HE PHILOSOPHY HELPFULNESS. Philosophy of Helpfullness By PRINCE HOPKINS, Ph. B., M. A. Vol. I. PIONEER PRINTERS 420-422 Sixth Street South Minneapolis, Minn. TO MY MOTHER tho her views so differ from those herein expressed THIS BOOK like my "INSTINCTIVE PHILOSOPHY" of which it is in part an enlargement IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED Let it be a small token of appreciation for my nurture and for the many battles she has fought for me as boy and as man. COVER DESIGN The cover design represents the waters of helpfulness welling forth to revivify all living things. Vulcan symbolizing creative effort, and Buddha symbolizing analytic calm, are both reflected in the fountain. Three steps of ascent are represented from the boggy level of corrupt liv- ing to the pure surface of the fount. Overhead hang three fruits, intensity, permanency and universality of hap- piness. Acknowledgement is made to Miss Edith Ordway for her valuable as- sistance in digesting certain books. INTRODUCTION The strength of any excitation, and the conse- quences of past performances modify all our na- tive tendencies. This fact accepted, we are moved by four primal urges: the hunger-motive, the love-motive, and their counterparts, the rejection or flight-motive and the combat-motive the more specific reflexes and instincts derived from these may therefore be classified as nutritive, amative, rejective or combative. Our nutritive impulses are usually draughted into the scramble to obtain material goods faster than our desires for ever more and more of such goods can grow. Perceiving unconsciously the hopelessness of this endeavor for all but an un- scrupulous minority, most of us become disheart- ened. The writer's object is to relieve this dis- heartenment by sublimating the nutritive urge into the channel of striving toward co-operative living. As a hopeful way of realizing in our life- time some of the happiness of non-competitive communism, we contribute this plan, which we ourselves practice, namely: Let the devotee oc- casionally find a time when it will be convenient to take a brief holiday away from his possessions and from his accustomed associations. During that holiday let him live communistically, cleav- ing to no property but helping wherever he can 2 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS without taking pay ; then returning to resume his possessions and old routine until such time as con- venient to again try this adventure in the long run repeating these ventures after ever shorter intervening periods. Let him urge others to join with him. Our amative impulses now vent themselves in procreating too numerous children, thus adding to our and the community's burden of support, or else in regaling "that stream of emotions we call our soul" with religion, thus holding back both ourselves and society from many forms of growth. Our object in this book is to sublimate the ama- tive urge rather into artistic creation (the ma- terial of the highest art and highest creation is not the bodies but the characters of children) and into impartiality. Our rejective impulses now turn into ostracism or harsher punishment of those who are morally sometimes only economically weaker than we are; but doing this destroys our touch with hu- manity and ends only in embittering both our victim and ourselves. While resistence to evil is necessary, its harmful incidental effects can be avoided and we can maintain our nature sweet, only if we sublimate part of the rejective impulse into some self -humiliating penance on ourselves as the condition of our repressing another person. At all times it is well to sublimate some of our re- jective tendency into the form of a mild asceti- cism. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 3 Finally, the combative impulses now largely find their outlet in an en masse handling of living beings ; and this method brutalizes them and our- selves. We endeavor to sublimate the combative tendency into a glorious fight for social justice, thru helping to unite all those who agree to these ideas into an association whose controlling com- mittee shall consist, one part of electives of full members of the association, namely persons the most active in service of its ideals, one part of electives of associate members, and one part (to safeguard minorities) of electives of persons who are undergoing whatever maximum punishment or restriction the association ever inflicts. We're telling you here the whole of our plans, so you may be under no misconception. They're elucidated in more detail in the pages which fol- low. This book has been made large enough to in- clude a fairly comprehensive amount of material, necessitated by the controversial nature of some of the points argued for herein. Consequently there are portions of it which are not adapted to the general reader. He should "skip" these pas- sages entirely, or he will simply become lost in a maze. Thus, you would best omit all the pages from page 50 thru page 82. You should at first reading glance thru the remainder of the book and judiciously select those sections which are of interest to you. CHAPTER NO. I This book is simply one of the means which occur to us for gathering together a group of people who will put into practice the ideas of con- duct expressed herein. In that sense it's a re- ligious book, hence most every chapter is in part given to description of such beliefs and religious usages as are pertinent to the topic in hand. Then may come psychological and other criticisms, lead- ing up to the suggestion of what conduct would be the very best among members of an ethical society like that which we're forming. The topic of the present chapter is the possibility and rela- tive merits of making Heaven to be here, on earth, rather seeking it beyond the stars. SECTION NO. I "But evil is wrot by want of thot. As well as by want of heart." We shall commence this book and chapter with a consideration of certain superstitious origins. Like the rest of the work, however, this is only meant to be suggestive and won't attempt to pre- sent any topic of finished form. In each chapter we shall follow the plan of treating the chapter topic with respect to how it concerns corrupted characters under the head of section 1 ; in respect to how it concerns normally PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 5 haphazard types under head of section 2; in re- spect to the viewpoint of selfish advantage, under section 3, and in respect to the viewpoint of the man wishing to help others under section 4. The topic of this first chapter is animism, the primitive way of thinking about the universe which treats every object as tho it were alive and as tho it did whatever it does, intentionally. Each person has a tendency to regard not only other persons and animals but everything else, as being like what he knows best, himself. Hence, if a tree falls upon him, the child or the savage reads into its action his own feelings, and may be- come enraged against what he regards as its evil intention. Later, when ideas of supernatural agencies have been elaborated, the various spirits and demons are similarly endowed with the pas- sions and other characteristic of the worshipper himself, or those which were outstanding in per- sons of authority with whom he early came into contact. Each of us, for instance, forms a con- ception which greatly affects his subsequent life, from his father and his mother ; the former gen- erally representing to him power, and the latter, love. The individual "projects" his childhood's father-concept (in particular) into his supersti- tious beliefs, or where we are dealing with races and not with individuals, into his myths. The idea of God will be found in each race to be an in- dex to the relationship of the father to the family, 6 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS not only do individuals whose recollection of their father as a severe authoritarian tend to be- lieve in a God of similar characteristics, but races for example the Hebrews during the patri- archial epoch reflect the paternal characteristics with which they have become familiar into their concepts of the deity. This matter is related closely to the Freudian concept of incest-complexes of which we may find evidences in the myths of all nations. The most usual examples given are the myths of Oedipus and of Electra. It will be remembered that ac- cording to the Greek story an Oracle had foretold that Oedipus would live to kill his father and marry his mother. His father commanded that he be killed to prevent this happening; but his mother turned him over to some peasants who brot him up as their own son. In later life they sent him out to seek his fortune. He encountered, without recognizing, his father upon the road and killed him in combat. Presently the people of the king his father's city chose him to be their ruler and he married the queen whom he did not know to be his mother. Dire disasters falling upon the city, he made investigation and discovered the true facts. The story of Electra similarly relates how she usurped her mother's place. These two myths seem to represent a projection of a conflict which exists in every individual and is expressed by children sometimes naively in the form "Daddy, when mother dies, will you marry me?" PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 7 In adult life so crude and barbarous a desire is suppressed from the conscious part of the mind as unworthy, but it still remains in the uncon- scious. Here it may give rise to dreams which seem to us not possibly to represent our true wishes as for example a dream that our parent of the same sex is dead. Another form which this fantasy takes is the wish to go back to those earliest conditions of natal or even prenatal existence when all our wants were satisfied by the mother and respon- sibilities had not yet come to exist for us. Myths representing this conception usually disguise the wish for re-birth under some such conception as that of the hero who is killed and resurrected. The. most evident forms of this conception are represented in stories like those of Mithra and of Christ, both of whom, as you probably know, were killed and then resurrected; but another form that the story takes is seen, for example, in that of the Babylonian Fish-God Cannes, who comes out of the sea to bring gifts and blessings to man- kind, returns again into the sea, etc. Submer- gence under the sea representing equally the condi- tions before birth and after death. Similarly there is the Egyptian myth of Osiris who is be- trayed into the hands of the demon Set (Note that the hero never dies in fair combat, but al- ways thru betrayal.) The pieces into which Set cuts Osiris' body are scattered to the corners of the heavens, but are brought together by his faith- 8 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS f ul sister-wife, so that he is resurrected again in the form of the young rising sun Horus. The descent and rise of the sun are taken in all re- ligions, as emblematical of death and resurrec- tion. Many primitive people believe that a great dragon swallows the sun in the evening and swims back towards the east under the ocean and that when he is approaching the eastern horizon the sun-hero manages from inside the monster's belly to deal a death thrust at its heart ; then he cuts his way out and re-appears glorious at dawn. You will perhaps recall that in the Old Testament are references to Leviathans and to the struggle of old against the overwhelming waters which biblical students account for as a faint survival of the old Babylonian story of the creation. .Con- sider also the story of Jonah who is swallowed by the whale, is carried under the sea and then is vomited forth upon the land to continue his work of redemption. Baptism as practiced in various religions represents, in symbolical form, drown- ing and re-birth to the new and spiritual life. How the symptoms of a neurotic may be sym- bolical satisfactions of the libido, or body of his desires, has been shown by neurologists. In the normal individual, his dreams subserve similar but less intense cravings and protect his sleep from disturbance by emotion. In the Ethnic group, its myths or its religion play the same role. As we said, the concept of the godhead corre- sponds almost invariably to the character of the PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 9 father. In patriarchial ages, God is a severe judge; in civilized times he is more gentle and forgiving. For each individual, too, the national god-ideal is sure to be modified by the demands of his personal father-complex. In these pages we shall review some of the principal world-viewpoints that man has thot out for himself since first he arrived at sufficient in- telligence to opine at all upon such matters. The most primitive types of belief proceed from animistic superstitions. (1) Savage man attrib- utes the movements of trees, etc., to the spirits that inhabit all objects, and control is sought over the objects by directing attention on these spirits. (2) The spirit is separable from its physical habitants. (3) The spirit itself, tho somewhat impalpable, yet is distinguished from grosser ma- terial only by the degree of its density, for not until Descartes' day was drawn the modern sharp differentiation between "mind" and "matter." Indeed, to the Greeks the "spirit" of a thing wasn't far from synonymous with our idea of its Purpose as if the "spirit" of a hunting-dog were Pursuit of Game, etc. The animistic attitude even credits beasts with living in families, having magic, etc. One point that must always be noted when we're concerned with the origin of religions is that it is the tendency of primitive men, as we note it is the tendency with children, to regard all things as more or less like themselves and to 10 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS attribute even to objects that we would call dead volition. For example, a child who has been hurt by catching his finger in the door will fly into a rage and beat the door as tho the latter had been guilty of an intentional offense. If this tendency is so innate, you mustn't be surprised that when men had begun to hold a theory of every object having its double or spirit, they should very read- ily justify such actions as that of the angry child, upon the ground that the spirit within the object that had injured them was evilly motived toward them, and if they showed themselves resentful toward the object, such rage might modify its future conduct even as their anger might affect the conduct of a living creature. This is the atti- tude called animism. Its growth and development are due to it seemingly to offer a new means of controlling the forces of nature. The present writer has observed primitive re- ligions only in Hawaii and Java ; and in both those countries vestiges that are left of the primitive beliefs of the natives are -corrupted by Mohamme- dan and Christian additions. The dwellers on the Hawaiian Islands are today largely Christians, and in Java they are mainly Mohammedans, al- though in both these countries primitive practices still persist to some extent. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Ha- waiian beliefs was their veneration for the power- ful spirits which are supposed to dwell in the vol- canoes. But we ought to go back first to the ques- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 11 X tion of how these people ever got the notion of spirits at all. On inquiring into the analogous beliefs of people like ourselves, we find that for the most part, we moderns accept a good deal of material that has been handed down by tradition. But by looking far enough back into the past, one comes to the time when the very earliest beliefs were beginning to be evolved. If there is any truth in the theory of human evolution and no competent judge today any longer denies this hypothesis there must have been a period when our race was just becoming human and intelli- gent, and ceasing any longer to be animals moti- vated only by instincts that were unmodified by reflection. As man is preeminently the potential- ly intelligent animal, so he is also preeminently the animal gifted with imagination. In common with other creatures, men dream; and that not only at night, but in their daytime reveries. But whereas the lower animals can hardly be presumed to seek for their dreams any rational explanation, it is the characteristic of men that they try in some intellectual way to har- monize all the less comprehended phenomena of life with phenomena already more or less familiar. We moderns explain dreams as products of our inner desires that find in the form of reveries the satisfactions which are denied them in the living world of reality. The material of which these dreams are constructed, or as one might say, the garments in which unconscious desires clothe 12 themselves, are experiences and pictures taken over bodily from the world of real phenomena. The savage, however, hasn't advanced far enough to explain his dreams in such terms. He still retains a good deal of the lower animals' con- fusion of inner subjective experience with objec- tive reality. At night he dreams that his friends have been moving about and talking to him, but upon awakening he repeatedly discovers that as a matter of fact they were all the time quietly asleep in their own tepees and deny all knowledge of the nocturnal adventures that he attributes to them. Of this there seems to him only one ex- planation possible; that is, that his friends have doubles, so that while one form reposed in the tent, another went on journeys. What more nat- ural that that he should consider their own shadows (shades) as being these doubles. An identical curiosity about shadows is evinced by children. Their feeling has been well expressed by Stevenson 1 : "I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than 1 can see; He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head, And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. "The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow: Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; For he sometimes shoots up taller like an India rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all. 1 Stevenson, R. L. My Shadow. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 13 "He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play, And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way; He stays so close beside me, he's a coward, you can see; I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me. "One morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.'" When, in course of time, a class of men were evolved whose superior learning and cleverness enabled them to Jive by their wits upon the cre- dulity of the tribe, and so to enjoy leisure for thot, these began to ask themselves, "What is the na- ture of this double ?" "What's the nature, what's the meaning of life itself?" The reason why there has been so much dis- agreement on this great matter is that people, be- fore trying to solve it, haven't asked themselves, "First of all, just what do we intend our question to mean?" A story relates that a peasant and his son were sitting in the shade of their oak tree, when several strangers came along the road. "How do you like my oak tree?" asked the peasant of the first of these. The stranger responded, "Oh, it's an excellent bit of wood ; yes, an excellent bit of wood!" "So it is, Mr. Lumberman," returned the peasant ; then he put the same question .to the second stranger. "What do you think of my tree?" The second, having answered, "Oh, what fine acorns to fatten hogs upon !" our peasant re- plied, "So they be, Mr. Farmer," and turned to 14 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS the last of the three with his question, "How do you like my tree?" When the last of the men had answered, "What a roost from which to pick off the enemy's officers!" the peasant rejoined, "Quite so, Mr. Sharpshooter!" By this time the peasant's small son was getting curious. "Dad, how did you know that those guys were a lumber- man, a farmer and a sharpshooter?" So his father told him, "It was by the way they under- stood my question. The question was the same in wording, but to no two of the men did it have the same meaning, because no two were of the same trade !" So, with people who tried to answer satisfactorily the question of "What is Life?" the chief trouble has been that they didn't agree on what they all meant by their query. Now, the writer is interested in life from the point of view of a psychologist, and his friend Jameson from that of a lawyer, while Greenbie is a writer, and you are what you are. Is there, then, no one class that'll include us all? Yes, for whatever else we are, we're interested in living life. What we all want to know is, how more successfully to live. Life is full of possibilities; they're its sun-light ; it is full of failures ; they're its shadows: what we want is neither the mere light nor shade, qua light or shade, but from the clues they give us, to realize the truth behind. To no less a realization than this should you be con- tented that these pages should bring you hints of : PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 15 shall we, therefore, carry our query into meta- physics ? "Yes, of course," you admit. "My question is more in the province of the metaphysician. Mr. Metaphysician, can you tell us what is Life?" "Yes," says Mr. Metaphysician, "I can give you half a hundred explanations. Choose any one of them, or none of them, and I will disprove all the others for you, whichever they are." This is very kind of him and very obliging ; but reader, if you are of the same mind with the writer, you'll decide that all his fifty explanations so ingeniously proven and disproven, only show that he doesn't know much more about the matter than did we. His earnest and persistent inquiry after these elusive things, however, at least ought to encourage us not wholly to give up hope of finding answer some day, provided we avoid the entanglements of the purely metaphysical method. You've heard people say, with an air of positive- ness that's in strange contradiction to the content of their own words, that "the human mind, altho it can believe this or that, never can know any- thing positively." You have heard that when old Socrates preached about the value of knowledge, certain men asked him to tell them what knowl- edge was, and thereby utterly confounded him. But that we can know is what, after some pre- liminary explanations, we propose to prove, by actually giving you a definition of Truth. First, let us introduce two big words: "phe- 16 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS nomenon" and "noumenon." Phenomenon means an event in the material world, such as a feeling or a thot. Phenomena are going on about us all the time; rocks crumble away, rivers glide into the sea, or the wheels of the factories spin around ; other phenomena are the secretion of juices by the body, the contracting and relaxing of muscles, the growth of nerve-fibres, and the readjustment of brain-structure. Examples of noumena, on the contrary, are pleasure, pain, seeing, hearing, emo- tion, memories, imaginings, and all the fantasies and facts of mind. Now, in such creatures as you and we are, the inner phenomena of secretion, adjustment of cells, etc., go on in a different way because of, and after the occurrence of, outside phenomena such as, e. g., the bringing in of a tempting dish of food. But at the same time as the inner phenomena change their way of going on, the noumena also change. If the change of inner phenomena be, in the above case of food brot in, a change to a greater secretion of digestive juices and altera- tions in certain nerve cells, the corresponding change of noumena may be a change from what- ever train of thot previously was going on, to an expectation of the act of eating. All this time certain associations are being formed. Thru what mechanism is no matter j ust yet. But after some experience, the noumenon "anticipation of eating" doesn't await the actual sight of the food set on the table before us, but, e. g., arises so soon PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 17 as we see mother come into our nursery with a certain form of vessel in her hand, which in the past always has contained food. Now, let's represent the phenomena in this case by capital letters; let: E stand for Entrance of mother with a pink bowl. U stand for Uncovering of bread-and-milk within the bowl. F stand for Feeding of us by mother with said bread-and-milk. M stand for mouthing by us of the bread-and- milk. Then day after day the succession of phe- nomena which takes place is: E, U, F, and M. Let's represent the noumena in the same case by small letters; let: e stand for hearing and seeing mother Enter with the bowl. u stand for seeing and smelling the bread-and- milk, as Uncovered. / stand for feeling the spoon put into our mouth, Feeding. ra stand for taste and muscular sensations due to Mouthing. Then day after day the succession of noumena which takes place is: e, u, f, and m. Now, the point is that a time comes when so soon as phe- nomenon E has hit off noumenon e, the noumena u, f, and m take their cue direct from e, and don't wait till U, F, and M have occured. Result, 18 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS noumenon m precedes, instead of following, the phenomenon which normally used to give it birth, M; the sensations of mouthing anticipate the mouthing itself ; you think of the meal so soon as you see the mother. But one day mother brings, in her bowl, not food, but floor-polish. At first blush everything is as before ; phenomenon E is present and there- fore quite properly gives rise to noumenon e. But, from long association, e, u, f and m, the final term m, is Truth if independently a phenomenon M does occur, which, if it gave rise to any noumenon directly, would give rise to the noumenon m. Conversely, m is Falsehood in all other cases. But while it's good to be reassured that truth isn't altogether unattainable by man, we still are a long way from finality today. On those supreme questions which we were just discussing almost hourly comes the influx of new discoveries which make us skeptical of the sacred dogmas ! At this instant there's before the writer an item 2 headed "Where Was Soul of Girl During Time She Was 'Dead'?" in which the wondering newspaper writer asks "Where did the soul of Anna Loben- stein go when heart action ceased for 120 seconds ? "That question, resulting from the now famous case, in which a surgeon who had just operated on the Schenectady girl when respiration stopped, 2 New York, May 26, 1917. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 19 placed his hand within the abdominal cavity and massaged the life-giving organ until it returned to its normal work, has aroused discussion." Immediately below is an item : "Dr. Walter B. Cannon, professor of physiology at the Harvard Medical School, has perfected a scientific means of bringing back the departed spark of animal life. He declares that if the new method should be employed in each and every case of death a large percentage of the supposed inanimate bodies could be revived. The method consists of the introduction of a tube or catheter into the pharynx, pulling up the tongue, forcing the back part of it against the roof of the mouth by pres- sure applied far back under the chin," etc. Maeterlinck's book, "Death," is written for the reassurance of those whom religious teachings or morbid contemplations have filled with fears of the hereafter. We regret to say that he commits "the one sin in philosophy, superficiality." In so brief a volume it is impossible to go at all deeply into any phase of the subject. The alternatives are to give a mere summary of the possible argu- ments, or else to resort to general statements with- out proof. Maeterlinck, with his love of beauty and mysticism, of course chooses this latter way. After some preliminaries, he states that "Out- side the religions, there are four imaginable solu- tions and no more: total annihilation; survival with our consciousness of today ; survival without any sort of consciousness; lastly, survival with 20 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS universal consciousness different from that which we possess in this world." Annihilation is un- acceptable because (here Maeterlinck is dog- matic) "We are prisoners of an infinity without outlet, wherein nothing perishes." Our conscious- ness of today is too dependent on senses and bod- ily "organs that create and nourish it," to survive the corporeal demise. Of the other two postulates, cessation of all consciousness certainly offers no grounds for fear, since then "what comes is the great peace so often prayed for, the sleep without measure, without dreams and without awaken- ing ;" whereas to blend our being with that of the universe (the fourth possibility) would be to achieve great bliss. This author also bids us have no doubts but that the whole tendency of the universe is toward its greater felicity, for "If it be unhappy, that means that it willed its own un- happiness; if it will its unhappiness, it is mad; and, if it is mad, that means that our reason . . . judge what it wholly fails to understand." But let's return to our savage pondering over his dream and its implication that while a friend's body was reposing quietly on the ground, a form of similar outward appearance was actually wandering about and visiting him during the night. At other times our savage dreams that he himself has gone abroad and camped again at the scene of experiences of former years. His family tell him that during the whole of the night they saw the light of the camp-fire playing upon PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 21 his immoveable form so that they knew he re- mained there with them and had not gone else- where. So he is driven to the conclusion that he himself also has his double and that this double has been abroad conversing with the doubles of his friends and the doubles also of trees, animals and inanimate objects. He comes thus to think that both he himself and his friends and his dog and even stones and mountains all have their dupli- cates in a mysterious phantom world. When he comes to speculate upon what these doubles may be, several phenomena present them- selves for his consideration. There is, for ex- ample, his shadow. It follows him about during all the day and then disappears at night. It has essentially the same form as himself, so that he might very easily suppose it to be recognized by other persons. It seems capable of movements mimicking his own, a fact from which he is very ready to induce that it is endowed with its own will and powers of movement. Hence the word "shade" is used in the sense of soul. At other times the savage catches sight of his reflection in a quiet pool. There he sees not only very perfect presentation of his form, but its likeness even in color and fine matters of detail. Such an image is always puzzling to uninstructed minds; you know how wonderfully Carrol has portrayed a child's imaginings about it, in "Thru the Looking Glass." Thirdly, the savage notes that when they're 22 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS active, men breathe violently; whereas they breathe more gently during sleep, and cease to breathe altogether when at last death overtakes them. So he comes to think of the breath of which he has caught sight on cold frosty days as perhaps also representing the double which so mysteriously comes and goes. Sleep, indeed, to the savage, is thought of as more akin to death than we today are apt to think it, and, for that reason, the most ignorant peoples (here falsely so called) usually have none of the terror at death which is found among peoples who have submitted to "the benefit of clergy" and rejoice in highly artificial religions. Lastly, a fourth class of phenomena which con- vinces the savage of the reality of spirits has been given altogether too little consideration by most of the writers upon this topic. In our day there is still great interest in so-called spirit-mediums persons who go into a trance state and then pre- tend to have communication with souls of the departed. We'll return to this matter presently. In a dis- cussion-group which we held, of adults, we at this point asked the members of the class to give us some summary of their own beliefs in regard to the soul. One man said that he believed we all had souls, for the reason that the Bible so taught. He, however, was the only member who seemed to place his belief upon this authoritative standard (if, indeed, he could have found in the PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 23 Bible an unequivocal justification for his asser- tion) . The other members mostly inclined to the opinion that the matter was incapable of definite proof one way or the other. A majority declared that they couldn't easily conceive of their essen- tial self, their inner consciousness, as ever ceas- ing altogether to exist. We said that we our- selves were inclined toward this attitude, not be- cause we could justify it upon any theoretical, or, much less, scientific, grounds, but admittedly be- cause we lacked the capacity to imagine ourselves absolutely "going out" like a candle flame. How- ever, it seemed to us that we must rigidly exclude from the possibility of continued survival, all those faculties of the mind which under the heads of memory, reason, benevolence, etc., it has been customary to associate with the word "soul." That while we might conceive of an inner self as passing into the body of another animal or under- going some other kind of transition, yet any soul necessarily must leave behind all recollections of a former life ; hence those so-called proofs of con- tinued existence which sometimes are offered, namely, the alleged memories of former exist- ences, must be put out of court. This was be- cause all our higher mental operations depend upon sensations, memories, etc., and there was more than mere speculative reason there was considerable scientific evidence for believing that the capacity for having sensations, etc., in- heres in brain structure. It seems to be a fair in- 24 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ference from what we already know of the de- pendence of mental activity upon brain structure, to doubt the old theory, that the soul and not the brain is the ultimate seat of mental activity and that the brain is "only an instrument." Today that theory is in a precarious position. It was a custom among the Hawaiians to pay great reverence to the bones of their departed ANCIENT CHINESE MEMORIAL TABLET chiefs, because the soul was thot to hover around these enduring portions of the anatomy of the deceased. It became highly important, therefore, to bury the body of their relatives in proper fash- ion in order that their spirits mightn't continue to go mooning about in the night. Savages be- lieve that these spirits are often very malicious toward those who in real life were their friends PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 25 or even relatives. For example, one traveller tells how a woman was warned by her dying husband not to follow his funeral quite to the grave be- cause he was afraid his spirit would then eat her. When, as a matter of fact, she forgot his warning and did follow too far, his ghost was on the point of doing her serious injury, only at the last mo- ment she thought to call on the names of the gods. Often tablets and wooden figures are con- structed by friends of a dying man, in the expecta- STONE FIGURES IN JAVA tion that his spirit will take up its abode in one. These figures or stones are reared to invite friendly demons to make their home here and ward off those less well-disposed. In the picture shown herewith, you'll see two big stone figures of this kind in Java ; and in another picture hun- dreds of little idols set upon the top of a wall in Madura that look like gaily painted dolls made out of plaster. 26 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS The veneration given to idols is due to belief not that the actual blocks of stone are inherently possessed of any supernatural power, but simply that these form convenient dwelling places for departed spirits or for ghosts. "For," argues the savage, "if spirits have a fondness for inhabiting IDOLS ON A GARDEN WALL IN MADURA living bodies, mayn't they be supposed to attach themselves to the stone representations that we make of such forms?" Fetishes are symbols to the worshipper him- self of the power resident in a deity, just as, for example, to the lovelorn young man the slipper or handkerchief of his sweetheart may bring back to him the emotions which he more properly might be supposed to feel only in her actual pres- ence. Almost any kind of object may be used by 27 the savage as a fetish, and he comes to believe a certain supernatural power to inhere in the fetish by virtue of the spirits that are attracted to it. Spirits are supposed very often also to take up their abodes in the bodies of animals; and this idea has given rise to many weird tales, as also to things which, from our point of view are hu- morous. Mr. Thacher, headmaster of a school the writer attended, received a complaint from his Chinese cook that the cat was killing chickens. "Then why don't you kill the cat?" asked Mr. Thacher. "I no likee," answered the Chinaman, "maybe he my glanmother. ! 3 " An interesting example of the desire to secure hin^lf from being haunted by the spirits of ani- mals that he had slain is shown in the photograph herewith submitted of a number of animals that were placed in this old Chinese temple by a man who had been a great hunter. The guide told us that every time this ancient gentleman had killed a deer or a tiger or whatever it might be, he had had one of these wooden likenesses constructed to safeguard him from the creature's ghost, which might naturally be expected to feel toward him a certain resentment. Savages also believe that the spirits of departed men may take up their abodes in the bodies of wild animals ; and if they are disposed evilly, they may inhabit some vicious creature such as the 3 Grandmother. 28 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS tiger. You have probably heard of were-wolves ; wolves into the bodies of which demons or malevo- lent ghosts have entered in order in a fearful way to prey upon those who were perhaps the ghosts' tribal brothers. A similar superstition is preva- lent among the Slav people of parts of Europe. They believe that a departed spirit or devil will take up his residence in a dead body, the blood of which, for this reason, continues to remain liquid ; these spirits, going about at night to do harm, are IN THE ANIMAL TEMPLE, PEKIN known as vampires. The most blood-curdling witch story in fiction is based upon this religion. It is now out of print, but sometimes you can ob- tain an old copy. The title is "Dracula." Probably the belief in reincarnation arose from the fact that often a child was born who bore re- semblance of body and perhaps of mind also to some member of the family who recently had died. The natural inference by savages who understood little of heredity, was that the spirit which had so recently departed had now come back again to its friends in the form of the newly born child. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 29 The child would sometimes be greeted in a way indicating this belief. We asked the above mentioned adult discussion class to give their own "reactions to" the idea of transmigration. None of them seemed to oppose the idea except the two members who absolutely disbelieved in any idea of the survival after death. These two members seemed to consider that con- sciousness was a sort of product of those activ- ities which go on in the body, in the same sense that a water spout is a product of certain arrange- ments of a pipe with a nozzle and a proper supply of water, and they thought as soon as the bodily activities ceased, the stream of consciousness must "go out" just as absolutely as the fountain might cease to spout when someone turns off the water, or as the flame of a candle "goes out" when it is extinguished. It seemed to the writer that a good approach to a discussion of this question would be to ask what function consciousness plays in animal life. Since all animals apparently are endowed with consciousness we might expect that endowment with consciousness was a product of natural selection. We might anticipate that the creatures which were conscious had, by the fact of that quality, some survival-value in the strug- gle for existence, over creatures which conceiv- ably were pure automatons. More specifically, the function of consciousness in the animal auton- omy might very well be the bringing together of various sensations into one general feeling. If a 30 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS person looks at some object, each portion of that object throws its image upon a particular part of the retina of the observer's eye, but if the per- son now moves to a different position and again regards the object, all parts of that object are now thrown on to entirely new parts of the eye and yet we are somehow able to recognize the object as the same. Without pretending to give an explanation which could be regarded as scientific, possibly we may draw an analogy that will be in some ways helpful. We might suppose, for example, that each brain-cell engaged in the process of intellectualizing the seen object were to send out its own particular kind of radiations and that somewhere in the brain or near it were located some single particle (to be called the Self) which would be affected simultaneously by their radiations from all these different cells at once. Or it would partake, let us say, of a certain vibra- tory backward and forward motion imparted by one cell and with a certain rotary motion im- parted by another cell. In this way we might represent in the physical terms how this one central particle could unify thru itself the vari- ous motions received from the many different brain-cells, and thus could be able to reflect back to the brain a single type of motion synthesized from all. Of course the above must be regarded as only a very crude way of representing the functions of a conscious self. But perhaps it will do to illustrate the point that, supposing such PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 31 consciousness-units (which you may call selves or souls or by whatever other name) to exist separately from corporeal bodies, then the fact that they could be useful to living beings might in the course of time result in this : that if there could be evolved upon the earth organisms able to draw these selves to them, as boats upon the sea are drawn into whirlpools, then necessarily the law of the survival of the fittest would account for the existing fact that the organized creatures which inhabit the world are the creatures equipped to draw to them consciousnesses. The feeling that even inanimate objects are motived by their own volition, not only explains the attitude of savages toward the world around them, it not only explains their curious religious customs and their willingness to make sacrifices to the lesser and greater spirits which they feel to inhabit the river which may rush down and overwhelm their canoe, and the sun in heaven which they recognize as the source of warmth and light. Animism also gives rise to those proced- ures which we include under the name magic. The most simple form of magic is the endeavor to cause good or evil to distant persons by sub- jecting to good or evil, figures, likenesses of these persons. It's roughly true that like things tend to act in like ways, similar things tend to ex- perience similar feelings, etc. If one knows how a tawny giraffe will behave, he can guess pretty well how a black giraffe will behave. If the small 32 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS cherries are devoured by birds, probably the large cherries likewise will be devoured by birds. So the savage argues, that if thru the clay figure which he makes to look like his enemy he thrusts his spear, then a spear is likely and in a similar way to pierce his real enemy. We show you herewith a snapshot of an effigy of the Kaiser being guarded by a French soldier. You see, these old dispositions still continue to work their effects on the human mind. The sol- dier, guarding "Guillaume," of course, doesn't be- lieve that he could bring any real misfortune upon the Kaiser by hitting his figure, and yet to mal- treat the effigy does seem to afford a certain satis- faction. The primitive man took such things a little more seriously; that's all. You remember how in the fall of 1917 the people in Chicago car- ried an effigy of Mayor Thompson thru the city in an automobile and afterwards publicly burned it to show their disapprobation of his tolerance of the former American principle of free speech. Playing up this almost innate superstition, the medicine men of savage tribes manage to per- suade such of their dupes as have any enemy whom they wish to injure that they, the medicine men, know the most effective means of insuring such injury. If the tribe plans to go on the war path, the medicine men are called into council and employ their magic art to cause sickness to spread among the foe. Of course if, by coinci- dence, disease does spread in the enemy's camp, EFFIGY OF THE KAISER. 34 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS the most is made of this fact, and the prestige of the medicine men rises by leaps and bounds. Here is the true origin of Mrs. Eddy's famous M. A. M. 4 One is reminded, too, of the story of a clergyman who was asked "to pray for Lucy Gray." Regularly the prayers of the congrega- tion went up for her until one day the pastor was, by the same parties as before, told, with thanks, that the prayers no longer were required for Lucy Gray. "Has she died?" queried the pastor? "0, no, indeed," came the answer, "she's won the steeplechase!" He became the most popular pastor in the history of the parish. Particularly are shamans in vogue for the cure of diseases. Since time immemorial, certain types of disease have been curable thru the agency of faith. It's no matter whether the faith be reposed in the "miracles" performed at the Cathedral of Lourdes, or reposed in John Alex- ander Dowie, or in the incantations of Christian Scientists, or in the presence of a New Thought healer, or in bread-pills administered by a mod- ern medical practitioner; no matter whether the faith is that of the pilgrims to the Temple of Asculapius in Ancient Greece, or still earlier tem- ples of the ancient pagan world, or finally whether the faith is that imposed in the primitive medi- cine man. The cure of disease seems to be ef- fected with equal efficacy. What the New Thot healer doesn't happen to cure, the Christian 4 "Malicious animal magnetism." PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 35 scientists may, and the man on whom the Chris- tian scientists are powerless, may get the bene- fit of a miracle at Lourdes, and whoever gets no action at Lourdes, may still hope for benefits from some witch-doctor from the negro quarter. There is the best of biblical authority for de- moniac possession. This belief, that sick per- sons were suffering from the ejection from their bodies of their own proper souls, and habitation of those bodies by demons who had, so to speak, "squatted" in the vacated premises, is now so far from our present thinking that for us mod- erns it's difficult to see how mankind ever held such a conviction. Not so, however, if you bear in mind certain phenomena which still remain somewhat difficult for us to explain scientifically. We refer to that general group of psychoses known as hysterias, neurosies, comas, etc., and to epileptic seizures. Indeed, Dr. Hyslop of Bos- ton recently told the writer that he (Hyslop) had reverted to the theory that these neurosies are true cases of spirit-possession ! What is more natural than for the savage to explain as due to the agency of malevolent spirits the conduct of a man who, suddenly ceas- ing to act in normal fashion, falls upon the ground, writhes in apparent agony, foams at the mouth, etc? Have you ever seen a group of epi- leptics gathered together in a room? A clinic where several of them are assembled is a very extraordinary sight. You'll see a circle of these. 36 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS persons seated in the waiting room as calm and dignified as anyone else. But they are like a lot of quiescent geysers in the Yellowstone National Park, when it isn't time for them to erupt. Then, suddenly, with even less warning than those gey- sers would give, one or more of the persons pres- ent will perhaps throw back his head and laugh hysterically for exactly six minutes, or whatever his particular time-interval may be, and then be- come quiet and dignified again just as suddenly. In the meantime, some other party may enter upon a violent crying fit, and after the seizure has passed away and the period of quiescence that succeeds it has passed away also, another such fit will seize the person. We knew of a case, a boy, who was always a very good child and espe- cially very affectionate and kind to his mother, only at intervals of about two weeks, he would be seized with an almost homicidal attack, would as- sault his mother, would pick up a hatchet and at- tack furniture or even attack persons, and would simply run amuck for a short time. Then he would, of his own accord, become again perfectly good and sweet for another two weeks. When in a savage tribe such a seizure would take place, the medicine man would be called in. The latter would go through various weird ceremonies, the epileptic seizure would pass off, and the medicine man would receive the credit for effecting a wonderful cure. It is just as to- day; if you get a cold in the head you take pills PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 37 for it, and when the cold, through the natural course of nature, has passed off, you recommend the wonderful medicine to all your friends. Hysterias have pretty well been shown by psy- choanalysts to be by-products of sexuality; and in the case of certain comas, etc., Freud and other writers of this school have made out a very strong case. They have shown, too, that the phenomena of hypnotism must be diagnosed sim- ilarly. The effect of hypnotism in religion we shall discuss in Chapter II. The illogical dogmatism of religious people sometimes reminds one of the Scotchman who maintained that all the greatest writers had been Scots. "What about Shakespeare," someone asked, "he wasn't Scotch, was he?" "Weel," re- plied the daughty highlander, "Shakespeare's tal- ents would justify the supposeetion that he was." Three years ago we found ourselves in Java, where a great mixture of superstitions were to be studied. At Buitenzorg, all evening the peo- ple were helping the Chinese element among them celebrate a sort of left-over New Year's. Many merchants entertained the populace with native dancers and players on the "gamelong." The dancers sometimes by the masks they wore, and in their attitudes, imitated the witch or spirit figures that are embroidered on their batic^ work. But for that matter, the bible definitely stands for belief in witches. Manasseh "used enchant- 38 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a fa- miliar spirit, and with wizards." 3 Isaiah speaks of "Wizards that peep and mutter."" "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." 7 "A man also or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death." 7 A distinctly Eastern belief, that the material world is an illusion, and that nothing truly exists but ideas, is finding its way into the west. Thomas Reid (1710-1796) combated this pretty effective- ly. His points were that (1) the actual percep.- tion of an object is clear and steady compared to mere imagining of it, and contrasts with "knowledge about," (2) Our belief always varies with clearness (likeness to near perception), for eye-witnesses are most credited in a courtroom, and even skeptical philosophers as a matter of fact do credit their senses in the very act of pick- ing out an object in order to dispute whether or not it has a real existence; and (3) Reasons never make sense-perceptions more irresistible than they previously were. Perhaps the best argument of all is that if ma- terial-objects are only errors of mind, we never could experience surprise. What is the philosophy under discussion but a refusal to look facts in the face? There's an illustration to be had from the intellectual world today, so ludicrously ex- S II Coron. 33:6. e lsa. 8 :19. 'Ex. 22:18. "Lev. 20:27. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 39 treme that it would have astonished our grand- parents more than would the wireless telegraph or an airship. Who'd have predicted that the age in which Science, a system of thinking that's tacitly materialistic, has justified its essential soundness, would be the age to revive the denial that a material universe exists. "I was told," said Pundita Ramabai, 9 "on com- ing to New York that a new philosophy was being taught in the United States; but when I asked what its teachings were I recognized it as being the same philosophy that has been taught my people for four thousand years. It has wrecked millions of lives and caused immeasurable suffer- ing and sorrow in my land, for it is based upon selfishness, and knows no sympathy or compas- sion." The last phrase of this accusation would seem to accord at least with the words, "Sympathy with sin, sorrow, and sickness would dethrone God as Truth" 10 . "The Los Angeles Times, one morning last August, published the details of the arrest of one of our citizens who had allowed a horse to suffer acutely from colic, explaining that he was giving the horse treatment. It is reported by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals that the horse in its awful suffering had beaten both sides of its head upon the ground until they were raw, The noted helper of the "little widows" in Bombay, India. 10 Harker, P. 43. Dr. J. M. Buckley, North American Review, July, 1901, P. 34. 40 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS when a little medicine from a veterinary surgeon would probably have brought instant relief. The horse died. If a man or woman is foolish enough to apply the false teachings to himself, I suppose in this free country he will have to be allowed to play the fool; but when innocent little chil- dren and enfeebled old people and defenseless dumb brutes are victimized by this senseless and inhuman fanaticism, then " While responsible for much neglect of suffering and for many deaths, this religion has been a true help to many nervous invalids who, by repeated iteration of its high priestess' book, have been able to induce in themselves a conviction that her phrases make sense, are logically acceptable, and remove or heal every malady. On June 14, 1914, Mr. Voliva, successor to John Dowie and now the head of Zion City, ful- minated in an amusing way against the cults in a lecture given at Zion City. He took a long time to get started, as he had to tell the audience how he had stood at the head of his class in logic, how he had six sheepskins from different universities, and knew a lot more about than the devil himself, who, he said, wrote it. He also sent a good many people out of the hall, by his repeated use of the words, "liar," "hypocrite," and other vulgarisms, but once started he was clever. "This table is an illusion, but when it comes to buying their book, there isn't any illusion about "Dr. C. E. Locke, Eddyism, p. 22. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 41 that ; you've got to come over with the real cash. "Christ's disciples say he was dead, but he was fooling them all the time, while he was in the tomb he was demonstrating . (This after quoting from Mrs. E. to the effect that Christ only "seemed to die.") Hitting one of his follow- ers on the back, Voliva exclaimed: "What's the matter? This is just nothing hitting nothing!" After quoting from Mrs. E. to the effect that it isn't exercise that strengthens the arm, but only the directing of mind upon it "for a trip-hammer is not strengthened by the use it gets," Voliva offered next time to bring a trip-hammer up on the stage and let all the ists in the audience direct their -minds upon it, and see whether it would grow. (This would be an absolutely fair test of their contentions.) Quoting from Mrs. E., "If a man had as little of mortal mind as a lobster, he could grow a new arm in place of one cut off as readily as a lobster can grow a new claw." "Here's one for the women. Page 141, Science and Health : "We shall always continue to be beau- tiful, when mortal mind so decrees." "The sensation of sickness and sin exists only in mortal mind." Page 107. "From human belief comes the reproduction of the species, we are male or female according as we think." Science and Health, Page 411. "If God is all and all is God, then God is an illusion, 42 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS isn't he? (i. e., since "All" must include even "mortal mind.") We've been warned that this chapter is against "good taste," and will offend many earnest peo- ple's feelings. But the classifying as "bad taste" of every utterance which strikes at the Eternal Hypocrisies is a dangerous ruse of reactionism, which honest men must expose and defy, and while we apologize to everyone whose tender toes we tramp on we'll continue to trample on what obstructs the path to truth. If the beautiful cathedral shelters falsehood's sharpshooters, the beautiful cathedral must fall. "Some people thoughtlessly say, if it does any good, why not let it alone? but this is a danger- ous and illogical position; if in approving any- thing that seems to be good, we lend our appro- bation and support to dangerous untruths and a mass of unmoral and immoral teachings. Taking opium may do some good when one is in pain, but because of the danger of fastening a deadly habit, morphine is prescribed with the greatest care. It is no sign that an entire system is good because here and there some noble principles may be found in it. There may be some good in ism, but behind the false-face of good, there is imposture, lying, and grossest self-conceit; therefore a brave man cannot let half-truths and untruths alone ; it must be assailed ; it will, in the end be driven out; to let it alone is a confession of weakness." 12 J -Dr. C. E. Locke, Eddyism P. 50. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 43 There's a duty of denial as well as an abuse of it; a public duty as well as a private duty in re- fusing what is contrary to self-interest and the general welfare. The Doctor finds himself con- fronted with it when some new nostrum or turtle- serum is being foisted upon the public and adver- tised by newspaper syndicates. A calm study of alleged cures convinces him that it's a fake, but if he raises his voice in denunciation, a thousand angry throats will revile (alas! historically too true) "the intolerance of the medical profession." The psychologist finds himself hailed as a brother by all manner of well-meaning tho hope- lessly deluded dabblers in the "occult," and is expected to countenance, by at least the duplicity of a polite silence, what from experience he recog- nizes as typical forms of delusion; and not to smile at the most disgraceful fabrications of old ladies' brains or be scorned as "materialistic," "narrow," and "unwilling to be convinced." The scientist in every field is brought by his researches to conclusions on the great metaphysical ques- tions that shake the world, but awed by the au- thority of the University that employs him, and which too frequently guages its own duty by the delicate barometer of income and bequests he con- tents himself with publishing the crudest facts of his discoveries and makes but faint complaint when they're "interpreted" by some Bergson into a denial of the very basis of science. 44 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS The oriental doctrine of reincarnation now so much in vogue relies for proof mainly upon two supposed facts: (1) It satisfies our sense of the universe being moral, and (2) we often, walking into a strange room, feel a sudden sense of having been there before when in this present life it's impossible we should have been. The argument for the assumed "morality of the universe" is : "The Cosmos is orderly ; like causes give like effects, therefore, we're forced to believe that all good or evil fortunes somehow, some- where, sometime, were justly earned." True that the universe is orderly, but this only proves that good and evil fortunes were caused ; not that they were "justly earned;" there's an immense gulf be- tween the respective hypotheses of universal Causality and universal Justice. The former has been established as an absolute truth, by deduc- tion from repeated experiments. The latter fails by this method to be established, as it is, in fact, disproved to be more than roughly and generally true. Since it's evidently false that we get strict- ly and accurately our deserts in this world, the- ology has postulated a world hereafter, where who can say but there may be hells and heavens and has appealed to the feeling each of us has of an innermost indivisible self which when its every tangible embodiment has rotted away shall still survive. Call them "souls" if you will, these indivisible selves, but remember always that giving a thing PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 45 a name doesn't really explain What it is. Avoid assuming, too, that there's any evidence of "souls" having a capacity for an independent intellectual life when not en rapport with a mechanically operating brain. On the contrary, we've direct proof that at least a large number of mental func- tions depend absolutely upon the activity of spe- cific cerebral organs. Not so easily can we just- ify the existence of sin and things to cry about. This leads us to give some ill-merited atten- tion to that venerable apology for all evils that "unless we had the experience of overcoming ill, we couldn't enjoy the satisfaction of mastery, nor the strength of character that comes thru moral conquest," or that "evil is necessary to purify us." But if we know nothing of that particular satisfaction, the joy of conquest, why should we ever miss, or crave it, or be imperfectly satisfied without it? Or of what use is purity except in a world where evil exists ? Seriously, out of your own acquaintance, reader, are the forceful indi- viduals you have known so much happier, or mayn't some shiftless southern darky put them all to shame when it comes to sheer enjoyment of life? The cold facts of experience, always the ultimate arbiter of any theory, are dead against the pious hypothesis that the suffering and temp- tation in the world, thru struggles and character building, become the source of more happiness than they take away. The writer has traveled rather extensively over the world, and has found 46 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS that what's true of individuals is equally true of races of men the happiest he has encountered anywhere are the easy-living, characterless peo- ples of the Malay Archipelago particularly the Javanese. There's no moral justification for the existence of suffering and "sin" or "error." This problem of the ultimate injustice of things is postponed merely, not solved, by the Oriental doctrine of Karma. You ask, "Why do I who am so good, suffer more privations than Smith, who's so wicked?" The Eastern sages trium- phantly answer, "It were indeed outrageous, save that in a former life it must have been you who were wicked and Smitty who was good." You come back with, "But why was I wicked and Smith good?" They parry this with the reply, "Because in a still earlier existence than that one, you were perhaps still more evil yet than Smith." You follow up with, "But why did I ever start differently from the way Smith started?" Your Oriental philosopher, if he's frank (in Asia this word is purely a relative term) here will profess to misunderstand your query; and so ends an idle discussion. Otherwise he begs the question by means of endless rigmarole about the inbreath- ing and outbreathing of the Brahman, but never "gets down to brass tacks" on the question of how our sense of justice is to be satisfied by know- ing merely that the Brahman does so breathe, without any satisfactory fundamental reason why it must be so. The secret of the superior subtlety PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 47 of the Eastern philosophy over the Western lies in the fact that it presents a greater number of mazes in which you can lose track of the unan- swerable questions before your instructor has to confess, "I don't know." In fact, he may, as a final resort, declare that to understand the great truths of which he and a few other adepts alone are in possession, you first must prepare your intellect thru years of practicing Yoga. This dodge is one that the Theosophists particularly affect, whom we have with us also in America. No, dear reader, the Eastern philosophy is as utterly bankrupt as the Western when asked to disprove that in the last analysis sin or virtue, folly or wisdom (and consequently, of course, pain and joy) are alotted ultimately as by a throw of the dice. The thing important to recognize is that the greatest true fortune is greatness of spirit, and that the worst misfortune is petty egoism. On merely metaphysical grounds, we re- peat there's no justifying the existence of sin and "error." If, "without a brain, the 'soul' is without mem- ory, without perception and without reason," im- portant correlaries follow. It's evident that all post-mortem punishments or rewards for a soul benefit of power to remember for what it was being punished or rewarded, are ridiculous. It's equally plain that our conduct while we are liv- ing upon this earth is unlikely to add to our souls any accretions everlasting of importance ; whether 48 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS accretions of wisdom, or of superiority to low desires, or of ennobling traits of character, or anything whatsoever. Nor is it reasonable that our conduct (through "Karma," etc.,) affect for better or for worse the state in which we shall be re-incarnated (if we are to be). Our present conduct, indeed, may make this a worse or a bet- ter world to be born into, when our chance for that comes around again, but the resulting likeli- hood of betterment to our own condition would be mighty slight. Therefore, these facts ap- preciated by a majority of mankind (as, unless false, they sooner or later must come to be) , will necessitate profound alterations in our methods of seeking to induce mankind to be good. Hereto, philosophical systems have concerned themselves largely with an attempt to show that we live in a moral universe, i. e., one in which, in the long run, the evil doer can't escape the full penalty of his sins, and wherein, on the other hand virtue inevitably will receive its full reward. The strong psychological effect of so absolute and sweeping an assertion, is lost, or hopelessly weakened, so soon as we modify it to even a slight degree, by admitting it to be (what it is) only an approximation to the facts a general truth, but not an absolute, or necessary truth. Since current philosophy is bound to be "found out," (indeed, it is suspect already), is there no use to prepare for the day when we shall have to be wholly honest? Isn't it a wiser plan to make our PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 49 ethical teachings in schools independent of alleged super-human revelations (which at best leave sin and causes for crying unexplained) ? 1. The absurdities of the ancient Jewish at- tempt to harmonize the presence of evil with the concept of a moral universe are well emphasized by Marshall Gauvin. "God foresaw and . . . hav- ing infinite power the serpent was but the instru- ment he used. If the fall occurred God was re- sponsible. Is there any wonder that Christianity is dying, when that religion means, if it means anything, that God designed the ruin of the hu- man race, designed a hell in which to burn his children, and designed his own death on a cross to save a few!" Again, "where shall we look for proofs of God in history? ... In what nation, in what re- ligion, at what times has God revealed himself in the human heart? Can the history of any Christian nation be pointed to as a shining credit to God? Is not the history of Christianity a long and gruesome story of ignorance, persecution and war? Was God revealing himself in the human heart when scientists languished in dungeons and when helpless old women were burned as witches ? Can it be that God revealed himself to the Mo- hammedan and the Jew as a unity, to the Catholic and the Presbyterian as a trinity, and to the great world of science as the unknowable the incon- ceivable? Is it not reasonable to suppose that if God were addressing himself to the human heart, 50 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS we would all receive and understand the mes- sage?" We have already noted the unsatisfactory at- tempt to justify God in allowing men to go on sinning, suffering, on the ground that it developes their character. "Honest industry in a hovel and indulgent idleness in a stately home, virtue clothed in rags and vice arrayed in silken robes, truth beneath the feet of priests and superstition made sublime, liberty dying on the scaffold and tyranny raised to the monarch's throne these are but the means by which the providence of God realizes its design. 13 Of the sense of recognition we sometimes feel on entering a place in which we couldn't previous- ly have been, the explanation given by Tichener is that in the first moment our conscious mind is absorbed by some other idea but our unconscious is taking in the situation; next we see the place with our conscious mind too, and the previous unconscious view compounds with this later one so as to give a feeling of recognition. A more usual case would, it seems to us be that where certain elements in a present situation have been experienced before, and under conditions of strong emotion, so that the strong sense of recollection for these elements is superimposed on the whole situation. For example if just as we enter a strange town a certain odor were to blow toward us from the neighboring orchards, this odor might "Gauvln. Marshall G., Artile in The Truth Seeker, July 26, 1913. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 51 bring into our unconscious a memory of a certain summer evening when the orchards were in bloom ; but, especially if the circumstances of that evening involved painful recollections, it might well be that all would be repressed from the con- scious mind except only the sense of familiarity, and that familiarity, deprived of its proper refer- ence, would superimpose itself upon the entire present scene. It is profitable for us to examine the basis of strange religions, because all religions are related phenomena and throw light upon one another. It is profitable to examine history for references to pagan practices, because so many of our Chris- tian usages are taken over from them bodily. R. Ellsworth in the Truth Seeker of December 28, 1918, has an article on this topic. "The . . . historian, Mosheim, tells us that in the second century several Christian churches imitated the mysteries of Paganism. The profound respect that the people entertained for those mysteries . . . were ... a motive sufficient to give a mys- terious appearance to their religion, so as to com- mand . . . respect with the public . . . For this reason they called mysteries the institutions of the Gospel, particularly the Eucharist. They used in this rite, and in that of baptism, several words and ceremonies consecrated in the mysteries of the Pagans. This . . . commenced chiefly in Egypt. Clement of Alexandria . . . was one of those who contributed the most to this usage, 52 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS which then spread to the Occident when Adrian had introduced the mysteries in that part of the empire. Hence . . . customs and fables of Pa- gan mysteries . . . have 'been perpetuated in that church down to our day. In the initiation to the Pagan mysteries there were degrees; so in the church there are the degrees of porter or door- keeper, acolyte, reader and exorcist, the last de- gree conferring the power of expelling the devil. The ecclesiastical ornaments in the Church are like those used in the mysteries of the Pagans. The Vestals kept a light constantly burning in the Pagan temples; so a lamp is kept burning day and night before the altar in ... churches. Upon the altar in the Pagan temples there was an image of the god Usiris or Bacchus, and the em- blem of an aries or lamb; so upon the altar in . . . churches there is a tabernacle in which God is said to dwell, and the door of the tabernacle bears a representation of a bleeding lamb. "The Pagans solemnly and processionally car- ried the image of Osiris or Bacchus, around whose head there was a halo representing the rays of the sun; so in the . . . church the priests pro- cessionally, and with great pomp, carry, both in the aisles of the churches and on the streets, a wafer which they call God. It is shaped like the disc of the sun, and the outside, called halo or glory, appears like the sun's rays. The Pagans did not permit their candidates for initiation to assist at the celebration of the mysteries, which PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 53 t was always preceded with this formula, solemnly and loudly spoken by an officer: "Away from here, ye profane and impious men, and all those whose soul is contaminated with crimes!" So, at one time in the . . . churches, the deacon arose after the sermon, turned towards the assistant, and ordered the catechumens to leave the church, because the celebration of the mysteries was about to commence the celebration of the mass. "The Pagans initiated the candidates near the front door of their temples; so in ... churches the baptismal font is placed near one of the en- trances. The Pagans initiated candidates chiefly on the eve of great festivals ; so, in the . . . church, catechumens are baptized chiefly on the eve of Easter and Pentecost. The Pagans believed that initiation made them holy; so the . . . church holds that baptism remits original and all other sins and makes men holy. The Pagans revered in their temples the statue of Pan, in whose hands was a seven-pipe flute ; also they revered emblems of the seven planets; likewise the . . . church holds the doctrine of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and of the seven sacraments. In the month of February the Pagans celebrated the Luper- cales and the feast of Proserpine; so the Church . . . celebrates Candlemas-day. . . The Pagans celebrated the exaltation of the virgo or virgin, the sixth sign and seventh constellation in the ecliptic ; and the Church . . . has established the feast of the Assumption, or the ascension of the 54 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS Virgin Mary to heaven. The Pagans made sol- emn processions in honor of the goddess Ceres; so the . . . Church has instituted pompous pro- cessions in honor of the Queen of heaven, the Holy Virgin. "When in the . . . century the Protestants shook off the yoke of the pope, they discarded many of the mysteries of the Romish church, but retained enough to establish an identity between the reformed practices and those of the ancient Pagan world. Protestants still teach the mystery of the trinity, the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of the new birth and other occult notions, which took their rise in Pagan forms of belief and usage, and are in no sense original with the new religion. "Christians now celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ, without apparently any realizing sense that . . . before . . . Christianity . . . the twenty-fifth of December was . . . held sacred . . . in memory of the nativity of the god Sol, or the sun, which regularly occurred at the winter solstice. . . A revelation that is but a refined re- production of what ancient peoples conjured up ... is plainly a human product . . . Mysteries imply secrecy ; what then is the value to mankind of a revelation that does not reveal? "Christianity is a cemetery of dead faiths; it is the opium of the people . . . and the sooner men free themselves from the influence of its hierophants and priestly intercessors, the sooner PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 55 they will learn to value man's autonomous ef- forts." As regards our own position, we'll say frankly that we're atheist. How in the world can a Chris- tian, for instance, who professes to believe in the new testament, comply with (what the "Melt- ing Pot" has given us) : "Some tests for true believers: "Now, I want to show the Christian by his own standard, the New Testament, just what his chances of heaven are worth (Mark xvi, 16-19) : "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe : In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them ; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." "Now, my dear Christian friend, step forward. In addition to a check which will secure for you a crown and a harp, I will give you one hundred dollars for the first lively, healthy, robust devil that you will cast out. If you have never learned anything but plain English, I will give you another hundred dollars if you will utter a few sentences in Greek, Hebrew, or Sanscrit. And if you will handle a good big rattlesnake without mittens you shall be rewarded with his rattles; they will prove a fine accompaniment to your harp. Now, I will take a little strychnine just what will lie 56 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS on the point of a small penknife and drop it into a little water. Don't tremble now, because if you take it and pull through all right you will not only escape hell, but will secure heaven. Remem- ber the promise in the New Testament, and down with it ; if you have faith like a grain of mustard- seed, there is not the least bit of danger. Web- ster says that to be sick is to be affected with any kind of disease. Now, most people die of some kind of disease. But why should any one die of disease when the simple laying on of hands would cause one to recover? "Either there are no believers, or else the prom- ise is not worth a penny whistle. Now, Chris- tian, how is it? If you can't heal the sick, you don't believe; you must go to hell sure. Allow- ing the promise to be good, and that every Chris- tian is a believer, all the doctors' diplomas in America would not be worth a rupee. Unless these Christians are great liars, they are praying for my conversion every day. But is there a sane man who believes that any Christian can exhibit these signs any more than I can? Consequently, his chances of heaven can be no better, and I am nothing but a poor Infidel, whose oath would not be taken in a court of justice in some of the states in this Union, and who has been loaded with a thousand Christian curses. "Of all the countless millions who have ever been born not one ever could perform these mira- cles. Therefore all the myriads who have ever PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 57 peopled the earth have been brought into exist- ence only to be damned." John Peck. "And these signs shall follow them that be- lieve." Good ! "In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues ; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." "Bring on your believer! Let him cast out a devil. I do not ask for a large one. Just a little one for a cent. Let him take up serpents. 'And if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them.' Let me mix up a dose for the believer and if it does not hurt him I will join a church." Ingersoll. "The reason that Christianity does so little harm is because it is so little believed." R. C. Adams. In Bombay one morning at about 7 :30, we went out to the Parsi Towers of Silence, where mem- bers of this sect when dead, are exposed to be devoured by vultures! They don't let you get very close to the Towers, but they have a model by means of which they show you how the dead bodies are placed in sort of basins provided for them. The basins having little irrigating ditches leading off from them to drain away blood and other fluids when the vultures come in to do their dirty work. We arrived here at the same time that a lot of Native Congresses were being held 58 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS and have been chasing 'round to a lot of these. One night we attended a big reception given by Lady Tata, and, there found a woman whom we had been quite anxious to meet, Mrs. Annie Bes- ant. She is short, with nearly white hair, force- ful masculine face and dressed always in a sim- ple white silk Mother Hubbard. She wore around her neck a single gold ornament of beautiful and intricate workmanship. We couldn't get her to talk very much that night, but next day, after we'd heard various "hot-air artists" at the Mos- lem League and the Social Conference, we man- aged to get an earful of her eloquence. She is a famous orator. She spoke, however, not on the- osophy which, of course, was what we wanted to hear her talk on, but on the betterment of the "little widows" and abolition of the greatest curse of present day India, child marriages. We "scouted about" a good deal to Mission So- cieties, Salvation Army Depots and Y. M. C. A/s, to talk with workers in those lines about the con- ditions of the masses of the people. One of the most interesting talks we had was with the Na- tive Secretary of the local Y. M. C. A. who pre- sented to us in a very interesting light the Hindu attitude toward all the hodge-podge of Native and Foreign religions, Hinduism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity that rubbed el- bows in this country. He himself seems to be deist; and we imagined that that is what the more educated Hindus were. He started a while PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 59 ago a school to teach the poorer class of Natives and prepare them to get a little better living for themselves, as the Y. M. C. A. here is more par- ticularly for Europeans and charges rates that are beyond the reach of poorer Natives and there is a deplorable dearth of elementary schools. On the day before Christmas we attended a meeting in a large Pavilion of the Arya Samaj ; then a meeting of the Bhattias. Many people who are so greatly impressed with "spirit phenomena" might find their explanation by reading in the Century Magazine 13 his owners account of Roger, "A full blooded mongrel of the cocker-spaniel persuasion," how "he could spell anything which I could spell without being taught. I asked for Constantinople, phthistic, penumonia, and for problems like 2x3-f-2 1. He never made a mistake. Fractions offered no dif- ficulties to him. He selected colors correctly the first time he saw them and made change as quick- ly 'as any cashier." Then, compare the story of "The Behavior of Roger," by Robert M. Yerkes. His explanation of Roger's powers is the same, tho as he says the process isn't "seen by the ob- server when Roger is in practice and does his best. It is highly probable that the dog's visual sensi- tiveness to movement is greater than ours." Upon which passage E. A. Swift makes com- ments worth quoting at some length. "Yerkes' conclusion agrees with those reached in the in- vestigation of 'Der Kluge Hans,' the German 60 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS horse whose wonderful feats in reading, spelling, giving the najnes of those to whom he had been introduced, and solving complex arithmetical problems involving fractions were heralded round the world a few years ago. Pfungst 14 dis- covered that clever Hans could not reply correct- ly to questions when the answers were unknown to the questioner. Fraud was climated by the fact that the horse answered correctly questions put by the investigator and by others who were only interested in the psychological aspect of the performance. The success of the investigator in obtaining correct answers also proved that the movements which served Hans as a cue were in- voluntary. . . . These movements, which the spec- tators did not detect, were observed by the horse and translated into appropriate action. So he could spell any word which the questioner could spell, or give the answer of difficult problems in arith- metic by pawing with his hoof according to the language code which he had been taught." 15 In a clipping before us* George Arliss, actor, is reported as saying: "A most astonishing lot of Boston people ap- pear to be believers in spiritualism. It seems to me that the war with its thousands of untimely deaths has caused great numbers of people to grasp desperately at the idea that the dead hover around us and try to communicate with us. Sir 14 Prof. Pfungst Das Pferd des Herrn v. Osten. l: 'E. A. Swift Youth and the Race, pp. 294, 295. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 61 James Barrie in The Well Remembered Voice' has dramatized this idea and since I have been playing it here, I have been amazed at the num- ber of folks who have written me discussing spiritualism." 16 That this movement represents anything ex- alted is questioned by David Eccles in the Truth Seeker : "The crudest form of materialism I know is the materialism of the average Spiritualist. With him (as one of them expresses it) 'spiritual things are gross matter in a refined state.' "Sane thinking requires us to tie ourselves to rational probabilities drawn from experimental evidence. That one form of matter is cruder than another, save in relation to our own needs, is a delusion. It is doubtful if forces, as separate en- tities, go racing over the universe. "Professor Crookes demonstrated that gases increase their amplitude of vibration as a condi- tion of vacuum is obtained till they begin to move in straight lines across the receptacle and their impingement on the outer glass causes it to glow with light. He calls this 'the fourth state of matter.' The speed of the atoms is enormous. As spirits are supposed to move with the speed of light or thought, this fourth state of matter Would seem to be their condition. Unfortunately, in this highly sublimated and 'spiritualized' state, like Cowper's 'John Gilpin,' they could not "January 25, 1919. 62 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS stop themselves when they wanted to, but if ob- structed would bound back with the same resili- ency. To get living rational conditions into an- other world we are compelled to build it on ex- actly the same order as this one, with birth, growth, toil, decay and death. "The most telling indictment against the claims of Spiritualism is its utter sterility and confused Babel of statements. It has revealed nothing and does nothing but continue the old bondage to a new set of grasping go-betweens, who begin to call themselves 'reverends.' In a dark cabinet it claims to materialize from the air, faces, flowers and clothing; but it never made a potato to feed a starving child or a garment to clothe its nakedness. No medium has yet told the whereabouts of a lost explorer or located an enemy's mine or cannon. It has not added to science a single thought. The spirit's relation to the body is presented in the same crude terms as was thought out by the early savage. "Dr. Mary Walker insists that the snakes men see in delirium tremens are real spiritual snakes. In this view, man is not alone a living soul, but a colony of untold millions of living souls. Every cell is animate and individualized. It does its own breathing and imbibes its own food. When the power to oxidize food is gone the phenomenon of life disappears. Life is simply one form of the general energy. That this energy carries "the promise and potency of life" under all conditions PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 63 of existence is not only believable, but forced upon us as a conclusion. Evolution denies a creative beginning to anything. "The cells do not all die together. Cells and whole organs can be incised and kept living after the individual is dead. Moreover, the ovaries of a dying mother may be cut out and transplanted into another body, and brought to maturity and fecundated produce offspring. "If the ovaries had been cut out and had died before the mother, would they continue to grow into human form in the Summer Land? Spir- itualists insist that there is change and growth there. A Spiritualist once gravely showed me an alleged spirit photograph of his dead daughter who had died in infancy. The photo was that of a young lady. I said, "Do you recognize it?" "Not positively," he answered, "for she has grown to be a young woman since she left here." There is faith for you! If she can grow from a cell form to a young woman, she can complete the cycle and go to old age and death. If the form and organs are there, all the other phenomena will be there. What would be the use of a spiritual mouth, ears, nose tongue and palate except to eat, hear, smell and taste with ? "Ella Wheeler Wilcox assures us in a recent poem that when she dies she will 'run and run and run' till she finds her dead mate . . . and she no doubt thinks she will find him dressed as 64 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS he was. If she delays her dying too long he may have found another mate. "The whole conclusion is bristling with absurdi- ties. For if all forms of life have spiritual bodies and carry their natures with them, then our bodies will carry their parasites along and we shall have the same woes and pains to fight. We cannot think of spiritual fish without thinking of spiritual waters, nor of snakes or parasites without their proper pabulum. The struggle for food will exist there as here, and the survival of the fit be the supreme law. In other words, the spiritual explanation leaves us where it found us, and explains nothing." To similar effect is a criticism in the same ex- cellent paper by Donald Grey 17 of a book by one Severence : "One great point they overlook is the fact that man's reason being but a part of nature, neces- sarily the thoughts and reasonings of man can- not exceed, or reach beyond the limits of nature. Man, thinking and speaking, is actually a part of nature thinking and speaking of itself! "Sir Oliver Lodge says that if they have ma- terial bodies, such bodies must be made of ether or a like substance. Now can you imagine a mor- tal man in evolution, with a man's senses and in- telligence with the ability to think and speak to mortals on earth by 'table-moving, rappings, voices, lights,' directing pencils and such like ab- 17 February 1, 1919. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 65 surdities as claimed in a body made of ether! 'It is unthinkable.' "We all know that a man's intelligence and memory cells are a matter of brains ; how, then, can his intelligence and memory survive the death of his brain? Yet this impossibility is the very test Sir Oliver Lodge and others suggest as the only feasible proof of the genuine survival of the spirit. He also says of spiritism that it is "a universe where the orinary laws of matter are inoperative!", Did anyone ever distinguish be- tween ordinary and extraordinary laws in the universe of nature? "One writer shows the weakness of his reason- ing by admitting that because 'certainly every- one wishes it' (spirit life) that is 'the greatest ar- gument in its favor!' " 'Professor Crookes thought he had sufficient evidence to establish man's continuity of con- sciousness, and he said so' (says Mr. Severance), yet with all the public confidence and hopes placed in a scientist of his eminence, 'when judged by results he was repudiated' in other words, he failed to make good his assertions. So did Sir Oliver Lodge, who admits that it cannot be sat- isfactorily proven, tho he himself is satisfied! One of the great weaknesses of spiritism that tho all humanity live again as spirits, yet of all these myriads only a 'chosen few' . . . can com- municate ! This is about as bad as priest-craft. "Finally, Mr. Severance upholds the study of 66 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS spiritism amongst thinkers and philosophers ; but thinking and philosophy can never elucidate such a purely scientific subject. On the contrary, I hold that its study and belief by unscientific minds have pernicious tendencies. It encourages the charlatan and makes ready tools of the credulous, as does religion." That seances can be turned to pecuniary profit by the "insiders" is known to those who've been reading the accounts of the intrigues which lead to the fall of the Romanoff dynasty; or to those who may have seen in the San Francisco papers for February or the Chicago Tribune for March, 1908, 17 the account of Bartlett, Dalzell, Brown, Treadwell, and the "spirits" by whose aid they defrauded a bank. Today we stand toward spirit- ism in somewhat the same relation that Pagan Lowe stood toward the then young spirit of Chris- tianity. Logic has little power to check it be- cause its nature is illogical and emotional. "Persons with habitual hallucinations, and also the inspired, exhibit these states; they draw the attention of the crowd to themselves, now as poet or artist, now as savior, prophet, or founder of a new sect. The genesis of the peculiar frame of mind of these persons is for the most part lost in obscurity," hence Jung 18 contributes the follow- ing observations on the case of a so-called spir- itualistic medium : "These dates are to the best of our remembrance. 18 Jungr Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, Ch. 1 on the. Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 67 Subject: Miss S. W., 15i/ 2 years old (1899- 1900). Paternal grandfather, a clergyman "with frequent waking hallucinations (generally visions, often whole dramatic scenes with dia- logues," etc). Paternal grandmother, at 20 went into a trance for three days; later had fainting fits, followed by "brief somnambulism during which she uttered prophecies." The mother has an inherited mental defect often bordering on psychosis. Other relatives were either odd, pe- culiar characters, or hysterics and visionaries. Miss S. W. is slenderly built, skull somewhat rachitic, face rather pale, eyes dark with a pe- culiar penetrating look. Her preference is for handwork and day-dreaming. "Often absent- minded ; misread in a peculiar way when reading aloud. . . There were no other abnormalities . . . no serious hysterical manifestations." Her father died when S. W. was not yet grown up. She was unhappy; often afraid to go home; her interests were limited, also her knowledge of literature. When she began to take an interest in table-turn- ing, it "was discovered that she was an excellent 'medium.' Some communications of a serious na- ture arrived which were received with great as- tonishment. Their pastoral note was surprising. The spirit said he was the grandfather of the medium." The first attacks of somnambulism took place in Jung's presence. S. W. became cataleptic. "In somnambulic dialogues she copied in a remark- 68 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ably clever way her dead relations and acquaint- ances, with all their peculiarities so that she made a lasting impression upon unprejudiced persons." There were attitudes passionelles, and complete dramatic scenes. "She then made use exclusively of a literary German which she spoke with an ease and assurance quite contrary to her usual uncertain and embarrassed, manner in the waking state." "In addition to these great attacks which seemed to follow a certain law in their course, S. W. produced a great number of other automa- tisms. Premonitions, forebodings, unaccountable moods and rapidly changing fancies were all in the day's work. ... In the middle of a lively conversation S. W. became quite confused and spoke without meaning in a peculiar monotonous way. . . . These lapses usually lasted but a few minutes. . . . Later she simply said They are there again,' meaning her spirits. . . . The hal- lucinations involved all the sense organs equally. ... It is remarkable with what curious sincerity she regarded her dreams. . . . She was unswerv- ingly convinced of the reality of her visions. . . . She once said : 'I do not know if what the spirits say and teach me is true, neither do I know if they are those by whose names they call them- selves, but that my spirits exist there is no ques- tion. I see them before me, I can touch them, I speak to them about everything I wish, as natural- ly as I'm now talking to you. They must pe PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 69 She absolutely would not listen to the idea that the manifestations were a kind of illness. In time . . . three of her brothers and sisters like- wise began to have hallucinations of a similar kind." "This particular type of attack with the com- plete visions and ideas had developed in the course of less than a month, but never afterwards exceeded these limits." "She is fully orientated to the external world, but seems to stand with one foot, as it were, in her dream-world." "She speaks quietly, clearly, and promptly, and is al- ways in a serious, almost religious frame of mind. Her bearing indicates a deeply religious mood." "To every one who did not know her secret she was a girl of fifteen and a half, in no respect un- like a thousand other such girls." Jung gives accounts of the seances at which he was present, discusses the development of the somnambulic personalities, with a study of the way in which S. W.'s mind reacted to Justinus Kerner's book, "Die Seherin von Prevorst," and also gives a quite full account of her scheme of "mystic science." Her visions seemed to lose plasticity and form, and six months after Jung withdrew from the seances, she was caught cheat- ing. "Deducting the want of balance due to puberty, there remains a pathological residue which ex- presses itself in reactions which . . . have a bizarre unaccountable character. . . Traits which 70 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS can certainly be regarded as hysterical." Mis- reading was due to a "hysterical dispersion of at- tention." This is "a quite elementary automatic phenomena." "A healthy person only exceptional- ly allows himself to be so engaged by an object that he fails to correct the errors of a dispersed attention those of the kind described. The fre- quency of these occurrences in the patient point to a considerable limitation of the field of con- sciousness." "We thus find . . . rudimentary au- tomatisms, fragments of dream manifestations, which imply . . . the possibility that some day more than one association would creep in between the perception of the dispersed attention and consciousness. The misreading shows us, ... a certain automatic independence of the psycho- logical elements, . . . and can be thus conceived as a prodromal symptom of the later events ; spe- cially as its psychology is prototypical for the mechanism of somnambulic dreams, which are in- deed nothing but a many sided multiplication and manifold variation of the elementary processes. In course of time the states of dispersed attention . . . have grown into these remarkable somnam- bulic attacks; hence they disappeared from the waking state, which was free from attacks." "In the semi-somnambulism one has the impression of a mature woman possessed of considerable dra- matic talent. The reason for this seriousness . . . is given in her explanation that at these times she stands at the frontier of this world and the 71 other, and associates just as truly with the spirits of the dead as with living people. And, indeed, her conversation is usually divided between an- swers to real objective questions and hallucina- tory ones." In the automatic movements of the table there was no question of intentional and voluntary pushing or pulling on the part of the patient. Un- conscious motor phenomena are easily produced even in normal persons. They are powerfully affected by suggestion or by earlier autosugges- tion. It is a question of partial hypnosis, limited entirely to the motor area of the arm. The best form of suggestion is a series of rhythmic but very slight taps upon the table, and soon the os- cillations become stronger. "By means of this simple mechanism there may arise those cases of thought-reading so bewildering at first sight." At another seance the automatic expression of one personality is interrupted unexpectedly by "a new person, of whose existence no one had any suspicion" (who was, according to S. W., Jung's grandfather). That is, automatic phenomena were progressing favorably when darkness came on, and, as the influence of that upon the sugges- tibility of the sense-organs is well-known, it seems to have been the foundation "for a rapid deepen- ing of hypnosis, in consequence of which halluci- nations could be developed." "It is probably a dissociation of the personality already present which seized upon the material next at hand for 72 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS its expression, namely, upon the associations con- cerning" Jung. "The perception of this unex- pected intervention of a new power must inevit- ably excite a feeling of the strangeness of the au- tomatisms, and would easily suggest the thought that an independent spirit is here making itself known. Hence the intelligible association that she would finally be able to see this spirit." SECTION 2 "So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, When just the art of being kind Is all this old world needs." The following sections 2 and 3 of this chapter are so obstrusely dry that only bespectacled scholars will enjoy reading them. The ordinary reader is asked not to make the attempt, but husband his intellectual forces for an attack upon other portions of the book. So many of the free will arguments are ad hominem e. g. arguments that if we confess the truth of de- terminism, it will undermine some cherished dogma or institution that we are tempted to offer in return one of the same kind, which you must take cum granum salo. It is, that if we reject causality as absolute, then (worse than all other calamities) this very reasoning, upon which we have spent so much care and time we in writing it and' you in understanding it and fort which you have paid out your good money, would be little better than a deception. You and we therefore have an interest at stake in refuting this theory which de- nies our knowledge and would crown Chance king over Life. Let us rally our forces about our standard and PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 73 march forth to the battle. Three strong friends, Science, Metaphysics, and Theology, will all be loyal to us in this hour of need. Science will be loyal because all of his discoveries have been made by ignoring any but a material universe, wherein no energy is ever gained or lost in any operation, (a method that hasn't been proven to be inadequate to the severest tasks). Metaphysics will stand by us, because its aim is to arrive at a unified concept of the world, to reduce it to some single principle, ^which it can never do by covering over with some vague term, e. g., the "elan vital" of Bergson), an admission of irregularity in itself. Theology also takes our side if it aspires to be consistent with man's tenet of an omniscient Deity, since how could Deity foreknow the future unless He could predict the part to be played in it by Man; which implies that Man's part is predetermined? There are two tremendous consequences of the fact that all things move absolutely obedient to "law." The one is "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." As surely as the future is the fruit of the present, so surely is our destiny bound to be the consequence of what we made it; if the universe is obedient to "law," we actually, by exploring that "law," can trick the universe into slavery to us as its master. The other consequence is, however, that as surely as the present is only a result of the past, so certainly must all the good and ill fortunes of life be looked upon ultimately as fortunes as throws of the dice (even tho, at the same time with apparent, but not actual inconsistency we can continue to recognize many of them as the rewards of conduct), for, were we present at our own first creation, to deter- mine our fate? Something like the following must have occurred to us shortly before we even existed at all; we were called 74 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS aside by our Maker, and told that in order that we, and not He, should be the one responsible for our subsequent actions, we must take part in the creation of ourselves, which now was imminent. He did the principal part of making us otherwise, if we existed from eternity could He claim we were His creatures and must obey Him? He knew, however, that by letting us tamper with the work, while He looked out of the window, the said work would be imperfect. Thus, a little spice would be introduced into life and He could still say, "If you suffer, didn't your act bring it upon you?" Men, having inherited a belief in an intelligence which preceded and ordained all material crea- tures, sometimes defend their faith by the follow- ing argument: "There was once a creation, therefore also a creator, a deus. Otherwise the universe-machine has been running already for an infinity of time, so that by rights all the stars long, long ago, should have gravitated into one inclusive mass :n the middle of the universe, and all energy (that otherwise might hurl them apart) should have bfen raditated away altogether, or at least been frittered down to the one form, evenly distrib- uted, Heat. The fact that the universe hasn't become, and remained, one such single inert luke- warm lump, proves that it's been 'wound up' again by some deus ex machina" This argument didn't seem so presumptuous at the time it first was put forth, as it seems to us now; for in those days men supposed that "mat- ter" and "energy" were permanent realities, quite PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 75 separate and unchangeable ; the men of that time hadn't dreamed our modern visions of the trans- mutability of elements ; of the break-up of atoms ; or of matter itself being but one form of energy, in essence as changeable as any of Energy's other forms. Today we're less confident of our omniscence. When the vibrations from our universe reach the limits of the luminiferous ether, who shall say whether they roll backwards upon the centers that shook them forth, or whether they remain there in those uttermost reaches and transmit themselves into gases, liquid, and solids? But had men's knowledge of such ultimate things been as correct as they fancied it was, yet they might have reflected that even the least warm bodies are always evaporating their sub- stance into space, and at the same time always sending forth not merely heat, but various other vibrations. To be sure, those of the exhalations which are gaseous will be subject to only the force of gravitation. But we know that solids, if suf- ficiently microscopic, may be impelled, against gravitation, to dart away into space, by the dy- namic pressure upon them of radiant energy. 19 Suppose that in Act I, you strip matter of nearly all its energies, and lay it inert in the center of your universe. Act 2 opens with the liberated energies driving in storms thru space catching up 19 Thig, possibly, is an explanation of why a comefs tail, which is composed of mere dust, is tossed around, and even ahead, of it, as the comet swings around our sun. 76 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS particles from the surface of your central ball of matter, and bearing them to heaven in despite of gravitation. In Act 3, eons afterward, you'll have again the same old universe you started with. Try it and see. Yet, perhaps not quite the same, after all. For, things never really repeat. Fried- rich Nietzsche made famous, the thot, that as space must have its limits, and as the number of ultimate divisibles of energy must be limited, therefore the number of possible combinations of forces must have some limit finally, so in limit- less time identical worlds must happen again and again. When Nietzsche reasoned this way he'd forgotten his elementary geometry. Were the ex- tremest points of the universe only a hair's breath apart, still the number of positions a point could occupy on the line between them, would be limitless. There's no more reason for believing in the "Eternal Recurrence" than for fearing that the universe will "run down." "Progress moves not in circles, which are closed, but in spirals, eternally new." In vain man searches for signs of planned efficiency in the workings of the uni- verse ; or for scrupulousness in its methods, com- parable to even the little refinement to which man himself has attained; and yet, undirected and unmoral to the Cosmos be, still, in changing over from old-time views, we should try to make cer- tain that we're not ignorant of their understand- ing, before we presume to understand their ignor- ance. For Cosmos, spells more than Chaos. It's PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 77 orderly, and, apparently, it even has a Whence and a Whither. Not, perhaps, a whither in Aris- totle's sense of a purpose, to fulfil which it has come into existence; but a whither, in the sense of a point of the compass, toward which it sets. Herbert Spencer started us upon the road toward a definition of this Whither, in his "Synthetic Philosophy." He declared that things progress from discrete homogeneity to concrete heterogene- ity. We progress from discordant monotony to- ward that harmony consonant with individuality. "Very well," say you, "since science and meta- physics can give me no help, I see that I was foolish indeed ever to have deserted my old pas- tor. I will go back to him, and ask him to help me pray for The Light." Your pastor is very glad indeed to see you back again within the fold and comforts you with a great many "fundamen- tal verities" from the Scriptures. For a time you feel that at last you have indeed found peace. But an uneasy suspicion will not be smothered that it is a dishonorable peace. There are so many things which you have to just "take upon faith." You can take them on faith all right enough so long as they're only a little absurd or improbable; but when, into the bargain they be- gin to be inconsistent, then you find yourself run- ning for help to the theological apologists. "How shall I believe God to be good, if, tho all-powerful, he allows evils to exist?" "Because except thru evil, He has no way of developing character!" 78 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS "Then why doesn't He make another way ?" "My child, it is not for us to weigh His inscrutable motives with our finite minds!" "Because finite minds are the only minds we have, must we let priests do our thinking? Did He give us these minds expecting we shouldn't use them?" And so each reply raises but another question. Unless our theologian is very clever, indeed, at answer- ing these doubts in plausible language, we begin to wonder whether his explanations of things really explain them at all. We ask why there was any more need of a God to make the world than there was of a Super-God to make God. And finally, we come to think the theologian, despite his assumptions, really knows no more about the matter than we do ourselves, and we leave him, to inquire elsewhere. The witty Dean Hole has left some good stories scattered through his Memoirs, which will be told and retold until their identity is lost. He tells us that once a country clergyman was asked to pray for rain. He did so, and the rain did fall, and continued to do so. When it had been rain- ing some time, the local farmers met and dis- cussed the situation. "That's the worst of our parson," said one, "he always overdoes every- thing." That story reminds him of another. One farmer stated to another, who was a Methodist, that he intended to ask the rector to use the prayer for rain. "Better ask our parson," said the Methodist, "he can pray your rector's head off!" PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 79 Little Esther was saying her bed-time pray- ers, and in conclusion, asked: "Please, dear God, make San Francisco the capital of California." "Why did you ask that, Esther?" interrupted her mother. "Because I wrote it on my examination paper that way." What but our underlying religious disbelief makes the above stories seem humorous ? Uncon- sciously, we all accept the fact that all events, including mental events, proceed according to uni- form "laws." Of mental events, the first determiner is In- heritance. McKeever 20 says truthfully: "People are by no means all alike at birth, but are born with predispositions to form habits of one kind more readily than another. This is perhaps more readily seen in the case of animals. The offspring of the heavy draught-horse is never expected to develop readily into habits of movement that be- long to the horse of pacing or trotting strain. It is not in accordance with his nature. But he will eas- ily and naturally take up habits that pertain to drawing heavy loads. The young bulldog early falls into habits of surliness and pugnacity, while his young companion of the sheperd-dog variety takes more readily to acts suggesting a kind and gentle disposition. It is the nature of the brute, in each case, that is asserting itself ; and this na- : McKeever Psychology and Higher Life. 80 ture is Inherited. Many more such examples could be given. So it is with men. The child is likely to in- herit not only much that is peculiar in the phy- sical form and movement of its parents and more remote ancestors, but also many of the mental traits." David Hartley, a psychologist living from 1705-1757, based his ideas upon the investigations which physiologists already had made on the nervous system. You probably are aware that the nerve cells differ from other cells of the body physically in their elongation (to sometimes sev- eral feet) and functionally in that the sensitivity which is an attribute of all protoplasm (not to say, of all matter) is greatest in the nerve-cells. They are technically called neurons. Each has a center, or nucleus, from which a long thread- like axis grows in one direction, and root-like branching dendrites in the others. The meeting of the axis of one neuron with the dendrite of an- other is called a synapse. The nerve-current jumps across these synapses as a spark passing along a fuse would jump to a second fuse placed end to end to the first, and when it reaches the brain a sensation is felt that depends not on the nerve along which it travels, as Johannes Mueller (1801- 1858) first supposed, nor upon nature of the cur- rent which travelled, but on the part of the brain it reaches. It is as tho we had fuses leading to different kegs, in one of which was powder which PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 81 would burn with red light, in another, powder which burn with a blue light, etc. Tho as a mat- ter of fact, all these sections of the brain are themselves comprised of simply millions more of nerve-cells, as tho the powder in our kegs were all in the form of coils and coils more of fuse. Of course the brain and nerves are superior to com- mon fuses, in that they are not burned out but renew themselves after the spark has passed along them. To illustrate how this chain operates, we'll sup- pose that something touches your foot. From the multiplicity of the nerves which begin sending currents to your brain you get the sensation of the extensiveness of the surface touched; from the intensity of the incoming current you sense the violence of the stimulus ; from one distinct set of nerves you get the impression of pain, from an- other set a sense of heat, from another set a sense of warmth, from another a sense of cold, from another set of nerves you get the sensation of tactile contact (such as a fly would make), from another set the sense of pressure, (as of a weight resting upon the skin), from nerves in the adja- cent joints the sense of strain set up to resist the pressure of your object against my foot, and per- haps from the most elementary nerves of all (without the terminal organs possessed by the others) ending in the internal fibres of those mus- cles, you get also the sense of malaise in the tis- sues themselves. Surgical cases prove that if any 82 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS one of these nerves is severed with a knife, you'll remain thereafter incapable of feeling any one of these sensations from any certain particular re- gion unless the nerve shall knit and grow together again. This shows how dependent you are upon your system of nerves for all knowledge whatever about the outside world; since, of course, your eyes and ears, and all other sense organs have to send their messages over these same nerve-wires. If you could free yourself from the trammels of this body as the Oriental Mahatmas and Adepts are alleged to do, and could go sailing through the air to visit foreign climes, you wouldn't learn very much, would you? Not unless you packed your nervous system in your suit case, and toted it along. By staining with certain dyes, we can follow the course of a particular set of nerves, as they run from the outside of the body to the spinal cord, wherein they ascend to the brain. If a set of nerves has become diseased, the disease some- times mounts gradually up its full length to where it enters an organ of the brain, and by means of the discoloration produced by the disease, we can follow the course of the nerve. In cases where specific parts of the brain have been exposed to pressure or submitted to electrical or other stimu- lation the sensations felt by the owner of the brain are attributed by him to other specific parts of the body. In these various ways, it has been possible to mark out the functions of large tracts of the brain's surface so accurately, that in sev- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 83 eral cases of invalids who felt some incapacity as though the trouble existed in the body proper, a surgeon has been able to remove, by a correctly directed trephining operation, the true cause of the malady: e. g., perhaps a clot of blood under the skull. Says McKeever: "President G. Stan- ley Hall, of Clark University, performed a most interesting experiment. After the death of Laura Bridgeman, a blind, deaf mute, remarkable for her intellectual attainments, Dr. Hall examined her brain carefully and found that the optic lobes were withered and undeveloped, the gray cover- ing being much thinner over this portion. On the contrary, the lateral portions of the brain, the centers for movement of the secondary muscles, showed unusual development. The absence of the two senses of sight and hearing compelled Miss Bridgeman to depend almost wholly upon the muscular sense and the sense of touch in getting her knowledge about things. Hence the full de- velopment of the lateral brain convolutions. "By cutting into the brain of a diseased person who has long been deaf, dumb or blind, or par- tially paralyzed, the scientist finds a nerve struc- ture of a peculiar nature. The center, which, on account of the particular ailment, has not been used, is always found to be shriveled up, atro- phied. On the other hand, unusual ability in the performance of any function is attended by an unusual development of the corresponding brain-center. 84 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS "A soldier receives a bullet-wound in the oc- cipital lobe of the brain and is immediately ren- dered wholly or partially blind. In this case the evidence is fairly conclusive that the center for sight lies in the region of the brain which was struck. If the lesion in the occipital lobe is such as to cause complete blindness, all memory of things seen is als.o obliterated. A person so in- jured can form no visual images whatever. "1. For every psychosis (mind-act) there is a neurosis (nerve-act). That is, accompanying every mind-act there is a brain-act. "2. All mental processes tend to express them- selves in form of physical acts, although only a few, the most act-impelling ones, succeed in com- ing to expression in such form. "4. One's moods change constantly with the ever-varying condition of his health and his en- vironment. He may experience joy, sadness, hope and despair all within a single hour, and shortly afterwards, while deeply absorbed in a problem, none of these. "5. The nervous system is composed of (1) afferent nerve-tracts with specialized outer ends to catch the sense of touch, sight, sound, etc. : (2) central organs of re-direction, as the brain, spinal cords, and smaller ganglia; (3) efferent nerve- tracts to direct the movements of muscles, limbs, etc. "6. Many of the ingoing nerve currents are re-directed and movements executed correspond- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 85 ingly without the attention, or often even with- out the knowledge of the person chiefly concerned the subject." On each side of the head, just above the temple, is a convolution known as the "Fissure of Ro- lando," of which every part represents a known (experimentally verified) portion of the body; from the facial muscles (at the base of the fissure) to the muscles of the feet (at its top). One part of the fissure is connected with incoming, and the other with outgoing nerves. Just above the temples are located hearing centers, and at the rear of our skulls (not over the eyes, as phrenologists postulate) are the chief centers of vision. Two centers alone those namely, for writing and speech, both located near the top of the head on the left side, represent definite types of activity rather than mere bodily organs. The mid-brain seems to have in general, a supervisory and co-ordinating effect over the lower activities (a frog with its brain removed can still swim, though but blindly) and apparently the fore-brain has higher functions still, since a dog from whom the fore-brain was removed, lived for many days an ordinary existence, being only a bit snappy and irritable, and unable to acquire new tricks. But bear in mind that perception is not completed in the sensory organ itself nor in the nerve. As N. Kostyleff, a Russian psychologist observes, the results of modern investigators show that con- sciousness of what is seen depends on cerebral 86 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS processes. "It is to this cerebration that is given the name of visual representation." (Dr. Nuel La Vision, 1904.) Similar results have been ob- tained for audile images. The nerves which bring stimuli from the periph- eries of our bodies can generate sensations only when those nerves connect with the proper or- gans in the brain. Therefore it is brain activity which is normally essential to thought. Is it possible for thought to take place without the brain ? The first effect of diseased conditions in a section of the brain is some abnormality in the patient's power or tendency to think or feel as regards the subject of functioning of that brain-section, followed in time, if the disease pro- gresses, by an irreparable loss of the faculty of having any feelings, ideas, dreams, or imaginings whatever, upon that subject, nor of comprehen- sion of such ideas if some other person broaches them. The same loss of faculty of course, fol- lows the surgical removal of a portion of the brain. Isn't this fairly plain proof, that without a brain the so-called "soul" is without perception, without memory, and without reason? The Greeks in speaking of the "soul" of anything meant its entelechy to Aristotle the "soul" of an axe was chopping. But a long line of theologians have distorted the term to mean a sort of little imp inside each of us. But in Givler's happy ex- pression, "Hard atoms and soft souls may suit the temperamentally minded, but whatever van- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 87 ities science may exhibit, temperament is not one of them. . . . We are then not going to study capital M mind, nor are we to treat of conscious- ness as an inner imp." 21 Not to dwell longer, however, upon negations, let us try to conceive of how the thinking process is built up. We shall commence by considering actions so primitive as hardly to deserve the name, Intelligent. As hereinbefore noted, the air-vibrations (for example) radiated by a warm object affect warmth-end-organs embedded in our skin so these send currents along the nerves to cervical centers located along the posterior side of the fissure of Rolando, the stimulation of which particular cen- ters happens always to be accompanied by an appropriate sensation of warmth. The warmth of the original object consisted in the rapidity of vibration of its molecules; the nervous current is doubtfully a vibratory phenomenon at all; and the resultant sensation we have no reason what- ever to regard as a matter of vibration. Other sensations, as heat, cold, pain or tactile sensa- tion, singly or in any combination, result, not im- mediately because the rapidity of vibrations in the object is different or because of its contact with our skin, but indirectly because entirely dif- ferent sets of end-organs are adapted to be stimu- lated by it in these respective cases, and so send nerve-currents similar to the current sent before 21 Givler, R. C. The Conscious Cross-section, p. 37. 88 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS except that by traversing other tracts they arrive at other locations on the posterior side of Ro- lando's fissure. Right here we're met with one of the greatest questions of all philosophy, namely : how does this happen, that because there existed a vibration of material particles, or a flow of some more or less physical type of energy along nerves, there exists now a sensation, felt by an ego ? It appears to us that we must consider Energy and Feeling as outside and inside views of the same reality. What to an outer observer is, say, an electron, is known to the electron (?) itself (shall we say himself?) as ego; what is known to an observer as motion in that electron is known to itself as sensation. Imagine the ego i\? a smallest divisible unit of one of the forms which matter or energy can as- sume, and that the elements of its sensation are its own inner view, so to speak, of the motions to which it is subjected. If a rotation eastward was felt to it as the sensation of yellow, a rota- tion northward as redness, and non-rotation as grayness, then a slow rotation northeast might mean the sensation of brown. Meantime what function would it subserve? Merely by being conscious the ego would contrib- ute nothing to give it a survival value in the econ- omy of the animal host. It might, however, be of value if it could serve as a unifying agent to the animal receiving the effect of a multitude of nerve- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 89 currents, combining them in itself, and reflecting back upon the nerves a blend. The analogy which comes to mind is that of a pool of water into which various colored lights are playing, and which irridesces with an effect compounded of them all. Because of the utility to living forms of possessing an ego, we can suppose that it is by the law of the survival of the fittest that there have come to exist the existing fauna of the world endowed with some means of sucking to them- selves at conception, and holding magnetized so long as the bodily processes endure, one of these ego particles, much as a floating cork might be drawn to a vortex in the water, and remain sus- pended over the center of it so long as the vortex continued in motion, after which the cork would be released, or whirled to another vortex else- where in the stream. Our ego, like such a cork, would travel, meantime, everywhere that the vor- tex traveled, whilst retaining the same suspended position in the midst of its activities and of the inrush and outrush of so many gallons of ma- terial substances. If our self indeed endures as the same self from our birth until our death, then it differs herein from all that we know of any of the ordinary material particles of the body. (On an average of seven years the material of the body is renewed completely.) For there's need to explain how the unification of perceptions take place. When you stare squarely at an object, the reflections from mil- 90 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS lions of points of its surface are focused onto as many nerve-ends on the retina of my eye, so that a very specific combination of a million nerve- currents flows into your brain. Suppose later that you glimpse that same object again, not squarely, but out of one corner of your eye. Its points now are reflected upon an entirely differ- ent part of my retina, so that the new one million nerve-currents is a different combination entirely from the former one million; yet you recognize these as meaning the same object. Evidently the important thing is never what individual nerve- currents are arriving, but what combination they form. This implies that they are grasped not singly, but as a unit. Now perhaps we can see the functions which would be filled by an ego as lacking in self-activity as the cork floating over the whirlpool, an ego which yet partook of the whirlpool movements, with all their tremulous modifications, of the flood of currents within the brain cortex, and also in turn, by its own very inertia, reshaped the direction of those currents. Let's apply one more analogy. When a strong electric current flows through a cylinder formed of spirals of wire (a helix), it'll cause any adja- cent bar of iron to leap into the center of the helix and remain suspended there between the pulls of gravity and of magnetism. Fluctuations of the electric current cause ossilations of the piece of iron ; but the very inertia of the iron then reacts to check or create currents in the helix. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 91 The spirals of wire here represent our nerve- system; the currents, our afferent and efferent nerve-currents, and the iron our persisting and unifying (tho inert) ego. To form any exact conception of what that ego is which survives the body if anything survives, or which is the unifying element in intelligence if any one entity has a function of unifying intel- ligence, is difficult. True knowledge must wait upon further advances in science. No explana- tion is afforded by merely calling it a different name e. g., "the soul," "the atman." When we have called it "soul" we understand it no better than we did before, therefore let's throw away the concept "soul" as a useless one. It is not an hypothesis, it is not even an impressionistic sketch of processes; it's an ignorance-glossing, pretentious, mountable, empty name. The scien- tific spirit is not to try to cover up thus the limita- tions of our knowledge, but to confess them frankly and thus define problems for future in- vestigation. Let's return, therefore, to our discussion of the learning-process. As described by McKeever, at the first moment of a child's existence the "pon- derable objects touching him from without, and the colic and other disturbances from within, be- gin an everlasting irritation of his nervous system. He coos and kicks and screams and otherwise 'fights back.' Thus the environment impresses itself upon him, and thus he reacts upon 92 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS it and acquires the more rapidly the little, simple meanings of things. One of the most interesting pastimes imaginable is to observe closely day by day the conduct of the little child as he proceeds to find out the whole world." (On page 136) "I believe that the primary law of earliest development of consciousness in the child is that of change, or variation. His first awareness of things present to sight is of objects moving, and thus causing a change of position of the retinal image. He becomes aware of sta- tionary objects only after he is able to move his head, and thus cause a moving retinal image. His first consciousness of things heard is of sounds that come intermittently, as in the case of the human voice. . . . These changes in the amount and character of the nervous stimuli impart to the brain cortex the many nervous shocks, each with its peculiar quality of feeling. In some such way as this I believe, the child gets his first idea of a . . . 'this different from that/ " "Every thought one thinks tends to express it- self in an act. To make this statement clear, sup- pose you meet three good friends on the street- corner, each about to depart in a different direc- fion and each urging you to go with him. You listen to A's plea and feel impelled to go with him, and so afterwards with B and C. But all the time they are talking there keeps coming up in your mind a more impelling thot that either of them can offer ; for example, the thot that you PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 93 promised your mother that you would return home directly. And so you do go directly home, but you no doubt felt, for a moment, an impulse to act on the suggestion of each of your three friends. So is that every thought tends to express itself in an act, but only one, the one most im- pelling to action, directs your conduct at any given time. Of the thousands of thots that rush thru one's mind in the course of a day, compara- tively few become realized in actual conduct." (This writer would have been more correct had he said that thots themselves are but the sensa- tions of miniature rehearsals of acts.) "When one is undergoing deep emotion, he doubtless experiences feelings of a pronounced character. In fear, he has that chilly, drawn-up feeling in the stomach; in anger, a warm feeling of physical comfort about the bowls and chest; in embarrassment, a dry, uncomfortable feeling about the mouth and throat. Other emotions have their peculiar kind of feeling. The one who is experiencing the emotion is not likely to take very close account of the physical expressions ac- companying. An outside observer, however, often may. As a matter of fact you can very easily catch yourself. See, for example, whether in pronouncing p you don't feel a slight tingling of the lips, or whether you can pronounce x, q, or k without a movement in the throat. So that as the Russian Kostyleff (Cerebral Mechanism of Thot, p. 16) observes, The intellectual develop- 94 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ment of the individual comes down to the enrich- ing of the organism in cerebral reflexes,' and (p. 36) 'the reflexes studied by Pawlow and Bech- terew are not the base of a process, the full im- plication of which escapes science, but they are the most essential elements, the very body of what we call mental images or ideas.' " It's questionable whether the course of any in- coming nerve-current ends in the production of a sensation. The current continues in existence until it discharges into some mechanism of muscu- lar actions. For example, the organism of most animals is so arranged that if the animal be run- ning half in sun and half in shade, the general bodily temperature determines whether afferent currents from the warmth and from cold-end-or- gans respectively will accelerate or inhabit the running mechanisms for either side of his body, causing a taxis (turning) into more sun or into more shade. The difference between a heliotropic plant (e. g. a sunflower) and a helio-taxic animal (e. g. some of the lower forms) is as follows. The plant reacts to an excess of light upon one side with a flow of sap into the cells of the opposite side, the tumescence (expansion) of which con- tinues to bend the plant toward the sun until the light-effect upon either side is balanced. But the animal reacts generally with more than the swell- ing of muscles on one side of him he reacts with a whole cycle of alternate swellings and contract- ings of such muscles. With the plant it's as tho PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 95 fluid were admitted into a hydraulic press, and exerted a single push; but in the animal it's as tho fluid were admitted into a steam-hammer or an engine, which continued to give a whole series of strokes until the fluid was turned off. The fact is that in the animal the initial contraction of a muscle causes incoming currents of sensa- tion from the muscle itself, which sensations then become the immediate initiators of say a contrac- tion of some other muscle, sensory currents for which in their turn set off a third part of the process, and so on until the cycle is completed by contracting the first muscle again, and the entire chain repeats itself. The precise course of such a chain depends partly upon the inherited group- ings of neurons, with which were born (reflexes and instincts), and partly upon automatisms we establish after birth (habits and associations) . When we first perform an act such as riding a bicycle, we make each muscular adjustment de- liberately and consciously, but so soon as a chain of such adjustments has been repeated many times, its steps follow one another without need of deliberation, and we repress the monotonous complex of processes into our unconscious. Each muscular contraction or inervation built as one element into whole cycle or complex, which no longer disturbs the "higher" brain centers, but is "short-circuited" thru (taken care of by) "lower" centers in the cerebellum (small brain under the main cerebrum) the pons (where the. 96 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS spinal cord enters the brain) or even in the cord (the main rope of nerves from the brain to the points where they individually branch out toward their respective termini) similarly these very cycles, complexes, automatisms, and centers may be made the units of still higher organizations. When we have mastered the muscular automa- tisms of balancing our bodies on our right foot, on our left foot, moving forward, and moving back- ward, we may then build these automatisms as elements into the more complex automatism of a Spanish Fandango. In all this process of integrating activities you'll recognize the correlate of what we spoke of before, the unifying of sensations. Here we handle out-going nerve-currents in whole groups, just as there by the action of the ego we handle incoming currents in whole groups. Now besides this integrating there's a process of differentiat- ing a separating and an analysing which you must understand in order to have a clear idea of how we think. We may describe it by representing with cer- tain capital letters, V-0-I-C-E-M-O-T-H-E-R-M- I-L-K, a group of realities (phenomena) which the child perceiving as a confusion, reacts to on the first occasion in a haphazard way. When these same phenomena become know to the child, they are known only thru exciting in him certain echoes of sensations and of responsive actions on his part (noumena or ideas) which we shall desig- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 97 nate by small letters, v-o-i-c-e-m-o-t-h-e-r-m-i-l-k. Presently a time comes when one part of the group of phenomena, say V-0-I-C-E, or M-0-T-H-E-R, or M-I-L-K, is manifested alone. It excites in him immediately only the noumena v-o-i-c-e, or only m-o-t-h-e-r, or only m-i-l-k, and by such a process he first comes to distinguish these as not one and inseparable. But also V-0-I-C-E has been accompanied so frequently by M-O-T-H-E-R, and M-0-T-H-E-R so frequently by M-I-L-K, that a similar succession v-o-i-c-e-m-o-t-h-e-r-m-i-l-k has come to intercon- nect itself among the noumena. Hence, if V-O-I-C-E occurs and awakes v-o-i-c-e, the other noumena m-o-t-h-e-r and m-i-l-k awaken auto- matically thru their forerunner association with v-o-i-c-e, and without awaiting the actual mani- festation of M-O-T-H-E-R or of M-I-L-K, and this process is what we call Anticipation. The anticipation is Logical if it proceeds step by step thru a long series of middle terms; it is intui- tional if it skips the middle term and flashes at once from premises to conclusion especially if the premises themselves are of a nature somewhat intangible. The anticipation was Truth if ac^ tually thereafter the phenomena M-I-L-K did manifest themselves. The anticipation was Error if these failed to materialize. If, as we said, "without a brain, the 'soul' is without memory, without perception and without reason," important correlaries follow. It's evi- 98 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS dent that all post-mortem punishments or re- wards for a soul bereft of power to remember for what it was being punished or rewarded, are ridiculous. It's equally plain that our conduct, while we are living upon this earth is unlikely to add to our souls any accretions of everlasting importance, whether accretions of wisdom, or of superiority to low desires, or of ennobling traits of character, or anything whatsoever. Nor is it reasonable that our conduct (thru "Karma," etc.) affect for better or for worse the state in which we shall be reincarnated (if we are to be so). Our present conduct, indeed, may make this a worse or a better world to be born into, when our chance for that comes around again, but the resulting likelihood of betterment to our own con- dition would be mighty slight. Therefore, these facts appreciated by a majority of mankind (as, unless false, they sooner or later must come to be) will necessitate profound alterations in our methods of seeking to induce mankind to be good. If we're going to let them go seeking a heaven, as reward for their efforts, we must tell them that heaven can be only on this earth, to remain upon which seems to be our destiny not only in the present life, but in any future one. And that heaven will be a social more than it will be an individual salvation, since no one can control the manner of his especial reincarnation, but can only better his chances by initiating currents of gen- eral betterment which will continue multiplying PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 99 and ramifying in this old world until after his long death-sleep he finds himself again reincar- nated here. For the creator of paradise on a future better earth must be ourselves, mankind. Surely this is a wholesome and socially salutory conclusion. Too long have mankind wasted in fruitless preparations for a future state efforts which might have been fruitful if only applied to mundane things. The speculations of meta- physics have resulted at best in a gradual evolu- tion of such ideas, or if not precisely this, at least a refining of the language in which we ex- press them. A doing away with some of the misunderstandings which confused the thinkers of past ages, can be traced thruout all the vicissi- tudes of speculation. "Some think one generell soul fills every braine, And others thinke the name of soule is vaine, And that we only well-mixt bodies are." 23 Primitive people 24 if they distinguish the soul from the body at all, think of it as the body's shadow, or its breath. The later Egyptians first imagined that the soul went thru post-mortem meanderings, and that it needed expensive priest- ly administrations; other Oriental peoples re- tained a pantheism which checked the upspring- :3 Davies, Sir J. Nosce Teipsum. 24 Taylor, E. B. Primitive Culture ; first edition, especially chapter 11 ; Marrett, R. R., The Threshold of Religion ; Cawley, A. E., The Idea of the Soul. 100 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ing among them of mere individualistic ideas. An evolution of Greek thot on the subject may be traced 25 thru Anaxamander and Diogenes of Ap- polonia; Empedocles (who attempted to com- bine Animism and hylozoism), the Pytha- goreans, such as Diacchus, who were interested chiefly in facilitating, thru their ceremonies, the return "home" of the soul ; and the Stoics. Plato varies his position considerably. He was the first psychophysical dualist.- 6 Even by later thinkers, however, the soul continued to be thot of as something like the use, or at best essence, of its object. Aristotle speaks of the "axness" of an axe, in this way, tho Anaxagoras had pro- gressed to the point of associating intelligence with soul. It was from Greek, rather than Hebrew, sources, that Christianity got its ideas, the Schol- astics combining Aristotle's view with the Orien- tal notion of immortality. Descartes for the first time seems to hit upon the idea of a funda- mental duality in essence between material and spiritual, which Spinoza then set himself to ex- plain away. Leibnitz ascribed souls to everything in existence, and Berkeley virtually said that that was all of them that does exist.- 7 Let the reader trace for himself the vagaries of most of the em- piricists and Kantians. Fechner suggests that "Davies. Cf. 20 Roberts, E. J. Plato's View of the Soul. Mind, N. S., vol. 14. - 7 A11 the choir of heaven and furniture of earth have not any subsistence without a mind - - their being is to be perceived or known. Berkeley. Of the Principles of Human Knowledge. Sec. 4. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 101 just as in life Attention moves about from point to point within the body, so after death the soul moves around the world. That men should speculate so deeply about death, and come to such strange unnatural con- clusions about it is understandable when we con- sider how profoundly many animals may be ef- fected by the presence of death, if made vivid to them. Read Alphonse Daudet's "La Mort du Dau- phin," in which the little prince has discovered that he must die. We translate freely : "But don't cry, Madam Queen ; you forget that I'm the Dauphin, and that the Dauphins don't die in this fashion." The Queen still cries more than ever, and the Little Dauphin begins to be frightened. "Ho!" says he, "I don't wish Death to come and take me, and I know very well how to prevent him. Let forty very strong lansquenets be sent here immediately to mount guard about our bed ! . . . Let a hundred big cannons watch night and day under our windows, and woe to Death if he dare approach us!" In order to please the royal child, the Queen gives the signal. Immediately we hear the big cannons rolling in the court and forty great lan- squenets, with haliberds in their hands, arrange themselves around the room. These are grizzled old veterans. The Little Dauphin claps his hands on seeing them. He recognizes one of them and calls. 102 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS "Lorrain ! Lorrain !" The veteran takes a step toward the bed. "I love you very much, old Lorrain, . . . Just let me see your big sword. ... If Death comes to take me, you'll have to kill him, won't you?" Lorrain answers, "Yes, my Lord." And two big tears run down his tanned cheeks. At this moment the almoner approaches the Little Dauphin and talks to him a long time in a low voice, while showing him a crucifix. The Little Dauphin listens with a very astonished air, then, suddenly interrupting him, says: "I understand very well what you say to me, Mr. Abbot; but isn't it possible that my little friend Beppo could die in my place if I gave him a lot of money?" . . . The almoner continues to talk with him in a low voice, and the Little Dau- phin resumes with a great sigh: "All that which you're telling me is very sad, Mr. Abbot; but one thing consoles me, and that is that up there above, in the Paradise of the Stars, I shall still be the Dauphin. ... I know that the good God is my cousin, and could not fail to treat me according to my rank." Then he adds, turning toward his mother: "Let them bring me my handsomest clothes, my white ermine doublet, a*nd my velvet slippers. I wish to dress myself up for the angels and to enter Into Paradise dressed like a Dauphin." A third time the almoner leans toward the Lit- tle Dauphin and talks to him in a very low voice. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 103 In the midst of his discourse the royal child in- terrupts angrily: "But then," he cries, "to be Dauphin is nothing at all!" And without wishing to hear anything more, the Little Dauphin turns toward the wall, and cries bitterly. The point which we have reached now neces- sitates a frank discussion of the old problem of determinism versus free-will. Among the fierce controversies which have vexed men's minds since time immemorial, that which has raged about the so-called "Freedom of the Will" has been not the least. The following definition is found in the Cyclo- pedia Brittanica, llth Edition: "Determinism in Ethics the name given to the theory that all moral choice, so called, is the determined or necessary result of psychological and other conditions. It is opposed to the various doctrines of Free will, known as voluntarism, libertarianism, indeter- minism. . . " Another and helpful definition is that given by Dr. L. C. Givler (The Conscious Cross-section, pp. 371-373) . "Purpose is the maintaining of a motor pattern in the midst of various environments. . . . It includes the element of choice. . . . "The will is characterized as the dominant pur- pose in the individual ... if we but analyze all cases of the will, we find that the thing done, the thing willed, is the most constant response to that 104 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS environment of which the person is capable. The divided inconstant person alone boasts of the free- dom of the will that is inside of him. The rest' of humanity are even now falling into the habit of desiring to be predictable. The honesty of the bankers, lawyers, merchants, and other per- sons of the social mele is just this predictability of their actions before they are fully functioned." In spite of notable exceptions, it is essentially the Free will position which in the Occident has been connected with the religious way of thinking. Here the array of names is imposing. Chrisos- tom, who gave "choice to man and fulfillment to God;" Clement; Cyril of Jerusalem; Antiochus who said "faithfulness is a matter of self-resolu- tion," in spite of grace; Gregory of Nyssa; Origen; Isaac of Antioch, who held that even regeneration was a personal act of man, who in this was higher than the angels ; Tertullian ; Pe- lagius and Celestinnus who argued that without freedom there could be no guilt; Duns Scotus, who made will the only essence of all ; Albertus Magnus ; Socius, who curiously made God like "a wise pedagogue who will not scrutinize too close- ly" ; Melancthon so far as it may not resist the Word and Holy Spirit; Schopenhauer, who said necessity is the kingdom of nature, but freedom is the kingdom of grace, which has nothing in common with cause and effect; Goethe, who de- fined freedom as the possibility of performing the rational under all circumstances; A. Bellinger; PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 105 Luthart; and innumerable others. It is natural to understand the bias of theology in favor of free will, without which indeed theology's God is loaded with the responsibility of all sin and evil. Besides these theologians, whose view has al- ways small weight because they're committed in advance to defend their fundamental preconcep- tions, there has been, however, a continuous suc- cession of lay philosophers to defend the free will doctrine. Thus Epicurus consented to "the pre- ponderance of free moral practice to mere under- standing. To the Sophists "the measure of all things" was man. Plato declared virtue un- coerced and free and the individual responsible for an evil destiny. Melancthon thot we're free up to the point of resisting the Word and Holy Spirit. By Descartes' definition even intellectual error is but an affirmation of ideas yet proble- matical Malbranche called will the natural and spontaneous inclination to good. Leibnitz in a curious nescient analogy compared the will to a magnetic needle obeying its "own" laws. Hume, skeptical, attacked the law of causation. Kant declared "thou canst for thou shalt." Shelling was a free wilier, and J. F. Herbart said, "freedom is independence, over against causal- ity as collectivity." Hegel found freedom implied in rational will. To Schopenhauer, "necessity is the kingdom of nature, freedom the kingdom of grace" which had nought in common with cause and effect; this notion was enlarged upon by E. 106 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS v. Hartman. With Fichte, his egoistic doctrine implied free will; and Leibman revived the doc- trine for those "who're not diverted by other mo- tives. To Goethe, "Freedom is the possibility of performing the rational under all circumstances." A Bellinger thought "rational will a potency transcending time/' and hence a reflection of divine freedom. For Luthardt, "freedom results with self determination according to divinely pat- terned nature." L. Clark was for freedom. T. Reid based it upon the consciousness of power and accountability. James considered "free will nothing but real novelty." J. F. Roys says we're "free so far as life is unique." But the authoritarian argument from what good men and true have believed about the ques- tion is hopelessly complicated in this case (as in most others) ) from the differences of opinion as among even the religious-minded by themselves. Out of the nebulous past, when all thinking was more or less mystical, come echoes of the battle, in which an indefined Determinism is called by the religious term of Fate. Essentially this is the doctrine of all the Orient; but it has been adopted also by many Occidental theologians. Cyprian said that while salvation was thru faith, yet even our capacity for faith itself was thru God's will. Ambrose held that the efficacious work of redemption requires that initiative should come from God. The council at Ephesus in 431 rejected the Pelagian protest (against Aug- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 107 ustine) of Freedom. Luther, in order to stress the need of trust in divine grace, harped on the impotence of our will. Calvin was absolutely against Free will. In our own country we had an exampler of this position in Johnathan Ed- wards. Outside religious circles the determinists of course are yet more numerous. Of Greek philosophers, Heraclitus, Pythagoras and the Eleatics were determinists. Socrates at least taught that will is governed by understanding. Zeno postulated six mechanisms by which thot is formed, and the Stoic school held that our basic characters are fixed. In modern times we had wholly determinist philosopher in Thomas Bradwardine, Albert of Haberstadt, Spinoza called will a delusion due to failure to comprehend absolute causality. The English and French empiricism of the 17th and 18th centuries culminated in such materialism as that of J. B. R. Robinet. Locke considered that the will is moved by the greatest uneasiness. David Hartley and Joseph Priestley accounted for all mentality on a basis of physiological neural antecedents. T. H. Green said that choice merely expresses character, and given the man and his circumstances, the will is given. The argument from the number of able think- ers who hold a point of view is always precarious. On almost every subject, the earlier opinions are somewhat, if not almost completely, erroneous. All that is helpful to know on that point is, which 108 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS way does the trend of opinion move? Do men tend to become more determinist or more inde- terminist in their mode of thought? A phil- osophical opinion, like a religion, may, be erroneous and yet so completely self-consistent as to survive the assaults of logic; but when cen- turies, perhaps only when milleniums, of time have flowed by, the race gradually comes to a more sober judgment, and, embracing some newer, but generally lesser, folly, is free to laugh at the old. And we think that whoever is familiar with Dra- per and Lecky, and in general with the history of intellect, must grant that the development of human thot is away from indeterminism as it is away from animism. After all, the older conception of the soul has an essentially animistic source. Anthropologists now generally agree that primitive man's concep- tion of the soul was a guess at the origin of dreams and other natural phenomena which we now account for better than he could. And as to arguments from the chivalry we owe to God not to make Him culpable of the world's crimes, (the argument of many theologians against Determinism) we may settle that by re- calling that the ways of God are confessedly in- scrutable. HOW CAN IT BE USEFUL TO CON- CERN OURSELVES ABOUT A BEING WHOSE WAYS ARE INSCRUTABLE? It is much more profitable for us to take note of many pertinent facts which each of us may PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 109 observe for himself, such as the fluctuations of his own morale according to the state of his health, the climatic conditions, etc. Few of us feel as strong to resist temptation after 5 P. M. as earlier in the day, and the crime-records con- firm this as a general fact. In gloomy weather the statistics for suicide increase; and in spring and summer immorality Concealing memories, the conventions of the stage in representing to- gether the "soul" plotting crime and nature's "ele- ments" in turbulence imply recognition that an empathy here exists? Again, if will were free, we never could gage from the appearance of a crowd gathered before a church whether they'd proceed to prayers or (changing suddenly their plans) start a riot. We should never know the appropriate thing to say to an old friend, nor know whether a given person Would be suitable to trust with an undertaking since his past reputa- tion and character wouldn't determine his conduct of tomorrow. In the literature of the Psychoanalytic move- ment we shall find much to substantiate our argu- ment for determinism. Freud says 2S "These con- ceptions of strict determinism in seemingly ar- bitrary actions have already borne rich fruit for psychology perhaps also for the administration of justice. Bleuler and Jung have in this way made intelligible the reaction in the so-called as- sociation experiments, wherein the test person ^Freud Psychology of Everyday Life, p. 303. 110 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS answers to a given word with one occurring to him . . . while the time elapsing ... is measured. . . . Three students of criminology H. Gross . . . Wertheimer and Klein have developed from these experiments a technique for the diagnosis of facts in criminal cases." This book is more than a series of anecdotes of cases where mental events apparently fortuitous or "freely" willed are re- duced to mechanically caused phenomena. Freud takes up systematically various types of mental operation, and gives us his experiences in analys- ing each kind as persons brot them to him to chal- lenge the competence of his hypothesis. Thus his chapters include: (1) Forgetting of Proper Names, (II) Foreign Words, and (III) Names and order of Words, (IV) Concealing memories, (V) Mistakes in Speech and (VI) in Reading and Writing (VII) ) Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions (VIII) Erroneously Carried Out Ac- tions (IX) Symtomatic and Change Actions (X) Errors (XI) Combined Faulty Acts (XII) Deter- minism Chance and Superstitious Beliefs. Freud, once speaking to a stranger, couldn't recall the name of the painter Signorelli, could only think of Botticelli and Boltraffio. He had just been discussing the customs of Turks in Bos- nia and Herzegovina and thot of their remark to physicians on the occasion of a relative's death "Sir (Herr) ... if he could be saved you would save him" and their remark about sexual pleasure "Sir (Herr) if that ceases, life no longer has any PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 111 charm." But this last theme he had repressed; the death theme because a patient had lately com- mitted suicide, the sexual because this patient's malady was sexual and because the theme was too intimate to discuss with a stranger. This double- repression on the word Sir (Herr) and which had been occasioned by the word Herzegovina, caused repression of the equivalent signer of Sig- norelli, so that he united the Bo of Bosnia to form Botticelli and Boltraffio. A young man who was bemoaning to Freud that the Jewish race was prevented from realizing its ambitions and desires concluded with the verse in which Dido leaves her vengeance upon Aeneas to posterity; but he omitted from it the word Ali- quis. This omission he challenged Freud to ex- plain. His associations with Aliquis were reliq- ues-liquidation-liquidity-fluid. Then a relique he had seen of St. Simon. Then several saints of the calendar ending with St. Januarius, whose blood, preserved in a phial in Naples, miraculously liqui- fies on a certain holiday. During the French oc- cupation the blood was slow in liquifying, much to the excitement of the people, until Garibaldi pointed out to the priest the soldiers arrayed without and expressed hope the miracle would soon take place which it then did. The next association was only seemingly irrelevant "a wom- an from whom I could . . . get a message . . . an- noying to us both" Namely, "that she missed her courses ?" Freud rightly guessed. For when the 112 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS speaker, deploring the wrongs of his people, had quoted Dido's wish that a new generation would take the vengeance on itself, he was interrupted by the thot "Do you really wish . . . for posterity? Just think ... if you now . . . must expect pos- terity from the quarter you have in mind !" "Feeling of conviction that there is a free will . . . exists, but . . . must be justified . . . does not manifest itself in weighty and important deci- sions ; on these occasions one has much more the feeling of a psychic compulsion and gladly falls back upon it. (Of Luther's "Here I stand, I can- not do anything else.") "Many things obtrude themselves on conscious- ness in paranoia which in normal and neurotic persons can only be demonstrated thru psycho- analysis as existing in their unconscious. "Dr. Ferenczi reports that he was a distracted person . . . considered peculiar by his friends on account of the frequency and strangeness of his failing. But the signs of this inattention have almost all disappeared since he began to practise psychoanalysis with patients, and was forced to turn his attention to the analysis of his own ego. He believes that one renounces these failings when one learns to extend by so much one's own re- sponsibilities. He therefore justly maintains that distractedness is a state which depends on un- conscious complexes, and is curable by psycho- analysis. One day he was reproaching himself for having committed a technical error in the PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 113 psychoanalysis of a patient, and on this day all his former distractions reappeared. He stumbled while walking in the street (a representation of that faux pas in the treatment), he forgot his pocket-book at home, he was a penny short in his car fare, he did not properly button his clothes, etc."- 9 The recent experiences of psychiatrists with the war-neuroses so-called "shock cases" con- firms the deterministic conception of mental proc- esses. Among the statements in the March, 1919, Atlantic Monthly by F. W. Parsons are many such as this : "A soldier overreaches in an effort to forget painful experiences, and forgets his name, organization, and occasionally all the facts of his early life, reverting to an infantile state. If his reaction is infantile, he is in effect an infant, and infants do not fight obviously the fulfillment of a wish. Such states are transitory episodes, the changes from a lisping, toy-playing infantile state to a normal adult reaction taking place within a few days, the condition having lasted from a few weeks to several months." Freud's above cases, and innumerable others like them seem to place psychic events among those which obey strictly the rule of causality. And what more is it to say this, after all, than to in- clude them within the category of all things na- tural? A boy's top takes its spinning course over the ground which couldn't have been predicted -"From Psychopathology of Every Day Life by Sigmund Freud, p. 166. 114 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS from a knowledge of the few merely obvious fac- tors involved, such as lay of the land and material of which the top is made. Do you thence con- clude that the top's course is in the least independ- ent of material causes? If not, why deem that the case is otherwise with yourself? If we were the top, doubtless we should say "My sense of un- constraint in spinning assures me that I am a free agent. The air vainly blows against me as I continue my course. Vainly the pebbles get in my way I scatter them in all directions! Whatever I have a turn to do, that I do. For my will is free!" Truly we are free only as the spinning top is free. That effects follow solely after causes me- chanically adequate to produce them holds good without exception thruout the whole world and an admission of this invariability is the keystone in the arch of the mathematics and the sciences, upon which rests the human mind's mastery over matter. We daren't pull out that great keystone truth for so small a reason as that somebody's petty system of morals is made by a falsehood by it. A million times young investigators in physics and in chemistry have tried to disprove that every smallest divisible unit of present energy exists as it is solely because of an equivalent unit in the past, they have tried and always in vain. The "law" of conservation of energy stands firm. Con- sequently any control exerted over physical ener- gies by a "soul" would have to be exerted thru PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 115 something in the nature of a frictionless switch, turned by that soul and operating in the midst of a stream of physical energies. In order to deflect physical energies, such a switch itself would have to belong to the same universe of energies, and to move this switch, the soul also would have to belong to the same universe of energies; that is to say, the soul would have to belong to this uni- verse regarding which we know that every event after being carefully investigated is but the in- evitable effect of antecedent causes. Hence we've not the millionth part of justification for believ- ing that fiats of the soul are other than inevitable effects arising out of the past. There be persons known as Mystics, who claim the laws which govern life are inscrutable. Akin to them be these believers in "freedom of will," whose tenet is, that tho we were to ken before the event, all the fixt causes of a man's action, still we couldn't say positively what his act would be; cause and effect hold sway over the material world alone and don't hold true in the world of spirit. But if a man's acts weren't determined a billion years before he was born, there's chaos in the cosmos, for if there's a cranny in the whole uni- verse in which purely uncaused things, whether volitions or sorceries, can find lodgement, that cranny is a cavern which may undermine the firm- est ground we build on. If there exists, any- where, a fountain of pure hazard, it will wash 116 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS away every structure founded upon positive knowledge, and sweep us again into the bog of superstition and witchcraft. However small the leak in the dyke, if no man can check it, it ends in inundation. "By their fruits ye shall know them" was the test suggested by a great ethical reformer. Apply this test to the loose credulous, animistic thinking of the past, and see its fruit in the hardly pro- gressing civilizations of the Orient, with their swarming populations suffering under a rotation of pestilence, war, famine, and grinding labor. Apply it to the close-knit skeptical, mechanistic thinking which is modern science, and see the populations reduce their birth-rate, disease suc- cumb to sanitation, war coming into disrepute, famine unknown, and labor shortening its hours. Indeed, unless our conduct is determined by something more calculable than "free" whim, then of what possible use can be all these discussion! of conduct? As matter of fact, only because of determinism is it worth while making this or any effort to influence conduct. The simplest reference to our own conscious ex- perience convinces us that we're free to will any- thing if we conclude to will it. Therein, and in an appeal to the fear of introducing chaos into our moral systems if we should confess to the truth of determinism, lies the whole case for free will. At a superficial glance it appears as tho PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 117 that is all to be said on the subject. If we feel free, isn't that conclusive that we are free? Let's welcome the partial truth contained in this viewpoint, for there undoubtedly is a cer- tain truth contained therein. That truth is: Nothing oppresses us, nothing crushes us down, nothing hurls us back as we stand confidently on the verge of willing. If we've come so far as to conclude to will, we shall will. There'd be much less dispute about "freedom of the will" if people would only observe this dis- tinction ; no one tries to deny that you and we are free to act contrary to the influences affecting us, if we choose. All that the determinist asks you to concede is (1st) that whatever choice we make is an expression of character, and (2nd) that our character could only have been just what it was. Suppose you say that a fiat of will was given by an agent outside heredity or environment, called the soul; still you're in no better case for the soul, too, acts in accord with its own character, doesn't it? And given just such a soul, there had to be just such an act. To even admit so much, however, isn't to admit that our act of will was uncaused, or that it could have been different from what it was, unless those causes also had been different from what they were. True, that when we are confidently on the verge of willing, nothing then prevents us doing so. Some previous series of experiences, however, caused us to be confident on the verge of willing, 118 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS and but for that cause we should be standing somewhere else. Some cause has brot us so far as wishing to will, without which cause we'd never so have wished at all. If the determining causes aren't felt as hurling us back from a de- sired goal, it's because those forces aren't sim- ply outside us, but within us, in the form of the reasons why we desire that goal. A man who answered an advertisement prom- ising, for one dollar, an infallible recipe for be- coming rich, received a neat card on which was engraved "work like the devil and never spend a cent." He was ashamed to complain that he had been defrauded, for he thot that indeed he had received only his deserts for imagining that there existed a short-cut to wealth. But indeed the little card was a fraudulent cheat in a high degree. For tho it told the man what to do to gain wealth, it failed to tell the es- sential thing, namely, how to do what it recom- mended. Every one knows he can get rich by continually earning and never spending ; but both these things may require a self-control which he lacks. What he wants is not the repetition of an already fa- miliar fact, but knowledge of how to overcome his weakness. The present series of essays has been con- structed upon a principle exactly the opposite of that of the card in the above story. That was a trick to defraud the first innocent who answered PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 119 the advertisement, without hope of meriting the future trade that would come of his pleased rec- ommendations. Whereas we, on the contrary are desirous of satisfying you with so much benefit from the course that you will bring your friends to us; desirous of so impressing you with the value of what is to be gained from this contact that you will wish to continue the relationship by joining an association of people leagued to- gether for mutual support in living their princi- ples set forth in these lessons. To accomplish this end, we'll try to avoid ever telling you what to do whilst leaving you uncertain of how to go about it. But first you must of course try really hard to conquer each obstacle without the aid of anyone but yourself. Only that method will give you a sense of mastery and the optimism and aggres- siveness which results from experience of ob- stacles overcome. Similarly the reason for hav- ing you answer some questions before you read the text, is to stimulate you toward original thought on the topics taken up. Afterward, when you have read the text, you should correct any answers you made to questions if you feel they were wrong, and by so doing you are likely to become more exact, as the lessons continue, in your way of expressing yourself. After all, it is in exactness of thought that the efficient man differs from the vagarist. 120 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS SECTION 3 "Things of an unexperienceable nature may exist ad libitum, but they form no part of the material for philosophic debate." 30 "There lives more faith in honest doubt, be- lieve me, than in half the creeds." 31 "The chemist or the physicist can see how the conclusions of his statements ought to reach this or that end, but only the residues in the retort or the pattern of crystallization on the stone shows him what the upshot of his statements should have been." 32 The real rub in all arguments upon and for determinism, with most people, isn't intellectual, it's the feeling that if we admit a fatalistic ele- ment into our philosophy we take away incentive, or else make it unreasonable for God, parents, or magistrates to reward or blame people for the manner of their behavior. These are argumenta ad hominem; with a logician they don't count, but of every 100 pretended logicians in the world, at least 99 are moralists in disguise. But why should the incentive to act rightly be less strong because I know that from the begin- ning of time itself forces were converging which inevitably and eventually have pushed me on to just this act? To be sure, some lazy lookers-for- 30 Wm. James. 31 Tennyson, In Memoriam. a2 GivIer, R. C. Conscious Cross Section, p. 16. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 121 excuses 33 will seize upon fate as an apology for their shortcomings, but we doubt whether these wouldn't have found another excuse in any case ; anyhow, they are the persons whose actions are of least consequence to the world. They whose actions do count are the men and women, the youths and maidens, whose lives are no apology, but an eager onrush to discover the utmost profit in their opportunities. We would see a dozen weak- lings complaining for the want of their crutches, rather than one of these strong ones should lack fire-wood to cook his dinner. A weakling fallen by the wayside touches our sympathies, but a strong man down endangers the general safety. Most assuredly, people of purpose are buoyed up and steeled against the reverses of life by the feeling that they are no whimsical eddies in the ocean of life, but a part of its great central cur- rent, sweeping on irresistibly. To the question, "Why keep up the good fight?" they answer, "Ask the sun and moon to halt in full career, as Joshua is alleged to have done, but as for me, an invincible momentum compels me to> go on and on." We believe that much of the power of the German army can be traced to a feeling among its units, that they are advance-agents flung from Heaven's own hand to scatter effete or barbarous people, and spread "das Kultur." Napoleon felt ^"If the will at the opportune moment has not sought to make use of the moral forces at its disposal, it is because the ego . . . sympathized with the cause of temptation, appropriated it to itself, made it its own. But this very thing proves the evilness of the ego." Tarde. 122 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS this sense of inner urgency; 34 so do you and we at times, all great men do. One feels that the approach by Loeb and Ver- woin is essentially the promising approach, yet as someone has objected, there still is much to do because while we can see why, e. g., a current causes certain responses, it remains almost as hard as ever to see why a situation should do so. We can understand the tropism (taxis) of an ani- mal toward a general source of illumination, but not its tropism (taxis) toward the changing, metamorphasing perceived image of prey or of its mate. To effect a tropism (taxis) we have had hitherto some comparatively simple unit ele- ment. It would seem, therefore as tho the psycho- physical mechanism of the animal must reduce to terms of a unit element the complex and varia- ble stimuli it receives from the image of prey or of its mate, now full face and now in profile, fall- ing now on one portion of the reting and now on another. This unit element, identical with the meaning of the perception is doubtless comprised in terms of the animal's own bodily reactions to the situation. Even so, how is the unification, whether of sensations or of outgoing reactions, achieved ? The need of attempting some answer to this 3 *"In men of the world-shaking type, the Napoleons, Luthers, etc., . . . the resolution is probably of this catastrophic kind. The flood breaks out quite unexpectedly through the dam. That it should so often do so is quite sufficient to account for the tendency of these characters to a fatalistic mood of mind and the fatalistic mood itself is sure to reinforce the strength of the energy." p. 533 of ch. 26, vol. 2, Psychology by Wm. James. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 123 question before we can pursue further our pres- ent inquiry is our excuse for dragging in here a short metaphysical discussion of the concept of an "ego." We hypothecate this "ego" as a small- est divisible unit of one of the forms which mat- ter or energy can assume, and that the elements of its sensation are its own inner view, so to speak, of the motions to which it is subject. If a rotation eastward meant to it the sensation of yellow, a rotation northward meant redness, and non-rotation meant blackness, then a slow rota- tion northeast meant the sensation of brown. Be- cause of the utility to living forms of an ego, we'll suppose that it is by the law of the survival of the fittest that there have come to exist the existing fauna of the world endowed with some means of sucking to themselves at conception, and holding magnetized so long as the bodily processes endure, one of these ego particles, much as a float- ing cork might be drawn to a vortex in the water, and remain suspended over the center of it so long as the motion continued, after which it would be released until whirled to another vortex else- where in the stream. Our ego, like our cork would meantime travel everywhere that the vortex trav- eled, whilst retaining the same suspended posi- tion in the midst of its activities and of the inrush and outrush of so many gallons of material sub- stance. Meantime what function would it subserve? Merely being conscious to itself, the ego would 124 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS contribute nothing giving it a survival value in the economy of the animal host. It might how- ever be of value if while of itself as inert as the cork in the whirlpool it partook of the whirl- pool movements, with all their tremulous modifi- cations, of the flood of currents within the brain cortex, and also in turn reacted upon these by its own inertia. In another analogy, we may suppose that the ego is like a pool of liquid into which various col- ored lights from as many respective nerve cen- ters play, and which absorbs and blends all these different hues, so x that it reflects back to the neu- rons a light of different tinge from any one which it received, because it is a unification of many. But perhaps the best analogy I can give is the following: We know how electric currents in a helix may draw into the center of the helix and suspend there a piece of iron. We know that not only the movements of the iron respond to fluctua- tions in the electric current, but that the move- ments of the iron in turn effect alterations of the current within the wire of the helix. Similarly, fluctuations of nervous current might be induced among the neurons Of the brain cortex by the inert bobbing about of an ego suspended without contact somewhere among them, and of which the momentum had been imparted by previous currents among those same neurons. But let us leave, now, these meta-physical con- cepts, which have served their purpose if they PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 125 in any way make it easier to bridge the gap be- tween Loeb's tropisms and Verworn's taxis mech- anisms to the concept of Woodworth and others of certain fundamental drives, such as hunger, sex, etc., and in which in each case the first part of the act is recognition, easier to bridge the gap between Loeb's tropisms and Verworn's taxis mechanisms to the concepts of Woodworth and others, of certain fundamental drives, such as hunger, sex, etc., and in which in each case the first part of the act is recognition. The theory of evolution now is the basis of all the biological sciences, now established so soundly that to be heralded by the newspapers as having "over- thrown" it is a notoriety attained by a perpetual succession of dabblers in every science; and now so tacitly accepted by all that every Religion al- ways at first the opponent of new truth today hunts and "reinterprets" its scriptures for evi- dence that evolution was taught by it from the beginning. To question this great hypothesis is today less a proof of independent thinking than a confession of unfamiliarity with the evidence; but the credit for all this is due to a change in our method of proof. The arguments of the ancient philosophers, both Oriental and European, were frequently subtle and abstruse, but to a sophisticated mod- ern, they appear wholly childish. Today we find a firmer argument for evolution in convergence of inductive testimony from many separate sources. 126 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS In astronomy the nebular (evolutionary) hypo- thesis was arrived at independently by the mathe- matics of La Place and the searchings of Lavoi- sier; it is, moreover, supported by the spectro- scopic analysis which shows similarity of composi- tion of nebulae and stars thruout the heavens, and by the uniform direction of rotation and the re- spective sizes and temperatures of satellites. In geology proof of the world's age since water could exist on it in liquid state, and of evolutionary processes at work, is uniform from the nature of successive layers of the earth, crust, the erosion of rocks, and the quantity of salt thus far dissolved by its waters; this time period (50,000,000 to 90,000,000) is in remarkable agreement with what is required for the evolutionary process by other sciences. Ornithology shows that in the successively deeper and necessarily earlier- formed strata of rock, lie embedded bones of ever more simply-organized animals; that the modifications of structure are gradual from the upper, more recent forms resembling animals now living to the extinct creatures of the age-old past ; and that as we go backward the multiplicity di- minishes and we approach a common ancestry for the most diverse present types, just as in ascend- ing a tree the twigs at the top are seen to be sprung from common branches and eventually form a single trunk. The Distribution of animal types is not haphazard, nor do similar species necessarily inhabit regions similar in climate, but PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 127 the distribution is well accounted for by suppos- ing that an evolutionary process was in progress whilst continents and islands were being formed, separated, or connected at the times specified by geologists. The Classification of animals extant today according to their degrees of resemblance is explainable only if the resembling groups are descended from less or more remote common an- cestry. The argument from the Structure of Ani- mals is borne out too from the fact that quite similar types will interbreed, and that between slightly more removed types transfusion of blood is possible. Embriology calls attention to a par- allel between ontogenesis and philogenesis which is surely significant. The hypothesis of an evo- lutionary origin of species and descent of man was substantiated with observations enormous in amount though often anecdotally unscientific or even credulous in character, by Charles Darwin; and by him, simultaneously with Herbert Spencer, provided with an explanation which renders the process comprehensible the doctrine, as since modied by de Vries, that thru some accidental in- fluence upon the reproductive cells, an animal occasionally is born with an inheritable muta- tion (say a modified pair of limbs) or an impul- sion toward some type of conduct; in some few cases the mutation will be of nature equipping the animal better to find food, say, or foil its ene- mies ; finally the result will be that these favored animals, as the more fit in the struggle for exist- 128 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ence, will leave more progeny to inherit their characteristics (including the new mutation) than will their competitors. Thus, by accumulation of new mutations, new species originate upon the earth in profusion, replacing their fewer, more simple predecessors. Though the span of man's recorded history is infinitessimal in the time dur- ing which this process has been going on, and though to look for noticeable changes in forms during that time is as though within its own life- time a fly should ask to see the changes in girth of an aged tree, even so we do sometimes see small-scale modifications in animal species occur- ring before our eyes at least where man usurps nature's place as selector and breeder. But when we say that "nature breeds for" greater beauty or skill or group solidarity or whatever, that is only our convenient expression for the fact that in a particular case these qualities increase the chances of survival of the group of animals they characterize. Evidences of intention and a goal in the workings of nature, or of a benevolent dis- position toward her creatures, have been read into her by devout men, rather than read out of her by scientic men. Science has been called organized knowledge. But many of the ideas of the ancients and they couldn't see but those ideas were "knowledge" were organized even to the point of becoming fine- spun metaphysical systems. Science is even more a method, a discipline. The pseudo-scientist PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 129 notes only evidence for his theory and suppresses or ignores all against ; the idealized scientist gath- ers all evidence indifferently and then frames the hypothesis which seems to be indicated and which does violence to no fact. For the former is moved by desire for notoriety or at best by fanatic or patriotic desire to justify a preconceived theory; the latter is moved, if not by innate curiosity after the facts, at least by the desire to figure in the eyes of posterity as one who judged carefully; "most men wish to have truth on their side, but few care to be on the side of truth." The pseudo- scientist, in a corner, will even pretend that evi- dences for his theory are withheld from the vul- gar, but are accessible to those like himself who have special gifts or have achieved thru study and ascetic practices to superhuman powers ; but the true scientist is democratic, and invites critics to witness the experiments, and repeat the meas- urements, upon which he bases his conclusions. The pseudo-scientist seeks to- astonish his public with the bizarre or even the super-natural; but the true man of science is he who tries to ex- plain the complex in terms of the simple, the mys- terious in terms of the familiar, and is inevitably a skeptic as regards the supernatural. In always maintaining this attitude, the typical scientist may be called biassed. But it is the bias at least of experience. The credulous animistic way of thinking was the old-world way; what progress either material or spiritual can it claim? The 130 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS skeptical, mechanistic way of thinking is essen- tially the modern way; its resultant material progress looms on every hand, and its application to the moral field will result in progress at least as great. Every great reformer has been less supernaturalist than his age. So let each one for himself dare to explore the unknown. Let him like a new Columbus bring his barkentines over the curly-waved horizon of blue Ocean, to the discovery mayhap of a new world. The free wind that fills the bellying sails is no more free than the spirit of such a cap- tain. "No other pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage-ground of truth." And the proc- ess of attaining to such truth is as zestf ul as any physical exploration. Memory takes us back to the time when as a boy we led a party to the discovery of a cave that we had sighted in the mountains. Early was the hour when we forsook our beds to commence our journey under the still glimmering stars before the dawn. Hot grew the sun when afternoon found us still toiling up the laborious flanks of mountain and precipice, still uncertain whether our route would lead to any conclusion. But at last our doubts were dispelled as we swung into full view of the yawning cavern; a last scramble up the heap of granite detritus, and we entered its cool shade. Then we looked back upon the toilsome ascent that had taken so many hours, and felt that it was worth while. None PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 131 but the aboriginal Indians had attained to this place before us. Since then we have explored many places, and have lost that feeling that we must be absolutely the first who ever trod the native heath. It is no longer anything that millions have been there be- fore us, so long as to our own experience the ad- venture comes as new. Standing once on Tiger Hill in the Himalayas, we were grateful that others had already seen, had told the story of its wonders till it reached our far off ears, and had built this turret on its summit with the charts identifying all the neigh- boring peaks. All around, below, rolled cloud- land's billowy ocean, pearl-colored in its troughs, its crests and sprays touched pink with the flush of dawn. This downy sea drifted in wraiths past us, sometimes engulfing too our scant fire ; again it ebbed down, leaving our island stark in con- trast above its whiteness. Once as it ebbed, the sun's disk showed clear on the horizon; and op- posite, a glittering ice peak like a diamond sparkled in that first ray. Then, thanks to the chart, which earlier comers had erected, we knew that this was Kichenjunga, 28,000 feet above the sea. As the cloud floor ebbed further, its mas- sive ice-crest higher soared, the white cloud-land becoming gray by comparison with its ineffable, celestial purity. Imagination staggered at the picture ! Yet we waited for a sight of a still more stupendous mountain Everest which we 132 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS should know by its resemblance to the picture on that panoramic chart upon the tower. Three rounded peaks scarcely visible in the far distance for then we still scanned the mists. Meantime rents and rifts appeared in the cloud floor, thru which we looked awe-struck down into dark green depths of warm valleys, thousands and thousands of feet beneath that sea, as when one peers down thru the flat lily-pads and sees under the clear water the bottom of the pool. But the rifts closed again, and we peered forth over the surface, and thot we saw for one moment but never shall be sure far in the distance, across the cloud sea, three close-clustered glittering islands. Everest. The reason we've placed so much emphasis in this chapter upon the ideal of science is that until mankind have not merely information but real love of truth and willingness to submit to truth's discipline, little progress can be made toward any other goal. Love of truth comes before loyalty to the doctrine or the organization. Referring to the defences of the old creeds Lecky argues : "If it is said that plagues or pestilences are sent as a punishment of error or of vice, the assertion must be tested by a comprehensive examination of the history of plagues on one hand, and of periods of great vice and heterodoxy on the other. If it be said that an influence more powerful than any military agency directs the course of battles the action of this force must be detected as we PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 133 would detect electricity, or any other force, by experiment. If the attribute of infallibility be ascribed to a particular Church, an inductive reasoner will not be content with enquiring how far an infallible Church would be a desirable thing, or how far certain ancient words may be constructed as a prediction of its appearance ; he will examine, by a wide and careful survey of ecclesiastical history, whether this Church has ac- tually been immutable and consistent in its teach- ing; whether it has never been affected by the ignorance or passion of the age; whether its in- fluence has uniformly exerted on the side which proved to be true ; whether it has never supported by its authority scientific views which were after- wards demonstrated to be false, or countenanced and consolidated popular errors, or thrown ob- stacles in the path of those who were afterwards recognized as the enlighteners of mankind. If ecclesiastical deliberations are said to be espe- cially inspired or directed by an illuminating and supernatural power, we should examine whether the councils and convocations of clergymen ex- hibit a degree and harmony of wisdom that can- not reasonably be accounted for by the play of our unassisted faculties. If institutions are said to owe their growth to special supernatural agen- cies, distinct from the ordinary system of natural laws, we must examine whether their courses are so striking and so peculiar that natural law fails to explain them. Whenever, as in the case of a 134 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS battle, very many influences concur to the result, it will frequently happen that that result will baffle our predictions. It will also happen that strange coincidences, such as the frequent recur- rence of the same number in a game of chance, will occur. But there are limits to these varia- tions from what we regard as probable. If, in throwing the dice, we uniformly attained the same number, or if in war the army which was destitute of all military advantages was uni- formly victorious, we should readily infer that some special cause was operating to produce the result. We must remember, too, that in every great historical crisis the prevalence of either side will bring with it a long train of conse- quences, and that we only see one side of the pic- ture. If Hannibal, after his victory at Cannae, had captured and burnt Rome, the vast series of results that have followed from the ascendancy of the Roman Empire would never have taken place, but the supremacy of a maritime, commercial and comparatively pacific power would have produced an entirely different series, which would have formed the basis and been the essential condition of all the subsequent progress ; a civilization, the type and character of which is now impossible to conjecture, would have arisen, and its theologians would probably have regarded the career of Han- nibal as one of the most manifest instances of special interposition on record. "If we would form sound opinions on these mat- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 135 ters, we must take a very wide and impartial sur- vey of the phenomena of history. We must ex- amine whether events have tended in a given direction with uniformity or a presistence that is not naturally explicable. We must examine not only the facts that corroborate our theory, but also those which oppose it. "That such a method is not ordinarily adopted must be manifest to all. As Bacon said, 'men mark the hits, but not the misses;' they collect industriously the examples in which many, and sometimes improbable, circumstances have con- verged to a result which they consider good, and they simply leave out of their consideration the circumstances that tend in the opposite direc- tion." 35 The thotf ul man, therefore, gives over all hopes of supernatural consolation, and schools himself to meet facts as they are, without seeking a false refuge. In place of "pie in the sky by and by" he goes about in an effective way to make conditions better on this earth; he presumes that if he is ever to live again it will foe on this same old planet. Instead of trying, thru spirit-mediums, to get into communications with the (non-exist- ant) personalities of departed dear ones, he ex- erts himself to improve the world into which they and he must (if ever) come again to live. There even are reasons of personal advantages why a man should become an idealist. "Lecky, W. E. H. ( History of European Morals. 136 PHILOSOPHY OP HELPFULNESS We don't say it's always to man's personal ad- vantage to do a good act. If a man loves evil, performing a good act mayn't make him either healthy, wealthy or wise. Also, a man truly good, but who is such only from a sense of duty, may live and die friendless and miserable, probably will. But we do say this : that no other type of man is half so happy as he who is good thru LOVE of goodness. No other CAN be. For as a man judges a tool to be worth anything, not when it is good to itself, but good FOR SOME- THING, just so he inevitably judges himself to be of use to something greater. But who can be genuinely happy without self-respect? SECTION 4 "Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt; Nothing's so hard but search will find it out." 36 In great centers of civilization, religion soon becomes organized for the purpose of sanctioning laws and morals. "These attempts at religious reform are interesting as showing the anxiety of the human mind to sublimate its religious creed to the level of the moral and intellectual standard it has attained, and to make religious ordinances in some degree the instruments of moral improve- ment." 37 What is most striking to the real spirit of human helpfulness of the founders, Christ, 36 Except in the case of the hen on the China egg. 37 Lecky, W. E. H., History of European Morals, vol. 1, p. 324. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 137 Buddha, etc.? When the moral or intellectual composition of a group is low, it has no difficulty in dragging its religion down to a corresponding level; a fact which indicates that the rare cases of genuine reform thru religion are of an hyp- notic nature and probably could the connection between religion and pure living in the remaining instances be known it would be seen that it was a merely chance one ; if a pious person is also good, every one praises God for such a shining example of what is conceived to be cause and effect ; but let an atheist be equally good, and if people find a flaw in his goodness, they will ascribe that flaw to his atheism. That superstition is dangerous to the public weal thru promoting emotionalism and non-sanity should be evident. But this chapter wasn't intended to be mere negations, except in so far as negations are al- ways necessary to sweep away the obstacles that hinder affirmation, the real power. Says Fonte- nelle, "It is not science to fill one's head with all the extravagances of the Phoenicians and the Greeks, but it is science to know what led the Phoenicians and the Greeks into these extrava- gances. All men are so much alike that there is no race whose follies should not make us tremble." "We live spiritually," says Prof. Royce, "by out- lining our forms and thus enriching our sense of their deeper meaning." What once was thot to be final truth, becomes more pregnant if we regard 138 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS it as showing how man progresses continually from relatively false to relatively more exact. Science has been defined as "organized knowl- edge ;" but, more than that, it's a method. When your black priest from Africa tells a miraculous tale of Mohammed, your white priest may go him a better one of Christ ; but your brown priest can tell one about Krishna's miracles which makes both the others look as commonplace as pages from a dictionary. Each one can tell a won- derful story to prove his own point, but the world makes no advance thru such methods. At the beginning of all spiritual life, must come the determination to be sincere. If a creed won't stand skepticism, won't bear critical examina- tion, regards any matters as "mysteries" too holy to be investigated, and tells us we "must have faith." we're false to the highest in us if we accept that creed, however much comfort it seems to afford us. True, that in accepting the word of an eminent scientist upon some discovery he has made, we may be as gullible as any other doc- trinaire. E; g., The "law of universal gravita- tion" sometimes is taught in school as a truth which it would be naughty, or impious, not to be- lieve. But that's not true science at all, that's only weak human nature asserting itself again in a new mask. Genuine science consists in per- forming personally the experiments which sub- stantiate a hypothesis. And where it is impos- sible to do this, the next best thing is, to demand PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 139 that the scientific men in whom one puts trust as one's competent envoys, shall be men of skeptical and accurate habits, whose reputation for im- partial veracity has stood the test of an army of co-investigators constantly ready to expose them, should they claim a discovery which others, work- ing independently with proper apparatus, can't certify. "It is a sign of mediocrity to have settled opinions on unsettled subjects," 38 and in the realm of ideas and ideals, as everywhere else, "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." What ideals of character must become that of the race? Certainly a character creative of Hap- piness first of all for we are so made that we can't think of anything as being good, that doesn't somehow make someone happier. And then the idea of fairness. In fact, the idea of The Great- est Happiness For the Greatest Number. Will a time come when all men shall hold this ideal? It will. For thru Force, Custom, Sugges- tion, and Reason, the law of natural selection stamps out all that's not sincere and true. "Till o'er the wreck emerging from the storm, Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form; Mounts from her funeral pyre on wing of flame, And soars and shines, another and the same." 39 Good men live in mutual helpfulness; evil men in destructiveness and misery. The most like- S8 C. E. Jemingham Maxims of Marmaduke, p. 6. "Erasmus Darwin Botanic Garden. Pt. L. Canto IV, L. 399. 140 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS able 40 fellows are surest to mate and leave chil- dren to inherit their good qualities. History is the story of how societies built on egoistic lines always are conquered by societies built on more altruistic lines; therefore the sense of self-inter- est of societies continually suggests an atmos- phere more favorable to altruism. Our philosophy is too negative! we're ruled by immediate emergencies because we have no higher vision to dwell on. How shall we attain one? Only by forgetting that semi-fiction, Selfhood. We may have one immortal "soul," or we may have a dozen, or there may be a myriad of us living together in this body, one soul to every living cell, and each imagining that he is the only inhabitant, exalted into higher consciousness than it could be if alone, because of the "crowd psy- chology" of living integrally in a community of so many. . . . So, too, in a nest of bees, EACH tiny individual may pulsate with the WHOLE feeling of being what Maeterlinck 41 called the "spirit of the hive." Ecstasy the Orientals be- lieve to be the union of the soul of an individual with the great total of all souls. And tho there is an ecstacy which is sensual and fleeting, yet indeed one may attain an excitement of enduring and sustaining value, by becoming, thru the power of wisely directed effort, less a microcos- mic, more a macrocosmic, kind of self. 42 40 I wish I also could say, the most ABLE. 41 M. Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee. "For all creatures to reach this state togethei-, would be no less than in a sense to create God. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 141 But let's return to the relation of sexuality to certain religious phenomena. The multiplication of new cults indicates, to my mind, that men crave some intellectualization of the tendencies toward idealism which they feel within themselves, as well as crave some clearer guide to right action than instinct alone affords. The supplying of such a philosophy explains the partial success of so many recent "cults." But these cults are the product of uneducated think- ers, who, though intending well, yet under-esti- mating the enormous necessity of academic train- ing. No one would dream of employing such people as chemists, locomotive builders or sur- geons. "Evil is wrought by want of thought as well as by want of heart." Love you then mother, father, sibling, sweet- heart? What profits it to give them this mo- mentary embrace if almost within your grasp they whiten with age or, caught in fever's or disease's clutch, they pass from sight? They re- turn, if ever, to an earth as full of woes and part- ings as that they so lately left. Count not on heavenly meetings, future recog- nitions, supernatural consolations. Faith in such things is but the delusion of a hope, resting on hearsay evidence. If something in us yet sur- vives the- grave, where shall that something dwell, unless here upon this same old earth? What should drive us hence? Pray not; therefore, to God, the deaf, the impossible of existence, for 142 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS your loved one. Work rather with your own two hands to beautify this world, that his soul may find it lovelier to abide in; and create therefore kindness and the spirit of good will toward every creature, for who may say what form your friend shall next inhabit? A good way is to regard our "self" as the BUNDLE OF THE SEVERAL ASPIRATIONS, DESIRES AND SYMPATHIES WHICH ARE DEAR TO US. We like this view of the ego 43 because it lets us look upon "selfishness" in the common acceptance of the term and our ignor- ance, etc., as the ego's primitive, small, undevel- oped or shrunken conditions; and upon generos- ity and wisdom as equally the ripened fruit of its larger growth; that puts these types of char- acter in the position we feel they ought to occupy. The self -feeling of some persons scarce- ly passes beyond the limits of their corporeal bodies and of the raiment that tricks them out. Whereas the ambitions of some (however few doesn't concern this argument) others include the whole world in their ken; 44 to these salt of the earth let their high opportunities be made known, that they may slough off the blindness which hides them from their best selves, and seek the sunlight pe hat 43 Thus Lotze makes such a great point of the extension of our srsonality to the tip of the cane we carry in hand, the top of the "James, Wm., Psychology, ch. 14, pp. 550-604. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 143 wherein to be warmed to the uttermost unfolding and to a life of vigorous activity. We wish you to remember this way of consid- ering the self, because it'll be the basis of figures of speech which we shall use thruout this book. What do people mean by the word "self?" Do they mean their own bodies? And if so, why not just as much their hair, finger-nails, etc., which are a part of their bodies, and their clothes with which they adorn themselves? If to an outside eye, too often "the clothes make the man," so why not consider them PART of the man? Or, if their self is a matter of innerconsciousness and sensation, must it not be made to include the sensations of mothers, small brothers, and others whom they love? Whose injuries they feel quite as acutely as they would injuries to their own proper persons? For, if they are going to draw distinctions between sensations felt immediately and those only felt in that other manner thru sympathy, why shouldn't they confine themselves just as much to the sensations of the immediate moment and refuse to admit as of themselves any sensations of the future? It will be evident after a little thinking that the self is not any fixed and static thing, but something that grows, send- ing out shoots as does a plant. It sends out some shoots, like Deceit, Meanness, Vice, and Unfit- ness, which (for reasons we shall give) need to be pruned off; but it also grows another and for- tunately a very opposite kind of shoots, like Un- 144 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS derstanding, Helpfulness, Virtue, and Efficiency. It's a question how far we should either prune off, or cultivate, other people's shoots for them, by using force, or blindly forming their habits, or even implanting subtle suggestions; but one thing we certainly MAY do we may argue, we may tell them our own experiences, we may fore- stall their being deceived. If we thoroughly at- tend to that, and are everlastingly patient, we find that boys, at least, will prune, of their own accord, the bad shoots that weigh them down; and will direct their forces into the shoots better poised and upright. If boys why not adults? Those who have attained to the above concep- tion of the self, henceforth in a measure are fore- armed against depression from the loss of hope that our memories and other personal character- istics survive death. For if we live and think aright, our interests continue to prosper after the destruction of this bodily instrument. The high- est interests indeed, Truth, of Goodness, are like the phoenix ; tho they be killed, still in time they are sure to be resurrected. Identify your soul with these eternal interests, and tho it be be- trayed and seemingly lost, there shall come in time its savior. Yet tho it is so possible to resuscitate a soul even to the point of giving it more vitality than ever it possessed in the original body, (a thing Mencius' writings did for Confucius) yet for souls there nevertheless is death. There are death PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 145 by neglect, and the more fearful death by poison- ing. In the old Egyptian myth, when Isis made an adder to sting Osiris, she molded it out of his own spittle mixed with clay, and so gained power over him, according to the rule of magic that that which proceeds from us has power to bind us. Under a superstitious awe for the spoken word and for all cast-off things as magically potent over a person, the ancients may well have sym- bolized the truth, that out of a man's own mouth is he confuted. When a soul is made to betray and confute itself, or frightened into undoing and reversing the labor of its life, it has been pois- oned, and has shrunk back beyond the nothing- ness out of which it was born. In this crooked world, in which every principle must bend a trifle if it is to survive long enough to accomplish any work at all in straightening the crookedness around it, the most difficult of all things is to tell when pliancy has gone far enough, when fur- ther bending threatens loss, not gain. In this sense Institutions as well as individuals, have their souls; and all is true of them that we have spoken regarding the souls of individuals. When the spirit of an institution is dead, it were better for itself and for the world that its corpse died too, instead of wriggling on like the behead- ed body of a snake. "Be always displeased at what thou art, if thou desire to attain to what thou art not; for 146 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abid- est." But let's turn to the other objection that's voiced against determinism; namely, that it makes it unreasonable to encourage good or blame evil. Can you justify folk who reward or punish a child just to show good humor or vent their spleen? Rather, aren't they hoping that their treatment will be the cause to produce in him a certain effect, implicitly recognizing in at least a degree that his character can be determined by circumstances? And don't we modify our treat- ment of him in recognition of other influences, such as sickness, fatigue, or bad leadership, that have affected the case? Says a modern criminol- ogist: "We know that the ego cannot create itself and that the character has already been formed by a series of anterior facts . . . were this not so, we should be compelled to acknowledge that in each man there takes place at each instant a veritable miracle, that is to say ... an initial movement in nowise the effect of pre-existing or superven- ing conditions. "From this standpoint, the problem of punish- ment completely defies solution." 45 In considering this or any of the following problems under the head of ethical reconstruc- tion, we shall dwell upon the opposition between 4= Baron Garofolo, Criminology, chap. 2, par. 2. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 147 the old and the new points of view, namely the opposition of a morality which was formulated by the leading elements, the arisotic elements in a society which was only just merging out of feudalism, as against the morality of a coming regime which we hope may be formulated by those elements at the bottom of the social scale and not at the top of it. We are demanding today a revolution in economic conditions at least as mo- mentous as the last century's revolutions in poli- tical institutions. The older ethics, therefore, upheld in the face of logic the doctrine of free- dom of the will, in order that it might justify a religious conception of personal righteousness or sinfulness. The new ethics instead will incline toward determinism because determinism alone is consistent with the idea that by improving in- stitutions and the environment under which men live, we can alter the moral judgments and con- duct of men themselves. That is to say that every improvement in our system of handling prisoners, every improvement in appealing to the pride of people whom we formerly attempted to help only by "charity," every new application of sugges- tion in giving ideals to the young children, in short, every mode that we take of trying to make people morally better, is based upon the concep- tion that their goodness or badness is to a very large extent determined by the experiences that we from the outside are able to hand on to them. Therefore, as said, mankind passes from the old 148 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS conception of free will to an ethics based upon determinism. This needn't, however, imply that passivism, which is so often associated with the idea of fatal- ism. It is true that fatalism typifies most of the philosophies of the Orient, where, because of con- ditions of climate, and most of all, because of the intense crowding of populations, which makes for a low standard of living, men's minds become at once mystic and pessimistic and they lack energy to accomplish active work. It is equally true that the thinking of most energetic charac- ters, as, for example, Napoleon (who constantly referred to "My Star,'') express this determin- istic or fatalistic attitude. For the conception of being driven by inner necessity does not any more lead to saying "What is the use of my try- ing to be better or- to accomplish things," than it leads to saying "How can I help improving or doing right !" What indeed is it but a too non-deterministic attitude carried to the point of intellectual dis- honesty, that permits many people of feeble char- acter to live continually in the hope of luck, soft snaps, and short-cuts to success, gambling in lot- teries, and scanning magazines for articles sent "free?" What believer in free-will is inconsist- ent when he "burns the candle at both ends" with late hours, orgies, bad ventilation, drugs (tobacco at least) combined with hectic days? Under de- terminism, however, every idealist is bidden first PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 149 of all to study the material and psychical require- ments of his own organism, and to relieve it of irritations and disharmonies which else may bring his grander reformatory plans to ruin. Finally, to all them who have been disturbed by the fatality taught in these pages, it is to be pointed out that their very concern over their chances of rising out of present selfishness into a better future character, is circumstantial evi- dence that selfishness isn't the fundamental law of their natures, else selfishness would have satis- fied them. A nobler type of living will prove more congenial to them, undoubtedly, when once they've sloughed off old habits of thought and demeanor. To everyone, in short, in whom this chapter finds a responsive echo, or who finds himself ponder- ing its viewpoint after he has laid this book aside, we may say confidently "You're one of those, for whom it was written. Many were not so born for it, but you were. You, even without con- scious effort, are already upon the first step of a new sphere of development; you're beyond pure selfishness because that never was natural to you." Whoever has advanced thus far, will hardly re- verse his evolution, to wallow again in the primaeval slime." "For he on honey dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise." 46 "'Coleridge Kubla Khan. 150 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS An Atheistic Ethics founded upon the idea of Helpfulness to others must take the place of sup- erstitious ethics built upon tradition. Although their doctrines have been preached to humanity for from 1,500 to 2,500 years you still hear apolo- gies made for the meager fruit of Mohammedan, Christian, and Buddhistic Ethics, on the score that these teachings "have never yet been tried." If after so many centuries these systems haven't recommended themselves sufficiently to the com- mon sense of mankind to receive even a satisfac- tory trial, surely it is time that a more promising code was devised. Superstition in its grossest form is an admixture of greedy supplication of the gods for material goods, together with a scarcely disguised sex-worship, a cringing sup- plication for defense against danger, and an in- vocation of divine wrath against the enemy. To- day the religion of people of ordinary discrimina- tion still contains elements derived from these same emotions hunger, love, fear and hate, but in a form to soothe rather than to excite them. The analytic type of person is apt to pierce with his intellect the whole fallacy of supposing that our personality can survive the disintegration of our brain, and tho he may believe that still the element or elements of our consciousness may recombine in new combinations to live again on this same earth, yet there is no reward or prog- ress beyond the grave save as we may make the whole world a better place to be born again into. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 151 With this realization, man liberates his spirit from its thralldom to ancestral prejudices. The worker for the good of humanity sees in super- naturalism a barrier to progressive movements and a stronghold of the privileged classes; but in opening fire upon this citadel, he makes atheism one in a program of several proposals for ethical reform. CHAPTER II Beatitude happiness, in intensest degree of the greatest number of living beings for the long- est time as the test of the worth of anything must be another proposition of the new ethics. From this one it follows that the first step in vir- tue is to become either light-hearted or diligent or magnanimous. The second step is to combine two of these qualities. The final step is to combine all three. Generally it may be said that from the point of view of hedonism the lowest type of man is that degenerate type produced by civilization, the worrier. We see him as the sensualist trying consciously to stimulate his jaded senses ; or as the sentimental woman hurrying from cult to cult on account of what someone has named "that stream of emotions she calls her soul." We must entice these people with the value of simple enjoyment of the passing moment. Next there are the but- terfly types, thoroughly natural but forever in- volving themselves not to mention their friends in difficulties by their indiscretions. We must appeal to them in the hour of their trial to be no longer deceived by these illusions, but to drop off what hinders future happiness. Third are those who calmly bend all efforts toward one end, but that end a selfish one these include most ambi- tious and ascetic types ; we must show them how their self -centered interest defeats its own end. and requires the cultivation of a magnanimous PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 153 purpose. Finally there are the few happy people who have lost themselves in serving others. SECTION I "Always be cheerful, smile ! A good laugh is the best medicine." Why is it, when the evil results of religion would appear to be so evident, men still adhere to it? Partly, as we've shown, because certain parties derive a profit from it and partly because it sublimates our love for it. But there's another reason, in the comfort which many people find in it. It's hard to shake off, just as is a drug. "No one" condones a writer in the Truth Seeker." 1 who have had any intimate experience of the sor- rows of life can fail to have a certain sympathy with people whose failing courage on extraneous support. . . We pity, rather than condemn, the man who is driven by insomnia to the relief af- forded by opium. But one consideration emerges . . . from this attempt to answer. . . "Why men believe? by descriptions of the consoling power of Christianity. True though these descriptions may be, they do not prove the truth of Christian- ity. The thought that Christ wiped out the sins of men by his death on the cross may be soothing to the man or woman struggling against temptation, but the soothing influence does not prove that that event took place. A dying sufferer may be 'Feb. 1, 1919. 154 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS comforted with the thought of heaven, but his pleasure in the thought does not demonstrate the existence of a future life. The wish is father to the thought, 'but the thought is not father to the proof. It is, surely, only a most pessimistic view of the world that can bring belief through consola- tion into such prominence. Christianity, appar- ently, has been partly responsible for the pessim- ism. It has taught the essential wickedness of man; it has preached the dependence on Provi- dential care; and it has turned the eyes of man from his own vile self and the corrupt things of this world to the beauties of heaven. In this way it has created the very spirit of despair in human effort the power of the human will to overcome trouble is weakened and the soul becomes a prey to its own weakness. Surely, when one is asked to choose between a "gospel" which represents man as a care-worn child comforting himself with the alleged prom- ises of an alleged creator, and a view of life which gives man the power of his own salvation and makes him the arbiter of his own destiny, there can be no hesitation. Regarding "Theosophy, Spiritualism, and Christian Science," . . . "The extraordinary vogue which they have among women and among men of emotional temperament proves that the ra- tional element does not predominate. Theosophy PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 155 brings ineffable peace to the soul; Spiritualism comforts us with . . . communication," etc. Here we're reminded of R. C. Givler's 2 obser- vation : "I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the word 'Adam' . . . means 'a dam' or 'obstruc- tion,' whence it is proven that mortal mind is very, very impervious to spiritual influences."* "In the writings of certan mental healers of today, for example, alliteration is the highest 'logical' category; 'experience proves' is a shibol- eth from another quarter, from persons blissfully ignorant of the fact that experience is both a noun and a verb, usually employed in an equivocal sense. 'It is unthinkable,' asserts a third party, and then goes on to state just how carefully the 'unthinkable' has been thot out. From such pit- falls of expression one needs to be emphatically warned in psychology." An article in The Truth Seeker concluded: The situation led a ... cannon to remark, after setting out to convert an Agnostic: "We are on different sides of the stream. You want a re- ligion founded on reason; mine is founded on faith." "Belief through consolation may commend it- self to the emotional and imaginative, but such a view of religion adds nothing to the depository of truth, nor does it create an increment in human knowledge and efficiency." 2 Idem., p. 11. *The Conscious Cross-Section, p. 47. 156 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS The above excellent article was followed by this poem: THE QUESTION. You rob us of all that is sacred, Of Bible, of God, and of grace; But when you thus take our religion, What else do you give in its place? The Old, Old Story. With Bible wide open the preacher, As its pages he pounded and pawed, Denounced the devices of Satan And exalted the glory of God. "All fable and myth!" cried the Skeptic; "Contradictions absurd on their face!" "I know it," assented the other, "But what will you give in their place?" Deluded, a woman prayed hourly Some fancied offense to atone; Far greater her sin, she imagined, Than God had the will to condone. "You pine 'without cause," ventured Reason. There was end of the devotee's grace; "Away! you would take my loved sorrow, And leave not a pang in its place." A mendicant sat in the highway Where rags half his person disclosed; There were Lazarus sores on his body, Which in charity's name he exposed, "I would clothe you in health," proffered Science; But the mendicant made a grimace. "My wounds are my wealth," said the fakir, "And what could you give in their place?" PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 157 A traveler once in the Southland Discovered a people in chains; When he read them the story of Freedom, They gave him sour looks for his pains. Said they: "We are told by our masters That chains are God's gift to our race; Before you have riven them from us Say what you will give in their place." 3 Undoubtedly, however, we must recognize from the psychological standpoint that some others, more useful, and more satisfying channel must be found for that portion of the ego which hither- to expressed itself thru religion. Let's begin by controverting the philosophy which sets up pleasure as the end of life. An article in the International Encyclopedia states that "psychological hedonism" is "contraverted by well known facts. So far is man from always seeking pleasure that in most of his actions he has no thought of pleasure. He acts from auto- matic impulse, from instinct, from habit, from desire for certain objective ends, as well as oc- casionally from a desire for pleasure." Jealousy of admitting that one's fellow crea- tures can possess more than a limited amount of virtue or should I say, the craving to reduce psychology to a few handy empirical rules,? finds expression in old Epicurus' doctrine, that all human conduct is derivable from the selfish craving to be happy. *Go. E. Macdonald. 158 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS This view has been begotten (in the face of evident facts) from one of man's principal vices, his lust for metaphysics. The slander, that "crea- tures are moved only by self-interest," is born in our desire to reduce all the complexities of life down to a few handy forumlae. Color has been given to it by old-time notions of the Soul, which was presumed to be the seat of "The Reason," and "The Will," as well as of "Consciousness;" and which the church has tried to bribe into being good by dangling as bait the hope of an after- death reward a tacit admission of, and more- over an emphasis upon, self-interest. It was left for writers of the last two or three decades to prove conclusively that the pleasure- seeking selfishness of human nature isn't a hard and fast rule without exceptions, in quite the sense that a prematurely supercilious philoso- phy assumed it to be. Not at least save as our actual actions may symbolize for us other actions which would give selfish pleasure to us. This reservation we make and wish to have understood thru all the following argument, which indeed it largely negatives. Professor Wm. James has argued this point so thoroughly and well that for proof we refer the reader to volume two of his Principles of Psychol- ogy, pages 550 to 559. "Present pleasures are tremendous reinforcers, rand present pains tremendous inhibitors of whatever action leads to them, so the thoughts of pleasures and pains PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 159 take rank amongst the thoughts which have most impul- sive and inhibitive power. ... It is almost impossible for a man to cut or mutilate himself slowly or deliberately his hand invincibly refusing to bring on the pain. Many pleasures . . . when once we have begun to taste them make it all but obligatory to keep up the activity to which they are due. So widespread and searching is this influ- ence of pleasures and pains upon our movements that a premature philosophy has decided that these are our only spurs to action, and that therever they seem to be absent it is only because they are so far on among the 'remoter' images that prompt to action that are overlooked." "This* is a great mistake, however. Important as is the influence of pleasures and pains upon our movements, they are far from being our only stimuli. With the mani- festations of instinct and emotional expression, for ex- ample, they have absolutely nothing to do. Who smiles for the pleasure of the smiling, or frowns for the pleas- ure of the frown? Who blushes to escape the discom- fort of not blushing? Or who in anger, grief, or fear is actuated to the movements which he makes by the pleasures which they yield? In all these cases the move- ments are discharged fatally by the vis a tergo which the stimulus exerts upon a nervous system, framed to respond in just that way. The objects of our rage, love, or terror, the occasions of our tears and smiles, whether they be present to our sense, or whether they be merely rep- resented in idea, have this peculiar sort of impulsive power. The impulsive quality of mental states is an at- tribute behind which we cannot go. Feelings of pleasure and pain have it, but neither have it exclusively or pecu- liarly. It is of the essence of all consciousness (or of the neural process which underlies it) to instigate move- ment of some sort. That with one creature and object it should be of one sort, with others of another sort, is a problem for evolutionary history to explain. However, 4 James : Psychology, vol. II, pp. 550-559. 160 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS the actual impulsions may have arisen, they must now be described as they exist; and those persons obey a curiously narrow teleological superstition who think them- selves bound to interpret them in every instance as effects of the secret solicitancy of pleasure and repugnacy of pain. 5 "... These motives are supplied by innumberable ob- jects, which innervate our voluntary muscles by a process as automatic as that by which they light a fever in our breasts. If the thought of pleasure can impel to action, surely other thoughts may. Experience only can decide which thoughts do. The chapters on Instinct and Emotion have shown us that their name is legion; and with this verdict we ought to remain contended, and not seek an illusory simplification at the cost of half the facts. "If in these our first acts pleasures and pains bear no part, as little do they bear in our last acts, or those ar- tificially acquired performances which have become ha- bitual. All the daily routine of life, our dressing and un- dressing, the coming and going from our work or carry- ing through of its various operations, is utterly without (James' note) 5 "The silliness of the old-fashioned pleasure-philoso- phy saute aux yeux. Take for example Prof. Bain's explanation of sociability and Parental love by the pleasures of touch : "Touch is the fundamental and generic sense. . . The combined power of soft contact and warmth amounts to a considerable pitch of massive pleas- ure. . . . The sort of thrill from taking a baby in arms is something beyond mere warm touch ; and it may rise to the ecstatic height. . . . In mere tender emotion not sexual, there is nothing but the sense of touch to stratifying. Touch is both the alpha and omega of affec- tion. . . . Why should a more lively feeling grow up towards a fellow- being than toward a perennial fountain? (This 'should' is simply de- licious from the more modern evolutionary point of view). To ac- count for this, I can suggest nothing but the primary and independ- ent pleasure of the animal embrace." (Mind, this is said not of the sexual interest, but of 'Sociability at Large.') . . . Prof. Bain does not explain why a satin cushion kept at about 98 F. would not on the whole give us the pleasure in question more cheaply than our friends and babies do. It is true that the cushion might lack the 'occult magnetic influences." Most of us would say that neither a baby's nor a friend's skin would possess them, were not a tenderness already there. The youth who feels ecstasy shoot through him when by accident the silken palm, or even the 'vesture's hem of his idol touches him, would hardly feel it. were he not hard hit by Cupid in advance. The love creates the ecstasy, not the ecstasy the love. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 161 mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions. "... As I do not breathe for the pleasure of the breathing, but simply find that I am breathing, so I do not write for the pleasure of the writing, but simply be- cause I have once begun, and being in a state of intel- lectual excitement which keeps venting itself in that way, find that I am writing still. Who will pretend that when he idly fingers his knife-handle at the table, it is for the sake of any pleasure which it gives him, or pain which he thereby avoids ? We all do these things because at the moment we cannot help it; our nervous systems are so shaped that they overflow in just that way; and for many of our idle or purely 'nervous' and fidgety performances we can assign absolutely no reason at all. "Or what shall be said of a shy and unsociable man who receives point-blank an invitation to a small party? The thing is to him an abomination; but your presence exerts a compulsion on him, he can think of no excuse, and so says yes, cursing himself the while for what he does. He is unusually sui compos who does not every week of his life fall into some such blundering act as this. Such instances of voluntas invita show not only that our acts cannot all be conceived as effects of represented pleasure, but that they cannot even be classed as cases of repre- sented good. The class 'goods' contains many more gen- erally influential motives to action than the class 'pleas- ants.' Pleasures 6ften attract us only because we deem them goods. Mr. Spencer, e. g., urges us to court pleas- ures for their influence upon health, which comes to us as a good. But almost as little as under the form of pleas- ures do our acts invariably appear to us under the form of goods. All diseased impulses and pathological fixed ideas are instances to the contrary. It is the very bad- ness of the act that gives it then its vertiginous fascina- tion. Remove the prohibition, and the attraction stops. In my university days a student threw himself from an 162 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS upper entry window of one of the college buildings and was nearly killed. Another student, a friend of my own, had to pass the window daily in coming and going from his room, and experienced a dreadful temptation to imi- tate the deed. . . His director said, 'all right! if you must, you must. Go ahead and do it,' thereby instantly quench- ing his desire. . . . But we need not go to minds diseased for examples of the occasional tempting-power of simple badness and unpleasantness as such. Every one who has a wound or hurt anywhere, a sore tooth, e. g., will ever and anon press it just to bring out the pain. If we are near a new sort of stink, we must sniff it again just to verify once more how bad it is. This very day I have been repeating over and over to myself a verbal jingle whose mawkish silliness was the secret of its haunting power. I loathed yet could not banish it. "Believers in the pleasure-and-pain theory must thus, if they are candid, make large exceptions in the applica- tion of their creed. . . . "Accordingly, where Professor Bain finds an exception to this rule, he refuses to call the phenomenon a 'gen- uinely voluntary impulse.' The exceptions, he admits, 'are those furnished by never-dying spontaneity, habits, and fixed ideas.' Fixed ideas 'traverse the proper course of volition.' "Disinterested impulses are wholly distinct from the attainment of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. . . . The theory of disinterested action, in the only form that I can conceive it, supposes that the action of the will and the attainment of happiness do not square thruout." "Sympathy has this in common with the Fixed Idea, that it clashes with the regular outgoings of the will in favor of our pleasure." "Prof. Bain thus admits all the essential facts. Pleas- ure and pain are motives of only part of our activity. But he prefers to give to that part of the activity exclusively which these feelings prompt the name of 'regular out- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 163 goings' and 'genuine impulses' of the will, and to treat all the rest as mere paradoxes and anomalies, of which nothing rational can be said. This amounts to taking one species of a genus, calling it along by the generic name, and ordering the other co-ordinate species to find what names they may. At bottom this is only verbal play. . . . "There is, it is true, a complication in the relation of pleasure to action, which partly excuses those who make it the exclusive spur. . . . "... To have compassed the steps towards a proposed sensual indulgence also makes us glad, and this gladness is a pleasure additional to the pleasure originally pro- posed. On the other hand, we are chagrined and dis- pleased when any activity, however instigated, is hind- ered whilst in process of actual discharge. We are 'un- easy' till the discharge starts up again. And this is just as true when the action is neutral, or has nothing but pain in view as its result, as when it was undertaken for pleas- ure's express sake. The moth is probably as annoyed if hindered from getting into the lamp-flame as the rogue is if interrupted in his debauch; and we are chagrined if prevented from doing some quite unimportant act which would have given us no noticeable pleasure if done, merely because the prevention itself is disagreeable. "... A pleasant act and an act pursuing a pleasure are in themselves, however, two perfectly distinct con- ceptions, though they coalesce in one concrete phenom- enon whenever a pleasure is deliberately pursued. I can- not help thinking that it is the confusion of pursued pleas- ure with mere pleasure of achievement which makes the pleasure-theory of action so plausible to the ordinary mind. We feel an impulse, no matter whence derived; we proceed to act; if hindered, we feel displeasure; and if successful, relief. Action in the line of the present im- pulse is always for the time being the pleasant course; and the ordinary hedonist expresses this fact by saying that we act for the sake of the pleasantness involved. But 164 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS who does not see that for this sort of pleasure to be possible, the impulse must be there already as an inde- pendent fact? The pleasure of successful performance is the result of the impulse, not its cause. You cannot have your pleasure of achievement unless you have man- aged to get your impulse under head-way beforehand by some previous means. "It is true that on special occasions (so complex is the human mind) the pleasure of achievement may itself be- come a pursued pleasure; and these cases form another point on which the pleasure-theory is apt to rally. Take a foot-ball game or a fox-hunt. Who in cold blood wants the fox for its own sake, or cares whether the ball be at this goal or that? We know, however, by experience, that if we can once rouse a certain impulsive excitement in our- selves, whether to overtake the fox, or to get the ball to one particular goal, the successful venting of it over the counteracting checks will fill us with exceeding joy. We therefore get ourselves deliberately and artificially into the hot impulsive state. It takes the presence of various instinct-arousing conditions to excite it; but lit- tle by little, once we are in the field, it reaches its par- oxysm; and we reap the reward of our exertions in that pleasure of successful achievement which, far more than the dead fox or the goal-got ball, was the object we orig- inally pursued. So it often is with duties. Lots of ac- tions are done with heaviness all through, and not till they are completed does pleasure emerge, in the joy of being done with them. Like Hamlet we say of each successive task, 'O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!' and then we often add to the original impulse that set us on, this additional one, that 'we shall feel so glad when well through with it,' that thought also having its impul- sive spur. But because a pleasure of achievement can PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 165 thus become a pursued pleasure upon occasion, it does not follow that everywhere and always that pleasure must be what is pursued. This, however, is what the pleasure- philosophers seem to suppose. As well might they sup- pose, because no steamer can go to sea without incidental- ly consuming coal, and because some steamers may oc- casionally go to sea to try their coal, that therefore no steamer can go to sea for any other motive than that of coal-consumption. 6 "As we need not act for the sake of gaining the pleas- ure of achievement, so neither need we act for the sake of escaping the uneasiness of arrest. This uneasiness is altogether due to the fact that the act is already tending to occur on other grounds. And these original grounds are what impel to its continuance, even though the un- easiness of the arrest may upon occasion add to their impulsive power." James thus ends his argument: "To conclude, I am far from denying the exceeding prominence and importance of the part which pleasures and pains, both felt and represented, play in the mo- tivation of our conduct. But I must insist that it is no exclusive part, and that co-ordinately with these mental objects innumerable others have an exactly similar impulsive and inhibitive power." 7 6"How much clearer Hume's head was than that of his disciples' ! It has been proved beyond all controversy that even the passions commonly esteemed selfish carry the Mind beyond self directly to the object ; that though the satisfaction of these passions gives us en- joyment, yet the prospect of this enjoyment is not the cause of the passions but, on the contrary, the passion is antecedent to the enjoy- ment, and without the former the latter could never possible exist," etc. Tin favor of the view in the text, one may consult H. Sedgwick, Methods of Ethics, book I, chap. IV ; T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, bk. iii. chap. 1. p. 179 Carpenter, Mental Physiol., chap. VI; J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, part 11, bk. 1, chap. 11. i, and bk. 11, branch 1. chap. 1. i 3. Against it see Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, chap. 11 ; H. Spencer, Data of Ethics, 9-15 ; D. G. Thompson, System of Psychology, part Ix, and Mind vi, 62. Also Bain, Senses and Intellect, 38-44, Emotions and Will, 436." 166 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS McDougall 8 adds: "None of the doctrines of the associationist psychology was more profoundly misleading and led to greater absurdities than the attempt to ex- hibit pleasure and pain as the source of all activi- ties. What could be more absurd than Professor Bain's doctrine that the joy of a mother in her child, her tender care and self-sacrificing efforts in its behalf, are due to the pleasure she derives from bodily contact with it in the maternal em- brace? Or what could be more strained and op- posed to hundreds of familiar facts than Herbert Spencer's doctrine that the emotion of fear pro- voked by any object consists in faint revivals, in some strange cluster, of ideas of all the pains suf- fered in the past upon contact with, or in the presence of, that object? (cf. Bain's "Emotions and the Will," chap. VI ; and H. Spencer's "Prin- ciples of Psychology," vol. I, part IV, chap. VIII, 3rd Ed.) Now that the fallacy of the extreme form of pleasure-philosophy, has been exposed, we're in a position to discuss impartially the time function of displeasure and other factors in conduct. One of the new psychological concepts, for which the Russian school (especially Pavlov) is chiefly to be credited, is that of the Conditioned Reflex. Within certain ranges of stimulus, ani- mals are motived to outgoing activities; but a different range of the same stimuli causes with- 8 McDougall Instincts, p. 45. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 167 drawing reactions. Thus, small enough doses of any drug are in their effect stimulant, large doses are narcotic. Hints of the conditioned reflex idea occur in Thorndike's "instinct of general physical activity." It's more emphasized by Pavlov, Wood- worth, Holt, and to a degree Le Dantec and others. Comparison is valuable with Bleuler's theories of Schizophrenic negativism, ambivalency, and am- bitendency. "Oltmanns had observed that Phycomyces is positively heliotropic in weak light, indifferent in somewhat stronger light, and negatively helio- tropic in still stronger light." 9 We can detect in ourselves the reversal of the mechanism of response when the tension is too great. As Dr. Allport suggested in a seminar, with too intense a stimulus we feel that the situa- tion is "over our head" and become indifferent to it. Also a chick may become simply "blind" to caterpillars as food to be pecked at after the chick has experienced their wooliness. On the subject of habit, Loeb makes this con- tribution under the head of "memory impulses and Tropisms:" "When a muscle is stimulated several times in succession, the effect of the second or third or later stimulation may be greater than that of the first. A consistently anthropomorphic author should draw the inference that the muscle is gradually learning to react properly. What seems 9 Loeb Tropisms, p. 117. 168 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS to happen is that the hydrogen ion concentration is raised by the first stimulations to a point where the effect of the stimulation becomes greater. When the stimulations continue and the hydrogen ion concentration becomes still greater, the re- sponse of the muscle declines and finally becomes zero; the hydrogen ion concentration has now become too high. The writer observed that when winged plant lice of a Cineraria were taken di- rectly from the plant, they did not react as promptly as after they had gone through several heliotropic experiments. There is nothing to in- dicate that this is a case of "learning" since it may also be the result of a change in the hydrogen ion concentration or of some other reaction prod- uct. 10 "Learning is only possible where there exists a specific organ of associative memory, the physi- cal mechanism of which is still unknown!" 11 And again: "Memory images may have a di- rect orienting influence. The chemotropic phe- nomenon of an insect laying its egg on a sub- stance which serves as food (for both mother and off -spring) and for which the mother is positively chemotropic, may be modified by an act of asso- ciative memory, e. g., when a solitary wasp drags the caterpillar on which it lays its eggs to a pre- viously prepared hole in the ground. The essen- tial part of the instinct, the laying of the eggs on 10 Loeb, Jacques Tropisms, p. 164. "Idem., p. 165. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 169 the caterpillar, does, perhaps, not differ very much from the fly laying its eggs on decaying meat; and the solitary wasp may be strongly positively chemotropic for the caterpillar on which it lays the eggs, although this has not yet been investi- gated. But the phenomenon is complicated by a second tropism, which we will call the "orienting effect of the memory image. As is well known, the wasp before 'going for' the caterpillar, digs a hole in the ground to which it afterwards drags the caterpillar, often from a distance. The find- ing of this previously prepared hole by the re- turning wasp, the writer would designate as the tropistic or orienting effect of the memory image of the location of this hole ; meaning thereby that the memory image of the location of this hole makes the animal return to this location." Thorndike, in his experiments with cats, who learned to get out of boxes by manipulating latches, noted that the animals tended to keep all learned elements in the same order. In this he differs from Jennings. The proper way to commence the study of any psychic function is by considering first its simpler forms of manifestation. This method pursued in the case of voluntary action has led to the modern theory of Conditioned Reflexes. According to this, we're endowed at birth, not so especially with an assortment of specific instincts, as with a fund of energy seeking outlet in any available channel (Thorndike's "Instinct of General Physi- 170 PHILOSOPHY OP HELPFULNESS cal Activity"). This energy takes the form of efferent (out-going) nervous currents to one or another group of the centers which control muscu- lar actions. Like the flow of compressed air into an automatic rock-drill, so the nervous energy of a new-born chick floods into centers which con- trol certain muscles of his neck and elsewhere, and cause up-and-down pecking movements. In the chick, however, there's a mechanism, the nerve-endings in eyes, the taste bulbs, etc., which now sends back to the controlling centers other, afferent (in-coming) currents, which may as it were close the valve and shut off any further sup- ply of air from our rock-drill; that is, stop the pecking movements of the chick. Actually, thinks Hobhouse, when the chick say, who has been peck- ing at gravel, seeds, worms, etc., pecks at a cater- pillar, this "incongruous" morsel stimulates the release of energy into withdrawing movements, and it is the antagonism of the old and new move- ments which is the "asynergie" or non-active con- duct we observe. Thorndike here makes the criticism that "con- gruous" and "incongruous" have in themselves no power of making connections between neurons. We suspect that one must read into the chick's situation an element of pleasure when he pecks at the worms, and of displeasure when he gets the caterpillar. Pleasure, as Cannon* and others have so well shown, causes a secretion of certain sub- stances by special glands within the body, where- * Cannon Bodily Changes. 171 as displeasure causes other and very different secretions. Isn't it possible that the pleasure- secretions cause growth towards each other of the nerve ends, or otherwise reduce the synoptic resistance to passage of nerve-currents, whereas displeasure-secretions cause shrinkage apart of these ends or otherwise increase the resistance? Pavlov, Woodworth, and others yield allegiance to the conditioned reflex. Prof. Holt, of Harvard, holds that the early random movements may be tropisms to various stimuli, like that of the flower which turns toward the sun. We shall discuss tropisms in our next essay. Le Dantec, a noted French psychologist, points out that eight of the "ten commandments" are negative an indication that the prevailing tendency of organisms is pos- itive or out-going. An important fact about the conditioned re- flexes is the way in which one and the same stimu- lus, according as it is now moderate or now in- tense may excite now out-going now withdraw- ing actions, now attack and now fear, or now love and now disgust. Perhaps these effects operate thru the medium of the secretions they generate within the body, by a chemotropic mechanism similar to that of our response to drugs. A small amount of alcohol or caffeine, or whatever, stimu- lates; but a sufficiently large dose narcotizes. As we shall show with more detail in later es- says, much havoc is wrot within the organism by the conflict of the out-going and the withdrawing 172 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS tendencies, when they are charged with strong impulsive values, at least when the issue is re- pressed instead of being faced frankly and on the conscious plane. Hitchman tells how while the great French physician "Charcot was engaged in the study of the hysterical paralyzes which follow dreams, the idea came to him to reproduce these artificially and to this end he made use of hysteri- cal patients whom he brought into the sonnambul- istic state by hypnosis. He succeeded that these paralyses may be the result of ideas which have gained the mastery of the patient's brain in mo- ments of special disposition."* It was finally revealed that behind sexual erotic events of puberty are still more far-reaching ex- periences of infantile life, which are also of sexual content. . . . Since these infantile experiences of sexual content can produce a psychic effect only by the aid of the memory, here is revealed the insight that hysterical symptoms never arise without the co-operation of the memory. Hysteri- cal patients suffer from "reminiscences." (Freud- Hitschman, pp. 8-9.) "A definite complex is in every case the occasion and content of the neu- rosis it is the ruling power in the diseased mind." However, it's explicitly stated now that "the neurotic constitution pre-exists" or antedates, the specific occasion of the neurosis. What is this neurotic constitution? C. G. Jung implies a con- *Freud-Hitschnian Theories of the Neuroses, pp. 5-6. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 173 nection between it and an abnormal degree of "extraversion" or of "introversion." To explain these terms he cites the two-type division of men made by so many writers, to which we shall come in a moment. We, all of us, possess dual nature, at once for and against each proposal, the tendency techni- cally called Bi-valence. The conception of Bi- valence is due, we believe, chiefly to Freud and Adler, and it may be explained somewhat as fol- lows. Whenever we have an impulse to perform an act of a certain kind, there goes with it always an impulse in exactly the opposite direction ; and positive conduct is possible only as one of these tendencies continuously outbalances the other. This doubleness of value in our impulses is called ambi-tendency. When, however, we have lived out to the point of surfeit our tendencies in one direction, it will often happen that the directly opposite tendency then gains the ascendency. This is why frequently an individual whose life has been most unexceptionable will suddenly seem to change his character completely and commit acts of a scandalous nature. It explains, on the other hand, why persons who have lived out only the evil side of their characters, as e. g., gamblers, prostitutes, etc., astonish those who do not well understand human nature by manifesting a wholly unexpected self sacrifice, generosity, etc. The libido, surfeited with evil, craves good. In each of us exists this complex nature, result- 174 ing from his multitude of contradictory instincts, and it is true that every impulse that prompts us to act in one direction is accompanied by a con- trary tendency to act in precisely the opposite manner. We cannot think, for instance, of re- maining seated without the idea occurring to us of getting up. Where the individual completely de- nies all expression, even in sublimated or symboli- cal form, for a long period of time, to any element of his nature, that neglected tendency is likely at some time to completely overbalance his whole system of life and cause him to run amuck to the astonishment no less of himself than of his friends. The saint will become sinner; and the sinner will experience emotional religious conver- sion, throw himself ecstatically into work of re- form or whatever it may be, or perhaps will show a degree of kindness and self-sacrifice that the or- dinary good person despairs of. This explains many of the inconsistencies of life. Moreover, where our natural desires are slighted in a way that we find it impossible to remedy directly, our nature tends to compensate itself for these injuries in some other direction. In the case of a normal person, the repression of his personality which he has experienced may spur him to renewed effort and to the achieve- ment of extraordinary success. Thus we find Napoleon Bonaparte, in his childhood, when scorned by all his playmates at the aristocratic French military academy, plunging into His PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 175 studies and evolving his plans for future great- ness with a concentration of energy which goes far to explain his subsequent career. Again, the philosopher Kant produced his system of meta- physics as a means of withdrawing from the physical pain which his illness caused him. The neurotic is the person in whom this compensation takes a useless channel, a symbolical and merely delusive channel, or in which it goes to an extreme that is as bad as or worse than the original trouble itself. This last case, that of swinging too far in an opposite direction, is called over- compensation, and it is part of the explanation of our tendency to balk our own conscious desires, offend our patrons, or do the inappropriate action. The simplest classification of conduct is into dichotomies (division of two). A conveniently twice dichotomised classification (Hopkins) is into two out-going drives, Assimilative and Erotic, and their two reversals, the Rejective and Jealous. We shall use this somewhat in this book. Preference is given the term Rejective over the term Fugitive, as indicating either Fear or Disgust reactions, and agreeing with the reflex noted by Wm. James, "turning the head aside." James discusses men under head of two types "Tough-minded" (emperical) and "Tender- minded" (loving theory). Warringer's two oppo- sites were typified respectively by Sympathy and Abstraction. For Schiller they were the Naif and the Sentimental. Nietzsche mentions Appollonian 176 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS and Dionysian. Gross gives Weakness and Rein- forcement of consecutive function. Freud and Adler dwell upon Casualism and Sentimentality. C. G. Jung, who has made this list, prefers his own division into Extravert and Introvert. The Extrovert is wrapped up in the outer world ; con- sciously his is what Thorndike calls an "interest in people and their feelings;" he compromises readily to meet facts. The introvert is self- centered; consciously his is what Thorndike calls the "interest in things and their mechanisms;" and he would rather go thru the mountain than around. One of Jung's favorite contributions is this di- vision of man into two psychological types the extra vert type and the introvert type. Some of us are familiar with classifications made by vari- ous men, for example, Professor James divided man into the tough-minded and the tender- minded, meaning by the latter the men who reflect upon their ideas they create philosophical sys- tems, and meaning by tough-minded those who are imperical in their point of view, deal with facts rather than with ideas, etc. Nietzsche spoke of the Appolonian and Dionysiac types of men, meaning by them much the same thing. We think Jung's classification is really the clearest; by in- trovert he means the type of man whose gaze turns inward, who translates the whole world in terms of himself, and makes it simply a stage for his own acting. On the other hand, he means by PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 177 the extravert the man whose gaze is turned out- ward upon the world and who projects into that world all his own feelings, reading into every- thing around him interpretations which really represent himself. The introvert is the man of strong character becoming often perverse and stubborn; he is also the intellectual man and the sentimental. The extrovert is the matter-of-fact man, the materialist in philosophy, the pliable and adaptable individual, hardly understanding the meaning of the word principle. By the introvert, Jung means the man who is all absorbed in his own ideas and interprets every phenomenon in terms of its subjective value to himself. This type it is which elaborates phil- osophical and ethical and religious systems, which tries to cut its way directly through every obstacle instead of seeking the easier way around. The extrovert, on the other hand, is the pliable man who is little concerned with the inner principles, but adapts himself to the facts of the world as they exist and who, indeed, interprets his own feelings only as manifestations of the attitude of the world outside. When they become pathologi- cal, the introvert engrossed in himself tends to insanity ; the extravert, on the other hand, attrib- uting his own lack of balance entirely to the sup- posed malevolence of the outside world, becomes hysterical. We were much interested in what Mr. Farrington said about the tendency of hysteria to manifest itself only among the men and non- 178 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS commissioned officers. He quoted Arian and Yea- land on a report of 250 cases as saying: "The majority of the patients are below the average of intelligence as judged by the Binet-Simon scale and others who are more highly equipped prove to have an unstable history, either personally or in the family." Another quotation was, on the other hand, that regarding war psychasthenia "among officers neurasthenic symptoms are much more frequent than hysteria, and MacCurdy states that in a pure state it occurs almost exclusively among officers." If these authorities can be relied upon, rt would seem that the more ardent objectively looking natures found their places among the ranks and among those non-commissioned officers whose business it is to deal most directly with the humanity under their charge and not to have the handling of the mathematical and technical prob- lems of management ; and as if, on the other hand, the introversive intellectual calculating type of mind tended predominantly to assume the respon- sibilities of officership. And this final dichotomy of characters is based upon an alleged division of the mind itself into two compartments, conscious and unconscious. But these are not equal in volume. The mind rather is like an ice-berg seen at sea, a little part of it is evident, the part called the conscious, and a great part is submerged out of sight, the unconscious. Due to this fact that far the larger part of our- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 179 self is in the unconscious, we continually are de- ceiving ourselves about what we really desire. Because a thing is abstractly good, or good for mankind in the large, and because we have a good opinion of our own character, we proudly say we wish that thing. Still more often, the opposite to this takes place ; our 0wn desire for something is so urgent that we decide that that thing is broadly right and good. That happiness now or in the future, for one's self or for others, is the supreme end to be worked for, is a postulate that has appealed, since ancient times, to the wise. We believe that proof whether or not an act promotes such happiness, would be accepted as final tesf of the goodness or evil of the act by more people than would agree to any other test. Biologically considered, happiness is the indi- cation of right adjustment. If creatures were happy normally in what was harmful for their species, their kind soon would cease to exist. Let us, by explaining one or two facts of heredity and evolution, substantiate this. The principle of inheritance sometimes is thot to mean that a parent transmits all his traits to his offspring. No such theory is advanced by scientists. The extreme contrary opinion of de Vries is now prevalent, that the offspring inherits no traits whatever except about half those which its parents themselves inherited at conception nothing that the parents acquired after conception 180 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS and further that there may appear in the off- spring, to be handed down to future descendants, freakish new "mutations" which never before ap- peared in any ancestor. These and some other laws of inheritance have been adduced by statisti- cal methods and experiments, of which the classi- cal ones are those of Karl Pearson and of Gregor Mendel. They show that improvements of our race will be limited until Eugenics the breeding from the stock of highest inborn (not acquired) endowments is applied. The fact that some en- thusiasts for eugenics habitually over-state their case and ignore obvious economic and other en- vironmental factors, shouldn't obscure this truth, which is substantiated by all we know of biologi- cal evolution. Modern ideas of evolution date from Charles Darwin. He called attention to the improvement of breeds of domestic animals which resulted from man selecting only the most desirable types to be parents. In his "Origin of Species" he col- lected observations sometimes credulously ac- cepting anecdotes on hearsay, but usually more irrefutable material in so stupendous quantity as to bear down all opposition, to show that a competition for food constantly goes on between all kinds of animals, wherein the less well-adapted succumb and leave few progeny. Hence, succeed- ing generations are descended from the more suc- cessful types, and inherit their traits ; and by ac- cumulation of new traits new species originate. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 181 Thus were originated men as well as other ani- mals. Herbert Spencer simultaneously working out in his armchair what Darwin was observing as the result of explorations named this process "the survival of the most fit." (Sometimes, of course, the best and most highly evolved creature is less "fit" to survive than some noxious para- sites, and little-evolved forms ; e. g., the mammoth was less fit than the bacterium.) The evolutionary hypothesis has become the underlying concept of all the biological sciences. To question it is less a mark of independence than a confession of ig- norance of the immense and constantly increas- ing weight of evidence on which it rests. We can indicate here merely some fields in which these proofs will be found; as: (1) animal breeding, as above indicated. (2)' embryology. The developing embryo recapitulates roughly the successive primitive types thro which presumably the animal in question is descended. (3) Pale- ontology. Buried in the earth are found skeletons of living and of extinct forms of animals. As we explore the successively deeper and older strata of the earth's crust, the skeletal forms become ever more similar and more simple, indicating that eventually all types are derived from a com- mon origin. (4) Distribution of flora and fauna over the earth's surface aren't strictly such as climate and other obvious influences will account for, especially is this true of outlying islands like Australia. But as we know the approximate 182 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS date when these now separated continents and is- lands were so connected "by land, that immigra- tion of animals was possible, an estimation by the evolutionary theory of the then existing flora and fauna of neighboring regions enables us to account very well for the distribution observed today. (5) Structural and functional resem- blances in animals are accounted for only by the evolution-hypothesis. (6) Classification into species, genera, sub-genera, etc., follows the lines hypothecated by evolution. (7) Biology finds certain organs, and psychology certain mental dispositions, which are unexplained by present usefulness, but can be accounted for on the theory of evolutional descent. (8) The elapse of time demanded for the evolution of existing life-forms checks up moderately well with the time calcu- lated by geologists as having elapsed since the earth cooled sufficiently to be habitable. (9) Biological evolution would seem reasonable in the light of cosmic evolution generally, which has its own proof in each of its special fields. We return to the remarks which preceded the above two paragraphs. The high value men place upon happiness indicates that happiness is usual- ly the sign of biologically, right conditions. For as one authority* says, this emphasis "occidental speculation" appeared very early and vigorously asserted by many. Sophist Aristippus and his Cyrenaic School made hedonism their central doctrine. . . . Aristippus seems at times to PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 183 have insisted upon the supreme value of the pleas- ure of the moment and to have lost sight of the necessity, even for securing pleasure, of consider- ing the future. . . ," 14 Such a view undoubtedly was narrow. In these pages we'll show that we've the right to (and a reason for) classifying motives into the following four divisions; themselves an evolutionary hier- archy: Group 4 (highest) all our yearnings to make an objective contribution toward the greater happiness of the world which Group 1 arbitrar- ily shall call "helpful" tendencies. Group 3 (the next highest) the yearning to establish ourselves individually on the way to a maximum of enjoy- ment of our life a group we'll call the "Privately Ambitious" tendencies. Group 2, the desires of the most simple unperverted and undeveloped men. Group 1, all remaining desires or motives a group we'll call, very arbitrarily no doubt, "Sen- sual-erratic" tendencies. To each of these groups of motives corresponds a certain type of character, which in the degree that it is a pure type, expresses itself thru acts of one or the other kind, and is itself happy there- in. It is folly to teach, as did the old Sunday school text, that Mr. X, whose character is nar- row and crabbed, would be happy if he were to spend his time ministering to others instead of being ministered unto for so long as no change of heart has come from within, Mr. X would feel ^International Encyclopaedia, 184 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS that in so doing he was acting like a silly senti- mentalist. No more use is it to argue, as many philosophies have done that Miss Y, whose char- acter is weak and sensual, would find more happi- ness in a life of self -disciplined abstemiousness for so long as she remains a sensualist every in- dulgence missed seems an irreparable loss, and rankles in her conscience. These arguments over- stated the case just enough to give it all away to give away the fact that they were not ingenu- ous, but were designed to persuade all hearers to behave in the way that was considered to be moral. So they smacked of insincerity, and failed to reform the world. Yet in saying that they overstated their case we're tacitly admitting that such arguments just missed the point of a great truth. That truth is, that the sensualist, tho happier in acting as most natural to him rather than as would be natural say for a schemer or an idealist or least of all an altruist to act, yet is on the whole the least happy type of being. It will pay him to change his char- acter if he can even by the uncongenial method of practicing virtues that conform to a more stable disposition. And the ambitious person, tho happier when absorbed in promoting his own interests than when trying to play idealist or altruist, and tho not subject to the physical aftermaths suffered as result of his debauches by the sensualist, yet must endure great despairs. If all is for self, he PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 185 will surely find that all is not worth while. It will profit him to cultivate deliberately the qual- ities of higher types of character. A happier lot is that of the idealist. He flits about from illusion to illusion, coloring the gray stones of rife for us with bright-hued paint. He reads ir.oral purposes into the universe, and ex- cuses himself from seeing the world's misery or from helping quite effectively, on the score that this is a moral universe in which all must be for the best. But in the end the shams have a way of crushing in this delicate rosy shell in which he has enclosed his life, and then he feels the un- satisfactoriness of mere ideals in themselves, and the need of founding them upon a plan to do defi- nite good in the world. Finally, you may expect us to say that com- plete happiness comes in proportion to the attain- ment of complete selflessness. Unfortunately we're not convinced that completely selfless exist- ence ever is actually attained. Moreover, as one approximates more perfectly the type of charac- ter which has identified itself with the yearnings of humanity, one may find that it has taken on many new sorrows on this behalf, and certainly it will be compelled to hold itself ever ready to make a supreme sacrifice even of health, liberty and life for the cause it espouses. Nevertheless, this acquisition of world-cares is compensated for by a dropping off of petty private worries, which now seem too trivial. Sacrifices themselves, 186 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS when demanded from one who has attained true devoteeship, find such a one prepared to yield them. It's because this type has in loftiness of motive a source of strength above that of ordi- nary men, that the latter are bewildered to see him emerge triumphant over their persecutions. So we think he is, after all, the happiest kind of be- ing, the type into which it will pay all others to try to evolve. He alone amid privation constant- ly experiences ecstacy. In order to be happy, the first essential 15 is right desires. It's self-evident that if we desire only what's wholesome, right, and obtainable, our health'll be good, ouv desires in the process of satisfaction, and consequently we are always happy. But how shall we gain this friendliness on the part of our desires ? How reach them ? "Tomorrow's desires are crystalized from the ocean of today's purposive conduct; they're the salt that its waves will leave behind. That ocean itself is being formed every moment, from clouds of self-suggestion and nebulous impression and habits, borne hither on yesterday's winds of time and circumstance. Started fortunately in the de- sire for self -improvement, our task is to control the influences that are likely to be assimilated un- consciously, and purge one's self of all cant and cobwebs that interfere with diligent earnestness. As a last step in this cycle of growth, we must ensure the success of the whole process, by doing it in a normal, happy spirit." PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 187 We still need to consider how far the need to take on an unpleasant attitude toward the world may or may not be demanded by one's condition as a competitor in the economic market. First, one needs to take a certain shrewd and cynical view of the likelihood of affairs, or of people, turning out as beneficent and honest as we should like to have them, even tho one may find it expedient pu'blicly to pretend that he be- lieves in them (in order not to make their chances any slimmer than they already are). Secondly, a state of complete satisfaction 15 is a state not merely of no progress, but of no effort to stem the currents of disintegration which everywhere make true "standing still" an impos- sible thing in life. To be sure the state of Happiness does give a certain spontaneity of performance, a light-heart- edness in the execution of duties that are plain to view, which, far from seeming to accomplish less progress than before, rather seems to accomplish more. Yet a careful examination of the facts will show that this efficiency in activity is only in the settlement of problems that have been forced upon our attention, already, in less happy periods, and that the hour of happiness is the hour of forget- fulness of problems, not of raising them or hold- ing them in mind. The fact seems to be corrobor- ^May we be unsatisfied, yet happy ? Recently a. Freudian asked us to substitute "greatest satisfaction" for "greatest happiness ;" w declined to do so. They're hardly equivalent, since we may be most happy in the initial process of satisfying a desire, or even in mere anticipation of doing so. 188 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ated by history, that periods of a people's greatest joyousness nearly always are followed by periods of retrogression and decline. (That the epoch of the greatest Grecian Art, the Golden Age, the very embodiment of Joy, should be followed by Grecian decadence, may be thus a more significant fact than has been realized. One people may be inherently more joyous than another and at the same time more progressive because endowed with great virility. We have a tendency to think that qualities in people necessarily balance up to about the same value in the end. We repeat, "quickly learned, as quickly forgotten," and many similar catch-words till we believe them; but psychology gives them no support. On the contrary, experi- ment shows that super-excellence in one quality generally gives a slight probability of superiority in other qualities also. SECTION 3 "No profit grows where is no pleasure ta 'en In brief, sir, study what you most affect." 17 "If you mean to profit, learn to please." 18 "Everywhere a magnetic personality wins its way." "A pleasant smile brings the largest re- turns on the investment." The present section of this chapter is intended for the person whose interest is in promoting his own future well-being. Compared with An- "Shakespeare Taming: the Shrew Act 1, Scene 1, Line 39. 18 Churchill Gotham Book II, Line 88. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 189 axagores "Epicurns laid more value on the neces- sity of choosing 'productive' pleasures, to use Bentham's phraseology, i. e., pleasures whose con- sequences were not painful." 19 The normal person, even the normal child, will admit that whatever he desires for himself he wouldn't desire were he convinced he'd be un- happy with it, and that by a similar logic what he wishes for the sake of another, or for the sake of religion, he'd no longer wish were he convinced it wouldn't affect as he now anticipates the happi- ness of his friend, or of God, or of someone. Examinations that have been made of the per- spiration exuded by men in varying emotional moods, show that in malevolent moments, as in miserable ones, certain poisons are secreted which aren't given off in kindly moods any more than in agreeable moments. This seems to be one of the reasons why evil as well as unhappy disposi- tions so often can be read by the ugly effects these have upon the body and face, while good as well as happy dispositions favor beauty. It's a matter of health to be kindly; to be angry limits us; wherever we'd expand, hatred makes us feel that enemies shut us in. We become a part of all that we love, through affection we experience the air of a new and wonderful freedom. No power can give us joy and freedom save we accept the gift. Yet that men may differ from this point of view is proven by the numbers who actually do so 1!> Inten\ational Encyclopaedia. 190 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS differ. How shall we expect all men ever to agree upon anything, when we see great numbers seri- ously affirming that the very noses on their faces are "error?" 20 And indeed when men accept the happiness-motive in the narrow sense of believ- ing they must live for themselves alone, their high expectations are so thoroly disappointed, that it's no wonder many of them in disgust conclude that something other than happiness at all must be the final good. We may sum up this section of our essay by saying that as man isn't necessarily driven by a desire for immediate indulgences, he may well choose to postpone indulgences for the sake of more enduring happiness for himself, and that this course has been advocated by many philoso- phers among whom, in ancient times, perhaps the most famous was Epicurus. But the man who has chosen a philosophy of Egoism seldom fellows it consistently. Somehow it fails to satisfy his whole nature. How often we hear of one to whom apparently life held out every allurement of health, wealth, friends, etc., but who sickened of it all and perhaps even killed himself? This is because a self -centered life isn't a mentally wholesome life. "Think about your- self if you want to be miserable," runs a proverb. Insanity frequently developes out of this attitude. Does this indicate that perhaps the egotist's logic 20 Tho petitioning for a Rovernment pension when said "error" is shot off in the war. See The Truth Seeker, March, 1919. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 191 is somewhere wrong has his cynical calculation been, after all, blind? The yearning of the idealist to devote himself to some activity for its own sake, or for some ef- fect not reducible into terms of happiness, is therefore quite admissible as a psychological pos- sibility. "For as man is naturally a gregarious animal, so is he in need of maintaining his heart warm, as well as his head cool. Toward his kindred and indeed toward all living creatures, his attitude in- variably must be one of benevolence. Toward their follies, and even their apologies, he must be good naturedly tolerant. "In the form of a pretty fairy tale, 'La Foret Enchantee et le Petit Enfant,' 21 Mme. Perrier tells how the innocent and happy eyes of children discover beautiful realities which can't endure the rough presence of sordid adults; 'ils marchaient sans les voir sur toutes les petites fleurs at tous les oiseaux effrayes se taisaient dans les branches.' ' But can he carry this to the point of actually omitting self entirely as a factor in the problem? Motives in the best of us are so infinitely complex, that to assert of any act that it's a pure expres- sion even of one of the lower tendencies is always pVecarious; much more hazardous would it be to designate a case of unalloyed altruism, at least before the most exhaustive analysis. 21 Mme. Jeanne Perrier, Pendant qu'on Dort, published by Lamertin. Bruxelles. 192 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS SECTION 4 "The true measure of a man's success is the service which he renders, not the pay he exacts for it. The true measure of a man's ability is the power to help others and to contribute to their advancement." 22 "By love, serve one enother." "Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge." 23 This fourth section will deal with the will to bring the greatest happiness to the greatest num- ber. If the desire for humanitarian service be at first lacking, it can, with patience, be cultivated. McKeever 24 gives a helpful hint on this point: "While engaged in giving a public address, he has often found it possible to engender in himself a pronounced emotion of sympathy by means of lowering his voice" and otherwise assuming a sympathetic manner. That acts of pure goodness on rare occasions actually may be performed is the belief of com- petent psychologists today, in contrast to what was held true in old time. "All the ancients," says the International En- cyclopaedia, "were agreed that the pleasure of the agent was for the agent himself, the supreme end. A disinterested desire for someone else's "President Hadley of Yale. -^Shakespeare. "Psychology and Higher Life. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 193 good was not recognized as possible; or if pos- sible, it was regarded as perverse. Early modern Hedonists (Hobles, Locke) were almost or quite as individualistic as the ancients. But with Cum- berland, Hutcheson, and Hume, a new phase of hedonism was introduced, viz., the theory that not the agent's greatest pleasure, but 'joy in widest comonalty spread' is the supreme end of moral action (universalistic hedonism, or utilitarian- ism)." As a sample of the positions of modern psychologists, we may take that of Pillsbury.* "The gregarious animals exert themselves and even suffer in behalf of the herd, as the male deer are said to form a circle about the females and the young and to risk their own lives in defense of the unit. This instinct may be justified teleo- logically, since the survival of the race depends upon the survival of the larger. . . ." Ellwood, again, in his "Sociology in its Psycho- logical Aspects" states: "Quite as much is to be said for sympathy as a universally important ele- ment in human society as for imitation. In the history of sociology, when it is finally written, Professor Giddings, who has especially stood for the recognition of this element of sympathy, will be accorded as large a place as Tarde. . . ,.* "All sympathy, Ward thinks, comes from re- flection. . . . Hence sympathy, he thinks is essentially egoistic. The correct statement, how- 194 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ever, would be that sympathy is at first entirely organic and instinctive, and altruistic." On page 313 he continues, "The sympathetic emotions are the accompaniments of altruistic impulses. . . . Sympathy accompanies altru- istic activity and reinforces it everywhere. . . . Philanthropic activities must be regarded as very largely a development due to the increase of sym- pathy in the sense of altruistic feeling in human society." Even the individualistic Metchinkoff, in his "Prolongation of Life," page 221, admits that "in times of want the worker-bees sacrifice their own lives and give the queen the last remnants of the food supply so that she survives them." John Muir says of his boyhood companions : "We delighted in dog-fights, and even in the hor- rid red work of slaughter-houses, often running long distances and climbing over walls and roofs to see a pig killed. "But here is an illustration of the better side of the boy nature. In our back yard a pair of robin-redbreasts had their nest (and a soldier) climbed the tree and robbed it. ... I remem- ber to this day how my heart fairly ached and choked me. . . . Again and again we rehearsed the sad story of the poor bereaved birds and could not be comforted. . . , 24 Lecky says that J4 Muir, John. "My Boyhood and Youth," pp. 26-28. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 195 "When Plutarch, after the death of his daugh- ter, was writing a letter of consolation to his wife, we find him turning away from all the common- places of the Stoics as the recollection of one sim- ple trait of his little child rushed upon his mind : 'She desired her nurse to press even her dolls to the breast. She was so loving that she wished everything that gave her pleasure to share in the best of what she had.' "- 6 The best proof, however, because it can raise no possible suspicion that any factor other than in- stinctive nature plays any part, is that taken from the world of lower animals. And here we shall again quote from our old friend, Prince Kropot- kin: "Facts illustrating mutual aid amidst the termites, the ants and the bees are too well known to the general reader, especially thru the works of Romanes, L. Buchner and Sir John Lubbock, that I may limit my remarks to a very few hints. If we take an ant's nest, we not only see that every description of work bearing of progeny, foraging, building, bearing of aphides, and so on is performed according to the principles of voluntary mutual aid; we must also recognize with Forel that the chief, the fundamental feature of the life of many species of ants is the fact and the obligation for every ant of sharing its food, already swallowed and partly digested, with every "Lecky. W, E. H. "History of European Morals," pp. 242-243. 196 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS member of the community which may apply for it." 27 "The numberless associations of locusts, vanes- sae, cicindelae, cicadae, and so on, are practically quite unexplored ; but the very fact of their exist- ence indicates that they must be composed on about the same principles as the temporary asso- ciations of ants or bees for the purposes of migra- tion. As to the beetles, we have quite well-ob- served facts of mutual help amidst the burying beetles (Necrophorus)." ". . . As a rule, they live an isolated life, but when one of them has discovered the corpse of a mouse or a bird, which it hardly could manage to bury itself, it calls four, six or ten other beetles to perform the operation with united efforts. . . without quarreling as to which of them will enjoy the privilege of laying eggs in the buried corpse. And when Gleditsch attached a dead bird to a cross made out of two sticks, or suspended a toad to a stick planted in the soil, the little beetles would in the same friendly way combine their intelligences to overcome the artifices of man. The same combination of efforts has been noticed among the dung-beetles." 28 "As to the big Molucca crab (Lumulus), I was struck (in 1882, at the Brighton Auarium) with the extent of mutual assistance which the clumsy animals are capable of bestowing upon a comrade "Kropotkin, P., "Mutual Aid," p. 12. J8 Kropotkin, P., "Mutual Aid," p. 10. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 197 in case of need. One of them had fallen upon its back in a corner of the tank" and "its com- rades came to the rescue, and for one hour's time I watched how they endeavored to help their fel- low prisoner." And, "after many attempts, one of the helpers would go in the depths of the tank and bring two other crabs, which would begin fresh forces the same pushing and lifting of their helpless comrade," and, "since I saw that, I can- not refuse credit to the observation quoted by Dr. Erasmus Darwin namely, that 'the common crab during the moulting season, stations as senti- nel an unmoulted or hard-shelled individual to prevent marine enemies from injuring moulted individuals in their unprotected state.' "When a new swarm of bees is going to leave the hive in search of a new abode, a number of bees will make a preliminary exploration of the neighborhood, and if they discover, say, an old basket, they will take possession of it, clean it, and guard it sometimes for a whole week, till the swarm comes to settle therein." 29 "The sociability of the bees is the more instruc- tive as predatory instincts and laziness continue to exist among the bees as well about the sugar plantations of the West Indies and the sugar re- fineries of Europe, robbery, laziness and very often drunkenness becomes quite usual with the bees. We thus see that anti-social instincts con- ia George J. Romanes' "Animal Intelligence," 1st edition, p. 233. Quoted by Kropotkin, P. Mutual Aid. 198 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS tinue to exist amidst the bees as well ; but natural selection continually must eliminate them, be- cause in the long run the practices of solidarity proves much more advantageous to the species than the individuals endowed with predatory in- clinations. The cunningest and shrewdest are eliminated in favor of those who understand the advantages of sociable life and mutual support." "I need not dwell upon the association of male and female for rearing their offspring, for provid- ing it with food during their first steps of life, or for hunting in common ; tho it may be mentioned by the way that such associations are the rule even with the least sociable carnivores and rapa- cious birds ; and that they have a special interest from being the field upon which tenderer feelings may develop even amidst otherwise most cruel animals. It may also be added that the rarity of associations larger than that of the family among the carnivores and the birds of prey, tho mostly being the result of their very modes of feeding, can also be explained to some extent as a conse- quence of the change produced in the animal world by the rapid increase of mankind. At any rate, it is worthy of note that there are species living a quite isolated life in densely inhabited regions, while the same species, or their nearest congeners, are gregarious in uninhabited coun- tries. Wolves, foxes and several birds of prey may be quoted as instances in point." 30 ""Kropotkin, P., "Mutual Aid," p. 20. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 199 "The fishing associations of the pelicans are certainly worthy of notice for the remarkable or- der and intelligence displayed by these clumsy birds. They always go fishing in numerous bands, and, having chosen an appropriate bay, they form a wide half -circle in face of the shore, and narrow it by padding toward the shore, catching all fish that happen to be enclosed in the circle. On nar- row rivers and canals they even divide into two parties, each of which draws up on a half-circle, and both paddle to meet each other." . . . "No one has ever seen them fighting for the posses- sion of either the bay or the resting place. In South America they gather in flocks of from forty thousand individuals, part of which enjoy sleep while others watch, and others again go fishing. And finally, I should be doing an injustice to the much-calumniated house-sparrows if I did not mention how faithfully each of them shares any food it discovers with all members of the society to which it belongs." 31 "The cranes are extremely sociable and live in most excellent relations, not only with their con- geners, but also with most aquatic birds." . . . "Their sentries always keep watch around a flock which is feeding or resting, and the hunters know well how difficult it is to approach them. If man has succeeded in surprising them they will never return to the same place without having sent out one single scout first, and a party of scouts after- 3I Kropotkin, P., "Mutual Aid," p. 24. 200 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS wards ; and when the reconnoitering party returns and reports that there is no danger, a second group of scouts is sent out to verify the first re- port, before the whole band moves. With kin- dred species the cranes contract real friendship; and in captivity there is no bird save the also so- ciable and highly intelligent parrot, which enters into such real friendship with man." 32 "And feelings of justice develop, more or less, with all gregarious animals. Whatever the dis- tance from which the swallows or the cranes come, each one returns to the nest it has built or repaired last year. If a lazy sparrow intends ap- propriating the nest which a comrade is building, or even steals from it a few sprays of straw, the group interferes against the lazy comrade; and it is evident that without such interference being the rule, no nesting associations of birds could exist. Separate groups of penguins have separ- ate nesting places and separate fishing abodes, and do not fight for them. The droves of cattle in Australia have particular spots to which each group repairs to rest, and from which it never deviates; and so on. We have any number of direct observations of the peace that prevails in the nesting associations of birds, the villages of the rodents, and the herds of grass-eaters." . . . Leaving aside the really touching facts of mutual attachment and comparison which have been re- corded as regards domesticated animals and with ^Kropotkin, P., "Mutual Aid,'" p. 27. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 201 animals kept in captivity, we have a number of well certified facts of compassion between wild. animals at liberty. Max Perty and L. Buchner have given a number of such facts (2). J. C. Wood's narrative of a weasel which came to pick up and carry away an injured comrade enjoys a- well-merited popularity. So also the observations of Captain Stansburg on his journey to Utah which is quoted by Darwin ; he saw a blind peli- can which was fed, and well fed, by other pelicans upon fishes which had to be brought from a dis- tance of thirty miles. And when a herd of. vicunas was hotly pursued by hunters, H. A. Wed- dell saw more than once during his journey to Bolivia and Peru the strong males covering the retreat of the herd, and lagging behind in order to protect the retreat. As to facts of compassion with wounded comrades, they are continually mentioned by all field zoologists. Such facts are quite natural. Compassion is a necessary out- come of social life." "Brehm has so admirably summed up the man- ners of life of the parrot." . . . "The members of each band remain faithfully attached to each other and they share in common good or bad luck." . . . "They post sentries to keep watch over the safety of the whole band." 33 A more concise argument on the possibility of unselfish conduct is found in the second part of 33 Kropotkin, P., "Mutual Aid," pp. 28-29. 202 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS Dewey and Tufts' Ethics, from which the follow- ing is taken : "1. The Theory" (namely that all conduct is necessarily egoistic) "exaggerates the role of an- tagonistic competitive struggle in the Darwinian theory." 34 (a) The initial step in any "prog- ress" is variation; this is not so much struggle against other organisms, as it is invention or dis- covery of some new way of acting, involving bet- ter adaptation of hitherto merely latent natural resources, use of some possible food or shelter not previously utilized. The struggle against other organisms at work preserves from elimination a species already fixed quite a different thing from the variation which occasions the introduc- tion of a higher or more complex species, (b) Moreover, so far as the Darwinian theory is con- cerned, the "struggle for existence" may take any conceivable form ; rivalry in generosity, in mutual aid and support, may be the kind of competition best fitted to enable a species to survive. It not only may be so, but it is so within certain limits. The rage for survival, for power, must not be as- serted indiscriminately ; the mate of the other sex, the young, to some extent other individuals of the same kind are spared, or, in many cases, pro- tected and nourished, (c) The higher the form of life, the more effective the two methods just suggested: namely, the method of intelligence in discovering and utilizing new methods, tools and 34 Dewey & Tufts' Ethics. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 203 resources as substituted for the direct method of brute conflict; and the method of mutual protec- tion and care substituted for mutual attack and combat. It is among the lower forms of life, not as the theory would require among the higher types, that conditions approximate its picture of the gladiatorial show. The higher species among the vertebrates, as among insects (like ants and bees), are the "sociable" kind. It is sometimes argued that Darwinism carried into morals would abolish charity : all care of the hopelessly invalid, of the economically dependent, and in general of all the weak and helpless except healthy infants. It is argued that all current standards are senti- mental and artificial, aiming to make survive those who are unfit, and thus tending to destroy the conditions that make for advance, and to in- troduce such as make towards degeneration. But this argument (1) wholly ignores the reflex effect of interest in those who are ill and defective in strengthening solidarity in promoting those ties and reciprocal interests which are as much the prerequisites of strong individual characters as they are of a strong social group. And (2) it fails to take into account the stimulus to fore- sight, to scientific discovery, and practical inven- tion, which has proceeded from interest in the helpless, the weak, the sick, the disabled, blind, deaf and insane. Taking the most coldly scien- tific view the gains in these two respects have thru the growth of socialism, particularly of care 204 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS for the unfortunate, been purchased more cheaply than we can imagine there being bought in any other way. In other words the chief objection to this "naturalistic" ethics is that it overlooks the fact that, even from the Darwinian point of view, the human animal is a human animal. It forgets that the sympathetic and social instincts, those which cause the individual to take the in- terests of others for his own and thereby to re- strain is sheer brute self assertiveness, are the highest achievements, the high-water mark of evolution. The theory urges systematic relapse to lower and foregone stages of biological develop- ment." We omit, until our discussion, in a later essay on sympathy, the rest of Dewey's argument, save only his conclusion : "1. THE EXISTENCE OF OTHER-RE- GARDING SPRINGS TO ACTION. Only the preconceptions of hedonistic psychology would ever lead one to deny the existence of reactions and impulses called out by the sight of others' misery and joy and which tend to increase the latter and to relieve the former. Recent psycholo- gists (writing, of course, quite independently of ethical controversies) offer lists of native instinc- tive tendencies such as the following: Anger, jealousy, rivalry, secretiveness, acquisitiveness, fear, shyness, sympathy, affection, pity, sexual love, curiosity, imitation, play, constructiveness. In this inventory, the first seven may be said to PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 205 be aroused specially by situations having to do with the preservation of the self ; the next four are responses to stimuli proceeding especially from others and tending to consequences favor- able to them, while the last four are mainly im- personal. But the division into self-regarding and other-regarding is not exclusive and absolute. Anger may be wholly other-regarding, as in the case of hearty indignation at wrongs suffered by others; rivalry may be generous emulation or be directed toward surpassing one's own past record. Love between the sexes, which should be the source of steady, far-reaching interest in others, and which at times expresses itself in supreme abnegation of devotion, easily becomes the cause of brutal and persistent egoism. In short, the division into egoistic and altruistic holds only 'other things being equal.' "Confining ourselves for the moment to the na- tive psychological equipment, we may say that man is endowed with instinctive promptings which naturally (that is, without the interven- tion of deliberation or calculation) tend to pre- serve the self (by aggressive attack as in anger, or in protective retreat as in fear) ; and to de- velop his powers (as in acquisitiveness, construc- tiveness, and play) ; and which equally without consideration of resulting ulterior benefit either to self or to others, tend to bind the self closer to others and to advance the interests of others as pity, affectionateness, or again, constructive- 206 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ness and play. Any given individual is naturally an erratic mixture of fierce insistence upon his own welfare and of profound susceptibility to the happiness of others different individuals varying much in the respective intensities and proportions of the two tendencies." Conceding the point that no inherent principle of his organization absolutely requires mankind to pursue happiness as its goal, still sentiment is growing that all other values are reducible ulti- mately into terms of happiness for self or happi- ness for someone else. This doctrine, termed "hedonism," is thus traced in the International Encyclopaedia. "The term 'Utilitarian' was put into currency by J. S. Mill, who noticed it in a novel of Gait; but it was first suggested by Bentham. . . . "The history of Utilitarianism . . . falls into three divi- sions which may be termed theological, political, and evolutional respectively. "It is in a clerical work written to refute Bishop Cumberland De Legibus Naturae (in 1672) that we find the beginnings, of utilitarianism. Hobbe's conception of the state of 'nature antecedent to organization as a state of war . . . was . . . offensive. Cumberland .... does .... lay much stress upon the naturally social character of man .... The further development of the- ological utilitarianism was conditioned by opposition to the moral sense doctrine of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. Both these writers, more particularly the latter, had postulated in controverting Hobbes the existence of a moral sense to explain the fact that we approve benevo- lent actions, done either by ourselves or others, which bring no advantage to ourselves. There was a general PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 207 feeling that the advocates of the moral sense claimed too much for human nature and that they assumed a degree of unselfishness and a natural inclination toward virtue which by no means corresponded with the hard facts. The fire of human enthusiasm burnt low in the 18th century, and theologians shared the general conviction that self-interest was the ruling principle of men's con- duct. Moral sense seemed to them .... dangerous to the interest of religion .... for what should be said to a man who might affirm that, just as he had no ear for music, he was insensitive to ethical differences . . . ? Moreover if mere sense were sufficient to direct our con- duct, what need had we for religion? .... John Gay,. . . . in a dissertation prefixed to Laws' translation of .... Origin of Evil (... 1731) ... .says. . . .this that vir- tue is benevolence, and that benevolence is incumbent upon each individual because it leads to his individual happiness .... Further advances along the same line of thought were made by Abraham Tucker in his Light of Nature Pursued (. . . . 1768-74). Gay and Tucker sup- plied nearly all the important ideas of Paleq's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (.... 1785) .... Hume's Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (. ...1751).... though utilitarianism is very far from being theological .... points out that the essence of benevolence is to increase the happiness of others. Thus he establishes the principle of utility. "Personal merit" he says, "consists entirely in the usefulness or agreeable- ness of qualities to the person himself possessed of them, or to others who have any intercourse with him . . . ." "Political utilitarianism .... Abstractly .... Ben- tham .... like Paley .... regards men as moved en- tirely by pleasure and pain .... but his purpose was the exalted one of effecting reforms in the laws and consti- tution of his country. He took up the greatest happiness principle not as an attractive philosopheme, but to dis- tinguish good laws from bad. Sir John Bowring tells us 208 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS that when Beuthain was casting about for such a cri- terion, "he met with Humes' Essays and found in them what he sought. This was .... as he expressed it .... the doctrine that the only test of goodness of moral precepts or legislative enactments is their tendency to promote the greatest possible happiness of the greatest number.) These opinions are developed in his Princi- ples of Morals and Legislation (. . . 1789) and in De- on-ology (. . . . posthumously in 1834) .... These princi- ples of Bentham were the inspiration of that most im- portant school of practical English thinkers, the Philo- sophic Radicals of the early 19th Century From Bentham the leadership passed to James Mill .... and from him to John Stuart Mill .... His essay on Utili- tarianism (...1863) ....is a little masterpiece worthy to be set beside Kant's Metaphisic of Morals .... Mill belonged to a generation in which the most remarkable feature was the growth of sympathy; he puts greater stress* than his predecessor upon sympathetic pleasures .... it is in sympathy that he finds the obligation and sanction of morality ^Morality' he says 'consists in con- scientious shrinking from the violation of moral rules, and the basis of this conscientious sentiment is the social feelings of mankind, the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures, which is already a powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become stronger from the influences of advancing civili- zation.' Such passages in Mill have their full signifi- cance only when we take them in connection with that rising tide of humanitarian sentiment which made itself felt in all the literature and in all the practical activity of his time. The other notable feature of Mill's doctrine Is his distinction of value between pleasures .... It is commonly said that in making this distinction Mill has practically given up Utilitariasm because he has applied to pleasure (alleged to be the supreme criterion) a fur- ther criterion which is not pleasure. But . . this . PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 209 may be questioned. . . . The merest pleasure-lover may -consistently say that he prefers a single glass of good champagne to several bottles of cooking sherry .... So Mill is justified in preferring a scene of Shakespeare .... to a great mass of lower pleasure. The last writer who, though not a political utilitarian, may be regarded as belonging to the school of Mill is Henry Sidgwick, whose elaborate Methods of Ethics (. . . . 1874) may be re- garded as closing this line of thought. His theory of conduct is a sort of reconciliation of utilitarianism with intuitionalism, a position which he reached by studying Mill in combination with Kant and Butler. His recon- ciliation amounts to this, that the rule of conduct is to aim at universal happiness, but that we recognize the reasonableness of this rule by an intuition which cannot be further explained. "Even before the appearance of Sidgewick's book utili- tarianism had entered upon its third or evolutional phase, in which principles borrowed from biological sci- ence make their entrance into philosophy. The main doctrine of evolutional or biological ethics is stated". . . . in the third chapter of Darwin's Descent of Man (. . . . 1871). . . . he approached the subject "exclusively from the side of natural history." Theological and political utilitarianism alike had been individualistic. But Dar- win shows how the moral sense or conscience may be re- garded as derived from the social instincs, which are common to men and animals. To understand the genesis of human morality we must study the ways of sociable animals such as horses and monkeys, which give each other assistance in trouble, feel mutual affection and sympathy, and experience pleasure in doing actions that benefit the society to which they belong. Both in ani- mals and in human society individuals of this character, being conducive to social welfare, are encouraged by natural selection they and their society tend to disap- pear and to destroy the society to which they belong. 210 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS Thus, in many do sentiments of love and mutual sym- pathy become instinctive and, when transmitted by in- heritance, innate. When man has advanced so far as to be sensitive to the opinions of his fellow-men, their approbation and disapprobation reinforce the influence of natural selection. When he has reached the stage of reflection there arises what we know as conscience. He will approve or disapprove of himself according as his conduct has fulfilled the conditions of social wel- fare. 'Thus the imperious word ought seems to imply the consciousness of a persistent instinct, either innate or partly acquired, serving as a guide, tho liable to be disobeyed. "The most famous of the systematic exponents of evolutional utilitarianism is in Herbert Spencer, in whose Data of Ethics (1879). ... He shows how morality can be viewed . . . psychologically, as evolving from a state in which sensations are more potent than ideas so that the future is sacrificed to the present to a date in which ideas are more potent than sensations (so that a greater but distant pleasure is prefrred to a less but present pleasure) ; sociologically as evolving from approval of war and warlike sentiments to approval of the senti- ments appropriate to international peace and to an in- dusarial organization of society. The sentiment of ob- ligation Spencer regards as essentially transitory; when a man reaches a condition of perfect adjustment, he will always do what is right without any sense of be- ing obliged to do it. The best feature of the Data of Ethics is its anti-ascetic vindication of pleasure as man's natural guide to what is physiologically healthy and morally good. . . . Following up the same line of thought, Leslie Stephen with . . . more attention to scientific method has worked out in his Science of Ethics (1882) the conception of morality as a function of the Social organism, while Professor S. Alexander in his Moral Order and Progress (1899) has applied the principles of PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 211 natural competition and natural selection to explain the struggle of ideals against each other within society. "'Moral Evil," says Professor Alexander, "is in great part a defeated variety of moral ideal. ... A. Southerland's Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct (. . . 1898) is a capable piece of work in this direction." A year or two before his death, our father took us upon a fishing trip, and he was amused when we took upon us by preference all the labor of rowing the boat, and left entirely to him and to our guide the actual catching of fish. Neither then nor subsequently were we able to find pleas- ure in killing things. In regard to hunting it is the same with us as in regard to angling ; we love to roam thru the wild, nor does a year pass but we make one or more camping trips, and yet the most deadly weapon we'll carry is a camera. Notwithstanding that this attitude has become a matter of principle, still we're inclined to wonder whether fundamentally it mayn't have some other origin, the more potent precisely because the less obvious. So often, our strong aversions are trace- able to childhood experiences. Many a would-be swimmer, his ambition balked by an insuperable unwillingness to confide his body completely and lovingly to the water as a swimmer must, will tell you that as a boy he was thrown into the middle of a deep stream, or was unmercifully "ducked" by older boys. So it may be that the surest guar- antee against cruelty in adulthood (for wanton game-killing is cruelty) is that in youth we should 212 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS have been tragically impressed by the spectacle of animals suffering. The childhood picture which we now recall in this connection is nothing of an extreme character like a bull-fight to excite the anticipations of the reader. It is simply that of a small boy who stoned a cat out of a tree and then was struck by remorse at sight of the little creature's shrunken body. It happened at the rear of a big stable. A dog first sighted the cat, nosed her out of her hiding and when she streaked across the yard toward that tree, he gave fast and furious chase. The small boy was just coming around the corner of the stable, dreaming about a flying machine. he intended to build, when this animal whirlwind flashing past awakened him to a sense of ex- ,hilarating realism, and sucked him along in its vortex after it to the base of the tree. Herein the cat had found refuge, and the baffled dog was cogitating how best to renew the attack, while hiding his immediate embarrassment under a .noisy assumptipn of bragadoccio. We distinctly recollect that the small boy the writer had a moment of uncertainty as to what course it would be ethical for him to pursue, and as to which contestant he ought to abet, and we re- call that his decision was finally rendered upon the precedent of the immense majority of alli- ances being notoriously between boy and dog ; and seldom between boy and cat. Like a good legalist, PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 213 he no sooner made sure of what was the boys' international code on such matters, than he hero- ically repressed all compunctions, and openly en- tered the field with shouts and exhortations as the avowed ally of dog. Both combattants during this time had not failed anxiously to eye the boy as a possible and deciding participant in the fray. So, when it was seen which side he had chosen, the barking as- sumed a confident tone, and the mewing took on a note of pitiful despair. On the ground, jubila- tion clamored loud; but in the tree horror crouched. The failure of the dog's offensive had been due, of course, to his inadequacy in the air. So long as operations had been confined to the ground, he had vanquished the foe completely; but in the high altitudes he was powerless. This defect his new ally was to remedy, by bringing to his assist- ance an artillery fire of bricks and stones which drove pussy into the topmost branches. At last the barrage attained its effect, and the unequal battle ended. An ugly stone hit the poor little creature squarely, and with a cry of pain she tum- bled from the tree. The dog gave a yelp of triumph and jumped to seize his prey. But the boy drove him away angrily. Filled with no feeling except deep re- morse, which had flooded over him like a torrent at the instant that he saw his stone strike true, the boy took his victim into his arms and tried 214 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS vainly to nurse her back to life. But it was too late. When the little body became quite cold and stiff, it was given a decent burial. And the one mourner who attended was sincere in his devo- tion, nor ever passed that way again without ex- periencing sharp remorse. This experience may well be one reason why invitations to go hunting or fishing now awake in us only repulsion. For the rest, we leave it to Dr. Freud and the psychoanalysis to point out learnedly the importance of childhood experiences in predetermining character. But after all, what anomalies are hunting and fishing, in this day of abattoirs and of steam fishing-vessels ! sportsmen, are not camping and boating in the free air and amid the beauty of nature enough delight in themselves, without the bloody superfluity of butchery? The only rational meter of the ultimate right or wrongness of actions is that all goods must be measured in terms of the amount of happiness somebody derives from them. You'll find reams of argument for this theorem among the writings of Utilitarians and Hedonists. We don't imply that the common run of people actually do, in a ma- jority of cases, guide themselves by this considera- tion, but merely that it's the only rational, sane, standard; for to act rationally means to act to- ward the procurement of something desired, whether good or bad. Here are some typical ob- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 215 jects of desire: food, sleep, money, social recog- nition, to attain Heaven, to obey God's command- ments, to see some creature suffer, to attain cul- ture, to down our enemies, and to be of service to mankind. While the desire for food is a blind instinct that seldom stops to ask "Why?" yet we'd consider a person to be hardly amenable to reason who deliberately ate food that he knew would cause a surplus of crying over smiling. Again, fatigue-toxins may so drug a tired person that for the sake of sleep he'll jeopardize his very life; but his action under such circumstances can't be called rational; if a person isn't too drowsy to reason clearly, he isn't tempted to seek sleep when he believes that by doing so his rest will end in misery, unless that misery is to be balanced by more happiness, (e. g., as the misery of struggling to remain awake when lost at night in a snow- storm, might be balanced by the presumed hap- piness of escaping death thereby) , but if a person is tempted to woo sleep, when his rational powers are in abeyance to the excitement of present ac- tivity, he realizes that sleep (say because it favors health) will result ultimately in a net surplus of happiness over any misery of foregoing present excitements. The accumulation of money may become a mania as difficult to curb as is the use of opium or hashish, but who, in dispassionate moments, unblinded by the glamor of some glit- tering new project, who, but feels in the depths of his heart that gold, finally, is no more than an in- 216 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS surance against the day of wretchedness and cry- ing or at best, is a means of having and giving smiles ? As to social recognition, would it be half so keen but for the sense that in obscurity we shan't be quite smiling? What's the meaning of "Heaven" except that it be a place or state of supreme happiness? Would you still wish to obey God's commandments if you really and keen- ly felt that to do so was the way to make every- one (including yourself and God himself) forever unhappy? Would you seek as keenly after cul- ture, if you believed (what non-Teutons represent to be the German conception of it) that culture means for all mankind, crying? Would you in your rational moments really desire that a fellow creature should suffer punishment merely "be- cause he so well deserves it," unless you feel that you yourself would then be able to smile and crow over a fallen foe, or because God in His inscrut- able wisdom would be displeased, i. e., unhappy, were it not so, or because you hope the sufferer may, through thus suffering, become a more hap- piness-giving sort of man, or because the example of his sufferings may deter others from following misery-creating kinds of conduct? In sum, I think you must agree that when not enslaved to appetites, nor drowsy, nor drunk with excitement, nor a truth-despising fanatic, nor enraged, nor insane, nor an infant, nor stupid, in short, when- ever for a moment you're truly rational, you know that happiness is the one thing in the world which PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 217 in itself is worth while and the one quality which gives merit to articles of value. To be bad means to be unfavorable in the long run to happiness, whereas to be good means to be favorable (when all the ramifications and after- effects of the matter have been counted) to hap- piness. Too often in our judgments of human beings, their character or actions, the words "good" and "bad" are applied loosely to denote the general praiseworthiness of the intentions behind those actions and not the acts themselves. E. g., we call a woman good who, in trying to alleviate the sufferings of dying cats, builds a cat-hospital and prolongs their suffering for months, or we call a workman "bad" who, by some striking exem- plification of the unsatisfactoriness of the kind of employe which he typifies, is the cause of his employer's installing labor-saving machinery. It would be more accurate to speak merely of "a well-intentioned woman" or an "ill-intentioned man." A safe hypothesis by which to guide one's judgments is that "only that is good which is good for something." As to whether the existence of evil wouldn't be justified if it were shown to be the only way known to God for strengthening our characters? We answer "No." Except there were such evils to overcome by means of evil itself, what would be the use or advantage of building up a strong character? The aim of all things, towards which 218 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS triumphs, or character, or any other achieve- ments are but subsidiary means, we decided, was Happiness. Then how is mankind better off be- cause at the cost of much wickedness and crying, the balance of smiling is to be of that particular and especial variety that comes through a strong character conquering temptations ? Our essay thus far has shown man as a crea- ture capable of the greatest variety of contradic- tory motives, sometimes sensual or even whimsi- cal, sometimes ambitious, anon idealistic, and in rare instances even truly altruistic. It has fur- ther shown that the happiest life pro tern is that which expresses nothing higher (nor lower) that our character as already formed, but that it may pay to renounce some of this present luxury to achieve higher character and its accompanying greater fortitude and greater bliss. The way thus prepared for us to tell you frankly both what you may hope for yourself and what we ourselves hope, to profit by these essays. We feel that in general a man who writes a book or delivers a lecture does well to commence by summing up for his audience frankly, in a few words, what is his own point of view. They can be on their guard against him. The writer or lecturer if he's wise will wish this, because a good knock-down fight at the beginning is more satisfactory to either party fhan a history of deceptions ending in dis- illusionment and embitterment. So let us tell first how it is we came to write these essays, and in PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 219 so doing, we'll see whether our mutual plan isn't (as we believe) the thing to serve best your in- terests too. Frankly, then, we hit on the idea of these es- says as a means of building up the nucleus of an ideal society. It occurred to us that certain major principles which must be the foundation of the better social organization which is to succeed the present one could be denned in terms that would make them immediately workable by individuals or groups ; and, further, that through a course on personal problems we could appeal to our readers on a basis largely of self interest to adopt these principles and to join with groups of others in practicing them. We're always glad to correspond on such matters with readers of our books. Within the shell, therefore, of the cruel and wicked but visibly disintegrating social order in which our lives have been cast, we want to plant. like seeds, little groups organized upon the fol- lowing lines: 1. Leaving to individual judgment the ques- tion of the Ego's survival of death, we condemn the intrusion into schools and public meetings of exercises, etc., based on assumptions of superna- tural powers, a teleological or moral universe, etc., or otherwise designed to distract to the prob- lems of an hypothetical other world the energies that are so sorely needed for the problems of this present world. Instead of the hereafter we em- phasize the here. 220 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 2. Their purpose shall be to promote the great- est happiness of the greatest number of mem- bers and of non-members, contributors and non- contributors, alike. Hence the first law of their nature shall be not self-preservation, not wealth and respectability, but daily to dispel ignorance and suffering. 3. Overpopulation of the world increases the bitterness of the economic struggle. We en- join upon our following Adoption and Education, as being worthier than propagation, of children. 4. It should be a matter of conscience that self-expression should not assume unwholesome or vulgar or wasteful forms. Our members are pledged to general abstemiousness, and to non-use of tobacco and drugs. 5. We believe in continuous self-education. 6. Full freedom of expression through forms intellectual and artistic, as vital to human sanity, is one of the purposes of our organization. 7. We urge individuals to consider as para- mount the rights of the group, in questions which involve an irreconcilable conflict of liberties of sensing or expressing, as for example where one wishes to smoke or to swear in a loud unmusical voice in a car in which are other persons whose physical senses 35 are irritated thereby, or to dis- figure a landscape, or to mingle in crowds if one's body doesn't measure up to a certain standard of 36 The meaning- of the swear-words is no physical but a mental fact. It would be impracticable to carry this rule into the ideational realm, for the meanings which any presentation may, call up will depend upon each perceiver's own associations, hence are unpredictable. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 221 healthiness. But we urge vigorous resistance to every encroachment of the group upon each in- dividual's right to do whatever isn't an aggres- sive interference with the equal freedom of others in sensation or expression. As for exam- ple where the group insist on him taking part in great emotional mass-movements with their like- lihood of grand-scale violence, which last is al- ways wrong. Every form of discrimination against large groups of races or color of skin, etc., is essentially contrary to our spirit. 8. Our members shall bring their disputes be- fore our own tribunals for settlement, and it shall be the rule that whoever exacts any penalty, even from his child, shall in some degree humble him- self or do a penance of like sort, before him, lest arrogance grow among us. 9. Self -understanding is the most fundamental knowledge. 10. As a rebuke to that commercial spirit which has filled the world with materialistic dis- content, our organization will not in its offcial capacity own property. It will arrange camps and other meetings which members are enjoined occasionally to attend, at which they will take a holiday from the greedy atmosphere of the pres- ent-day world, share in common the labor of the camp and divide among the needy all supplies brought along. 11. Our organization-plan shall be such as be- seems our aspiration to unify all enduringly wor- 222 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS thy institutions. The membership shall be rep- resented not geographically but according to their industrial or other affiliations. Half as many rep- resentatives as members elect to our supreme council may be chosen by any persons outside the membership, or who have been repressed by us, or dishonored, this provision is for a check to growth among us of snobbish tendencies. Half as many representatives as these shall be chosen by those children or others whom we have most severely disciplined; 36 this as a check to tyran- nous tendencies. Upon the foregoing eleven principles we are as said, founding an organization, which each of our readers is invited to join. But in so inviting them, we wish to appeal on grounds primarily of their self-interest. Only if our organization truly benefits its membership, will it measure up to its first principle to serve mankind. So next let us follow our exposition of the plans of development of the association with an exposition of plans for personal develpment of its individual adherents. Later we think we can show that the two mutual- ly support each other, principle by principle, and step by step. In the course of the other essays of this series, we shall try to show : 1. The pathological types will be happier when they can become natural. 2. The merely animal type will find his pleas- Terhaps in the beginnigr no severer cases will occur than of per- sons who have been put ou.t of a rneetinpr for causing disturbance. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 223 ures actually heightened to the degree that an in- fusion into him of the spirit of ambitious egoism brings him to greater abstemiousness. 3. The egoist needs an infusion of less selfish aspiration, to prevent him narrowing himself to the point where life has become sterile. A warm heart is as necessary to success as is a cool head. 4. This craving becomes satisfied only as he continues his development toward an efficient al- truism. So much for the general conception. But how, you'll ask, is it proposed that these changes should be effected ? It's impossible to effect them in many cases quickly. They must come as results of con- scious growth, and lasting growth can be begun only on the basis of reliable scientific knowledge. So we propose to devote the various essays that follow this one to considering in more and more detail each specific impulse of the human being, and to show how in each case the elemental desire may be stepped up to a sublimated form of expression. We already have discussed the pe- culiar doubleness of human responses "condi- tioned reflex," "bivalance," and "ambitendency." Chapter 5 will consider how we best can confirm faint tendencies, exposes the fallacies of make-be- lieve sciences like phrenology, "memory-train- ing," "wiH"-training, etc., 37 and gives the present status of the doctrine of instincts. wnjit a lot of philosophy dating back to Locke, and psychology an- tedating James you'll find in most of the popular discussions of these subjects! They're permeated by the dogma of "discipline" for our "faculties," which any normal school graduate can tell you is dead. 224 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS We've said that our aim in this book is partly a social one. Upon the foundation of elemental human nature colored with the idea of restraint instead of that of development has been reared a society little better than a brothel, where four sinister columns, greed, superstition, terrorism and vainglory become necessary to support its corner institutions of Property, Church and chari- ties, Penitentiary, and State. But upon the same human nature can't you see reared some day in place of this brothel a fair temple to Happiness, whose corner institutions shall be Collectivism, The Federation of Clubs of Service, Re-education Homes, and athletic and Propaganda Leagues? The Ethics we're interested in, isn't the Ethics that bolsters the posts of the ancient and decaying brothel why not let that rot and fall away? but the Ethics necessary as foundation for the columns of the new temple that will arise. These essays are intended to solve for you the greatest puzzle of life the puzzle of Conduct. Each of us has a tendency toward being a social animal, that desires to do what is felt to be right ; but each of us at the same time has many individ- ual tendencies, that make him wish to follow sel- fish and even unwise and passionate impulses. When we simply make a compromise between these two natures as we ordinarily do in life, methods of suggestion which are therapeutically questionable, and terms like "subconscious" (for unconscious) and telepathy, for mut>cU>- reading which indicate ways of thinking that have been superseded. In our discussion of the "Will" we at least shall not fool you with make-believe science. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 225 neither nature is quite satisfied, and we become unhappy. Analyses should be made in no cynical spirit, and with the idea that "To understand all is to forgive all." . That which in our association goes by the name of goodness is not to be thot of as in all respects a different goodness from all which the old world long has so regarded. All that men have till now thot and felt is not to be thrown by the board. But those virtues which we particularly stress, or concerning which we differ from others, or on which our teaching requires definition, we shall gradually set forth in the ethical code below. To practice this code in their lives rather than to preach it by word of mouth is the form of propa- ganda which we enjoin upon all of our members; it will win far more converts to us than anything else we could do. Mr. Greenbie, the first teacher at our school in California wrote up the following account of his experiences on "affection at Boyland." "When parents finally consent to give their children into the care of strangers they should be given some guarantee that they will receive the at- tention children by right of being born of civilized parents deserve. "Of course, were we still living in a natural en- vironment instead of the mind-born one, there would be no question of education. Thrown out upon our own resources with unperverted in- 226 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS stincts as our guides, education would be neces- sary. But civilization is at war with our in- stincts and rave against it much as Nietsche will it is as much an instinct with us to destroy our instincts and substitute the minds' wishes as it is to submit to 'stagnation.' "Affection is a matter of education it is lead out of us. So too is brutality. And naturally the fond mother should inquire as to how much affection her child will get if entrusted to the master. And she might use this barometrically. A child's education is proportionate to the amount of affection it receives. "One of the loveliest things at Boyland is the general good will existing among the boys. This is not saying that they have no quarrels, no bick- erings a more lucid term, squabbles. They would be boys without special characteristics were that the case. "But more often it isn't because of jealousy but because one makes a nuisance of himself that the trouble begins. 'It's so much quieter without ' they will say. 'Everything goes better when is away.' "This, it must be seen, is in reality a desire to eliminate those who make for quarrelsomeness. "On the other hand, when grouped about listen- ing to one of us telling them the lesson in history (or other subject of the day) very often the oldest would permit one of the younger to share the PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 227 steamer-chair with him, putting his arm about him in the spirit of brotherliness. "The majority of mothers who alone have been compelled to assume all the responsibility over their children generally say that a father is need- ed to supply the sterner training. And indeed as far as rational discipline is concerned, the boys at Boyland received a wholesome share of it. But undue severity has been eliminated by calm judgment. "Where most parents make the mistake is in making demands on their children the carrying out of which they are themselves indifferent to. But our motto has been first to be sure that that which we have asked the boy to do is absolutely necessary and then to see that it is accomplished, or else not making the demand. This can be done firmly and affectionately, and should be as easy for the mother as for the father. "On one occasion, little Self-Willed refused to do what was asked of him. At the same time he threatened to run home if I insisted. Calmly and without unnecessary talking to, I picked him up in my arms and made for the field of battle. In the tussle he struck me in the face. I took even this calmly. Upon reaching our destination, I set him on the ground, gave him a shovel (the others were doing the same) and told him to get to it. He insisted he wouldn't dig, at the same time tearing out shovel after shovel of dirt, ac- cording to orders. Then I dismissed the others 228 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS and kept him to the task, talking to him all the while, gently, and pointing out the need of effort, self-control, etc., etc. When I thot the lesson long enough, I asked him if he didn't want to quit. And hand in hand, we made for home, better friends than ever. Up turned the little face to me and the lips spoke out: 'You're my daddy now.' I picked him up, he put his arms about me and so we reached the cottage. "Time and again that same refrain accompanied by a kiss gladdened a darker moment. At other times, when I entered the room to see that they were well tucked in, the windows opened, two eager little hands would draw me close to two puckered lips which kissed me good night. We were their guardians, their providers, their train- ers and their playmates. "One little youngster came to me in a hungry moment. 'I wish I had someone to hug,' he said. Did I deny that to him? Soon we were sitting on one chair, talking reminiscently, as tho we had been brothers in some other world. "When coming up from dinner, one little fellow said: 'Carry me up stairs, Prince.' The others soon made the same request, piling pell mell upon us, laughing and gurgling in glee. At another time, they would put their arms around us, and together we would come up the stairs from the dining room. "After having been naughty, one youngster came up to me with a book to show me something. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 229 I took him in my arms and asked him to make an effort to become a stronger boy and assured him that we loved him and would do everything to help him. 'I love you too,' he answered, evident- ly much moved by my show of affection. "Someone suggested that we go for a moonlight ride, and immediately, it spread like wild-fire. Nothing to do but go. Then I decided to remain to do some work, but they wouldn't hear of it. Into the Den they came, virtually dragging me out by my coat tails. Then Prince, thinking it was a partial show of affection for me, and having enough to do to stay home, went in. When they saw that they rushed in, clamoring that he too come. Nothing would do but that we both come along. And a jolly crew were we." Kindness to other human beings is our first duty, because in them it begets a like emotion, that continues multiplying its effect. But the truly chivalrous person is he whose love by no means ceases at the boundaries of the human species, but includes all who live. One should en- deavor to be as all-compassionate as Gautama. In what form this kindness toward animals should find its expression is a matter for individ- ual judgment. Kindness doesn't consist in petting each pass- ing dog. Doubtfully does it consist in feeding the starving birds and squirrels thru the winter, since this in the end means a multiplication of the number of these creatures and so of the in- 230 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS definite expansion of our problem. What is needed is not sentimentalism. As regards vivisection, our problem is compli- cated by many factors. We must beware of judging that all animals kept for experimental purposes are made to suffer, because cases of cruelty have been known, or because of reports by all-informed and hysterical crusaders. Many physiologists invariably take entirely adequate precautions against the infliction of pain ; and in- deed the conditions of the experiment themselves as a rule absolutely require the administering of an anaesthetic if any operation is to be performed, as otherwise the struggles of the animal would defeat the experimenter's aims. Nevertheless, cruel and even sadistic men do occur in labora- tories, from whom creatures should be protected in some way. The Boston American suggests: "The first step to be taken is to throw open to the public these vivisection chambers." This would of course need to be done in a way that would not interfere with the physical free- dom of the experimentors. Such measurements at best undoubtedly would meet with great oppo- sition from the hospitals, as many ill-balanced persons would be at first stirred up to protests in unwarranted measure. But in the end the pub- lic would find its poise. It is much easier to slir up the public to a cam- paign against the real and supposed cruelties of by which the vague thing called science benefits, PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 231 than against the cruelties by which they them- selves profit to the extent of having savory viands and luxurious skins. Almost everyone nowadays, even quite outside the ranks of the vegetarians, admits that we are positively harmed by the amount of meat we consume. If you are in real earnest about this business of being kind to animals, begin right now and at home to amend the suffering of live-stock under our abominable slaughter house conditions, by denying yourself eighty per cent of the animal products you now use. "Apropos is the following clipping from a leaf- let circulated by the American Humane Educa- tion Society, Boston, Mass.: NOT SUDDEN DEATH ALONE. Possibilities Liable to Occur in the Chase of Any Wild Animal That Escapes Wounded. "I got a long snap-shot on the stag and hit the beast in the haunch. It was late in the day and the wounded animal got away. Nine days later I spied the big stag. * * * * "Not once did he rise or attempt to feed, but lay there restlessly, beating his head against the ground. I knew well enough what that meant. His plaint could not reach my ear, but it reached my heart. I put up the 200-yard sight and killed him. "I will not attempt to describe the body in detail. It would not be desirable. I will merely 232 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS say that it was wasted away and almost fleshless except for the wounded haunch, which was great- ly swollen. This I had done for my pleasure! "After that year I went no more to Scotland." In this little sketch from "Tracks of a Rolling Stone," by Hon. H. J. Coke, we have volumes of the "sport of killing." The above is quoted by the Vegetarian,* a little paper edited by Mrs. J. R. Albert in the hope of appealing to the human conscience not to destroy animals for food. Our meat consumption should be reduced to less than a quarter of what it now is. That would benefit ourselves as well as re- lieve the victims. But the human race is singu- larly callous to any humanitarian appeal which deprives it of an indulgence, except it be a call to inflict vengeance. The way to meet the outer world, which after all is as weak and susceptible to suggestion as we, is to meet it with the smile of friendship no mat- ter how hard we may have to fight it. Thus we shall win friends to ourselves, at least among those whose friendship is worth having. True happiness Consists not in the multitude of friends, But in the worth and choice. Nor would I have Virtue a popular regard pursue: Let them be good that love me, tho but few. 38 Even children followed with endearing wile, *1649 Grand Ave., Chicago. ""Johnson, Ben Cynthias Revels, Act 3, Scene 2. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 233 And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile. 39 Children always appreciate friendship, and few adults will take the trouble to be their friends. Befriend the frightened dog, whom cruel youths have hounded, with tin cans to his tail, making sport of its embarrassment. Follow not the priests of Zoroaster, that otherwise great master, but who taught his magic they should kill, as allies of dark Ahriman, toads and snakes and all such creatures whom unhappy fate endowed with scales. Follow least of all the way of hunters moved not by need of food but their pleasure in the hunt; to professional butchers such things are best left, and them even we ought not to stimulate to more than necessary slaughter, but reduce to minimum our demand for meat, for man's own existence isn't near so joyous as jus- tifies that brutes should greatly suffer for our race's maintenance. Befriend, as Bludda did the wounded swan struck by his cousin's arrow, and all other helpless creatures. Befriend afflicted persons. Visit them whom sickness has laid low, in hospitals especially, the time goes slowly, callers come not often forget our selfish bashfulness, take a chance on being more than welcome, for how few think to come! Visit those worse than sick, the sick in soul, the misanthrope, the grouch, the unpleasant and un- grateful persons; of all that are sick on earth ''Goldsmith The Deserted Village, L. 183. 234 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS none are sorer afflicted, none more bereft of friends than these. Befriend the unfit, who by hereditary taint, improper education, vicious habits, or the pride-sapping will weakening exper- ience of a life of failure, know only demon dis- couragement. Befriend the popular man ; he may need a true friend. Above all go to the prisons, seek out the wretched drags of our society ; treat them as sages, perhaps emotionally unstable, but schooled in all the bitterness of experience; take your questions of state to those whom the weight of society crushes, go sit at the feet of the humble. CHAPTER III Sexuality, its aberrations, and its sublimations, will occupy us now. Control, restriction, of the birthrate may claim consideration as the third of our ethical mandates. The sensualist with his erotomania is on the lowest rung of the ladder ; we recall one night in a New York elevated train a drunkard who retorted to the jibes of the crowd, "Tha's all right, but I've got eight children at home, and that's more than any of you've got!" The entirely normal person keeps his family with- in smaller number largely because there are so many other outlets for his energies to vie with the purely sexual channel. The ambitious person will prefer to launch a few well educated children toward careers that may shed lustre upon him as their parent, than to spawn his progeny whole- sale. The altruist sees that to adopt and educate some of the unfortunate children already begot- ten into a world that doesn't want them is the true virtue, whereas unlimited breeding by the working class is to the advantage only of their masters who want more strike-breakers and sol- diers. SECTION I Of the two most fundamental problems of the day, we may well be nearer the solution of the other the economic than of this one. Indeed, 236 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS the economic problem may well have to be set- tled first. The accompanying pictures show you how men and women have to work in a country (India) where birth-rate is practically unchecked. Even the filth from street and stable is gathered into cakes and dried against the walls of the houses, to serve as fuel. INDIAN WOMEN SPINNING It is to the sexual question to which we must go for an explanation of the creation and sup- pression of complexes. "Standing out prominently in the Freudian System is that idea of a conflict between the mental tendencies of the individuals and the tra- ditional code of conduct prescribed by .... So- ciety." This conflict particularly takes the form PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 237 of the sexual question, a few of the evidences of which are as follows: There is a close union between blood lust and sex lust, and we need not point out the fearful rage of combative passion which is sweeping over the world today. This age is only parallelled in that respect by those other ages in the world's history when both sexual and military passion swept over the world. For example, the period of the Crusades. You will recall that these Cru- sades, like our modern war, is excused by all the parties to it on the ground of a high ideal to be attained, tho it is significant that the immediate precursor of the Crusades was the interference by the Seljukian Turks with the profitable commerce in oriental luxuries for the merchant princes of the day. Almost contemporaneously with the Crusades was also a peculiar outburst of dancing mania ; for example, in Spain was originated at that time the famous Tarentella dance, supposed to be a cure for the bite of the tarantula. Only a few years ago we ourselves witnessed a great rage for dancing of a more primitive type than has been fashionable for centuries. The type of music now so much in vogue is itself closely allied to the primitive, particularly the "Jazz," makes a strong appeal to the emotions. Again, there is the tremendous increase in di- vorce, itself, however, only a symptom of the fun- damental discontent with the marriage institu- 238 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS tion and symptom of the resolution not to be bound by it. Our novels and serious magazine literature are constantly permeated by discussions of the sex question in a way indicative of the great interest taken in it by all persons of the present time, and to these evidences may be ad- ded that of the moving pictures. DRYING CAKES OF OFFAL FOR FUEL Just recently in the New York Times maga- zine 1 we read of the meeting of the Women's Free- dom Congress, in which the addresses of Fola La Follette, Signe Toksvig, Anna Strunsky Wall- ing, and others all showed the radical tendency of the times. Nor is it difficult to account upon many scores for this wave of public tendency. In the first J March 30, 1919. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 239 place, it is a natural thing in the human race to surge from one extreme of a passionate feeling to another, alternating between the pleasure mo- tive and the ascetic ideal. The tendency of pres- ent age, from this point of view, is really a flow- ing back from the other extreme of puritanism. Again, the amusements which are offered to us are nearly all of a type to increase the already great hyper-excitability of the race. People are no longer content to remain quietly at home or calling upon their friends, or sitting on their front verandahs in the evening discussing serious or frivolous questions, but instead someone imme- diately suggests that the unoccupied moments should be utilized for seeing, let us say, the new- est comic opera. The comic opera, the typical play of our times, has as its motive essentially the play of sexuality, treated nearly always in light and frivolous fashion. The older morality of sex was determined by the conception of property, woman being in the old regime more or less of a chattel. The newer conception is one which places both sexes on a basis of equality and denies to neither of them his or her individuality. And the institution of marriage must, therefore, become based not upon any forcible legal restraints as in the past, but only upon the consideration of the well-being and happiness of all its members. "That a man or woman, the units of society, should violate the divine in themselves for the 240 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS sake of society is absurd. They are merely set- ting an example to their children to do the same thing, which means that society in that respect will never get any better." 2 Certain philosophers whom we shall discuss in Chapter 10, made of man essentially an animal driven by the urge of the belly, "A pig philosophy" it was called by Carlisle, with a petulance which betrayed him as more sentimentalist than logi- cian. These psychoanalysts whom we shall now discuss with you a very modern school regard man as essentially driven by the urge of sex. Josef Breuer, a Vienna physician, in 1880 dis- covered "that the symptoms of hysterical patients depend upon impressive but forgotten scenes in their lives (traumata). The thereapy founded thereon was to cause the patients to recall and reproduce these experiences under hypnosis (ca- tharsis), and the fragmentary theory, deduced from it was that these symptoms corresponded to an abnormal use of undischarged sums of excite- ment (conversion) Breuer al- lowed the carthartic treatment to rest .... and only resumed it after" (his pupil, Dr. Freud) "caused him to do so, on (the latter's) return from Charcot. 8 Breuer's famous case was that of a girl with paralyzed arm. Under hypnosis she eventually recalled a scene where she had fallen asleep with her arm hanging over the foot of the bed of her "Alison Pair in Winston Churchill's The Inside of the Cup. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 241 invalid father. At this time her attendance on her father was shutting her off from the court- ship of a beau. Awakening in excitement, with dreams in which snakes were conspicuous, she found the stopping of circulation in her arm had "put it to sleep" and she thought it paralyzed. The discovery of this origin of the symptom re- sulted in its automatic disappearance. "Breuer .... must have discovered the sexual motivity so that here, as tho hit by 'an un- toward event' he broke off the investigation."* His unconscious rebelled at the evidences that the "undischarged sums of excitement" were invari- ably sexual. Freud says, "one day I was accompanying Breuer when a man came up urgently desir- ing to speak when Breuer was free he told me this was the husband of a patient. He ended . . . 'those are always secrets of the alcove' ('secrets of the conjugal bed') "Later, .... Charcot was just relating to Brouardel .... 'C'est toujours la chose genital toujours toujours toujours.' 5 "Chrobak . . . asked me to take a patient . . . she was suffering from senseless attacks of anx- iety, which could only be alleviated by the most exact information as to the whereabouts of her physician at any time in the day. When Chrobak appeared, he took me aside and disclosed the fact 4 Idem. p. 5. 5 Idem, p. 7. 242 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS that the patient's anxiety was due to the fact that tho she had been married eighteen years, she was still a virgo. intacta . . . " 6 with a cynical prescription as the only cure. As Freud now developed his own conclusions, "an acquisition of the psychoanalytic work, won by legitimate means, as extract from very numerous experiences .... is the theory of in- fantile sexuality. 'The seeker often found more than he bargained for.' He was tempted always further back .... hoped to be permitted to tarry . . ." (But) "the tracks led still further back into childhood . . . And now the whole sexual life of the child made its appearance "Abraham . . . drew attention to the fact that just the peculiar nature of the child's sexual con- stitution enables it to provoke sexual experiences of a peculiar kind, that is to say traumas. 7 In "1902 a number of young doctors crowded around" Freud "to learn psychoanalysis, to prac- tice it, and to spread it. 8 "Ellis . . . wrote, in 1911 ... 'Freud's psy- choanalysis is now championed and carried out, not only in Australia and in Switzerland, but in the United States, in England, India, Canada.' 9 . . . "Even in prudish America one could, ... in academic circles, . . . treat scientifically all those things that are regarded as offensive." 10 6 Idem, pp. 8, 9. 'Idem, p. 11. "Idem, p. 17. "Idem, p. 22. 10 Idem, p. 23. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 243 Just as we have seen James, Thorndike, Mc- Dougal and others postulating a multitude of in- stincts of slightly ^related character, so Freud on the other hand has his own hierachy of human motives, but all of an essentially sexual nature. Thus he has as his primal pair normal active and passive (masculine and feminine) erotic desire; next come sadism (pleasure in inflicting pain) es- pecially upon the opposite sex and masochism (pleasure in being subjected to pain, especially by one of opposite sex) and thirdly we have ex- hibitionism (love of displaying one's self) and curiosity (originating in curiosity about sex). From these six impulses Freud derives all others. Some good illustration of "exhibitionism" and its withdrawal we may get 11 "From an article in the Pedagogic Seminary, by G. Stanley Hall and Theodate L. Smith. "The following records of the conduct of chil- dren showing off before strangers, and also the cases of several older persons: 1, male, four years old. Being watched at his play, would run as fast as he could, and fall down. 2, male, seven years old. When watched at play, began to hammer the fence. "See! I am moving this fence." 3, male, five years old. First pants. Walked around; then began to kick, laugh, lie down, roll over, etc. 4, female, five years old. New hat. Sits down. "McKeever, Psychology and Higher Life. 244 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS Holds the head first on one side, then on the other ; . . . will get a book, stand on a chair, "speak pieces," etc. Soon as people leave, she acts nat- ural. 5, female, seven years old. Likes to say things to make people laugh. Says whatever she thinks of first, whether good or bad. 6, female, fourteen years old. Voice unnatural and her words do not sound like English when a certain boy friend is near. Sometimes the affec- tion continues after he is gone. 7, female, two years old. Turned somersaults when calling. 8, female, seven years old. Thinking herself watched tried to walk in a fine way. 9, two boys, aged eight and six years, playing "dares." The older one dared the younger one to put his foot on a chopping-block, which the latter did, and had his foot cut off: at the ankle. 10, male, thirteen years old. Servant. Company being present, let the pie slide off the plate on some one's dress. 13, female, five years old. Very bashful before strangers. Face grows red, and she says the op- posite of what she means. 14, male, fourteen years old. Much trouble with what was called "swallowers" if he sat in com- pany. 15, female, sixteen years old. Face would flush and heart palpitate if spoken to by a stranger. 16, male, seventeen years old. Good speaker. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 245 Feels flush and faint when he faces an audience. Every nerve seems to twitch. 17, female, adult. Often addresses meetings, and presides with great dignity. Says it is a great trial. 18, male, nineteen years old. When talking to a young lady, turns bright red, stammers, smiles, . . . and finally bolts." The Libido is used by Dr. Freud in its ancient significance of an almost purely sexual aggre- gate of energy. Carl Jung, however, modifies this somewhat and means by the term simply the sum of all our tendencies. In infancy the whole course of the libido fixes itself upon the functions of the body, not only the alimentive actions in them- selves, but those closely allied to them, such as sucking a finger, etc., and even the exeretory functions become to the small child a source of incredible pleasure. Indeed, in later life, many tendencies, both neurotic and normal, are to be traced back to their origin and development from these earliest pleasures. As the child grows older, he changes somewhat the nature of his cravings, but still fixates for a long time upon himself, and it is rather the continuation beyond its normal period than anything else which is pathological in for example, masturbation. The next stage af- ter this, which we may call subjective, is the stage known technically as narcistic. The name comes from that of a Greek boy who was so engrossed with the beauty of his own form that he could 246 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS not fall in love with the beautiful nymph who was pining away for him, and as a punishment he was condemned to become the flower narcissus, which grows beside of a pool and lives forever upon its own beautiful reflection in the waters. As this indicates, the narcisistic stage is that in which the individual is all engrossed in admiring and idealizing his own body, or perhaps we may add thereto, his own superlative characteristics. Finally we come to the objective stage of develop- ment, in which the libido finally turns outward and fixates upon some person in the outside world, normally upon someone of the opposite sex. In childhood, of course, the most available persons are the child's own parents, and to a lesser ex- tent, its brothers and sisters, and as the tendency is still inclined to manifest itself most toward the different sex, we have the boy in love with his mother, and the girl with her father, a fav- oritism which is generally reciprocated by the parent him or herself. This situation gives rise, of course, to the jealousy of the parent of like sex to that of the child himself. The boy is jealous of his father and the girl of her mother, because the boy wishes to possess the mother all to him- self, etc. These desires often are expressed by the child in naive frankness, as when the little girl asks "Daddy, when mummie does, will you marry me ?" But soon more complex motives come into play and there ensues embarrassment and repression. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 247 But these childhood desires still live on in the un- conscious, and later in life may force the adult into actions which afford them a sort of symboli- cal expression and satisfaction, tho the individual himself is forced to invent other explanations of his conduct. It is as when one is given an hypno- tic sleep a command to be carried out after awak- ening. Duly he executes the command ; but when you ask him why? his mind ignoring the true reason hurriedly furnishes a pretext which might make such an action seem rational and normal. Freud's hypothesis of incest phantasy is based upon his conception of infantile sexuality, which we have perhaps sufficiently referred to under the last question, together with the changes in the object of the libido. You will recall the illustra- tions of incest phantasy in the myths of Oedipus and Jocasta. You will also recall how perpetual a theme in ancient mythology was the myth of the betrayal by treachery and subsequent resurrec- tion from death of a racial hero come to redeem the world. This occurs in the myths of even the most primitive people in the stories of the swal- lowing of nightfall of the sun, his subsequent bat- tle with and escape from the great dragon or fish that swallows him, and his liberation and reap- pearance in the morning as a glorious new ris- ing sun. Among the Babylonians, it was the fish-god Oanes who thus typified our wish to be reabsorbed by the mother that is by death other- wise symbolised by the ocean and to be reborn 248 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS again to the paradise of infantile irresponsibility and omnipotence. Among the Egyptians, it was Osiris betrayed into the hands of his enemy Set resurrected through the loving devotion and mag- ic arts of his sister-wife Isis and re-born as the rising sun Horus. Among the Hebrews the story is found in the adventures of Jonah swallowed by the whale, carried under the sea, and spewed forth to carry on his missionary task among the wicked cities of Asia Minor. Of course the theme is most familiar of all to us in the story of Jesus betrayed by the kiss of Judas, and risen to immor- tal life from the tomb. Our rite of baptism again symbolizes drowning and, re-birth to the \new life. The most typical thing in all Freud's philoso- phy, is the importance which he places on the incest phantasy. We speak first of the role which the father plays. As this role seems to be a more important one as far as neurosis is con- cerned than the mother. The two roles are to be distinguished in this fashion taking typical cases of course, that the father as a rule governs thru fear and the mother thru sympathy. The off- spring become attached to one or the other of the parents in the majority of cases according to their own sex the daughter being generally fond- est of the father, the son of the mother, etc., and there prevails on the contrary an antagonism be- tween the son and father, daughter and mother. However, Freud uses the term sexuality in a very PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 249 broad sense and recognizes in each individual a large homeosexual component; so, as we mention in the beginning of this paper he bases friendship between members of the same sex upon the at- traction of the homosexual element in the one individual for the corresponding component in the other. It will be pertinent to this Chapter if we here continue with Jung (pp. 321-327), giving as an illustration of unconscious processes his case of a servant who suddenly began to deck herself out in bizarre fashion, had her teeth extracted, and then accused herself of an heinous sin in hav- ing done these things. On analysis it appeared that a love-affair just grown serious had revived in her the memories of a previous affair of like kind but which had terminated disastrously, leav- ing her with a child. To be sure of her present lover's affection before she should tell him the secret, she decked herself out in a fashion which she thot attractive. Nor was she the first per- son to have her teeth extracted out of pure vanity. The nervous reaction after such an operation makes everything more difficult to bear, there- fore then came the first anxiety attack. Still the patient sought to guard her secret and so "shifted the fear in her guilty conscience on to the extraction of the teeth," a common method, "for when we dare not acknowledge some great sin, 250 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS we deplore some small sin with the greater em- phasis." "The problem seemed insoluble to the weak and sensitive mind of the patient, hence the effect be- came insurmountably great; this is the mental desire as presented from the psychological side. The series of apparently meaningless events," and the delusions, have now a meaning. The patient is a "person like ourselves, beset by universal human problems." Thus we see in mental dis- ease "an unusual reaction to emotional problems which are in no wise foreign to ourselves," and that "the delusion discloses the psychological sys- tem on which it is based." This conception is so enormously significant be- cause it "forces us into the innermost depths of the most common and least understood of mental disorders," the extreme of madness. A more complicated case was that of a man between thirty and forty years of age, a foreign archaeologist, "a precocious boy of rare gifts. Physically he was small, always weakly, and a stammerer. He ... studied ... at B ... He be- come absorbed in his archaeological study so that soon he ... led the life of a hermit devoted en- tirely to science. A few years later, on a holiday tour, he revisited B ... He walked a good deal in the environs of the town. His few acquain- tances now found him somewhat strange, taci- turn, and nervous. ... He then remarked that he must get himself hypnotised, he felt his nerves PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 251 unsteady." After an illness inflammation of the lungs, a state of excitement set in, which led to suicidal ideas. For weeks he was in the asylum in an extremely excited state. Completely de- ranged, not knowing where he was, he uttered broken sentences no one could understand. Often it took several attendants to hold him when he became aggressive. Gradually he became quieter, at length "came to himself, as if waking out of a long confused dream." His health regained, he was discharged as completely cured. He returned home, took up his work, published several re- markable books, and living a hermit-like exis- tence, gradually became lost to all meaning of the beauty of life. After a few years a brief holiday again brought him to B , and he soon resumed his solitary walks in the environs. "One day he was suddenly overcome by a faint feeling, and lay down in the street. Carried to a neigh- boring house, "he immediately became extremely excited. He began to perform gymnastics, jumped over the rails of the bed, turned somer- saults, in the room, began to declaim in a loud voice, sang his own improvisations, etc." Again at the asylum, the excitement continued. "He ex- tolled his wonderful muscles, his beautiful figure, his enormous strength.' He thot himself a great singer, a marvelous reciter, an inspired poet and composer. The contrast of his ideas with reality was strik- ing. "He is a small, weakly man of unimposing 252 PHILOSOPHY OP HELPFULNESS build, with poorly developed muscles betraying at a first glance the atrophying effect of his studious life." Unmusical, with a weak voice, he sings out of tune, and is a bad speaker because of his stammer. "For weeks he occupied himself in the asylum with peculiar jumping, and contortions of the body which he called gymnastics," then be- came more quiet and dreamy, now and then sing- ing a love song, and gradually becoming accessible for lengthy conversations. To sum up: ... A typical case of dementia preacox, of the katatonic variety, specially characterized by pe- culiar movements and actions." Present views in psychiatry would regard this as "localised cel- lular disease in some part of the cortex, exhibit- ing confusional states, delusions of grandeur, pe- culiar contortions of the muscles, or twilight- states, which taken all together have as little psy- chological meaning as the bizarre shapes of a drop of lead thrown into water." The above is not Jung's view. "It was certainly no accidental freak of brain-cells that created the dramatic contrasts shown in the second illness." heels from the ceiling were awakening in hun- These contrasts "were very subtly determined by the deficiencies in the patient's personality," de- ficiencies we would all regard seriously in our- selves. The latent desire to find compensation for the austerities of his studious life in the joys of poetry and music and love, the ambition of the PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 253 stammerer who would emulate Demosthenes, were not these the sources of the patient's delu- sions ? The naturalness of the explanation is sig- nificant. "When our patient was a student he learned to know and love a girl-student. Together they made many excursions in the environs of the town." His timidity and bashfulness, charac- teristic of a stammerer, and his poverty never permitted him to declare his love. They both went away at the termination of their studies, and he never saw her again. Not long afterwards he heard she was married. He buried himself in his studies, "not to forget, but to work for her in his thoughts," keeping his love quite secret, and never letting her or any one else know of it. Once he traveled through the town where she lived, and from the train "saw standing in the distance a young woman with a little child, and thought it was she. ... He does not think he felt any peculiar feeling at that moment; anyway . . . the unconscious wanted to be left in peace with its illusion. Shortly after- wards he came again to B . What was going on in him?" The patient's answer is that, upon falling ill, he "lost the well-regulated world and found him- self in the chaos of an overmastering dream, a sea of blood and fire. . . . Everywhere conflagra- tion, volcanic outbreaks, earthquakes, mountains fell in, followed by enormous battles where the 254 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS peoples fell upon one another. . . . He was right in the midst of those fighting, wrestling, defending himself, enduring unutterable misery and pain ; gradually he was exalted and strengthened by a strange calming feeling that some one was watch- ing his struggles, that his loved one saw all from afar. That was the time when he showed real violence to the attendants. ... He saw himself at the head of great armies which he would lead to victory. . . . He would try to get his loved one as prize of victory. As he drew near her the ill- ness ceased, and he woke from a long dream." "His daily life again began to follow the regular routine. ... A few years later he was again at B . . . . Again he followed the old trail and again was overcome by memories. But this time he was not immersed in the depths of confusion. He re- mained orientated and en rapport with his sur- roundings. The struggle was considerably milder, but he did gymnastics, practiced the arts, and made good his deficiences ; then followed the dream stage with the love-scenes, corresponding to the period of victory in the first psychosis. In this state, according to his own words, he had a dream- like feeling as if he stood upon the borders of two worlds and knew not whether truth stood on the right or on the left. He told Jung, 'It is said she is married, but I believe she is not, but is still waiting for me. ... It is ever to me as if she were not married.' ' "Our patient here portrayed but a pale copy PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 255 of the scene in the first attack of psychosis, when he, the victor, stood before his mistress." In a few weeks his scientific interests again began to dominate, he repressed his intimate life more and more, and "finally turned from it as if it did not belong to himself. . . . There remained nothing but a certain tense expression, and a look which, though fixed on the outer world, was turned in- wards at the same time; and this alone hinted at the silent activity of the unconscious, preparing new solutions for his insoluble problem. This is the so-called cure in dementia preacox." Following our custom, we shall now discuss a type of utilization of the motive which altho it is a sublimation of crude passion, yet doesn't appeal to us to be the desirable kind of sublimation. In chapter 10 we give what might well occupy this section, namely a discussion of how sex is stimu- lated into abnormal lust by present-day civiliza- tion. As that theme is, however, trite we confine ourselves here to a few words on sexuality in religion. It was in the town of Colombo, Ceylon, that the writer first (Dec. 19, 1915), came across a Hindu temple, which he inspected and found in- teresting. It was unimportant. Within were a few of the gods of the Hindu pantheon, chief be- ing he of the elephant head (ganesh). The tem- ple was set in a small grove of cocoanut trees, and a heap of the nuts stood by. The next day our train enroute for Kandy passed a number of 256 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS such, ensconced in the jungle. In these temples one finds pictured biographies of the gods, large- ly turning upon erotic themes. We crossed to India proper by what's known as "Adam's Bridge." One day the gods had a TEMPLE IN A GROVE IN CEYLON big fight down in Ceylon, and when the defeated parties ran away, they dropped into the water niany large stones which they carried for missiles. These form a chain of small islands from Ceylon to the mainland, so close that the railroad is only broken at one point. This fight was the one in which the monkey-god Hanuman came to the as- sistance of Rama, a story whereby the Hindus PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 257 explain the totemism that allows monkeys to in- fest even their temple unharmed. We arrived in Madura Dec. 15, 1915, and went to see the most wonderful pagan temple in the world. Its dark galleries and open courts covered twenty-five acres of ground. From the moment we entered, we were stunned by the sheer awe- fulness of it. It was as tho we had been plunged back twenty-five centuries into the days of Nine- vah and Babylon, and the sight of us white per- sons seemed as strange to those half -clad leering throngs of human beings that encircled us as it would have been to the ghosts of those ancient races. Altho we entered the temple at 5 p. m. (early in this climate), its endless corridors were often quite dark, and the bats that hung by their dreds, and filling the echoing chambers with a weird whimpering and squeaking. The roof was supported by grotesquely sculptured monolithic columns, each representing some legend of a god. Many of the shrines we weren't allowed to enter ; but other times we came upon monstrous idols, odorously greasy from the melted butter sacrificed to them. One gets some idea of the size of this temple by looking out over the city from any high emin- ence, when seemingly from the most separated quarters of Tanjore arise those great towers which mark the temple-gates. These towers are typical element of Hindu temple-architecture. Imagine an Egyptian obel- 258 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS isk like "Cleopatra's Needle" to enlarge its girth, or imagine Washington monument to lose the greater part of its height. See it also bowing its straight lines into curves, and then fancy every surface becoming overwrought with fulsome sculptures of gods and goddesses. Still you have to picture these deep reliefs themselves as en- crusted with smaller figures over and between the arms and legs of the larger ones, and filling in every interstice of background, like bees when they are preparing to swarm from the hive. The figures are always fulsome, with exaggeration of sexual characteristics. Our party usually included a stalwart Moham- medan travelling-boy, Amir Bux, as well as two ladies and me; but when we came to any shrine of idolatry, Amir, as a follower of the Prophet, remained stolidly outside, and left such adventur- ings to us dogs of unbelievers. Equally amazing as the gate-way towers were some objects near them. We mean not the in- numerable beggars no, poor creatures! they raise their hideous deformities everywhere. Only one particular beggar at this gate do we at all remember, a young girl who clawed her way thru the dust to show with pride the stumps where her legs had never grown. No, it's not of the beg- gars we're thinking, but of the far-famed car of the jaggernath! Just within the gate stood three of these im- mense vehicles. We gazed on them with awe, PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 259 wondering whether their wheels had crushed out 'the lives of babes thrown under them by fanatic parents, as missionaries love to report. Each wagon formed a movable throne which with the figure of the god seated on it was wheeled about, whenever, as divined by the priests, the deity wished to make a state visit to the shrine of one of his heavenly relatives. The throne and entire car were of wood carved with the same bewilder- ing Hindu ornateness as the towers. These jaggernath cars were the only interest- ing things of a town within a town where we found ourselves now standing namely of the city of the Brahmans, or priestly caste. This city was situated within the temple walls. The ven- eration in which the Brahman aristocracy of In- dian society is held by the commonalty probably is known to you it is a reverence shared only by that sacred animal, the cow, which roams unmol- ested thru streets and houses and churches of this people. To arouse Hindu fury against an enemy, you say not "they are mutilating women and chil- dren" but "they are killing cows and brahmans !" However this may be, we found the brahman city to be essentially no different from the dwelling- places of the lower caste. Here was scarcely less poverty and certainly no less filth. The place was the residence of a hoard of priestly guides who urged their services upon us. Tanjore is less fre- quented of foreigners than it deserves to be, and we were probably the only non-natives visiting 260 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS JAGGERNATH CARS, MADURA PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 261 it at this time, consequently there arose a keen rivalry for our attention ; but we finally elected to be our guide the most intelligent, slyest young priest of the crowd. At once he brushed aside the others, and conducted us from the Brahman city into the temple proper. We must pause for a word of tribute to this priest. His mind was as supple as his graceful body. Of him the saying was literally true, that "butter would not melt in his mouth." All lying and all selfishness and all hypocrisy were in him brot to such a perfection as made these vices seem to be most pleasing acquisitions. With what con- temptuous delight he interpreted to us from pic- tures on the walls the sundry erotic adventures of the gods whose priest he was ; "I do not believe such things," he confided, "for me there is only one God!" How he smiled at the poor flocks of worshippers who prostrated themselves in awe be- fore the shrine; "I am working for my belly!" laughed he, their shepherd. Finally, when the inevitable time came for parting, how suavely he cozened us ourselves out of many times the usual fee, and sent us away feeling we had bought cheaply acquaintanceship with such a personality ! O, he was the essence of all priestcraft. And in the superstitious subjection of the people about him could be seen the fell fruit of the undemo- cratic doctrine that the masses have too little self- control to live by dry truth, as we of the elite are 262 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS able to. "The masses must rather be given half truth, allegories and symbols." "Why is it," C. H. Cooley asks, "that the sym- bol encroaches and persists beyond its function? Evidently just because it is external, capable of imitation and repetition without fresh thought and life, so that all that is inert and mechanical clings to it. All dull and sensual persons, all dull and sensual moods in any person, see the form and not the substance. The spirit, the idea, the sen- timent, is plainly enough the reality when one is awake to see it, but how easily we lose our hold upon it and come to think that the real is the tangible. The symbol is always at command; we can always attend church, go to mass, recite pray- ers, contribute money, and the like ; but kindness, hope, reverence, humility, courage, have no string attached to them ; they come and go as the spirit moves; there is no insurance on them. Just as in the schools we teach facts and formulas rather than meanings, because the former can be re- ceived by all and readily tested, so religion be- comes external in seeking to become universal." Meantime we walked thru long dark galleries of immense length, and out again into open courts where the sunlight blazed. We examined gro- tesque representations of the various gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, and marvelled at strange types of architecture. Then we explored gloomy shrines where hideous granite figures glis- tened black with the grease of butter-fat burned PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 263 in ovation before them. We followed long cor- ridors where hundreds of bats flew away, squeak- ing shrilly at our approach. We entered cham- bers where the only light came from constellations of tiny butter-lamps fastened, with their ornate brackets, like stars over the face of great doors. Thus that morning passed. To our joy we learned that in the afternoon there was to be a procession thru the temple in honor of Parvati. Easily our priest-guide prevailed on us to return to see it. We lunched at our hotel, took the siesta which is a necessity in the Indian climate, and went for a roundabout drive to see the town before return- ing to the temple. On the way we halted by the roadside to watch a bridal procession. The brass band that preceded it broke ranks and ran to- ward us helter skelter for alms. Next the groom left his bride in the carriage to see what he could get. We were too disgusted to give anything. But alas! these miserably poor people! Their birth-rate is so high that millions starve, and to cure the evils of their country they are given not knowledge of how to help themselves, but missionaries and imported administrators! Our priest-guide of the morning was awaiting us anxiously when we returned to the temple, with the news that the procession in honor of Parvati was assembled and about to set forth. Accordingly we again hurried down one of the most lugubrious galleries in the heart of the great 264 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS building, and took our stand in a corner which commanded several vistas. We have purposely re- frained from saying we commanded a, view down these vistas, for all about us it was now almost as black as pitch. Here and there a flicker from the brass lamps around his shrine indicated the recess in which some grotesque idol sat, but these roomy galleries were nearly empty of worship- pers. The uncouth square stone pillars, upon which the slab roof pressed heavily, were so coat- ed with smoke and grease that we took care not to lean against them. In the air was a rancid odor from the melted butter being offered on many altars. Our hearing was the only sense as yet undisturbed by some strange presentation. An expectant quiet brooded everywhere. But suddenly a barbaric blare of conch-shell trumpets echoed thru the vast walls, and a flock of frightened bats passed unpleasantly close to us. Our guide had hardly more time than need, to an- nounce "the procession is coming" than a flare of flambeaux chased away the shadows, and around a corner of the stony chambers swung a crowd of bronze-breasted musicians blowing wierd instru- ments, and seeming larger than life as the torches threw their shadows against the roof huge slow-striding elephants! The progress of the procession was marked by a psychological effect upon the few bystanders. As it successively passed them, we would see sud- den awe strike like a panic into the faces of the PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 265 more religious. Flat on the ground they would hurl themselves, as tho grovelling before the pres- ence of immediate death. Despite all the reassur- ances of our guide, the two ladies who were with us shrank back in some terror on seeing this fanaticism seize those around us; and whatever was lacking to complete their emotion was added by the clamor of drums and wild shrieking of conch-shells. We'd give anything for the abil- ity to reproduce that scene in its full dramatic and operatic power over all the primaeval in- stincts ! When the elephants and musicians had paced past us, we saw the central object of all super- stitious regard, Parvati. Her image was a sort of little rag-doll, maybe a foot high, very dirty, but decked out in a wealth of ornaments, and carried high on a litter of which the poles were borne by some dozen half -naked Brahmins. But now was to come the anti-climax, illus- trating typically the Oriental's lack of all sense of the fitting and congruous. Imagine the thing happening to the Host in a Roman Catholic, or in a Russian orthodox, procession ! When the bear- ers of the goddess caught sight of us Europeans, thier dignity vanished in smoke, and they behaved like the wedding celebrants we had seen that afternoon. They left their precious burden un- ceremoniously and ran clamoring to us for alms ! Yes, the poor little rag-doll goddess in her glori- ous trinkets and tinsel was dropped on the ground, 266 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS whilst her worshippers begged a few annas ! When they received none, they raised her upon their shoulders again, the worshippers mended their broken ranks, the elephants and torch-bearers wheeled back into line, the acclamations of the crowd were resumed, and the rattle of drums and STONE BULL IN TANJORE TEMPLE. blare of trumpets and the wierd lights and shad- ows from the flambeaux disappeared around some corner of the gloomy galleries. A few bats winged back to the haunts from which they had been dis- turbed. The smell of the rancid butter and the twinkling of distant lamps again became our only sensations. We remained for a while amazed and stunned. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 267 After that we left the temple. We requested our priest to purchase for us one of the conch- shell trumpets. After seeing the irreverent con- duct as any European would call it of the pole- bearers, we anticipated no trouble in buying any religious or other appurtenance which we cared to pay for. But the next day at train-time our guide appeared at the station, most apologetic, to say that no money would induce one of the men to part with his horn. COURT OF TEMPLE AT TANJORE. Our next stay was at Trichinopoly, where is the most beautiful (and one of the largest) Hindu temples in the world. During our visit they'd a religious celebration, sort of like a circus. Most of the temple was given over to linga (the em- blems of phallic worship) . They consist of stone cylinders, two or three feet high, set in the center of circular disks ; these represent the male organ piercing the female. In this temple the linga stand in the arcade which can be seen in the ex- treme rear of the picture. The women sit upon the lingam as a cure for sterility. On the way out (Jan. 19, 1916), we stopped to 268 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS see a Vishnu temple where Vishnu left a foot- print as big as the top of a small table, in the rock. In Benares, quite early one December morning, Mrs. S and the writer took a boat in which we were rowed down and up the Ganges. We saw the extraordinary temples which line the waterfront and of which some are sliding into the river. The most striking sight was a "holy man" in brilliant yellow robe and painted face, who, all the time we were floating by, balanced himself immove- ably upon one foot and held one hand pointing dramatically to heaven. We didn't see dead bodies being cremated on the burning-ghats, so made the trip again in the evening and this time did see them. In the afternoon we drove out to the ruins at Sarnath, where Buddha's five dis- ciples had deserted him before his enlightenment, and where he preached his first sermon there- after. We surely should have "acquired merit" in vis- iting all these "holy places." Benares itself was disappointing to our party, tho interesting despite all its dirt. In the cut herewith shown of its temples along the Ganges, the phallic architecture is seen. The same slyness that we noted in our priest guide of the Madura Temple is typical of all the eastern religious men whom we've met. Only a few evenings ago we were perusing the gospel PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 269 of Ramakrishna, 1 - that is, of the Bhagavan whom thousands worship as the most recent incarnation of the diety he was preached in this country by his pupil and disciple Swaani Vivekananda. There among much that is beautiful, occurs the fol- BENARES FROM THE GANGES lowing jarring passage. Narendra (Vivekanan- da) asks "what attitude should we hold when wicked people come to disturb our peace or do actually offend us?" To which the Bhagavan answers: "A person living in society should have a little Tamas (the spirit of resisting evil) for purposes of self-protection. But that is neces- " p. 40. 270 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS sary only for outward show, its object being to prevent the wicked doing harm to you. At the same time you should not do actual injury to another on the ground that he has done injury to you." In short here's a Savior who preaches that we may enjoy the merit of living non-resistantly, by bluffing our enemies into thinking we are go- ing to use force ! Indeed Ramakrishna goes on to illustrate his point with a story of a snake who was persuaded by a holy man not to bite anyone, but "in a few days all the neighborhood conclud- ed that the snake had lost his venom .... so everyone began to tease him. They pelted him with stones or dragged him mercilessly by the tail, and there was no end to his troubles. For- tunately the sage again passed that way .... and seeing the condition of the snake .... said 'my friend, I simply advised you not to bite any- one, but I did not tell you not to frighten others. Altho you should not bite any living creature, still you should keep people at a distance by hiss- ing at them.' And Sri Samakrishna added : There is no harm in 'hissing' at wicked men and at your enemies, showing that you can protect yourself and know how to resist evil. Only . . . resist not evil by causing evil in return." Surely a strange doctrine ! How should we con- vert others to believe in a doctrine which we thus outwardly appeared to deny and how thus propa- gate the truth? Or how long would it take the PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 271 world to discover our bluff and take it at its true value? While in Calcutta in 1916 we became for a time a pupil of the noted Sri Sri Narayananda Saras- watty, of Lodipur, of whom we had read in a Cal- cutta paper that "He is an Advaita Vadi or a be- liever in non-dulism and is said to be the follower of Shankaracharya, the great religious reformer HINDU HOLY MAN. who appeared when Buddhism was the State re- ligion in India. He is an advocate of the Upan- ishads and is called the 'Raj-Yogi' or King of Yogis. He is reputed to be 125 years of age and although married is a Bramhachari. 'His Holi- ness/ for such is he called by his followers, is said to have practised 'Yog' for three years in the forests of Gujerath and those near Lucknow. He is reported to be able to bring the dead to life 272 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS and generally is looked upon by hundreds as a man of miracles and one who is second to none in India. . . . Hundreds of men, women and chil- dren visit him everyday to embrace his feet and receive his blessing and his presence in the local- ity has caused and is causing a great deal of sen- sation. . . . About a score of his disciples who were present vouched for the fact, that His Holi- ness appears to be one day over a hundred years and the next a lad of 20 or sometimes a baby of one year. "The following specific instances were given of his reported miracles. Bissessur Nath Khetery, Government Pensioner and one of His Holiness disciples, said that about a year ago he was suf- fering from heart disease and died from its ef- fects but was brought to life again through the blessing of His Holiness. Again he was later at- tacked with plague and was restored in the same way. The son of Thakur Prasad, Inspector of Sanskrit Schools, Allahabad, is said to have been rid of a malignant disease, which was pronounced to be incurable by eminent medical men, through the same instrumentality; and a man who had died of plague at his "asram" was brought to life. Among the followers of His Holiness are said to be European gentlemen of position, also Indian Judges, Government officials and vakils, etc., who look upon him as their guru." More- over he was one of few men of his type we've met who refused to take money but insisted en PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 273 giving us Yoga instructions without pay. Once we said to him "when we return home, many persons will wish to know whether we with our own eyes have seen you perform miracles. And unless we can answer 'we ourselves have seen him perform them' they won't believe that you have supernatural powers. We wish we might be able to reply 'we have seen'." But Sri Sri Saraswatty mildly expressed his disappointment in us for desiring so vulgar a demonstration, and assured us that no true yogi will display his powers to the curious or the unconvinced. It's possible that the reputed miracles of these holy men and of saints and saviors generally are delusious effected thru hypnotic power which as Freud and Jung and others have shown, is in nature sexual moreover the initiators of these movements like leaders in other fields, are largely epileptics and hysterics. It was true of the greatest military leaders like Caesar, Hannibal, or Napoleon; it was true of Mahomet and of various characters described in that interesting little booklet "Modern Messiahs," and any psych- istrist would aver it was true of Buddha or Ra- makrishna, from reading their biographies. Binet and Sangle have written two heavy volumes on "La 'Folie de Jesus." A very inter- esting account of the role of sexuality in religion is given by Josiah Royce in his "Pathological As- pects," which we urge every interested student to procure. Fortunately there remain other 274 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ways of sublimating the yearnings of our soul, besides these pathological or superstitious chan- nels. Of such ways the most promising is to di- rect our love toward humanity as a whole, and to develop in ourselves the character most con- sonent with social welfare. How to accomplish this we shall in due course discuss adequately. It is our program first to review in a general way the historical development of religions. SECTION 2 Here we may enquire what is the derivation of the erotic instinct itself, out of which we find to be evolved the most marvelous facts of life? We devoted much space to the guesses that primitive man made at the nature of self, of "will" and of the hereafter. Turn we now to certain scientific theories of today. As Max Verworn indicates, all muscular work of the organisms is based finally upon chemical energy, tho much of their energy may come in a roundabout way. E.g., in plants chemical energy passes over into potential, mechanical energy is stored up as tension, and becomes kinetic e.g., where fruit bursts open and scatters its seeds with great force. In the cell, energy is transformed into mechan- ical energy and into heat. Chemical energy becomes potential in making biogens, and the PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 275 intra-molecular heat becomes very great; strong affinities are thus united. (A dissemilation pro- cess). The excreta contain almost no chemical potential; while those substances retained in the cell serve to help to unite proteids, etc., and oxy- gen again, i. e., to loosen the biogen molecule. As regards the vital chemical chain, "continual storing up of potential chemical energy and a transfer of it into other forms, the source of it is in the food and oxygen ; the original capital of it is in the chemical energy that every droplet of living substance has carried over from its an- cestors; and the result is expressed in the work accomplished by the living substance. Oil droplets in alkalies form pseadopodia. The surface tension between the two discs in striated muscular fibres changes, and thus contraction oc- curs. Chemical and mechanical energy alone accomplishes muscular contraction, without the aid of heat or electricity. Reduction of conduct to comparatively small number of primary motives is the aim of Loeb, with his galvano, helio-, geo-, rheo-, anemo-, stereo-, chemo- and thermo-tropisms. The follow- ing extensive quotations summarize his book, "Forced Movements, Tropisms, and Animal Con- duct." "The term forced movements (in) physiology, designates the fact that certain animals are no longer able to move in a straight line when cer- 276 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS tain parts of the brain are injured, but are com- pelled to deviate constantly toward one side. 13 "Normally the processes inducing locomotion are equal in both halves of the central nervous system, and the tension of the symmetrical mus- cles being equal, the animal moves in as straight a line as the imperfections of its locomotor ap- paratus permit. If, however, the velocity of chemical reactions in one side of the body, e. g., in one eye of an insect, is increased, the physio- logical symmetry of both sides of the brain and as a consequence the equality of tension of the symmetrical muscles no longer exist. The mus- cles connected with the more strongly illuminated eye are thrown into a stronger tension, and if now impulses for locomotion originate in the cen- tral nervous system, they will no longer produce an equal response in the symmetrical muscles, but a stronger one in the muscles turning the head and body of the animal to the source of light. The animal will thus be compelled to change the direction of its motion and to turn to the source of light. As soon as the plane of symmetry goes thru the source of light, both eyes receive again equal illumination, the tension (or tonus) of symmetrical muscles becomes equal again, and the impulses for locomotion will now produce equal activity in the symmetrical mus- cles. As a consequence, the animal will move in a straight line to the source of light until some 13 Pp. 14-15. PHILOSOPHY OF HLEPFULNESS 277 other asymmetrical disturbance once more changes the direction of motion. "What has been stated for light holds true also if light is replaced by any other form of energy. Motions caused by light or other agencies appear to the layman as expressions of will and purpose on the part of the animal, whereas in reality the animal is forced to go where carried by its legs. For the conduct of animals consists of forced movements. 14 "If pleasure and pain or curiosity play a role in human conduct, why should it be otherwise in animal conduct? The answer to this objection is that typical forced movements when produced in human beings, as, e. g., in Meniere's disease or when a galvanic current goes thru the brain, are not accompanied by sensations of pleasure or pain, and there is no reason to attribute the circus movements of an animal, after lesion of the brain, or when one eye is blackened, to curiosity or thrills of delight. An equally forcible answer lies in the fact that plants show the same tropisms as ani- mals, and it seems somewhat arbitrary to assume that the bending of a plant to the window or the motion of swarmspores of algae to the window side of a vessel are accompanied or determined by curiosity or by sensations of joy or satisfac- tion. And finally, since we know nothing of the sentiments and sensations of lower animals, and "Pp. 13-14. 278 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS are still less able to measure them, there is at present no place for them in science. "The second difficulty was created by the fact that the Aristotelian viewpoint still prevails to some extent in biology, namely, that an animal moves only for a purpose, either to seek food or to seek its mate or to undertake something else connected with the preservation of the individual or the race. The Aristotelians had explained the processes in the inanimate world in the same teleological way. Science began when Galileo overthrew this Aristotelian mode of thot and in- troduced the method of quantitative experiments which leads to mathematical laws free from the metaphysical conception of purpose. 15 "We have thus far considered only the relations between right and left. Aside from the symmetry relation we have polarity relations, between apex or head and base or tail end. Just as we found that the morphological plane of symmetry is also a dynamical plane of symmetry, we find that with the morphological polarity head-tail is connected a dynamic polarity of motion, namely, forward and backward. This will become clear in the next chapter on forced movements. 16 "Physiologists have long been in the habit of studying not the reactions of the whole organism, but the reactions of isolated segments (the so- called reflexes). . . . l5 Pp. 17-18. 18 P. 21. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 279 "When we put a Palaemonetes in a trough thru which a current goes and if we put the animal with its head toward the anode the tail is stretched out (Fig. 2). This means that the tension of the Fio. 2. Forced position of thnmp (Palamontlet) when galvanic current get* from ? e * * UlJ - . Tension of extensor miucles of tail fin prevails over that of flexors Animal can iwim forward (to anode), but not backward. (After Loeb and Maxwell ) Flo. 3. Forced position of shrimp when positive current goes from tail to head. Tension of flexon of tail fin prevails over that of extensors. Animal can swim backward (to anode), but not forward. (After Loeb and Maxwell.) FROM LOEB. extensor muscles prevails over that of the flexors and since the forward swimming is due to the stroke of the extensors, and since it is antagonized by the tension of the flexors, the animal can swim forward but not backward, or only with diffi- culty ; if we put the animal with its head toward 280 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS the cathode the tail is bent ventrally (Fig. 3), which means that the tension of the flexors is stronger than that of the extensors. As a conse- quence the animal can swim backward, but not forward. 17 IN HELIOTROPISM. "In the case of unequal illumination of the two eyes the tension of the symmetrical muscles in an animal becomes unequal. In this condition the equal impulses of locomotion will result in an unequal contraction of the muscles on both sides of the animal. As a consequence the animal will turn automatically until its plane of sym- metry is in the direction of the rays of light. As soon as this happens the illumination of both eyes and the tension of symmetrical muscles become equal again and the animal will now move in a straight line either to or from the source of light. 18 "That these animals do not go to the light be- cause they prefer light to darkness but because the light orients them is proved by the fact that they will go from light into the shade if by so do- ing they remain oriented with their heads toward the source of light. 19 "As Bonn pointed out, the definite path in which a positively heliotropic animal moves when under the influence of two lights, shows that the an- 17 Pp. 34-35. "Pp. 47-48. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 281 thropomorphic interpretation is as erroneous in this as in any other case. A human being would go to one of two illuminated houses and not to- ward a point between them, determined by the relative intensity of the two lights. 20 "The law of Bunsen and Roscoe says that with- in certain limits the chemical effect produced by light increases in proportion with the product of intensity into the duration of illumination, e. g., Effect equals Kit, where i is intensity, t duration of illumination, and K a constant. 21 GEOTROPISM. "When the stem of certain plants is placed in a horizontal position, the apex grows vertically up- ward and the root downward. The downward growth of the root is called positive, the upward growth of the apex negative geotropism. "This can be demonstrated if we mark the cortex in definite intervals with india ink at the beginning of the experiment When we com- pare the rate of geotropic bending of horizontal stems without leaves and with one or two leaves at the apex, we find that the bending in the latter is much more rapid, owing to the greater mass of material supplied for the growth of the cortex. "In vertebrates the reactions leading to the maintenance of equilibrium are apparently pro- 1!> P. 50 or so. 'P. 82. 21 P. 83. 282 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS duced in the ear, since they disappear if the acoustic nerves are cut. "It seems that some change in the pressure upon the endings of the auditory nerve is respon- sible for the effects. There are fine grains of CaC0 3 the otoliths in the ear of many species pressing on the underlying nerve endings. 22 "A crustacean, Palaemen, loses its otoliths in the process of moulting and the animal curiously enough replaces them by picking up small grains of sand and putting them into its ears. Kreidl kept such crustaceans in jars free from sand but containing fine particles of iron which the crus- taceans after moulting put into their ears When, e.g., he brought a magnet from above and the right near the animal the latter turned to the left and downward. The animal, therefore, be- haved as if changes of pressure of the otolith upon the nerve endings determined its geotropic orientation. 23 Lyon has shown that the phenomena which were formerly described as rheotropism in fish are due to the orienting effect of moving retina images. The reader is familiar with the fact that many fish when in a lively current have a tendency to swim against the current. This phenomenon was believed to be due to the fric- tion of the water. Lyon showed that fish orient themselves just as well when they are put into "P. 123. P. 124. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 283 a closed glass bottle, which is dragged through the water. "When driven backward by the current or when dragged backward in a bottle through the water, the objects on the bank of the river seem to move in the opposite direction. The animal being com- pelled to keep the same object fixed, an apparent forward motion of the fixed object changes the muscles of the fins in such a sense as to cause the animal to follow the fixed object auto- matically. "When such rheotropic fishes were, kept in an aquarium and a white sheet of paper with black stripes was moved constantly in front of the aquarium the fish oriented themselves against the direction in which the paper and its stripes moved. The phenomenon was more marked hi young than in older specimens. "All the phenomena of rheotropism ceased in the dark or when the fish were blind. "A very pretty demonstration was discovered by Carrey in sticklebacks. 176 When a swarm of such fish was kept in an aquarium it was noticed that all the fish were oriented with the long axes parallel and that the whole school swam in a course parallel, but in a direction opposite, to that of the moving observer. If the observer re- mains stationary opposite the aquarium and moves an object, preferably white, which is held in the hand, the little fish at once respond by moving slowly and oppositely to that of the mov- 284 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ing object. They can be thus made to move up or down or to the right or left. 24 "STEREOTROPISM ... is determined by ... pressure on certain nerve endings in the skin . . . "The role of tactile influences on the orienta- tion of animals is most clearly demonstrable in starfish, flatworms, and many other animals, when put on their backs. The animals 'right' themselves, i. e., they turn around until the ven- tral surfaces or their feet are pressed against solid objects again. As the writer pointed out long ago, 2 ^ 3 gravitation has nothing to do with the phenomenon, since starfish will stick to solid surfaces with their tube feet even if by so doing their backs are permanently turned to the center of the earth. Unless the nerve endings on the sole of their tube feet are pressed against a solid surface the animals are restless -and the arms move about until the feet are again in contact with solid bodies. 25 "In female ants at the time of sexual maturity. When such animals are put into a box containing folded pieces of paper or of cloth, after some time every individual is found inside the folds. This happens also when the boxes are kept in the dark. 287 The same form of stereotropism is found in many species of worms. When earthworms are kept in jars with vertical walls they are found creeping in the corners where their body is as "Pp. 131-133. "P. 134. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 285 much as possible in contact with solid bodies. It is this tropism which compels the animals to bur- row into the ground. 26 "MaxwelP 49 kept Nereis, a form of marine worms, which burrows in sand, in a porcelain dish free from sand. Into the dish glass tubes were put, whose diameter was of the order of that of the worms. After 24 hours every tube was in- habited by a worm who made it its permanent abode. They even remained in the tube when ex- posed to sunlight which rapidly killed them. 27 "There are indications that the way contact with a solid influences the behavior of living mat- ter is also through the influence on the rate of certain chemical reactions. The writer observed that the stolons of a hydroid, Aglaophenia, have a tendency to adhere to solid surfaces and not to leave them any more if they once reach them, and that as soon as such a stolon reaches a solid surface, e. g., a piece of a glass slide, its growth is accelerated considerably. It was very astonish- ing to notice how much more rapid the growth of roots of Aglaophenia was when they were in contact with a solid body than when they grew in sea water. The rate of growth is the function of a chemical mass action. 28 CHEMOTROPISM is for Loeb the explanation of many physiologic progresses, e. g., breathing is quickened by the increased acidity of th^ blood. -"P. 135. - 7 Pp. 135-136. W P. 138. 286 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS "Pfeffer and his pupils found that the sperma- toza of ferns go in large numbers into a capil- lary tube containing sodium malate in a concen- tration of 0.01 per cent, (a solution ten times as diluted is still slightly active) .... Pfeffer found that Bacterium termo and Spirillum undula are positively chemotropic to a liquid containing 0.001 per cent of peptone or of meat extract. It is stated that cholera bacilli are strongly attract- ed by potato sap. Pfeffer found also that the spermatoza of certain masses are positively chemotropic to cane sugar solution in dilutions of 0.1 per cent. 29 "Shibata made extensive experiments on the chemotropism of the spermatozoa of Isoetes which he found positively chemotropic for the malate anion, and also for the succinate, tartrate, and fumarate anion, when offered in the form of their neutral salts. . . . "Shibata studied especially the mode by which the spermatozoa are oriented chemotropically by malates and found that the reaction consists always in a turning of the axis of the body of the spermatozoa toward the capillary tube contain- ing malates or succinates, as the tropism theory demands. "They will not go into the tube unless the con- centration in the tube is a definite multiple of the concentration of the outside solution. Thus Pfeffer found that the concentration of sodium "Pp. 140-141. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 287 malate in the capillary must be at least thirty times as great as in the outside solution to induce the spermatozoa of fern to move into it, and in the case of Bacterium termo the solution of meat extract in the tube had to be at least four times as great as the outside solution. In the case of Isoetes spermatozoa Shibata found the ratio is about 400 to 1. This constancy of the ratio is known as Weber's law, which therefore holds for chemotropic phenomena. "Lidforss 281 found with the aid of Pfeffer's method that the spermatozoa of Marchantia are positively chemotropic to certain proteins, espe- cially egg albumin, vitellin from the egg yolk, hemoglobin, and mucin of the sub-maxillary gland; blood albumin, casein, and legumin were less effective. The lowest concentration for he- moglobin solutions and for egg albumin was 0.001 per cent. ! 30 "Barrows has devised an apparatus which al- lowed him to test quantitatively the chemotropic reactions of Drosophila .... Two glass bot- tles were inserted with their openings oppo- site each other, one of which contained the substance to be tested for chemotropic efficiency, while the other served as a control. The num- ber of flies which on their path were deviated by the bottle containing the substance to be tested were counted and their number compared with that going into the control bottle. In this way ""Pp. 141-142. 288 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS it was possible to ascertain that the flies are posi- tively chemotropic to ethyl and amyl alcohol, acetic and lactic acid, and to ether. The chemo- tropic effect of alcohol was increased thru the admixture of traces of an ester, e. g., methyl ace- tate. "When an animal is struck on one side only by . . . a chemically active substance emanating from a center of diffusion, the mass of this sub- stance or of the photochemical reaction product increases on this side. These substances react with some substance of the nerve endings and as soon as the mass of the reaction product reaches a certain quantity the automatic turning, the trop- istic reaction occurs." 31 "THERMOTROPISM is the name under which M. Mendelssohn has described the observation that Paramaecia gather at a definite end of a trough when these ends have . . . different temperature. 22 " The position of Loeb is paralleled by tliat of Max Verworn, with his photo-, thermo-, galvano-, chemo-, baro-, rheo-, and geo-, taxis. The following is a summary by Dr. Givler of Verworn's General Physiology, Chapter V, on Stimuli and their actions. A Stimulus is "every change of the external agencies that act upon an organism. The stimu- lus plus irritability is stimulation. We shall be- 1l Pp. 153-154. "P. 155. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 289 gin by Verworn's remarks on (A) the Relation of Stimuli to Vital Conditions. (1) The varieties of the stimulus are (a) chemical, e. g., food, water, oxygen, also chemical processes in the nervous system influencing the various tissue cells. Nerves are not copper wires but chemical (liquid) masses, (b) Mechanical, push, shake, press, etc., e. g., sound (c) thermal, (d) photic (e) elec- trical not (f) magnetic. (2) The intensity of the Stimulus may be thus shown. Vital Conditions Minimum Optimum Maximum Death Life Death Stim (Adaption) Stim Conditions of Stimulation Maximum Zero Point Maximum Death Life Death (3) Trophic Stimuli are those concerned with nutrition and without which nutrition would not take place, e. g., sight of food, makes the organ- ism move to get it. B is the Irritability of Living Substance. (1) Conception of Irritability and the Nature of Reactions. "Irritability of Living Substance is its capacity of reacting to changes in its environment by changes in the equilibrium of its matter and its energy." It is not the capac- ity of evolving a great amount of energy upon slight stimulus. Such are only special cases, e. g., springs, elastic, often stimuli causes decreases in production of energy. The general action of all 290 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS stimuli upon living substance consists in a change of spontaneous vital phenomena. There are two kinds of changes; quantitative and qualitative, e. g., qualitative where cell forms a substance wholly foreign substances to its normal life. To sum up: (1) Every change in the exter- nal vital conditions of an organism constitutes a stimulus. (2) Every augmentation of a vital phenomenon, either of one or of all, constitutes excitation. (3) Every diminution of a vital phe- nomenon, either of one or all, constitutes depres- sion. (4) The action of stimuli can consist of excitation or depression. Let us now consider beginning with the Actions of the Various Stimuli. The Actions of Chemical Stimuli include (a) the phenomena of excitation. In general, the more food ingested, the more is metabolism hastened. 118 grams proteid needed to maintain nitrogenous equilibrium in man; more than this increases both assimilation and dissimilation phases of metabolism. Increase of food brings also increase of form, fattening. In- crease of transformation of energy activity, es- pecially contractions. Some organisms produce more light, (b) the Phenomena of Depression are notable as regards narcotics and anaesthetics, especially. They depress metabolism, form changes, e. g., all division, and transformations of energy, and turquescence, also contraction movements, in both smooth and cross striated muscles. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 291 Next consider the Actions of Mechanical Stimu- li, i. e., of changes in pressure relations, (a) The Phenomena of Excitation. The mechanical stimuli act on the metabolic process to produce substance, secretion, e. g., foreign body in mouth, produces saliva. No such effort was known in form changes, growth and cell division. There are positive effects upon transformation of en- ergy, e. g., sensitive plant. There are also pseu- dopods with and "granulate" upon slight to greater touch. Mechanical stimulation increases flagellate motion. Increases muscular motion. In- creases production of light. (Perhaps this because the C. N. S. maintains a general temperature, which temperature controls metabolism; when, there in winter the temperature has to be in- creased in the body, the metabolism also in- creases.) The form changes. Reproduction (Positive Results). Protoplasmic movements in- crease with warmth. Ciliary motions also. Mus- cles contract with rising temperature. Rising temperatures augment vital processes, (b) The phenomena of Depression include falling tempera- tures which decrease vital phenomena. Cold rigor the last stage of safety in temperature (cold). Heat rigor the last stage of safety in temperature (warm). Now consider the Actions of Photic Stimuli. Photic meaning the chemical, not the thermal effect. In higher creatures only the eye or eye- spots are at all sensitive to these Photic effects. 292 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS But a "destructively luminous" light will kill cells all over the body. ( From Absolute Darkness (zero stimulation) up.) (a) As regards the Phenomena of Excitation, it may be safd that the whole organic world ulti- mately depends upon the metabolic action of light. Red rays of light the most helpful to assimila- tion. No effects upon form changes known. Positive effects upon changes of Energy. Blue and violet rays especially noted for photic efforts. Latent period here also noted 1-2 seconds. (b) The Phenomena of Depression include very few depressing effects of light. (5) When we come to consider the actions of electrical stimuli, we note there is no special or- gan for electric stimulation, and yet this force stimulates all tissue; the ease of grading the stimulation makes its use very valuable. (a) The Phenomena of Excitation; no real "adaptation to electric stimulus, all degrees of stimulation really affect in some way, other than by muscular contraction. Electrotomus (p. 414) . No general law of polar excitation can be formed ; in some organisms the contraction is effected by making at the anode in others by breaking at the anode and similarly with making and breaking at the cathode. Summation effects: i. e., dis- continuous tetanic contraction, turquescence as well as movements effected by electricity. Mus- cle excited to activity by every known stimulus consumes more oxygen than resting muscles, it PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 293 consumes more glycogen stored in it, and pro- duces more carbonic acid. (b) As regards the phenomena, Depression, Electric stimulation, produced long and intensely produces depression. Galvanic Rigor. So much for Verworn on Relation of Stimuli to Vital Condition. Now comes B. The Directive effects of Unilateral Stimulation, i. e., attraction and repulsion effects (like magnetism). Only un- symmetrical stimulation can control the direction of motion. Under this head we have (1) Chemotaxis, posi- tive and negative. Bacteria excrete toxins ; these attract the leucocytes. Pus filled tube and rab- bits body (leucocytes). Spermatozoon seeks the ovum chemotactically. Chemotactic effects of Paramacium. We act similarly toward our food. (Odor, taste, etc.) and our air supply. 2. Under Barotaxis we shall consider Pressure Relations, positive and negative. Thigmotaxis, the more or less strong contact of living substance with more solid bodies, i. e., a feeble contact may call out positive stigmo taxis, or strong contact and negative. Thigmotaxis in creeping plants and climbers. Also in crods of paramaecia and leucocytes if organisms crowded together produce, say carbonic acid, and chemotaxis may result. (2) Rheotaxis to currents, say of water. Cases of this are fishes going upstream to spawn, or spermatozoa entering uterus meet a current of mucous liquid flowing toward them. The cilia 294 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS lining the uterus have a direction of stroke toward the mouth, and hence produce a current toward the outside. (3) In Geotaxis, the adjustment is to gravity, to the center of the earth. The growth of roots of plants are an example. Positive and negative. Roots and stems also transverse geotaxis in lat- eral branches. The organisms, however, come to rest at top of a long tube of liquid because the pressure (hydrostatic) at the bottom is too great, i. e., they show negative geotaxis because of nega- tive rheotaxis. Geotaxis is a special case of baro- taxis. (3) In Phototaxis all bars of light diminish in intensity the farther we get from this source, ideal conditions for unilateral stimulation are pro- vided. Sunflowers, potato tubers. May flies are all cases in point, seeking a "Place in the Sun." Blue and Violet rays are better than Red for caus- ing phototaxis. The direction of the rays is im- portant. (4) Thermotaxis is illustrated in Amoeba. Amoeba aren't phototactic, but thermotactic. Other cases are turtles and millionaires at Palm Beach, we and our houses, etc. (5) Galvanotaxis looks exactly like magnet- ism. Paranoecia collect at Kathode. Some or- ganisms anodically, others kathodically, galvano- tactic, others still turn their axes in right angle to direction of current, and remain there nicely PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 295 spaced but twitching, i. e., transversely Galvano- tactic. Lastly we may discuss C. The Phenomena of Exhaustion, considering first the (1) Fatigue and Exhaustion. Changes in muscle and nerve cells occur. "Gymnasts" fewer is to be noted. Positive (ac- cumulation of poisons) and negative (disintegra- tion of muscle substance) effects of fatigue are to be distinguished. (2) Excitation and depression both may fol- low upon continued increase of stimulation. But diminishing vital conditions depress without first exciting. (3) Death by over Stimulation may occur. Verworn considers that life is a series of specific natural changes. On the sex instinct, Loeb says: "Mating in certain fish, like Fundulus, consist in the male pressing that part of its body which contains the opening of the sperm duct against the corresponding part of the female body. The latter responds by pressing back, and the pres- sure of the body is maintained by both sexes thru motions of the tail. During this mutual pressure or friction both sexes shed their sexual cells, sperm and eggs, into the water, and since the openings of the cloaca of the male and female, through which the sex cells are shed, are brought almost in contact with each other, sperm and eggs mix at the moment they are shed. This act of 296 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS mating is due to a stereotropism which exists only during the spawning season and which is supposedly due to certain hormones existing at this time in the animal. The existence of such hormones is also indicated by certain colorations which develop and exist in the male during this period. The stereotropism is to some extent spe- cific since it is exhibited by the contact between the two sexes. The specificity of this stereo- tropism is of importance and needs further ex- perimental analysis, but that it is in reality a type of common stereotropism is evidenced by the fact that if during the spawning season we keep females isolated from males in an aquarium the females will go thru the motions of mating and shed the eggs every time they come in con- tact with the glass walls of the aquarium. "Professor Whitman told the writer that male pigeons when kept in isolation will try to go thru the motions of mating with any solid object in their field of vision, e.g., glass bottles, and even with objects which give only the optical im- pression of being solid, namely, their own sha- dow on the ground. . . . "V. L. Kellogg has made observations which show, that the nuptial flight in bees is also due to an outburst of positive heliotropism as in the ant. . . . ss Also, "Whitman took the eggs or young of wild 32 Loeb Tropisms pp. 157-158. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 297 species, giving them to the domestic ring-dove to foster, with the result, that the young reared by the ring-doves ever after associated with ring-doves and tried to mate with them. Passenger pigeons when reared by ring-doves re- fuse to mate with their own species but mate with the species of the foster parents. 539 This shows incidentally that racial antagonism is not inherited but acquired. "We have mentioned the fact that the mating instinct is determined by tropisms aroused by specific internal secretions, and that in isolated male pigeons any solid body can arouse the mat- ing reaction. Craig"' 40 raised male pigeons in isolation so that they never came in contact with other pigeons until they were adult. One pigeon was hatched in July and isolated in August. " 'Throughout the autumn and early winter this bird cooed very little. But about the first of February there began a remarkable development of voice and social behavior. The dove was kept in a room where several men were at work, and he directed his display behavior toward these men just as if they belonged to his own species. Each time I put food in his cage he became great- ly excited, charging up and down the cage, bowing-and-cooing to me, and pecking my hand whenever it came within his cage. From that day until the day of his death, Jack continued to react in this social manner to human beings. He would bow-and-coo to me at a distance, or to my 298 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS face when near the cage; but he paid greatest attention to the hand naturally so, because it was the only part with which he daily came into direct contact. He treated the hand much as if it were a living bird. Not only were his own ac- tivities directed toward the hand as if it were a bird, but he received treatment by the hand in the same spirit. The hand could stroke him, preen his neck, even pull the feathers sharply, Jack had absolutely no fear, but ran to the hand to be stroked or teased, showing the joy that all doves show in the attentions of their compan- ions. 34 .... "When this pigeon was almost a year old it was put into a cage with a female pigeon, but although the female aroused the sexual instinct of the formerly isolated male the latter did not mate with her, but mated with the hand of his attendant when the hand was put into the cage, and this continued throughout the season. Thus the memory images acquired by the bird at an impressionable age and period perverted its sexual tropisms. 35 "The biologic utility of sex is, of course, in the propagation of the race. From a cell one quarter inch in diameter develops the human being who is to inherit, according to strict biological laws, the fundamental traits bequeathed by his par- ents. Galton's book on Ancestral Heredity, in "Idem, p. 168. ""Idem, p. 169. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 299 1889, expressed the proportion of traits derived from the two parents as one-half, from the four grand-parents as one-fourth, etc. This has how- ever, been tested (by Castle especially) and found to be too rough an approximation to be useful. Mendel formulated a law in 1886 which in 1900 was rediscovered by De Vries, Com, and Sher- mont. His concept was of unit characters e. g., in peas, tallness and shortness. Also the con- cept of Dominant and Recessive Characteristics. But we should beware of too ready reference to "heredity" as an "explanation" of everything. Like "the unconscious" it is too easy a way out of difficulties. It used to be thought that even traits which a person acquired after his birth could be trans- mitted to offspring. Now, thanks to De Vries and others, this idea, like "prenatal influence" has been relegated to the limbo of abandoned theories. Castle 36 tells how a female albino guinea pig just at sexual maturity was by an operation de- prived of its ovaries. There were introduced into her body the ovaries of a young black female guinea pig not yet sexually mature, aged three weeks. The grafted animal now mated with a male albino and produced three litters of young, of which six individuals were all black, etc. This certainly is strong evidence that it is not the ani- '"Castle Genetics & Eugenics, p. 24. 300 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS mal as a whole, but essentially the germ cells which determine inheritance. A little booklet on the Birth Control Movement" 7 says, "In our modern city life, with its extremes of poverty and riches, large families are frequent- ly a menace, not only to their members, but to the community at large. Statistics collected by physi- cians and social investigators show that the in- fant mortality in large families is enormously greater in proportion than in small. Dr. Alice Hamilton, in the Bulletin of the American Acad- emy of Medicine for May, 1910, reports an in- vestigation of the families of 1,600 wage earners. Deaths per thousand births, in families of 4 children and less, averaged 118 6 children 267 7 children 280 8 children 291 9 children and more 303 "In other words, the death rate in families of eight and more is two and one-half times that of families of four children and under. "An examination of statistics shows the injuri- ous effect not only on the mother, but on the chil- dren, when a woman bears her babies in too rapid succession. Motherhood is not a universal ex- perience. That half of the human race which can never be called upon to experience the pains of child-birth has come to accept them very com- placently, like the growing pains of childhood. * 7 P. 121. Published by committee of one hundred, 1917. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 301 It gives us a start to come upon the figures re- cently collected by Dr. Grace L. Meigs, of the Government Children's Bureau in Washington, D. C. She finds that, by official reports, more than 15,000 mothers die each year in this country from conditions related to child-birth. During the year 1913 more women between the ages of 15 and 44 years died in child-birth than from any other cause except tuberculosis, and the mortal- ity was three times that of typhoid fever. It would be interesting to know in how many cases the physical condition of these women was such that they should never have been allowed to be- come pregnant, and how many of them had lost their vitality and power or resistance thru too frequent child-bearing. "As for the effects on children born in such rapid succession, R. J. Ewart, an English econ- omist, reports on his study of an English manu- facturing town, that children born at intervals of less than two years after the birth of the previous child, remain notably defective, even at the age of six, both as regards intelligence and physical development. When compared with children born at a longer interval, and with first- born children, they are, on the average, three inches shorter and three pounds lighter. F. Boas, in a government report for 1911 on 'Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants', sums up : 'The physical development of children, 302 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS as measured by stature, is the better, the smaller the family.' "These statistics show only the obvious physical results of too frequent child-bearing. But mother- hood has come to mean a good deal more than mere physical bearing of infants. It may include the stimulus and inspiration of companionship with a woman of broad interests and normally rounded life. We all know exceptional cases of large families, where the mother exercised a powerful influence over all her flock. But such cases require extraordinary physical vitality on the part of the mother, and usually ample means to supply a staff of nurses. In the average case, a baby a year means that the older ones must be neglected, turned out on the streets to play, and deprived of all the love and influence which the mother yearns to give if she only had the time. "Many men and women who practice birth control themselves have an idea that 'the masses of the people' do not want this information, and would not take the trouble to use it if they had it. They might be startled to see the flood of let- ters which pours in upon nearly every woman connected with the birth control movement. As soon as the name and address of a woman inter- ested in birth control is given in the newspapers, she begins to receive these letters. They come from every state in the Union and from both fathers and mothers. Some bear the earmarks of education and culture. Many are misspelled, and PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 303 laboriously scrawled. Thru them all runs a pa- thetic eagerness for help out of the baffling diffi- culties against which these men and women are struggling." Connecticut. "Dear Madam: "My daughter-in-law is a very frail little wo- man. She has brought eleven children into the world. The last four were still-born. The doctor says she has not vitality enough ever to bring another living child into the world. If you will kindly give information that will prevent any more conception, you will save her life, so that she may rear those who are still living." Montana. "Dear Madam: "I am taking the liberty of asking if you would not be so kind as to give me information on birth control. My husband is making $16 per week, and we have had four children in as many years. Two are living, another is expected soon. Now before the birth of each child I have to take to my bed for about six weeks, on account of kidney trouble, and of course this makes it very ex- pensive, as well as dangerous. It just keeps us in debt all the time, and this is so discouraging. We are both young and hard working; I have even taken washing to help out. I don't mind having children, if there is plenty to provide with. But on account of the high cost of living, and also the danger on account of my kidneys, I would 304 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS like to stop for a while, until we get on our feet, anyway." "It is difficult and humiliating, in the face of such appeals, to have to write back with cold propriety, that it is against the law to give such information, and that (although we practice it ourselves) we may not share it, but can only work for the repeal of such laws. "The discussion of large families brings us to the subject of race suicide. This is a bugaboo with which a certain school of alarmists try to terrorize us. While birth-control information does result in lowering the birth rate, it also, and simultaneously so, lowers the infant mortality, that the result is frequently a net increase of population. "In 1881, when birth-control clinics were started in Holland, its three principal cities showed a birth rate of 33.7 per thousand. In 1912 the birth rate had dropped to 25.3. The general death rate, however, had dropped in the same period from 24.2 to 11.1 per thousand, so that the net change was an increase in population. (These figures are quoted from an article by Dr. Adolphus Knopf, the tuberculosis expert, endors- ing birth control in The Survey for November 18, 1916.) "It is difficult to take this talk of race suicide seriously when one remembers the deep, strong passions with which women and men long for Children. Physicians constantly meet in their PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 305 practice women who have deliberately faced Cae- sarian sections, four and five times, for the sake of having a family. The fact that they were physically unable to bear a child normally did not daunt them for an instant. Love of children, and especially love of one's very own, the strong, fierce power of maternal and paternal instinct, is too deep-seated for it to be possible that the race will die out because of the spread of this informa- tion. Another objection to birth control is based on its supposedly injurious effects. No doubt harm- ful methods have been used, but there is no rea- son why they should be, as absolutely harmless methods are known. Numerous medical authori- ties testify to this fact, that with the proper use of preventive measures, there is no possible in- jury. Dr. J. Rutger of The Hague, in his book on "Race Improvement," writes: "There is but one method of saving women from the risk of gynaecological diseases depend- ing on infection, and that is cleanliness. Now cleanliness is the most essential feature in the ap- lication of preventive means. Preventing infec- tion and preventing fecundation are in principle parallel problems. And Dr. William J. Robinson, in 'Practical Eugenics/ writes: "Another argument is that the use of the means of prevention renders a woman sterile, so that when she afterwards wants to have children she cannot do so. This is absolutely and unquali- 306 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS fiedly untrue. Here is again confusion between prevention and abortion. It is true that repeat- edly performed abortions may render a woman sterile on account of the inflammations and in- fections that abortions often set up. But properly used means of contraception have no such effect. Thousands and thousands of women use these means as long as they do not want to have any children; when they want a child, they discon- tinue their use and very soon afterward become impregnated." "Statistics are sometimes quoted to show an in- crease of cancer and sterility, attributed to birth- control methods. But many doctors class abor- tions and the prevention of conception together. In giving statistics for the evils resulting from one, they include the other. No one argues that abortions are not injurious. They are. The de- sire to prevent the present widespread practice of abortions with their injurious after-effects is one of the important arguments for birth con- trol. It is, therefore, scarcely fair to use as an argument against birth control the injurious ef- fects of abortions. It is like grouping together the mortality rate for pneumonia and sprained ankles, and arguing that sprained ankles are a fatal disease. "Havelock Ellis, in his 'Essays in War Times,' meets this objection. Granting, for the sake of argument, that there are injurious effects, he points out that many of the changes which the PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 307 process of evolution has brought about have had harmful as well as beneficial results. Raising mankind from all fours to walk about on two feet has produced many disorders. Most of the back- aches and internal ailments from which women suffer are due to the disarrangement of their or- gans caused by standing up. Yet no doctor makes this an argument for returning to all fours. Clothes are another example. All the ani- mals are born with whatever covering they need fur, feathers and hairy hides. Man alone has devised an artificial covering for himself. In its train have come many diseases. Tuberculosis, pneumonia, grippe and colds are chiefly due to our susceptibility to draughts and cold, brought on by wearing clothes. Yet far from attempting to return to the status quo ante, we have even made it illegal for a man to try to go without clothes." From here on the discussion becomes distinctly social in its significance. Personally, we incline to go much farther than most of the advocates of birth control, and to believe, with the neomal- thusians, that an actual diminution of population is desirable. Herbert Quick in his On Board the Good Ship Earth, Shows the danger from what he calls "the Hindu Peril." "India contains 40 1,766,000 square miles, while the United States has more than three millions. But while we have less than a hundred millions "Herbert Quick, On Board the Good Ship Earth, pp. 179-182. 308 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS of people, British India has 300,000,000, (244,- 361,056 in 1901). "These 300,000,000 fellow passengers of ours are very poor, and very ignorant and unenlight- ened. Therefore they multiply rapidly. Wher- ever there is found on the good ship Earth a peo- ple which has a very high birthrate, the masses will be found living on a low intellectual plane, on a low plane of prosperity, or both. The Hin- dus meaning all the Indian peoples are as far as the masses are concerned, not only poor beyond the conception of an American, but they are plunged into an intellectual slavery that is appall- ing. Therefore they multiply very rapidly. "In the absence of the accepted checks on popu- lation war, pestilence and famine and in the absence of the check which must come in to pre- vent those by checking multiplication the ex- piration of poverty and the attainment of high intellectual life the people of India will at the rate with which their population has grown since first it was computed, amount in 1950 to 450,000,- 000 ; in A. D. 2000 it will be 675,000,000 ; in A. D. 2050 it will be 1,012,500,000; and in A. D. 2100 it will be 1,518,750,000. There is, of course, no room in their present habitat for such swarms. There are many unused natural opportunities in their country. There are coal, iron, water-power and irrigable lands; but even at the present rate of increase all these op- portunities will be overtaxed in a hundred years. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 309 The Hindus are robbed by taxation, and exploited by landlordism and monopoly, but with a perfect system of distribution of wealth, if such were to be hoped for, multiplying as they are doing, pov- erty would overtake them thru sheer swarming in the absence of the enlightenment which dimin- ishes progeny. "For their increase does not show their birth- rate. War has been forbidden them by the Roman peace of the British rule. But still their ignor- ance and squalor, their neglect of sanitation and supineness under disease keeps down the multi- plying hordes. And famine descends upon them whenever rain fails to come with the southwest wind which is called a monsoon the rain-bringer for the Hindus. The government puts aside some millions of rupees every year as a famine-insur- ance fund to keep the people from starving in years of drought ; but this can do no good. More people will live over this famine and therefore there will be more mouths to feed when the next famine comes. The cause of famines in India is not drought, but too many people and bad distri- bution of wealth. And if the distribution be rem- edied the people will at once multiply to take up the slack liberated by better institutions. The situation is perfectly hopeless in the absence of enlightenment and the adoption of sane beliefs. For population depends more on beliefs than on food. 310 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS However, we resume our quotations from the pamphlet on Birth Control 41 "Perhaps the most important and generally quoted argument against birth control is the fear expressed that it would lead to an increase of im- morality among young women. This presupposes a low standard of morality among young girls. Most of us believe that a positive idealism, rather than a negative fear of consequences, is the re- straining influence on most of our young women. We are rapidly growing away from a civilization which undertakes to preserve the chastity of young women by actual physical compulsion. In Spanish and South American countries, young girls are forcibly kept in their rooms by close surveillance and iron bars in their windows. In respectable society, no young woman is allowed to be alone with a man for an instant; even in her own home, and tho he may be marrying her the next day. "Gradually society is developing a different atti- tude toward women. We have come to realize that a passive virtue, enforced by lack of oppor- tunity to do otherwise, is not as valuable to so- ciety, nor to the individual, as the building up of character, which, having the choice between good and evil, chooses wisely. In the last century, the convention requiring a chaperon for an un- married girl at all times has been tremendously relaxed. Sending girls away to college, and into "Birth Control, pp. 30-36. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 311 the big cities to work, has released them from all actual physical restraints. Yet we do not feel that our womanhood is suffering from the change. Rather it is more wholesome and self-respecting than ever before. Similarly, we believe that the more general knowledge of birth-control informa- tion will by no means result in a general lowering of moral standards. "The probability that it will work harm in in- dividual cases is scarcely an argument against making the information legitimately available. "Railways, street cars, automobiles, many of the most important elements of modern life take an enormous number of lives every year. From the point of view of the woman whose husband has been run over and killed by a speeding auto- mobile, it might seem desirable to legislate the motor car out of existence. But society never has and never can be governed by the consideration of individual cases. "Balanced against the harm of knowledge of contraceptive measures may do to the individual girl are the hundred thousands of married men and women all over this country whose married life is marred and haunted by lack of this knowl- edge. Women in delicate health, women with dis- eases which make pregnancy almost fatal, wives of small-salaried men whose incomes are insuffi- cient to care for their present families to all these women and their husbands, fear of preg- nancy is an ever-menacing, everhaunting night- 312 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS mare. Officials of the various courts of domestic relations say that lack of response and accord in the marital relation is responsible for a tremen- dous number of divorces and unhappy marriages. Remove this fear of an unwelcome child from the woman's heart, and it seems reasonable to believe that it would go far toward adjusting many of these tangled and unhappy relationships. "The suggestion that self-control would meet the difficulty does not seem a practical solution. To many men and women the marital relation is beautiful and sacred, and by no means to be apolo- gized for. They feel that it would be unnatural and wrong to attempt to eliminate its inspiring and uplifting influence from married life, except for the rare occasions when procreation is de- sired. Recent studies made by Freud, Jung, and other great specialists in nervous troubles have called attention to the pathological conditions frequently induced by maladjustments in the sexual relationship. Celibacy is generally recog- nized as an abnormal and incomplete mode of life. It is the more anomalous when demanded of a man and woman loving each other, and living together in the affectionate intimacy of married life. "Turning to the arguments for birth control in addition to those already implied, the underly- ing principles involve several fundamental issues. "One of the most convincing arguments for family limitation is its beneficial results in the PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 313 countries where it has been tried. Government statistics from these countries record a tendency to earlier marriages. These are made possible because the young couples feel free to marry at once, instead of having to wait until the man can earn enough to support an unlimited succession of babies. Early marriages are the most effective possible means of reducing prostitution and venereal disease, as well as illegitimacy and abor- tion. "On the positive side, the good effects of family limitation are seen in the improvement of the individual and of the social life of the community. In Holland the records show that, with the adop- tion of birth control, the stature of the men ap- plying at the recruiting office has been notably improved. The number of men over 5 feet 7 inches has increased from 24 to 47 per cent. The number of men under 5 feet, 2'/i inches has de- creased from 25 to 8 per cent. The diminution of pauperism is also noticeable. In England the number of persons whom it was necessary to re- lieve annually, per thousand of the population, has fallen from 23.5 in 1875 (when the birth rate began to decline) to 26.4 in 1910 a drop of 23.5 per cent. "Most of the extreme cases of destitution in our big cities involve the suffering and often the wreckage of many little children. A striking ex- ample of this fact is furnished by the list of 'New York's One Hundred Neediest Cases,' pub- 314 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS lished by the New York Times just before Christ- mas each winter. This list is compiled by the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. Insane parents, fathers with broken spines, mothers incapacitated by constant child-bearing or sickness, and large families of pitiful little children, dependent on a sixteen-year-old brother or sister, or perhaps eight little children under ten years of age so the stories run. They make heart-rending reading. And they point an unes- capable moral: Much of the misery of New York's neediest cases could have been avoided by the intelligent use of birth control. "One of the important arguments for family limitation seems incredible in the criminal stu- pidity it involves. Physicians testify that it is fatal for women with certain classes of diseases to attempt to bear children. Such cases include pelvic deformities and certain types of kidney and heart disease and tubercular conditions. With insanity, tuberculosis, and certain con- tagious diseases, the danger is multiplied by the probability of its being handed on to the child to handicap him through life. "Among the very poor where expert medical care is not possible, men and women unfit for par- entage, because of heriditary taints which they may pass on, continue year after year to produce unfit and sickly children. Reliable statistics show that it is these children who, in after years, come to form a majority of the inmates of the re- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 315 formatories, prisons, houses of prostitution and insane asylums. In addition to the hideous total of suffering and agony which goes into the child- hood and maturity of such lives, it is the State, and each one of us, who must pay the ultimate bill for restraining and caring for them. This brings us to the kindred subject of Eu- genics. The negative phase of this subject the segregation or even sterilization by vasec- tomy of feeble-minded is belatedly receiving some of the attention it deserves. In its positive as- pects however, it still hardly has progressed. Yet "to add one man of the ability, say of Simon New- comb, William James, E. B. Wilson or Jacques Loeb, to the American stock is of greater advan- tage than to prevent the birth of a thousand feeble-minded or insane." 42 If the native intellectual endowments of the Aryan race (which is usually ranked highest in the scale) be compared with those of, say the Hottentots (who are among the lowest) a differ- ence of level undoubtedly will be found between their averages, in favor of the Aryans. But this difference isn't so great as generally supposed, for many Aryans are as stupid as the stupidest Hottentot, while many individual Hottentots lack only an enducation to rival the brilliance of high class Aryans. What is many, many times greater than the difference between the averages of these 4 -J. McK. Cattell. "American Men of Science." Second Edition, 1910. p. 563. 316 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS races is the difference between the individual genius of the Aryan race and the idiots of the same race, or between the brightest men and stup- idest men of the Hottentot race. Someone has ad- vanced a theory to account for the difference in civilization between two races, that the higher race is that one which produces the greatest varia- tions away from its average (has most idiots to take care of, but has likewise most geniuses to urge it forward). That there is a greater aberrancy from type among advanced, as compared with primitive groups, of people seems to be borne out by the statistics we have on the subject. It's a tribute to the instincts of mankind that, upon the whole, they're affected much less power- fully by low types than by high, and that in leader- ship as in most other things in the long run "real merit wins." Witness, for example, the instances given in Terman's Study of Leadership, as : "Girl of 11 ruled the boys and girls alike. 'One of the wealthiest girls in the village was her slave. She could make us do as she wished be- fore we knew what was up. She was good-look- ing, daring skillful in holding her own, and older than the rest.' " Our program to be scientifically social must in- clude eugenic measures. There is also the eugenic question to be considered in relation to the "high birth rate among the least desirable classes of the community. The indigent, the unemploy- able, the reckless, the drunken and the mentally PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 317 deficient. . . . Is it wonderful, then, that we have overcrowded districts a physical and mental depreciation? The combined wisdom of the age can find no remedy from this dilemma, unlimited reproduction and brutality, or humanitarianism with restrictions. "The recent Mental Deficiency Bill is a first recognition of the latter principle. But why deal only with the extreme cases of mental deficiency? There are millions of poor physically and mental- ly unfit creatures who, if voluntary restriction were known to them, or they were not told it was unhealthy or immoral, would only be too glad to escape burdening themselves and the community with a numerous and weakly progeny. What is the use of deploring the increase of the unfit when the poor mothers among the working classes are only too anxious to avoid the misery of bearing child upon child in wretched surroundings, on miserably insufficient wages, and of seeing half of their children perish from semi-starvation be- fore their eyes? "What is the use, too, of simply segrating the mentally deficient when we have a huge factory of mental deficiency in our midst in the terrible amount of venereal disease caused by prostitu- tion? If all young people were able to marry at a suitable age, instead of waiting to provide for a family, this great source of defect would be stopped, and it would do far more to check mental defect than any other measure which could be 318 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS devised. In fact, we should probably never have needed the recent Mental Deficiency measure if our educated classes had done their duty in ex- tending the knowledge of hygienic means of fam- ily limitation to the poor when they adopted them themselves." The public reticence to discuss these vital ques- tions reaches a point of tragic absurdity which yet recalls a newspaper item that appeared in a Boston paper on March 12, 1919 : BOARD FENCE IN COURTROOM TO HIDE WOMAN'S ANKLES. "New York, March 12. Because Mrs. Betty Inch was too generous in the display of her ankles to jurymen who failed a month ago to agree on a verdict in her trial on a charge of extortion, she found the witness stand surrounded by a four- foot board fence when she appeared today in the supreme court for the second hearing of her case. " 'What is it, a spite fence?' the comely Mrs. Inch inquired when she entered. The partition concealed all but her head and shoulders when she took the stand." In the little booklet, "Yes, but" 43 a last objec- tion of the conservatives is thus stated and answered : (Quote p. 23 to end p. 24.) "Yes, but somehow the whole idea is distasteful. "Issued by the Voluntary Parenthood League, 206 Broadway, New York City, p. 28. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 319 I believe in it, but really I don't think I care to be associated with an organized effort in regard to it. It is such an unpleasant subject. "Granted, your aversion, and you are by no means alone in having it, but are you going to let that hold you back, when you realize how day by day the needless tragedies go on, and that just in proportion as you and all the others who have like feelings, shrink from responsibility, that suf- fering will be prolonged? Do you realize that there are thousands of women like poor young Mrs. S , twenty-six years old, married five years, and with four living children, who said to the hospital nurse when offered a few weeks' rest in the country: 'I don't want the country. I want rest from having babies. I can't stand it much longer. I shall go mad! Think of four children, four, three, one and a half, and the new baby! If you know anything that can help me and other women like me, why don't you teach us?' "Doesn't one's personal aversion to the subject sink into nothingness in the face of desperate need like this? Doesn't it make squeamishness seem rather like self-indulgence? "Especially, if you yourself, have all the in- formation necessary for safeguarding yourself and your own children, can you bear it not to in- sist that all the others who need it, shall have it, too? Noblesse oblige!" CHAPTER IV This chapter will deal with the great funda- mental urge, hunger. SECTION I Down from the dim past of all peoples come echoes of hymns composed in honor of some in- toxicant. Whether we listen to the vedic chants in honor of some, the fermented juice of a plant raised to the dignity of godhood, or to the din of Grecian bacchanals, we are surprised with this association between wine or drugs and worship. A relic of it persists even today in the Christian Eucharist. Says Brinton: "In every savage tribe we find a knowledge of narcotic plants which were employed to induce, strange and vivid hallucinations of dreams .... The negroes of the Niger had their 'fetish water,' the Creek Indians of Florida their 'black drink' for this purpose. In many parts of the United States the natives smoked stramonium, the ?'Iexi- can tribes swallowed the eyotl and the snake- plant, the tribes of California and the Samoyedes of Siberia had found a poisonous toadstool; all to bring about communication with the Divine and to induce extatic visions." 1 The Indians of New Mexico who are "unacquainted with intoxi- cating liquors .... find drunkenness, in the fumes PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 321 of a certain herb smoked through a stone tube and used chiefly during their religious festivals." Among the old Mexicans, a seed called Oliluhgue entered into a vision-producing "divine medi- cine" which could be obtained only from the priests. 2 "In the Indie and Iranian cult there was," we are told, "a direct worship of deified liquor ana- logous to Dionysiac rites." It has even been maintained that the whole Rig Veda is but a col- lection of hymns for soma worship. The drink- ing ceremony was accompanied by magical incan- tations and by religious invocations. During the frequent libations that marked the sacrifice of soma, the officiating priest asked repeatedly for inspiration. He offered the liquor with these words: "0, Indra, accept our offering .... drink of the soma, thou the friend of prayer and of the liquor; well disposed God, drink in order to in- toxicate thyself." "I pour it out into the double cavity of thy belly ; may it spread thru thy mem- bers; may it be sweet to thy taste; may it steal upon thee, deliverer, veiled as women seeking a rendez-vous. Hero with the strong neck, full bellied, strong of arms, Indra, praised by many, accept the pressed out soma, father of divine energy." Leuba, 1 who quotes the above passage, con- tinues : "Modern India has not renounced the use 'David Brtnton, The Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 7. -H. H. Cancroft, Native Races, vol. 1, pp. 566-567. 'Extatic Intoxication in Religion, James H. Leuba. pp. 578-579. 322 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS of drugs in religious ceremonies. The India Hemp Commission appointed by the English Gov- ernment to investigate the use of hemp drugs in its Hindoo possessions, reported that several hemp preparations are "extensively used in the exercise of religious practices.'' They found evi- dence of the "almost universal use of hemp drugs by fakirs, jogis, sanyasis, and ascetics of all classes, and more particularly by those devoted to the worship of Siva." The hemp plant is be- lieved by priests and oeople to be a special at- tribute of that god. In this early identification of intoxication with religion and its subsequent divorce, we have a fact curiously resembling the early confusion with religion and subsequent divorce from it t)f various sciences and arts. In this case the mean- ing probably is to be found in the confusion of ex- tatic states physically produced (and in them- selves affording a relief to excitation) with the trance-like condition so generally regarded as favorable to communication with another world. A colored sentinel challenged another colored soldier who seemed to be carrying something in- side the lines. "Whot goes there?" he asked. "Lieutenant with a jug o' gin," was the an- swer. "Pass, Lieutenant! Halt, gin!" commanded the sentry. That the use of narcotics no longer can be held PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 323 as the peculiar reproach of oriental peoples is evident from statistics of conditions in our own country in 1919. Before us is a clipping from a Boston paper that reads: "Albany, N. Y., Feb. 25. One man in every twenty in New York State is addicted to the use of narcotic drugs a dope fiend. And nine out of ten of these morphine slaves are being swindled daily by proprietors of fake drug 'cures' or by ig- norant administering of so-called narcotic drug remedies by reputable physicians. "This appalling condition of affairs was re- vealed in a report by Ex-Senator George H. Whit- ney, pioneer in narcotic legislation, made public today. "Ex-Senator Whitney, as chairman of a special legislative investigating committee, heads the op- position to the proposed abolition of the State bureau for narcotic drug control. Instead of abolishing the bureau Mr. Whitney and his co- workers in the fight against the use of drugs will urge the Legislature to combat the drug evil by seeking scientific cures to be administered by the State." The ultimate cure for drug using, however, can- not come from less than a grand-scale turning of the people away from the pursuit of luxury to the Simple Life. We must cease to believe that drugs or anything short of abstemious living, moderate exercise and plenty of repose can give respite from ill-being. That it sets itself squarely against 324 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS these ideals is a terrible indictment of modern "civilization." The inference probably is that drug-using, as well as drinking, isn't merely a habit in the sense that riding a bicycle may become a habit. These things obtain their grip chiefly upon persons whom the strain of "civilization" has rendered neurotic. That gambling also must be put in this class is the contenting of a Dr. Corning. A newspaper clipping 2 says: "On gambling in its moral and economic aspects there has been endless writing and talking, all condemnatory, of course. And gambling goes on, in one form or another, probably as much as ever, though a good deal of it is now done under other names and much that used to be public is now more or less secretly conducted. Of scientific at- tempts to describe and explain the psychology of gambling there have been few, and still fewer have been those to cure, instead of to denounce, the gambler's psychosis. The first task is un- dertaken by Dr. J. Leonard Corning in an article contributed by him to The Medical Record, and both his observations and his conclusions have the interest of novelty. "Gambling makes its wide, almost universal, appeal, Dr. Corning thinks, not to mere greed or avarice the desire to get something for nothing but because in playing games of chance for 2 The date is about 1914. We have lost record of the paper.. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 325 valuable stakes there is a constant alternation of emotion that is in itself pleasurable, and there comes into action the same element of suspense that forms at least a large part of the attraction in many legitimate amusements and occupations. It is this suspense the ignorance of what is go- ing to happen and the joy which comes from seeing or learning what does happen that for most people makes novels and plays enjoyable and holds attention to one or several climaxes and the succeeding denouements. The man engaged in scientific research also alternates between con- fident hope and the disappointments of defeat, but enjoys his work, even though it does not prove materially profitable. "In games of hazard the suspense is brought about in an arbitrary manner, while its alterna- tions are injuriously frequent and there is noth- ing logical about the conclusion. Gambling is merely a misuse of that capacity and inclination to take chances upon which enterprise and prog- ress of every kind largely depend. Its votaries often show, and all of them can be suspected of, a neurasthenic taint. This, in Dr. Coming's opinion, makes the gambling habit in its more exaggerated forms an affair of psychopathology rather than of morals, and he thinks that dis- semination of knowledge of the habit's essen- tially morbid nature, coupled with a dispassionate and explicit account of its inroads on mental ef- ficiency, should help to a rational prophylaxis." 326 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS As we shall see in a later chapter, the knack of exploring the unconscious can in some degree be acquired, and the student will only then be in a position to quite understand himself, and to re- place his present too crude objectives by the sub- stitution of objectives satisfying a wider range of his desires. SECTION 2 So much for the dangers inherent in even that instinct which is fundamental to our preservation. The wonder is that it's able to guide us at all in this unnatural, complex, and changing environ- ment which we've created. The fact is that the evolution of the human race has gradually weeded out those individuals who have not had an unconscious predilection for the wholesome things in their environment. If we today are unable to select that which is whole- some, it is because (a) our environment is not that which it has been thru the centuries of mil- lenniums of evolution of the race, and (b) because we are in such a state today and so far removed from the natural, that we do not let the uncon- scious, instinctive nature speak to us. Hunger reduces itself to a chemotropism. Loeb describes how minute organisms, swimming in a tank of water, are stimulated to turning- movements in a purely mechanical way when cer- tain chemical infusions are introduced into the PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 327 fluid from a particular quarter. Similarly he shows how young caterpillars are at first violently heliotropic until when for that reason they have climbed up the twig to the tender shoots, these latter chemotropically excite their mandibles. It seems likely that in the young infant the first sucking is essentially a chemotropic reaction, and that this reflex is thereafter conditioned by vari- ous associations until its various manifestations constitute a so-called instinct. "Professor Preyer divides the movements of in- fants into impulsive, reflex, and instinctive. By impulsive movements he means random move- ments of limb, body and voice, with no aim, be- fore perception is aroused. Among the first re- flex movements are crying on contact with air, sneezing, snuffling, snoring, coughing, sighing, sobbing, gagging, vomiting, hiccoughing, start- ing, moving the limbs when tickled, touched, or blown upon, etc. "Of the movements called instinctive in the child, Professor Preyer gives a full account. Herr Schneider does the same. I will base my own very brief statements upon theirs. " 'Sucking.' " 'Biting an object placed in the mouth, licking sugar, making characteristic grimaces over bitter and sweet tastes ; spitting out.' " 'Clasping an object which touches the fingers or toes. Later, attempts to grasp at an object 328 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS seen at a distance. Pointing at such objects, and making a peculiar sound expressive of desire.' " 'Carrying to the mouth of the object when grasped. This instinct leads to a set of habits which constitute his function of alimentation, the first expression of instinctive life." 3 It is a delightful instinct, is alimentiveness, prompter of midnight pantry raids and source of all gustatory joy, but source also for humanity, of as much woe as joy. "They are sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing." 4 The amount of pleasure derivable from our instincts is limited. We shall be broaching no very new idea, when we say it seems as tho our animal economy produces regularly an amount of vital energy ultimately dependent upon our state of health, much as a river bed produces an amount of water dependent upon the conditions of the soil. Applause, balls, cocktails, the drama, eat- ing, fine feathers, etc., can wash pleasure in upon us momentarily at a greater rate than the normal, but can't do so for more than a limited time ; and so soon as the stimuli are removed, the flood of energy slackens, until there shall have been time for the normal flow of the stream to have built itself up again. 3 Wm. James' Principles of Psychology ; volume 2, pp. 403-404. Merchant of Venice. Act 1. Scene 2, L. 5. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 329 "Drunk last night; drunk the night before; Going to get drunk tonight, if we never get drunk any more! When I am drunk I'm as happy as can be; For I am a member of the Souse familee! Glorious! Glorious! One keg of beer among the four of us! Glory be to God there are no more of us; For any one of us could drink it all alone!" This does well enough for a rollicking song the evening before, among companions "born but to banquet and drain the bowl," 5 but on the morn- ing after it has a hollow sound. Mr. Gourmand has a bad taste in his mouth he eventually be- comes cross and loses his keen enjoyment of deli- cate flavors and is lucky if he stops short of de- lirium tremens or dyspesia (which has been de- fined as "a square meal in a round stomach"). Mr. Puffer isn't long without his accustomed ci- gar, before he commences to crave it. Dicky, the dime novel fiend, finds too little excitement in his humdrum duties as office boy. Nancy Nicklodeon endures an evening at home only as the greatest torture. Then why do we send missions to rescue the cocaine-fiend or the hashish-eating dervish; isn't all folly a matter of degree? In ancient Rome, noblemen oftentimes became gladiators, to win applause ; their vanity was in no respect dif- ferent from that of your present-day aspirant for social leadership, the dweller in a too fine man- 'Homer's Odyssey, Book 10, L. 622, Pope's Translation. "Dress does make a difference, David. (Bod Acres, in Sheridan, The Rivals, 3, 4.) 330 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS sion, the wearer of jewels, or of him or her who takes pride in being more gaudily dressed "than business interests demand." Roman gourmand- ism disgusts us, but our own dietetic house of glass is as frail as theirs ; we moderns take more frequent meals and probably surfeit ourselves more, and with worse mixtures than those in- dulged in by the poor old wealthy Romans. SECTION 3 In this section we wish to show that the typical pleasure-seeker is like a man who tries to make a brook flow faster by sweeping the water down with a broom. He creates a momentary flood; then there comes a scarcity. Just so the pleasure we get from luxuries or entertainments of what- ever kind is followed by comparative ennui. The valley behind the brook can supply water only at the usual rate, and he who accept this as so is spared much pains. The foresighted person, who wastes none of his energies thru unwholesome liv- ing, is like the man who so well utilizes the water of the brook that it more than supplies his needs. The altruist who foregoes tobacco and other habits because they are repugnant and interferences with other people's rights is sure to benefit there- by, as is the man who dams up the brook to make a drinking place for the chance passer-by, and incidentally finds that the reserve thus created tides him over a period of drought. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 331 There also is to be considered (by most people) in this connection the economic disadvantage of luxurious tastes. A case in point is that of a lit- tle boy who was asked by a humanitarian "Do you know what poor animal had to suffer in order that your mother might wear those furs?" "Yes," came, the reply, "my papa." Aunt Mary Wells is one of the few "befo' de wan" darkies left in a little Kentucky town. Re- cently she was discussing with her employer the merry-go-round that was running up on the cor- ner. "Nawsuh, Mr. Malcolm," she said, "naw-suh, I don' ride on none o' dem things. Why, Mr. Malcolm, I've seen some o' these here fool niggers git on that thing and ride as much as a dollar's worth, and git off at the very same place they gits on at; an' I sez to 'em, 'Now you spent yo' money, nigger, whah yo' been ? ' "Considering the matter from a purely per- sonal and selfish viewpoint, I genuinely fail to see what material gift beyond that of a sound body can afford a man much happiness. Of money, only a small amount is needed to sustain a person in that simplicity in which he thrives best. More than that is only display, which em- bitters one against the shop-keepers who begin to make him a target for imposition and dishon- esty: Or it's for social recognition, envied by the brainless; this means you must hold yourself aloof from the herd, and so do violence to some of 332 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS the finer feelings. Or it's for entertaining so numerous a company of friends, that those among them whose attachment is upon the solid rock of inherent affinity, those whom you would "grapple to thy soul with hoops of steel" (as Shakespeare puts it) , are lost sight of in the herd who come only to feed at your table, with the re- sult that you become irritable, cynical and inci- dentally less able to attract real friends. Or it's to give to the needy, and so aid in maintaining the race of the unfit and parasitic at your door day and night, besieging you through the keyhole and every mail. Or to spend it, your life's energy, 'drowning' trouble in dissipation, ruining that one undoubted asset, your physique, and worry- ing over blackmail and scandal. Heigh-ho! But if we accept an hypothesis, we must be pre- pared to accept it in all its applications. The pleasure of pictures, the pride in porcelain, the perusual of world news and the enjoyment of grand opera, all these, unless in that minute de- gree in which they may increase our general ef- ficiency, are mere vanities. They are dissipa- tions. To those who enjoy them they are as far from bringing a permanent accretion of happi- ness as are horseracing, cock-fighting, card play- ing and comic opera. 7 So much being arrived at, it may be argued, 7 "The Theatre, in proper hands, might certainly be made ths school of morality : but now, I am sorry to say it, people seem to go there principally for their entertainment." Sheridan, The Critic, Act. 1, 1. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 333 'If Desire is a source of misery, we ought to en- courage no appetities, but simply to let Desire die of inanition, tho we ourselves die, too.' The fundamental mistake here is in supposing that all desires are unpleasant. Desire denied satisfaction is what's unpleasant. When you know that a good dinner is on the table, is it a misfortune to be hungry ? Do you say, "Alas, would that I could lose my appetite." As our old Professor, John Dewey 8 has pointed out, desire, in itself, is merely an urge in a certain direction, pleasurable or painful, according to whether or not it's combined with the expectancy of being satisfied. This, of course, always pre- supposes a healthy general condition of the body, but if we pretend a listless apathy which we don't truly feel, by denying ourselves the actual re- quirements of health we only deal our welfare a more severe blow than we were trying to avoid, by turning off the spigot whence all happiness must commence its flow. "But," quotha, "At first, the writer was for ridding us of needless desires, while now he con- tradicts himself, by saying desires may bring happiness. If they may bring happiness, why discourage them? Why not welcome them, and the more the merrier. E.g., why shouldn't Paul, the rich pork packer's son cultivate his taste for flashy neckties, or even for an occasional gal- lery seat at the grand opera, so long as he can 8 Dewey and Tufts. Ethics. 334 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS confidentially anticipate that these desires always may receive due satisfaction? Why not 0, pshaw! The fellow has given his case dead away !' ' Be patient! thou excitable one, whilst we ex- plain that no one would sell Paul Porkpacker his pink tie, or welcome him to his roost at "Aida" more gladly than we ; did we not see that the very pleasures which a desire in being fulfilled affords, leads to expansion of that desire and birth of new desires. There's much truth in that nursery tale of the fisherman who was kind to a fairy crawfish. The fairy, of course, offered him any reward he'd ask. The fisherman first spoke for a small cot- tage. With this, he was for a time content, till, egged on by his more ambitious -wife, he returned to request a lordly castle and estate. Becoming at last king, and being more greedy with each new gift, he at last demanded to become God him- self ; at which impudence the crawfish took back everything it had given. We're sure, therefore, that Paul Porkpacker no sooner bought his pink tie than he immediately became aware that the reddish brown suit which he wore was "impos- sible" with this. "He can afford a new suit," say you. Having a new suit, it occurs to him to be "the neatest dresser" in his college class. "No harm in that," say you. Which gives him a certain standing with the PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 335 fair sex, so that the next time he goes to the opera, he'll take a pretty companion along who may prefer "The Follies" to "Aida," and isn't agreeable to sitting in the gallery "So long as she's a nice girl . . . .," say you. Though very nice she may be dull company, so that Paul happens round at the stage entrance the next time the company's in town, to see whether Totty Twotoes wouldn't be a livelier girl to have out to supper. "We're young but once," say you. Totty prefers the young men who're not too stingy with their money. "So do I," say you. But Paul learns that a good many women in smart society are much the same way, and feels he's now a irfan of the world. "Would you have him remain always a child?" you ask. In fact, some of his scrapes have cost "Old Man" Porkpacker a tidy little sum in blackmail. "Good joke on Dad," say you. And after the upset of a certain memorable Joy-ride, Paul persuades his father that a yacht is safer than an automobile, and, moreover, would be profitable in enabling him to become chummy with wealthy members of the New York Yacht Club. "The right acquaintances might be very helpful to him in a business way," say you. But Paul is hardly one of this crowd of high financiers, ere from them he learns the joys of 336 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS laying out a beautiful country estate, or equip- ping a boys' school. "I'm getting sleepy," say you. In sum, dear reader, the point is, that the body of our desires, which may be a source of unalloyed pleasure to us if we keep them starved down close to the ground of their physiological functions, strain always to shoot forth sturdy branches in the place of their former delicate twigs; which branches require far more effort to hold back, or even they may tear our house all to pieces. If we live, the time eventually comes when our increas- ing desires must go partly unsatisfied. My con- tention is that we should make the best of an in- evitable dilemma, take a healthy enjoyment out of satisfying a minimum of desires, but constant- ly check all desires with an early enough denial so that they may "know their proper places." De- sires are turbulent egoists; indulge one of them with some slight authority over his fellow-desires, and he straightway becomes an oppressive tyrant. "Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty." Not by vindictive bruising the tops of the largest weeds, nor by punishing gophers with whips, does one's garden grow into ideal beauty, but rather thru the instant death of these undesirable germ- inations. Neither does a club or association of persons recruit its membership promiscuously and then expect to bulldoze the new members into conformity with the original purpose for which the club was formed, but rather it builds itself PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 337 up from the start, out of only those materials which will be wholly congenial to its purpose. So also, a personality, to be in any sense successful, must upbuild itself exclusively from mental states that are appropriate. Contentment is possible only thru realization that all material prizes, with the one exception of bodily health, are vanity and illusion "maya." It's not merely that indulgences bring no sur- plus of satisfaction; they work counter to the nobler interests of life. " 'Live like yourself,' was soon my lady's word, And lo, two puddings smoked upon the board."' "Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits Make rich the ribs, but banquet quite the wits." 10 Not only do gourmandizing, beer-swilling, etc., stupify one, but they lead to the use of stronger stimulants and narcotics which complete the ruin of man. The melancholy raven in Poe's famous poem symbolizes that author's own morbid habits, while "Lenore" was his own lost manhood. The "self-sacrificing" person is indirectly but another product of these same passions, since he's the frightened or disgusted man who has fled from the follies of excess to an opposite extreme almost equally illogical. Fright and disgust both are irrational, because Temperance must be temperate. But how to tell how much of anything is a Love's Labour Lost Act 1, Scene 1, L. 26. 10 Pope's Moral Essays, Ep. Ill, L. 461. 338 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS happy mean, and how much, absurd extreme? The only method is, to feel one's way by degrees. Suppose that in a moment of exaltation and con- viction X concludes that he ought to live in the desert as a hermit. We say that instead of sneak- ing away that very evening, leaving a bereaved family and a neglected business to condole with each other it would be better to proceed more de- liberately lest the next month, or even the next day, he should come running back to say he'd changed his mind. During the first few nights he should "sleep on" the proposition. In the mean- while he might introduce a few modifications in regard to his diet dropping out the cocktails to- day, the lobster a la Newburg tomorrow, replac- ing each omission with an increased percentage of the traditional parched peas and water. The following Sunday morning, in place of his usual eighteen holes at the club, he could commence to spade out a cozy little cave in his own backyard, acclimatizing himself to the life of a desert- dweller by retiring into his shelter nightly; in the meantime he could terminate his family re- lations amicably, and settle up his business prop- erly. If he were successful in these preliminary motions, assuredly he'd attract an enthusiastic apostle for the new architecture in the person of every unspoilt small boy of the neighborhood. In due course of time our hermit may rent a gen- uine cave in some suburban location, not too in- accessible to be reached by occasional reporters, PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 339 and sight-seeing tourists, and here he'll write his book on "The Modern Recluse," or "A Holy Her- mit and His Hermitage, by Himself," which is to perpetuate and popularize his ideals, and insure himself sufficient notoriety and misunderstand- ing on which to really begin his business of her- miting in earnest. These preliminaries over, our cautious fellow, if his resolution still holds, is welcome to the desert places of the earth. Upon the whole, however, you'll find that the best opinion of today doesn't favor the kind of holiness which helps no one but the holy man's self. Parched peas may sustain the fire of life when fanned by the hot breath of enthusiasm; communities of ardent devotees doubtless awaken each other's latent warmth, when in a colder at- mosphere much richer fuel couldn't withstand the chill. Yet We may justly question whether those particu- lars of a man's life which are most evident to outsiders, or even toward which he himself cher- ishes the greatest attachment, are in many cases worthy of being esteemed so highly. There is one thing, indeed, upon which too much valor cannot be placed a modicum of Health is so essential to any credit balance on the happiness side of life, that whoever is without it, or without at least a fair expectation of being compara- tively exempt from actual suffering in the body, will do well to shuffle off this mortal coil as quick- ly as possible. Actual suffering, of course, must 340 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS be distinguished from mere potential pain. An incurable bed-ridden invalid may be altogether comfortable so long as he simply keeps quite still ; and if such a man will cultivate a patient, cheer- ful disposition, he may pass the years happily, more happily, perhaps, than if his infirmity hadn't shielded him from certain aspects of more active life. Truly one may say that the gift of a sound body is a piece of a great fortune, besides which all other possessions pale into insignificance. I question whether anything more, at all, on the material side, is necessary to man's selfish happi- ness than the conditions of physical and mental health. These conditions are two-fold; (1) hygienic comfort and (2) appropriate material for the exercising of the faculties, e.g., space in which to move about naturally, a moderate variation of stimuli, and occasional friends with whom to converse. All else depends upon one's standards and imagination, hence is subject to one's will. For all luxuries only seem to add joy to our lives, since every pleasure in which we in- dulge inevitably makes such pleasures in the fu- ture less of a delight and more a matter of course, which we miss when they're not present. In parts of China, India, Egypt and other coun- tries, we've seen the masses of the people so des- perately poor that thru the nights they lay by the roadside wrapped in only a cotton rag or two, quite numb with cold ; it was inconceivable PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 341 how they lived at all, yet many were far happier than middle-class people in this country, because they took their penury as a matter of course, and looked upon any occasional nearly satisfying meal, or almost-vermin-free bed, or what-not, as a delightful surprise. We dare say that everything to which these poor creatures look forward as to pleasures, we could endure only as extreme hardships. Their beds would infest and bruise us; their foods irritate our palates; their cheap confectionery and "soft" drinks (served in dirty cups) we'd be afraid of; their vile liquors would strangle us; their religious rites, by which they obtain ecstasy would give us the cramps; their sweet," to do honor to the house guest, by smear- ing it with cow-dung, would be distasteful to us. we advise no one to live the life of an Oriental way of rendering the house floor "clean and coolie; it is inconsistent with the maintenance of vital efficiency. Yet, the coolie can teach what utterly relative terms "luxury" and "privation" are. Privation means having less than you have habitually, therefore he who is accustomed to abundance finds in but few things any luxury, while in many little matters he suffers privation. Whereas he who is used to asceticism, enjoys all simple com- monplaces as though they were luxuries; more- over, he doesn't fear, and hardly ever feels priva- tion. This is the result of an unconscious form of auto-suggestion. There's no one but requires 342 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS to administer some form of auto-suggestion to himself regularly, else he degenerates into one of the many species of savages. One of the benefits which enthusiasts gain from a cult so seemingly far removed from psy- cology as the cult of Physical Development, is the psychological effect of religiously performing a few stunts every morning, let us say, with heavy weights; some exercise which begins the day with a strong outflow of energy that more than compensates for the inevitable fatigue of the exercise. The daily cold plunge has perhaps its chief value in this direction, tho for those to whom cold water is distasteful, the burden of the thot that "There's that unpleasant thing to be gone thru with again today, tomorrow, the next day, and every day until I die" would be a rem- edy worse than the disease. In the same way the no-breakfast habit has a similar value, by giv- ing a certain heroic beginning to the day. Yet, far from being the advocate of an absolute denial of the pleasures of the body we would go on record as believing that the body is in the last analysis the source of all pleasures whatsoever, and that the object of the highest idealism must be the securing to some creature, some time, bodily ex- hilaration. But as highly flavored viands eventu- ally pall upon the palate, and the beauty of in- tense coloring ceases to be an astonishment to the eye, so, also, the hearing of voluptuous music charms into an ecstasy whose price is some less PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 343 exalted mood later on, and the stirring romantic novel leaves us with little relish for the dun brown of everyday life. The color scheme to which we may believe that the animal nervous system is adapted, is varia- tion of blues and browns combined with almost omnipresent greens ; this is an induction from ob- servation of the undesecrated spots of Earth, and is substantiated by experiments performed in testing the effects upon animals of colored light (the violet end of the spectrum being depressant, the red, irritant) . There run through the forest no gray streets crowded with crea- tures sooty-coated, there grow no startling sign boards flaunting their colors in massed flamboy- ance. The flavors of fruit food are cooling. Senses repose ; no dust fills the nostrils, but sooth- ing aromas are everywhere around; the restful- ness of green, the infinite variation of the crooked architecture of the trees, and sounds softer than silence. If flowers here and there gleam boldly, their brilliance is no useless- show, but a flag to insects, nectar-seeking and pollen-laden. If male creatures strut in their plumage, or warble sweet songs to their mates, their colors are no assump- tion or conceit, but a means of alluring the modest and bashful ones hidden among the foliage. All color, all excitement, all taste is utilitarian in nature in perpetuating life. The Japanese, alone of the human races recognize this fact. 12 1= We refer to the purpose of their gardens as places of rest. 344 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS Natural selections or maybe eugenics in the course of a millennium may remake mankind into a race harmonious with all the changed conditions of civilized existence but the part of wisdom is to recognize that our present physiology is that of the wild people who dwelt in the woods, where they seldom had excitements or luxuries to un- nerve them. Our aim should be to keep our lives as hygienic as theirs, tho making use of what- soever is truly good in this complex age. Our tastes must remain simple. Horace Fletcher has shown that the man who'll practice daintiness in eating, gradually sloughs off habits like those of tobacco and liquor. He proves indeed that "it takes a good judge of whisky to let it alone." The pampered man becomes the moral coward, while his more abstemious neighbor develops a quality of courage and endurance. Like all vir- tures, as well as vices, the courage that is needed in crises is built up slowly and laboriously. "So you are going to let your cook go?" "Yes. Can't afford to keep her. I don't mind the salary, but her tastes in food are out of my reach." SECTION 4 Health is the basis of moral and intellectual, as it is of physical, life. Thus, for example, all of us have noticed that at times of a depression due to fatigue, we are not capable of making moral PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 345 decisions that we would make when fresh from a good night's rest, or when we are run down by sickness, equally we have not our normal moral energy. This being so it is suitable that we should commence these lectures with a discussion of those ethical points which bear most directly upon the maintenance of individual health. The habits which contribute to health, or its opposite, We might conveniently subdivide as those con- cerned with intake of food, etc., and those con- cerned with out-going or expenditure of energy. We shall find that naturalness and simplicity in all things is much the whole secret of health. Hence no virtue can be more important than that of Simplicity of Tastes. " The trouble with nine out of ten habitual drinkers/ says W. T. Hadley, Supt. of the Hadley Memorial Home, at a recent celebration of the third anniversary of that institution, 'is that they have bad teeth. If your friend is a drinking man have him visit a dentist.' ' Now that nation-wide prohibition is sure to be enacted, is the time to agitate compulsory dental examination. Prohibition can only be a success when statutes against liquor are backed by the force of a public opinion, so if, in the course of human events, a dentally imperfect people de- mands its bottle, mere prohibitory statutes will avail nothing. What the liquor interests have to contend with isn't legislation, but the universal passion to reform things and the knowledge of the 346 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS cold indisputable facts which modern research, has established of the unredeemed harmfulness of alcohol. The legislation itself is an unfortu- nate feature ; interferes with the inalienable right of suicide. It would have been better to have gone to the other extreme and have established free public booze fountains in some remote spot where the weak and the oppressed together might end their sorrows. That, however, isn't the only remedy. The vice of drink, the infantile instinct carried to excess in the years of maturity, like most other vices thrives because it has been com- mercialized. The property of a concern whose business all men know to be an organized threat to their physical welfare can be protected only by force, the force of law, from being sacked and wrecked. Why bother, then, to force temperance upon people. Why not simply cease to employ (police) force and legislation in protecting perni- cious business interests. Outlaw all property used for specified baleful purposes; here's a solution and a suggestion for the long-wished-for "practi- cal program of constructive anarchism." At the end of two years (not to work too great a hard- ship nor cause surfeit of rioting) the sphere of government might shrink so as to not include police protection of distilleries and saloons, of patent medicine factories, or of any person oper- ating them. At the end of four years, a still further shrinkage, so not to include protection of tobacco plants, cigar stores, and breweries. At PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 347 the end of six years of this no-law method, pro- tection could be withdrawn from spices, Spanish cooked foods, cosmetics, hair-dye and jewelry. The end of eight years would usher in relief from ill-tempered cook-ladies, night-singing cats, book- agents, tax collectors, and middle of the road hogs. If the movement survived its decennial, it would show itself hardy enough to deny protection to munition factory interests. The largest stars and planets grow larger by eating up the little meteorites which come tumb- ling down from the sky, just as the big fishes in the ocean live upon the smaller ones, and they, upon those smaller still. 11 Max Nordau, the fa- mous apostle to the degenerate, in his book, "The Interpretation of History," shows how the great migrations of mankind, their wars, slavery, and other baleful institutions, have been due to the urge of hunger. These institutions have resulted from the need of food and the unwillingness to work unnecessarily hard for it, and since, in prim- itive society, success in life was measured by the possession of a superfluity of food and skins, of slaves enough so that one need do no menial work, but hunt and fight, therefore to this day a social prestige attaches to the waster and the idler, and to cruel, or at least combative sports. Veblen has shown how "conspicuous waste" be- came the ostentation of ruling castes, who in this "It's the obverse of the tragedy: "The big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em; the little fleas have littler fleas, and BO on ad infinitum." 348 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS way emphasized the difference between them- selves and the common herd of those who had to consider the expense of whatever they did. For- tunately the more obvious forms, at least of dis- play are now more apparent to a sophisticated world as being but a low form of self-advertise- ment exhibitionism on a par with that of the small child who cries "watch me" as he performs, or who prances naked into a room full of com- pany. But whereas the vanity of the child injures no one, the extravagance of the man destroys useful goods and forces others to work at un- necessary tasks. Let no one be deceived by the sophistry that to consume needless luxuries makes work for un- employed persons and hence is good. Had the money which went to buy luxuries remained in the bank, the bank would have had more money to loan to persons who wish to build homes and factories, etc., and hence to employ workmen. And the money you spend in the first case ceases to employ anyone once the luxury is made and by you consumed. Whereas on the other hand the money the bank lends to build a factory con- tinues to create more wealth, and that to create still more, employing workers in increasing num- bers. To praise mere consumption because it "gives employment to people" is like praising someone who should hire a laborer to build walls in the day time and knock them down every night. CHAPTER V. Habits of close attention, thinking heads, Become more rare as dissipation spreads, Till authors hear at length one general cry Tickle and entertain us, or we die! 1 This chapter will be given over to a discussion of Habit. If the book were written in less haste, here we could clearly show how, by self-training, each person can step himself up from phase to phase of character growth, and this to his own advan- tage. As it is, we shall endeavor to demonstrate this as best we can. As an illustration of how the principle would apply to reading, let's start with a person who reads simply at random what catches his eye newspaper head lines, adver- tisements or whatever. At the next higher stage of development (the second) he'll be persuing that which pleased by its capacity of affording genuine satisfaction rather than that which fascinated simply because it was, say, the novel of the day which everyone else was reading. The third stage is that of serious study undertaken delib- erately to advance us toward a goal; and when we have developed the capacity to enjoy this kind of reading, each successive book has all the inter- est of a new chapter in a "continued" serial story. The interest, even so, can be immensely enhanced 'Comper. 350 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS (fourth stage) if the purpose of the reading is increased efficiency toward our private ambitions not only, but in the service of others and of a cause greater than ourselves. SETION I "Books which are no books."-' "How various his employments whom the world calls idle, and who justly in return esteems that busy world an idler too." 3 It's easy to crack jokes at the expense of others whose slowness tantalizes us. We say "waiter, while you're out, send us a postcard occasionally," and laugh, tho we may be no quicker, ourselves. In the first section we propose, after a few words upon the vice of sloth, to discuss certain false assumptions that have been made by per- sons pretending to psychological knowledge. We shall thereby be able to detect what is false in certain vain theories of self-improvement. An excellent article by Purington, in the "In- dependent" contained advice of the head of a huge manufacturing concern outside whose doors hundreds of men were waiting for employment. He remarked: " 'We shall engage perhaps twenty per cent of the men outside. The other eighty per cent we cannot use. Of the twenty per cent engaged, probably half will leave or be discharged under six months. That is, only ten per cent of the =Lamb, Charles. Last Essay of Elia. Detached Thoughts on Books. 'Cooper. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 351 men who apply for a job are able to get and keep it. " 'What is wrong with the ninety per cent? I will tell you. They don't know literally hundreds of things that good workmen ought to know, but that most men will not take the time and pains to learn. " 'They don't know how to work ; we have to teach them. They don't know how to think; we try to teach them, but as yet have no reason to be proud of our success. They don't know what they can do best; we may have to transfer a man a half dozen times before he happens on a line of work that really interests him. They don't know what or when or how to eat; I figure that the average employee's working capacity is low- ered twenty per cent by foolish meal habits. They don't know how to live in their homes, and keep well for their work. This company loses $40,000 a year from preventable illness of em- ployes, and the employes themselves lose more than that. They don't know where to look for technical knowledge and the solution of their trade problems; our educational department has to answer for them hundreds of questions they ought to answer for themselves, or find answered in a book or magazine they should have on file. They don't know how to plan their future in this company or elsewhere; I judge that perhaps one man in fifty has clearly in mind a purpose, plan, picture, of his own life work the other forty- 352 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS nine men are drifting, empty-eyed, empty-hearted. They don't know why they are living at all, these men who come here for a job; and looking for work without feeling the joy of work is like pick- ing roses in the dark you get more thorns than flowers.' ' So much for the evil of a want of good habits, only less an evil than the possession of bad habits. A form of the latter not sufficiently dis- cussed in the Sunday School texts, is the carrying on of the outworn customs of our forefathers. It is in China that this has become the greatest curse. In Canton one day we visited the "City of the Dead." Here were mortuaries where new- ly-deceased persons who could afford to do so might rest in pomp until an auspicious spot were discovered for their burial. Coffins are beautifully lacquered with successive coats until their originally rough surface becomes perfect. From the side walls of the mortuary chamber de- pended long streamers of condolence, presented by friends. Most interesting of all were the paper effigies of servants, of food, and of "moun- tains of gold and silver" (tinsel) to be burnt at the final funeral service, in order that the spirit of the departed might want nothing. An interesting feature of the Chinese temples is their very general character as resorts for the care of diseases. "Nothing under the sun is new"; listen to how the best medical practice of today was fore-run by the ancient Chinese, whose PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 353 ways their modern descendants still imitate. A wealthy Chinese woman, attended by her maid, enters the temple. 3 After buying various kinds of josh-sticks, they plant these before the altar and light them. A well-dressed young Chi- nese in the employ of the temple, who has been "sizing her up" steps forward to ask her name and importune her for a donation; she offers one dollar (Mexican) and after holding out for five, he finally is contented with the one. She now takes in her hand and shakes patiently a piece of hollow bamboo that contains scores of little sticks with inscriptions upon them. She holds this slantingly, so that as she shakes it, some of the sticks work themselves up and out. These sticks designate which medicines she shall purchase from a near-by booth for the cure of her malady: A young Chinese statesman who was travelling on the same boat with the present writer a few years ago, was interested in the extirpation of religions from his country, especially Confucian- ism and Buddhism, because of their effect in perpetuating outworn customs. Let us quote here some pages 5 from Sinclair's "Profits of Re- ligion" on the retarding effects of Christianity: "Consider their prestige with the press and in politics, their hold upon literature and the arts, their control of education and the minds of chil- "This note is dated Dec. 2, 1915. 'Sinclair, Upton The Profits of Religion. Pp. 55-60. 354 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS dren, of charity and the lives of the poor ; consider all this, and then say what it means to society that such a power must be, in every new issue that arises, on the side of reaction and falsehood." 'So it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,' runs the church's formula. "Here is the Reverend Edward Massey, preach- ing in 1772 on 'The Dangerous and Sinful Prac- tic of Inoculation' ; declaring that Job's distemper was probably confluent small-pox; that he had been inoculated doubtless by the devil; that dis- eases are sent by Providence for the punishment of sin ; and that the proposed attempt to prevent them is a diabolical operation. Here are the Scotch clergy of the middle of the nineteenth century denouncing the use of choloroform in obstetrics! because it is seeking 'to avoid one part of the primeval curse on woman.' Here is Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford anathematizing Darwin: 'The principle of natural selection is absolutely incompatible with the word of God,' And the Bishop settled the matter by asking Huxley whether he was descended from an ape thru his grandmother or grandfather. "And you think that conditions are changed today? But consider syphillis and gonorrhea, about which we know so much, and can do almost nothing; consider birth-control, which we are sent to jail for so much as mentioning! Consider the divorce reforms for which the world is crying and for which it must wait because of St. Paul ! PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 355 Realize that up to date it has proven impossible to persuade the English Church to permit a man to marry his deceased wife's sister! That when the war broke upon England the whole nation was occupied with a squabble over the disestablish- ment of the church of Wales! Only since 1888 has it been legally possible for an unbeliever to hold a seat in Parliament ; while up to the present day men are tried for blasphemy and convinced under the decisions of Lord Hale, to the effect that 'It is a crime to deny the truth of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion or to hold them up to contempt or ridicule.' Said Mr. Jus- tice Horridge, at the West Riding Assizes, 1911: 'A man is not free in any public place to use com- mon ridicule on subjects which are sacred.' "And the one essential to prosecution is always that the victim shall be obscure and helpless; never by any chance is he a duke in a drawing- room. "A teacher of mathematics named Holyoake, presumed to discuss in a public hall the starvation of the working classes of the country. A preacher objected that he had discussed 'our duty to our neighbor' and neglected 'our duty to God' ; where- upon the lecturer replied: 'Our national Church and general religious institutions cost us, upon accredited computation, about twenty million pounds annually. Worship being thus expensive, I appeal to your heads and your pockets whether we are not too poor to have a God. While our distress lasts, I think it would be wise to put deity upon half pay,' And for the utterance the un- fortunate teacher of mathematics served six months in the common Gaol at Gloucester! "While men were being tried for publishing the 'Freethinker,' the Premier of England was Wil- liam Edward Gladstone. Read his efforts to prove that the writer of Genesis was an inspired geolo- gist ! This writer points out in Nature 'a grand, fourfold division, set forth in an orderly succes- sion of times : First, the water populations ; sec- ondly, the air population, thirdly, the land popu- lation of animals; fourthly, the land population consummated in man.' And it seems that this division and sequence 'is understood to have been so affirmed in our time by natural science that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established act.' "Hence we must conclude of the writer of Gen- esis that 'his knowledge was divine !' Consider that this was actually published in one of the leading British monthlies, and it was necessary for Pro- fessor Huxley to answer it, pointing out that so far is it from being true that 'a fourfold division and orderly sequence' of water, air and land ani- mals 'has been affirmed in our time by natural science,' that on the contrary, the assertion is 'directly contradictory to facts known to every- one who is acquainted with the elements of nat- ural science.' The distribution of fossils proves that land animals originated before sea-animals, 357 and there has been such a mixing of land, sea and air animals as utterly to destroy the requisi- tion of iDOth Genesis and Gladstone as possessing a divine knowledge of Geology. "I have a friend, a well-known 'scholar,' who permits me the use of his extensive library. I see in the dim shadows walls lined from floor to ceiling with decorous and grave looking books. There are literally thousands of such, and their theme is the pseudo-science of 'divinity.' I close my eyes to make the test fair, and walk to the shelves and take a book. It proves to be a modern work. 'A history of the English Prayer-book in Relation to the Doctrine of the Eucharist.' I turn the pages and discover that it is a study of the variations of one minute detail of church doc- trine. This learned divine he has written many such works, as the advertisements inform us fills up the greater part of his pages with foot-notes from hundreds of authorities, arguments and counter-arguments over supernatural subtleties. I will give one sample of these footnotes asking the reader to be patient: "I add the following valuable observation, of Dean Goode: ('On Eucharist,' II p. 757. See also Archbishop Ware in Gibson's 'Preservative,' vovl. X, chap. II). 'One great point for which our devines have contended, in opposition to Romish errors, has been the reality of that presence of Christ's Body and Blood to the soul of the believer which is affected thru the operation of the Holy Spirit notwithstanding the absence of that Body and Blood in Heaven. Like the Sun, the Body of Christ is both prea- 358 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ent and absent; present, really, and truly present, in one sense that is, by .the soul being brought into immediate communion with but absent in another sense that is as regards the contiguity of its substance to our bodies. The authors under review, like the Romanists, maintain that this is not a Real Presence, and assuming their own interpretation of the phrase of divines who, though using the phrase, and its misapplication by the Church of Rome, have induced many of our divines to repudiate it, etc.' " "Realize that of the work from which this Val- uable observation' is quoted, there are at least two volumes, the second volume containing not less than 757 pages! Realize that in Gibson's 'Preservative' there are not less than ten volumes of such writing! Realize that in this twentieth century a considerable portion of the mental ener- gies of the world's greatest empire is devoted to that kind of learning!" "The date upon the volume is 1910. I was in England within a year of that time, and so I can tell what was the condition of the English people while printers were making and papers were re- viewing the book-stores were distributing this work of ecclesiastical research. I walked along the Embankment and saw the pitiful wretches, men, women and sometimes children, clad in filthy rags, starved white and frozen blue, soaked in winter rains and shivering in winter winds, home- less, hopeless, unheeded by the doctors of divinity, unpreserved by Gibson's 'Preservative.' I walked on Hampstead Heath on Easter day, when the population of the slums turns out for its one holi- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 359 day ; I walked literally trembling with horror, for I had never seen such sights nor dreamed of them. These creatures were hardly to be recog- nized as human beings; they were some new grotesque race of apes. They could not walk, they could only shamble; they could not laugh, they could only leer. I saw a hand-organ playing, and turned away the things they did in their efforts to dance were not to be watched. And then I went out into the beautiful English country; cul- tured and charming ladies took me in swift, smooth motor-cars, and I saw the pitiful hovels and the drink-sodden, starch-poisoned inhabitants slum-populations everywhere, even on the land ! "What the Church means in human affairs is the rule of the aged ... I look up their ages in Who's Who, and I find the average age of the goodly company is seventy. There have been men in history who have retained their flexibility of mind, at the age of seventy, but these men were trained in science and practical affairs, never in dead languages and theology. One of the oldest of the English prelates, the Archbishop of Can- terbury, recently stated to a newspaper reporter that he worked seventeen hours a day, and had no time to form an opinion on the labor question. "But that, you may say, was a long time ago. If so, let us take a modern country, turn to Rafael Shaw's 'Spain from Within.' "On every side the people see the baleful hand of the Church interfering or trying to interfere in 360 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS their domestic life, ordering the conditions of em- ployment, draining them of their hard-won liveli- hood by trusts and monopolies established and maintained in the interest of the Religious Or- ders, placing obstacles in the way of their chil- dren's education, hindering them in the exercise of their constitutional rights, and deliberately ruining those of them who were bold enough to run counter to priestly dictation ... "As to the location of the schools, a report of the Minister of Education to the Cortes, the Par- liament of Spain, sets forth as follows : "More than 10,000 schools are on hired prem- ises, and many of these are absolutely destitute of hygienic conditions. "There are schools mixed up with hospitals, with cemeteries, with slaughter houses, with stables." At the beginning of our criticism of certain widely spread theories about the mind, let it be said that even so inspired a psychologist as Wm. James committed himself to certain points of view which now are regarded as unsound. For instance, we no longer can accept his view that all conduct is ideo-motor. No more can we agree with him that the best way to break off an old habit is always and necessarily to quit it abso- lutely once for all ; in the case of morphine habit this method may result in stoppage of the heart. James' idea of exercising "the will" by daily unpleasant tasks also smacks of the old faculty PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 361 psychology. The faculty "was regarded as a pow- er, a vital tendency of our organism, like a limb on tentacle of the soul." This must be borne in mind by the reader when he comes to the lengthy quotation we shall give presently from James. But if so noted a psychologist sometimes went astray what shall be said of those commercially- ijmpelled persons and schools whose advertise- ments are found in newspapers and magazines? Exactly like the testimonials for patent medicines are the enticing avowals of the. man who is now paid $50,000 a year as a result of following the exercises in somebody's book, or who has learned to read character at sight, or who increased his "will power in a few hours" or "really" improved his "memory in one evening." Unfortunately the gains made by pupils are only such as any one can make in anything by becoming intensely inter- ested in it. The bases of these systems have been known for many years, but the extravagant claims made are not borne out by the tests of the univer- sity laboratory, nor of commercial firms which have wanted to use them in their employment departments. We discussed in Chapter 2, the division of con- ductand of character into two opposing types. It now will be logically in order to take up the further division into four or a comparatively limited number of classifications. Let's first re- view at least one effort of this kind which is of importance at least historically. 362 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS To Miss Taylor we are indebted for the following survey of attempts to account for human characteristics on the basis of "temperaments." First the physiological attempt. From 131-210 A. D. dates a fourfold division accord- ing to the predominance of one of the four "humors"; the blood giving sanguine temperament, lymph giving the lymphatic or choleric, yellow bile giving bilious or melancholic, and black bile giving atrabilious or phleg- matic. This division is still popular notwithstanding that no such thing as "black bile" exists. A later defines the choleric as quick and strong, the sanguine as quick and weak, the melancholic as slow and strong, and the phlegmatic as slow and weak. The phrenologists derived four temperaments from the proportionate mixture of elements in the body. They enumerated : 1. Motor Temperament Corresponding to ancient choleric. 2. Vital Corresponding to sanguine and lymphatic. 3. Mental Corresponding to melancholic. 4. Balanced or Temperate Corresponding to com- bination of 1, 2 and 3. I have failed to find the actual chemical analyses upon which they doubtelss (?) based their theory. Kant enumerated a sensitive type with light blood (sanguine), sensitive with thick blood (melancholy), active or volitional with hot blood (choleric), and active or volitional with hot blood (choleric) and active or volitional with cold blood (phlegmatic). He didn't trouble to follow up his assumption with the blood-chart and thermometer. Lotze, using the fourfold demarkation based on de- gree of strength and quickness derived from our end organs, notes also: 1. Kind and degree of excitability for external im- pression. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 363 2. Extent to which the ideas excited reproduce oth- ers. 3. Rapidity with which ideas vary. 4. Strength of pleasure and pain associated with the ideas. 5. Ease with which external actions associate with these ideas themselves. Lotze believes the sanguine temperament typifies childhood; the sentimental, youth; the choleric, ma- turity; and the phlegmatic, old age. To certain entire nations also he ascribes one or an- other temperament; tho without telling us how many rods across the border one must go to note the change. Secondly we may consider the psychobiological school. Thus Baldwin defines the temperaments as the char- acteristic differences in the emotional susceptibilities, in the rapidity of their mental processes, and in the fixity of their conations. Lass classifies temperaments on the basis of heredity rather than of environment, since a "disposition" maintains itself under great alternations in circum- stances. When, if ever, it appears greatly modified, this is at the expense of greater effort than is required to alter any mere habit. Joseph Jastrow in an article in the Popular Science Monthly reviews the various attempts made since early times to define character and temperament. In a book of his own published in 1917, "Character and Temperament," he gives a rambling survey of present-day general information on the subject. Jastrow has temperament as a specialization of na- ture upon the basis of common inheritance; and the problem is to classify these individual variations into groups. He proposes the predominance in ail indi- vidual of either sensitivity or activity or of neither or both, as a basis for classification, thus: 1. Sensitive-active type, or sanguine. 364 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 2. Sensitive-active or melancholy. 3. Sensitive-active or choleric. 4. Sensitive-active, or phlegmatic. Each of us has a variety of potentialities, and whether we develop one or other of them is due to the selective action of his profession and other environment. Thirdly, let's take up the psycho-physiological school. Wundt's classification is derived from the ancients via Kant; he uses strong and quick, strong and slow, etc. Kulpe agrees with this. Hoffding says we must add to these four combinations, the tendency to one of those great opposites of the life of feeling, and include the light and the dark temperament. These point to the influence of vegi- tative functions upon the brain, where the older four show the responsiveness of the organism to external stimuli. Ribot follows Jastrow in his emphasis on sensibility and activity, but with much subdivision and elabora- tion of types. He gives: 1. Sensitive temperament. 1'. Humble type. 2'. Contemplative type. 1". Irresolute like Hamlet. P". Certain unproductive mystics. 3". Self-analystics. 3'. Emotional type. 2. Active temperament. 1', Vital. 2C Intellectually powerful. 3. Lymphatic. 1'. Apathetic. 2'. Intellectually powerful. 1". Speculative. 2". Practical calculators, characterized by (!"') effort, and (2"') inhibition. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 365 4. Temperate, or mixed. ... .:.-._;.; 1'. Sensitive-active (harmonious) in (1") lower* (2") higher, degree. 2'. Lymphatic-active, unalterable, "moral." 3'. Lymphatic-sensitive (stoic). 4'. Temperate, "episodic." Fourthly, we pass to the psychological type of theories. Here stand today Yerkes, Tichener, Mary Calkins, who all regard temperament as a good term for congenital susceptibility to emotion stimuli and for particular char- acter of response, and accept the usual fourfold divi*. sion. Fifthly and finally we come to chemical-physical the- ories. Seeland, a Russian anthropologist, rebelling against the assumed equality of value to the race of the several temperaments, arranges the following hierarchy: 1. Strong or Postive. 1'. Gay, including (1 ") strong sanguine, (2") weaker, and (3") serene, 2" phlegmatic, or calm. 2. Balanced or neutral "unknown to science, tho that of the majority of men." 3. Weak or negative. 1'. Pure melancholic. 2'. Nervous, versatile. 3'. Choleric (rare outside of genius). How much of the above notes are Miss Taylor's, we're not sure. Our own notes on the topic, of which the earlier ones were taken in a lecture course given by Prof. Jastrow at the University of Wisconsin back in 1910, follow: Experiments on soldiers on a diet showed no dif- ferences in changes of weight, secretions, etc., could be correlated with "sanguinity" or "choler" of tempera- ment. Rejecting the chemical theory, Seeland attribute* 366 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS temperament to an elementary life alleged to exist in the tissues besides their general activity. The gay tem- perament would correspond to rapid and harmonious molecule vibrations, etc. This recalls Hartley's "vibra- tinncles" again, or even Democritus. In sum, the great amount of study which has been given to the temperaments by persons of even the best scientific standing, forbids us to pass the subject dis- respectfully by. A scientific basis yet may be found perhaps in motor response to the autonomic system. But the work so far done is suggestively at best and often becomes humorous. When a scientist seriously distinguishes the "humble" as a temperament, we won- der whether "satanic" or "ananiac" won't come next. An historical study of various theories of human nature, but of which none have really landed us any- where, has been made by Prof. Joseph Jastrow, and summarized by him in an article in the Popular Science Monthly. From this survey Prof. Jastrow proceeds to his own exposition of the subject in his book, "Char- acter and Temperament," which covers well the field of modern theory, tho is not wholly happy in leaving his readers with a clear-cut idea of its contents. We al- ready have given attention to one of the theories upon which he lays much stress, that of the four tempera- ments. But from early times a more multiform classi- fication of human motives than has been desired. An attempt to supply this was and is made by the astrolo- gers, palmists, phrenologists, physiognomists and char- acter-readers or fortune tellers of every ilk, clime, and time. As the outstanding example of the hasty generaliza- tion to which an excess of curiosity may lead, consider the prematurely born pseudo-science of character-read- ing. We abstract from Prof. Jastrow. There appears to be little hope of the refinement or discovery of a shortcut method of reading character di- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 367 rect from human measurements.* To begin with, the very term character itself isn't the designation of any tangible fact, but only a convenient way of referring to certain phases of psychology. Then, secondly, so much of characters that strike us as individual are in actuality group traits, and super- ficial. It's possible to fathom the man only after it is proven possible to fathom the group. The apparent qualities that appear in his achievements are largely resultant on interests pushed to the front by the ideals of the group, these ideals of course being in turn a function of the kind of heroes the group feels need of at any particular age. Thirdly, the "character" idea has been worked for all it was worth on account of its moral availability, as where in the bible certain types are held up to teach lessons, and show the play of the "ethical." Fourthly, an over-emphasis on the possibility of char- acter-reading inevitably has grown out of man's im- memorial unwillingness to accept things merely without accounting for them. The wonder excited by new discoveries in science at about the period of the rennaissance served to heighten the natural credulity of the middle ages, and interest in the study of character was revived by Carau and Baptista de la Porta.s It centered about Lavater (1741- 1801), a clergyman, who building upon morphological facts supplied by his friend Goethe, founded the "sci- ence" of physiognomy. A greater influence, however, was exerted by the bombastic Herder, author of the anonymous "Secret Diary of a Father," and who found enormous popularity in supplying the demand for handy recipes of a more trashy character than had been coun- tenanced by the credulous but devout Lavater. Franz Joseph Gall (1757-1858), the founder of Phrenology, appealed, owing to his reputation as an anatomist, to an entirely different audience; nevertheless, scientific 368 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS men refused to accept this vagary of his and Spurtzheim's as set forth in the "Anatomy of the Nervous System and of the Brain in Particular." After his death his tenets became greatly corrupted. Gall and Spurtzheim trav- elled Europe extensively, beginning each lecture with an exhibition of their marvelous skill in dissecting the brain and giving a learned dissertation; then they car- ried over the prestige so gained into the other field. Gall had a wonderful collection of head-moulds; it was the age of the beginning of anthroponetry. See also Benton, Anatomy of melancholy. Spurtzheim had real psychological insight and recog- nized a difference between fundamental and superficial qualities. Gall named 24 faculties, Spurtzheim 37 "propensities" and "sentiments." Almost as good as the previous ideas of John Locke! Now comes the advent of charlatans. Manuals ignore the sources of their lore, regardless of the fact that Spurtzheim rejected "the four temperaments," etc. We read of "the architectural nose, like a Greek column," etc. We abandon adherence to any kind of system. Faculties are located all over the face, as well as over the brain. The mass of scientists opposed the movement and James Braid, the first scientific hypnotist, lost in this way his prestige; he threw subjects into trance, and pressed organs, later he recognized his error. Thus has attempt at a study of character and tempera- ment been swamped by this impatient attempt to storm science, and get conclusions before proof. In the 19th century Humbolt, Curier and others drew attention to individual differences till finally it became clear that the nervous system was at bottom of all characteristics. So long as we couldn't tell the functions of the larger parts of the nerve system it was evident we couldn't go into details to the extent that phrenology pretended to have done. As an example of a more worthy attempt than most to defend one of those pseudo-sciences which once quite PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULN'SS 369 overcame popular (untrained) criticism -let us review a chapter on "The Neglect of Phrenology," written by a man whose credulity on this topic too much eclipsed in academic circles the lustre of his real contributions to science A. R. Wallace. Our criticism may show the reader how easily there may be formulated for astrology, palmistry, physiognomy, telepathy, theosophy, theology, or what not an argument able to pass muster even with persons of scientific attainment if they be not versed in the mechanism of minds. But to Wallace: the interspersed numbers in brackets are for reference in the criticism which follows his account: "In the last years of the eighteenth century Dr. 'Gall * * * rediscovered the facts * * * that the brain is the organ of the mind that different parts of the brain are connected with different mental and physical manifesta- tions (1), and that, other things being equal (2), size of the brain and of its various parts is an indication of mental power.' He became certain that 'strongly marked peculiarities of character or talent (3) were associated with constant peculiarities in the form of the head' (4). He painstakingly made 'collections of skulls and casts of skulls of persons having special mental character- istics' (5), 'made comparisons of form and size with mental faculties' (6), etc. He began, in 1796, lecturing, taking Dr. Spurtzheim through Europe, in 1807. Spurtz- heim lectured in Great Britain from 1813 to 1817. Through him George Combe became interested and began 'his long course of personal observation and study which rendered him the best English exponent of the science.' 'His great reputation as a religious, social, and educa- tional reformer and philosophical thinker (7) led to his being welcomed in the best social, scientific, and political circles. But * * * phrenology * * * was *-*.* rejected by the great bulk of the scientific and literary men of his time'." Gall, Spurtzheim, and Combe * * * "studied the skull, 370 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS its varying thicknesses in different parts and at dif- ferent ages, as well as under the influence of disease. And it was only after making allowance for every sort of uncertainty or error (8) that they announced the possibility of determining character * * * (9), often (10) with marvelous exactness (11). Surely this was a scientific mode of procedure (12), and the only sound method" (13). Combe examined phrenologically the heads of several patients at the Newcastle Lunatic Asylum, in 1835, Mr. Mackintosh, the Surgeon-Superintendent of the asylum, having already noted down their characteris- tics. In the five cases here given there were no dis- crepancies between the reports of the two men, and such striking parallels in each case as the following: Phrenologist's Report. Superintendent's Report- 1. HOPE small, MORAL FACULTIES deficient (14). Money mania, wealth. 2. ACQUISIT I V E N E S S enormously large (15). A P roselvte Jew 5 wil1 lea <* 3. FIRMNESS, SBLF-ES- the Jews tO the con( l ue8t TEEM large (16). of En S land - 4. Organ of NUMBER Dementia> perpetually em- (17) exceedingly large. ployed wjth figureg and 5. HOPE extremely small; with arithmet ic. destructiveness (18), excessively large. Suicidal monomania. At another asylum, with more explicit phrenological readings, the history of each of three cases was clearly indicated by the phrenologist. Also in Newcastle Jail, the same thing was shown in several cases, of which three are given. Dr. Elliotson examined, as a test for a phrenological society, the skull of a person to him unknown. The correspondence between the character outlined and the man's history was remarkably con- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 371 vincing. A phrenologist examined one hundred forty- eight convicts under charge of a Navy Surgeon previous to a voyage to New South Wales, giving the Surgeon his memoranda for comparison with the traits shown during the voyage. After the four-months' voyage the Surgeon reported that the phrenologist was right in every case but one, and that the phrenologist's report enabled the officer to put in custody malcontents who had planned a mutiny (19). Archbishop Whatley sent a cast of his own head to three different phrenologists, and received three har- monious and accurate reports, with revelation of at least one trait known only to the subject himself. Wallace submits the delineation given of his own character by phrenologists, and concludes that the corroboration of facts to insight is convincing (20). Phrenology seems easy but is very difficult, as one must be skilled in "detecting the comparative size of the organs * * * and in estimating the complicated results produced by the various combinations of or- gans as influenced by temperament, education, and so- cial position" (21). Dr. John Elliotson, founder of the Phrenological As- sociation, was the chief defender of operations during mesmeric trance, "for supporting and practicing which his professorship was taken from him" (22). Objection to the detailed classification of the mental faculties, and to the names given to the several or- gans, is the same as to the nomenclature in other sci- ences, as in geology (23). There is room for improve- ment in the enumeration of the mental faculties, but not by those who classify from their own consciousness, which does not reveal the brain-organs on which the faculties depend (24). No scientific objector, as Combe urged, "was able to give any knowledge of the relations of the mind and brain by other means" (25). 372 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS \ In . 1870. several Continental physiologists and Pro- fessor Ferrier, in England, began experiments on the brains of living animals, and by galvanic currents local- ized the functions of the brain in producing muscular movements. These facts in no wise preclude the pos- sibility of the brain's being the center for initiating ideas as well. Examples showing the "correspondence of the motor- areas of Ferrier with the phrenological organs of which the particular motions are the natural expression": Ferrier. Excitation of a certain area elevated the cheeks and angles of the mouth with closure of the eyes. No other region pro- duced the same effect. The expression of joy or amazement is the draw- ing back of the corners of the mouth. The earliest symptoms of general paralysis of the insane, which is almost always accompanied by optimism and delusions of wealth, etc., is the trembling at the corners of the mouth and the outer corners of the eyes. Facial movements. Center producing mo- tions of the tongue, cheek-pouches, and jaws in monkeys, exactly as in tasting. 4, Center of power of see- ing and attending to definite objects (not the center of vision, which is situated in an- other part of the brain) ; the outward manifesta- tion, a fixed gaze. Phrenological Organ. 1. The brain center cor- responds in position with the organ of HOPE, whose manifes- tation is cheerfulness (26). 2. Organ of IMITATION, which gives power of mimicry (27). 3. Organ of GUSTATIVE- NESS (28). 4. Organ of CONCEN- TRATIVENESS (29). PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 373 I. Centers for motions in- 5. Organ of DESTRUC- dicating anger; in cats, TIVENESS (perhaps opening of mouth, with badly named) (30). spitting, and lashing of tail. This correspondence is remarkable "confirmation as regards most of the motor-centers. "The motions of parts of the body resulting from stimulations of various brain-centers were really the physical expression of mental emotions * * * long since assigned to the phrenological organs situated in the same parts of the brain" (31). The main principles of phrenology, once denied, but which now form part of a recognized science, are! "1. The brain is the organ of the mind" (32). "2. Size is, other things being equal, a measure of power" (33). "3. The brain is a congeries of organs, each having its appropriate faculty" (34). "4. The front of the brain is the seat of our percep- tive and reflective faculties; the top, of our higher senti- ments; the back and sides, of our animal instincts." (Now all physiologists admit that this general division is correct.) (35.). "5. The form of the skull during life corresponds so close to that of the brain that it is possible to de- termine the proportionate development of various parts of the latter by an examination of the former." (Now admitted by all anatomists.) Quite aside from the fact that the Zurich neurologist Molokoff has somewhat successfully attacked the whole extreme theory of brain centers, some chief flaws in Wallace's imposing argument are the following: (1) But whether these parts of the brain connect with the type of functions claimed by Gall is the point in dispute. (2) "Other things" (than the size of the brain or 374 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS organ) never are "equal." So of what value could this test be? (3) The trouble is that phrenologists assume gratui- tously unit traits "of character or talent" to corre- spond to certain names which language happens to have developed. The unlikelihood of any such correspond- ence in fact should be evident when we consider how the meanings of words change from generation to gen- eration must we assume a parallel evolution pari passu of the units of human "character or talent?" (4) The peculiarities of the head are "constant." But "character or talent" is sometimes enormously al- tered under the tutelage of outward events and the ma- turing of inner processes. 05) As the characteristics of each person were known to the examiner whom they had interested to the point of procuring the skull, this could hardly have failed to bias his results. We usually find what we eagerly hope to find. (6) The crux of the whole matter is here: there are no mental faculties. For example, there is no such thing as "the memory" there are innumerable specific mem- ories for numbers, for faces, for names, for places, for types of boats, for types of locomotives as many as 1 a man's interests, and as impossible even to name and classify. But we shall discuss this at length later. (7) Spurtzheim's achievement in certain fields is no voucher for correctness in another. (8) "Making allowances for every sort of uncer- tainty" is a sweeping claim. Too sweeping, as we think we shall show. How can a man know he has allowed for every sort? (9) Character then is only physical, and independent even of the connections formed between one center and the next by the habits of life, to say nothing of the re- finement of abilities through culture, the alteration of PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 375 one's whole philosophy through the acquisition of a new viewpoint, or the sway of a great passion? (10) "Often" covers a multitude of inexactnesses. (11) Who was referee of the exactness? (12) Scientific perhaps so far as it went. (13) If this is the only sound method perhaps what we need is patience to wait for one more sound. (14), (15), and (18) Not highly hazardous guesses in the case of a criminal. (16) Why measure a man's head for what can more easily be read from his mannerisms? (17) What becomes of the "organ" in child prodi- gies who suddenly acquire or as suddenly lose a spe- cialized ability? Does an "organ" in the one case sud- denly puff up, and in the other case suddenly collapse flat? (19) Marvelous! Lombrasso and the whole anthro- pometric school of criminologists have worked for dec- ades and measured thousands and thousands of cases in the endeavor to establish some such correspondences as these. To be able to do so would immensely facilitate the work of the authorities; yet this school is quite discredited. (20) Whatley and Wallace were well known char- acters. Had casts of obscure and unknown persons been submitted for examination, the coincidence would have been more remarkable. (21) This is really shameless. A loophole provided for every failure, and this pretended science is seen to be negligible compared with the cleverness or otherwise of the person who applies it. When "temperament" as well as "education and social position" are known, the remaining task for phrenology is not severe. (22) Too much sometimes is made of these preju- dices, bad as prejudice always is. The early history of "mesmerism" was so full of charlatanry that it's no wonder careful men were skeptical of the whole sub- 376 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ject. We shall study hypnotism later; suffice it that plenty of struggling young surgeons today would jump at the chance of notoriety thru anaesthetising by hypno- tism, had this method proven dependable. These same pioneer phrenologists would hypnotize a subject, and in his hearing say to the audience, "You will now note that when I press (such an) organ, the subject will be struck by (such an) emotion" thereby "proving" their contentions. 7 (23) Naming and classifying objective things is be- yond all comparison easier than doing the same to things subjective. (24) Two false assumptions are (1) that there are "faculties" and (2) that "organs" in the brain can be sharply distinguished at all. (25) On the contrary, physiologists have been very ingenious in devising other means of studying the so- called "relations of the mind and brain," as elsewhere we shall see. (26) Most other emotions also manifest partly thru the facial muscles. Conversely, hope and cheerfulness are essentially more related to the internal organs and glands. (27) Mimicry isn't limited to facial expression. (28) "Gustativeness" to be a matter of sensation, not, as here implied, of motivation. (29) This "center" is really a bony protuberance, most prominent in the apes, who aren't famous for "concentrativeness." On the other hand, it has been abundantly shown that concentration of various kinds is essentially related to the temporarily dominant interest. (30) More than badly named, we should say, since ail the outer muscles of the body are likely to be in- volved in "destructiveness," and since anger has been shown by Cannon* to be related essentially with the Adrenal gland. From Jastrow. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 377 (32) and (33) The truth contained in these state* ments did not originate with phrenology. (34) Discussed above. (35) Absolutely not. There's no school of physio- logical psychology which designates the front of the brain as a locus of "perceptive faculties" nor the top as locus of "our higher sentiments." One modern tendency even is to regard the fore-brain as an emotional center rather than an intellectual. In the same way as we have discussed Wallace's book we might take up with you other works upon the same pseudo-science, or on others. It's a fact that many bod- ily functions have locatable brain centers; phrenology is a scientifically unjustifiable belaboring of that fact. It's a fact that every object in the universe has some minute influence over every other (thru gravity, etc.); astology is the unjustifiable belaboring of this fact. It's sure that our habits of life stamp certain creases upon our hands and faces; palmistry and physiognomy are unjustifiable belaborings of this fact. It's true that the theory of vibration has been of much use in science, also true that people get "hunches" and catch one an- other's feelings by unconscious processes; some of the literature of New Thot is a belaboring of these facts. Any one of these pseudo-sciences can give a remarkable set of testimonials of its success. The question is, was it the technique based upon the "science" which achieved the result, or was it the personality of him who made use of it? Was it by rigid adherence to the rules of card-reading that the gypsy so accurately read your character, or were those rules only a foil for the opera- tions of her shrewd intuition? Was it thru his correct theory and technique that the practitioner of some new cult healed you, or by some more subtle influence which still makes his explanations ridiculous? The difference is profound and is important for so long as our founda- 378 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS tion is in the least insecure everything built upon it is a source of danger. "No one can deny," says John Newman in a news- paper article, "The amazing exactness with which a for- tune teller appears to be able to read the character and to describe the past events in the life of the person who has come asking to have his or her 'fortune told.' The ability is so general that the scientific basis of it cannot be hard to follow. Like most elements of supposed mystery it is due to a very simple set of circumstances. "Every emotion is definitely accompanied by physical changes more or less marked, and this is so true that it is impossible even to imitate these emotions of love, fear, revenge, anger, etc., without these physical changes appearing also. The variation in the size of the pupil of the eye is one of the most infallible of these, always occurring with every change of mood and thought, and always being a purely involuntary act. One cannot in- crease or decrease the size of the pupil of the eye at will, but at the same time one cannot be angry without the pupil contracting, one cannot be filled with passionate ardor without the pupil enlarging. "Surprise, such as is felt by the patron or the client at the unexpected guess of a fortune-teller, finds ready response in the blood pressure, and the palmistry ex- pert, in addition to other signs, has a sure guide in the pulsation of the blood when he or she is nearing a dis- closure. A slight movement of the eyes, a deep breath, a quickened pulse, a dampening of the skin reveals to the mind-reader that a hidden thought is on the verge of being revealed * * * It is the same principle that makes some men poker experts. They have learned to read the tiny involuntary changes which chase them- selves unbidden over the faces and gestures of opponents. No amount of self-control can prevent these changes of expression, for they are outside the power of the will. "But so many evils have attended these manifestations PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 379 from the time of the late M. Bishop to my own day, such a widespread cult has arisen through which almost any lying frauds can be palmed off on deluded masses, that the public has every right to know there is not a single strange, unusual, more than prosaic explanation for the whole deceptive system of telepathy and mind reading. I will give here and now, a test which any person can apply to any mind reader, which, simple as it is in its requirements, will force immediate exposure of his claims. "Ask him to tell you what you intend to do tomorrow. "Unless you yourself have in some way given the information to him or a confederate, he will fail, and fail utterly. He will fail because there has never been in the whole history of the human race a single genuine instance of mind reading. "Here is another test for demonstrating that every mind reader does not read minds, but reads signs: "Try to find a single instance of mind reading where the thing has been successfully done that has not had the thought, which was read, translated into some word or action by the subject himself. You will find not one because not one has ever existed. For the so-called mind reader to tell you what was in your mind he must have your thought outwardly manifested by you in such a manner that some one of his trained and expert senses can interpret it as plainly as if you had spoken the words in his ear. "It is merely because he begins with senses the eye chiefly that are more acute than those of the ordinary civilized man, that he is able to display acumen which to less finely endowed persons looks like telepathic in- sight into their brain and heart. Upon his original gifts he grafts incessant practice and an intensely nerv- ous concentration which practically doubles their effi- ciency, so exhausting is the strain of some of the 'mind- reading' seances, purely because of the operator's con- 380 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ceiitratlon of nervous energy, that they often leave liini weak -as- if from some terrific struggle;" s MTich criticism which science must meet is owing to the distortion of her hypotheses by cultists, who wish to bask in her prestige even while they revile her as "ma- terialistic." Usually these cults are themselves more materialistic than science, in their clumsy attempts to revive explanations of mental processes in outworn terms of vibrations, waves, etc. If eventually terms of move- ment for all the phenomena of nature is found acceptible, it can never be as crude a one as those now printed in popular "methaphysical" circles so called. And while as the science of biology is becoming chemical, the sci- ence of psychology is becoming physiologial, still the lat- ter is tending directly away from that premature type of materialism which ignored the meaningful nature of conduct. In C. G. Jung's "Psychology of the Uncon- scious" (p. 315) are some data worth quoting here. In former ages the mind was regarded as a substance, the forces of nature were personified, and mental disorders were the work of evil spirits. Even today this conception has a certain credence and expression, the classical ex- ample being that of the elder Pastor Blumhardt's driving out : the devil, in the famous case of Gottlieb in Deltus. Yet in the sixteenth century at the Julius Hospital in Wurzburg, mental patients received humane treatment side by side with the physically ill. With the coming of the first scientific ideas, the barbaric personification of unknown power disappeared; but the underlying con- ception that "every misfortune was the revenge of of- fended gods" became the belief that mental diseases were due to sin. Such views held until, at the beginning of the last century, in France, Pinel, "whose statue fittingly stands at the gateway of the Salpetriere in Paris, took away the chains from the insane . . and formulated for the world the humane and scientific conception of mod- "We think, one of the Hearst Papers dated the fall of 1912. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 381 ern times." When "Esquirol and Bayle discovered that certain forms of insanity ended in death," and that in such cases changes were found to have taken place in the brain, especially when Esquirol showed that gen- eral paralysis of the insane, called "softening of the brain," was "always bound up with chronic inflammatory degeneration of the cerebral matter," the foundation was laid for the dogma still generally held, that "diseases of mind are diseases of the brain." Gall's discoveries, tracing loss of the power of speech to a lesion in the left lower frontal convolution of the brain, seemed to con- firm it. Tumors on the brain were found to be the cause of extreme idiocy and other intense mental dis- orders. "Wernicke localized the speech center in the left temporal lobe," and then it was hoped that "every physical activity would be assigned a place in the cortical gray matter." The effort was made to trace primary mental changes in the psychoses back to parallel changes in the brain. Meynert, of Vienna, sought an origin of the psychoses in the alteration of blood-supply in certain region. Wernicke saw an explanation in morpho- logical changes. The result of these efforts is that every asylum has its "anatomical laboratory where cerebral sections are cut, stained, and microscoped." Now, how- ever, the pendulum is swinging the other way toward a recongnition of the importance of the reational and emotional factors. So much for the chances, of a sytem of reading "character" at sight. Now for the possibility of "training" traits of character "will," "mem- ory," etc. If elementary psychology were but taught in the schools, how hard it would be for the quacks to make a living! But were too busy with Latin and higher mathematics to have time 382 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS for merely vital subjects like physiology or psy- chology. Watson gives a chapter 9 to the limits of train- ing in animals. But we shall get most of our material from Thorndikes Educational Psychol- ogy. Here is a resume of Chapter IV, "The Relationship between Mental Traits" Introduction. Mental traits, and the means of con- trolling them, may be best known through their rela- tionships. The study of these relationships is necessary for the proper estimate of the disciplinary value of stu- dies, for right choice of studies, accurate grading, and conclusive tests of mental growth and condition. The ignorance of mental relationships is, however, enormous, because: Thesis: Mental relationships like mental traits, are variable. Example: The relation of 39% between ability in Latin and ability in mathematics, means an average not an individual relation. A. Variability in mental relationships may be as ac- curately measured as any facts. I. By measuring the degree of resemblance, the ratio, between the stations of an individual in two different traits, having first measured the degree of resemblance between the two mental traits in a group of individuals, as an average. II. By using the coefficient of correlation, a "single figure so calculated from the individual records as to give the degree of relationship between the two traits which will best account for all the separate cases in the group." Range of possible values: -(-100% ... ... 100%. E. g., "A coefficient of correlation between two Watson Behavior, p. 297. Chapt. IX. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 383 abilities of +100% means that the individual who is the best in the group of one ability will be the best in the other." B. Relationships between mental acilities or functions may be: I. Necessary; i. e., "where the mind is so organized that the condition of one function always involves such and such a condition of the other function," * II. Caused; i. e., due to the action of some cause, such as growth or training, that influences both functions in similar ways. *I. (a). Necessary relationships are difficult to find, because: (1). Correlation between remembering numbers and remembering words is slight and variable. (-2). Adding figures in one order does not give facil- ity in adding them in the reverse order. (3). "Almost any, if not any, one thing in the mind may happen in partial independence of almost any, If not of any, other thing"; e. g., a great variety of moral and intellectual virutes and vices may accompany ef- ficiency in earning a living, success in school studies, professional skill, or scientific insight. C. The notion that any special mental act has for its main component some general faculty or function is not true, because facts bear out the comparative inde- pendence of mental functions. This is shown by the fact that: I. Attentiveness to one series of experiences is not necessarily accompanied by attentiveness to any other series. II. Correlations in memory (.61), association (.30), and perception (.51) tests between the two members of pairs of practically identical traits, show the above marked and significant divergences. II. Numerous other facts confirm this. (See Table of Correlated Coefficients, below.) 384 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ; Conclusion. Therefore, "The mind must be regarded aot as a functional unit nor even as a collection of a few general faculties which work irrespective of particular material, but rather as a multitude of functions each of which is related closely to only a few of its fellows, to others with greater and greater degrees of remoteness, and to many to so slight a degree as eludes measure- ment." (P. 29.) This necessitates: A. The readjustment of thinking in accordance with the "singularity and relative independence of every mental process, the thorough-going specialisation of the mind" because this independence is so thoroughly borne out by the facts of the structure and mode of ac- tion of the nervous system. B. The readjustment of educational methods, and es- pecially the new formulation of mental tests. Table of Correlation Coefficients. (See C, III above.) I. Among college freshmen the correlation of effi- ciency in various kinds of mental tests nowhere exceeded .07, except in one case of efficiency in memory of figures heard with that of figures seen, where it was .39. The correlation of efficiency in motor quickness with quickness in mental tests nowhere exceeded .09. The correlation of efficiency in memory with quickness in reaction time nowhere exceeded .17. In various tests of quickness, the highest correlation was .21. Accuracy tests showed in the main no correlation, but in one case a correlation of .38. II. Among highest grammar-school pupils, boys and girls together, no correlation in effeciency tests exceeded .36; in quickness none exceeded .34; in accuracy, none exceeded .30. - III. With adults, the correlation between deficiency in sense discrimination and mental tests was 0, or very slight; between delicacy of discrimination of length and weight, with weight and pressure, etc., was at highest, .30. Efficiency in memory tests ran from .02 to .75, as 385 also did perception tests. In quickness in mental tests it was found that the quickest and the slowest are both more accurate than those of mediocre speed. General efficiency in mental tests ranged from .07 to .61. IV. In tests of children from 10 to 15 years, the range in memory was .18; in efficiency, .52. The Relationship of School Abilities. The mental traits involved in a single school study are always complex, and vary with different aspects of the study and different methods of teaching. Studies should be analysed down to elements that were in each case homogeneous, and the relations amongst them then found. As studies stand, the following relations are shown by teachers' marks: Science is closer to Latin than to mathematics. Science is closer to English than history is. Algebra and geometry are as distantly related as though one were a mathematical and the other a non- mathematical subject. English and geography are more nearly related than either is to drawing. The most striking thing is the small amount of cor- relation among the subjects. This means that "the most talented scholar in one field will be less than half as talented in any other," and "that the most hopeless scholar in one field will in another be not so far below mediocrity." The folly of using any one study as a basis for grading and promoting is apparent; and if it were done, Eng- lish and not arithmetic would be the better choice. It is also clear that, for whatever reason it may be, there is a "closer correlation of abilities in boys than in girls in the grammar grades." The relationships among the abilities involved in some of the simpler processes of arithmetic shows a very slight correlation, in on instance more than .17, which 386 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS proves that each process is really a separate problem. We shall come more specifically to our topic, how- ever, with a resume of Thorndike's Chapter VIII, "The Influence of Special Forms of Training upon More Gen- eral Abilities.'' Introduction. The problem is, How far does the train- ing of any mental function improve other mental func- tions? That there is some influence upon other mental traits from the training of one, is clear, but it is also evident that this influence is not comparable in amount to that upon the direct object of training. Thesis: A change in one function alters any other only in so far as the two functions have as factors identi- cal elements. E. g., Improvement in addition will alter one's ability in multiplication because addition is ab- solutely identical with a part of multiplication. (Definition: "By identical elements are meant mental processes which have the same cell action in the brain as their physical correlate.") A. The view of the large influence of any special form of discipline upon general functions of the mind is not true: I. Although supported by such psychologists and edu- cators as: R. N. Roark: "Methods in Education." C. L. Morgan: "Psychology for Teachers." E. H. Babbitt, A Lodeman, and Calvin Thomas on "Methods of Teaching the Modern Languages." J. H. Morris and R. Wormell, on "Teaching and Or- ganization," and such college presidents as Woodrow Wilson, Thomas J. Conaty, Nathaniel Butler, H. M. McCracken, and Timothy Dwight. II. Because a study of "the relationships of mental abilities proved that there was every reason to dis- believe in the existence of such truly general abilities," as memory, attention, etc. For: (a). There is a static independence of mental func- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 387 -lion, which, however, does not imply in functional inde- pendence; for perfect correlation between two traits does not imply the influence of alteration in one upon the other, br does lack of correlation prevent the improve- ment of one through the training of the other. (b). There is a general absence of necessary rela- tionships. 'B. Experiments do not prove the spread of ability from the one function trained to others. I. Experiments on the "extent to which training of one organ of the body improves the bilaterally sym- metrical organ Conducted by: (1). Volkmann, who found that practice of the left arm in discrimination improved the right arm without any practice to an almost equal degree. (2). Scripture, Smith, and Brown, who found that improvement of strength of grasp in one arm was ac- companied by 80% as much improvement in the other arm. (3). David, who found that practice with the toe, hand, and arm movements upon one side was followed by very notable improvement upon the other. (4). Woodworth, who found that training in ac- curacy in hitting a dot with one hand, gave an almost parallel degree of facility in the other untrained hand. -are not strictly relevant because: (a). The sensations from any pair of bilaterally sym- metrical organs are different from those from any pair of organs taken at random, and (b). Cannot be considered as illustrating such in- ferences as that of Stumpf, "that the capacity of con- centrating attention on a certain point in question, in whatever field it is acquired, will show itself efficacious in all others"; or that of Scripture, that "the develop- ment of will power in connection with any activity is accompanied by a development of will power as a whole," etc.; because 388 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS -'.' ('!) They imply - that functions are related as are sensations of one organ with identical sensations from the bilaterally symmetrical organ, which is false. (2)i They imply that the amount of "attention" or "will power" in one organ is equaled in the case of an- other, which it is not. (3). They make no effort to discover whether the amount of improvement that is common to both is not due entirely to identical elements of a concrete sort, such as sensations, or contractions of the muscles, etc. II. Direct experiments in the influence of training in one function upon the condition of another. Experiments: (1). The two functions chosen were closely similar, and usually regarded as identical by psychologists. (2). The subjects were gifted, compared with people in general. (a); James' experiments in memorizing one kind of verse before and after training in memorizing another kind, showed very slight improvement in facility, and in one instance a loss. (b). Gilbert and Fracker's tests in quickness in mov- ing the finger at certain signals showed improved re- sults after training except in one case, but "the low cor- relation between the individual's improvement in the special act trained and his gain in other acts tested make the argument from the amount of this gain in- secure"; and the functions trained obviously contained many elements identical with those of the functions tested. - (c). Thorndike and Woodworth's experiments in 'training in ( 1 ) , estimating areas, lengths, and weights of certain shape and size, showed considei-able improve- ment, but not over 52% in any case. (2) . Perceiving words containing certain letters, mis- spelled words, etc., showed an improvement in speed of 39%; in accuracy, of only 25% as much; while train- 389 ing in perceiving English verbs reduced the time nearly 21%, and the omissions 70%; while in perceiving other parts of speech, time was reduced only 3%, hut tb<^ omissions increased over 100%. (d). Judd found that though there was "an improve- ment in the direction of attention and in the character of eye movements" in one observer, in another a fixed habit was caused which prevented improvement in a similar task. III. The results show: (a). In influencing factors: (1). The acquisition of ideas of method and general utility. (2). Facility in certain elements that appear in many other complexes. (b). In improvement. (1). That "improvement in any single mental func- tion need not improve," and may injure, "the ability in functions commonly called by the same name." (2). That improvement in any single function does not imply equal improvement in any other, however similar. (3). That no change of data, however slight, is with- out effect on the function; hence, there is a point in the divergence of data where the loss of effect of training is complete; and the rapidity of the loss implies that that point is nearer than has been supposed. (4). Hence, it is to be inferred that "the spread of practice occurs only where identical elements are con- cerned in the influencing and the influenced function." This is borne out by Blair's experiments with type- writer keys and the repetition of the alphabet, experi- ments in which the influence of practice in the forming of certain associative habits showed that "20-days" training . . . put the abilities in the tested series as far ahead as 3 days of direct training would have done," 390 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS thus- making clear that "influence of training is meas- ured within a very narrow field." C. Conclusion. The facts concerning both mental traits and the actual influence of training of one func- tion upon the efficiency of others prove that the amount of disciplinary effect of environmental agencies is greatly overestimated. The reasons are: I. The influence of selection is not sufficiently taken into account. The qualities of general discrimination, observation, etc., which may be increased by the study of Latin and Science, may have been the cause of the choice of those studies rather than the effect. II. Due discount in results has not been given to the natural efficiency due to growth in maturity. III. Those who estimate the acquirement of mental aptitudes are themselves gifted, and so mistake the re- sults of discipline alone upon the average mind. SECTION 2 In the above section we've indicated what are some of the limitations on training. It'll now be in order to show what actually can be accom- plished toward increased efficiency thru habit formation or at least what are the underlying principles upon which we must work. This in- volves first of all a discussion of nerve physi- ology, and then of "the Unconscious." You may know that in the simplest forms of organic reaction, the protoplasm which feels the shock is the same as that which acts because of it. The next step is, that a more sensitive type of protoplasm, called a nerve, specializes to convey the stimulus from one part to motor protoplasm PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 391 at another part, as e. g., when you cause a frog's leg to contract or straighten by stimulating the nerve with electricity. Third, there's an afferent nerve to bring the stimulus into a center, and an efferent nerve to convey it from the center to the acting muscle. These nerves grow longer, con- nect better, and so, supposedly, make easier the passage of a nervous current; or they shrink apart, and make it more difficult for such a cur- rent to pass. We .presume that the beneficial or poisonous compounds which (an analysis of per- spiration shows) are given off respectively in pleasurable or in painful states, have their func- tion in causing the growth of the nerve-fibres after actions of which the results were pleasurable, and shrinkage of them after actions of which the results were painful. This, in some measure would explain why a pleasure-bringing simple re- action is repeated, but one bringing displeasure is avoided. But the steps of increasing nervous organiza- tion continue. The fourth of them is, that over the nervous center already spoken of, which we'll say, is located in the spinal cord (tho another such is at the solar plexus) is set a higher center, in the cerebellum, one having more complex func- tions. Thus, a frog having the cord severed in the middle of its back will execute kicking move- T. Moore Lalla Rookh (Prologue No. 2). Altho causing electric disturbances, this current itself apparently is chemical rather than either electrical or vibratory, and may be likened to a spark of com- bustion passing along a fuse, which fuse then recovers its former conditions. (SeeMcKindrick and Snodgrass' Physiology of the senses.) 392 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS ments in the water, but can co-ordinate '. these movements properly for swimming, only if the cerebellum's intact. Dominating the centers of the cerebellum, again, are centers in those parts of the cerebrum which control practically all the common activities of life; and supreme over all is, apparently, the fore-brain. By means of this hierarchy of centers a corresponding hierarchy in our habits is made possible. E. g., (1) the foot develops into a confirmed habit, the tendency it had from birth, instinctively to push down- ward when you press up against its sole. The muscles of foot, leg and back, form reactions necessary for balancing the body. (2) a system of co-ordinating these reactions into a single move- ment of the whole, is evolved, in which the sensa- tions from the moving muscles themselves stimu- late those muscles to new movements, which cause new sensations, etc., in a cycle like that of the valves and pistons in a steam engine. Now the rhythm of walking, for instance, can be switched on or off as you can switch on or off an electric fan ; and simultaneously other rhythms, say the muscular combinations necessary to whistling a tune, are reduced to the same subserviency. (3) The automatisms of walking, whistling, and what not, all may be turned on at the same time, and expected to look out for themselves, whilst the higher consciousness directs the threading of our walk thru a maze of city streets to the postoffice, say; or the running thru, in systematic order, of PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 393 a repertoire of different whistled tunes. (4) Even the threading one's way to the postoffice, and the elaborate -succession of musical selections, and who knows what side activities, such as e. g., flirting with the young persons of opposite sex whom one passes, all may become so purely ma- chine-like, that while they go on, our chief con- sciousness may be concerned with policies of state, the result of the ball game, or what not. The function of habits is, to disburden us of details, so that we may pass on to more puzzling urgen- cies. All which we do so easily now, once had to be made laboriously into a habit, and the energy we then spend in the right direction, gives our career momentum now, as surely as that which we mis-spent them, now drags us back with leaden inertia. "Our acts our angels are, or good, or ill, Our fatal shadows, that walk by us still." 10 James gives three valuable rules on habit- formation. The first is, that we should break with the old ways as sharply as possible. The second, that we should take advantage of every chance that offers, for establishing the new habit firmly at once. Also, we never should allow a beautiful impulse to evaporate without effectively acting upon it. Going to church or grand opera, getting yourself ethically all wrot up, and then simply consuming food and going to bed, is seri- ously morally injurious. Third, we should suffer "Fletcher, J.. Upon an Honest Man's Fortune. 394 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS no exception to occur until the new habit is thoro- ly well established. But before we proceed further with James, it may be in order to inform you as to the modern idea of "the unconscious." The concept of uncon- scious thinking dates back to Friederick Herbart (1776-1841), who pointed out that when opposed concepts encounter one another, some had to yield and be repressed below the "threshold of con- sciousness," tho (if not destroyed) only to reap- pear as efforts to present themselves again. (A new idea, moreover, had always to pass muster before the "apperception-mass" of preconceived prejudices.) After Herbart, Schaupenhauer con- tributed a great deal to this line of thot. What has science thus far ascertained about that hidden thing we've named "the unconscious?" What definitions have been given of it? Freud considers the unconscious as a sort of garbage-can into which are cast all those desires which for social or religious or other reasons have become unbearable to our conscious mind. Lay regards it as a sort of a dwelling place of Titan emotions, which it is our business to drive back where they belong. This is, of course, a conception hardly consistent with the other hypothesis of psycho- analysis. White defines it as the part of the psyche on which reality plays, and strikes the spark of the conscious. Jung regards it as the sum of all processes below the threshold of the conscious, and not only the abiding place of re- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 395 jected desires, but the source from which future conscious states. Treasure the very dust of Time. Never is the disposal of one single second a matter of indiffer- ence. Often, indeed, it may be spent best in abso- lute idleness, as in sleeping, but a short and intense slumber is not only more economical of time than a more prolonged yet restless one, but actually it is more wholesome. The contrary largely is true as regards eating, since to eat slowly is bene- ficial ; but even here time may be saved along with health by partaking of but small quantities of food, and few dishes. Haste seldom achieves values ; but quickness is quite another thing. Most valuable as an economiser of Time, is the habit of intelligent patient industry. Never desire to kill Time; Time is a good servant. A compelling influence which we can enlist on our own behalf, is the powerful force of auto- suggestion. We must read the books that are cheerful and inspiring. We must "run with" companions who are overflowing with life and good spirits, and must avoid dining in those cafes where other than energetic types of people sur- round us ; 'tis no harm (since the bodily carriage has an effect upon the mental attitude) to offset our ragged attire by an imperceptible swagger; certainly we should do all that we do, "with an air." To clap our acquaintances upon the back, without arousing resentment as being too famil- iar, and successfully flirt with all the prettiest 396 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS girls ; these are the tests and touchstones of what is called "manner," (distinguish between the singular and the plural) and by his increasing skill one may measure the egoist's progress. Jung devotes the tenth chapter of his Psychol- ogy of the Unconscious to its importance in Psy- chopathology. Herein he discusses the content of the unconscious which is defined as sum of all psychical processes below the threshold of con- sciousness. The answer to the question: How does the unconscious behave in neurosis? is found in its effect on normal consciousness, as illustrated by the example of a certain merchant. The compensating function of the unconscious is taken up. Symotomatic acts and Nebuchadnez- zar's dream are discussed. Intuitive ideas, and insane manifestations both emanate from the un- conscious. Eccentricities pre-exist a breakdown. In mental disorder unconscious processes break thru into consciousness and disturb equilibrium. This is true also in fanaticism. Pathological compensations are afforded by the peculiar symp- toms in cases of paranoia. Unconscious processes have to struggle against resistances in the con- scious mind. Distortion of memories is due to re- pression of unpleasant parts: In morbid condi- tions the function of the unconscious is one of compensation. The method of arriving at an understanding of the unconscious is highly complex. Technique has been evolved which makes it a distinct art PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 397 if not a. science in itself. In the. .early days .Breuer and Freud used to hypnotise their ; patients., and then extract from them an account of incidents remembered in the hypnotic state. This method succeeds well at the beginning, but has a number of disadvantages. In the first place not all per- sons are readily hypnotisable. The second objec- tion is still more serious, hypnosis, altho at first it seems to bring about a ready confession of mem- ories hidden in the unconscious soon results in a lack of transference between the hypnotist and his subject as tho the subject were sensing that he was yielding up the inmost secrets of his soul without being able to control his outpouring, be- came suspicious that they might be employed to his disadvantage and thus gradually become more and more reticent. The second method used was therefore to simply have the patient recline at ease and relate various ideas as they occurred to him. There came in now that method of following up clues known as the association method in this whenever the patient gave hint of some experi- ences around which a great group of emotional dis- positions seem to cluster or from which trains of association seem to lead away in all kinds of di- rections a special note was made of such experi- ence and he was encouraged to tell to the physi- cian everything that he could recall in connec- tion with it and also every train of thot or fan- 398 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS tasy, no matter how absurd that came into his mind at the time. SECTION 3 "Never be idle." "Life is too short to waste." "Push on keep moving." 11 "We are not sent into this world to do anything into which we can not put our hearts. We have certain work to do for our bread and that is to be done strenuously; other work to do for our de- light and that is to be done heartily; neither is to be done by halves or shifts but with a will ; and what is not worth this effort is not to be done a' all."* "The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In busi- ness, sometimes, prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying, There is no defeat except from within, no really "Morton, Thomas A Cure for the Heartache. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 399 insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose."** Purington's article in the Independant, from which we have quoted briefly above, continues to the effect that a "veteran employee" commented upon the executive head " 'the chief won his place by knowing more about the company's business than any other man here; and he keeps it, I think, by aiways knowing just what to do in a crisis. Let me explain. I was here thirty years ago, when the Chief came hardly more than a boy and took a job at $10 a week. From the very first he had to know the why and how of everything. He borrowed technical books from libraries ; talked with officials whenever he could make a chance; found an experienced man in his line too old for active work and took business lessons from the old fellow; did all sorts of un- heard-of things, to master the science of his trade. " 'It wasn't long before the head of the depart- ment came to consult this boy whenever a hard problem was being considered. Then one day the head of the department resigned. Before another manager could be found, a crisis developed in that branch of the business, and the whole reputation of the company was involved. The high officials were in a panic. What did that boy do but walk into the directors' meeting and tell the owners of the business how to hande the situation! Of Ruskln. Marden. 400 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS course they made him head of the department. " 'He held the position a couple of years, made a lot of improvements, earned a large salary in- crease, and saved a few thousand dollars. Then he did a most unusual thing. He asked for an- other job in a more difficult branch of the busi- ness a job that meant lower, harder work, and the pay scarcely a fourth of what he was getting. Some of the directors called him a fool tho now they realize he was a genius ; but they transferred him as requested. Within a year he had invented a scheme for cutting costs that he sold to the com- pany for several thousand dollars and a good roy- alty. Soon he had a share in the business, and a comprehensive idea of the present, past and future of each department. He was always break- ing out in some new place, with some new plan for enlarging the business or reducing the expense.' ' Mr. Purington's advice is: "Know your job. Learn exactly what you are paid to do and not to do. Organize each class of work on a time schedule. Find the standard output, and the maximum, for a week, a day, an hour; make your output measure up always be- tween the standard and the maximum. Write out a list of all the mistakes apt to occur in your line of work; then take special, itemized precau- tion to prevent each. Analyze the merits and de- merits of every tool, machine, material, supply; compare with different brands of manufacture, and with scientific standards of performance; re- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 401 jeet faulty equipment, demand the best utensils far your work, Make- a list of the new books in your profession, devote an evening or two a week to study an application of improved methods. Join a national trade association or professional society, and make friends with the leaders in your line. Locate a man who has done bigger, better things than you have; study him, the principles, aims and methods that made him ; detect and cor- rect your especial habits of failure. . . . "There are in America today a number of men with salaries of $50,000 or more, who held jobs not so long ago at $15 a week. How did they gain such promotion ? For every dollar in money each man took from his job he took fifty or a hundred dollars' worth of knowledge. Thus each man ulti- mately fixed his own salary. The way to make an occupation valuable is to look on it as an educa- tion." But it's not so much the experiences in them- selves thru which a man meanders that are valu- able, as it is his retention of the gist of those ex- periences. In passing thru a book, and equally in passing thru life, we should under-line the key- sentences, to refer to them again. If we were to ask, here, just what occurs within us when we recognize an experience to be the same with one which we've had previously, we should find ourselves in a discussion of what James calls one of the foundation pillars of mental life. It may be that each of us has his own peculiar form 402 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS of recognition, as e. g., a sensation from some part of the body. In recognition in its lowest form we simply know that our final attitude is the same. A low form would be the recognition of our own room when we go to it. The case of our reaction is the test; ease when things go smoothly as contrasted with the shock of having to overcome something unfamiliar. We give the name Mediate Recognition to that type in which perceiving an object starts a train of thot and step by step brings back the earlier situation un- til in a sudden flash we have the whole clearly.* Thus in either case the process of recognizing is in the end a coming back to an "already-re- hearsed" motor attitude to the situation. (You'll understand this better when you've read the les- son on Habit. Pass on now.) It usually is said that memories of events are blotted out by mere passage of time. Probably this is inaccurate ; for that the unconscious never loses any impression, however trivial is indicated by the revival of a forgotten experience in hypno- sis, etc. Jung at least is of opinion that forgetting con- sists in two processes. One is condensation; by a boiling-down process the essentials of situations are made relatively more prominent. Theories in regard to recognition are of three types. Theorists of the first type are concerned with a recognition of function. The- orists of the second type include Tichner, Wundt, and the great ma- jority (tho the behaviorists have written little) ; they hold that recog- nition may be superimposed upon a situation. A third type (vide Hob- bes and Mary Calkins) hold that recognition is a not-further-analysa- ble element of. consciousness. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 403 Recognitions can be divided into (1) the affec- tive tones and (2) the organic sensations con- nected with them. Of these the former are more important. Kostyleff (p. 35) by examining hallucinations, shows that "it is not the process of contact, but the process of measure and of identification, which makes the cognizance of things, and lives again thereafter in thot." And their million trivialities become subordinated. Such boiling down, indeed, is what distinguishes the man of discernment from the bore; a child or an imbe- cile may have good memory of photographic type. In time the essential points even of many situa- tions blend into a general impression. A more awkward cause of forgetting is the Distortion of memories due to the fact that the conscious part of our mind squeezes out of itself, that is, re- presses into the unconscious part, all memories in the degree that they are knit up with emotional elements repugnant to our personality. We shall discuss this at length in a later lesson. We're concerned at present more with the discovery of a corrective. Right now let me warn you against the so- called courses in "memory training" which are so much advertised in our magazines. Them also, the fallacies on which they're based and the par- tial results they sometimes seem to achieve, we shall have to consider in a lesson devoted to the subject of self -discipline. 404 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS -'--But; here, at the beginning of our -lessons r some hints -on how to study will be most in place. Sev- eral authors have written instructively on this topic. One of the best books is De Garmo's "How to Study, and Teaching How to Study." MeKeever in "Psychology and Higher Life" concentrates much thot into the following epitome of "How to Study" (p. 174). "1. Have a Program. The student who fol- lows the same program of study and work every day thereby calls to his assistance a powerful agency, viz., habit. It is this way: For instance, if you study algebra every day from 2 to 3 P. M., you will soon find the mind better prepared to master algebra at that hour than at any other. Try it ! "2. Have a Method. Every paragraph you read has, or ought to have, a central or specific idea. Find this point and note it carefully. Be- fore beginning the day's duties, have in mind an ideal standard of excellence, and then strive to reach it. In this way one accumulates mental power, generates his own enthusiasm, and con- tributes directly to the building of his own character." (In memorizing, read each time entirely thru the piece to be committed without hesitation. At all other times give the newly acquired fact a logical place within your whole system of ideas; relate it by logical association to your other knowledge. For this reason "cramming" a lot PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 405 of information just before an examination is a poor way to retain knowledge, because it doesn't give "each new fact acquired time to take its logi- cal place among the facts already known.") "3. Attention. Positively refuse to permit your attention to be drawn away from the task it is engaged upon. Herein lies the secret of power, and of much so-called genius. If the mind wan- ders, bring it back to the point and hold it there persistently. See that your efforts in this respect are not hindered by sluggishness resulting from insufficient sleep or improper ventilation." The importance is also rightly dwelt upon in- this connection of Interest. Examples are given of a young woman with re- markable memory for names and faces who "would stand in the hall as the students filed by and have some friend tell her as many names as possible. Then, she would be seen later operat- ing at another place in one of the buildings with a different "helper." She threw her whole soul into the task, and for that reason success was easily attained." Mr. Keever himself, "early in life formed the habit of trying to solve all ordinary arithmetical problems mentally. The favorite time and place for this work was at early morning before get- ting out of bed. His memory for long strings of figures is still very active. But another early habit of paying no attention to the names of per- sons with whom he became acquainted has always 406 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS been a source of annoyance and embarrassment to him." To make the subject understandable, to take it out of the realm of abstract theory, and to give "memory . . . another ally in emo- tional interest" laboratory methods and concrete embodiments of the lesson are vital; "the hands and feet and muscles of the body are put thru the process of doing the work so often that they do the remembering." This is one reason we assign observations for you yourself to work out in con- nection with these lessons.) "4. Test your Strength. One of the best tests of mind concentration comes during an effort to study in the library. About half of those who pretend to study there waste their time in the childish habit of gazing at those who are moving about the room. If you can't possibly resist the temptation to stare at others, close the book and feast your eyes for a few minutes, then study dili- gently for a while; but don't try to do both at once." (This advice is prompted by some observations made under Mr. Keever's direction upon the study-habits of students in the library of Kansas State Agricultural College, and which yielded the table on the following page: Subject PHI Total Length of LOSOPH Total Time Y OF HELPFULNESS 407 Total Efforts to Study Interruptions Time Number Test and Sex Min. Sec. Studied Min. Sec, Lost No. Av. Min. Sec. Length No. Av. Length Min. Sec. Min. Sec. 1. M 31 52 25 65 5 67 46 34 46 8 2. M 31 15 21 10 7 5 18 1 10 18 23 3. F 45 30 15 8 3 45 8 1 52 4. M 33 18 30 14 30 7 2 40 6 1 25 5. M. 18 59 12 15 6 44 11 1 5 11 37 6. M 28 41 21 36 7 5 18 1 12 17 23 7. M 22 5 19 40 2 25 6 3 16 6 25 8. F 23 49 20 42 3 7 26 48 25 8 9. M 10 15 8 45 1 30 8 1 6 8 13 10. M 23 45 17 45 6 12 1 29 11 33 11. M 34 51 31 50 3 1 16 1 59 16 12 12. M 22 4 15 30 6 34 12 1 19 11 36 "The table is self-explanatory. It shows, for example, that during a period of about thirty-two minutes subject number one looked up from his book forty-five times and made forty-six separate efforts to get his mind on the lesson, the average length of time of the efforts being thirty-four seconds. In the majority of instances the sub- ject looked up from the page in order to see who was passing.") "5. Be Orderly and Systematic. Good order and system about the study-room are aids to scholarly work, while disorderliness and untidi- ness are indicative of incoherent thinking. More- over, these bad qualities, if allowed to continue, will become a menace to your own success later in life and a great annoyance to someone who will have to live with you. Motto : A place for every- thing and everything in its place." (Happy the child who, making extravagant statements, "had the bare reality pointed out to him." Moreover, "clear thinking and systematic work are twin brothers. . . . Let one in all 408 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS that he undertakes . . . devise a method that will involve the least possible waste of time and energy and yet prove effective . . .let him have a well devised plan for the performance of every task that is before him, and his subsequent development into a logical, systematic thinker is practically assured. ... If the student can, at some time in the course, take up the formal study of logic, he will be enabled to accomplish much toward systematizing his thinking." Elsewhere he emphasizes "the masterly method" of study by making notes of the gist of every argument and the "special thesis of every chapter.") "6. Be Punctual. Tardiness and irregularity in attendance to duty are two bad habits that may easily be broken if the matter is undertaken in time; but, if permitted to go on unchecked, they are sure to bring about loss of interest, and dis- couragement. To meet all of one's appointments promptly is an evidence of stability of character, and a good indication of worthy attainment. "8. Be Cordial. . . . "9. Cultivate Pure-Mindedness." (In a later chapter we can better discuss these.) "10. . . . You can become a member of the great class of faithful, diligent workers, and they are the people who are moving the world today. Nearly all the students who fail in their classes do so on account of lack of diligence; very few from lack of ability. If you would master a sub- ject easily, pay special attention to its funda- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 409 mental, principles given at the beginning of the term." So much then, for the method of study. As to that related question, of how much to study, we'll make here only this general remark ; that we should read books not as substitutes for life and experience, but as stimulants of our own observa- tive and feeling powers. Herein lies the immense gulf between books. The popular story is often excused on the ground that it teaches us about people. A novel of the quality of Vanity Fair undoubtedly does this. But we can afford to omit nearly all the trash which passes current as "literature" or "philosophy" or popularized and diluted "psychology" because at best it is life thru other men's eyes second hand. Better save our reading hours for more technical material, for classics whose excellence has stood the test of time, a few standard scienca-texts, and the works of Freud, Adler, Jung, Jones, Bril, etc. Their conclusions we can accept or discard, but the classics will at least cultivate our judgment of what is well presented, and the others will help us avoid pitfalls and equip us with more powerful methods of observing life. You see, it is after all the way in which we do things, that counts. The Ancients had innumer- able theories about almost everything under the sun, and wrangled over them ad nauseam, without establishing any of them above others as more than a clever guess because the method of their attempted proofs was weak. 410 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS Now for that much quoted classical chapter by James on Habit: James quotes from Huxley, "a story, which is credible enough, tho it may not be true, of a practical joker, who seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out, 'Attention!' whereupon the man instantly brot his hands down, and lost his mutton and potatoes in the gutter. The drill had been thorough, and its effects had become embodied in the man's nervous structure," 13 and he continues. "If the period between twenty and thirty is the critical one in the formation of intellectual and professional hab- its, the period below twenty is more important still for the firing of personal habits, properly so- called, such as vocalization and pronunciation, gesture, motion, and address. Hardly ever is a language learned after twenty spoken without a foreign accent; hardly ever can a youth trans- ferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he even learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest 'swell,' but he simply cannot buy the right things. An invisible law, as strong as gravitation, keeps him within his orbit, arrayed this year as he was the last; and how his better-bred acquaintances contrive PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 411 to get the things they wear will be for him a mystery till his dying day. "The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisi- tions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful ac- tions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so in- grained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right. "In Professor Bain's chapter on "The Morai Habits' there are some admirable practical re- marks laid down. Two great maxims emerge from his treatment. The first is that in the 412 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possi- ble. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right motives ; put your- self assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old ; take a public pledge, if the case allows ; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might ; and every day during which a breakdown is post- poned adds to the chances of its not occurring at all. "The second maxim is: Never suffer an ex- ception to occur till the new habit is securely root- ed in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully wind- ing up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. Continuity of train- ing is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right. As Professor Bain says: " The peculiarity of the moral habits, contra- distinguishing them from the intellectual acqui- sitions, is the presence of two hostile powers, one to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the other. It is necessary, above all things, in such a situation, never to lose a battle. Every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many con- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 4i3 quests on the right. The essential precaution, therefore, is so to regulate the two opposing powers that the one may have a series of unin- terrupted successes, until repetition has fortified it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition, under any circumstances. This is the theoretically best career of mental progress. "The need of securing success at the outset is imperative. Failure at first is apt to dampen the energy of all future attempts, whereas past ex- perience of success nerves one to future vigor. Goethe says to a man who consulted him about an enterprise but mistrusted his own powers: 'Ach! you need only blow on your hands !' And the re- mark illustrates the effect on Goethe's spirits of his own habitually successful career. Professor Baumann, from whom I borrow the anecdote, 1 says that the collapse of barbarian nations when Europeans come among them is due to their de- spair of ever succeeding as the newcomers do in the larger tasks of life. Old ways are broken and new ones not formed. The question of 'taper- ing-oftY in abandoning such habits as drink and opium-indulgence, comes in here, and is a ques- tion about which experts differ within certain limits, and in regard to what may be best for an individual case. In the main, however, all ex- pert opinion would agree that abrupt acquisition of the new habit is the best way, if there be a 'See the admirable passage about success at the outset, in hb Hand- buch der Moral (1878) pp. 38-43. 414 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS real possibility of carrying it out. We must be careful not to give the will so stiff a task as to insure its defeat at the very outset ; but, provided one can stand it, a sharp period of suffering, and then a free time, is the best thing to aim at, whether in giving up a habit like that of opium, or in simply changing one's hours of rising or of work. It is surprising how soon a desire will die of inanition if it be never fed. " 'One must first learn, unmoved, looking nei- ther to the right nor left, to walk firmly on the straight and narrow path, before one can begin "to make one's .self over again." He who every day makes a fresh resolve is like one who, arriving at the edge of the ditch he is to leap, forever stops and returns for a fresh run. Without unbroken advance there is no such thing as accumulation of the ethical forces possible, and to make this pos- sible, and to exercise us and habituate us in it. is the sovereign blessing of regular work.' 2 "A third maxim may be added to the preceding pair; Seize the very first possible opportunity to a6t on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain. As the author last quoted re- marks : ; J. Bahnsen : Beitrapre u CharakteroloRie. (1867), vol. 1, p. 209. 415 " 'The actual presence of the practical opportu- nity alone furnishes the fulcrum upon which the lever can rest, by means of which the moral will may multiply its strength, and raise itself aloft. He who has no solid ground to press against will never get beyond the stage of empty gesture- making.' "No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess and no matter how good one's sen- timents may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act one's char- acter may remain entirely unaffected for the bet- ter. With mere good intentions, hell is proverb- ially paved. And this is an obvious consequence of the principles we have laid down. A 'charac- ter,' as J. S. Mill says, 'is a completely fashioned will;' and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A tendency to act only be- comes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain 'grows' to their use. Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost ; it works so as posi- tively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human charac- ter than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea 416 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed. Rousseau, inflaming all the mothers of France, by his eloquence, to fol- low Nature and nurse their babies themselves, while he sends his own children to the foundling hospital, is the classical example of what I mean. But every one of us in his measure, whenever, after glowing for an abstractly formulated Good, he practically ignores some actual case, among the squalid 'other particulars' of which that same Good lurks disguised, treads straight on Rous- seau's path. All Goods are disguised by the vul- garity of their noncomitants, in this work-a-day world; but woe. to him who can only recognize them when he thinks them in their pure and ab- stract form ! The habit of excessive novel-reading and theatre-going will produce true monsters in this line. The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play, while her coach- man is freezing to death on the seat outside, is the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale. Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be, never to suffer one's self to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 417 it afterward in some active way. 3 Let the ex- pression be the least thing in the world speak- ing genially to one's aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horsecar, if nothing more heroic offers but let it not fail to take place. . . . "The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time/ Well! he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the mole- cules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next tempta- tion comes." But "as we become permanent drunk- ards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientic spheres, by so many sep- arate acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faith- fully busy each hour of the -working-day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, between all the details of his business, the power of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away. "See for remarks on this subject a readable article by Miss V. Scudder on "Musical Devotees and Morals," in the Andover Review, for January, 1887. 418 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS Young people should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faintheartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together." To give to James' beautiful chapter a practical illustration let us translate for you from the sec- ond chapter of Autoine Abalat's "Le Travail du Style." " 'Nothing which is done well is done quickly.' To style, above all, is applicable this very true saying of Joseph de Maistre. Toil is the very condition of a good style. Save for exceptions which we shall examine, one may say that there isn't a well-written book but has cost a great deal of trouble; above all if, by the term well written book we understand a work which unites all the beauties of style. Prose which is merely correct and easy can't be considered as a speci- men of finished style. Other samples of prose join resemblance and- embossment to naturalness and to correctness. These latter works are su- perior. George Sand wrote well, but she had neither the Genius of Jean-Jaques nor the color- ing of Bernardin de St. Pierre ; and Chateaubriand shone by virtue of descriptive qualities which were lacking to Bernardin and to Rousseau. More- over, not to avoid meeting the objection, let us admit at once that certain improvisors have at the first attempt realized very beautiful prose. We shall return to that. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 419 "Having made this concession, we must, under pain of abdicating all instruction, establish some general rules. Well, the example of all our classic authors teaches us that labor is an absolute con- dition of every written work. Perfection is had by retouching and recasting. It is rare for a first editing to be satisfactory, even when inspir- ation is overflowing, because it is always precipi- tate, because we have not had time to reflect nor to choose our expressions, and because we always are much better able to speak all than to speak well. You need only hold a pen, to per- ceive this truth. Only slowness and reflection permit us to judge what we have produced. Recoil is needed; it is indispensable to let our style cool off. The more time we allow between the two draughts, the better chance have we to see our- selves clearly. Very few corrections are made immediately. We must come out of our fever, leave our first ideas, drop the interest in our work and come to feel differently about our sub- ject. Only then come variations of terms, sur- prises in expression, economy of words, the flash of images the sense of relief and of life, and finally the possibility of perfecting that which was but rough-hewn. Compositions written in an examination officially limited to a very short time, are able, under cerebral pressure, to give the measure of aptitude or the presumption of talent ; but never will they be well written, because they've not been done over. 420 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS "For the first drawing-up, everyone has his own method. There are those who finish with a breath, quit to return to it again. Others advance only slowly, and remodel the page so soon as it is fin- ished. Advice can't be given on this. The method matters little; what is essential is the necessity of doing it over again. It is vain to rebel against this fact; a style is not good until it is made over. The first casting is more or less close to banality. We are in haste to write, we have no time to hunt about, the pen flies on, we write what is easiest, and what first comes to hand is banality." At heart the man who seeks his own good is dissatisfied with the rewards which have come to him thru the pursuit of self-interest. Happy is he, if he seek the cure thru a revolution of his own soul. He, as St. Paul of old, admires the sweet virtue of Charity all the more ardently, because he yearns, as yet in vain, to feel its in- fluence in his heart. If you who read this passage feel this desire of the heart, that is circumstantial evidence that selfishness isn't the fundamental law of your nature, else selfishness would have satisfied you. A nobler type of living will prove more congenial to you, undoubtedly, when once you've sloughed off the old habits of thot and demeanor. To every one, in short, in whom this chapter finds a respon- sive echo or who finds himself pondering its view- point after he has laid this book aside, we may say PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 421 confidently, "You are one of those, for whom it was written." Many were not so born for it but you were. You, without conscious effort, are al- ready upon the first step of the new sphere of development; you're beyond pure selfishness be- cause that was never natural to you." Whoever has advanced thus far will hardly reverse his evolution, to wallow again in the primeval slime. "Foi; he on honey dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise."* You are beyond the blind sensualism of the animal, or the self-centered attention of the egoist; you have entered the realm of the nobler desires of the aspirationist. The path of aspiration may be approached via the way of self -hypnotizing habits : by means of Meditation, Prayer and the Reading of inspira- tional and inspiriting books. SECTION 4 Lust of life ebbs low, and the appetites sink down most easily in those individuals whose thot centers too much in themselves. Happy are they who come to realize the cause of their own un- vitality in the smallness of their motives for liv- ing. The motives of life must be multiplied in order to maintain its interest. Tincture of iron isn't the royal road away from anemia ; a better road may well be spiritual aspiration, leading at "Coleridge's Kubla Khan. 422 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS length to what Jesus called the "Kingdom of Heav- en," or what less poetical modern psychologists would call Altruistic Abandon. Once upon a time every planet had an ocean of air such as our own earth possesses, but this air gradually blew away, or was absorbed by the rocks, at least in the cases of the littler planets it was so, for they didn't keep attracting more air toward them. Every seed at birth also has a certain amount of starch given it, even as the little panets have a certain amount of air. The seeds live on this starch for awhile, thrive and grow. So, too, every animal is able to live for a time upon the fat of its own body, but soon the planet, the seed, and the animal must seek food from the outside, or dwindle and die. We can't live forever as did the man and his dog who were starving in the desert; every day the man cut off a piece of the dog's tail, made for himself a soup of it, and fed the bone to the dog wherewith to grow more tail. You've known children who hardly could be per- suaded to eat enough to keep them alive. Most healthy children are different from that oh, so different but they may starve in spite of eat- ing, if their machinery for grinding and digest- ing what they eat gets out of order. When a man who wanted to be an English soldier, late- ly, was told the army wouldn't take him because he had bad teeth, he said, "I want to shoot Ger- mans, not to bite them!" But the doctors knew PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 423 that with such teeth he couldn't be a strong, well- fed man, such as they wanted for a soldier. If this man had taken proper care of his teeth, and let the dentist examine them and treat them regularly, he would have been allowed to join the army, and go out and be crippled for his country. However, the point we wish to make here is that we neither physically or spiritually can fat- ten and thrive upon ourselves alone. We'd quickly find that we are in the situation of poor Coriola- nus, who complained: "Anger's my meat ; I sup upon myself, And so shall starve with feeding." The sensualist either sinks still lower or rises to the level of egoism; the egoist sinks back into sensualism unless he becomes a man of moral aspirations; the Aspirationist, in turn will be- come egoist again unless he evolves into an Al- truist; and even the Altruist is insecure in his eminence unless in kindliness, modesty, efficiency and all other good qualities he continues to be active. He must continue to cultivate his quali- ties of personal efficiency and refinement to the end of achieving the best results for society, as surely as he must aim at the good of society if he is to realize the finest personal qualities. This is a point which ardent reformers are apt to overlook. The cultural and the social motives are com- bined in the important task of education. It is a 424 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS promising sign that so many educational move- ments are starting among the workers them- selves. There's a Workers College in Boston, as we might expect. In Stelton, New Jersey, is the Ferrer School, part of a New York larger asso- ciation of extreme radicals, which here has its country colony and educates children wholly with- out punishment or stressing authority. In Brook- lyn, New York, is the Williamsburg Culture Cen- ter, with its large number of (non-religious) Sun- day school classes. The most noted socialist col- lege, is of course the Rand School, located where it can do a huge educational work in the heart of New York City. Another radical college of which we know is the Workers Institute in Chicago. We have heard something of a technical-training in- stitution in the west run by the I. W. W. The "Wobblies" are one of several diverse elements which jointly control the thriving Peoples Insti- tute in San Francisco. No doubt but what the list of such schools thruout this country already is a long one, altho our labor organizations are far indeed behind those of Europe. Since our own school in California has been closed, we have often thot how much bigger might be the educational harvest to be reaped in this field rather than in that of private institutions. The thing appeals to us as in many ways a larger work to ally oneself with some general move- ment (sobeit not so large as to have crystallized itself.) Then too, a privately owned school, auto- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 425 cratic more or less in management of at least its employees, is in an amolalous position to be preaching democracy. The Roman Catholics long ago realized that they must keep their children in schools of their own. They saw that the state would use the public school to indoctrinate children with the state's own point of view. The Catholics have covered MOHAMMEDAN SCHOOL. the country with an extensive system of paro- chial schools, advanced schools, and colleges. How long before the Radicals will be as wise as they? When they do will they be broad enough to give us a set of schools which no more attempt to indoctrinate with some new ism than to incul- cate church-dogmas and nationalist dogmas? We doubt whether they'll do so in any great degree, yet we think they'd be freer than are the popular schools we already have. Our existing history- texts for example, to say nothing of systems of school discipline and the whole coercive scheme, are a crime upon childhood. At any rate a new competitor in the field should be welcomed. To upbuild a system of radical popular schools, awaits some educator of large calibre. CHAPTER VI This chapter will deal with Repression and its effects. Freud's discoveries of the harmful effects of emotional repression indicate that self-expression must form part of the new ethical code. The sensualist here is in the gravest situation on ac- count of the perverted form which many of his tendencies come to assume because too much in- dulged. Nor is the unperverted natural man in much better situation in the midst of our com- plex society with its innumerable taboos; tho to him Art, at least, opens a symbolic channel of ex- pression. The ambitious man will solve in some degree this dilemma by sublimating his impulses into forms in which they add impetus to his de- liberated purposes. But the truly fortunate are those whose interest is the welfare of society as a whole; because they'll use the anger which un- reasonable restriction always arouses in direct attack upon this very repressiveness of society. SECTION I "In case of doubt take the safe side. In case of grave doubt take to the woods." All enslavement is thru fear. Hence to be fearless is to have achieved freedom. Pain is unendurable chiefly thru the fear of more pain in the next moment. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 427 Fear is utilized to establish habits and coerce creatures into acting in the ways we desire; by means of fear we may bend the lower animals into habits that are useful to us. One vice, a brother to Fear, raises such havoc with mental processes, and is, in every sense, so "awfully common" that we must stop to say a few words again' it : Lying. It, again, shows the danger of the conceit of cleverness, imagining you've a combination that'll beat the game. This chapter's no place to speak of the disruption of communal relations thru deceit, nor can it be pre- tended that no lie ever brot more good than evil. The point we wish to make is, that of the two atti- tudes, "I'll lie only when I'm very sure it's wise to," and "I'll take my chances on not lying even under those circumstances where it surely would be better to," the second is the more prudent state of mind. If you're stupid at lying, of course you'll not try it so often. No one exactly likes being caught in lies and therefore having people unsure whether or not they shall believe anything he afterward tells them. "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive," and all that. Every day of our lives, questions are coming up with a quick "answer this, yes or no?" when we've no time to go into the likelihood of our being caught if we lie so, if we lie sometimes, sooner or later the law of probabilities decrees we must be caught. But the only thing that'll prevent us 428 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS lying at such times is to have a habit of telling the truth automatically, i. e., at all times what- ever. Take, for example, the case of the ape, in an- cient times, who fell overboard from a ship that was passing the Piraeus, the harbor of Athens. A dolphin, which saw his mishap, took him upon its back toward land. Mistaking the ape for a man, and an Athenian, the dolphin asked him, "Do you know the Piraeus ?" It tickled the ape's vanity to be mistaken for a human, and in his ignorance, he thot "the Piraeus" must be some noted Athenian citizen. Had he had the habit of "automatic truthfulness," he still would have been saved. But he answered, "0, I and the Piraeus are intimate friends. He often dines with me !" This boast made the dolphin so angry, that he plunged, under the sea and left the ape to his fate. One's face, too, becomes, in a slight measure, a means whereby people can tell whether his hab- its are honest or not. But that danger, in lying, of which we wanted to speak so particularly here, comes of wanting to lie convincingly well. The vulgar lie with their lips. But your truly polished prevaricator lies with his whole body and mind. The most finished liars we've encountered are the natives of Ceylon, who will run the whole gamut of the emotions to cheat you out of the value of a pin, and all that with such art, such plausibility, such restraint, 429 that after the conclusion of the deal your con- science simply aches with sympathy for the poor fellow, who has done you out of only a thousand per cent. "Oh what a goodly outside falsehood hath." 1 The material profits of such trickery must in- deed be tremendous, tho, if they're to counter- balance the spiritual losses of this play-acting. 2 The man who can incline himself so easily to de- ceive others, must be an unusual character if that same suppleness doesn't creep into his life in less welcome places. How many persons we've met, who, in developing skillful evasiveness, have lost the power to keep to the point in an argument, and squarely meet the issues involved! Finess 1 Shakespeare Merchant of Venice, Act I, 1. 2 A clipping before us says, in 'realizing" the chnrctr. the tra- ditional view, as old as dramatic art itself, is that the actor will fail to achieve the highest effects unless he actually allows the part to possess him so completely that his body responds in spontaneous move- ments. It is true, indeed, that a few great players, like Oquelin. re- ject this view, and insist on the predominance of the purely intellec- tual elements. William Archer, the well-known English criric. in his "Masks and Faces," has collected evidence on this point and finds that most successful actors and actresses declare they must feel the emotion th'y express. Salvini. for example, ssys : " 'If you do not weep in the agony of grief, if you do not blush with shame, if you do not glow with love, if you do not tremble with trror, if your eyes do not become bloodshot with rage, if, in short, you your- self do not intimately experience whatever befits the diverse characters and passions you represent, you can never thoroughly transfuse into the hearts of your audience the sentiment of the situation.' " To the same effect Miss Emily Bateman, one of the greatest emo- ational actr^ses, spys: "If real tears do rot come to my eyes I dn not truly feel what I am acting, nor can can I impress my audience to the same extent when I feign emotion as when I really feel it. I have acted the part of Leah for twenty-four years, and the te?rs always cor"e to my ^yes wh*n the little child says 'My name is Leah.' " Th foregoing instances establish two facts with positive certainty: (1) To the successful actors themselves, the feelings, however induc?d, are for the time being real; and (2). there is an exceedingly close relation between the mental state and the physical expression, no mat- ter whether the physical expression be regarded as the cause or as th effect of the mental. 430 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS is necessary, to carry many points; and in some professions, e. g., of statesman, detective, etc., "Economy of truth," doubtless, is part of the game. But if it's a question of one's personal happiness, we should bet on the man who'll "speak the truth and shame the family." "A crafty fel- low never has any peace," goes the proverb. To lie to your fellow-men hardens your heart in the degree that it softens your backbone; and a hard heart is a stranger to peace. Lies are "Like Dead Sea fruits, that tempt the eye, but turn to ashes on the lips." This subject is knitted closely with that of spreading pious legends for "the greater glory of God," or atrocity tales for "patriotic motives," (a modern substitute among more peoples than need here be mentioned) . It is vicious to preach that the defense of whatever cherished insti- tution justifies us in besmirching the ideal of strict historic truth. "Truthe is the hyeste thing that man may kepe." 3 Deceit undermines not only all relations be- tween the deceiver and his fellows, but, for three reasons, it brings chaos into his own thinking. First, because, as you will remember, every lie you "got away with" confirmed you in the feeling that whether or not it were "an abomination un- to the Lord" certainly it was "a very present help in time of trouble." 4 Having let down the bar- riers by ever so little, you lost the habit (which, "Chaucer, Frankeleyns Tale. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 431 as we hope, you once had) of automatically tell- ing the truth upon all those little occasions, a hundred of which come up every day, when there's no time to think. If there always were time enough so you could figure out just how much other people could be expected to know of the truth, then you might always succeed in de- ceiving them. But life is so full of sudden sur- prises, that unless we're in the habit of telling the truth always, we usually will have to spend a good deal of time making new lies to back up the old ones. Telling the truth saves worry. Secondly, if still you persist that you want to be a liar, we're afraid you'll want to be a clever one. Remain a stupid liar if you're wise; when you become a clever liar, you become a fool. This is because to be an artist at lying means you must throw your whole soul into it; yes, and be- lieve in it, yourself, accepting on faith what you know to be a fable making a religion of it, in short. Do you think such practices can leave your intellect unharmed? Do you think, if you today practice persuading yourself that black is white you can remain a careful, skeptical, scien- tific thinker, reasoning carefully, and not easily deceived?" "No man can follow two masters." Thirdly, the new branch of mental therapy called psycho-analysis, shows that in extreme cases terrible all-around harm to health may re- 4 St. Paul. Apropos of Expression, we may discuss the necessity of adequate provision for play. 432 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS suit from pretending not to feel what you really do. Lije Williams was haled to court to answer a complaint arising out of a broken bargain. Among the witnesses called was one Steve Collins. "Mr. Collins," said the examining lawyer, "you know the defendant in this case, do you not?" "Oh, yes," answered Collins. "What is his reputation for veracity?" con- tinued the lawyer. "Is he regarded as a man who never tells the truth?" "Waal, I can't say that he don't never tell the truth," replied Steve, "but I do know that if he wanted his hogs to come to dinner he'd have to git somebody else to call em!" Apropos of Expression, we may discuss the necessity of adequate provision for play. We find to hand an old excerpt, perhaps put out by the playground association, which runs: "Societies to the number of 111, 406 athletic clubs, and 59 industrial organizations were report- ed by Sheldon 5 among 1,139 boys, and 911 such associations among 1,145 girls. Forbush 6 found among 1,022 boys 862 societies, of which 77 per cent were predatory or athletic. Puffer discov- ered that 128 of 146 boys in the Lyman Indus- trial School were members of gangs devoted to sociability and physical activity, or in general 3 boys in 4. 7 "The time for the formation of 5 American Journal of Psychology. V. 9, p. 429. 8 Pedagogical Seminary. V. 7 p. 313. 7 Pedagogical Seminary- V. 12, p. 175. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 433 gangs is from 10 to 11 years of age to about the 16th year. Under certain conditions the period may be~ extended, but when that is the case it usually indicates arrested development. Gangs are the expression of primitive tendencies. An environment incapable of draining off these in- stincts into channels which will make for social growth perpetuates the racial impulses of early man. Examples are the Mafia .... and the Ca- morra .... The history of criminology is replete with organizations that owe their existence to the survival of primitive instincts." 8 All of which, let it nevertheless be observed, is not to be taken as indicative that even the "primitive instincts themselves might not quite easily embody them- selves usefully, even today. New York police captains several years ago told the committee on small parks that they had no trouble with boys who live in the neighbor- hood of playgrounds and parks." 9 After two years of parks, the Chicago South Side "showed a decrease in delinquency of 17 per cent, relative to the delinquency of the whole city, while the rest of the city had increased its delinquency 12 per cent." 10 "If we consider three districts in the South Side which are better equipped with playgrounds 8 Swift, in "Youth and the Race." p. 246-7. He gives at a footnote "numerous examples" (of organizations ba?d on primitive instincts) "mpybe found in Jacob A. Ri's's 'How *he Other Half Lives.' 9 Swift, "Youth and the Race," p. 103. 10 Allen Burns, reprint from the "Proceedings of the Second Annual Playground Association," p. 11. 434 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS and apparatus than the other portions of that section we find that two of them which had a rapid increase in population during the period under consideration showed a decrease in delin- quency of 28 per cent and 33 per cent respec- tively, while the delinquency of the third, in which the population remained more nearly uni- form, decreased 70 per cent. And this decrease occurred- at a time when the delinquency of the entire city increased 11 per cent. In St. Louis, again, the police reports have shown a decrease of 50 per cent in juvenile crime in the neighbor- hood of playgrounds during the summer months when they were open. 11 Already we've given some brief history of the psychoanalytic movement. Let us now survey somewhat more widely the entire field. Although psychoanalysis was originated by Dr. Sigmund Freud, some of his pupils have start- ed schools of their own, based upon slight or serious divergences from his position on various technical points. From the four primal instincts above men- tioned, Freud has singled out the reproductive as being, on account of the great repression accord- ed it in our civilization, the source of all neuroses. He holds that inasmuch as in our modern life the instincts of nutrition and derivatives 12 are fairly 11 Swift. "Youth and the Race." p. 104. 12 Prof. James dr--w up a l^ng list of human irstincts, to refute the notion that man had fewer instincts than the lower animals. An in- stinct has been defined as a "birth-given tendency to act in a specific way." Examples are the tendency of all birds to build nests, even PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 435 satisfied in most of us, therefore it's only the love instincts which make trouble. Freud's own classification of instincts, therefore, runs as fol- lows: Primary are the tendencies to normal active and passive sexual role; secondary are sadism and masochism; tertiary are "Schaulust" pleasurable curiosity in beholding sex phe- nomena and exhibitionism. As opposed to this, Adler, the first prominent pupil to break away from Freud, emphasizes as the center of all complexes the Ego, and believes that neuroses are simply inefficient attempts to compensate symbolically for slights to self-re- spect. Personally, we think that Freud's pleasure- motive and Adler's masculine protest are two compensating branches, of the family of the ro- mantic instincts, whose relative importance will vary according to the individual who is being tho they have been hatched and reared indoors and never have seen a nest ; or the tendency of dogs to make scratching motions suitable for burying a bone, even though since puopyhood they've lived, well- fed, in a house with h?rd floors. A birdling who has never seen a nest, or a puppy who has never known the use of buried food, can hardly be presumed to act in th-se ways from a calculation of future bliss to be thus gained. No more is this the case with every day ac- tions of human beings. Four innate tendencies are so much more primitive than any other* that the rest are considered as descended from them. Therefore, as we've said, we conveniently may think of the Tree of Life as having two main trunks one the tendency to seek things that it feel* are desirable ; the other the tendency to avoid what it feels are odious. The first of the trunks aeain silitting giv-s as a proslc branch the tendency to assimilate food, and as a romantic branch the tendency to unite with a mate for reproduction ; conversely, the second trunk of the tree of life also splitting gives us as a prosaic branch the tendency to flee from danger and as a romantic branch the tendercy to combat enemies. The emotions corresponding to these primal instincts are hunger end love, fear ?nd anger. As descended from the primal assimilation-of-food instinct, we'd class hunting with its further derivatives of play and of general phys- ical activity; also hoarding, with its derivatives of collecting, and so forth. 436 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS analyzed; and will be emphasized according to whether the analyst himself is predominently of this or of the other make-up. Jung recognizes a value in both the Freudian and Adlerian ex- planations, .but he puts a great deal of emphasis also on what we may call the higher branching of the tree of instincts, and not merely upon these two fundamental tendencies. Moreover, Jung considers it necessary to give more attention than his predecessors to not merely analyze the motives of action, but to see in what direction the character of the individual is trending and how he may form a helpful new systhesis of all his tendencies. Among the proofs offered to psychoanalysts to substantiate their concept of the unconscious part of the mind one would seem to be the fact of disassociated personality. For example, there are many persons who, on account perhaps of some fall or injury to the head, will forget for many years who they are perhaps go off to some other city and begin life anew and eventually awake to the trends of thought of the original character, return to their former home, resume their former life, and entirely forget all they did during the intermittent years. It is a well known fact that in hypnotism the subject may go from one trance into another deeper and deeper, each time assuming an entirely different character, and upon being hypnotized again he will resume one or another of these definite states. Further- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 437 more, each of us is surprised sometimes at the way in which different attitudes arise seemingly from nowhere and overwhelm him; as Professor James (or was it Emerson?) said: "Our moods toms: The method of creating the sub-conscious personality "Adrienne." 19. Pp. 61-64, 69, 72, 84, 89, 90, 91. Disease: Hallucination and automatism. (Flournoy). Patient: Helen Smith. Symptoms 'Somnambulism with glossolalia. 20. P. 62. Experiments : Patient: Maury experimenting upon himself. Symptoms : Pictures seen hypogogically became the subjects of the dreams that followed. 21. P. 62. Experiments to the same effect as the above. Patient: G. Trumbull LaHd. experimenting on himself. 22. Pp. 63, 84. Disease: Hallucinations. (Jules Quicherat). Patient: Jeanne d'Arc. Symotoms : Hallucinations appearing in accordance with pre- dominating presentations. 23. P". 37. 44 63 Disease: Hallucinations. (Hagen). Patient : Swedenborg. Symptoms : Hallucinations appearing in accordance with pre- dominating presentations. 24. P. 63. Disease: Hallucinations. (Goethe). Patient: Be^venuto Cellini. Symptoms : Ibid. 25. P. 63. Disease : Hallucinations. P"t\" r -t: An unnamed student. Symptoms : Ibid. 26. Pp. 64, 65. 84. Disease: Character-change. (S. Weir-Mitchell). Patient: Miss Mary Reynolds, who lived in Pa, in 1811. Symptoms : Long sleep ; complete amnesia ; character and dis- position totally changed. Alternating two states of conscious- 464 ness for 16 years ; last 25 years of life spent in the secondary state exclusively. 27. P. 65. Disease: Character-change: (Schroeder von de Kalk). Patient : Young woman, 15 years. Symptoms : After 3 years of illness, she was seized with peri- odic and complete amnesia. Normal state, intelligent, well- read ; abnormal state, silly, childish. 28. P. 66. Disease Character-change. (Hoefelt). Patient : Girl, submissive and modest. Symptoms : Spontaneous somnambulism, and change to imperti- nent, rude, and violent. 29. Pp. 66, 84. Disease: Character-change. (Azam). Patient: Felida, 14% years. Depressed and timid. Symptoms: Amnesic attacks, with secondary state gradually be- coming chief ; new disposition, lively, reckless. Later, an ap- proximation of conduct between the two states. 30. P. 66. Disease: Hysteria, with amnesic alternating character. Patient: Louis V, of France. (Bourru and Burot, and others). Symptoms : At periodic intervals displays the worst tendencies. Second, agreeable, sympathetic, industrious, and obedient. 31. P. 66. Disease: Character-change. (Rieger) Patient: "A case parallel to Lindau's criminal lawyer." 32. P. 66. Disease: Character-change. (Morton Prince) Patient ; Case from "an Experimental Study of Visions." 33. P. 67. DLease: Periodic change in personality without am- nesic dissociation. (Renaudin) Symptoms : First stage, rude, greedy, thievish, inconsiderate. Patient : A young man of excellent character. Body aneasthetic during bad intervals. 34. P. 69. Disease : Double consciousness. (Janet) Patient: Leonie I and Leonie II. Symptoms : A naturalness in contrast with "Ivenes," S. W.'s second personality. 35. Pp. 70, 71. Disease: Hysterical dreaming. (Pick) Patient: Woman. Thinks herself the Empress Elizabeth. (Same Case?) Symptoms : Acted out the idea of attempted rape upon herself. 36. P. 70. Disease: Pathological dreaming. (Bohn) Patient: Woman. Symptoms : Dreamt herself into a marriage engagement with a totally imaginary lawyer, and corresponded with him, disguising her handwriting. 37. P. 71. Disease: Hysterical identification. (Erler) Patient : Woman, acutely hysterical. Symptoms : Thought herself one of several little paper riders whom she saw hypnogogically. 38. P. 75. Disease : Hypnotic somnambulism. Patient: Bettina Brentano, who suddenly fell asleep upon Goethe's knee, the first time she met him. Cause : Psychic stimulation bringing about the hypnotic state. 39. P. 75. Disease : Susceptibility to somnambulic states. Patient: A sensitive lady about to have a splinter cut out of her finger. Symptom : Pleasurable hallucination of plucking flowers, the state disappearing spontaneously when the operation was over. 40. P. 76. Disease: Spontaneous hypnosis. (Bonamaison) Patient : Remarkable case, "in which not only was the sense .of touch retained, but the senses of hearing and smell were quickened." PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 465 41. P. 76. Disease: Hysterical lethargy. (Loewenfeld) Patients : "D." Symptoms : A fleeting recollection of the lethargic interval, in- stead of the usual total amnesia. 42. P. 76. Disease: Hysterical lethargy. (Loewenfeld) Patient: "St." Symptoms : Lethargy was turned into hypnosis by mesmeric passes, and thus combined with the rest of consciousness during the attack. 43. P. 81. Disease: Hystero-epilepsy. (Janet) Patient: Man who had a vision of a conflagration during at- tacks, and in whom an attack could be induced by the sight of a lighted match. Cause: This relatively slight amnesic dissociation shows the d.ep foundation of the ego-complex. 44. P. 84. Disease : Somnambulism. (Dyce) Patient : ( ?) during age of puberty. Cause: Puberty as inducing somnambulism. 45. Pp. 87-89. Disease: Cryptomnesia. (Frau E. Forster-Nietzsche) Patient : Nietzsche. Symptoms : Almost verbal reproduction of a passage from Ker- ner's "Blatter aus Prevorst," in "Thus Spake Zarathustra." 46. P. 89. Disease: Glossolalia. Patient: Judge Edmond's daughter Laura. 47. P. 89. Disease: Glossolalia. (Bresler) Patient: Probably identical with Blumhardt's Gottlieben Dittus. 48. P. 96. Circumstarc : Use of Association method. Test-person : A hysterical woman. Result: Her reactions showed the two typically hysterical ten- dncKS ; long reaction time ; explanatory woris rather than simple reactions (Jnet's sentiment d'incompletude, Freud's re- . inforced object-libido). 49. P. 103. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : A hysteric. Result: Many failures to react at all. 50. P. 106. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : A man of small stature, younger than his three tall brothers ; had a psychosis. Result: The word short came frequently and without meaning. 51. Pp. 106-118. Circumstance: Suspicion of theft of money. Test-person : "A," a woman friend of Read nurse : had been present at probable time of theft; later confessed to it. Result: Association experiment pointed in every detail to her guilt. 52. Pp. 106-113. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : "B," the head nurse of the hospital. Result: In spite of suspicious outward appearances, every re- action to the test indicated innocence. 53. Pp. 106-113. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : "C," the nurse who had charge of cleaning the room. Result: Outwardly calm, every reaction indicated innocence, and even ignorarce till near the end of the test 54. P. 114. Circumstance: Reaction to test given by older intelligent woman student. Test^person : A young student, who thought the test an exam- ination in intelligence. Result: He reacted with definitions, seeking the significance of the stimulus words ; results similar to those of an idiot. 466 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 55. Pp. 118-119. Disease: Episodic excitement, with violent jeal- ousy of husband. Patient: An educated woman of 30 years, married 3 years. Cause: Reactions to association test showed jealousy was pro- jection of her own sexual wishes, as she was faithless in her fancies. 56. Pp. 121, 122, 125, 158, 159. Circumstance: Association method applied according to 15 separate standards. Test-t>erson : A middle-aged man, husband of No. 57, father of No. 58 ; a drunkard and quite demoralized. 57. Pp. 121, 122, 125, 126, 158, 159. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : A woman of 46 years, wife of No. 56, and mother of No. 58. Result: A pure predicate type, with marked subjective tendency. 58. Pp. 121, 122, 125, 126, 158, 159. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : Girl of 16 years, the daughter of Nos. 56 and 57. Result : A pure predicate type, with marked subjective tendency ; almost complete agreement with mother. 59 ; Pp. 122, 123. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : The husband of No. 60. Result : Predicate objective type ; almost complete agreement with wife. 60. Pp. 122, 123. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : Wife of No. 59. Result : Predicate objective type ; almost complete agreement with husband, though with some few more subjective tendencies. 61. P. 123. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : The father of Nos. 62 and 63. Result : Predicate objective type ; quite close agreement with daughters. 62. P. 123. Circumstance: Ibid. Tst n-rs'-m : First r'j'Ufirhtrr of No. 61. Result: Predicate objective type somewhat more pronounced than eiJier father or sister, but in quite close agreement with them. 63. P. 123. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : Second daughter of No. 61. Result: Predicate objective type, somewhat less pronounced than sister, and a trifle more than father. 64. P. 123. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : A woman, single, living with her sister, who is No. 65. Result: Fairly predicate-objective type, excelling in some re- spects her married sister and falling below in others. 65. P. 123. Circumstances: Ibid. Test-person : A woman, married, living with her sister, No. 64. Result: Fairly predicate-objective type, quite harmonious with the sister who is single. 66. Pp. 123, 124. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : A man, the husband of No. 67, and brother-in-law of Nos. 64 and 65. Result: A fairly subjective and emotional type. 67. Pp. 123, 124. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : Wife of No. 66, and sister of Nos. 64 and 65. Result: Rapid falling away from objective type of sisters, and almost complete agreement with husband's type. 68. Pp. 124, 125. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person : Mother of No. 69. Result: Mother and daughter, living together, show complete agreement both in thought and form of expression. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 467 69. Pp. 124, 125. Circumstance: Ibid. Test-person: Daughter of No. 68. Result: Complete agreement with mother; L e., utterly subject to milieu. Patient: A youth who ran away from parents, yet cherished a box of childhood treasures. Cause: The depressions of puberty, resulting from effort to free himself from spell of family, and difficulty in forming new adjustment. 71. Pp. 127, 128. Disease: A neurosis. Patient: An intelligent and educated young woman, who thought her eyes influenced men disagreeably. Cause : Repressed erotic wishes ; a certain predilection for lov- ing mentally abnormal persons a result of her love for an older brother who became hopelessly insane at 14 years. 72. Pp. 129-131. Disease: Dementia praecox. Patient: A lady whose husband was in every way suitable for her. Cause : The favorite daughter of her father, she continually compared with him her husband to the disadvantage of the lat- ter; the infantile constellation. 73. Pp. 132-5, 149, 150, 170. Circumstance: Study of the psy- chology of the child. (Freud) Case: Little Hans, a 5-year-old boy. R suit: A knowledge of a child's mental processes, especially in relation to the discoveries concerning sex. 74. Pp. 135-154. Circumstance: Ibid. (Jung) Case: Anna, a 3 year-old girl, a healthy, lively child of emo- tional temperament. Result: Ibid. 75. P. 153. Disease: Excessive masturbation. Patient: A 4-year-old girl. Cause: The child slept in the same room with parents. 76. PD. 160-2. Disease: A climacteric neurosis. Patient: A well-preserved woman of 55, a favorite daughter, twice married. Cause : The parental constellation ; The dominance of her father throughout her life. 77. Pp. 162-165. Dis ase: Nervousness with suicidal tendency. Patient: Man of 34 years, of small build, youngent of three brothers ; married to his brother's widow ; in love with a young girl. Cause : The familial constellation ; the relation to the father strongest, with masochistic homosexual coloring. 78. Pp. 165-170. Disease: Nervousness and anxiety, because of religious fears after father's sudden death. Patient: A peasant woman of 36 years, a/erage intelligence, healthy, the mother of 3 children. Cause: Father's favorite; married against his wbhes, refusing an idiot servant, whom her father wished her to marry. Her husband a good man: her father a drunkard and swearer; great anxiety over her father's soul. 79. Pp. 170-172. Disease: Enuresis. Patient: Bey of 8 years, intelligent, afraid of his father, lov- ing his over-indulgent mother. Cause : In a position of too much dependence on parents ; Jeal- ous of his father, yet homosexual toward him. 80. P* 174-175. Reference to the love episode in the Book of Tobias. Case: Sarah, daughter of Raguel, had 7 successive husband* 468 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS who all died on the wedding night ; her 8th, Tobias, lived tho Raguel had dug his son-in-law's grave beforehand. Cause : A mythological account of the father constellation. 81. P. 174. Disease: Hysteria. Patient: A woman who had three husbands. Cause: Husbands were all chosen under the infantile constella- tion. 82. Pp. 176-190. Disease: A phantasy of puberty. Patient: Marie X., a 13-year-old school girl, expelled for start- ing an ugly rumour about her teacher. Cause: A dream of Marie's, of wish-fulfillment, which dream, when retold, became a rumour because it voiced the sexual complex of the girls of the school. 88. Pp. 191-196. Circumstance : Three dreams each containing a number. Patient: A middle-aged man, having an extra-conjugal love affair. Causes : The first and second numbers showed a tendency to count up the cost of the love affair ; the third, envy of his doc- tor because the latter had one child more than he. 84. Pp. 196-199. Circumstance: A dream consisting only of a name and number. Patient: The wife of No. 83. Cause: The repressed wish that her husband, impotent as re- gards herself, might die, and she marry again and have another child. 85. Pp. 209-211. Disease: A neurosis. Patient : A man about 40, with wife and children ; has an in- tense resistance toward his professional work. Cause : Difficulties with wife, a childish egoism, etc. 86. Pp. 209, 210. Disease: A neurosis. Patient: A woman of 40, mother of 4 children; after death e h'd s fi th : neurosis better; now wants another; can find no other interest sufficient to make her well. 87. Pp. 217, 218. Circumstance: Dream of fire in hotel, from which patient was rescued by husband and father. Patient: A married woman, of frivolous mental attitude. Result of analysis : In a hotel patient had a questionable love affair. 88. Pp. 219, 220. Circumstance: Dream of going upstairs with . mother and sister. Patient : A young man ; neurotic ; difficulty in choosing pro- fession. Result of analysis: Dream symbols have more than one mean- ing ; here, signified patient's neglected biological duties. 89. P. 239. Disease : Various neurotic troubles. Patient: A withered peasant woman of 50 years. Result: Her reaction to hypnotism aroused the suspicion that there was a sex element in suggestion. 90. Pp. 239, 240. Disease: Enuresis nocturna. Patient : Girl of 17 years ; had suffered since early childhood. Result of hypnotic treatment: Success of cure due in part to an evident sex element in the method. 91. Pp. 240, 241. Disease: Pain in knee-joint of 17 years duration. Patient: Woman of 65 years. Result of hypnotic treatment: A wonderfully sudden cure which gave good evidence of the purely personal nature of the success. 92. P. 246. Disease: Enuresis nocturna. (Loy) Patient : A girl of 15 years, who had suffered from infancy. Result: Rapid cure by hypnotism. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 469 93. P. 246. Disease: The washing mania. (Loy) Patient: A woman. Result: Cure thru light hypnotism and psychoanalysis. 94. P. 247. Disease: Masturbation. (A colleague of Ley's) Patient: A young French boy whose grandmother interfered when sexual enlightenment was given. 95. P. 265. Disease: Extreme erotic transference phantasies. (Jung) Patient: A very intelligent lady, who unconsciously acted on the insight gained from analysis, and dreamed of the doctor and herself without the forms of transference. 96. PD. 303, 304, 305-311. Circumstance: Dream of surreptitiously plucking an apple from a tree in a strange garden. Patient: A young man. Result of association method applied to dream material : A love affair with a housemaid, with whom he had a rendezvous the day before. 97. Pn 319-322. Disease: Dementia Praecox. Patient : Cook, woman of 32 years ; no hereditary taint. Teeth extraction caused anxiety attacks. Result of psychoanalysis : She had had an illegitimate child, knowledge of which she wished to keep from her present lover. 98. Pp. 322-328. Disease: Dementia Praecox. Patient : Man of 30 to 40 years ; a foreign archaelogist of great learning and unusual intelligence. Result of T>sychoanp]ys ; s : All delusions, etc., are explicable by the incidents of a futile love affair of many years before. 99. Po. 327-328. Circumstance : The psychosis has one noteworthy picture in 1'terature, "Impgo." Author: The artist Spitteler. Cause: "The er+i~t knows PS a rule better than the psychiatrist." 100. Pp. 328, 329. Disease: Dementia Praecox. Patient: Man five years in bed without uttering a word. No explanation given. Cause: Time makes no difference to the patient. 101. P. 329. Disease : Dementia Praecox. Pt*ent: Man silent for y~rs, "to snare the German language." Cause: To patients, nothing peculiar in experiences. 102. Pp. 329-330. Disease: Dementia Praecox. Patient: Woman for 35 years ill in bed: back bent, head bowed, knees somewhat drawn up, and hand held as in position of sewing. Analysis: A love affair that had come to nothing. The man was a shoemaker. 103. P. 330. Disease: Dementia Praecox. Patient: Man with mad medley of delusions and words except when physically seriously ill. Conclusion : Reason survives in some corner of the mind. 104. Pp. 331-335. Disease: Dmentia Praecox ; "the classic example of meaningless delusional ideas." Patient: A woman, dressmaker; fell ill at 39 yars : sat for 20 years mechanicelly sewing, apparently an imbecile yet utter- ing odd words which proved to be keys to rich and satisfying phantasies. 105. P. 335. Circumstance: The character of 'Hannele in the. drama of that name. Author : Hauptmann. Cause: "Something common both to the artist and the insane and to ... every human being." 470 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 106. Pp. 337-343. Disease: Paranoid dementia. (Freud) Patient : P. Schreber, revealed in his autobiography, "Denk- wurdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken." Ann lysis : The infantile complex ; also bizarre concatenations of ideas. 107. PT>. 338-343. Circumstance: The interpretation of "Faust" causally. Patients : The symbol Faust, the man Goethe ; the human being. Analysis : The causal standpoint leads to constructive under- standing. 108. Pp. 358-361. Disease: Hysteria, spastic paralysis of right arm, systematic aphasia; twilight states. (Breuer & Freud) Patient : A very intelligent young woman : the psychic injury, or trauma, occurred while nursing her dying father. Cure: Effected by psychoanalysis, one of the first cases. 109. P. 358. Disease: Hysteria, causing loss of hearing. Patient: A lady, who still sang. The doctor, accompanying her, changed the key, and she sang on in the altered key, show- ing she heard. CPUSC: An anatomical impossibility is often symptomatic of hysteria, 110. Pp. 358, 359. Disease: Hysteria, causing comolete blindness. Patient: A man, who. gradually recovering his sight, sees everything but people's heads. Cuse: The consciousness only, not the sense function, is affected. 111. Pp. 361-366. Disease: Hysteria, following a sudden fright. Patient: A young lady, who is in love with her friend's hus- band and not with the man she is engaged to. Cause : The erotic conflict, and not the trauma resulting from the fright of runaway horses in her childhood. 112. Pp. 381-383. 392-394, 414. Circumstance: Conflict of soul, as seen in the life ard works of Nietzsche ; wherein he differed from Wagn-r: the "will to power." 113. Pp. 385-391, 406-408. Disease: A neurosis; terror, nervous asthma; choking. Patient: A young married woman, hr father's favorite, who had hd before her marriage, a flirtation with an Italian. Analysis : Cause in conflict between the infantile-Totic relation to father pnd love for hr husband (according to Freud). Cause in the will to power of the ego, which first took advantage of parents' estrangement, then asserted the ego by neurosis when influence over husband flogged (according to Adler). 114. Pp. 399-401, 405, 415. Disease: Hypochondria. Pt s "nt: A retired American business man, of 45 years; self- made. Csuse: Active creative energy turned back into himself with destructive force. A hopeless case. 115. Pp. 418-430, 434. 435. Disease: Infantile comolex directed to- ward a friend ; homosexual tendency : trsnsfererce to doctor. Patient: A woman artist whose "Heal friendship" with an- other woman artist produced a neurosis in both. Analysis : Succss in restoring the individual psyche. 116. Pp. 447, 448. Disease: Schizophrenia. (Maeder) Patient : A man who called the world his picture-book ; a lock- smith, without intellectual gifts. Analysis : His idea just as universal in character as Schopen- hauer's world, but has stood still in an embryonic stage of PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 471 growth, while Schopenhauer's has changed to an abstraction universally valid. Cases cited in Jung's "Psychology of the Unconscious." 117. Pp. 37-41. Disease: Introversion psychosis. (Anatole France) Patient: Abbe Oegger, a priest much given to phantasies; re- ceived a sign to prove that Judas was saved. Cause: Unconscious preparation of his mind for hhwelf play- ing the part of Judes. as he left the Roman Catholic Church and became a Swedenborgian. 118. PT>. 41-138 191. ff. thruout book. Subject: Poms and auto- biographical material from "Quelque faits ^'imagination crentice sub-onsciente." Author: Miss Frank Miller, an American woman. Disease: Archaic definition overlays real meaning of modern word. Patient: A woman, who discf>vrd the mythologic (Spielrein) m">ni" i*;7-l60. D ; sese: Dementia praecox. Patient: A woman marrifd many years, and taken ill after the death of her child ; symptom, a peculiar boring movement on her left temnje. Cause: Prdominance of the infantile. 121. P 162. Disease: A catatonic state. Patient: A ymi*>sr girl, just engaged; on first seeing the doctor, requested something to eat. Cu t.o th" prsexual stage. 122. P. 162. Disease: Dementia praecox. Pftint: A yiuni? maidservant; had delusions mixing sexual pnd rutirMve element*. Cause: Regression to the presexual stage. 123. P 18S. Disease: Imbecility showing in incendiarism. (Dr. Schmid) Patient: A peasant youth. C"us-: CiTPCti^d with masturbation. 124. P 203. CircuT"sti>r>c': A dr*>rn tht th physician speared to the wall an animal half pig, half crocodile. Patient: A neurotic man who had questionable relations with women. Cus-: The fear that the physician would forbid his sexual adventures. 125. P. 206. Circumstance: Hynogoaint.ed o a By,*"tine chroh wH : one hnn-1 with g _ r ..,4 fingers, which were large and had knobs at the end. Patient: A man. Ou p- T,-, h""d h. 20d. Pntient: Same man PS No. 125. C"iie' Th <--n-ctin of the idea of fire which is also a bird. with the T-hslHc hand. 127. P. 210. Circumstance: Phantasy that defecation is like the emotion of a volcano. Patient: A man who h^d this phantasy in his childhood. -<,<> "Th trrm- 'or **"* ^'"mental occurrences of nature are originally not at all poetical." 472 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 128. P. 211. Circumstance: Phantasy that the patient's father was sitting on the toilet in dignified manner, and receiving greetings from people who passed. Patient: A woman characterized by special veneration for her father. Cause : The close connection of the idea of veneration with the anal region. 129. P. 211. Circumstance: A dream of the representation of "the Crucified on the bottom of a blue-flowered chamber pot." Patient: A young man very religiously trained. Cause: The intimate connection of the faeces and gold, the most worthless with the most valuable, i. e., with the religious. 130. P. 212. Circumstarce : Child's reply, when on toilet, that she was making "A little wagon and two ponies," things she es- pecially wished for. Case: "Anna," who had a well-developed anal theory of birth. Cause : The child's enormous interest in derecation and its products, seeing that thereby something is produced. 131. P. 212. Circumstance: The phantasy of childhood that from a crevice in the wall of the toilet a fairy would come and bring everything it wished. Patient: A woman. Cause : Ibid. 132. Po. 212-213. Disease: Insanity. (Lombroso) Patient: An artist who considered himself God and the ruler of the world, making it come forth from the rectum. Cause : The great valuation placed upon the excrement. 133. Pp. 212-213. Disease: Insanity. (Lombroso) Patient : An artist who had the same phantasy as No. 132, and who painted a picture of himself with the world coming forth from his arms. Cause : Ibid. 134. P. 213. Disease: Insanity. Patient: An educated woman, separated from husband and child under tragic circumstances ; smeared herself with excrement when the doctor had established a hopeful train of thot. Cause : Now known to be an infantile ceremony of welcome, or a declaration of love. 135. PD. 248 249. Disease: Illness resulting from typical retention of the libido ; dream of a garden containing a remarkable exotic tree with flowers and fruit : she ate and found herself poisoned. Patient: A woman many yars married, who had recently met a young man very pleasing to her. Cause: The tree has a nhallic significance. 136. P. 275. Circumstance: Drsm that th patient's IMT is encircled by a large red worm, for whom she had a tender interest. Patient: A girl of 6 years, who goes to school unwillingly. Cause : The motive of encircling is the mother symbolism. (For case mentioned Pp. 275-276 see No. 115.) 137. P. 362. Circumstance: Explanation of the maternal significance of water in regard to the mother complex. Patient: A woman, who shuddered at the explanation and thot of a jellyfish. Cause : The encircling and devouring motive in the jellyfish denotes th re-absorption in the mother complex. 138. P. 363. Circumtance : Dream of being as high as a church steeple, and of threatening a policeman. Patient: A girl of 11 years. Cause: A wish inversion; the policeman is the father, "whose gigantic size is overcompensated by the church steeple." PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 473 139. P. 413. Circumstance: Dream of a serpent bite in the region of the genitals. Pat.ent : A man trying to free himself from his mother complex. Cause: The conviction that he was inspired and poisoned by his mother expressed itself by the contrary phallic symbol. 140. Pp. 413, 414. Circumstance: Dream that the patient was filled . with a great snake, whose tail could be seen but not seized. Patient: A woman in a relapse, during which the libido was again introverted. Cause: The snake the symbol of the libido. 141. P. 414. Disease: A very strong introversion (catatonic state). Patient: A woman who complained that a snake stuck in her throat. Cause : Ibid. Cases Cited in Jung's "Theory of Psychoanalysis." 142. P. 10. Disease : Hysteria ; hallucinations of smell. Patient: Miss Lucy R., an English governess in Vienna. Result: Cure effected by psychoanalysis. (Freud) Conclusion : The etiological moment not found in traumatic scenes, but in the "insufficient readiness of the patient to set store upon the convictions passing thru her mind." (Jung) (For case discussed Pp. 12-14, 46-49, 72-77, see case No. 111.) 143. Pp. 25, 26, 28. Disease: Homosexuality. Patient: A young man who conquered the homosexual tendency, and after being heterosexual for some years, became homosexual again because of a woman's refusal to marry him. Cause: A reversion of the libido. (For case mentioned Pp. 35, 36 ; also "Psychology of the Un- conscious," P. 152 ; see case No. 106.) 144. P. 48. Circumstance: A lively fear of earthquakes. Cause: The shock of an earthquake long recovered from. 145. Pp. 84-89. Disease : An ordinary hysteria. Patient: The elder of two sisters but a year apart in age. Cause: Indecision as to marriage, while her sister married without any emotional obstacle ; also, she was the favorite daugh- ter, and had apparently an incest phantasy toward her father. 146. Pp. 89, 90. Disease: Hysteria. Patient: A woman whose mother had written of her in early childhood, that she was always good-tempered and enterprising. Conclusion : Unusual sensitiveness in children is discernible in infancy. 147. Pp. 8y, 90. Disease: Catatonia. Patient: Sister of No. 146. Her mother had written of her, when she was 2% years old, that she was always in difficulties with both people and things. Conclusion : Ibid. 148. Pp. 112-133. Disease: A neurosis in a child. (Jung and Miss Mary Moltzer.) Patient: A girl of 11 years; intelligent. Sud- den sickness and headache ; reluctance to go to school ; later, fever; liking for a teacher, followed by estrangement; a boy friend. Cause: Complicated emotional processes, due to the gradual approach of puberty. 474 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS SECTION 2 The above section has told you something of the pathological aberrations caused when instincts are too much repressed. It is time we enquired into the normal nature of instincts. This chapter continues our skeleton of funda- mental principles of human nature. Human na- ture is what we have to deal with every day more than with anything else. It is more important than all the arts, and is the key to an understand- ing of history and politics; perhaps this is why nothing ever is said about it in the public schools, for a general knowledge of it would .explain too many of our cherished delusions. For most of our institutions not only, but also our habitual manner when provoked, is based upon a tacit assumption that human conduct is best controlled thru the single motive of Fear. Never has much intelligence been required, to see in other's fears, emotions easy to exploit to our own advantage. The mother-cat makes use of it when she raises her bristles so as to look for- midable to her enemy, dog; or when she cuffs a recalcitrant kitten. No wonder, then, that non- resistant philosophers like Lao-tse, Bhudda, and Tolstoi have been regarded as somewhat other than human. And yet that there's at least far more truth than error in their position is being demonstrated by an essentially non-spiritualistic development of modern science psychoanalysis. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 475 Let's discuss the characteristics of this flight instinct, before we enquire whether other primal or evolved urges are also important in the motiva- tion of men. Turning to the classics of modern psychology, we get from Wm. James' following description: 16 "Fear is a reaction aroused by the same objects that arouse ferocity .... Fear stands beside lust and anger, as one of the three most exciting emotions of which our nature is susceptible. The great source of terror to infancy is solitude. The teleology of this is obvious, as is also that of the infantile expression of dismay the never failing cry on waking up and finding himself alone. "Black things, and especially dark places, holes, caverns, etc., arouse a peculiarly gruesome fear .... says Schneider: "'.... Children who have been carefully guarded from all ghost-stories are nevertheless terrified and cry if led into a dark place, especially if sounds are made there. . . . "'.... The fact of such instinctive fear is easily explicable when we consider that our savage an- cestors thru innumerable generations were accus- tomed to meet with dangerous beasts in caverns, especially bears, and were for the most part at- tacked by such beasts during the night and in the woods . . . .' "Fear of the supernatural is one variety of fear. It is difficult to assign any normal object "James. Wm. Principles of Psychology pp. 415-420. 476 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS for this fear, unless it were a genuine ghost. But science has not yet adopted ghosts ; .... To bring the ghostly terror to its maximum, many usual elements of the dreadful must combine, such as loneliness, darkness, inexplicable sounds, .... moving figures half discerned .... and a ver- tiginus baffling of the expectation. This last ele- ment, which is intellectual, is very important. It produces a strange emotional 'curdle' in our blood to see a process with which we are familiar de- liberately taking an unwonted course. Professor W. K. Brooks .... told me of his large and noble dog being frightened into a sort of epileptic fit by a bone being drawn across the floor by a thread which the dog did not see. Darwin and Ro- manes have given similar experiences. The idea of the supernatural involves that the natural should be set at naught. . . But in view of the fact that cadaveric, reptilian, and underground horrors play so specific and constant a part in many nightmares and forms of delirium, it seems not altogether unwise to ask whether these forms of dreadful circumstance may not at a former period have been more normal objects of the en- vironment than now." SECTION 3 "The object of education is to make men, to produce the man of truth and honor, to give men the grace of the gentleman, which cannot mani- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 477 fest itself save in good manners, modesty." 17 "Dare to be true." 18 "To thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man." 19 To what has been said on the evils of lying, it may be objected, that whatever marks us as lacking in adroitness and self-control, makes rea- sonable the surmise that we also will turn out to be peddlers of gossip, unworthy of confidences. 20 To be accepted as a confessor, one first must estab- lish his reputation for discretion. How then shall we dare to become entirely frank? The answer is that we can be truthful and yet maintain a certain reserve. But our sociability and loquaciousness, as human animals are indeed to be taken into account; where direct statement of our views is imprudent, another outlet should be provided. This outlet is to be found in art. Thru an artistic medium we can express in sym- bolic fashion the deepest passions. It would be well to put in the first half hour of every morning at some artistic effort. The religions of the world which have endured have built upon this fact. Long after a man has lost, intellectual contact with his church, he may continue to be lured by her music, her vaulted aisles, and her stately pageantry. Among these 17 F. Marion Crawford. 18 G. Herbert, The Temple (The Church Porch). '"Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act. 2, 1. ^The author learnt this by bitter experiences, which he may con- fide to you some day if you ask him delicately. 478 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS he knows himself to be inexplicably more com- fortable than when wrangling with his hoarse- voiced co-radicals in some ugly hall ; yet he would vote down any proposition to devote even a meager sum toward making this hall aesthetically more attractive to himself and his fellow humans. The Japanese are peculiarly a people of artistic discrimination. On visiting Japan at the time of the mikado's coronation our party were fortu- nately enabled to see, one evening, the Cherry Dance. This isn't usually given at this time of year; in the present instance real cherry blos- soms were counterfeited in paper; so as to have their sauce to celebrate the coronation. We were in the loges and had real chairs. The medium- priced place in front of us was simply a sloping platform, upon which people merely squatted, and the cheapest places were squatting room upon the main floor in front. When first we entered the house, they put us thru the "tea ceremonial." Having left our shoes without, we all sat around the sides of a large room and ate the queer cakes and drank the tea which was brewed and served us after certain so- cial formulae. The whole show was conducted by Geisha girls. These girls are professional entertainers, something after the pattern of members of Rus- sian ballet. When the curtain rose, a troup of Geishas were disclosed sitting in a row upon a log. They PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 479 thrummed their instruments with a precision ex- tended to the point of having them all move their hands in exactly the same way at the same time. All costumes were the most gorgeous we ever saw on any stage; nothing "faked" but all materials genuine. Two other stages, one on each side wall of the theatre, were afterward revealed, disclosing other musical troops. Their music teachers sat behind them, and publicly reproved any girl who made a mistake. From the rear troops of dancing Geishas en- tered, and passed via the side stages on to the main one. Each act ensuing consisted of music and ceremonial dancing expressive of some phase of the rice harvest. We couldn't guess the inner meaning of many of their moves, yet there seemed to be a subtle pantomimic element in this and in other Japanese dancing we've seen, that makes the ballet or folk dances of Europe seem very artless by comparison. A curious sight in Japanese streets, especially in the early morning, is to see an old lady stand- ing in the middle of the sidewalk, face toward the east and with folded hands, mumble her prayers. She is worshipping the sun, the chief Shinto deity. And yet the Japanese aren't what you'd call an essentially religious people. Their real religion is Patriotism. Shintoism is rather a set of ceremonial observances. It has an aes- thetic value. Its temples and shrines are very 480 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS lovely, and so are the observances. Why (by the way) should dancing before the altar be absent from all western forms of worship? This custom is as much in place as singing, and should be in- troduced among us. At Delhi, we were nearly prevented from in- CROWD OF THE FAITHFUL WORSHIPPING IN JUMNA MOZHID, DELHI. specting the beautiful Pearl Mosque, because it's inside the fort and we as foreigners, were halted from entering there. But by good fortune, Mrs. Meyer of our party, knew Lady , whose husband yf a very influential man; and she gave us a feed and then personally conducted us thru. There's a singular dignity about the Mo- hammedan worship, which is reflected with deli- PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 481 cate beauty in their mosques, tombs and palaces. In approaching the Taj Majal, that architectural pearl secreted by the labor of many thousand slaves, we felt sure no building could realize the expectations that its describers had raised in us of this one. But on the night that we saw its white domes float like bubbles in the moonlight, we knew that no description ever did this struc- ture justice. SECTION 4 "Art thou a statesman and canst not be a hypocrite? Impossible! Do not distrust thy vir- says he has been reported dead on the authority his death and his burial. On 15 occasions Villa tues."- 1 Repression and lying are found together. Each is born of a sort of mistrust. In a repressive society, deceit will flaunt itself everywhere. The ruling elements themselves, not content with for- bidding frank expression by those whom they re- gard as dangerous to the community, go further, by setting an example in conscienceless deceit. Gradually a profound mistrust is growing up everywhere of the press, that institution which once was hailed as safeguard of the people's liber- ties. All are coming to realize that it is not to their readers that newspapers and magazines look for eighty per cent of their income (which ' J1 Dryden Don Sebastian. 482 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS means their possibility of life) but to advertis- ers, and consequently that news will be suppressed which is unwelcome to big business. A few days ago we clipped the amusing and pertinent item printed below. 22 It concerns the claim by the Mexican, Villa, that "the present ad- ministration in Washington has been hoodwinked and victimized by Carranzista propaganda into believing all sorts of unreliable and fantastic re- ports about himself and his activities. "In support of this latter contention Villa cites numerous specific instances. He calls attention to the frequency with which the administration here has officially and semi-officially announced of witnesses which the United States accepted as reliable, and on four occasions his body has been identified by agents in whom Washington placed implicit confidence, he says, while on one occasion four witnesses swore they had seen him buried, and their reports were accepted, he says, without question." Sometimes the most annoying statements in the press are those which put one in a situation mere- ly ridiculous, or which represent him as express- ing views which he never dreamed of holding. The writer in the course of a lecture at a California hotel, expressed views which displeased local pa- pers. The meeting itself was perfectly orderly rather dull indeed and at the end of it we hap- pened to remark that we were catching an out of ? 5 From White Sulphur Springs, (W. Va.) Day Letter, June 4, 1919. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 4&3 town train. Imagine our astonishment to learn from the write ups of the affair (by a reporter who had not even been present) that we had been "hooted from the platform," that "hisses" had drowned our talk, so that we'd been obliged to flee from town !- :! Certain of our acquaintances, more or less believing what they read, had much merri- ment at our expense ! On the occasion of our next address in Los Angeles, the most notorious of these same papers came out with a series of abso- lute misquotations. A paper in our home town which has a shady reputation for blackmail, steal- ing the news, etc., copied these misquotations, to make them a subject for editorials, and for some time continued to publish the letters of indignant correspondents on the absurdity of our (sic) views! We replied but no paper would give us space. On this occasion we took written testimony of several persons as to the discrepancy between our utterances and those of the papers ; and when for the third and last time we spoke in Los An- geles, we had every word taken down by a re- porter of our own. So this time the account in- cluded nothing about the speech, but only of an occurrence afterward, an article made up whole- piece of imagination ! This was in the Times. In one column of print there were by count thirty lying statements! "Going some!" The papers knew themselves to be safe because we stood for 23 We wrote a reply to these charges, but of course could not suc- ceed in getting more than a few lines space in a not-prominent section of the paper. 484 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS an extremely unpopular cause, were badly in- volved with the courts, and because they formed an almost impregnable aggregation. But in any case you've scarcely any chance of winning a libel case against them, because they guard their statements with "alleged," etc., and deal so much in innuendos. Thus a paper comes out with : "We wish to apologize to Mrs. Orville Overholt. In our paper last week we had a head- ing, 'Mrs. Overholt's Big Feet.' The word we had ought to have used is a French word, pro- nounced the same way, but spelled fete. It means a celebration and is considered a very tony word." Williamsville (N. D.) Item. "Never state as a fact anything you are not certain about," the great editor warned the new reporter, "or you will get us into libel suits. In such cases use the words 'alleged,' 'claimed,' 'reputed,' 'rumored,' and so on." And then this paragraph appeared in the society notes of the paper : It is rumored that a card party was given yes- terday by a number of reputed ladies. Mrs. Smith, gossip says, was hostess. It is alleged that the guests, with the exception of Mrs. Bellinger, who says she hails from Leavitt's Junction, were all from here. Mrs. Smith claims to be the wife of Archibald Smith, the so-called "Honest Man" trading on Key Street. And when the editor had read the report a PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 485 whirling mass claiming to be the. reporter was projected through the window. It's hard to say which is the more mischievous a lying press, or the censorship of opinion. A story is told of a woman who never permits any argument or discussion of her mandates. One afternoon a storm came up and she asked her son Tommy to close the trap-door leading to the flat roof of the house. "But, Mother " began Tommy. "Thomas, I told you to shut the trap." "Yes, but Mother " "Thomas, shut that trap !" "All right, Mother, if you say so, but" "Thomas!" So Thomas slowly climbed the stairs and shut the trap. The afternoon went by and the storm howled and raged. Two hours later the family gathered for dinner, and when the meal was half over, Aunt Anna, who was staying with them, had not appeared. The mother started an investiga- tion, but she did not have to ask many questions. Tommy answered the first one : "Mother, she is on the roof." We read in an article by H. A. Warren: "Interference with freedom of inquiry and in- struction in recent years has been largely confined to the department of philosophy, psychology, and economics, particularly the last. Philosophic theory and psychological principles occasionally come into conflict with traditional ecclesiastical 486 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS interpretations. Only last year, for example, Dr. John M. Mecklin, professor of philosophy and psychology at Lafayette College, resigned under pressure on account of alleged lack of harmony be- tween his teachings and the tradition of his insti- tution .... "This summer the head of the psychological de- partment at a state university, a psychologist in good standing, was dismissed on indefinite charges, his petition for a faculty committee of inquiry being denied. At one of the state normal schools an assistant professor of psychology of several years' standing was dismissed without warning after a brief hearing before the board. "The researches of economists and sociologists often conflict with the interests of political lead- ers and organized wealth. In 1895 Professor Be- mis of Chicago, and in 1900 Professor Ross of Stanford, were retired from their chairs in economics. Friends of the meji claimed, in each case, that pressure had been exerted by patrons of the institution on account of certain economic doc- trines which they taught. . . . "In 1911 Professor Banks was dismissed from the University of Florida, following the publica- tion of an article in The Independent, in which he stated his conviction that teachers and others in positions of influence made a grievous mistake in the generation prior to the Civil War in not pav- ing the way for a gradual removal of slavery PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 487 without the loss of so many lives and the conse- quent pension burden. "Early in 1913 the professor of economics and social science at Wesleyan, Dr. Willard C. Fisher, was summarily suspended after some casual re- marks in a public lecture regarding the observa- tion of the Sabbath. Last autumn Dr. J. L. Lewinsohn, professor of law at the University of North Dakota, resigned under pressure, the au- thorities having disapproved of his active partici- pation in the political campaign. He claims to have been censured by the dean for attending a conference of leaders of the Progressive Party. "During the past winter it was charged in the press that Dr. King and Dr. Nearing, two econo- mists in the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, had been denied de- served promotion on account of some statistical inquiries relating to local and state enterprises. "In March, Professor A. E. Morse relinquished the chair of political science at Marietta College, Ohio. He claims to have been 'practically forced to resign for political reasons.' .... The attitude of the college toward the principle of academic freedom is announced in an official bulletin .... 'it is the sacred duty of the institution (to censor) according to their own judgment and the dictates of their own conscience. At the close of the ses- sion two members of the faculty, friends of Dr. Morse, were offered the choice of resignation or dismissal. No charges were formulated in the 488 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS resolution which summarily cancelled their profes- sional license. Both men were professors of sev- eral years' standing and heads of departments." 2 * We ourselves so thoroly despise the argu- ment 'that the number of assenting minds is proof of a proposition's Tightness,' that we have to confess we haven't the least right to over-ride, rough-shod, the objections of morally and even intellectually, the most despicable persons. If any one can't agree with the point of view now to be propounded, we release him from any obli- gation to respect our standards of right and wrong and beg him to find others of his own; only in return we demand that he, too, shouldn't presume to hold us bound by his standards, but admit our right to formulate, and follow, stand- ards of our own. Tolerance of others, as Spencer 25 has shown, must be extended to the point where liberty ac- corded does not interfere with an equal liberty being enjoyed by others. Only; the following testimony may reasonably be looked for from those who profess a higher morality than their fellows, namely that they make as much of a point of manifesting the new virtues enjoined by, or cultivated by, their creed, as they are of en- joying the new liberties which it permits. We can't conclude this chapter better than by 24 Howard Crosby Warren in an article on Academic Freedom. "Herbert Spencer Man vs. State. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 489 quoting at length from an editorial by B. H. Stamper. 26 "One day a friend met an enthusiastic sup- porter of the proposed union of the provinces to say: 'Pastor, do you know that your elder, Mr. Blank, is very angry because you are advocating Confederation?' 'But have you and Elder Blank ever thought how angry I am with him because he is opposing Confederation?' quietly asked Dr. Grant. 'Now go back and tell him how foolish it is for either of us to refuse the other the right of deciding for himself.' "Has it ever occurred to you it is the opposer who usually manages to find an intermediary will- ing to go to the man manifestly within his rights and plead with him to smother his convictions or yield an essential point, in the interest of peace. The third person rarely has the courage to rebuke the tyrant's insolence .... "our neighbors had the only organ in our farming community. We fairly revelled in the hymn singing the new instrument developed. But one evening when the older scholars went to rehearse some songs for our school exhibition we found that the organ had disappeared. "The eldest son pinched me to follow him out to the woodshed, where he informed me that his mother's uncle, Joshua, who had just arrived was a Mennonite of the old school and hated musical instruments as devices of the devil. So the organ M B. H. Stamper, Los Anueles Examiner, April 4, 1913. 490 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS had to be hidden in the clothes closet until the be- whiskered guest's departure. Otherwise the family knew that Uncle Joshua would rage with righteous indignation and make his entire stay most unpleasant. "Now, that old man's attitude toward innova- tions is a fair type of the opposition of the op- poser in every realm. He always considers his anger toward the proposed reform to be infinitely more sacred than the reformer's anger toward the evil he is warring against. . . . Then it is sur- prising and chagrining to notice how many fool- ish people there are who set about to mollify him even to blaming the reformer who has aroused his ire. "These tyrants of yesterday are usually prompt to abdicate after their first outburst of rage has been bravely met. They have very little reserve strength. Argument demolishes their defences. "And this is my plea: Stand by the innovator if you believe he is right. Do not heed the op- poser's pretense at indignation. Let not his show of rage bully you into a plea for peace when there should be no peace. Turn upon the reactionary, not upon the progressive and rebuke Him." Thus when a radical gets into trouble with the authorities on account of something he clearly had a right to do, everyone who stood inertly by while wrongs were being perpetrated now bit- terly reproaches the radical for the worry he has brought upon his dear ones. Scarcely anyone PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 491 goes to the authorities and calls them down for their abuse of power. Yet we claim we've not become a servile people! "When some falsehood with its brand Stalks like Goliath, ravaging the land Fit thou the pebble Truth within thy sling And then, like David, fling!" CHAPTER VII Losing one's temper is particularly character- istic of degenerate minds. The normal mind more quickly throws off a spasm of this unpleasant emo- tion. The foresighted person will utilize his fight- ing propensities themselves in combating his own proneness to anger, on account of the remorseful consequence which follow this passion. Finally, the altruist especially will battle against the hu- man weakness for following with the mob into violence. SECTION I "Blessed be the Lord, my strength, which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight." (Ps. 144:1) "And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee: thine eye shall have no pity upon them." (Deut. 7:16) "Of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth ; but thou shalt utterly destroy them." (Deut. 20:16-17) "And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew al> the males." (Num. 31 :7-10) "And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 493 the little ones of every city, we left none to re- main." (1 Deut. 2:24-25-34) "And we utterly destroyed them as we did unto Sihon, king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women and children of every city." (Deut. 3:3-6) "And the Lord said unto Joshua, 'See I have given into thine hand Jericho . . . and they utterly destroyed all that was in that city, both man and woman, young and old.' " (Josh. 6 :2-21) It should be evident enough from the above quotations that Javeh, the god of the Hebrews, by no means shared the pacifist convictions of his alleged son Jesus. Allah and Mohammed were in much better accord, and preached the sword as a legitimate means for the settlement of differences. But Jesus' followers seldom have taken seriously his really radical utterances, whether in regard to war or to property, etc. If anyone claims that the days of persecution and of religious wars are over, we call his atten- tion to the way in which religious sanctions were invoked upon their bloody work by all the partici- pants in this recent war. Miss Slocum, in a newspaper article, describes her experiences of this thing in Germany : "Germans believed the 'fatherland' attacked by cruel envious foes. . . . "During the early stages of the war they thronged the churches. While in no respect sen- sational, the countrywide rush to the churches 494 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS had in it certain elements of a huge religious re- vival. . . . "Despite a considerable lapse from the first in- tensity of emotion the churches have held a good share of their gains, and the Kaiser's pious talk 'Forward with God!' and all that goes down whole. "Even today German pastors can bid their peo- ple 'stand for the right, as Martin Luther did,' tho the Kaiser's prayers for an 'honorable peace' and for divine grace to 'treat our enemies in a Christian manner' is no longer read in churches by his majesty's orders. Perhaps his conscience smote him. "Meanwhile the Kaiser talks piety. The Ger- mans swallow that with the same willingness even delight. Beyond question, the religiosity of the imperial household has accomplished a lot toward preventing rebellion in Prussia. . . . "Their devotion to the Prince of Peace bred few if any, pacifists among the clergy. . . . "The great bulk of the German people, religious by instinct, cleave to the church, and the imperial German government finds in the church an in- valuable medium for propaganda. Thus it con- trives to maintain its hold on the sentimentality of Germans behind the lines and of Germans in the trenches. Innumerable books and pamphlets linking war with religion are flooding Germany today. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 495 "While the immediate cause of this worst of wars is autocracy," comments C. S. Hunt, in The Truth Seeker, 1 a "cause of autocracy is religion." The autocrat finds precedent and sanction for all tyranny in the bible. "In 2 Kings, Chapter IX, he reads that the Lord anointed Jehu king of Israel, and told him to smite the house of Ahab. "We no longer punish the son for the crime of the father. The Lord and Jehu did. In Chapter X Jehu directs that seventy men of Ahab's fam- ily be beheaded. The seventy heads were brot in baskets ; after which Jehu denied what he had done, just as the autocrat now does (Verse 9) : 'I conspired against thy master, and slew him; but who sleiv all these?' "Then, as if admitting the act, he slays more (11) : 'So Jehu slew all that remained of the house of Ahab, all his great men, his kinfolks, and his priests, until he left none remaining/ "Still bloodthirsty, he met forty-two brethren of another king, Ahaziah, and 'slew them at the pit of the shearing house.' Then he went to Sa- mariah and 'slew all that remained of the house of Ahab . . . according to the saying of the Lord which he spake to Elijah.' Then, disliking the Baalites, who were created by the Lord for some unknown reason, Jehu pretended to join them and assisted in their rites, then smote every one of them. All the autocrat's preachers learned J October 12, 1918. 496 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS this lesson; then taught the people that their monarch was divine and should kill all peoples whom he disliked, or when he wants their lands. " 'Now we understand why the other nations pursue us with hatred; they do not understand us. So were the Jews hated in antiquity, because they were the representatives of God on earth.' "See 'Gems of German Thot, by Wm. Archer, page 78:' Then these expressions from preach- ers: " 'God has chosen the German people/ De Preuss. " 'Germany is chosen, for her own good and that of other nations, to undertake their guid- ance.' H. S. Chamberlain. " 'God has taken the German nation under his care or in any case has some special purpose in view for it.' Pastor Lehmann. " 'World mission that of imparting to the other peoples the achievements of its Kultur, so that all lands may be filled with the Glory of God.' Pastor Hennig. " 'We shall permeate, in the name of God, a world which has become poor and desolate.' Pastor Rump. " 'This German mission is : to look after the world.' Pastor Traub. '"Germany the center of God's plans for the world.' Pastor Lermann. " 'Jesusless horde, a crowd of the Godless, are Prof. W. Sombart, Handler und Helden, page 142. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 497 in the field against us. May God surround us with his protection . . . since our defeat would also mean the defeat of his son.' Pastor Rump. "As the Lord gave Canaan to the Jews, so he gave Belgium to the autocrat, the land to be earned by killing the people. " 'When thou comest nigh to a city, . . . and it makes the answer of peace and open unto thee, then all the people therein shall be tributaries, and serve thee. And if it make no peace, thou shalt beseige it, ... and smite every male.' "King Menahaem knew this divine law, and followed it. " 'Then Menahaem smote Tiphsah, because they opened not to him, . . . and all the women therein that were with child he ripped up.' 2 Kings, XV, 16. " 'So Joshua . . . utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord had commanded.' 'Go and smite Amalek, slay both man and women, infant, ox and sheep. . . . And Saul smote the Amale- kites, and utterly destroyed all the people/ " 'And David smote the land and left neither man or woman alive.' "Higher criticism rejects the Jewish horrors; but our people do not know the Bible. When they do, they will discard it. If not, we are doomed to frequent slaughter, outrage and destruction. By chance, Hosea was right: 'My people are de- stroyed for lack of knowledge.' This is evident: 498 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS Those who sanction the autocrat believe in Moses and Elijah." "A writer in The Westminster Gazette, M. Matheson, draws attention to an article in The Quarterly Register of the Presbyterian Alliance. For some years, he declares, large secessions from the German Protestant State Church have been in progress, it being estimated that during 1912- 13 some 80,000 withdrew and during the first four months of this year about 30,000. The reasons suggested are 'the spread of the scientific spirit and the growth of social democracy.' In explana- tion of the latter the writer quotes this : "^he authorities of the Protestant State Church, and notably the pastors, are the tradi- tional supporters of the Throne, the buttresses of the ruling caste. Every measure introduced by the Government having for its purpose the limitation or curtailment of the liberties of the people has had the support of the Church. Never a protest is raised at the piling up of armaments." Regarding the persecutions which were abetted by the Church when it had the power, Lecky, we think it is, says : * "They were, in the overwhelming majority of cases, simply the natural, legitimate, and inevit- able consequences of a certain portion of the re- ceived theology. That portion is the doctrine that correct theological opinions are essential to salvation, and that theological error necessarily *History of European Morals. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 499 inyolves guilt. To these two opinions may be distinctly traced almost all the sufferings that Christian persecutors have cause, almost all the obstructions they have thrown in the path of human progress; and these sufferings have been so grievous that it may be reasonably questioned whether superstition has not often proven a greater curse than vice and that obstruction was so pertinacious, that the contraction of theologi- cal influence has been at once the best measure and the essential condition of intellectual advance. The notion that he might himself be possibly mis- taken in his opinions which alone could cause a man who was thoroly imbued with these princi- ples to shrink from persecuting, was excluded by the theological virtue of faith, which, whatever else it might involve, implied at least an absolute unbroken certainty, and led the devotee to regard all doubt, and therefore all action based upon doubt, as sin. "To this general cause of Christian persecution I have shown that two subsidiary influences may be joined. A large portion of theological ethics was derived from writings in which religious massacres, on the whole thot ruthless and san- guinary upon accord, were said to have been cor- rectly enjoined by the Diety in which the duty of suppressing idolatry by force was given a greater prominence than any article of the moral code, and in which the spirit of intolerance has found its most eloquent and most passionate ex- 500 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS pressions. Besides this, the destiny theologians represented as awaiting the misbeliever was so ghastly and so appalling as to render it almost childish to lay any stress upon the earthly suffer- ing that might be inflicted in the extirpation of error. "That these are the true causes of the great bulk of Christian persecution, I believe to be one of the most certain as well as one of the most im- portant facts in history. For the detailed proof, I can only refer to what I have elsewhere written ; but I may here notice that that proof combines every conceivable kind of evidence that in such a question can be demanded. It can be shown that these principles would naturally lead men to persecute. It can be shown that from the time of Constantine to the time when the rationalistic spirit wrested the bloodstained sword from the priestly hand, persecution was uniformly de- fended in long, learned and elaborate treaties, by the best and greatest men the Church had pro- duced, by sects that differed on almost all other points, by multitudes who proved in every con- ceivable manner the purity of their zeal." But it would be unjust to accuse the Church of monopolizing the leadership in this direction. The Church monopolizes leadership in nothing; it fol- lows. Both religion and philosophy function to adjust the popular conscience to that as moral or reasonable which stronger influences have de- cided upon as expedient. As regards philosophy, PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 501 we may take for an analogous example a tendency thus criticized by John Dewey:* "Recently, there has sprung up a so-called 'naturalistic' school of ethics which has formu- lated explicitly the principle of self-assertion, and which claims to find scientific sanction for it in the evolutionary doctrine of Darwin. Evolu- tion, it says, is the great thing, and evolution means the survival of the fit in the struggle for existence. Nature's method of progress is pre- cisely, so it is said, ruthless self-assertion. . . . Nature affords a scene of egoistic endeavor or pressure, suffer who may, of struggle to get ahead, that is ahead of others, even by thrusting them down and out. But the justification of this scene of rapine and slaughter is that out of it comes progress, advance, everything that we re- gard as noble and fair. Excellence is the sign of excelling ; the goal means outrunning others. The morals of humility, of obedience to law, of pity, sympathy, are merely a self-protective device on the part of the weak who try to safeguard their weakness by setting fast limitations to the ac- tivities of the truly strong. . . . "PRACTICAL VOGUE OF THE UNDERLY- LYING IDEA. Such a theory, in and of itself, is a literary diversion for those who, not being competent in the fields of outer achievement, amuse themselves by idealizing it in writing. Like most literary versions of science, it rests *Dewey and Tuft's Ethics, 502 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS upon a pseudo-science, a parody of the real facts. But at a time when economic conditions are put- tin? an extraordinary emphasis upon outward achievement, upon success in manipulating na- tural and social resources, upon "efficiency" in exploiting both inamimate energies and the minds and bodies of other persons, the underlying prin- ciple of this theory has a sanction and vogue which is out of all proportion to the number of those who consciously entertain it as a theory . . . our current standards are sentimental and arti- ficial, aiming to make survive those who are unfit, and thus tending to destroy the conditions that made for advance, and to introduce such as make towards degeneration. But this argument (1) wholly ignores the reflex effect of interest in those who are ill and defective in strengthening social solidarity in promoting those ties and reciprocal interests which are as much the prerequisites of strong individual characters as they are of a strong social group. And (2) it fails to take into account the stimulus to foresight, to scientific dis- covery, and practical invention, which has pro- ceeded from interest in the helpless, the weak, the sick, the disabled, blind, deaf, and insane. Tak- ing the most coldly scientific view, the gains in these two respects have, through the growth of social pity, of care for the unfortunate, been pur- chased more cheaply than we can imagine their being bought in any other way. In other words, the chief objection to this "naturalistic" ethicgrts PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 503 that it overlooks the fact that, even from the Dar- winian point of view, the human animal is a hu- man animal. It forgets that the sympathetic and social instincts, those which cause the individual to take the interests of others for his own and thereby to restrain his sheer brute self-assertive- ness, are the highest achievements, the high-wa- ter mark of evolution. The theory urges a sys- tematic relapse to lower and foregone stages of biological development." Catherine seemed such a reliable girl that Mrs. Moran had no hesitancy in leaving her in charge of the children while she went for a long drive. "How did they behave during my absence?" she asked on her return. "Beautifully, madam," Catherine replied, "but in the end they fought terribly." "Why on earth did they fight?" "To decide which was behaving best." A Topeka business man. employs two negroes to work on his gardens, which he personally over- sees. One morning Sam did not appear. "Where is Sam, George?" he asked. "In de hospital, sah." "In the hospital? Why, how did that happen?" "Well, Sam he been a-tellin' me ev'ry mornin' foh ten days he gwine to lick hia wife 'cause o' her naggin'." "Well?" "Well, yistiddy she done ovahhead him, dat's all." 504 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS SECTION 2 False faiths and similar influences only have excited in abnormal degree the ferocious tenden- cies which in all of us are instinctive. Hear what Wm. James says on "pugnacity, anger, resent- ment. In many respects man is the most ruth- less and ferocious of beasts. As with all gregari- ous animals, 'two souls,' as Faust says, 'dwell within his breast/ the one of sociability and help- fulness, the other of jealousy and antagonism to his mates. Though in a general way he cannot live without them, yet, as regards certain indivi- duals, it often falls out that he cannot live with them either. Constrained to be a member of a tribe, he still has a right to decide, as far as in him lies, of which other members the tribe shall cpn- sist. Killing off a few obnoxious ones may often better the chances of those that remain. And kill- ing off a neighbor tribe from whom no good thing comes, but only competition, may materially better the lot of the whole tribe. Hence the gory cradle, the bellwn omnium contra omnes, in which our race was reared; hence the fickleness of human ties, the ease with which the foe of yesterday be- comes the ally of today, the friend of today the enemy of tomorrow; hence the fact that we, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, what- -James, Wm. Principles of Psychology. v. 2, p. 410. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 505 6ver more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smouldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they live through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed." This view must be modified by the facts above supplied by Dewey, who is the more modern writer. Yet there is considerable truth still in what James says of the derivation of our combat- ive qualities. But these don't necessarily have as valuable a function today, when expressed in a crude manner as they had in the past ; nor is their value in selecting the fittest for survival so great. These elements in our nature are as responsible, perhaps, as economic causes for turning civiliza- tion into an armed camp. SECTION 3 Juliette, "Why slaves, 'tis in our power to hang ye." Master "Very likely, 'tis in our powers then to be hanged, and scorn ye."* The advice of Lord Bacon was : "Nothing conduces more to the well representing a man's self, and securing his own right, than not to dis- arm himself by too much sweetness and good nature. The virtue of soul that corresponds to the pug- nacious instinct is indomitability. 3 Self-respect, that commendable element in 'See Gould. Brave Citizens. p. 35, p. 40. **Kirkpatrick, E. A. "The Individual in the Making," p. 204. "Beaumopt and Fletcher's. Sea Voyag-e quoted by Emerson. 506 Pride, is necessary not only to keep up the quality of one's conduct but to gain a hearing in this rough world. With grace and modesty, bearing in mind always the need of tempering down (by example at least) the blatant sensationalism which today surrounds us, we yet must remember that if we remain in much retirement, our claims and our projects will be passed by and lost to the world. "If you don't blow your own horn, no- body else will." No one understood better the need of self-advertisement than some of the Jew- ish prophets who affected the various eccentrici- ties described in the Old Testament, e. g., making a hole thru the city wall instead of passing out thru the regular gate, evidently for the purpose of gaining an audience. Confidence, even assur- ance, is necessary to worldly success. That indomitability is needed in life, is a tru- ism; what we chiefly need to understand is, how this quality may be cultivated. "Whatever increases the child's facility in movement, imagining, or remembering, prepares the way for his voluntary control of these proc- esses and increases his confidence in himself and adds to his will power. . . Experience in choosing and directing action in accordance with choices is needed to develop freedom of voluntary control. "Will power is gained, not merely by being in- duced in some way to make an effort, but by being directed in such a way as to succeed. In other words, 'will' may to a certain extent be developed PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 507 more by doing easy things than by doing things which because of fatigue, lack of interest or want of knowledge, are difficult to do. The amount and degree of success. Bather than the frequency and intensity of effort, make for progress in the de- velopment of volition. . . . By courage, we mean boldness, physically** and particularly moral determination and calm set- tling down to the solving of difficulties instead of whining and complaining about them. In the stress of sudden calamities, such as no one can always foresee and provide against, one carries one's safety in one's own breast. If we ask, what is Freedom ? You'll answer by describing its opposite state saying, e. g., that a man's not free whom the walls of the town jail restrain, whilst he batters against them in a vain effort to escape ; then after he's given up the as- sault, and sunk upon his couch jn sad despair, his condition would be unaltered if, unbeknownst to him, you replaced those walls of stone with paper walls, having only the appearance of strength. Or would he be in better case, if, knowing that the walls were torn away, he now found himself grown too feeble to move, or found that the shame of facing friends whom he'd disgraced had be- numbed his "will-power?" In short, isn't it plain that nothing more is necessary, to make man a prisoner than himself alone even his thots? = **Vid in Los Angeles Examiner. May 26, 1913, the account of a one Isaac Basset, 75 years old, who to save his life amputated his own foot. 508 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS But can his thots equally under all circum- stances give him freedom? Here are we (at this writing) on a ship in the middle of the China Sea; we couldn't induce the captain to set us ashore, and if we tried to swim ashore we'd be drowned. Tho on so small a vessel the range of our movements is as small as that of an inmate of Sing Sing, yet who'd call us "prisoner?" We even are chained to this desk and seat for another hour, by our will to finish our stint of so many pages to be written, yet we regard ourselves as free as that young police-officer in the service of the Nizam, who told us how inefficient had proven the European prison system in the checking of crime in Hyderabad, (thru which dominions, at the time, we were traveling) . He told us the na- tives truly looked forward to the next term of in- carceration as a relief from all responsibility; how patiently thoy accepted the prison duties forced upon them; and what real pleasure they took in being able to squat for long hours upon the floors of their barren cells, chattering, or dreaming away the exquisite leisure of these re- current vacations. The only chains in which such men can be made to languish are those of superstition; and even there their philosophy largely has freed them. It's pitiful, really, l^ow people can break away from certain bonds but go no further. "We boast our emancipation from many super- stitions ; but if we have broken any idols, it is PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 509 through a transfer of the idolatry. What have I gained, that I no longer immolate a bull to Jove, or to Neptune, or a mouse to Hecate; that I do not tremble before the Eumenides, or the Catholic Purgatory, or the Calvinistic Judgment- day, if I quake at opinion, the public opinion, as we call it ; or at the threat of assault, or contume- ly, or bad neighbors, or poverty, or mutilation, or at the rumor of revolution, or of murder? If I quake, what matters it what I quake at? . . ." : One must, in short, find the remedy for evils ultimately within one's self, and the attack on outer conditions must be when and because they interfere with betterment of inner conditions. "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."** It's the privilege of the pure egoist, alone among mortals, to be quite trusting and happy under all circumstances. As soon as a man be- gins to regard as important something beside him- self, he ceases to be adequate unto all things. He may resign himself to poverty ; but can he endow his wife with an equal resignation? He hopes to teach his children to seek happiness within themselves even as he their father, can do; but whilst they're now mere infants, how shall he give them the fortitude to laugh at the merry jest of their little playmates, who call their father a "jailbird?" This fact is unfortunate; neverthe- T Emerson. * ^Shakespeare Hamlet, 510 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS less, each of us can do his share to put the thought of his community and generation upon a less sor- did basis. "In man . . . the test of an influence is not . . . clear ... the great variety in human tempera- ments requires variations in stimuli for the at- tainment of the same result." 8 "If a man does not keep pace with his com- panions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer." "The conservative sees danger only in the ad- vocacy of the Red Flag and the disrespect for the law. Both are equally blind to the fact that any mode of creative effort which portrays life boldly, earnestly and unafraid, may become more dan- gerous to the present fabric of society than the loudest harangue of the soap-box speaker. Take, for instance, the sentence of Mrs. Alving in "Ghosts." "I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I only wished to pick at a single knot, but when I had got that undone, the whole thing ravelled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn." Is there anything in revolu- tionary thought more powerful than this, and does it not turn the light on the whole structure of society, on every phase of it? "In other words, make men and women con- scious of the machine-sewn fabric of society which ravels out the moment you pick at one knot, and "Swift. "Youth ami the Race," p. 327. "Thoreau, H. P, PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 511 you will rob society of all its glare and pretense, of all its sham and hypocrisy ; and that means the beginning of the end of such a society. "Therein lies the revolutionary and social value of the Modern Drama, not only for the workers, but for those who need enlightenment as much as the workers, the professional middle-class, men and women who are only now beginning to buck up against, life and who by training and habit are utterly unfitted for the shock. "In countries where political oppression affects all classes, the aristocrat no less than the peasant, the intellectual no less than the ignorant, feel the paralyzing effect of despotism. That is why the intellectuals there have made common cause with the people, have become their teachers, comrades and spokesmen ; but in America political pressure had so far affected only the "common" people. They are thrown into prison ; they are clubbed, mobbed, tarred and deported. Therefore another medium is needed to arouse the intellectuals of this country, to make them realize their relation to the people, to the social unrest and to the bru- talities and abuses going on day after day in this wide land." 10 The principle of non-resistance to evil hardly can be carried to the extreme advocated by Tol- stoi. We take more the attitude expressed by Gid- dings in chapter 20 of his "Democracy and Em- pire." He finds complimentary phases of the 10 Goldman, Emma. The Modern Drama. 512 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS truth to have been expressed by Tolstoi and by Neitsche in this way, that Neitsche rightly fore- saw that vigor of type is the goal of evolution, but couldn't see that vigor may be expressed in "differentiated" (i. e., intellectual, sympathetic, etc.,) forms as well as in sheer brutality, while Tolstoi put his emphasis upon the form in which acts should be manifested, but forgot that vigor which must be the underlying foundation, "It is only men who have energy to spare who are normally altruistic. On the physiological side, altruism is a mode of expenditure of any surplus energy that has been left over from suc- cessful individual struggle. The meek shall in- herit the earth, not because they are meek, but because, taking one generation after another, it is only the mighty that are or can be meek, and because the mighty if normally evolved are also by differentiation meek." 11 SECTION 4 In our school, Boy Land, we've most persistent- ly argued against the children's proposals, or tried to devise substitutes which would appeal to them equally well, chiefly when they were least spontaneous, when they absorbed the cheap clap- trap of the press about institutions, or clamored to force all their companions to adopt some fea- 11 F. H. Giddings. Democracy and Empire. p. 351. Giddings as- sumption, however, that the higher forms of life necessarily represent more expenditure of energy than the lower, seems to us purely speculative. PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 513 ture of the outside world which was autocratic in its nature. Rightly or wrongly we thus en- deavored to draft away their enthusiasm for boy- scouting. First we inaugurated the "June En- gineers," who learned to run surveys in the hills, blaze and repair trails, and build rustic bridges. When this plan was observed to lack elements of pleasurable rivalry and excitement, we got the boys to divide themselves into three societies, each with certain special "chores" to do but each of which also was assisted in building its own small chemical fire engine ; when we had fire-drill these rival companies dashed to it with huge zest. Our objection to the scout idea was the anti-radi- cal purposes for which the boys sometimes were employed. For instance, in the recent arrests of suffragists in Boston "you read that the district and military police were assisted by Boy Scouts. It would be well to let Boy Scouts keep out of the enterprises in which women are arrested. In America, where women are classed with non-vot- ing idiots, Indians and children, little boys learn contempt for women easily enough. To permit them as children to assist in arresting the mothers of other boys, and thus develop early their contempt for women is rank stupidity and brutalizes them unnecessarily." 12 Nor, for that matter are we converts to the Rooseveltian hypothesis that 'boys should settle by physical combat their little differences of 1= Boston American, February 11, 1919. 514 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS opinion ; it was not in accord with any doctrine of ours but in childish response (comportably to their ages) to instinctive resentment, that our girls and boys three months ago sailed into that delegation sent to the school from a Sunday school picnic to express the views of their elders about "Prince Hopkins," and certain of his unpopular policies. So long as it remains purely a sport, boxing, tho, has always had encouragement at the BOXING, BOY LAND. school, for the very reason that thus you are able to drain off into a sportive channel an instinct which else might result in "bad blood." If only national struggles might be settled with padded instead of mailed fists! Little quarrelling have we had at Boy Land because the children have had few unconscious complexes to project upon others, thanks to the lack of repression in our "disciplinary" regime. "All the old abuses in society, the great and universal and the petty and particular, all unjust PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 515 accumulations of property and power, are avenged in the same manner. Fear is an instruc- tor of great sagacity and the herald of all revolu- tions. One thing he always teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears. He is a carrion crow, and tho you see not well what he hovers for, there is death somewhere." 13 As a result of the official inculcation of the prin- ciple of violence, during the past few years, com- bined with forcible suppression of discussion, and the imprisonment of their older and more conser- vative leaders, many radicals in all countries are coming to believe that violence is justifiable in protest. Men like Scott Nearing who became popular when they were prosecuted by the gov- ernment for their pacifist stand, already are re- garded by a growing "left-wing" element as too "centrist." This change of attitude bodes no good. The laboring-man is no expert in the use of violence, and in the long run never benefits him- self by resorting to it. We recommend everyone to read Robert Hunter's Violence in the Labor Movement, to see how invariably the cause of the masses has been betrayed by leaders who pro- voked them to violence. Such leaders, as was the case in the strike at Lawrence, have been sup- plied by "detective" agencies in the pay of the mill-owners to discredit the workers. In an account of the Russian revolution, 14 oc- "Emerson, R. W., on "compensation" in his "Critical Essays," v. 1, pp. 83-4. 1( As quoted by the Melting Pot, April, 1919, from the New Republic. 516 PHILOSOI^IY OF HELPFULNESS curs the incidental mention that "those servants of the autocracy who fomented disorder in Petro- grad in March, 1917, believed that by creating and suppressing an artificial premature revolt they could forestall and perhaps altogether pre- vent the more serious revolt against themselves which they had good reason to expect in the fu- ture. The autocracy arrested the whole Labor Group of the Central War Industries Committee because that group of patriotic Socialists had shown themselves capable of preventing trouble with the workmen." What disaster from without and tyranny with- in the Bolshevik regime is courting by not stop- ping short of opposing violence with violence! At the present time we witness the mightiest effort in history of the masses of the world to break the economic harnesses in which they are made to toil. But everywhere they are letting passion run away with judgment, and are resort- ing to violent means. Half a century of propa- ganda and pacific means, not merely the recent events, had put ideals of a better world into the minds of all the peoples ; these ideals in a decade more would have forced, by similar slow but cer- tain processes, their mature fruition. But now the events of the past five years have so filled all minds with the worship of force, that the impa- tient peoples (we say "impatient" with under- standing sympathy, but with despairing pity) have gone back to the old, old, never-yet success- PHILOSOPHY OF IJELPFULNESS 517 ful means of abolishing capitalism permanently, namely the resort to armed insurgency. More would be gained if instead of lending themselves to increasing violence against other groups the partizans of progressive movements would make sure of the utmost solidarity within their own ranks, and of the inclusion of all pos- sible co-workers. The writer was never more in- censed than a year ago last winter when at a meet- ing of all "radical" and labor elements he found himself involved in parliamentary duel with a "labor" speaker who wished to exclude Asiatics from admission to the privileges of this country. In his splendid pamphlet on Race Prejudice, 1 " 1 James Morton warns us that "race prejudice is unfortunately not confined to the slums and to the 'privileged classes,' where so abnormal a mental trait is to be expected. Even the trades unions, representing many of the most intelligent workingmen and workingwomen, are ignorant and base enough to draw the color line. When a great strike was won in California by the com- bined energy and loyalty of Americans, Mexican.* and Japanese, all working together, Samuel Gom- pers, head of the Federation of Labor, exhibited his own unfitness to hold any honorable position calling for an intelligent and broadminded man, by refusing to recognize the charter of the local Union, unless they would let themselves be bull- dozed into barring out their Japanese brothers, ''Morton, James The Curse of Race Prejudice pp. 43-44. 518 PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS who had stood by them so nobly in the time of stress. The dastardliness of this eminent leader may be suffered to speak for itself. Numbers of trades unions, even in the North, dishonor them- selves by adopting by-laws, which prohibit any Negro from becoming a member. And then they complain that Negroes are scabs and strikebreak- ers! If the Negro has not yet developed a full sense of the solidarity and brotherhood of labor, the blame must rest on the shoulders of those who would deny him the right to earn an honorable living by the side of his white brothers. "The shortsightedness and folly of the color dis- crimination of the trades unions is even more con- spicuous than the meanness and inhumanity of such a policy. The Negro cannot starve, and must not be expected to submit tamely to so gross an injustice. If the white workingman refuses him as a helper, he must have him as a rival. The Negro cannot help himself. He must follow the law of self-preservation ; and the narrow race prejudice of the trades unions is responsible, if he is forced by their unreasoning and heartless os- tracism to become the tool of the Baers and Par- rys, who rejoice in nothing so intensely as in divi- ^'ons in the ranks of labor. In a recent book, Pro- fessor Graham Brooks, who is anything but a fanatic, and is everywhere recognized as a most reliable observer remarks : "I asked one of the largest employers of labor in the South if he feared the coming of the trade PHILOSOPHY OF HELPFULNESS 519 union. 'No,' he said, 'it is one good result of race prejudice, that the negro will enable us in the long run to weaken the trade union so that it cannot harm us. We can keep wages down with the negro, and we can prevent too much organi- zation.' "And the average trades unionist is idiot enough to play right into the hands of such 'employers of labor/ whose great aim is to 'keep wages down,' and to prevent organization! Dixie, the prominent organ of the cotton manufacturers, some time ago, made the same brag, declaring that so long as the white and colored workingmen could be kept apart, by fostering race prejudice, the existence of the Negro in the South was a great blessing to employers, and that he must always be kept there, as a means of preventing the rise of trades unionism in that section. That trades unionists, in the very teeth of these un- blushing avowals, should allow themselves to be made catspaws by the worst enemies of organized labor, must be looked upon as one of the most marked evidences of mental deterioration under the bane of fetichistic superstition, which history has to record. A man who is fool enough to com- mit industrial suicide to spite his brother of a darker skin, has only himself to thank, if he fails to awaken sympathy."