consequences from the instruction of the boys; andyet we cannot deny the possible advantages. Their hygienicconsciousness may be enriched and their moral consciousness tainted bythe same hour of well-meant instruction. With the girls an energeticno is the only sane answer; with the boys the social reformer may wellhesitate between the no and the yes. The balance between fear and hopemay be very even there. Yet, however depressing such a decision maybe, the psychologist must acknowledge that even here the loss by frankdiscussion is greater than the gain. 

A serious warning lies in the well-known fact that of all professionalstudents, the young medical men have the worst reputation for theirreckless indulgence in an erotic life. They know most, and it ispsychologically not surprising that just on that account they are mostreckless. The instinctive fear of the half knower has left them; theylive in an illusory safety, the danger has become familiar to them, and they deceive themselves with the idea that the particular case isharmless. If the steps to be taken were to be worked out at thewriting desk in cool mood and sober deliberation, the knowledge wouldat least often be a certain help, but when the passionate desire hastaken hold of the mind and the organic tension of the irritated bodyworks on the mind, there is no longer a fair fight with those soberreasons. The action of the glands controls the psychophysicalreactions, so that the ideas which would lead to opposite response areinhibited. Alcohol and the imitative mood of social gayety may help todull those hygienic fears, but on the whole the mere sexual longingis sufficient to break down the reminiscence of medical warning. Thesituation for the boy is then ultimately this: A full knowledge of thechances of disease will start in hours of sexual coolness on the oneside a certain resolution to abstain from sexual intercourse, and onthe other side a certain intention to use protective means for theprevention of venereal diseases. As soon as the sexual desire awakes, the decision of the first kind will become the less effective, andwill be the more easily overrun the more firmly the idea is fixed thatsuch preventive means are at his disposal. At the same time thediscussion of all these sexual matters, even with their gruesomebackground, will force on the mind a stronger engagement with sexualthought than had ever before occurred, and this will find itsdischarge in an increased sexual tension. On the other hand, this newknowledge of means of safety will greatly increase the playing withdanger. Of course it may be said that the education ought not to referonly to sexual hygiene, but that it ought to be a moral education. That, however, is an entirely different story. We shall speak aboutit; we shall put our faith in it, but at present we are talking ofthat specific sexual education which is the fad of the day. 

 V

Sexual education, to be sure, does not necessarily mean education ofyoung people only. The adults who know, the married men and women ofthe community, may not know enough to protect their sons anddaughters. And the need for their full information may stretch farbeyond their personal family interests. They are to form the publicopinion which must stand behind every real reform, their consciencesmust be stirred, the hidden misery must be brought before them. Thusthey need sexual education as much as the youngsters, only they needit in a form which appeals to them and makes them willing to listen;and our reformers have at last discovered the form. The public must betaught from the stage of the theatre. The magazine with its shortstories on sex incidents, the newspaper with its sensational courtreports, may help to carry the gruesome information to the masses, butthe deepest impression will always be made when actual human beingsare shown on the stage in their appealing distress, as livingaccusations against the rotten foundations of society. The stage isovercrowded with sexual drama and the social community inundated withdiscussions about it. 

It is not easy to find the right attitude toward this red-lightliterature. Many different interests are concerned, and it is oftenextremely difficult to disentangle them. Three such interests standout very clearly: the true æsthetic one, the purely commercial one, and the sociological one. It would be wonderful if the æstheticculture of our community had reached a development at which theæsthetic attitude toward a play would be absolutely controlling. If wecould trust this æsthetic instinct, no other question would beadmissible but the one whether the play is a good work of art or not. The social inquiry whether the human fates which the poet shows ussuggests legislative reforms or hygienic improvements would beentirely inhibited in the truly artistic consciousness. It would makeno difference to the spectator whether the action played in Chicago orPetersburg, whether it dealt with men and women of to-day or of twothousand years ago. The human element would absorb our interest, andas far as the joys and the miseries of sexual life entered into thedrama, they would be accepted as a social background, just as thelandscape is the natural background. A community which is æstheticallymature enough to appreciate Ibsen does not leave “The Ghosts” witheugenic reform ideas. The inherited paralysis on a luetic basis isaccepted there as a tragic element of human fate. On the height oftrue art the question of decency or indecency has disappeared, too. The nude marble statue is an inspiration, and not a possible stimulusto frivolous sensuality, if the mind is æsthetically cultivated. Thenakedness of erotic passion in the drama of high æsthetic intentbefore a truly educated audience has not the slightest similarity tothe half-draped chorus of sensual operetta before a gallery whichwants to be tickled. But who would claim that the dramatic literatureof the sexual problems with which the last seasons have filled thetheatres from the orchestra to the second balcony has that sublimeæsthetic intent, or that it was brought to a public which even posedin an æsthetic attitude! As far as any high aim was involved, it wasthe antiæsthetic moral value. The plays presented themselves asappeals to the social conscience, and yet this idealisticinterpretation would falsify the true motives on both sides. The crowdwent because it found the satisfaction of sexual curiosity and erotictension through the unveiled discussion of social perversities. Andthe managers produced the plays because the lurid subjects with theirappeal to the low instincts, and therefore with their sure commercialsuccess, could here escape the condemnation of police and decentpublic as they were covered by the pretence of social reform. How farthe writers of the play of prostitution prostituted art in order toshare the commercial profits in this wave of sexual reform may betterremain undiscussed. 

What do these plays really teach us? I think I have seen almost all ofthem, and the composite picture in my mind is one of an absurdlydistorted, exaggerated, and misleading view of actual socialsurroundings, suggesting wrong problems, wrong complaints, and wrongremedies. When I studied the reports of the vice commissions of thelarge American and European cities, the combined image in myconsciousness was surely a stirring and alarming one, but it had nosimilarity with the character of those melodramatic vagaries. Even thebest and most famous of these fabrications throw wrong sidelights onthe social problems, and by a false emphasis inhibit the feeling forthe proportions of life. If in “The Fight” the father, a senator, visits a disorderly house, unlocks the room in which the freshestfruit is promised him, and finds there his young daughter who has justbeen abducted by force, the facts themselves are just as absurd as thefollowing scenes, in which this father shows that the little episodedid not make the slightest impression on him. He coolly continues tofight against those politicians who want to remove such places fromthe town. In “Bought and Paid For” marriage itself is presented aswhite slavery. The woman has to tolerate the caresses of her husband, even when he has drunk more champagne than is wise for him. The playmakes us believe that she must suffer his love because she was poorbefore she married and he has paid her with a life of luxury. Whereare we to end if such logic in questions of sexual intercourse is tobenumb common sense? England brought us “The Blindness of Virtue, ” thestory of a boy and a girl whom we are to believe to be constantly ingrave danger because they are ignorant, while in reality nothinghappens, and everything suggests that the moral danger for thisparticular girl would have been much greater if she had known how toenjoy love without consequences. 

The most sensational specimen of the group was “The Lure. ” It would beabsurd to face this production from any æsthetic point of view. Itwould be unthinkable that a work of such crudeness could satisfy ametropolitan public, even if some of the most marked faults ofconstruction were acknowledged as the results of the forcefulexpurgation of the police. Nevertheless, the only significance of theplay lies outside of its artistic sphere, and belongs entirely to itseffort to help in this great social reform. The only strong applause, which probably repeats itself every evening, broke out when the old, good-natured physician said that as soon as women have the vote thewhite slavers will be sent to the electric chair. But it is worthwhile to examine the sermon which a play of this type really preaches, and to become aware of the illusions with which the thoughtless publicreceives this message. All which we see there on the stage is taken bythe masses as a remonstrance against the old, cowardly policy ofsilence, and the play is to work as a great proof that completefrankness and clear insight can help the daughters of the community. 

The whole play contains the sad story of two girls. There is Nell. What happened to her? She is the daughter of a respectable banker in asmall town. A scoundrel, a commercial white slaver, a typical Broadway“cadet” with luring manners, goes to the small town, finds access tothe church parlours, is introduced to the girl, and after somecourtship he elopes with her and makes her believe that they arecorrectly married. After the fraudulent marriage with a falsifiedlicense he brings her into a metropolitan disorderly house and holdsher there by force. Of course this is brutal stage exaggeration, buteven if this impossibility were true, what conclusion are we to draw, and what advice are we to give? Does it mean that in future a younggirl who meets a nice chap in the church socials of her native townought to keep away from him, because she ought all the time to thinkthat he might be a delegate of a Broadway brothel? To fill a girl withsuspicions in a case like that of Nell would be no wiser than to tellthe ordinary man that he ought not to deposit his earnings in anybank, because the cashier might run away with it. To be sure, it wouldhave been better if Nell had not eloped, but is there any knowledge ofsexual questions which would have helped her to a wiser decision? Onthe contrary, she said she did elope because her life in the smalltown was so uninteresting, and she felt so lonely and was longing forthe life of love. She knew all which was to be known then, and ifthere had been any power to hold her back from the foolish elopementit could have been only a kind of instinctive respect for thetraditional demands of society, that kind of respect which grows upfrom the policy of silence and is trampled to the ground by the policyof loud talk. 

The other girl in the play is Sylvia. Her fate is very different. Sheneeds melodramatic money for her sick mother. Her earnings in thedepartment store are not enough. The sly owner of a treacherousemployment agency has given her a card over the counter, advising herto come there, when she needs extra employment. The agency keeps openin the evening. She tells her mother that she will seek some extrawork there. The mother warns her that there are so many traps fordecent girls, and she answers that she is not afraid and that she willbe on the lookout. She goes there, and the skilful owner of the agencyshows her how miserable the pay would be for any decent evening work, and how easily she can earn all the money she needs for her mother ifshe is willing to be paid by men. At first she refuses with pathos, but under the suggestive pressure of luring arguments she slowlyweakens, and finally consents to exchange her street gown for afantastic costume of half-nakedness. The feelings of the audience aresaved by the detective who breaks in at the decisive moment, but thearguments of the advocates of sexual education cannot possibly besaved after that voluntary yielding. Sylvia knows what she has toexpect, and no more intense perusal of literature on the subject ofprostitution would have changed her mind. What else in the world couldhave helped her in such an hour but a still stronger feeling ofinstinctive repugnance? If Sylvia was actually to put her fate on amere calculation, with a full knowledge of all the sociological factsinvolved, she probably reasoned wrongly in dealing with thisparticular employment agency, but was on the whole not so wrong indeciding that a frivolous life would be the most reasonable way out ofher financial difficulties, as her sexual education would include, ofcourse, a sufficient knowledge of all which is needed to avoidconception and infection. She would therefore know that after a littlewhile of serving the lust of men she would be just as intact and justas attractive. If society has the wish to force Sylvia to a decisionin the opposite direction, only one way is open: to make the belief inthe sacred value of virtue so deep and powerful that any merereasoning and calculation loses its strength. But that is possibleonly through an education which relies on the instinctive respect andmystical belief. Only a policy of silence could have saved Sylvia, because that alone would have implanted in her mind an ineffable ideaof unknown horrors which would await her when she broke the sacredring of chastity. 

The climax of public discussions was reached when America had itsseason of Brieux' “Damaged Goods. ” Its topic is entirely different, asit deals exclusively with the spreading of contagious diseases and theprevention of their destructive influence on the family. Yet the doubtwhether such a dramatized medical lesson belongs on the metropolitanstage has here exactly the same justification. Nevertheless, it bringsits new set of issues. Brieux' play does not deserve any interest as adrama. With complete sincerity the theatre programme announces, “Theobject of this play is a study of the disease of syphilis in itsbearing on marriage. ” The play was first produced in Paris in the year1901. It began its great medical teaching in America in the spring of1913. Even those who have only superficial contact with medicine knowthat the twelve years which lie between those dates have seen thegreatest progress in the study of syphilis which has ever been made. It is sufficient to think of the Wassermann test, the Ehrlichtreatment, the new discoveries concerning the relations of lues andbrain disease, and many other details in order to understand that aclinical lesson about this disease written in the first year of thecentury must be utterly antiquated in its fourteenth year. We mightjust as well teach the fighting of tuberculosis with the clinicaltextbook of thirty years ago. 

How misleading many of the claims of the play are ought to have struckeven the unscientific audience. The real centre of the so-called dramais that the father and the grandmother of the diseased infant arewilling to risk the health of the wet nurse rather than to allow thechild to go over to artificial feeding. The whole play loses its chiefpoint and its greatest pathetic speech if we do not accept theParisian view that a sickly child must die if it has its milk from thebottle. The Boston audience wildly applauded the great speech of thegrandmother who wants to poison the nurse rather than to sacrifice hergrandchild to the drinking of sterilized milk, and yet it was anaudience which surely was brought up on the bottle. It would be veryeasy to write another play in which quite different medical views arepresented, and where will it lead us if the various treatments oftuberculosis, perhaps by the Friedmann cures, or of diphtheria, perhaps by chiropractice or osteopathy, are to be fought out on thestage until finally the editors of _Life_ would write a play aroundtheir usual thesis that the physicians are destroying mankind and thatour modern medicine is humbug. As long as the drama shows us humanelements, every one can be a party and can take a stand for themotives of his heart. But if the stage presents arguments onscientific questions in which no public is able to examine the facts, the way is open for any one-sided propaganda. 

Moreover, what, after all, are the lessons which the men are to learnfrom these three hours of talk on syphilis? To be sure, it issuggested that it would be best if every young man were to marry earlyand remain faithful to his wife and take care that she remain faithfulto him. But this aphorism will make very little impression on the kindof listener whose tendency would naturally turn him in otherdirections. He hears in the play far more facts which encourage him inhis selfish instincts. He hears the old doctor assuring his patientthat not more than a negligible 10 per cent. Of all men enter marriedlife without having had sexual intercourse with women. He hears thatthe disease can be easily cured, that he may marry quite safely afterthree years, that the harm done to the child can be removed, and thatno one ought to be blamed for acquiring the disease, as anybody mayacquire it and that it is only a matter of good or bad luck. Thepresident of the Medical Society in Boston drew the perfectly correctconsequences when in a warm recommendation of the play he emphasizedthe importance of the knowledge about the disease, inasmuch as any onemay acquire it in a hundred ways which have nothing to do with sexuallife. He says anybody may get syphilis by wetting a lead pencil withhis lips or from an infected towel or from a pipe or from a drinkingglass or from a cigarette. This is medically entirely correct, and yetif Brieux had added this medical truth to all the other medicalsayings of his doctor, he would have taken away the whole meaning ofthe play and would have put it just on the level of a dramatized storyabout scarlet fever or typhoid. 

Yet here, too, the fundamental mistake remains the psychological one. The play hopes to reform by the appeal to fear, while the whole mentalmechanism of man is so arranged that in the emotional tension of thesexual desire the argument of the fear that we may have bad luck willalways be outbalanced by the hope and conviction that we will not bethe one who draws the black ball. And together with this psychologicalfact goes the other stubborn feature of the mind, which no sermon canremove, that the focussing of the attention on the sexual problems, even in their repelling form, starts too often a reaction of glandsand with it sexual thoughts which ultimately lead to a desire forsatisfaction. 

The cleverest of this group of plays strictly intended for sexualeducation—as Shaw's “Mrs. Warren's Profession” or plays of Pinero andsimilar ones would belong only indirectly in this circle—is probablyWedekind's “Spring's Awakening. ” It brought to Germany, and especiallyto Berlin, any education which the Friedrichstrasse had failed tobring. To prohibit it would have meant the reactionary crushing of adistinctly literary work by a brilliant writer; to allow it meant tofill the Berlin life for seasons with a new spirit which showed itseffects. The sexual discussion became the favourite topic; the girlslearned to look out for their safety: and it was probably only achance that at the same time a wave of immorality overflooded theyouth of Berlin. The times of naïve flirtation were over; anyindecency seemed allowable if only conception was artificiallyprevented. The social life of Berlin from the fashionable quarters ofBerlin West to the factory quarters of Berlin East was never morerotten and more perverse than in those years in which sexual educationfrom the stage indulged in its orgies. 

The central problem is not whether the facts are distorted or not, andwhether the suggestions are wise or not, and whether the remedies arepracticable or not. All this is secondary to the fundamental questionof whether it is wise to spread out such problems before themiscellaneous public of our theatres. No doubt a few of the socialreformers are sprinkled over the audiences. There are a few in theboxes as well as in the galleries who discern the realities and whohear the true appeal, even through those grotesque melodramas. Butwith the overwhelming majority it is quite different. For them it isentertainment, and as such it is devastating. It is quite true thatmany a piquant comic opera shows more actual frivolity, and no onewill underestimate the shady influence of such voluptuous vulgaritiesin their multicoloured stage setting. Yet from a psychological pointof view the effect of the pathetic treatment is far more dangerousthan that of the frivolous. A good many well-meaning reformers do notsee that, because they know too little of the deeper layers of thesexual imagination. The intimate connection between sexuality andcruelty, perversion and viciousness, may produce much more injuriousresults in the mind of the average man when he sees the tragedy of thewhite slave than when he laughs at the farce of the chorus girl. Moreover, even the information which such plays divulge may stimulatesome model citizens to help the police and the doctors, but it maysuggest to a much larger number hitherto unknown paths of viciousness. The average New Yorker would hear with surprise from the RockefellerReport on Commercialized Prostitution in New York City that thecommission has visited in Manhattan a hundred and forty parlourhouses, twenty of which were known to the trade as fifty-cent houses, eighty as one-dollar houses, six as two-dollar houses, andthirty-four as five-and ten-dollar houses. Yet the chances are greatthat essentially persons with serious interests in social hygiene turnto such books of sober study. But to cry out such information to thoseBroadway crowds which seek a few hours' fun before they go to the nextlobster palace or to the nearest cabaret cannot possibly serve socialhygiene. 

Worst of all, the theatre, more than any other source of so-calledinformation, has been responsible for the breakdown of the barriers ofsocial reserve in sexual discussions, and that means ultimately inerotic behaviour. The book which the individual man or woman reads athis fireside has no socializing influence, but the play which they seetogether is naturally discussed, views are exchanged, and all which inold-fashioned times was avoided, even in serious discussion, becomesdaily more a matter of the most superficial gossip. When recently at adinner party a charming young woman whom I had hardly met before askedme, when we were at the oysters, how prostitution is regulated inGermany, and did not conclude the subject before we had reached theice cream, I saw the natural consequences of this new era of theatreinfluence. Society, which with the excuse of philanthropic sociologyfavours erotically tainted problems, must sink down to a community inwhich the sexual relations become chaotic and turbulent. Finally, thetheatre is not open only to the adult. Its filthy message reaches theears of boys and girls, who, even if they take it solemnly, are forcedto think of these facts and to set the whole mechanism of sexualassociations and complex reactions into motion. The playwriters knowthat well, but they have their own theory. When I once remonstratedagainst the indecencies which are injected into the imagination of theadolescent by the plays, Mr. Bayard Veiller, the talented author of“The Fight, ” answered in a Sunday newspaper. He said that he could nothelp thinking of the insane man who objected to throwing a bucket ofsalt water into the ocean for fear it would turn the ocean salt. “Doesnot Professor Münsterberg know that you can't put more sex thoughtsinto the minds of young men and women, because their minds containnothing else?” If the present movement is not brought to a stop, thetime may indeed come when those young minds will not contain anythingelse. But is that really true of to-day, and, above all, was it trueof yesterday, before the curtain was raised on the red-light drama?

 VI

How is it possible that with such obvious dangers and such evidentinjurious effects, this movement on the stage and in literature, inthe schools and in the homes, is defended and furthered by so manywell-meaning and earnest thinking men and women in the community? Anumber of causes may have worked together there. It cannot beoverlooked that one of the most effective ones was probably the newenthusiasm for the feministic movement. We do not want to discuss herethe right and wrong of this worldwide advance toward the fullerliberation of women. If we have to touch on it here, it is only topoint out that this connection between the sound elements of thefeministic movement and the propaganda for sex education on thenew-fashioned lines is really not necessary at all. I do not knowwhether the feminists are entirely right, but I feel sure that theirown principles ought rather to lead them to an opposition to thisbreaking down of the barriers. It is nothing but a superficiality ifthey instinctively take their stand on the side of those who spreadbroadcast the knowledge about sex. 

The feminists vehemently object to the dual standard, but if they helpeverything which makes sex an object of common gossip, it may workindeed toward a uniform standard; only the uniformity will not consistin the men's being chaste like the women, but in the women's beingimmoral like the men. The feministic enthusiasm turns passionatelyagainst those scandalous places of women's humiliation; and yet itschief influence on female education is the effort to give more freedomto the individual girl, and that means to remove her from theauthority and discipline of the parental home, to open the door forher to the street, to leave her to her craving for amusement, tosmooth the path which leads to ruin. The sincere feminists may saythat some of the changes which they hope for are so great that theyare ready to pay the price for them and to take in exchange a rapidincrease of sexual vice and of erotic disorderliness. But to fancythat the liberation of women and the protection of women can befurthered by the same means is a psychological illusion. The communitywhich opens the playhouses to the lure of the new dramatic art mayprotect 5 per cent. Of those who are in danger to-day, but throws 50per cent. More into abysses. The feminists who see to the depths oftheir ideals ought to join full-heartedly the ranks of those whoentirely object to this distribution of the infectious germs of sexualknowledge. 

Some stray support may come to the new movement also from anotherside. Some believe that this great emphasis on sexual interests mayintensify æsthetic longings in the American commonwealth. No doubtthis interrelation exists. No civilization has known a great artisticrise without a certain freedom and joy in sensual life. Prudery alwayshas made true æsthetic unfolding impossible. Yet if we yielded here, we would again be pushed away from our real problem. The æstheticenthusiast might think it a blessing for the American nation if agreat æsthetic outburst were secured, even by the ruin of moralstandards: a wonderful blossoming of fascinating flowers from a swampysoil in an atmosphere full of moral miasmas. To be sure, even then itis very doubtful whether any success could be hoped for, as alightness in sexual matters may be a symptom of an artistic age, butsurely is not its cause. The artist may love to drink, but the drinkdoes not make an artist. An æsthetic community may reach its best whenit is freed from sexual censorship, but throwing the censor out of thehouse would not add anything to the æsthetic inspiration of a societywhich is instinctively indifferent to the artistic calling. Above all, the question for us is not whether the sexual overeducation may havecertain pleasant side effects: we ask only how far it succeeds in itsintended chief effect of improving morally the social community. 

In fact, neither feminism nor æstheticism could have secured thisindulgence of the community in the new movement, if one more directargument had not influenced the conviction of some of our leaders. They reason around one central thought—namely, that the old policy ofsilence, in which they grew up, has been tried and has shown itselfunsuccessful. The horrible dimensions which the social evil has taken, the ruinous effects on family life and national health, are before us. The old policy must therefore be wrong. Let us try with all our mightthe reform, however disgusting its first appearance may be. Thissurely is the virile argument of men who know what they are aiming at. And yet it is based on fundamental psychological misapprehensions. Itis a great confusion of causes and effects. The misery has thisdistressing form not on account of the policy of silence, but in spiteof it, or rather it took the tremendous dimensions of to-day at thesame time that the dam of silence was broken and the flood of sexualgossip rushed in. 

We find exactly this relation throughout the history of civilizedmankind. To be sure, some editorial writers behave as if the eroticcalamity of the day were something unheard of, and as if it demanded anew remedy. The historical retrospect leaves no doubt that periods ofsexual tension and of sexual relaxation, of hysteric erotic excitementand of a certain cool indifference have alternated throughoutthousands of years. And whenever an age was unusually immoral andlascivious, it was always also a period in which under the mask ofscientific interest or social frankness or æsthetic openmindedness thesexual problems were matters of freest discussion. The periods ofausterity and restraint, on the other hand, were always characterizedalso by an unwillingness to talk about sexual relations and to showthem in their animal nakedness. Antiquity knew those ups and downs, mediæval times knew them, and in modern centuries the fluctuationshave been still more rapid. As soon as a moral age with its policy ofsilence is succeeded by an immoral age, it is certainly a very easyhistorical misconstruction to say that the immorality resulted fromthe preceding conspiracy of silence and that the immorality woulddisappear if the opposite scheme of frankest speech were adopted. Butthe fact that this argument is accepted and that the overwhelmingmajority hails the new régime with enthusiasm is nothing but analmost essential part of the new period, which has succeeded the timeof modesty. 

Sexual discussion and sexual immorality have always been parts of onecircle; sexual silence and moral restraint form another circle. Thechange from one to the other has come in the history of mankind, usually through new conditions of life, and the primary factor has notbeen any policy of keeping quiet in respect or of gossiping incuriosity, but the starting point has generally been a change in thelife habits. When new wealth has come to a people with new libertiesand new desires for enjoyment, the great periods of sexual frivolityhave started and brought secondarily the discussions of sex problems, which intensified the immoral life. On the other hand, when a nationin the richness of its life has been brought before new greatresponsibilities, great social earthquakes and revolutions, great warsfor national honour, or great new intellectual or religious ideals, then the sexual tension has been released, the attention has beenwithdrawn from the frivolous concerns, and the people have settleddown soberly to a life of modesty and morality, which brought with itas a natural consequence the policy of reverence and silence. The newsituation in America, and to a certain degree all over the world, hascome in, too, not through the silence of the preceding generation, but by the sudden change from agricultural to industrial life, withits gigantic cumulation of capital, with its widespread new wealth, with its new ideas of social liberty, with its fading religion, withits technical wonders of luxury and comfort. This new age, which takesits orders from Broadway with its cabarets and tango dances, mustridicule the silence of our fathers and denounce it as a conspiracy. It needs the sexual discussions, as it craves the lurid music and thesensual dances, until finally even the most earnest energies, those ofsocial reform and of hygiene, of intellectual culture and of artisticeffort, are forced into the service of this antimoral fashion. 

Some sober spectators argue that as things have gone to this extent, it might be wise to try the new policy as an experiment, becausematters cannot become worse than they are to-day. But those who yieldto the new advice so readily ought again to look into the pages ofhistory, or ought at least to study the situation in some othercountries before they proclaim that the climax has been reached. Itmay be true that it would not be possible to transform still more NewYork hotels into dancing halls, since the innovation of this fashion, which suggests the dancing epidemics of mediæval times, has reachedpractically every fashionable hostelry. Yet we may be only at thebeginning, as in this vicious circle of craving for sensual life andtalking about sexual problems the erotic transformation of the wholesocial behaviour is usually a rapid one. The Rococo age reached manysubtleties, which we do not dream of as yet, but to which theconspiracy against silence may boldly push us. Read the memoirs ofCasanova, the Italian of the eighteenth century, whose biography givesa vivid picture of a time in which certainly no one was silent onsexual affairs and in which life was essentially a chain of gallantadventures; even the sexual diseases figured as gallant diseases. Inthe select American circles it is already noticeable that thefavourites of rich men get a certain social acknowledgment. The greatmasses have not reached this stage at present, which is, of course, very familiar in France. But if we proceed in that rapid rhythm withwhich we have changed in the last ten years, ten years hence we mayhave substituted the influence of mistresses for the influence ofTammany grafters, and twenty years hence a Madame Pompadour may bedwelling not far from the White House and controlling the fate of thenation with her small hands, as she did for two decades when Louis XVwas king. History has sufficiently shown that these are the logicalconsequences of the sensualization of a rich people, whose mind isfilled with sexual problems. Are we to wait, too, until a greatrevolution or a great war shakes the nation to its depths and hammersnew ideas of morality into its conscience? Even our literature mightsink still deeper and deeper. If we begin with the sexual problem, itlies in its very nature that that which is interesting to-day isto-morrow stale, and new regions of sexuality must be opened. Thefiction of Germany in the last few years shows the whole patheticdecadence which results. The most abstruse perversions, the ugliestdegenerations of sexual sinfulness, have become the favourite topics, and the best sellers are books which in the previous age would havebeen crushed by police and public opinion alike, but which in thepresent time are excused under scientific and sociological pretences, although they are more corrupt and carry more infection than anydiseases against which they warn. 

 VII

What is to be done? In one point we all agree: Those who are called todo so must bend their utmost energy toward the purification of theouter forms of community life and of the public institutions. Certaineugenic ideas must be carried through relentlessly; above all, thesexual segregation of the feeble-minded, whose progeny fills thehouses of disorder and the ranks of the prostitutes. The hospitalsmust be wide open for every sexual disease, and all discriminationagainst diseases which may be acquired by sexual intercourse must beutterly given up in order to stamp out this scourge of mankind, as faras possible, with the medical knowledge of our day. Every effort mustbe made to suppress places through which unclean temptations areinfluencing the youth. Parents and doctors should speak in theintimacy of private talk earnest words of warning. The fight againstpolice corruption and graft must be relentlessly carried on so as tohave the violation of the laws really punished. 

Many means may still seem debatable among those who know the socialand medical facts. Certainly some of the eugenic postulates go toofar. It is, for instance, extremely difficult to say where the limitis to be set for permissible marriages. There may be no doubt thatfeeble-mindedness ought not to be transmitted to the next generation, but have we really a right to prevent the marriage of epileptics orpsychasthenics? Can we be surprised then that others already begin todemand that neurasthenics shall not marry? Even the healthcertificate at the wedding may give only an illusion of safety, as thehealth of too many marriages is destroyed by the escapades of thehusband, and it may, on the other hand, lead to a narrowing down underthe pressure of arbitrary theories, producing a true race suicide. Thequestion whether the healthy man is the only desirable element of thecommunity is one which allows different answers. Much of the greatestwork for the world's progress has been created by men with faultyanimal constitutions whose parents would never have receivedpermission to marry from a rigorous eugenic board. 

But whatever the sociological reasons for hesitation may be, the statelegislators and physicians, the police officers and social workershave no right to stop. They must push forward and force the publiclife into paths of less injurious and less dangerous sexual habits andcustoms. Their success will depend upon the energy with which theykeep themselves independent of the control of those who do not countwith realities. The hope that men will become sexually abstinentoutside married life is fantastic, and the book of history ought notto have been written in vain. Any counting on this imaginaryovercoming of selfish desire for sexual satisfaction decreases thechances of real hygienic reform. It would even be an inexcusablehypocrisy of the medical profession if, with its consent, one group ofspecialists behave as if sexual abstinence were the bodily ideal, while thousands of no less conscientious physicians in the world, especially those concerned with nervous diseases, feel again and againobliged to advise sexual intercourse for their patients. We knowto-day, even much better than ten years ago, how many seriousdisturbances result from the suppression of normal sexual life. Thepast has shown, moreover, that when society succeeded in spreadingalarm and in decreasing prostitution by fear, the result was such arapid increase of perversion and nerve-racking self-abuse that after ashort while the normal ways were again preferred as the lesser evil. 

And the reformers will need a second limitation of their efforts. Theycannot hope for success as long as they fancy that reasoning andcalculation and sober balancing of dangers and joys, of injuries andadvantages, can ever be the decisive factor of progress. They oughtnot to forget that as soon as this whole problem is brought down to amere considering of consequences by the individual, their eugenichopes may be cruelly shaken. However distressing it is to say itfrankly, by mere appeal to reason we shall not turn many girls fromthe way which leads to prostitution, nor many boys from theanticipation of married life. The girl in the factory, who hesitatesbetween the hard work at the machine for the smallest pay, withoutpleasures, and the easy money of the street, with an abundance of fun, may in the regrettable life of prosaic reality balance theconsequences very differently from the moralist. She has discoveredthat the ideal of virtue is not so highly valued in her circles as inthe middle classes. The loss of her virtue is not such a severehindrance in her life, and even if she yields for a while to earn herextra money in indecent ways, the chances are great that she mayremain more attractive to a possible future husband from her set thanif she lived the depressing life of grief and deprivation. Theprobability of her marrying and becoming the mother in a decent familyhome may be greater than on the straighter path. It is, of course, extremely sad that reality takes such an immoral way, but just here isthe field where the reformers ought to keep their eyes wide open, instead of basing their appeals on illusory constructions about socialconditions which do not exist. And if the boys begin to reason, theircalculations may count on a still greater probability of good outcome, if they indulge in their pleasures. More than that, the fate ofcertain European countries shows that when it comes to this clearreasoning, the great turn of the selfish man is from the dangerousprostitute to the clean girl or married woman, to the sisters andwives of his friends, and that means the true ruin of home life. 

What is the consequence of all? That the fight ought to be given up?Surely not. But that instead of relying on physical conditions, onfear of diseases, on merely eugenic improvements and on cleverreasoning, the reform must come from within, must be one of educationand morality, must be controlled, not by bacteriology, but by ethics, must find its strength not from horror of skin diseases, but in thereverence for the ideal values of humanity. 

 VIII

We must not deceive ourselves as to the gravity of the problem. It isnot one of the passing questions which are replaced next season by newones. State laws and interstate laws may and ought to continue toround off some of the sharp edges, institutions and associations mayand ought to succeed in diminishing some of the misery, but thecentral problem of national policy in the treatment of the youth willstay with us until it has been solved rightly; illustrativeinstruction cannot be such a solution. We must see with open eyeswhere we are standing. The American nation of to-day is no longer theAmerica of yesterday. The puritanism which certainly was a spirit ofrestraint has gone and cannot be brought back. The new wealth andpower, the influx of sensuous South European and East Europeanelements, the general trend of our age all over the civilized world, with its technical comfort and its inexpensive luxuries, the recedingof religion and many more factors, have given a new face to America inthe last fifteen years. A desire for the satisfaction of the senses, alonging for amusements, has become predominant in thousandfold shadesfrom the refined to the vulgar. In such self-seeking periods thesexual desire in its masked and its unmasked forms gains steadily inimportance and fascination. 

America, moreover, is in a particularly difficult situation. This newlonging for joy, even with its erotic touch, brings with it manyvaluable enrichments of every national life, not least among them thespreading of the sense of beauty. But what is needed is a wholesomenational self-control by which an antisocial growth of these emotionswill be suppressed. Our present-day American life so far lacks theseconditions for the truly harmonious organization of the newtendencies. There are many causes for it. The long puritanic past didnot allow that slow European training in æsthetic and harmless socialenjoyments. Moreover, the widespread wealth, the feeling of democraticequality, the faintness of truly artistic interests in the masses, allreinforce the craving for the mere tickling of the senses, foramusement of the body, for vaudeville on the stage and in life. Thesexual element in this wave of enjoyment becomes reinforced by theAmerican position of the woman outside of the family circle. Hercontact with men has been multiplied, her right to seek joy in everypossible way has become the corollary of her new independence, herposition has become more exposed and more dangerous. And in additionto all this, the chief factor, which alone would be sufficient to giveto the situation a threatening aspect: American educationalists do notbelieve in discipline. As long as the community was controlled by themoral influence of puritanism, the lack of training in subordinationunder social authority and obedient discipline was without danger, while it strengthened the spirit of political liberty. But to-day, inthe period of the new antipuritanic life, the lack of discipline ineducation means an actual threat to the social safety. 

In such a situation what can be more fraught with dangers than toabolish the policy of silence and to uphold the policy of talking andtalking about sexual matters with those whose minds were stilluntouched by the lure. It means to fill the atmosphere in which thegrowing adolescent moves with sultry ideas, it means to distort theview of the social surroundings, it means to stir up the sexualdesires and to teach children how to indulge in them without immediatepunishment. Just as in a community of graft and corruption theindividual soon loses the finer feeling for honesty, and crimeflourishes simply because every one knows that nobody expects anythingbetter, so in a community in which sexual problems are the lessons ofthe youth and the dinner talk of the adult, the feeling of respect forman's deepest emotions fades away. Man and woman lose the instinctiveshyness in touching on this sacred ground, and as the organic desirespush and push toward it, the youth soon discovers that the barriers tothe forbidden ground are removed and that in their place stands asimple signal with a suggestive word of warning against some easilyavoided traps. 

From a psychological point of view the right policy would be to reducethe external temptations, above all, the opportunities for contact. Coeducation, for instance, was morally without difficulties twentyyears ago, but it is unfit in high schools and colleges for theeastern part of the nation in the atmosphere of to-day. Moreover, theæsthetic spirit ought to be educated systematically, and above all, the whole education of the youth ought to be built on discipline; thelesson by which the youth learns to overcome the desire and to inhibitthe will is the most essential for the young American of to-morrow. The policy of silence has never meant that a girl should grow upwithout the consciousness that the field of sexual facts exists in oursocial world; on the contrary, those feelings of shame and decencywhich belong to the steady learning of a clean child from the days ofthe nursery have strongly impressed on the young soul that suchregions are real, but that they must not be approached by curiosity orself-seeking wilfulness. This instinct itself brought something ofideal value, of respect and even of reverence into the most triviallife, however often it became ruined by foul companionship. Tostrengthen this instinctive emotion of mysterious respect, which makesthe young mind shrink from brutal intrusion, will remain the wisestpolicy, as long as we cannot change that automatic mechanism of humannature by which the sexual thought stimulates the sexual organs. Themasses are, of course, in favour of the opposite programme, which isin itself only another symptom of the erotic atmosphere into which thenew antipuritanic nation has come. That mechanism of the nervoussystem furnishes them a pleasant excitement when they read and hearthe discussions and plays which bristle with sexual instruction. Themagazines which, with the best intentions, fight for the new policy, easily find millions of readers; the plays with their erotic overflowand the moral ending are crowded, and mostly by those who hardly needthe instruction any longer. A nation which tries to lift its sexualmorality by dragging the sexual problems to the street for theinspection of the crowd, without shyness and without shame, and whichwilfully makes them objects of gossip and stage entertainment, isdoing worse than Munchausen when he tried to lift himself by hisscalp. It seems less important that the youth learn the secrets ofsexual intercourse than that their teachers and guardians learn theelements of physiological psychology; the sexual sins of the youthstart from the educational sins of the elders. 

It is easy to say, as the social reformers and the vice commissionersand the sex instructors and many others have repeated in ever newforms, that “all children's questions should be answered truthfully, ”and to work up the whole sermon to the final trumpet call, “The truthshall make you free. ” Yet this is entirely useless as long as we havenot defined what we mean by freedom, and above all what we mean bytruth. If the child enjoys the beautiful softness of the butterfly'scoloured wing, it is surely a truth, if we teach him that seen underthe microscope in reality there is no softness there, but large uglybumps and hollows and that the beautiful impression is nothing but anillusion. But is this truth of the microscope the only truth, and isscience the only truth, and is there ever only one truth about theconcrete facts of reality? Does truth in this sense not simply mean acertain order into which we bring our experience in the service ofcertain purposes of thought? We may approach the chaos of lifeexperience with different purposes, and led by any one of them we mayreach that consistent unity of ideas for the limited outlook which wecall truth. The chemist has a right to consider everything in theworld as chemical substances, and the mathematician may take the samethings as geometric objects. And yet he who seeks a meaning in thesethings and a value and an inner development may come to another kindof truth. Only a general philosophy of life can ultimately grade andorganize those various relative truths and combine them in anall-embracing unity. 

No doubt the physician's scientific discoveries and observations areperfectly true. Man is an animal, and anatomical and physiologicalconditions control his existence, and if we want to understand thisanimal's life and want to keep it healthy, we have to ask for thetruth of the physician. But shame upon him who wants to educate youthtoward the view that man as an animal is the true man! If we educateat all, we educate in the service of culture and civilization. Allbuilding up of the youthful mind is itself service to human progress. But this human progress is not a mere growth of the animal race. Ithas its total meaning in the understanding of man as a soul, determined by purposes and ideals. Not the laws of physiology, but thedemands of logic, ethics, æsthetics, and religion control the man whomakes history and who serves civilization. He who says that thechild's questions ought to be answered truthfully means in thisconnection that lowest truth of all, the truth of physiology, andforgets that when he opens too early the mind of the boy and the girlto this materialistic truth he at the same time closes it, and closesit perhaps forever, to that richer truth in which man is understood ashistoric being, as agent for the good and true and beautiful andeternal. 

Give to the child the truth, but that truth which makes life worthliving, that truth which teaches him that life is a task and a duty, and that his true health and soundness and value will depend upon theenergy with which he makes the world and his own body with its selfishdesires subservient to unselfish ideals. If you mean by the truth thathalf-truth of man as a sexual creature of flesh and nerves, the childto whom you offer it will be led to ever new questions, and if you goon answering them truthfully as the new fashion suggests, yourreservoir will soon be emptied, even if the six volumes of HavelockEllis' “Psychology of Sex” are fully at your disposal. But the morethis species of truth is given out, the more life itself, for whichyou educate the child, will appear to him unworthy and meaningless. Ifthe truth of civilized life is merely that which natural science cananalyze, then life has lost its honour and its loyalty, its enthusiasmand its value. He who sees the truth in the idealistic aspect of manwill not necessarily evade the curious question of the child who ispuzzled about the naturalistic processes around him. But instead ofwhetting his appetite for unsavoury knowledge, he will seriouslyinfluence the young mind to turn the attention into the oppositedirection. He will speak to him about the fact that there issomething animal-like in the human being, but will add that the truevalues of life lie just in overcoming the low instincts in theinterest of high aims. He will point to those hidden naturalisticrealities as something not overimportant, but as something which aclean boy and girl do not ask about and with which only theimagination of bad companions is engaged. An instinctive indifferenceand aversion to the contact with anything low and impure can easily bedeveloped in every healthy child amid clean surroundings. Why is theboy to live and to die for the honour of his country? Why is he todevote himself to the search for knowledge? Why is he to fight for thegrowth of morality? Why does he not confine himself to mere seekingfor comfort and ease and satisfaction of the senses? All which reallycreates civilization and human progress depends upon symbols andbelief. As soon as we make all those symbols of the historiccommunity, all the ideals of honour and devotion, righteousness andbeauty, glory and faithfulness, mere matters of scientificcalculation, they stare us in the face as sheer absurdities; and yetwe might again misname that as truth. Then it is the untruth whichmakes us free, it is the non-scientific, humanistic aspect whichliberates us from the slavery of our low desires. 

Certainly there will always be some wild boys and girls in the schoolwho try to spread filthy knowledge, but if the atmosphere is filledwith respect and reverence, and the minds are trained by innerdiscipline and morality, the contagion of such mischievous talk willreach only those children who have the disposition of the degenerate. The majority will remain uncontaminated. Plenty of lewd literature inthe circulars of the quacks and even in the sensational newspaperswill reach their eye and their brain, and yet it will leave not theslightest trace. The trained, clean mind develops a moral antitoxinwhich at every pulse-beat of life destroys the poisonous toxinsproduced by the germs which enter the system. The red lanterns willnever be entirely extinguished in any large city the world over, butthe boy who has developed a sense of respect and reverence and aninstinctive desire for moral cleanliness and a power to overcomeselfish impulses, will pass them by and forget them when he comes tothe next street corner. But the other, whose imagination has beenfilled with a shameless truth and who receives as his protectionmerely a warning which appeals to his fear of diseases, may pass thatred lantern entrance at first, but at the next block his taintedimagination will have overcome the fear, and with the recklessconfidence that he will know how to protect himself and that he willhave good luck he, too, like the moth, will feel attracted toward thered light and will turn back. We can prohibit alcohol, but we cannotprohibit the stimulus to sexual lust. It is always present, and theselfish desire, made rampant by a society which craves amusement, willalways be stronger than any social argument or any talk of possibleindividual danger. The only effective check is the deep inner respect, and we must teach it to the youth, or the whole nation will have to betaught it soon by the sterner discipline of history. The genius ofmankind cannot be deceived by philistine phrases about the conspiracyof silence. The decision to be silent was a solemn pledge to thehistoric spirit of human progress, which demands its symbols, itsconventions, and its beliefs. To destroy the harvest of these idealvalues, because some weeds have grown up with them, by breaking downthe dams and allowing the flood of truth-talk to burst in is the greatpsychological crime of our day. There is only one hope and salvation:let us build up the dam again to protect our field for a betterto-morrow. 

 II

 SOCIALISM

The history of socialism has been a history of false prophecies. Socialism started with a sure conviction that under the conditions ofmodern industry the working class must be driven into worse and worsemisery. In reality the development has gone the opposite way. Thereare endlessly more workingmen with a comfortable income than everbefore. The prophets also knew surely that the wealth frommanufacturing enterprises would be concentrated with fewer and fewermen, while history has taken the opposite turn and has distributed theshares of the industrial companies into hundreds of thousands ofhands. Other prophecies foretold the end of the small farmer, stillothers the uprooting of the middle class, others gave the date for thegreat crash; and everything would have come out exactly as theprophets foresaw it, if they had not forgotten to consider many otherfactors in the social situation which gave to the events a verydifferent turn. But it may be acknowledged that the wrong prophesyingwas done not only by the socialists, but no less by the spectators. Imyself have to confess my guilt. Many years ago when I wrote my Germanbook on “The Americans, ” I declared with the ringing voice of theprophet that socialism would never take hold of America. It was soeasy to show that its chief principles and fundamental doctrines weredirectly opposed to the deepest creeds of Americanism and that thewhole temper of the population was necessarily averse to theanticapitalistic fancies. The individualistic striving, the faith inrivalry, the fear of centralization, the political liberty, the lackof class barriers which makes it possible for any one to reach thehighest economic power, all work against socialism, and all areessential for American democracy. Above all, the whole American lifewas controlled by the feeling that individual wealth is themeasurement of individual success, and even puritanism had an internalaffinity to capitalism. Hence socialism could not mean anything but animported frill which could not be taken seriously by the commonwealth. In later editions of the book I modified my predictions slightly, andto-day I feel almost inclined to withdraw my prophecy entirely. 

To be sure, I still think that the deepest meaning of Americanism andof the American mission in the world is farther away from socialismthan the spirit of any other nation. And yet—I do not say that Ifear, or that I hope, but I believe—socialism has in no other land atpresent such good chances to become the policy of the state. Thecountry has entered into a career of progressive experiments; thetraditional respect for the old constitutional system of checks andbalances to the mere will of the crowd has been undermined. The reallegislative reign of the masses has just begun and it would seem onlynatural that such an entirely new movement should be pushed forward byits own momentum. If the genius of America, which was conservative, turns radical, the political machinery here would be more fit thanthat of any other land to allow the enforcement of socialism. Thiswill not come to-day or to-morrow, but that socialism may suddenly bewith us the day after to-morrow is the possibility with which theneutral observer must count. There is no need of directly reversingthe prophecies, as there are many energies in the soul of the nationwhich may react against this new tendency and may automatically checkthis un-American economic capture. It is a fight with equal chances, and which side will win cannot be foreseen. But if socialism reallyhas entered the realm of practical possibilities, it becomes the dutyof everybody to study the new demands from his own standpoint. Thenation must see the facts from many angles before it can decide onthis tremendous issue. Any one-sidedness, whether in favour of oragainst the new programme, must be dangerous. In such a situation eventhe psychologist may be excused for feeling tempted to contribute hislittle share to the discussion. 

The central problem of the psychologist would evidently lie in thequestion whether the socialistic reformer calculates with right ideasabout the human mind. There might, to be sure, be a littlepsychological side-show not without a peculiar interest at theentrance gate of socialism. We might turn the question, what is thepsychology of the socialist, so as to mean, not with what psychologydoes the socialist operate, but what goes on in the socialist's mind. No doubt the motives have gone through deep changes even in the mindof the cultured leaders. When Karl Marx laid the foundations ofsocialism, he was moved solely by the desire to recognize a necessarydevelopment. It was the interest of the theorist. He showed that thethings which the socialist depicted simply had to come. He did not askwhether they are good or bad. They were for him ultimately naturalevents which were to be forestalled. The leaders to-day see it all ina new light. The socialistic state is to them a goal to the attainmentof which all energies ought to be bent. Not their theoreticalknowledge, but their practical conscience, leads them to theirenthusiasm for a time without capitalism. In the minds of the masses, however, who vote for the socialist here or abroad, the glory of moralrighteousness is somewhat clouded by motives less inspiring inquality. The animosity against the men of wealth rushes into themental foreground, and if it is claimed that the puritans disliked thebear baiting not because it gave pain to the bears, but because itgave pleasure to the onlookers, it sometimes seems as if thesocialists, too, desire the change, not in order that the poor gainmore comfort, but in order that the rich be punished. And many cleanermotives have mixed in, which resulted from the general change ofconditions. The labourer lives to-day in a cultural atmosphere whichwas unknown to his grandfathers. He reads the same newspaper as hisemployers, he thinks in the same catch phrases, and has essentiallythe same foundation of education. Moreover the publicity of our lifein this era of print too easily teaches the workingman that his mastermay be neither better nor wiser than he and his comrades. And finally, the political and economic discussions of the last half century havemade it perfectly clear to him that the removing of the materialmisery lies in the realm of practical possibility, and that evenwithout bombs a new economic order may be created almost as easily asa new tariff law or an income tax or an equal suffrage. Hence it isnot surprising that all these motives combined turn the imagination ofmillions to the new panaceas. 

But if low motives are mixed with high ones in the mind of thechampions of socialism, they certainly have never stopped assuring usthat it is worse with their opponents. Marx himself declaredpassionately that greed was the deepest spring, that “the most violentand malignant passions of the human breast, the furies of privateinterest” are whipping men into the battle against socialism. Howeverthat may be, the discussions in the clubroom and in the political hallperhaps oftener suggest a less malignant motive, a persistentcarelessness, which keep the friends of the capitalistic order frommaking the effort really to find out at what the socialists areaiming. The largest part of the private and public accusations ofsocialism starts from the conviction that socialism means that all menmust have equal property, and in consideration of the fact that noreal socialist demands that, and that the socialists have alwaysinsisted that this is not their intention, there indeed seems to besome psychology necessary to understand why the antisocialists do nottake the trouble to find out first what socialism is. 

But here we are not engaged in the mental analysis of those who fightabout socialism. We want rather to ask whether the human minds arerightly understood by those who tell us that socialism is, or is not, the solution of our social problems. And if we turn to thisfundamental question whether socialism ought to become the form of oursociety, the chief thing will be to avoid a mistake in the discussionwhich pervades the largest part of our present-day literature. Theproblem is no longer, as it was in the childhood days of socialisticdebate, whether the historical necessities must bring socialism. Weknow that socialism will come, if we like it, and that we can avoidit, if we hate it, and that everything therefore depends upon thedecision of the community whether it wants to work for or against thegreat economic revolution. It is thus not a question of facts, but ofpreferences, of judgments, of ideals. We do not simply have toexchange wise words as to that which will come anyhow, but we have tomake up our mind whether it appears to us desirable or not desirable, and that means, whether it is in harmony with our purpose or not. 

But this forces on us as the very first inquiry: what is the purposeof our social economic system to be? Just here the mistake comes intothe debates. We hear eloquent orations about the merits or demerits ofsocialism, without any effort being made to define clearly for whatend it is useful or useless. It is meaningless to claim that socialismis good, if we do not know for what it is good, and the wholeflippancy of the discussion too often becomes apparent when we stopand inquire what purposes the speaker wants to see fulfilled. We finda wobbling between two very different possible human purposes, withthe convenient scheme of exchanging the one for the other, when thedefender gets into a tight place. These two great purposes areeconomic development and human happiness. With the gesture of highcultural inspiration the new scheme is praised to us as a way toward agreater economic achievement by mankind, a fuller development of humaneconomic life. But as soon as doubts are cast on the value of thescheme for this noble purpose, the argument slips into the othergroove and shows us that socialism is wonderful for removing humanmisery and bringing sweet happiness to numberless men, women, andchildren. According to the same scheme, of course, when we do not feelconvinced that socialism will be the remedy for unhappiness, thescene is changed again, and we hear that it will be splendid foreconomic progress. 

No one would claim that the two ends have nothing to do with eachother. We might define the progress of economic life in such a waythat the increase of human happiness belongs within its compass. Or wemight show that widespread human happiness would be an advantageouscondition for the development of economic civilization. But in anycase the two are not the same, and even their intimate relation mayappear artificial. To discuss the value of a new scheme withoutperfectly clearing up and sharply discriminating the possible ends forwhich it may be valuable, can never be helpful toward the fundamentalsolution of a problem. Nobody doubts that human progress is a worthyaim, and no one denies that human happiness is a beautiful goal. Hencewe may evade the philosophical duty of proving through reasons thatthey are justified ends. We take them for granted, and we only insistthat the one is not the other, and that it is utterly in vain tomeasure the value of socialism with reference to these two ideals, aslong as we do not cleanly discriminate for which of the two socialismcan be valuable. In itself it may very well be that it is splendidfor human progress, but unfit for promoting human happiness, or thatit is powerless for the development of mankind, but most successfulfor the increase of human joy. 

Hence we ask at first only: how does the old or the new system servethe progress of mankind? What this human progress means is clearlyinterpreted by the history of five thousand years of civilization. Itis the history of the growing differentiation of human demands andfulfilments. Every new stage in the culture of mankind developed newdesires and new longings from nature and from society, but it alsobrought with it new means of satisfying the longings and fulfillingthe desires. The two belong most intimately together. The new means offulfilment stimulate new desires of intellect and emotion and will, and the new desires lead to further means of their satisfaction. Thusthere is an incessant automatic enrichment, an endless differentiation, a thousand new needs on the height of civilization where the primitiverace found a few elementary demands, and a thousand new schemes ofmaterial technique and of social, institutional life where the lowerculture found all it needed with simple devices. It is an unfoldingnot dissimilar to that which the plants and the animals have shown intheir organic life in the long periods of natural evolution. Thedevelopment from the infusors to the monkeys was such a steadyincrease in the manifoldness of functions. The butterfly is as welladjusted to its life conditions and as well off as the fish, and thefish as well off as the elephant, and in the evolution of economiccivilization as in that of the kingdom of animals the advance does notinvolve an increase of joy. Pain results from a lack of adjustment, but not from a scarcity of functions. Hence if we strive for progressalone, we are moved not by the hope for greater joy, but by anenthusiastic belief in the value of progress and development itself. Does a socialistic order secure a more forceful, a more spontaneous, amore many-sided, or even a more harmonious growing of new demands andof new means for fulfilment than the capitalistic system which holdsus all to-day?

The psychologist certainly has no right to ask to be heard first, whenthis strictly economic aspect of the great social problem isemphasized. Industrial specialists, administrators of labour, politicians, and financiers stand nearest to the issue. But whateverthey testify, they ultimately have to point to mental facts, and thepsychologist is naturally anxious to emphasize them. He has nothingnew to contribute. It is the old story of the stimulating influenceof the spirit of competition. Healthy progress demands unusualexertion. All psychological conditions for that maximum strain areunfavourable in a socialistic state with its acknowledged need ofrigid regulation and bureaucracy. We see all around us the flabbyroutine work, stale and uninspiring, wherever sharp rivalry has nochance. It is the great opportunity for mediocrity, while the unusualtalent is made ineffective and wasted. Our present civilization showsthat in every country really decisive achievement is found only inthose fields which draw the strongest minds, and that they are drawnonly where the greatest premiums are tempting them. To-day even themonopolist stands in the midst of such competition, as he can nevermonopolize the money of the land. This spur which the leaders feel isan incessant stimulus for all those whom they control, and, as soon asthat tension is released at the highest point, a perfunctoryperformance with all its well-known side features, the waste and theidleness, the lack of originality and the unwillingness to take risks, must set in and deaden the work. 

Nature runs gigantic risks all the time, and throws millions ofblossoms away so as to have its harvest of fruit, and at the same timenature shows the strictest economy and most perfect adjustment toends in the single blossom which comes to fruit. Just this doublenessis needed in the progressive economic life. The rampant luxuriousnesswhich is willing to throw away large means for a trial and for a fancywhich may lead to nothing, and yet a scrupulous economy which reachesits ends with the smallest possible waste, must blend. But as long asman's mind is not greatly changed, both will be the natural tendencyof the capitalist, and both are abhorred by the governmental worker. He has no right to run risks, but does not feel it his duty to avoidan unproductive luxuriousness. He wastes in the routine where he oughtto economize, and is pedantic in the great schemes in which hisimagination ought to be unbridled. The opponents of socialism haveoften likened the future state to a gigantic prison, where every onewill be forced to do the work without a chance for a motive whichappeals to him as an individual. This is in one respect unfair, as thesocialists want to abolish private capital, but do not want toequalize the premiums for work. Yet is their method not introducinginequality up to the point where it has many of the bad features ofour present system, and abolishing it just at the point where it wouldbe stimulating and fertilizing to commerce and industry? We are toallow great differences of personal possession. Even to-day the largecompanies count with hundred-thousand-dollar salaries, and there isnothing in the socialistic principle which would counteract thistendency. The differences may even grow, if the economic callings areto attract the great talents at all in such a future state. But justthe one decisive value of the possessions for the development ofindustry and commerce—namely, the transforming of the material gaininto the capital which produces and works, would become impossible. The national achievement would be dragged down. All the dangers whichthreaten bureaucratic industrialism everywhere—political partyinfluences with their capricious zigzag courses, favouritism, protection and graft, waste and indifference, small men with inflatedimportance in great positions, and great men with crushed wings innarrow places—all would naturally increase, and weaken the nation inthe rivalry of the world. 

While such paralyzing influences were working from above, the changesfrom below would interfere no less with vigorous achievement. Everygateway would be wide open. Socialism would mean a policy opposite tothat of the trade unions to-day. They are energetically excluding theunfit. Under the new order the fine day for the unfit would havedawned. At present the socialists feel at home in the system of theunions, because the firm organization of the workingmen through theunions is helpful for their cause. But if that cause wins, thebarriers of every union must break down, and the industrial energiesof the nation will be scattered in the unimportant work in order togive an equal chance to the unproductive. 

Nobody doubts that socialism would overcome some of the obviousweaknesses of the capitalistic era, and those weaknesses may beacknowledged even if we are faithful to our plan and abstract frommere human happiness. If only the objective achievement is our aim, wecannot deny that the millionfold misery from sickness and old age, from accidents at work, and from unemployment through a crisis intrade, from starvation wages, and from losses through fraudulentundertakings, is keeping us from the goal. But has the groaning ofthis misery remained unheard in these times, when capitalism has beenreaching its height? The last two decades have shown that the systemof private ownership can be in deepest harmony with all those effortsto alleviate its cruelties in order to strengthen the efficiency ofthe nation at work. Certainly the socialists themselves deserve creditfor much in the great international movement toward the materialsecurity of the workingman's social life. It is doubtful whetherwithout her social democrats, Germany, the pioneer in the socialinsurance movement, would have given to the army of workingmen thoseprotective laws which became the model for England and other nations, and which are beginning to be influential in American thinking, too. The laws against child labour, the efforts for minimum wage rates, and, most important, the worldwide tendency to secure a firmsupervision and regulation of the private companies by the state, arecharacteristic features of the new period in which capitalismtriumphs, and yet is freeing itself from cancerous growths whichdestroy its power for fullest achievement. 

To work nine hours instead of ten, and eight instead of nine, was onlyapparently an encroachment on the industrial work. The worldwideexperiment has proved that the shorter working hours allow anintensity of strain and an improvement of the workmen which ultimatelyheighten the value of the output. The safety devices burdened themanufacturer with expenses, and yet the economist knows that no outlayis more serviceable for the achievement of the factory. Unionism andarbitration treaties are sincere and momentous efforts to help thewhole industrial nation. And all this may be only the beginning. Thetime may really come when every healthy man will serve his year in theindustrial army. Man and woman and child may thus be more and moreprotected against the destructive abuses of our economic scheme. Theirphysical health and their mental energy may be kept in better andbetter working order by social reforms, by state measures and strongorganization. The fear of the future, that greatest destroyer of thelabourer's working mood, may be more and more eliminated. Extremelymuch still remains to be done, but the best of it can surely be donewithout giving up the idea of private capital. In the framework of thecapitalistic order such reforms mean a national scientific managementin the interest of efficiency and success. If that framework isdestroyed, the vigour and the energy are lost, and no improvements inthe detail can patch up the ruinous weakness in the foundation. If thegoal is an increased achievement of the industrialized nation, socialism is bound to be a failure as long as human minds and theirmotives are what they are to-day and what they have been through thelast five thousand years. 

No doubt such arguments have little weight with the larger number ofthose who come to the defence of socialism. The purpose, they wouldsay, is not at all to squeeze more work out of the nerves and musclesof the labourer, to fill still more the pocket of the corporations, toproduce still more of the infernal noise in the workshops of theworld. The real aim has nothing to do with the output and the muscle, but with the joy and happiness of the industrial workers, who havebecome slaves in the capitalistic era. It is quite true that if thisis the end, the arguments which speak against the efficiency ofsocialism might well be disregarded. The mixing of the reasons canbring only confusion, and such chaos is unavoidable indeed, as long asthe aims are not clearly discriminated. We may acknowledge franklythat the socialistic order may be a hindrance to highest efficiency, and yet should be welcomed because it would abolish the sources ofunhappiness. Yet is there really any hope for such a paradise? Theproblem of achievement may stand nearer to the economist, but that ofhappiness and misery is thoroughly a question of the mind, and it isthe duty of the psychologist to take a stand. 

His issues, however, ought not to be confused by mixing in a sideproblem which is always emphasized when the emotional appeal is madeand the misery of the workmen's fate is shown up. There is nounhappier lot than that of those healthy men who can work and want towork, and do not find a chance to work. But this tremendous problem ofthe unemployed is not organically connected with the struggle aboutsocialism. As far as social organization and human foresight can everbe able to overcome this disease of the industrial body, the remediescan just as well be applied in the midst of full-fledged capitalism. It is quite true that the misfortune of unemployment may never becompletely uprooted, but vast improvements can easily be conceivedwithout any economic revolution; and, above all, no scheme has beenproposed by the socialists which would offer more. As long as there isa market with its ups and downs, as long as harvests vary and socialdepressions occur, there will be those who have no chance for theirusual useful activity. If the community of the socialistic statesupports them, it will do no more than the capitalistic state willsurely do very soon, too. If we want to see clean issues, we ought torule out the problem of unemployment entirely. 

The socialistic hope can be only that, through the abolition ofcapital, the average workman will get a richer share from the fruitsof his industrial labour. In the programmes of the American socialistsit has taken the neat round figure that every workingman ought tolive on the standard of five thousand dollars yearly income. Of coursethe five thousand dollars themselves are not an end, but only a meansto it. The end is happiness, and here alone begins the psychologist'sinterest. He does not discuss whether the five-thousand-dollarstandard as minimum wage can really be expected. He asks himself onlywhether the goal can be reached, whether such a socialistic societywould really secure a larger amount of human happiness. It is herethat he answers that this claim is a psychological illusion. If weseek socialism for its external achievement we must recognize that itis a failure; if we seek it for its internal result, joy andhappiness, it must be worse than a failure. The psychology of feelingis still the least developed part of our modern science ofconsciousness, but certain chief facts are acknowledged on all sides, and in their centre stands the law of the relativity of feeling. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction, content and discontent, happinessand unhappiness, do not depend upon absolute, but upon relative, conditions. We have no reason whatever to fancy that mankind served bythe wonderful technique twenty centuries after Christ is happier thanmen were under the primitive conditions of twenty centuries beforeChrist. The level has changed and has steadily been raised, but thefeelings are dependent, not upon the height of the level, but upon thedeviations from it. Each level brings its own demands in the humanheart; and if they are fulfilled, there is happiness; and if they arenot fulfilled, there is discontent. But the demands of which we knownothing do not make us miserable if they remain unfulfilled. It is thechange, and not the possession, which has the emotional value. The upand down, the forward and backward, are felt in the social world, justas in the world of space the steady movement is not felt, but only theretardation or the acceleration. 

The psychologist knows the interesting psychophysical law according towhich the differences in the strength of our impressions are perceivedas equal, not when the differences of the stimuli are really equal, but when the stimuli stand in the same relation. If we hear threevoices, the sound has a certain intensity; if a fourth voice is added, the strength of the sound is swelling; we notice a difference. But ifthere is a chorus of thirty voices and one voice is added, we do nothear a difference at all. Even if five voices are added we do notnotice it. Ten new singers must be brought in for us to hear the soundas really stronger. And if we have a mighty chorus of three hundredsingers, not even twenty or fifty or even eighty voices would help usto feel a difference; we need a hundred additional ones. In otherwords, the hundred singers which come to help the three hundred do notmake more impression on us than the ten which are added to the thirty, or the one added to the three. Exactly this holds true for all ourperceptions, for light and taste and touch. The differences upon whichour pleasures and displeasures hang, obey this same law ofconsciousness. If we have three pennies, one added gives us apleasure, one taken away gives us a displeasure, which is entirelydifferent from the pleasure or displeasure if one penny is added ortaken away from thirty or from three hundred pennies. In thepossession of thirty, it needs a loss or gain of ten, in thepossession of three hundred the addition or subtraction of a hundred, to bring us the same emotional excitement. A hundred dollars added toan income of five hundred gives us just as much joy as ten thousandadded to fifty thousand dollars. The objective gain or loss does notmean anything; the relative increase or decrease decides humanhappiness. 

Do we not see it everywhere in our surroundings? If we lean over therailing and watch the steerage in the crowded ship, is there reallyless gayety among the fourth-class passengers than among thefirst-class? Where are the gifts of life which bring happiness toevery one? I have friends to whom a cigar, a cocktail, and a game ofcards are delightful sources of pleasure, the missing of which wouldmean to them a real deprivation. I have never played cards, I havenever touched a cocktail, and have never had a cigar between my lips;and yet I have never missed them. On the other hand, I feel extremelyuncomfortable if a day passes in which I have not gone through threeor four newspapers, while I have friends who are most happy if they donot have a printed sheet in hand for months. The socialists claim thatthe possession of one's own house ought to be the minimum externalstandard, and yet the number increases of those who are not happyuntil they are rid of their own house and can live in a littleapartment. Of course it might be said that the individual desires varyfrom man to man, but that an ample income allows every one to satisfyhis particular likes and to protect himself against his particulardislikes. But the situation is not changed if we see it under thismore general aspect of the money as means for the satisfaction of allpossible wishes. The psychological law of the relativity ofconsciousness negates no less this general claim. There is no limit tothe quantity of desires. On the level of expensive life the desiresbecome excessive, and only excessive means can satisfy them; on alower economic level, the desires are modest, but modest means aretherefore able to give complete satisfaction and happiness. 

The greatest dissatisfaction, hopeless despair, expresses itself insuicide. Statistics show that those who sink to this lowest degree oflife satisfaction are not the poorest. Not seldom they are themillionaires who have lost their fortune and kept only enough for aliving which would still be a source of happiness to hosts of others. If the average wage were five thousand dollars, or, better said, thecomfort which five thousand dollars can buy to-day, this standardwould be taken as a matter of course like fresh air and fresh water. The same old dissatisfactions and discomforts would spring from thehuman heart, when it looked with envy on the luxuries of theten-thousand-dollar men, or when by recklessness and foolishness orillness the habitual home life became suddenly reduced to a pitiablethree-thousand-dollar standard, which would be the goal for theworkingmen of to-day. We are too little aware that the averageexistence of the masses in earlier centuries was on a much narrowerscale than the life of practically the poorest to-day, and that themere material existence of those who to-day consider themselves asindustrial slaves is in many respects high above that of theapprentices in the periods before the machine age. Even at presentthose who think that they are at the bottom of material life in onecountry often live much better than the multitudes in other lands inwhich fewer desires have been aroused and developed. 

The individual may often alternate between different standards, justas any one of us when he goes out camping may feel perfectly happywith the most moderate external conditions, which would appear to himutter deprivation in the midst of his stylish life the year around. Many an Irish servant girl feels that she cannot live here without herown bathroom, and yet is perfectly satisfied when she goes home forthe summer and lives with seven in a room, not counting the pigs. Thisdependence upon relative conditions must be the more complete the morethe income is used for external satisfactions. As far as the meansserve education and æsthetic enjoyment and inner culture, thereremains at least a certain parallelism between the amount of supplyand the enjoyment. But the average American of the five-thousand-dollarclass spends four thousand nine hundred dollars on goods of a differentorder. Altogether his expenses are the house and the table, theclothes of the women, and his runabout. In all these lines there is nolimit, and the house of to-day is no longer a pleasure if hisneighbour builds a bigger one to-morrow. The man with thefifty-thousand-dollar expenditures feels the same dissatisfaction ifhe cannot have the steam yacht and the picture gallery which themultimillionaire enjoys. 

The inner attitude, the temperament, the training, the adjustment ofdesires to the available means, is the only decisive factor in suchsituations. The trust magnate and the factory foreman have equalchances to feel happiness in the standard of life in which they live. If they compare themselves with those who are richer, and if theirhearts hang on the external satisfactions, they both may feelwretched; and yet with another turn of mind they both may be content. Optimism and pessimism, contentment and envy, self-dependence anddependence upon the judgment of the world, joyfulness and despondency, are more decisive contrasts for the budget of happiness than thedifference between fifteen dollars a week and fifteen dollars aminute. Some of my best friends have to live from hand to mouth, andsome are multimillionaires. I have found them on the whole equallyhappy and equally satisfied with their position in life. If there wasa difference at all, I discovered that those who ate from silverplates were sometimes complaining about the materialism of our time, in which so much value is put on money. I have never found their fateespecially enviable, nor that of the others especially pitiable, andevidently they themselves have no such feelings. The generalimpression is much more as if actors play on the stage. The one givesthe rôle of the king in purple cloak and ermine, the other plays thepart of a beggar in ragged clothes. But the one rôle is not moreinteresting than the other, and everything depends upon the art ofplaying the character. 

This whole scramble for money's worth is based on a psychologicalillusion, not only because pleasure and displeasure are dependent uponrelative conditions, but also because the elimination of one source offeeling intensifies the feelings from other sources. The vulgardisplay of wealth which cheapens our life so much, the desire to seeksocial distinction by a scale of expenditure which in itself gives nojoy, have in our time accentuated the longing for wealth out of allproportion. This is true of every layer of society. The clerk's wifespends for her frocks just as absurdly large a part of his income asthe banker's wife. Every salesgirl must have a plume on her hat ratherthan a nourishing luncheon. Others must have six motor cars insteadof a decent library in their palace. But this longing for uselessdisplay is still outdone by the hysterical craving for amusement. Thefactory girl must have her movies every night, and besides the ninehundred kino shows, a hundred and twenty theatres are needed tosatisfy the amusement seeking crowd of New York, in addition to thehalf dozen which offer art. This mad race to outdo one another andthis hunting after pleasures which tickle the senses have benumbed thesocial mind and have inhibited in it the feeling for deeper values. But if by a magic word extreme equality of material means were createdand the mere sensuous enjoyments evenly distributed, in that momentall the other differences from individual to individual would be feltwith heightened sharpness, and would be causes for much strongerfeelings of happiness and unhappiness. 

Men differ in their inborn mental powers, in their intelligence andtalent, in beauty, in health, in honours and career, in family andfriends. The contrasts which are created in every one of theserespects are far greater and for the ill-fated far more cruel thanthose of the tax-payers. The beautiful face which is a passportthrough life and the discouraging homeliness, the perfect body whichallows vigorous work and the weak organism of the invalid unfit forthe struggle of life, the genius in science or art or statesmanshipand the hopelessly trivial mind, the youth in a harmonious, beautifulfamily life and the childhood in an atmosphere of discord, the homefull of love from wife and children and the house childless andchilly, the honours of the community and the disappointment of socialbankruptcy—they are the great premiums and the great punishments, which are whirled by fate into the crowd of mankind. Even here most ofit is relative. We rejoice in four-score years, but if we knew thatothers were allowed a thousand years of life, we should be despondentthat hardly a short century is dealt out to us. We are happy in therespect of our social community simply because we do not desire thehonours of the czar or of the mikado. But if we began to measure ourfate by that of others, how could we ever be satisfied? Women mightenvy men and men might envy women, the poet might wish to be thechampion of sport and the sportsman might be unhappy because he is nota poet. No one of us can have the knowledge and the technical powerswhich the child of the thirtieth century will enjoy. As soon as webegin to compare and do not find the centre of our life in ourselves, we are condemned. 

Everybody's life is composed of joys and pains which may come fromany of these sources. Where beauty is lacking, wit may brilliantlyshine; where health is failing, a talent may console; where the familylife is unhappy, the ambitions for a career may be fulfilled. Muchinequality will thus result, but the chances for a certain evenness ofhuman joy and sorrow will be the greater the more numerous the sourcesfrom which the joys and griefs of our days are springing. Add theinequalities of wealth, and you increase the chances that theemotional values in the lives of all of us will become more equal. Theugly girl may be rich and the poor one may be beautiful, the geniusmay hunger and the stupid man may marry the widow with millions, thehealthy man may have to earn his scanty living and the patient mayenjoy the luxuries of life. Their states of feeling will be more alikethan if a socialistic order had put them all on the same economiclevel of philistine comfort. The joys of capital are after all muchless deeply felt than any of those others, and the sufferings frompoverty are much less incisive than those from disappointed ambition, from jealousy, from illness, or from bereavement. It is well knownthat many more people die from overfeeding than from underfeeding. Wemay feel disgusted that the luxuries so often fall to the unworthy andthat the finest people have to endure the hardship of narrow means. But all those other gifts and deprivations, those talents and beautiesand powers and family relations, are no less arbitrarily dealt out. Weall may wish to be geniuses or radiant beauties, great singers orfathers of a dozen children; we have not chosen our more modest lot. 

It might be answered that the poverty of the industrial masses to-daymeans not only the absence of the special comforts, but that it meanspositive suffering. Men are starving from want and are chained downlike slaves to a torturing task. But let us discriminate. It is truein states of unemployment and illness the physical man may be crushedby naked poverty, but that has nothing whatever to do with socialism. We have emphasized before that it is the solemn duty of society tofind ways and means to protect every one who is willing to work aslong as he is healthy, against starvation in times of old age andsickness, and if possible in periods of market depression. Thenon-socialistic community has the power to take care of that, and itis entirely an illusory belief that socialism has in that respect anyadvantage. All the comparisons of the two economic orders ought torefer only to the variations rather high above the starvation line, even though the American must call starvation a standard which thecoolie may think tolerable and to which the European poor in theMiddle Ages were often accustomed. On the other hand, neithercapitalism nor socialism can protect the reckless and the wastefulagainst economic suicide. 

Much more important is the problem of suffering through the characterof the work itself. That is the real fountainhead of the socialisticflood which threatens to inundate our present-day social structures. But is there not even here a psychological misunderstanding involved?It may be granted that many a man and many a woman stand in thefactory day after day and year after year with the one feeling ofdistress and wretchedness at the hard work to which they are forced. But is their work really responsible for it, and is it not rathertheir personal attitude? Who is doing harder physical work than thesportsman? There is no more exhausting muscle strain than the climbover the glaciers of the Alps, which thousands pursue with passion. Analyze the profession of the physician. How many of his functions arein themselves of such a character that they might be denounced as themost humiliating slavery, if they were demanded from any man who couldnot see the aim and higher interest which they are serving! This isexactly the point where the leaders of labour are sinningunpardonably. They work with all the means of suggestion, until theworkman, as if hypnotized, looks on the mere movements which he is toperform in the factory, and forgets entirely the higher interest andaim of civilization which he is helping to serve. The scholar in hislaboratory has to do a thousand things which in themselves are uglyand dirty, tiresome and dangerous, uninteresting and exhausting, butwhich he is performing with enthusiasm because he knows that he isserving the great ideal of cultured life, to discover the truth andthus to help the progress of mankind. There is under no factory roof aworkman so forlorn that the work of his hands is not aiding thefulfilment of an equally great and equally ideal purpose of civilizedmankind, the development of economic civilization. As soon as hislabour amidst the noise of the machines is felt as such a service toan ideal cultural purpose, the work is no longer dead, but living, interesting, significant, wonderful. 

The mother who takes care of her little children has to go through athousand tiresome actions which would be intolerable if they weremeaningless, but which compose a beautiful life if they are heldtogether by the aim which the motherly love sees before it. Whateverwork a human being may perform, force on his mind the treacheroussuggestion that it is meaningless, that it is slavery, that othersseize the profit, and he must hate it and feel it an unbearablehardship. It has often been observed that the most bitter complaintshave always come from those workers who are reached by the suggestionsof theories and not from those who simply face practice, even thoughtheir life may be a much harder one. In Russia the workingmen of thecity found their life so intolerable that revolts broke out, while therural classes were satisfied with conditions of much more crueldeprivation. Our social reformers too easily forget the one greatteaching of the history of mankind, that the most powerful factor inthe world is the ideas. Surely there is some truth even in thatone-sided picture of the history of civilization which makeseverything dependent upon economic conditions, but the element oftruth which is contained therein is due to the fact that economicconditions may influence the ideas. The ideas are the really decisiveagencies. Only for ideas have men been ready to die, and for ideashave they killed one another. Give to the world the idea that earthlygoods are useless and heavenly goods alone valuable, and in thiskingdom of the religious idea the beggarly rags of the monk are moredesired than the gold of the mighty. Religion and patriotism, honourand loyalty, ambition and love, reform ideals and political goals, æsthetic, intellectual, and moral ideas have turned the great wheel ofhistory. Give to the workingman the right kind of ideas, the rightattitude toward his work, and all the hardship becomes blessedness andthe suffering glory. His best payment then will be the satisfaction ofcarrying his stone to the great temple of human progress, even thoughit may not be a cornerstone. 

Even the complaint repeated without end that the workingman's task isunendurable because of its unceasing monotony is ultimately nothingbut a psychological theory, and this theory is superficial andmisleading. It is easy to point out to the suggestible mind that thereis a wonderful enrichment of life in variety, and that uniformity musttherefore be something ugly and discouraging and unworthy. But thereal mental facts allow just as well the opposite argument. The merechange and variation, going from one thing to another, makes the mindrestless and distracted, without inner unity and harmony. To be loyalto one task and to continue it faithfully and insistently, brings thatperfect adjustment of the mind in which every new act is welcomebecause it has become the habit ingrained in the personality. To besure there are individual differences. We have in political life, too, radicals who get more satisfaction from change, and conservatives whoprefer continuity of traditions; and so the whole mental structure ofsome men is better adjusted to a frequent variation in work, and thatof others better prepared for continuity. The one has a temperamentwhich may lead him from one occupation to another, from one town toanother, from one flat to another, from one set of companions toanother. But there is the opposite type of minds. To them it is farmore welcome to continue throughout life at the same work, in the sameold home, in touch with the same dear friends. Many minds surely arebetter fitted for alternation in their activities, but many others, and they certainly are not the worst, are naturally much betteradapted to a regular repetition. There are opportunities for bothtypes of mental behaviour in the workshop of the nation, and thepeaceful adjustment is disturbed only by the hasty theory thatrepetition is a lower class of work, which makes man a mere machineand that it is therefore to be despised. Change the theory aboutuniformity, and you remove monotony from the industrial world. Monotony is only the uniformity which is hated. 

Do we not see that power of theories and ideas everywhere around us, even in the most trivial things? The most splendid gown is nothing butan object of contempt if it is the fashion of the day beforeyesterday. In lands where titles and decorations are a traditionalidea, the little piece of tin may be more coveted than any treasuresof wealth. Through ideas only can the great social question be solved. No distribution of income can change in the least the total sum ofpleasure and displeasure in the world, and the socialistic scheme isof all the useless efforts to increase pleasure and to decreasedispleasure the least desirable, because it works, as we have seen, atthe same time against those mental functions which secure the mostforceful progress of economic life. A true change can come only fromwithin. The superficial, unpsychological theories of human happiness, which have been hammered into the working population of our age, havemade true happiness more and more difficult to attain. There is smallchance that this inner conversion will come in our day throughreligion, however much religion may help toward it. There is stillsmaller chance that philosophy can do it and that the average man willtake the attitude of Antisthenes who claimed that it is divine not toneed anything and that he who needs least is nearest to the ideal. Butthere is every chance that mankind will remember again more vividlythe deeper lasting values of humanity. Society must be sobered afterthe frenzy of this present-day rush for external goods. The shallowdisappointment is felt too widely already. The world is beginning todiscover once more that this scramble for pearls and palaces and motorcars among the rich, and for their showy imitations among the middleclass, and the envy of material profits and the chase for amusementseven among the poorest, leave life meaningless and cold and silly. Assoon as the industrial community turns to a new set of ideas andbecomes inspired by the belief in the ideal value of the work as workand as a necessary contribution to the progress of mankind, the socialquestion will be solved, as all the differences which socialism wantsto eliminate then appear trivial and insignificant. 

But on the other hand, this belief cannot grow, and cannot spread itsroots deep in the soil of the industrial mind unless, as a necessarycounterpart, the ideas of duties and obligations spread and enlargeamong those who profit from the rights of capital. The capitalisticsociety must organize itself so that the sinking below the starvationline through illness, old age, or unemployment will be reduced to aminimum, so that the greatest possible participation in all whichgives higher value to life will be secured for the worker and hisfamily, and above all, so that the industrial control will be exertedby the best and the wisest. Nowhere is reform of ideals more needed. The brutality of capital is never felt more strongly than when theworkingman suspects that those at the top are not selected on accountof their stronger capacities. Only when capital is conscious of itsduties can the belief in the ideal meaning of the workingman'sfunction take hold of the masses and inhibit the suggestion ofsocialism. Merely granting the external claims, giving to the factorygirls increasing chance for amusement, means to deceive them. The moresuch longings are satisfied, the more they must grow and become acraze which sharpens the feeling of dissatisfaction. This desire forsuperficial joys, for sensual amusements and cheap display is nothingbut a suggested habit, which imitation creates in a period of waste. If a time of simplicity were to come, not only the longing for theseprizes would become silent, but the prizes themselves would appearworthless. Liberate the workingman from his distrust of the presentsocial order; let him feel deeply that his duties are not enforcedslavery but a solemn offering to human progress, which he gives inglad coöperation in the spirit of ideal belief. At the same time stopthe overestimation of the outer enjoyments, and cultivate theappreciation of the lasting values, and our time of unrest will cometo inner harmony. But do not believe that this can ever be done, ifthose who are called to be the leaders of the social group are notmodels and do not by their own lives give the cue for this newattitude and new valuation. As long as they outdo one another in thewild chase of frivolity and seek in the industrial work of the nationonly a stronghold for their rights and not a fountain spring ofduties, as long as they want to enjoy instead of to believe, thisinner change can never come in the community. The psychologist can donothing but to predict that no other scheme, no outer reform, no newplan of distribution, can bring a real change, as every calculationwhich works with outer means to secure happiness must remain apsychological illusion. The change from within is the only promise andthe only hope. 

 III

 THE INTELLECTUAL UNDERWORLD

The public conscience of the social world has been stirred in recentdays by the dangers which threaten from an antisocial world that lurksin darkness. The sociologists recognize that it is not a question ofvicious and criminal individuals, but one of an antisocial atmosphere, of immoral traditions and surroundings, through which crime flourishesand vice is fostered. They speak of a social underworld, and mean byit that whole pitiable setting in which the gangs of thieves and thehordes of prostitutes live their miserable lives. The publicdiscussions nowadays are full of stirring outcries against the rapidspreading of vice in our large cities; it is a war for clean livingand health. But after all we ought not to forget that similar dangerssurround our inner culture and our spiritual life, and that anintellectual underworld threatens our time, which demands a no lessrigorous fight until its vice is wiped out. The vice of the socialunderworld gives a sham satisfaction to the human desire for sensuallife; the vice of the intellectual underworld gives the same shamfulfilment to the human longing for knowledge and for truth. Theinfectious germs which it spreads in the realm of culture mayultimately be more dangerous to the inner health of the nation thanany physical diseases. The battle against vice and crime in the worldof the body ought to be paralleled by a battle against superstitionand humbug in the world of the mind. The victory over the socialunderworld would anyhow never be lasting unless the intellectualunderworld were subjugated first. In the atmosphere of sham-truth allthe antisocial instincts grow rankly. 

I know of a large, beautiful high school in which the boys and girlsare to receive the decisive impulses for their inner life fromwell-trained teachers who have had a solid college education. I havefound out that quite a number of these teachers are clients of amedium who habitually informs them as to their future, and for adollar a sitting gives them advice at every turn of their lives. I donot know whether she takes it from the tea leaves or from an Egyptiandream book or from her own trance fancies, but I do know that theprophecies of this fraud have deeply influenced some of their livesand shaped the faculty of the high school. What does this mean?Mature educators to whose training society has devoted its fullesteffort and who are chosen to bring to the youth the message of earnestthought and solid knowledge, and whose intellectual life oughttherefore to be controlled by consistent thinking and real love forknowledge, fall back into the lowest forms of mental barbarism andreally believe in the most illogical prostitution of truth. The doublelife of Jekyll and Hyde is more natural than this. The impulse tovirtuous behaviour and the atrocities of the criminal may after all becombined in one character, but the desire to master the world by adisciplined knowledge and to think the universe in ideas of order andlaw cannot go together with a real satisfaction and belief in thechaotic superstitions of mediumistic humbugs. Here we have truly atwofold personality, one living in a world of culture and the other inan underworld of intellectual dissipation and vice. It would not bedesirable for the high school teachers who are to be models of virtueto live a second life as gamblers and pick-pockets, but it is moredangerous if they are the agents of intellectual culture and indulgeat the same time in intellectual prostitution. 

No spirit of false tolerance ought any longer to be permitted, whenthe treacherous danger has become so nation wide. It is sufficient totake up any newspaper between New York and San Francisco and runthrough the advertisements of the spiritualists and psychical mediums, the palmists and the astrologers, the spiritual advisers and thepsychotherapists: it is evident that it is a regular organizedindustry which brings its steady income to thousands, and which in thebigger towns has its red-light districts with its resorts for theintellectual vice. The servant girl gets her information as to thefidelity of her lover for fifty cents, the clerk who wants to bet onthe races pays five dollars, the great banker who wants to bet onstocks pays fifty dollars for his prophetic tips, and the widow whowants messages from her husband pays five hundred dollars, but theyall come and pay gladly. If this mood permeates the public of allclasses, it is not surprising that the cheapest spiritualistic fraudcreeps into religious circles, that the wildest medical humbug issuccessfully rivalling the work of the scientific physician, and thatthe intellectual graft of psychical research is beginning to corruptthe camps of the educated. Surely it is a profitable business, and Iknow it from inside information, as not long ago a very successfulclairvoyant came to the Harvard Psychological Laboratory and offeredme a partnership with half his income, not because he himselfbelieved much in my psychology, but because, as he assured me, thereare some clients who think more highly of my style of psychology thanof his, and if we got together the business would flourish. He told mejust how it was to be done and how easy it is and what personsfrequent his parlours. But I have inside information of a verydifferent kind before me, if I think of the victims who come to me forhelp when superstition has broken their mental springs. There was ayoung girl to whom life was one great joy, until for ten dollars shegot the information that she would die in a very big building, and nowshe goes into hysterics when her family tries to take her into atheatre or a hotel or a railway station or a school. 

Indeed the psychologist has an unusually good chance to get glimpsesof this filthy underworld, even if he does not frequent the squalidquarters of the astrologers. Bushels of mail bring this superstitionand mental crookedness to his study, and his material allows him toobserve every variety of illogical thought. If a letter comes to hiscollection which presents itself as a new specimen that ought to beanalyzed a little further, nothing is needed but a short word ofreply. It will at once bring a full supply of twisted thought, sufficient for a careful dissection. It has been said repeatedly inthe various vice investigations that no one can understand the illfate of the vicious girls, unless he studies carefully the men whomthey are to please. An investigation into mental vice demands stillmore an understanding of those minds which play the part of customers. There are too many who cannot think in straight lines and to whom themost absurd linking of facts is the most satisfactory answer in anyquestion. The crudeness of their intellect, which may go together withample knowledge in other fields, predestines them to be deceived andputs a premium on the imposture. I may try to characterize somevarieties of crooked thinking from chance tests of the correspondencewith which the underworld has besieged me. I have only the letters ofmost recent date in hand. 

I abstract, of course, from those written by insane individuals. Theycome plentifully and show all sorts of distortions and impossibleideas. But they do not belong here. The confused mind of the patientis not to be held responsible. His absurdities are symptoms ofdisease, and they are sharply to be separated from the lack of logicin the sound mind, just as the impulse to kill in paranoia is to bedistinguished from the murderous schemes of the criminal. It isgenerally not difficult to recognize at once which is which. I findthe most frequent type of letters from evidently diseased persons tobe writings like this: “Dear Sir: I wish to let you know that someyoung men have a sort of a comb machine composed of wireless telephoneand reinforced electricity. They can play this machine and make aperson talk or wake or go to sleep. They can tell where you are, evenmiles away. They play in the eyes and brain, I think. They have twomachines; so they know when the police or anybody is coming towardtheir house. They keep talking most of the time so as to take up aperson's mind. It is about time it was stopped, but people don'tunderstand such things around here. Could a wireless telephone gettheir voices? Hoping you will do something to stop them, I am yours, ONE WHO HAS BEEN ANNOYED VERY MUCH. ”

There is no help for such a poor sufferer except in the asylum. Herewe want to deal not with the patients, but only with the sinners whosin against logic, while their minds are undiseased. 

There is another large class of correspondents, which is not to beblamed, and which is one of the most interesting contributers to thepsychologist's files. People write long discussions of theories whichthey build up on peculiar happenings in their minds. The theoriesthemselves may be entirely illogical, or at least in contradiction toall acknowledged science, but such letters are interesting, becausethey disclose abnormal mental states. Here it is not real insanity;but all kinds of abnormal impulses or ideas, of psychasthenicemotions, of neurasthenic disturbances, of hysteric inhibition, arethe starting points, and it is only natural that such pathologicalintrusions should bewilder the patient and induce him to form thewildest theories. Again, he may believe in the most improbable andmost fantastic connection of things, but this is due to theoverwhelming power of disturbances which he is indeed unable toexplain to himself. I have a whole set of letters from women whoexplain in fantastic theories their magical power to foresee comingevents; and yet it is not difficult to recognize as the foundation ofall such ideas some well-known forms of memory disturbance. Commonlyit is the widespread tendency of women to accompany a scene with thefeeling that they have experienced it once before. They are few whonever have had it, especially in states of fatigue; many have it veryoften; and some are led to trust it and to become convinced that theyreally experienced the scene, at least in their minds, beforehand. This uncanny impression then easily develops into untenablespeculations on the borderland of normal intellect. The letters whichapproach those of the insane most nearly come from persons who try towork out a theory to account for hysterical experiences which breakinto their normal life. Sometimes the most absurd explanations must beacknowledged as justified from the standpoint of the patient. A womanwrote to me that she had the abnormal power to produce railroad wrecksby her mere will, while she was lying at home in bed. She wanted me tohypnotize her in order to relieve her from this uncanny power. She hadelaborated this thought in full detail. She did not know, what I foundout only slowly, that in hysterical attacks at night, for which everymemory was lost the next morning, she used a stolen switch key to opena switch, because she was angry with a railway official. I will ignoreall such cases with an abnormal background here and confine myself tothe healthy crowd. 

If I were to characterize their writings from an outside point ofview, I might first say that their expressions are expansive. There isno limit to their manuscripts, though I have to confess that anexposition of eighty-five hundred pages which has just been announcedto me by its author has not yet reached me. Nor can it be denied thattheir relation to old-fashioned or to new-fashioned spelling is notalways a harmonious one. Nor should I call them always polite: thecriticism of my own opinions, which they generally know only from somegarbled newspaper reports, often takes forms which are not the usualones for scholarly correspondence. “Whether it is your darkness or ifit is the badness of the police that go around calling themselves thegovernment, that probably ordered you to put such ignorance in theSunday article, I do not know. ” Or more straightforward are letters ofthis type: “Greeting—You take the prize as an educated fool. According to reports to me by less stupid and more honest men thanyou, the matter is. . . . ” It is surprising how often the handwriting ispretty, coquettish, or affected, but almost half of my crankcorrespondence is typewritten. 

When the newspapers tell of a mysterious case, minds of this typeimmediately feel attracted to mix in. When a few years ago I publishedan article disclosing the tricks of Madame Palladino, I was simplyflooded with letters of advice and of explanation. The same thingoccurred recently when the papers reported that I was experimentingwith Beulah Miller. Now it is easy to understand that those whofancied that the Miller child had supernatural gifts of telepathy andclairvoyance would wish to bring their questions to me so that I mightmake Beulah Miller trace their lost bracelets or predict their fortunein the Stock Exchange. But I was at a loss to understand why so manypersons from Maine to California felt tempted to write long letters tome in which they told me what kind of questions I ought to ask thechild, as if I could not formulate a question for myself. Every oneexpected a special report for himself with exact statements of heranswers. The whole performance showed a lack of judgment which istypical of that lower intellectual layer; and yet the letters wereoften written on beautifully monogrammed letter paper. More often, however, my own writings or doings have nothing to do with the case. Iam the perfectly innocent receiver of written messages about anythingbetween heaven and earth, while the messages which my correspondentsreceive from me are not always authentic. One of my psychicallytalented writers reports: “On May 31st at eight forty-nine A. M. Inthe midst of a thunderstorm I came into communication with DoctorMünsterberg and asked him to send me a message. He said, 'The name ofmy son is Wilhelm Münsterberg. '” It is improbable that I lied soboldly about my family, even in a telepathic message. 

I may select a few typical theories, which all come from evidentlyotherwise normal and harmless people. I have before me a whole seriesof manuscripts from a druggist who is sure that his ego theory is“very near the truth. ” It is in itself very simple and convincing. “The right and the left cerebral egos united with one sublime ego arein the body in a loose union in possession of an amœboid cell. Duringsleep they may separate. The sublime ego wanders through nerve pathsto the bowels, and the bowel experiences are the dreams. ” Anexperiment brought a definite proof of this. The druggist dyed somecrackers deep blue with methylene blue, and later dreamed that a largetrain of blue food was passing by. As each carriage of the traincorresponded to a granule of starch in the crackers, he was able tofigure that the ego which saw those parts of the crackers was aboutone thousandth of an inch large. “The fact of seeing in dreams is dueto vital force, the peculiar low speed to the high vibration force ofliving albuminoids emitted from every tendril of bioplasm andperceived by the eye of the ego-bion during its visit. ” “Within theego-bion is the ego itself, which is much simpler looking, about onehundredth of a micromillimeter. ” I do not want to go into details ofhow these egos can be transmitted “by kiss or otherwise” from onegeneration to another, but I can say that as soon as the reader hasgrasped the fundamental thesis of the author, everything follows withperfect logic. The good man, who is doubtless a faithful druggist andwhose mind is perfectly clear, has simply twisted some of the ideaswhich he has gathered from his ample reading and developed his pettheory. 

His case is very similar to that of a dignified, elderly trained nursewho is faithfully devoted to her noble daily work and who follows hervocation without indicating to any one that she is the author of agreat unpublished philosophical work. She has spent twenty-five yearsof her life on the elaboration of this _magnum opus_, which is richlyillustrated. Everything in the book is consistent and in harmony withits presuppositions. The theory again is very simple; every detail isperfectly convincing, if you acknowledge the starting point. As tothis, there may be difference of opinion. The fundamental thought isthat all human souls are born in the forests of Central Africa. “Soulsare sexless forces. Never is one soul born into life. There are alwaystwo. Often we find three pairs of almost the same type with but ashadow of density to distinguish each pair. Man evolutes upward on thescale of life by two tribes of apes. Ere man becomes human, herepresents one cell force. When man takes the human form as Maquake, he becomes a double life cell. ” I do not claim to be an expert in thissystem, but if I understand the whole work rightly, the idea is thatany human soul born there by the monkeys in Africa has to pass incircles of one thousand years from individual to individual, becomingat first negro, then Indian, then Malayan, then Hindu, then Greek, Celt, and Roman, then Jew, and finally American. After a thousandyears the soul begins to degenerate and enters sinners and criminals. Which stage the soul has reached can easily be seen from the fingernails. The chief illustrations of the great work were thereforedrawings of finger nails of all races. It is a side issue of thetheory that “souls once matured generally pass on to another star. Thenearer the sun is to the star holding life, the denser is all growthin nature. ” I acknowledge that this view of evolution does notharmonize exactly with my own, but I cannot deny that the whole systemis worked out with perfect consistency, and wherever I asked thewriter difficult questions as to some special problems, she was atonce ready to give the answers with completely logical deduction fromher premises. She is by no means mentally diseased, and she does notmix her theories with her practical activity. If she sits as nurse atthe bedside of a patient, she recognizes of course from the fingernails that this particular soul may be three or five thousand yearsold, and accordingly in a decaying state, but that does not interferewith her conscientious work as a nurse and helper. 

To be sure, not every one spends twenty-five years on the elaborationof some twisted fancies. Most of my correspondents write themonumental thoughts of their systems with decisive brevity. Aphysician informs me that every thought and act of our lives istransfixed on the etheric vapours that surround our earth, and that itis therefore only natural that a clairvoyant is able to see thosefixed events and write them down afterward from the etherealinscriptions. Another tells about his discovery that the human body isa great electrical magnet. I am the more glad to make this fact widelyknown, as the author writes that he has not given it to the publicyet, as he is not financially able to advertise it. Yet he himselfadds that after all it is not necessary to advertise truth. On eightquarto pages he draws the most evident consequences of his discoveryand shows how he is able to explain by it the chemical change of eachcell in the brain and to prove that “foolish so-called spirits aresimply electrical demonstrations. ” “I can demonstrate every current, nerve cell, and atom of the human body. It may seem strange to youthat I claim so much, but with the induction every investigation hasbeen so easy for me. I have never been puzzled for any demonstrationyet, but I am still searching for more knowledge. Yours forinvestigation. . . . ” I may say that this is a feature common to most ofmy correspondents of this metaphysical type. They are never “puzzled. ”

Nearly related to this type of theories are the systems of astrology;and in our upper world very few are really aware what a rôle astrologyis still playing in the intellectual underworld. Some of theastrological communications I receive periodically go so far beyond myunderstanding that I do not even dare to quote them. But some of theastrological authors present very neat and clean theories which are sosimple and so practical that it is almost a pity that they are absurd. For instance, I am greatly interested in the question of determininghow far the mind of individuals is predisposed for particularvocations, and in the psychological laboratory we are busy withmethods to approach the problem. The astrologers have a much moreconvincing scheme. My friend writes that he has observed “over twothousand cases wherein the dates of birth have been the means to givethe position of the planets at the hour of birth, the purpose being toascertain the influence they had on man. Now the furniture businesscalls for an artistic temperament, and after careful observationthrough birth dates it is found that the successful furniture men havethe planet Venus in their nativities. But the Venus influence isprominent also in other lines of business such as art, jewellery, andin all lines where women's necessities are manufactured. Otherplanetary influences on success in business are: Saturn for miners, tanners, gardeners, clowns, and beggars; Mercury for teachers, secretaries, stationers, printers, and tailors; Jupiter for clergymen, judges, lawyers, and senators; Mars for dentists, barbers, cutlers, carpenters, and apothecaries; Uranus for inventors, chemists, occultists, and others. ”

One system which is still more frequent than the astrological is thestrictly spiritualistic one, which expresses itself in spirit returnsand messages from the other world. Geographically the most favouredstations for wireless heavenly connections seem to be Brooklyn, NewYork, and Los Angeles, California. The adherents of this underworldphilosophy have a slang of their own, and the result is that theirletters, while they spring from the deepest emotions, sound as ifthey were copied from the same sample book. The better style beginsabout like this: “Knowing that you are intensely interested in thingspsychological, I beg to enclose you copies of some of the automaticletters which I have received. I have a young lawyer friend in thecity, and he and I can throw down fifteen or twenty sheets of paper ona table, take hold of hands and get them written full, and in this wayI have received letters from Pericles, Aristides, Immanuel Kant, andmany others. I got letters from Julia Ward Howe a week after hertransition, and I got letters from Emerson and Abraham Lincoln byasking for them. I enclose copy of the last letter which I receivedfrom Charlotte Cushman, and I think you will agree there is nothingfoolish about it or indeed about any of the letters. I have recentlymarried again, and my present wife is a wonderful trance medium, probably the best means of communication between the two worlds livingto-day. ” This is not exceptional, as practically every one of myspiritualistic correspondents has some “best means of communicationbetween the two worlds. ” The messages themselves usually begin: “Myloved one, out of the realms of light and truth, I come to you . . . ”and so on. If the letters do not come from the spiritualiststhemselves, some of their friends feel the need of turning myattention to the “wonderful psychic powers” of their acquaintances. Not seldom the spirits take a more refined form. “The forms of thenewly dead come to me in bulk. I see and feel them. They are purplishinky in colour. When a real spirit comes to me in white, I close myeyes. I seem to have to. The spirit or presence most commonly seen, Ibelieve, is a thought form. It frequently comes off the cover of amagazine, and were I not getting wise, I would think the universeturned suddenly to beauty. But I am learning that a person can receivewonderfully exaggerated reports from the very soul of the artist. ”

From here we see before us the wide vista of the individual gifts andtalents: the underworld people are sometimes bragging of them, sometimes grafting with them, if not blackmailing, and often simplyenjoying them with the sweet feeling of superiority. The powers turnin all valuable directions. Here is one who wishes to know whether Ihave ever heard of any other “person who senses the magnetism of theearth and is able to tell many kinds of earthquakes? Also volcanicheats? A quick reply will favour me. ” Many have the regular propheticgift; practically every one of them foresaw the assassination ofMcKinley. Most of them, however, are gifted in curing diseases. Thetypical letter reads as follows: “There is a young man living herewho seems to be endowed with a wonderful occult power by the use ofwhich he is able to diagnose almost any human ailment. He goes into atrance, and while in this condition the name of the subject is givenhim, and then without any further questions he proceeds to diagnosehis case fully and correctly and prescribes a treatment for the reliefof the trouble. In every case yet diagnosed a cure has almostimmediately resulted. ” This kind of gift is so frequent that it isreally surprising that so many physicians still rely on their clumsiermethod. Marvellous also are the effects which hypnotism can secure inthis paradise of the ignorant. After having hypnotized patients manyhundred times, I fancied that I had a general impression as to thepowers and limits of hypnotism. But there is no end to the newinformation which I get from my hypnotizing correspondents. “Has itever occurred to you that by hypnotism death will be prevented, andall ills, mental or otherwise, be cured before long? Why do I thinkso?” Of course I do not know why she thinks so. I usually do not knowwhy the writers of the underworld letters think so. Or rather Iusually do know that they do not think at all. 

There may be many who will read all this not only with surprise, butwith skepticism. They live their intellectually clean lives, dwell insafe, comfortable houses of the intellect and move on well-pavededucational streets, and never see or hear anything of thoseinhabitants of the intellectual slums. If ever a letter like thosewhich pour in hundreds to the desk of the psychologist were to strayinto their mail, they would feel sure that they had to do with alunatic who belongs in an asylum under a physician's care. They haveno idea that not only their furnaceman and washwoman, but also theirtailor and their watchmaker, or perhaps the teacher of their children, and, if they examine more carefully, three of their last dinnerguests, are strolling for hours or for a night, or living for seasons, if not for a lifetime, in that world of superstition andanti-intellectual mentality. Such people are not ill; they arepersonally not even cranks; they are simply confused and unable tolive an ordered intellectual life. Their character and temperament andtheir personality in every other respect may be faultless, but theirideas are chaotic. They bring together the contradictory and makecontrasts out of the identical, and, far from any sound religiousbelief or any true metaphysical philosophy, they simply mix anymystical whims into the groups of thought which civilization hasbrought into systematic order. Instead of trying to learn, they arealways longing for some illegitimate intellectual profit; they arealways trying to pick the pocket of the absolute. 

It is not difficult to recognize the social conditions from which thistendency springs. The fundamental one, after all, is the widely spreadlack of respect for the expert. Such a lack easily results fromdemocratic life, as democracy encourages the belief that every one canjudge about everything and can decide from his own resources whatought to be thought and what ought to be done. Yet no one can claimthat it is truly a part of democracy itself and that the democraticspirit would suffer if this view were suppressed. On the contrary, democracy can never be fully successful and can never be carriedthrough in consistent purity until this greatest danger of thedemocratic spirit of society is completely overcome and repressed byan honest respect for the expert and a willing subordination ofjudgment to his better knowledge. Another condition which makes ourcountry a favourite playground for fantastic vagaries is the strongemphasis on the material sides of life, on business and businesssuccess. The result is a kind of contrast effect. As the surface ofsuch a rushing business life lacks everything which would satisfy thedeeper longings of the soul, the effort to create an inner world isreadily pushed to mystical extremes in which all contact with thepractical world is lost, and finally all solid knowledge disregardedand caricatured. The newspapers have their great share, too. Anyabsurdity which a crank anywhere in the world brings forth is heraldedwith a joy in the sensational impossibilities which must devastate themind of the naïve reader. 

But whatever the sources of this prevailing superstition may be, thereought to be no disagreement about its intellectual sinfulness and itsdanger to society. We see some alarming consequences in the growth ofthe revolt against scientific medicine. Millions of good Americans donot want to know anything about physicians who have devoted theirlives to the study of medicine, but prefer any quack or humbug, anyhealer or mystic. Yet for a queer reason the case of the treatment ofdiseases shows the ruinous results of this social procedure veryslowly. Every scientific physician knows that many diseases can becured by autosuggestion in emotional excitement, and if this belief inthe quack produces the excitement and the suggestion, the patient mayreally be cured, not on account but in spite of the quack who treatshim. The whole misery of this antimedical movement is thereforesomewhat veiled and alleviated. But this is not so in the fields ofreal culture and knowledge. The belief in the absurdities there hasnot even an autosuggestive value. It is simply destructive to the lifeof civilized society. It is absurd for us to put our best energies towork to build up a splendid system of education for the youth of thewhole nation, and at the same time to allow its structure to beundermined by the millionfold intellectual depravity. 

Of course it may be difficult to say what ought to be done. I feelsure that society ought to suppress with relentless energy all thoseparlours of the astrologists and palmists, of the scientific mediumsand spiritualists, of the quacks and prophets. Their announcements bysigns or in the public press ought to be stopped, and ought to betreated by the postal department of the government as theadvertisements of other fraudulent enterprises are treated. A largerôle in the campaign would have to be played by the newspapers, buttheir best help would be rendered by negative action, by notpublishing anything of a superstitious and mystical type. The mostimportant part of the fight, however, is to recognize the dangerclearly, to acknowledge it frankly, and to see with open eyes howalarmingly the evil has grown around us. No one will fancy that anysocial schemes can be sufficient to bring superstition to an end, anymore than any one can expect that the present fight against city vicewill forever put a stop to sexual immorality. But that surely cannotbe an argument for giving up the battle against the moral perversitiesof metropolitan life. The fact that we cannot be entirely successfulought still less to be an argument for any leniency with theintellectual perversities and the infectious diseases the germs ofwhich are disseminated in our world of honest culture by theinhabitants of the cultural underworld. 

 IV

 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE

The harmony and soundness of society depend upon its inner unity ofmind. Social organization does not mean only an external fittingtogether, but an internal equality of mind. Men must understand oneanother in order to form a social unit, and such understandingcertainly means more than using the same words and the same grammar. They must be able to grasp other men's point of view, they must have acommon world in which to work, and this demands that they mould theworld in the same forms of thought. If one calls green what anothercalls sour, and one feels as noise what another feels as toothache, they cannot enter into a social group. Yet it is no less confusing andno less antisocial if the world which one sees as a system of causesand effects is to another a realm of capricious, causeless, zigzaghappenings. The mental links which join society are threatened if somelive with their thoughts in a world of order and natural law, andothers in a mystical chaos. 

This has nothing to do with differences of opinion. Society profitsfrom contrasting views, from discussion and struggle. The opposingparties in a real debate understand each other well and are workingwith the same logic and the same desire for order of thought. Thiscontrast between order and mysticism has still less to do with thedifference of knowledge and belief in a higher religious andphilosophical sense. There is no real antagonism between science andreligion, between experience and philosophical speculation. They pointto each other, they demand each other, and no social question isinvolved when the interests of one man emphasize more the scholarlysearch for scientific truth, and those of another concentratethroughout his lifework on the emotional wisdom of religion. It isquite different with mysticism and science; they are not two partiesof a debate on equal terms. They exclude each other, as the mysticprojects his feeling interests into those objects which the scientisttries to analyze and to understand as effects of causes. Nothing is asafer test of the cultural development of a society than the instinctfor the difference between religion and superstition. Mysticism is asystematized superstition. It never undermines the true interests ofsociety more than when it goes to work with pseudo-scientific tools. Its most repellent form, that of sheer spiritualism, has in recentyears declined somewhat, and the organizations for antilogical, psychical research eke out a pitiable existence nowadays. But thecommunity of the silent or noisy believers in telepathy, mysticalforesight, clairvoyance, and wonder workers seems to increase. 

The scientific psychologist might have a twofold contact with suchmovements. His most natural interest is that of studying the mentalmakeup of those who chase this will-o'-the-wisp. Their mental vagariesand superstitious fancies are quite fascinating material for hisdissection. But for the interests of society an entirely differenteffort is, after all, more consequential. The psychologist has noright to avoid the trouble of examining conspicuous cases whichsuperficially seem to endorse the fantastic theories of the mentallyuntrained. Such an investigation is his share, as indeed mentaloccurrences generally stand in the centre of the alleged wonderfulfacts. From this feeling of social responsibility some years ago Iapproached the hysterical trickster, Madame Palladino, who had so muchinflamed the mystical imagination of the country, and from thisinterest in the social aspect I undertook again recently a researchinto the mental powers of Beulah Miller, who was well on the way tobewilder the whole nation and thus to stir up the always latent mysticinclinations of the community. It is a typical specimen of those caseswhich can easily upset the loosely reasoning public and do tremendousharm to the mental unity of the social organism. It seems worth whileto illuminate it in full detail. 

Indeed, since the days when Madame Eusapia Palladino stirred the wholecountry with her marvellous mystic powers, no case of psychicalmystery has engaged the interest of the nation as that of littleBeulah Miller in Warren, Rhode Island, has done. The story of herwonderful performances has become a favourite feature of the Sundaypapers, and the small New England town for the first time in its longhistory has been in the limelight. The reporters have made theirpilgrimages, and every one has returned bewildered and amazed. Here atlast the truth of telepathy was proved. Sworn affidavits of reliablepersons removed the last doubts; and I myself, with my long trainingas a scientist, had to confess, when for the first time I had spent afew hours with Beulah Miller, that I was as deeply startled andovercome with wonder as I was after the first night with EusapiaPalladino. Yet what a contrast! There the elderly, stout Italian womanat a midnight hour, in dimly lighted rooms, in disreputable New Yorkquarters, where the palmists and mediums live in their world of shampsychology, sitting in a trance state at a table surrounded byspiritualistic believers who had to pay their entrance fees; here alittle, naïve, ten-year-old girl among her toys in the kitchen of herparents' modest white cottage in a lovely country village! I neverfelt a more uncanny, nerve-irritating atmosphere than in Palladino'ssqualid quarters, and I do not remember more idyllic, peacefulsurroundings than when I sat between Beulah and her sister throughbright sunny mornings in their mother's home with their cat besidethem and the pet lamb coming into the room from the meadow. Thereeverything suggested fraud, and when at my second séance her foot wascaught behind the curtain and the whole humbug exposed, it was exactlywhat I had expected. But here everything breathed sincerity andnaïveté and absence of fraud—yet my mere assurance cannot convince askeptic; we must examine the case carefully. 

The claims are very simple: Here is a school child of ten years who isable to read in the mind of any one present anything of which he isthinking. If you take a card from a pack and look at it, and stillbetter if several people look at it, and best of all if her mother orsister looks at it, too, Beulah will say at once which card it is, although she may stand in the farthest corner of the room. She willgive you the date on any coin which you have in hand; in a book shewill tell you the particular word at which you are looking. Indeed, asworn affidavit reports still more surprising feats. Beulah gavecorrectly the name of the reporter whom nobody else knew and the nameof the New York paper for which she is writing. At school she readswords written on the blackboard with her back turned to it. At homeshe knows what any visitor is hiding in his pocket. 

The serious-minded man who is disgusted with spiritualistic charlatansand their commercial humbug is naturally inclined here, too, at onceto offer the theory that all is fraud and that a detective would bethe right man to investigate the case. When the newspapers discoveredthat I had begun to study the girl, I received from many sides letterswith suggestions to look for certain devices with which stageperformers carry out such tricks, such as marked cards and theequipment of the magician. But whoever thinks of fraud heremisunderstands the whole situation. The psychical powers of BeulahMiller were not brought before the public by the child or her family;there was no desire for notoriety, and in spite of the very modestcircumstances in which this carpenter's family has to live, the factsbecame known before any commercial possibility suggested itself. 

The mother was startled by Beulah's psychical gifts because shenoticed two years ago that when the family was playing “Old Maid”Beulah always knew in whose hands the dangerous queen was to be found. Then they began to experiment with cards in the family circle, and herability to know of what the mother or the sister was thinking becamemore and more interesting to them. Slowly her school friends began tonotice it, and children in the Sunday-school told the minister aboutBeulah's queer mind-reading. All this time no newspaper had knownabout it. One day the minister, when he passed the house, entered andinquired whether those rumours were true. He had a little glass fullof honey in his pocket, and Beulah spelled the word honey at once. Hemade some tests with coins, and every one was successful. Thisminister, Rev. H. W. Watjen, told this to his friend Judge Mason, whohas lived in Warren for more than thirty years, and then both theminister and the judge visited repeatedly the village where theMillers live, performed a large number of experiments with cards andcoins and words, and became the friendly advisers of the mother, whowas still troubled by her doubt whether these supernatural gifts ofthe child came from God or from the devil. Only through the agency ofthese two well-known men, the Baptist minister and the judge, was thepublic informed that a mysterious case existed in the neighbourhood ofWarren, and when the newspapers began to send their reporters andstrangers came to see the wonder, these two men decided who should seethe child. Of course, commercial propositions, invitations to giveperformances on the vaudeville stage, soon began to pour in, but withindignation the mother refused to listen to any such idea. Because ofmy scientific interest in such psychological puzzles, the judge andthe minister turned to me to investigate the case. It is evident thatthis whole social situation lacks every conceivable motive for fraud. 

But this impression was strongly heightened by the behaviour of thefamily and of the child during the study which I carried on in thethree weeks following. The mother, the twelve-year-old sister Gladys, and Beulah herself were most willing to agree to anything which wouldmake the test difficult, and they themselves asked to have everythingtried with no member of the family in the room. Beulah was quite happyto show her art under unaccustomed conditions like having her eyescovered with thick bandages. When inadvertently some one turned a cardso that she could see it, she was the first to break out into childishlaughter at her having seen it. In short, everything indicated suchperfect sincerity, and the most careful examination yielded soabsolutely no trace of intentional fraud, that I can vouch for thehonesty of the intentions of all concerned in the experiments carriedon so far. 

If fraud and humbug may certainly be excluded, the wiseacres will saythat the results must then have been a matter of chance coincidence. No one can deny that chance may sometimes bring surprising results. Dreams of far-distant accidents come true, and yet no one whoconsiders those millions of dreams which do not come true and whichtherefore remain disregarded will acknowledge any prophetic power insleep. It may happen, if you are asked to call a name or a figure ofwhich another man is thinking, that you will strike the right one. Moreover, recent experiments have shown that there is much naturaluniformity in the thoughts of men. Certain figures or names or thingsmore readily rush to the mind than others. Hence the chances that twopersons will be thinking of the same figure are much larger than wouldappear from the mere calculation of probabilities. Yet even if wemake the largest possible concession to happy coincidences, therecannot remain the slightest doubt that the experiments carried onunder standard conditions yielded results the correctness of whichendlessly surpasses any possible accidental outcome. We may take atypical illustration: I drew cards which she could not possibly see, while they were shown to the mother and sister sitting next to me, Beulah sitting on the other side of the room. The first was a nine ofhearts; she said nine of hearts. The next was six of clubs, to whichshe said first six of spades; when told it was not spades, sheanswered clubs. The next was two of diamonds; her first figure wasfour; when told that it was wrong, she corrected herself two, andadded diamonds. The next was nine of clubs, which she gave correctly;seven of spades, she said at first seven of diamonds, then spades;jack of spades, she gave correctly at once, and so on. 

One other series: We had little cardboard squares on each of which wasa large single letter. I drew any three, put them into the cover of abox, and while the mother, Gladys, and I were looking at the threeletters, Beulah, sitting beside us, looked at the ceiling. The firstwere R-T-O. She said R-T-I. When told it was wrong, she added O. Thenext were S-U-T; she gave S-U, and then wrongly R P Q, and finally T. The next were N-A-R; she gave G N-A-S R. The following D-W-O she gaveD-W, but could not find the last letter. It is evident that every oneof the cards gave her fifty-two chances, and not more than one infifty-two would have been correct if it were only guessing, and as tothe letters, not more than one among twenty-six would have been chosencorrectly by chance. The given example demonstrates that of five cardsshe gave three correctly, two half correctly, and those two mistakeswere rectified after the first wrong guess. The second experimentdemanded from her four times three letters. Of these twelve letters, six were right at the first guess and five after one or two wrongtrials. Taking only this little list of card and letter experimentstogether, we can say that the probabilities are only one to manybillions that such a result would ever come by chance. 

Yet such correctness was not exceptional. On the contrary, I have noseries performed under these conditions which did not yield asfavourable an outcome as this. Some were even much more startling. Once she gave six cards in succession correctly. It was no differentwith word experiments. The printed word at which the sister and Ilooked was stall; she spelled E S-T-O A-R I L-L. And when the wordwas steam, she spelled L S-N K T-O A E-A-M; when it was glass, S G-L-RA-S. Whenever a letter was wrong, she was told so and was allowed asecond or a third choice, but never more than three. It is evidentfrom these three illustrations that she gave the right letter in thefirst place six times, and that the right letter was her second choicefour times, and her third choice three times, while no letter wasmissed in three choices. Cases of this type again could never occur bymere chance. The number of successful strokes in this last experimentmight be belittled by the claim that the last letters of the word wereguessed when the first letters had been found. But this was not thecase. First, even such a guess would have been chance. The word mighthave been grave instead of grass, or star instead of stall. What ismuch more important, however, is that a large number of other casesproved that she was not aware of the words at all, but spelled theletters without reference to their forming a word. Once I wroteChicago on a pad. The mother and sister gazed at the word, and Beulahspelled correctly C-H-I-C-A-G, but made eight wrong efforts before shefound the closing O. In other cases, she did not notice that the wordwas completed, and was trying to fish up still other letters from hermind. Everything showed that the word as a word did not come to hermind, but only the single letters. I leave entirely out ofconsideration the marvels of mind-reading which were secured by thejudge and the minister, the male and female newspaper reporters, before I took charge of the study of the case. I rely only on what Isaw and of which I took exact notes. I wrote down every wrong letterand every wrong figure, and base my calculation only on this entirelyreliable material. Nevertheless, I must acknowledge it as a factbeyond doubt that such results as I got regularly could never possiblyhave been secured by mere coincidence and chance. As chance and fraudare thus equally out of the question, we are obliged to seek foranother explanation. 

There is one explanation which offers itself most readily: We saw thatin order to succeed, some one around her, preferably the mother andsister, who stand nearest to her heart, have to know the words or thecards. Those visual images must be in some one's mind, and she has theunusual power of being able to read what is in the minds of thoseothers. Such an explanation even seems to some a very modest claim, almost a kind of critical and skeptical view. The judge and theminister, for instance, in accepting this idea of her mind-reading, felt conservative, as through it they disclaimed any belief inmysterious clairvoyance and telepathic powers. In the newspaperstories, where the mysteries grew with the geographical distance fromRhode Island, Beulah was said to be able to tell names or dates orfacts which no one present knew. It was asserted that she could givethe dates on the coins which any one had in his pocket without thepossessor himself knowing them, or that she could give a word in abook on which some one was holding his finger without reading it. Nowonder that the public felt sure that she could just as well discoversecrets which no one knows and be aware of far-distant happenings. Itis only one step from this to the belief in a prophetic foresight ofwhat is to come. For most unthinking people, mind-reading leads inthis fashion over to the whole world of mysticism. In sharp contrastto such vagaries, the critical observers like the judge and theminister insisted that there was no trace of such prophetic gifts orof such telepathic wonders to be found, and that everything resolvesitself simply into mere mind-reading. Some one in the neighbourhoodmust have the idea in mind and must fixedly think of it. Only thenwill it arise in Beulah's consciousness. 

But have we really a right to speak of mind-reading itself as if itwere such a simple process, perhaps unusual, but not surprising, something like a slightly abnormal state? If we look at it from thestandpoint of the scientist, we should say, on the contrary, thatthere is a very sharp boundary line which separates mind-reading fromall the experiences which the scientific psychologist knows. Thepsychologist has no difficulty in understanding mental diseases likehysteria or abnormal states like hypnotism, or any other unusualvariation of mental life. The same principles by which he explains theordinary life of the mind are sufficient to give account of all thestrange and rare occurrences. But when he comes to mind-reading, anentirely new point of view is chosen. It would mean a complete breakwith everything which science has found in the mental world. Thepsychologist has never discovered a mental content which was not theeffect or the after-effect of the stimulation of the senses. No manborn blind has ever by his own powers brought the colour sensations tohis mind, and no communication from without was ever traced which wasnot carried over the path of the senses. The world which is in themind of my friend, in order to reach my mind, must stimulate hisbrain, and that brain excitement must lead to the contraction of hismouth muscles, and that must stir the air waves which reach my eardrum, and the excitement must be carried from my ear to the brain, where the mental ideas arise. No abnormal states like hypnotism changein the least this procedure. But if we fancy that the mere mental ideain one man can start the same idea in another, we lack every possiblemeans to connect such a wonder with anything which the scientist sofar acknowledges. 

To be sure, every sincere scholar devoted to truth has to yield to theactual facts. We cannot stubbornly say that the facts do not existbecause they do not harmonize with what is known so far. Thepsychologist would not necessarily be at the end of his wit if thedevelopments of to-morrow proved that mind-reading in Beulah Miller'scase, or in any other case, is a fact beyond doubt. He might arguethat all previous knowledge was based on a wrong idea and that, forinstance, other processes go on in the brain, which can be transmittedfrom organism to organism like wireless telegraphic waves without theperception of the senses. If these other processes were conceived asthe foundation of mental images, the scientific psychological scholarof the future might possibly work out a consistent theory and all thepreviously known facts might then be translated into the language ofthe new science. Whether in this or a similar way we should ever cometo really satisfactory results, no one can foresee, but at least it iscertain that this would involve a complete giving up of everythingwhich scientists have so far held to be right. Certainly in thehistory of civilization great revolutions in science have happened. The astronomers had to begin almost anew; why cannot the psychologiststurn around and acknowledge that they have been entirely wrong so farand that they must begin once more at the beginning and rewrite allwhich they have so far taken to be truth?

Certainly the psychologists are no cowards. They would not hesitate todeclare their mental bankruptcy if the progress of truth demanded it. But at least we must be entirely clear that this is indeed thesituation and that no step on the track of mind-reading can be takenwithout giving up everything which we have so far held to be true. Andit is evident that such a radical break with the whole past of humanscience can be considered only if every other effort for explanationfails, and if it seems really impossible to understand the facts inthe light of all which science has already accomplished. If BeulahMiller's little hands are to set the torch to the whole pile of ourknowledge, we ought first to be perfectly sure that there is reallynothing worth saving. We cannot accept the theory of the apostles ofmind-reading until we know surely that Beulah Miller can receivecommunications which cannot possibly be explained with the means ofscience. 

Now we all know one kind of mind-reading which looks very astoundingand yet which there is no difficulty at all in explaining. It is afavourite performance on the stage, and not seldom tried as a parlourgame. I refer to the kind of mind-reading in which one person thinksof a hidden coin, and the other holds his wrist and is then able tofind the secreted object. There is no mystery in such apparenttransmission of the idea, because it is the result of smallunintentional movements of the arm. The one who thinks hard of thecorner of the room in which the coin is placed cannot help givingsmall impulses in that direction. He himself is not aware of thesefaint movements, but the man who has a fine sense of touch becomesconscious of these motions in the wrist which his fingers grasp, andunder the guidance of these slight movements he is led to theparticular place. Some persons express their thought of places moreeasily than others and are therefore better fitted for the game, andwe find still greater differences in the sensitiveness of differentpersons. Not every one can play the game as well as a trained stageperformer, who may have an extreme refinement of touch and may noticeeven the least movements in the wrist which others would not feel atall. Such an explanation is not an arbitrary theory. We can easilyshow with delicate instruments in the psychological laboratory thatevery one in thinking of a special direction soon begins to move hishand toward it without knowing anything of these slight movements. Theinstruments allow the reading of such impulses where the mere feelingof the hand would hardly show any signs. A very neat form of the sametype is often seen on the stage when the performer is to read a seriesof numbers in the mind of some one who thinks intensely of thefigures. Some one in the audience thinks of the number fifty-seven. The performer asks him to think of the first figure, then he graspshis hand and counts slowly from zero to nine. After that he asks himto think of the second figure, and counts once more. Immediately afterhe will announce rightly the two digits. Again there is no mystery init. He knows that the man who thinks of the figure five will make aslight involuntary movement when the five is reached in counting, andthe same movement will occur at the seven in the second counting. Ifhe is very well trained, he will not need the touching of the hand;he will perform the same experiment with figures without any actualcontact whatever. It will be sufficient to see the man who is thinkingof a figure while he himself is counting. As soon as the dangerousdigit is reached, the man will give some unintentional sign. Perhapshis breathing will become a degree deeper, or stop for a moment, hiseyelids may make a reflex movement, his fingers may contract a bit. This remains entirely unnoticed by any one in the audience, but theprofessional mind-reader has heightened his sensibility so much thatnone of these involuntary signs escapes him. Yet from the standpointof science his seeing these subtle signs is on principle no differentfrom our ordinary seeing when a man points his finger in somedirection. 

But the experience of the scientist goes still farther. In the casesof this parlour trick and the stage performance the one who claims toread the mind of the other is more or less clearly aware of thoseunintended signs. He feels those slight movement impulses, which hefollows. But we know from experiences of very different kind that suchsigns may make an impression on the senses and influence the man, andyet may not really come to consciousness. Even those who play the gameof mind-reading in the parlour and who are led by the arm movementsto find the hidden coin will often say with perfect sincerity thatthey do not feel any movements in the wrist which they touch. This isindeed quite possible. Those slight shocks which come to their fingertips reach their brains and control their movements without producinga conscious impression. They are led in the right direction withoutknowing what is leading them. The physician finds the most extremecases of such happenings with some types of his hysteric patients. They may not hear what is said to them or see what is shown to them, and yet it makes an impression on them and works on their minds, andthey may be able later to bring it to their memory and it may guidetheir actions, but on account of their disease those impressions donot really reach their conscious minds. 

We find the same lack of seeing or hearing or feeling in many cases ofhypnotism. But it is not necessary to go to such extreme happenings. All of us can remember experiences when impressions reached our eyesor ears and yet were not noticed at the time, although they guided ouractions. We may have been on the street in deep thought or in aninteresting conversation so that we were not giving any attentionwhatever to the way, and yet every step was taken correctly under theguidance of our eyes. We saw the street, although we were notconscious of seeing it. We do not hear a clock ticking in our roomwhen we are working, and yet if the clock suddenly stops we notice it. This indicates that the ticking of the clock reached us somehow andhad an effect on us in spite of our not being conscious of it. Thescientists are still debating whether it is best to say that these notconscious processes are going on in our subconscious mind or whetherthey are simply brain processes. For all practical purposes, thismakes no difference. We may say that our brain gets an impressionthrough our eyes when we see the street, or through our ears when wehear the clock, or we may say that our subconscious mind receivesthese messages of eye and ear. In neither case does the scientist findanything mysterious or supernatural. 

I am convinced that all the experiences with Beulah Miller mayultimately be understood through those two principles. She has unusualgifts and her performances are extremely interesting, but I thinkeverything can be explained through her subconscious noticing ofunintended signs. Where no signs are given which reach her senses, shecannot read any one's mind. But the signs which she receives are notnoticed by her consciously. She is not really aware of them; they goto her brain or to her subconscious mind and work from there on herconscious mind. 

What speaks in favour of such a skeptical view? I mention at first onefact which was absolutely proved by my experiments—namely, thatBeulah Miller's successes turn into complete failures as soon asneither the mother nor the sister is present in the room. All theexperiments which I have conducted in which I alone, or I togetherwith the minister and the judge, thought of words or cards or lettersor numbers did not yield better results than any one would get by mereguessing. In one series, for instance, in which we all three made thegreatest effort to concentrate our minds on written figures, she knewthe first number correctly only in two out of fourteen cases. Inanother series of twelve letters she did not know a single one at thefirst trial. Sometimes when she showed splendid results with hersister Gladys present, everything stopped the very moment the sisterleft the room. Sometimes Beulah knew the first half of a word whileGladys stood still in the same room, and could not get the second halfof the word when Gladys in the meantime had stepped from the littleparlour to the kitchen. Beulah was helpless even when a wooden doorwas between her and the member of her family. She herself did notknow that it made such a difference, but the records leave no doubt. Imay at once add here another argument. The good results stop entirelywhen Beulah is blindfolded. Even when both her mother and sister weresitting quite near her, her mind-reading became pure guesswork whenher eyes were covered with a scarf. Again, she liked to make theexperiment under this condition and was not aware that her knowledgefailed her when she did not see her mother or sister. Her delight inbeing blindfolded spoke very clearly for her naïve sincerity, but herfailure indicated no less clearly that she must be dependent uponunintentional signs for her success. 

Let me say at once that some of the observers would probably object tomy statement that the presence of the family was needed and that shehad to be in such direct connection with them. The newspapers toldwonderful stories of her success with strangers, and even the judgeand the minister felt certain that they had seen splendid resultsunder most difficult conditions. Yet I have to stick to what Iobserved myself. It may be objected—and it is well known that this isthe pet objection of the spiritualists against the criticism ofscholars—that the results come well only when the child is in fullsympathy with those present and that I may have disturbed her. Butthis was not the case. I evidently did not disturb her, inasmuch as wesaw that the experiments which I made with her when the sister or themother was present were most satisfactory. Moreover, she was evidentlyvery much at ease with me when we had become more acquainted, and justthose entirely negative results were mostly received on a morning whenI had fulfilled the dearest wishes of the two children, a watch forthe one and a ring for the other, besides all the candy with which mypockets were regularly stuffed. She was in the happiest frame of mindand most willing to do her best. But if I rely exclusively on my ownobservation, it is not only because I suppose that the experimentsyielded just as good results as those of other observers. It is ratherbecause I know how difficult it is to give reliable accounts from merememory and to make experiments without long training in experimentalmethods. All those publicly reported experiments had been made withoutany actual exact records, and, moreover, by persons who overlooked themost evident sources of error. As a matter of course, I took notes ofeverything which happened, and treated the case with the samecarefulness with which I am accustomed to carry on the experiments inthe Harvard Psychological Laboratory. 

To give some illustrations of sources of error, I may mention that theearlier observers were convinced that Beulah could not see slightmovements of the persons in the room when she was looking fixedly atthe ceiling, or that she could not notice the movements of the sisteror the mother when she was staring straight into the eyes of theexperimenter. Any psychologist, on the contrary, would say that thatwould be a most favourable condition for watching small signs. Heknows that while we fixate a point with the centre of our eye we aremost sensitive to slight movement impressions on the side parts of oureye, and that this sensitiveness is often abnormally heightened. Justwhen the child is looking steadily into our face or to the ceiling, the outside parts of her sensitive retina may bring to her the visibleunintentional signs from her sister or mother. The untrained observeris also usually unaware how easily he helps by suggestive movements orutterances to the other observers. When Beulah gave a six instead of anine, one of our friends whispered that she may have seen it upsidedown in her mind, or when she gave a zero instead of a six that itlooked similar. In short, they keep helping without knowing it. Verycharacteristic is the habit of unintentionally using phrases whichbegin with the letters of which they are thinking. The letter in theirminds forces them to speak words which begin with it. If they start ata C, we hear “Come, Beulah, ” if at a T, “Try, Beulah, ” if at an S, “See, Beulah. ” It is very hard to protect ourselves against suchunintended and unnoticed helps. It is still more difficult to keep thefailures in mind. The eager expectancy of hearing the right letter ornumber from the lips of the child gives such a strong emphasis to theright results that the wrong ones slip from the mind of the hearer. The right figure may be only the third or the fourth guess of thechild, but if then the whole admiring chorus around say emphaticallyat this fourth trial that this is quite right, those three wrongefforts which preceded fade away from the memory. I may acknowledgefor myself that I was mostly inclined to believe that the number ofthe correct answers had been greater than they actually were accordingto my exact records. For all these reasons I had the very best rightto disregard the reports of all those who relied on their amateur artof experimenting and on their mere memory account. 

What kind of signs could be in question? It may seem to outsiders thatthe most wonderful system of signs would be needed for every contentof one mind to be communicated to another. But here again we mustfirst reduce the exaggerated claims to the simpler reality. WhenBeulah makes card experiments, the whole words jack, queen, king, spade, club, heart, diamond, come to her mind, but when she makes wordexperiments, never under any circumstances does a real word come toher consciousness, but only single letters. Why is this? If king andqueen can be transmitted from mind to mind, why not dog and cat? Yetwhen the mother thinks of dog, it is always only first D, and after awhile O, and finally G which creeps into her mind. This differenceseems to me most characteristic, because it indicates very clearlythat the whole performance is possible only when the communicatedcontent belongs to a small list which can be easily counted. There areonly three face cards, only four suites, only ten numbers, and onlytwenty-six letters, but there are ten thousand words and more. It iseasy to connect every one of the ten numbers or every one of thetwenty-six letters with a particular sign, but it would be impossibleto have a sign for every one of the ten thousand words. Yet if we hadto do with real mind-reading, it ought to make no difference whetherwe transmit the letter D or the word dog. This fact that she canrecognize words only by slow spelling, while the faces and the suitesof the cards and the names of the numbers come as full words, seems tome to point most clearly to the whole key of the situation. Anythingwhich cannot be brought into such a simple number series, forinstance, a colour impression, can never be transmitted. If the motherlooks at the ace of diamonds, Beulah says that she sees the red of thediamond before her in her mind, but if the mother looks at the pictureof a blue lake, this blue impression can never arise in Beulah's mind, but only the letters B-L-U-E. 

Moreover, I observed that for Beulah the letters of the alphabet wereindeed connected with numbers, as in seeking a letter she has a habitof going through the alphabet and at the same time moving one fingerafter another. Thus she feels each letter as having a definite placein her series of finger movements, and the finger movements themselvesare often counted by her, so that each letter is finally connectedwith a special number. This, indeed, reduces the situation to rather asimple scheme. She succeeds only if her mother or sister is presentand if her eyes are open, and she succeeds only with material whichcan be easily counted. A very short system of simple signs would thusbe entirely sufficient to communicate everything which hermind-reading brings to her. As to the particular signs, I do not yetfeel sure. It would probably take months of careful examination beforeI should find them out, just as in Germany it has taken months forscholars to discover the unintentional signs which the owner of atrick horse made, from which the horse was apparently able tocalculate. I have no time to carry on such an investigation in thiscase, the more as I do not see that any new insight could be gained byit. 

Once I noticed distinctly how in the card experiments the motherwithout her own knowledge made seven movements with her foot when shethought of the figure seven. That gave me the idea that the signsmight be given by very slight knocking on the floor which Beulah'soversensitive skin might notice. What speaks against such a view isthat the results stop when she is blindfolded. Yet in this connectionI may mention another aspect. It is quite possible that the coveringof her eyes may destroy her power, and that nevertheless she mayreceive her signs chiefly not through the eyes, but through touch andear. It may be that she needs her eyes open because the seeing of themembers of the family may heighten by a kind of autosuggestion hersensitiveness for the perception of the slight signs. I have no doubtthat this kind of autosuggestion plays a large rôle in her mind. Shecan read a card much better when she is allowed to touch with herfingers the rear of the card. She herself believes that she receivesthe knowledge through her finger tips. In reality it is, of course, astimulus by which she becomes more suggestible and by whichaccordingly her sensitiveness to the slight signs which her mother andsister give her becomes increased. We must, however, never forget thatthese signs, whatever they may be, are not only unintentional on thepart of her family, but also not consciously perceived by Beulah. Ifshe stares at the ceiling, and her mother, without knowing it, makesseven slight foot movements, Beulah gets through the side parts of hereye a nerve impression, but she does not think of the foot. This nerveimpression, as we saw, works on the subconscious mind, or on thebrain, and the idea of seven then arises in her conscious mind like apicture which she can see. 

Such a system of signs, completely unknown to those who give them andto her who receives them, cannot have been built up in a short while. But we heard how it originated. At first Beulah recognized the queenin the hands of her sister and mother, when they were playing “OldMaid. ” There are many who have so much power to recognize the smallsigns. But when they began to make experiments with cards, probablydefinite family habits developed; there was much occasion to treateach card individually, to link some involuntary movement with theface cards and some with each suite, and slowly to carry this systemover to letters. They all agree that Beulah recognizes some frequentletters much more easily than the rare letters. What the observershave now found was the result of two years' training with mother andsister. Yet all this became possible only because Beulah evidently hasthis unusual, supernormal sensitiveness together with this abnormalpower to receive the signs without their coming at once toconsciousness. Her mental makeup in this respect constantly remindsthe psychologist of the traits of a hysteric woman. 

We have to add only one important point. Some startling results havesurely been gained by another method. The same sensitiveness whichmakes Beulah able to receive signs which others do not notice, evidently makes her able to catch words spoken in a low voice within acertain distance, while she is not consciously giving her attention tothem. She picks up bits of conversation which she overhears and whichsettle in her subconscious mind, until they later come to herconsciousness in a way for which she cannot account. All were startledwhen at the end of our first day together I took a bill in my closedhand and asked her what I had there, and she at once replied a“ten-dollar bill, ” while they all agreed that the child had never seena ten-dollar bill before. This result surprised the minister and thejudge greatly, and only later did I remember that I had whispered tothe judge in the next room, with the door open, that I should ask herto tell the figures on a ten-dollar bill. In the same way the greatestsensation must be explained, which the experiments before my arrivalyielded. The New York lady who came with the minister's family andothers to the house was overwhelmed when Beulah spelled her name, which, as the affidavit said, was not known to any one else present. This affidavit was as a matter of course given according to the bestknowledge of all concerned. Yet when later I came to Warren, one ofthe participants who told me the incident strengthened it by addingthat he was the more surprised when the child spelled the namecorrectly with a K at the end, as he had understood that it wasspelled with a T. In other words, some of those present did know thename, and the lady had evidently either been introduced or addressedby some one, and this had slipped from their minds because Beulah wasnot in the room. But she was probably in the other room and caught itin her subconscious mind. At her first début before the minister, too, by her same abnormal sensitiveness she probably heard when he told themother that he had a glass of honey in his pocket. In short, the twoactions of her subconscious mind, or of her brain, always go together, her noticing of family signs from her mother and sister and hercatching of spoken words from strangers, both under conditions underwhich ordinary persons would neither see nor hear them. We havetherefore nothing mysterious, nothing supernatural before us, but anextremely interesting case of an abnormal mental development, and thisunusual power working in a mind which is entirely naïve and sincere. 

How long will this naïveté and sincerity last? This is nopsychological, but a social problem. Since the newspapers have takenhold of the case, every mail brings heaps of letters from all cornersof the country. Some of them bring invitations to give performances, but they are not the most dangerous ones. Most of the letters urge thechild to use her mysterious, supernatural powers for trivial orpathetic ends in the interest of the writers. Sometimes she is tolocate a lost trunk, or a mislaid pocketbook; sometimes she is toprophesy whether a voyage will go smoothly or whether a businessventure will succeed; sometimes she is to read in her mind where arunaway child may be found; and almost always money promises areconnected with such requests. The mother, who has not much educationbut who is a splendid, right-minded country woman with the very bestintentions for the true good of her children, has ignored all thissilly invasion. She showed me a whole teacupful of two-cent stamps forreplies which she had collected from Beulah's correspondence. But Iask again, how long will it last? If Beulah closes her eyes and somechance letters come to her mind, and she forms a word from them andsends it as a reply to the anxious mother who is seeking her child, she will soon discover that it is easy to gather money in a worldwhich wants to be deceived. She is followed by the most temptinginvitations to live in metropolitan houses where sensationalexperiments can be performed with her. The naïve mother is stillimpressed when a New York woman applies the well-known tricks andassures her that the child reminds her so much of her own little deadniece that she ought to come to her New York house. It is a pity howthe community forces sensationalism, commercialism, and finally humbugand fraud on a naïve little country girl who ought to be left alonewith her pet lamb in her mother's kitchen. Her gift is extremelyinteresting to the psychologist, and if it is not misused by those whotry to pump spiritualistic superstitions into her little mind or toforce automatic writing on her it will be harmless and no cause forhysteric developments. But surely her art is entirely useless for anypractical purpose. She cannot know anything which others do not knowbeforehand. Clairvoyant powers or prophetic gifts are not hers, andabove all her mind-reading is a natural process. The edifice ofscience will not be shaken by the powers of my little Rhode Islandfriend. 

Yet the most important part is not the fate of the individual child, but the behaviour of this nation-wide public which chases her into theswamps of fraud. No one can decide and settle whether the party ofsuperstition forms the majority or the minority. If all the silentvoters were sincere, they probably would carry the vote for telepathy. But in any case, such a party exists, and it does not care in theleast that scientific investigations clear up a case which threatensto bring our world of thought into chaotic disorder. A world of mentaltrickery and mystery, a world which by its very principle could neverbe understood, is to them instinctively more welcome than a world ofscientific order. There cannot be a more fundamental contrast betweenmen who are to form a social unit than this radical difference ofattitude toward the world of experience. Compared with this deepestsplit in the community, all its other social questions seem temporaryand superficial. 

 V

 THE MIND OF THE JURYMAN

Every lawyer knows some good stories about some wild juries he hasknown, which made him shiver and doubt whether a dozen laymen ever cansee a legal point. But every newspaper reader, too, remembers anabundance of cases in which the decision of the jury startled him byits absurdity. Who does not recall sensational acquittals in whichsympathy for the defendant or prejudice against the plaintiff carriedaway the feelings of the twelve good men and true? For them are theunwritten laws, for them the mingling of justice with race hatreds orwith gallantry. And even in the heart of New York a judge recentlysaid to a chauffeur who had killed a child and had been acquitted:“Now go and get drunk again; then this jury will allow you to run overas many children as you like. ”

Yet whatever the temperament of the jury and its legal insight, we maysharply separate its ideas of deserved punishment from that far moreimportant aspect of its function, the weighing of evidence. Thejuries may be whimsical in their decisions, they may be lenient intheir acquittals or over-rigid in their verdicts of guilty, but thatis quite in keeping with the democratic spirit of the institution. TheTeutonic nations did not want the abstract law of the scholarlyjudges; they want the pulse-beat of life throbbing in the courtdecisions, and what may be a wilful ignoring of the law of the juristsmay be a heartfelt expression of the popular sentiment. Better to havesome statutes riddled by the illogical verdicts than legal decisionssevered from the sense of justice which is living in the soul of thenation. But while a rush into prejudice or a hasty overriding of lawmay draw attention to some exceptional verdicts, in the overwhelmingmass of jury decisions nothing is aimed at but a real clearing up ofthe facts. The evidence is submitted, and while the lawyers may havewrangled as to what is evidence and what is not, and while they mayhave tried, by their presentation of the witnesses on their own sideand by their cross-examinations, to throw light on some parts of theevidence and shadow on some others, the jurymen are simply to seek thetruth when all the evidence has been submitted. And mostly they do notforget that they will live up to their duty best the more theysuppress in their own hearts the question whether they like ordislike the truth that comes to light. Whoever weighs the socialsignificance of the jury system ought not to be guided by the fewstray cases in which the emotional response obscures the truth, butall praise and blame and every scrutiny of the institution ought to beconfined essentially to the ability of the jurymen to live up to theirchief responsibility, the sober finding of the true facts. 

It cannot be denied that much criticism has been directed against thewhole jury system in America as well as in Europe by legal scholars aswell as by laymen on account of the prevailing doubt whether thetraditional form is really furthering the clearing up of the hiddentruth. Where the evidence is so perfectly clear that every one byhimself feels from the start exactly like all the others, thecoöperation of the twelve men cannot do any harm, but it cannot do anyparticular good either. Such cases do not demand the special interestof the social reformer. His doubts and fears come up only whendifference of opinion exists, and the discussion and the repeatedvotes overcome the divergence of opinion. The skeptics claim that thesystem as such may easily be instrumental for suppressing the truthand bringing the erroneous opinion to victory. In earlier times afrequent objection was that lack of higher education made men unfit toweigh correctly the facts in a complicated situation. But this kind ofarguing has been given up for a long while. The famous French lawyerwho, whenever he had a weak case, made use of his right to challengejurymen by systematically excluding all persons of higher education, certainly blundered in this respect, according to the views of to-day. Those best informed within and without the legal science agree thatthe verdicts of straightforward people with public-school educationare in the long run neither better nor worse than those of men withcollege schooling or professional training. A jury of artisans andfarmers understands and looks into a mass of neutral material as wellas a jury of bankers and doctors, or at least its final verdict has anequal chance to hit the truth. 

But the critics say that it is not the lack of general or logicaltraining of the single individual which obstructs the path of justice. The trouble lies rather in the mutual influence of the twelve men. Themore persons work together, the less, they say, every single man canreach his highest level. They become a mass with mass consciousness, akind of crowd in which each one becomes oversuggestible. Each onethinks less reliably, less intelligently, and less impartially thanhe would by himself alone. We know how men in a crowd do indeed losesome of the best features of their individuality. A crowd may bethrown into a panic, may rush into any foolish, violent action, maylynch and plunder, or a crowd may be stirred to a pitch of enthusiasm, may be roused to heroic deeds or to wonderful generosity, but whetherthe outcome be wretched or splendid, in any case it is the product ofpersons who have been entirely changed. In the midst of the panic orin the midst of the heroic enthusiasm no one has kept his owncharacteristic mental features. The individual no longer judges forhimself; he is carried away, his own heart reverberates with thefeelings of the whole crowd. The mass consciousness is not an addingup, a mere summation, of the individual minds, but the creation ofsomething entirely new. Such a crowd may be pushed into any paths, chance leaders may use or misuse its increased suggestibility for anyends. No one can foresee whether this heaping up of men will bringgood or bad results. Certainly the individual level of the crowd willalways be below the level of its best members. And is not a jurynecessarily such a group with a mass consciousness of its own? Everyindividual is melted into the total, has lost his independent powerof judging, and becomes influenced through his heightenedsuggestibility and social feeling by any chance pressure which maypush toward error as often as toward truth. 

But if such arguments are brought into play, it is evident that it isno longer a legal question, but a psychological one. The psychologistalone deals scientifically with the problem of mutual mental influenceand with the reënforcing or awakening of mental energies by socialcoöperation. He should accordingly investigate the question with hisown methods and deal with it from the standpoint of the scientist. This means he is not simply to form an opinion from general vagueimpressions and to talk about it as about a question of politics, where any man may have his personal idea or fancy, but to discover thefacts by definite experiments. The modern student of mental life isaccustomed to the methods of the laboratory. He wants to see exactfigures by which the essential facts come into sharp relief. But letus understand clearly what such an experiment means. When thepsychologist goes to work in his laboratory, his aim is to study thosethoughts and emotions and feelings and deeds which move our socialworld. But his aim is not simply to imitate or to repeat the socialscenes of the community. He must simplify them and bring them down tothe most elementary situations, in which only the characteristicmental actions are left. Is this not the way in which theexperimenters proceed in every field? The physicist or the chemistdoes not study the great events as they occur in nature on a largescale and with bewildering complexity of conditions, but he bringsdown every special fact which interests him to a neat, miniature copyon his laboratory table. There he mixes a few chemical solutions inhis retorts and his test-tubes, or produces the rays or sparks orcurrents with his subtle laboratory instruments, and he feels surethat whatever he finds there must hold true everywhere in the giganticuniverse. If the waters move in a certain way in the little tank onhis table, he knows that they must move according to the same laws inthe midst of the ocean. In this spirit the psychologist arranges hisexperiments too. He does not carry them on in the turmoil of sociallife, but prepares artificial situations in which the persons willshow the laws of mental behaviour. An experiment on memory orattention or imagination or feeling may bring out in a few minutesmental facts which the ordinary observer would discover only if hewere to watch the behaviour and life attitudes of the man for years. Everything depends upon the degree with which the characteristicmental states are brought into play under experimental conditions. Thegreat advantage of the experimental method is, here as everywhere, that everything can be varied and changed at will and that theconditions and the effects can be exactly measured. 

If we apply these principles to the question of the jury, the task isclear. We want to find out whether the coöperation, the discussion, and the repeated voting of a number of individuals are helping orhindering them in the effort to judge correctly upon a complexsituation. We must therefore artificially create a situation whichbrings into action the judgment, the discussion, and the vote, but ifwe are loyal to the idea of experimenting we must keep the experimentfree from all those features of a real jury deliberation which havenothing to do with the mental action itself. Moreover, it is evidentthat the situations to be judged must allow a definite knowledge as tothe objective truth. The experimenter must know which verdict of hisvoters corresponds to the real facts. Secondly, the situation must bedifficult in order that a real doubt may prevail. If all the voterswere on one side from the start, no discussion would be needed. Thirdly, it must be a rather complex situation in order that thejudgment may be influenced by a number of motives. Only in this casewill it be possible for the discussion to point out factors which theother party may have overlooked, thus giving a chance for changes ofmind. All these demands must be fulfilled if the experiment is reallyto picture the jury function. But it would be utterly superfluous andwould make the exact measurement impossible if the material on whichthe judgment is to be based were of the same kind of which theevidence in the courtroom is composed. The trial by jury in an actualcriminal case may involve many picturesque and interesting details, but the mental act of judging is no different when the most trivialobjects are chosen. 

I settled on the following simple device: I used sheets of dark graycardboard. On each were pasted white paper dots of different form andin an irregular order. Each card had between ninety-two and a hundredand eight such white dots of different sizes. The task was to comparethe number of spots on one card with the number of spots on another. Perhaps I held up a card with a hundred and four dots above, and belowone with ninety-eight. Then the subjects of the experiment had todecide whether the upper card had more dots or fewer dots or an equalnumber compared with the lower one. I made the first set ofexperiments with eighteen Harvard students. I took more than thetwelve men who form a jury in order to reënforce the possible effect, but did not wish to exceed the number greatly, so that the characterof the discussion might be similar to that in a jury. A much largernumber would have made the discussion too formal or too unruly. Theeighteen men sat around a long table and were first allowed to lookfor half a minute at the two big cards, each forming his judgmentindependently. Then at a signal every one had to write down whetherthe number of dots on the upper card was larger, equal, or smaller. Immediately after that they had to indicate by a show of hands howmany had voted for each of the three possibilities. After that adiscussion began. Indeed, the two cards offered plenty of points forearnest and vivid discussion. During the exchange of opinion in whichthose who had voted larger tried to convince the party of the smaller, and vice versa, they were always able to look at the cards and torefer to them, pointing to the various parts. One showed how thedistances on the one card appeared larger, and another pointed out howthe spots were clustered in a certain region, a third how the dotswere smaller in some parts, a fourth spoke about the opticalillusions, a fifth about certain impressions resulting from thenarrowness of the margin, and a sixth about the effect of certainirregularities in the distribution. In short, very different aspectswere considered and very different factors emphasized. The discussionwas sometimes quite excited, three or four men speaking at the sametime. After exactly five minutes of talking the vote was repeated, again at first being written and then being taken by show of hands. Asecond five minutes' exchange of opinion followed with a new effort toconvince the dissenters. After this period the third and last vote wastaken. This experiment was carried out with a variety of cards withsmaller or larger difference of numbers, but the difference alwaysenough to allow an uncertainty of judgment. Here, indeed, we hadrepeated all the essential conditions of the jury vote and discussion, and the mental state was characteristically similar to that of thejurymen. 

The very full accounts which the participants in the experiment wrotedown the following day indicated clearly that we had a true imitationof the mental process in spite of the striking simplicity of ourconditions. One man, for instance, described his inner experience asfollows: “I think the experiment involves factors quite comparable tothose that determine the verdict of a jury. The cards with theirspots are the evidence pro and con which each juryman has before himto interpret. Each person's decision on the number is hisinterpretation of the situation. The arguments, too, seem quitecomparable to the arguments of the jury. Both consist in pointing outfactors of the situation that have been overlooked and in showing howdifferent interpretations may be possible. ” Another man writes: “Inthe experiment it seemed that one man judged by one criterion andanother by another, such as distribution, size of spots, vacantspaces, or counting along one edge. Discussion often brought immediateattention to other criterions than those he used in his firstjudgment, and these often outweighed the original. Similarly, different jurymen would base their opinion on different aspects of thecase, and discussion would tend to draw their attention to otheraspects. The experiment also illustrated the relative weight given tothe opinion of different fellow-jurymen. I found that the statementsof a few of the older men who have had more extensive psychologicalexperience weighed more with me than those of the others. Suggestiondid not seem to be much of a factor. A man is rather on his mettle, and ready to defend his original impression, until he finds that it ishopeless. ” Again, another writes: “To me the experiment seemed fairlycomparable to the real situation. As in an actual trial, the fulltruth was not available, but certain evidence was presented to all forinterpretation. As to the nature of the discussion itself, I thinkthere was the same mingling of suggestion and real argument that is tobe found in a jury discussion. ” Another says: “The discussioninfluenced me by suggesting other methods of analysis. For instance, comparison of the amount of open space in two cards, comparison of thenumber of dots along the edges, estimation in diagonal lines, weremethods mentioned in the discussion which I used in forming my ownjudgments. It does not seem to me that in my own case directsuggestion had any appreciable effect. I was conscious of a tendencytoward contrasuggestibility. There was a half submerged feeling thatit would be good sport to stick it out for the losing side. The lackof any unusual amount of suggestion and the presence of the influencesof analysis and detailed comparison seem to me to show that the testswere in fact fairly comparable to situations in a jury room. ” To besure, there were a few who were strongly impressed by the evidentdifferences between the rich material of an actual trial and themeagre content of our tests: there the actions of living men, here thespace relations of little spots. But they evidently did notsufficiently realize that the forming of such number judgments was notat all a question of mere perception; that on the contrary manyconsiderations were involved; most men felt the similarity from thestart. 

What were the results of this first group of experiments? Our interestmust evidently be centred on the question of how many judgments werecorrect at the first vote before any discussion and any show of handswere influencing the minds of the men, and how many were correct atthe last vote after the two periods of discussion and after takingcognizance of the two preceding votes. If I sum up all the results, the outcome is that 52 per cent. Of the first votes were correct and78 per cent. Of the final votes were correct. The discussion of thesuccessive votes had therefore led to an improvement of 26 per cent. Of all votes. Or, as the correct votes were at first 52 per cent. , their number is increased by one half. May we not say that thisdemonstrates in exact figures that the confidence in the jury systemis justified? And may it not be added that, in view of the widespreadprejudices, the result is almost surprising? Here we had men of highintelligence who were completely able to take account of everypossible aspect of the situation. They had time to do so, they hadtraining to do so, and every foregoing experiment ought to havestimulated them to do so in the following ones. Yet their judgment wasright in only 52 per cent. Of the cases until they heard the opinionsof the others and saw how they voted. The mere seeing of the vote, however, cannot have been decisive, because 48 per cent. , that is, practically half of the votes, were at first incorrect. The wrongvotes might have had as much suggestive influence on those who votedrightly as the right votes on those on the wrong side. If, nevertheless, the change was so strongly in the right direction, theresult must clearly have come from the discussion. 

But I am not at the end of my story. I made exactly the sameexperiments also with a class of advanced female university students. When I started, my aim was not to examine the differences of men andwomen, but only to have ampler material, and I confined my work tostudents in psychological classes, because I was anxious to get thebest possible scientific analysis of the inner experiences. I had noprejudice in favour of or against women as members of the jury, anymore than my experiments were guided by a desire to defend or toattack the jury system. I was only anxious to clear up the facts. Thewomen students had exactly the same opportunities for seeing thecards and the votes and for exchanging opinions. The discussions, while carried on for the same length of time, were on the whole lessanimated. There was less desire to convince and more restraint, butthe record, which was taken in shorthand, showed nearly the samevariety of arguments which the men had brought forward. Everythingagreed exactly with the experiments with the men, and the onlydifference was in the results. The first vote of all experiments withthe women showed a slightly smaller number of right judgments. Thewomen had 45 per cent. Correct judgments, as against the 52 per cent. Of the men. I should not put any emphasis on this difference. It maybe said that the men had more training in scientific observations andthe task was therefore slightly easier for them than for most of thewomen. I should say that, all taken together, men and women showed anequal ability in immediate judgment, as with both groups about half ofthe first judgments were correct. The fact that with the men 2 percent. More, with the women 5 per cent. Less, than half were rightwould not mean much. But the situation is entirely different with thesecond figure. We saw that for the men the discussion secured anincrease from 52 per cent. To 78 per cent. ; with the women theincrease is not a single per cent. The first votes were 45 per cent. Right, and the last votes were 45 per cent. Right. In other words, they had not learned anything from discussion. 

It would not be quite correct if we were to draw from that theconclusion that the women did not change their minds at all. If weexamine the number of cases in which in the course of the first, second, and third votes in any of the experiments some changeoccurred, we find changes in 40 per cent. Of all judgments of the menand 19 per cent. Of all judgments of the women. This does not meanthat a change in a particular case necessarily made the last votedifferent from the first; we not seldom had a case where, forinstance, the first vote was larger, the second equal, and the thirdagain larger. And as a matter of course, where a change between thefirst and the last occurred, it was not always a change in the rightdirection. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the votes alwayscovered three possibilities, and not only two. It was thereforepossible for the first vote to be wrong, and then for a change tooccur to another wrong vote. The 19 per cent. Changes in the decisionsof the women contained accordingly as many cases in which right wasturned into wrong as in which wrong was turned into right, while withthe men the changes to the right had an overweight of 26 per cent. The self-analysis of the women indicated clearly the reason for theirmental stubbornness. They heard the arguments, but they were so fullyunder the autosuggestion of their first decision that they fanciedthat they had known all that before, and that they had discounted thearguments of their opponents in the first vote. The cobbler has tostick to his last; the psychologist has to be satisfied with analyzingthe mental processes, but it is not his concern to mingle in politics. He must leave it to others to decide whether it will really be a gainif the jury box is filled with individuals whose minds are unable toprofit from discussion and who return to their first idea, howevermuch is argued from the other side. It is evident that this tendencyof the female mind must be advantageous for many social purposes. Thewoman remains loyal to her instinctive opinion. Hence we have no rightto say that the one type of mind is in general better than the other. We may say only that they are different, and that this differencemakes the men fit and the women unfit for the particular task whichsociety requires from the jurymen. 

Practical experience seems to affirm this experimental result on manysides. The public of the east is still too little aware of this newand yet powerful influence in the far west, where the jury box isaccessible to women. There is no need to point to extreme cases. Anyaverage trial may illustrate the situation. I have before me thereports of the latest murder trial at Seattle, the case of PeterMiller. The case was unusual only in that the defendant had beenstudying criminal law during his incarceration in jail, and addressedthe jury himself on his own behalf in an argument that is said to havelasted nine hours. The jury was out quite a long time. Eleven were foracquittal, one woman was against it. The next day the papers broughtout long interviews with her in which she explained the situation. Shecharacterized her general standing in this way: “I am a dressmaker, and go out every day, six days in the week. I read the classified adsand glance at the headlines, but I don't have much time to waste onanything else. ” But her attitude in the jury room was very similar. She says: “I was sure of my opinion. I didn't try to change anybodyelse's opinion. I just kept my own. They argued a good deal and askedme if the fact that eleven of twelve had been convinced by the sameevidence of Peter Miller's innocence didn't shake my faith in my ownjudgment. Well, it didn't. We were out twenty-four hours. I borrowed apair of knitting needles from one of the jurors, and I sat there andknitted most of the time. ” The State of Washington will now have tohave a new trial, as the jury could not agree. There will probablystill be many hung juries because some dressmaker borrows a pair ofknitting needles from one of the jurors, knits most of the time, andlets the others argue, as she is sure of her own opinion. The naïveepigram of this model juror, “I didn't try to change anybody else'sopinion; I just kept my own, ” illuminates the whole situation. This isno contrast to the popular idea that woman easily changes her mind. She changes it, but others cannot change it. 

In order to make quite sure that the discussion and not the seeing ofthe vote is responsible for the marked improvement in the case of men, I carried on some further experiments in which the voting alone wasinvolved. To bring this mental process to strongest expression, I wentfar beyond the small circle which was needed for the informal exchangeof opinion, and operated instead with my large class of psychologicalstudents in Harvard. I have there four hundred and sixty students, andaccordingly had to use much larger cards with large dots. I showed tothem any two cards twice. There was an interval of twenty secondsbetween the first and the second exposures, and each time they lookedat the cards for three seconds. In one half of the experiments thatinterval was not filled at all; in the other half a quick show ofhands was arranged so that every one could see how many on the firstimpression judged the upper card as having more or an equal number orfewer dots than the lower. After the second exposure every one had towrite down his final result. The pairs of cards which were exposedwhen the show of hands was made were the same as those which wereshown without any one knowing how the other men judged. We calculatedthe results on the basis of four hundred reports. They showed that thetotal number of right judgments in the cases without showing hands was60 per cent. Correct; in those with show of hands about 65 per cent. Ahundred and twenty men had turned from the right to the wrong—thatis, had more incorrect judgments when they saw how the other men votedthan when they were left to themselves. 

It is true that those who turned from worse to better by seeing thevote of the others were in a slight majority, bringing the total vote5 per cent. Upward, but this difference is so small that it could justas well be explained by the mere fact that this act of public votingreënforced the attention and improved a little the total vote throughthis stimulation of the social consciousness. It is not surprisingthat the mere seeing of the votes in such cases has such a smalleffect, incomparable with that of a real discussion in which newvistas are opened, inasmuch as in 40 per cent. Of the cases themajority was evidently on the wrong side from the start. Those who areswept away by the majority would therefore in 40 per cent. Of thecases be carried to the wrong side. I went still further and examinedby psychological methods the degree of suggestibility of those fourhundred participants in the experiment, and the results showed thatthe fifty most suggestible men profited from the seeing of the vote ofthe majority no more than the fifty least suggestible ones. In bothcases there was an increase of about 5 per cent. Correct judgments. Idrew also from this the conclusion that the show of hands wasineffective as a direct influence toward correctness, and that it hadonly the slight indirect value of forcing the men to concentrate theirattention better on those cards. All results, therefore, point in thesame direction: it is really the argument which brings a coöperatinggroup nearer to the truth, and not the seeing how the other men vote. Hence the psychologist has every reason to be satisfied with the jurysystem as long as the women are kept out of it. 

 VI

 EFFICIENCY ON THE FARM

We city people who are feeding on city-made public opinion forget thatwe are in the minority, and that the interests of the fifty millionsof the rural population are fundamental for the welfare of the wholenation. Moreover, the life of the city itself is most intimatelyintertwined with the work on the farm; banking and railroading, industrial enterprises and commercial life, are dependent upon thefarmers' credit and the farmers' prosperity. The nation is beginningto understand that it would be a calamity indeed if the temptingattractiveness of the city should drain off still more the humanmaterial from the village and from the field. The cry “back to theland” goes through the whole world, and this means more than a campingtour in the holidays and some magazine numbers of _Country Life inAmerica_ by the fireplace. Its meaning ought to be that every nationwhich wants to remain healthy and strong must take care that theobvious advantages of metropolitan life are balanced by the joys andgains of the villager who lacks the shop windows and the excitingturmoil. 

Certainly the devices of the city inventor, the telephone and themotor car and a thousand other gifts of the last generation, haveovercome much of the loneliness, and the persistent efforts of thestates to secure better roads and better schools in the country haveenriched and multiplied the values of rural life. Yet the most directaid is, after all, that which increases the efficiency of farmingitself. In this respect, too, we feel the rapid progress throughoutthe country. The improvements in method which the scientific effortsof all nations have secured are eagerly distributed to the remotestcorners. The agents of the governmental Bureau of Agriculture, theagricultural county demonstrators, the rapidly spreading agriculturalschools, take care that the farmer's “commonsense” with itsbackwardness and narrowness be replaced by an insight which resultsfrom scientific experiment and exact calculation. Agriculturalscience, based on physics and chemistry, on botany and zoölogy, hasmade wonderful strides during the last few decades. It must beconfessed that the self-complaisance of the farmer and the power oftradition have offered not a little resistance to the practicalapplication of the knowledge which the agricultural experimentsestablish, and the blending of the well-known conservative attitude ofthe farmer with a certain carelessness and deficiency in education haskept the production of the American farm still far below the yieldingpower which the present status of knowledge would allow. Othernations, more trained in hard labour and painstaking economy andaccustomed to most careful rotation of crops, obtain a much richerharvest from the acre, even where the nature of the soil is poor. Butthe longing of the farmer for the best methods is rapidly growing, too, and in many a state he shows a splendid eagerness to try newways, to develop new plans, and to progress with the advance ofscience. 

In such an age it seems fair to ask whether the circle of scienceswhich are made contributory to the efficiency of the agriculturist hasbeen drawn large enough. It is, of course, most important for everyfarmer to know the soil and whatever may grow on it and feed on it. All the new discoveries as to the power of phosphates to increase thecrop or as to the part which protozoa play in the inhibition offertility, or the influence of parasites on the enemies of the cropsand the numberless naturalistic details of this type, are certainlymost important. Yet does it not look as if in all the operations whichthe worker on the land has to perform everything is carefullyconsidered by science, and only the chief thing left out, the workerand his work? He is earnestly advised as to every detail in the orderof nature: he learns by what chemical substances to improve the soil, what seeds are to be used, and when they are to be planted, whatbreeds of animals to raise and how to feed them. But no scientificinterest has thrown light on his own activity in planting the seed andgathering the harvest, in picking the fruit and caring for the stock. 

No doubt, the agent of some trust has recommended to him the newestmachines; but their help still belongs, after all, to the part ofouter nature. They are physical apparatus, and even if the farmer usesnowadays dynamite to loosen the soil, all this new-fashioned power yetremains scientific usage of the knowledge of nature. But behind allthis physical and chemical material in which and through which thefarmer and his men are working stand the farmer himself with hisintelligence, and his men themselves with their lack of intelligence. This human factor, this bundle of ideas and volitions and feelings andjudgments, must ultimately be the centre of the whole process. Thereis no machine which can do its best if it is wrongly used, no toolwhich can be effective if it is not set to work by an industriouswill. The human mind has to keep in motion that whole great mechanismof farm life. It is the farmer's foresight and insight which ploughand plant and fill the barns. For a long while the average farmerthought about nature, too, that he could know all he needed, if heapplied his homemade knowledge. That time has passed, and even herelies on the meteorology telegram of the scientific bureaus ratherthan on the weather rules of his grandfather. But when it comes to themental processes which enter into the agricultural work, he wouldthink it queer to consult science. He would not even be aware thatthere is anything to know. The soil and the seed and even the ploughand the harvester are objects about which you can learn. But theattention with which the man is to do his work, the memory, theperception, the ideas which make themselves felt, the emotions and thewill which control the whole work, would never be objects about whichhe would seek new knowledge; they are no problems for him, they aretaken for granted. 

Yet we have to-day a full-fledged science which does deal with thesemental processes. Psychology speaks about real things as much aschemistry, and the laws of mental life may be relied on now moresafely than the laws of meteorology. It seems unnatural that thosewho have the interests of agriculture at heart should turn theattention of the farmer exclusively to the results of the materialsciences and ignore completely the thorough, scientific interest inthe processes of the mind. To be sure, until recently we had the sameshortcoming in industrial enterprises of the factories. Manufacturerand workingman looked as if hypnotized at the machines, forgettingthat those wheels of steel were not the only working powers under thefactory roof. A tremendous effort was devoted to the study andimprovement of the industrial apparatus and of the raw material, whilethe mental fitness and the mental method of the army of workingmen wasdealt with unscientifically and high-handedly. But within the last fewyears the attention of the industrial world has been seriously turnedto the matter-of-course fact that the workman's mind is more importantthan the machine and the material, if the highest economic output isto be secured. The great movement for scientific management, howevermuch or little its original plans may survive, has certainly once forall convinced the world that the study of the man and his functionsought to be the chief interest of the market, even in our electricalage; and the more modest movement for vocational guidance hasemphasized this personal factor from sociological motives. At lastthe psychologists themselves approached the problem of the worker inthe factory, began to examine his individual fitness for his work, andto devise tests in order to select quickly those whose inborn mentalcapacity makes them particularly adjusted to special lines of work. Above all, they examined the methods by which the individual learnedand got his training in the technical activities, they began todetermine the exact conditions which secured the greatest amount ofthe best possible work with the greatest saving of human energy. Allthis is certainly still at its beginning, but even if the solutions ofthe problems are still insufficient, the problems themselves will notagain be lost sight of. The most obvious acknowledgment of theimportance of these demands lies in the fact that already the quackadvice of pseudo-psychologists is offered from many sides. Theup-to-date manufacturer knows, even if he is not interested in thesocial duties involved, that the mere economic interest demands a muchmore serious study of the workingman's mind than any one thought often years ago. 

This change must finally come into the agricultural circles. Theconsequences of the usual, or rather invariable neglect, are felt lessin agriculture than in industry, because the work is so much morescattered. The harmful effects of poor adjustment and impropertraining must be noticed more easily where many thousands are crowdedtogether within the walls of the same mill. But it would be anillusion to fancy that the damage and the loss of efficiency aretherefore less in the open field than in the narrow factory. On thecontrary, the conditions favour the workshop. There everybody standsunder constant supervision, and what is still more important, alwayshas the chance for imitation. Every improvement, almost every newtrick and every new hand movement which succeeds with one, is taken upby his neighbour and spreads over the establishment. The principle offarm work is isolation. One hardly knows what another is doing, andwhere several do coöperate, they are generally engaged in differentfunctions. Even where the farmhands work in large groups, the attitudeis much less that of team work than of a mere summation of individualworkers. In the country as a whole the man who works on the farm hasto gather his experience for himself, has to secure every advance forhimself, and has to miss the benefit which the social atmosphere ofindustrial work everywhere furnishes. 

It would be utterly misleading to think that the long history ofmankind's agricultural pursuits ought to have been sufficient to bringtogether the necessary experience. The analysis of the vocationalactivities has given every evidence that even the oldest functions areperformed in an impractical, inefficient way. The students ofscientific management have demonstrated how the work of the mason, asold as civilization itself, is carried on every day in every land withmethods which can be improved at once, as soon as a scientific studyof the motions themselves is started. It could hardly be otherwise, and the principle might be illustrated by any chance case. If a girlwere left to herself to learn typewriting, the best way would seem toher to be to pick out the letters with her two forefingers. She wouldslowly seek the right key for each letter and press it down. In thisway she would be in the pleasant position of producing a little letterafter only half an hour of trial. As soon as she has succeeded withsuch a first half page, she will see only the one goal of increasingthe rapidity and accuracy, and by hard training she will indeed gainsteadily in speed and correctness, and after a year she will writerather quickly. Yet she will never succeed in reaching the idealproficiency. In order to attain the highest point, she ought to havestarted with an entirely different method. She ought to have begun atonce to use all her fingers, and, moreover, to use them withoutlooking at the keyboard. If she had started with this difficult methodshe would never have succeeded in writing a letter the first day. Itwould have taken weeks to reach that achievement which the simplermethod yields almost at once. But in plodding along on this harderroad she would finally outdistance the competitor with the commonsensemethod and would finally gain the highest degree of efficiency. Thisis exactly the situation everywhere. Commonsense always grasps forthose methods which quickly lead to a modest success, but which cannever lead to maximum achievement. On the other hand, up to the daysof modern experimental psychology the interest was not focussed on themental operations involved in industrial life as such. Everything wasleft to commonsense, and therefore it is not surprising that thefarmhand like the workingman in the mill has never hit upon the onemethod which is best, as all his instincts and natural tendencies hadto lead him to the second or third best method, since these alone giveimmediate results. 

A highly educated man who spent his youth in a corn-raising communityreports to me the following psychological observation: Howeverindustrious all the boys of the village were, one of them was alwaysable to husk about a half as much more corn than any one else. Heseemed to have an unusual talent for handling so many more ears thanany one of his rivals could manage. Once my friend had a chance toinquire of the man with the marvellous skill how he succeeded inoutdoing them so completely, and then he learned that no talent wasinvolved, but a simple psychological device, almost a trick. Theworker who husks the ear is naturally accustomed to make his hand andfinger movements while his eyes are fixed on them. As soon as one earis husked, the attention turns to the next, the eyes look around andfind the one which best offers itself to be handled next. When themind, under the control of the eyes, has made its choice, the mentalimpulse is given to the arms, and the hands take hold of it. Yet it isevident that these manipulations can be carried on just as wellwithout the constant supervision of the eyes. The eye is needed onlyto find the corn and to direct the impulse of the hands toward pickingit up. But the eye is no longer necessary for the detailed movementsin husking. Hence it must be possible to perform that act of visionand that choice of the second ear while the hands are still working onthe first. The initial stage of the work on the second ear thenoverlaps the final stages of the work with the first, and this mustmean a considerable saving of time. 

This was exactly the scheme on which that marvel of the village hadstruck. He had forced on himself this artificial breaking of theattention, and had trained himself to have his eyes performing theirwork independent of the activity of the hands. My friend assures methat as soon as he had heard of the trick, there was no difficulty inhis imitating it, and immediately the number of ears which he was ableto husk in a given time was increased by 30 per cent. The mereimmediate instinct would always keep the eye movement and the handmovements coupled together. A certain artificial effort is necessaryto overcome this natural coördination. But if this secret scheme hadbeen known to all the boys in the village, ten would have been able toperform what fifteen did. Of course this is an utterly trivialincident, and where my friend husked corn in his boyhood days, to-dayprobably the cornharvester is doing it more quickly anyhow. But aslong as real scientific effort has not been applied toward examiningthe details, we have to rely on such occasional observations in orderat first to establish the principle. Every one knows that just suchillustrations might as well be taken from the picking of berries, inwhich the natural method is probably an absurd waste of energy, andyet which in itself seems so insignificant that up to present days noscientific efforts have been made to find out the ideal methods. 

Similar accidental observations are suggested by the well-knownexperiments with shovelling carried on in the interest of industry, where the shovelling of coal and of pig iron demanded a carefulinvestigation into the best conditions for using the shovel. It wasfound that it is an unreasonable waste of energy to use the same sizeand form of tool for lifting the heavy and the light material. Withthe same size of shovel the iron will make such a heavy load that theenergies are exhausted, and the coal will give such a light load thatthe energies are not sufficiently made use of. It became necessary todetermine the ideal load with which the greatest amount of work withthe slightest fatigue could be performed, and that demanded a muchlarger shovel for the light than for the heavy substance. Exactly thissituation repeats itself with the spade of the farmer. The conditionsare somewhat different, but the principle must be the same. Of coursethe farmer may use spades of different sizes, but he is far frombringing the product of spade surface and weight to a definiteequation. Sometimes he wastes his energies and sometimes he exhauststhem. But it is not only a question of the size of shovel or spade. The whole position of the body, the position of the hands, thedirection of the attention, the rhythm of the movement, the pausesbetween the successive actions, the optical judgment as to the placewhere the spade ought to cut the ground, the distribution of energy, the respiration, and many similar parts of the total psychophysicalprocess demand exact analysis if the greatest efficiency is to bereached. Everybody knows what an amount of attention the golf playerhas to give to every detail of his movement, and yet it would beeasier to discover by haphazard methods the best way to handle thegolf stick than to use the spade to the best effect. 

On the other hand, the better method is not at all necessarily themore difficult one. More effort is needed at the beginning to acquirean exactly adjusted scheme of movement, but as soon as thewell-organized activity has become habitual, it will realize itselfwith less inner interference. For the educated it is no harder tospeak correct grammar than to speak slang, and it is no more difficultto write orthographically than to indulge in chaotic spelling, just asin every field it is no harder to show good manners than to behaverudely. If the sciences of digging and chopping, of reaping andraking, of weeding and mowing, of spraying and feeding, are allpostulates of the future, each can transform the chance methods intoexact ones, and that means into truly efficient ones, only when everyelement has been brought under the scrutiny of the psychologicallaboratory. We must measure the time in hundredths of a second, muststudy the psychophysical conditions of every movement, where not treesare cut or hay raked, but where the tools move systems of levers whichrecord graphically the exact amount and character of every partialeffect. The one problem of the distribution of work and rest alone isof such tremendous importance for the agricultural work that a realscientific study of the details might lead to just as much saving asthe introduction of new machinery. The farmhand, who would never thinkof wasting his money, wastes his energies by contracting big muscles, where a better economized system of movement would allow him to reachthe same result through the contraction of smaller muscles, whichinvolves much less energy and much less fatigue. The loss by wrongbending and wrong coördination of movement may be greater than by badweather. 

Yet commonsense can never be sufficient to find the right motor willimpulses. The ideal distribution of pauses is extremely different frommerely stopping the work when a state of overfatigue has been reached. Even general scientific rules could not be the last word. Subtlepsychological tests would have to be devised by which the plan foralternation between work and rest could be carefully adjusted to theindividual needs of every rural worker. The mere sensation of fatiguemay be entirely misleading. It must be brought into definite relationsto temperature, moistness, character of the work, training, and otherfactors. On the other hand, the absence of fatigue feeling would be initself no indication that the limit of safety has not been passed, andyet the work itself must suffer when objective overfatigue of thesystem has begun. At the right moment a short interruption may secureagain the complete conditions for successful work. If that moment haspassed, an exhaustion may result which can no longer be repaired by ashort rest. Any wrong method of performing these simple activities, that is, any method which is not based on exact scientific analysis, wastes the energies of the workingman, and by that the economic meansof the farm owner, and indirectly the economic resources of the wholenation. In the Harvard Psychological Laboratory we are at presentengaged in the investigation of such an apparently trivial functionas sewing by hand. The finger which guides the needle is attached to asystem of levers which write an exact graphic record of every stitchon a revolving drum. And the deeper we enter into this study the morewe discover that such a movement, of which every seamstress and everygirl who makes her clothes feels that she knows everything, containsan abundance of important features of which we do not as yet knowanything. With the same scientific exactitude the laboratory mustinvestigate the milking, or the making of butter, the feeding of thecattle and the picking of the fruit, the use of the scythe and theaxe, the pruning and the husking. The mere fact that every one, evenwith the least skill, is able to carry out such movements with someresult, does not in the least guarantee that any one carries them outto-day with the best result possible. 

The governmental experiment station ought to establish regularpsychological laboratories, in which the mental processes involved inthe farmer's activity would be examined with the same loyalty tomodern science with which the chemical questions of the soil or thebiological questions of the parasites are furthered. Only suchinvestigations could give the right cues also to the manufacturers offarming implements. At present the machines are constructed with thesingle purpose of greatest physical usefulness, and the farmer whouses them has to adjust himself to them. The only human factor whichenters into the construction so far has been a certain desire forcomfort and ease of handling. But as soon as the mental facts involvedare really examined, they ought to become decisive for the details ofthe machine. The handle which controls the lever, and every otherpart, must be placed so that the will finds the smallest possibleresistance, so that one psychical impulse prepares the way for thenext, and then a maximum of activity can be reached with the smallestpossible psychophysical energy. Such a psychological department of theagricultural station could be expanded, and study not only the mentalconditions of farming, but examine also the psychological factorswhich belong indirectly to the sphere of agricultural work. It mayexamine the mental effects which the various products of the farm stirup in the customers. The feelings and emotions, the volitions andideas which are suggested by the vegetables and fruits, the animalsand the flowers, are not without importance for the success in themarket. The psychology of colour and taste, of smell and touch andform, may be useful knowledge for the scientific farmer, and even hismethods of packing and preparing for the market, of displaying andadvertising, may be greatly improved by contact with appliedpsychology. 

At least one of the psychological side problems demands especialattention, the mental life of the animals. Animal psychology is nolonger made up of hunting stories and queer observations on ants andwasps, and gossip about pet cats and dogs and canary birds. It hasbecome an exact science, which is housed in the psychologicallaboratories of the universities. And with this change the centre ofinterest has shifted, too. The mind of the animals is not studied inorder to satisfy our zoölogical interest, but really to serve anunderstanding of the mental functions. It was therefore appropriate tointroduce those methods which had been tested in human psychology. Inour Harvard Psychological Laboratory, in which a whole floor of thebuilding is devoted exclusively to animal experiments underspecialists, single functions like memory or attention or emotion aretested in earthworms or turtles or pigeons or monkeys, and the resultsare no less accurate than those of subtlest human work. But thisexperimental animal psychology has so far served theoretical interestsonly. It stands where human psychology stood before the contact withpedagogy, medicine, law, commerce, and industry suggested particularformulations of the experiments. Such contact with the needs ofpractical life ought to be secured now for animal psychology. Thefarmer who has to do with cows and swine and sheep, with dogs andhorses, with chickens and geese, with pigeons and bees, ought to havean immediate interest to seek this contact. But his concern ought togo still further. He has to fight the animals that threaten hisharvest. 

The farmer himself knows quite well how important the psychicalbehaviour of the animals is for his success. He knows how the milk ofthe cows is influenced by emotional excitement, and how the handlingof horses demands an understanding of their mental dispositions andtemperaments. Sometimes he even works already with primitivepsychological methods. He makes use of the mental instinct which drawsinsects to the light when he attracts the dangerous moths with lightat night in order to destroy them. Ultimately all the traps and netswith which the enemies of the crop are caught are schemes for whichpsychotechnical calculations are decisive. The means for breaking thehorses, down to the whip and the spur and the blinders, are after allthe tools of applied psychology. The manufacturer is alreadybeginning to supply the farmer with some practical psychology: dogswhich despise the ordinary dog biscuits, seem quite satisfied with thesame cheap foods when they are manufactured in the form of bones. Thedog first plays with them and then eats them. There is no reason whyeverything should be left to mere tradition and chance in a field inwhich the methods are sufficiently developed to give exact practicalresults, as soon as distinct practical questions are raised. Therewould be no difficulty in measuring the reaction times of the horsesin thousandths of a second for optical and acoustical and tactualimpressions, or in studying the influence of artificial colour effectson the various insects in the service of agriculture. 

Especial importance may be attached to those investigations in animalpsychology which trace the inheritance of individual characteristics. The laboratory psychologist studies, for instance, the laws accordingto which qualities like savageness and tameness are distributed in thesucceeding generations. He studies the proportions of those traits inhundreds of mice, which are especially fit for the experiment onaccount of their quick multiplication. But this may lead immediatelyto important results for the farmers with reference to mental traitsin breeding animals. It would be misleading if it were denied thatall this is a programme to-day and not a realization, a promise andnot a fulfilment. The field is practically still uncultivated. But ina time in which the nation is anxious to economize the nationalresources, which were too long wasted, and in which the need ofhelping the farmer and of intensifying the values of rural life isfelt so generally, it would be reckless to ignore a promise thefulfilment of which seems so near. To be sure, the farmers cultivatedtheir fields through thousands of years without chemistry, just asthey do their daily work to-day without psychology, but nobody doubtsthat the introduction of scientific chemistry into farming has broughtthe most valuable help to the national, and to the world economy. Thetime seems really ripe for experimental psychology to play the samerôle for the benefit of mankind, which in the future as in the pastwill always be prosperous only when the farmer succeeds. 

 VII

 SOCIAL SINS IN ADVERTISING

There is one industry in the world which may be called, more than anyother, a socializing factor in our modern life. The industry ofadvertising binds men together and tightly knits the members ofsociety into one compact mass. Every one in the big market-place ofcivilization has his demands and has some supply. But in order to linksupply and demand, the offering must be known. The industry whichovercomes the isolation of man with his wishes and with his wares laysthe real foundation of the social structure. It is not surprising thatit has taken gigantic dimensions and that uncounted millions areturning the wheels of the advertising factory. The influence andcivilizing power of the means of propaganda go far beyond the help inthe direct exchange of goods. The advertiser makes the modernnewspaper and magazine possible. These mightiest agencies of publicopinion and intellectual culture are supported, and their technicalperfection secured, by those who pay their business tax in the formof advertisements. 

Under these circumstances it would appear natural to have just as muchinterest and energy and incessant thought devoted to this very greatand significant industry as to any branch of manufacturing. But theopposite is true. Armies of engineers and of scientifically trainedworkers have put half a century of scholarly research and experimentalinvestigation into the perfecting of the physical and chemicalindustries. The most thorough study is devoted to the raw material andto the machines, to the functions of the workingman and to everythingwhich improves the mechanical output. In striking contrast to this, the gigantic industry of advertising is to-day still controlledessentially by an amateurish impressionism, by a so-calledcommonsense, which is nothing but the uncritical following of awell-worn path. Surely there is an abundance of clever advertisementwriters at work, and great establishments make some careful testsbefore they throw their millions of circulars before the public. Yeteven their so-called tests have in no way scientific character. Theyare simply based on watching the success in practical life, and thesuccess is gained by instinct. Commonsense tells even the mostsuperficial advertiser that a large announcement will pay more than asmall one, an advertisement in a paper with a large circulation morethan in a paper with a few subscribers, one with a humorous oremotional or exciting text more than one with a tiresome and staletext. He also knows that the cover page in a magazine is worth morethan the inner pages, that a picture draws attention, that a repeatedinsertion helps better than a lonely one. Yet even a score of suchrules would not remove the scheme of advertising from the commonplacesof the trade. They still would not show any trace of the fact that themethods of exact measurement and of laboratory research can be appliedto such problems of human society. 

Advertising is an appeal to the attention, to the memory, to thefeeling, to the impulses of the reader. Every printed line ofadvertisement is thus a lever which is constructed to put some mentalmechanism in motion. The science of the mental machinery ispsychology, which works on principles with the exact methods of theexperiment. It seems unprogressive, indeed, if just this one industryneglects the help which experimental science may furnish. A few slightbeginnings, to be sure, have been made, but not by the men of affairs, whose practical interests are involved. They have been made bypsychologists who in these days of carrying psychology into practicallife have pushed the laboratory method into the field of advertising. 

The beginnings indicated at once that much which is sanctioned by thetraditions of economic life will have to be fundamentally revised. Psychologists, for instance, examined the memory value of thedifferent parts of the page. Little booklets were arranged in whichwords were placed in the four quarter pages. The advertiser isaccustomed patiently to pay an equal amount for his quarter page, whether it is on the left half or the right, on the lower or on theupper part of the page. The experiment demonstrated that the words onthe upper right-hand quarter had about twice the memory value of thoseon the lower left. The advertiser who is accustomed to spend for hisinsertion on the lower left the same sum as for that on the upperright throws half his expenditure away. He reaches only half of thecustomers, or takes only half a grasp of those whom he reaches. Thiscase, which can be easily demonstrated by careful experiments, istypical of the tremendous waste which goes on in the budget of theadvertising community. And yet the advertiser would not like to actlike the poet who sings his song not caring whose heart he will stir. 

As long as the psychologist is only aware of an inexcusable waste ofmeans by lack of careful research into the psychological reactions ofthe reader, he may leave the matter to the business circles which haveto suffer by their carelessness. But this economic wrong may coincidewith cultural values in other fields, and the social significance ofthe problem may thus become accentuated. A problem of this doubleimport, economic and cultural at the same time, to-day facespublishers, advertisers, and readers. It is of recent origin, but ithas grown so rapidly and taken such important dimensions that atpresent it overshadows all other debatable questions in the realm ofpropaganda. The movement to which we refer is the innovation of mixingreading matter and advertisements on the same page. In the good oldtimes a monthly magazine like _McClure's_ or the _American_ or the_Metropolitan_ or the _Cosmopolitan_ showed an arrangement whichallowed a double interpretation. One interpretation, the idealisticone, was that the magazine consisted of articles and stories in solidunity, which formed the bulk of the issue. In front of this content, and after it, pages with advertisements were attached. The otherinterpretation, which suggested itself to the less ambitious reader, was that the magazine consisted of a heap of entertainingadvertisement pages, between which the reading matter was sandwiched. But in any case there was nowhere mutual interference. The articlesstood alone, and the automobiles, crackers, cameras, and other waresstood alone, too. All this has been completely changed in the last twoor three years. With a few remarkable exceptions like the _AtlanticMonthly_, the _World's Work_, and the _Century_, the overwhelmingmajority of the monthly and weekly papers have gone over to a systemby which the tail of the stories and articles winds itself through theadvertisement pages, and all the advertising sheets are riddled bystray pieces of reading matter. The immediate purpose is of courseevident. If the last dramatic part of the story suddenly stops on page15 and is continued on page 76, between the announcements of breakfastfood and a new garter, the publisher, or rather the advertiser, hopes, and the publisher does not dare to contradict, that some of theemotional interest and excitement will flow over from the loving pairto the advertised articles. The innocent reader is skilfully to beguided into the advertiser's paradise. 

We claimed that here the economic innovation, whether profitable ornot, has its cultural significance. The sociologists who have thoughtseriously about the American type of civilization have practicallyagreed in the conviction that the shortcoming of the American mindlies in its lack of desire for harmony and unity. It is an æstheticdeficiency which counts not only where art and artificial beauty arein question, but shows still more in the practical surroundings andthe forms of life. The nation which is and always has been controlledby strong idealistic moral impulses takes small care of the æstheticideals. The large expenditures for external beautification must notdeceive. Just as the theatre is to the American essentiallyentertainment and amusement and fashion, but least of all a life needfor great art, so on the whole background of daily life a thousandmotives show themselves more effectively than the longing for innerunity and beautiful fitness. The masses who waste their incomes forbeautiful clothes, not because they are beautiful, but because theyare demanded by the fashion, patiently tolerate the dirt in thestreets, the crowding of cars, the chewing of gum, the vulgar slang inspeech, and shirt-sleeve manners. But this undeveloped state of thesense of inner harmony has effects far beyond the mere outerappearances. The hysterical excitement in politics, the traditionalindifference to corruption and crime up to the point where they becomeintolerable, the bewildering mixture of highest desire for educationand cheapest faith in superstitions and mysticism and quacks, all mustresult from a social mind in which the æsthetic demand for harmony andproportion is insufficiently developed. The one great need of the landis a systematic cultivation of this æsthetic spirit of unity. Itcannot be forced on the millions by any sudden and radical procedures. The steady, cumulating influences of the whole atmosphere of civiclife must lead to a slow but persistent change. Fortunately, many suchhelpful agencies are at work. Not only the systematic moulding of thechild's mind by art instruction, and of the citizen's mind bybeautiful public buildings, but a thousand features of the day aid inbringing charm and melody to the average man. 

Seen from this point of view the new fashion in the makeup of theperiodical literature is a barbaric and inexcusable interference withthe process of æsthetic education. A page on which advertisements andreading matter are mixed is a mess which irritates and hurts a mind offine æsthetic sensitiveness, but which in the uncultivated mind mustruin any budding desire for subtler harmony. The noises of the street, with all the whistles of the factories and the horns of the motorcars, are bad enough, and the antinoise crusade is quite in order. Yet the destructive influence of those chaotic sounds is far weakerthan the shrillness and restlessness of these modern specimens ofso-called literature. The mind is tossed up and down and is tornhither and thither, following now a column of text while theadvertisements are pushing in from both sides, and then reading thelatest advertisement while the serious text is drawing the attention. It is the quantity which counts. The popular magazines which circulatein a million copies and reach two or three million minds are theloudest preachers of this sermon of bewilderment and scramble. Aconsciousness on which these tumultuous pages hammer day by day mustlose the subtler sense of proportionate harmony and must develop aninstinctive desire for harshness and crudeness and chaos. To overcomethis riot of the printing press is thus a truly cultural task, and yetit is evident that the mere appeal to the cultural instinct will notchange anything as long as the publisher and, above all, theadvertiser, are convinced that they would have to sacrifice theirpersonal profit in the interest of æsthetic education. If an end is tobe hoped for, it can be expected only if it is discovered that thecalculation of profit is erroneous, too. But this is after all aquestion of naked facts, and only the scientific examination candecide. 

The problem might be approached from various sides. It was only meantas a first effort when I carried on the following experiment: I had aportfolio with twenty-four large bristol-board cards of the size ofthe _Saturday Evening Post_. On eight of those cards I had pasted fourdifferent advertisements, each filling a fourth of a page. On somepages every one of the four advertisements took one of four wholecolumns; in other cases the page was divided into an upper and lower, right and left part. All the advertisements were cut from magazines, and in all the name of the firm and the object to be sold could beeasily recognized. On the sixteen other pages the arrangement wasdifferent. There only two fourths of the page were filled by twoadvertisements; the other two fourths contained funny pictures with afew words below. These pictures were cut from comic papers. All thepictures were of such a kind that they slightly attracted theattention by their amusing content or by the cleverness of thedrawing, but never demanded any careful inspection or any delay by thereading of the text. This, in most cases, consisted of a few titlewords like “The Widow's Might, ” “Pause, father, is that whipsterilized?” or similar easily grasped descriptions of the story inthe picture. Even where the text took two lines, it was more easy toapperceive the picture and its description than the essentials of theoften rather chaotic advertisements. By this arrangement we evidentlyhad thirty-two advertisements on the eight pages which containednothing else, and thirty-two other advertisements on the sixteen pageswhich contained half propaganda and half pictures with text. All thismaterial was used as a basis for the following test, in whichforty-seven adult persons participated. All were members of advancedpsychological courses, partly men, partly women. None of those engagedin the experiment knew anything about the purpose beforehand. Thusthey had no theories, and I carefully avoided any suggestion whichmight have drawn the attention in one or another direction. 

Every one had to go through those twenty-four pages in twelve minutes, devoting exactly thirty seconds to every page, and a signal marked thetime when he had to pass to the next. He was to give his attention tothe whole content of the page, and as both the pictures and theadvertisements were chosen with reference to their being easilyunderstood and quickly grasped, an average time of more than sevenseconds for each of the four offerings on the page was ample, even forthe slow reader. Of course the time would not have been sufficient toread every detail in the advertisements, but no one had any interestin doing so, as they were instructed beforehand to keep in mindessentially the advertised article and the firm, and in the case ofthe pictures a general impression of the idea. 

As soon as the twenty-four pages had been seen, every one was asked towrite down the ideas of five of the funny pictures within threeminutes. The results of this were of no consequence, as the purposewas only to fill the interval of the three minutes in order that allthe memory pictures of the advertisements might settle down in themind and that all might have an equal chance If we had turnedimmediately to the writing down of firms and articles, the last onesseen would have had an undue advantage. But when the three minutes hadbeen filled with an effort to remember some of the funny pictures andto write down their salient points, all the mental after-images of thepages had faded away, and a true memory picture was to be produced. Inthe presentation care was taken to have the twenty-four pages followin irregular order, the pages of straight advertising mixed with thoseof the double content. After the three minutes every one had to writedown as many names of firms with the articles as his memory couldreproduce. The time was now unlimited. Nothing else was to be added;the reference to the particular advertisement was entirely confinedto the firm and the object. Where they knew the firm name without theobject, or the article without the advertiser, they had to make a dashto indicate the omission. The aim was to discover whether thethirty-two advertisements on the mixed pages had equal chances in themind with the thirty-two on the straight advertisement pages. In orderto have an exact basis of comparison, we counted every name 1, andevery article 1. Thus when firm and object were correctly given it wascounted 2. 

Of course there were very great individual differences. It is evidentthat a person who would have remembered all the sixty-fouradvertisements on this basis of calculation would have made 128points. The maximum which was actually made was in the case of twowomen, each of whom reached 50 points. One man reached 49. The lowestlimit was touched in the exceptional case of one woman who made only11 points. The average was 28. 4. These figures seem small, consideringthat less than a fourth were kept in mind, and even by the best memoryless than a half, but it must be considered that in the modern styleof advertisement the memory is burdened with many side features of theannouncement, and that the result is therefore smaller than if nameand article had been memorized in an isolated form. But these figureshave no relation to our real problem. We wanted to compare the memoryfate of the advertisements on the one kind of pages with that of theparallel advertisements on the other kind. As soon as we separate thetwo kinds of reproduced material we find as total result that theforty-seven persons summed up 570 points for the advertisements onpages with comic pictures, but 771 for the advertisements on pageswhich contained nothing else. The average individual thus rememberedabout six whole advertisements out of the thirty-two on the combinedpages, and about eight and a fifth of the thirty-two on the straightpages. Among the forty-seven persons, there were thirty-six whoremembered the straight-page notices distinctly better than themixed-page advertisements, and only eleven of the forty-seven showed aslight advantage in favour of the mixed pages. In the case of the menthis difference is distinctly greater than in the case of the women. Only two of the fifteen men who participated showed better reproducingpower for the mixed material, while nine of the thirty-two womenfavoured it. As the advertiser is not interested in the chancevariations and exceptional cases among the reading public, butnaturally must rely on the averages, the results show clearly that thepropaganda made on pages which do not contain anything butadvertisements has more than a third greater chances, as the relationwas that of 6 to 8. 2. 

The result is hardly surprising. We recognized that the conditions forthe apprehension of the special advertisements are in themselvesequally favourable for both groups. As the pictures were very easilygrasped, it may even be said that there was more time left for thestudy of the advertisements on the mixed pages, and yet the experimentshowed that they had a distinct disadvantage. The self-observation ofthe experimenters leaves hardly any doubt that the cause for this liesin the different attitude which the mixed pages demand from thereader. The mental setting with which those pictures or the writtenmatter is observed, is fundamentally different from that which thosepropaganda notices demand. If the mind is adjusted to the pleasure ofreading for its information and enjoyment, it is not prepared for thefullest apprehension of an advertisement as such. The attention forthe notice on the same page remains shallow as long as the entirelydifferent kind of text reaches the side parts of the eye. On thosepages, on the other hand, which contain announcements only, a uniformsetting of the mind prepared the way for their fullest effectiveness. The average reader who glances over the pages of the magazines is notclearly aware of these psychological conditions, and yet that feelingof irritation which results from the mixing of reading matter andpropaganda on the same page is a clear symptom of this mentalreaction. The mere fact that both the advertisements and stories oranecdotes or pictures are seen in black and white by the retina of theeye, and are in the same way producing the ideas of words and forms inthe mind, does not involve the real psychological effect being thesame. The identical words read as a matter of information in aninstructive text, and read as an argument to the customer in a pieceof propaganda, set entirely different mental mechanisms in motion. Thepicture of a girl seen with the understanding that it is the actressof the latest success, or seen with the understanding that it is anadvertisement for a toilet preparation, starts in the wholepsychophysical system different kinds of activities, which mutuallyinhibit each other. If we anticipate the one form of inner reaction, we make ourselves unfit for the opposite. 

An interesting light falls on the situation from experiments whichhave recently been carried on by a Swedish psychologist. He showedthat in every learning process the intention with which we absorb thememory material is decisive for the firmness with which it sticks toour mind. If a boy learns one group of names or figures or verses withthe intention to keep them in mind forever, and learns another groupof the same kind of material with the same effort and by the samemethod, but with the intention to have them present for a certain testthe next day, the mental effect is very different. Immediately afterthe learning, or on the morning of the next day, he has both groupsequally firmly in his mind, but three days later most of what waslearned to be kept is still present. On the other hand, those versesand dates which were learned with the consciousness that they had toserve the next day have essentially faded away when the time of thetest has passed, even if the test itself was not given. Every lawyerknows from his experience how easily he forgets the details of thecase which has once been settled by the court, as he has absorbed thematerial only for the purpose of having it present up to the end ofthe procedure. These Swedish experiments have given a cue to furtherinvestigations, and everything seems to confirm this view. It bringsout in a very significant way that the impressions which are made onour mind from without are in their effectiveness on the mind entirelydependent upon the subjective attitude, and the idea that the samevisual stimuli stir up the same mental reactions is entirelymisleading. The attitude of reading and the attitude of looking atadvertisements are so fundamentally different that the whole mentalmechanism is in a different setting. 

The result is that whenever we are in the reading attitude, we cannottake the real advertising effect out of the pictures and notices whichare to draw us to the consumption of special articles. The editor whoforces his wisdom into the propaganda page is hurting the advertiser, who, after all, pays for nothing else but the opportunity to make acertain psychological impression on the reader. He gets a third moreof this effect for which he has to pay so highly if he can have hisadvertisement on a clean sheet which brings the whole mind into thatwilling attitude to receive suggestions for buying only. It is mostprobable that the particular form of the experiment here reportedmakes this difference between advertising pages with and withoutreading matter much smaller than it is in the actual perusal ofmagazines, as we forced the attention of the individual on every pagefor an equal time. In the leisurely method of going through themagazine the interfering effect of the editorial part would be stillgreater. Compared with this antagonism of mental setting, it meansrather little that these scattered pieces of text induce the reader toopen the advertisement. If we were really of that austere intellectwhich consistently sticks to that which is editorially backed, weshould ignore the advertisements, even if they were crowded into thesame page. They might reach our eye, but they would not touch ourmind. Yet there is hardly any fear that the average American readerwill indulge in such severity of taste. He is quite willing to yieldto the temptation of the advertising gossip with its minimumrequirement of intellectual energy for its consumption. He willtherefore just as readily turn from the articles to the advertisementsif they are separated into two distinct parts. Frequent observationsin the Pullman cars suggested to me rather early the belief that theseadvertisement parts in the front and the rear of the magazine were thepreferred regions between the two covers. 

Just as the great public habitually prefers the light comedy andoperetta to the theatre performances of high æsthetic intent, it movesinstinctively to those printed pages on which a slight appeal to theimagination is made without any claim on serious thought. It is indeeda pleasant tickling of the imagination, this leisurely enjoyment oflooking over all those picturesque announcements; it is like passingalong the street with its shopwindows in all their lustre and glamour. But this soft and inane pleasure has been crushed by the arrangementafter to-day's fashion. Those pages on which advertising and articlesare mixed helterskelter do not allow the undisturbed mood. It is as ifwe constantly had to alternate between lazy strolling and energeticrunning. Thus the chances are that the old attractiveness of thetraditional advertising part has disappeared. While those broken endsof the articles may lead the reader unwillingly to the advertisementpages, he will no longer feel tempted by his own instincts to seekthose regions of restlessness; and if he is of more subtlesensitiveness, the irritation may take the stronger form, and he maythrow away the whole magazine, advertisement and text together. Thefinal outcome, then, must be disadvantageous to publisher andadvertiser alike. The publisher and the editor have certainly neveryielded to this craving of the advertiser for a place on the readingpage without a feeling of revolt. Commercialism has forced them tosubmit and to make their orderly issues places of disorder and chaos. The advertisers have rushed into this scheme without a suspicion thatit is a trap. The experiments have proved that they are simplyinjuring themselves. As soon as this is widely recognized, acountermovement ought to start. We ought again to have the treasuresof our magazines divided into a straight editorial and a cleanadvertisement part. The advertisers will profit from it in dollars andcents through the much greater psychological effectiveness of theirannouncements, the editors will be the gainers by being able topresent a harmonious, sympathetic, restful magazine, and the greatpublic will be blessed by the removal of one of the most maliciousnerve irritants and persistent destroyers of mental unity. 

 VIII

 THE MIND OF THE INVESTOR

The psychologist who tries to disentangle the interplay of humanmotives finds hardly a problem for his art to solve when he approachesthe conscientious investor. His work has brought him savings, and hissavings are to work for him. Hence they must not lie idle, and in thecomplicated market, with its chaotic offerings, he knows what he hasto do. He seeks the advice of the expert, and under this guidance, hebuys that which combines great safety with a fair income. Theintellectual and emotional processes which here take control of thewill and of the decision are perfectly clear and simple, and themental analysis offers not the least difficulty. The fundamentalinstincts of man on the background of modern economic conditions mustlead to such rational and recommendable behaviour. A psychologicalproblem appears only when such a course of wisdom is abandoned, andeither the savings are hidden away instead of being made productive, or are thrown away in wildcat schemes. Yet of the two extremes thefirst again is easily understood. A hysteric fear of possible loss, anunreasonable distrust of banks and bankers, keeps the overcautiousaway from the market. But while such a state of mind is said to befrequent in countries in which the economic life is disorderly, enterprising Americans seldom suffer from this ailment, and even thetheoretical doctrine that it is sinful to have capital working seemsnot to have affected practically those who have the capital at theirdisposal. The specific American case is the opposite one, and withregard to those reckless investors it seems less clear whatpsychological conditions lie at the bottom of their rashness. 

Foreign visitors have indeed often noticed with surprise that theAmerican public, in spite of its cleverness and its practical trendand its commercial instinct, is more ready to throw its money intospeculative abysses than the people of other lands. What is thereason? Those observers from abroad are usually satisfied with thenatural answer that the Americans are gamblers, or that they have anindomitable desire for capturing money without working. But thestudents of comparative sociology cannot forget the fact that manynational institutions and customs of other lands suggest that theblame might with much more justice be directed against the otherparty. America prohibits lotteries, while lotteries are flourishing onthe European continent. The Austrians, Italians, and Spaniards areslaves to lotteries, and even in sober Germany the state carries on abig lottery enterprise. President Eliot once said in a speech aboutthe moral progress of mankind that a hundred years ago a publiclottery was allowed in Boston for the purpose of getting the funds forerecting a new Harvard dormitory, and he added that such a procedurewould be unthinkable in New England in our more enlightened days. Yetin the most civilized European countries, whenever a cathedral is tobe built, or an exhibition to be supported, the state gladly sanctionsbig lottery schemes to secure the financial means. The Europeangovernments argue that a certain amount of gambling instinct isingrained in human character, and that it is wiser to create a kind ofofficial outlet by which it is held within narrow limits, and by whichthe results yielded are used for the public good. 

This may be a right or a wrong policy, but in any case, it shows thatthe desire for gambling is no less marked on the other side of theocean. In the same way, while private bookmakers are not allowed atmost European races, the official “totalisators” offer to thegamblers the same outlets. Every tourist remembers from the Europeancasinos in the summer resorts the famous game with the little horses, a miniature Monaco scheme. And in the privacy of the too often notvery private clubs extremely neat card games are in order which dependstill more upon chance than the American poker. Moreover, theEuropeans have not even the right to say that American life indicatesa desire for harvest without ploughing. Every observer of Europeanlife knows to what a high degree the young Frenchman or Austrian, Italian, German, or Russian approaches married life with an eye on thedowry. Hundreds of thousands consider it as their chief chance to cometo ease and comfort. The whole temper of the nations is adjusted tothis idea, which is essentially lacking in American society. It isevident that no method of getting rich quick is more direct, and froma higher point of view more immoral, if taken as a motive for thechoice of a mate, than this plan which Europe welcomes. The samedifference shows itself in smaller traits. Europe invented the tippingsystem, which also means that money is expected without an equivalentin labour. Tipping is essentially strange to the American character, however rapid its progress has been on the Atlantic seaboard. 

Of course it would be absurd to ignore the existence and even theprevalence of similar attitudes in America. If the dowry does notexist, not every man marries without a thought of the richfather-in-law. Forbidden gambling houses are abundant, private bettingconnected with sport is flourishing everywhere; above all, theeconomic organization admits through a back-door what is banished fromthe main entrance, by allowing stocks to be issued for very smallamounts. In Germany the state does not permit stocks smaller than onethousand marks, equal to two hundred and fifty dollars, with the verypurpose of making speculative stock buying impossible for the man ofsmall means. The waiter and the barber who here may buy very smallblocks of ten-dollar stocks have no such chance there. Stock buying isthus confined to those circles from which a certain wider outlook maybe expected. The external framework of the stock market is here farmore likely to tempt the man of small savings into the game, and themere fact that this form has been demanded by public consciousnesssuggests that the spirit which craves lotteries is surely not absentin the new world, even though the lottery lists in the Europeannewspapers are blackened over before they are laid out in the Americanpublic libraries. A certain desire for gambling and quick returnsevidently exists the world over. But if the Americans are reallyspeculating more than all the other nations, a number of other mentalfeatures must contribute to the outcome. 

One tendency stands quite near to gambling, and yet ischaracteristically different, the delight in running risks, the joy inplaying with dangers. Some races, in which the gambling instinct isstrong, are yet afraid of high risks, and the pleasure in seekingdangerous situations may prevail without any longing for the rewardsof the gambler. It seems doubtful whether this adventurous longing forunusual risks belongs to the Anglo-Saxon mind. At least thosevocations which most often involve such a mental trend are much morefavoured by the Irish. It is claimed that they, for instance, areprominent among the railroad men, and that the excessive number ofaccidents in the railroad service results from just this recklessdisposition of the Irishmen. It tempts them to escape injury and deathonly by a hair. Where this desire to feel the nearness of danger, yetin the hope of escaping it, meets the craving for the excitement ofpossible gain, a hazardous investment of one's savings must beexpected. 

Yet it would be very one-sided and misleading if this group ofemotional features were alone made responsible for the lamentablerecklessness in the market. We must first of all necessarilyacknowledge the tremendous powers of suggestion which the wholeAmerican life and especially the stock market contains. The wordsuggestion has become rather colourless in popular language, but forthe psychologist, it has a very definite meaning. Suggestion is alwaysa proposition for action, which is forced on the mind in such a waythat the impulse to opposite action becomes inhibited. Under ordinarycircumstances, when a proposition is made to do a certain thingthrough the mechanism of the mind, the idea of the opposite action mayarise. If some one tells the normal man to go and do this or that, hewill at once think of the consequences, and in his mind perhaps theidea awakes of the dangerousness or of the foolishness, of theimmorality or of the uselessness of such a deed, and any one of theseideas would be a sufficient motive for ignoring the proposed line ofbehaviour and for suppressing the desire to follow the poor advice. But often this normal appearance of the opposite ideas fails. If theyarise at all, they are too faint or too powerless to offer resistance, and often they may not even enter consciousness. They remainsuppressed, and the result is that the idea of action finds its wayunhindered, and breaks out into the deed which normally would havebeen checked. If this is the case, the psychologist says that the mindwas in a state of increased suggestibility. 

The degree of suggestibility, that is of willingness to yield to suchpropositions for action and of inability to resist them, is indeeddifferent from man to man. We all know the stubborn persons who arealways inclined to resist whatever is proposed to them and who do notbelieve what is told them, and we know the credulous ones who believeeverything that they see printed. But the degree of suggestibilitychanges no less from hour to hour with the individual. In a state offatigue or under the influence of alcohol or under the influence ofstrong emotions, in hope and fear, the suggestibility is reënforced. The highest degree of suggestibility is that mental state which wecall hypnotism, in which the power to resist the proposed idea ofaction is reduced to a minimum. But the chief factor in making ussuggestible is the method by which the idea of action is proposed, andin psychology we speak of suggestion whenever an action is proposed bymethods which make the mind yielding. It certainly is notobjectionable to exert suggestive influence. Suggestions are theleading factors in education, in art, and in religion. Theauthoritative voice with which the teacher proposes the right thinghas a most valuable suggestive power to suppress in the child theopposite misleading impulse. But surely suggestions can becomedangerous and destructive. If actions are proposed in a form whichparalyzes the power to become conscious of the opposite impulses, thevoice of reason and of conscience is silenced, and social and moralruin must be the result. 

Everybody at once thinks of the endless variety of advertisements. Anannouncement which merely gives information is of course nosuggestion. But if perhaps such an announcement takes the form of animperative, an element of suggestion creeps in. To be sure we areaccustomed to this trivial pattern, and no one completely loses hispower to resist if the proposition to buy comes in the grammaticalform of a command. If we had reached the highest degree ofsuggestibility, as in hypnotism, we could not read “Cook with gas”without at once putting a gas stove into our kitchen. Yet even such amild suggestion has its influence and tends slightly to weaken thearguments which would lead to an opposite action. The advertisements, however, which the brokers send to our house and which are spreadbroadcast in the homes of the country to people who have no technicalknowledge of stock-buying are surely not confined to such child-likeand bland forms of suggestion. The whole grouping of figures, thedistribution of black and white in the picture of the marketsituation, the glowing story of the probable successes with thebewildering hints of special privileges, must increase thesuggestibility of the untrained mind and reënforce powerfully thesuggestive energy of the proposition to buy. The whole technique ofthis procedure has nowhere been brought to such virtuosity as in ourcountry. The fact which we mentioned, that the new industrial andmining enterprises can offer shares small enough to be accessible tothe man without means, has evidently been the chief reason fordeveloping a style of appeal which would be unthinkable in thecountries where the investors are essentially experienced businessmen. 

But the skill of the prospectus with its sometimes half fraudulentfeatures would, after all, not gain such influence if suggestion werenot produced from another side as well, namely, through the instinctof imitation. The habit of making risky investments is so extremelywidespread that the individual buyer does not feel himself isolated, and therefore dependent upon his own judgments and deliberations. Hefeels himself as a member of a class, and the class easily becomes acrowd, even a mob, a mob in which the logic of any mob reigns, andthat is the logic of doing unthinkingly what others do. It is wellknown that every member of a crowd stands intellectually and morallyon a lower level than he would stand if left to his spontaneousimpulses and his own reflections. The crowd may fall into a panic andrush blindly in any direction into which any one may have happened tostart and no one thinks about it, or it may go into exaltation andexuberantly do what no one alone would dare to risk. This massconsciousness is also surely a form of increased suggestibility. Theindividual feels his own responsibility reduced because he reliesinstinctively on the judgment of his neighbours, and with thisdecreased responsibility the energy for resistance to dangerouspropositions disappears. Men buy their stocks because others are doingit. 

But finally, may we not call it suggestion, too, if the individualeven tremblingly accepts the risks of perilous deals, because he feelsobliged to grasp for an unusually high income in order to live up tothe style of his set? Of course there is no objective standard ofliving if we abstract from that where the income simply secures theneeds of bare existence. Above that, everything depends upon thehabits of those around us. If the community steadily screws up thesehabits, makes life ostentatious for those of moderate means as well asfor the rich, hysterically emphasizes the material values, the will tobe satisfied with the income of safe investments has to fight againsttremendous odds. The truly strong mind will keep its power to resist, but the slightly weak mind will find the suggestion of the surroundinglife more powerful than the fear of possible loss. If all theneighbours in the village have automobiles, the man who would enjoy aquiet book and a pleasant walk much more than a showy ride will yield, and spend a thousand dollars for his motor car where fifty dollars forbooks would have brought him far more intense satisfaction. In nocountry have fashion and ostentatiousness taken such strong possessionof the masses, and the willingness to be satisfied with a moderateincome is therefore nowhere so little at home. 

Yet neither gambling and taking risks, nor suggestibility andimitation, are the whole of the story. We must not forget thesuperficiality of thinking, the uncritical, loose, and flabby use ofthe reasoning power which shows itself in so many spheres of Americanmass life. It is sufficient to see the triviality of argument and thecheapness of thought in those newspapers which seek and enjoy thewidest circulation. It is difficult not to believe that fundamentallysins of education are to blame for it. The school may bring much tothe children, but no mere information can be a substitute for atraining in thorough thinking. Here lies the greatest defect of ouraverage schools. The looseness of the spelling and figuring draws itsconsequences. Whoever becomes accustomed to inaccuracy in the elementsremains inaccurate in his thinking his life long. If the Americanpublic loses a hundred million dollars a year by investments inworthless undertakings, surely not the smallest cause is the lack ofconcise reasoning. Wrong analogies control the thought of the masses. Any copper stock must be worth buying because the stock ofCalumet-Hecla multiplied its value a hundredfold. But the irony of thesituation lies in the fact that, as experience shows, those who arethe clearest thinkers in their own fields are in the realm ofinvestments as easily trapped as the most superficial reasoners. It iswell known that college professors, school teachers, and ministersfigure prominently on the mailing lists of unscrupulous brokers, andtheir hard-earned savings are especially often given for stocks whichsoon are not worth the paper on which they are printed. Sometimes, tobe sure, this unpractical behaviour of the idealists really resultsfrom an unreasonable indifference to commercial questions. The truescholar, whose life is tuned to the conviction that he has moreimportant things to do in the world than to make money, readily fallsinto a mood of carelessness with regard to the money which he doeschance to make. In this state of indifference he follows any adviceand may easily be misled. 

But it seems probable that the more frequent case is the opposite one. Just because the teacher and the pastor have small chance to saveanything, they give their fullest thought to the question how tomultiply their earnings, and their mistake springs rather from theirignorance of the actual conditions. They think that they can figure itout by mere logic and overlook the hard realities. They resembleanother group of victims who can be found in the midst of commerciallife, the over-clever people who rely on especially artificialarguments. They feel sure that they see some points which no one elsehas discovered, and while they may have noticed some small reasonablepoints, they overlook important conditions which the simpler-mindedwould have seen. They know everything better than their neighbours, and whatever their friends buy or sell they at once have a brilliantargument to prove that the step was wrong. They generally forget thatthe listener must be suspicious of their wisdom, as they themselveshave never earned the fruit of their apparent wisdom. They all, however, may find comfort in the well-known fact that hardly any greatfinancier has died, not even a Harriman or a Morgan, without therebeing found in his possession large quantities of worthless stocks andbonds. But the variety of intellectual types, the careless and theuncritical, the over-clever and the illogical thinkers, could easilyprotect themselves against the dangers of the shortcomings in theirmental mechanism if their minds had not another trait, which, too, ismore frequent in America than anywhere else in the world—the lack ofrespect for the expert. 

The average American is his own expert in every field. This iscertainly not a reproach. It supplies American public life with animmense amount of energy and readiness to help. Above all, historically, it was the necessary outcome of the political democracy. In striking contrast to the European bureaucracy, any citizen could atany time be called to be postmaster or mayor or governor or member ofthe cabinet. A true American would find his way, however complex thework before him. That was, and is, splendid. Yet the development ofthe recent decades has clearly shown that the danger of this mentalattitude after all appears to the newer American generation alarminglygreat in many fields. Civil service has steadily grown, the influenceof the engineer and the expert in every technical and practical fieldhas more and more taken control of American life, because thego-as-you-please methods of the amateur have shown increasingly theirineffectiveness. Education has slowly been removed from thedilettantic, unprepared school boards. The reign of the expert inpublic life seems to have begun. But in private life such an attitudeis still a part of the mental equipment of millions. They ignore thephysician and cure themselves with patent medicines or mental healing:they ignore the banker and broker and make their investments inaccordance with their own amateurish inspiration. They pick up a fewdata, ask a few friends who are as little informed as themselves, butdo not think of asking the only group of men who make a serious, persistent study of the market their lifework. 

They call this independence, and it cannot be denied that somefeatures of our home and school education may have fostered thistendency not to submit to the judgment of those who know better. Theyhave grown up in schools in which the kindergarten method neverstopped, in which they were permitted to select the studies which theyliked, and to learn just what pleased them; they were brought up inhomes in which they were begged and persuaded, but never forced to dothe unwelcome; in short, they have never learned to submit their willto authority. It cannot be surprising that they fancy that it is theright kind of mental setting to feel one's self the ultimate authorityin every field, and it would be harmless indeed if the patentmedicines would really cure as well as the prescriptions of thephysician, and if the wildcat schemes would really yield the same safeincome as those investments recommended by the reliable banker. It isthen, after all, no chance that this commercially clever Americannation wastes more in anti-economic fancies than any other people onthe globe. It is the outcome of psychological traits which are rootedin significant conditions of our educational and social life. Yet assoon as these connections are recognized and these reasons for wasteare understood, it ought not to be difficult fundamentally to changeall this and to make the savings of the nation everywhere reallysources of national income. 

 IX

 SOCIETY AND THE DANCE

The story of the dance is the history of human civilization, of itsprogress and regress. To be sure, as the human mind remains ultimatelythe same, mankind has often unintentionally returned again to the oldforms. The pirouette, which the artists of the ballet invented ahundred years ago, and which was applauded as the wonder of its time, as we now know, was danced by old Egyptians. Not seldom the same outerforms referred to very different mental motives. We learn that manypeople danced half naked as an expression of humility. Who would claimthat the lack of costume in the ballet of to-day is a symbol ofhumility, too? Moreover, the right perspective can hardly be gained aslong as we take the narrow view and think only of those few forms ofdance which we saw yesterday in the ballroom and the day beforeyesterday on the stage of the theatre. The dance has not meant tomankind only social pleasure and artistic spectacle, it originallyaccompanied the social life and surrounded the individual in everyimportant function. 

Dancing certainly began as a religious cult. It was the form in whichevery increase of emotion expressed itself, grief as well as joy, aweas much as enthusiasm. The primitive peoples danced and in many placesstill dance when the seasons change or when the fields are to becultivated, when they start on the hunt or go to war, when health isasked for the sick, and when the gods are to be called upon. TheIroquois Indians have thirty-two chief types of dances, and even amongcivilized nations, for instance the Bohemians, a hundred andthirty-six dances may be discriminated. Moreover, at first, the danceis really one with the song; music and dancing were only slowly tornasunder. And if we look over the whole world of dance, it almostappears as if what is left to us is after all merely a poor remnant. Yet in these very days much seems to suggest that the dance is to cometo its own again. At least, he who observes the life along Broadwaymay indeed suspect that dancing is now to be intertwined again withevery business of life, and surely with every meal of life. No longercan any hostelry in New York be found without dancing, and wider stillthan the dance sweeps the discussion about it. The dance seems oncemore the centre of public interest; it is cultivated from luncheon tobreakfast; it is debated in every newspaper and every pulpit. 

But is not all this merely a new demonstration that the story of thedance is the story of civilization? Can we deny that this recent crazewhich, like a dancing mania, has whirled over the country, is asignificant expression of deep cultural changes which have come toAmerica? Only ten years ago such a dancing fever would have beenimpossible. People danced, but they did not take it seriously. It wasset off from life and not allowed to penetrate it. It had stillessentially the rôle which belonged to it in a puritanic, hardworkingsociety. But the last decade has rapidly swept away that New Englandtemper which was so averse to the sensuous enjoyment of life, andwhich long kept an invisible control over the spirit of the wholenation. Symptoms of the change abound: how it came about is anotherquestion. Certainly the increase and the wide distribution of wealthwith its comforts and luxuries were responsible, as well as thepractical completion of the pioneer days of the people, the richblossoming of science and art, and above all the tremendous influx ofwarm-blooded, sensual peoples who came in millions from southern andeastern Europe, and who altered the tendencies of the cool-blooded, Teutonic races in the land. They have changed the old American Sunday, they have revolutionized the inner life, they have brought the operasto every large city, and the kinometograph to every village, and haveat last played the music to a nation-wide dance. Yet the problem whichfaces every one is not how this dancing craze arose, but rather whereit may lead, how far it is healthy and how far unsound, how far weought to yield to it or further it, and how far we ought to resist. Toanswer this question, it is not enough to watch the outside spectacle, but we must inquire into the mental motives and mental consequences. Exactly this is our true problem. 

Let us first examine the psychological debit account. No one can doubtthat true dangers are near wherever the dancing habit is prominent. The dance is a bodily movement which aims at no practical purpose andis thus not bound by outer necessities. It is simply self-expression:and this gives to the dancing impulse the liberty which easily becomeslicentiousness. Two mental conditions help in that direction; the meremovement as such produces increased excitement, and the excitementreënforces the movement, and so the dance has in itself the tendencyto become quicker and wilder and more and more unrestrained. When gayVienna began its waltzing craze in the last century, it waltzed to thecharming melodies of Lanner in a rhythm which did not demand more thanabout one hundred and sixty movements in a minute; but soon cameJohann Strauss the father, and the average waltzing rhythm was twohundred and thirty a minute, and finally the king of the waltz, JohannStrauss the younger, and Vienna danced at the rhythm of three hundredmovements. But another mental effect is still more significant thanthe impulse to increase rapidity. The uniformity of the movements, andespecially of the revolving movement, produces a state of halfdizziness and half numbness with ecstatic elements. We know the almosthypnotic state of the whirling dervishes and the raptures in thesavage war dances; all this in milder form is involved in everypassionate dance. But nothing is more characteristic of suchhalf-hypnotic states than that the individual loses control of hiswill. He behaves like a drunken man who becomes the slave of hisexcitement and of every suggestion from without. No doubt many seekthe dancing excitement as a kind of substitute for the alcoholicexaltation. 

The social injury which must be feared if the social communityindulges in such habits of undisciplined, passionate expression needsno explaining. The mind is a unit: it cannot be without self-controlin one department and under the desirable self-discipline of the willin another. A period in which the mad rush of dancing stirs sociallife must be unfavourable to the development of thorough training andearnest endeavour. The fate of imperial Rome ought to be the eternalwarning to imperial Manhattan. Italy, like America, took its art andscience from over the sea, but gave to them abundant wealth. Insteadof true art, it cultivated the virtuosi, and in Rome, which paid threethousand dancers, the dance was its glory until it began ingloriouslyto sink. 

Not without inner relation to the inebriety, and yet distinctlydifferent, is the erotic character of the dance. Lovemaking is themost central, underlying motive of all the mimic dances all over theglobe. Among many primitive peoples the dance is a real pantomimicpresentation of the whole story from the first tender awaking of asweet desire through the warmer and warmer courtship to the rapturesof sensual delight. Civilized society has more or less covered thenaked passion, but from the graceful play of the minuet to thegraceless movements of the turkey trot the sensual, not to say thesexual, element can easily be recognized by the sociologist. Hereagain cause and effect move in a circle. Love excitement expressesitself in dance, and the dance heightens the love excitement. Thiserotic appeal to the senses is the chief reason why the church hasgenerally taken a hostile attitude. For a long while the dance wasdenounced as irreligious and sinful on account of Salome's blasphemousdancing. Certainly the rigid guardians of morality always look askanceon the contact of the sexes in the ballroom. To be sure, the standardsare relative. What appeared to one period the climax of immorality maybe considered quite natural and harmless in another. In earliercenturies it was quite usual in the best society for the young man toinvite the girl to a dance by a kiss, and in some times it was thepolite thing for the gentleman after the dance to sit in the lap ofthe girl. The shifting of opinion comes to most striking expression, if we compare our present day acquiescence to the waltz with the moralindignation of our great-grandmothers. No accusers of the tango to-daycan find more heated words against this Argentine importation than theconservatives of a hundred years ago chose in their hatred of thewaltz. Good society had confined its dancing to those forms of contactin which only the hands touched each other, leaving to the peasantsthe crude, rustic forms, and now suddenly every mother has to see herdaughter clasped about the waist by any strange man. Even the dancingmasters cried out against the intruder and claimed that it wasillogical for a man to be allowed to press a girl to his bosom at thesound of music, while no one would dare to do it between the dances. 

Thus the immorality of our most recent dances may be hardly worse thanthe dancing surprises of earlier fashions, but who will doubt thatthese sensual elements of the new social gayeties are to-dayespecially dangerous? The whole American atmosphere is filled witherotic thought to a degree which has been unknown throughout thehistory of the republic. The newspapers are filled with intra- andextra-matrimonial scandals, the playhouses commercialize the sexualinstinct in lurid melodramas, sex problems are the centre of publicdiscussion, all the old barriers which the traditional policy ofsilence had erected are being broken down, the whole nation isgossiping about erotics. In such inflammable surroundings where thesparks of the dance are recklessly kindled, the danger is imminent. Ifa nation focuses its attention on sensuality, its virile energy mustnaturally suffer. There is a well-known antagonism between sex andsport. Perhaps the very best which may be said about sport is that itkeeps boyhood away from the swamps of sexuality. The dance keepsboyhood away from the martial field of athletics. 

The dance has still another psychological effect which must not bedisregarded from a social point of view. It awakes to an unusualdegree the impulse to imitation. The seeing of rhythmic movementsstarts similar motor impulses in the mind of the onlooker. It is wellknown that from the eleventh to the sixteenth century Europe sufferedfrom dancing epidemics. They started from pathological cases of St. Vitus' dance and released in the excitable crowds cramplike impulsesto imitative movements. But we hear the same story of instinctiveimitations on occasions of less tragic character. It is reported thatin the eighteenth century papal Rome was indignant over the passionateSpanish fandango. It was decided solemnly to put this wild dance underthe ban. The lights of the church were assembled for the formaljudgment, when it was proposed to call a pair of Spanish dancers inorder that every one of the priests might form his own idea of theunholy dance. But history tells that the effect was an unexpected one. After a short time of fandango demonstration the high clerics beganinvoluntarily to imitate the movements, and the more passionately theSpaniards indulged in their native whirl, the more the whole court wastransformed into one great dancing party. Even the Italian tarantellaprobably began as a disease with nervous dancing movements, and thenspread over the land through mere imitation which led to an ecstaticturning around and around. Whoever studies the adventures of Americandancing during the last season from New York to San Francisco must beimpressed by this contagious character of our dancing habits. But thismeans that the movement carries in itself the energy to spread fartherand farther, and to fill the daily life with increased longing for theragtime. We are already accustomed to the dance at the afternoon tea;how long will it take before we are threatened by the dance at thebreakfast coffee?

We have spoken of three mental effects: the license, the eroticism, and the imitativeness which are stirred up by the dancing movements. But in the perspective of history we ought not to overlook anothersignificant trait: the overemphasis on dancing has usuallycharacterized a period of political reaction, of indifference topublic life, of social stagnation and carelessness. When the volcanoeswere rumbling, the masses were always dancing. At all times whentyrants wanted to divert the attention of the crowd, they gave thedances to their people. A nation which dances cannot think, but livesfrom hour to hour. The less political maturity, the more happinessdoes a national community show in its dancing pleasures. The Spaniardsand the Polish, the Hungarians and the Bohemians, have always been thegreat dancers—the Gypsies dance. There is no fear that the NewYorkers will suddenly stop reading their newspapers and voting at theprimaries; they will not become Spaniards. But an element of thispsychological effect of carelessness and recklessness and stagnationmay influence them after all, and may shade the papers which theyread, and even the primaries at which they do vote. 

Yet how one-sided would it be, if we gave attention only to thedangers which the dance may bring to a nation's mind. The creditaccount of the social dance is certainly not insignificant, andperhaps momentous just for the Americans of to-day. The dance is awonderful discharge of stirred up energy; its rhythmic form relievesthe tension of the motor apparatus and produces a feeling of personalcomfort. The power to do this is a valuable asset, when so muchemotional poverty is around us. The dance makes life smooth in themidst of hardship and drudgery. For the dancer the cup is alwaysoverflowing, even though it may be small. There is an element ofrelaxation and of joyfulness in the rhythm of the music and thetwinkling of the feet, which comes as a blessing into the dulness andmonotony of life. The overworked factory girl does not seek rest forher muscles after the day of labour, but craves to go on contrastingthem in the rhythmic movements of the dance. So it has been at alltimes. The hardest worked part of the community has usually been themost devoted to the gayety of popular dances. The refined society hasin many periods of civilization declined to indulge in dancing, because it was too widely spread among the lowest working classes intowns and in the country. The dance through thousands of years hasbeen the bearer of harmless happiness: who would refuse a welcome tosuch a benefactor? And with the joyfulness comes the sociability. Thedance brings people near together. It is unfair to claim that thedance is aristocratic, because it presupposes leisure and luxury. Onthe contrary, throughout the history of civilization the dance hasbeen above all, democratic, and has reënforced the feeling of goodfellowship, of community, of intimacy, of unity. Like the populargames which melt all social groups together by a common joyfulinterest, and like humour which breaks all social barriers, the lovefor dancing removes mutual distrust and harmonizes the masses. 

This social effect has manifold relation to another aspect of thedance, which is psychologically perhaps the deepest: the dance is anart, and as such, of deep æsthetic influence on the whole mental life. Whenever the joy in dancing comes into the foreground, this art isdeveloped to high artificiality. No step and no movement is left tothe chance inspiration of the moment; everything is prescribed, and tolearn the dances not seldom means an almost scientific study. In thegreat dancing periods of the rococo time the mastery of the exactrules appeared one of the most difficult parts of higher education, and as a real test of the truly cultivated gentleman and gentlewoman;scholarly books analysed every detail of the necessary forms, and thesociety dances in the castles of the eighteenth century were moreelaborate than the best prepared ballets on the stage of to-day. Butthe popular dances of the really dancing nations are no less bound bytraditions, and we know that even the dances of the savages are movingon in strictly inherited forms. Far from the license of haphazardmovements, the self-expression of the dancer is thus regulated andbound by rules which are taken by him as prescriptions of beauty. Todance thus means a steady adjustment to artistic requirements; it isan æsthetic education by which the whole system of human impulsesbecomes harmonized and unified. The chance movements are blended intoa beautiful whole, and this reflects on the entire inner setting. Educators have for a long time been aware that calisthenics, with itssubtly tuned movements of the body, develops refinement in theinterplay of mental life. The personality who understands how to livein gentle, beautiful motions through that trains his mind to beauty. In Europe, for instance in Hellerau near Dresden, they have recentlybegun to establish schools for young men and women in which the main, higher education is to be moulded by the æsthetics of bodilyexpression, and the culture of the symbolic dance. 

This æsthetic character of the dance, however, leads still further. Itis not only the training in beautiful expression; it is thedevelopment of an attitude which is detached from practical effectsand from the practical life of outer success. The dance is an actionby which nothing is produced and nothing in the surroundings changed. It is an oasis in the desert of our materialistic behaviour. Frommorning till night we are striving to do things, to manufacturesomething in the mill of the nation: but he who dances is satisfied inexpressing himself. He becomes detached from the cares of the hour, heacquires a new habit of disinterested attitude toward life. Who canunderestimate the value of such detachment in our American life? TheAmericans have always been eagerly at work, but have never quitelearned to enjoy themselves and to take the æsthetic attitude whichcreates the wonders of beauty and the true harmonies of life. Toforget drudgery and to sink into the rhythms of the dance may bring tomillions that inner completeness which is possible only when practicaland æsthetic attitude are blending in a personality. The one meansrestless change; the other means repose, perfection, eternity. Thishardworking, pioneer nation needs the noisy teachings of efficiencyand scientific management less than the melodious teaching of song anddance and beauty. In short, the dance may bring both treacherousperils and wonderful gifts to our community. It depends upon uswhether we reënforce the dangerous elements of the dance, or thebeneficial ones. It will depend on ourselves whether the dance willdebase the nation, as it has so often done in the history ofcivilization, or whether it will help to lead it to new heights ofbeauty and harmony, as it has not seldom done before. Our socialconscience must be wide awake; it will not be a blind fate which willdecide when the door of the future opens whether we shall meet thelady or the tiger. 

 X

 NAÏVE PSYCHOLOGY

The scientific psychologists started on a new road yesterday. For along time their chief interest was to study the laws of the mind. Thefinal goal was a textbook which would contain a system of laws towhich every human mind is subjected. But in recent times a change hasset in. The trend of much of the best work nowadays is toward thestudy of individual differences. The insight into individualpersonalities was indeed curiously neglected in modern psychology. This does not mean that the declaration of psychological independenceinsisted that all men are born equal, nor did any psychologist fancythat education or social surroundings could form all men in equalmoulds. But as scientists they felt no particular interest in therichness of colours and tints. They intentionally neglected thequestion of how men differ, because they were absorbed by the study ofthe underlying laws which must hold for every one. It is hardlysurprising that the psychologists chose this somewhat barren way; itwas a kind of reaction against the fantastic flights of the psychologyof olden times. Speculations about the soul had served for centuries. Metaphysics had reigned and the observation of the real facts of lifeand experience had been disregarded. When the new time came in whichthe psychologists were fascinated by the spirit of scientific methodand exact study of actual facts, the safest way was for them toimitate the well-tested and triumphant procedures of natural science. The physicist and the chemist seek the laws of the physical universe, and the psychologist tried to act like them, to study the elementsfrom which the psychical universe is composed and to find the lawswhich control them. But while it was wise to make the first forwardmarch in this one direction, the psychologist finally had toacknowledge that a no less important interest must push him on anopposite way. The human mind is not important to us only as a type. Every social aim reminds us that we must understand the individualpersonality. If we deal with children in the classroom or withcriminals in the courtroom, with customers in the market or withpatients in the hospital, we need not only to know what is true ofevery human being; we must above all discover how the particularindividual is disposed and composed, or what is characteristic ofspecial groups, nations, races, sexes, and ages. It is clear that newmethods were needed to approach these younger problems of scientificpsychology, but the scientists have eagerly turned with concertedefforts toward this unexplored region and have devoted the methods oftest experiments, of statistics, and of laboratory measurements to theexamination of such differences between various individuals andgroups. 

But in all these new efforts the psychologist meets a certain publicresistance, or at least a certain disregard, which he is notaccustomed to find in his routine endeavours. As long as he was simplystudying the laws of the mind, he enjoyed the approval of the widerpublic. His work was appreciated as is that of the biologist and thechemist. But when it becomes his aim to discover mental features ofthe individual, and to foresee what he can expect from the socialgroups of men, every layman tells him condescendingly that it is asuperfluous task, as instinct and intuition and the naïve psychologyof the street will be more successful than any measurements withchronoscopes and kymographs. Do we not know how the skilful politicianor the efficient manager looks through the mind of a man at the firstglance? The life insurance agent has hardly entered the door before heknows how this particular mind must be handled. Every commercialtraveller knows more than any psychologist can tell him, and even thewaiter in the restaurant foresees when the guest sits down how large atip he can expect from him. In itself it would hardly be convincing toclaim that scientific efforts to bring a process down to exactprinciples are unnecessary because the process can be performed byinstinct. We all can walk without needing a knowledge of the muscleswhich are used, and can find nourishment without knowing thephysiology of nutrition. Yet the physiologist has not only brought tolight the principles according to which we actually eat, but he hasbeen able to make significant suggestions for improved diet, and innot a few cases his knowledge can render services which no instinctiveappetite could replace. The psychological study of human traits, too, may not only find out the principles underlying the ordinary knowledgeof men, but may discover means for an insight which goes as far beyondthe instinctive understanding of man as the scientific diet prescribedby a physician goes beyond the fancies of a cook. The manager maybelieve that he can recognize at the first glance for which kind ofwork the labourer is fit: and yet the psychological analysis with themethods of exact experiments may easily demonstrate that his judgmentis entirely mistaken. Moreover, although such practical psychologistsof the street or of the office may develop a certain art ofrecognizing particular features in the individual, they cannotformulate the laws and cannot lay down those permanent relations fromwhich others may learn. 

Yet even this claim of the psychological scholar seems idle pride. Hadthe world really to wait for his exact statistics and his formulæ ofcorrelation of mental traits in order to get general statements anddefinite descriptions of the human types and of the mentaldiversities? Are not the writings of the wise men of all times full ofsuch psychological observations? Has not the consciousness of thenations expressed itself in an abundance of sayings and songs, ofproverbs and philosophic words, which contains this naïvepsychological insight into the characters and temperaments of thehuman mind? We may go back thousands of years to the contemplations oforiental wisdom, we may read the poets of classic antiquity, orShakespeare, or Goethe, we may study what the great religious leadersand statesmen, the historians and the jurists, have said about man andhis behaviour; and we find an over-abundance of wonderful sayingswith which no textbooks of psychology can be compared. 

This is all true. And yet, is it not perhaps all entirely false? Canthis naïve psychology of the ages, to which the impressionism and thewisdom of the finest minds have so amply contributed, really makesuperfluous the scientific efforts for the psychology of groups andcorrelations and individual traits? It seems almost surprising thatthis overwhelmingly rich harvest of prescientific psychology has neverbeen examined from the standpoint of scientific psychology, and thatno one has sifted the wheat from the chaff. The very best would be notonly to gather such material, but to combine the sayings of the naïvepsychologists in a rounded system of psychology. In all ages theysurely must have been among the best observers of mankind, as evenwhat is not connected with the name of an individual author, but isfound in proverbs or in the folk-epics of the nations, must haveoriginated in the minds of individual leaders. My aim here is moremodest: I have made my little pilgrimage through literature to findout in a tentative fashion whether the supply of psychology, outsideof science, is really so rich and valuable as is usually believed. What I wish to offer, therefore, is only a first collection ofpsychological statements, which the prescientific psychologists haveproclaimed, and surely will go on proclaiming, and ought to go onproclaiming, as they do it so beautifully, where we scientists havenothing but tiresome formulæ. 

Let us begin at the beginning. There has never been a nation whosecontemplation was richer in wisdom, whose view of man was subtler andmore suggestive, than those of old India. The sayings of itsphilosophers and poets and thinkers have often been gathered in largevolumes of aphorisms. How many of these fine-cut remarks about mancontain real psychology? The largest collection which I could discoveris that of Boehtlinck, who translated seventy-five hundred Indiansayings into German. Not a few of them refer to things of the outerworld, but by far the largest part of them speaks of man and of man'sfeeling and doing. But here in India came my first disappointment, adisappointment which repeated itself in every corner of the globe. After carefully going through those thousands of general remarks, Icould not find more than a hundred and nine in which the observationtakes a psychological turn. All those other thousands of reflectionson men are either metaphors and comparisons of distinctly æstheticintent, or rules of practical behaviour with social or moral orreligious purpose. Yet even if we turn to this 1½ per cent. Whichhas a psychological flavour, we soon discover that among those hundredand nine, more than a half are simply definitions of the type of this:“Foolish are they who trust women or good luck, as both like a youngserpent creep hither and thither, ” or this: “Men who are rich are likethose who are drunk; in walking they are helped by others, theystagger on smooth roads and talk confusedly. ” It cannot be said thatany psychological observations of the fool's or of the rich man's mindare recorded here. If I sift those maxims more carefully, I cannotfind more than two score which, stripped of their picturesquephrasing, could really enter into that world system of naïvepsychology. And yet even this figure is still too high. Of thoseforty, most are after all epigrams, generalizations of some chancecases, exaggerations of a bit of truth, or expressions of a mood ofanger, of love, of class spirit, or of male haughtiness. The analysisof woman's mind is typical. “Inclination to lies, falsehood, foolishness, greediness, hastiness, uncleanliness, and cruelty areinborn faults of the woman”; or “Water never remains in an unbakedvessel, flour in a sieve, nor news in the mind of women”; or “The mindof a woman is less stable than the ear of an elephant or the flash oflightning. ” On the other hand we read: “True women have twice as muchlove, four times as much endurance, and eight times as much modesty asmen”; or “The appetite of women is twice as large, their understandingfour times as large, their spirit of enterprise six times as large, and their longing for love eight times as large as that of men. ” Againwe read: “The character of women is as changeable as a wave of thesea; their affection, like the rosy tint of a cloud in the eveningsky, lasts just for a moment”; or “When women have a man's money, theylet him go, as he is no longer of any use to them. ”

The same one-sidedness and epigrammatic exaggeration can always befelt where whole groups of men are to be characterized. “The faults ofthe dwarf are sixty, of the red-haired man eighty, of the humpback ahundred, and of the one-eyed man innumerable. ”

But let us rather turn to sayings in which the subtlety ofpsychological observation deserves admiration: “The drunkard, thecareless, the insane, the fatigued, the angry, the hungry, the greedy, the timid, the hasty, and the lover know no law”; “If a man commits acrime, his voice and the colour of his face become changed, his lookbecomes furtive, and the fire is gone from his eye”; “The best remedyfor a pain is no longer to think of it; if you think of it, the painwill increase”; “A greedy man can be won by money, an angry man byfolding the hands, a fool by doing his will, and an educated man byspeaking the truth”; “The wise man can recognize the inner thoughts ofanother from the colour of his face, from his look, from the sound ofhis words, from his walk, from the reflections in his eyes, and fromthe form of his mouth”; “The good and bad thoughts, however much theyare hidden, can be discovered from a man when he talks in his sleep orin his drunkenness”; “The ignorant can be satisfied easily, and stillmore easily the well educated, but a man who has become confused by alittle knowledge cannot be won over even by Brahma”; “Good people arepacified by fair treatment, even if they have been very angry, but notcommon people; gold, though it is hard, can be melted, but not grass”;“By too great familiarity we produce low esteem, by too frequentvisits, indifference; in the Malaja mountains a beggar woman uses thesandalwood tree for firewood”; “The silly man steps in without beinginvited, talks much without being questioned, and trusts him who doesnot deserve confidence”; “New knowledge does not last in the mind ofthe uneducated any more than a string of pearls about the neck of amonkey”; “The inner power of great men becomes more evident in theirmisfortune than in their fortune; the fine perfume of aloes wood isstrongest when it falls into the fire”; “The anger of the best manlasts an instant, of the mediocre man six hours, of the common man aday and a night, and the rascal will never get rid of it”; “Thescholar laughs with his eyes, mediocre people show their teeth whenthey laugh, common people roar, and true men of wisdom never laugh”;“Truthfulness and cleverness can be found out in the course of aconversation, but modesty and restraint are visible at the firstglance”; “Grief destroys wisdom, grief destroys scholarship, griefdestroys endurance; there is no perturbation of the mind like grief. ”Often we hardly know whether a psychological observation or a metaphoris given to us. In any case we may appreciate the fineness of a sayinglike this: “Even a most translucent, beautiful, perfectly round andcharming pearl can be strung on a thread as soon as it has beenpierced; so a mind which longs for salvation, perfectly pure, freefrom quarrel with any one and full of goodness, will nevertheless bebound down to the earthly life as soon as it quarrels with itself. ” Onthe borderland of psychology we may find sayings like these: “As atailor's needle fastens the thread in the garment, so the thread ofour earthly life becomes fastened by the needle of our desires”; “Anelephant kills us if he touches us, a snake even if he smells us, aprince even if he smiles on us, and a scoundrel even if he adores us. ”But there is one saying which the most modern psychologist wouldaccept, as it might just as well be a quotation from a report of thelatest exact statistics. The Indian maxim says: “There is truth in theclaim that the minds of the sons resemble more the minds of thefathers, those of the daughters more those of the mothers. ”

We may leave the banks of the Ganges and listen to the wisdom ofEurope. Antiquity readily trusted the wonderful knowledge of men whichHomer displays. He has instinctively delineated the characters withthe inner truth of life. How far was this art of the creative poetaccompanied by the power of psychological abstraction? I do not thinkthat we can find in the forty-eight books of Homer even a dozencontributions to our unwritten system of the naïve psychology of thenations. To be sure we ought not to omit in such a system thefollowing reflections from the “Odyssey”: “Wine leads to folly, makingeven the wise to love immoderately, to dance, and to utter what hadbetter have been kept silent”; or “Too much rest itself becomes apain”; or still better, “The steel blade itself often incites todeeds of violence. ” We may have more doubt whether it ispsychologically true when we read: “Few sons are equal to their sires, most of them are less worthy, only a few are superior to theirfathers”; or, “Though thou lovest thy wife, tell not everything whichthou knowest to her, but unfold some trifle while thou concealest therest. ” From the “Iliad” we may quote: “Thou knowest the over-eagervehemence of youth, quick in temper, but weak in judgment”; or, “Noblest minds are easiest bent”; or, “With everything man issatiated—sleep, sweet singing, and the joyous dance; of all these mangets sooner tired than of war. ” Some may even doubt whether Homer'spsychology is right when he claims: “Even though a man by himself maydiscover the best course, yet his judgment is slower and hisresolution less firm than when two go together. ” And in the alcoholquestion he leaves us a choice: “Wine gives much strength to weariedmen”; or if we prefer, “Bring me no luscious wines, lest they unnervemy limbs and make me lose my wonted powers and strength. ”

It is not surprising that the theoretical psychology of the Bible isno less meagre. Almost every word which deals with man's mind reflectsthe moral and religious values and is thus removed from purepsychology into ethics. Or we find comparisons which suggestivelyilluminate the working of the mind without amplifying ourpsychological understanding. We approach empirical psychology mostnearly in verses like these: “Foolishness is bound in the heart of thechild, but the word of correction should drive it far from him”; or“He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much;and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much”; or“Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant”; or“The full soul loatheth an honeycomb, but to the hungry soul everybitter thing is sweet”; or “For if any man be a hearer of the word andnot a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass, for he beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straightway forgettethwhat manner of man he was”; or “Sorrow is better than laughter, for bythe sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. ” But here wehave almost overstepped the limits of real psychology; we are movingtoward ethics. Nor can we call metaphors like this psychology: “Hethat hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is brokendown and without walls. ”

Let us turn for a moment to the greatest knower of men in mediævaldays, to Dante. How deeply his poetic eye looked into the hearts ofmen, how living are the characters in his “Divine Comedy”; and yet heleft us hardly any psychological observations. Some psychology may beacknowledged in words like these: “The man in whose bosom thought onthought awakes is always disappointed in his object, for the strengthof the one weakens the other”; “When we are wholly absorbed byfeelings of delight or of grief, our soul yields itself to this oneobject, and we are no longer able to direct our thoughts elsewhere”;“There is no greater grief than to remember our happy time in misery. ”It is hardly psychology if we hear, “The bad workman finds fault withhis tools”; or, “Likeness ever gives birth to love”; or “The wisestare the most annoyed to lose time. ”

From Dante we naturally turn to Shakespeare. We have so often heardthat he is the greatest psychologist, and yet we ought not to forgetthat such a popular classification does not in itself really mean thatShakespeare undertakes the work of the psychologist. It does mean thathe creates figures with the temperament, character, thought, and willso similar to life and so full of inner mental truth that thepsychologist might take the persons of the poet's imagination asmaterial for his psychological studies. But this by no means suggeststhat Shakespeare phrased abstract judgments about mental life; and aswe seek his wisdom in his dramatic plays, it may be taken for grantedthat in this technical sense he must be a poor psychologist, becausehe is a great dramatist. Does not the drama demand that every wordspoken be spoken not from the author's standpoint, but from theparticular angle of the person in the play? And this means that everyword is embedded in the individual mood and emotion, thought, andsentiment of the speaker. A truly psychological statement must begeneral and cannot be one thing for Hamlet and another for Ophelia. The dramatist's psychological sayings serve his art, unfolding beforeus the psychological individuality of the speaker, but they do notcontribute to the textbooks of psychology, which ought to beindependent of personal standpoints. And yet what a stream of versesflows down to us, which have the ring of true psychology!

 “Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep. ”

 “Trifles light as air Are to the jealous confirmation strong As proofs of holy writ. ”

 “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such sharp fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. ”

 “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. ”

 “Present fears Are less than horrible imagining. ”

 “Too swift runs as tardy as too slow. ”

 “Never anger made good guard for itself. ”

 “Anger is like A full-hot horse; who being allow'd his way Self-mettle tires him. ”

 “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind. ”

 “All things that are, Are with more spirit chased than enjoy'd. ”

 “Celerity is never more admir'd Than by the negligent. ”

 “Strong reasons make strong actions. ”

 “The whiteness in thy cheek Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand. ”

 “The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. ”

 “Sweet love, I see, changing his property, Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate. ”

 “Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs. ”

 “I do not know the man I should avoid So soon as that spare Cassius; he reads much; He is a great observer. . . . ”

And so on. 

 * * * * *

We all know it, and we know it so well and feel so much with Cæsar orwith Lear or with Othello or with Macbeth, that we instinctively takeit all for true psychology, while it after all covers just theexceptional cases of the dramatic situation. 

No! If we are to seek real generalities, we must not consult theplaywright. Perhaps we may find the best conditions for generalstatement where we do not even have to deal with an individual, butcan listen to the mind of the race and can absorb its wisdom from itsproverbs. Let us take the word proverb in its widest sense, includingpopular sayings which have not really the stamp of the proverb. Thereis surely no lack of sharply coined psychology. This is true of allcountries. I find the harvest richest in the field of the Germanproverbs, but almost as many in the field of the English, and a largenumber of sayings are common to the two countries. Verycharacteristic psychological remarks can be found among the Russianproverbs, and not a few among those in Yiddish. But this type ofpsychology is sufficiently characterized, if we confine ourselves hereto the English proverbial phrases. Often they need a commentary inorder to be understood in their psychological truth. We hear in almostall countries: “Children and fools speak the truth. ” As a matter ofcourse we all know that their chance of speaking the objective truthis very small. What is psychologically tenable is only that they areunable to hide the subjective truth. Many such phrases are simplyepigrams where the pleasure in the play of words must be a substitutefor the psychological truth; for instance: “Long hair and short wit. ”Not a few contradict one another, and yet there is not a little wisdomin sayings like these: “Beware of a silent dog and still water”;“Misery loves company”; “Hasty love is soon hot and soon cold”; “Dogsthat put up many hares kill none”; “He that will steal an egg willsteal an ox”; “Idle folks have the least leisure”; “Maids say no andtake”; “A boaster and a liar are cousins german”; “A young twig iseasier twisted than an old tree”; “Imitation is the sincerestflattery”; “Pride joined with many virtues chokes them all”;“Offenders never pardon”; “The more wit, the less courage”; “We aremore mindful of injuries than of benefits”; “Where there's a will, there's a way”; “An idle brain is the devil's workshop”; “Anger andhaste hinder good counsel”; “Wise men change their minds, foolsnever”; “Sudden joy kills sooner than excessive grief”; “Lazy folkstake the most pains”; “Nature passes nurture”; “Necessity is themother of invention”; “We are apt to believe what we wish for”; “Whereyour will is ready, your foot is light. ”

All these proverbs and the maxims of other nations may be true, butcan we deny that they are on the whole so trivial that a psychologistwould rather hesitate to proclaim them as parts of his scientificresults? As far as they are true they are vague and hardly worthmentioning, and where they are definite and remarkable they are hardlytrue. We shall after all have to consult the individual authors togather the subtler observations on man's behaviour, even though theyfurnish only semi-naïve psychology. But the English contributions areso familiar to every reader that it may be more interesting to listento the foreigners. Every nation has its thinkers who have thereputation of being especially fine knowers of men. The French turnmost readily to La Rochefoucauld, and the Germans to Lichtenberg. Certainly a word of La Rochefoucauld beside the psychologizing proverblooks like the scintillating, well-cut diamond beside a moonstone. “Weimitate good actions through emulation, and bad ones through amalignity in our nature which shame concealed and example sets atliberty”; “It is much easier to suppress a first desire than tosatisfy those that follow”; “While the heart is still agitated by theremains of a passion, it is more susceptible to a new one than whenentirely at rest”; “Women in love more easily forgive greatindiscretions than small infidelities”; “The reason we are not oftenwholly possessed by a single vice is that we are distracted byseveral. ” But is this not ultimately some degrees too witty to betrue, and has our system of prescientific psychology the right to openthe door to such glittering epigrams which are uttered simply totickle or to whip the vanity of man? Or what psychologist wouldbelieve Lichtenberg when he claims: “All men are equal in their mentalaptitudes, and only their surroundings are responsible for theirdifferences”? He observes better when he says: “An insolent man canlook modest when he will, but a modest man can never make himself lookinsolent”; or when he remarks: “Nothing makes a man old more quicklythan the thought that he is growing older”; or “Men do not think sodifferently about life as they talk about it”; or “I have always foundthat intense ambition and suspicion go together”; or “I am convincedthat we not only love ourselves in loving others, but that we alsohate ourselves in hating others. ” Often his captivating psychologicalwords are spoiled by an ethical trend. For instance, he has hardly theright to say: “In the character of every man is something which cannotbe broken; it is the skeleton of his character. ” But he balances suchpsychological rashness by fine observations like these: “The characterof a man can be recognized by nothing more surely than by the joke hetakes amiss”; and “I believe that we get pale from fright also indarkness, but I do not think that we would turn red from shame in thedark, because we are pale on our own account, but we blush on accountof others as well as on account of ourselves. ” And we are in the midstof the up-to-date psychology when we read what he said a hundred yearsago: “From the dreams of a man, if he report them accurately enough, we might trace much of his character, but one single dream is notsufficient; we must have a large number for that. ”

I add a few characteristic words of distinctly psychological temperfrom the great nonpsychological authors of modern times. Lessingsays: “The superstition in which we have grown up does not lose itspower over us when we see through it; not all who laugh about theirchains are free”; or again, “We are soon indifferent to the good andeven to the best, when it becomes regular”; “The genius lovessimplicity, while the wit prefers complexity”; “The characteristic ofa great man is that he treats the small things as small, and theimportant things as important”; “Whoever loses his mind from lovewould have lost it sooner or later in any case. ” But on the whole, Lessing was too much of a fighter to be truly an objectivepsychologist. We may put more confidence in Goethe's psychology:“Where the interest fades away, the memory soon fails, too”; “Thehistory of man is his character”; “From nature we have no fault whichmay not become a virtue, and no virtue which may not become a fault”;“A quiet, serious woman feels uncomfortable with a jolly man, but nota serious man with a jolly woman”; “Whatever we feel too intensely, wecannot feel very long”; “It is easy to be obedient to a master whoconvinces when he commands”; “Nobody can wander beneath palms withoutpunishment; all the sentiments must change in a land where elephantsand tigers are at home”; “A man does not become really happy untilhis absolute longing has determined its own limits”; “Hate is anactive displeasure, envy a passive one, and it is therefore notsurprising that envy so easily turns into hate”; “No one can produceanything important unless he isolate himself”; “However we may strivefor the general, we always remain individuals whose nature necessarilyexcludes certain characteristics, while it possesses certain others”;“The only help against the great merits of another is love”; “Manlongs for freedom, woman for tradition”; “A talent forms itself insolitude, a character in the stream of the world”; “The miracle is thedearest child of belief”; “It is not difficult to be brilliant if onehas no respect for anything. ”

Whoever falls into the habit of looking for psychologizing maxims inhis daily reading will easily bring home something which he picks upin strolling through the gardens of literature. Only we must always beon our guard lest the beautifully coloured and fragrant flowers whichwe pluck are poisonous. Is it really good psychology when Vauvenargueswrites: “All men are born sincere and die impostors, ” or, whenBrillat-Savarin insists: “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell youwho you are”? Or can we really trust Mirabeau: “Kill your conscience, as it is the most savage enemy of every one who wants success”; orKlopstock: “Happiness is only in the mind of one who neither fears norhopes”; or Gellert: “He who loves one vice, loves all the vices”? Canwe believe Chamfort: “Ambition more easily takes hold of small soulsthan great ones, just as a fire catches the straw roof of the hutsmore easily than the palaces”; or Pascal: “In a great soul, everythingis great”; or the poet Bodenstedt when he sings: “A gray eye is a slyeye, a brown eye is roguish and capricious, but a blue eye showsloyalty”? And too often we must be satisfied with opposites. Lessingtells us: “All great men are modest”; Goethe: “Only rascals aremodest. ” The psychology of modesty is probably more neatly expressedin the saying of Jean Paul: “Modest is he who remains modest, not whenhe is praised, but when he is blamed”: and Ebner-Eschenbach adds:“Modesty which comes to consciousness, comes to an end. ”

But in our system of naïve psychology, we ought not to omit suchdistinctly true remarks as Rabelais' much-quoted words: “The appetitecomes during the eating”; or Fox's words: “Example will avail tentimes more than precept”; or Moltke's: “Uncertainty in commandingproduces uncertainty in obedience”; or Luther's: “Nothing isforgotten more slowly than an insult, and nothing more quickly than abenefaction. ” It is Fichte who first said: “Education is based on theself-activity of the mind. ” Napoleon coins the good metaphor: “A mindwithout memory is a fortress without garrison. ” Buffon said whatprofessional psychologists have repeated after him: “Genius is nothingbut an especial talent for patience. ” Schumann claims: “The talentworks, the genius creates. ” We may quote from Jean Paul: “Nobody inthe world, not even women and princes, is so easily deceived as ourown conscience”; or from Pascal: “Habit is a second nature whichdestroys the original one. ” Nietzsche says: “Many do not find theirheart until they have lost their head”; Voltaire: “The secret of ennuiis to have said everything”; Jean Paul: “Sorrows are like the cloudsin a thunderstorm; they look black in the distance, but over us hardlygray. ” Once more I quote Nietzsche: “The same emotions are differentin their rhythm for man and woman: therefore men and women never ceaseto misunderstand each other. ”

This leads us to the one topic to which perhaps more naïve psychologyhas been devoted than to any other psychological problem, the mentaldifference between men and women. Volumes could be filled, and Ithink volumes have been filled, with quotations about this eternalsource of happiness and grief. But if we look into those hundreds ofthousands of crisp sayings and wise maxims, we find in the material ofmodern times just what we recognized in the wisdom of India. Almostall is metaphor and comparison, or is practical advice and warning, oris enthusiastic praise, or is maliciousness, but among a hundredhardly one contains psychology. And if we really bring together suchpsychologizing observations, we should hardly dare to acknowledge thatthey deserve that right of generality by merit of which they might bewelcomed to our psychological system. Bruyere insists: “Women areextreme; they are better or worse than men”; and the same idea isformulated by Kotzebue: “When women are good they stand between menand angels; when they are bad, they stand between men and devils. ”Rousseau remarks: “Woman has more esprit, and man more genius; thewoman observes, and the man reasons. ” Jean Paul expresses the contrastin this way: “No woman can love her child and the four quarters of theglobe at the same time, but a man can do it. ” Grabbe thinks: “Manlooks widely, woman deeply; for man the world is the heart, for womanthe heart is the world. ” Schiller claims: “Women constantly return totheir first word, even if reason has spoken for hours. ” Karl JuliusWeber, to whom German literature has to credit not a few psychologicalobservations, says: “Women are greater in misfortune than men onaccount of the chief female virtue, patience, but they are smaller ingood fortune than men, on account of the chief female fault, vanity. ”Yet as to patience, a German writer of the seventeenth century, Christoph Lehmann, says: “Obedience and patience do not like to growin the garden of the women. ” But I am anxious to close with a morepolite German observation. Seume holds: “I cannot decide whether thewomen have as much reason as the men, but I am perfectly sure thatthey have not so much unreason. ” And yet: “How hard it is for women tokeep counsel, ” and how many writers since Shakespeare have said thisin their own words. 

The poets, to be sure, feel certain that in spite of all these innercontradictions, they know better than the psychologists, and wheretheir knowledge falls short, they at least assure the psychologistthat he could not do better. Paul Heyse, in his booklet ofepigrammatic stanzas, writes a neat verse which, in clumsy prose, says: “Whoever studies the secrets of the soul may bring to lightmany a hidden treasure, but which man fits which woman no psychologistwill ever discover. ” To be sure, as excuse for his low opinion of uspsychologists, it may be said that when he wrote it in Munich thirtyyears ago there was no psychological laboratory in the university ofhis jolly town and only two or three in the world. But to-day we havemore than a hundred big laboratories in all countries, and even Munichnow has its share in them, so that Heyse may have improved on hisopinion since then. But in any case we psychologists do not take ourrevenge by thinking badly of the naïve psychology of the poets and ofthe man on the street. Yet we have seen that their so-calledpsychology is made up essentially of picturesque metaphors, or ofmoral advice, of love and malice, and that we have to sift big volumesbefore we strike a bit of psychological truth; even then, how often ithas shown itself haphazard and accidental, vague and distorted! Themathematical statistics of the professional students of the mind andtheir test experiments in the laboratories are certainly lesspicturesque, but they have the one advantage that the results aretrue. Mankind has no right to deceive itself with half-true, naïvepsychology of the amateur, when our world is so full of socialproblems which will be solved only if the aptitudes and the workingsof the mind are clearly recognized and traced. The naïve psychology issometimes stimulating and usually delightful, but if reliablepsychology is wanted, it seems after all that only one way is open—toconsult the psychologists. 

 THE END

 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 

 BOOKS BY HUGO MÜNSTERBERG

 Psychology and Life, Boston, 1899 Grundzüge der Psychologie, Leipzig, 1900 American Traits, Boston, 1902 Die Amerikaner, Berlin, 1904 The Americans, New York, 1904 Principles of Art Education, New York, 1905 The Eternal Life, Boston, 1905 Science and Idealism, Boston, 1906 Philosophie der Werte, Leipzig, 1907 On the Witness Stand, New York, 1908 Aus Deutsch Amerika, Berlin, 1908 The Eternal Values, Boston, 1909 Psychotherapy, New York, 1909 Psychology and the Teacher, New York, 1910 American Problems, New York, 1910 Psychologie und Wirtschaftsleben, Berlin, 1912 Vocation and Learning, St. Louis, 1912 Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, Boston, 1913 American Patriotism, New York, 1913 Grundzüge der Psychotechnik, Leipzig, 1914 Psychology and Social Sanity, New York, 1914

 TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Obvious printer's errors have been fixed. See below for the full list. The list of books by Hugo Münsterberg has been moved from thebeginning to the end of the project. 

 Errors fixed

page viii—typo fixed: changed 'pyschology' to 'psychology'page 067—typo fixed: changed 'pulsebeat' to 'pulse-beat'page 086—spelling normalized: changed 'world-wide' to 'worldwide'page 281—typo fixed: changed 'mratial' to 'martial'page 283—spelling normalized: changed 'onesided' to 'one-sided'page 299—spelling normalized: changed 'onesidedness' to 'one-sidedness'page 315—typo fixed: changed 'Eschenback' to 'Eschenbach'