A SURGEON'S PHILOSOPHY BY ROBERT T MORRIS M.D. Gfornell Hmoerottg SIthrarg aitljaca. Sftm ^ark Cornell University Library Fl 723.M87 A surgeon's philosophy ... 3 1924 012 509 943 WW r4 Cornell University SB hf Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924012509943 A SURGEON'S PHILOSOPHY TO-MORROW'S TOPICS SERIES MICROBES AND MEN A SURGEON'S PHILOSOPHY DOCTORS VERSUS FOLKS w^rii'^ij'M '- o . 3 tu E p p P^'tn'' .'.^ . o > X 4—1 3j c o CJ -t-J bc c c c^ OJ Lh -d )-i ryi rt bC OJ 6 ^ o £ t/} o o -t-> be o d o ■3: c o SURGEON'S PHILOSOPHY To-Morrow's Topics Series BY ROBERT T. MORRIS, M.D. Frontispiece GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY PAGE & COMPANY I 9 I S Copyright, 1915, by DOUBLEDAY, PaGE & COMPANY All rights reserved^ including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian PREFACE This second book of the "To-Morrow's Topics" series avoids those deeper problems which are discussed in "Microbes and Men," and leaves purely medical questions to the third book, "Doctors versus Folks." R. T. M. CONTENTS (References to some of these topics will be found also in the Indexes of the other books of the series.) Religion RoMAX Catholics Theology The Soul Six Cheistiax Sciexce SixGLE Standard of Morality Prophets HOMERGY IXSAXITY ^IlSCOXCEPTION Neurotics Clairvoyaxts MYSTICISil Freud Philosophers Poetry Bergsox Chaxges Pantheism Sprixg Flowers Automobilists Dogs Potatoes Trees CONTENTS Lies Santayana The Polity Unit Dissatisfaction Kindly Friendliness Friends Conceit Eyes Gambling Profanity Dual Nature Compensations Political Rings Business Man Graft Styles in Dress Production Anergists Employers Socialism Incompatibility Marital Morbidity Domestic Vacation Women in Business Suffrage Drug Habits Bohemia Dances Servants Smart Set Dislikes News S. F. T.'s A SURGEON'S PHILOSOPHY TO-MORROW'S TOPICS CHAPTER I For purposes of personal comfort, I had to construct a working religion of my own, and this took the form of wor- ship of the three conventional physical entities and of their combinations which appeared in all substances and all activi- ties on Earth and about the Earth. Church and State could not be separated (in imagination), and consequently the Monistic Unity State includes the idea of a Monistic Unity Churth also. As a medical student I was surrounded by others who found in their dissections anything but suggestions of the soul, but in the world one of the very first things we must deal with is religion, because Homo sapiens is as religious by nature as the mocking bird is by nature a wonderful songster. In the monistic unity state every man will look upon God as he looks upon one of his other children, to be helped in every way possible. Under present conditions God appears to be, more or less helpless without our aid, but that evidently is part of nature's plan. He is a creature of our crude minds. The conception of nature taking the place of a personal God is not incompatible with the belief that we may have a future life. The constituent elements of matter are inde- structible according to one theory. (We need not cloud the argument at this point by referring to transmutation of matter and of the energies.) A power capable of developing us here 3 4 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS would certainly be able to reassemble our distributed forces elsewhere, and in still higher form, if that were the plan of the power. So long as it is a beautiful thought, — this hope of meeting our friends again, with our best characteristics made still more perfect under new adjustments, — the idea may quite as easily be held as the notion of complete annihi- lation after death. The conception of a personal God is constructively fanciful. God is a practical working model of nature, placed in the minds of different races of men in order to spare them the trouble of trying to comprehend the whole subject of nature. Nature placed the idea of a personal God in the mind of man as a working library of herself in a compact edition. We have really needed Theology in our great civilizations up to the present time. The Westminster Catechism is not a childish shibboleth. It represents careful thought on the part of good men and has been extremely useful for the con- struction of a helpful mental ladder for people who had no other ladders for serving the same purpose. I would no more do away with the idea of a personal God than I would do away with the idea of fairies for children. There are fairies. Let us keep them. Do not kill them with materialism, which is half-blind when in its greatest perfection. Let the children have these doors of the soul opened into fancy and the ideal. Instinctively children choose the good fairies, and there is escape from the commonplace goodness with which they are daily impressed. Allowing children to have the fairies does not lead them away from the domain of morals or of ethics for a moment. I know a good old grandmother who takes endless comfort with her rocking chair, spectacles, Bible and cat. It would cause her no discomfort if I were to say that Moses was a creation of Solomon's for political purposes, and that his teachings TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 5 were taken from those of philosophers who Hved a couple of thousand years earlier. If I were to suggest, however, that Moses did not speak in the English language and there might possibly be some error in translation, it would cause her so much discomfort that I would never think of doing anything of the sort. Nothing would be gained but someone would be pained were I to convince the dear old lady that a tablet in the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania collection gives a pre-Semitic Assyrian account of the Fall of Man and The Deluge. It would be cruelty to say to her that Vintud the Creatress persuaded the Water-God to make an exception of Tagtug and a few pious ones when the flood was sent. I would not like to inform her that the Sumerian eating of cassia, and The Curse, was not changed into the Apple-Adam story until after the lapse of several centuries from the first recording of the idea upon a stone tablet. The monistic unity plan of reasoning gives us a scientific hold on the theory of a future life. Jeffries in his "Story of My Heart" sees nothing but dis- order and lack of plan in the world, and longs for a better God. I see nothing but order and plan and the sign of a Deity needing our help and who must and shall have our help. We ought to have sympathy with and compassion for every living thing on the earth, and even for the ruler above this earth. The world is not to be blamed for placing theology first in rank among studies in former days, for the best men worked con- scientiously with the best features belonging to their day. Even the exponents of theology did not need to carry the result of their studies into daily life. If a bishop, can voice the sentiment of the unthinking in stately language, he will be followed and admired, and will obtain a control which is necessary in social life, avoiding that disorder which would 6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS result if the unthinking were left to their own individual guidance. It is best to have the bishop say little that would mark him as intellectual in a group where blandness of manner and natural dignity of bearing assist better for diplomatic adjustment of the internal conflicts, intellectual and ordinary, in his diocese. We must always remember that no matter what a man is, intellectually, emotionally or physically, he first and last and all the time is only a toy of the three physical entities which set him up for the purpose of playing a part in the game of nature. Everywhere in nature one sees nothing but plan and balance if he looks at it in a large way, provided that he has vision adjusted to the right focal length. If his vision is out of focus, everything seems to be in confusion. Richard Jeffries prayed for something better than God, something superior, higher, more good. He concluded that there is such an existence, higher than the soul, more perfect than Deity. I am not irreverent when saying that a better God is wanted ; it is only the God of the Bible to whom I refer. The Bible, we assume, was constructed by man at the dictation of some higher power. The God of the Bible was dictated, just as the Federal Constitution was dictated, for man by man, but under instigation from a higher mind. We must always remember that the words of God are the words of man, shaped by man according to the wishes of God. That is — Nature! A notable instance of this is found in the fact that man, recognizing the need for rest one day in seven, set out to justify himself and ease his conscience by shifting the respon- sibility, — (thereby avoiding the imputation that he was lazy) — to the Lord. Man has called his day of rest the Lord's Day. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 7 The custom of resting one day in seven has been recognized so generally throughout the Earth that it evidently represents a natural process. Somewhere on Earth every day is a Sab- bath day. The Greeks observe Monday; the Persians, Tues- day; the Assyrians, Wednesday; the Egyptians, Thursday; the Turks, Friday; the Jews, Saturday; and the Christians, Sunday. In the same way man, prompted by God, says there will be a static future in which every relation in life will be automatically perfect. That expression of an intuition may mean that we are to vibrate in ether in some harmonious combination in space. The vital impulse representing the highest aspirations of humanity must break down tem- porary churches and states. As fast as church and state become ineffective in controlling the masses, church and state are built up again in precisely the same way as cell protoplasm which is continually in a state of flux is broken down at one point and built up at another point. Church and state re- capitulate their early history like the growing embryo of an animal. Church and state are nothing but an expression of protoplasm, because men are protoplasm and church and state wholly depend upon men and therefore must follow the laws of protoplasm, the unit of organic life. Religious ceremonies are not only helpful for aligning religious thought in those who wish to use that form of thought, but they are also useful for allowing people who are not devout to discharge duties which they recognize as belonging to the social order, — briefly and automatically, — aside from giving any real thought toward their own personal conduct. When Jeffries prayed for a better God, he referred to the God of the Bible, but He is the one whom most men need at present. No one will deny the fact, I presume, that Richard Jeffries was a good man, eagerly seeking ways for being a better man. 8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS His trouble in trying to find his heart was due to lack of a scientific training which would have shown him order in nature's plan ; — order where he saw nothing but disorder and chaos. He had what might be called a literary point of view, rather than a scientific point of view. There is value in that. We would not have had his deeply interesting literature had he known better than to write as he did in "The Story of My Heart." Jeffries considered the idea of a Deity as inferior, and believed there was something higher, but he presented the matter in a way which is painful, in that conscientious crudity which so often goes with the literary point of view. He did not realize that educational conditions are of artificial construction. Max Nordau held that if there is a God the idea is so vast that we cannot comprehend it, and it is absolutely wrong trying to do so. As a matter of fact, every man has his own God just as every man has his own horizon when looking over the landscape — limitations resting in the individual. Let each man see a small God, or a larger God, or the largest God who can be comprehended by man. Any man may read into the Bible or get out of the Bible anything that he wishes in terms of his own seeking. H the largest God comprehended by man has not the power to carry out His own wishes with- out our help He may still be under the direction of an Ante- cedent Mind far beyond our comprehension. Our God may be simply one of a billion Gods. If it requires thousands of years for the Hght of one of the millions of suns to reach this earth, and we cannot even be sure of measuring the distance of a nice neighborly planet accurately, because of the possi- bility of there being curvatures in space, let us be contented with what we can comprehend, and make the best use of that knowledge. We are not even ready as yet to face facts that we do know. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 9 Facing facts would set the world in order too fast, out of proportion for the times. If Aryans were to fear that Jews will outbreed them, they might hurry to form a saving system of eugenics, and disturb what appears to be nature's plan, although if they were to do so, that still would be according to nature's plan. Obscurantism is phylogenetic protection of the pocket nerve. (Church livings must be guarded.) Like hypocrisy it repre- sents an expression of preference for the comfortable ideal and a dread of the labor required for getting at facts. Ob- scurantists have a greater fear of the truth and are more active in opposition to the development of knowledge than are people who more cheerfully follow vital lies and social myths. We have needed the story of the Resurrection and of the visions of the saints for heartening purposes. It has been nature's plan with the present varieties of civilized Homo sapiens, to hold a bunch of nice carrots — the social myth — before our noses, in order to encourage us in keeping at work upon the treadmill of evolution. In past history, collective errors falsely held to be vital truths have been presented to man in different form, at different stages of their progress. Now in the twentieth century truths unadorned are rapidly getting to furnish stimulus enough. We shall not much longer require myth and miracle, which really served an useful pur- pose in their day for keeping the human heart full of hope. The treadmill upon which we worked, with toothsome carrots before our noses, is now found to have been grinding good corn for our own purposes all of the while. The Christian Church as exemplified in the High Church has been imperialistic, because supernaturally revealed truth had to be supernaturally guarded. For this purpose a divinely appointed head was ordained and the Church spoke through lo TO-MORROW'S TOPICS divinely appointed officers. Politicians of the state could not allow such a source of power to be neglected, and consequently the imperialistic church has been the tool of kings and the sport of politicians in times past. Jesus, however, was democratic, and the Christian democrat of the present day recognizes no central authority on earth to whose judgment on points of belief he is in duty bound to submit. Man's attempt at fol- lowing the Master into democracy while holding to the tradi- tion of supernatural power, has resulted in the formation of various Christian creeds, practically all of which retain in their clergy the idea of some sort of supernatural guardian for supernaturally revealed truth. The Christian church seems to have been really weakened by the process of progression into different creeds, and it has been steadily declining since the time of the Protestant Reformation. The clergy of different creeds have expended their energy upon defining and defend- ing the church, while laymen were sneering at heresy trials and begging for some one church that would make itself the embodiment of Jesus the democrat, who remained in the hearts of all civilized men, and who needed neither definition nor defense. The Monistic Unity Church is apparently the one church that would do this, because it democratically wor- ships the physical energies. The highest product of these energies (speaking from our anthropocentric viewpoint), is the sort of man exemplified by Jesus. The energies are free and democratic, and the whole civilized world is becoming free and democratic. Knowledge of the energies which now takes the place of earlier superstition in regard to them, does not remove the spirit of religion from man. It makes him if anything more worshipful. There is no more deeply reli- gious man than the astronomer or the physicist, but his reli- gion is a religion based upon that part of the natural which is more wonderful than anything in the supernatural. Jesus is TO-MORROW'S TOPICS ii still his Christ, but he has no creed beyond creeds which may be subjected to mathematical test or to laboratory test. The churchman who believes that the astronomer or the physicist is less religious than he, is misinformed. The churchman who believes that an astronomer or a physicist is less moral than he is a careless observer. The churchman who believes that an astronomer or a physicist has less spiritual inspiration than he is unintentionally impertinent. The energies are en- gaged in unceasing work. The religion of the energies is the religion of work. Work is democratic. Jesus was demo- cratic; and the best representative of the energies in their product man was Christ as teacher. Worship of the energies is not new. Heathens have crudely worshipped the sun, fire, and wind, as idols representing the energies. A later study by the inductive method in science of those energies which are represented in wind, fire, and sun, has given man great spiritual advantages in new and greater conceptions of God as an idol representing nature. A feudal system which supplied the conception of heaven during the Middle Ages, when the Church was an ally of the privileged classes, still continues to furnish the most popular conception of heaven to-day. A newer church will not require an honest man to swallow hard and call for help from an expert, before attaching his signature to articles of faith in a creed. Transubstantiation, predestina- tion, vicarious atonement, and apostolic succession will not interest him, because these things do not belong to the spirit of inquiry by the inductive method into the character of those energies which heathens worshipped in the abstract, and which civilized man now worships in the concrete. Religion in its full statement analysis is cosmic order per- sonified, and if one's education does not allow him to worship on so large a scale, he may at least worship a part of the 12 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS cosmic order, exemplified in some creed, — particularly some established creed developed by good men. The child in the beginning, however, must first w^orship the mother, — then after her the divine parent to whom has been given human attri- butes. The child mind does not know how to group dominant interests outside of persons. Religious personalities help the child mind and also the undeveloped adult mind to make judgments along religious lines of thought. Just as the body of man has developed from the cell, up through the lower forms of life to the newly-born child, and then to the adult man, — so has religion developed. First there was reverence expressed toward charms, then early fetichism through worship of animals, the sun, ancestors, virtues, and m3d;hic personifications of these, — up to God. People of the monistic unity state when advancing worship still farther, will worship those physical entities of which the cosmos is constituted. The rudiments of earlier forms of animal life are found in the physical body of man to-day, and the rudiments of earlier forms of religion are likewise found in his soul to-day. The new religion when formulated will be grander and more resounding with reverberations than a religion which stops to play with such questions as that of vicarious atone- ment. This at the present time does not even appeal to clever children, although it is a necessary part in many church formulae, and a part which I would not see removed while it continues to do service. There are many things that even the God of nature cannot accomplish without difficulty excepting through our help. It seems to my mind evidence that the God of this Earth needs our help and that some still higher power exercises directing power over Him. Several thousand acorns have to be made in order to get one that can grow. Nature gives things form. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 13 equipment, and then sets them at fighting out their identical destinies. The idea of the possibiHty of there being a bilhon gods does not lessen our reverence or feehng of sublime responsi- bility toward our own God. A man is not less thrilled by the grandeur, or less careful about his steps in the Grand Canyon of Arizona, simply because he realizes that the Grand Canyon is only a part of the world. The faith and hope that go with the idea of serving God and the nation and ourselves will lead to a keener enjoyment of life than the faith and hope that one will selfishly get some reward in the next world, and that a neighbor will be "sent to Hell as he deserves." The necessity for appointing agents seems to be represented in the plans of both Gods, and the exact meaning of such plan of procedure one fails to comprehend, even when the subject is viewed in the largest way. We may recognize the fact, however, that there is a plan with both Gods. The God of the Bible made a devil and then set agents at work against him. The God of nature allows great waste and sets agents at work against the waste, man being employed as agent in both cases, and the agent himself being wasted lavishly by the microbe. The agent himself is as wasteful as a pestilence. The God of the Bible fighting the devil of his own creation with his own appointed agents, seems to be an allegorical representa- tion, — a picture drawn by the God of nature for the purpose of expressing his own methods of work. Christ was God in the sense that man is God, and man really is God in the monistic unity of nature. It was simply nature's plan when giving the cross lesson to furnish the solution of a desire. If God were omnipotent then the crucifixion could have been prevented. It seems more rational to believe that nature 14 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS allowed the crucifixion, as an object lesson for purposes in spiritual evolution. That is much more comforting than to think of the crucifixion as a suicide, which would be the case if it were a permitted homicide with accessory agreement. Even from the viewpoint of the crucifixion as a prevent- able murder, we may still argue that it was an inspiring object lesson of service to millions of people. We need not be too particular about insisting upon the accuracy of details of the beautiful story as moulded and concentrated through the ages by sympathetic relators. There is no real need for our trying to analyze the motives of God in the matter, be- cause we finally arrive at the point which, determined, is unimportant. The ideal of the story as moulded and now related contains immense value. Man has constructed the story from whatever materials served originally to give direc- tion to an ardent human wish, and in consequence we have had for many centuries an expression of that wish in the story of The Cross. Nature dictated the construction of the story by implanting in the human mind the desire for that object lesson, and, nature being God, we have an instance of the ruling of God, if one wishes to state the matter in that way. The child's conception of God as looking down and seeing everything, no doubt has an influence in correcting little barbarians, and the conception in the same way is useful for very many older people. Does it lessen the dignity of the conception of Deity to know that God was made by man? For an answer with an object lesson — watch an idol maker stop while carving a hand in order to pray to his idol. The same spirit is evinced by the missionary with his visualized mind, which lives in the sky. The missionary does not recognize that fact, because nature must blind people, like lovers with their psychoses, in TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 15 order to get some of the best things done. The missionary could not work with burning zeal if he realized the truth that he and the wooden-idol maker were alike. Nature, in order to gain progress, chooses the best carvers for making idols and the best moulders of thought for visualizing the mind in the sky. We need lose none of the dignity and grandeur of the idea of God when becoming pragmaphiles. If the hymns which are sung in Christian Churches are doggerel from a literary standpoint, what matters it so long as they are sung with fervor ? The doctrine of a Providence is directly in accordance with the theory and beliefs of the monistic unity state, which ex- plains providence in a natural way by saying that nature may be trusted to do what is best. The doctrine of a Providence has been applied in such a small way and in supernatural meaning by individuals, who wished to explain the nature of trifling events, that it does not appeal to a man of much experi- ence. Some of the masterpieces of literature have lost their fine import because they were used by us for reading lessons when we were children. The grand truth in the theory of a providence has become hackneyed through little hackings by the superstitious. The Monistic Unity idea turns our religious nature directly toward Nature without need for symbolizing it as God. One weakness of our churches at the present moment is due to their insistence upon adherence to a symbol as an idol, thereby obstructing the broad views of good men. If any religionist feels that insistence upon adherence to the visualized form of an ideal mind will capture the imagination of the young, strong, vigorous and intelligent element of a community, he might better stop and look around a bit to observe what this sort of thing has already done to the churches. If any religionist feels that he should insist upon acceptance of a 1 6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS book as coming directly from a visualized mind, he causes loss of interest on that part of the social community which is most potent for substantial uplift. Is there not inspiration in the feeling that the Scriptures were founded by men alone, who in such early days expressed themselves so well in symbols of sociology? To my mind there is great satisfaction in the feeling that men themselves did this work unaided by any supernatural power. It seems so much finer and more inspiring to inscribe in the Bible this prefa- tory remark: Homo Ipse Fecit. The idea of divine inspira- tion is so much weaker as an idea that it furnishes one ex- planation for difficulties which the church now finds in en- gaging the interest of young people in religion. We have an object lesson, as the case stands to-day, in make-believers trying earnestly to convert unbelievers. Is it not time to mount up to a grander view of the inherent intrinsic worth of unaided man. It by no means lessens the beauty of Christ to know that He was inspired, in the sense that He represented nature speaking through the best instincts of man. This idea makes Him stronger than the idea that He required help from some source outside of man. I recognize only one form of irreverence, Ille est, complaint about cruelty and injustice, — for that means nothing more than vain personal objection to the will and method of God (Nature). The wish to ascribe high thoughts to divine origin may perhaps be traced back to primitive modesty. We find it expressed to-day in simple form as a relic in the commonly employed prefacing remark — "as the feller says." This remark has usually been ascribed to cowardice, — a man afraid to stand for what he is about to say. I had accepted the teaching of psychologists, that this common form of remark represented cowardice, but upon making observation of a number of men who employed it habitually I am con- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 17 vinced that it represents modesty. The same modesty expressed in higher form would ascribe the magnificent crystals of human thought to a supernatural source. My own confidence in man is such that I believe it to be more ennobling if we reserve the idea of supernatural origin of the crystals of thought, for use by that part of the community which is not as yet prepared to comprehend the nature of values possessed by man himself. Uncivilized people worship material idols which serve to fix attention upon ideals and are useful. Civilized people make out of nature a symbol called God and worship God as a beautiful working model of nature. The savage can grasp nothing greater than the idea of a God for the most part, because back of all knowledge lies nature — too great for our comprehension. No one as yet has made a symbol for the origin of God — for Antecedent Mind — or for the origin of Antecedent Mind. The idol of the heathen is not very different in fact from our God, because both represent emblems, a symbolic effect. How much of our deepest feeling is represented in common- place material like the material of an idol ! A little plain ring of gold does not actually ensure the never-ending union of two lives joined in love, yet it stands for that beautiful ideal; and a diamond added to the circlet of gold would be a profanation of the ideal. Uncivilized idol worshippers who require an image of wood make that choice for the same reason that a vine requires some stable and erect support. An idol assists in holding thoughts high. Civilized people required something for hold- ing their thoughts very high indeed, and constructed God. The Greeks with all their learning and all their various altars for gods still had an altar for the unknown God. Fancy rising to the point of visualizing of people is shown i8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS in the primitive form by our visualizing of the saints. A child reading of some character in a story sees just what clothes the character wears, fixes the color of his hair, and decides upon his height. The action of an adult visualizing the saints, and of a child visualizing the character in a story book, are similar in character and desirable. The child mind demands a very concrete picture of God. While watching heavy rain a child asked her mother, "What is the shape of God?" The mother replied that he was able to take any shape. "Is he now shaped like a watering-pot?" asked the child. This simple picture of the watering-pot is hardly more simple in fact than the mother's larger idea of God, made for us in good literature. Nature does not allow us to conceive even of the luminiferous ether as starting from nothing, but that is the nearest approach that we can make toward comprehending anything without substance. There we must stop short. In other words, we carry X to the nth power in speaking of God. There is good in everything if we find it among the com- pensations. In religious movements where the will is put aside for the emotions, historians have called attention to the bad side chiefly. They tell us that pilgrimages to shrines favor the spread of contagious diseases, and that vicious people follow pilgrims as a netter follows pigeons, — finding easy prey among those whose ordinary protection of the will has been put aside temporarily in favor of the emotions. We hear of little beside the immorality and disease which are spread by pilgrims, because that is the most obvious to reporters, — but underlying all this is an elevation of thought on the part of thousands of people toward better ideals. Hysterics some- times plan for a long time in advance to surprise people with the results of their visit to some famous shrine. They TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 19 simulate a serious chronic illness, and having engaged the sympathy of a very large number of people, betake themselves to a shrine in order to cause excitement and wonder by their sudden recovery from paralysis or blindness or whatever form of illness they chose to assume. On the whole these visits to shrines are perhaps beneficial, because like Christian Science the shrines give a modus vivendi to an unrest ful element in the community. Neurasthenics among the pilgrims, the ones who commonly make themselves and others uncomfortable, are better so long as the suggestion of betterment lasts. They believe themselves to be cured of all sorts of things. Walls of habitations of the priests are hung with discarded paraphernalia of the ill, and if the invalids require new apparatus later, it is often in the line of good sanitation, although working hardships for some of the poor. A few cripples become worse or die as the result of discarding their apparatus in response to suggestion, but on the whole the good is, I believe, more than equal to the bad. On the occasion of religious revivals vicious people flock to the meetings (particularly to camp meetings), know- ing that where wills, are to be put aside for indulgence in the emotions, some of the revivalists will become ready to follow wills of almost any sort for awhile. It is interesting to note the influence of hypnotism in reli- gious revivals. The leader starts slowly. Hymns with no particular meaning are sung. In the course of half an hour the leader gets under way, and his hearers begin to "get power," as the saying goes, which merely states a condition in which people have really laid aside their power. People who are most easily able to drop their wills are the ones who become backsliders more quickly and discredit the whole move- ment. It is a pity that the dignity of the Christian church should have to be subjected to movements by evangelists. 20 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS The work of an evangelist would be valuable if minds which he has beaten to a froth were to rest upon some higher plane of knowledge or even upon elevated phrases like those of the Boy Scouts when settling back to accustomed habit ways. At the present time, minds which have been beaten up by an evangelist are allowed to settle back upon myth, miracle and mystery. The evangelist of to-morrow may have some rea- sonable mind-rest all prepared in advance. It seems probable, however, that with increase of scientific knowledge, emotional agitators will gradually retire. The bell will ring midnight for them. Even at the present time Billy Sunday could not enter a wedge beneath the emotions of the educated classes until these minds had first been primed by the 19 14 war friction, very much as we start ofif a statical electrical machine by rubbing the glass with the skin of a cat. We assume that man is a chemical machine, one action of which is manifested electrically in the form of neuricity. If neuricity transmits an impulse to the ether in such a way as to cause response in what we call "thought," it is not difficult to understand that an evangelist whose personality allows him to liberate an unusual degree of positive thought from an audience, may transmit such thought along his own personality wires for so long a time as his presence keeps the audience charged. The evangelist may get up steam more readily in locali- ties where he finds low water in the boiler, but the expenditure of force results in a blowing-up process rather than con- structive accomplishment of work. The moral effect of his presence in one relation is observed when people who have been in the habit of paying small bills honestly, drop their money into the hat of an evangelist. This forces the grocer into competition with The Lord so far as collections are con- cerned. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 21 It is notorious that when wills are laid aside and the emo- tional faculties of the mind are chiefly in exercise, moral barriers are allowed to fall more readily. There is another side to the question. Some people who have never before given any attention to spiritual thought assume a new attitude and try to lead better lives, but this takes place chiefly among the illiterate. The harmful influence is exerted upon people who have had more or less training along lines of the intel- lectual faculties. Perhaps the effect of religious revival on the whole is not worse than the formal exercise of religious ceremony with cant and phrase, pomp and circumstances, in which the church members follow perfunctory services which do not appeal to the deep ethical side. Perfunctory Christians are apt to feel that having disposed of religious duty they are then free to run off and take a recess in morals. Among some kinds of people, the religious revival de- generates into an orgy and there is a certain peculiar "getting of power" which relates to the muscular system in advanced orgies of religious revival. People throw themselves toward the ceiling with springs which could hardly be equalled if they were simply after apples in somebody's orchard. When rolling upon the floor they are enabled to throw themselves remarkably by the action of the abdominal muscles alone. The religious orgy is being gradually replaced by six-day bicycle races and speed orgies of automobile contests, as civilization advances. On the whole, however, thousands of revivalists turn their thoughts toward religion, and the general effect is probably good rather than bad, although the good part is not so often reported. Religion is commonly held to stand in opposition to all concrete knowledge, but the chosen race will find as much exaltation in emotion based upon knowledge as most people now find in emotion based upon superstition and the undemon- 22 TO-MORHDWS TOPICS strable. In fact we shall not have to wait for a chosen race in order to find exaltation in concrete knowledge. Its votaries are already here. What check does nature put upon science in order to prevent its oak tree from growing too rapidly? All of the systems of educational conviction stand in the way, with large bulk, because they are obliged in the presence of fact to make labori- ous adjustment; they have to adapt their bulk to new centres of gravity. Science makes its way most rapidly by extending strong roots below these systems in the stratum of manufac- tures, arts, and commerce, where the capillary attraction of practical business advantage draws all valuable fact toward itself. Percolating fact also runs freely beneath the foundations of systems of educational conviction, melts out all soluble error, and leaves large spaces into which these systems would topple were it not for their fresh adjustments. Systems of educational conviction are built without restraint, composed of materials which people think they want. They contain beloved traditions and religious instincts expanding to wide dimensions. When knowledge is not based upon science it becomes a mystery. The human mind with its love for mystery seeks it in the presence of most ordinary facts. On some of the shooting grounds for the sora rail, in the South, we find not only the boatmen but even quite intelligent shooters seriously discussing the question if the rail have really de- veloped from frogs, although books of ornithology describe the breeding habits of this species, and New England boys know where to find their nests and eggs. The Southern rail shooters prefer to seriously discuss the mystery of the sudden appearance of these birds. One reason why science is not chosen in place of mystery in the selection of leaders of the people is because science TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 23 condenses large feeling into small correct idea. Leaders of the people expand small idea, correct or incorrect, into large feeling. The public in general prefers feelings to fact, because this happens to be one of the peculiarities of our species. It may have basic origin in the flying habit of spirit. The scientist does not wish to be a leader of the people ; his prefer- ence being for producing pure high grade materials which the leaders may employ. Science is producing agent for knowl- edge ; feeling is distributing agent for knowledge. The public goes to the distributing agent for all of its commodities. The public is a bit suspicious of any leader who is open to con- viction, and it prefers one who has absolute confidence in him- self. It feels that his attitude must be an outcome of satis- factory personal experience, no matter whether that is the fact or not. It is apt to avoid leaders who are open to con- viction very much as they avoid the learned doctor who is not sure that he can manage a case successfully. They much prefer the charlatan who promises to cure. It is not easy to explain to grown-up folks why anything stated in terms of mystery and words of conviction is so at- tractive to them, but children will understand. Mystery — a peep into a neighbor's market basket! Conviction — honest people have much trouble in arriving at conclusions. When a man speaks to them in terms of conviction, they assume that he has settled a whole lot of preliminary trouble and has kindly spared them the labor of so much effort. Stupidity in this regard is not confined to man. Even so intelligent an animal as the horse will run back to his stall in a burning barn. He will try to run through indefinitely outlined fire in order to reach a definitely outlined stall. The masses are not as yet ready for exaltation based upon science. Superstition must continue to take the place of knowledge for some time to come. Meantime superstition has 24 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS immense value as a cofferdam. The Roman Catholic Church has served an useful purpose when standing in front of science, by forcing science to make its test so perfect that sharp and polished plowshares were the only ones that could be carried under the roots and stones of tradition, and made to turn an even furrow. The Roman Catholic Church makes good citizens of a very large class of civilized people who are not as yet allowed the privilege of great knowledge. It appeals also to primitive races of people because of its pomp and pageantry, and for that reason is more successful in proselyting than is the more serious Presbyterian Church. The American Protective Association would seem to be on the wrong track in its ideas of securing protection against the spread of Roman Catholic influence. The duty of the Ameri- can Protective Association is to make its own churches attrac- tive enough to take charge of that particular element which is far better ofif under the authority of some church. Which- ever church takes this element in charge is doing public service, and wherever the Roman Catholic Church succeeds best, there it is the best church. Conflict between church officials is a waste of force which may be better turned toward conflict with disintegrating social influences. The only feasible way for the American Protective Association to gain control over the Roman Catholic Church on biologic grounds is to outbreed it. Is it doing that? This particular group of notes was inspired by the receipt of a missile sent through the mails. The morning's mail — how much of interest centres about that event ! Mine contains a sample copy of "The Threat." It appears to be a newspaper which combines the functions of organ and of weapon for shooting twisted half-truths at high velocity against the Roman Catholic Church. Its methods of action have certainly been pirated from the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 25 "Bullet-in of the Knights of Columbus," — opposed to Protes- tants. Laymen are not supposed to see the latter publication, but it has a certain feature peculiar to all hair trigger weapons, that of mowing down by-standers accidentally when aimed at a target. The reason for this is mechanistic in its nature. Militancy represents a state of mind rather than a social need. Militancy as a state of mind is no more quiet in its own organized society groups than is thorium (a state of matter) in its periodic-law groups. Militant Knights give away secrets when they develop personal grievances. Some publications claim to have a range three times beyond that indicated by office figures. The Bullet-in has a range several times beyond that of its claims. Perhaps in the course of progress women will take charge of such a publication and feminize the terminal syllable of Columbus. We may then have sounds of billing and cooing instead of sounds of killing and booing which now emerge from this particular organ. It took a school boy anyway to inform his teacher that "a news- paper is the mouth organ of the people." Now, I am neither a Romanist nor a Protestant, believing that Theology of any brand is an obstacle which hinders a man from running freely — like the egg shell which adheres to an ambitious young sand- piper. From this impartial standpoint The Threat sounds to me like the hysterical screaming of a stuck pig. There is not one line of cheery inspiration nor one ray of sunshine breaking through its clouds of menace. The Threat tells us that Romanists burned Bruno at the stake, but we find less than a column devoted to a description of what Calvin did to Servetus in the interest of tidings of great joy. There is information about the church movement against Copernicus, but not even a footnote referring to the trip of pretty Anne Hutchinson into the woods on the invita- tion of the Puritans. The tone of Romanist literature on 26 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS the whole is one of peace and smooth poHty. The tone of The Threat is autobiographical. On the occasion of the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Montreal recently, ii,ooo people paid for attendance at a wrestling match, while only a small handful attended the free meetings of the famous scientific body. If civilization on this present cultural trip of ours cannot make a better showing than this, a voice of peace and of smooth polity is at least a safe kind of voice for guid- ing the eleven thousands in every land. To the Odynecens among Romanists and among Protestants I would say — "Wait a minute ! We heathens who have to drag along some- how without Theology are informed that work in the interest of Christ must always be done in the spirit of Christ. If that is a true statement, then somebody is being misled by The Threat and by the Bullet-in. Stop long enough to peep about in a search for the spirit of Christ in these two publications opposed to each other and then decide who is being fooled." Any established church renders the service of constantly proclaiming the moral law. So-called rationalists who deny the value of the church, are apt to deny at the same time the principles of all kinds of obligation toward a neighbor, toward society, and toward the state. This tendency toward universal egoism represents doubling of the rose, — establishment of individual variation. If thorough-going individualism is a sign of higher civilization it is a flag at the summit which indicates that further movement is toward decline. Educated Roman Catholics take poetically, and more or less diplomatically, the famous Encyclical Letter and its Sylla- bus Quanta Cura of Pope Pius the Ninth, issued in 1864. Section 55, relating to the separation of Church and State, was employed as a special text by Pope Leo the Thirteenth and Pope Pius the Tenth. The idea that separation of Church TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 27 and State is pernicious has a fundamental origin which has been crudely expressed up to the present time by partisans. Later on in the course of civilization, Church and State will again be united, but not upon the partisan grounds which lead to conflict. The Roman Catholic Church has probably allowed about as much progress as the times could manage. It has been con- spicuous in opposition to progress because of its size and power, but has been corrected by the state and by nature's laws, as rapidly perhaps as was intended by nature. One of the British kings when appointing a bi.shop for a certain diocese in Ireland said, "He is a great blockhead, but he suits the people and has a large following, so I shall appoint him." The church might forge too far ahead of the state, did not nature apply the brakes and divide up work amongst several sects. Officers of the church have social prestige and the ear of the best people to such an extent that an universal church with agreement in dogma and tenet would develop out of all proportion to nature's plans. Nature will probably keep the work of the church split asunder by creeds and thereby held in check until science can formulate a system of ethics which will constitute a new Bible. According to nature, God is really in His heaven, and the world is all right so far. The church requires diplomatic officials in order to carry the form of any religion systematic- ally, but this does not imply that officers who follow form are really better men than other worshippers who sit in the back seats. The expression "from chancel to nave" is not synonymous with an expression "from chancellor to knave." Nature will keep religious creeds apart until she has developed them by evolution up to a standard of her choice, meantime keeping on with progress, wiping this creed off the 28 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS slate, then another creed, — perhaps the whole Christian creed, — meanwhile progressing and cutting off those creeds which in experience are found to be superfluous. Established religious sects furnish ways and means for giving comfort to people who do not comprehend the Bible as a whole. One creed is better than another when it satisfies one group of people. The latest United States census statistics report r86 separate church denominations in the United States, besides a much larger number of individual churches not belonging to any regular denomination. A business man at the head of the world would make a merger of most of these, allowing only two to remain in competition, and thereby avoiding waste, while maintaining the stimulus of healthy competition. Per- sonally I would have but two churches remain, on one hand the Roman Catholic Church, and on the other hand the Monistic Unity Church. From the census report, we find statistics quoted by Odell in a recent number of Munsey's Magazine, showing typical instances of waste. Lake township in Pennsyl- vania has a population of 1200 people. There are ten church buildings and fourteen congregations. There are 405 church members, representing 36.75 per cent, of the population. The average attendance at church on Sunday is 40. Seven hundred and fifty dollars is the maximum salary paid to any minister for a year's work. There is a congregation for every 88 inhabitants, but nearly two-thirds of the population are outside of the pale. All of these small congregations are involved in a desperate struggle for self-preservation, and yet not meeting obvious needs of the community. Three counties in Indiana are cited by Odell. Daviess county has a population of 27,747, with a church membership of 32.5 per cent. ; Mar- shall county has 24,124 population, of which 27.4 per cent, are church members; Boone county has 24,673 people, 41.6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 29 per cent, of whom are church members. There are 231 churches in the three counties, interesting one-third of the population. There are 115 resident ministers with an average salary of fifty dollars a month, which is the wage of unskilled labor. Out of the 91 churches in Marshall county 25 report that they have no young men members under 21 years of age. Forty-four country communities in Illinois have 225 churches, 45 of which are at a standstill, 36 are losing ground, and 47 practically abandoned. Thirty-one per cent, of the population are church members, but less than 20 per cent, attend regularly. In Missouri three representative rural communities, Knox, Adaire and Sullivan, have a population of 53,701 people, 29 per cent, of whom are church members. There are five Roman Catholic churches and 159 semi-animated Protestant churches. There is no men's club or organization among the Protestant churches. If all of these churches could be arranged by a business man into two groups, their resources when combined would provide libraries, clubs of various sorts for social, literary, and recreation purposes, with ministers trained to supply the needs of the people, and relieve them from the necessity for gossip as a chief stimulus for getting together socially. Social sterility occurs as a result of successive crop- ping of the ground with miracles and the cheaper grade of emotions, which are not closely related to wheat or to corn. These people are all very much alive, and human. Give them opportunity; reach their minds with alternating crops of science, art, literature and ethics, and a sublime potential would be liberated for good. The people at this very moment stand waiting all ready to become eager. Fault lies in wasteful multiplication of church denominations and edifices. We must encourage and uphold Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in America, for the present century at least. The public is not yet prepared to understand that finite 30 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS thought is a mode of infinite thought. My driver is an honest and good man, who goes to church regularly. He has no bad habits, excepting a short periodical excitement in politics. During intervals between election times he is not unbalanced by revolutionary or even evolutionary thoughts relating to polity. For six days of the week he is unsinged by any burn- ing religious question, yet on the whole he is an exemplary citizen within his limitations, and one of the sort who make first rate social ballast. Were I to inform him that heat is a mode of motion he would say, "Excuse me. I did not quite get that!" If I were to inform him that finite thought is a mode of infinite thought he would put on a very intelligent look and stop at the look. Now it would be quite wrong to interfere with any of William's habits of church attendance, or to make any change in his points of view that are obtained from the minister on Sundays. Any contribution that I happen to make to the funds of his church is made gladly and sincerely on my part. Good men of his type are to have their suitable churches for many decades to come. The monistic unity church will go back to one of the attrac- tive features of paganism which existed at a time when the beauties of religion were ordered into form by the present Christian churches. Pagans gave a separate god to each living thing. A part of God really is given to each little living thing, in order to help it work out its own destiny. There is no more beautiful idea for bringing us into sympathetic appreciation of a living world than the simple pagan doctrine which repre- sented a correct idea. It is an idea which is probably as permanent as the moon, and when circling about religions as a satellite, it will become obscured and then shine upon us, — then obscured and shining upon us again, age in, age out. The music of the church and state of monistic unity will not be in the minor key of sadness, but in the major key of joy. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 31 In architecture the genius who is called great at the present time does not concentrate his intention upon the cozy home features of houses. His mind runs to classical columns, inspiring ceilings, grand effects. The more money we have for paying the architect, the farther away he will lead us from home. In doubling of the rose great expression results. According to the natural trend of architecture cathedrals are intended to give an impression of the sublime through lines that will overwhelm the worshipper with a sense of his own littleness. It is not the littleness of the worshipper that will be taught in the church of monistic unity, but an over- whelming sense of his own great importance in playing his game of life well. A great many people are driven away from the church by attempts at impressing them with a sense of their littleness. Men know better ; they have an inherent instinct which teaches them that they are not little. The trinity church of ether, energy and matter will impress upon us the importance of ourselves, instead of trying like the Trinity church of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to impress us with our littleness. When a man is sufficiently impressed with his own littleness, he will proceed to do little things. Fortunately nature forestalled such a calamity which might follow the teachings of theology, and speedily gave man vanity, so that while recognizing smallness (a really necessary thing for him to recognize) he could only see it in others and was not personally injured by being crowded into small personal space. People are not indifferent to any religion which appeals in a simple and cordial way to their highmindedness. The people whom you love most are very sincere, are they not? Their love for the genuine has won your trust and admiration. We must hold fast to the Christian religion until we have a system of moral ethics or another religion large enough to 32 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS take its place. Religion is a rope between mountain climbers that helps the coward and the brave alike to live. It is not yet time to exchange an irregular strand of moral ethics for the rope of religion when travelling over dangerous places, so far as the regular run of folks may be concerned. We shall eventually supplant the Christian church by a system of ethics, but meanwhile let the Christian church remain as a coffer dam with as few leaks as possible, until we have something larger to put in its place. The church has a comforting quieting tendency for most people, but sometimes a neurotic individual in the church as elsewhere is bound to be a martyr if possible. He is not happy unless he is sufifering, and if the suffering is of a sensational nature, so much the better. Follow the Christian religion until you have a better one of your own. If you think you have a better one it will be better for you personally at least. The important thing is to have a religion, and if one thinks it the best, it is the best one for him. Even though I have little personal interest in any accepted church, it is my belief that a live church is the best social servant of a community. Its ideals are those of higher life, and aside from administering to the spiritual wishes it so often looks after the physical condition of its people. Aside from its educational institutions the church is largely responsible for the establishment of hospitals, orphan asylums, and other organizations for the relief of physical distress. There should be really a more helpful cooperation between the medical profession and the church. The church, like the physician, has always taken up those problems of humanity which are apt to be disregarded by the community, and on a genuine basis of brotherly love which is superior to all bickerings. There is not enough tendency as yet for different churches to get TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 33 together in order to attack community problems in the way in which industrial corporations make mergers. When the various churches make mergers, and form an universal church, the medical profession will be a strong factor in all organiza- tions relating to such a church. At present the wasteful multi- pHcation of doctors is similar to wasteful multiplication of church societies. Churches and doctors in the United States are situated within a stone's throw of each other. This simile rnay be of divine origin if we are to judge from its fitness. Those who seek to "know the truth" do not find it because its origin and solution lie in the infinite. This is a primary proposition similar to an attempt at lifting ourselves by our boot-straps. I have known earnest but deluded men of wealth who were ready to devote whole fortunes to seeking for the truth. Had they devoted their fortunes toward seeking methods for securing high degrees of human utility, their money would have been well expended. Spreading of the gospel of Jesus will have more influence in the monistic unity state than it has at present, because it will be upon a more rational basis. It will be taken to the ball game and to the business office instead of being kept for Sundays as at present. Explanation of the real nature of Christ and His teachings will be unhampered by superstition and therefore will lead to a wider permeation of principles than has occurred under theology. Christ as a crystalline symbol of man's best thought is more glorious than a char- acter standing upon superstition. Jesus was a teacher of theoretical humility, but it was not until after the middle of the sixteenth century that Galileo placed it upon a practical working basis. Previous to the day of Galileo there were only two methods of investigation — the philosophical and the mathematical. Galileo added the experimental method of investigation. This latter method 34 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS promptly deprived a man of all arrogance of opinion, and renders him humble in the presence of unsolved problems. \\'ith solved problems at a man's disposal there is no occasion for arrogance of opinion. Was Christ divine? That depends upon the definition of "divine" in one's own mind. If it means that He was sent by a higher power to teach the people on this earth — yes ! just as we all are divine, and sent by a higher power to teach each other. Christ represents only a superior degree of the Divine. Having selected Jesus of Nazareth for special attention, men proceeded to ascribe attributes to Him which He in his modesty would have repudiated, but which for teaching pur- poses were allowed to stand. Just as a fine woman ascribes to her accepted suitor all known refinements of the human mind, so men gladly did the same with Christ, and put into His history the things they really wanted to say. There are thousands of strong men to-day upholding the teachings of Christ who do not believe in divine inspiration. Joseph of Arimathea was a Pharisee, and as a lawyer, no doubt found it difficult to follow the idea of an inspired Christ, because he knew too much, yet he was the one who stood by Christ when all others forsook him. I know many men to-day who are called agnostics but who are better followers of the teachings of Christ than are others who uphold the idea of divine inspiration. I believe that Jesus was really the Christ, carrying to man messages from nature in concrete form. It is not necessary to believe stories about a virgin mother, the resurrection, and all that sort of thing at the present time, but in earlier days such stories were necessary in order to interest the mind of the day, and they form a pretty illusion even now. While not believing in a supernatural Christ as described by the Church, I am very reverent toward the Christ whom nature TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 35 furnished for us, and who was completed by man. Among verses which I have pubHshed, one which I Hke best is "The Easter Crocus," although no one has spoken to me of it when friends were quoting other verses of mine. At the time when Paul said "The world by wisdom knew not God," the statement was no doubt true, but at the present time it is by wisdom based upon knowledge that we really know the God of nature and understand the God of the Bible. Our new knowledge can admit that Jesus was the Christ, and that no better Christ has been chosen by the God of nature to represent all that is best. Christ was really the son of God, and spoke as such. He was an exponent of nature in a form which allowed expres- sion of concentrated ethics. Divine punishment is really divine punishment, representing nature's way, but having funda- mental origin in the ether and in nature's plan. Christ simply represents a type that we have had many times before and since in history. All the others in earlier and later years have failed to represent so fully what was needed, — as was represented by Jesus, — although they sometimes had inspiring vision and a large following. The men who have posed as Christs (false Christs) in the later days of history when we are able to make classification of psychoses have been mostly paranoiacs with religious mania, but, believing in themselves, often obtained a large following, like Schlatter or Dowie. There is no reason why some paranoiac may not give us almost a parallel to the entire history of Christ, excepting for the fact that in these days people are so much less superstitious. It is merely a question of degree. Jesus was the supreme character chosen by nature through man, as most symbolic of what men desired. A paranoiac believing in himself may develop a very beautiful doctrine and may be capable of concentrating and crystallizing 36 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS the best thought of his followers, of such at least as wish to have their best thought crystallized and concentrated. He is a nucleus upon which gold is deposited by electrolytic action, or perhaps for a better parallel, the neuritic action of currents of thought. From time to time attempts are made at presenting Christ upon the stage. This is generally met by successful opposition. The opposition does not come from devout Christians alone. I should personally consider it a shocking profanation. Christ represents nature at its best, and the nearest approach to nature which can be made by art of any sort is a bungle. I would not take away God and Christ. They are real, and represent expressions of nature in a form which we can comprehend. If man made Christ in accordance with a conception of the highest qualities in his own mind, he was prompted by am- bition which showed the trend of his deepest thought. If man made God after his own image, it showed a fundamental confidence in himself that must mean divine origin. From the uncouth wooden idol with its arms and legs, to the visual- ized human mind in the sky, we have always a representation of man, or of some sacred animal representing human attributes. According to the doctrine of naturalism nature is governed wholly by natural laws with which God never interferes. The doctrine of omnipotence attributes to God absolute power, but does not necessarily imply that He uses it. The doctrine of divine providence holds that God possesses and exercises absolute power over all the works of His hands. Argument upon all of these doctrines may be dropped in favor of the doctrine of the monistic unity church, that this Earth has a God who does the best He can under the direction of a still more perfect and superior force. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 37 Humanism takes a peculiarly human attitude toward life, and assumes that man is the measure of all things. It allows that the unseen may really be present, but that man can know his duty and know his life without any reference to the un- seen. It respects the superhuman and supernatural, but makes the highest element — human nature itself — stand first. When the roses doubled in Greece they gave us union of beauty and religious exaltation as the highest product perhaps of civiliza- tion, in forms that were most normally human, depicted for instance in the Elgin marbles of the three graces. The Hindoo expressed divine wisdom in a material idol with many arms, yet the Hindoo has a very large sense of the beautiful. The people of the Middle Ages knew the beautiful, but visualized their saints by making them unattractive in outline of ex- pression. It was Greece that gave to the world the normally beautiful in its art idols. Christians know beauty, and our highest expression of the doubling rose is Christ in the form of a man with mental perfection, instead of depicting (as was done by the Greeks) a balance of expression with the physical. Greece gave to the world as its final product the form of man for its god, with the mind and soul characteristics balanced. Christianity leaves out the form ideal, giving us a character with mind and soul characteristics preponderating over the physical. If one tries to read the meaning of this change from an ideal of the highest early civilization to an ideal of the highest late civiliza- tion, it would seem to indicate that our symbol neglects what is neglected when a nation goes into decline — the human body. After the Greek civilization, in the following highest civil- ization, that of Christianity, there is given to the world as its final product the form of man for its god, with mind and soul characteristics preponderating over the physical, and no longer in balance. 38 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS The steps to materialism were dark and led downward, but they were firm and gave that safe guidance which modern science has furnished for taking us toward home. It was necessary for men to step entirely out of the masked ball of the church in order to escape from its glare and illusions. We were met by the ether of monistic unity, and this took us away from the dark steps of materialism to the real home where there was no glare and no masks, — nothing but kindly gentle light and real people. Naturalism, idealism, pragmatism, and realism are all dif- ferent forms of one thing, if we start from the monistic unity standpoint of observation. In the Middle Ages science was subject to religion, but toward the end of the eighteenth century science and religion parted company, each in search of truth which they did not find when travelling together. That was the first great division of labor in seeking for truth. Science was indififerent to personal interests, and impersonally sought theoretical truth calmly. Religion, on the other hand, was based upon personal interest, urged by longings for per- sonal well-being in the present and future. Philosophers working from the religious motive became impatient and irri- table, lost the calmness belonging to science, and began to indulge in mental gymnastics, rising high above solid ground, like flycatchers in their flighty fights with each other. They constructed Gothic arches and spires of words. If we start from a viewpoint of this difference in motive between science and religion we can readily perceive why philosophy had to form the two great nineteenth century schools, naturalism and idealism. Philosophers trying to reach a state of maturity, like the nematode Gordius, passed through intermediate hosts very much as Gordius does. At one stage they were pragmatists, and later they became new realists. In naturalism we have an application of the theories of science TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 39 to the problems of philosophy and the assertion that scientific knowledge is final. There is no root for extraction from scientific knowledge, or reaction of any kind beside the physical. That takes us straight back to the first stepping stone out of infinity. The physical entity of the ether gives a comfortable starting point within our comprehension for understanding naturalism. In idealism we have the assertion that "being is dependent upon the knowing of it," and all really is identified with some form of consciousness. This idea, like that of naturalism, need not go back to hopeless infinity, for it also may start comfortably from the physical entity of the ether. If the newer pragmatism of the sort represented by James can be made to lead toward new realism, as seems probable, and as new realism already admits that consciousness is a kind of function exercised by an organism, we may then all go back to our monism, passing by the won- derful architecture of philosophy and art to a common starting point for both naturalism and idealism. This would probably have occurred earlier in the history of philosophy had it not been for the dualistic conception of realism which the older idealists overthrew. The return of the philosophies to a home starting point is not very different from the return of botany and zoology to the point where animal and vegetable life cannot readily be differentiated one from the other. At this very moment we seem to be on the verge of finding that the dance of sub-atoms will make it even difficult for us to distinguish between inorganic and organic in the world of matter, and the relation of colloids to crystalloids in the inorganic group. When that period is reached, we may be well on the way toward recognizing the common starting point of energy and matter from the ether, and that leads us all to infinity again, after a most fascinating tour among the philosophies and sciences. Science will no longer be dominated 40 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS by religion, or religion by science, but both will proceed to- gether hand in hand, in our god garden, where nature is gradually cultivating man up to the point where he will be prepared to join the billion gods on equal terms. The state of monistic unity is not to represent perfection; it is only one step in advance of the present stage. When we arrive at acceptance of the monistic unity idea we shall be informed that still another and better idea awaits us in the future. It was sort of mean for science to tease theology about its assumptions; but theology showed its teeth and retorted that science was bankrupt, because it could not solve the riddle of the Universe. Who cares whether the riddle of the Universe is solved or not, so long as science can read in its constitu- tional law the acts of organic life, and can allow men to use this law for their guidance while they are in town (on earth). Science — always wary of preconceived notions — does not worry about solving the riddle of the Universe, because that very intention would include the idea of a preconceived notion that the riddle could be solved. Science would prefer to busy itself with making life practical and satisfactory here on earth, learning all that it can prove, which is sufficient indeed to keep one fully occupied, without any need for stepping off into space for more room. Science observes that certain terms required for solution of the riddle have not been stated, or at least have been clipped off from the entrance card to this exhibition of ours on earth. Items relating to time and space were likewise clipped off from our card, and now what can a man reasonably be ex- pected to do without knowledge of the beginning of time or the limitations of space? When directions for finding time and space in our exhibition were clipped off, the back of the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 41 card was incidentally mutilated; and this part of the card describing the intentions of Antecedent Mind was mutilated at essential points. During moments of recreation, science occasionally has a theoretical idea that a more perfect card will be given to us in perhaps the third or fourth world after this one, when we have grown enough. We do not know, however, that even the billion gods have as yet been furnished by Antecedent Mind with any key for solution of the riddle of the Universe. Theology seems not to thoroughly enjoy the scenery along our route of life unless it can know whither we are bound, like a nervous little old woman whom I once saw on the trolley car at Kennebunkport in Maine. Her friends had taken her out for a pleasant ride. After intervals of a few moments she would turn to her friends and ask where they were going, although she had been assured quite as often that the only object of the trip was a ride in the open air. This did not satisfy the aged traveller at all. She could find no enjoyment in the beautiful scenery and bracing sea air unless she knew definitely just where they were going and when the car would arrive at its destination. Theology is a nervous little old woman of Kennebunkport. Science cares little about our destination so long as it is permitted to enjoy glorious views of the landscape along the way, trusting mean- time that Antecedent Mind is a fairly responsible party for company. Theology believes that we shall have punishment if we are not good. Science shows that we are having pun- ishment at the times when we are not good. The reason why theology always drags along behind the general intelligence of the public is the reason why politics is not representative of public opinion or public desire, and that reason is because theology and politics represent the efforts of specialists to reduce the formulae of their occupations to those of fixed method. The free spirit of man, on the other 42 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS hand, is constantly expanding outward and away from fixed method. Theology is not to be criticized for taking an arbitrary stand, because it is not a compact science, and must formulate a system of conviction according to its best light at any given date in progress. The essentials of religion are the essentials of theology, but the essentials of theology vary with our stage of evolution and with the sects. They changed after conflict with astron- omy, after conflict with geology, after conflict with Darwin. They will change again after conflict with archaeology on the claims of Moses. The essentials of religion will continue to change with the essentials of theology, until theology means and is synonymous with natural history. Theology has never really lost any of its legs. It has simply changed the shape of its legs during the transformation changes belonging to the larval form of man on his way to adult form among the billion gods. The phrase "loss of theologic legs" was invented by some one who forgot his magnifying glass that day. God having been given metaphysical place, men then pro- ceeded to build creeds downward, like the tentacles of a medusa. These tentacles are often very beautiful and seem to be engaged in a good deal of motion, but they add little or nothing to actual progression on the part of the medusa, which is practically at the mercy of currents. Theology, as I understand the matter, assumes that God intended all of His errors, but this to my mind is a pragmaphobic concept. More rational is the conception based upon daily experience, that God is doing the best he can all of the while, but needing our help. Such a conclusion contains the idea that our God is but part of a system of gods all of whom are superior to man, but under control of some still higher power. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 43 Theology attempted to comprehend all human activities, but at the present time we find that bacteriology must stand first in order for our understanding. It is reported that on one occasion a mineralogist read an elaborate paper at a society meeting describing the metal bearing areas of our globe. He showed that such areas occurred in certain belts around the earth, — for which he gave a geological reason. An anthropologist in the audience when discussing the paper replied that it was not a geological question at all, and the metal bearing belts simply represented the areas of greatest human activity, where men found things. Orthodox science will eventually replace the present theology in which innumerable sects appear, for there can be no final sect. A thing not demonstrable is dropped out. It seems to me there can be only one religion in the end, and that will be the religion of science, possessing as high degrees of exalta- tion and of satisfaction as may be found to-day in any reli- gious dogma. One may reach the loftiest heights in science as well as in religion. What life is more exalted, more correct or more beautiful than that of the astronomer? He lives far above the small conflicts of social life. I asked one of my friends, a business man of wide experi- ence, if grafting was done by men who were professed Chris- tians. He replied, "Yes, these underhand procedures are practically universal in the business world." "Then," I said, "we must leave grafting to professed Christians and to the vicious, because there is nothing of that sort in science. I do not know of a single man engaged in scientific work who would be capable of underhand procedure; and to my mind it is evidence that science will give the final message to the world." If the church cannot stop grafting through the instincts which the church engenders, and if grafting is the undercurrent which removes the sand from beneath all foun- 44 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS dations of human construction, then the religion of science will logically be the religion to furnish the last message. In former days religion and science were far apart, engaged in warfare, but there has been less and less opposition as man gained knowledge in the place of superstition. Religion at the present time for instance does not take anything in the Book of Judges or of Daniel very seriously. Man has a bodily machine, but he has a mind and spirit for the development of which the bodily machine was evidently constructed. Let us assume that a final purpose is the de- velopment of man toward the form of a god. Worship according to some one of the Christian rehgious forms, is not incompatible with the severely scientific type of mind. One of the most accurate scientific men whom I have ever known was a Swedenborgian. In all probability he did not believe for a moment that Swedenborg conversed with spirits and angels, or that he was an especially appointed divine agent. My friend was too familiar with the subject of delusions. He knew what was meant by hallucinations of sight and of hearing appearing in a man who had previously held important positions in life before the development of a progressive mental disorder. The beauties of vision of Swedenborg appealed to his religious nature, and he enjoyed the use of that form of worship. The wide learning of Swedenborg and his extensive experience in practical affairs of the world allowed him when finally insane to construct a religion that carried messages for educated men. An engineer heads his locomotive toward a certain town. He hberates energy and takes us to the town if his locomotive remains upon the track. An inventor heads his mind toward a certain objective point on the map of his imagination. He liberates energy and arrives at the destination if he stays on TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 45 the track of science. When a locomotive runs off the track its disposition of energy can be stated in terms of destruction. When the mind of man gets off the track of science, its energy can also be stated in terms of destruction. The rails of steel and of science indicate the only safe route for the locomotive and for the man, no matter how much whistling and puffing and display of headlights may be made by the locomotive and by man. Mind cannot transcend matter as we understand matter. Matter cannot transcend mind as we understand mind, but one may be converted into the other in that tre- mendous monistic unity which we may call the God of Nature. Inventors and investigators have thrills like the ecstatic thrills of a religionist, when they are on the point of making some great discovery. What is it that thrills? Not the idea of personal gain, but the inherent instinct of joy at being of service to mankind,^ — an instinct that lies next to that of self-preservation. People have the same thrills when they are engaged in doing an angelic act of charity, or some saintly kindness, unless they are doing it with some idea of getting praise for the act. The personal and selfish factor will pre- vent any blazing up of thrills. I observe no greater ecstasy than that of people engaged in public service who are quietly at work with no idea of reward. The idea of reward or of prominent notice kills the thrills as quickly as dirt smothers a fire. If men finally produce life in the laboratory it will only be an object lesson of the way in which nature does things, and still another object lesson showing that a greater intelligence is behind all, greater than that intelligence which led to the growing of unfertilized eggs in the laboratory. It is only a positive indication of unfathomable intelligence farther back in the ether. The problem of Hfe is a problem of matter 46 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS which has acquired vital energy so far as we at present know, but vital energy may be only a transformed condition of that ether of which other energies, and matter, are alternative demonstrations, according to the monistic unity idea. Life may exist apart from matter, — but in different form — as mat- ter is different from the ether and from the energies. The Brownian movements of particles — sub-atoms in the molecule of gas — seem quite as much like life as do the movements of the amoeba which we call movements of life. The nerve-system is a machine for the manifestation of consciousness rather than a machine for the manufacture of consciousness, but if the machine is matter plus vital energy, and if both these parts of the machine are merely two activities of the ether, consciousness may be a third activity of the ether, the two other activities being directed by supreme intel- ligence to make sure of the third activity — consciousness. According to this theory, we would have a clear comprehen- sion of Huxley's view that "life is the cause and not the consequence of organization." It is probably both cause and consequence, depending upon the specific form of organization which we have in mind at any given time. Organization of the nervous system as one part of an organism is dependent upon special cell construction and aggregation, under orders from life. Life, in that case, represents some part of the supreme directing power belonging to infinity, but applied to laws relating to the three physical entities which are delegated to look after the affairs in this world. It is much easier to understand life if we think of it as an original directing intelligence, which is playing a game by making combinations of the three physical entities. If living matter were immortal we should have no evolution; for the death of organisms is necessary in order to allow the fittest to survive. It is much easier to conceive of life as a power TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 47 dealing with matter through all mutations of matter, and con- ducting cell (organism) mortalities by plan. In other words, there is immortality of The Life (which implies the existence of an antecedent mind), and immortality of the antecedent mind. We have to employ the term immortality in a meta- physical way for purposes of argument because we really know nothing of final time. After the end of time — what? Antecedent mind makes or directs all physical processes on earth, but all physical processes on earth cannot make ante- cedent mind. The mind of man is but an incident in the work- ing plan of antecedent mind, and as we judge from experience —part of a division-of-labor plan. The supreme intelligence parcels out to us certain portions of His work which are to be completed under our minor degree of intelligence. The division-of-labor conception appears to be justified by evidence which we have that a supreme intelligence directed the organism to go on and reproduce itself, working toward higher development for ages, for the final purpose of reporting back to antecedent mind again. This is precisely what is happening, so far as I can observe. It places tremendous responsibility upon each one of us, but a responsibility that may be carried with joy if we are fond of being helpful. It gives me tenable belief in the possibility of a future hfe. Animation of the inanimate will never be done in the labora- tory as far as we know at this moment, but we did not know until recently that the egg of a sea urchin could be "fertihzed" chemically, and we did not know until recently that pieces of a man, placed in proper media, could be grown under glass like plants in a hotbed. We have just recovered from the agreeable shock of Dr. Loeb's mechanistic development of the egg when Sir William Ramsay now makes his statement about the transmutation of elements. Hydrogen seems to have been changed into neon 48 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS and helium. This is in line with our monistic contention that all things on this earth, so far as we know, have originated from the ether; and it is little surprise to learn that science may be enabled to transmute one element into another. The fact is something more than an interesting observation. It will lead to means for transmuting other elements and they in turn will open up such inexhaustible supplies of energy that steam and electricity will appear to be nothing more than the makeshift resources of a crude people. Even if Sir William Ramsay does this he will not be a creator in the inorganic world, any more than Dr. Loeb makes himself a creator in the organic world. Sir William Ramsay and Dr. Loeb simply give a laboratory demonstration of the way in which the great Creator does things. If the three physical entities come from God, and God is everything and one, then we even have a Biblical statement to the effect that the three entities are one thing in different forms. We are constantly finding in the Bible great truths which correspond so closely to the findings of modern science that one is often amazed, unless he believes as in this quoted instance that the facts are probably coincidental and he is reading into the Bible what is not really there. The cruelties and mercies of the God of the Bible represent the cruelties and mercies of nature. In former times we gave credit to the God of the Bible for things that went right, and placed responsibility upon God as "due to His will" if things went wrong. This was a cor- rect but primitive way of expressing the matter. Divine force of the God of nature acts through individual man, and consequently whatever happens is divine will, if we use the word "will" in the sense of meaning a direction of force. We know that the lowest form of life begins with simple cells which cannot readily be classified as belonging to either TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 49 animal or vegetable life. We carry our knowledge of cells step by step, as they occur in the construction of the highest plant or animal, but in the scheme our knowledge actually comes to an end with man. Man has tried to step suddenly from understanding of man to understanding of God. We do not know what placed vital energy in the simple cell nor what becomes of the energy after it has left man, knowing only that energy is indestructible according to our present information. We are free to assume anything that we wish. The assumption that we can step to an understanding of God represents an impulse that was probably given to our cells for a purpose. It is a crude expression for that analogy which we find in the continuity of everything else in the world, when some purpose of nature is being directed to attain its end. I would not ridicule the idea of a step directly to the pres- ence of God from this earth. It gives pleasure to many people, and is a brief way for expressing what likely enough really does occur in some manner which is at present beyond our comprehension. It is nature's plan to place in man the idea that everything begins from something and goes somewhere. There may be in other worlds forces of which we cannot conceive. Nature gave us cause and effect to play with, and stopped at that, without any information about first cause or final effect. Life exists on this earth — ergo, it must have started. Under like conditions it will start again we may assume. The same reasoning applies to different kinds of life on different planets, many of which no doubt are similar to ours. Nature allows her best minds to make the most logical sequence from cause to effect, and other minds in various degrees to teach a system of logic, but keeps all within bounds, without reference to the first cause. 50 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS As a grape turns its tendrils toward a support by some unknown force giving it direction, so we turn to the thought of , immortality and shape our lives in accordance. In the next world we may go visiting from planet to planet. Who knows? The soul is supposed to be imponderable, but two men have tried to weigh it, and one (Lodge) found that at the moment of death in one case about two and one half ounces of weight were lost. In the other case about three-quarters of an ounce were lost. This might seem to have a great deal of meaning, and to indicate that whatever passed was soul, and that it was ponderable. The physician in a more practical way thinks at once of sudden loss of a certain amount of water which some- times occurs at the instant of death, represented by the initials of ponderable psychomere. The sudden loss of this amount of water will vary considerably, but unless a statement is made of observation on this particular point we shall be cautious about beheving that people who die lose ponderable psycho- meres of widely different weights. At just what moment the psychomere would leave a body might be a question for some controversy anyway. A man who has been under water for fifteen minutes is dead as a stone so far as we know by any ordinary tests, and he will remain dead unless an expert in resuscitation takes charge. The man may then be brought back to Hfe again. The atom has been rather definitely shown to be a system of still smaller bodies or electrons, and the force of cohesion which keeps the atoms and molecules and the whole cell struc- ture together seems to be of electro-static origin. It is not impossible that certain volatile parts of the cell may escape immediately at the time of death of an individual. We are not obliged to believe that the part which escapes must be called the soul. The psychomere seems to represent a mere TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 51 psycho on the part of a theoretician, and sudden loss of a small amount of weight immediately on the death of an indi- vidual may be explained in several other ways than by de- parture of a ponderable soul. Does the soul belong to the entire body or to a part of it ? If to a part, to which part? Carrel can remove tissue from a living man, place it in a culture medium in a glass, and cause it to grow. Does this new tissue contain any of the soul of the man from whom it was taken? Was any soul cut away with the original piece, or did it retract into the rest of the man when the piece was cut away? Theology uses faith for its anchor, and cannot make prog- ress excepting when dragging anchor. Science, on the other hand, prefers ballast and good sails. We have to use the word "Science" in contra-distinction to "Theology" in the accept- ance of meaning which is used in common parlance, because theology is really a science. For purposes of argument and comparison we had to separate science and theology just as we separate gold and hydrogen for making atomic weight comparisons. Nothing is really very different from anything else in this world excepting as we make differences for pur- poses of our convenience. Theology is one of the sciences, in the sense that science is classified knowledge, and theology classifies its facts as far as lies within its power. The differ- ence between theology and other sciences is that its facts are farther apart, like the molecules of hydrogen when compared with the molecules of gold. For further comparison let us take Logic and Theology. Both are sciences, yet both have to go to imagination for a starting point. The syllogism must come from somewhere, brought by somebody. The difference then between Logic and Theology is the difference between gold and hydrogen again — the distance apart of their respective molecules of 52 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS classified fact. In gold the molecules are near together, and in hydrogen they are far apart. Hydrogen and Theology are at their best under conditions of warmth. Gold and Logic are more true to their innate natures when coldest, but hydrogen and theology rise more rapidly when expanded by warmth. Logic belongs to the intellect, religion belongs to the spirit; but the difference between them is only a sort of atomic weight difference. Religion and Science should be lovers. They are naturally partners, yet religion has turned a look of hatred upon science. Hatred and love are so closely allied, however, as the psychologist well knows, that I believe religion and science may be about to join hands and "live happily ever afterward." At the present time science looks with deep suspicion upon theology, because theology habitually puts forth statements which cannot be proven to be true, in the form of definite assertion. Science puts people in its jail for doing that. Dogma is necessary to any religion for purposes of ballast. This ballast may be shifted considerably to meet the exigencies of any phylogenetic wind. We do not depend upon ballast for motive power, in fact it is a hindrance insofar as increased friction surface is concerned. Under present conditions dogma is still necessary as a compensating force for religions which would turn turtle excepting for it. Dogma is always to be taken poetically by the more intelligent people in a reli- gious body. For them it does no harm, and for the less intelli- gent it is necessary for ballasting purposes. A man who is reasoning out a religious dogma finds many things to be done in order that we may be saved ; but the busy scientific man — equally good but not having time to be saved, decides to take his chances with the crowd. My billion gods do not belong to the old pagan conception of a separate god for each living thing, although there was a TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 53 wealth of soul in that idea. They do not belong to the step higher— those pagan gods of anthropomorphic character on Mount Olympus who did not get on with each other any too well. My gods are the ones in control of separate planetary systems, each one similar to the God of our own planet. All gods are man-made to be sure, because man can only perceive what is within the limitations of his consciousness. Our idea of space includes only that area of which we are conscious, containing the ether. The coordinating and harmonizing spirit which is in control of all of the gods we have to assume to exist somewhere in infinity, and that is entirely outside of the limitations of our comprehension. In considering the unvary- ing law of the universe we must assume that some one power is supreme. Some of us would not readily understand accord- ing to our own comprehension why our own God had to create a devil to nullify His own wishes. The tendency to sorrow over natural features of life is a curious thing, and has an influence throughout all literature, — in fact is exploited by theology. The exploitation of sorrow and suffering represents those crude views of life which belong to earlier cultural development of a race, and probably has an important place in nature's plan for development, but will gradually disappear. In fact, suffering and cruelty are even now rapidly disappearing under the influences of evolution toward a chosen nation. The normal healthy mind is neither very optimistic nor very pessimistic, but melioristic, if we may judge from the universal activities toward uplift and betterment in all civilized nations, and even among savage people. Meliorists present the best average type of mind. The average type is a standard type in all nature's activities. It is not so important then to implant religious faith in the optimist or in the pessimist as it is to 54 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS implant it in the meliorist, because nature always makes an exemplar the most potent type. If the meliorist takes for his religion a hopeful belief in the destiny of his own nation, and has faith in himself as being part of the God of nature, we then have a secure religious faith held by that part of the nation which represents its main army. The meliorist army will not suffer much from any loss which occurs on the flank of optimism or of pessimism. "Back to the land!" is a war cry of the mehorist in his effort to combat nature's gregarious instinct. It is a call to his fellow man to escape from those evils of citiness which depend upon gregarious instinct. A religion is noble and generous when it becomes an inspira- tion for daily life. When it becomes a depressing force, or creating an unreal atmosphere through narrow piety, its form of practice is left largely to specialists who enjoy the incidental pomp and etiquette. Sin is voluntary reversion to a lower type of mind in the presence of consciousness of a higher type of mind. If one does not know of a higher type he is not a sinner. A street boy who knows little of his parents and who steals may not be a sinner at all. He sees nothing but methods of competition and utility as applied to himself. One of my patients whom we may call Bona was a beautiful girl, — member of a chorus. Her mother was a questionable character, and her father was unknown. She was brought up in the city streets and refused none of the temptations. Yet Bona had never sinned because she did not know any better life in the world. She had in- herited noble qualities from some progenitor. As soon as better ways of life were pointed out to her, she immediately became ambitious to live up to them. She advanced on the stage, formed a company of her own, was successful, and in the later years of her life was an extremely good woman. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 55 Had she been arrested at any time before she was eighteen years of age, moralists would have said that she was a sinner and fit for the reformatory, but the naturalist says, "Not so !" I have often compared her with another young woman whom I knew, of the ultra- fashionable set who was brought up in the best of surroundings. The esthetic side of life had been carefully taught to her, and yet in the latter half of her life she was what moralists would term a sinner. Let us call her Mala. Bona came to me on account of a diplococcus infection. She was then seventeen years of age. I recognized excellent traits of character in her nature, and these were pointed out to her during the time of tedious treatment. She was delighted at having good traits discovered by somebody and did not know that she possessed them originally. She told me that she believed the whole chorus with which she was associated at that time consisted of girls who were sufifering from the effects and complications connected with flagellated motile cells or diplococci or spirochetas, although those were not the words which she used. Many of the chorus singers are dead or disabled after a few years of their sort of life. Streptococci carry them ofif with peritonitis, diplococci carry them off, spirochetae lessen their numbers rapidly. To this day I never see a chorus without thinking of it sadly as a place in which nature quickly and cruelly wipes out and wastes a great mass of lives of beautiful young people who are not to become good wives and mothers — the bonfire element. The chorus always arouses a feeHng of sadness in me. It represents mis- fortune of environment quite as much as it does incomplete home teaching, or wilful carelessness and vanity on the part of a few of the girls. In my clientele there have been many lovely characters from the chorus, young women who would have made fine wives and mothers. They spoke to me hope- 56 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS lessly about the environment. Here indeed may the robins watch out for the gray-hawk man. One chorus girl said that she tried to persuade the florist to take back a ten dollar bouquet and allow her two dollars for it, in order to help buy food for her old mother and invalid sister who were in need. The bouquet probably came from some man who was himself bound for the bonfire. The predatory employer is at his best in this capacity when dealing with members of the chorus. A rapter who already has girls caught by one foot because of their financial needs, finds readier victims among those who are leading a life of display than other predatory employers find among girls with stronger home ties and more serious occupation. Mala came from highly developed antecedents. She prob- ably had a defective chromaffin system, but that subject was then unknown. When there was weariness from nervous tension after a strenuous house-party she craved stimulation or a narcotic to relieve the feeling of nervous instability. At first it was a little wine and a cigarette, and these extraneous influences gradually released her from the protection offered by a cultivated mind. The next step after dropping her guard was response to primal suggestion on the part of a companion, and then came fondness for living further in atavistic methods of life. It was the simple life, as that term might be applied in one sense, yet she retained good position in a gay social set. Now, as you observe, we have excused both Bona and Mala. Bona did not sin, because there was lack of knowledge of better things. Mala did not sin from the naturalist's stand- point, — because nature had sent overpowering influences stronger than the will, for tossing her into the bonfire. Even though society may excuse under any circumstances, it must nevertheless protect itself from the results of its own errors in not teaching Bona what was right and in not teaching TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 57 the parents of Mala to keep their protoplasm up to standard quality. Society weeping must toss its own children into the bonfire. If any one family is progressing too rapidly accord- ing to nature's view, she sets their children back, with reversal to a primitive type. They must begin all over again, or else burn up in the bonfire if they have not enough family strength left for beginning again according to exemplar methods of living. In order to send children back to a more primitive type, nature employs bacterial toxins when she finds that defective protective organs have been inherited. Bona had no "social position" at any time, but she led many girls among her associates to think of better things in life. Mala had a high social position (using that expression in ordinary meaning) from the first to the last. Her methods, traditions and training made this position secure even after her mind had reverted, but she dragged down thoughtless companions who were close to her, and who emulated her gaiety, cleverness and style. Mala made a confession of sin in the conventional meaning- less chant when she went to church every Sunday. Bona never went to church, nor confessed sins, but spent many of her Sundays in being helpful to other girls. There is no such thing as fault, excepting as an abstract term for our convenience, awaiting the time when the teacher will not call his own inefficiency the fault of the pupil. His own insufficiency belongs to nature's plan, and therefore is not in itself a fault. It represents only the present stage of incomplete development of semi-domesticated man. The oak must not grow to a height of eighty feet in a day. The two most important factors in social life are religion and marriage. According to our present system almost every- one who has passed examination in these two subjects is 58 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS entitled to the degree of D.D.L. (Dupe of the double lie). We begin at Sunday School with an apple story taught as truth, and we are then expected to remain truthful citizens with the roots of character carefully planted in lie soil. Later comes the flowering season with its love psychosis in which two earnest people see in each other things which are not there. They are expected to develop together subsequently upon the basis of histrionic acceptance of each other, and to remain true to false impressions through life. When experience later on introduces a struggle between belief and knowledge relating to the double lie basis, it is too late for most people to repudiate the D.D.L. degree. Voltaire said that he who knew everything forgave every- thing, — but that makes an intellectual requirement necessary. A sufficiently daring insight proceeding from the soul accom- plishes the same end. A man is never shocked or disgusted if his insight is courageous. Immorality for purposes of amusement and pleasure is sin. The wages of sin is death. Immorality for purposes of com- fort and greater efificiency may occasionally be a virtue. We have in literature histories of lives that were greater and better because of immorality, but this part of their history should be suppressed. We do not hold such lives up for example but we sorrowfully understand them as representing expedient adjustment to unfortunate conditions. Some beautiful and useful characters among authors have been excused by the public when they exchanged convention for comfort in companionship. This exchange would not be approved by the public upon any ground of pleasure, but only upon a ground which is tacitly recognized as affording in- creased utility of the authors under the circumstances. Individuals of a gregarious species like Homo sapiens hunger for companionship. The feeling is innate. It is some- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 59 times wrong to accuse one of immorality who longs for com- panionship only. Comfort is perhaps nature's second law, to speak in a large and relative way. Most of the best durable work is done under conditions of comparative comfort. Although some of the greatest work of genius is done under conditions of great discomfort, it furnishes the exception which proves the rule. Artists and literati who have arrived at conditions of comfort in high degree through some competence are apt to stop doing great work, but even the best work of artists and literati is seldom of the kind that I would classify as the most durable and satisfactory of all human work, on the whole. The most durable and satisfactory of human work consists of the thousands of treatises written by engineers, naturalists, historians, physicists, and these form the bulwark and the strength for basic literature and art of nations. Such treatises are mostly written under conditions of comparative comfort on the part of their authors. Rousseau believed that the most important method for securing human comfort was to simplify things. He wanted to simplify religion so that all men might share its comfort, simplify social relations by making all men equal, simplify literature, art, and life in general by what he described as a return to nature. Many others have felt like Rousseau, but there is a constant tendency in all organic life to elaborate and to make things complex. Simplicity is opposed to nature's plan. It is very difficult for instance to state a scientific fact simply. When stated simply it may be stated as half truth, and a half truth is quite as erratic in its movements as a half bullet fired from a rifle. Just as the constituent elements of matter are never lost, so value and good are persistent in effect in the whole course 6o TO-MORROW'S TOPICS of evolution. The Parable of the Talents was a divine mes- sage to us. Nature asked to have the subject stated to us in that way for an object lesson, and so it was written. Good cannot be lost, nor can evil be lost. Evil belongs in a larger degree to the primitive mind. A reversion to the primitive mind carries evil back with it, — ergo, one can make a fairly clear deduction that nature's intention is to have good prevail, throwing evil into the profit and loss account. Evil goes backward to belong to the atavistic group of people. Most people who are led astray get into trouble through a perversion of good instincts. It is the most popular fellow socially who gets to drinking too much. The love of romance and adventure which so often leads to mishap will be fully satisfied by science in the monistic unity state. Young people's associations, formed for travel and for studying nature, can give an outlet in every community to the very best natural instincts of good people who now get into trouble through their natural love for romance and adventure. The boy who would not steal a peach out of a dealer's basket would climb over a neighbor's fence at night and get a pocketful, — at least I did. That's adventure! Every creed makes for better life. Therefore let us have creeds enough to take messages to all who need them. One must respect any sincerely held faith, but we cannot have a sympathetic interest in people who hold faith in Chris- tian Science, for instance, and another faith at the same time. The church must have a complete message, or as nearly com- plete as possible for the many-sided needs of human nature. The Hebrew religion which makes a strong stand for learning appeals to the intellect. It is always ethical, rejuvenating, and in that respect quite as valuable as the Christian religion. It is only a question of choice in text books. Most religious cults have represented psychopathic epidemics TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 6i when in their incipiency, contagion beginning from some one individual who was deranged — usually a paranoiac with reli- gious mania and morbidly intense vision of human needs. Simultaneously his mind disregarded the daily relations of creed to life — this being a symptomatic characteristic. Religious ideas are apt to be formulated in lonesome places. An individual "takes himself apart" and thinks out an idea which is not crushed by the realities of life until he has formed a large rough diamond which is then cut and polished by his followers. People with religious mania are not disturbed by the realities of life. There is a great deal of material for eccentric cults in Amer- ica because of the increasing number of neurasthenic people. Mrs. Eddy's doctrine, crude and fantastic (paranoiac in origin), has gained great foothold. Religious cults come and go. Christianity was called at first by the Romans an exitiahilis superstitio, but it seems to be the cult which has appealed to the largest number of people with the exception of Moham- medanism (of paranoiac origin). We cannot put this question of "deadly superstition" aside and say, "Oh, well, heathens have always spoken that way." Heathens who spoke of the Christian movement in that way were making Roman law and preparing to produce Justinian and his code at the time when Mohammed was founding Islamism on Christ. It is possible that Christian Science, like Mohammedanism, may live on after the departure of the leader, first because the insight of any paranoiac may be of such degree of genius that methods of far-reaching interest in relation to human life are established. And second, because we are to have more and more neurasthenics. Such a religion may furnish a modus Vivendi for large numbers of unstable people whose unhappiness would otherwise be disturbing to social order. 62 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Christian Science was the first of the psychological cults to approach the idea of the monistic unity church, and the tenets of the two are similar in many respects, although Christian Science was founded upon morbid vision. Critics of Mrs. Eddy have taken her falsehoods seriously. That must not be done, as they represent the delusions and the misconceptions belonging to paranoia, and are to be given consideration by the alienist rather than by the most expert legal cross examiner. Any doctor who attends a meeting of Christian Scientists and listens to their testimony relating to cures will be im- pressed with the feeling of something really pathetic about it. The diagnoses are unverified by competent authority, and no steps are taken for getting at any accurate diagnosis in advance of the beginning of Christian Science treatment. If records of the results in real disease, based upon real diagnosis, were actually to be kept by these good people, something would be added to real science. One member of the church arises and tells of cure of a case of cirrhosis of the liver, but no one knows if the patient really had cirrhosis of the liver or not. There are many forms of this disease, and other conditions for which it is mistaken, by pretty good diagnosticians. An- other member arises and tells of a case of hip-joint disease that was cured, but no one knows if the patient really had hip-joint disease or some readily curable condition simulating it. A member arises and quotes a case of cancer, but no one knows whether the patient really had cancer or not. The fact that the patients had been told by doctors that such were their diseases is far from constituting correct diagnosis. Every expert consultant sees cases in his every-day work in which such diagnoses have been wrongly made by pretty good doctors. Christian Science has not as yet been extended into veteri- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 63 nary medicine and thousands of farm animals die every year from "error." Christian Science, however, has rendered excellent service in helping to give people control over their emotions. It has demonstrated the extent to which the will may overcome both morbid anachronistic emotion and the kind of natural emotion which "races" when thrown out of its normal medium by an individual who swings too heavily over the waves of daily events. The mechanistic psycholog}- of Christian Science effort includes the idea that the machinery of an emotion is inclined to run too far on its own momentum once the wheels have been set going. Nerve vibrations belonging to an emo- tion seem to have a tendency to continue their vibrations indefinitely along one line of work unless they are checked by the will. Many painful symptoms of illness occur when nerve vibrations are set going in a morbid way by the microbe. Their phylogenetic meaning is the giving of an alarm which will lead to proper retreat from the microbic enemy. If the mind continues repetitiously to give touches to such vibrations there is an increase in their intensity. A succession of mental strokes in the opposite direction, and against the trend of nerve impulse when given by the will of a Christian Scientist, has a marked effect in lessening the intensity of the vibrations, or in some cases causing them to cease altogether. There is no more room for doubt about this phenomenon than there is room for doubt that an aching tooth often stops aching when the dentist's office is approached. The tooth-ache was caused by "fear-thought" on the part of cells that were being menaced by a toxin. The introduction of a still greater mental fear-thought, of pain that may be caused by the dentist, leads to overthrow of and domination over the fear-thought which was being expressed by cells alarmed in the presence of a toxin. 64 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS The earnestness displayed in the Men and ReHgion Forward Movement is truly pathetic because of the energy so heartily put into the cause by good men who cannot know they are threshing old straw that has been beaten to the last hull. The highest religion is service to one's fellowman. If man is a wolf, then run with the pack. If he is an angel, — fly with the flock. Stoicism was the first philosophy appearing as an exponent for the brotherhood of man, and Christianity was the first religious exponent of the same idea. Patriotism is opposed to this idea but must remain in nature's plan until a nation appears which will recognize brotherhood of all people as it is now recognized under economic limitations in sects. Various attempts of different religions at securing the brotherhood of man illustrate the continuity of all things in nature, by phenomena which are similar to phenomena occur- ring in the brotherhood of nature. When the moon was thrown off as an independent mass of matter it continued to respond to the general laws of matter, and when New Thought was thrown off from Christian Science it continued to follow the laws of suggestion, — and, no doubt, in that field serves an useful purpose. Such a religion gives "harmonious thought vibrations" to many people who are not seriously occupied excepting with their own troubles, but who still remain subject to regulation by human nature. The feminine founder of the New Thought Church, with its Religion of the New Civiliza- tion, could not continue to vibrate harmoniously with her mental and spiritual semichord, when he founded a second branch of the harmony sect, and went to live with another semichord, — to whom he was not married. The husband is reported to have explained, when questioned on this point, that he had vowed to live under the laws of harmony with his wife, and if he and his wife proved not to be harmonious later they TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 65 were not really married according to the tenets of the New Thought cult. Living with an harmonious companion and with one to whom he was not married might not be in accord- ance with the laws of the state, but he felt it was in accordance with the laws of God, and that was more important. This would appear to constitute one more responsibility placed upon God. The New Thought standard as quoted is similar to that of the old Puritan, who said that if it was his way it was God's way, and that ought to be enough. Parsons may preach, moralists may become morbid, laws may be laid and penalties paid, on the subject of double standards of sex morality, but the whole question will always revolve about the single pivot question of distended vesicles belonging to one sex. The pragmaphobe at present takes charge of the double standard question but in the monistic unity state it will be presented only in its educational phase. All forms of morality are to be placed upon a scientific rather than upon an emotional basis. The condoning by women of a double standard of morality for the two sexes represents an insight which penetrates beneath the face value of social expediency. The demanding of a higher standard on the part of women, on the other hand, is primordial in origin. If morality is to be the best experience in nature's plan, there will constantly be a slow evolution toward high morals, just as nature plans that an oak tree shall grow six inches a year instead of growing its eighty feet all at once. We must remember that the word "morality" is from "mores" — customs of the people. Morality is based upon protection of the family first, and next upon protection of the state. Among the most highly educated and cultivated people we 66 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS find a certain number with steel spring morals, finely tempered so they will bend down to almost any point and then spring back quickly to the prescribed social level for a position of rest. Their morals may bend quite as low as leaden morahty of the untempered sort which remains at any point to which it is bent. The bending of morals in different social sets is the same in degree, but different in temper only. The question of a double standard in sex morality may be disposed of rather briefly. On the ground of social ethics there can be no room for argument relating to the double standard of sex morality. There is only a single standard. On physical grounds however we may note that one sex has distended vesicles while the other has not. The whole ques- tion of a double standard of sex morality turns fundamentally upon that one point in physiology. If we now attempt to take this double standard question back to a primordial begin- ning for purposes of review, we find that it is not a primordial question at all, but belongs to our modem artificial (and good) social system. Physiology however will subtend all ethics of the very best artificial systems in every computation in which it may be placed as a factor. One who states in conversation that he defeats physiology is one of three things : abnormal, or untruthful, or an expender of valuable energy in persistent warfare with his physiology. The latter type is most nearly the ideal type under present conditions of our civilization. The small vesicles which are adherent to the large vesicle follow all of the laws of the larger vesicle when tension caused by contents gives a message to the sympathetic nerves to cause contraction of their muscular coats. This matter of tension and contraction in relation to the larger vesicle is recognized as a quite ordinary matter, because it belongs to both sexes, but the same physiology as applied to the small vesicles has TO-AIORROW'S TOPICS 67 not as yet attracted attention in questions relating to sex morality. The psychology of moral questions may turn upon a normal physiologic basis, quite as surely as psychology swings to a microbic influence. Certain physical and psychical influences have a direct bear- ing in this matter. Athletes and men who are engaged in hard physical exercise divert energy that would otherwise go in larger proportion to the pelvic sympathetic ganglia (and to the brain as well). Men who are engaged in hard mental work, or in worry, likewise divert energ)^ that would other- wise send more frequent impulse to the pelvic ganglia. Nature preserves a balance in favor of the exemplar, by causing decline of organs from which normal impulse is diverted for a long time. If men are not engaged in engrossing physical or mental work, the psyche is apt to be directed frequently toward particular pelvic ganglia which pla}' their part in this question. Give a thoroughbred stallion freedom from occupa- tion and a diet of oats, turn him loose, and ask the stable boys if there will not soon be scandals in high horse life. I have heard much teaching and preaching and have read more or less literature from men who, to my definite personal knowl- edge, belong to the abnormal or to the untruthful groups. One of the abnormal men was an anarchist, — and small won- der. Some quite normal individuals fighting against constant suggestion from the pelvic ganglia become so morbid that the question sometimes arises if they would not become better citizens were they to hurr)' and become married. I was on the point of saj-ing something else but stopped in the nick of time. The persistent relation of physiology to morals cannot be changed, any more than the persistent relation of geography to commerce can be changed. New inventions in morals and in transportation have to be adapted respectively to physiology as it stands and to geography as it stands. Attention is some- 68 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS times called to the contented appearance of certain priests as an evidence that celibacy is the most desirable thing for a nation. Give any man the comfort of a religion in which he has unlimited faith, pay all of his bills, eliminate the food question, run his responsibilities by machinery, give his mind full occupation, and then ascribe his care- free look if you like to the shape of the buttons on his coat, or to any other factor in fancy. Physiology of the waking sex will continue its incessant vibration like the humming of a bass note while the contralto is singing. Women cannot understand this out of their ex- perience in personal feeling, and occasionally express to the doctor their disappointment in men. They have been misled as they Ijelieve in the idea that men were attracted to them because of their talents and virtues, — and later discovered that another sort of attraction seemed to have furnished motive for attention. Now this is all right and all wrong, depending upon where one chooses to place emphasis. Sex attraction was always basic, but attraction through talents and virtues really did excite interest first, let us say, in any given case. This latter was the singing of the contralto. Then, up came the bass note as a natural accompaniment. If the con- tralto did not sing loudly and clearly enough, the bass came in disproportionate volume and disappointed the singer. I'^x- ceedingly good men have sometimes been attracted toward women of talents and virtues, and then have suddenly awak- ened in surprise to finfl themselves normal. At present our laws of .sex morality are much like the boy's rule in grammar — "Never use a preposition to end a sentence with." The idiom is stronger than the grammarian's rules, and physiology is stronger than the rules of morality, but not stronger than the idea of morality. The rules, however, are not static, but will gradually be changed to allow some kind TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 69 of regulated freedom to take the place of regulated hypocrisy. Regulated hypocrisy represents the striving for an ideal, and in that light is commendable. I doubt if anyone can foresee just now what lines will be followed by future compromise between the sex that is at ease and the life-waking sex, but so long as physiology persists, it will be stronger than rules which appear to be the really best ones for present social expediency. The idea of a single standard of sex morality for both sexes is based metaphysically upon ideal morality as the unit of value. Any standard in etymological significance must stand on like conditions for like ordinances and like results. Unlike conditions must produce unlike ordinances for standards and results. Nature formed the male sex in all organic life for life awakening function. Among higher organisms the life awakener was given vesicles for storing up awakening ma- terial, and his storage apparatus was endowed with sensory nerves which would keep him reminded of a natural duty to go forth and seek. Social expediency has formulated artificial but temporarily good laws for regulation of the conduct of the life awakener. One who submits best is the best citizen. Conditions being unlike however, for the two sexes, we can- not have a single standard of sex morality. Each sex must eventually have its own standards, but upon a gold basis of mores if you please, formulated for the purposes of each sex. Conditions lie at the base of all laws. Conditions being diflFerent for the two sexes, laws for the sex which unceasingly seeks to awaken are not to be formulated by the sex which is much of the time at sexual peace and ease. We shall not always have a single standard of sex morality, because it would not be upon a basis of biologic justice. In the course of Western civilization we shall arrive at methods for formu- lating a standard for each sex and which will be obeyed. At 70 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS the present time a single metaphysical standard is written upon the books, and obeyed in its spirit, but not in its letter. Squeeze two sexes under one artificial law and there will be such wasteful escape of morality as now occurs. One of the inspirations in life is the evident fact that we have not as yet arrived at a position of static morality. Splendid opportunities are now open for a newer and better morality than has be- longed to the world's previous experience. Laws formulated from a biologic basis will be more easily obeyed by the people of the chosen race. Under laws of the two standards, justice will arrange for tolerance of each sex toward the other with its respective laws. This will call for a compromise between abstract justice and natural law, — a compromise which will no doubt be effected as well in the future as it has been in the past, and probably better. At the present moment no one can formulate a concrete course of procedure which will be better than the system of ethics which was gradually formed during the first five centuries of the Christian era, and which has come down practically unchanged through thirteen subsequent centuries. There will be no revolution for establishing a double stand- ard of sex morality. It will come as a result of safe slow steps belonging to the twentieth century renaissance of democ- racy. In the meantime the individual who considers himself to be a privileged character will be ridiculously immoral. The unjust single standard is the one which we are to follow at present. Sex morality which may stand as an index for all morality is found in highest degree in the middle or exemplar class — its lowest level is among the poverty stricken and among idle fashionable exhibition people. For a long while man considered himself to be the only thing of consequence in this world, and he believed that other TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 71 things were just thrown in by the Lord for man's use, very much as one throws corn into the chicken coop. Later he began to reahze that all animal life possessed consciousness. Then he began to realize that vegetable life also possessed consciousness. I like to believe that consciousness extends to infinity. When we have gone so far along the trail as to admit that consciousness is a function exercised by an organ- ism, why not let the mind go altogether free? Why must philosophy always keep the mind in leash? A hound will never follow the stag rapidly unless we slip his leash. Let the mind go free. Slip the idea that consciousness is confined to organic life. The single celled amoeba is exercising its func- tion of consciousness when engaged in obtaining energy (absorbing food) from colloid material. Are the colloid molecules not exercising a similar consciousness when obtain- ing energy from the atom? Is not the atom exercising a similar consciousness when obtaining energy from the elec- tron? Is the electron not exercising a similar consciousness when obtaining energy from the ether? Do we not have an example of a fairly high degree of consciousness when beryl arranges its dififerent elementary molecules mathematically in the form of a beautiful crystal? If the mind is loosed from its leash, it will begin to blaze the trail of consciousness from man, following to the lower animals, to colloid cells, to crystals, to molecules, to atoms, to electrons, and to the ether. The mind will then find that all manifest forms of conscious- ness are merely incidents in the course of action of an original consciousness and there is no line of demarcation to be found. Man is only one process in the factory. The entire cosmos is alive and everything in it conscious, representing dififerent phases of the great moving consciousness — antecedent mind. Those who define consciousness restrict its meaning. If man is a special creation according to anyone's best ^2 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS knowledge and judgment, why take away his behef ? It gives him comfort and if he acts Hke a special creation in other mat- ters, in accordance with his best knowledge and judgment, he is a good citizen. It matters not what he thinks in relation to the origin of man. Yet people were told originally by nature to kill each other in the interest of beliefs. It was necessary at that time, in the course of evolution of belief. Metaphysical theorists occasionally evince scorn for zoolo- gists who say that man is simply the best of the brutes. I would go further, admitting that he is the best of the brutes, and that he is going to heaven, — but would take the other brutes along, also. I shall not stand for any theory which leaves lower animals out of the question of a future life, — feeling like the old Scotchman who said that his mind was open to conviction but he would like to see the man who could convict him. Herbert Spencer says that to be a good animal is the first requisite for man's success in life, and to be a nation of good animals is the first condition of national prosperity. \Mien cultural limitations are being reached in any country the proportion of good animals diminishes. People don't eat so well, they don't sleep so well, they don't walk so well as they do in an earlier stage of development of that country. A question which will be asked in the monistic unity state by people questioning themselves, is this — "Is every man and every woman brought into contact with me a little better or a little worse for that contact? If they are not a little better, can I not do better?" People respond to a man's own presentation of himself. If he is suspicious of them they become suspicious of him. If he wishes to take advantage of them they will meet him half way at least. If one assumes an air of social superiority TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 73 they know how to respond to that. Whatever a man sees in the world of people is really himself in a mirror. Any man who fills his mind with love for his kind is playing a little trick on nature who wishes to keep him fighting in order to carry on evolution. The trickster who is bound to love his fellow man enjoys life nevertheless, and is no worse than many who in other ways interfere with God's plans. Selfishness as a destructive force, and love as a constructive force was preached by professors and saints for centuries before the advent of Jesus. It was a discovery contem- poraneous with the earliest discoveries recorded. The Bible was constructed for the purpose of presenting a stately ex- ponent of social order and of love, very much as the Federal Constitution was constructed for the purpose of presenting an austere account of social order and of protection. Our hope for the future lies not in "unmasking" people who are idealized by their juniors and by those who are lower in social position. Our hope lies in further idealizing people, for precisely the same reason that we prefer to idealize Christ. Missionaries are not to be judged by certain extreme types, — the ones who are grasping and immoral when opportunity is given them under freedom from the restrictions which prevail in civilized communities. They are to be judged like other men, without regard for their religion. Some are to be judged as variants from the exemplar among missionaries. The fanatics among the missionaries do much harm with their misplaced zeal and interference with carefully established methods of experienced missionaries, and are likewise excep- tions from the mean type. One day while eating venison with the hereditary chief of an Indian tribe, and Grand Sachem of several tribes, he told me that the feeling among Indians against the missionaries is "not so much because of their improprieties as because of their opening the way for politi- 74 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS cians who are thieves." While it is very true that the Bible has usually been followed by syphilis and the sword, it is my belief that, on the whole, the exemplar missionaries have done much more good than harm in advancing civilization at least. Let the missionaries keep at work. They are really better- ing conditions, and preparing the way for the best. Not for the natives themselves always, but for better peoples to follow. We hold it to be an impertinence if a Mohammedan reli- gious man comes to us with his Koran. It is quite as much an impertinence for us to take the Bible to India, if we put the matter on the ground of impertinence. It is not intentional impertinence on either side, however, but rather a kindly desire on the part of those who have obtained the benefit of religion, to supply what is believed to be a satisfaction that one's brother needs. The money and character of the people who are back of each missionary determine how far each shall go with his message. There is no best creed. One creed is better than another insofar as it satisfies the needs of a given group of people. The Methodists would not be happy with the Episcopalian creed, and the Episcopalians would not be happy with the Methodist creed, yet each forms a strong society. Each church is a social club for women of the creed, who work con- scientiously in this best of social clubs because of the creed. One reason why there are so many religious creeds and at the same time so many good people of no religious creed, is because nearly all of the religions and creeds have been founded by individuals suffering from a psychosis which gave visions in connection with hallucinations of sight and of hear- ing. Paranoia and other definite psychoses we note in the recorded histories of the founders of most of the creeds. Such creeds may be inspiring and beautiful. There are two reasons why people follow the paranoiac TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 75 prophet no matter whether his ideas are beautiful or revolting : (i) He speaks with the words of mystery, and (2) he speaks with the tone of conviction. Mystery and conviction both belong to the positive note, suggesting action. The former has not been placed in this classification by psychologists so far as I know, but mystery affirms much and denies little or nothing. Therein lies the overlooked secret of its power. The psychotic monk Gregory Rasputin is said to run amuck with his sexual erethism, yet is believed to hold the position of one of the three or four most powerful men in Russia to-day. The childishness of the Russian mind in relation to mystics and mystery brings the feeling that what appears to be decomposition of character may be a phenomenon indicating the primitive mentality of a growing mental giant. When two psychotic monks like Rasputin and Heliodorus are strug- gling for supremacy in power, their pathological delusions of grandeur may constitute a really serious menace for the state, particularly in the presence of a war cloud. Their irresponsi- ble advice may form a pathological basis for action, and this would furnish a key to certain "unexplained" actions of Rus- sian high officials. The great body of tremendously strong scientific men in that country cannot always stand against the primitive childishness of rulers possessing money and power, when the latter accept the irresponsible advice of mystic psychics. In all countries of all times insane mystics who were called fanatics have fomented or even precipitated war. They have appealed to emotions in such a way as to carry public opinion above the reach of reasoners. Cherchez la fenime is accepted as a classic legend in explanation for great troubles. Cherchez la folie will play no less than second role to this legend in the Monistic Unity State. A man perhaps has eaten apples during his whole lifetime, yet he probably cannot tell you how many seed compartments 76 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS there are in an apple. He has perhaps bought or caught cod fish all his life, but cannot tell the number of fins a cod fish carries. He has listened to the voices of the night hawk and of the whip-poor-will all of his life, but cannot tell one bird from the other when both are in his hands. This same man may be ready to give quite an accurate description of the hoop snake, which never existed. From the tales told at the country store his imagination has pictured a concrete form of snake which is imperishable, because there are no facts to be entered in denial of the validity of his picture. The para- noiac may have in his morbid mind quite as vivid a picture of something which is nonexistent, — as a countryman has of the picture of a hoop snake. There is no one who can make denial of the validity of the pictures in the mind of a para- noiac, and when he speaks with words of conviction concerning such mental pictures, people follow him. His conviction is due to toxic interference with judgment, leaving choice free to act positively as a final mental entity. People followed Schlatter, Dowie and Mrs. Eddy because these leaders spoke with words of mystery in terms of conviction, and carried messages of the sort which people desired. Anyone who speaks in this way is certain to have a following. According to Renan, Jesus was entirely sincere in his belief in his own healing powers, although the Greek and Roman scientific men of that day looked upon Him as we have looked upon the psychotics Schlatter and Dowie. It is difficult for the exemplar at the present day to realize how other people with good enough sense in ordinary matters can be misled by prophets. We must remember that even now certain groups of people get together from time to time, set a date for the end of the world to come, put on white robes, and dispose of their property. So long as this is actually being done in some part of the country after intervals of a few years, — and no TO-MORROW'S TOPICS yy joke about it, — it may stand as an index of the possibilities of the human higher intelHgence. Religious cults founded by paranoiacs who present the phase of sexual erethism and who introduce polygamy or the harem into their creeds, are prone to leave out of their vision the idea of equal rights of all sorts for women. Their erethism is due to toxic irritation of protoplasm of the cells of pelvic ganglia and the origin of their ideas is chemical, — hence mechanistic. All religious beliefs are mechanistic in origin for that matter ; likewise all other beliefs. Consequently there is no reason why a religious cult founded by a paranoiac may not inspire followers to lead useful and happy lives. There is the characteristic mystic feature, however (belong- ing to the psychoses), which is recognized by the normal mind as being not quite true, and which interferes with acceptance of any creed as a whole by the highly educated. There are such beautiful ideas in Theosophy for instance, that one might almost love Theosophists, but when Mr. Judge seriously relates an account of the receiving of freshly written letters dropped upon his table on the steamer by some astral body, the normal mind recognizes the demonstration of a psychotic feature. A man of affairs is naturally loath to accept any creed as a whole, or even to view its best features without suspicion. We should not wish to see any creed destroyed if it serves an useful purpose. Let us eat a delicious peach without thinking it necessary to swallow the whole pit, or even to crack out and eat the bitter kernel. Most creeds have been personally conducted. Consequently, they have spht on the Scylla of leadership or the Charybdis of disposition of funds when human nature took charge of the wheel on the death of the founder. The beautiful parts of Theosophy would be acceptable to rational people if they could be presented at their true value. 78 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS They represent ancient hypotheses belonging to the earliest theology and metaphysics, but are now put into the form of affirmation and doctrine, and that is precisely the form which cannot be accepted under the tests of twentieth century methods. Theosophy like many of the other religions is extremely restful to those to whom it appeals. Theosophy constructs a hammock of beautiful strands of old Oriental religions and in this hammock its adherents swing themselves into pleasant dreams. When I observe that a man is particularly lovable, considerate and cheery in his every-day talking and writing, I am apt to find later that he is living up to the tenets of some faith like that of Theosophy or Christian Science. The chief weakness in all creeds and religions is their failure to furnish proof warranting or substantiating their assertions. This means that the most faithful adherents will be the least intelligent people, the proportionate ratio varying toward the exemplar position which is held by the exemplar class of people. The exemplar mass suffices to support the churches, but without that degree of enthusiasm which we might fairly believe would follow a statement from the pulpit to the effect that creeds represent ideals and symbolic forms rather than facts. That would be a truth which could be recognized by the most intelligent, who have an innate love for truth. There would be a readier willingness to follow ideals which are husked from a superstition. After many years of contact with men of various social positions and characters, in different nations (a close contact which belongs to the doctor and sportsman) — after noting men's ideas when they were off-guard and revealing their innermost thoughts, my experience teaches that men are better than their professed beliefs. Philosophers sometimes tell us that men are no better than their beliefs, but I seem to have TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 79 a conviction that men employ a belief simply as the best alpen- stock upon which they can lay hands for the moment. We need not look too closely into the details of any creed. It is best to note only what the creed does for its adherents. A kindly view of downright statement of untruth on the part of Mrs. Eddy and of Joseph Smith shows this untruth to belong to misconception which clinically belongs with their other psychotic symptoms. The insight features of a psychosis were forged into alpenstocks by Mrs. Eddy and by Joseph Smith. Christian Science has made thousands of people happy, and the well edited "Monitor" is a model newspaper, — far better than the average toxic tension scratcher of the news stand. The hallucinations of sight and hearing of Mohammed and of Swedenborg belong clinically with their history of classifiable psychosis, yet their insight during euphoric stages sufficed to formulate helpful alpenstocks for millions of people. The Bible and the Koran are filled with results of insight on the part of contributors whose history gives evidence of the possession of clinical psychoses, yet the alpenstocks of the Bible and of the Koran help entire races of people. For a concrete example, think how much better doctors are than their beliefs. I know most excellent and useful men in the regular profession who prescribe solvents for gall-stones, and yet we know that gall-stones cannot be dissolved within the body, and by only a few destructive agents outside of the body. The homoeopathists prescribe trillionth triturations of a snake venom which would be digested in the stomach as an albuminoid, producing no toxic effect, even if it were given pure by the spoonful, without any trituration. The ho- moeopathists and the regulars laugh at each other for their absurd beliefs and inconsistencies, just as the Mohammedans and Christians laugh at each other, yet all of these people are better than their own beliefs. 8o TO-MORROW'S TOPICS It makes little difference what a man believes so long as he believes it well enough to be better or more useful. At the time when Jesus was born, China had already lived for nearly four thousand years under a system of agriculture founded by the Emperor Yu, which was even at that time far superior to our agricultural system in America to-day. A religion which is to be durable must be as practical as an agricultural system, — as devoid of mystery. What is the true religion? Each religion is the true one. Whenever any body of men agree upon a set of dogmas which appeal to their higher natures, a religion is formed, — a true religion for these people. Each one of the two hundred rehgions presented at the Congress of Religions in Chicago, was probably the best one for its respective adherents. At the present time the Moham- medan religion satisfies the largest number of people, but there are little religions in remote districts of New England which have earnest followers, and which serve an useful purpose. Christian Science was allowed full freedom until it asked for legislative rights to take charge of medicine. Then it was asked by the people to stop at that point. The Roman Catholic Church was given great freedom until it attempted to take charge of politics of the state. Then it was asked by the people to stop at that point. Coldness toward religion is simply due to the outgrown methods by which the clergy seek to liberate the religion with which all men are filled. New methods are to come. I rerriem- ber very well not more than twenty-five or thirty years ago, when the difference between religious philosophy and scientific method might be represented in a certain common attitude toward a pond. In very many rural regions in New England there is some mysterious looking body of dark water, and we are gravely told by the inhabitants that no bottom has ever TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 8i been found in that pond. The local people would be far from grateful to anyone who actually went out and measured the depth of such a pond and reported his findings at the village store. He would be held in suspicion as seeking notoriety, — an adventurer not to be trusted. People do not want to have the depth of their bottomless ponds measured. That repre- sents religion. Science, on the other hand, gladly receives reports upon the depth of a pond and upon the beauties of any animal or vegetable organisms which are found at the bottom. One reason why present day religions do not engage deeper interest among people of civilized countries is because men observe too much of worldly strife between members of an overcrowded clerical profession. Their methods are quite in line with the business man's own experience in relation to sordid features of trade and industrialism. At an executive committee meeting of almost any one of our present day churches the Holy Ghost is politely asked to remain outside for a few minutes until the business of the committee has been transacted in executive session. The fundamental spiritual idea is really at the basis of all religions, and men will be ready to accept methods of religious observance when they are pre- sented in form which appeals to their obvious needs. The good pastor of the church may always have to be care- ful about assuming too much of the authority of the rector, and very human complications result from the natural desire of the rector to retain power, even though it seems to be worldly in origin. Yet below it all we see the spiritual and the desire to give orderly direction to its forces for purposes of efficiency. A Protestant bishop recently applying the test of scholar- ship to the Mormon faith, proves conclusively that the Mor- mon prophet, Joseph Smith, received no divine message but simply made a crude translation from ancient Egyptian docu- 82 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS ments and appropriated the ideas as his own. What does it matter, so long as Joseph Smith founded a creed which has satisfied an industrious and contented set of people? What does it matter if Mrs. Eddy appropriated the ideas of Quimby and founded a creed which gives a modus vivendi for clever neurotic people who previously constituted the most unrestful element in society? Is the Protestant bishop who exposes the Mormon prophet sure there was no fraud in the establish- ment of some of the prophets of his own Bible? Scholars tell us there was quite as much fraud in the establishment of his prophets as there is in the creeds founded by Joseph Smith or Mrs. Eddy. Nothing matters much in this world after all, provided that better methods of living come out of any creed. A great many prophets were fakirs, but that was not their fault. The ones who were sane were heroes. Finding them- selves face to face with a gullible public, they were not the cowards to turn tail and run. I am not even convinced that asceticism is wholly useless. What does it matter if jealous monks said that Simeon Stylites was set upon his pillar by the Lord in order to keep him out of mischief with the nuns, and if vultures instead of angels were at last seen descending when his body became as dulled as his mind? What does it matter if he got the pillar idea from India and showed no originality? What does it matter if any school boy would have doubts of there being much mystery about the way in which Simeon got to the top of his pillar? Did the passer-by in the street not look upward toward Simeon Stylites; and in looking upward were his thoughts not projected still further toward the sky, away from the more sordid and degrading influences of the street ? I believe that Simeon belongs among the martyrs and saints, and that he served an useful purpose at a time when superstition which made men look upward was better than superstition which made them look downward. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 83 That is the test which would be acceptable to the pragmatist at least. Furthermore, I believe that the messages of Joseph Smith and of Mrs. Eddy and of the Syrian ascetic were all of divine origin, imderstanding divine in the monistic sense of an inspiration given by nature with an ideal of human betterment. These divine messages and their consequences belong to nature's experimental laboratory. The monist how- ever will apply the laboratory tests rather than scholarship tests, when investigating questions of religious fraud during the rest of this twentieth century. We say that asceticism is a peculiar form of selfishness; yet it has compensating value as one of the habits of our species which needs to be studied. Asceticism may have accomplished nothing in itself, but it gives the psychologist certain facts which he needs when studying man. The Talmud and the Bible represent condensed experience of humanity. The Koran, the Book of Mormon, and "Science and Health" on the other hand, may be traced back to origin from psychotic individuals. On this basis, we may finally assume that the Talmud and the Bible will outlast books compiled from experiences of any morbid individual. The Bible, the Koran, the Talmud, the Torah, are all in- spired really by Deity if we assume that thought is developed out of ether, which dates back to the beginning of the world and that it directs mode of thought. We try to visualize something above our best thought. Consequently anything shaped by man according to nature's plans was really done by action of the ether. In other words, — by Deity. We may say that the Bible is really inspired in the sense that nature planned to have one book in the Bible left out at one time, another book in the Bible inserted at another time — this trans- lation accepted, another translation rejected, and all with the idea of giving crystals of human experience for guidance. 84 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Any great book which is accepted by a large number of people varies only in degree from the daily system of ethics followed by society. This daily system also is inspired. The Talmud is inspired, the Koran is inspired, the Bible is inspired. The Constitution of the United States is an inspired work, quite as well as is the Bible. Whenever it becomes time to make a change in the Constitution there will be a great deal of popular objection very much as when any change is sug- gested for the Bible. Although the clergyman may conscientiously preach from the Bible as an inspired book, even when knowing the actual history of the way in which the book was really constructed, he is in a particularly difficult position to-day. If he believes the Bible to be supernaturally inspired many of the most intellectual people hold him to be a dull fellow. If he does not believe it to be supernaturally inspired he is held by the average church layman to be np true exponent of the Lord. It is nearly time for him to preach and teach the beautiful symbolic nature of God and the Bible, — to have the freedom of spirit that goes with straight dealing. The clergyman will then be inspired. The Bible, if properly taught, can present all elements neces- sary for impressing the mind. We find the poetic, the aesthetic, and the dramatic, but the entire system must be taught as the work of man who did his best with the knowledge and wisdom obtainable at various periods. Unwise teachers emphasize the supernatural rather than the natural features of the Bible, and take us far away from present-day civilization. Years ago when the Bible was closer than it is at present to civiliza- tion and to the state, religious orders of the church were the first in scientific farming and in the applied sciences, — up to the limit of scientific knowledge of the times. ReHgious TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 85 orders were patrons of the arts, but in venturing out to cap- ture the state as a whole, we find that the church in its poli- tical functions in relation to the state, brought about disastrous results. The whole trend of Bible teachers is to teach us to believe, while the highest function of the human mind is perhaps after all the ability to doubt skilfully, — like Montaigne. On the argumentum ad hominum basis, — and carrying the argument to personal application, I find encouragement in almost every part of the Bible, — and yet am not deceived about it. Everything is only relatively true, and relatively explana- tory because nothing in the world is correct excepting in a relative way. If a Bible story is prefaced by telling a child that it was put in that way for simple people with the idea of conveying a truth, the child is more impressed and the truth sinks deeper into the mind of the child. The child sees contemporary children spanked for telling the kind of stories that are seriously told by the Sunday school teacher. The reason why a boy does not believe in the Jonah story is because he knows boys who tell things like that to-day, and he makes comparison from the basis of actual experience. He has been told that bears will eat naughty people. His nurse has told him the same thing would happen to him, and it did not happen. Like a rabbit in a box trap he will eat and drink things which do not appeal to him if he is obliged to do so, but when he does escape, he will run farther away than ever before, and much farther than is necessary. Boys knowingly risk so many things meriting punishment that the fall of Adam has no terrors for them. It is better to teach children that God sees all the good things they do, rather than to prognosticate punishment for naughty things. Children very often do naughty things, and then look around for the punishment. If it does not follow, they 86 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS develop their own ideas, which are pretty well defined some- times. Children usually are taught to think of God as one who is anxious to interfere, chiefly when they are naughty. When the nation has developed which can move from the God of the Bible up to the God of nature, who carries a message in every act, we shall have what the present trend of civilization seems to anticipate. One who is not the least bit interested in theology may thoroughly enjoy church service. When I am prevented from going into the country for week-ends, one of the compensa- tions is opportunity given for going to church. What can be more beautiful than the rite of baptism and the giving of a little child to God? What can be more inspiring than the thoughts of the really good clergyman expressed in terms of humanity and tenderness, or the devotional exercises which exemplify a spirit of devotion, without reference to the validity of its object? I can go into any church reverently and take part in the services devoutly, but it requires a pretty clever boy or a rather stupid boy to do the same thing. It is the great mass of exemplar type boys — between the clever ones and the very stupid ones — that the church at present misses but needs. It requires a great deal of effort and training on the part of high-spirited boys to respond to the appeal of the church with reverence. We find too much of the decorum that goes with low spirit. Low spirit does not belong with high vitality, and highly vital boys are chosen for leaders. To clever children the ideas of miracles are obstructions and tend to keep the brightest boys away from church. They have more confidence in that consciousness which is based upon their daily experience, and such experience does not lead them to put much faith in myth. They get off too many TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 87 miracles upon each other. When I explain to boys the unity of physical entities of the cosmos, tell them they are to play a good game with nature, and that each one is responsible for playing his own part well, the subject apparently interests them more than any account of miracles would interest them. We may inform boys at the same time that religious forms of the church are necessary and beautiful, and will continue to re- main as a cofferdam, until society has progressed to the point where it depends upon science for its messages. Materialism, which we are now leaving, was nevertheless a step in advance. We left the masked ball of the church, stepped out into the dark temporarily, but upon square firm steps. We knew pretty well where we were while stepping along materialism. The steps conveyed us toward the point where a conveyance was waiting to take us to more elevated views. There is no harm in holding in a poetic way to the illusion that miracles may be performed. Sensible men understand, and take the matter in the right sense. One day after a hard day's hunt in stormy weather we were sitting around the little iron stove at a country inn. A gusty wind was banging at the windows, and a cold rain driving outside. We had just become tiredly comfortable in our dry clothes after a hot dinner and with freshly lighted pipes when a Roman Catholic priest of the neighborhood, Father O'C, entered the door along with a sheet of sleet, and coming up to me with his customary cordial smile, said: "Docthor, will you do me a favor?" "Why, yes. Father," I replied. "Glad to do anything for you at any time." Said he in his rich Irish brogue, "There is an auld woman down the road about a quarther of a mile, who wants me to perform a miracle for her, and would you mind going down and doing it in my place?" I went down the road, and performed the miracle for him. The good priest's way of putting the matter showed what was in his 88 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS mind. He was really a devout and respectful man in his attitude toward miracles, but took them poetically. It is possible that the people are not yet ready for a candid clergyman. It may be that the clergy will find it really desir- able for some time yet "to give people fits because they know how the cure fits." One of the men whom I sometimes em- ploy is a very capable and trustworthy workman and handy at all sorts of jobs, yet a good part of his ordinary conversa- tion relates to superstition. "Sunlight puts out a coal fire," "We have a wet moon this month," "Hazel-brush is killed if we cut it on the fifteenth day of August," "They had to dig up Brown's amputated arm and set the fingers straight be- cause he could feel they were bent." Hour after hour this man's conversation runs along as full of cheerful superstition as old-fashioned buttermilk is full of lumps. He is a good citizen, but knows so many things which are not so that he would hardly be contented with any church which did not fill his mind with superstition to serve as padding for his widely separated facts. No man is more faithful to his work or works for longer Viours than the minister of the gospel. His preparation of the sermon includes no selfish thought. When he conducts christenings and weddings there is holy joy in his presence. The solace which he gives at funerals leaves his parishioners deeply comforted. His visits to the sick and to the poor are made in the spirit of Christ. When sympathizing with the afflicted he does not begin with any statement of his own woes, but keeps them to himself. When the question of charity becomes acute he is the first to draw from his meagre store, and to help — out of all proportion to his means, because he is the one with his responding nature, to feel more deeply- out of his own experience the need for charity. In all educa- tional matters his cultivated voice is still raised. In my ex- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 89 perience which is probably hke that of most doctors, the clergymen whom I have chosen as beloved friends were superior to their theology. These men were far better than their theology and would lift theology to higher levels could they but find a way for cutting it free from superstition. Those religious journals which lead their clientele into trouble through advertising patent medicines which are to be used for criminal purposes, or which contain habit- forming drugs (bunco-game prescriptions in general), do not display hypocrisy so much as they display cynicism. While ostensibly ministering to things of the spirit, the editors cannot manage to hide a certain contempt for their fellow man, by using him as their prey. A copy of a religious journal which I just now happened to pick up brought out this note. It contained an appealing outcry against drug habits, and in the advertising columns of the same journal were advertised patent medicines containing two or more habit-forming drugs. There was reference in the reading text to fraud in business, and in the advertising pages was found a free cure for consumption. In the text, comments were made upon the question of race suicide, but among the advertising pages was found the alluring description of a "regulator." All these things were found in a single copy. I do not doubt that in all other copies of the same religious paper something would be found in the adver- tising pages to nullify any elevating influence which might be found in the reading text. Readers of religious journals are presumed to be too well trained in faith to ask bothersome questions. This faith may be readily capitalized and made into an asset by men in charge of the advertising pages. When there is collusion on the part of the editors, the most intelli- gent part of the public understand only too well the attitude of cynicism on the part of such editors. The spirit of the young men escapes quickly through such rents in a spiritual 90 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS balloon which was to have lifted them above coarse earthly matters. When we hear of some unexpected and unusual immorality on the part of men who are high in the afifairs of church or state, we usually observe that the men have arrived at an age representing a period of physical decline, or else there is evi- dence of a definite psychosis. There is illness which may be recognized as such, and these men are by no means to be classified by the public as criminals, until properly arranged hearing has been given. They are not even to be held up as examples for warning, but are to have for the most part our quiet sympathy and protection. Least of all are they to receive the attention of the public press, which does tremendous harm by informing the public that misdeeds are to be asso- ciated with the names of men in high position in church or state. It is a comfort to know that the bishop is a man who is trying to be right. That is a heartening sight. He is always trying to be right, and we need not be disheartened at the complaints of his hard working clergy that he has more com- forts than they, and that his position is due to diplomacy rather than to piety. His diplomacy is quite as essential as the order of railroad management. His piety is not so neces- sary if he only has capacity for recognizing pious men and placing them for efficiency. His physical comfort is apparent rather than real, because high position means complicated discomfort. Comfort is not his aim, but apparent comfort is incidental to his position. The complaints that are constantly heard from the clergy against officials in higher position are nothing more than the socialist's cry against the capitaHst. My heart goes out to the bishop as it goes out to the magnate, to the poor clergyman and to the underpaid laborer. All four need our help TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 91 What is spiritual life? A young man filled with desire to express himself in beauty in painting, casts about in a feeling of unrest until some day he is caught in the magnet-like force of the spirit of Michael Angelo. Day by day he is drawn closer until the moment arrives when he becomes charged in the same way and goes on to exert his own force, according to the power of response to external impressions which be- longs to his own nature. He has caught the spirit of the master and his own spiritual life in painting begins from that hour. A young man feeling his way among symphonies and themes, becomes cognizant of the influence of Beethoven. Nearer and nearer he is drawn, with a magnet-like force, until he suddenly finds himself charged in the same way. He has caught the spirit of a master in music. A young man modelling and dreaming, feels the pull of Phidias. He re- mains, draws nearer, becomes charged in the same way, and his spiritual life as sculptor then begins. The young man who wishes to express himself in justice, peace, and brotherly love, draws nearer and nearer to Christ, and suddenly finds himself charged with the spirit of the Master. All these young men cultivate the true spiritual life, as I understand the meaning of the term. What about the artist who follows the forms of traditions of art, yet expresses himself in the ignoble — the prurient? He uses the same materials as those used by others, yet his work is to be classed it seems to me as per- sonal amusement. Master he cannot be. No one is to follow him seriously, with a feeling of reverence, and his life work notwithstanding the skilful application of technique is a failure. The world has a subliminal mind. He has overlooked that. The subliminal mind of the public possesses insight and seeks elevation continuously, turning infallibly toward the spiritual, no matter how favorably the passer-by may comment for the moment upon perfection of technique in the display of bad 92 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS motive. How about the clergyman who follows the forms of church service and falls into the rut of system and tradition, purchasing popularity by compromise with conscience, cramp- ing his spiritual freedom in order to please the congregation? His work is a failure because the subliminal mind of the great public in the field of religion looks for the spiritual superman in its minister, no matter how constantly it may exert upon him an influence of restraint which is due more to thoughtless- ness than to intention. It is after all the spiritual that shines through and beyond obscuring vulgarities in the work of the pastor. He may buy patent medicines or allow them to be hypocritically advertised in his religious journal because of the dollars they bring to the counting house. No matter if he lets his sons go to the devil because he has no message to fit the practical daily needs of healthy boys. No matter if he tries to persuade the layman that other creeds are inferior to his, or at least must be viewed with suspicion. No matter if he wearies in trying to minister to the spiritual hysteric whose pathologic selfishness demands that he give up sympathy for other people and devote it all to her. (This is not adverse criticism of the spiritual hysteric. She cannot avoid her selfishness. It is an illness, and really requires sympathy, but not to the extent which she demands from the pastor.) It is the spiritual in the work of the pastor which makes him innately beloved of all good people. It is the spiritual in the work of the physician that endures, and that shines upon, through, and beyond all obscuring influences. No matter if the fool invests in mining stock; no matter if he destroys confidence of the laity in his profession through unwise com- ment about colleagues ; no matter how much he deceives him- self about being a rational materialist; no matter how often he stops to ask if expediency may not be morality and good TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 93 business at the same time. It is the spiritual in his nature that endures and endears in the doctor as in the pastor. It is the spiritual that shines upon, through, and beyond all men, just as the ether shines upon, through, and beyond all matter. So I like to think that the ether and the spiritual are one — that all things are composed of the one. The spirit returns to ether after having been used by man upon this earth, and it may have to do still more of crude performance in another world, — becoming better in that "v/orld" — then on to another sphere, becoming ever better and better. The idealist points the way to better things, and expects others to follow simply because the right way has been pointed out to them by him. In this practical world the idealist who wishes people to follow must go further and formulate a practical way, perhaps even concealing the idea while seeking opportunity to place it. Plato said that he was ready to follow as a god any man who could make the law of one the law of the many in his life plan. That will be the method in the church of monistic unity. A new Japanese religion is said to be based upon the idea that the Emperor is a direct descendant of the Creator of the Universe, and to be held in corresponding degree of honor. As a matter of fact, all of the other Japanese are likewise descendants of the Creator in the same way, but the idea is useful for purposes of organized religion. The Japanese Emperor really descended directly from the Creator, just as Jesus Christ was the real Christ. The monistic unity religion of usefulness, and the gospel of human continuity in relation to chemical processes, will serve for giving comfort to roundly educated men. These have been left unsatisfied by Theology, and in consequence 94 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS have been prone to live almost too freely as independent indi- viduals. They came to know about the mistakes of Moses, the failure of the God of this world to get us anatomically right, the fallibility of present-day human testimony in rela- tion to snake stories, and its allied influence in relation to earlier wonder stories. All of this knowledge had a tendency to leave roundly educated men without a good working library of religion. In the monistic unity state people will carry their religion into their daily life. We ought to speak of God with joy rather than with reverence. There should be no can't in our voices. We are all doing as well as we can — He better than any of us, but needing our help. Our help at present is not given systematically excepting on ceremonious occasions. It is apt to be disposed of as we dispose of a grocer's bill, dis- charging the matter from mind as a duty done, — or like an examination at school "passed up" without further need for action on that closed incident. A chum God for every day is the kind we need. In legis- lative committees which are considering strike bills relating to insurance, banks, railroads, or public works, we find men of all religious faiths. Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Romanists, Universalists, Presbyterians. When the question arises if they are to be venal or not, religion is seldom in evidence in their arguments. I have known individuals on such committees who were strongly swayed by their religious convictions, but at the meeting of the whole committee these convictions were not held to be practical by the chairman. Metaphysicians engaged themselves in wonderful games of words on the subject of heredity until very recently, when Mendel and Loeb interfered with their sport by reducing the question of heredity to quantitative and qualitative analysis, TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 95 followed by a statement of exact results obtained in the labora- tory. The subject is now taken out of the field of metaphysics and placed in the field of biology which is a subdivision of chemistry. Systems of ethics do not belong fundamentally to meta- physics but to chemistry. The pack of wolves chooses its leader not because of agreement between players of words, but because of instinct. Instinct represents a form of con- sciousness, and consciousness is a function exercised by all organisms. The elaborated data of ethics formulated by man are based upon various forms of consciousness manifested in sex instinct, maternal instinct, nutrition instinct, economic instinct, workmanship instinct, and the other instincts. Man does not work and plan methods for obtaining food and rais- ing children as a result of an agreement, following discussion of the desirability of so doing. He is simply acting in accord- ance with the chemistry of his cells. His intelligence may allow him to do this very well, according to special plans of action, but the instincts are primordial. Exercise of these instincts is under control of and subject to the body chemistry (normal or depraved). Pawlow caused the secretion of saliva in a dog by means of optic and acoustic signals, — in other words, by giving the dog an idea. An idea in the same way may lead to changes in metabolism which are due to its influence upon cells of various organs. A prolonged idea — an obsession — may result in seri- ous poisoning. On the other hand, retroactively, serious toxic impression of microbic origin may lead to obsession. At the present time we cannot always tell which begins first, — the idea leading to poisoning, or poisoning leading to the idea. With such knowledge of the microbe as we already have, knowing of its influence in the whole field of biology, we are enabled to put much of our physiological, social and ethical 96 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS life upon a scientific basis. We know that starch, fat and proteins are the substances which undergo oxidation in the body, and we know that proper oxidation of absorbed mate- rials forms an essential part of all life phenomena among animals and in the higher plants. We have recently come to know that substances which are oxidized imperfectly by the animal or plant are often taken charge of by the microbic enemies of the animal or plant, and the product of their work is injurious. We have already spoken of normal metabolism as "homergy" (Homos, ergon), and of the effects of certain injurious kinds of metabolism as "allergy" (Alios, ergon). Homergy relates to customary animal cell work, and allergy relates to the work of foreigners (toxins) in established cities of cells (organisms) which had established an orderly government. Under the processes of homergy men lead natural lives with the constant natural tendency toward prog- ress in physical, social and ethical life. Under the processes of allergy men lead more or less unnatural lives, with a tendency toward mysterious or bizarre effects in physical, social and ethical life. The homergic man and wife have a tendency to raise six children, to accomplish work of benefit to the social body, and to conform to ethical standards set by church and state. The allergic man has a tendency to go without a wife, — or, if married, to have few children or none. His Hfe work may be extremely useful to the social mass, or extremely injurious — but in any event it is apt to be extreme in tendency. His ethical standards are sometimes those of the ascetic, sometimes those of an irresponsible Latin Quarter artist. The homergist adapts himself as comfortably as a red squirrel to his environment, and finds happiness or at least satisfaction in his work. He is not distressed about the future of his race. The allergist fits uneasily into his en- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 97 vironment, introduces problem plays at the theatre, mystery in his books and futurist effects in his art. The allergist is ex- pressing himself plus the microbe along with his natural work. The homergist is the single rose, the allergist is the double rose. On account of the unlimited crossing in man having introduced so many decadent strains incidentally, we do not find the pure homergist as frequently as we find the allergist in some degree. The homergist knows that nothing in the world really matters so very much after all so long as he plays his part faithfully, while the allergist, burning with zeal, would sometimes gladly die in order to see his political or religious sect win. Nature observing the danger places allergists in opposition to each other as part of her regular plan. She pairs off allergic zealots against each other. Abnormal views strongly opposed to each other have a tendency to neutralize each other. Shall we believe? No ! if the question refers only to things which we are told to believe. Shall we believe ? Yes ! — things which we are shown may be believed. The credulous mind is a victim of every passing wave of influence and becomes waterlogged. I know all about it, being naturally credulous myself. Shall we have faith? No ! not in the things in which we are told to have faith. There are too many men who wish to use our minds for their own purposes. Shall we have faith? Yes! if we feel it out of our own experience. Nations come and go like long ranks of waves upon Old Ocean's gravelly beach. Each nation gets right something that was left wrong by the preceding nations^ Each nation leaves wrong something to be righted by the succeeding billows of oncoming nations. When the last nation of men subsides from the beach of Time, something will be left still belonging to ftie wrong. 98 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Nothing is true in the world excepting a view upon which men for the most part agree. We call that the abstract, and it is relatively true. But everything in fact really is concrete at last and belongs to the infinite. It is not nature's plan to allow man to get things wholly right. That is to be left to the God of nature. The privilege is denied to man. Even natural laws are true only to the extent that a group of men agree upon their validity for purposes of convenience. The same relates to religious views. Things are not as they are excepting as we agree to see them in that way. Faith in the self importance of each individual in the monistic unity state will carry comfort and moral stimulus in high degree. Every man will lose that personal selfish dread of extinction when his work is done. Personal affections will be increased because of the interest attaching to good work intended or accomplished. The injustices of this life will be classified under the head of "Wounds of Vanity" or as "Diseases of the I," and will be treated by specialists on the subject of sensitized protoplasm. It will be recognized that personalities which have been built up by sustained moral and intellectual effort representing the best product of our evolu- tion cannot be lost forever, any more than the three physical entities can be lost forever. Personalities of men exert an influence in accordance with their proportion, and the influence transmitted to other people continues in transmission. The fearful dread that one may be going to a lot of trouble in building up his personality for no purpose is meanly egocentric in conception. The soul, — the first and last product of per- sonality, is for the use of ourselves primarily but is not to be kept in a safe place here, in order to be sent to a safer place subsequently. Each man's responsibility ends with the development of his own personal soul, and we need not specu- late as to the exact methods of its later employment by the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 99 God of nature. That would be presumptuous. The soul is to be loaned out at interest, and not to be hoarded. Some psychologist of to-morrow will publish a book entitled "Comparative Personalities." This will be of inestimable value for governors, presidents and kings as a work of refer- ence in their wrestling matches with competitive personalities that are displayed by politicians and favor seekers. Up to the present time the subject has not been reduced to its prin- ciples and yet the psychology of competitive personality has exerted more determining force in the history of nations than has been exerted by any religion. CHAPTER II Even in these later days of our present cultural period, all civilized nations still continue, as in ruder days, to look upon certain pathologic disorders of the brain function as belonging to commendable genius or despicable crime, when they are really pathologic and of chemical mechanistic origin. We do not as yet place healthy genius or unavoidable crime in their respective stalls at the civilization exhibition. Percheron horses, broncos and thoroughbred racers are all mixed together in one stall, and the committee is asked to award a prize for the best horse and to denounce the worst one. Wolves and bears are all in one stall as exhibits of the ferocious animal, with no prize as yet for the ones which are most amenable to training, — yet we know that the St. Bernard dog and the cocker spaniel were once wolves. The imbecile, the hysteric, the epileptic, the insane, -and the criminal, were in earlier days often regarded as saints or prophets, wizards or witches. They were revered, worshipped, or tortured, according to their relation to the social organiza- tion of time and place, and not according to their pathology. We have made clumsy advance to be sure with cumbersome and costly methods, but the decadent writer, artist, or criminal, is still treated from a barbarous viewpoint of criticism, and not as a microbe-stung victim. We have records showing that twenty-five per cent, of the patients admitted to institutions TO-MORROW'S TOPICS loi for the insane, and a large proportion of criminals in confine- ment, have brains injured by the use of alcohol, but statistics stop at about that point, and do not show that microbe toxins often preceded the alcohol, the latter furnishing adjuvant influence only. Suicide is not a question for moral judgment at all, and never has been. It is a question calling for kindly human sympathy, yet from the statutes of courts to conversation around the home table, it is considered from the moral and not from the microbic standpoint. Inebriety has been treated in a most bungling way from the moral standpoint by good men who meant well, but did not know. The question of the inebriate is not a moral question. It is a medical question of the sort which calls out, or should call out, the best traits of mind of those fortunate ones who have the privilege of giving kindly care to others. In our studies of various microbic influences we took up the most obvious cases first. In typhoid fever several days elapse before presence of the bacilli causes much disturbance of vital signs, yet the bacilli are present and increasing rapidly meantime. A certain bac- terium causing symptoms of a cyclical insanity may perhaps develop in the bowel in the same way as a typhoid bacillus develops for some days before the evidences of insanity are noted by the clinician. The symptoms may never be noted at all by a layman who calls them a form of rare genius. In typhoid fever the onset is evident when body cells have been sensitized to a point at which they begin to elaborate a secre- tion which comes forth to destroy the typhoid bacilli. When the invading bacillus is rent asunder, its protein poison is set free, and the presence of this poison accounts for some of the symptoms and lesions of typhoid fever. Such is the history of infectious diseases in general. Diseases in which the Hfe course of specific bacteria is rapid and their symptoms pro- I02 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS nounced are the diseases in which we have made our first simple studies. A'^accination introduces into the body very- minute doses of microbe poison which slowly trains the body cells to eat up later-coming microbe poison. It is only very recently that we have learned to vaccinate against typhoid fever and a number of other infectious and contagious diseases in man and in lower animals. The method of vaccination against smallpox resulted from an accidental observation by Jenner, and vaccination against this disease was employed empirically and crudely for a long time. Napoleon was the first general to definitely lay plans against the microbe when he ordered vaccination for fifty thousand troops. He did not know about the microbe itself however. Nowadays we first learn the life histories of bacteria which are inimical to our body cells, and we may employ vaccines rationally. An attempt to find psychologic origin for mental disorders takes us back a long way from scientific methods of to-day and leaves us among the Vedantists. A study of the physiologic origin of mental disorders belongs to the twentieth century and allows us to blaze a trail step by step while carrying a light. A search for the psychologic origin leads us to grope about in the darkness, looking for a light. Morbid psychology means morbid physiology, and we might quite as well speak of the psychologic origin of psychology itself as to speak of the psychogenetic origin of mental disorders. Things which are supposed to belong wholly to the psychic side of life are always physiologic. A mediocre student may be a mediocre student because he is repelled by books on account of an error of refraction. The piercing glance of the villain is now known to be an efifort at focal adjustment due to astigmatism, and this in turn may be at the bottom of his villainy, — through disturbance of metabolism. Myopia causes a retrospective bearing. The alert neurotic individual who is TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 103 bright, interesting, magnetic, and the Hfe of every party, may be constantly overstimulated because of an abnormal increase of thyroid secretion. He may be very hard to live with when he becomes exhausted and reserves his cleverness for "com- pany" exhibition. It is often difficult for him to live with himself. I look forward to the time when we shall be enabled to vaccinate against many kinds of insanity. That time will come when we have sought out and studied the life histories of specific bowel microbes which precipitate the attacks. We are already well on our way toward vaccinating against many diseases which present symptoms of mental derangement, typhoid fever for instance. Some kinds of insanity are like other intoxications. There are degrees but no dividing lines. We all know of cases in which there is melancholia or hysteria lasting only during the time when colonic bacteria are particularly active. The victims are quite sane and normal at other times. Who then shall draw a dividing line between sanity and insanity? We say that this person is sane or insane accordingly as we are enabled to classify characteristics well enough to prove either point, but one condition merges into the other so gradually that no one can draw the line excepting in a concrete case of clinical insanity. Even then he can only describe it, — and not define it. Given a certain microbe found in excess in a certain case and the bacteriologist of the future will tell the psychologist what emotion he is to anticipate on the part of that individual. The psychologist then taking up his portion of the work will predict the course and influence of that particular emotion in its sociologic bearings. In scientific psychology nothing is abnormal. A certain psychosis is the normal result of activity of a certain toxin. I04 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS The course of an emotion can be predicted as we predict the season that is to follow another season, and yet we have to go back of psychology in order to comprehend the subject of emotions. We have to learn from the bacteriologist's labora- tory tests that nature has prepared a certain individual in a certain way for expressing a certain emotion. The psycholo- gist may then state the direction of force of that particular emotion. If psychologists at the beginning of the nineteenth century had been possessed of our present knowledge concerning move- ments of the mind of genius as they occur in the ill, and in the ill of classifiable types, they might have predicted epileptic Napoleon's 1812 campaign into Russia. They could have fairly assumed that brilliant military skill, morbid in character, belonging to his earlier campaigns, would finally result in some campaign without justification or demand, when a mind of this type began to fail. Napoleon then would not have been accused of criminal carelessness in leaving incompleted campaigns in other countries in order to organize a campaign into Russia for which there was no need on the part of the state in 1812. Experimental psychology shows that the average man employs only from a tenth to a third of his normal brain capacity, the rest lying dormant. This remainder of his brain efficiency can be turned to the happiness account if he chooses. It can be turned to a fad, to a hobby, to an animosity, to anything which in a man's best judgment he should turn that reserve force. Three different kinds of forces commonly lead man to use more of his inherent brain power — alcohol, microbe toxins, and new ideas. He is conscious of the influence exerted by the first and last of these three forces, and he uses them in degree according to his measure of wisdom. The second force has been out of his comprehension, but the peda- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 105 gogy of the future will bring that force also into the field of his comprehension. The latent part of the brain is brought into general activity by great numbers of people towards some special train of thought when we have a popular movement established by some leader or leaders. For example, the period of conquest at the time of Cassar; the period of literary activity at the time of Queen Elizabeth ; the period of religious change at the time of Luther; the present period of science. At such times the entire civilized world uses much of the latent part of the brain along lines of thought belonging to the period, thus giving a hilly appearance to the road of human progress. The rapid development of any idea (fad or otherwise) is due to primary engagement of interest on the part of that one- tenth or one-third of the brain which is commonly employed in daily affairs, followed by rapid freeing of the rest, very much as the contents come bursting forth from a feather pillow when it is opened. That part of the brain which has previously been used in maintaining a balanced position in the affairs of an individual keeps at work in its usual way, when the latent part begins to emerge. Consequently a man is held to be rational on the whole when the latent part of his brain becomes engaged in a fad or is a promising new idea. Chemical examination of the physical brain cells in cases of dementia praecox shows a definite pathological change from the normal condition. Among other changes there is altera- tion of the relative proportions of two brain lipoids, cholesterol and kephalin, the former being increased in quantity and the latter decreased. Cholesterol and kephalin fail to carry a sufficient amount of oxygen for allowing physical brain cells to "breathe." Proper hormones for giving that sort of in- io6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS struction are not being secreted, for the reason that certain ductless glands are poisoned. Kephalin with its avidity for oxygen plays a very important part in the "respiration" of the nervous system, and vi^hen this substance is decreased in quantity the physical brain cells must be more or less "smothered." Psychanalysts will speak of dementia prsecox metaphysically, as a struggle between conflicting emotions. The surgeon, on the other hand, will think of it as a struggle of smothering cells for oxygen, these cells having been injured by an abnormal internal secretion from ductless glands. The surgeon likes to speculate on the hypothesis that whenever body cells of any sort find themselves penetrated by foreign proteins which get among their space-lattices, they proceed to manu- facture ferments for destroying such impolite intruders. These ferments in turn may attack body cells destructively, and the body cells now go into action again, this time- manufac- turing anti ferments for protective purposes. The. surgeon would like to have psychanalysts take up a question like that of high blood pressure, which is also quite as much a mechanis- tic physical question as is dementia prsecox. He would be interested to see what they could do with such a question metaphysically. The surgeon puts the subject upon a physical basis, feeling that the arterial system in some of these cases has been sensitized by foreign proteins which render it allergic to internal secretion of the adrenal glands. He prefers to believe that microbic toxins start the curve of symptoms for a vicious circle. The surgeon believes that when medicine has progressed to a point of stating the case of many forms of clinical psychoses in terms of defective oxidation of cerebral lipoids, we may then go on to a classification of many of the simpler sub-oxidation processes, which lead to nothing more distressing perhaps than family rows. Let us say that a cyclic mania and a cyclic alcoholic spree TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 107 are one and the same thing. Each may be dependent upon the influence of toxins for which the patient has a craving or toward which he is vulnerable when the energy granules of her nerve cells have become exhausted. Much depends upon the definition of insanity. The imbecile is "insane," and so is a drunken man, a melancholic, and a typhoid patient with hallucinations. Where shall we draw the line? It cannot be done. When Spitzka testified in court that all men were insane, the ones who took offense were the ones who required examination. Everyone is insane, everyone is likewise sane. It is only a matter of description of certain features which may be classified. The man who is suffering from chronic rheumatism is not engaged in using a wholly normal mind. His is a poisoned mind due to selection of irritating materials by the physical brain cells. The selection is influenced by toxins in a case of rheumatism quite as well as it is in a case of acute mania. The latter disease, however, is classifiable under some one form of mania, and may be described as such, while the type of mind going with rheuma- tism is not as yet classified as an insanity. It will be classified by doctors later. The rheumatic mind is too active and forceful an entity to be allowed to roam at large in literature without eventual classification. Is insanity hereditary? Only as a physical brain is defective in its cell plasm construction. Physical defects of the ductless glands and physical defects of the bones belong also in the same group (including the bone marrow which is a ductless gland). This is one of the great questions which will be opened up during the twentieth century. If the cell plasm of insane parents is limited in its capacity for making physical brain cells for the unborn child, then the child after birth will have a tendency toward insanity because of defective cell entailment. The same thing may quite as well relate to the io8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS child's thyroid gland or to the child's jaw bone. If cell injury previously suffered by the parent was due to insufficient oxida- tion of toxins, and if the child is properly trained in oxidizing toxins and protected against toxic influences, then — according to the monistic unity theory, the child of insane parents may be trained in such a way that he and his descendants will have a tendency to return again toward normal standards and the exemplar. Books written by cyclothemics may be helpful for other cyclothemics, for instance, "A Mind that Found Itself." This is the autobiography of a man who knew that he was the victim of manic depressive insanity. He had an epileptic brother, and his own insanity was probably an epileptic equiva- lent. The great danger to literature comes when works of unrecognized cyclothemics are published as works of mis- understood geniuses. The author of "A Mind that Found Itself," recounting his experiences for the purpose of arriving at a conclusion, is mis- leading when he begins at the point where he believes that fear of epilepsy as it appeared in his brother led to his own insanity. He stops at another wrong point of suggesting that the highest function of a study of the subject will be in the formation of a national committee for mental hygiene. Such a com- mittee will be of very great value, but a national committee for studying toxins is what we need first. The author who is quoted seems to have started from the common error that his brother's epilepsy could be traced to an injury from a fall, and that his own insanity was caused by fear of epilepsy coming to him also. In both cases the mental disturbance was presumably due to an inheritance of injured cells and defective protective organs which allowed toxins to dominate and bring about mental disturbance in the same general way as they bring it about in typhoid fever. Reading between the lines of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 109 this valuable book, we perceive a peculiar alertness of mind and restlessness that go with continuance of toxic impression, even though the author of the book employed splendid will power and intelligence for controlling his symptoms, — aided by the best methods of alienists. The ascribing of epilepsy to a fall is very apt to obtain credence unless one has had considerable clinical experience, and knows the natural tendency of people to look for such objective causative influence. In the out-patient department in my clinical work at the Post Graduate Hospital we fre- quently examine a hundred or more people in the course of an afternoon, and among these may be several cases in which the patients themselves, their parents, or relatives, ascribe everything from epilepsy to mastoiditis to the result of some strain or fall. They reason back to some objective point. Even cases of diplococcus infection are often ascribed to a fall, — an idea which may be correct if taken in sufficiently large meaning. There is to be more insanity in the world for awhile as civilization progresses, but the sort of will-power that was exerted by the author of "A Mind that Found Itself," together with control of toxic precipitating causes, will allow many patients to obtain good control over their symptoms. Eventu- ally eugenics will dispose of most of the insanities, — (aided by the physiologist) . The largest number of insane, according to the census re- port, up to January, 19 10, were in Massachusetts, where we have the oldest civilization in America, and consequently a greater proportion of senescent protoplasm. New York expends one-seventh of its state income upon caring for its insane. Insanity is not increasing as the result of greater stress in living, because under conditions of civilization there is no TO-MORROW'S TOPICS actually far less stress than under conditions of barbarism. One factor in the increase belongs to advancing medical skill which protects the weak, carries them to adult life, and makes little provision as yet against their having progeny. There are more than thirty thousand of the feeble minded alone in New York state. The one child of a man of fortune in the city may not have half the chance of the eight children of a poor clergyman in the country. The tendency of our times is to relieve stress and struggle, but the result of such relief is an ever increasing proportion of double roses and a more rapid increase of the proportion of people who are vulnerable to toxic influences of many kinds. The system of education of the monistic unity state will include the idea of increasing resistance rather than removing obstacles. Resistance will be increased to such a degree that obstacles will be sought for in a spirit of sport. Hardship and struggle are nothing but "bully adventure" for a hearty boy. If he cannot get enough of that at home he goes camping. At the present time a boy whose education is beyond his ability to use it, becomes a less valuable citizen than does a boy who uses exceedingly well what he has struggled to obtain for his obvious needs. The insanities which are apparently toxic in origin, will receive the sort of attention which we now give to surgical affections of toxic origin. Take puerperal insanity for an example. It is clearly toxic and known to be such, and while transitory in the acute attack, often leaves a victim chronically poisoned. Progeny from such a mother may have unstable nervous equilibrium, but children of insane parents may escape insanity themselves if they keep watch over the sources of toxin formation and avoid its precipitating influence. That will be a feature of our coming medicine. Puerperal insanity may come to one who has little predis- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS iii position to mental derangement. It was clearly toxic in origin in some cases which have come to my knowledge. The symp- toms may belong to allergy, and sensitized protoplasm is then handed down to children who are born subsequently, very much as sensitized protoplasm is transmitted to progeny in guinea pigs in laboratory experiments in allergy. We know how to overcome the effects of allergy in guinea pigs. No one as yet has taken up the question in relation to puerperal insanity, although we are apparently far enough along to obtain the history of the particular toxin in this particular form of insanity, when doctors give attention to such a subject, instead of "going into surgery" which is just now popular, unfortunately for the public. Insanities are classified in a large number of groups from their symptoms, without reference to the clinical history begin- ning along this line of observation. In post mortem examinations upon the insane, peritoneal adhesions of the upper abdomen, gall-stones and cholecystitis, are as clearly hieroglyphics as are any that ever appeared upon an Egyptian tomb. These hieroglyphics of toxic influence from the bowel actually stand in the way of the post mortem examiner, who rudely tears them away in order that he may see. Is it not curious that the very sign that should make him see is the sign he tries to get out of the way when trying to see? It seems to be part of nature's plan to prevent too rapid progress. Surgeons had a similar experience. I remem- ber very well thirty years ago in Germany, seeing post mortem examinations made in cases which I now recognize as having been appendicitis. At that time the hieroglyphics were not read at all; they were simply considered to be in the way of the examiner. One may walk in a whole gallery of paintings in the dark, trying to recognize them by feeling of the frames. Yet some- 112 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS where in the gallery is a little bit of an insignificant button, which if pressed, instantly turns on the light, and the gallery is all in display in a moment. Press the little microbe button, and I believe that the whole gallery of insanities will be lighted up like a flash, with the prospect of our being enabled to dis- pose of half of the asylums. At the present time one is met with a quizzical glance if he. asks a post mortem examiner to stop long enough to see the toxic insignia which are plainly in evidence. The time is coming when the very first step for studying insanities will be a study from cultures of enteric microbes. We have been set back by the metaphysical studies of Freud, who deals with the psyche instead of with the colon. Aretseus of Cappadocia, who probably lived about the time of Nero, is by some classed as the best observer after Hippo- crates. He described some forms of mental derangement about as well as it is done to-day. He noted the intestinal disturbance that goes with various forms of mental derange- ment but did not have the advantage which is given to present day psychiatrists (if they can see their opportunity) of placing a cause and effect relationship between forms of colonic poisoning and forms of mental derangement. It h a curious fact that the ancients approached so near to the truth as to believe that circulation of poisonous bile was a cause for some forms of mental derangement. Had they spoken of poisons that are excreted by the liver it would have been a remarkably close guess — better than any metaphysical modern guess. In melancholia there is often misanthropy, religious superstition, suspicion and inclination to suicide, but all of these symptoms would appear to a surgeon to mean that the patient has loss of integrity of certain groups of cell elements. The cells of the physical brain are inefficient for enabling them to conduct normal collection of and distribution of energy for practical adaptation to the day's work of the individual. All classical TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 113 symptoms may be present in the melancholic, or only one or two, depending no doubt upon the structure of cell arrange- ment in the physical brain, under the influence of toxic dis- advantage. If the melancholic is passionate, ill-natured, wake- ful, and with distressing dreams, anxious about trifles, shun- ning society, cursing life and courting death, it apparently means a mechanical inefficiency of cells of the physical brain. The patient could not realize in his conscious mind that all this disturbance was due to protoplasmic poisoning by microbe toxins. In addition to specific microbe toxins in cases of melancholia the sulphuret products which are retained when there is bowel stasis are particularly poisonous. Some of the gas forming bacilli often liberate large quantities of sul- phurets in these cases. Hippocrates and Galen both recognized and commented at length upon the relationship between mental derangement and gastro-intestinal disturbance. Galen said that many poisons which disturb the intestine also act directly upon the brain through the stomach, and that such secondary brain disease frequently lasts longer than the primary gastro-intestinal disease. He said that melancholia may arise from affections of the abdominal organs. That was a better guess than has been made by psychanalysts of more enlightened times. What do they think of Galen on that point anyway? I am listening. Answer, please! When the first psychological laboratory was established at Harvard in 1890, some educators were doubtful about the clear sanity of such a procedure. Yet the work of this labora- tory has been of incalculable value in the field of criminology alone. The more recent establishment of a fund for psychical research must be attractive to the spookily inclined; yet, on account of the laws of continuity and of reciprocal relations in nature, no action can be so foolish that it does not bring in 114 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS some good result toward the end. The reason for this is because the natural tendency of expenditure of human energy is toward progress whenever action of any sort calls out a reciprocal reaction. It is much like the natural tendency of all disease being toward recovery of the patient. Modeft-n psychiatry suffers from following the widely rang- ing and varying symptoms which are picked out for classifica- tion purposes, without reference to the clinical course of a psychosis. Psychiatry does not as yet begin the study of this clinical course from the point that would be chosen by a surgeon, from the bacteriologist's report. Attic adhesions, cholecystitis and chronic pancreatitis of the insane carry very little light into the sensorium of the psychiatrist as yet. The entire subject of the insanities will undergo a revolution and with new classi- fications when this is done. It will be a feature of to-morrow in medical advance, and I await the advent of some knight who will slay the dragon of Freud with his pen. In the milder forms of cyclothemia the laity would seldom consider a patient to be mentally deranged. Members of a patient's family recognize the presence of a "queerness" but they may not know that the entire symptom course has been detailed by authorities. In the manic depressive group of insanities some of the older psychiatrists held that gastro-enteric disturbance stood primarily in causal relation, but this view was dropped later because of the observation that patients recovered under vari- ous kinds of treatment when the cycle had run its course. Psychiatrists were misled into feeling that the whole plant was no more, because the flowers of the plant had fallen. We shall go back to the former conception of the cause of in- sanities when the bacteriology of the enteron is recorded systematically in these cases, not only during the periods of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 115 evident mental derangement, but in the intervals. As a result of new knowledge obtained from such study, the cycle may perhaps be inhibited in the manic depressive psychosis, and it is not impossible that vaccination against some of the insanities will get to be a routine procedure in some families. In young women of high character and of the best sur- roundings, a pathologic stage of the cyclic type has been responsible for many accidents which were considered from the moral side only, and not recognized until later development gave opportunity for classification of signs. In fact, the laity is apt to consider that the later development of insanity in a given case was caused by mental brooding over an accident, when in fact the victim was really irresponsible from the first. Sometimes a cyclothemic young woman who has met with an accident is hurried into marriage with the result that her children inherit the tendency. In the euphoric stage of cases of cyclothemia with sexual erethism, writers belonging to both sexes may fairly approach or quite reach genius in prurient writing, if they have natural talent as writers. That part of the reading public which likes this sort of literature could get its fill more quickly by going directly to the asylums, where one may obtain daring material that even some publishers would refuse to accept. In cases of cyclothemia in which a dipsomanic feature appears during the depressive stage, the writing is practically all done during an author's euphoric stage, so that we do not have much literature belonging to the dipsomanic part of a cycle. The mental symptoms of typhoid fever are not classed as insanity, and yet in these cases we have delusion and hallucina- tion, as clearly as in any mental derangement that goes by the name of mania. Typhoid has simply been classed as a fever because the earlier symptoms which are first recognized belong to physiology as distinguished from mentality. A number of ii6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS insanities, quite as distinctly of bacterial origin as typhoid fever, are not classified as belonging to infection because the mental symptoms happen to attract first attention. Sensitiza- tion caused by specific bacteria of insanity which do not happen to liberate energy in the form of heat, would not suggest to the psychiatrist a similarity to typhoid sensitization, in which energy does happen to be liberated in the form of heat. Hippocrates classified "phrenitis" as "fever" when it was accompanied by symptoms of headache, rigors, loss of appetite, muscle twitching, convulsions and delusions. He said that it runs a critical course leading to recovery, but that chronic insanity and nervous diseases may remain. In the days of Hippocrates a number of infectious diseases were classified under the head of phrenitis. Since that time one group of physicians has studied diseases in their bacterial rela- tionship, and another group has studied certain diseases from their mental features only. Both kinds of observers should have compared notes all this while. Toxin hieroglyphics in abdominal cavities of the insane are so obvious that post mortem examiners when getting these characters out of the way are cutting the painting of a master out of its frame in order to search for the spirit of the master somewhere behind the painting. There is hardly any fact better established in psychology than this natural tendency of men to look past the obvious, — which appears to be in their way. Aretaeus treated colonic stasis and flatulence of the melan- cholic patient empirically, without noting a basic reason for beneficial results of such treatment. The same thing is done to-day. Can't we do better? In the present century rational consideration of the subject of melancholia may get to be on about these lines : (a) Flatulence is caused by a certain group of harmful TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 117 anerobic bacteria as well as by harmless saprophytes. Find what ones are present in excess in any. given case. (b) The anerobic bacteria could not grow in excess if the digestive function of the patient were good. (c) Digestive function is under control of the sympathetic nervous system. (d) The sympathetic nervous system is under control of hormones when directing secretion for digestive purposes. (e) Hormones depend for their secretion upon the efficiency of the ductless glands. (f) Function of the ductless glands depends upon their structure. (g) Structure depends chiefly upon heredity. (h) Hereditary cell character depends upon the antecedents of an individual. A patient with melancholia then has a tendency through his hereditary cell construction, to allow the development of toxins which will bring out symptoms called insanity. Any- thing like worry in a man of unstable nervous organization causes loss of a part of his physiological control. The balance which he maintains unconsciously when in a comfortable frame of mind is lost. Worry interferes with the action of hormones. Function of ductless glands is in turn disturbed. This disturbs the function of digestive organs, and allows bacteria to make use of the food that was intended for diges- tive purposes. A patient is then poisoned by the toxins of enteric bacteria, and this leads to an intoxicated stage of worry, tipsy worry, otherwise known as melancholia. Toxins which are responsible for some forms of mental derangement seem as in other diseases to call out antibodies which protect the individual against various other kinds of infection, and at the same time stimulate his resistance organs in general to a remarkable degree of efficiency. We observe ii8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS this notably in cases of paranoia. A paranoiac may expose himself to many kinds of infection without suffering the ill effects which would be suffered by other people. lie may endure a surgical operation of considerable magnitude with no evidence of shock. He may take long journeys through the wilderness, suffering deprivation of food, sleep, water and warmth, with an immunity against deleterious influence which is so uncanny that it arouses wonder in the minds of very hardy people who cannot bear the hardships so well as he. This wonder prepares a simple people for listening to any mysterious message which the paranoiac may bring. Fre- quently it is religious in its nature and with a high degree uf spiritual insight. The paranoiac in civilized communities who is not confined may be extremely injurious, because his accusa- tions against various people are related with a vigor and bear- ing which carry conviction. They are believed by hearers who do not understand that he is honestly expressing misconcep- tion. I have at this writing a letter from a paranoiac of this sort, begging me to help him in his troubles with his wife and stating clearly and forcibly the nature of her misdeeds. Hand- ing the letter to my secretary, his comment is, "Why, she is just as bad as he is." Now that would be the way in which almost any layman would take the letter, — or conversation on the part of the writer of such a letter. 1 happen to know that not one statement in that letter about the wife is true. The man has great physical strength and the sort of restless activity so often observed in paranoiacs. lie is capable of doing an immense amount of harm daily yet would be called "sane, though queer" by many pecjple. The sum total of his harmful influence is perhaps greater than if he were simply to kill one or two people. Perhaps he will do that also ; but according to our present methods of management, minds of this sort are allowed to go free f(jr the most part. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 119 While paranoia seems to have been the chief form of in- sanity among the founders of great religious movements, cyclic insanities have been most in evidence among literary geniuses. Perhaps warfare has origin in anxiety psychoses at times. The ceaseless untiring activity of the paranoiac may be quite remarkable. I have recently received a closely written letter of sixteen quarto pages in script, from a man in the south whose activity politically and religiously must keep hundreds or even thousands of people disturbed year after year. He is so nearly rational at times that a previous appeal for my influence in his behalf in a grand undertaking misled me com- pletely. I am naturally credulous about large plans. This individual had letters from prominent men in his state (includ- ing the governor), endorsing him fully, and addressed to European capitalists. His ideas were consecutive, clear, and gave the impression of being those of a man of great power and efficiency. This second letter recently received begins by asking me to go personally to one of our great philanthropists and to interview him in behalf of the writer of the letter. Then follows a great display of the ego, grandeur, expansive- ness, and delusions of persecution, combined in such a way as to show that he is a wholly irresponsible character. The letter is written coherently enough to deceive any layman, and I do not doubt that for many years to come this man will be a source of disturbance and a great engine of harm, yet unrecognized as such by laymen with whom he comes in contact. Anyone who speaks strongly and convincingly is apt to be believed. No one can speak more strongly or more convinc- ingly than some of the insane. At certain stages of their activity, during which the public at large believes them to be sane, they speak with the air and bearing of clear honesty; and that leads to much harm because honesty is something which I20 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS is recognized quickly by most people. At the same time they would not understand this honesty of manner to be the result of clear misconception. Ordinarily misconception among the really sane is the most common cause for human disagreement. A rat which is guided by instinct has less misconception concerning his in- terests than does a man who is guided by reason. One of my patients, a very successful mental healer, told me her success had been due to learning that half of the tales poured into her ears were not true. They depended upon mis- conception which is symptomatic of features of the mind of neurasthenics. She had not realized this until in the course of perfecting a method she adopted the plan of quietly going to accused parties for the purpose of persuading them to be better. The results were surprising but not in the way she had anticipated. Real facts which she secured allowed her to exercise a most useful function subsequently. Whenever two sane people become inimical to each other for any reason, they proceed to load up with misconception relating to each other, and their views are not to be trusted by anyone else. We are God's own children; demonstrating that fact by making a sport of nature's ways, for purposes of our amuse- ment. Thus, we take two game cocks that are comfortably sunning themselves in the barnyard and hold them face to face with each other for a moment. Then we bet upon the result. Nature does the same thing with us, and no doubt lays stakes upon the game. Nature is pretty sporty on the whole. We pay tribute to her wisdom when allowing our- selves to be forced into inimical attitudes toward each other. Every day we observe the action of inimical fools among school girls, doctors, artists, business men, — almost TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 121 everybody. Folks take nature so seriously. Lawyers are the only ones who commonly escape personal consequences, but even with them it requires a third party to break their currents of antagonistic thought. The judge separates the two coils, stops the induction current and lets the client drop. Lawyers make a business of what other people do for diversion and which nature does for the purpose of keeping us active in forcing evolution. When there is deep feeling between people who have become inimical to each other, as in impending dissolution of partner- ship or in divorce cases, misconception develops to such an extent that the most wise of judges would find it difficult to analyze the real questions of justice which are involved. This is a field in which the newer scientific psychology is to have a bearing upon later civilization. Every year an increasing number of people remark upon my youthful appearance. When I really did look youthful they did not speak of it at all. Hence there is a bit of hypocrisy in this kindly attempt at giving me pleasure. Hypoc- risy is a modifying agent offered by nature in compensation for some of the effects of misconception. She wishes to have misconception prevail generally in order to avoid sudden, untimely and violent psychic progress. One who is bluntly frank is socially tabooed for the reason that the blunt indi- vidual has his or her own proportionate degree of misconcep- tion along with the rest of us. Hypocritical smoothing of the ways in a spirit of honest conciliation belongs to the social expert. It brings condemnation only when employed selfishly and unwisely. Generous hypocrisy is altruistic in its humane motive. Contradiction in terms does not necessarily mislead us, be- cause we can make intelligence rise superior to any association 122 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS of ideas belonging to words. We say that a blackberry is red when it is green, or that a fly is biggest when it is little. We understand the term "full dress" for women as meaning not quite that. When the slit skirt has finally reached the opera box in a progressive style which leaves one leg entirely free, with a neat blue bow of soie de voile to fasten the drapery just above one hip, leaving the other leg modestly covered, the first wearer of that costume will be spoken of as over-dressed. Toxic intensification of natural misconception causes a pro- portionate degree of harm. Misconception is often a salient symptom of microbe poisoning of the physical brain cells. In such cases it leads to wrong views of life, to false accusations, and to as much discomfort as any other feature of any other intoxication may cause. If one feels hurt because of miscon- ception of his motives, let him take comfort from the fact that something was likely enough wrong with the physical brain cells of the other party,— that the other party was helpless in the presence of a misconception and deserving of sympathy. Do not confirm your own misconceptions in this way. If one can have a sufficiently good sense of humor, miscon- ception will take its turn in various compensations. Picture Culver and me returning from caribou shooting in Quebec. The time of Thanksgiving was approaching. I said to Felix, our guide, "Culver and I are going home, where we can have some turkey. You don't know what that is." And this was about the resulting conversation : "O, by gar ! je sais bien-ze turkey." "You don't have them around here, Felix?" "O, oui, r have the one." "Did you raise him yourself ?" "Cer- tainement! Je I'ai eleve par la queue." "No! What I mean is, is it a tame turkey or a wild turkey?" "Wild? Mais qu'il est diable sauvage!" "But, Felix, you do not understand. What I mean is did you raise him or catch him in the woods?" TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 123 "Je I'ai trouve dans la savane." "Now, Felix, we are getting somewhat mixed. You say you found the turkey, that it is a wild one, that you raised him yourself, and you lifted him up by the tail. I do not know yet whether it was a wild turkey or a tame one." "You come on my house noW and je vous le montrerai, et ma femme he cook it si vous restez till to-mor- row." We went over to Fehx's house and there, sure enough in the pen was his capture. I asked, "Felix, what kind of a turkey do you call that?" "It ees un snopple turkey," he replied. The insane on parole who are not likely to commit any desperate act are sometimes more dangerous, and cause more suffering than if they were plainly insane from the lay point of view. There is an insidious activity of the mind, commonly aimed at relatives upon whom they are dependent for support. While attacking these friends they often find sympathy among people who do not know. There is commonly a hatred toward people who are nearest to them, and who in a spirit of noble self-sacrifice are doing the most for them. Some years ago I was begged by the family of an old friend to take him to a certain asylum, at a time when he had an "attack" of insanity. They told me that he had locked himself in his room and had in some way come into possession of a loaded revolver arid would shoot anybody who tried to take him to the asylum. Upon our arrival at the asylum attendants found that he had two loaded revolvers with him. Now this sounds like part of the history of an extremely dangerous individual. Furthermore, he really might have shot me or any one of his family or some of the officials, yet such harm would have been little worse than the harm which he did for years, at times when he was considered to be safe and sane. He was a man of highly cultivated mind and of most attractive 124 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS personality, with a wide range of learning which had secured for him a large group of admirers. At times when he was "sane," many of his suspicions and misconceptions still re- maining, were mingled with brilliant rational reasoning in such a way that he misled hundreds of people into believing that members of his family were guilty of outrageous conduct. His influence as a whole, at times when he was "harmless," I consider to have been more harmful than at the times when he threatened to be harmful. This would not be looked at in the same way by laymen, most of whom recognized the rational part of his mind as something so excellent that his incidental delusions were included as correct A'iews belonging to a rational mind also. One reason why a similarity between stages of insanity cycles and other intoxications has not been obser\-ed, is be- cause the patient seems to need treatment only when in the depressive stage in the milder forms of the insanities. He is first seen and studied in that stage as a rule, and his euphoric stage is considered to be nothing more than his normal state. There are some cases, however, in which depression is the only feature observed at any time, and this may relate to cases in which we have some special additional microbe at work. An official in an institution for the treatment of psychoses and neuroses said to me that his institution really needed a special department for stomach diseases, because their patients had so much stomach and bowel trouble. He was beginning to have a glimmer of new light. If the officials of this insti- tution were to add a department for the study of stomach troubles it would not suffice. They would have to add one specialty after another, and still not be comprehensive enough when planning to treat psycho-neuroses. A special institution founded with the idea of giving special treatment to a class of patients of this sort would be found in the end to belong to TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 125 the general practitioner and to no one else, excepting as he chose to employ experts. Ordinary nervousness frequently depends directly upon microbic influence. There are two essential factors causing nervousness, — (i) An enfeebled nervous system, vi^ith or without specially sensitized cell protoplasm, (2) An irritation, this latter coming from without. Irritating toxins come from without and have a positive effect upon cells which are not able to protect themselves sufficiently well. Nervousness is not inherent in any character of the nerves themselves, but depends upon an external agent in relation to their quality. Abrams says that the tale of every neurasthenic may be written in four chapters, i. The sins of the fathers. 2. The birth of a neurotic. 3. Struggle for existence on deficient nerve capital. 4. A bankrupt nervous system. This author is almost right, but we need to elaborate a bit on the meaning of the word "sins." Sin has to include the idea of a great many involuntary as well as voluntary infractions of health laws. It has to include the unwisdom of reading in bed when one needs sleep, — of eating food which does not digest well, — of neglecting exercise which is required for keeping all of the muscles of the body in good action. It means neglect to estabhsh regular habits of oxidizing tissues. In other words, sin must be used in a physical sense rather than in a theological sense, and must include worry and fear quite as much as it includes abuse of alcohol and the contracting of certain diseases. In fact, the harmless sins outweigh all others in harmful influence because of their more frequent propor- tionate occurrence. My statement would be much like that of Abrams but leaving out "sins of the fathers." A family runs along for 126 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS two or three hundred years perhaps, maintaining good mean type — its variants not far removed. Suddenly a variant ap- pears who becomes great. Nature sets protoplasmic limita- tions upon the descendants of that variant. Sometimes this is evinced in the first generation, sometimes not so quickly, but eventually there are neurasthenic children, who may be beautiful characters or criminals. They stop breeding and all is well for the race. They furnish material for novelists who ask "What are we coming to?" Whenever any one asks "What are we coming to?" he must remember that it is only the Elims who bring up this question. Mean type people are to ask instead, "When are we coming to?" and "When shall we be wide enough awake to understand the question as a whole?" One is to remember that the mean type individuals are finer in quality and larger in number every year among men of a progressing nation. Nervousness comes wholly from without. That must be understood. It is not due to anything inherent in the nerves themselves. The nerves themselves are only the unresisting responders to an outside influence which disturbs them like smoothing their fine ends with a rough brush. Sometimes the brush which is employed for smoothing nerve cells is caffein, sometimes a microbe toxin, sometimes ordinary waste mate- rials, but the latter probably stand in third place of influence. Let us take for instance a case of brushing of nerves with the toxins of la grippe. If the individual drinks much tea or cofifee at the time of his attack, his nerves are still more brushed. If he rests quietly in bed, more waste materials are stored up than before, but he has less nervous irritability. Therefore we may assume that in this particular disease toxins brushed the nerve cells first, caffein brushed them next, and waste materials brush them least of all. When people become excessively nervous through overwork or wrong methods of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 127 work to the point where noises or actions of people cause unpleasant response, we assume that nerve cells were first brushed by toxins, and noises and actions of people were simply like a sprinkHng of pepper in addition, coming as a secondary incident. We might as well say that a cough was caused by opening the door. The draught of air from the open door was simply a precipitating cause, the microbic cause being there previously, ready to make response. Neurotics are people with exaggeration of certain normal characteristics, not different from other people excepting in their difficulty in adapting themselves to surroundings. Neurotic response to external impression is due to abnormal sensitization of cell protoplasm. Sometimes this is rapidly acquired by the individual after severe illness or mental shock which causes loss of control of protective organs, and allows microbe toxins to sensitize cell plasm abnormally. More often, however, the neurotic represents inherited cell deficiency en- tailed by parents whose protoplasm was injured by toxins, and who did not transmit normal cell gifts to their children. The neurotic individual makes exaggerated response to ex- ternal stimuli because of his highly sensitized protoplasm. He may or may not have great physical strength. The neuras- thenic, on the other hand, is the neurotic who expends so much energy in responding to external stimuli that his general health is enfeebled. All neurasthenics are neurotic, but not all neurotics are neurasthenics. They may in fact give much attention to their health, and develop an astonishing degree of strength. The neurotic habit and its neurasthenic stage represent dif- ferent degrees of disturbance of the chemical balance of the body. One reason why we associate the idea of neurotic habit with the idea of weakness so commonly is because the victims 128 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS engage our attention particularly when they reach the neuras- thenic stage. \\'e may find an individual who is sensitized by microbic toxins to such a point that he is out of harmony with all ordinary surroundings, and }'et with a physical strength in general which suffices for allowing him to keep a whole neighborhood in discomfort year after year. It is said by the unthinking that illness cannot be strength. This is said by people who have had no experience in trying to control the superhuman physical strength of a maniac or even of an alcoholic with delirium tremens. He has been weakened by excesses, and yet may not be subject to physical control by two individuals of much greater natural strength. His physical exertion is beyond that allowed by sane will. Who can control the mental strength of a paranoiac artist who draws spiritual angels or the most incomparably realistic witches and devils, with a depth of feeling which is seldom possible to a well man? Who can control the cyclothemic writer in either his euphoric or depressive stage when he is not amenable to ordinary influence of reason, and yet is displaying morbid strength in his writing? The emotional symptoms of neurasthenia are irritability, unreasonableness, bad humor much of the time, — or, at least, mercurial response, impetuousness and fault finding. The neurasthenic feels that everything must be changed and ex- hausts himself in efforts at changing everything. Outbursts of temper, and over-exertion in attempts at changing every- thing belong to a vicious circle, and leave the victim still more exhausted than before. Boys and girls with neurotic tenden- cies are sometimes so much brighter than others, that they cut out for themselves a place in life much larger than could be filled comfortably by people of vital or motive type and in bounding health. A neurotic is not necessarily a weakling. He may be the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 129 bravest, most courageous, and most active of lovable men, but his nerve balance is unstable. We are not to think of the neurotic or neurasthenic indi- vidual as being faulty through any lack of will power or lack of good intention. The most pitiful cases are observed in people of such high degree of culture that we know they would become well, not only for their own sakes but even more for the sake of other people, were it in their power to do so. Some of the sweetest and dearest characters of my acquaintance are carried in such sensitive and delicate physical constitutions that life-long solicitude and anxiety are imposed upon those who are nearest to them. There must be frequent medical attendance year in and year out, — ^very highly skilled medical attendance at that, — in order to keep these really precious members of society in their fields of usefulness. They repre- sent the penalties of over-civilization. It is not their fault. Pity is what we are to give rather than condemnation when they irritate us as much as they themselves are irritated by their cruel toxins. We are to think of them tenderly and sapiently, knowing that every one of them envies the rest of us who are brutally strong and who do not mind thorn bushes if we are able to hunt bears. Sensitiveness of the spirit depends upon sensitiveness of protoplasm, and sensitiveness of protoplasm is in general due to defective organic construction. The delicate sensitive soul may be quick as a fiddler crab at striking back in response to any imagined insult or injury. It is found most often among the Elims who possess very highly sensitized protoplasm entailed by progenitors. Display of sensitiveness occurs chiefly in those who are not enabled to make much headway against the external impressions of the world. This condition is not found to be valuable by winners of victories in friendship or in affairs, but is held to be desir- I30 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS able by some people of poetic or artistic temperament. The fact that it is not really desirable, even for people of poetic or artistic temperament, is shown in the balanced, well-poised character of some of our great popular artists, and men of deepest and finest feeling — men who do not strike back at supposed insults or injuries. The possession of a delicate sensitive soul is a call for sympathy. It has been produced through over-sensitization of protoplasm by microbe toxins and is mechanistic in character. Viewed from this standpoint we can extend our sympathy, even though the invalid mis- guidedly boasts of the possession of that sort of nature. A remarkable influence in science, art, and literature of the Tftorld has been wielded by people with hysteria major, — often by women in a trance condition. They have applied their morbidly sensitized protoplasm and their associative faculties to great problems with an insight which is beyond the comprehension of normal people. Yet normal people are the ones who conduct the affairs of the world for the most part, and who furnish healthy children subsequently, — something which the morbid seers cannot often do. It may be said wittily that if great insight belongs to hysterics, give us more hysterics and show us how to make hysterics of our children. No! Let the rose double when it must, but do not try to make every state, nation, and family one of doubling roses, because then the end is near. It is the bright flickering flash that we see before a light goes out, — and besides, the great majority of hysterics are not of special value to the world. Hysteria is not to be used as a term of reproach. It is simply a common form of demonstration of toxic sensitization of protoplasm. It is characteristic of the hysteric to deceive, to produce startling effects, to mystify and to remain con- cealed — all at the same time. Consequently the morbid but TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 131 brilliant insight of hysterics when projected into art, literature or religion has been enormously influential for both harm and good, although unobserved in its true light. Hysteria has been of value to the world through suggestion made to geniuses like Taine and Ribot by hysterics with whom they were asso- ciated. The logical mind of genius has often made use of the morbidly keen insight of hysteria, which latter would have failed at critical moments. Although the term hysteria is often thought of as a term of reproach, that idea is quite as brutal in its conception as the former brutality connected with the management of the more definite psychoses like mania. The hysteric is an object for sympathy. The psychosis when mild commonly responds to sharp command or to suggestion in many of its features. For that reason it has not been associated in lay minds with the idea of a definite psychosis. Hysteria steps to the fore when any propaganda which liberates much feeling is under way. Note its appearance in the woman's suffrage question for instance, interfering with real progress in that worthy cause. It may give clear insight and great activity in certain directions, yet at the same time its caprice is demonstrated in such a way as to cause a with- holding of public approval from its propaganda. The appear- ance of hysteria at the head of almost any rapidly developing movement has the effect of bringing about a responsive opposi- tion which prevents a subject from being developed too rapidly for purposes of stability. It is a question if the milder cyclothemias take first place among the unrecognized psychoses in literature, or whether hysteria stands first. Hysteria is far more common than cyclothemia, and its tendency toward causing self-expression in literature and art occurs more frequently on the whole, but there is a peculiar tendency for cyclothemia to cause expres- 132 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS sion in features suggesting genius. The public thinks of hysteria in its graver forms as a psychosis which can be recognized as such by any passer-by, yet the great majority of cases of hysteria are not recognized at all by any one except- ing the alienist. Hysteria is described in different ways by authors — for instance, as a state in which idea controls body and produces morbid changes in its functions. Some authorities trace all of its manifestations to disturbances in the psychic sphere. It is sometimes described as a special psychic state, capable of giving rise to certain definite dis- turbances which can be reproduced by suggestion, and removed by persuasion. All of these conceptions deal with the mental side, and make no reference to toxic influence in sensitizing the protoplasm up to a point where it makes "hysterical response" to impressions. Severe forms of hysteria which attract the attention of the public -are comparatively rare, but milder cases constitute perhaps the most common derangement of the brain and nervous system. While the majority of cases develop at about the age of puberty, indicating a toxic internal secretion influence relating to sex cells, hysteria may appear in childhood, at the second or third year of age. It dechnes rather rapidly after the twenty-fifth year of age, and is rare again after the forty-fifth year of age. It appears in all coun- tries among all races, and about equally in both sexes, although more often in the male of the lower classes and the female of the educated classes. It belongs to neuropathic families, and may represent an equivalent of other neuroses and psy- choses appearing in such families. In the predisposed sensitized individual some precipitating cause like fear, grief, or shock, may initiate hysteria. Emo- tional disturbance may precipitate the symptoms, but they likewise appear after many common illnesses. It is an asso- ciate of all diseases of the brain and spinal cord. It may TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 133 become epidemic or endemic, extending from the susceptible to others through imitation and strong suggestion, but when it becomes epidemic or endemic there is marked similarity in the cases. Imitation hysterias take on the type which is given by an individual who first develops the psychosis. In schools, if one or two hysterical individuals begin with uncontrollable laughter this laughter may extend, through the power of sug- gestion, to an entire school, and to an extent which sometimes necessitates closing of the school. Imitation-hysterics return to normal condition for the most part when the influence of suggestion is removed. The original suggestors, however, retain physical and mental characteristics belonging to their psychosis. Protracted religious meetings sometimes develop severe forms of hysteria, with muscle spasm or with the peculiar epidemic dance of St. Vitus. Mimicry of other kinds of disease is developed to a remarkable degree, and nearly all of us in the profession have been at one time or another deceived by hysterics who mimicked some other diseases — even though we were on guard against such deception. As a matter of fact, there is a certain bearing and manner belong- ing to hysteria which will allow one to suspect its presence when other diseases are being mimicked. Tests for stigmata then reveal the true nature of a case. An enlightened con- ception of the deception and simulation belonging to hysteria includes the idea that these victims do not always display this mental trait for purposes of pleasure or notoriety. Simu- lation and deceit sometimes have their origin in morbid mis- conception, in misconstrued impression, or from the failure of impression to reach the proper field of consciousness. Some hysterics appear to simulate purposely, and they have such craving for sympathy that diabolical plans are sometimes laid by them for the purpose of engaging sympathy. Deception by the hysteric represents a compensation. The 134 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS keen insight and remarlv-able scope of vision whicli these mor- bidly sensitized people sometimes have would lead us far astray were it not for our knowledge of their uncanny desire to deceive being a matter of classified fact. Hysteria most often appears in people of little physical resistance, although it may sometimes appear in people who are very well and strong physically and mentally (as the result of some profound emotion). The African spearmen who are lion hunters represent a very strong and courageous group; but after a thrilling kill of a lion, they are said often to go into an hysterical condition lasting for two or three days. Farmers whom I know to be strong rational men have gone into an hysterical condition after a protracted religious meeting, and they remained more or less irresponsible until one or two careless horse trades jarred them back into good adjustment again. People who are not strong physically and mentally may develop hysteria under far less stress. The optophone of d'Albe gives us a sound of light, and dis- tinguishes between various kinds of light by differences in sound. Sensitized protoplasm of the ear of an hysteric may allow that ear to make quite as delicate optophonic response, for all that we know, and it is a pity that morbid untruth is so peculiarly characteristic of the hysteric that we cannot receive acceptable testimony on such jjcjints. Very many of the lower forms of life among the infusoria and bacteria are able to produce light without heat, apparently by causing dissociation of elements which return to their original condition as soon as the stimulus ceases. This power occurs less often among higher plants and animals. Perhaps the leaf of a nasturtium and the special breast feathers of a heron may represent the highest organic structures in which light may be normally produced. Yet one cannot say that certain morbidly sensitized people may not dissociate elements TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 135 in such a way as to give effects which are recognizable by other morbidly sensitized people and by no one else. Among the trance mediums, for instance, some such process may per- haps be carried on. These people may be able to simulate a function which is common to lower forms of life, and it would be hardly more remarkable than the development of a neoplasm which represents increase of embryonic tissue due to lost chromosomes of cell nuclei. This feature of the subject is very interesting. If one could only study a medium who was not a fraud! The efficient ones among the mediums belong essentially to the group of people who present characteristics of major hysteria, and a constant feature of hysteria major is the spooky craving to deceive. This morbid craving to deceive, added to the peculiar power which really may be present, will always make it an extremely difficult matter to study trance mediums in a scientific way. After Madame Palladino was exposed no more clairvoyants or telepathists were brought forward for some time, but now we have Beulah Miller engaging attention. If she can be kept away from the people who force upon her mind spiritual- istic superstitions, automatic writing, table rapping, and other shop-worn inanities, the psychologists may have an oppor- tunity to study her high degree of susceptibility to subconscious noticing of unintended signs (using the expression of Muen- sterberg). This susceptibility could probably be proved if she were to show unusual facility in learning lip reading, as it is taught in schools for the deaf-mutes. There will be much difficulty, however, in keeping her from the influence of mystic minds which will flock about her, exerting their peculiar influence upon a mind particularly receptive to suggestion, and turning her footsteps toward the paths of fraud. One reason why the fakir and the insane genius have such vogue is because of the element of mystery, aside from its 136 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS positive note. We naturally turn to mystery, for the same reason that we turn toward the puzzle page of a magazine. The human mind, like the mind of the red squirrel, imme- diately changes itself into a bull's eye lantern in the presence of anything suggestive of a dark hole leading to unknown depths. Through all ages, fakirs in medicine, in philosophy, — and professional occultists — have cunningly made use of this natural desire for entering dark holes. The fakir does it as a means of livelihood. How are we to determine if a mystery is worth exploring or not ? Precisely as we know if a magazine puzzle is worth while or not ? It belongs to general experience, and the man of large experience bothers himself not at all about those mysteries which may engage breathless interest on the part of the ignorant. When we are tempted to put our heads into mystery let us take care that we do not smother. Descend into mystery with all the caution of descending into an old well or an unused mine. Value there may be, but there are also noxious smother- ing vapors. Step by step, as the old miner tests his way when descending into the mine; step by step the trained scientist tests his way into mystery, not stepping in boldly and becom- ing lost. The love of mystery is after all only another ex- pression of the instinct which is shown in scientific curiosity. There is simply a difference in the form of expression. In the one case the ignorant, the ill, and the untrained plunge headlong into darkness, going into the woods without knowing the paths, and becoming more and more bewildered, while the scientist follows as his light certain landmarks which are already in the landscape, blazing a trail as he proceeds so that safe retreat will be facilitated — or that others may follow and widen the path. The love of mystery is after all more or less morbid, for those of us in touch with real things have our minds and hands so fully engaged with real things that life is TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 137 filled and satisfactory. There are few college bred people among those who are given to seriously patronizing palmists, mystics, mind readers, fortune tellers and spiritualists, although senile and psychotic changes occur among all classes. For the present I believe telepathy to be nothing but re- sponse to a form of suggestion. Among people who are well acquainted with each other, short range telepathy constantly occurs. A certain unconscious use of facial muscles belongs to a certain thought, and this when observed by a friend sug- gests the same thought to that friend. Both people may then at the same moment express the same idea in words. Lip reading by the deaf and dumb would seem quite as wonderful to a savage as telepathy seems to us. One reason why mysteries of premonition have been carried so far and have been given such importance, is because they are so frequently associated with the hysteric individual who has the characteristic symptom of a morbid desire to deceive. Mysteries of personality also belong so commonly to this type of individual that we have to associate the two facts when taking into account all descriptions of their actions. Their sensitized protoplasm makes them amenable to suggestion in daily life quite as well as when they are in trance states. Disturbances of personality are not mere empty marvels, but seem to represent the influence of toxins upon a susceptible group of allergic people. In any event, a brief disturbance of personality seems to be nothing more than disturbance of metabolism. A seer takes note of the unusual. If he sees normally, his unusual belongs in normal category, and takes its proper place. If he sees morbidly his unusual belongs in morbid category. There are some features of telepathy which seem very close to the supernatural, but which may probably be explained 138 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS readily enough if one finds the factors. For instance, fear means antagonism — an antagonistic state of mind. I have one friend, a cultivated intelligent woman, who is intensely afraid of cows. If I start off across a field alone and pass through a herd, they barely look up. Some of them may do so, but immediately go back to feeding again. I can go through the field with this woman's daughter, who has little fear of cows, and they pay no attention. This particular woman not only immediately attracts the attention of cattle, however, but they run toward her menacingly and I have seen a cow trying to leap over the fence in order to get at her. Even when we are at a distance of many yards some one of the cows will become excited when she is near, and try to get at her. They seem to recognize some little movement unknown to me, or some attitude of fear which means antagonism, and they resent it, and try to destroy the fearful object. I am convinced that it is not telepathy, but some unconscious movement rather than any mysterious vibration of ether waves, which excites the cows. One reason for that belief is because I have watched people go among hives of bees without being afraid, and the bees remained docile. On the other hand, if an individual is afraid of them they are very apt to sting him. On one occasion, when watching a man who was afraid of bees, I saw a bee leave the hive by my side and go far out of its way to sting him, — and happened by chance to observe the reason. Some fly had come near him, and he had inadvertently made a quick motion toward the fly. Bees resent quick motions. They resent the quick switching of a horse's tail and often sting a quietly feeding horse on that account. In the case of bees we may eliminate any telepathy idea, but I do not yet understand about the cows and this woman. The explanation, no doubt, is simple enough if one can find it. Cows may see the fear in her eyes. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 139 The value of any one of the various spookyisms depends upon the percentage of verification by which claims may be substantiated. For instance, thought transference may be substantiated upon a one per cent, basis of verification and is therefore a cheaper affair than prophecy which commonly requires at least five per cent, of verification in order to estab- lish the reputation of any one prophet. Prescience, thought transference and premonition, when they are anything more than reflected light from things which are already stored in the subjective mind, seem at times to be due to abnormal action of brain molecules and sometimes to pure coincidence. I remember once in a certain village being told impressively about a mother who became very much alarmed about eleven o'clock in the morning, saying that her boy was drowning somewhere at that moment. As a matter of fact, the boy was really drowning at about that time. She had forbidden him to go off for a swim excepting with older boys, and whenever she found that he had disobediently gone for a swim with the younger boys she customarily imagined that he was drowning. On this particular morning, suddenly finding that he was gone from the house with the younger boys, she surmised as usual that he was drowning. This one time when she spoke about it was remembered and con- sidered to be prescience by the neighbors because of the fact of the drowning. If one hundred mothers every day have a premonition that their sons are drowning there will be plenty of witnesses to state that the mother was correct in case one of the boys does drown. The incident will become a matter of common con- versation, and a great deal will be made of the story, while the other ninety-nine cases will be forgotten. Miracles, mysteries, snakes and fish, all have what we might call special building value for stories, just as certain kinds of lath have special I40 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS building value for ceilings. Whenever one of these subjects is brought forward in conversation we have to bear in mind our knowledge of its known building value. The mystery editor of this morning's newspaper has pub- lished a note relating to a woman who actually saw wings emerging from the mouth of a man who had just passed away. This is stated very, very seriously, and is intended to give the impression that his soul is what she saw flying away on such matter-of-fact structure as real wings. There is no question but she actually did see wings, because sight refers to a sub- jective brain impression as well as to things actually mirrored upon the retina. The disturbed brain which ordinarily retains retinal images may be so stimulated by intense thought as to place other images upon the retina, and under these circum- stances the individual is perfectly sincere in stating that the things were seen, for they were seen. Deep emotion, alcohol, morphine, and other drugs may produce hallucinations of sight. The alcoholic actually sees green lizards and snakes upon the floor. The patient who is responding to certain morphine effects actually sees a man standing at the foot of the bed when the man is not there at all. The self-hypnotized crystal gazer observes in his globe of glass a column of march- ing soldiers. They enable him to predict coming war. All of these things are clearly seen, but they represent only a certain cerebral state of the observer. Images have been actually placed upon his retina from behind by disturbed brain cells. These are quite as real to him as images placed upon the retina from in front. The imaginative child actually "sees things." No doubt the recent sinking of a fishing boat in the English Channel by a Russian warship was due to the fishing boat actually appearing to be a hostile war ship upon the retina of officers who were strongly impressed with a need for watchfulness. When one TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 141 man shoots another for a deer in the woods, it is probable that the image of a deer has appeared from the brain side (from behind) upon the retina of an over-eager sportsman, in re- sponse to suggestion made by movements of bushes. If that is the case, the law which places a very high fine or penalty upon the offence of shooting a doe will not be wholly effective in saving human life. The idea of instituting such a law was to oblige men to stop before they fired in order to see whether the object was really a buck deer or some other animal altogether. The fine for shooting a doe was intended to make the hunter sure that he really saw a buck deer. If the image of a buck deer with antlers appears upon the retina of an over-eager sportsman, no matter what animal excites the brain impression, human life will continue to be sacrificed every year through men being mistaken for deer. I have sometimes questioned if one may not place upon his auditory centres from behind the same impression that would be made by an extrinsic influence. At one time while I was in college a mad dog ran through Ithaca, biting a number of dogs and other animals, some of which developed the disease later. When reading up on the subject I was impressed by the statement of one habit of a rabid dog, to seek dark secluded places for hiding during some phases of the disease. One night, when returning late to my apartment, which was reached through a long, dark hallway, I heard a peculiar sound of heavy breath- ing near the door. It was impossible because of the darkness to discern what sort of visitor might be there, and as I cau- tiously approached the door, a strange dog got up from beneath my feet and shuffled slowly toward the stairway, making a low hoarse cry. My door was closed before very long. Several rabid dogs were killed at about that time, but later knowledge of the effects of strong imagination has caused me to wonder if there really was a dog at my door. 142 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS So far as human testimony could go there was a peculiar sort of dog in an unusual place that night, and doing just what mad dogs do when they are in the hiding mood. Images of relatives are often placed upon the retinas of searchers at the morgues, so strongly that attendants have to be constantly on guard against false identification of people who have lost their lives. The newspapers recently told of a case in which a woman identified the body of a drowned man as that of her husabnd, and went to considerable expense to have him buried as well and securely as she thought proper. When the husband turned up a week or so later, angry at the mistake, there was a separation, and the wife later sued him for the burial expenses. Sincere members of the clergy have actually seen liquefac- tion of the blood of St. Januarius, which is said to occur on a certain date, but a French bishop has recently placed a ban on manifestation of the Miracle of the Bleeding Heart in the chapel of a certain abbey. It was claimed that a priest origin- ally noticed that an ordinary effigy of the Sacred Heart affixed to the wall near the altar exuded drops of blood, and this miraculous bleeding has continued up to the present time as the famous "Bleeding Heart of Poitou." Thousands of pil- grims have been attracted to the shrine and they were cured (by suggestion) of many ailments when touched by the miraculous blood. Subscriptions flowed in from many quar- ters, and a good trade was done in postal cards, photographs, and strips of linen colored with blood. Day and night masses were celebrated before the marvelous object. The present Bishop of Poitieres, however, has asked to have this miracle cease. The flow of blood dried up when the miraculous object was temporarily removed. In this latter case, the bishop apparently believes that some liquid was employed which simulated blood and caused deception of people whose TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 143 retinas actually received a primary impression of seeing blood. In the case of the blood of St. Januarius, there is not a primary retinal impression of liquefying blood, but the retina receives that impression from brain cells which are stimulated by the psyche to place an earnestly wished-for impression upon the retina. The retina in such a case actually sees liquefaction of blood quite as well as if liquefaction really occurred and produced a primary retinal image. A priest who sees the liquefaction of blood is to be praised for devoutness which leads to a wish of that degree of strength. The spiritualist actually sees departed friends. The negro who is fearful when approaching a graveyard in the full of the moon in order to secure the left hind leg of a rabbit, actually sees a ghost. The negro sees the kind of ghost that he was expecting to see. The spiritualist sees and hears what he is expecting to see and hear, instead of obtaining really new information. We are not to doubt the seriousness of people who tell us that they are seeing ghosts or talking with dear ones who are departed. We are simply given to under- stand the depth of their feeling in wishes or in fears, and this is often extremely pathetic. If such phenomena are held by honest people to represent truth, we may readily understand how many honest people have misconceptions following almost any strong wish or belief. Is it possible that during a stage of intense self hypnotism the body cells produce material which is destructive to certain poisons? The Mohammedan fanatic who is about to swallow living scorpions, on the occasion of a certain rite, goes into a peculiar physical state. His eyes become glassy with a fixed stare. He froths at the mouth and makes strange noises and movements. Scorpions are then dropped alive into his mouth by a priest. Apparently one of three things must happen. Either the priest sapiently pinches the tail of each scorpion 144 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS and renders it gentle, or the fanatic may be temporarily im- mune against scorpion poison, or he may really suffer and sometimes die as a result of being stung. Scorpion poison being alburninous is digested harmlessly in the stomach, but those of us who are familiar with the habits of this terrible arachnid know how viciously and impetuously it lashes with its tail, driving the sting deeply into any soft tissue within reach. Poison injected into tissue of the mouth or oesophagus of a man would commonly produce profound effects instantly. I imagine that the priest is a wise man, but two other possibilities may be taken into consideration. Man is not yet permitted to give a general definition of energy. He can only say that in any physical phenomenon there is something which remains constant. If ethereal waves may be excited by electrical action to the point of making response across the Atlantic Ocean, as in wireless messages, one might believe that telepathy to some degree may exist. Ethereal waves are hypothetically set in motion by thought, and the process of thought is really accom- panied by a discharge of neuricity. So far as my personal experience goes, however, the people who are most expert at telepathy have a tendency to globus hystericus, and other com- mon features that include the morbid desire to deceive, conse- quently I must exclude this group altogether when considering the value of testimony. Then again I have seen skilful magicians doing everything that is claimed for telepathy, and admitting there was deception. We may say that some of the demonstrations which are made by trance mediums are really supernatural in the sense of being abnormal, but so long as all of the best exponents — all of the best mediums, have without exception been trapped in deceit, we must be cautious about believing that any of their manifestations are supernatural TO-MORROW'S TOPICS i45 excepting as meaning abnormal. The elder Hermann offered a thousand dollars for any supernatural manifestation which he could not reproduce on the stage. I would like to feel the pulse of every telepathist and note if it runs thirty or forty beats in good rhythm without dropping a beat. If it does drop a beat, I do not care about testimony from that individual. Madame Palladino admitted deceit when caught at it, but said that it was simply added for the purpose of interesting investigators. Her statement was not made until after the deceit had been detected however. Tyndall discovered that ants were always singing while at work. He noted that particles of dust upon a microscopic slide across which an ant ran, were thrown into concentric circles. He recognized these as wave lengths belonging to musical sound. Subsequent experiments with the apparatus for detecting character of sound proved this to be true. Ants are always singing at their work. Songs of ants are not appreciated by the drum membrane of man. The pitch is too high for our ears. I can readily conceive however of a trance medium whose auditory apparatus protoplasm is so highly sensitized by toxins that it would respond to vibrations of a singing ant, or sensitized olfactory apparatus responding to vibrations of the sort which are detected by a hound's nose at the place where a fox has passed many hours before. Trance belongs essentially to the group of psychic disturbances in which we find coincident hysteria. The protoplasm of the hysteric is so highly sensitized that he can sometimes present phenomena which are entirely beyond our general comprehen- sion, and his acts belong to the miraculous unless we can place the phenomenon upon some such ground as that of allergic sensitization. The individual in trance may be able to "suppress the image" of ordinary impressions upon his ordinary protoplasm by an 146 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS effort of the will, and then respond only to the impressions upon his allergic protoplasm. The partridge flutters on the ground and pretends that you can catch her if she fears that you are too near her young. She is untruthful. When we get too close to nature's secrets she sets prescience, telepathy, miracles, and that sort of thing to make one think that she can be captured. By the time when a tale relating to prescience, telepathy, or miracles has reached the third party, it is practically all falsehood. Nature then, sends untruth to lead us astray from some of her precious treasures of science at this callow part of our Christian cultural period, just as the partridge leads us away from her treasures if we threaten to catch them when they are too young. There is really something in the subjects of prescience, premonition, and telepathy, but it does not come out in the telling, any more than one obtains the meat of an untruthful partridge. Such phenomena are demonstrated in the highest degree among those who are most highly sensitized by toxins, having lost some of their protection. These people belong to the doubling rose group of people, who for the most part have feeble children or none at all. One would hardly think of a trance medium as the parent of healthy children. As a group they seem to belong to the ends of families. The best exponents of spooky subjects attract one's atten- tion very much like the flame of a lamp that is going out, flashing and flickering without giving any steady light for direction. The extension of faculty which is exhibited during some trance states is puzzling unless we place the trance people as a class in the allergic group. That will allow us to dispose of any supernatural feature. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 147 Sometimes through grief or some sudden illness people lose partial control of their protective organs. Enteric bacteria then develop, sensitize protoplasm, and take charge of mental processes. Spiritualism or some other form of mysticism develops as a sequence. The toxins which cause spiritualism or any kind of mysti- cism among educated people of the Occident are very apt at the same time to cause spasm of capillaries, giving to the face a pallor that we associate with many habits of thought which are toxic in origin. Mysticism may be described as toxic clouding of sensitized protoplasm. It represents inability to concentrate thought, or to allow of clear mental action, and is due to weakness of the higher cerebral centres. It is apt to appear late in life as one result of senile changes which are caused by the indol group of toxins. Mysticism among the educated is a symptom, like backache, and is not an entity of intellect. Abundant exercise and food will often relieve mysticism, or even a bad case of spiritualism, when toxins which are clouding cell protoplasm become suffi- ciently oxidized. Excessive religious feeling may also be a sign of abnormal psychology, toxic in origin. It does not appear very often in the young; — consequently it is difficult for us to know when normal religious feeling begins and ends. We are aware of the fact that in many cases it increases relatively in proportion to the increase of enteric toxins. The mystic's peculiar nearness to God, and his conscious- ness of personal relations with the eternal seem to be due to this clouding of his cell protoplasm. He is unable to reason clearly and incisively because the cells of his brain have lost their "sharp edges." His mind slows up and seems to be close to the end of thought — the end of thought being a vapor- 148 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS ous expansion toward infinity. A series of tennis games, or a long mountain climb for a fortnight may so oxidize the toxins of a mystic, that he cannot be much of a mystic until he returns home and again lessens oxidation of cerebral lipoids through sedentary habits of Hfe. A famous and much loved sculptor recently died in the West under the treatment of a Chinese physician. I asked his New York doctor how it was that he went to a Chinese doctor. The answer was, "He had psoriasis. That apparently belongs to the allergic toxic group of diseases, and according to your theory it accounts for his peculiarities in selection of a physician. It was probably in response to that poisoning that he was fond of making a study of the occult. His was such a beautiful character that he sought in the occult a spiritual insight which he could not get from the real life about him. He needed the supernatural for developing his art concep- tions." This incident leads me back to the question if art conceptions which are inspired morbidly by toxins are really the ones which make for glory, no matter how beautiful the character of an artist may be. In associating with occultists the sculptor was associated with a poisoned class. He was among the influences which give us morbid estheticism, arti- ficial emotionalism (exaltation?), false pathos, exploitation of mysteries. In occultism we find the phenomenon of the clouded mind, the mind entering a fog. This clouding of the mind is typically pathologic, and belongs characteristically to the enteric group of toxins. Science might be described as the art of classifying demon- strable data. Art might be described as the science of demon- strating classifiable data. Mysticism representing illness has no place in normal science or in normal art. The mystic is uncomfortable, realizing that he is off his feet. The only experience of mine with mysterious things has TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 149 been apparent recognition of some friend who was passing. I have seen him clearly, but a moment later the real individual appeared. The first one was not he at all. This has occurred several times, and I had to find an explanation. Probably I had caught a glimpse of the real individual at some distance but without taking note. It made an impression upon my subjective mind sufficiently strong to invest a nearer passer-by with characteristics of that individual who had been uncon- sciously seen and placed upon the retina from the brain side. I presume this has occurred when I was engaged in working out some problem, and did not clearly see my friend in my conscious mind when he first appeared at a distance. The subjective mind however acted automatically, seized him, and placed his semblance upon another man who was passing. Mysticism will continue to increase for awhile, for the reason that we shall have more and more protoplasm sensitized by microbes. Before following the ideas of an enthusiast or any sort of an "ist," notice if he has facial pallor. Many fanatics and drug habitues are pallid because of toxic spasm of their capillaries. The capillaries of the brain are probably much like those of the face. If an anarchist is pallid it is because of a toxic condition which manifests itself in spasm of the facial capillaries, — indicating morbid brain action as well. His faulty cenesthesia is ascribed by him to extrinsic social causes, when he really depends upon his own internal chem- istry. When considering a question apparently so remote from the microbe as the type of mind of anarchists, we have to inquire into the character of their ductless glands. Only two anarch- ists have ever come under my close observation, and both were men with distinct evidence of ductless gland defect. One of the anarchists had symptoms of chronic hyperthy- ISO TO-MORROW'S TOPICS roidism, the other stated to me that some of his pelvic ganglia had never made any demonstration of their presence. Both men w^ere w^ell known in the anarchist colony. They were violent, intense and vehement in manner, and on one occasion, when at a meeting, I noted the large proportion of pallid faced people in the audience. It was the pallor belonging to spastic contraction of capillaries, due to toxic over-stimulation. I do not know what proportion of people in that particular audi- ence were anarchists, or if some of the more ruddy-cheeked members were not anarchists also, but both of these men whom I happened to know personally were so pallid and defective, that their anarchy would seem to belong among the microbe demonstrations. Napoleon had habitual spasm of the right shoulder. His absence of moral sense, his impulses and illusions of mega- lomania, belong under the classification of what we know as psychic epilepsy. When we speak of Napoleon and Jeanne d'Arc as repre- sentatives of toxic cell injury, sceptics say, "Give us more of these crazy people of the same sort." Wait a moment. The world does not need them most of the time. When the time is ripe for people to suppress the image of interfering tradition in order to serve the state in a great way, then nature will bring forward such a leader. He may be healthy or ill, as a genius. Ignorance plus strong will, may be quite as effective as education plus strong will at such times. If an ignorant peasant girl like Jeanne d'Arc hears the needs of her country talked about in the market place, her mind may become concentrated upon the subject in such a way as to suppress the image of all obstacles to action. If she happens to be a psychotic with great natural executive ability, she may go straight to a method for serving the state, suppressing all conflicting tradition images the more readily on account of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 151 her ignorance. The hallucinations of hearing which furnished directing voices for Jeanne d'Arc were symptomatic of mental derangement which allows all energy to be concentrated upon some fixed idea. What is a dream ? Stir a paddle about in the sea at night, and observe the flashes of light from so-called phosphorescent animal forms. That apparently represents the nature of a dream. The paddle for a dream is often a toxin, and the flashing particles are emanations from a group of brain cells that have been stirred into activity. In the flashing of sea animals we occasionally outline perfectly the form of a jelly fish. In a dream we occasionally see objects very distinctly. The Mohammedan answers the question why we dream by saying that it is the will of God. That suffices. Higher up in the intellectual scale the Christian also says that we dream by the will of God, but in science we may take the question like all others directly back to the three physical entities for a beginning. Everything on earth, we say, is due to vibrations of energy, matter, and the ether. Matter in one form con- stitutes that part of brain cells belonging to the subjective mind. Let us imagine that these cells which are engaged with the subjective mind keep up a sort of constant harmonious humming while the objective mind vibrations strike a different chord. These brain-cell movements when combined during the day are expressed in the music of thought. At night vibra- tions of the normal objective mind subside altogether, while those of the normal subjective mind continue in rhythmic motion like the heart muscle at night. Microbe toxin sets the cells which are devoted to the objective mind to vibrating in disharmony whenever it causes partial awakening. The sub- jective mind responds, and disturbed memory then goes to humming, "remembering" in dreams many things that never 152 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS occurred. It likewise anticipates in dreams many things that will never come to pass. During sleep the objective mind refuses to respond normally to the poisoned cell players, but cells of the subjective mind may respond in the form of dreams. Dreams appear to result chiefly from toxic irritation of brain cells of the subliminal mind set, if we are to base our idea upon the frequency with which dreams are known to follow upon toxic impression. An unusual noise or a dis- tended hollow viscus will also act like toxin by stimulating certain nerves and arousing partial brain action during sleep. Nightmare develops from toxic impression so distinctly that some individuals know just what particular food will cause nightmare. Sleep is probably due to an automatic arrangement between the body cells. When the nerve cells expend their energy granules down to a certain point special hormones are then secreted, and messages are sent out from the chromaffin cells of the sympathetic ganglia, instructing all of the body cells to change their rate of vibration. Then we have sleep. A toxin or an unusual external impression breaking in during sleep plays upon these cells, and sets them to vibrating irregu- larly, — giving us dreams. Sleep is probably arranged auto- matically very much as the water level in a boiler is regulated by automatic devices. Neuricity is, I believe, a phase of elec- tricity and we may look upon sleep as a sort of automatic electric compensation process which is conducted by hormones. The Freudian cipher relating to the significance of dreams is not so cleverly drawn as are some of the Shakespeare- Baconian ciphers. His theory is everywhere clouded by elusiveness and diffusiveness of statement. So far as most of us have been able to take testimony, there is no essential difference between day dreams and night dreams. We use TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 153 the same materials from the conscious and subconscious mind in both cases, but night dreams are more of a jumble because we are pretty busy with sleep at that time and cannot lay our ideas out very straight. Dream wishes and wide-awake wishes are also similar in character, and the tests which Freud ap- plies for discovering hidden wishes in dreams if applied to normal waking consciousness would yield practically similar results. The working materials are about the same in both cases, variation being expressed in terms of quantity rather than in terms of kind. The dream has no special function, so far as Freud has given proof. The dream, some of us believe, is nothing more than a third-rate psychic process, and would not occur at all excepting for abnormal stirring of brain cells. There is the closest sort of relationship between our dream consciousness and our wide-awake consciousness. The complex of memories and thoughts, conscious and sub- conscious, in a most intricate weaving, appearing by day or by night, as the case may be, gives opportunity for any one who is at all clever, to construct a cipher which will mislead all who do not walk with a testing stick. Freud in his various studies is, on the whole, of great value when serving as a warning against the present-day tendency to extreme special- ization in study. He seems to have lost the sense of logical values, and plays the role of special pleader upon doubtful hypotheses. He minimizes or disregards unfavorable evidence instead of placing it in the structure, as would be done by men who make valid scientific advance. He builds monstrous and revolting structures upon a basis of shifting sand with the alertness of a paranoiac, using his obsession of sex as a rolling stone in the foundation. Freud asserts that each person's memory, if allowed to wander freely, may usually be counted upon to furnish the information which the examiner wants. H that method fails 154 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS the improved plan of Jung is employed. In the latter method the examiner makes use of word associations to remind a victim of what he should divulge. If the wandering mind and the prompting of Jung both fail, recourse is then had to a study of the dreams of the victim. Proper analysis of the real meaning of dreams is said to require the services of an expert, and I quite agree to that proposition. We are told that the science of dreams is so rich in meaning that no dream carries its full or true signifi- cance on its face. Each sign has to be translated by a master in this new study, or else we common folks who have to drag somehow would see nothing in it. When the Freuds are reminded that most dreams have no sexual features whatso- ever, but present only a jumble of ordinary impressions, they reply that these are symbols. The various animals which are seen in dreams are said to be symbolic for the animal passions. Rapidly moving trains, or running waters typify hurrying emotions, — they tell us. In dreams the lake or the bare land- scape are simply elements of a picture language as well defined as the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians to the Freudian mind. We are seriously informed that apparent data have to be absolutely reversed at times in order to be rightly understood. My response to all this would be that the symbols are quite as well defined as are the features of plants which were once used according to the doctrine of signatures. No more, no less! Making a parallel then to the doctrine of signatures the Freudian might say with his advanced idea — "A pinnate leaf may not look much like a liver, but if one is broad minded enough he will clearly understand that it looks like a liver badly out of order, and had it not been for sex in parents there never would have been any leaf or liver." The old adherents of the doctrine of signatures stopped far short of this, and saw only the features of plants which symbolized TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 155 parts of the body, or which suggested disease through some physical resemblance. The Freuds are more fanciful than the old adherents to the doctrine of signatures when they say it is not even necessary to have anything so plain as a plant signature in a dream. "Their experts can find a symbol for the signature, if the signature itself happens to be missing." A dream book that I once bought from an old darkey con- tained no more superstition than the dream theory of the Freuds, and it has the merit at least of stopping short of reversal of apparent data, for that indeed is the last straw. Freud ascribes great value to dreams, and studies the "mani- fest dream content" and the "latent dream content" in order to find the meaning of a dream. A person who has no dreams is consequently left out of consideration. The form of a dream varies with the kind of toxin or kind of external im- pression. Thus a dream from indigestible sausage (colon bacilli?) would be different from that of indigestible beans (capsulated bacilli?), — would be different from one following too much use of alcohol, — would be different from the dreams caused through irritation of sympathetic ganglia by over- distended hollow viscera, — would be different from stirring of cells of the subconscious mind by the first turn of the conscious mind just before awakening. If my understanding of Freud's theory is correct, one would have to experience all of these five different kinds of dreams in order to bring out five different instances of repressed memory of five occasions of being sexually shocked in childhood. When Towser lying before the fireplace whines in his sleep, growls, wags his tail, or awakens suddenly and looks about for the rabbit which he has seen in his sleep, I wonder what early sexual aggression has disturbed the poor dog. Is the rabbit symbolic of a sexual shock received by Towser when he was a pup ? The good old dog is in trouble from the effects iS6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS of culture to which man subjects his pet. In consequence he suffers from rheumatism, eczema and other metaboHc hitches, and now, last of all, must bear like a man the Freudian analysis of his dreams. Freud constructs a metaphysical theory after the fashion that was characteristic of German method in the early half of the nineteenth century. He gives evidence of a morbid tendency to over-emphasize the potency of erotic influence in all of our experience, and the results of this preconception lead him into disgusting explanations. He insists that prac- tically all dream wishes have origin in early sexual aggres- sions. What can be more morbid than his explanation of dreams which picture the death of beloved parents. He fails to use the dream as a proof that the dreamer wishes a parent dead at the present moment, but his theory concludes that the dreamer has wished a parent dead at some time in childhood. The antagonism of children to parents who punish them is made to explain some of these death dreams, but Freud wishes to account for the larger proportion of them on the basis of infantile erotic influences. "The man dreams of the death of his beloved father because in childhood he had felt sexual attraction toward his mother and had wished for the death of his father, who was his effectual rival." According to this idea the explanation can apply only to dreams in which the dead parent is of the same sex as the dreamer, and Freud forgets to explain how it is that dreams quite as frequently refer to parents of the opposite sex. Freud and Breuer had a case of hysteria in which the patient fancied, or perhaps actually did detect a cause for self re- proach. This had led, like other emotional disturbances, to the development of hysteria in that particular case. Confes- sion led to the sort of recovery that might have occurred at a Roman Catholic confessional. Freud, however, tried to con- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 157 struct a whole system upon this case as a basis. He assumed that various obsessions, hysterical and others, had their origin in some sexual aggression of childhood. Obsessions, he says, are evolved from suppression of the memory of reproaches having sexual origin. In other words, memory of the sexual action being repulsive, is suppressed. Let us say that Freud or Jung can take a given case of hysteria, or a given criminal, and by laborious and tedious analysis make an interesting association of concealed facts and hidden characteristics of the mind in these two particular individuals. Very well, how about the next case, and the one after that, and another one? Ah, there's the rub. Failures are not recorded by Freud and by Jung, because these failures are uninteresting to them. Ergo, their success is interesting as a sort of curio of psychism in the cases in which it really occurs. Their successes cannot be reported as representing principles for support of a system unless general application can be made, and unless failures are carefully recorded and reported. They must account for psychoses, — hysteria par- ticularly, in a class of patients who have never been aware of any sexual aggression, in fact, who consider any sexual experience in the light of luck rather than as shock. Then there are the feeble minded, who have various psychoses, and who probably have not been more impressed by early experi- ence than by experiences of the moment, all of which seemed to them to be pleasant. The psychoses in these people have to be accounted for by Freud, or his system falls and belongs among the curiosities, like the fat man at the circus or the woman with a beard, who are really present in side shows. Let us consider the case of Simple Sam, whom I have known during his entire life time in a certain village. He is feeble- minded, but manages to keep occupied at various jobs, ex- cepting when some occasion like election or a fire leads to the 158 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS development of hysteria. Sexual experiences of various sorts have dated from his childhood, but all of these he has looked upon as luck rather than as shock. Now, if we are to leave out Towser and Simple Sam because they do not quite fit into the Freudian theory, where are we to stop leaving out instances in a system which must be like a wheel ? A wheel cannot bear weight when even two spokes and the corresponding part of the felloe are missing. That wheel is simply a plaything for the boys, looking very much like a whole wheel if the missing part is immersed deeply in mud (deep sexual idea). When such vital parts of a "system" are missing it has to be carried as "an abstract wheel-in-the-head." Freud states that he found individual forms of hysteria to disappear whenever he aroused in the patient a memory of some sexual event which was causal in relation to development of symptoms, and when the patient gave verbal explanation for the emotion. He calls his treatment a catharsis of repressed emotions. He later retreated from his first position of belief in an aggression dating from childhood, and now places it at some time after puberty, but projected back into childhood. That indicates to my mind the instability of his basis, which is still more unstable if we consider the thousands of men and women with psychoses who have never suffered any feeling of shame from childhood to adult life either with or without cause for shame. What is to be done in order to bring unshocked cases under the Freudian theory? H we leave out all of the people with obsessions who have never had any feeling of shame, with or without cause, from childhood up to adult life, then the whole system falls to the ground as a system. The method of treatment may remain to play a small role in providing means for treating a few people who happen to be proper subjects. These people are still subjects for pity, both before and after treatment. Freud thinks that motives of shame TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 159 have resulted in repression of the consciousness of certain experiences, which then became subconscious. He traces the cause of repression inevitably into the field of sexuality, and makes this embrace not only shame, but also parental and filial affection, — and all sex experiences and perversions. His con- tention is that the motive for repression having been dis- covered the patient can then reestablish a normal mental atti- tude toward the circumstance. Its train of symbols is sup- posed to disappear. In psychanalysis both physician and patient assume an ex- pectant attitude of mind. The doctor believes, and the patient is involuntarily led to believe, that a cure of the phobia will follow when a sexual "trauma or repression" has been re- vealed. The more revolting an incident which is unearthed the greater his power to cure. Freud requests the patient to allow herself to drift aimlessly in her communication with him, and to speak of everything that comes into her mind. She is not to suppress any thought or idea on the ground that an idea happens to be shameful or painful. The very statement of this wish on the part of a physician would at once suggest to the mind of almost any woman the idea of concentrating attention upon some shameful or painful experience as meaning just what he was after. Among patients of hysterical temperament (and perhaps others) the desire to please or to surprise the doctor would certainly at times lead to the giving of misinformation, or in any event to dispro- portionate statement. Such statements when seized upon by the doctor would be dove-tailed into his preconceived notion, and he would then by suggestion lead the patient according to his personal hypnotic or suggestive ability. The methods of Freud do not have the merit of "at least being harmless." We are beginning to hear of many cases of distressing mental perturbation on the part of patients who i6o TO-MORROW'S TOPICS were subjected to unsuccessful attempts at extracting a con- fession about unfamiliar subjects. Suffering of an indignity- is a phenomenon which is inseparable from the mental sex mauling of practically every individual who is subjected to Freudian search. Nothing is said about shame and upheaval of the emotions as a final result of the treatment. How about that? The Freudian method may suggest sexual occurrences which never occurred at all. One of my patients said to me that what she had told the psychanalyst was not true at all, and she did not know why she had told him such things. Freud suggests to his patients what he wants to get, and then gets it, — therefore his method does not differ essentially from other suggestive methods. Just why a patient should be able to reestablish a normal mental attitude and to go forth rejoicing after a true confession or after a misstatement of fact suggested by the doctor, is to be explained on one ground only. It is to be explained on the ground of continued suggestion of the idea of rejoicing, and such an idea will be good so long as it holds out. In this respect the Freudian system is not different from Christian Science. In the one case the system of suggestion is artificially constructed upon a hypothetical basis of sex. In the other case — Christian Science — the method of sugges- tion is also artificially constructed and maintained, but upon a hypothetical basis of mind. According to the monistic unity doctrine Christian Science would give better results than Freudian treatment, because mind is more deeply fundamental than sex. It includes consideration of First Cause and the sexless amoeba, while sex is nothing more than a convenience belonging to some of the later plans of First Cause. Freud takes the mind no further back than to sex, whereas Christian Science takes it all the way back to First Cause. Freud then is more superficial than Christian Science. The more deeply TO-MORROW'S TOPICS i6i fundamental the origin of function, the higher may we con- struct a building of logic, because of the deeper and stronger base. My observation of the practical results of Freudian treatment justifies the idea of this deeper base being the safer and stronger. Christian Science people are far happier, more lovable and cheery than the Freudian products as a whole, as I have observed them. Both classes of patients, however, carry the manner and presence of people who are under the influence of suggestion from a source which lies outside of their own wills. Before many years have passed we shall be developed to a point where people are taught to avoid acquiring one morbid condition in the hope of overcoming the effects of another morbid condition. At the present time Christian Science, Freud, alcohol and caflfein are all alike in the sense that they relieve the stress of one morbid condition by introducing another morbid condition in its place, the latter being more agreeable. It is a matter of alternative only. Christian Science is milder in application, and agreeable to a greater number of people than is Freud. Cafifein is milder in its influence, and agreeable to a greater number of people than is alcohol ; ergo, in the absence of a satisfactory hygienic alternative for morbid conditions I would prescribe for psychotic patients, tea and Christian Science, rather than alcohol and Freud. Under a proper system of eugenics which is to be developed, and is even now developing rapidly, we shall have fewer and fewer people with morbid conditions which require such alternatives for securing comfort. All of this sick-head Freud pother has been taken up seri- ously because of the natural attraction of men toward the sound of a brass band of deep thinking. Men in their egotism naturally like to keep step to this, without observing that the drum major himself is often walking backward. It may per- 1 62 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS haps seem out of place for a surgeon to devote so much atten- tion to the subject of Freud, but the latter represents, in the field of medicine, an influence which is directly opposed to the new scientific methods of to-day. The contrast makes him as large a figure as Satan in opposition to the Angel of Light. He represents the worst features that we have had to combat in that new progress in medicine which was first made by surgeons following the new era of Virchow. The system of Freud, like philosophy or religion, represents educational conviction rather than scientific method. Upon observing the men who have become interested in Freud I note that he appeals more to those who have taken a course in arts at college than to those who took a course in science. A system of this sort is attractive to those who are com- monly known as learned men, and men who are proud of that distinction. The scientist knows better than to allow himself to be classified as a learned man if he can avoid it. There are too many things which the learned man knows that are not so. The true scientist abhors the idea of being called "learned." Psychanalysts believe that complex conditions of modern life make it more and more difficult for people to handle their fundamental instincts. If the nature and effect of funda- mental instincts can be shown, people are then supposed to be enabled to manage these instincts more intelligently. A sur- geon would assume, however, that a lame man having been shown why he was lame would walk no better than before, unless he continued to be supported by a crutch. When the psychanalyst lets go of the brain of somebody who has become badly mixed up in the application of his instincts, the surgeon believes that such an individual will soon be in trouble again. Another long and tedious pull at his head is then in prospect, unless the physiologist takes charge and obliges that individual TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 163 to oxidize his toxins to a degree which allows his physiology to return to the point at which his instincts can go around and around as smoothly as the wheels of a watch. The Roman confessional does not allow a man's head to go to destruction after the rendering of kindly temporary aid; but the Freuds let it go when the patient's money gives out. At the confes- sional, I presume, no one ever attempts to mislead the priest, but one of my impressionable young patients who had been treated by the method of psychanalysis said that she told the doctor a great many things that were not true because he seemed so eager to have her say what she did, that it was not in her heart to disappoint him. Psychanalysis claims to be the application of Darwinism to the psychic sphere (obverse of organic evolution) ; but Darwin collected facts and slowly came to conclusions, while Freud and Breuer began with a conclusion and then proceeded to add suitable facts for purposes of support, discarding unsuit- able facts. This is the worst crime that is known to science, because it purloins the very essentials of art. It is the menace of a wolf in the covering of a sheep. We shall hear much less of Freud a few years from now, although he has captivated the imagination of some of our psychiatrists at the present moment. His system has been constructed very much like the Marxian socialism by building a storehouse and then putting into it only such things as he wants. The Freudian system is founded upon a basis of suggestion which affects both patient and practitioner unfavorably in the end. Incidentally, in the course of development of the system, much information of value has been gained — as exemplified in certain side studies by Brill. Information which was previ- ously unknown is apt to be gained whenever we start to make new observation, even from a faulty basis. It was when trying i64 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS to hybridize chestnuts with oaks that I accidentally made an observation which engaged the attention of biologists in all parts of the world. The fact that parthenogenesis occurred in trees of the organic rank of the Fagacese was not anticipated, and might not have been discovered in the present century had I not been at work in a wrong way while attempting to collect facts bearing upon another question altogether. From oste- opathy, which is based upon misconception and fraud, many facts of value have been incidentally collected and some old knowledge has been brought to the surface. From Christian Science, based upon ideas of a paranoiac, much of substantial value has been applied in the way of treatment. One of my inventions consisted in arranging a series of magnets in a box for the purpose of diverting magnetite from other forms of sand on the seashore. This apparatus pulled out a lot of iron, but the plan was not practical because the cost of power for moving and clearing the magnets was too great. In the same way, the Freudian system. Osteopathy, Christian Science, or any fad, when swept over millions of people will pull out thousands who adhere to it for awhile. In the end such systems are not found to be quite worth their operating expenses, although something of good comes from all of them. The regular medical profession learned the use of lobelia from the Indians,-^from a shoemaker the operation for vesical calculus, from a postmaster the method for sound- ing Eustachian tubes, from a monk how to use antimony. It draws to itself practical knowledge from all possible sources. When the Freudian theory first began to attract my atten- tion, in order to see how it would work out practically, I referred clinical cases to different psychiatrists who were making a study of the subject, but perceived at once that a poor widow without means would have to be rather careful about going crazy. An attempt was made to obtain treatment by TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 165 psychanalysis for one of my colleagues, a very dear friend, who had developed a psychosis. Doctors are supposed not to charge each other for services, and on this basis I could not find any Freudian who cared to take charge of my friend's case. Doctors, therefore, belong with poor widows in that class of people who must think twice before developing a psychosis. There is one notable characteristic that runs pretty generally through all peculiar systems in medicine; they inci- dentally leave the poor out of account. Any system in medi- cine will fail, no matter how silly it may be, unless it takes charge of the poor. Freud does not do that, but furnishes the stimulus of a good business enterprise, — I will not say by intention. A particularly valuable feature of the incidental new work of the Froids has been their close study of and full description of the features of personalities. Their study of the aberrations of sexuality will give new and valuable light for studying characters in history. A psychiatrist who pins his faith to the Freud method of psychanalysis and psychotherapy might be charged with not- ing the commercial value of the method, because it seems to be carried out chiefly upon people who have sufficient means to pay for the valuable time of skilled physicians. I would not seriously ascribe any such sordid motive to interest in the subject, yet the incidental fact is a bit catchy — particularly when we consider this feature in relation to Osteopathy and other fad methods. Two post-impressionist psychiatrists, Freud and Jung, are at the present moment quarrelling over the question if the neurotic is "transfixed" to a certain period in his early infancy. Freud holds that the neurotic is dependent upon his infantile past, and the morbid psychic conflicts of later life develop through the powerful influence of that past. Restoration of i66 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS health can occur only when the libido (Freud's vital energy, — desire, — any form of inherent force) becomes detached from the subconscious infantile fixation. Jung asks why there should be fixation of the libido to former infantile fantasies, anyway. He thinks that the etiological element of the neurosis does not consist of the mere existence of infantile fantasies, but must be contained in the so-called fixation. He raises the question if the intensity of an Oedipus complex or of an Electra complex is really derived from fixation or from re- gression. When two men are thus engaged in struggle for possession of a single will-o'-the-wisp, let us hold our breaths and trust that the one who finally secures it will leave it to charity, for that is where the whole question rightfully belongs. In selected cases the methods of Freud and Jung, like those of Du Bois, and the isolation-persuasion scheme of Dejerine, undoubtedly have a certain practical value, but all of these methods belong to the era of superstition. They serve a pur- pose, just as Calvinism serves a purpose, until such time as we may come into a full and free understanding of the chem- ical and physical nature of mental states. The Freudians, not content with analyzing real characters, try to extend their range of analysis to characters of imaginative literature. From the classics they construct such formulae as the "Oedipus Complex" and the "Electra Complex." They try to show that the mental mechanisms of unconscious repression and of mental conflicts are the same for hysteria in actual patients as they are for fictitious creations, like the mental disease of Hamlet and Lady Macbeth. If anything more is needed for placing the views of the Freudians among metaphysical obses- sions, they will no doubt furnish more. If Hamlet and Lady Macbeth, who did not exist, had unconscious repressions which also did not exist, the Freudians easily trace the history of these characters back to some sexual shock by a scientific TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 167 method, — which also does not exist, if we are still to place confidence in anything so old-fashioned as reductio ad absurdum. Perhaps we may call the adherents of Freud the Froids, taking the name from "fraud," and the Greek "eidos." This is a mule word to be sure, wholly intolerable to word makers, but the mule is a very useful animal. The Froids are not frauds, because they really take themselves very seriously, but by adding the eidos we have a very good appellation. Supposing that the Froids were to tell us that the moon is made of green cheese. Green cheese at least is what one must have in mind when looking at the moon if he is broad-minded enough. This use of the expression "broad-mindedness" occurs frequently in their writings, and seems to be a sort of hidden appeal which they feel it necessary to make. They appeal also to the sympathies like the Christian Scientists, by asking — "if there is so much suffering from psychoses in the world, why not let a new method have a fair trial ?" They ask us if they have not observed some new facts. Yes! One who looks at the moon and thinks it to be green cheese, may note what migratory birds are passing in the night. The mere fact that astronomers were looking toward the sky allowed them to make new notes on migration of sandpipers. The same powers which commonly allow a victim to recover from any one of various diseases after running the gauntlet of drugs, allow him to recover after application of the Froid system. According to the Froids, nervous invalidism is largely a sign that the sufferers suffer because they cling unwittingly to modes of thought and feeling which belong to childhood stages of development. My assumption as a surgeon is more matter of fact, and I prefer to believe that modes of thought and feeling depend upon physical cell construction. Physical cell cc^struction depends upon inherited tendencies, and upon i68 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS response to normal or morbid products of metabolism. Meta- physical medicine, like the system of Freud, must be considered as a sort of art applied by mental experts. All art must so vary with the personality of the artist, that we can never have any satisfactory artistic method in practice unless it is upon that basis of science which allows all men equally to apply it, when they have comprehended its data and its conclusions. Those who attempt healing upon a fanciful basis, like Freudism, would be classified as im- postors were it not for the saving grace of the word "delusion." One may find characteristic articles by Froids in the American Practitioner for December, 19 12, and in the Transactions of the Harvey Society for 191 1. One is written by a teacher at Johns Hopkins and the other by a teacher at Harvard Medical School. The fact that teachers are allowed to write and speak upon this subject at two institutions of such high character is a good example of the value of freedom in teach- ing. The more important the man happens to be, the more clearly his delusion is outlined. The Froids have made a few real discoveries; but this is often done by men who do not half believe in any given quest. When men sirhply have their minds opened toward any cause and begin to look about they are pretty sure to find something surprising. This is illustrated by an experience which is related of two of my friends who were in such a hurry to leave the boat-house and get to fishing that one of them forgot to remove his necktie in which was a valuable diamond pin. After fishing all day with good success, it was suddenly dis- covered that the diamond pin was missing. It was believed to have been lost overboard during the excitement of landing some one of the fish. The question came up if any one of the fish in the vicinity seeing a bright object falling into the water might not have swallowed it, and if that particular fish had TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 169 been captured later. In a sort of half hearted hope the two fishermen set about opening all of the bass and pickerel in the boat, and, when the very last bass was opened, there was the pin in a crack between two boards in the bottom of the boat under the bass. Suppose now that while searching in the wrong way for the pin, the fishermen had incidentally run across a new cestoid entozoon which had not previously been known to belong to Micropterus salmoides. Furthermore the fish had incidentally been prepared for the table, thus avoiding a discussion with the cook, and that is something worth while. Consequently, the result of their labors was not profitless. The result of labors of the Froids will not be profitless, even though all of these metaphysicians wander far away from any such scientific procedure as hunting for and removing a real physi- cal cause for symptoms, — the real new medium of the day. Metaphysics belongs to the era of superstition, while in medi- cine we have really progressed to the era of analysis, and are approaching the synthetic era. It is too late a day for medical subjects to be treated from the metaphysical stand- point. Surgery and bacteriology have done too much team work in getting the medical profession away from superstition. The Froids would give metaphysical position (supersti- tious) to a psychosis like dementia prsecox for instance, hold- ing it to represent a conflict taking place in the mind ; but the surgeon or bacteriologist would place the symptoms upon a purely physical basis. These latter investigations might assume that toxins were injuring the cells of certain ductless glands in such a way as to allow morbid internal secretions to escape directly into the circulation, and that these, or the anti- bodies which they call out, were producing an impression which deprived cerebral lipoids of their oxygen carrying power — leading to the symptoms of dementia prsecox. Psychanalysts believe that in regression of function belong- I70 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS ing to psychoses they find analogy to the retardations of development occurring in the structural part of organic life. Involution of the appendix vermiformis wrould be represented by some homologous psychic involution according to the Freu- dian point of view. The surgeon on the other hand holds that psychoses depend upon structural retardations of develop- ment or maintenance. Curiously enough, certain phases of mental action which occur in connection with involution of the appendix really do seem to represent psychic involution (re- gression) ; but my own explanation would show a direct cause and effect relationship between the two conditions, rather than a coincidental or homologous relationship. Thus — in the course of involution of the appendix, fibroid replacement of lymph structure occurs. This fibroid tissue proceeds to con- tract like all hyperplastic connective tissue, incidentally pinch- ing and irritating any nerve filaments which are entrapped. These irritated nerve filaments excite the sympathetic ganglia of the abdomen. Excited sympathetic ganglia fail to conduct proper secretion on the part of ductless glands, and we then have deranged hormone secretion. Deranged hormone secre- tion means impaired efficiency of the adjustment of function and of subsequent metabolism of toxins (microbic or proteoly- tic, or both). Toxins in the circulation have the effect of sensitizing protoplasm abnormally. Abnormally sensitized protoplasm is hampered when engaged in making the structure of physical brain cells. Structure of physical brain cells is so closely related to function of physical brain cells that our patient may now present symptoms of hysteria for instance, with features that the psychanalyst would classify as involu- tional psychic. The psychanalyst would not trace the evolu- tional psychic feature back to fibroid degeneration of the appendix, and thus following a clearly marked physical clinical path step by step. He would metaphysically attempt a tracing TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 171 of psychic features back to a primitive instinctive mechanism which had not become properly developed in that particular individual. When carrying the subject into practical application, I have brought to an end very many psychic "regressions" by remov- ing involuted appendices. Even the dreams were then stopped or changed in character. Every link in concatenation could be readily followed straight from the appendix to the psyche in these cases. The psychanalyst carrying the subject into practical application, might also have brought to an end the psychic regressions in some of these cases. He would have done it through the aid of suggestion, but most of his patients would not have remained permanently well, a tendency to relapse always remaining after treatment by suggestion. Patients would have reverted to their former morbid condition after awhile, for the reason that the fundamental cause for disturbance (the fibroid appendix) remained. If certain patients with psychic regression can be cured of that symptom through removal of their regressive appendices, how many of these Freudian patients may be better helped by physical methods than by metaphysical methods? The question of proportion in this matter is very important for the public, right now, — daily, — no time to be lost, — people suffering. The psychanalyst believes that psycho-neuroses represent a moral conflict, in which contents of the patient's conscious mind are desperately struggling with contents of his uncon- scious mind. At least one surgeon believes that psycho- neuroses represent a physical conflict rather than a moral one. He believes that normal contents of the patient's physical brain cells are desperately struggling with abnormal contents of those very same physical brain cells, — abnormal contents hav- ing made forcible entrance. Here indeed, do we find a parting of the ways between psychanalyst and surgeon. We both 172 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS relieve many of our patients so far as symptoms go. This is an everyday experience, and not a speculative proposition. One of us helps in one way, the other helps in another way. Which set of patients will best remain cured? This is a practical sort of question which will be asked by the general practitioner. He is the man who will want to know the best thing for his patients and he is the judge who will settle the question. What has the common sense doctor to say on the subject at the present moment? If I understand Freud, he believes that psychoses have one common origin, and they may all be traced back to primitive normal sex instinct. If I understand Sidis, he also believes that the psychoses have one common origin and may all be traced back to primitive normal fear instinct. When two philosophers like Freud and Sidis start off on a race but run- ning in opposite directions, who among us wishes to lay a wager on the results of the race? Both men will get back to the original starting point eventually if they run far enough. (All the way around the world! Wouldn't that discourage you?) Having reached the starting point again, Freud and Sidis and the physiologist can all start off again side by side in a hare-and-hound race after the microbe. This time there will be fair probability of all three getting to a common goal quickly. The philosophers will use the largest number of words for cheering each other along, and the physiologist will use the largest number of instruments of precision for detect- ing tracks along the route. He will get to the goal first. Philosophers start out with an obvious fact and push it along ahead of them, rolling it up with everything that will stick, until it becomes so large that the path is obscured. They keep right on rolling after the path is obscured and tumble off the brink into infinity. According to Freud's school, psychic alienations mean TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 173 repression of actual experiences, and the method of restoring comfort is similar to that of the Roman Catholic Church in its confessional. The Roman Catholic confessional antedates Freud's treatment. We have often found in medicine that empirical methods were useful in practice in advance of scientific explanation. When first reading Freud in the German I became very- much engaged w^ith his ideas, but when English translations appeared a different point of view developed. Reading the ideas from a surgeon's standpoint rather than from that of a psychiatrist allowed me to escape being caught in the cog wheels of familiar terms which might hang in the traditions of a psychiatrist, and drag him along into trouble. Style often gives the measure for a lock-step that leads one straight into the prison gate in literature. A man is likely to follow Swinburne where he might not wish to go, in lock- step with captivating style. When I took up Freud in the German his style was so scientific that I quite went with it, not realizing that it was a lock-step, and that bona fide science was running free in another direction altogether. When one has been trained to scientific reading it is somewhat difficult to escape from the dangers of a style like that of Freud, and I will forgive some of the learned psychiatrists who have followed him into a mental prison. The ideas of the psychanalyst are quite hypnotic, and one is obliged to shake himself occasionally and say "Out!" when reading their literature. It is a style characteristic of any writer who has a misconception for which he is trying to prove premises by strenuous effort. When training was being given by my early teachers, if any fact seemed weak, we students were asked to put aside everything else, — the entire theory if necessary, — until positive or negative testimony could be obtained for bracing that fact. 174 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Psychiatry as a whole must first go over to psychology and to bacteriology before it can be revamped and returned as a science. If it fails to stand this test the psychologist and the bacteriologist will take away its foundations and use them for their own purposes. Psychology has already begun to do this by taking charge of the feeble-minded. Bacteriology has already begun to do it by showing the microbic influence upon certain abnormal forms of mental expression. It will be the fault of the psychiatrists if they allow their underpinnings to be stolen. It was the fault of the botanists to allow bacteriolo- gists to run off with their biggest foundation stone, and hew it to their own hking. Tradition is a nice warm cap, but it comes down over the eyes unless we are on guard against that accident. What is fanciful and unpractical on Monday is accepted by the critics on Tuesday and exceeded by the critics on Wednes- day. In psychic pathology we must always remember that func- tion and structure are so closely related to each other that we cannot well study the one without a knowledge of the other. Until we know more of the natural or morbid brain action in relation to structural changes which are taking place in the physical brain cells under normal influences and under toxic influences, the time will not have arrived for a satisfac- tory basis for psychic therapy. The psychiatrists at present have to work arbitrarily from symptoms. This is particularly unfortunate, for it carries us back with a feeling of distress over the nomenclature and speculation of old psychology. It is regrettable because psychiatrists and psychologists are largely of the intellectual group among physicians, and in this group there is always a deadly tendency to do mental stunts in speculative philosophy. In the field of psychotherapy we may look for as much sonorous high class confusion during TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 175 the next few years as we had in psychology twenty odd years ago, — more confusion in fact. Scientific normal psychology at the present time has so little real relation to psychotherapy that we only add to the confusion by trying to adjust phenomena of morbid mental processes to fit our knowledge of normal processes. We must await the coming knowledge of changes in physical brain cell structure while protoplasm is being built up and broken down under both normal and morbid conditions before a satisfactory basic ground can be found for psychanalysis or psychotherapy. Both subjects have real germs of great value. Under present conditions if we overhear two psychiatrists discussing the views of an absent third one, we shall hear something quite shocking. They will say contemptuously, "What does he know about psychanalysis or psychotherapy?" If we overhear the third one speaking with a fourth, and the first two are under discussion, the same comments will be made. Thanks for that much comfort at least! While the older psychiatrists classified patients on the basis of symptoms, and the younger generation psychiatrists are making involved construction with unknown factors, it seems to me safer to keep un pied a terre by holding that morbid structural arrangement of cell plasm of the physical brain leads to a corresponding expression of mental symptoms. Knowing already the nature of influence of many kinds of toxins upon many kinds of physical cells we may at least place psychoses on a sort of basis that is satisfactory to modern reasoning methods of the surgeon. Psychiatrists group together symptoms belonging to psycho- ses of the human mind and then proceed to build downward to classifications, very much as the religious philosophers assign a metaphysical place to God and then build downward with their creeds. 176 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS The sportsman is struck by a similarity between one feature of his sport and the closet sport of speculative philosophy when a partridge fails to get up at some point to which reason had taken him in expectation of finding a partridge. The partridge jumps up unexpectedly from some other place. Bergson says in his "Creative Evolution," "It would be difficult to cite a biological discovery due to pure reasoning, and most often when experience has finally shown us how life goes to work to obtain a certain result, we find that its way of working is just that of which we never should have thought." Herein lies the similarity between the sport of a shooter and the sport of a philosopher. Nature sets no limitation to the development of theories in natural science, but she sets a kind of limitation to the con- struction of sentences from words in speculative philosophy by forcing one to hold his breath for so long a time when trying to comprehend them that carbon dioxid is stored up in excess and brings the thought to an end very much as occurred in the reading of this sentence. In oriental countries — in China and in India, — highly civilized people took up metaphysics in place of science which was not then available. These people with capacity for good reasoning established esoteric philosophy so completely that they have been unable to drop their scholarship. The more useful and practical science that has developed in the younger and more progressive civilizations since that time has forged far ahead. Scholarship in philosophy has resulted in rendering oriental people comparatively inert in the world of affairs. They comprehend all questions in a beautiful sentimental way, very much as the earth was once comprehended in a nebulous mass; but concentration and condensation of the scholastic nebula for purposes of working efficiency belongs to science and not to philosophy. One by one strong nations will come TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 177 out of the East like Japan, when nature slips the leash of philosophy and allows them to reason exoterically. Esoteric philosophers on the whole are inclined to be de- pressing in end-results. The biologist says it is because they belong to the class of scholars who are engaged in cerebration at the expense of physical exercise which would oxidize their toxins. Colon bacillus influence casts a shadow through philosophy pretty generally, because it represents so largely an expression of unmetabolized products. Here and there we find a philosopher who has taken good care of his physiology, or whose toxins of tuberculosis have given us the sunnier side of reasoning. A man of accurate scientific training looks upon the meta- physician with suspicion. The deep thinking metaphysician with aweful mind looks upon the business man with a sort of reserved contempt. The business man looks upon learned men with an amused respectful tolerance — and endows their institutions. The farmer looks upon the city man as a simple- ton when the latter is in the country. A city man looks upon the farmer as a simpleton when the latter is in the city. All sorts of men "look upon" other sorts of men and each one is correct in his view. A better way is not to "look upon" other men, but to develop that fine X-ray perception which "looks through" other men, and beyond to the wonderful spirit of human nature which each one surely possesses. Finding soul within them all, one photographs it in a composite picture of ideal human nature. The composite soul picture is a finished work of art, — but "looking upon" men gives us a rough outline sketch only. Metaphysics when applied to a subject is like hydrogen dioxid applied to albumen of the egg of a sea-urchin. Im- mediately a great foaming mass of words appears, with more or less destruction of the subject. Science when applied by 178 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Loeb to the egg albumen of the sea-urchin, gives us a living moving object clearly visible to the eye of any child, instead of a foaming mass of words. When we put a hound after a hare, he captures the hare if it runs in a circle. Science when pursuing imaginative philosophy finds by observing the tracks of new realism that philosophy has run in a circle, and is now about to be capiured by science. A speculative philosopher uses wonderful combinations of words, making the plain reader uncomfortable when trying to follow his course of thought. The sentences impress one with a sense of his own littleness much more than the archi- tecture of a Notre Dame Cathedral makes him feel it. The plain reader may be in distress over his lack of education and intellectual clearness of vision, unless he emancipates himself by realizing that an imaginative philosopher is simply bound to do stunts with his head as an athlete does with his legs. Both look around for approval after completing their stunts. Speculative philosophers are approved most fully by people who do not understand them, but their peers write contradict- ing philosophies, with phrases equally grand and mysterious. That allows the plain reader to escape from their sentences. If philosophers cannot agree among themselves, the honest reader is not in duty bound to follow any one of them with labor and distress of mind, — sentenced nearly to death. Herbert Spencer for instance said that "Life is a definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences." Now, who can honestly deny that? Yet it is not the sort of description that would be satisfactory to a school boy. Metaphysics has been described as a method of finding bad reasons for what we already know by instinct. It would not TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 179 be so bad if metaphysics could stop at that, but when meta- physical reasoning is made to show that a room and a chair in the room are the same thing, a school boy will reply, "Gee ! What's the use of education, if that's the best it can do?" We are not to assume that metaphysics being a lingo game is less valuable than chess, but we must take good care to place it in proper relation to other things. A game of almost any sort has distinct value until its technic outstrips its essentials. When the chess player, the futurist painter or the rigorous mentaler is prepared to write "the last philosophy" we then know that his game has become congealed in technic, and having lost plasticity cannot longer be employed by free spirited men for thought moulding purposes. If mathematics is born out of the play instinct of mankind and if astronomy is born out of the detective instinct of man- kind, such differences in birth origin will not allow either mathematics or astronomy to escape from the common obliga- tion which nature has imposed upon all human activities. It is an obligation for every man to act as peacemaker between the essentials and the technic of his subject. The limitations of a subject for useful human employment are indicated by the tendency for essentials or for technic, one or the other, to gain mastery. If metaphysics becomes con- gealed in technic while science remains free flowing, we may surmise which instinct is to supply the last message for man- kind. The study of metaphysics is conducted by men who revere knowledge with an awe amounting to superstition, but their employment of the intellect becomes of that ecstatic sort which causes the intellect to expand to a point of losing specific gravity. The intellect then shoots upward far above anything so gross as physical facts. One of my beloved friends, a man of the very finest quality and of the deepest feeling, graduated i8o TO-MORROW'S TOPICS in philosophy from an university in Europe as well as from one in this country. He cannot be trusted to follow a plain fact to the point of recording it in proper alignment with other facts. His boundless mind refuses to be confined by the drag- ging weight of a fact and his lectures leave audiences filled with noble superstition. Another one of my old friends who took high rank as a scholar, was graduated in philosophy from a foreign university because he could not satisfy his longing in this country. He came in one day for a loan of four dollars in order to buy some needed article of apparel. The money was never returned because he really forgot about it I am sure, his mind being constantly superior to four dollars. All of his dollars died young anyway. He had no bad habits excepting that when seeking an income-paying position he gambled. He gambled by playing checkers with doubt and doubt usually won. While unable to make adjustment with daily affairs sufficient for securing ordinary comforts, he would without hesitation present a philosophical conclusion for any proposition. Dispute it at your peril 1 By saying "peril" I mean that he would go into a very full explanation. James and Bergson, seeking for the sources and satisfactions of religion, give the intellect a very small role. They are at the same time impressed by the limitations inherent in ideas. Hocking does some exceptionally skilled work in a hopeless cause by saying that feeling coupled with idea gives us a unit in consciousness ; and he makes the essence of religion consist in feeling. That places the latest religious philosopher in the same class with the Futurist in art. There is no need for denying that feeling is expressed in high degree, quite apart from intellectual processes, in religion and in futurist art. When a mob forms, the leaders are enabled to create an over- whelming wave of feeling out of a very few ideas. If TO-MORROW'S TOPICS i8i thoughts and words of the religious, and paintings of the Futurist, represent feeling in highest degree, then feeling is so clearly individualistic that one who is most ill and unstable may give expression to the most extreme degrees of feeling in religion and in art, — and yet hardly appeal to the normal minds of other people at all. Let us encourage expression of feeling however. Let us admit that it is the essence of certain phases of religion and of art ; but let us not be misled into any notion that the greater the degree of expression of feeling, the greater its comparative value in religion and in art. Feeling must be condensed back into the form of idea again by an atmos- phere of lower temperature before we can form a correct estimate as to its inherent value. Expression of religious feeling in highest degree has always belonged to the super- stitious era of cultural periods. In our own cultural period, we are now perhaps emerging from the dominant analytic into the dominant synthetic stage, having left the superstitious era pretty well behind. If our present religions and creeds were outlined at a time when we focussed upon superstition, is it not time for us now to withdraw and focus again for a new observation, this time adjusting our lenses to science ? A feeling is held to be what we really want to express in religion and in art, and I believe that to be true. Let us feel from a secure basis of science belonging to the synthetic stage of our cultural period, rather than from superstition which belonged to ancient times, or from mysticism which represents toxic clouding of cell proto- plasm. Personally I have deep religious feeling when looking at the constellations at night, and also profound appreciation of art which expresses sympathy with nature; but I have not been able to allow myself to be persuaded that the work of allergic artists who express deep morbid feeling should arouse any sympathetic feeling at all on my part. My deepest i82 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS feeling belongs to science when looking into the heavens at night. There is at such times no obscuring view of mountains or trees, and one can look past the moon, past the stars, clear to the verge of infinity. There is no painted symbol of nature so far as I know which will carry one as far as that. My satisfaction in religious feeling is complete, and the source so apparent that I have none of the longing, — nor vague dissatis- faction, which leads the professed religionist and the Futurist artist to hunt unceasingly for justification of feelings. This painful, restless hunt for justification of religious or artistic feeling I believe to belong to a focus upon superstition, — upon something which has slowly moved out from under the lens of present day affairs. I would ask your coming philosophers to leave the anti-intellectual features of James, Pratt, Hoeffding, and Bergson in the wake of science, and to find a way for giving intellect first position in religion and art of the future. People ask why there is decline of interest in poetry to-day. There is not less interest. Poetry has changed form only and we have not recognized the new form. It is now finer and stronger than ever before, — escaped from the toils of supersti- tion. It is now more condensed, because it goes into terms of scientific expression, We do not as yet recognize the transi- tory stages of the three physical entities to the metamorphic rock and to the gold nugget. Poetry in the form of verse, — measure and rhyme, — was the transitional stage of metamor- phic literature which took us to the beautiful, to the sublime, the elevating, and left us at noble science. There may be less of emotional poetry in the future, for the reason that poetry, relating to the imagination, as it does, would naturally have been strongest in the days of strong superstition. We are always to remember the three stages TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 183 in the cultural period of any nation or race; first a period of superstition, — and the strongest men glorify superstition — next we have the stage of analysis, in which vast masses of facts are liberated by men of scientific bent. The third stage is the stage of synthesis, in which men of the generalizing type of mind pass the parallel rays of great masses of fact through their lenses, and concentrate them for the purpose of developing great principles. In the present day of our cul- tural period poets cannot find justification for feehngs that are based upon superstition because there is not enough super- stition left. We are in a transition stage. There is curtailment of "great" poetry, because the poetry of the present day must conform to standards of measure by the classicists. This does not mean that we shall lose the fine songs of sentiment. Further than that, opportunity presents at the present moment for some great poet to set to music of the mind the great principles of our progress in science, and the idea that we are all on the way to become gods. Moving poets are to come again, but with feelings proceeding from science. The poet of the future will feel cosmic emotion. Lombroso threw a flood of light upon points in psychiatry, criminal law, politics, and sociology with his studies of deca- dence in mankind. Nordau extended the field of Lombroso and threw new light upon the domain of literature and of art. The time has now arrived for throwing a search light upon the entire field of human activities, and this light is directed through a lens which enlarges our view of the physical entities. Art and poetry will never be scientific in their nature under any sort of hghting. The kind of art and the kind of poetry, however, will be classified scientifically upon a basis of psy- chology and bacteriology. Aberrations of art will at least be properly classed, if not caused to disappear by science, so that art and poetry when guided by science will give us a more i84 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS stimulating variety, of finer healthier type, — deprived of morbid features. Psychiatrists are like theologians in some respects, that is, they begin the study of man from the top, theologians begin- ning with the soul, and psychiatrists beginning from one step further down, — from the mind. Both are still trying to make classification from a product of the organism instead of from a knowledge of anatomic and physiologic factors. Like poets they come to a state of rest in superstition. In consequence of this method the courts have merry times with psychiatrists as witnesses, especially when experts are called in to represent different "sides," making confusion worse confounded. Add to the mass, — on one side lawyers absolutely upright and working in accordance with their convictions, and on the other side lawyers working for money and their own interests in a case in which they have perhaps fomented litigation to begin with. Lawyers, doctors, relatives, judges, — the witness himself even — may be left in doubt as to whether he is sane or insane. All of this trouble is due to psychiatrists trying to act like theologians to the extent of classifying plants from their fruits. The physical causes which may render a man insane and yet responsible will be taken into consideration by the court when we get far enough along on that. The Christian method of study of the soul, and its surround- ings and belongings, is characteristic of all primitive methods of study which begin with the obvious at the top and then try to work downward. The Christian method applied in botany for instance in order to classify plants by their fruits would not be likely to place the rose and the apple in the same family, and it would have to leave out of botany altogether the culti- vated potato without flowers, and the double cherry (the pride of Japanese horticulture), which does not bear any fruit at all. Assuming that our premises are correct, that the soul TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 185 is the best fruit of man and that the apple is the best fruit of its family, a classification which begins with the obviously best fruits would leave out altogether the possibility of satisfactory classifications in relation to the fundamental entities and their products. By the deductive method from the apple and from the soul one does not even approach basic factors in the problem. Both the inductive and the deductive methods of reasoning lead to wrong conclusions unless we begin from the three fundamental physical entities, and then build upward from a knowledge of their activities. The tendency to make classifications from fruit instead of from soma cell and germ cell characteristics — in other words, from the mind instead of from the body, — has led to great errors and endless confusion in theology and literature and in art, but not in science. There was undoubtedly the same tendency toward error and confusion among the primitive botanists that is found to-day among literary critics. The early botanists no doubt were men in the position of many unlearned people to-day who take note of obvious characteris- tics only. An avocado may be called a pear — as it is so called, but which it is not. Unlearned people would never think of classifying the mountain ash as a pear, — which it is. Psychiatrists, belonging to a highly educated group in our profession and studying psychoses from the mental side alone, are prone to develop into imaginative philosophers when they make classifications and deductions from mental actions which fundamentally inhere in toxic influences. Because the psychiatrist belongs to a highly intellectual and highly educated group in our profession, it is difficult for the rest of us to avoid following the reasoning of any one of them. The only means for relief is to act as we do with the philosopher or with the historian, — i.e., hunt up a second one, and get his private opinion of the first one. i86 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS It is a source of satisfaction when two or three books on philosophy or on logic are published at about the same time, for they show us that specialists in the science of correct reasoning do not always reason alike. There is great comfort at not feehng obliged to take each new author with a serious- ness which would prompt us to lay aside all other work until he was mastered. As one follows the history of naturalism and of idealism, he is struck by the feeling that followers of naturalism start off with the idea of disagreeing with each other if possible, and ending by general agreement. Followers of idealism, on the other hand, start with the idea of agreeing with each other if possible, and then end by general disagreement. According to a report in a recent number of the New York "Times," Bergson sees a great future for American philosophy. This idea coming from so high an authority may perhaps arouse conflicting emotions in our minds. The dominant spirit in America to-day would seem to be that of science in the analytic stage, progress being made by inductive method. We have already commented upon the fact that intellectual peoples of the orient have failed to march in the forefront of progress for the very reason that scholarship was their idol and philosophy was made to comprehend all of their questions. A large philosophy obstructs when based upon small fact. In another note the menace of Freud has been discussed, — the attempt at building a system by the anti-scientific method of choosing material which fitted, and discarding material which did not fit. The philosophy of Freud carried psychiatry back to the dark ages of Schelling and nullified in part the trenchant influence of Virchow whose objective teaching liberated medicine from speculative philosophy. Certain studies which are incidental to the work of Freud TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 187 really allow science to make better analysis of some of the notable characters in literature. As an instance of this, his- torians of literature have called attention to the sympathetic nature of Walt Whitman, demonstrated in his becoming a war nurse. Along come the Freudians, who explain that it was not an example of noble self-sacrifice, but rather a re- sponse to homosexual motive. This idea they fully support with contributory testimony obtained from his writings. Thus has the pragmaphile gained information, but of destruc- tive nature until the biologist gives still further information. Walt Whitman was a double rose, and not responsible for his homosexuality. The biologist further informs the prag- maphile that in all probability the wounded soldiers received detailed attention, given with a degree of tenderness and sympathy that would not have belonged to the brusque and fully virile mascuhne nurse. The Freudians engaged in fanciful foraging have made many additions to our actual knowledge concerning various characters in different fields of human expression, but their findings require checking up by somebody else. A rather curious sort of change appears to have taken place during the past seventy-five years of occidental civilization. During the early part of that period, when our fund of science was comparatively small, speculative philosophy seems to have enlarged the boundaries within which science might spar. During the latter part of that period esoteric reasoning of any sort has pulled science back toward the centre of the ring. To employ another picture, esoteric reasoning has through all history held exoteric reasoning upon a leash so generally that we seem to have evidence of nature's determination to hold the mind of man within certain metes and bounds. The prospect for the future is bright, however, if we observe that when such a fine idea as that of brotherhood of man is i88 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS brought under restriction by the leash of nationalism, we apply a high sounding name to that latter prejudice, and call it patriotism. We carry high ideals in mind even though incon- gruity between the narrow prejudice called "patriotism" and the broad social ideal of brotherhood of man does not appeal to our sense of humor. Splendid nations are to spring from the protoplasm of oriental races during the next couple of eons, as rapidly as nature sees fit to release one nation after another from the leash of esoteric reasoning. In the meantime very many fantastic ideas like those of Freud are to lead people upon a wrong trail, but while upon a wrong trail they will quite accidentally run into the haunts of new kinds of ideas that are good and true. I have been in many sorts of places, but on the whole this busy little world is the most interesting one among them all. Bergson says, "The brain is but a part of the spiritual life of the mind." Does he mean the brain of a seal or of an eel? He says further, "Life owes its existence to an original im- pulse." This would seem to be nothing more than an axiom acceptable to science which does not attempt to define nor even to explain life but is satisfied with describing it. "The source of life is undoubtedly spiritual," says Bergson. May we not as truly say that it is also chemical ? Recapitulating some of the former notes in the book for the purpose of making them bear upon this question let us remember that the crystal is alive and it grows. A simple organic cell is alive and it grows. One is a crystalloid body, the other a colloid body. A crystal may divide by fission due to internal strain. The cell does divide by fission or mitosis due also we presume to internal strain. Crystal and cell are morphologic masses of matter dependent for structure upon their intimate molecular attractions and the sub-atoms of both are "lively little beasts." Molecular TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 189 attraction which arranges colloids in the form of cell chromo- some should be no more mysterious than an apparently allied phenomenon which is demonstrated in the formation of a crystal from crystalloids. The chief difference between crystal and organic cell (morphologic forms which have been arranged according to laws of cohesion), may be held to lie in the habit of colloidal forms of elements continuing to divide by fission or mitosis under the influence of some such external compelling force as light energy (sunlight or radio-activity) if we are not contented with believing that the inherent ferment activity of colloids is sufficient for conducting a second step in life. The third step in life apparently consists in the reaction of coherent colloid molecules with some such external energy as that of light which forces them to take in and cast out simultaneously such atomic groups as may fit into their molecular structure. This latter phenomenon is called "feeding" and it constitutes a distinguishing feature of organic life. The first step in feeding let us say is absorption by osmosis, and the second step is that of assimilation, which is conducted by the ferment action possessed by colloids. This idea of the chemical origin of life may be called spiritual, if by spiritual we mean a convenient abstraction which is em- ployed for describing the most refined of human sentience. Nevertheless the expression of a beautiful thought represents kinetic energy liberated from the potential energy of a potato eaten for breakfast. This released energy makes a reaction with the ether through the agency of brain cell protoplasm in the form of what we call a thought — spiritual or otherwise. The predicament in which "school psychiatry" finds itself at this time in the twentieth century may be charged against philosophy. Metaphysical psychology describes dementia prsecox as a conflict of the mind with itself, while science describes it as connected with the failure of one of the cerebral I90 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS lipoids to carry a normal degree of oxygen, this failure pre- sumably due to toxic injury of colloid kephalin by a toxin. Bergson says that "mankind is tending more and more toward social ethics." This is a biologic matter of expediency which may be expressed in terms of anthropology as belonging to one stage of every cultural period of the past. According to Bergson the main test of philosophy is to do what he thinks science cannot do — comprehend life. It seems to me that organic life is something quite calculable if we begin with the study of the action of colloids, and believe that the term "life" is simply a convenient abstraction which may be carried back . to include inorganic matter and antecedent mind. Antecedent mind must necessarily be alive. Personally I cannot comprehend life so clearly from the viewpoint of any philosophy as from the idea of a creative evolution mechanistic in character, based upon changing mani- festations of ether under the direction of an antecedent mind somewhere within space — space being that within which all else is. Antecedent mind may be considered to be mass if we describe mass as being anything which reacts with anything else. We are prone to think of everything as relating to time, but time may be described as a period required for measuring anything within space. A fragment of shiny obsidian, a clear thought, a soft desmid, a sensation of touch from a loving hand, do not to my mind belong to philosophy fundamentally. They seem to be merely incidents in a mecha- nistic evolution which has for its creative purpose the eventual transformation of the highest organisms from their larval stage into gods. These gods are eventually to take charge of universes already formed, or now in the process of formation, or in the course of preparation for the beginning of formation. If I understand Bergson, his theory that our universe consists of a purposeless spontaneous creative force that TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 191 formulates its questions as it goes along would seem to me to be an illustration of the simplicity of all things, including philosophers. We are not given means for knowing just where space ends or how far time will extend beyond all events, nor how to draw lines of differentiation between kinds of mass, solid, semi-solid, fluid or gaseous. Any one who attempts to define time and space, or the intention of ante- cedent mind, is too simple to realize that we are not given facts to play with in regard to these questions. Nature kept them away from us on this earth for the same reason perhaps that we withhold a gold watch from the little child in the kinder- garten. Bergson says that the will creates enormous energy from a mere spark, a mere idea, which flares up like gunpowder into a vast conflagration of energy, the source of which philosophers cannot explain in the limited doctrines of a con- stant quantity. I am glad to know that Bergson, if correctly quoted, makes the comparison with gunpowder, because gun- powder when in a state of combustion is merely liberating energy which has previously been stored up from the Sun. That is precisely my idea about an idea, — that nothing at all is created by the will. The will simply liberates, in the form of ideas, stored-up energy which we get at the dinner table. It would be a rash assumption however to state that I always understand the philosophers. When I ask them a question they confuse me. This would be a source of considerable annoyance, a sort of smothering feeling that one had reached his own limitations of intelligence, excepting for the fact — a fact which gives me great relief — that they confuse each other. I presume that anyone speaking from the analytic basis of science would recognize the synthetic function of philosophy when a reasoner like Fichte could bring philosophy into close contact with practical life and furnish a power toward cement- 192 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS ing German national union at a time when the French occupied Beriin in 1807. We have in this example one instance of its practical application. James believed philosophy to be the concern of present humanity rather than something virhich is to be perfected in the distant future. That belief represented progress. Bergson has rendered excellent service by giving the style of literary appeal to philosophy and has largely removed the stressful phraseology of a lingo game vvrhich men formerly acquired in order to prepare themselves for thoroughly con- fusing each other. For that much — thanks ! Bergson is at least clear up to the level of his nimbus. We are alvv^ays in danger from a revival of philosophy. The appearance of such a suddenly revived interest is not an elusive social phenomenon. Let us ever remember that psychologists tell us that a man commonly employs only from i-io to 1-3 of his brain power for making daily adjustments and conducting affairs. The rest of his brain power remains latent. W^henever reason is captured by imagination and put to work on some particular line of thought by a leader of minds like Peter the Hermit or like Bergson, much of the latent 2-3 B.P. of the multitude may be made to do work in a fad. One reason for the rage for bridge whist and its successor the tango tea was due in part to the emptiness of life of so many members of the educated leisure class. It is this very class which may supplant the turkey trot by philosophy and interfere with our sense of relative values, if Bergson's hopeful outlook for American philosophy is to be fulfilled. Man is the only animal that groans at his natural work. The red squirrel, the robin and the ant are all uttering notes of joy while at their work. Man can play a sly trick on nature if he ever becomes mischievous enough to laugh all day long and upset nature's plans for keeping him discontented. He can TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 193 do so if he wishes. Were it not for the fact that man is really superior to his present condition but does not know it, his unhappiness would constitute a pitiful plight. His present condition of unrest and of ill health however is one resulting from choice, following decision in accordance with employ- ment of his intelligence; and even what he calls success in life may be hypothetical and a tragedy. One of my acquaint- ances began life as a poor boy. He succeeded through the exercise of indomitable will and perseverance in obtaining among other things, a yacht, five automobiles, and two decrees of divorce. There is much waste of energy on the part of people who construct good books dealing with the philosophy of life, and who assume that there is merely lack of will or lack of incentive on the part of people who are discontented and tm- happy. The limitless formulae and phrases, kind words and bright cheering thought of these authors, furnish only a small percentage of real help. A small percentage of their force is really translated into final efficiency in work. The reason for much wasted effort is because the subject of effort has been treated sociologically and not biologically. When people know \\'hy they are unduly discontented and unhappy, with good reasons placed on a pathologic basis for their consideration, they may take vital new courage. In most of the books that I have seen dealing with cheerful philosophy of life, we have the implication of fault on the part of discontented people. That is presenting the matter in its negative phase, and like negative presentations in general is discouraging, even though a writer really means to be encouraging. It is such an in- sidious way for presenting a negative phase,- — (implying fault under the caption of cheerful philosophy), that few readers seem to recognize it in its true light, but it is effective on the negative side nevertheless. Some of the most unhappy people 194 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS whom I know have the largest collection of books teaching mental health. If we put the subject on an entirely different basis, and teach these people how full they are of inherent strength, — that they have sufficient will and unlimited good qualities, they are not depressed by any implied idea of their troubles being due to personal fault. When they are informed that it is the microbe in the case, — this the guilty rascal — we state the positive phase leading to hopeful action, because one is then free to take steps for eliminating or diminishing the microbe influence. (I believe a healthy man will be cheerful without help of any philosophy, for the same reason that the red squirrel is cheerful). The differences in forms of state- ment are these. Negative on the part of a philosopher who says, "If you simply follow my suggestions you will be cheer- ful." The "if" furnishes a negative suggestion implying previous fault. The positive statement is this. "You are a hunter and fond of the chase. Come on! Let us have sport to-day, going after the microbe which is after us !" CHAPTER III It is interesting to speculate not only upon what will happen in science during the present century, but also to anticipate changes in the every-day sights round about us. I wonder if one hundred years from now, in the year 2012, a walk down Fifth Avenue below Central Park will show the same distinc- tions between people of different hours. After the early morn- ing milkman has awakened the town with his rattling cans and the policeman can doze no longer, there comes a sudden burst of eight o'clock shop people and laborers, mostly going across the avenue. I wonder if we shall see the bright-eyed school children hurrying back from vacation to their old friendships and new books at nine A. M. There will surely be more books, — loads of them, but will means have been devised for allowing children to keep their red cheeks all of the year around, instead of for a short time after return from vacation? It is now the month of October. Along with the children on the way to school are proud fathers carrying books and paraphernalia, in a most undignified way for fashionable Fifth Avenue. The fathers act quite as young as the children themselves for the most part. An hour or so later in the morning, one sees on Fifth Avenue the visitors to the city, who may be distinguished at a glance by their way of looking at things. We observe the business man who already has a competence, making his way leisurely downtown and not very 195 196 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS seriously in a hurry. In the morning crowd are shoppers of the class who know just what they want. In the afternoon on Fifth Avenue there is the vanity drama. All sorts of paint and powder and contraptions of tailors and dressmakers dis- played for catching and holding attention. In the evening Fifth Avenue has its theatre-goers, sporty folks, students out for exercise, and people who give evidence in their gait of having no special occupation beyond going to and from good dinners. Then there are simple things of the country near at hand. I wonder if these will be changed very much one hundred years from now. This is October the 5th, 19 12. A perfect autumn day, and mine the luck to have traded temporarily a fine old shopworn city in exchange for my beautiful clean Merribrooke at Stam- ford. What would I not give to return to the farm house for one whole day an hundred years from now on October the 5th, 2012. Not in spiritual form with pure white wings and a golden harp, but just in my old duds. A felt hat torn at the top, hob nail shoes, and my canvas shooting coat minus a button or two, but with its treasury of capacious pockets all intact. The early gunners walked this morning through glint- ing frosty grass that was still being lighted by the crescent of a waning moon, long after signal lights had come from the east bidding the planet Neptune to retire. There will be no change in that particular morning order of the heavens for October 5th, 2012. Autumn haze softened all of the changing colors of foliage during the day and brought them into harmony, blending the rude outlines of great elms, sycamores, and hills, in a way to glorify the middle distance near at hand. Autumn haze is not a real mist but only that tempering effect in nature's art which justifies Corot. Not being required for artistic pur- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 197 poses at night, the haze cleared away, and allowed me to count seven stars in the newly returned October Pleiades. How the freshly arrived Hyades did sparkle also, with Saturn adding dignified steady light between these two scintillating constel- lations ! If 2800 years are required for the light of Aldebaran to reach this gifted earth, who cares, so long as we have it now ! Vega will shine out of Lyra as straight overhead on October 5th, 2012, as it does for me this evening, excepting for some little mathematical variation relating to its ellipse. That sort of thing does not bother plain folks who cannot even make a check book balance with the bank account, and who are here on earth to enjoy things. On October 5th, 2012, I shall not be here to bend my neck dangerously and look at Vega, but somebody else will take the very same pose on that night. The haze remained as long as necessary for mystic effect this evening, and then a sunset began like music of the sort that commences where words end. During the first part of sunset there was tanager scarlet in the western haze, then followed bright crimsons of the ampelopsis, and finally brown-reds of the color tones of orchard oriole and chewink. Broom sedge amongst the cedars on the hill side across the rocky stream came out in all its glory of mellowed sunshine. Its dainty feathers which were presented to it by the king of fairies are not displayed until the sun is low, but then what wondrous beauty is spread upon the proudly erect bluebents. One who does not know Sir Andropogon Scoparius has missed meeting a very charming friend of the Oreads of October. During the day a rare and precious autumn warmth reminded the birds so much of spring that a white throated sparrow actually went about singing the first bar of his favorite Lohengrin wedding march. From the cliffs above the brook came a muffled sound, the autumn drumming of a ruffed grouse, as he drums in days 198 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS when "a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove." A meadow lark called out to me, "See, see, sweet sixteen!" referring to his middle-aged mate in traveling costume. It is a pretty nice bird who feels that way toward his wife. His wife responds by not changing her bridal trousseau very much when traveling. Blue jays screamed all day long like school boys, out for a nutting expedition on Saturday. Gold finches and starlings were singing, but they are likely to burst into song at almost any time during the year, because sociability makes sunshine daily in their midst, no matter what clouds may be overhead. Pine trees jealous of the elegant adornment of changing maples, were shedding their two-year-old spills, and preparing to come out in a glory of radiant green, for contrast with the landscape as it slowly browns toward November monochrome. There is a white pine standing by my entrance gate, about a dozen years old, that has now passed the age of danger from horns of cattle and beaks of aphids, and is beginning to add dignity to beauty. It is almost big enough to be honored by the presence of a katydid, although it may have to wait a year or two longer before enjoying that dis- tinction. How I should like to see that pine tree one hundred years from this hour! In fancy I see it spreading its limbs out to meet those of two white birches which I planted nearby for purposes of contrast, together with a red pine, a Douglas fir, and two Austrian pines for competition effects. Down by the swimming pool there are some lively sprayful young hemlocks. They will not wave branches very far over the pool in my day. I put them among the rocks near the water's edge for others to enjoy later. Who knows but some ogre of efficiency — an utilitarian, will lay hands upon their timber some day. Let us hope not! At six o'clock in the morning, when I took a plunge in the clear cold water, it aroused dancing reflections of shield-ferns TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 199 which were gracing some rought gneiss rocks near the bank. Beeches and oaks were still green, but a white ash near the pool was purpling on the summer side. Maples were re- splendent in many colors. Gray birches and sassafras were responding to a call to allow iron molecules of their chlorophyll to vibrate with longer internodes. A trout jumped out of the water just as I jumped in, both of us enjoying the stimulation of changing our elements for a moment. All of the sumach family, from staghorn to climbing ivy, was claiming supremacy in color effects, and one can distinguish climbing ivy from Virginia creeper in the cedars at a single glance at this time of the year. The melting gold of climbing ivy in October is poured freely through the branches of cedars — and lavishly over old lichen-covered stone walls. Virginia creeper flames out more resplendently perhaps, but not really belonging to the royal family of sumachs in color effect. On the hillside a pepperidge tree commands attention in the distance, and it is more entrancing still when the glossy red leaves are gloated over in one's hands. Who says that Autumn is a time of sadness? He only who does not see the store of good things that have been laid up after a season's work by busy trees. Where leaves have fallen from the butternut and black walnut there is revealed a suggestion of wealth. Their treasures remind one of plea- sant evenings to come, in front of blazing birch logs of the open fireplace, at a time when the tell-tale white snow in the morning will show just where a red fox went at night. I wonder if there will be foxes and partridges in these woods of mine an hundred years from to-day, and if the track of a deer or of an otter may be seen as now in the sand by the stream a little way below the house. The fruit spurs of apple trees are as well filled with their rich cambium store of condensed apple blossom, as the June 200 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS eggs of a bobolink are full of coming song. Brown buck- wheat, that entices plump quail, has multiplied many times the seed that was sown on rich ground by Peter, my good Slavic farm hand. Instead of sadness in the autumn, I see only the colors of banners waving triumphantly over an exhibition of good things. Asters, gentians, and a late cardinal flower, have to lean far over the mirror of the brook in order to make sure they are conspicuous in the midst of so much color. It was dangerous delay indeed which made them postpone their flowering until now. A cosmos plant in the garden, in the midst of ruin among the culled vegetables and beheaded cab- bages, is in all its nuptial array. A wood duck gliding gracefully among floating leaves in the quiet pool was almost unseen because of so many other pretty colors afloat. He gave me a surprise with his sudden flash and spring as he mounted into the air on wild free hurt- ling wings. Bunches of wild grapes and shrubby sweet ferns are about the only things left, to send fragrance into the air near the bank of the stream. A cold little marbled sala- mander that was found under a mossy stone was not grateful for being disturbed, but when I found a chilled geometric spider, and placed him on a warm spot on a rock he ap- peared to be pleased. The vanessas, pretending to be very old bark of a chestnut tree, were not too cold to flit away to a safer place when I tried to look at them closely. Here and there from very still woods came the clear call of a Hyla, like a disembodied voice, — which brought back to mind the merry jingle of an eager throng in the springtime pool when skunk cabbage Kohaelda are standing on fixed post among the alders, and the woodcock is warbling a sweet love song to his mate. To-day was a day of happiness as usual for my little rascal of a friend, the red squirrel, who is always happy, no matter what the weather may be. He is quite as full of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 201 mischief as any irresponsible perennial boy like myself. He is especially joyful on sunny autumn days when he is busily laying up a store of provender in tree holes that he alone knows about. When the red squirrel finds a store of delicious beechnuts all nicely shelled and hidden away behind a slab of loose bark, he steals every single one of them; — stolen from the white-footed mouse. I do the same thing myself. Glad of the luck ! When he wants a young bird to eat, he catches one. I do the same thing in the dove cote. When he wants a pear he looks about to see that no one is watching and then takes it, just as we all do. We call him a thief and he is our kin. It is sort of mean in him to drive off the big grey squirrel, but Japan did that to Russia — guided by the red squirrel's motives. His agility is imparted from the springing, bending branches from which he leaps. There is nothing of slovenli- ness in his attire, for he would not appear in public until every dishevelled hair had first been made sleek with the aid of a pretty little moist pink tongue and tiny paw. Criticism cannot hit him, unless very expertly aimed, for he sees it coming and gets out of the way. This is not cowardice on his part, for he is courageous in every fibre, but he knows the economic value of staying alive. We must allow him some faults, or he would otherwise be too far above mankind in perfection. If the red squirrel had no bad tricks, hke that of taking what he wants and thinking it his due, he would never deserve to be killed, — but Heavens ! That is the very reason why he engages my affection and feeling of brotherhood. He is always boiling over with merriment, and is "sassy" if one approaches too near to his tree. As full of curiosity as our own natural aristocrats (the women folks) and, dare I say it? — almost as beautiful, — as chic and stylish anyway! There are probably days when he is dignified, but not when observers are near to be depressed by a show of seriousness. There 202 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS may be grave questions in home life, or when a hawk is near, but he never allows anyone else to know it. All that he has to say is sprightly and full of cheer, and the chatter which he tries to make us think so very, very saucy is really all make-believe. It is bed time. I will step out for a moment and listen to the barred owl, look for an emerald glowworm in the cold moonlit grass, glance at the North star to see if it is all right, and then allow October 5th to pass away for a century and dream of what will be here in 2012. Will there be trees and birds and flowers about Merribrooke one hundred years from now ? The city will have engulfed it by that time unless the flying machine gets to be a sort of tedding machine for spreading city folks around thinly. Perhaps the latitude and longitude of my chicken house will be changed altogether. Members of the Scott expe- dition to the Antarctic region have just reported the find- ing of characteristic fossils proving that the South Pole had twice been in a temperate zone, — apparently meaning that the earth had tipped over at least twice unexpectedly. By this we mean there was a change in the angle of the axis of the earth in relation to its plane of movement. This news belongs with our previous knowledge that tropical plants and animals once lived in the vicinity of the North Pole. Who knows when the world will turn turtle again? The obliquity of a viscous mass like our Earth, traveling around the sun at an angle of 23 degrees, is liable to great variation. Besides that, its density is presumably changing all of the while, giving different relative degrees of attraction by the sun. Still further, we have to consider the vast and increasing accumulation of a heavy ice cap at the South Pole (North Pole ice more rapidly runs into the sea in glacier form). This TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 203 heavy ice cap was not originally at the present South Pole, when the earth came to an equilibrium after tumbling over on two previous occasions. Consequently the ice must be exert- ing at the present time a constant influence which is more or less opposed to the direction in which our top was set spinning in the last game. The earth is an unbalanced gyroscope, because a large pro- portion of the land surface is in the northern hemisphere, resting for the most part upon rock. If this rock has an average specific gravity of three, and if the water of the southern hemisphere has an average specific gravity of one, the rock would therefore have a tendency to throw the center of secondary rotation of the earth out of the perpendicular. The heavy constantly increasing ice cap of the Antarctic region would also interfere with mathematical calculations. Who knows but on some hot morning in July we may see the sun traversing a strange new route across the sky, — and a few hours later my beautiful trees, all covered with snow preparing to go into fossil form, to be discovered by some Captain Scott a million years later? There may be no names like that of Scott a million years from now, anyway. In fact, we may be quite sure there will be no Scotts at that time, because all possible protoplasmic variations of that family group will have been exhausted. Modern comets have such tenuous tails that no real smother- ing of organic life is anticipated from that source; but perhaps in times gone by some heavier colliding mass has killed off all organic life on this earth, forcing it to begin all over suddenly again. A colliding mass may have exerted an influence in tipping the world over and giving warm climates for regions that are now glacial. That might account for the perfection of many of the skeletons which paleontologists have collected and which have remained in a state of good preservation 204 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS until they became petrified. The microbes perhaps perished along with all other cell life; consequently, skeletons lasted for aeons of time, until an entirely new lot of microbes had been developed, but the petrified skeletons were then past danger of destruction. We can easily conceive of the sudden demise of great quantities of animals and plants merely from the sudden tipping over of this earth, causing warm regions to become Arctic. Such sudden demise of organic life might have occurred from the influence of gases belonging to a collid- ing mass ; but there is wide room for range of imagination in explaining the way in which the bones of many of these animals were pulled about and scattered to some distance. Perhaps great tidal waves, occurring at the time of the tipping, swashed the bones far apart. We may turn the search-light of inference in this direction as freely as in any other direc- tion, — backward to the past, or forward to the future, if we like, — inference being one of the adjustable joys given to us by nature. There is no need for discussing the relative values of induction and deduction, because both were given to us as talents, and one depends upon the existence of the other. Perhaps Antecedent Mind has decreed that whenever culture and population are sufficiently well done on one side of the world, we are to be turned over and browned on the other side for awhile. Our present knowledge does not allow us to go very far beyond molecules, atoms and electrons, in our attempt at understanding the origin of life, but there is some question if in the present century we may not find that the very beginning of life is still being conducted among the colloids and re- sulting in formation of unclassed amoebse at least. At the present stage of evolution such new forms may not be destined to maintain their places in the presence of modern organic TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 205 competition. They may not develop successfully into higher forms of organic life, which we can recognize as permanent new species. If all organic life on this earth were suddenly to be swept off by the gas from some colliding mass, the col- loids still remaining in our rivers and oceans might then go on to the development of an entirely new set of organic beings. These would begin at such a low stage that new forms would meet only primitive kinds of opposition to development. Who knows but this is really in nature's plan, and that an entire new outfit of organic beings is to replace the ones now on this earth, after a colliding mass has banged at us from the skies ? The idea of destruction of all organic life on this earth as the result of some quite possible collision, and the poor hard- working world having to begin evolution all over again from its colloids, is enough to make one yawn with a feeling of weariness, if we are to agree with philosophers who assume there is no purpose in the development of organic life. Our only hope is in developing right now an intense interest in the beautiful things about us, without regard for any intention belonging to antecedent mind. If gas from a colliding body wipes off all organic life, and nature has to begin this organic world all over again with colloids as a basis, we may as well, while we are about it, assume that such gases would destroy colloids also. Even these might be built up again by mutations of the crystalloid elements. If one is bound to be worried about the course of affairs in this world, he might as well begin way back, and be thorough. There was a warm sympathy with life in pagan days of Pantheism, when every tree had its own god. The hard- hearted Puritan saw little that was ahve excepting man, — and his man, cold and half stupefied by his religion, looked 2o6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS forward to the time When he could escape from a life which was indeed awful. These two extreme positions, crude in their conception, represented one kind of ignorance and two kinds of imagination. In this twentieth century, some of us are back to Pantheism again, with imagination all alert at finding life — fascinating life — in everything. Man is alive, an eagle is alive, a cricket is alive, a violet is alive, a wine microbe is alive; and not only these, but the noble cliff of granite rock, rising in stately dignity from the river bank toward the blue sky, is mutable and alive. A part of it (through processes of erosion) has already gone to help form the structures of birds and flowers, and to engage for awhile in more active life than the part which still remains intact. We know that the cliff which still remains is neither inert nor immutable. The stress and strain of stupendous living energies hold its mole- cules together. A merry, ceaseless dance of sub-atoms is causing a feeling of care on the part of atoms of the cliff, for is it not their serious atomic duty to maintain order in the house of the molecule of granite? Organization must be supported notwithstanding the pranks of sub-atoms. So long as order and organization prevail the force of cohesion lends a willing hand to assist the granite cliff in its function of appearing as an inspiring feature of the landscape. Do not imagine for a moment, however, that the cliff is free from responsibility. Even as you gaze upon it, the innocent trick- ling stream from a spring has borrowed a little of its sub- stance, and this will be loaned by the stream to a water-cress. A mallard will accept it from the water-cress, and a hunter will take it from the mallard. Some day nothing will be left of the cliff; — but look upon it now! It is alive, as you are, in the damp rising mist of early morning and in the glory of warm evening sunlight. You and the cliff are but twin inci- dents in the sublime whirl of immeasurable energy. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 207 The cliff is your living brother, throbbing and pulsating with the vibrations of that stupendous engine which is manu- facturing something, we know not what. Can you feel alone when in the mountains, even above timber line, and above lichen line ? There I join hands with God and we enjoy things together. Kings and presidents are austere as the clifif with their ideas of personal importance, yet they come and go as clififs have come and gone. Kings and cliffs in the past have always disappeared, to be replaced straightway by others. Living kings have not endured so long as living clififs, because their molecular constituents were arranged for more rapid change, but their atomic and sub-atomic contents were similar, and all shared a common fate in the past — as they will in the future. High among the mountain peaks you and the cliff and the God of this world are in company, all alive, all brothers, and all perhaps to share the same fate, — ^to be rent asunder for new combinations according to the laws and plans of Antecedent Mind. Everything in nature engages the soul. Who does not love to contemplate the vast power of the grand swinging ocean when the unbounded tide is high, — its long heaving billows and smashing breakers? Yet when the tide is out, I think of the diatomic beauty of sea mud. The time is not far distant when microscopist designers will go to the mud for their ideals of beauty to be reproduced in designs. They will work out patterns from diatoms and desmids and consult great works on the subject of rhizopods. The color of the wide mysterious ocean at full tide is entrancing, but the fragrance from micro- scopic organisms of its mud at low tide is inspiring. Men say this fragrance gives them appetite and brings back color to pale cheeks, but the outlook, together with the oxygen-laden winds of the sea, also help to unbind the shackled mind, and bid it range far, far to the distant horizon and beyond that. 2o8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS The outlook of people by the sea and among the mountains is wide. There is a freedom of the mind that would be limited among small and mean surroundings. It is difficult to live one's happiest life among surroundings of the city. It is only while at my old farmhouse in vacation time that these notes can be written, — near the pleasant sound of rushing water, where vireos are singing, and a chattering squirrel in the hickory tree tries to attract my atten- tion. Here is where one can watch sunset clouds and smell ripening fruit. These must be my joyful surroundings, for in the city one is engaged in making adaptation to duties of the day as one cog wheel fits into another cog wheel, rotating with the rest of town machinery. We may call it "life" in town, but "soul" is in the country. Who cares if soul and life were once synonymous terms away back in the dark beginning, so long as now the course of life, like the Nautilus of Dr. Holmes, establishes grander mansions as it progresses. Eyes brighten most when men speak of the country. "When the red gods call," I sometimes think of half-hidden snow berries growing in the loose humus beneath dark firs, — and the grateful odor of balm of Gilead trees, where a trout brook is murmuring and the moose comes to drink. Then again memory turns to where a baby blue sea, flowing over pure white sand, shimmers in the heated air and makes a mirage that raises distant palm trees aloft. I listen and hear the booming of an alligator or the song of a mocking bird. The odor of jasmine seems to come to my nostrils. Some- times my thoughts turn to the bleak mountain with its damp caribou moss and grey lichens, and the bare peaks from which one looks down upon billowy clouds below. In another mo- ment I am on a heaving dark-green ocean amidst exploding foam, and chilled by the blast, while above the sound of warring waves I hear the slapping of halyards. Then again TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 209 I hear the labored breathing of my broncho and the mo- notonous creaking of the saddle hour after hour, — and smell the sage brush after a freshening rain. I hear the measured thump of the paddle against the canoe — inhale wood smoke of the camp fire and a wafted odor from hot crunchy bacon in the frying pan. I see a trapped fox, his fluffy fur showing beautiful changes of color when it is stirred by the wind. How soft it feels! I hear the measured "flup, flup," of snow shoes on deep and crisp cold white. Oh, such white! And all so still in the great forest aisles, — so vacuumly still that one more snow flake descending from the leaden sky above would almost echo in the stillness of the forest aisles, in the hollow stillness of spruces. I hear the thunder of falls, the black portentous current sliding silently over the brink and then smashing into smothering foam, giving the very rocks and the ground a subdued tremble. I hear the splash of a splurging salmon, rebreathe like a lover the breath of deep woods moss and of fir trees and of pines. I hear the pecking of sleet against the log cabin window, and the shaking of the door by the wind, which would fain enter and whirl ashes merrily over the blazing birch logs in the open fireplace. Do you know all of this, poor neurasthenic aesthete, arising at nine A. M. from a city bed? Ah, no ! Poor waif of the mind ! You may know beauty and crime in per- haps equal proportions, as the foam beneath the falls carries dead leaves and sticks along with its expanding bubbles, which glint out rainbow hues of beauty for a moment. But you, foam and froth of the mind, were made by the falling of powerful ancestors, as the froth beneath the falls is made by the strong waters plunging amongst obstacles. To you, aesthete, I say sadly, "Farewell, a long farewell!" Like the white foam you were born of falling power. You are about 2IO TO-MORROW'S TOPICS to go into vapor, to vanish and be lost. Flee to the open if you have life enough left — and live ! The desire to get back to the land is an automatic movement, quite as automatic as that of the feed- valve in a machine. It is response to what might be called mechanistic instinct. We know that mechanistic development of the egg is possible with- out fertilization; but nature, in order to insure fertilization of the egg in the best way, places sentiment about the process as a whole. Nature also places sentiment at work for getting her gregarious people back to where they can oxidize their toxins once more after they have gone to cities and have suffered cell injury during efforts at obtaining prizes that are given by culture. She makes them love birds and flowers, and enjoy outdoor sports, and in that way secures incidental meta- bolism of toxins. It is sentiment, then, which insures integrity of the sex cell, and sentiment again which insures integrity of the soma cell. Both processes are automatic in response to natural stimuli. Both processes are mechanistic in last analysis. Should we not enjoy them because they are mechanistic? Is a watch less beautiful because it goes usefully by machinery? One who understands its mechanism, appreciates it best. I gave a spray of white azalea to a friend on an early July day. "How wonderful !" he said. "What delicate fragrance, what daintiness in shades of white, — if one can have shades of white! Is it Japanese?" Now what do you think of that? No wonder people ask what is the use of living. My friend did not know where the white azalea grew. It grows where the rose breasted grosbeak would waken him at four o'clock in the morning with a finer song than he would hear in town during the day. It grows where the hellebores say "I'm here !" to the goddess of springtime — where the bracken fern offers TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 211 best thanks for sunshine received, and where the Virginia turtle shows us a placer of unalloyed gold in the trout brook. My friend would not know how to find molten silver in the leaves of a silver poplar, even with spring water right at hand, for that is a trick known only to lovers of trees. Ask him about the most fragrant flower of the vicinity and he would not mention the wild fox grape at all. One who does not know the beautiful things near home may spread blankness of mind and heart over a large area when he turns traveller and goes forth to see things. My smoky old tent stood among sparse aspens on a bit of clean sand between rough boulders. Toward the East one saw great cold billows rearing aloft in their might, then tumbling cowed by their encounter with determined granite ledges guarding the inlet. With sternness gone and better natures released the waves crinkled in sunlight on friendly sloping sands in front of my tent on that quiet estuary, with a sort of purring sound, mingled with the dulcet music of a small river that had poured itself out of the mountain valley on the sunset side of camp. A mother seal playing with her baby stopped for a moment in front of the tent, surprised. Nothing like that had she ever seen before. It was not a safe place for her perhaps ; at least, she could not risk any danger for her little one and at the same time satisfy her feminine curiosity (material for a tense situation you perceive). The seal instantly took her conflicting emotions down below the surface of the water, without drowning them, emerged again a long way off, and looked at us with round, wondering eyes. A grampus came rolling along into the narrow estuary lazily and slid his dark back out of the water only a few yards away from us. He snorted out a shorter puff than usual when he espied Itok and me in front of the tent. A pretty little turnstone prodded with his bill under the pebbles close to our feet with- 212 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS out any sign of fear, engaged in making a merger of sundry amphipods. We were very quiet — Itok by nature and I be- cause of sympathy with the surroundings. It was not much of a sound that caused me to turn my head around, — just a trifle of unusual sort of rustle that some folks would not have noticed at all. There under the flap of our tent sat a little mouse of a species that I had not seen before. He was quite fearless and began to wash his face with tiny paws. I wanted very much to collect that mouse, but his spirit of companionship overcame my scientific zeal. "What's that, Itok?" I asked in a low voice. "Awingyak," he replied. "Oh, yes !" said I, "every- body knows it is a mouse, but what kind of a mouse?" "Suna- mik — !" Oh, dear! why should I have expected him to say more than that it was just a mouse ! "Know why mouse she not 'fraid when wash face?" "No," said I, knowing that some Eskimo legend was coming. For a long time nothing was said, but I knew better than to disturb the silence, for when divine afflatus is arranging the sequences of a legend one must not interrupt the spell with that impatience which comes from civilization. Itok looked far away toward the misty distant headland and seemed to be dreaming. Then he began. "Once time, plenty hundred year back, was very nice girl. She come down by river to fix hair and look in see herself all pretty." At that moment a sound of crunching sand was borne to our ears and a moment later a traveller, heavily coated and looking uncomfortable, came upon us. He was accompanied by a sailor and the two had walked over from the bay where the seldom steamer had put in for a few hours' stay. "Well, well !" the traveller remarked, "I didn't expect to find a white man here! Do you like it — this camping out in iceberg air? Say, isn't this a God forsaken spot though ! nothing to see and nothing to do until you get back somewhere !" On another occasion when seated under a great oak whose TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 213 ancestor may have been planted by a wandering Druid, I was tiiinking of the days when a swarthy Hun might have sat on that identical small spot, if the nimble Goths ever gave a Hun time to sit down. A sweet voiced linnet changed the timbre of my thought toward the glorious expansion of later day culture in that country of scholars. Just then a family party of travellers stopped by a park bench within hearing distance and this was about the order of conversation. "This isn't Bonn, Madge, you are a goose ! This is Mainz !" "No it isn't, Tilly, it's Bonn ! We were in Mainz yesterday !" "Pa, Tilly says this is Bonn. It's Mainz, isn't it?" "Now, children, you can always remember which it is by bearing in mind that it is on the river." "What river, Pa?" "Look in the guide- book and be more independent ! Don't always be asking me as though I were the only one who knew !" "George wants to go to Louvain. Do you think there is anything going on there?" "Well, they say there is an old university ..." "Oh, pshaw! I'll bet it's a stupid old place — nothing going on there at all !" It is said that the widening influence of travel may be ob- tained at an expense of not more than seven dollars per day per individual, if one is careful about expenditures, but the average cost is something over ten dollars per day per person. Who knows the very earliest spring flowers and songsters of his locality? When hoydenish dithyrambic March is wearied of revelling with ^olus there sometimes comes a day when Auster goes quietly northward for a stroll. 'Tis not a long stay that he makes, because April is jealous and soon persuades Boreas to return and show his power once more. During this brief visit of a benign presence, gnomes of the Symplocarpus come out bravely in nuptial array along the trout brook's bank. The very modest emigrant, Draba verna, coming out at the 214 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS same time, prefers to hide its petals by a little dissembling monochrome with the edge of a melting snow bank. These and the pussy willow are our first spring flowers at Merribrooke (although I may some day find golden saxifrage and early saxifrage there). One does not so easily decide about the earli- est spring songsters, because gold finches and fox sparrows may sing on almost any warm day in winter. Chickadees and nut- hatches, bless their hearts ! — no doubt consider their everyday voice's to be as truly song as are the everyday voices of some other simple cheery folk whom we know. Perhaps the song sparrow and the woodcock are to me the first real harbingers of spring. No matter if Auster moves rapidly during his stroll at the last of March; the little song sparrow, impatient at any delay in love-making, flips like a brown leaf in a gust of air from dead weed stalks to the top of an alder, and sings the song of a heart full of cheer while the wind blows his tail and his courageous bit of song all sideways. It is his intention that counts for so much. The woodcock's song in the warmer evenings of March is particularly charming because of its fitness to the character of the bird, and to his surroundings, ^olus still picks threnodies away up aloft among the clashing branches of mighty oaks during the day. At night there comes a lull ; — the calm of eventide settles over forest and field. In this hour of peace the woodcock sings to his sweetheart. Among all bird songs appropriate to the environment, what can be more delightful than the song of the woodcock? It is the song of the tenderest of lovers, and it strikes the very note that poets have sought in their ideals of love in a cottage, or of a secluded spot in some far wilderness. The song of a woodcock is the dearest song in the world. Would that some one would sing to me such a lullaby ! All is quiet in the valley. Moonlight is transmuting spring mist into gold. The jingle of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 215 silver bells of the Hyla chorus comes faintly from some distant marsh. Then it is that the woodcock looks into the dreamy eyes of his beautiful bride and springing aloft with twittering wing, — stills the wing note when high in the air, and warbles so softly and sweetly to his true love that it seems almost sacrilege to listen. It is not to the multitude that he sings. Oh, no, indeed ! "It is just for you and me, Betty ! Not for the world would we disturb any one with our affection, but we love each other and our happiness is complete !" The unnatural character of much of our "high culture music" produces an artificial taste which dulls the sensibilities against appreciation of real music. I have often called the attention of a companion who was humming some refrain from Debussy or from Wagner to a bird like the red cross-bill that was singing near at hand. My friend would stop for a moment and exclaim, "Yes, fine !" — and then go on humming his Debussy or Wagner again while the red cross-bill was still singing. That was an impious interruption of Jehovah who was speaking to us at that moment straight out of his great heart from his own wonderful throne! I have never made any comments when my friends have done this, but away down deep there was a feeling of pity, — a feeling of shame for the misdeeds of culture. The voices of birds call out particular response from one who has natural feeling. The melody of the hermit thrush is that of spiritual ecstasy, and when singing he chooses a natural place for worship, where the incense of moist moss is not wafted away by careless winds. In his deep forest nave the higher lights are sifted soft through spills of larch, and further mellowed by gentle reflection from motionless leaves of shaded moose-maple and viburnum. The color of Clintonia berries and of the flowers of Linnea suffice for decoration of his 2i6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS mossy carpeted floor. A star may sometimes be seen above in day light from the depths of his abode, and that I fancy is why he sings as he does. The song of the red cross-bill on the other hand is the inspired voice of comradeship — a clear song of vibrant cheer from the roads of his merry flock among the very tip tops of dark firs. From the fragrant resin of their cones he abstracts a spicy virility which accords with the sprightly vigor of his manner and presence. High winds, high sun; these he braves with a choice that belongs to his nature, yet he cares not a bit for lowering cloud nor driving rain so long as companions enough are near. To hear him sing is worth a trip of long miles. The red cross-bill and the hermit thrush may be found within hearing distance of each other and both birds at the same moment voicing the two chief joys of higher life, comradeship and spiritual expression. I find that my strongest special memories are connected with voices of birds. Each has its group of associations; long- tailed duck, olive-sided flycatcher, water wagtail, raven, robin, nightingale, rook. Each voice recalls experiences in near and far-off lands. Starlings and catbirds have songs which in some features are alike, but the catbird prefers a song which is sweet in quality, while the starling's song is musical but not sweet. We find the same thing in characters of people who resemble each other in some respects. The nuthatch, because of its habit of taking the opposite point of view, finds much of value that other birds miss. While the eagle is our national bird, for large free idea, I believe that the chickadee is to become our national bird for associations of pretty sentiment. The robin in the North and the mocking bird in the South have already called out much that is beautiful in literature, and in larger proportion perhaps than any other two birds. They have furnished the opening TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 217 notes for self revelation of the finer inner natures of many hundreds of people, but the quality of literature surrounding the chickadee has on the whole been closer to the heart, and of late years increasing in volume. This fondness for the chickadee will probably become general, calling forth expres- sion of delightful sentiments. The cheerfulness of the chick- adee in the midst of storm and flying snow, his ready adapta- tion to the vicissitudes of weather, his family attachment, modesty, busy occupation and usefulness, all appeal to those of us who go where the chickadee lives. We cannot forget his dainty grace and beauty — and the bright eyes of our dear little fluffy chickadee make one of the pleasantest memories of a day spent afield at almost any time of the year. He intro- duces a social idea of companionship and good cheer, with an epieikeian disregard of hardship. The sociability of a gregarious species is inspiring when it is of happy character. The darling little troop of cheery chickadees, busily singing and working, attract to their assem- blage cousin nuthatch, sprightly red start and pretty chestnut- sided warbler, pert Maryland yellow throat and demure downy woodpecker. All of these visitors like to get together and follow along with a busy family party of chickadees, excepting in winter when the warblers are nearer to the place where the mangrove sits. The song of the red-eyed Vireo symboHzes work plus cheer- fulness. He sings in the midst of his hourly daily work in summer and all through the year at times. He does not feel that he should wait until we have made weather conditions suitable to his artistic mood before he can sing to us and in that way reward us for contributing to his vanity. That sort of spirit belongs only to the higher intelligence. When he sings to us we are bound to agree that something indefinably good is in the weather for that day. 2i8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Even the plain call notes of birds add something to the daily life of wood and field. Ornithologists tell us that the voice of the chickadee is not a song but just a plain call note. If that is the case I shall wish to believe that the song of the vireo is also nothing more than call note, for he sings as he goes, with- out expression of unusual emotion. This leads me to a con- clusion that any sort of voice may be close to song all of the while, if inner spirit strikes the chords aright. Wait a minute ! Perhaps I am going barbarously fast any- way when speaking without inspiration, of the plain call notes of birds. A man may always think finer thoughts than he has in his work-a-day mind, if he will only stop for a moment and open the gold purse of memory. Sit down with me here on soft caribou moss. Now listen, — yes — listen! So faintly, yet clearly, one almost says "near-ly", — the silvery lilt of a light floating marlin; two miles toward God while the world whirls beneath him. He stops not for rain, nor for mountain, nor falcon, from Labrador coast to the Argentine highland. "This evening I'm Southward, to-morrow returning; Missouri, Alberta, wherever you see me, don't mind what the wind is, you'll know it's fair weather — and always good going for those who fly high enough, Send up a greeting ; — but, no ! I won't hear it, for voices of men cannot reach to my roadway. Just lift up both hands as a sign that you see me, and down through all cloudland I'll send a clear-sky note." Oh, silvery lilt of the light floating marlin! When men's hands point toward him, — they're lifted toward Heaven. How many people in the country keep an eye upon pretty pussy during the month of June, when young birds are leaving the nest? I doubt if ten thousand people in any one state take the trouble to do this. Yet if ten thousand households were to TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 219 confine one cat each during the month of June, it would mean the saving of at least 250,000 useful birds for that state alone in a single year. Estimates which have been made in Massa- chusetts indicate that a much larger number of birds are killed each year by ten thousand cats, but in that state there are more birds about the houses than in some of the Western states. We may safely count upon a yearly loss of 250,000 young birds for every ten thousand cats in rural and suburban dis- tricts in each state. Most of the killing of young birds is done in the early morning or in the evening, when the owners of cats do not know about movements of their pets unless they have had occasion to study the matter. I have watched my own cats. They marked every bird's nest near the farm house by the calls of nestlings when their parents approached with food. The cats made it a point to "go rounds" near these nests, and when the young birds fluttered to the ground nearly all were caught. My attention was not directed to the matter at first because there were so many other things to think about. Articles which appeared upon the subject in the natural history press led me to make close observation and to allow the sacrifice of young birds in order to get at the facts. My two cats caught practically all of the young birds from the nests of something like three robins, two chippies, one blue bird, one wren, one phoebe and several song sparrows near the house in the course of one month. I have forgotten the details, but the loss included more than fifty young birds in thirty days! Do advances belonging to civilization always civilize in proportion to the degree of advance? I know of a beautiful winding road in New England. Its sandy curves lead past the old tumble-down mill that was used in Revolutionary days for grinding rye and corn. There were surprises of fern covered rocks as one came around bends in the road. Alders 220 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS grew where the woodcock's borings might be found close to the footpath. There were places where the sunlight danced merrily over its luck at getting through the overhanging beech branches to the road below. This summer I found that the trees and bushes had all been cut and the beauty of the road entirely ruined. In a little old house with mossy shingles, hidden among great lilac bushes, my dear old friend widow Bradley explained that practical efficiency was responsible for the misdemeanor. Automobilists had complained to the town authorities that they dared not go fast along the shaded road for fear of running into each other. (What a pity they hadn't all done it!) They wanted to put on speed and get past the place where wild grape vines hung in long festoons from graceful elms, and where closed gentians of heavenly blue peered out from among the asters. They wanted to hasten by the bend where a big-eyed rabbit might be taken by surprise, and where a cautious approach would allow one to get a glimpse of the neat brown thrasher in his dust bath of fine white sand. They wanted to be rid of the sight of a pretty striped chipmunk sitting ever so still on a lichen-covered stone wall, with his tiny paws folded closely against the soft fur of his breast. They wanted to exceed the speed limit past butternut trees where might be found the charming sub-colors and half tones of the larva of a regal moth, in order to get to some wide open space where they might go still faster and read pill signs on large boards by the wayside. Nature is mean when laughing up her sleeve and playing practical jokes on people with misconception, making them believe they are leaders of affairs in this world when really they are like a bull with a ring in its nose, and are being led by evolution into worry and debt and annoying competition. Nature does not find it necessary to employ misconception TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 221 among the lower animals to such an extent; but man, who comes dangerously near to making progress too rapidly, must have his right conceptions held in check. Wild birds and animals have little misconception about the intentions of a man with a gun. They keep far away from him. If he lives among them in a friendly way, some of them will come to eat out of his hand, and the very wildest become surprisingly tame about the camp of a hermit or of a nature lover who has no kill in his heart. This reads almost like superstition to one who does not know as well as I do what the attitude of love and sympathy toward wild creatures will bring in the way of response. Whenever one goes through the woods hundreds of pairs of eyes are turned toward him without his knowledge, and these eyes get a right conception about motives of an intruder. A man who goes through the woods with a camera-heart gets much closer to wild animals than does a man who goes out with a gun-heart. The scientific psychologist will say, "Nonsense ! No wild animal knows the difference between a camera-heart and a gun-heart, and no wild animal knows a man's intentions." Right here is where I find some compensation for not being scientific, and can have the privi- lege of knowing better than the psychologist seems to know. A man who is fond of horses and cattle will go among them freely without attracting any special attention, while one who fears them may be in danger, because fear is recognized at once by animals as an inimical attitude. We may say this is misconception of real motive, because the one who is fearful does not really mean to do the animal harm. Fear, like hunt- ing spirit, belongs in the harm class, and animals promptly recognize it as such. A psychologist gravely remarked to me that man is the only animal that laughs. Such an expression of opinion places a man at once. He has not enough love and sympathy in his 222 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS nature to get very close to the animals. They must remain more or less sad or suspicious in his presence. He belongs with the anthropocentric group who believe that the Lord made man and casually threw other things into the world for his needs. Come now, Professor Psychologist! Watch our Towser when his sense of humor has led him to try to beat a passing railroad train in a race. Back he comes with a tail wagging so hard that it wags him all over, his eyes fairly shine with merriment. He is taking the same little short breaths that you yourself take when laughing. The corners of his mouth and of his eyes are drawn up very much like yours when you are laughing, and what is more, he is too sociable to wish to laugh all by himself, but runs back to me so that we can laugh together pver an amusing incident. If he does not laugh with a loud guffaw which disturbs those who do not happen to be interested, it is simply because he was not given intelli- gence enough for that. Your dog cares more for your habitual attitude of mind than he does for any individual acts. Accidentally step upon his foot and he forgives. Pretend that you are going to hit him very hard with your fist and he will not even close his eyes. A strange dog knows very quickly whether you are fond of animals or not. I would rather have dogs and babies run to me instinctively, than to have a press agent succeed in work- ing into "the society columns" an impression that I was really on the inside with the exclusives. Others may not feel the same way. While going across a pasture with a lady who was visit- ing the farm I remarked upon the pleasure of feeling that the horses and cows and all other animals on the place would run toward me instead of away from me, to which she replied, "Mercy me! that is just precisely what I was always afraid they would do." TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 223 They say that a dog is Hke his master. This is largely true, because the dog has no misconception about his master's habitual attitude of mind. If a man is austere and reserved, so is his dog. If a man is friendly and enthusiastic, so is his dog. I once had a dog that was a great thief. A man's dog may know better than his wife if he is lovable or not, because the dog as a lower animal cannot use his higher intelligence for getting into a snarl of misconception. Years ago several of us members of a class were much im- pressed and somewhat depressed by a lecture from a professor in psychology who made unhappy comparison between the reasoning of man and the intelligence of a dog. His points seemed well made and I could not answer them, but one day a month or so later I happened to see him with the dog from which he had drawn some of his conclusions. It was a miserable little watery-eyed poodle that would have served a much better purpose if somebody had tied a stick to it, soused it in a pail of soapsuds, and used it as a mop for cleaning the floor. The sight of the dog which the teacher had used for purposes of comparison with man allowed me to return at once to former ideas and to fuller appreciation of my boyhood com- panion, Guy Newfoundland. Once when I went in swimming all alone Guy watched carefully from the bank of the pond. He paid little attention until I got into what he feared was too deep water, and then suddenly rushing in grasped me by the arm with gentle but firm teeth, and against all objections dragged me ashore. The mop dog would not have done that. One day when I was starting off on a hunt for woodchucks, and cached my luncheon in a stone wall, it was some time afterward that I happened to notice that Guy was not with me. A long search failed to find him. Where he had gone was a mystery. On returning to the place where my luncheon had been cached, there was dignified Guy lying beside it and 224 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS protecting it. He had little confidence in the boys and the other dogs of the neighborhood, and had foresworn the joy and delight of hunting woodchucks in order to go back and protect that luncheon. If the mop-dog had gone back to the luncheon, it would have been for the purpose of eating it. Whenever another dog pitched at Guy for the purpose of frightening him or even for the purpose of biting him, which various sized dogs sometimes would do, Guy was too magnani- mous to fight back until he looked the other dog well over and decided that he was a good match, — otherwise he would not retaliate. The mop dog would have bitten anything that he thought would run away. We find character displayed by individual animals quite as well as by individual men. I have had dogs that would not steal, and others that would do so. It was a matter of natural honor on the part of dogs that would not steal. An honest dog will stand guard and attack another that attempts to steal. A dog that has killed sheep during the night shows it in his face in the morning. I am unwilling to draw a line between men and dogs when it comes to a question of soul. Even among animals far less intelligent than the dog, the cat for example, we find some that will not steal when tempted and others that will slip into the pantry on every occasion when they think no one is looking. Among my dogs all were affec- tionate, some were brilliant, others stupid, — some honest, others dishonest, and I felt like all of them at times. It is said that ambition belongs only to man, yet some of my dogs have had ambition. When they had learned to do a thing that pleased me they tried to do it exceeding well. One might say this was for the purpose of reward or a bid for display of afifection on my part, — but what is the every day aim of ambition in man himself beyond this? Do animals think? Does a watch tick? If watches tick, TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 225 then animals think, because ticking and thinking both represent mechanistic processes which are characteristic of the agents by which they are expressed. We were driving along the road with a steady old horse, when he suddenly jumped like a colt at seeing a small piece of paper in the road. This was such an unusual act for him that I asked the driver why he did it. Said the driver, "Oh, there's a lot of human natur' in that hoss. When he goes along and ain't thinkin' he'll jump when he sees somethin' that he ain't thought about seein'." Speaking of mind, it is difificult to draw a line of demarca- tion between mind of man and mind of animals. I have had dogs that seemed quite as intelligent as some of the Indians in my employ, with quite as high appreciation of ethics. While we must agree that man's mind is far superior on the whole, we may nevertheless take animals into account in the question of a future life. It is not necessary to assume that evolution has proved man to be merely a king of brutes, the most powerful and cunning of all animals. Things of the spirit have developed along with his physical evolution, and I object only to man in his conceit saying that man alone has all of the things of the spirit. If we speak of high intelligence, I have had dogs with that. If we speak of devotion to truth, I find that quality in some of my dogs. Nobility of character — my dogs have had that. Unselfishness — my dogs have shown it. What people call soul I would call the highest product of our present evolution of brain associated with the highest evolution of the organic part of animal life. Among my dogs there were noble Guy and honorable Don ; magnanimous Grouse, sensitive Busy, clever Belle, keen dis- honest Gyp. Belle was not really mine, but too good and clever to have ownership claimed wholly by Sam Tisdel, with whom I went on many shooting trips during her lifetime. 226 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS There is much in the instinct of animals which is quite beyond human comprehension. Yesterday I observed an osprey flying from the river over my barn where a large flock of pigeons sat cooing and flying about unconcernedly. The osprey flew very near to them, but they paid very little atten- tion, excepting that some of them flew up and circled near him in a playful way. Now, if a Cooper's hawk or a sharp- shinned hawk had appeared, even at a great distance, there would have been terror immediately among the pigeons. Some of my employees do not know the difference between an osprey and a Cooper's hawk in its relation to pigeons, but the pigeons know. Why should house flies crowd into the veranda, and hurry to get under cover when a thunderstorm approaches, unless they have some degree of instinct closely approximating reason? Instinct surely can tell them nothing of drops of rain that are to hit them on their backs presently. They know however that they should get under cover. The knowledge that rain drops will hit them on their backs in the course of sixty minutes may not come to them in that definite form of in- formation, but they know something is going to happen out of doors pretty soon and they know where to go. Perhaps the reason why a hound knows where a fox has passed two hours before is because the fox left surrounding objects vibrating in a certain way, not necessarily in the form of odor. It may be similar to the "smell" of brass, which is often so strong as to be disagreeable, and this smell is left upon the fingers from some of our old-fashioned brass objects. Now, brass is not volatile, as we understand volatility, nor is any brass transferred to the fingers to impart a disagreeable odor. It is perhaps due to conflicting vibrations of zinc and copper in combination, which are transmitted to our olfactory organs and give the same impression as that which is made by TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 227 volatile substances. A fox travelling in deep snow cannot leave much "odor," but a hound will follow by "scent" at some distance from the tracks. If the smell of brass is due to vibration rather than to emanation, then we may presume that the odor of flowers is also due to vibration, only a part of which depends upon emanation. This would make smell so closely allied to sound that some day somebody may be expected to measure smells. He will reduce them to scientific terms, all science being based upon measurement and numbers. The current conception of smells as being due to emanation from material particles in the air came to a pause when I stopped to think about brass. Smells when measured will be reflected from appropriate surfaces and their respective velocities of transmission will be treated by equations. Smells will perhaps be photographed. I now recall a statement by a physicist saying that a bronze medallion which had lain for a long time upon his window- sill showed something like a copy of itself upon the white paint. He had no explanation for the phenomenon. It was probably a case in which a smell had photographed itself, and the paint had appreciated what our noses appreciate in connec- tion with brass. Before this century is over we may perhaps take photographs of smells of flowers and get to understand how a hound knows where a fox ran several hours previously. Musk which was mixed with mortar of a mosque in Constanti- nople in the eleventh century gave a strong odor when the mosque was recently repaired, and this mortar exposed. Theologians like to call attention to the idea that reason must be different from instinct, because the reason of the lowest man is so much higher than the instinct of the highest animal. That is a somewhat debatable point, but we will accept their premises for purposes of argument. Now then, the current of electricity which is given by a torpedo fish, and 228 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS the odor furnished by a polecat are so distinctly in excess of the electricity which is furnished by ordinary muscle action, or the odor of any other known animal, that we recognize at once the presence of highly specialized function. The reason- ing of man is a highly specialized "instinct function" of his physical brain cells. It is to be compared in that way with the furnishing of a shocking current by the torpedo fish, or the furnishing of a shocking odor by the polecat. The furnishing of a shocking view by a modernistic fictionist is nothing more than a demonstration of highly specialized function of physical brain cells, on the part of a superior being. As one comes to know more of the habits of wild animals, he gradually gives up killing and prefers studying the animals, and observing them in their native haunts. He likes to see them increase in numbers. Primeval lust of the chase is very apt to disappear or become modified after one gets older and passes the savage stage of youth. After birth we have to recapitulate our social evolution, passing through stages of barbarism to stages of higher intellectual life. The boy who is eager as a wolf to kill a deer gets to be the man who would prefer to photograph a deer, and to observe its graceful move- ments. Even the collecting of specimens after one has come to prefer observation of animals to destruction of them, often belongs to the barbarous stage. It has an example in com- parative psychology in habits of the magpie, when mere collect- ing is done without scientific purpose. Collecting without definite plan represents a primal stage of thought, although correlation of observation for the purpose of deducing im- portant facts is commendable on the part of those who have capacity for high class work. What is real and what is not real? The color of a flower is as real as the substance of a flower, because both simply TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 229 represent different modes of vibration of the ether. Thus, a red rose gives us several kinds of result of ether vibrations. Its color vibrates in long ether waves at the instance of the character of its chlorophyll grains. In its odor the waves are due to vibration impulse given by volatile products. In the wood it vibrates in the form of certain helium combinations. The question as to what is real and what is not real becomes simplified if we carry everything back to the basis of mani- festation of ether vibration. If a man places himself in the shoes of an electron, he finds the color of a rose to be quite as tangible and real as the wood of a rose. I like to take a big, jolly view of things, and to believe that my friends are the truest, my dogs the cleverest, my horses the gentlest, and my geese not readily distinguished from swans, yet at the same time, my sympathies run most quickly to men who believe their own things are even better than mine. That makes my vanity bearable for others. In the days when doctors were warring over questions of the value of antisepsis, at national medical society meetings. Dr. Link was most violent in his attacks upon these new methods, and upon me as their advocate. In fact it was difificult for us to approach each other courteously in private, and we sort of instinctively kept apart from each other at all dinners and social occasions in the profession. We happened to return on the same steamer from an international congress, but did not find occasion to speak to each other at first. One day, while sitting near Dr. Link on the deck, I overheard his con- versation with a circle of friends about prairie chicken shoot- ing, and listened to his detailed experiences with sport in the field. He described a wonderful pointer that he owned, — keen nose, staunchness, pride of bearing in the field — and said that on one occasion when they were shooting in tall prairie 230 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS grass, the pointer was lost. The dog would not come to any call because of his wonderful staunchness, and it was known that he was somewhere on a point. "We searched high and low for him," said Dr. Link, "and all at once I came upon him standing in a little clearing, and looking as big as a horse." On that I arose and said, "Link, let us shake hands. Any man whose pointer looks to him as big as a horse is a friend of mine, no matter what he thinks on the subject of antiseptic surgery." A young man asks how he may cultivate his natural bent toward intellectual and social life, and at the same time main- tain health and make a living at agriculture. I tell him to buy a farm at any comfortable distance from town and go into raising potatoes. This is only one of fifty crops which might come into mind, but we may just as well take the first one up for consideration, because it will serve as well as any of the others for purposes of illustration. Raising potatoes will fill the life of an educated man to overflowing with satisfaction, if he goes at his work in the right way. Viewed from the economic side, he becomes a producer, of value to himself and to the public, because he puts money into his own trousers pocket, and at the same time lessens the importation of pota- toes from Ireland, thereby keeping money in the pocket of America. From the spiritual side, he is in daily observation of the beauties of nature, and at night is "free to contemplate mysterious distances in the sky. The clergyman of a country church would no doubt be grateful for such increase of salary as might come from a remarkably thrifty parishioner. Rural spiritual environment is quite as easily cultivated as the habit of laying plans for corrupting somebody in town or for taking shrewd advantage of a neighbor. The saints often went to the desert for quieting their spirits. Viewed from the side TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 231 of health, he will be oxidizing his toxins and consequently allowing a clean intelligence to guide his will past undue domination on the part of any insidious microbe. From the intellectual side he would be obliged in order to comprehend the subject of potatoes to take up certain lines of study, a few of which are as follows: — Study of geological history of the soil of his farm. The law of physiological ratios in relations of a plant toward nutritive elements of the soil. Phytopathologic studies covering the subject of fungous and bacterial parasitic diseases of the potato. Colorimetric de- termination of phosphoric acid in arable soils. The study of meteorological conditions influencing the level of the water table of his soil. Conditions influencing nitrogen fixation by asrobic organisms. Studies in botany and entomology which will require a year or so of odd ends of time for making a beginning, and getting a card index of such literature under way. He will have to make calculations based upon the yield per acre in relation to seed selection. The question of civic improvement in village and country, based upon possibilities offered by profits, accruing from expenditure of judgment after studying markets, will enter into his plans. Architecture as applied to model farm buildings will allow great scope for his artistic sense. Incidental to potato raising he will have to make observations on the chicken and pig as by-products of the farm, together with associated questions of economy in maintaining a proper ratio between waste of small potatoes, and their resulting effects when turned into weight of chicken and pork. The necessity for rotation of crops will take him into complicated questions of relative values of alternating crops. He will need to have correspondents in various coun- tries who will keep him polished up in French, German, Italian, and other languages. Neighboring farmers in the vicinity will wish to have proper representation in the legis- 232 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS lature by a highly educated man, and they will be grateful if he goes to the State capitol and devises means for securing better banking privileges for agriculturists. No one can serve the country better than the potato raiser -who turns his spare hours in winter to public questions. Winter is also his season for distant travel, unless he has become so enamoured of the potato that he prefers to buy another farm in Bermuda and spend his winters there in the same kind of work. He can experiment with wild potatoes sent by mail from our American Consuls in Chili and Bolivia, and likely enough cultivate from wild types an entirely new variety of marvelous value. For humorous recreation in the field — and the Devil may care for the cost — he can graft tomato plants upon potato plants, and make the grafted plant an economic wonder which builds heavy potatoes beneath the ground while gaily waving its misleading round red banners above ground. In this con- nection he will be impelled to give potato and tomato the same pronunciation, and that will be a step forward in established euphonies. Neighbors will come and lean over his fence on Sunday mornings — a mark of distinction! It is difficult to know where to begin and where to stop in making these few suggestions, but one who seriously takes up the subject of raising the best potatoes in the best way will find that each phase of the subject opens into those limitless vistas of external expansion which are seductive to the great mind. And the health of it all! In regard to the money profits, one cannot say, because the subject is one in which I have only bungled on my own farm; but a potato raiser whom I met in North Dakota told me that his annual net profit was about $10,000, and that is above the average income of men engaged in the other professions and arts. This particular man told me that he started in a small way with borrowed money, but the rapidity with which profits come in will depend upon the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 233 working of ordinary laws of economics — upon the amount of original capital and the way in which it is expended. Athletes are very apt to acquire a physical development for which they will have no requirement after giving up active training. This is injurious, because tissues which are not kept in commission are prone to degenerate rapidly. I believe in athletics and in that fine development which belongs to culti- vation of the physical side, but this development is to be made with the idea of maintaining it for a lifetime. The young man who trains himself for the strenuous work of the oars- man, of the football player, or for track sports at college, and who engages in sedentary occupation when his college work is completed, does not as a rule enjoy that degree of health which belongs to his classmates who took an average amount of exercise during college days. The idea of acquiring a high degree of physical development and beginning this from the earliest days of childhood is highly commendable, provided that one has in mind the idea of making use of that development through life. Contests in sport which develop the physical side and at the same time bring into play the qualities of courage and foresight are of enormous value to young men and young women provided always that a con- dition of physical excellence is to be maintained by them subsequently. Men who have lived their lives in the open may retain great physical strength until late in life. My old guide Caribou Charlie, even when well past seventy years of age, I never saw wearied but once. We have run wild and wicked waters in the canoe all day long, in the midst of storms and cold, some- times without opportunity to make camp or get a meal until night, and perhaps not even then. The only time when I ever saw him show any signs of physical weakness was on one 234 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS occasion on the Labrador coast. Head winds had prevented our sloop from reaching the only steamer of the year on which we could return and consequently we had to go ashore and walk that night about thirty miles through a pathless wilderness of bog, forest and rocks, knowing nothing about it excepting that according to a coast outline map there were three rivers which we would have to swim during the night. When swimming across the broadest of these rivers, shortly after midnight, and finding ourselves being swept rapidly toward the sea by the swift current, he begged me to go on and leave him to his fate, as he was exhausted. With all of the physical exertion required for exploring in the North, often when he was cold, wet, and hungry, I have never for a moment heard him complain. He seemed as much a part of nature as the storm itself, fitting into all vicissitudes as readily as the wind changes. We really need very few things. Most of the desires that lead us to work incessantly are really unnecessary. I first began to realize this when with Caribou Charlie, at a time in life when it seemed obligatory upon me to complete all work in sight instantly in order to take up twice as much more. When- ever we returned from the woods to some city or large town, my first thought was to go to some good hotel. He would say, "What's the use o' that? Can't we pitch our tent up here right near the edge of town just as well. It won't cost us nothin', and we can walk or catch a car into town. What we cook ourselves is better for us than what we get at hotels. We'll enjoy it more, and it won't cost us a dollar a day to live where we can have everythin' we want, and see everythin', and do everythin' we please in town." His motive was not really in solicitude for our economies and health. He was shy and did not like to go to hotels, but his point of view made me stop and think. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 235 One of the most comical cases of starvation that has come under my observation was on a certain northern coast. A family of pale and dejected people came to our tent and begged us to give them something to eat. Their fishery had been a failure and one of the sons had gone off on a two days' journey in order to try to obtain some flour on credit. We gave them a lot of hard ship's biscuit, for which they were very grateful. We had no need for the biscuit ourselves because we were living upon boiled salmon, broiled seal tender- loins, fried sea trout, roast ptarmigan, fricasseed hare, chowder of rock cod, and clams; blue berries, mushrooms, delicious wild leeks, cranberries, jewel weed and things like these; in fact we were living on the fat of the land. These starving people might have had the same things, but it was not their custom to eat them. Salmon they could not afford to eat because all of this fish which they caught had to be given to the trader in order to pay off old debts for supplies. It was beneath their dignity to eat the other things because their dependence upon such food indicated the' social fault in their not being successful at securing means for the purchase of expensive flour and pork. Starvation is largely a social matter, anyway, rather than economic, in its origin. Almost anyone can find a way for getting to a land where there is food all the year round and little work to be done, if he really prefers that sort of existence and knows about it. It is a great satis- faction for a man to feel that he might be dropped from a balloon on almost any part of the earth, prepared to set about getting his dinner at once even though he took nothing along with him from the balloon. There is hardly any part of the earth, excepting on the barren mountain top or the middle of the desert, in which a man cannot proceed to light a fire without matches and to cook himself a meal with things which he finds about him. Even on the bare mountain top there are 236 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS almost always lichens which may be gathered for food and which are sufficiently nutritious to sustain life under ordinary conditions, although they are not very good. Personally, I prefer the delicious things which we found where that family was starving. The fish and animals that were living in the vicinity of the starving family were all well-to-do. Nothing but a feeling of social shame had kept these people from utilizing food that was all about them in abundance. Somebody was looking on, and the higher intelligence of the members of the family prevented them from obtaining comfort excepting under con- ditions which would allow them to live upon the provender which was acceptable from the social standpoint of thrifty people. The misery of the hungry ones was as ludicrous as that of the holy men of India, whose peculiar tortures belong- ing to asceticism would not be borne were there no one to look on and have emotions aroused. Remove the element of vanity and our starving family, like the East Indian ascetic, would go to making hay while the sun shone. One of my acquaintances who has recently returned from an expedition to Siberia found the Eskimos starving because commercial walrus hunters had killed off the standard food supply of these natives. The Russian authorities had dis- tributed a little flour at one village, but that would serve only temporarily to ward off impending fate. A farinaceous food was one to which the people were unaccustomed anyway. Walrus become extremely fat upon clams which are found in greatest abundance in the vicinity where these people were starving, but having learned to live upon the walrus as chief food supply, it did not occur to them to develop methods for obtaining clams and other abundant food. Had the Russian government sent plankton nets instead of flour, and some teacher to show the men how to catch various molluscs, these TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 237 natives would have been furnished with a great store of food during the time of open waters at least, and the same food could be preserved for winter supply. No doubt some time would be required for learning to prepare these foods in the best way, but molluscs and plankton would at least settle the question of starvation. There is practically no part of the world in which people who can get to open sea water may not catch limitless quan- tities of food, which is not as yet captured excepting by the members of scientific expeditions who are collecting specimens for purposes of study. Every cubic yard of sea water con- tains organic life which if condensed, dried and prepared for food would furnish a supply of nitrogenous nutriment. In the wheat country of the great North- West, when far- mers are obliged to allow their land to remain idle because of the growth of pestiferous weeds, whole families are some- times brought almost to the verge of starvation. It does not often occur to them to raise a variety of crops which would insure at least a fair living during times of accident to the wheat. Several of the kinds of starvation among men are brought about through acquired habit thoughts being stronger than original instinct. In the course of our development when appropriating gifts of nature for our own purposes, we began by simply collecting wild plants and animals. In this relation to plants, people on the west coast of Newfoundland furnished an object lesson, as late as the early nineties. The inhabitants would push their boats miles up the rivers and laboriously collect grass (for hay) that grew in small open spots. In addition to the labor there was often rivalry and fighting over possession of the grass. That represents a primitive stage. Men exert great physical strength and energy up to the point where they 238 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS have to attack each other for possession of goods; then they stop and think. On the east coast of Newfoundland, at the time when men were quarrelhng over patches of wild grass on the west coast, a more advanced people were tilling the ground and raising ten times as much grass with perhaps one half the amount of labor. That represents the second stage in the history of development of our plant resources. The third step consists in making selection of the best types of plants for purposes of propagation, and not using seed or grafts from inferior sorts. A fourth step consists in hybridiz- ing selected plants in order to intensify the production of desirable characteristics, and to make new varieties. These are the four main steps in progress with plants, but as civiliza- tion progresses we elaborate methods belonging to each step. We turn our attention partly away from the annual plants, which first engaged interest because of their quicker returns. With foresight we look to the trees, which give larger final returns with less labor and money expenditure than is required for securing crops from annual plants. The tree when cap- tured and trained by man is capable of doing more work for him than is done by annual plants. We shall eventually have the two-story farm of J. Russell Smith. Nut trees overhead — annual crops beneath. A three-story farm if we raise mush- rooms in a cellar under the ground. In any new country men work extremely hard for small returns from the ground, but they develop character as a result of the struggle. Later, when they begin to degenerate and become indolent enough to stop to think, they make very much larger incomes. In the warm countries, where physical exertion is almost always an effort and men are inclined to sit in their rocking chairs and think, we have the great plantations which yield princely incomes. Men who work hardest in various capacities as employees make an income which may TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 239 be in inverse proportion to their expenditure of physical energy. In New England at the present time few large farms are yielding great incomes, because where the old Puritan spirit still persists men expend their energies in hard labor in the struggle to wrest riches from crops of annual plants. When a degree farther along in decadence is reached and New Englanders become lazy enough there will be great orchards of fruit and nut trees yielding royal incomes from the stony hills that are now sheep pastures. In the year 1800, 90 per cent, of the population of this country consisted of farmers, against 33 per cent, in 19 10. Production does not necessarily lessen relatively in degree, for the reason that improved farm machinery now exists which makes it possible for a few men to do the work of many. Nevertheless we are reaching the limit of profitable production of meat by farmers, even though they receive higher prices than ever before for their stock. It is the cost of pro- ducing what is produced that raises values. The time is coming when man will have to depend more upon the sea for food. There is little or no expense associated with the raising of fish, crustaceans or mollusks, which occur in such abundance in the waters. Many kinds of fish of high food value are not as yet in the market, because for some reason they happen to ofifend our aesthetic sense, and many of these fishes are de- structive to other kinds which now have high market value although no greater intrinsic worth. Man disturbs the balance of nature by catching for himself the fish which are also natural prey for some of the predatory sorts that are not marketable. The latter he does not take the trouble to capture. These predatory fish then go on to make disproportionate destruction of what is left of the kinds which man wants. We catch lobsters waste fully and neglect the chief enemy of the lobsters — ^the Squalus, an excellent fish for the table, but not 240 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS as yet used for food because its ugliness of mien is depressing to the finer sensibilities of the deep sea fisherman. The con- sequence is that the chief enemy of the lobster which is really about as valuable as the lobster, makes a sad upsetting of the balance. We shall change all that when we are forced to drop sentiment in favor of nitrogen. Aside from great quantities of unused fish, the bottoms of millions of acres of shallow waters are studded with albuminous jewels called clams. There are parts of the northern coast from Maine to Labrador where these are so abundant that they actually constitute a considerable proportion of the floor of the bays, and yet they are for the most part unused. A thousand years from now many of the neglected mollusks and still lower forms of animal life in the sea will be served in the form of delicious tempting repast upon our tables. I say "our," in the spirit of a desire to be here at that time. The relative value between sea foods, which cost man little or nothing to raise, and land meat which costs man a great deal to raise, show no consider- able differences excepting in the large fat content of land meat. Nuts which are also rich in protein and fat, contain the latter element, sometimes to the extent of more than 80 per cent, of their weight, and nut trees upon land which is now considered to be waste or nearly waste land, will be raised with comparatively little expense one thousand years from the present time. Millions of acres of nut trees will furnish both protein and starch food in the future. We usually assume that men who are near to nature are pretty honest, but there is a group among nurserymen who injure the whole business because of their modesty in not presuming to know more than their customers know. They allow people to set out Lombardy poplars, for instance, which they are well aware will die at the top by the time when these TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 241 trees begin to form a place in the buyer's affections. They sell Norway spruce, which they know will destroy one's love for evergreens, and Norway maple which becomes ragged instead of stately with age. Seedling trees of kinds which do not come true to type, are sold with no warning statement to the effect that practically all of these trees will be disappointing. Customers look up to these nurserymen as knowing about trees. The ones who can resist the temptation to fill certain orders will obtain many more orders and enlarge the trade for all. I was at dinner recently with a noted publisher. He told me that a question had been brought to his house in reference to publishing the works of a well-known horticulturist, but he had been advised in high quarters that the man was a charlatan. This had a very familiar sound to me, and I answered that no man who was engaged in cross-pollenizing plants could fail to make observations of enormous value. In the very nature of the case such an experimenter would be obliged to make new records for the world of horticulture. A man who is closely devoted to scientific work of that sort is apt to be misrepresented without his knowledge, by advertisers who plan to make capital out of his products. There is also a great deal of interest directed toward him by men who are ambitious to be equally useful but who are not succeeding so well. If such a man keeps quietly at his work, about an equal number of people will call him great or will call him a charlatan. If he is a man of vanity, with a heart at each end of his body, like an eel, he will be killed at an early stage by the blows upon his vanity heart. This is the test for a true scientific worker. If he has no eel's-tail heart situated in a vulnerable spot where it can be hammered by rivals, he lives and continues to work, no matter who calls him a charlatan. His share of satisfaction 242 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS will come from the ones who call him great, although he may not even care for that appellation. An indication of the degree of interest which is to be found in science in a locality is brought out by my correspondence on nut tree questions. There are about three hundred names on the list. It is difficult to obtain correspondents in any part of South America. There are few indeed in the southern states of North America. I can find more enthusiastic cor- respondents on almost any scientific subject in a small New England town than in a whole southern state or in an entire South American republic. Correspondents in parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa show degrees of interest which are classifi- able in relation to localities. I wished to obtain a certain rare species of hickory nut. The trees grew in a very restricted area in a high mountain locality in Mexico. It required long correspondence to find some one who could obtain specimens of the nuts and two men who were finally sent into the mountains on horse-back for them came very near losing their lives. On account of the recent disturbances in Mexico, the men were held to be spies. When they tried to explain that they were going on a two days' journey in order to get a handful of hickory nuts, the explanation was not satisfactory to the men who had captured them. Considerable diplomacy was required in order to obtain their release. The great engine, the tree, has not been much used as yet for crops yielding staple food in places where men till the soil. They began with crops which returned annual results in exchange for labor. Now that the crops from annual plants are becoming smaller every year in proportion to the increas- ing number of inhabitants, men will set great trees at work upon millions of half-barren acres. These trees will return TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 243 a larger profit for less labor than would be required for annual plant crops. People have not found it out as yet. The reason why they have not thought about it is the reason why the flying machine was not developed previously. Nature does not wish to have her oak tree grow to a height of eighty feet in one day. In addition to tree crops, nut-bearing water plants will be grown in thousands of acres of waste water at some time in the future. In many parts of the world where annual- crop plants are raised with difficulty tree crops furnish a staple starch food. There are regions in which chestnuts and pines practically take the place of wheat and corn, and these trees may be raised profitably where wheat and corn will no longer grow profitably. At the present time a hybrid tree is a great curiosity. When one has been discovered, men often travel far to see it. They do not stop to realize that a thousand hybrid trees can be produced with very little trouble, and among these would be some of enormous value to the world. Man has been using nature's crude materials. The time is coming when he will apply intelligence to the question. One who makes two trees grow where one grew before may be a public benefactor, but this is not work for untrained children, — contrary to some teaching that we observe at times in educational journals. It would be a fine thing to train children properly for setting out roadsides and waste places with valuable trees, but this work requires a great deal of special training, which in itself would be valuable if acquired by young people. One reason why I shall dread to leave this interesting world is because no one can tell who will then look after my own beautiful trees. One gets to note the individual character in trees just as he notes the individual character in animals. 244 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Distribution of forces in nature is made in many ways which are difficult of comprehension. A plant with soft tender roots which may be pinched off with a trifle of effort has sent these roots in every direction through hard ground. A similar expenditure of suddenly applied force exerted in what would seem to be the line of least resistance, would throw such a plant out of the ground and far into the air. A seed lying upon the ground will send a sprout boring down into the ground and yet the seed has no weight above it for counter pressure. When riding through central New York State and looking over the great sweeping hillsides of thin pasture and nearly deserted land, it makes me long to become penniless and out of work. Then would I be free to arrange some plan for getting possession of a wide barren hillside and making it yield one hundred dollars per year per acre in nut trees. Some day this sort of work will be commonplace, but now the arms of great beautiful valleys must extend themselves appealingly to men who will not come and make them productive. According to report, the New York Tree Planting Associa- tion limits the species which are to be set out, to elms, maples, certain oaks, lindens and sycamores. Let us take these up in order for purposes of conjment. The graceful elms have little value beyond their aesthetic side, and need much attention because of the depredation of the elm beetle and other para- sites. Beech trees which bear large crops of valuable nuts have a peculiar beauty, and will grow wherever the elm grows. Their enemies are very few. The wood of the beech is more valuable than that of the elm. Why then should the beech not be substituted for the elm for the most part by tree planters? Hard maples, which are on the planters' list, have one asset of valuable wood in addition to their beauty, but the black walnut grows practically wherever the maple grows. It is a TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 245 larger tree, its wood is more valuable, and the average market value of the nuts of an average black walnut tree would be more than three dollars per year. The only objection to the black walnut is the early dropping of its leaves in autumn. To my mind that is an advantage, because it reveals the store of good things symbolic of the year's work of the tree, and these symbols remain clinging to the branches long after their leaves have fallen. Oak trees, like the hard maples on the planter's list, really have one asset of valuable wood in addi- tion to their strength of presence, but the walnut (Juglans regia) in some of its varieties, will grow wherever oaks grow. Its wood is more valuable than that of the oaks, the stateliness and beauty of the tree rivals that of the oaks, and the average value of the crop of nuts from an average walnut tree will be more than five dollars per year, probably more than ten dollars per year. Lindens of the planter's list are of small account excepting from their adaptability to town life. At least one of the chestnuts (Castanea mollissima) and the tree hazel (Corylus colurna), both of which are resistant to blight, will grow where lindens grow ; their beauty far exceeds that of the lindens ; their wood is of greater value, and the annual crop of nuts from the average chestnut or hazel tree of these species would be several dollars per year. Syca- mores of the planter's list are known to be doomed in America because of a blight which is now established. Sycamore wood is of comparatively small value. The majesty of the tree is unquestioned, but the great pecan, which sometimes approaches a height of two hundred feet, is more sublime in its majesty; its wood is more valuable than that of the sycamore, and the annual crop of nuts is worth many dollars per tree annually — in some cases more than one hundred dollars per year per tree. The pecan will grow almost anywhere in America, from the Gulf of Mexico to southern Ontario at least, and varieties 246 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS which are now being introduced from Indiana and Ohio will undoubtedly grow well into Canada. One reason why these beautiful trees which are particularly valuable for their crops and for their wood are not recommended by the Tree Planters' Association, is because we have not as yet progressed that far in civilization — people have not been obliged as yet to think much about the subject. We are very careless about becoming civilized excepting when necessity compels. I know of single trees of the walnut, shagbark hickory and pecan hickory that have yielded single crops that sold for more than one hundred dollars each, but these were cultivated trees. When making collections of nut trees from different parts of the world there has been enjoyment of all the lust of the chase. Sometimes three or four years were required for securing a given specimen, and even then fatal accidents hap- pened to the specimens. I learned of a variety of the species of Araucaria imbricaia, which formed the dominant type of tree upon a certain high plateau in Chile. It was an extremely important tree because the nuts served as a mainstay of diet among the native Indians, and this particular stand of trees had been the source of contention, leading to warfare between native tribes who sought for its possession. Two years of correspondence were required for finding a Chilean who knew about these trees. The securing of a few ounces of the nuts required a horse-back journey of several days for men who were sent for them. These nuts were finally delivered in New York, but came late in the summer while I was in Europe. My men planted them at once, instead of stratifying them in sand, as they should have done, to wait until the following spring. Several of the little trees started to grow and lived through the winter, both with and without protection. When the frost went out of the ground in the spring every one of them was thrown out of the ground and killed, an accident TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 247 very common to all young pines. On attempting to obtain more of the nuts it was found that my correspondent had changed his address and could not be located. Here had been an opportunity, after much trouble, to establish a very valu- able food species. The experiment, so far as it had gone, showed that the trees were hardy at this latitude, for they lived perfectly through one winter. Since that time I have not been able to find any one who could get more of the nuts. The other and better known varieties of this species are not hardy at this latitude. Some of them make a valuable food supply in warm countries. Man has barely made a beginning as yet with his food supply among plants. De Candolle in the early part of the 19th century classified cultivated plants in 247 species only. Hendrick in Science for 1914 states that in America alone 2226 varieties of fruits have been developed from 45 species in the course of about fifty years. Hundreds of species of plants that were used by the Indians have not as yet been taken up and cultivated by us. A letter has just been received from the manager of a co- operative society, who wishes me to find some dealer in New York who will furnish members of the cooperative association with named varieties of nuts from grafted trees (in large quantities). Not long ago I made a search among dealers in New York in order to find some one who would take up the subject. At that time I had received a letter from London asking me to find some one who would furnish annually several tons of named varieties of pecans. Such a dealer could not be found. Some one will take up this business before very many years. Others then noting his success will enter into competition with him, and the business will be under way. Meanwhile, the fear of doing something new in lines of trade prevents men from embarking in such a useful enterprise. .The first man to develop this field will probably be the son 248 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS of some merchant, who finds no opening in his father's estab- Hshed business. When he has buiU up a large and profitable business, others will attempt to compete with him through methods of craft. They know how to do that, but not how to create a new business. Up in New Hampshire a livery driver who took me across the hills pointed out a fine tract of nearly two hundred acres covered with timber which he said he had recently bought. I remarked that he had done well as a driver to save up six hun- dred dollars (the price paid for the tract). "Oh," he said, "I paid nothing down, — only paid the interest, and I will pay back the cost price little by little as the timber is cut. When the timber is all cut, I will have good land, and considerable money besides after paying all expenses." There are plenty of people without money who could do quite as well as this Yankee, and in the same way. When we are canoeing up north and leave the tent for a swim on a chilly morning, there is often a little thin ice like a pane of glass around the edge of the water. A man does not feel at first like cracking through the ice in order to get into deeper water, but when he has had one plunge and has ex- ploded the customary expletives appropriate for such an occa- sion, his new invigoration pays for the effort. We often hesitate about going into various sorts of occupation, but al- most any occupation is invigorating when one is thoroughly in. A man remembers when thinking over past experience, of curious escapes from danger, and yet he soon forgets about them. Most of us have been many times in positions of danger, but we seldom remember about it unless something recalls an incident. I remember having had "the weak feeling" which is described by some, on only one occasion. I was climbing some high cliffs near the sea in search for one of the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 249 local inhabitants, and walking through dense heather at the time. When the man saw me coming he threw up both hands, and called out, "Stop!" He ran toward me hurriedly and said, "Look out! There is a cleft here in the cliff, covered by heather. It opens down a hundred feet to the water below." The next moment he said, "Why! You have already gone over it!" I had, in fact, leaped over the cleft in the cliff, mistaking it for a shallow gully, and might just as well have tried to walk across it. When we turned the shrubbery aside, water could be seen glimmering a hundred feet below. That was the only time when I have experienced the sickening sensation felt in the presence of danger. I have not felt it when under the ice, nor when charged by a wounded bear, the only feeling then being to do the right thing quietly, quickly and systematically. This weak feeling is very similar to "buck fever," so called, and produces a most remarkable sensation. Buck fever overcomes some individuals to such an extent that they cannot shoot at a large animal. This feeling I have also experienced once. Curiously enough it was just after shooting a red deer, although much larger and more important game had been shot previously. It was unaccount- able. In my case there was an intense feeling of weakness in the knees, making it almost impossible to stand, and a peculiar drawn feeling near the diaphragm. The general effect was almost precisely that which occurred in the cliff incident, yet on neither occasion was there any "stress of circumstances." Many times before and since, there have been periods of great danger which called for quick action, but with no accom- panying feeling of weakness. This I regret, because I have wished to be badly frightened in order to trace the sensations back along lines of their physiological meaning. Our sympathies will often lead us astray. I once caught 2SO TO-MORROW'S TOPICS two rats in a cage trap. It was a large wire trap and the rats were pretty comfortable in such quarters. It seemed best to keep them for awhile to see if they would become pets. In a short time they would eat and take water from my hand. When first caught they would squeal in anger at my approach. After kindly treatment for awhile they squealed in the same way whenever they heard me coming, but expressing an emotion of friendly interest. I began describing to friends all the good qualities of rats, drawing attention to their courage and intelligence. Whenever my friends dropped in for an evening, it was a pleasure to discourse upon the subject of good qualities in rats, and my friends were all inclined to agree that the animals had been thoughtlessly maligned. One day I was called off to a distant town in a hurry and was gone for forty-eight hours, without thinking of asking anyone to feed and water the rats. On my return I found that one had killed and half eaten the other, and my interest in the victor was not doubled because he represented two. Speaking of rats — the disappointment of experimental work may be tempered by surprises that make fair compensation if one has a sufficiently large sense of the humorous. I in- vented what appeared to be a very clever invention in the way of a rat trap. A galvanized garbage can of the sort to which rats are accustomed, was arranged with a mendacious top through which bad rats were to fall in large numbers and remain entrapped. Rats, like the European sparrow, have a peculiarly high degree of instinct for self-preservation. They failed to appreciate my interest in the trap, and none would go in, but one day a mouse was found there. It was a pretty little mouse, and I responded to my first impulse by kindly giving it food and water until a convenient time came for calling in the cruel cat. It was forgotten over night. The top of the can had been left wide open, because a mouse could TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 251 not jump high enough to get out. In the morning I found three Httle blind newly born rats in the can but no mouse, excepting a piece of his tail. Evidently a female rat about to give birth to young had jumped into the wide open can, after the mouse, and then in the violent effort required for jumping out again, had an accident, but finally escaped from the can, leaving the little ones behind. Those were the only three rats that were ever caught in my scientifically conceived trap. Some of our trout streams in the North have brown water, not attractive at first sight when contrasted with their charm- ing surroundings and associations. Being an idealist I had to make this water seem beautiful, and did so by studying the way in which it was colored. The chemistry turned out to be rather simple of explanation. Tannin like that from roots of dead coniferous trees was added in solution to sand containing iron and manganese. This water became similar in color to that of my northern streams. Rain water taking tannin through the soil evidently favors tannin reaction with iron and manganese salts, thereby establishing a pretty bit of chemistry in nature's laboratory. This dark northern water is then a nice clean thin ink. The Academy of Forty Immortals in France and the proposition to have a similar academy of fifty immortals in this country brings to mind the value of advertising. The list of immortals is found to consist chiefly of men who are famous in literature and meriting the distinction so far as it goes. There are more men in other professions who have moulded the thought of the world, who have advanced civiliza- tion, but who write little for the public; — consequently, these men do not appear in the lists. It is very well to have academies of immortals, all of whom were worthy of their 252 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS position, but we must understand that a much larger number of men in other fields of work have done on the whole more important work for the world. Literature gives wider adver- tisement, — that is all ! A test for the value of any given music or literature lies in its helpfulness in the daily adjustments of life. If any music or literature makes such adjustment more difficult, throwing one out of concert with daily afifairs, it is morbid, no matter how great the degree of genius that is displayed. The development of morbid music and literature is made chiefly by geniuses with pale cheeks, and not by the ones with rosy cheeks. Rosy cheeked genius is the only sort that is really to count in the twentieth century. The Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls are to raise a splendid red cheeked army of children of their own who will protect American art, literature, birds, animals, and all of the great wealth of the heritage that is ours. The fact that we can explain the nature of genius and excuse crime does not mean that any laissez faire plan of life is to be adopted in consequence. We have the fight of our lives before us. While blaming and crediting the microbe, we are not to stop with the blaming and crediting. Our knowledge is rather a call to action of a higher and more inspiring nature than when we blindly believed that genius and crime were sent to us, as the child believes the baby was sent down from Heaven. Tolstoy among his last words said that nothing but death was true ; all else in this world was a lie. A. R. Wallace, after ninety years' experience, says that our social fabric is rotten from top to bottom. I am reminded of the little Sunday- school boy who was asked by his teacher to tell the nature of a lie, and who replied slowly : "A-lie-is-an-abomination-unto- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 253 the-Lord, and an-everpresent-help-in-time-of-trouble." Now, as a matter of fact, in this sentimental world of ours, the social fabric is really built largely on lie, because it is the only material to be had in quantity sufficient for the large ideas of man. Quantity is what man wants for distending his vanity to full and round plumpness, just as the goat craves a full stomach, without regard for the nature of its contents. Man distends his mind with superstition and falsehood, in order to satisfy a craving to have it full of something, but he is, nevertheless, very seriously and joyfully looking for quality all the while. As rapidly as he can replace falsehood with scientific fact, man does precisely that, as surely as a goat drops last week's newspaper when he sees opportunity to get through a fence and find ripe apples enough. This is a comical world to be sure, with its inconsistencies and hypocrisies, but the satisfaction of men who are seriously and happily engaged in scientific study and welfare work is a perennial inspiration. These are the men who are really at the present time construct- ing a social fabric for to-morrow. We need have little concern about lies and rotten social fabric, which attract the attention chiefly of that declining element with senescent protoplasm, whose colonic toxins exert chemotactic influence upon wounded ideals. An aged man's view of life may be a skatol or an indol view in large part, and we must not forget to recognize that influence when it appears in literature. Those of us who are younger can resist that sort of influence, because the tissues of our ideals are more resilient, our protoplasm is newer and we can respond to the stimulating influences of healthy progress which is being conducted by serious and happy men in constructing a social fabric which every day becomes more substantial, notwithstanding the high color staining which is done in spots mischievously by the microbe that is now under observation by clever detectives. 254 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS The idea of Tolstoy and of Wallace that all is He and the social fabric rotten, is true in a comparative way only — aside from its physiologic phase belonging to a stage of decline. There is probably much less of lie and of rottenness in this cultural period than in any previous one. Even the personal character of European royalty has improved to such a degree that many a king would be allowed to cross the threshold of the best of New England families to-day. When Nietzsche plunges his pen through the conventional Hes of civilization, his pen is mightier than the sword in its power for destruction, because conventional lies, like the hons of later heraldry, are symbols for conventional ideals. What is accomplished by attacking these lies, beyond destruction of a building that is fully insured ? Somebody must bear the loss. The conventional lie serves a purpose while we are catching up with our ideals. The ultimate test of the value of an author is found in the effect of his labors. Are men happier or more joyful for the reading of Nietzsche? Are they more efficient, more helpful, more ready to step out upon Esdraelon with courage in their eyes? If this is not the final effect of any reasoner's philosophy let the elims bid it in at a rummage sale. Young men with or without strong individuality are ever seeking for guidance among histories of the lives of famous men. A great many choose Napoleon, and his character fits them as a general's cap fits a hand-organ monkey. How well do I remember, when a dozen years of age, trying to find among Plutarch's Lives just the one to follow, and deciding upon Socrates. It is amusing now to think of the seriousness of then. As a matter of fact one follows his temperament unconsciously. Silver may be moulded into many forms, but it will always be silver. Instead of following any one char- acter it is better for purposes of self-culture to know and to TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 255 compare various opposite characters, realizing that our httle world is most interestingly alive because of its variety in all forms of organic life, including the highest product. That form of self-sympathy which is called prejudice when it occurs in other people than ourselves, makes it better to compare two characters with each other rather than to compare another character with one's self, when forming judgments. I sometimes compare Henri Rochefort with Joseph Leidy. Rochefort was a deputy when I first met him in the eighties. He seemed unable to discuss with my companion (a press correspondent) certain points which he had made in a trench- ant and bitter press contribution a short time previously. To this day I see as yesterday the pale, haggard ascetic face (which I now associate with spasm of the capillaries belonging to toxic over-sensitization of protoplasm). His life was one of tremendous and feverish activity, urging others to excesses like his own. Playwright, journalist, municipal official, socialist, exile, deputy, art connoisseur, noted for voluptuous whims and epicurean living. The Dreyfus question, or any stirring public question requiring calm judgment had upon his sensitized protoplasm precisely the opposite effect. He touched the match of emotion to any stick of dynamite which his penetrating eye discovered hidden beneath the pillars of government. I knew little of his private life, but it was reported that like many other neurotics he rested in benign and gentle mood, with a desire to avoid the responsibilities that go with maintaining a large establishment. His attitude was constantly inimical to political institutions. Social order excited him as a red rag excites a bull. His was the neurotic impulse to change everything and this desire was intensified in proportion to the inherent consciousness of inability to bring about a change on any given occasion. The innate craving to "Change everything" is a toxic manifestation quite 2S6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS as distinctly as a cough is a sign of irritation of the respiratory centres. With petard pen he damaged the protecting wall of government, but did not utilize the gap for marching in and leading others after him. There was nothing really con- structive in his active ambitions, nothing more than the toxic craving to rule or ruin, and without capacity for systematic ruling. One characteristic which belongs to his temperament was much in evidence. It is called "frankness" by people of his type, and consists in not hesitating to express opinions about others, but refusing to accept with good grace the conse- quences of such "frankness." He felt free to criticize or even to blackguard others, but promptly challenged to mortal combat people who spoke of him as he spoke of others. This is called patrician sensitiveness to questions of personal honor. Such hypocrisy as calm tolerance toward the views of others is not in these ill "frank" people. My first meeting with Joseph Leidy was in 1876, if my memory serves correctly. I had taken to him some specimens of entozoa from Salvelinus which had not been classified previously. Youthful embarrassment in the presence of a great man led me to ask an absurd question, — (instantly feeling more embarrassed in consequence). On realizing its absurdity Dr. Leidy, who undoubtedly comprehended the situation, said in a sweet low voice, and with gracious manner, in words that I remember as no rebuke would have been remembered, "That question is one that might very well be asked by anybody." Great heavens! Might very well be asked by anybody! Never! Never by any sane individual in this world. Here was a great man of charming personality going out of his way to exercise ingenuity in putting me at my ease, and succeeding in a single sentence. Rochefort was unable to discuss the first question that my friend put to him, although he had written explosively upon the subject. It was TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 257 not unwillingness, but inability. Leidy, on the other hand, unfolded quietly in the course of an hour a wealth of informa- tion upon almost any question which I had brought, and which he perhaps had barely mentioned in his writings. The life of Dr. Leidy was a continued unbroken flow of calm original research and discovery. His quiet learning increased in volume year by year as the river increases from its source to its final merging with the ocean. His voice was never raised beyond quiet laughter, and the laughter was genuine indeed, without a trace of that insincerity which one so often observes in efforts that are made at pleasing. There was not enough of desirable error in his nature to allow him to write popularly, with that disregard for accuracy which would suffice for presenting a subject in round form for the public. His writing was all of square form, to fit niches in the wall of science. Leidy maintained always that gentle, simple, gener- ous and cheerful nature such as we observe in great naturalists generally. He was more truly courteous and humane than a religious missionary, and his every day life carried a message which was deeply impressed upon all who came into contact with him. The desire to be like him was not suggested by any word of insistence that others should come to his point of view, but the desire was impelled by his mere presence. Rochefort demanded that others come at once to his own point of view. Natural science was enlarged every day that Leidy lived. Many hundreds of his published articles have been catalogued, but the list can never be completed. His range of interest extended from paleontology and a discovery of the presence and meaning of important fossils to an ex- haustive study of the rhizopods and of the microbes. Away back in 1848 he had classified bacteria as belonging to the vegetable world, and we must not forget that to an American is due this credit, when in later years the study of bacteriology 2s8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS has become the call of the twentieth century in all civilized countries. (Bacterial classification now changed and elabo- rated). Leidy's beautiful life was an example of the sort of life which belongs to all who are really true to nature. There was never a moment of passionate neurotic grasping for ideals in the air, but he quietly, step by step, made for others those ideal conditions in knowledge which will last for all time. I cannot picture Leidy as becoming impatient or irritated toward any living man, and the idea of his challenging anyone to mortal combat over a question of personal honor — as Roche- fort did on several occasions — has not been suggested by the sculptor who fashioned the Leidy monument in Philadelphia. Looking at that monument I hear again the voice that always charmed and carried conviction ; I see again the gentle, gener- ous expression of a man who never burned with feverish desire to destroy anything. A young friend and patient (how often we instinctively make this combination in our profession!) has gone to the country for recuperation. My young friend is self deprecia- tory and does not see in himself all the fine qualities that I see in him. Would that it were possible to divide up some of my surplus egotism, and let him have his proportionate share. He is deeply studious but depressed at times when he fails to oxidize his toxins, and has been on the verge of committing suicide twice. This morning, — a rare day in June, — I get from him a note containing no word about sun- shine and green fields. Instead of that he sends this quotation from Santayana and the last two lines underscored with a pencil : "The longing to be primitive is a disease of culture; it is archaism in morals. To be so occupied with vitality is a symptom of anaemia. When life was really vigorous and TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 259 young, in Homeric times, for instance, no one seemed to fear that it might be squeezed out of existence either by the incubus of matter, or by the petrifying Wight of intelligence. . . . No one paid it the equiovocal compliment of thinking it a sub- stance or a material force. Nobility was not then impossible in sentiment, because there were ideals in life higher and more indestructible than life itself, which life might illustrate, and to which it might fitly be sacrificed. Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all." Dear me, how I wish we had a public pound in which all these philosophers might be collected and then humanely drowned at stated intervals ! They do seem to be so unneces- sary. But more than that, they may be very, dangerous. I am not at all sure that some relative of my young friend may not later send me a letter containing sad news. In that case I shall believe that this author whom he has taken with him on a vacation, instead of a book on birds or flowers, has wielded the final stroke. Here is the substance of a letter which I immediately sent in reply : "Do not bother your head a bit about Santayana, my deal boy. These philosophers are mostly a cloudy lot of invalids engaged in disagreeing with each other as well as with com- mon sense. There is something catchy in the swing of the words of a metaphysician, a sort of popular air one may say, — intellectual ragtime. You are always in danger of mis- taking rhythm for music, but your critical sense will appreciate the fact of lack of melody in this music. Go out and roll in the neat white clover; get stung by a bee if you desire pain; get tangled up in a greenbriar vine if you want trouble; let an ant run up your sleeve if you crave annoyance; find a 26o TO-MORROW'S TOPICS patch of fragrant wild red strawberries where the buttercups grow. Sit down in the shade of a beautiful beech tree, with its wonderful play of light in the leaves, and listen to the vireos and bobolinks,— and to the indigo birds, which are now in full song. Find wholesome annoyances and joys for these days of recreation, instead of sitting in the shade of a curtain and reading about more shade. Let us take up some of the points of your Santayana. 'The longing to be primitive is a disease of culture; it is archaism in morals.' That, to my mind, is a lieful assertion. The longing is really a healthy longing for a breath of real fresh air, when one is smothered by morbidities of culture. 'To be so occupied with vitality is a symptom of anaemia.' Your author is perhaps unintention- ally right on that point. One who is anaemic has a longing for the good red blood and the bounding pulse of vitality. Now in regard to life being really vigorous and young in Homeric times, did Homer not shine as a mountain top because of the swamps of immorality and of sophistry of that day, a thousand years before Christ? People had no fear that life might be squeezed out of existence by the incubus of matter or the petrifying blight of intelligence (Mixed metaphor, — blight doesn't petrify or squeeze) because people were not then very familiar with the subject of matter. Did no one in the days of Homer think of life as a substance or material force? That is to my mind what lawyers would call a question of fact. As I remember history, the alchemists and philosophers, even before the days of Homer, were much engaged with this very same question. As to the world being young in Homeric days, several cultural periods had already come and gone. 'Nobility was not then impossible in sentiment.' Is it not more possible in sentiment and does it not exist to a greater extent to-day? This deaUng in generalities has a catchy swing, but ask your philosopher for concrete examples and he will disappear. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 261 There are plenty of 'ideals in life higher and more indestruc- tible than life itself,' and to these ideals good men are devoting their lives at the present moment in greater numbers than in the days of Homer. 'Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape.' My answer is, there is nothing mean in conforming to the dictates of natural law after the manner of a red squirrel. A higher power than the individual is directing. Let us not be impu- dent ! 'A spirit with any honor is not willing to live excepting in its own way.' Well then, for Heaven's sake why doesn't it live in its own? 'A spirit with any wisdom is not over- anxious to live at all.' My answer is, 'Ca selons sur le point d'vue.' A selfish self-centered spirit which has managed to get hold of what it thinks to be wisdom, may not be very eager to live if its vanity is snufifed out whenever it flares up. The spirit that is altruistic and full of life-joy finds enthusiasm in applying its wisdom in such a way as to eagerly live in utility for others. When well oxidized the spirit lives in the enjoyment of every-day wholesome legitimate pleasures for itself as well. If the selfish chap who has no desire to Hve on anyhow can hold on to himself long enough to help a few poor children to better positions in the world, or to solve some problem in natural science, the solution of which is much needed, and if he has then accomplished all that his vision perceives in useful ways, he may have himself buried under a fine tree in order to be still useful as a fertilizer. Now throw your Santayana into the tadpole pond, my dear boy. Do not look inside of a deep sounding tom tom in the expectation of finding something inside which justifies the sound. Let these philosophers pinch away at each other like a basketful of lobsters in the dark. Do not put your hand into the basket at all. Get out into the beautiful sunshine, or if it rains, into the refreshing rain, where real life is all in movement and you 262 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS join the living throng in appreciation of the glorious privilege of existence." We have no data for estimating the death rate which is caused by the unoxidized philosophers. They wield the final stroke at times — that we know. It is probable that the effect of their writings is more often nothing beyond making thou- sands of people miserable. The following clipping is from a report in the New York papers for August 19th, 1913 : "Lake left a letter addressed to the Coronor, in which he gave his reason for the tragedy and quoted several famous philosophers and writers as a defense of his action. "To the Coroner: I am tired of living. My wife is slowly dying, and our four children are small, delicate, and sure to get trampled on in the struggle of life. It is best for them to return to uncon- scious dust with their parents. (See Schopenhauer, Essay on the Sufferings of the World, etc., etc.) Enclosed find $22. Please telegraph my sister, Saranac Lake, N. Y. $20 is for her to come to Brooklyn. I wish her to have the bodies cremated. Insurance papers, some money and jewelry in the trunk addressed to — ." This man killed himself, his invalid wife, and four children ranging in ages from ten to seventeen. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche will some day be classed among the preventable diseases. If a book leaves one no better for having read it, the time spent in reading it was lost. Not one of the minutes of that lost time can ever be regained. Once that a minute has passed, you can never have it again so long as you live. If I were to give just one thought for guidance to young people, that would be the thought. We read and write more about the variants among people TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 263 than we do about the exemplar of the well-balanced mass. This destroys the sense of proportion in young readers, and it requires some years of experience for them to learn of the splendid efficiency of genuine women and men in the myriad of daily occupations. While there is a constant instinctive tendency toward varia- tion on the part of each individual, Nature provides the cor- rective, by introducing a tendency for some other individual to reduce variant ideas back to the exemplar type. I did not realize this when first having ambition to be a literary variant. All of the prose and poetry which was published for me in a little volume by the Putnams (Hopkins's Pond) had been sent to Harper's, The Century and other magazines which held high literary rank, but none of the contributions were accepted by these magazines. They were always returned at the end of a year or so with a form letter stating that the editor was overjoyed, etc. My emotions were intensified further by the fact that these literary efforts were all made at a time when I needed a dollar in less than a year. The sketches were then sent to special-interest periodicals, the editors of which always seemed really pleased to publish them. When they were col- lected in book form very few copies were sold. This put my literary ambition in gaskets and sent it out of commission. The conclusion was inevitable that my writing had no literary value as such above the commonplace, yet the ideas were of interest to a few people who had given specialists attention to the vari- ous subjects. Friends praised my literary work. That was biased testimony. Nobody bought the book — that was un- biased testimony. I had lived long enough to know the differ- ence between biased and unbiased testimony. The idea of becoming a literary variant was dropped promptly and forever, because the sooner a man disposes of a crippled fond hope, the fewer his painful sensations. The book had its uses — 264 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS one of the stories furnished priming which started another author off upon a famous career along a new line of cleavage in nature depiction. This conflict between instinctive variation on the part of one individual (an author) and instinctive repressing effort on the part of another individual (an editor), has a tendency to reduce really good literary contributions to commonplace expression. A concrete example was shown when I took the liberty in a natural history contribution to speak of the yellow breasted chat as "the yellow chested brat" because this seemed to be a more or less poetic rendering of his temperament. When the proof was sent for correction the editor had blue- pencilled my liberty and had supplied the real name of the bird. I crossed out the blue pencil mark on returning the proof and inserted the original words. When the article was finally published it was found that the editor had made a com- promise with me, calling the bird the "yellow chested chat," which was incorrect from any point of view. Another instance occurred when the first draft of these notes from the stenog- rapher's copy was given to a reader to be put in order and typewritten. The typewritten copy when returned seemed to me strangely uninteresting, and I looked in vain for subtle spice. The blue graving tool had erased key characters. Hunting up what remained of available stenographer's notes, it was found that the typist had reduced all "difficult" ideas to commonplace meaning. Wherever the copyist failed to understand the meaning of sentences they had been put in safe and harmless form. In this way much that belonged to the first draft of the book had been irretrievably lost, because my secretary did not keep all of his stenographic notes. One lost item comes to mind. I had written that my old guide told me he "took to the woods as a trapper because of martial TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 265 troubles to home." Corrected copy read he "took to the woods as a trapper because of marital troubles at home." The worst of it was that I had to pay special rates for skilled labor for this sort of thing. Oh, yes ! another lost item— one relating to associated ideas. I wrote "a common word may be found in one dictionary and not in another. Wit is not found in any dictionary." The copyist left this out altogether, having looked up "wit" we may suppose. It became necessary at the second attempt to find a reader and typist who was a little peculiar. It began to occur to me that we were dealing with a principle. Whatever previous manuscripts of mine could not be reduced to the commonplace with a blue pencil were not worth pub- lishing as literature. The experience would deter me altogether from publishing this collection of notes excepting for the actual knowledge that some of the ideas will be of practical service to some people. It is no doubt the duty of an editor of a literary magazine to use judgment in the selection of material which will please the largest number of people, rather than material which will be of service to a smaller number of people. Once upon a time in the far North I found myself upon a river which at low water had broad, smooth, flat clay banks, in which the tracks of wild animals were remarkably well out- lined. Camp was made for the purpose of devoting several days to obtaining a collection of photographs of these tracks, which incidentally included those of a polar bear and a number of other wild animals, tracks of which had seldom been photographed. After returning home, these films among others were given to a developer, but he threw this particular lot away and reported that they were "a funny lot of failures, looking as though something had made tracks all over them." These films were not commonplace — ^hence, failures! In this 'way the mean type prevails. 266 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Microbes form an "Invincible Tenth Legion," but we may at least carry on the contest in daylight, and enjoy the sport of war, enjoying the humor of a situation in which nature has placed her pet animal. Along with discovery of the fact that milk turns sour in a thunder storm because the very low barometer allows lactic- acid-forming bacteria to grow rapidly, it has been observed that certain other species of bacteria grow with great rapidity when the barometer is low. This explains a phenomenon which I had not comprehended previously, the greater death- rate in our hospitals occurring during a falling barometer. It undoubtedly allows one explanation for the fact that people are mentally depressed when the barometer is low. The colonic bacteria of the group which cause lactic acid formation in milk are the same ones which produce poisonous indols, skatols, and phenols in the colon. These poisons are de- pressing in their effects upon the mind. If bacteria which are producing these poisons increase rapidly enough at times of low barometer to turn milk sour, we may legitimately assume that they turn people's dispositions sour in the same way at times of low barometer. The slang expression "he makes me tired" has origin in a real feeling of fatigue, which follows the forcible lifting of one's protoplasm in order to make adjustment to the ideas of some unusual character or some one of different tempera- ment from the speaker. Thus the views of the musician are apt to make the mathematician tired, and the poet makes the athlete feel more weary perhaps than he is after a three-mile run. A man may often determine (from the cenesthesia of his protoplasm in the morning) about how he will treat other people during the day. The protoplasm of the anarchist is being bombarded cruelly by internal secretions. He imagines TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 267 that other people are causing his discomfort — not knowing about the microbe. His case is one calling for sympathy rather than for ire. The policy unit is the neuricity granule. After a full night's sleep, with plenty of fresh air, the morning cenesthesia of nerve cells, all nice and plump with neuricity granules, bespeaks a friendly day with one's fellows. A night that was largely wasted after a day of tire, followed by unsatisfying sleep, leaves one with nerve cells only half distended with neuricity granules, and a man then starts out prepared to get into troublesome complications in the course of daily adaptation. The policy unit, then, is the neuricity granule. If one is not sure from the feeling of his early morning cenesthesia that his neuricity granules are well charged for a lucky day, he may jot down in a note book the proportion of thoughts expressing a negative or positive attitude toward people and things. If he finds that his early morning thoughts are along lines of expression of the negative note, he is not quite prepared for a happy day. If, on the other hand, his morning cenesthesia starts him off with thoughts expressing the positive note, he is prepared to meet all sorts of disturbances in a resilient mood. What is called "frigidity" in both sexes, is now known to be due to hypothyroidism in many cases. The different intensities of states of mind seem to be due to both negative and positive will action, consisting in a release of neuricity in given directions. Positive action of the will (making an assertion) we may say forces liberation of energy ; while negative action of the will in day dreams allows energy to escape. The nerve cells take energy from the potato in your alimentary tract, transform it into neuricity, and expend that "energy in the words "Good morning." Which came first, — the will to use the words "good morning," or the energy which 268 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS directed nerve cells to utilize the potato by turning it into neuricity and expending it in the form of a will to use the words "good morning"? In order to settle this question it seems to me we have to go back to the old question of "which was made first, the hen or the egg?" This question is some- times brought up at a Sunday school picnic when boiled eggs are taken out of the luncheon basket. According to theology this question is easily settled by the good teacher, who replies, "Why, the hen was first created, and she then laid eggs." Those of us who were not at such a picnic of explanation have to take the question farther back and remember that in the very early days of the hen she multiplied her kind by dividing her- self into two parts of about the same size (fission). As she progressed in evolution, one part became larger than another when she divided herself up, and now when she divides her- self up, one part is rather small and simple while the other part remains large and complex. We observe then that neither hen nor egg came first, but both are different forms of the same thing. Going back now to our question as to whether the will came first, — or energy to use the will, — we see by analogy that the will, and energy to use the will, are simply different forms of the same thing. The will represents only one energy chute in a system of chutes for delivery of the various kinds of energies which we employ in our factory. Original energy came from Antecedent Mind, somewhere in the neighborhood of infinity, and we need not bother about that. What we need to avoid is the making of separate inde- pendent entities of the will, neuricity, and potato, — and then trying to decide which manifestation of energy takes prece- dence over the others. No one form takes precedence over the others so far as we know, excepting as a matter of ex- pediency on the part of nature. We are simply dealing with a hen-first, egg-first question. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 269 It is something of a shock to find that what we beheved to be a new idea is really old, wrong, and popular. I remember very many years ago, in the days of youth, pondering over what seemed to be a newly acquired fact when reading that a cannon ball dropped into the sea could only sink a mile or so, at which point the pressure of the water would stop it. For a whole day I speculated upon the fate of various ships and other objects which sank into the sea a short distance, and travelled about mysteriously with deep, dark ocean currents to find odd lodging places. My speculation was ruined when I happened to speak to a friend who was familiar with physics, and who replied, "That is a popular delusion! You do not know about the feature of density. Objects which are more dense than water go to the bottom finally, no matter what the pressure or the depth." Don't you think my friend was cruel in saying that a real new interesting idea was an old popular delusion? He might have caused me to subside more gently by prefacing his remarks after the manner of addressing a king, "As Your Majesty already knows." It was something of a shock, when dining with an archaeolo- gist yesterday, to learn that scholars question the authenticity of sayings which are ascribed to Hippocrates. Scholars seem to classify him not as a whole individual, but as one among the great men who have been idealized and then made to serve as nuclei about which the best medical thought of the day was crystallized. Abraham Lincoln served as a nucleus about which the wisdom and wit of the day became crystallized, and sayings which were ascribed to him represent largely a collection of material which was precipitated from the charged atmos- phere of his time. It is probable that all of the wisdom of the day was laid before Shakespeare. At the present time an actor who is recognized as a genius is the recipient of many letters carrying 270 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS suggestions and invitations to talk over various subjects which his play suggests. We may safely assume that Shakespeare having been recognized as a genius, lawyers took to him their cleverest points in law. Statesmen and doctors gave him the benefit of their experience in condensed form. His great associative faculty led him to make better use of this material than could have been done had he been hampered by the tradi- tions of wide learning in the various professions. The time comes in every cultural period when the people, heavily charged with idea, are ready to precipitate their wisdom upon any genius who is recognized as a proper nucleus. (Hippocrates, Homer, Jesus, Lincoln.) We must remember one thing. It is always a really great man who is chosen for a nucleus of national dimensions. One of my histrionic friends was bored by suggestions that came to him by letter, while another one grasped them eagerly and told me that such a large part of his play had come from other people that he felt very humble indeed. This humility was uncalled for, as he did not recognize the great genius which he really possessed in apply- ing associative faculty to his donated material. Genius con- sists quite as well in recognizing what is applicable for a purpose as it does in creative personal effort. A man of creative mind or with inventive talent in large degree is commonly held by his fellowmen to be unbalanced during the stage when he is working out problems. As a matter of fact he really is unbalanced when judged from the commonplace point of view of safe, stable mean-type men. The question relates not so much to the unbalanced nature of his force as it does to the ultimate results of expenditure of that force. The long arm of a lever is out of proportion to the rest of the lever. It is unpopular with the short arm which is obliged to do a lot of work, and it is unpopular with the fulcrum upon which pressure is made. No one knows TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 271 what an unbalanced man will do until he is through with his thinking. The instinctive withdrawal of an organism from a source of injury like heat is clearly mechanistic, in response to self- preservation impulse, and in the employment of machinery for the purpose. The approach of an organism to a supply of food is likewise mechanistic and belonging to the self-preser- vation group of movements. The movements for procreation are clear in their meaning. All of our chief activities are motor activities, and about these are grouped psychic states like those of love and hate, which occur automatically as expenditures of energy which are complementary to any one of the three chief motor activities. The simple organism employs the three motor activities in a simple way, and is easily destroyed by an enemy. The complex organism em- ploys a far more elaborate mechanical system for self-preser- vation of its type. The brain was developed for adaptive purposes more and more as these elaborate needs were appre- ciated by an organism. Elaborate psychic processes like love and hate result from adaptation of a motor organism to its environment. Just as we watch an animal running and jump- ing for exercise, so the poet enjoys the spectacle of love and hate escaping beyond ordinary bounds of the will while he takes note of their antics. The poet has been given an assign- ment to write up the movements of excessive emotion. From a biologic standpoint fiction is an outcome of the tendency to make a game of sport out of phases of human nature which belong primarily to the three motor activities. In order to keep people dissatisfied enough to ensure their remaining at work, nature had to resort to many resources. At first people are set to work at securing the three primal comforts. Having secured these, they are then turned over to 272 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS the emotions by nature, and the emotions serve to keep us continuously occupied. An individual who is disturbed by jealousy may be quite as busy at that as a rtian who is trying to secure bread for his family. An emotion is of no value unless it leads to its appropriate action; yet nature in order to get things done has to waste emotions as lavishly as maple seeds are wasted. We have a lively time with our joyous and sorrowful emotions all day long, not stopping to think that nature is being amused when forcing us to run up and down the tread-mill in order to grind out an occasional action that she wishes to have us complete for the evolution exhibition. We take all of our emotions as seriously as a baby takes a feather that sticks to the molasses on its finger ; and yet the trouble caused by any one emotion is soon over and we have to take up with another. All of the emotions are used by nature for her best cards in the game of keeping people at work. The amusing part of it is that we place the blame for our dissatisfaction upon other people, while nature is laughing up her sleeve, knowing that she is causing it herself for a definite purpose, — of making us evolve. If we were to perceive the character of this little trick of nature's in giving us dissatisfaction, the "blame" would be placed where it belongs. My neighbor in the country, Judge Clason, had a cross bull that habitually refused to come in from the pasture lot with the other cattle when the collie dog was sent after them. One day in March, when there was a patch of ice partly hidden in the grass of the pasture, my neighbor received a little Pomeranian dog for a present. The little Pomeranian dog happened to run out with the collie dog that evening when the cattle were sent for. The bull, as usual, refused to pay attention to the collie, but the Pomeranian began to snap at his heels. The bull, when turning around to threaten the small dog, slipped up on the ice and went down TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 273 with a great bang — dignity and all. He immediately pro- ceeded to go straight to the barn, and ever since that time when the Pomeranian is sent out into the field, the bull comes straight into the barn. He thinks it was the little dog that threw him. We think it is other people who cause our dis- satisfaction, but we fool ourselves as completely as the bull fooled himself about the cause of his discomfort. Dissatis- faction is the best card that nature plays in her evolution game, but this card is no more to be shown than the best card in a game of whist. When nature makes use of any one emotion for aid in conducting evolution, it is done with a purpose. We sometimes do the same thing up North when hitching up Eskimo dogs for a long day's journey. A dog that is not a natural leader is hitched at the head of the dog train. All of the dogs immediately become jealous of the one that is not a natural leader and try to get at him to kill him. The conse- quence is that he has to hustle all day long to keep ahead of the others, and that makes the sled go fast. We employ jealousy on the part of these dogs for practical purposes. When we wish to stop the kyack for a rest, the leading dog is unhitched and placed at the rear of the team. That is satisfactory to the other dogs. Comparative peace then reigns until we are ready to go on again. One may avoid excess of painful emotion by taking all questions back to comparative phylogeny. A nation holds up its hands in horror at outrages committed by another nation. According to history, any nation which holds up its hands in horror has itself been guilty of still greater outrages in the past. We are distressed over the fratricidal conflict in Mexico at the present time. No sooner has one man come into power than some other man plans to remove him and take his place. Precisely the same process, however, is under way in the universities of our most highly civilized countries. No 274 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS sooner has one man been given the presidency, or even a professorship, than other men become impatient in their wish to depose him and take his place. The difference between Mexico and an university is simply a matter belonging to comparative phylogeny. The reason why an university presi- dent is not killed is simply because civilization does not allow actual killing; its whole tendency being to protect the indi- vidual in all walks of life. So far as attitude of mind is concerned, the mental relation of ambitious higher organisms toward the president of an university, or toward the president of a railroad, is not different from the mental attitude of am- bitious higher organisms toward a president of Mexico or a president of Hayti. The differences in permitted action relate only to the degree of civilization, and not to the degree of phylogenetic wish. We are to be duly thankful to a degree of civilization which has now given so much protection to the individual. Almost any emotion may be turned to satisfactory account for the individual when it is bitted and bridled by the will. Any one of the emotions which is not secured with a screw nut of the will becomes a loose bolt in the works of man. Under our present childish stage of culture, curiosity has often led us to remove the screw nut from an emotion just to see what the loose bolt will do. This loose bolt of an emotion we call "inspiration" because man as an animal of high in- telligence does not lack for words. We are much like horse thieves, however, when we steal any one of these emotion work horses of nature and employ it for our own purposes under positive control of the will. Nature does not wish to have us take charge of emotions in that way, for it interferes with evolution. CHAPTER IV Whatever you do, whatever you are, you are making en- vironment — atmosphere for somebody. Man is an expression of his environment. It then becomes his duty to furnish environment for others in which they may Hve. Each man's duty is to do what he can in a normal way, as an oak tree grows, without worry or undue hurry. The oak tree fulfills its mission and becomes a thing of beauty and strength in the landscape without worry or undue hurry. One of my cynical friends gave as his definition of a suc- cessful man a man who had kept out of jail. My definition of a successful man is one who has developed a high degree of usefulness while maintaining health and happiness at the same time. We often read that a man achieved success in a certain undertaking, but suffered a nervous breakdown from over- work. Was it success ? It seems to me it was failure. If one can outwit nature and not be unhappy while carrying on good work he has a reward for his wit, but nature demands individuals for the most part who will work under such stress that they are actually unhappy with their allotment of dis- satisfaction. Activity is often out of proportion to ultimate efficiency. We very often hear of some one who can do more work in five minutes than another can do in half an hour. At the 275 276 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS end of ten years the one who does so much work actively may not have made as much substantial progress as the one who works more slowly. Day by day, hour by hour, it seems as though the very active one were accomplishing several times as much as the other, but not year by year or decade by decade. Genius has been defined as unusual capacity for work. This is not a definition because there are many men capable of an enormous amount of good work who are far from being geniuses. Genius commonly represents doubling of the rose and portends the ending of a family, as described elsewhere in these notes. Happiness is said to consist in not wanting what we cannot get. Satisfaction is really better than happiness, the satisfac- tion of getting things in the end which one was not quite sure he would obtain. Contentment is to be deprecated if it leads to inaction. The man who is most contented when he is hardest at work has the right sort of contentment. Contentment is not altogether pleasing to nature, and she sees to it that it does not last long unless one is contented when at hard work. Most people are well ofif, but they do not know it. Often when hunting I have been cold, wet and hungry, and have thought how well off people were with their warm dry clothes on, in some distant house in which I saw the light shining from a window. Perhaps the people there were uncomfortable also but in a different way, bothering themselves with some financial or social question, or disturbed about their neighbors. They were well off but did not know it. A man finds in others just about what he looks for, because we all contain almost everything for which anyone might look. The man who looks for meanness in other people finds it. The one who looks for angelic characteristics in others finds them. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 277 The individual who is looking for any one series of traits in others may represent them in highest degree in himself, be- cause it is innate knowledge of the possession of traits of meanness or of angelic characteristics which leads a gregarious man to perceive in others traits which he recognizes as domi- nant in his own character. While a strenuous life is quite correct for those who are adapted to it, I always prefer personally what might be called a sort of sunbeam existence, occupying a great deal of space, but displacing nothing. It is always a pleasurable feeling to make life brighter for many and harder for none. This does not hasten evolution, but I am lazy and like to shift that responsibility to others. When we say that an individual is blase we mean that he or she has "passed up" on experience with conventional sins and self gratification. The blase individual lacks originality sufficient for going further. The astronomer is never blase, nor is the geologist, the botanist, the mathematician, nor the Christian missionary. Symonds has declared that the true philosophy is simply to endeavor to escape from life. He says that we seek music, painting and sculpture because they help us to forget actual existence. Ask the Boy Scouts or the Camp Fire Girls if this is true. Ask the scientist on the verge of a discovery that will be of service to mankind if this is true. They will all say, "Poor fellow, he must be ill, if he has an inner consciousness from which he is always trying to escape. He must be a little butterfly trying to get away from the entangling web of an ugly spider." The finest thrills (assuming for the purpose of argument that thrills are desirable), belong to people who do not forget actual existence, but who concentrate all of their forces upon the pure joys of what is most real and definite in actual existence. 278 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS We are all sailing toward our epitaphs, one day nearer every- day, one hour nearer every hour. We may trim our sails according to the inscription which we wish to have placed upon the headstone. The one who builds castles in the air is a winner all the time until he fails, which he does part of the time. The pessimist is a loser all the time unless he wins, which is part of the time. One of my friends, Professor X, is an optimistic teacher of international renown. I have seen him at times when he had griefs that would turn an ordinary man's face into a gargoyle, but he remained calm and serene. Such griefs and troubles as he had would call for ranting and murder in many a stage play. That would be the description of the situation by many a play writer or novelist. The calm, serene man does not interest them much. His character will not make the gallery cheer. Give us that character in a play sometime, playwrights ! Great optimists like my noble friend X, who have lost their children and a large part of their possessions, are still enabled to adopt the world as theirs. All other people become their children and personal suffering over losses is lessened. I have sometimes been overwhelmed with grief over the death of a friend, but have not allowed the grief to last for a long while. I loved, respected and admired him, and honor his memory, but there is now no need for sadness. That would be wrong toward living people. It is a wrong toward other people if I do not now turn my love, respect and admira- tion to some one else who is still living. Long continued grief serves a selfish rather than an useful purpose. People who have some great sorrow and allow it to become an obsession depress all of their friends with an influence that is destructive. Friends of people who have an obsession of sorrow dread to see them coming, knowing of the painful sympathetic mood which is to be summoned. When indi- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 279 viduals have a great sorrow but repress its expression through an effort of the will, bearing it with dignity, and presenting a cheerful presence withal, they are revered by all of their acquaintances. They receive a deeper and heartier and more genuine sympathy than any which is accorded to the one who has become obsessed by a sorrow and who goes about seeking sympathy. If one does not get fun out of life to-day, Lord knows when he ever will do so, because our time here is rather short. It is best to work along in duty as one sees duty, even though it has a drag to it. Meanwhile one should seek ever to find duty of equal value but minus a drag. The drag is not an index of the real value of a duty. Gloom is not wanted in business offices. It is never an asset. Where then is gloom an asset? Where's that advertisement calling for some of it? So live that you can die laughing. Nothing matters much in this world so far as any indi- vidual is concerned. In a few years, each and every one of us now reading these notes will be dry crooked bones for some one to rattle with a pitchfork. Our joys and sorrows of childhood, our hard work in passing examinations at school, our oratory and skill, our frankness or slyness, love or hate, goodness or badness will all be represented in nothing but crooked ratting bones, unless we have left some idea or some structure which will serve the people who come later, and who wield a pitchfork on the rattling bones. Many people are unhappy because they have a temperament of penalties and conditions. They will not act or allow any- thing to be done excepting under stated conditions, with penalties always ready for any infraction. I have always refused to look at life as anything excepting 28o TO-MORROW'S TOPICS a good game of sport, with its proportion of good losers and bad losers among my friends. Would you like to know right now everything you will ever know? "Yes!" That would spoil the game! You are not a good sport ! If we knew everything at once it would be like playing a game of cards backward after the game was over. There is no sport in that. There is great sport in playing the game of life if one plays fair. There is, to be sure, such a thing as luck, but man does not call it by that name unless it is going against him. We hear a great many people perpetually claiming that they have no luck. The "no luck" people have to be very careful not to be included in the group of ingrates. They are usually idealists whose luck is only comparatively bad in rela- tion to some impossible ideal. The complainers whom I know have really had more good luck than they deserved for the most part, although we have to use the word "deserved" with some caution. Many of those who are ill, — the neurasthenics, — cannot look upon anything as good luck, because their over- sensitized protoplasm is physically unfit for receiving that kind of impression. It drops through their grating. The people who complain most about unfairness on the part of others are commonly the ones who are not able to success- fully impose unfairness upon others. Misanthropy represents a condition of mind resulting from the effect of things which a man has done to other people. It is a favorite expression of writers, — that a man has been "bowed and saddened by his experiences in the world." Men whom I know of this sort have been mostly bowed and sad- dened by the results of things which they have done to other people. I sometimes hear a man complaining about having been TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 281 born into the world against his will, an event concerning which he had no choice. What an ungrateful wretch! If you were born blind, and could have sight as a reward for being good for a period of ten years, how very, very good you would be for ten years at least. The complainer usually has first-rate eyes. If you were born deaf, how good you would be if you were to be given ears as a reward of merit. The complainer usually has first-rate ears. With all his gifts a man is un- grateful. He obtained his gifts for nothing, and consequently does not value them. Which pays best, goodness or badness? Anyone who is bound to put the question upon a payment basis is himself bad. I can answer the question, however, having made ob- servations for more than half a hundred years. It is my con- viction that goodness and badness pay about equally well so far as material gains are concerned. Good people, on the whole, are more comfortable. That is the only difference. I do not see how any one can sit down and think of anything for a long time without laughing, because there are so many ridiculous features to almost everything in human affairs, so many incongruities and inconsistencies under observation on every side. Almost any educated man can compute the orbit of a planet if he simply gives attention to acquiring methods, but let him try to use the factors in the problem of the blooming of a flower, and he will burst out laughing at the sense of his ridiculous smallness, unless he has so much vanity that he takes the matter seriously. When we are troubled by small near-by affairs, it is a relief to think of what is going at a distance. A railway train travelling at the rate of one mile a minute would arrive at the moon in 168 days, at Mars in 76 years, at Jupiter in 740 years, at Saturn in 1470 years, but it would require forty 282 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS million years for this same train to reach the nearest star. And this star is very near when compared with the distance at which some of the other suns are situated. Affairs of many kinds of folks are no doubt going on in some of the countless planets. If one simply sits down and thinks, there is little need for paying out good money for the theatre in order to get rest and amusement. One can think of more fun, of more comedy and tragedy, of more interesting complications in social life, of more that is spiritual, of more that is practical, if he simply sits down quietly and selects the sort of material he wants to use in his mind for purposes of rest and amusement. If a man is languid he may find it less trouble to pay a couple of dollars for the theatre and be contented with less true repre- sentation of life. The reason why thinking for oneself is more entertaining is because nature is always superior to art, the best art being that which most nearly represents nature. The best actor, the best painter, the best writer, is the one who most nearly portrays nature. Sophists deny the truth of that fact at times, and in the very next breath exclaim, "Why, it was almost the real thing!" It is the people with a sense of humor who save the world after all. Humor represents climax and is therefore a positive note. Absence of sense of humor represents anticlimax, and is negative in character. On one occasion, while conversing with an elderly lady near a country hotel, we heard the voice of a phoebe bird from a considerable distance ; I looked about for a moment and suddenly espied it far away on the top of a dead tree. The good lady remarked upon my acuteness of vision, but pretending not to notice the remark, I said, "Now, watch him. There's a fly coming. See what he will do when the fly passes him on the right." Surely enough, at just that moment the phoebe bird made a dart to the right, but of course TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 283 there was an even chance of its going to the left. On returning to the hotel later, I found people divided into three groups on the subject. The honest old soul had related the marvelous incident of my not only seeing the phoebe at a distance but seeing a fly pass him on the right side. The more serious people thought it was a case of wonderful eyesight, another group thought the good lady was mistaken, the third group, consisting of jokers, had seen through the incident at once. What is becoming of a world that deceives good, honest folk and has to leave its problems in charge of jokers for right adjustment? Indians sometimes have a sense of humor that is rather subtle. I remember one very taciturn Huron Indian whose ideas were seldom comprehensible to a certain foreign traveller who was sending home correspondence notes on the very subject of Indians. Returning from fishing near the boat house I told the traveller that a very large jack-fish had risen to my bait quite near the landing, another one about fifty feet farther on, and still another not far beyond that point, but all had failed to hook. The Indian said : "Too bad you did not catch the third one. It would have been very big." I asked why, and he replied, "There would have been three in one." The Indian knew the habits of jack-fish better than I did, but the foreigner did not laugh. Which one showed the most intelligence, Indian or foreign correspondent? The Indian is often very dignified in his poetic allusions, but much of the poetry ascribed to him has been edited in by white orators. Thus, calling the Mississippi River the "father of waters" is a very free translation indeed, because the words from which the name is derived are in common use to-day among Ojibway Indians. They mean simply "mistah" — big, and "sipi" river. Other Indian names with no special applica- tion of consequence become the subject of unnecessary dis- 284 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS cussion. Take, for instance, the name of one of our great cities. I had not thought particularly of the derivation but knew that various unplausible origins had been suggested. One day when in camp on the Nipigon River our Indians got out some lean bacon made "in Canada, and another sort which we much preferred, made in Chicago. They were preparing to cut the lean bacon when I called out to them, "Kawin awiia pakadados kokosh, nin bajidenima Chicago kokosh." At that all of the Indians suddenly laughed, — which is unusual. They had instantly understood my "Chicago" as their "shikago." That accounted for their amusement over the kind of meat that I preferred to the lean bacon, no such distinction having been intended. Ask any Ojibway Indian what "Chicago" means and he will refer to one of the most beautiful of our wild animals. A sense of humor is like the broad elastic rubber tire of an automobile, which crosses railroad tracks and runs over stones without making any impression excepting upon the shock ab- sorbers. In the days when steel tires were used we had to be very careful about crossing railroad tracks at acute angles and we were careful about ruts. The hard narrow steel tire of an individual without sense of humor must give him many an upset during the day. It always seems to me that people with no imagination or sense of humor must suffer from a gnawing within of some terrible unliberated force. I made up two Greek words for use in an essay and sent them to a very serious professor for approval, but he replied by return mail that no such words existed in the Greek. One could fairly read indignation be- tween the lines of his letter. I have never cared to be treated with respect. It implies too much responsibility on my part — this living up to what may be the mistaken notion of somebody. A kindly friendli- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 285 ness (perennial tolerance) is the best medium of social ex- change. It is the attitude that one may extend to anybody, from the President down to the street urchin who has stolen an apple and is for the moment too independent and well-off to need any sort of attention from anybody. A man may step out of this atmosphere of kindly friendliness at any moment that he pleases, in order to love or hate, or to indulge himself in whatever favorite luxury emotion he may enjoy, just as he leaves the house to go fishing or golfing. For substantial daily comfort, kindly friendliness furnishes the most suitable tem- perature in which to live, corresponding to room temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit. It takes young people a long while to get to a realization of this fact, and sometimes older ones never get to realize it at all. They feel that any new acquaint- ance is one to whom they must later show a good deal of affection or a good deal of hatred. They are prospectively to be near or far — ^very friendly or not friendly at all. This feeling that one must go to some kind of extreme in his or her emotions with any new acquaintance really belongs to the child mind, but often continues through adult life, particularly in people of nervous tension temperament. If one demands a display of respect toward himself, or a display of affection, he feels there must be constant posing for position. It seems to me that true regard of people for each other requires • no word or demonstration, because true regard is understood in the many little ways which are noted by instinc- tive appreciation. There are some men for whom I have the very deepest regard and whom I hope have a corre- sponding regard for me, and yet we never express it in any such vulgar way as might come from expression in words. Some of the most beloved people do not know my feeling toward them. Were I to let them know about it, there would be reciprocation and exchanges of affection. That would take 286 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS time, — diverting our thoughts toward what is so attractive. Some of the men whom I esteem most highly do not know it. There are people who use affection and esteem for trade pur- poses, but it seems better to use them as a miser holds his gold, where one can gloat over affection and esteem in private. An attractive personality is often spoken of as due to per- sonal magnetism. This means that the attractive individual is expressing a real and genuine interest in other people, — which is more or less under control of the will of the indi- vidual. Personality of any sort is really magnetic in one sense, if we choose to state the matter in a mechanistic way, based upon the new electron theory of matter. Atoms of matter composed of electrons are bound together in molecules by chemical affinity, and these molecules are held together by cohesion, which is a sort of differential chemical affinity over molecular distances. Locomotion of the electrons composing atoms in matter gives us magnetism, which is radiated in the form of thought, — assuming that thought is a result of mate- rial interaction, with electrical or ethereal consequences. Thought, according to my feeling, is one kind of force, and every kind of force is transmitted by the ether. Following the laws of radiation, thought is propagated from one body to another. Hence, locomotion of electrons concerned in the atoms of matter which undergo chemical change when a thought is expressed, actually reaches another individiial as an effect of magnetism, — if we choose to state the subject in that way. The one who gives the most gets the most in return, as a general proposition relating to friendship. A man may well stop to think how much he gives of himself to those who do not have a very good time in life. A bit of comfort and encouragement at the right time does not cost much and goes a long way. The politician understands this, and makes great TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 287 capital in a selfish way, for himself, but incidentally he really benefits the people whom he flatters with his kind words and apparent show of interest. That is the way in which the ward politician gets his following of voters. In our profession it is a great delight to be able to do this without any thought of reward. It is a pleasure to "catch people" at kindly or noble acts of which they thought I would have no cognizance. I often "catch people" at being honest, or just, or honorable, or tender, or courageous, when they thought no one was observing. They have often profited by it later, without knowing from whom came the "influence." We love people who bring out our best qualities, and avoid those who bring out our worst qualities. All motives are mixed, and we are to judge them by the sum total of their compensations. Looking for pure motives, either good or bad, leads to disappointment on the part of those who have not been instructed fully on the subject of motives. In the later years of life almost every man is surprised on recalling some of his foolish and unwise acts of the past. The compensating side is this. Eccentric things that he may have done often represented excellent qualities that were humped up. like the hills of Quebec, because there was not room enough on earth for so much good land to be spread out evenly at one time. One need not worry about people charging him with making mistakes. I would rather die under the shadow of some great mistake than under the shadow of any little meanness. Mistakes are stimulating. My friend Dr. Bigelow finding himself near his boyhood scenes, in the country, hunted up an old playmate who was not at home. The Doctor enjoyed the quaint old farmhouse and its surroundings, and was truly envious of the owner. 288 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS He took a photograph of the house, and later sent a copy of it to his old time acquaintance. There was no answer to the letter enclosing the photograph, and the Doctor learned later that his boyhood companion called him all sorts of names, and said that if he was proud of living in a better house in the city, he ought not to taunt anybody by taking a picture of the old farmhouse and sending it to him. How many people there are in this world surrounded by beautiful things and envied by others but not aware of it ! Jealousy is classified by psychologists as one of the fears. It is primordial selfishness representing irregular development of mind, one part of which may be advanced, while the other features show atavism to primitive type, just as one may have certain organs with arrested development while the other organs of the body are well developed. Jealousy as a return to the primitive type of mind has the same difficulty in making adjustment to present conditions that a primitive organ would have in adjusting itself to the mechanism of the higher organism. Jealousy is selfishness on fire, destroying its owner and defeating its own subconscious object. It is like brandy, in small doses a good stimulant when taken at the proper time — in large doses destructive. Jealousy represents the confession of an instinctive innate feeling of inferiority or lack of ingenuity. It expresses a fear that the object toward which it is directed possesses a greater degree of power. Pride comes to the rescue of strong indi- viduals when feelings of jealousy arise. For weaker indi- viduals, egotism is sent by kind nature as a comforter. Ego- tism introduces sophistry, which argues that the object toward which jealousy is directed is an inferior individual. This is a curious sort of manifestation of self-preservation, which hides a fear by sophistical conclusions which are comforting. The TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 289 idea that a display of jealousy is nothing more than tacit acknowledgment of inferiority is no doubt true in part, but on the other part it represents selfish ambition, although the selfishness may still be classed imder the fear group of emo- tions. We associate jealousy with the animal mind rather than with the human mind in primal conditions. In course and final result it belongs to the lower animal rather than to man. My first experience with jealousy that was aimed at me was when through hard work and early rising I caught more musk- rats than the other boys did. The first experience with jealousy of my own toward another boy was when one of my com- panions of an inventive turn of mind worked out a device which attracted attention, and important men came to see him. I fotmd myself thinking of all his faults, — "He was not so very much of a fellow after all, and I did not care much about him," and in fact became extremely uncomfortable. All at once I began to realize that the feeling was some peculiarity of my own, and on speaking about it with my parents was informed that it was jealousy. That was the first time I had ever heard of the feeling, or at least with any meaning. The question was settled after considerable thought by my deciding to be proud of having such a boy for an acquaintance. Since that time whenever I am threatened with a feeling of jealousy toward others, it has always been possible through an effort of the will to change it into a feeling of pride at having such men among my acquaintances. My friend, Mrs. A., was a most charming and cultivated woman. Her nature demanded a great amount of love and demonstrative affection. All went happily with herself and her husband until a boy was born. The mother jealously feared that the growing son would divide his love between herself and her husband. Unconsciously she forestalled any such calamity by gradually pointing out to the child its father's 290 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS faults. At the age of twenty years the son was tolerating his father and looking upon him chiefly as a means for support. The wise counsel and thorough understanding so necessary between father and son had been inhibited by the mother. There came a time when the father believed the son should be obliged to take up serious occupation. The mother at this time felt that her son needed still further protection against a world which might not treat him with due consideration. The son loved most that parent who did not wish him to work. In the course of events, as an attractive young man, the son formed a strong attachment for a pretty girl. This presaged division of love, and after that the mother was looked upon as a bore because of her interference. Thus ended one ex- ample of a case in which jealousy insidiously defeated its own object, the owner of the jealousy not being at any time aware of its presence. Thousands of lives all about us' have been wrecked by this relic of the primeval mind, very much as thou- sands of lives have been wrecked by a vestigial organ like the appendix. Envy also is primordial selfishness. We can trace it back to one type of cell in the lower forms of organic life. The cell divides by two, four, etc. Traits of the mind develop along with body development. When we have a primeval trait like envy persisting in the midst of present higher development it is quite as difficult for an individual to make adjustment to polite environment as if he had a primitive arm or leg. An individual with atavistic features trying to make efficient em- ployment of the primitive traits of envy and of jealousy is quite as much handicapped in the best social order as an indi- vidual with arrested development of an arm or of a leg would be in mountain climbing. In fact, one cannot climb the moun- tain of social life if he lugs along a heavy weight of primitive mental trait of any sort. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 291 Hatred is primordial, and dates back to repulsion of mi- crobes by the early soma cells arranging themselves for protection of germ cells. I have often known men and women of fine general character and development showing a hatred for each other which was wholly unnecessary. Both had qualities which would have endeared them to each other, if nature, fearing too great aggregation of people, had not left these primitive traits to help preserve the balance of nature by preventing too rapid progress toward perfection. Hatred, jealousy and envy are relics like the appendix, wisdom tooth and gall-bladder. They may make trouble for us, but they really aid nature in limiting disproportionate social aggrega- tion and over-population. Resentment is another primordial feature of the mind, when it relates to personal injury. When resentment is shown in relation to injuries suiifered by a race or a nation or a state or a town, it is shown in its proper stage of development. It is a risky rudiment, like a wisdom tooth, when employed for action in relation to one's self. A man who endeavors to be strong resents little that is personal. He resents what would be injurious to his state or nation. I think it was in June, 1876, that I became angry for a whole day. It made me very uncomfortable, and I decided never to become angry again, because of the personal discom- fort which it caused. The one who excited this emotion would have been pleased to know how much distress he had led me to suffer. Anger, like other intense emotions, inhibits ordinary physiological processes for the time being, and inhibition of digestive processes allows numerous bacteria to develop rapidly. The toxins from these bacteria in turn continue the irritation of nerve centres. I never see a man who is thor- oughly angry without thinking how much his capsulated bacilli 292 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS are enjoying their opportunity. Excess of emotion of any sort causes undue liberation of acid in cell metamorphosis. The tissues become sour, — actually. An individual of one type of mind may be fully appreci- ative of the character of another type without being able to change to that type. There are two distinct types of generous mind. One plans largely for service to others but neglects to give assistance in the way of small alms, or to remember anniversaries prettily. The other type represents that angelic interest in the little things that bring cheer and kind thoughts to make daily life sunnier. It delights in the Christmas tree and in possibilities of relief for the poor family. I have friends whose egotism is offensive, yet I love them for their affection; friends who are a little crooked and over- shrewd, yet I love them for their fine hospitality; friends who cannot be trusted in public affairs in which they are engaged, but I love them for their camaraderie and their proffered help if I want it (which I do not). ("What's the Constitution amongst f rinds?" exclaimed Sullivan). I have friends whose gender is somewhat in question because of viraginity or effeminacy — not their fault. They are lovable for gentleness, refinement or fine reasoning. I have friends who are rude, crude and untutored; yet I love them for their kindliness and courage. I have friends who are untruthful in careless con- versation, but I love them for the imagination which belongs to their mental habit, for I know them to be truthful under test of stress. I have friends whose moral standards are not high ; yet I love them for their cleverness or wit and learning. I have friends who are unwise and unpractical, yet I love them for their spirituality, their artistic conceptions, their poetic rendering of commonplace daily affairs. And then there are TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 293 the learned friends who are tactless and who manage affairs like the kitten with a skein of yarn, but yet I love them for their scholarship and their choice of daily thoughts. Verily there are compensations, and it is a privilege to live in a world where one can have so many kinds of friends. Were I to drop all of these for their shortcomings, the loss would be mine, not theirs. Cut the bruised spot out of a peach, and plenty of peach of the most luscious quality still remains. A man who is looking for friends without spots would collect an indigestible half-green lot like himself. One reason why I prefer to find everybody interesting and no one disagreeable is because the discovery of disagreeable traits in another would cause me discomfort, while having no effect upon the other party. If I then aim to be the only one discomfited, a preference for comfort would suggest that no disagreeable -characteristic be observed in anyone else. With an effort of the will one may transmute disagreeable impres- sions into ones that are interesting for purposes of study. Then again there are enemies. I could love almost every one of them if there were time for coming to an understanding between us, but we are too busy with other matters, and cannot get to the understanding. Some of them I admire for the convictions and motives which made them my enemies. We would agree perhaps in the long run, if there were time, but it is best on the whole for us to remain enemies, because be- tween our opposing points of view better principles are de- veloped through the expenditure of friction energy. They say that a biographer really writes his own life, using the life of his subject for a text. This carries out the idea that we may find in others just about what we wish to find. We are biographers of others according to our own tempera- ments and limitations. A young man or a young woman can make an estimate in 294 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS advance of the prospective amount of trouble in life v^^hich may be anticipated. For this purpose a note book is to be employed and a man is to jot down the number of remarks which he makes in the course of a day which relate to other people — personal remarks. If a man's conversation is found on analysis to be five per cent, personal, that propor- tion may not lead him into trouble, provided that much care is used in the selection of material which is to enter into the personal conversation. If ten per cent, of one's entire con- versation relates to people, he may look for much trouble in life, because the proportion of misconceptions and comments belonging to the negative phase of expression will soon engage him in hopeless confusion in his relations with other people. As a matter of curiosity I have sometimes jotted down the proportionate number of comments relating to other people which were made habitually by two people in conversation. In some cases it amounted to more than fifty per cent. For these people the world was sure to be a vale of tears. The best security against unhappiness, aside from avoiding causes for physical illness, is impersonal conversation which will relate to other people in a proportion of less than five per cent. We may judge of a man's tastes by the collections he makes. This one collects coins, that one collects engravings. I judge of a man's character by the collections of fact that he makes relating to other men, by the sort of things that he has saved up to say of other men. He is not to be judged by the attitude which he wishes to impress upon people, because that often represents conscious effort at self defence. A man sometimes gets together a mass of information which is detrimental to other people. He does this in propor- tion to his innate consciousness of personal moral weakness. When judged from a biologic basis, it means the collection and the storage of rebuttal material for purposes of self TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 295 defence. One of the most unhappy men whom I have known went so far as to keep a scrap-book and letter file of material which was detrimental to other people. He said it was for the purpose of getting back at anybody who got after him. Christ did not find it necessary to keep such a scrap-book, nor, in more modern times, have the natural scientists recognized any such need. One whose innate consciousness of personal weakness is such that he collects an overplus of destructive detrimental material does not wait for occasion to use it in rebuttal, but exhales it in daily life, throwing it out in advance of his steps. I never judge people by what they say favorably of themselves, because this represents a conscious guard. Men are best judged by their attitude toward other people, because that represents their unconscious and unguarded ex- pression of personal feeling for the degree of need for self protection. People who collect material which is hurtful to others may not necessarily be bad. They may simply express a feeling of personal insecurity, — not being sure of themselves. In village life, where fairly strong characters have lacked opportunity for trying themselves out, one may often note this tendency to collection of unhappy material relating to neigh- bors. Such tendency comes into conflict with civic pride, and there is many an amusing spectacle for the biologist or sociolo- gist who observes the struggle of people in their double wish, of having their town conspicuous on the basis of its talented men, and at the same time who have made a collection of detrimental material relating to these very same men. Being a blond of motive type, I have the temperament that goes with that type, caring little more for obstacles than a hurdle horse does; in fact, the more obstacles the merrier. Among the faults of that temperament I have a tendency to be visionary, with the inaccuracy belonging to speed. There has been a compensating side however when making mistakes, 296 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS because of the willingness of an hundred people to come to the rescue, bringing a wealth of helpful suggestions which were widening in their effect. Some came with axes in order to make quick work with such a character, others came with a rope to get my feet high above wrong ground. Others came with mercy and an attitude of helpful kindness. All responded according to the nature of their own particular temperaments and the final effect was beneficial for all. "Quot homines tot sententise." This being the case, every strong expression of opinion offends somebody; every strong expression of opinion pleases somebody. Therefore, if a man is quite natural and sincere in giving expression to strong opinions he will displease and please, attracting to himself those whom he has pleased, and this group will be all sufficient for satisfying his social needs. There is no possibility of making one viewpoint for all temperaments. One woman prefers to be alone with a fine thought, in order to develop it well and thoroughly in her mind. Another woman prefers to be in the company of admirers, wearing a beautiful dress developed artistically by some one else. "Never mind about the mind, that can wait," she says. One man is courageously planning to be of large public service in the face of all opposition. Another one is cunningly contriving to mulct the municipality. These are matters of temperament. Why is it that people always become so grave on the brink of great questions? I would rather laugh, and run the risk of tumbling in. The gravity is caused probably by a feeling of responsibility, egotistical in origin, based on the feeling that mistakes may lead to personal penalties, — or, perhaps, a more generous view would include the fear of leading others astray in case one were to go wrong in one's conclusions. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 297 Personally I have too much confidence in the cleverness of people, to have much fear about leading others astray. Every problem on earth runs into infinity. This would give us such distressing tension when working problems toward absolute conclusions that nature kindly gave us vanity for lessening discomfort whenever questions get us to a strain- ing point. When they lead us to that point, man settles ques- tions in his own way to his own satisfaction with his com- forting vanity. Thus man in his vanity makes God in his own image. He separates reason from instinct with the wedge of the V of his vanity, but we find a key to the truth in the symbol V standing for vanity. If we produce the two straight lines constituting the two sides of the V they give us X, repre- senting infinity, and nature kindly suppressed the image of these produced lines in order that we might rest contented with the two lines ending in V. Nature kindly renders a man free from pain when he has been hopelessly injured by introducing the condition known as shock, and in the same spirit she kindly blinds a man to his own vanities and conceits. Vanity leads us to take pride in our great inventions, but the locomotive transforming coal into movement of wheels is a crude thing when compared with a lightning bug. Think of the bug's elaborate gears and bearings, automatic feeders, waste disposal factory, repair shops and facilities for turning out more bugs, and then compare it with that crude thing of our manufacture, the locomotive. As a lightning bug trans- forms energy directly into light without measurable heat, so the body transforms energy into mind without notable libera- tion of heat. A bright thought let us say is nothing but a potato expressed in another form of energy, just as the whistle of the locomotive is a piece of coal expressed in another form of energy. A lightning bug transforms energy directly into 298 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS light without heat, and we transform the potato into mind without special heat, while the engine, the work of man, has to make a great deal of special heat first. Thought on the part of man is a higher function than a whistle on the part of a locomotive, but both are alike in representing liberation of energy, which has been stored up previously from the sun according to nature's plan. This in turn represents a form of energy which is derived from radiant ether assembled in Sun form. Vanity has economic value for one of its compensations. Vanity and altruism furnish the chief impelling motives upon which nature depends for keeping men engaged in new work in the face of jeers. Vanity impels the innovator to keep at work in the hope that jeers will be turned into cheers; altruism keeps him at work in the satisfaction of believing that he is to be of service, with or without reward. Neither vanity nor altruism will always suffice for keeping a man or a woman at work along new lines of thought if there is a family to be supported, because there is always a strong tendency for one to become a coward in the presence of fixed charges of a family, unless there is some independent source of income. On the other hand, those who have an independent source of income are very apt to become indolent and to leave well enough alone. All hail then, to vanity, when it furnishes a driving force equal to that of altruism, — if the end-result means progress. Let nature wind us up to the right with altruism or to the left with vanity, so long as we are wound up, — and full of go. Some people are always trying to lessen the conceit of others. I would not think of doing that, because it seems to me that the conceited individuals must get the greatest amount of comfort out of life after all. At the moment I recall a sort of fixed and permanent satisfaction that was TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 299 displayed in the mien of a fellow passenger on a steamer many years ago. She was a woman who had undoubtedly made her presence known in various foreign hotels as that of an American — a quite large one. I had been a guest at shoot- ing parties in a certain country for a couple of months, where at the castle or at the shooting box everyone present was assumed to be on the same social level, for the occasion at least. Army officers presented themselves, and princes and princesses newly arrived graciously announced their names to anyone whom they thought might not happen to know them. Everyone present was free to address any one else without further introduction than the fact of being present as a guest. On the way home on the steamer, — carrying still the spirit of recent environment, I had no sooner taken my seat at the table than a very stout and pompous lady made triumphal entrance through the dining salon and took her seat at the same table. Wishing to be affable I turned to her at once and said, "My name is Morris." She turned partly about, stiffly, and with a sort of lorgnette voice replied, "Indeed!" If one's mission is to give comfort in this world, leave people to their conceit. The compensation for conceit is the good citizen that it makes out of the man who is obliged to live up to his own estimate of himself. Those of us with vanity would frequently be in misery were it not for the conceit which nature gives us for our comfort. I have no objection to conceit or vanity on the part of any one else, provided he allows me to have my own share undis- turbed. Nature seems to have a plan for limiting the pro- portion of conceit and vanity which are to be normal for any one individual. In order to prevent over-development of these characteristics nature uses fire against fire. For instance, a man who is particularly conceited is apt to see a gage of combat in others who are likewise conceited. One who is 300 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS particularly vain is irritated by vanity in others. The men with largest degree of conceit and vanity of their own devote so much of their time to attacking conceit and vanity in others, that a great deal of energy is expended. Surplus is therefore automatically balanced. The vanity of scholarship may be quite as eccentric as the vanity of personal adornment. Pliny tells us that the fol- lowers of Porcius Latro used cumin in order to produce that complexion which bespeaks application to study. That, by the way, introduces the idea that even in olden times the scholarly men had toxic spasm of facial capillaries, ergo, abnormal and sometimes morbid brain action. The color of a man's skin gives a very good index for the face value of his deeper thoughts. There is no objection to a man being boastful, provided that he allows me the same privilege. Among my acquaint- ances some boastful men are so hospitable that I forgive them all their faults. They are so generous that I would almost allow them to steal. I have always had a natural tendency toward boast fulness myself because everything looks to be so large. This would have been corrected no doubt by my mentors, or by the gibes of other boys early in life, excepting for the fact of the char- acteristic being so clearly my own that it would have been a pity to have repressed anything so definite. Some false part would have to be acted in place of that tendency. One may note his own faults laughingly. Serious self- examination ends in morbid selfishness. No man takes offence at anything unless he is hit. If a man is sensitive about his personal honor, — question his personal honor. If he is sensitive on the question of being honest, — question his honesty. A target which is hit shows it. Self-consciousness of right intention repels all attack. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 301 Sensitive people often remind me of a basket full of crabs. If one crab moves a little for purposes of comfort, another crab pinches him. If a finger is pointed at them in admiration of their pretty colors, they raise their claws and strike at the finger. Put your sensitive people all into a basket and cover them with seaweed, where they can jab away at each other as cruelly as they please, but out of sight of the rest of us. People who ask for criticism are prone to take immediate offence if it is given. It is a peculiar sensitiveness which leads them to ask for it. There is fine inspiration in the incessant conflict of ideas among men who take things impersonally. If one must put on gloves for fear of hurting some weakling, it spoils the whole game, and gives one a sort of sinking feeling near the midriif. A rnan who needs to be handled with gloves should be handled with a club to save time. No one should be disturbed or change any plans just because of opposition. New ideas are out of the experience of critics. They have a right to speak as they do. The innovator likewise has his own right to go ahead in a free country in these days. Innovation is condemnation. It condemns the judgment of serious and honest men. Consequently it is condemned by them in turn and rightly in spirit. The innovator must take this into account and note on his part a double responsibility, first in hoisting new ideas to the surface and further in casting about for ways for securing any loose ends of his ideas. This must be done with skill. Many innovators are too vain and weak to attend to this second duty, and the loose ends become tangled in tradition which pulls down the whole idea. Tradition offers the largest degree of protection for a mean- type man and the meanest degree of protection for a large- type man. When an innovator has to share the results of the feeling 302 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS which he himself engenders, he gets good amusement out of it, provided that his sense of humor is large. If his vanity is greater than his sense of humor, he becomes sad and resentful towrard the world, forgetting that it was he who pushed first. If he has a good idea of the ridiculous there is no end of fun watching his fellow men trying to get a new idea down, like a young quail trying to swallow a grasshopper, with consider- able difficulty and a good deal of action, and some disarrange- ment of the grasshopper. If the young quail finally gets the grasshopper into some sort of swallowable shape, it suffices for storage of potential, and the quail becomes that much bigger. If you have an indomitable will for overcoming obstacles, it is no special credit to you. It only means that nature played a joke upon you in bestowing that will, but in order to prevent your seeing the joke, she gave you her anesthetic vanity. If you have a will for surmounting obstacles, nature gave you the will for that purpose, picked you out for the purpose. Various degrees of effort of the will which are employed for controlling symptoms of illness among the Christian Scien- tists no doubt have a direct effect in securing such control. At times when I wished to avoid sneezing, the effort had been a failure and I had rather come to think of it as something beyond the control of the will. On one occasion, however, a constable asked two of us to help him get two desperate char- acters. (We were selected for the work because of our knowledge of the locality.) We were gliding noiselessly down a stream at night, all alert for a smell of camp-fire smoke. While keeping- too closely in the shadow of an overhanging bank our boat slid quietly upon the mud and came to a stop. Before we had said a word, voices were heard not more than twenty feet away. The men whom we were after were waiting at that very spot with their rifles, anticipating that if TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 303 we came down stream in the night we would run upon the mud-bank at that particular bend and would be at their mercy. They talked in ordinary tones about what would happen to us and there we sat listening to it for half an hour, until they decided to try another point for getting us. The chilly air made us all want to sneeze, as we learned afterwards on comparing notes, and yet a single sound from any of us in the boat would have set several triggers in motion in an instant. We all managed to control the desire to sneeze by a sheer effort of the will. It was nearly daylight when we ran across the men a second time, and opened fire upon each other with the odds in our favor. If we were enabled to control our sneezes on that occasion, the Christian Scientists may control many symptoms of illness that are quite as definite as the desire to sneeze. The free will chooses good or ill. Taste is the compass by which the will is steered. How fine it would be if every one were really free to live' his or her own life in the fullest and best way without restric- tions that bind all of us. The rain which dampens and makes heavy the wings of the eagle is really necessary, for other purposes. Nature's restrictions belong to nature's plan, and the wish to be free is selfishness. We must fly the best we can under the circumstances, and our scream should be like the eagle's, one of courage always, and never a scream of dis- appointment or of fear. Patience is the ability to adjust oneself quietly to trying conditions, or in times of distress to suffer without words. Most people are pretty sensible all day long in the affairs of ordinary life. I have talked in the freedom of the woods with royal potentates and with missionaries, with merchant princes and with wild Indians, and have entered into the coun- cils of ordinary affairs with all of them. There is very Httle 304 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS difference in their ways of thinking in the matter of common affairs in everyday life. It is only when large or peculiar ques- tions arise that the limitations of different people are observed. People understand each other very well on the whole. I have watched a bear for half an hour at a time feeding or playing right near me in the woods. I have watched a beaver at his work, often but a few yards away. They did not know they were being watched, or they would not have stopped long enough for two grunts. It is the same way with people. Their intimate habits are watched and understood by other people, just as I watched the bear and the beaver. The keenest of eyes are turned toward every young man constantly, although he does not realize it. When one walks in the woods and thinks he is alone, hundreds of pairs of eyes are being turned upon him by the wood creatures without his knowledge. There are mice and crickets, birds and spiders, all keeping wonderfully quiet, but looking straight at him to see what he is going to do. He is looked at by people in the same way, but not for the same reason; — by various animals through fear, but by people because they are always eager to observe excellence, — for discovering somebody who is better than they themselves are. Hundreds of eyes are turned upon a young man, because the hope of every land lies in its young men. It is a most intense interest. If the young man thinks it necessary to attract attention to himself by posing, it is a mis- take; — by methods not quite genuine and sincere, it is a mis- take. If his egotism directs his method it is not inspiring, and the owners of the hundreds of pairs of eyes are sad. He is no better than common folks in his method. There is one essential for every young man who is planning his life work calmly, and with right intention, and that essential is often overlooked. It is sociability. The reason for that requirement is funda- mental. It is because he belongs to a gregarious species. If TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 305 he becomes so much engaged in his Hfe work that he neglects to be sociable, he is not wanted very much, for he seems not to be one of the crowd, no matter how good the character of his work. At least he is not wanted very intensely, — and the way is not made as easy for him, as it will be if he recognizes the fundamental law requiring sociability. Social life, however, is apt to take one entirely away from science, art or literature. In this way the world is kept from progressing too fast. I know artists, scientists and writers who would make a marked impression upon affairs of the world if they were not caught in the social whirl and dragged away from their best field of action. Judgment, then — in this matter ! Intellectual work must have the condition of absolute free- dom, and this is not allowed in typical social life. If great artists obtained pay and appreciation during their lives, they would be in such demand socially that their work would be inhibited. Nature knows that, and prevents it by leaving appreciation of their great work until after they have departed. When you tell a man that early morning reading and writing are of more value than reading and writing at any other time, he replies that it is not his experience. It is curious to note how regularly men will answer at once that it is not their experience, but on reflecting it will suddenly occur to them that they have not tried this experience. Force of habit is strong. It is said that at a colored people's church, when they asked the new member — a railroad porter, if he would take up the collection in one aisle, he asked to be excused for a moment until he could step out and get his whisk broom. Man is so accustomed to developing habits that it is an effort for him to change his mode of thought. A man who was 3o6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS asked if he thought capital punishment should not be abolished, answered, "No, what was good enough for my forefathers is good enough for me." Is the world getting better or worse? It depends upon yourself so far as one unit at least is concerned. It is one unit better or worse than it was before, on account of your presence. The cynic says that every man has his price. Now, let the average citizen take this question home to himself, and I think he will recognize the bon mot as appropriate for a label which the cynic places upon himself alone. Do I want fame? No! It imposes a great lot of extra hard work that will use up valuable time, interfering with my going fishing. (And the menus and speeches! Horrors!) Fortune? No! It introduces comphcated responsibilities that cause the arch of life-joy to sag in the middle, putting stress upon faith in human nature. Glory ? No ! The fuel for glory burns with brighter light and kindlier warmth when kept inside, with the doors shut. What then do I want that would make me amenable to a price of any dimensions? None of the men whom I trust have a price, — and they are many. Do I want power? Power for power's sake is vulgar. It has led men to waste their lives violently battling for causes which proved to be world calamities. One ought to exercise some sort of power however, and in order to avoid any bother it seemed best to harness up nature and make her do work at my bidding. Consequently I hybridized nut trees and made new kinds of trees for furnishing a food supply for the world. These great engines of trees and their progeny will manufac- ture from the ground millions of tons of food supply. They will give profitable occupation to thousands of people. Nature was obliged to make these new trees against her wish. She will TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 307 now be forced into an expenditure of billions of tons of energy at my bidding — and no harm done to anybody. If one wishes power, with injury caused to no one, is it not good sport to play a trick upon nature and oblige her to exercise vast power at one's simple request? Is it not quite as well to do that as to trample upon friends when developing some kind of power for which vanity furnishes incentive? There are men who crave the power of poHtical position in order to be of service to the State. Such a desire is commendable. Let them have that power! There are men who wish for power in com- merce so they may serve the people with cheaper and better commodities, thereby advancing civilization. The desire is commendable. Let them have the power ! There are men who are ambitious to show their power in the field of trans- portation and distribution. The desire is commendable. Let them have the power ! All of these men are expert in ways for getting other men to work for them, but it requires great expenditure of force on the part of the power lovers and often injures their health. I prefer to laugh lazily at a prac- tical joke played upon nature which will now oblige her to expend more energy than is expended by the employees of a thousand manufacturers. The occupation of driving nature along this new road injures the health of none, but gives health instead. Children will be taken out of the mill instead of being put into the mill — as a result of my way for exercising power. Desire for fame is selfish in origin, and pleases only those who enjoy selfish acquirements. It is a most disagreeable result of accident to those who do not desire fame. I have no objection to other people gaining fame if they want it. Fame is a splendid incentive to work for those who care for it, but they must be prepared to really do the increased work that goes with fame. They must forego many of their 3o8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS choicest pleasures, because the resuUs of fame take up so much of one's time. Who is rich and who is poor ? Needs increase in proportion as one increases his wealth. The man of wide experience has no difficulty in distinguishing between the rich and the poor. He does it by noting that the rich man is the one who lives within his income, no matter what it may be, and the poor man is the one who lives beyond his income; no matter what it may be. A mechanic in need of money is impatient because his work does not bring him more than a thousand dollars a year, while he sees large vistas into which he could enter had he only the means. A doctor making ten thousand dollars a year is impatient because he sees great vistas into which he could enter if he had the means. A banker making a hundred thousand dollars a year is impatient because he is always right at a point where great opportunities would open for him were his means ample enough. The magnate making a million dollars a year is impatient because wonderful mergers are in his field of vision, but he feels limited by his income. I have beloved personal friends in every one of these situations, and they all tell me of their longings, when we are off fishing together and talking like real folks. Each one of these men, from the mechanic making a thousand dollars annually, to the magnate making a million dollars a year, is equally im- patient because of the vistas in sight and the limitations of his individual means. The wives of all these men also perceive great opportunities which would be opened to them were it not for the annoying restrictions due to the limitations imposed by their husbands' incomes. Thus does the ring-master crack the whip and keep us all active in evolution. Let us laugh while being driven, TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 309 and skip away from the whip whenever we wish to be rest- fully merry, even though it is not quite fair to nature if we become glad. The joy of doing kindly or generous acts is fundamental. I have seen a rather selfish child with brightening eyes and a high degree of elation over realization that he had done a kindly act. There is often more enthusiasm on the part of a child in connection with such an act, than would have followed any selfish accomplishment. If a man carries a long face when he says, "Love thy brother," it is suggestive of his having a mental reservation, or else that the effort personally causes him much pain. Some- thing at least makes his face long. The instruction should be given laughingly, it seems to me. A clergyman friend, quoting to me one day the oft repeated formula — "Love thy brother," said it with such a long face that I rephed, "Oh, you fakir, you have a mental reservation; you are thinking of some deacon in the church. I have caught you at it, for your long face gives you away." There are always lives of which we do not approve. Be appreciative of the circumstances rather than critical of the individual. The finest fruit of ethics is the ability to put oneself in another's place. The exercise of justice represents perhaps the highest de- gree of culture, and this incidentally includes a nice adjustment of values in degrees of tolerance. Tolerance then is the pedestal upon which justice rests. One who is tolerant of adverse decrees of fate in his own life, has developed a reli- gion, and through the dictates of that religion can act in the clear field of inspiration known as justice. The question of injustice is a difficult one to place. We 3IO TO-MORROW'S TOPICS see little injustices every moment in daily life. These are revealed by the microscopic point of view^. Then we have large injustice between nations which we view with unaided eye. We see injustices in the movements of the heavenly bodies. These we view with the telescope. Perhaps we are irreverent in trying to discuss the subject of injustices, be- cause they all belong to nature's plan. When considering the question of injustice from its biologic basis, we need go no farther back than to paleozoic insignia of tooth marks of Allosaurus upon the vertebrae of Bronto- saurus. When a huge dinosaur gulped down its daily ton of dinner from some large and innocent saurian relative, the injustice is apparent and a matter of record. The swallowing of happy beasts that were conducting themselves properly in a most exemplary way, in accordance with the best Mesozoic standards, might be looked upon as being highly reprehensible, excepting for the fact that the ill-fated victims were largely engaged in doing precisely the same thing to still other beasts. Primitive justice in paleozoic times consisted in one saurian destroying no more than he really needed for his own pur- poses. The evolution of justice has been gradual, to be sure, but hopefully progressive, and in the highest mammals is now expressed by the intellectually conceived legend — "Vivre et laissez vivre." Phylogenetic manifestations will continue to permeate all ramifications of activity of even the highest mammal, who is to remember that a future condition of static justice is not in nature's plan so far as we know. The best that civilization can do is to further the cause of discrete justice with increasing refinement of discrimination in the application of its principles. Injustice relating to social life may be traced back for many generations in any one family. Sometimes when a financial genius has amassed a fortune as a result of crowding others out of his field of competition, he TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 311 cannot clearly understand just why he should have been suc- cessful. It was not due to the possession of a will of steel, because the school master has that. It was not due to alert sympathetic intelligence, because the clergyman has that. How then did it happen? He must look to his ancestors. In order to understand himself, this possessor of a fortune en- gages a professional genealogist for solving the problem. An expert quickly traces the family back to seven brothers who came over. The relationship of these seven brothers to some king is readily found, because in the days when kings were plentiful and cheap nobody could well escape being related to some one or more of them in the course of ordinary biologic procreation. Practically every one of these old kings was an oppressor and robber. Consequently a phylogenetic ex- planation for the financial success of our genius is at least clear if not satisfactory. Furthermore, robber kings ulti- mately promoted civilization. A robber capitaHst ultimately promotes civilization. The socialist who would deprive the latter of his power would himself do it through robbery and through the effect of mass impact of brute force. Every human action to-day may be traced back step by step to its primitive manifestations. Hie docet, that injustice represents a law of nature. This law, like the energies, is not abrogated by civilization. Its power is simply distributed through the aid of our intelligence in such a way as to bring best efficiency returns suitable for the purposes of that mammal which does the same thing in regard to raising potatoes. The increase of injustice as a result of reversion to selfish instinct, through the agency of certain diseases, is similar to other manifestations of primordial traits in excessive proportion, consequent upon disturbance of balance of the intellect through the influence of illness. The healthier the individual, the more likely is he to exercise a healthy degree of justice consistent with the 312 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS character of his early environment, because the will is the result of the very best harmony of function. The will at the present time among civilized people is aimed at the bestowal of justice as its highest attribute. Injustice to man is exemplified in the writings of Schopen- hauer, who took advantage of people with less intellectual power than his own, and cruelly subjected them to theories for the purpose of appeasing his personal vanity of intellect. It would seem to have been wanton cruelty on his part, be- cause he argued that nothing in this world is worth while, and then proceeded to find it worth while to expend time and energy in presenting theories which would dishearten hearty young folks. Injustice is a relative term like all other terms formulated by man. If one were to give detailed con- sideration to all of the injustices to which he is personally subjected, — from a couple up to sixteen of them daily, it might require as much of his time and thought as any rascally duellist ever gave to the defence of his honor. The law of nature which impels to incessant struggle is demonstrated when groups of people start off upon a series of avengings in the cause of justice and of honor. The job is never finished, because a winning group wins by brute force only, and final judgment in relation to justice and honor re- mains a prejudiced judgment upon both sides. The same thing is demonstrated between people who engage in mutual recrim- inations over affairs of lesser importance. Winning is not done winsomely. It is comforting to remember the biologic history of injustice beginning from such a fixed point as the devouring of a good gentle saurian by a rapacious saurian. One may thus place his personal injustices to profit and loss account, leaving himself free to conduct affairs in life without diversion of valuable energy toward thoughts of injustice as applied to himself. To-morrow's century is to be notable as TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 313 the century of intelligent discontent. Instead of engaging in military warfare over questions of injustice, people will pass judgment upon the subject of personal and national injustices from a biologic point of view. They will understand about public right. A little girl running to her mother cried and complained that she had been pushed over rudely by her brother. The wise mother pacified her quickly by simply asking who pushed first. Always ask this question when you hear anyone com- plaining of injustice. "Who pushed first ?" The little brother did not push the little sister over because she was being good to him. When about to make a sarcastic remark, stop to think if you would do it beside a man's coffin when his hands are folded on his breast, and the white face can make no reply. If you would not do it then, why do it now? One will often catch himself on the point of making unkind remarks because the temptation to display cleverness is so great in the presence of open opportunity. One may always stop in time if he realizes that the temptation is not of high order. Sarcasm furnishes the easiest sort of way to raise a smile, and being so easy is a vulgarity on that account. I asked a disdainful young lady, clever with sharp remarks, if she was really happy. She replied, "No, but I get a lot of satisfaction out of getting even with people." Isn't happiness better than mean satisfaction? What is your standing as an estimator? We often hear the question asked if a certain individual is not over-estimated. A man is over-estimated or under-estimated according to the estimator, who becomes the responsible party. An act is not so important as the state of mind in which one approaches the subject. When five men get together for a pleasant evening with straight flushes, the social state of 314 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS mind is more valuable than the act of gambling is bad. The Christian who holds back his corn crop hoping that hungry people will pay more for it later, is a gambler. We say that gambling is wicked. That is true only of wicked gambling in the abstract. In a concrete game of poker among friends in which we try to make each other unexpectedly uncomfortable over mistakes in judgment, the gambling is not wicked but is conducive to bright, alert, social intercourse. In a concrete game of bridge whist where people are playing for the sake of making money, it is wicked. In a concrete case of betting on a horse race where one enjoys using acute perception in regard to the comparative qualities of thoroughbreds, and enjoys making a friend uncomfortable by laughing at him a few dollars' worth, it is not so very wicked. In the pool room where men bet on a horse race with the vulgar idea of risking money, it is wicked. In the one case it is great fun, in the other case it is a sin. I like to use judgment about a good horse, and to condense the judgment in the form of a bet. I like to judge of an adversary in a game of poker and to upset his choicest calcu- lations. Gambling for gambling's sake is vulgar. There is no actual difference between betting on a horse which one has carefully studied, — and making a legitimate stock investment It is only a matter of the state of mind which is displayed. I know of a number of houses in the so-called "best society" in which a guest is not welcome unless he will play bridge for high stakes. The gambling spirit there takes the place of clever- ness of the salon. Bridge itself is a fine game, and when played well requires skill and intelligence in high degree. It pro- motes sociability, — but when played in the gambling spirit the game becomes vulgar. If we really care to take the question of gambling to some- one who can explain about it for us, we must stop at the booth TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 315 of the psychologist for a moment. He will tell us that the attraction of gambling is due to rapid alternation of opposing emotions. Gambling at bridge or poker belongs in the same class with the Ibsen drama and the Wagnerian opera, in the sense of their "Geist" having logical process and ending for any emotions which are incidentally aroused. Faro and pool room betting, on the other hand, belong in the same class with novels which have no message aside from playing a see-saw game with opposing emotions. Both classes of gambling may be beneficial when taken in moderation for purposes of re- laxation, but when taken as a dissipation this rapid alternation of opposing emotions has the effect of throwing one entirely out of adjustment with wholesome daily affairs of life, like an Ibsen drama, or a Wagnerian opera, or a stirring novel sans message. If we now leave the booth of the psychologist and go to the booth of the bacteriologist, the latter will explain to us that people who wish to play see-saw games continuously with their emotions are those who have pathologic protoplasm. The question of "gambling habit" then is no more a moral question than is the question of the alcohol habit funda- mentally. Both of these questions are moral questions over a part of their range only. Fundamentally the habit feature has origin in the craving of the abnormally sensitized protoplasm for morbid stimulation. The gambling evil cannot be stamped out by legislation because the desire is as deeply seated in morbidly sensitized protoplasm as is the desire for morbid music and drama. An universal desire for hazard, with legiti- mate and normal aims, gives us great engineering projects and great industries. When the aim is abnormal, consisting of nothing more than scratching irritated protoplasm, the gam- bling habit presents itself as a pathologic affection. This whole subject then becomes legitimate game for the bacteri- ologist, but for the moralist it is a greased pig at a fair. The 3i6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS moralist cannot catch and define gambling. He can only describe certain kinds. I have no particular principles against the use of alcohol, and would never think of refusing a delicious mint julep with my Southern friends in the midst of their hospitality. My refusal to join in what they consider the right thing would put a question upon their judgment or character. The triumph of vegetarianism is a glass of cheering wine. As for tobacco — there is so much comfort in my pipe and newspaper, when getting at ease with the whole world after a hard day's work, that the question of principle does not enter. I am a better companion for others on account of the solace of the pipe and on that basis would not think of making my friends un- comfortable by depriving them of my contented presence. As to gambling, the matter of principle does come in. I would under no circumstances make a bet on a game of faro, or a wager in a pool room, but I am perfectly willing to make my best friend uncomfortable and hold him up to the miserable ridicule of four or five congenial spirits, by proving that a four flush is better than three aces. He really ought to know better or pay money for the consequences of dulness. As a matter of fact, there is no time for this particular sort of enjoyment in these busy days of mine, but I have no principle against that, or against buying stocks which may go up or down. One cannot agree perhaps that every man is free to have his own moral standards, because the very origin of the word "mores" means — custom of the people. The closer one can live to the best opinion of the public in his actions, the better. A man cannot depend upon his own standards of morality. The burglar and the white slaver have their individual stand- ards. Thousands of people are put behind the bars every year — where they belong — because they live up to their indi- vidual standards of morality. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 317 Temperance fanatics do not believe in using champagne for christening a ship, but the suppression of such a pretty bit of sentiment must cause Neptune to file the points of his trident. Who would not rather trust himself upon the bound- ing sea in a fine ship which had been christened with a bottle of sparkling champagne by a pretty girl, than to sail the lead- colored ocean upon a ship which had received a chilling cold water blow in the face at her coming-out party. Profanity relates to an objectionable attitude of mind rather than to the use of any particular words. On the stage the other night an actor said at an impressive moment, "Your word is not worth a tinker's curse." Now, what is a tinker's curse ? There is no such thing. A tinker puts reliance mainly in standard curses. A tinker's dam is a poor modest little wall of clay or putty used for keeping solder within bounds, and worthless as a permanent structure, but the author of the play in his delicacy of sensibility thought he ought to avoid the expression "tinker's dam" and referred to it as a "tinker's curse," thereby expressing precisely the same attitude of mind as would have been expressed by words that were really shocking. The use of expletives introduces a state of mind which is forbidden. The words themselves have little significance. Take "Hell" for instance. A boy going in swimming is asked by a boy upon the bank if the water is cold. "Cold as Hell!" comes the reply with alacrity, and yet that is not in line with the reputation of the place according to the ones who know about it. Once at a farmhouse a little boy with a string of trout shared this conversation with me. "Jimmy, those are pretty large trout for a boy of your size to catch." "Yes ! but you ought to see the big one I lost off down by the bridge." "What did you say when you lost him off, Jimmy?" "I said, 'Oh, Hell !' " His father, who just then came up, said, "Hi, 3i8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS there! Hasn't your mother told you not to use such words?" "Yes, Pa," he said, "but Ma hain't never lost off no such trout as that one wuz." I listened to an Arizona mule driver rattling off a string of profanity like the firing of a string of fire crackers. It had no meaning beside representing his state of mind, and he was driving a pretty good mule team at that. Theft relates to an attitude of mind rather than to a static principle. A child may take money from a parent or relative when the same child would not take money belonging to a stranger even in the presence of open opportunity. Railroad officials buy in a branch road for five million dollars and sell it to their company for ten million dollars. If the stockholders find it out they call it theft, yet the transaction might be part of a large scheme which in the end if successful would win for the holders of securities. All depends upon the attitude of mind of the officials rather than upon their concrete acts. The game of a chess player is not a single play. Truthfulness arises from a basic sense of justice and right. Imaginative children and some older folks who are not truthful in careless daily speech are often extremely trustworthy on serious occasions when questions of justice and right are really at stake. The mistress of the house engaging a servant said, "Now, Margaret, above all things I demand truthfulness. Are you truthful?" "Yes'm," she answered, "when you say that you are out I shall tell people that you are in." There is no case on record of a healthy individual going for twenty-four hours without being untruthful or hypocritical. It is all in the degree and state of mind. One is actually ostracised socially when he is unnecessarily blunt. The Chinese editor when returning a manuscript is said to write the author in something after this manner : "Your TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 319 obedient slave bows before you and states that the long delay was due to the eagerness of his family and friends to read the manuscript repeatedly. Should we publish your contribu- tion, the Emperor would command us to make that a standard and to publish nothing inferior. Our magazine being a monthly and such gems as yours appearing seldom in the course of a year, you can readily appreciate our miserable position. Your slave begs you to bring the manuscript to him again for personal reading." Many men are trustworthy up to a certain point. Take for example a banker who would carefully watch balances, but nevertheless would bribe members of the legislature. May one associate with such a banker socially ? Yes, associate with a banker or beggar, or any other human being. All are full of interest for the student of human nature. Should a man live or die for the truth? So long as judges upon the same bench cannot always decide upon what is the truth, an ordinary man may actively live for what he believes to be the truth, but should be cautious about dying for it until the testimony is all in. An employer wishing to put one of my acquaintances in a responsible position asked me if he was entirely trustworthy. "Yes," I answered, "wholly trustworthy on first impulse and intention, but he is sensitive." "Then," said the employer, "I cannot bother to be careful with him. There's too much else requiring my attention in our business." When a sensitive man receives what he considers to be a slight he instinctively resents it, and then intuitively seeks for justification of his resentment. The inimical wedge has been introduced, and this gradually overthrows men from positions, and limits their range of useful activity. Busy men have no time for hunting up their gloves when dealing with a sensitive employee. Hearty give-and-take saves time. 320 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS If it were not for conscience how comfortable we all might be. Two or three of us conceived the idea of forming a club consisting of fellow spirits, naturalists, explorers, and sports- men. Our plan was to establish a series of club camps all of the way from the northern shore of Lake Huron to Hudson's Bay. We were to have a series of log cabins extending along the route, where members when travelling would find boon companions. Outing supplies and accoutrements for the wil- derness could always be found at these cabins, and records would be kept of interesting observations. The club was duly organized and incorporated, and the scheme appealed to the very best class of men as a general idea. The membership list was filled with statesmen, capitalists, and other men belong- ing to the large idea class. Two of us spent an entire summer in making a trip by canoe between Lake Huron and Hudson's Bay for the purpose of mapping the country and marking out camp sites. When it came to a matter of concrete practical application of benefits for members, it was found that few men really wished to go so far away as to the more distant camps for a summer outing. It was further discovered that most of the men who still retained the longing for primitive existence had become so softened by city life that they really preferred, not only to occupy near-by camps, but to have the hunting and fishing all marked out for them in advance. The original founders of the club could not do for these members what it was expected they would do for themselves, conse- quently resignations began to come in and with them a return of the stock which had been paid for, with a request that it be sold. Here we had two demonstrations of human nature brought closely together in conflict — the original desire for exploration and for primitive methods of living, and the later acquired desire for comforts. Meantime the club had TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 321 acquired valuable property, and as different members resigned, it was seen that this property promised to fall into the hands of the founders, much against their wish, as they had con- scientiously induced their friends to join the club on the basis of the original inspiration. I presume that few men have felt more distressed over prospective property holdings coming into their possession than were the founders of this club, but the whole thing represented nothing more than the effect of certain movements of human nature. It is nothing new to say that mens conscia recti is the chief thing, but like hearing a favorite bit of music over and over again, one never tires of remembering that the clean heart is the greatest comfort, and it indicates — this may be far fetched — the physical connection with all forces in organic life. When there is heavy machinery in the factory it becomes charged in one way electrically. When a thunder cloud ap- proaches charged in another way electrically there is often a discharge from the machinery and the spark may do con- siderable damage or set the building on fire. Now, if this inside machinery is approached by a thunder cloud, it does not become disturbed to its deepest molecules if it has good honest connection with ground principles. One need have no fear of the clouds which approach him in a threatening way so many times in the course of the year, provided that he knows that within himself there is ground connection with good principles. A man is what he knows himself to be, rather than what he wishes others to think him to be. It is very much like his feeling about clothing. He likes to put on nice things and then go out and see if he is admired; but unless he has neat and pretty things beneath he cannot walk with an air of pride, — only with an air of vanity. If he is conscious of the presence of neat and pretty underclothing, he can walk with an air of pride even though he happens to have 322 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS on a ratner old suit. It is the internal feeling, like the internal molecules of a piece of iron machinery, that determines whether one should go into a state of unrest or not at the approach of clouds of criticism. One of the most fundamentally dishonest men I have ever known was very much interested in church matters, and made a serious profession of religion. He was dishonest not only with others but with himself. In such cases a man is not always responsible. He is to be regarded as having morbid concepts. Some of the worst men whom I have known were church men. They were not insincere. Their pretensions of religion represented a struggle with what they understood to be the bad side of their dual natures. I wonder if there is such a thing as insincerity anyway. It seems to represent the expres- sion of an ideal realized but not attainable by the individual who is called insincere. I heard a man who had recently lost a fortune say in a voice of combined sorrow and pride that he had nothing but his honor left. As a matter of fact it was his lack of honor which to my personal knowledge had led to the predicament in which he found himself. He was sincere but misinformed about himself. Saving the face of a situation is hypocrisy, and yet is recognized everywhere as legitimate. Saving the face of honor, of social order and custom, has been developed to a high degree by diplomatists, even though manv liberties are taken behind the face. We need not sneer at hypocrisy; the better way is simply to laugh at our cleverness in observing it. Hypocrisy is an expression of an individual's recognition of an ideal which is sought if not attained. The mere display of recognition of an ideal expressed in terms of hypocrisy often represents a step in line with progress. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 323 England dearly loves a lord, no matter how much of a profligate he may be, or how worthless as a debt payer or citizen. We love to deceive ourselves. The child in the garden ascribes all sorts of virtues to a soiled rag doll, and actually kisses it lovingly. The English kiss a soiled lord who is stuffed with saw dust, but in so doing express a prefer- ence for that ideal which a lord is supposed to represent, and at his best does represent. We unconsciously retain our ideals in the midst of dis- turbing influences. The artist of the most corrupt days of early European civilization was engaged in painting Madonnas, and Madonnas were given higher approval by the populace than were any paintings depicting revelry. The grafter who now does by subterfuge what he once did more openly, is a hypocrite if you please, but he expresses the idea of not stealing at all, and his hypocrisy marks a certain advance over the methods of Feudal days. Further than that, grafters are almost invariably ambitious to have their sons and daugh- ters better than themselves. Men who are maintained at Washington at large expense for the purpose of influencing legislators are called "lobby- ists," if they are not working in line with the attitude of mind of statesmen. They are called "experts," valuable for fur- nishing information, if they contribute to what the legislator wishes to know, no matter whether such contribution is legi- timate and constructive or not. Kipling, in his "Jungle Book," speaking of monkeys in their roads among the tree tops, tells of the one that picks up a stick in the morning, carries it around all day pretending to do great things with it, and at night breaks it and throws it away. That makes a monkey pretty close to some of us. I watched a Brazilian monkey picking up armfuls of sticks, and when his arms were overloaded, he would stop and begin 324 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS breaking these sticks. Some he would bend a little, some he would crack, some he would break violently, with an accom- panying grimace. How I wished for some of our lawmakers to be present to note this evidence of our simian ancestry! We gather up all the laws we can carry until the limit is reached, and then begin bending and breaking them very much as this Brazilian monkey did with his sticks. We know very well there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, but we pretend it is not so, because we keep in mind an ideal. No one defends the idea that equal justice for all is really administered, excepting the lawyer, who has at that very moment a far-away look in his eye. The lawyer knows that even in the English court of law, a divorce case can be advanced in front of more than one hun- dred undefended divorce actions, a proceeding which illus- trates what can be done in the English law courts by influence. The Cabinet Minister can defeat public court rules and pro- cedure. This can be done in a country where there is pride in justice quite as well as in a country like Mexico, in which favoritism is commonly supposed to guide in court activities. Law in the Land of King Alfred's court procedure gets into trouble when influence is brought to bear from high social quarters ; and court procedure according to the code of Napo- leon frequently becomes humorous when the rules interfere with popular ideas or with primordial law. In the Caillaux case witnesses said anything they pleased to say, denouncing other witnesses and calling on their own witnesses to corroborate their arguments. The judge as prose- cuting attorney was brilliant with his invective and sarcasm. The individual chiefly on trial was the dead man, represented by his attorney M. Chenu. During the course of the trial there were four challenges to deadly combat between interested parties with opposing notions. All these challenges were TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 325 accepted. M. Labori as counsel for the handsome and socially prominent accused woman skilfully diverted attention from the case in a thrilling emotional speech. He spoke of the political difficulties of France, describing at length the wonder- ful achievements of his beloved country in art, literature and commerce. The danger of thousands of people being killed in defense of beautiful France made the killing of just one man such a trivial afifair that the jury promptly brought in a verdict of "not guilty." This placed the lady in a somewhat embarrassing position so far the question of her truthfulness was concerned, because she herself had stated on the witness stand that the shooting was premeditated and that she had voluntarily shot M. Calmette. One difficulty in training citizens to law-abiding methods is the object lesson given by political candidates for law-making position, who disregard speed regulation at election time. They scorch from oratory place to exhortation place with their automobiles, and then when elected turn around and have people fined thirteen dollars on Friday for doing the same thing. The public department automobile races through the crowded street at thirty miles per hour when the chauffeur is taking the cook to a ball. This tosses into the face of the populace the idea that legislation is really a joke, and that laws are to be observed only by the unfortunate. Such an object lesson is not confined to America. In Europe the socialists make much — and with good cause — of the fact that princes and high officials disregard the speed regulations with their high power law-breaking apparatus of many kinds. It is all the old struggle question in its bearing upon semi-domesticated man. The German, perhaps, makes louder and more frequent outcry against authority than the citizen of any other nation, yet the German reveres authority perhaps more than it is 326 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS revereo by tne citizen of any other nation. This apparent contradiction represents nothing more than the struggle which is taking place in all organic life, and is indicative of warfare on a high plane. A young clergyman told me of his distress of mind. He felt that if he did not read certain historical authorities he would be considered ignorant, but after reading them he could not honestly preach about what he knew to be falsehood, in connection with miracles and other Bible stories of vital im- portance. I persuaded him that the world at large would excuse him if he kept right on preaching as though he believed, because the lesson was the main thing. Sensible folk really take these matters poetically rather than literally and wish to have him do likewise. Heresy trials are the result of controversy between the ignorant and the unwise. When the question was stirred recently in New York, one clergyman openly charged a certain theological school with graduating men who did not actually believe in the resurrection of Christ. I said to my young clergyman friend, "If you give up preaching because of your conscientiousness about the accuracy of history, that sort of action would remove the intelligent and learned men who are conscientious. It would leave the church to its fate in charge of the ignorant and unlearned who are also conscientious. Your hypocrisy is only part of the hypocrisy necessary for adaptation to the times. Make it beautiful and ideal for the same reason that you put flowers in the vase to beautify the home. No one expects you to try to prove that the flowers really grow in that vase. Everyone knows they do not, — but it is the flowers that count. That is what we want. We must not worry about the sanctimonious hypocrite who is doing the very best he can. He is representing what he really holds to be ideal in life, even though a living of the ideal life is TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 327 beyond his capacity. Do not blame him. Laugh at your own cleverness in observing his hypocrisy, and let it go at that. With that attitude of mind you are striking a -positive note in life, and not striking a discordant negative note which would be hypercritical, — quite as bad in its way as the hypocritical. Remember that your own hypocrisies amuse other people." I do not believe that the insurance man who goes to church on Sunday and bribes a legislator on Monday really goes to church through any insincere motive of wishing to gain people's confidence, for that would be a clever bunco game. He is a better man for going to church, and may be obliged to bribe a legislator because some still more corrupt citizen would bribe him for worse purposes. It is the fault of our system. If our system were something to which we had reverted from better conditions there would be real cause for alarm. We have steadily progressed toward better conscience on the whole, and to-morrow's conscience is to be very fine. It is often said that religious forms are cultivated and kept intact for the benefit of priests who are quite human in their diplomacy. On the other hand the matter is retroactive, and the priest can go only so far as the people wish. Church form stands for order. Some of the most beautiful characters among my acquaintances are Christian missionaries in foreign lands. There are others who would loot a Chinese temple in time of warfare, — at least I know one who did, and who offered me some artistically wrought silver which I refused to accept. His excuse was that he had such a poor idea of the heathen who worshipped in that temple. We do not realize how rapidly progress is being made in the world, because it is like watching the growth of a baby — those who are nearest do not observe the growth; but it is taking place nevertheless. It was not so very long ago that peerages were given as a reward for pleasing a sovereign 328 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS personally, but now the more important peerages are seldom purchasable, excepting when bestowed upon some one whose fortune has been expended along lines of public benefit. Prog- ress is being shown not only among the peers, but among the tradesmen. Advance has been made in some countries from the hypocrisy of the shop keeper with his legend of "purveyor to His Majesty." These legends have now been divided, by rulings from the court officials into three classes : ( i ) Pur- veyors to His Majesty, (2) Actual purveyors to His Majesty, and (3) Active actual purveyors to His Majesty. No doubt in the latter class the form of the legend is obtained through a wise expenditure of "kindnesses to stewards," and to higher officials who are friends of the stewards. The same degree of attention given to perfecting the quality of the goods, might make the display of any legend entirely unnecessary. As with most hypocrisies, the nucleus of idea is in itself not ridiculous. The nucleus of idea in this case is that of the presence of ideal superior people who are competent to choose ideal superior goods. There is little doubt but the "active actual purveyor to His Majesty" does supply superior goods to His Majesty at least, no matter what he may have to do in the way of compensation for restoring balance, when dealing with other people. I once bought a box of cigars from an active actual purveyor to royalty, and was not mistaken for one of that set by the dealer. Man is the only animal that is persistently engaged in trying to fool his fellow. Monkeys try it at times in a spirit of fun, but they lack that higher intelligence which allows man to keep at it all the time seriously. Men have curious little vanities. Once on the north shore of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence I was told of a fisherman living at the mouth of one of the salmon rivers, who was so proud of the fact that he had been to Quebec that he was TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 329 sure to tell every visitor about it. When walking on his dock later where some sturgeon were lying about I remarked that one of them was very large. "Yes," he replied, "one of them is large, but I have seen them much larger at Quebec." On this same trip I had an old pilot, eighty-four years of age who always transformed his money into silver, and buried most of it. He told me that for sixty years he had averaged about five hundred dollars a year profit over expenses in trad- ing with Indians, and as he had no occasion to spend the money, he had transformed it into silver and buried it. I asked if he could remember where all the money was buried. He replied, "Almost all of it." I asked him when he was going to get it, and he said, "Some day." That was his peculi- arity. We ought to let every man have at least six peculiarities. The vital part of an egg is all in the yolk, yet we allow a lot of white margin. It is the same with character. The princi- ples are in the middle and we allow a wide range of margin around the principles. How often we observe some personal trait in a friend which furnishes an anticlimax to his splendid activities, and which we could correct for him were he capable of seeing the matter from our viewpoint. The anticlimax trait appears, like the call note of a scarlet tanager, or cat bird, interposed in the midst of his song of life. A scarlet tanager, perched upon the strong branch of a sturdy oak when the day is breaking, sends forth his rich, round, ringing roundelay of "Hit-her- Mary-Ridgway," using these words and parts of them in the heartiest of musical combinations. The suggestion of violence in his chosen words is only that of vigorous merry play. Then comes the anticlimax of his every-day call note "Tschip-purr," containing not one flexible element which might be called music, but which he insists upon introducing. In the same 330 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS way the cat bird, sitting in the sunny top of a gracefully bending golden willow, pours forth his liquid mellow flowing spirit of May, and then follows it with the anticlimax of his characteristic call-cry, suggestive of the voice of a sad cat. Every one of us has some anticlimax trait which is recognized with a feeling of disappointment by our friends, but of which we are personally unconscious. Much distress would have been spared good men and good women in the past had they known that nature purposely gave a dual nature to mankind. We assume for our argument that it was given to us by nature for purposes of helping the indi- vidual. Good people have looked upon one side of their dual nature as a blemish, and have suffered torments at times, not knowing that it was characteristic of their nature and as neces- sary as thorns in nature's plan for the rose. If the dual nature is used for purposes of comparison by the individual, and if he is then at liberty to make a choice of the better side, his duty has been fulfilled when he does make chief use of the better side. The dual nature is most useful and necessary. Wherever nature places a fault, there she places a compensation. We may call the double nature a fault in the case of a man who cannot see its value. One needs to be somewhat bad in order to fully appreciate good. In southern California, I have become weary of the beautiful weather, and have longed for a chill or a splash of rain. How could I appreciate bravery were I not a coward? How could I value honesty in others were I not dishonest? Were I not a toady, how could I appreciate the real impor- tance of people who are leaders ? Just as the Volvox consists of an inner and outer structure of cells, so the dual nature consists of inner and outer structures. I thank nature joyfully for the useful dual nature she gave me — instead of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 331 suffering and praying to the Lord to remove what his own devil has put into me for a good purpose. I recently noticed in the public press a case in which a man offered his double nature in excuse for a misdeed. One might as well take a barrow load of fertilizer down to the office of a Wall Street banker, and ask him to put it into his vaults as security. Wonderful value is to be derived from fertilizer in the garden, its intrinsic value being undebatable. Double nature cannot be used for purposes of excuse, but only for purposes of elucidation. It must always be considered as a man's barrow load of fertilizer. Luxurious good qualities may be developed by means of such raw material. People sometimes excuse a misstep by saying they must have been hypnotized at the time. That is no joke. It really has been hypnotism by suggestion in more cases than we per- haps realize. In many cases a very eager suggestion perhaps. The dual nature may be expressed as a left and right nature. One side should be given as much attention as the other in the cultivation process. Pagan religion had its forms grouped about destruction and construction as the two great forces. Then came the Christian religion recognizing the same things and stamping them by visualization. Monistic unity will recognize the same things, but will use protoplasm for its good material idol and the microbe as its material devil, instead of superstitiously having a good spirit and an evil spirit in the form of man. In the days of youth one of my dearest friends and one of the most brilliant and gifted, often had periods of depression. I tried very hard to be depressed at times in order to be sympa- thetic, because it seemed to me that if such a wonderful man had periods of depression it must be the natural thing, — but never could bring about any such feeling. He was also easily offended, and I tried hard to become offended, but my efforts 332 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS at depression and at accepting ofifence always ended in a laugh. My friend developed socialistic tendencies and I tried to be a socialist with him. At that time I did not know the reason for his depression. Now I remember that he had much trouble with his colon. A man is not entitled to credit for good personal characteris- tics unless he has developed them with the aid of his will after setting standards. Any power of the mind of which we are conscious must exist as a power, and existing, it belongs to the totality of physical entities. We can measure its value on earth by our own stand- ards only. If one is conscious of a power, and utilizes it for high purposes — to that extent is one to be given credit for its possession. How quickly sympathy changes a man's entire point of view? In camp in the north we were all very fond of wild goslings for the camp table. One day I captured a couple of them when going ofif salmon fishing; kept them in the canoe all day for company, and toward evening handed a little fresh grass toward them. They came up and took it out of my hand, and I never could kill goslings after that. Although meat is a necessary article of diet for most people I suppose that as we get older we all dislike more and more the idea of having anything killed. Hot roast duck stuffed with chestnuts, mushrooms and sausage, and served with a flood of rich brown gravy is pretty good, but any one who has had cunning little yellow downy ducklings climbing all over his feet and hands and has watched them grow under his care, would rather have someone's else ducks killed for his dinner. When eating roast duck I always try to imagine that it was raised by somebody who didn't know Timmie from Dickie, — somebody who raised impersonal ducks. I often wish the pathetic did not appeal to me so deeply, TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 333 for it does not seem to belong to a broad shouldered bear hunter who is about six feet in height. When I find a little dead bird lying upon its back with feet outstretched in mute appeal against a decree which could bring destruction to one so little and innocent, I always know where tears start from in women. It is from a place away down deep. It requires something of an effort to put aside the feeling on the ground that it is womanly, and not masculine in origin. So many little things in ordinary life are full of pathos. I remember a poor woman speaking of one of her acquaintances in the country who had recently died, saying, "Yes 1 She is gone ! She was a good neighbor, and she had such a nice horse and wagon." Think of the pathetic longing expressed by that woman. All depends upon the point of view. I remember more than forty years ago being saddened by seeing a little boy's empty sled dragging behind a sleigh. The driver had evidently whipped up his horse when the boy tried to hitch on behind, without noticing that the sled rope was hung to the axle. Had it been a nicely painted sled, nice new rope, and in good order, I would not have been impressed so deeply, but it was evidently a poor little boy's home made sled. The loss undoubtedly meant a great deal to that particular boy. It must have belonged to a boy whose legs were not big enough to go fast and loosen the rope, — and where in the world can a boy of that size get anything but a spanking when he loses his sled? "Please excuse me if I swear. I won't mean to." A rough chap said this to a gentle woman standing by his side. What was the occasion? I was about to amputate the man's leg. The nurse held his hand. He was ready to take the anaesthetic. He was not afraid of losing his leg or life. He was not dreading the suffering. His only fear was that he might inad- vertently swear and offend the gentle nurse who held his 334 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS hand, and his last words as he looked appealingly into her face were, "Please excuse me if I swear. I won't mean to." Ah, that was pathetic ! but it is this sort of thing which gives the doctor his confidence in human nature, and prevents him from becoming a cynic. People are much alike in all countries. One who is calm and thoughtful finds the same sort of people wherever he travels. One who suffers from a spirit of constant unrest and who is annoyed at peculiarities finds himself surrounded by the same sort of people when he travels. Wherever a man travels people are apt to pay him the compliment of being very much like him. Human nature is the real pith of all that is best here below. Let us, for an object lesson, take two masses of pith of equal size. Into one end of each put Bernard Shaw and Elbert Hub- bard, in the other end of each put a logician and a bishop. Now, drop both masses of pith to the ground from any eleva- tion and observe which end of each mass comes head-up. This object lesson shows that Shaw and Hubbard exert useful function in keeping us human nature folks head-end up. Business pride is not peculiar to large establishments. I tried to buy a pair of plain wooden shoes for souvenirs, in a little Jutland village. The shoemaker refused to let me have a plain pair, saying they were not good enough for me. He insisted upon my buying a pair of wooden shoes with fancy leather strappings, the very best he made — and asserted his point of view by absolutely refusing to let me have a plainer pair, even when I put them under my arm, and had the money in my hand for him. Two of the busiest men whom I know are always thoughtful for others in little things. Whenever any one of their ac- quaintances expresses a wish for anything they take the subject in mind without the knowledge of that acquaintance and try TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 335 to bring about what is wanted, if it is reasonably within their power to do so. They find joy in quietly doing things for others. This trait is also a genuine feature of many politicians and the one which originally engaged the interest of their friends, who placed them in position. Their generous good- fellowship and real interest in other men placed them in posi- tions where shrewder men capitalized and organized good- fellowship, for the purpose of putting it through machinery and turning out tools to be used in the form of jimmies upon the public purse. One of my acquaintances who was never a gentleman at heart, in fact, further away perhaps from being a natural gentleman at heart than any man I ever knew, understood method well enough to gain entrance to an exclusive social club. On the other hand, one of my friends, a man who may properly be called great, cannot have his name proposed for membership at a certain exclusive social club. He is a man of wonderful executive ability and of that kindly spirit which surrounds him with a host of friends. He is generous, wise, diplomatic, lovable, wealthy, and public spirited to the very last degree. One of the governors of the club, an aristocratic member of one of the oldest New York families, said to me, "Personally I would vote for him, but some of the other mem- bers would not, for the reason that he belongs to a calling in which good fellowship has a distinctly commercial bearing. If he were to be admitted to the club, it would be so difficult to draw the line for others in the same occupation." That is the matter in a nutshell. My honored friend is recognized by strong men as a strong man, whose generosity and friendly attitude toward mankind and the world in general is wholly separate from his occupation. He stands wholly above impu- tations of ulterior motive in the clear blue sky of genuineness 336 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS of friendship. Yet, in social club matters there is need for the governors to recognize the commercial nature of much of the good-fellowship of his colleagues. Cordiality and candor always mark good social intercourse. A man must make common cause with his colleagues and associates, noting his obligations to them. I asked a Westerner visiting New York among old acquaint- ances what impressed him most, and he said it was a lack of cordiahty, a certain lack of cordiality which seemed to be a feature of the New York spirit but which we do not realize. Self protection in a big city hides cordiality. Voices over the telephone show the natural unconscious habitual attitude of their owners. We have the polite, the coarse, the kindly, the self-conscious, thoughtless, business- like, resentful. We note quickly the change to slavish or cringing politeness when the party at the other end finds the one who is speaking to be important, but the habitual uncon- scious attitude is displayed on the first response to the im- personal individual on the other end of the line. There is a natural tendency for all of us to resent crossness on the part of others. We forget that people who are cross are not enjoying themselves. They are getting so little out of their negative presentation of ideas that we really should extend to them our sympathy. They are objects for pity. They are losing something and gaining nothing when ex- pressing crossness. Perhaps the best single test of the stability of any individual character is the ability to withstand harassing without loss of equanimity. Every one who is engaged in active work ex- pends a force which is met by reciprocal forces. These reciprocal forces are those of conflicting interests and of mis- conception on the part of others. Not only that, but every strong character, in man or woman, seems to invite others tp TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 337 put it to the test. There is something of idealism expressed by common people who respond to the challenge to find what such elevated characters can bear. These latter are the rocks against which changing tides of thought hurl their passing waves. The character which wavers and makes response to the daily harassments of life is a shifting bar of sand, which becomes a nuisance through obstructing the channels of clear action. Fault-finding defeats its object because it presents a negative statement. When couched in negative form, requests bring negative results. A young man said to a father : "I suppose you. will refuse if I ask for the hand of your daughter." The father repHed, "Yes, I will refuse; but if you had put it the other way, that you were bound to have my daughter if you had to kill me first, you could have had her. As it is, you have defeated yourself at the start, and I do not want a son-in-law of that type of mind. A man who defeats himself on propo- sitions at the start needs to be looked after by some one else most of the time." Humility is supposed to be desirable, but as a matter of fact I do not care to be humble myself, nor to associate with humble people. I would much rather have them attacking me or holding me in contempt, because it is much more stimulat- ing and results in getting better action all around. Emerson says that self-consciousness is the highest type of egotism, and that idea gave me a great deal of comfort when going before audiences in my timid days. If my knees began to wobble I would silently repeat the quotation, and could then think of the audience instead of myself. Self-conscious people are sometimes much occupied with the obsession that they are misunderstood. This may actually interfere with efficiency in school work on the part of youths, 338 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS and may become very annoying to teachers. One clever teacher of my acquaintance warns her girls that those who are misunderstood will have to be left quite alone with their genius, unless they can learn to understand others whom they misunderstand when believing themselves to be misunderstood. People of artistic temperament frequently retain the childish type of mind in adult life, and petulantly call attention to the idea of their being misunderstood. There is no more comical idea afloat (the latter word employed advisedly). Everybody is misunderstood. The ones who hold the idea large in its personal bearing do not understand themselves to be the worst of misunderstanders of other people. This desire to be understood is one of the most persistent single desires in the human mind. It signifies inherent knowl- edge of goodness contained, rather than a display of egotism, excepting as egotism is the larval stage of individualism. The desire to be understood includes the idea that one would be loved and admired for his good qualities if they were only known to others as well as they are known to himself, and that fact makes the desire really commendable. The translation of thoughts of one individual through the mind of another individual in daily intercourse may go far astray from nice correctness, very much as a poem suffers when translated from one language to another, through loss of that exquisite meaning which the poet recognizes as an aureola about his words. There is a loss of something in spirit in plain ordinary translation from one language to another. On one occasion when my room mate in Germany was impressed by the bright red cheeks of a new maid who served our "Schwarz Brod und Morgen Cafe," he allowed his coffee to become cold while he went to the dictionary in order to make up a sentence, and then returning, said with great deliberation and a bright eye which indicated confidence TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 339 in his progress : "The-maid-servant-has-one-very-delicate- hide." The first synonym for "haut" in his dictionary was "hide." As a matter of fact we are all alone in our very best thoughts, although the characteristics of one who believes himself to be generally misunderstood are understood by others better than by himself on the whole, for the reason that the sum total of unprejudiced judgment of many is larger than the sum total of one's own prejudiced judgment. It is true that the full range of a man's capabilities may not be under- stood by others, for his capabilities may go into eruption like a volcano at any time. His personal characteristics, however, are better known to others than they are to himself. The old Quaker said to his wife, "Everyone is queer but thee and me, and sometimes thee is a little odd." A bread human sympathy includes all human lives in its range. One can still admire a derelict banker or a cultivated thief as he admires a green tree, even though it has worms upon its leaves. It is not the fault of these people so much as it is the fault of society. Even the worms themselves are interesting to an entomologist, and all traits of good and bad character interest the anthropologist. Impending defeat is a situation of great interest because it brings out the limitations of a man's skill. One can enjoy defeat. It is like missing a partridge. The experience is help- ful when the next bird gets up. Fear is chiefly due to ignorance. Hold the girl baby up to a calf. She is afraid — she does not know but the calf may sting her, or give her a nip with sharp upper teeth. In this comical world one is often amused at people's choice in the selection of fears. I was out for a walk one Sunday with my little daughter (then three or four years of age), when we came upon a party returning from Sunday school surrounding at respectful distance a hooded adder in the 340 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS path. The people all looked quite pale and awe-struck, and I overheard the remark that one full grown man had gone to a house some distance away to see if he could procure a gun. Stepping to the front of the circle, I said to my little girl, "Run and pick up the pretty snakie." This she did without hesitation. These good people had no hesitation about putting confidence in the story of the finding of Moses, but they stood aghast with no confidence in the harmlessness of a pretty hooded adder which not only does no harm, but engages itself usefully every day in destroying noxious insects. I felt like saying — to the grown people at least, "Shame! Shame upon you! Go and get yourselves made over again and see if you cannot have a better job done!" A weak man praises his neighbor after the neighbor is dead and no longer in competition with him. Fear-thought leads to post mortem praise. The strong man without fear praises his neighbor while he lives. The one who is conscious of personal inferiority does not do that. Every healthy man and woman is as free as a bird to do whatever he or she chooses to do in this world. If a man says he could rather go fishing than stay at the desk, his statement is untrue, for if he stays at the desk he would rather stay at the desk. The reason for that is because he has fear. He hopes to go fishing some day, or the choice of the desk would become intolerable. People who struggle hardest for social prominence are the ones who most fear it will not be accorded them. In all relations of life we find practically the same thing. Is there anything you would like to do? You are free as a bird to do it. Fear alone prevents. Nature had to place this fear check upon man or he would become a god too rapidly. We sometimes hear a man complain that everybody is against him. The fact is that elements in his own mind are TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 341 against him. He does not realize that nature in keeping her balance makes people take opposite sides. The most natural and kindly man in the world opposes another man's positions on any subject instinctively. Half of the time the first man is right, half of the time the second man is right, or, to state the matter more correctly perhaps, both men's positions have their relative merits in nature's balancing game. If men have good health it is difficult to prevent them from loving even the people who oppose them. We cannot keep sunshine out of the garden with a picket fence. A man who is happy and contented is something of a rascal in that fact. He is defeating nature's plan to keep him uneasy and combative to the point of accomplishment. It is well to avoid complete satisfaction excepting as one takes it as he takes dessert once a day for dinner. Complete satisfaction after dinner for an hour will suffice. We may always listen to dissatisfied people but not to discontented people. The important thing is to distinguish between dissatisfaction and discontent in giving value to the ideas of social reformers. If the martyr is given no opportunity to suffer, he is in great distress. His unrest leads him to try first one channel and then another until finally he suffers and then is happy. The ingrate has always been held in contempt, but it is difficult to remember all the people to whom one should be grateful. Being an ingrate myself I do not ask people to be grateful to me, because that would mean selfishness on my part. Gratitude is a sort of tight-rope-walking emotion. It always makes me uncomfortable to have people show gratitude. I would rather have them join me in a wholesome understanding in what I am trying to do for them, and to rejoice over my 342 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS success, or sympathize with me in failure to accompHsh all that was hoped for in their interest. Philanthropists who are distributing their wealth are greatly- bothered by the hundreds of people who are insistent upon getting endowments, each for his own particular hobby. As a matter of fact, there are a great many worse people in the world than the ones who bother the philanthropists with their ideas of being useful to the world. The mere fact of their causing such bother is inspiring. The larger the number of such people who see great ends in their special fields of work, the greater the glory of the civilization which they represent. Men who want nothing are the ones to be avoided. If one is in a disdainful mood, or contemptuous, or in a rage, he is not thinking just then of buying shoes for poor children or of adding an extra row of kernels to an ear of corn. One may ask, "Is it not in human nature to have these moods?" Yes, it is, in that part of crude and childish human nature which allows its energies to be expended wastefully when they might be turned to profitable account. Afifection may be much more deeply rooted than interest in property. I have fine large barns of high class. If they burn, I shall not shed a tear, but will only have a deep regret. There is an old pet of a horse Dick in one of the barns, and when he dies I don't want anyone around to see what I do, for men are not supposed to do that. Brutality toward animals by no means belongs to the un- educated; in fact, we sometimes find the closest sympathy for animals among the lowly. I remember once looking at a field of tender young clover with a farmer boy of rather stolid type. He remarked, "By Gorry! I'd like to be in a flock of sheep comin' out o' the barn in March, and get into that 'ere clover!" I said, "You would get your nose pretty close to the ground, wouldn't you, Jerry?" And he replied. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 343 "You bet! We'd get our noses terrible cluss to the ground." His sympathy which kept him still among the sheep, uncon- scious of personal separateness, was quite touching. On the other hand, an educated lady who wears the feathers of wild birds in her hat, shows a heartless brutality. She knows that these birds are killed in the breeding season, when their feathers are most beautiful, and that tender baby nestlings must call pitifully for a mother until they finally starve. What cares she for that, if the feathers give class to her hat or soften the lines of a brazen face? A young man may find incentive to live healthfully if he keeps in mind the disastrous end-results of unwholesome effort. He will find a warning object lesson in the man who has amassed great wealth and ended his family lineage, — in great conquerors who died in confinement, and in scholars whose philosophy led them to argue that life was not worth the living. The healthy genius who has no desire to revolutionize the world excepting as he can do it along with regular and enjoy- able meals and on a proper amount of dreamless sleep, is a new and truly original genius. He leaves room for others to develop schemes equally valuable with his own. The financial genius who makes millions and keeps his health is really an original sort of genius. Whenever I am obliged to submit to unwelcome conditions through force of circumstances, it is my custom to begin at once to look about for compensations and lo ! they are quite as desirable as the things which I thought were wanted instead. Perhaps the greatest single comfort I have found in life has been due to development of this habit of always looking for compensations. The moon is round, but we see only one side at a time in the night. We know, however, that there is a compensating side of equal weight and size. Otherwise the moon would 344 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS not keep its balance in space. It is the same in all affairs of the people. One of the short story writers tells about the old lady who loved to go to the city occasionally because the noise and bustle were so restful to nerves that were worn threadbare by the quietude of the country. If a man has a broken leg he should be pleased because the compensation lies in oppor- tunity while in bed to do a lot of back reading which he might not have had time to do previously. When Herr Bebel was sent to prison for twenty-nine months, it gave him opportunity to do much reading and to write "Die Frau," which has been translated into fifteen different languages. We may say that his luck in being sent to prison enabled him to exert a more tremendous degree of force than could have been expended had he remained in the midst of interruptions belonging to daily adjustment with affairs. Many a man in prison, or in bed with a broken leg has invented things which brought him a competence. He has thought out plans perhaps which proved to be of great benefit to the state. In fact, the development of some great ideas, of thoughtful literature, and of successful undertakings have been the result of such circumstances. Almost everything that happens to us is good luck if we are physically well enough to turn it to that account. When a man has deep troubles he may exclaim, "Well, they can't kill me, and I can stand any- thing short of that!" If one seeks always for the compensa- tion it is easy for him to keep his balance among all the complex affairs of the world instead of being disturbed and thrown out of balance. Almost any man may say — "Were it not for that, I would not have done the other thing." To be sure he may occasionally enter a fool's paradise when accept- ing a compensation as something fully satisfactory; but we must remember that one who is in a fool's paradise is at least TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 345 in a paradise. One of the kindest but most unpractical friends of mine tried to console a sorrowing mother by saying, "Well, you know, the fewer children there are in a family the fewer troubles there are for yourself after all." On the whole, however, compensations come under calculations belonging to the Theory of Groups, and one is enabled to determine the existence of that feature of relativity which has been of in- calculable value to workers in science. If a man misses his train he returns home just in time to put out a fire. Many a young woman depriving herself of personal comforts in order to help her brother through college has developed a fineness of nature radiating through a larger circle of influence than would have been possible under conditions favoring selfish satisfactions in life. We should probably have heard nothing from Socrates with Cornelia for his wife. We should probably have heard nothing from Carnegie excepting for a poverty which pinched the Impatiens fulva pod, and spread his potential widely. In the small every-day affairs each annoyance has its compensation. The mind trained to find that compensation grasps it with a sense of humor. The mind untrained in this paradise scheme of finding compensations must respond to every impact like a calamary with its cloud of ink. Is life worth the living? Ask a red squirrel. He will answer that he at least finds joy in every day living. "But!" you reply, "he is a joyful little beast by nature, anyway, and not highly intelligent." Is high intelligence necessary then in order to allow us to question the joy of every day living or the nobility of every day life? High intelligence questions this joy when the microbe dominates the mind of a questioner. Young people generally are full of the joy of life. It is only when intelligence increases synchronously with toxic microbic influences that we observe diminishing proportions of that joy. An individual who is carrying an excess of enteric bacilli 34(3 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS may be so unthankful for blessings received in this world that one would expect God to be exasperated and indignant, were it not for the knowledge that such an individual is taking his part in the balance of nature, and is part of the scheme. His unthank fulness is due to an illness which is incidental to assisting certain microbes to grow. It is impudent irreverence to speak of this as a hard world — a vale of tears. I never hear any one complain in this way without having an instinctive desire to punch him to see if he has spunk enough to resent it. Has he warm clothing? Yes. Three meals a day ? Yes. A good bed at night ? Yes. Eyes with which to see wonderful things? Yes. Ears for hearing the music of voices? Yes. Means sufficient for taking him to the public library ? Yes. Means sufficient for taking him to the art col- lection? Yes. Is his life made safe by a well-organized social community? Yes. Has he limitations beyond those of his nature? No. Why then does he complain? It must be fear about entering the goodly football game and enjoying the sport. It may not be his fault that he whines. If he is ill give freely of sympathy, stop like a good Samaritan and lend a hand. Only the selfish, the cowardly, or the ill speak of this world as a vale of tears. Observation upon this point leads me to believe it is usually the ill. When discussing the subject or people who say that "Life and the world are hard at their best," Frank's expression used to be that he would "like to kick the ungrateful wretches into the middle of a ten acre lot." He beHeved they were saddened because of inability to make some kind of vain display upon which their hearts had been set. Had Frank lived a few years longer he would have come to know that as a matter of fact, these people almost always deserve our sympathy. Their out- cry is seldom due to cowardice on their part when facing the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 347 world, but represents rather a feeling of weakness due to im- properly oxidized protoplasm. I have known some of the most courageous people to express this feeling at times when they were definitely ill, and believe the attitude generally to belong to the ill — largely of the group suffering from the anxiety psychoses. One of my acquaintances was worried continually when he had to look after a family of three on an income of twelve hundred dollars a year. When his income had reached five thousand a year he was in still more distress. At ten thousand a year he was in such anxiety that his health was threatened from constant worrying, and now that he has an income of about twenty-five thousand a year, he is almost in despair. It was he who said to me to-day that life and the world are hard at their best. Some will say that my friend inherited this feature of apprehension from his parents, both of whom were apprehensive. It is a question in my mind if there is inheritance of such a tendency. Both of the parents were sufferers from colonic toxic influences. Their child being apprehensive, it may be assumed that he simply grows the same colonic bacteria that were grown by his parents, and these bacteria sensitize his protoplasm in such a way that it is in fear. Its views are those of apprehension because that is one of the negative phases of mind belonging to the fear group. Apprehensive people are capable of making fairly large fortunes in business, because their fears cause them to be prudent, but the same fears prevent them from enjoying the comforts that go with a competence. They are apt to fail under critical tests which require the positive imagination in large business ventures. Apprehension as a negative phase of the mind must be destruc- tive in the sum total of its activities. Anti's, and in fact all of the alpha-privative people, meet with comparatively little success on the whole, for the fundamental reason that they 348 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS are representing the negative sides of questions. Alpha- privative cults of various kinds would carry their propaganda farther and faster if their nomenclature could be changed in such a way as to suggest constructive action. Under the influence of constructive action, — doing something, — ^the nega- tive side of a question is obliged to look out for itself. I have never cared to feel that we were here in this world for probation. It is more satisfactory to think that an expert chess player has invited me to play the game with him. A child who dies at the age of one year has not had much chance at probation. Instead of our being probationers on earth, I like to feel that we have been kindly invited to play a game of chess here on earth with our good mother nature, with bacteria for the pawns. We are dutiful and polite enough to allow our mother nature to take the last king and castle after various checkmat- ings, but meantime showing her that we are capable of fine play worthy of her progeny. Nietzsche's theory of perpetual recurrence is depressive to many people ("just so many things have been given out to this world, and the number of combinations is finite"). Some people are distressed at the thought that the same combina- tions of things must occur over and over again in a tiresome way. This is not worrying anybody who is looking for his next opportunity to hold the winning combination again in a game of bridge. The chief end of man is to glorify nature, and to have fun while doing it. The perpetual recurrence theory is not based upon monistic unity facts. CHAPTER V Various animals have disappeared from this earth because they developed habits, instinctive or acquired, which led to their dissolution. The gregarious habit of Homo sapiens is leading him toward his own destruction, and family after family is burned up as it flutters about the bonfire of the city. Sentimentality is another one of the instinctive traits leading toward our destruction. We care much more for romantic love than we do for establishment of a system of eugenics. The tendency toward subterfuge in politics and in business is a third instinctive trait leading to our destruction, because a man who is in constant fear that others will do to him what he is trying to do to them loses confidence in his kind and post- pones marriage. This latter destructive agency, however, seems to be lessening ; and we have higher standards in politics and in business to-day than we had one hundred years ago. The political ring is a phylogenetic band of brigands. In former years brigands killed in order to rob. At the present time very little killing is done, although a political ring often has in view the idea of mulcting corporations and states in very much the same way as they were mulcted in former years by old-fashioned brigands. It is done more politely now and less openly, which means a recognition of its undesirability — hence, progress. The political boss is a vestigial remnant of the feudal baron. Good-fellowship prevails among the pals 349 350 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS in a political ring, and the municipal funds or state funds are appropriated with the idea of generous division among friends, without regard for the larger interests of the state. This undoubtedly means progress over the earlier days, when men had to be actually killed or badly frightened in order to make them give up their possessions. The later-day method of the politician is more gracious and takes only a sort of tithe of the money which is collected by taxation for public expenditure. When public buildings are to be constructed, or canals, or roads, we have regularly the same history of padded pay rolls, allotting of contracts without bidding or authority of law, and the payment of overtime to employees. The methods of the political ring are so well understood as to be easily unearthed by any governor who has the mind to do it; and herein lies compensation for the state because opportunity is given really strong men of public spirit to show their worth, and to be placed in important positions through the public esteem which they engender. It is the men who can stand above the political ring in the larger interest of the state, who gain the confidence of people of the state at the present time. Such men are pressed forward into high positions of public service. Excepting for the bandits of the political ring with the boss as leader we should not have opportunity to bring out the contrast between these really "good-fellows" and the individuals of really great and ster- ling pubHc worth who are to be promoted. That's the com- pensation. To-morrow the politician will be analyzed as a sort of specimen — and understood. Some defect of living-habit, either instinctive or acquired, has doomed whole races of men and of other animals to extinction at various times in the past. We note the fluctua- tions in the status of present day nations on this basis. The French nation for instance in an era of destructive warfare TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 351 furnished one of the most conspicuous destructors in history. Their tendency toward ideahsm and their capacity for follow- ing idealism with abandon led the French to develop arts and sciences beyond points attained by other nations, but at the same time they neglected that physical development which is necessary for maintaining a birth-rate in advance of a death- rate. This trait, both instinctive and acquired, already threatens extinction of the French people. We may conceive of some new varietal hybrid constructor, of equal power with the great destructor, who, with French materials at hand, can exert as tremendous a force for good as Napoleon did for harm. The marvelous inherent strength of the French is shown in the people of their colonies and in the provinces far removed from the capitals. It is only our instinctive gre- garious habit, and its result of drawing people to the cities for quick expression and burning up of the remnants in the bon- fire, that has threatened such a nation with early exhaustion of its fund of protoplasmic energy. We are not to conceive of any static culture phase for man in the future, but rather of a still more active elimination of the victims of nature's bonfire agent — the microbe. There will be unceasing thinning of the ranks of soldiers and camp followers, but more efficient soldiers and officers will remain. The nineteenth century dimmed the glory of all previous centuries, and the twentieth century will make the nineteenth century seem to belong to the Middle Ages. England, Canada, and the United States, joining upon a commercial basis, may extend sap channels into an united Orient, which latter will possibly include Russia. Africa will presumably become wholly British in its dominating influence. Germany, joining with Italy, can find room for industrial expansion in South America by the time when Africa is British. In military warfare the Spanish and Portuguese are better conquerors 352 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS than governors, but in the course of industrial dominance, military conquerors would naturally ally themselves with industrial rulers and thus come under control of industrial governors. The magnificence of the Spanish and Portuguese people under competent German industrial dominance may develop as it has never developed under military method. India will probably remain under industrial control by the British for a long time to come, because it is a country which is composed of races of people who are devoted in general to speculative philosophy. Esoteric reasoning for many moons will serve to keep India impotent as a power. The greatest of all potential nations now in sight is Russia, yet Russia is nothing but a vigorous sapling dating from the settling of a successful varietal hybrid upon a hill a hundred feet in height (Prince Daniel, at the Kremlin) almost within the memory of some kinds of grandfathers. This mutant by chance happened to receive Constantinople fertilizer and great Russia began to spread out from that hill as a result of that accidental combination of events. What we now call Russia was until yesterday's centuries nothing but a vast plain in- habited by Lithuanians, Finns, Tartars, Poles, Swedes and various assortments of Mohammedans, all engaged in keeping each other trimmed back according to natural law. The com- ing of a Slavic prince who happened to represent a strong hybrid type upset the balance of nature in that locality. It is not improbable that the beginning of any powerful nation has always depended upon some fortuitous cross between parents of certain types who impressed their peculiar protoplasmic energy upon a long line of descendants. Dr. Augustine Henry of Ireland has recently and originally called attention to the fact that progeny of a first cross be- tween species of trees are far more vigorous than either one of the parents. This hybridization of trees has now been TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 353 systematically conducted for a definite purpose by man, but has occurred occasionally as an accidental phenomenon previ- ously. Presumably all strong nations have arisen in the same way through accidental mingling of certain family (varietal) types in the human species. Here and there such a strong hybrid type has been produced that its progeny resulted in the formation of a great nation. A parallel is found when a varietal hybrid horse like the Hambletonian, Wilkes or Morgan stallion has set his imprint upon a whole countryful of horses. Nations of the near future, as in the past, will presumably arise from accidental combinations of protoplasm which form hybrids adapted for assuming dominant position, and in this regard the studies of Dr. Henry are important for application in the study of nations, because the protoplasm of animals follows laws similar to those regulating the action of proto- plasm of plants. Centuries from now man will perhaps be engaged in directing his knowledge of eugenics in such a way that a new nation like a new tree may be planned in advance. One requires little vision in order to foresee this sort of thing because we already have data for "obvious prophecy." The prophet of the future is more likely to be a mathematical eugenist than an impressionistic poet. Great Russia which is apparently to dominate America eventually (probably succeeding the Jews) will still later be supplanted by the descendants of some other hybrid form. We may excuse Russia for its underhand system of graft on the score of youthful callowness in morals. Perhaps the Russia which awoke from vodka after a single momentary titanic spasm will also awake from graft after a similar gigantic spasm. That is unlikely however because such a pro- cedure would leave Russia quite solitary and alone among present nations in this regard. 354 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Nature will simply allow Russia to breed up to a certain point. Her establishment will be followed later by expansion, then by expression and by decline seriatim. Nature by that time will probably have wiped off all other present-day civilized nations from the slate, and will be at work with new equations of nations. We speak of Russia as "the bear" but no nation has as yet developed beyond the stage of the trick- bear; docile enough when not hungry. I am one of those who believe that economic causes are at the bottom of all of the developments of history. In this same connection however I believe that developments of his- tory of nations depend upon two other essential factors. ( 1 ) The presence at a given time and place of a particularly vigorous varietal hybrid type. (2) The ideas which a type individual and his prototype congeners entertain toward the economic questions of a locality. (The historian asks what that may have to do with a civil war, in which the majority of people are of one mind on each side. We reply that one mind may be found to have grouped many others about itself). It was a single individual, Michael Tchelisheff, who led Russia out of the vodka wilder- ness. When people are of one mind in mass on great affairs it is commonly because through ovisness they are unconsciously following the mind of one. The world which is so much engaged with its short-circuit personal struggle questions between individuals, towns and nations, does not realize what a trifling affair this whole 1914 war is when looked upon as a passing incident among cata- clysms in the course of nature's plans. It is probable that none of the civilized nations which are now upon Earth are to remain. Aside from the question of cultural limitations underhand procedure is customary in the business and politics of all peoples. Man is the only animal persistently engaged TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 355 in deceiving his fellow and himself. If the fox or the lion were to engage in any such occupation we should perceive its destructive nature. This moral weakness of underhand pro- cedure is due to miscalculation on the part of nature. It be- longs with the awkward mechanical mistakes which she made when constructing man's anatomy. No doubt moral and physical mistakes will gradually be rectified by nature but she is obliged to work very much after the method of Burbank who disposes of faulty types of plants. Underhand procedure does not occur among animal or vegetable forms that are constituted for enduring position, consequently we are to assume that better and better hybrid varieties will be developed among people of different tribes and nations. Several thousand years from now we shall probably have nations of people with- out hernias and without secret rebate. We are apt to think of each nation as something that has always stood where it now stands. The historian to be sure knows better, but most of us are too busy to think. All of the great powers will be subjected to incessant attack by that still greater power, the army of the microbe. King Microbe will dispose of the weaker elements among all nations and will allow consecutive steps in evolution to be taken on the part of the stronger elements. No matter what plans are laid by nature's agent man, for developing power, nature's other agent, the microbe, will remain in control of questions of cultural limitation of any race or nation. When considering national questions in a large way we must begin always from the microbic factor in the problem. Let us, for purposes of fancy, without pretending to grasp the real diplomatic situation, take the present Balkan situation.* ♦These Balkan notes were written at the time of the beginning of the Balkan-Turkish war, and are allowed to stand as originally written because the microbe question remains unchanged. 356 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS (i) Microbes which are at warfare with the organic cells of an individual may give him concern about his health. (2) When he is a member of a family, the individual may lose part of the interest in his personal microbes (health question) and engage in more or less warfare with other members of his family. (3) When there is a tribe, families in the tribe lose interest in their family disputes and engage a larger interest in warfare with other tribes. (4) When there is a state, tribes in the state lose interest in tribal warfare and engage in the larger interest of warfare between states. (5) When the states belong to a nation, leaders among the people lose interest in state questions as compared with national questions. Psychology like protoplasm is always in a state of flux. The sequence in events ranging from disturbed organic cells of an individual to disturbed states in a nation, relates to the law of continuity observed everywhere in nature. The great unifying force of inimical pressure from an outside nation compresses the various and smaller state, tribal, family, and individual difficulties, into a compact mass which is capable of exerting unified mass force against that inimical outside nation. Most of the men and women in the Balkan states have been developing great physical strength because of their agricultural life, and likely enough because of their very gen- eral use of jugurth as a food. This food carries the bacillus bulgaricus which is destructive to those colonic bacteria which undermine men under conditions of civilization. While a large proportion of Balkan individuals have been insidiously growing physically strong, a large proportion of ruling Turks have in the meantime been growing physically weaker. De- composition of character follows physical decline as men ascend to ruling positions among the Turks. If the Balkan states now come to a pause with their state and tribal wars and family feuds, and if they unite under the unifying pressure TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 357 of inimical nations round about them, a tremendously strong new and unspoiled people will stand against any encroachment upon their territory. Russia and Austria would wish to absorb the Balkan states when Turkey falls, but France, Italy, and Great Britain, while not directly desirous of absorbing them, would not agree to have Russia and Austria gain such added power. Consequently the various nations of the Balkan states are in a way to form one great new nation. A Bismarck at the present moment might unite them. The stronger people in the Balkan states would work toward unifying obstreperous elements eventually. There would be a natural law in action all of the while with its pull toward establishment of exemplar types. This is as strong as the natural law which is now setting cultural limitations for the Turks. Nations are like varieties of plants. Species of plants tend toward variation which will allow final dominance of that variety of any one species which is best adapted to a given environment. Domi- nant varieties then proceed to establish exemplars of the variety which becomes established. Varietal hybrid types occurring as a result of union between members of certain family groups of men may give rise at any time to a great ruling family. (Hohenzollern example.) A strong widely spread exemplar type, however, may rule and govern democratically without need for the influence of any ruling family group. (Puritan example.) People of nations, like plants of gardens, are composed of helium combinations in their organic struc- ture; and all of these helium combinations in the world of animals and plants have a tendency to follow the same general laws of variation, with final dominance and establishment of the exemplar. The exemplar types then develop to the limit of cultural possibilities under their particular allotments of protoplasmic vigor. This stage is followed by a stage of decadence. Having been wound up they proceed to run down. 358 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS It is not impossible that the Balkan states with all their various languages and peoples might unite and form one great un- spoiled nation of political allies under pressure from the ex- ternal unifying forces which are now at work. Mr. George Kennan has made a study of the people who live in the eastern Caucasus, isolated from the rest of the world. He tells us that the Jews, Teutons, Celts, Persians, Arabs and Mongols who now live in these mountains, are in character and temperament much more like one another than they are like the races and the nationalities, physical types of which they still retain. Their features and coloring are those of their ancestors, but their minds all bear the impress of the part of the Caucasus in which their forefathers have lived for hundreds of generations. This gives us an object lesson so near at hand to the Balkan region that the idea of an united people with impulse in common toward new civiliza- tion, proceeding from these mountains, may not be wholly fanciful. Great Britain succeeded in uniting elements which were nearly as diverse as those of the Balkan states. Switzerland had to unite people of widely different language. The stronger one among the Balkan states would furnish the exemplar type of people who would prevail. Thus would be added to the civilized nations another unit of strength, when eventually a merged East may be combined against a merged West. Fur- ther than this, the Christian influence would probably be strong enough to unite the Balkan states religiously. Achieve- ments in literature, art, and government in United Balkania would gradually lead to the development of national pride. Sap channels of finance would be formed, and these sap channels would extend into other nations, under the influence of negative and positive pressures of debt and credit. These sap channels of finance when well established between United TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 359 Balkania and other civilized nations would make the Balkan states no longer a torment in the field of diplomacy. It is possible that a military conflict between East and West will never occur, provided that a sufficient number of sap channels extending between debt and credit are formed between East and West. This indeed, is very likely to be the case if war between East and West is deferred until the mutual depend- ence doctrine is widely observed. Applying our microbe theory to the present Balkan situation, the Monist observes that reform in Turkey has come only when other countries have performed upon it the surgical operation of lopping off one part after another. The causes for Turkish decay are held to be religious and political; but the microbe which gets after protoplasm is overlooked. The fatalism of the Turk's religion leads him to say from the Koran that "what is written is written." He therefore has small need for adjustment to changing environment, and may conscientiously hold that no treaty with infidels is to be taken seriously. It is also true that his form of government is a sort of organized brigandage against the subjects of his own coun- try. When we look at the map of European Turkey, we note its largely mountainous character. Agricultural Turks are oxidizing their microbe toxins and are remaining physically powerful. Why then does the European Turk from these regions not dominate the situation? Answer is given by the microbes. When the Turk gets to the cities and fails to oxidize his toxins there is rapid physical decadence, which carries decomposition of character as a corollary phenomenon. Education of the Turk in cities, like education of the present Russian in cities, is almost synonymous with disloyalty to the nation, because of that decomposition of character which appears when toxins are not properly metabolized. In the plant world we may note the limitations of a species which is under 36o TO-MORROW'S TOPICS cultivation by the rate of its death at the top. (Black locust, Lombardy poplar.) So it is with nations. Servia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Roumania, Macedonia and Albania are all moun- tainous countries in which people are oxidizing their toxins well. That reduces the Balkan-Eastern question according to the microbic theory to one of two probable answers : There may be absorption of these countries by Austria plus Prussia ; or else there may be union of the Balkan states under the leadership of an unspoiled people like the Bulgarians. The Monist bacteriologist may believe it quite possible that nature has kept these European mountain people in reserve, awaiting their turn to be tried out experimentally under conditions of high culture and civilization. When the proper time comes, these mountain races like other mountain races in the past, may be asked by nature to unite, — under Christian banners. Under the influence of the great unifying force of outward pressure from other nations and the internal cohesive force of religion, they may then step out ready for nature's trying-out test. Nature has kept the people of southern European races from increasing too rapidly numerically. In Albania, the vendetta is said to kill off every fifth man. Endless boundary trouble, and tribal feuds, have sufficed according to nature's customary plans, for keeping down population in the Balkan states. Now, if the appointed time has arrived, these countries will halt their vendettas and feuds and will get to work at increasing their population and uniting against aggression by Austria, Asiatic Turkey, or Russia. The resources of the Balkan countries, with their lands and coasts, would permit naturally of the formation of an United Balkania of tremendous power. The only question asked by the bacteriologist is whether decomposi- tion of character would begin so early under the influences of cultivation and the development of national art, science, and literature, that an United Balkania could not stand up under TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 361 the test required for high position among nations. We assume at the present time that the Russian cannot well extend into the Balkan region, because Roumania, not much interested either way, stands between. Austria might attempt to take charge : but the warring internal factions in Austria are united by religion only, and there is incessant internal warfare going on in Austria notwithstanding the influence of religion. A simple object lesson of the character of internal state warfare is given in the present "Ulster war." Home rule means Rome rule, desirable for that part of Ireland which is best governed under that sort of rule. As in other countries in which different peoples are confined arbitrarily, by political expediency, the charming, voluble, imaginative, poetical, ver- satile and flowingly wasteful people of the South of Ireland will continue to dash against the stern Scotch-Irish rocks of Ulster, with their immovable foundations in native industry, thrift and shrewdness. National union and inspiration, aside from religion, would be necessary for ensuring successful action against United Balkania. Austria could not proceed into the Balkans unless Germany as an ally should join the movement. If the Emperor of Germany with his ideas of Pan-Germanism were then to Prussianize the Austrian army, Balkan hatred of Germans would assert itself and would have a tendency to hasten union of the Balkan states under the dominance perhaps of Bulgaria. Such a movement let us say could only occur at the present writing as a result of Austrian movement followed by Prussian movement, the latter varietal hybrid type finally dominating. Greece with its sea coasts would probably remain a separate kingdom and minor sea power supported like Denmark by allies, while all the rest of the unspoiled nations of the Balkan states could join to form an United Balkania, subject then only to cultural limita- tions set by King Microbe. 362 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS The idea that warfare by arms between great powers may cease through the establishment of commercial sap channels implies a social settling of the question. The world would progress too rapidly however — out of nature's plan, if warship money were to be diverted to purposes of constructive advance. We must not race in progress. Cog by cog, cog by cog, that is nature's way. As rapidly as sap channels are established between any number of civilized states and nations under conditions of peace, the negative and positive pressures of credit and debt keep the sap of finance in motion, and allow of growth as in a tree. We then have incentives to industry and economy, which in turn lead to the development of best methods of distribution, increased production — and to creation in the interest and spirit of protection. Peace, therefore, has a tendency to give happiness and health up to the limit allowed by nature for any given race, before she decides to limit de- velopment of that race by sending the microbe to hasten disintegration of senescent protoplasm. War is a temporary play in the course of nature's game. It is a move for the purpose of getting certain winning nations into alignment, in order to allow the establishment of a system of sap channels between them, and thus advancing civilization. In countries like some of the Central American and South American republics where nature recognizes the fact that people are not given to making important additions to science, art, or govern- ment, she limits population through endless feuds called revo- lutions. The microbe always begins active work wherever men are gathered together for the purpose of killing each other — and this agent kills more men than are killed by weapons. In these aggregations of men nature sees to it that conditions are favorable for the development of microbes of various effective infective diseases. Nature fears that men TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 363 \\ill not destroy a sufficient number of each other unless she facihtates the process of elimination by sending different species of her little agents into aggregations of warriors, and attacking them with her bacteria vigorously. The incessant feuds between tribes of North American Indians, were car- ried on among men of such savage health that nature dared not depend upon the microbe to finish what men left of each other, and consequently she asked them to massacre women and children in order to prevent over-population. The massacre of women and children is an expression of nature's wish. In the far North, where winter starvation serves the purpose of warfare, there are comparatively few feuds be- tween different Indian tribes, because nature is satisfied with the starvation method. Civilized longing for universal peace brings about a relative degree of universal peace. A business man at the head of the world would show each nation its duty toward other nations. The idea of final brotherhood of man has really made a con- siderable degree of progress without any business man to introduce methods giving prompt efficiency. This would indi- cate that nature is apparently aiming at the same thing, in a way, and destroying the people who prove themselves least well fitted for brotherhood. The business man and his counting house of the world would check the desire for power and office belonging to the politician and to the general. Let us have Nobel prizes for peace advocates. Let us send our best citizens to the Hague Convention, in order to carry civilization as far along as nature will permit, not forgetting, however, that nature wishes to have inferior people disposed of. Let us have arbitration treaties which will place courts of justice in the field occupied by the sword. A business man at the head of the world would place restrictions on diplomacy before a subject could be 364 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS referred to the court of arbitration at all. Following the outline drawn by Dr. J. G. Schurman, he would insist upon any matter being left to a commission of inquiry before it could even get to be a question of diplomacy, and then he would insist upon considerable time being given, because the interval of time between injury and revenge stands in mathe- matical relationship to the severity of revenge. A business man at the head of the world when preparing debatable questions for submission to arbitration, would throw out all questions of independence or of honor at the outset. Every nation wishes to be independent for the same reason that a man wishes to be independent. Consequently this trait in human nature would have to be left out of arbitration because a nation or a state would be grasping in its demands for independence. The question of injured honor would be thrown out. I have been told by dealers in ship supplies about two nations in which high officials of the navy accepted graft from men who furnished such supplies, and this rake-off money was appropriated for officers, from admirals down to a number of small officials. These admirals would be the very first to cry out about injured honor-r-r-r in response to a blow received from another nation. Nations are all children as yet, simply a lot of fast growing awkward youngsters, and a business man at the head of the world would treat them as such. The question of the gratification of revenge for injured honor or for restriction of independence having been thrown out altogether, subjects which might very probably be sub- mitted for arbitration could then be managed according to principles of the law of equity. If all war questions for a business man at the head of the world were first sent to the commission on inquiry, then grad- ually brought under the charge of diplomatists, and finally TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 365 presented to the business man who was administrative head of the world, all of the military wars between powerful nations would cease. Warfare would continue only against and be- tween the races which nature has found to be inferior in her trying-out process. They were placed on earth in order to play their respective parts in evolution, and are to be disposed of when they eat more than they are worth. The dairyman understands this part of the question. A big business sometimes tampers with laws or even makes them. The government then becomes a party to big business and engages in the competition between conflicting interests of big business. If there were only one big business our affairs might be run by its officers more economically and efficiently than is done at the present time. Laws made by the harvester trust, with the government as a party might come into con- flict with laws made by the steel trust with the government as a party. That would mean the ordinary conflict belonging to all struggle in organic life, but the public is constantly engaged in efforts at helping the government remain superior to busi- ness conflict. A man of business at the head of the world would have the same questions to deal with that he finds in the factory and in the shop — the same old troubles. Managers often have to use the big stick in order to be kind and not let the employees injure each other. Otherwise hour after hour there would be constant fuss, confusion, waste, and opposing influences. The world is simply a shop on a large scale. Law of continuity again. Sometimes a fund is raised by scientific men for the publica- tion of books which are in manuscript. The Swiss Natur- forschende Gesellschaft planned to publish the works of Euler at an estimated cost of one hundred thousand dollars, which 366 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS wa? covered by about four hundred subscribers. There are many immensely valuable books which might be published for a few hundred dollars but which lie dormant and unused because the authors cannot raise money for their publication. Thousands of worthless and harmful books are put upon the market because at the present stage of our culture the latter pay best in dollars. A business man at the head of the world would publish scientific works which would set knowledge far ahead, but which are not published now (although in manuscript form), because the authors have insufficient means. These unpub- lished books would not be profitable from the publisher's standpoint, but they are often of priceless value for humanity and will be utilized in the system of to-morrow. A business man at the head of the world would manage affairs of the world in such a way that any business requiring his protection or experience would be regulated by him per- sonally, while subsidiary businesses would be left to work out their own destinies. The unprotected ones would be governed by his demand for their supplies and by the prices which he could give. The same idea may be carried into political economy relating to the tariff at the present time. In the absence of a business man to demand this, it will be done more slowly by the people in the ordinary course of evolution. A business man at the head of the world would not allow the development of a buccaneer tariff. Certain American-made goods are now to be bought more cheaply abroad than at home, because our system of discriminating against the home public has allowed it. A business man at the head of the world would restrict the revenues of the gov- ernment to affairs of the government, economically adminis- tered. A man with no greater experience than the president of some large successful corporation could manage this world TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 367 in such a way that it would make enormous progress, — out of all proportion to nature's plan. If a business man had charge of this world and could put men's affairs upon a business basis, there would be little of military war. The question of population might be adjusted according to the food supply. Contagious and infectious diseases would be checked whenever it paid to check them — very much as the orchardist now has a clean orchard when it is worth while. Physicians would be trained for scientific service and would be pried out of ruts. A capable business man would unbalance the original plan of nature. The root of an oak tree must not grow faster than its branches, and nature evidently wishes to have this world develop according to a certain rate of speed and no faster. Perhaps it is already in competition with some other world which nature wishes to have developed to a higher degree first. If a cause is great enough, the people are united. If a cause is not great enough, internal struggles keep population in check. In countries like the Balkan states some great unifying force would be required for making them work harmoniously together as a welded nation. If the external unifying force is sufficiently powerful, they can all unite. In any one of the countries, state questions now furnish the state unifying force. In any one of the families in the state, family questions now make family unifying force. Disputes between different family members, vendettas between different families, warfare between different states, all go on continuously as a part of nature's plan and struggle, but the smaller struggles cease in proportion as various outer unifying forces bring welding pressure to bear. If a business man at the head of the world could dispose of the prejudice that is called patriotism United Balkania might become a wonderful peace preserving factor by granting 368 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS equal rights in trade routes to the Mediterranean for use by the great powers. At the present time several great powers wish to gain for themselves exclusive rights, and they are almost willing to let their military men earn their salaries by settling the matter. An Irishman speaking with pride of the influence of his people in New York, asserted that they fur- nished the peace of New York — and upheld his point by explaining that the police were mostly Irish. Peace of the town being a responsibility of the police, the deduction was clear that the Irish furnished the peace of New York. United Balkania could furnish much of the peace of the world by weaving together various loose ends of the Eastern question when prescribing trade routes for the great powers to the Mediterranean. This would be mutually helpful between United Balkania and the great powers. It would be a con- structive movement, whereas the present struggle for exclusive rights to trade routes must necessarily be destructive. In Bulgaria, where people partake daily of their jugurth, containing microbes which are inimical to the indol producing microbes of the colon, there are reported to be 3800 people over one hundred years of age, although the population of the country is only seven millions of people. Germany with sixty-six million people reports only 71 individuals who are past one hundred years of age. This is presumptive evidence in favor of the idea that the length of years may be extended without much difficulty by all nations when the microbe ques- tion is understood. Not only the death-rate, but, what is still more important, the general morbidity rate may be changed distinctly by attacking the microbe systematically as the Bul- gars attack it incidentally. When one is in Belgrade the idea of union of the Balkan states appears to be ridiculous. When he is a little farther away, in Bucharest, it seems nothing more than improbable. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 369 When he is in Berlin, it is something to be thought of in a transitory way. When he is in America, it seems at least a possibility. Relative distance from complicated details gives one clearer vision of a situation. When conversing with one of our statesmen at a dinner in London, I happened to remark that my views of the political situation in America were much clearer than when I was at home — to which he answered, "That is precisely my experience. When I am in foreign countries, our political questions stand out very distinctly in high relief, and situations can be comprehended very much better than when one is buffeted among the dizzy details of the machine at home." A friend just returned from Russia was indignant about our recent police scandal in New York in reference to the collection of toll from organized vice. He felt that all America should be ashamed of our local municipal affairs. I asked him about graft in the court of the country from which he had just returned and my question made him suddenly absent- minded. These periodical questions of demoralization right themselves from time to time in a natural way. It is simply the object lesson again of the thunder cloud which gradually increases its charge of electricity until the tension becomes so great that it discharges, and then begins a state of electrical tension all over again. The compensating feature is the oppor- tunity which is given an honorable district attorney to become Mayor, Governor, and President — if he can keep his political head. As soon as a great public scandal has flashed, the same causes for the scandal begin all over again, but these affairs are small in comparison with the great moving methods of progress in clouds on the whole and of society on the whole. There is nothing wrong excepting in a relative way. Nature's large plans entirely transcend all questions of right and wrong as we see them, and it is great fun to be alive in 370 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS the midst of this activity. In the days of Napoleon, poHce graft from vice was organized. Part of the proceeds went openly as high up as to the extravagant Empress Josephine. In all of the European courts at the same time, corruption of various kinds in court circles existed in greater degree than it does in court circles to-day. Plistory shows a distinct and progressive increase in methods of better citizenship. One hundred years from now the standards of public and private morality will be much higher than those of to-day. They are now higher than they were in the days of the Emperor Napo- leon, when the aphids of vice were colonized by the ants of police under Fouche, the chief of police. In countries in which there is much decomposition of char- acter in official circles, one will find men who are most agree- able and profitable companions in the ordinary affairs of daily Hfe. I remember no more enjoyable days than some which were spent afield with three delightful friends who were officers in the Turkish army. We were all of us "just like everybody else" when together. They were outspoken against the cunning intrigues in which they were obliged to play an unwilling part, because of the established system. Capitalists of my acquaintance believe at heart in many of the Socialistic doctrines, yet they are obliged to act always from the side of the capitalist because they are units in a system. In any country in which there is corruption in civil courts and favoritism in the higher courts, we understand that coun- try to be one which is to fall behind in the race of nations. No nation can travel very far or fast upon two gangrenous feet. A country can progress only as rapidly as it develops progressive confidence in its courts of justice. No matter how many revolutions take place, or how many changes of rulers there may be in a given country, it remains among the dying countries if its courts are septic. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 371 The destiny of a nation composed largely of uneducated people of various kinds may be foretold by the readiness with which the educated and well-to-do turn to intrigue and to politics for personal ends. The idea of aristocracy includes the idea of oligarchy; the idea of oligarchy includes the idea of intrigue; the idea of intrigue is not compatible with the democratic ideal of aristocracy; but the general idea of the presence of an aristocracy in a country serves to hold the public coherently up to an ideal in civilized countries. There will be trained men at the head of all municipal activities to-morrow. It will not be enough that a candidate is honest, intelligent and possessing good intentions, — that he has wonderful recommendation papers, and describes to us his great influence. We make the mistake now of em- ploying men in municipal affairs for political reasons, yet no such mistake is made by private employers when selecting men for responsible positions. Men chosen for the most part in business houses are those who began near the bottom and worked up according to their well proven efficiency. In large cities of the monistic unity state the mayor, or the chief financial officer, or the chief engineer, will all have performed similar service in villages or in smaller towns first. There will then be a business man at the head of the world. A politician approaching the business man in charge of the world will engage in this sort of conversation. "We want Smith for mayor of New York." "Is he trained as a mayor?" "No, but he is popular and efficient in many other ways, and he will see that a lot of us get jobs." "Is the lot of people who are to have jobs especially trained for these jobs." "Oh, no! What do you think we are talking about? Economical administration of a business undertaking? No! We are looking for places at good pay for men rejected by 372 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS other employers. They will all hang together and vote for our party." "Is your party necessary?" "Oh, yes indeed, for defeating the other party." In the monistic unity state any governor who sincerely wishes to put the best men in office (aside from Civil Service men) can spare himself much trouble, and escape the im- portunities of the famished pack of politicians, by asking special societies to select from their midst the men who are to be candidates for appointment. Responsibility will then rest upon the established societies of men belonging to the professions and to other occupations. Complaint will no longer be aimed at the governor on this point and he will be left free to devote himself to affairs of state. At the present time, prac- tically all of the responsible men who are engaged in various occupations belong to societies, like the Associations of Engi- neers, of Doctors, of Lawyers, of Architects; and these men all know, or have means for knowing, the best men within their respective circles who should be put forward for holding public office. There is much of internal politics to be sure within all of these societies, but a few mistakes in connection with selection of candidates for public position would put members of these societies upon their mettle. The governor will simply notify a state or national association that he wishes the right architect, the right engineer, the right doctor, for a certain government position. The society will then assume the responsibility of making selection, and the gov- ernor will have his work simplified. I do not know why this has not been done previously, but perhaps it is because we have only just now reached the twentieth century. The test for fitness of an applicant for office will no longer be the degree of his appetite for a job. When men are chosen in this new way, special governmental favor will not be given TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 373 toward helping special business. Representative men being then in office will understand the destructive tendency which prevails at the present time in all countries, of allowing poli- ticians to organize matters of state in accordance with their own interests. The returns from any business will be de- pendent upon the ability of that business to serve the public, rather than upon its resources for serving the politicians. The president of any country who has to accept money for campaign purposes knowing that he must give a return in some equivalent in favor, knows that he is doing the wrong thing, and yet justifies it by the explanation "under the cir- cumstances." Shortly after the election of President Wilson, it was re- ported that one man in every forty-seven in the United States was an office seeker. On the whole those who do not belong to civil service training represent a class rejected by other employers, and four years spent in government service would be practically four years lost time. Regular pay, short hours, and little work, for four years, will unfit a man for practically every situation in life in which he would have to depend upon irregular pay and irregular hours. The strongest men in any civilized community depend upon irregular pay and irregular hours of work. To-morrow the president will not have private interviews with men of opposing ideas and thus run the risk of danger from competition between personalities. He will not work under ground blindly like a mole. He will leave the deter- mination of questions to the open discussion of the senate. This will not destroy any party, it will simply present clear issues. A single remark will sometimes give a clue to the nature of large and complicated questions. When the biographer of a president says that he has a morbid fear of anything which 374 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS will cause a split in the party, we may read the statement as meaning that the man who is in power has a morbid fear of anything which will cleave off a slice of his power. His morbid fear relates to himself rather than to the party interest, as we observe later when he is splitting the party himself. A single fact like that becomes a keystone in our arch of judg- ment, without bringing up the question of actual desirabiHty of splitting up of a party. It may have been desirable from a biologic standpoint, expressed in terms of sociology, and with personal bearing. In "practical politics" the different elements of a community are classified in relation to their influence. It is commonly held that the clerg}^ if they participate in an active way, do more harm than good. Their training in faith makes them unwary of schemers. Members of the merchant class seldom take any active part for fear of hurting business, as they do not wish to run the danger of business injury from political antagonists. The professional man if successful is too busy to be useful to politicians, and if not busy, is not wanted. Lawyers who go into politics, do it for the most part because they want to work for special opportunities for themselves. The saloon element is the most important one to be reckoned with in politics, because in that class men of the crowd are closer together. It is easy for the politician to raise money from "the liquor crowd," — easier than anywhere else, and in that case he is obliged to remain under obligations. Perhaps in the future the woman element is to be measured against the saloon element. Women are apt to be single-minded, good organizers, — and they work with great devotion to good causes, but many individuals among them are prone to keep their personal guards up. That interferes with mellow socia- bility of the sort that leads to union of many units and the making of large mass force. At the saloon, men drop their per- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 375 sonal guards which are carried most of the day in the course of business and other adaptations. Alcohol in its range of cheering influence leads men to drop their personal guards and to unite in the spirit of good-fellowship. We are dealing then with a mechanistic question. Politics is physical in its nature and must be treated from that basis by the sociologist. The professional politician is that part of the foundation beneath all pillars of society which renders them unstable. We plan a great bank. The politician takes a slice of graft for his own uses. The foundation is then unsound. We plan a great engineering undertaking, the politician comes in for his share — down goes the moral solidarity of the plan. We plan a great library or some great charity, the politician reaches under and takes out sand for himself — down go the prospects for a clean transaction. We plan a pure food system, a national hygienic system for the benefit of the people, and we make medical laws in the people's interests. The politician reaches under for his sand — down go the pillars. This is one of nature's plans for preventing too rapid progress. To be sure there are good politicians with high aspirations, but poli- ticians work according to a system, and if a link of character in the chain of their system is weak, the chain is little stronger than its weaker links, the chain being for the personal purposes of pohticians. The methods of politicians represent a variant of good- fellowship and will last for as long as good-fellowship lasts. It is a question of "you and me, and never mind the rest." Good-fellowship often gets men into the drinking habit and into the political habit. "Practical politics" has for its spirit the protection of a tribal-spirited group of men working to- gether in each other's interest, instead of protection of large public interests, — and herein lies the weakness and strength of politics. Men of largest calibre consider the people of a 376 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS whole country or of a whole state as belonging to their private group of friends, while in the ward of a city the private group of friends may comprehend only a few men who can stand together for delivering a vote and sharing the profits. Servants of a city when taken in charge by a political boss proceed to exploit the city like a conquered province. The people make a great outcry at election time, but shortly after- ward become docile enough to eat out of the hand of the boss if he has fed some of their personal friends judiciously. This being high-class work so far as the question of skill may be concerned, is rewarded accordingly. Many fine, strong, frank and honest men have found them- selves in selfish political circles. They did not find their way into these circles as the result of any intention or inclination, but were caught in established system. They were placed in the beginning of the circle for the very reason of their win- some good-fellowship, and loyalty to friends. In politics we shall always have corruption when any party remains long in power. This will be due to the fact that the politician represents a definite type of mind, just as the poet represents a definite type of mind. A man possessing the type of mind that belongs to the politician will organize the forces at his command for self advancement, and with this type of mind we incidentally find the moral sense largely in subjection. The politician because of his interest in the organization of work, for his own ends, will always maintain a dominant posi- tion in civic affairs. The longer any one party is in power, the more men of the politician type we shall see at the head of affairs, although they may by no means represent the character of the people by whom they are elected. For this reason there will never be any great difference between a republic and a monarchy, because the same types of human nature are at work no matter what the form of government. In some monarchies TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 377 there is quite as much if not more individual freedom, than in a republic which is dominated by political bosses who are able to thwart the will of the people quite as successfully as it could have been done by a despot king in days of yore. I have known many politicians of what are popularly called the baser set. They all believed themselves to be better than the people with whom they were surrounded, and were frequently quite serious in that view. They were ambitious for their children, and this ambition has always led to a wish to give their children the best educational advantages. One man who occupied a position of a great deal of power at one time, but who was called a thug, and who was a thug from the point of view of the up-town districts, really represented a survival of the fittest in his part of the city. He was proud of his achievements, and when one knows the surroundings in which he developed it explains his point of view so well that one would be inclined to agree with him. A number of men work- ing harmoniously together for themselves can often success- fully meet opposition on the part of the public. The governor of almost every state is practically a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Nature wastes a lot of governors before developing one by natural selection who is acceptable to the people of the whole country. Most governors get into confusion by mistaking politicians for the people, and that is nature's trap for eliminating the unfit among governors. The strength of a party is surely enough in its organization, but the strength of an organization is in its ideals, and the strength of its ideals is represented in terms of altitude. The people as a whole are chronically sick and tired of politics and politicians whom they understand very well indeed, allowing them to become obnoxious up to a cer- tain point, because the people are so busily engaged with other questions. This is wrong in principle, but is customary 378 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS in practice under present conditions. To-morrow's nations will have other methods. We often watch with keen interest a man full of promise going to the Senate or to Congress, and then see him become stifled in the atmosphere with which he is surrounded. We are greatly disappointed. He must necessarily breathe the air of politics, and will need to be strong indeed in order to avoid its noxious influence if he really has public interest at heart. Great men with pitchfork ideas sometimes go to a capitol. A few good dinners in cheerful social circles cover the tines with soft hay. The origin of the slang word "graft" as appHed to dis- honesty in business method is not clear. It is possible that men who first began to use the word were familiar with its significance in horticulture. The word sounds so much like the word "craft" that it would be pronounced in that way by many foreigners who are familiar with the meaning of graft. The word "graft" as applied in slang is so closely synonymous with the meaning of "craft" that we may use the words as having the same significance. According to Dr. Max Muller, the archseologist, graft in its worst forms existed in Egypt as early as 2000 years B. C. It was not until the religious reforms took place in 1400 B. C. that any really successful attempts were made to stamp out this evil. When the reformers came into power, all officials convicted of grafting were sent to the great outdoor prison of Egypt, on the north-eastern frontier, and their noses and ears were cut off. At the present time we are less barbarous, and cut off nothing but positions, when crafting is exposed. Crafting is sometimes looked upon leniently because of its prevalence "by those who understand the circumstances." Assassination of rulers in the cruder civilizations of the past, and in the cruder countries of to-day, is looked upon leniently TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 379 because of its prevalence. In civilized countries we are to make progress against crafting to-morrow as we have pro- gressed against assassination of rulers. It is merely a question of dates in the history of progress. One reason why the police have protected vice and have used it for a source of income is because the social system as a whole favors that sort of thing, and will continue to do so. A parallel is found in every day life in the garden. Some species of ants act as police in disposing of certain kinds of obnoxious insects. They find however that the aphis excretes a sweet fluid which they like to eat. The aphis is very injurious to plants because it sucks their juices. Ants destroy other obnoxious insects but protect the aphis. They will kill any intruder if they can, even attacking man viciously if he at- tempts to brush away their herd of aphids. Ants take up and distribute colonies of injurious aphids just as the police dis- tribute vice colonies that are sucking the juice of social life. The yellow ground ant is too grasping in its malefaction and makes so many tunnels along the roots of the white pine in order to place colonies of the woolly aphis that the tree is loosened at the root and dries out. "Exposure of protected vice" has then been made. Aphids and ants both suffer for awhile after exposure of their methods, but they soon begin the work all over again upon another tree, unless the gardener applies plenty of tobacco stems for mulch in summer and kerosene oil in winter. We limit development of aphids after learning the nature of both aphids and ants. Otherwise the police of some cities would follow their custom of placing vice colonies where they would be most useful to the police and most injurious to society. Aphids and ants are probably both necessary in nature for the purpose of preserving a certain balance, and society can only regulate their actions within practical and reasonable bounds. Crafting police are different 38o TO-MORROW'S TOPICS from ants in the sense that they represent no need in nature's economy. They represent nothing more than the application of a higher intelligence, in the development of a system. The methods of the system are being changed for the better along natural lines of progress, and the police of to-morrow will be as fine as the majority of police in some of our municipal gov- ernments to-day. Craft within municipal tribes like those of the police and fire departments is a result of methods of influence belonging to bosses in political centres, and applied to their respective clans. Some of the finest young men whom I have ever known were ambitious for service in municipal work belonging to the police and fire departments. These men were strong, brave, courageous, honest, and they looked forward to an opportunity for exercise of their splendid characters. No sooner had ap- pointments been received than they began to hear of favoritism and advancement due to methods of craft. Some of them have told me of the dampening of their ideals at the very out- set, by finding it necessary to bend to craft even before getting their first appointment. If this represented reversal from some prior better condition of affairs we might all feel discouraged ; but we know that higher officials who engage in methods of craft are themselves poor ignorant fellows who are well edu- cated only in the methods of the clan. It is the only world they know. They know nothing of the spirit of that great public which mostly forgets their existence excepting on special occasions. We know from history that at no time in the past have conditions really been better, and we know they are steadily becoming better, century by century. A state senator has recently been sentenced to jail because he asked for thirty-five hundred dollars in order to get a bill reported out of a Committee. He was exonerated by a com- mittee of his pals in the Senate but was later sentenced to jail TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 381 by due process of law in the courts. I know him as an able man and good fellow, deeply esteemed by his personal friends. He was simply hit by a tension flash. This history will be repeated again and again in different states, because it is favored by conditions. The compensating side for society rests in the opportunity which is given strong clean men for showing their hands and proving themselves worthy of confi- dence. It would be a pity if all criminals were to disappear, because we would not then have the interesting and inspiring spectacle of other men developing sufficient strength of char- acter to slay dragons. Most of the men in political position who employ office for purposes of private gain are men who have risen rather quickly into power from homes in which there was little of the mellowing influence of culture. Having gained position through the exercise of valuable traits in crude form, they are enabled to traffic in their power as legislators safely and for some time, because of the actual support given by other legislators of their own class. Such legislators, how- ever, form a sort of political trades union. Conditions which favor the rise of strong men with crude morals to legislative position, rest largely in our scheme of administration, with its great number of elective officers and many elections, with its division of responsibility into small wards, its complicated methods for confusing the mind of the public. All these condi- tions favor the development of the politician who seeks illegiti- mate gain. At the same time it exerts a destructive influence by compelling honest business men, who really wish to main- tain excellent government, to become accessories in crime. They are obliged to approach the level of the professional politician in order to obtain legal right to conduct their honest business. Big contractors are bled to the last drop by politicians acting in collusion with subsidized lawyers and state officers. In 382 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS order to avoid bankruptcy, these contractors have to filch from contracts and present the pubhc with broken-contract work. The public suffers from the activities of any robber clan in any municipal government, and yet allows the parasites to remain because of the difficulty in securing an altruistic organi- zation sufficient for meeting selfish organized force. The various cures which have been proposed for our system of administration will not be permanently effective. The Initia- tive, Referendum and Recall, direct primaries, and the various curative applications suggested by doctors for the body politic, will only serve temporarily. As our population increases, we shall need more and more remedies. None of them so far proposed will actually destroy the field for professional poli- ticians. As population increases we shall probably be forced eventually to have one cure which will be farther reaching and time saving. This will consist in having fewer elective offices, but more important ones ; fewer elections, and more significant ones. We shall have to so arrange matters that genuine selec- tion of officials by the public is made by a public which is not confused by the present methods of the professional politicians. Further than that, there will be born of our need a greater care in the selection of men who are to represent the people; but this will be a slow process, in line with nature's custom in making progress. We are all so much engaged in large affairs of progress that we cannot stop to look after irresponsible agents excepting as they become intolerable from time to time. To-morrow we shall take everything to the laboratory for testing purposes. If one is in doubt for instance about his personal originality of nature and wishes a test, he may make a trial upon the temptation to do some covert act of which his conscience does not approve. If he compromises with conscience on the grounds that "others do the same thing," this furnishes an object lesson in lack of originality. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 383 When put to the test, he finds himself herding with the flock of sheep in the valley as a matter of preference, instead of standing alone upon a pinnacle and acting as a capable sentinel for the flock. One is often tempted by ovisness to do things which are wrong "because others do it." Ovisness constitutes the wide open end of a corral leading to Hades on earth. Everybody enters this wide opening of the corral at some time or another but many scamper away back to safety on smelling brimstone. The first opening is wide and remains open, allowing of easy escape; it is only those who enter the narrower part with hidden bars (because "others are doing it") who are finally exploited and lost. Perhaps we see this phenomenon most often among legislators. They follow the majority because of gregarious instinct, and having become branded and turned loose, are now the property of smarter men. It is the gregarious instinct that takes every nation to the bonfire as a whole eventually, but easier victims like dishonest legislators get burned first. I have known legislators who began their careers proudly and ambitiously. Their friends, fathers and mothers believed in them, old schoolmates looked up to them. They were the admired young men of promise from their localities, yet when approached by corporations and subjected to indecent proposals by the party boss they became prostitutes, "because others did it." No one runs alone past the hidden bars of a corral, but strong wary individuals run back alone out of the open end. These are the survivors who become presidents. The ones who keep on past hidden bars "because others are doing it" are finally exploited by shrewd men who make it their business to seek out branded legislators and herd them together into some committee. This is readily done if there is money enough forthcoming. We may even find in the Bible a statement that all things obey money (Douay version). Ecclesiastes, Chapter 10, verse 19, 384 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS "In risum faciunt pattern et vinum, ut epulentur viventes: et pecuniae obediunt omnia." The sheep motive ("others do it") finds amusing expression in fashions. Women gaze upon that treasure of the Louvre, Venus de Milo. They note the strong shapely waist and ex- claim, "How old fashioned!" Then they retire to their boudoirs and put on corsets which almost make their tongues protrude, and throw all of their works out of gear. This is because the sheep are exploited by dressmakers in the interest of trade. Lambs are sacrificed upon the altar of commerce. Styles in women's dress will continue for a long time to be immodest or fantastic. The basic reasons are two in number. ( i ) In response to the need for making sex appeal in the course of decline, one line of costumes will be made more and more suggestive. There is nothing shocking in the frank exhibition of supports which vary in style from Chippen- dale to Clydesdale. This we observe in connection with ordi- nary bathing suits which lead to no appeal. These same sup- ports if draped for catch-as-catch-can effect, produce an entirely different impression. One of my patients, a young downtown clerk, was threat- ened with arrest for hooting at a split skirt. I expressed my surprise at his being anything of an ascetic. He replied: "Well, you see it wasn't the right time of day. When I'm busy and have important things to attend to, I don't want any split skirt waved in my face." (2) Styles which are quite proper will continue to be at least fantastic and elaborately mutable for the reason that each dressmaker has two assistants, let us say. These two will go into business for themselves eventually. In order for this constantly increasing number of dressmakers to make a living they must all join in creating a thirst in the feminine public mind. In order to create a thirst they must exploit TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 385 women for business purposes, and make them their tools. Dressmakers as a particularly able and shrewd class of people will bring the skill of the specialist to bear in giving rise to longings in their clientele. Dressmakers are like politicians in their alertness at capitalizing ovisness, and I cannot picture the dressmaker of to-morrow as being less clever than the one of to-day at placing her captured prey upon exhibition. The Greeks held that woman was graceful and beautiful inversely in proportion to what she had on. The fashionable dress, unpainted by artist, unsung by poet undescribed by science, has no true lover. It causes nervous- ness among textile fabric manufacturers; it draws thousands of happy young people out of healthful fields and shuts them pale-faced in the shop; it arouses envy, inspires jealousy, lessens oxidation, burns capital, and seems to have no very definite mission beyond serving temporarily as a hectic halo. Maids cannot find the hooks of a new one. An example of adherence to mediaeval custom in politics is found in Tammany Hall in New York. A famous and useful political society gradually fell into the hands of the Irish, who established an organization instinctively in the spirit of the ancient Irish or Scottish clan. This inherent tendency to clan formation was phylogenetic in character and manifested strongly in ancient form by the Irish, who gradually gained more and more control. The finer features of a clan, with its loyalty to friends and its united action against foes, brought out some splendid examples of masterly political skill and of personal character among its members, but under influences which are common in municipal affairs, control gradually came to be vested in men who did not represent all that was highest in human nature. The Tammany clan was finally emblazoned by the classic remark of one of its members in reference to a matter of public policy — "What's the Consti- 386 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS tution amongst f rinds?" The state had become impersonal to him. Tammany clan chieftains came to have practically absolute and arbitrary powers, until one of them made the blunder of impeaching a state governor, apparently acting as plaintiff, prosecutor, judge and jury in the case. The charges against the governor, however, were of the sort which might be applied against almost any member of the organization, and this appealed to a large sense of the ridiculous in the public. The power of an appeal to the ridiculous in a public which is awake and aware is quite as tremendous in America as it is in France (both countries are remarkably alike in this respect). The impeached governor had been a faithful adopted member of the clan, reared in its spirit and trained in its methods. His morals and conscience were those of his environment. He was truly ambitious, however, and his wide- faring mind led him into conference with two men of very high character who enjoyed the full confidence of the public. One of these men was an ex-governor of the state and the other a president. He seemed to gain from them and from their circle of acquaintances a new perspective upon political life, and With genuine and earnest endeavor sought to serve the whole people. This naturally brought him directly into conflict with the clan, the chieftain of which promptly ordered his political execution. He had known for many years pre- cisely what would be required of him by the clan should he ever become governor of the state, and consequently his bold attempt at rising to a higher plane must belong in history among records of courageous daring. No sooner was this governor deposed, than he fell by destiny — pardon the pagan word — into a district composed almost wholly of men newly freed from the oppression of foreign governments. In the fulness of their hearts they proclaimed him a hero and re- turned him to the Assembly with great demonstration of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 387 feeling. According to Le Bon, in his study of "La Foule," we may believe it not impossible for this example of the living citizen to actually become governor again. The psy- chology of the situation includes a large movement of emotion. The basic ideas from which feeling is being liberated in this case are not to be tossed aside lightly. The current expression of opinion is something like this : "Oh, yes, he has aroused sympathy, but only because the people feel that he has defeated a clan chieftain, and his bad record will stand against his further recognition after the flurry is over." If we consider the potential energy of each one of a series of basic ideas which are present in the case, it seems to me we may foresee something beyond the flurry. ( i ) A man who is familiar with every crooked path of the clan. (2) A man who knows how to ferret the run-ways if he wishes to do so. (3) A man who wishes to ferret the run-ways if we are to judge by his actions. (4) A man whose actions were apparently inspired through his capacity for appreciation of the characters of men of highest political virtue, and from whom he adopted sug- gestions as a matter of deliberate choice and preference. (5) A man whose whole badness has been exposed and inci- dentally dated, and found to date back to an environment above which he tried to soar. (6) A man who appears to have an obsession for serving the whole people. If New York, like some other large American cities, is sufficiently mediaeval to allow government by a clan, we may believe it sufficiently medieval to place a deposed governor back in his chair again, provided that the potential energy of each one of these six ideas is skilfully liberated in the form of strong feeling. This statement of the case does not mean approval on my part so much as it means a study of the real situation from a standpoint of psychology. The significance of an event commonly relates more to its immediate bearing than 388 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS to its worthiness for a place in history. If the Vikings used to discover America every year in August ten centuries ago when they came over to Labrador cod-fishing, it meant little to them. We are nothing but cod-fishermen in municipal politics as yet. Discovery of the haunts of a clan means little to us beyond introducing cause for a temporary skirmish. Some day such haunts will be invaded by men who purloin the spirit of the clan and apply it to the entire nation. Mean- time, people will actively uncover craft only upon some such occasion as when a governor is impeached for doing things which he learned how to do from his impeachers. Even this represents progress. The Lord liioves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. Shall the Government have control of railroads and tele- graphs to-morrow ? We assume first that under present condi- tions the matter would immediately be under control of poli- ticians, and for an object lesson we must stop and remember what has been done in the pension office when politicians had control of Government funds which could be used for giving pensions "as a matter of good politics," even though it de- graded the recipient and his "friend." Placing the control of business and of government directly in the hands of the people means placing it directly in the hands of politicians, under the conditions belonging to a democratic form of government. We have already done this in America, up to the limit of the capacity of our politicians, and the results are in evidence. A successful railroad is now built up through careful selec- tion of efficient employees in every department, while much of the government business is still conducted by men who have been rejected by other employers and who are selected through social influence, — not through demonstrated peculiarities in efficiency. This difference in the general character of em- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 389 ployees is fundamental as a factor in the question of govern- ment ownership of great utihties. When the women of Colorado were given the sufifrage, they promptly stuffed the ballot boxes and went to jail. The ideal woman is better than the average man. Now, run our course across the other way, and we come out even. If we establish an ideal suffrage, composed only of the most com- petent people to vote, pretty nearly every one is finally elim- inated excepting one man or one woman — that one being yourself. It is probable, however, that no natural line of cleavage will ever be formed, and the sufifrage in accordance with past history will be extended rather than restricted. We certainly cannot draw literacy lines, because these would be of far less value than character lines. A business man who corrupts legislators but who is familiar with a wide range of literature, is less desirable as a voter than the fundamentally honest laborer who cannot write his name. The educated Indian agent who sends in false vouchers and through political skill obtains high position in state affairs, is less trustworthy perhaps as a voter than the defrauded Indian who refuses to take part in trickery which is beneath his dignity. We tolerate wrong conditions until they reach a certain point and then change all at once. When a capitalist gives to a political party half a million dollars for campaign pur- poses, we may assume if we care to do so, that his purpose is quite patriotic and innocent; but the active organization becomes much like the personal property of that man. We then, seeing the danger, arrange for publicity in this country — and this is the hopeful feature in America at present. In England, great secret campaign funds are given in exchange for titles and for the purchase of peerages. It is a relic of the struggle which belonged to Feudal days, when men were 390 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS given the same rewards for conquest in open fighting, the only difiference being, that at present a higher intelligence arranges secretly and stealthily to overthrow adversaries (in the particular instance in which the funds are secretly given). The destructive effect of campaign funds is lost when libera- tion of their potential occurs in the open air. When it occurs deep down in public affairs, the disorder which follows results in moral decadence. While off shooting one day with a high official of a famous trust, our conversation turned to the subject of various "ex- posures" that were being published at that time. He said that instead of their having any influence in bringing about higher moral standards in business, they had the directly opposite effect, and so many small men had picked up ideas of craft that it was almost impossible to do business at times. The reason why so many had failed to take up this phase of business previously, was because they did not know how, — not because of larger standards of propriety held by the smaller men. My friend said further that when a business man was known to be of the exceptionally honorable type, little complaint about trust methods was heard from him as a rule. He was very likely to be taken up and placed in high position. Men of that sort were too valuable to be crushed. It is probably necessary under present conditions for us to maintain a very efficient Army and Navy, but to-morrow we must find ways for utilizing a volume of energy which is now locked up in our soldiers and sailors. Young men who had enlisted in a spirit of adventure have begged me piteously to exert my influence in aiding them to obtain honorable discharge from the Army. They say that the life of comparative indolence is intolerable. If they could only be given occupation they would not care how hard the work. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 391 Their natures crave and hunger for physical and mental exercise. A great restless body of men of this sort, restless because of their impatience over enforced indolence, and get- ting only partial solace out of mischief, can be put to valuable account when some military genius devises ways and means. The officers themselves carry a tremendous force of locked-up energy which could be expended in ways of high class utility without interference with special utility on their part in the grand profession of arms. Gifts to the caiise of peace hasten progress and degenera- tion, because under the influences of peace doubling roses develop rapidly. If five people are killed by the microbe during the course of warfare for every one killed by a missile, then we should expend five times as much money upon a National Board of Health as upon the Army and Navy. The only error in the above statement may lie in the actual proportionate cost of accomplishing the end. The plan to establish a National Board of Health as a department of the Federal Government meets with determined opposition on the part of organized boards of representatives of cults, fads and various-isms, with money supplied most freely by the patent medicine men. This harmful opposing organization calls itself a National League for Medical Free- dom and its ostensible object is to fight a national health board bill advanced by what is called the "Doctors' Trust." The League with unlimited resources behind it, has estab- lished offices in different cities. Its ammunition consists in money, lectures, and literature. The Journal of the American Medical Association has compiled pamphlets relating to the officers of the League, showing that officers of the League are associated with those patent medicine concerns which have yielded enormous returns to their owners. They have shrewdly 392 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS placed the loved word "freedom" against the hated word "trust" and a gullible public acts from habit-thought in response. Literature bearing upon this point may be obtained by any one upon application to the Editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association in Chicago. A national department of health would deal only with the practical affairs of public health, quarantine, water supply, and large questions of that sort. Its purpose to coordinate existing bureaus of health, in order to receive public sanction, may be attended to more expeditiously and effectively by organization. A national department of health would not and could not interfere with any school or system of medicine. Regulation of the practice of medicine is state function, with which the Federal Government has nothing to do. The National League for Medical Freedom represents organized quackery, and it is dangerous because of the ill-gotten money which is ready for purposes of influencing legislation. America is not as yet prepared to take in the territory of alien peoples. So long as bribery and improper use of money inhere in methods for getting some men into the Senate, and so long as favoritism is shown in taxation, our moral base is not sufficiently secure for allowing us to extend any arm carrying block and tackle for the purpose of lifting land. Several corporations have had their private Senate and Con- gress and an occasional arch-judge bold enough to render private decisions. Government thus has a tendency to become a struggle between competing private corporations. Such methods belong to a nation which is still far too crude for taking lead among the nations in which nature would naturally place confidence. She cannot as yet say to the United States, "O. K. ! Go ahead!" The business man understands this perfectly. When he learns that men in his employ have ob- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 393 tained positions through favoritism or bribery, he does not call them into the office and say, "Now that you have gained my confidence, go ahead and apply your methods to my busi- ness !" He says rather, "Now that I have lost confidence in you, run off !" Men of the sort whom the business man would ask to leave his employ still play too large a part in our governmental affairs to allow us to build a character abutment which is sufficiently stable for bearing the stress of lifting blocks of alien peoples and placing their land in our structure. The politician mistakes his policy for the people's policy. So long as the president of any country is obliged for political purposes to sign "pork barrel" Hcenses for theft, when politicians are interested in useless river and harbor improvements, the rulers of "corrupt alien peoples" will look upon us with too much suspicion. They will not be easily amenable to our government. We are reaching higher standards nevertheless all of the while, and we are on a higher plane to-day than at any time in past history, on the whole. One of my dear old college chums has recently held up five statesmen through the aid of a New York detec- tive who was sent to his state for the purpose of investigating the matter of the election of a state Senator. Five legislators were shortly afterward arrested with fifty thousand dollars in marked bills in their possession and they are now in the penitentiary. Had they conferred with me in advance I could have informed them that a man of the type of my friend would do precisely this sort of thing, in attempts at clearing the way for honorable politics of the sort which will prevail by the latter part of the present century. We may not be able to obviate all sales of statesmen by having a direct vote for Sena- tors, because malanimus of any genus is very pervasive and follows the law of diffusion like a gas. It is only when we have advanced in civilization to the point of cultivating selected 394 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS stock types of pervasive bonanimus that our politics will gradually become translucent. Many of the statesmen who are salable began life with high ambitions and noble impulses, encouraged by good mothers and proud fathers. For awhile they enjoyed the satisfaction which came from the plaudits of their old friends and supporters, until they were caught in the wheels of established machinery of low pressure engines. Their mothers and fathers were not quite good enough, or at least not astute enough to train them for long vision. From time to time there is a widespread arousing of land hunger which leads the mob to desire expansion of our terri- torial limits and the taking in of alien people who cannot be readily assimilated. Wise men at Washington know that such a movement would lead us to repeat the history of Rome, which weakened itself by expansion (in order to take in alien people) before the foundations of the central government had become sufficiently strong in justice and in high character generally. Rome began to expand most at the very time when character foundations in the central government were begin- ning to weaken. To-morrow, when we have civil courts entirely free from corruption, higher courts entirely free from the effects of "influence," and men placed in public position not because of their appetite for jobs but because of their selection from civil service lists or by responsible societies of their peers, then we may more safely begin to take in alien peoples. Com- petition between politicians of a country in which decomposi- tion of character has not advanced far, and politicians of a country in which decomposition of character is far advanced, must follow a natural law. Both groups of poHticians will compromise upon a mean level of character. A mean-level stress between our politicians and the politicians of certain alien countries at the present time would endanger our abut- ments. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 395 Not so many years ago, political economists taught that wealth came from the ground basically, but they had to include water with its fish under the definition of ground, which liquefies a simple definition somewhat. When chemists cap- tured elements out of the air and transformed them into property, we were obliged to add air as well as water to "the ground," but it was held by many that actual production was limited to these sources. Later, efforts were made to reason out a belief that the expenditure of brains and the use of machinery "produced." This was also true. In order to make a fair start we must really go still farther back, to a con- sideration of the three physical entities which form this planet and everything that is developed from its kinds of elements. We may then keep in mind the idea of continuity of all things in nature. A meteor containing four tons of iron lands upon a man's farm. The four tons of iron are worth, let us say, one hundred dollars. Did that very substantial property come from our planet? No! Therefore, we must go still farther back and observe that property really began with primal com- binations of ether energy and matter. Any effort on the part of man "produces," when it results in useful combinations of the physical entities or when it brings out for the use of man combinations which are already formed. The farmer "pro- duces" by forcing combinations of the entities in the form of a bushel of wheat, through his effort at furnishing conditions of cultivation. The fisherman also "produces" when he gets a nice fat twenty-pound lake trout into his boat. Both efforts must be classified under the head of production. Confusion results from attempting to draw arbitrary lines. A certain rural debating society is said to have broken up in disorder after trying to settle the question as to whether diggin' clams was fishin' or farmin'. Agriculture, inventing, mining, stock- raising, manufacturing, fishing, and expenditure of brain cell 396 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS energy in general, all "produce" when they result in making useful combinations of the three physical entities, or when they make available for use any combinations of the three physical entities already formed. Economists often speak of the great waste of organic matter which is carried to the rivers. On final consideration this is found not to be a waste. The colloid material which holds particles of earth in combination at such specific gravity that it floats all the way down the Mississippi River to the sea, is broken up by the salt of the Gulf of Mexico. This colloid material then furnishes food for bacteria, which are eaten by infusoria, which are eaten by molluscs, which are eaten by fish, which are eaten by man, so that the forest products really get back to man again. They may not get back to man in good economic proportion, but so far as the principle is concerned they are not wasted. To-morrow we may find the roadsides lined with beautiful trees, furnishing shade and at the same time yielding fruits and nuts by the ton for the public. At the present time millions of useless trees now line the roadsides. If they were to be replaced by fruit and nut trees the average yield could be at least a dollar's worth per year per tree (making our estimate so low that no one may object). Every citizen who "causes" one such tree to grow becomes a producer. Such an advance is not practicable as yet because we have developed only to the trick-bear stage, and the bears would fight over, and destroy such public roadside trees. The one who designs the best lines for a yacht is after all not so useful to the world as the man who finds a way for making use of the pteropods which swim under that yacht. Thousands of tons of valuable food supply are now going to waste every year because the need for such a food supply TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 397 has not influenced our thought habits as yet. The man who sails a winning race over the tons of pteropods that are down below is not to be compared in usefulness with the man who will invent a way for disposing of prejudice and putting this food on the market. Kingsley in his "Water Babies" has one little story about the people who were so snug and comfortable that they had no incentive to work. This introduces the problem of the snug. The workless son is an anergist. If a father has made fame or fortune he is a variant. Nature then has a tendency to bring about a corrective influence in the way of maintaining a balance. If a son is workless it represents nothing more than nature's effort at maintaining a balance. The father who has been a benefactor of civilization becomes in the same moment a menace to civilization when he brings up workless sons. The anergist and the anarchist represent two extreme types of social disintegrating influences. Both are commonly sufferers from toxic influences. The father of an anergist or of an anarchist may not be in any way blamable. He is usually to be pitied rather than blamed. The reason why the father was a variant of note was because of his approaching the exhibition period of cultural limitation. The workless son represents familiar limitation of protoplasmic allotment. That in fact may stand as a definition of anergy. The reason why England is at the present time so rapidly going the road to Rome, whither all roads lead, is because of the proportion of anergists in families of great power, with large allotment of protoplasmic energy originally. The problem of the snug is to become one of the greatest problems of to-morrow, but the line of release for this potential will be along paths of natural science. Almost any one who is brought face to face with nature problems will immediately 398 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS find dissatisfaction enough to furnish an incentive for work. There is no line of free release for potential of the snug in the overfilled trades and professions, and the problem has insidiously become one of the most important in every civilized nation to-day. The socialists and other uneasy people will continue to make progress and to carry forward plans of evolu- tion, because they are largely at work. The snug, on the other hand, finding no incentive to work in industrial occupations, in the trades and professions, immediately remove an enormous potential out of circulation and lock it up. This is one of nature's ways for preserving balance among its nations, until the chosen nation has copper wire enough for carrying a full current of power. In the monistic unity state nature will turn on the current of power from the snug. Their locked up potential can be liberated in the field of natural science when the proper time arrives. All individuals entering that field must at once find themselves in a state of healthy unrest and dissatisfaction, and the sculptor will some day have a vision of the gentleman of leisure rampant, with his face turned toward research work in natural science. To-morrow some of the snug unoccupied people who have nothing to do excepting to be useful, might form a society for making permanent records of conditions and events. At the present time practically all of our records are upon paper, and since the introduction of wood pulp, very poor paper at that. (Papers, parchment, and other organic material can probably be preserved indefinitely in vacuum receptacles, but they could not be kept for practical reference purposes in this way) . Mat- ters of vast importance relating to the present state of affairs on earth will be practically all lost to the people of one thou- sand years from now. A society for permanent records could make use of thin sheets of bronze or other metal that is practi- cally indestructible, and these might be filed away in every TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 399 city, or at Washington, in a building especially constructed for the purpose. Some of the metals could be rolled into such thin sheets as to take up no more space than would be taken up by parchment, and if attention were really given to the matter we could probably have metal sheets no thicker than sheets of ordinary paper. The problem of the snug has not as yet been taken up syste- matically by the economists, but it is quite as important as the problem of the other unemployed. If one wishes to begin a study of the question of the un- employed from its very needle point, he must begin with the fact of nature having given man the gregarious habit. Blame nature alone for the unemployed — no one else is to be blamed. We see still further just what nature means with this plan. She means to eliminate the unfit — cruelly if you please, but that is incidental to the plan. The best equipped will survive longest, others will go into the bonfire earlier. The gregarious habit belongs in nature's plans for keeping population checked, as well as for developing the best. If there is anything clearer than nature's plan as thus revealed, I cannot realize it. For some reason nature has preferred not to let men observe this plan during the past centuries. She did not even let men know the world was round until yesterday. She has played a three card monte game with the three physical entities. It may be said that the working man does not own railroad stock — but why not? One of the carpenters in my employ figured out that the money which he had lost through strike and unnecessary loss of time during a period of fifteen years would have allowed him to purchase several railroad bonds. There would be few strikes if the labor market were not over- supplied. The labor market will always be oversupplied until we fully realize the significance of the gregarious habit that was given us by nature for a double purpose. Overcrowding 400 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS will be prevented to-morrow when we modify this plan of nature by controlling the gregarious instinct, and set idle men at producing in the field. Intensive cultivation of land by a sufficient number of people would stop practically all of the strikes on earth. Shall strikes be stopped? Not yet! They are necessary instruments of the working man under present conditions. Strikes will be completely avoided only when the chosen race comes. That is nature's plan as clearly as any handwriting that ever appeared on any wall. In our day, at the present time, we must have strikes and unions for assisting the capitalist, who himself is struggling quite as hard as the working man in efforts at adjusting himself to changing condi- tions. The capitalist would unwittingly introduce intolerable hardships were it not for unions of the desirable sort which point out his errors. The man who gets the most fun out of the world is the one who sees through nature's game, and laughs at the humorless ones who play it with long faces. They tell of a mill workman who brought suit for damages against his employer because of an injury to his foot. It seems that the whistle blew for dinner while he was carrying a very heavy bar of iron and this injury was the result. There was no contributory negligence for he had not been warned. We have a story in compensation however of the ambitious work- man who was brought to trial by his union for working sixteen hours a day. He exonerated himself by explaining that he belonged to two unions. Occasion requires my advertising for a man and wife to care for the farmhouse and garden, on salary. A great heap of letters has come in response to my advertisement in three news- papers, and four-fifths of the responses have come from one of the three newspapers, — showing its advertising value. One man offering his services calls himself a "manager" and writes TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 401 nothing about his wife. I know all about these men who call themselves managers before being asked to take any such position. His wife would probably do most of the work. An- other letter begins with the personal pronoun, which is used sixteen times on three small pages, and the writer forgets to mention his wife. A third man states that he had a farm, made a failure of it, and would like to try mine. The next man asks me to call upon him at my convenience, says nothing about his wife, and suggests that the earlier I call the better it will please him. Here is a letter from a man who "guaran- tees to please me." (He does not know me as yet). A pathetic letter states that the writer has formerly received large pay, but his health is not good, he cannot work hard, but his wife can do all farm chores and is worth so much that he hopes I can take both of them on the basis of the value which he places upon his wife. In the next letter the applicant devotes so much space to explaining that he has no bad habits, that one begins to question if he has any good ones. He has the good taste at any rate to remember his wife, and to state that she is useful. Here is a note written by the wife herself, business-like and to the point, with details of what she and her husband can do. One correspondent says that if the farm is not too far away, and if it suits him on trial, he will take it. Three letters from men with foreign names describe very well their capabilities, and devote space to a respectful description of their wives. Between the lines of these three letters there is unquestionably expressed a wish to render service. The expression is couched in terms which leave one in no doubt about European training for such a position as I have to offer being better than American training. A nobleman in straits wrote to ask for a position as superin- tendent on my farm, and stated that he must humble himself and go to work. Now who could wish to employ a man 402 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS approaching work in that spirit? Humility is not an asset on my farm. What could I do with his humility were I to hire it from him by the month? — and artificial humility at that ! He asks for the position of superintendent. That would allow him to sit on the fence and watch men who were really at work. I like to employ a man who thinks he has succeeded in an ambition when finding work with me. The only solu- tion of the impecunious nobleman question is an institution for training them to become producers. Their training has been in the opposite direction, and when not in a safe financial position, they are extremely unhappy. Remittance men who take up farms and orchards in the West usually make a failure because of lack of training. They get in their crops and trees, send home for money, and then go off to gamble or enjoy sports of various kinds, while bugs manage the orchards in their absence. Lord if they could work like the bugs ! The remittance man who cannot make a living will not dig in the ditch "because of pride." Real pride would manifest itself in not allowing some one else to support him. He is a beggar in fact. His pride stopped short of full development, like a bract on the base of a leaf. In 1913, Professor A. L. Gesell of Yale University, pub- lished in The American Magazine an eugenic chart and psycho- logical study of one thousand individuals comprising a village of 220 families in the Middle- West. After a description of all the vicious, and feeble-minded variants from the mean type in this village, he makes the encouraging deduction that "Heredity actually tends to conserve the normal even more than the abnormal." This is precisely in line with my own ideas which are based upon principles of biology, but the article of Professor Gesell is extremely valuable for purposes of permanent study and reference. Incidentally, I might remark that houses in every city block might be mapped like those of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 403 Professor Gesell's western village. This would facilitate the work of yellow journal reporters when, in the course of prog- ress, work in the newspaper office has become more systemati- cally arranged. Acts of incendiarism for instance might be made a feature of the Tuesday edition, and some special type of villany for each day of the week. Readers could then look forward to their choice in reading and order copies in advance. With city blocks mapped as to houses, like the Gesell village, the Monday murder editor would simply ask the staff of reporters to report during a given week upon news from the people in houses Nos. 3, 16, 43 and 60, in Section 2 of Map B., keeping always in mind the leading idea of showing what the world is coming to. The Thursday thirst editor, or the Satur- day satyr editor, would lay out the work for each week systematically, with assignment to reporters for material which would be concentrated in the respective edition for which each editor was responsible. One of my good friends, a man of many millions, says after looking up his ancestry that he has been the first one of his family in three hundred years to amass a fortune. Now in his eightieth year he gives himself little praise for financial success and finds no honor or glory in being a millionaire. He says that success is simply incidental to certain lines of occupa- tion which may be quite accidentally taken up. I do not quite agree with him on that point. He needed to be a genius in order to hold his grip on each new round of the rope ladder while he was ascending. He says that a parent who accumu- lates a fortune and dangles it before his children commits a crime, and that extreme poverty is a priceless inheritance. That is the honest opinion of my beloved old friend who knows peculiarly well what hfe is talking about. An acquisitive genius however is always doomed to make a fortune regard- less of his degree of intelligence. 404 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS The man who has acquired millions is like the man who has secured a moose. He is under no obligations to divide the meat. The public says that he should divide it up, and points out that it is only through the help of organized society that he has been enabled to obtain his millions. On the other hand, the man who has secured a moose could not have done so excepting for the help of nature, in giving him hunter's skill. He is under no obligation to cut up the meat and throw part of it around in the woods, thus dividing with the microbes and weasels in order to repay his debt to nature. The capitalist who takes advantage of small competitors is no more cruel than a bluefish in the act of swallowing a herring. According to nature's law bluefish will continue to swallow herrings. A man of many millions who gives largely to educational institutions, and for easing the ways of the world, really causes more rapid doubling of the beautiful roses, and earlier deca- dence. He simply hastens what would occur in due time any- way. It is a very serious question. He is under obligations to no one for the way in which he is to expend his millions. He may keep them all, or not, as he wishes. He has merely played a game and won. If he found graft to be universal in his line of business he had a right to play that card to the limit, teaching the other fellows a lesson, and taking pay for his trouble. If he introduced the feature of graft as an inno- vation, he was a thief. The best single disposition of an endowment fund it seems to me is in furnishing conditions of growth for young people. Money which sets other people at useful work is a small cap which fires a large charge of powder. Before getting experience and knowledge of affairs, I imagined that a magnate could put his hand into his pocket at any time and take out four hundred dollars for any purpose. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 405 On closer association with magnates, I found they occupied that position because of order and system which interfered with their having any loose end dollars to spare. Their order and system extended to every detail of expenditure, even to small pocket money. Some of my friends put aside large and definite sums of money for charity and education every year, and they employ men on salary to look after such expenditure. If the men in charge do not manage wisely or at least very carefully, the large amount set aside is exhausted before the end of the year, and the magnate may not be able to take an- other thousand dollars out of his pocket for charity and educa- tion again in that year without considerable difficulty. Big business is simply work with big units and is necessary for progress. Most Americans are not afraid of big units, but of the evil that may go with them. There is quite as much craft and quite as much dishonesty among men who work with little units. As a matter of fact, big business accom- plishes more for science and for humanity than is done by little units. The big unit man when making large benefaction along educational lines, makes for greatest efficiency. His larger humanity replaces the little humanity of the shop which could not give largely, even though the income profits from labor were to be evenly divided. Great combinations of capital need not be feared. Other combinations will be made against them just as rapidly as the people observe the necessity for such combinations. It is a matter of natural evolution. The Sherman anti-trust law will probably not escape repeal finally, because it is an artificial expedient for halting natural evolution. It serves its purpose as one of the forces and takes its place in natural evolution, but as an artificial expedient cannot be expected to remain. The word "success" should stand in relation to utility of wealth rather than in relation to mere accumulation of wealth, 4o6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS and it does so stand in some communities in all parts of the civilized world to-day. Socialists and capitalists among my personal friends have one trait in common. The men of both sets are peculiarly inclined to hold to v^^hat they already possess instead of sharing with others. The exceptions form perhaps twenty per cent, on rough estimate, and these exceptions are about equally divided between socialists and capitalists. In discussing socialist versus capitalist questions the main requirement is to be good natured about it. One may be as intense and earnest as a red squirrel but not serious and super- cilious as a camel, no matter which side of the question he may represent. Neither side can ever be right, excepting in relation to special compromise, and then only relati^'ely and temporarily right, because mutation belongs to human institutions quite as much as it belongs to organic structures. Human institutions are dependent upon organic structure and they are inseparable from each other in questions of mutation as in other questions. Socialism argues that capital should become the property of the State. That means it would come under the control of politicians. History of the past will be history of to-morrow in relation to politicians, because we are dealing with a biologic question of struggle between different types of men. The abstract politician is a good fellow and the abstract socialist is not a good fellow. The politician wishes to obtain power for the purpose of bestowing its benefits among companions of whom he approves in his own circle. The socialist, on the other hand, wishes to remove power from capitalists of whom he does not approve, and who are not in his own circle. The politician's method is positive in its nature, so far as it goes. The socialist's method is negative in its nature, so far as it is permitted. One reason why the character of Boston is so different from its reputation is, because its character is in the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 407 hands of politicians and its reputation lies in the presence of men who are representative of all that is best in human intel- lectual achievement. This sort of mixture is a phenomenon which is characteristic of human society, but is not clearly understood as belonging to a biologic question of struggle for existence between different types of individuals. The French- man could not understand the American mixed drink. Said he : "You put in ze viskey to make him strong, you put in ze water to make him veak, you put in ze lemon to make him sour, and you put in ze sugar to make him sweet. Zen you say, 'Here's to you,' and drink it yourself." Human society is quite as delicious as a mixed drink, and when the idealist politician or the idealist socialist says "Here's to you," he means here's to himself. Various socialistic experiments have been tried in colony adventures. After a while the colonists were found to be engaged in practising individualism and capitalism, for the reason that human nature will not kindly subside for the pur- pose of adapting itself to a theory. The colonies of socialists fail because they do not produce enough, and the reason why they do not produce enough is because of jealousy, envy, and fear, — the fear of each member that he may do more than his share of the work. The Socialists like to speak of the conspiracy of organized capital. They ask if such conspiracy is not sufificiently das- tardly to incur odium, and if the conspirators — their hands stained with the life blood of man's ambition, happiness, and liberty, should be accorded nothing but honor or respecta- bility. Now, these words sound ringingly full of meaning, but they make me laugh, because they are the very words which are used between magnates of organized capital against each other. The only difference is this, — the capitalists em- ploy such terms at their directors' meetings, where they are 4o8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS heard by a limited audience, while the socialists use them in the presence of audiences of the public. Did not almost every one of these terrible conspirators of organized capital begin Hfe as a poor boy himself? Did he not run all sorts of risk of getting the life blood of his ambition, happiness, and liberty, spread all over the hands of other folks? To be sure he did. There is no difference between the capitalist and the laboring man, — no arbitrary line to be drawn between them- — excepting as we set up extreme examples and use them as subjects for debate. One reason why the trust member does not complain so loudly as the socialist is because he is more habituated to injury and to defeat. He is the football player who gets his ribs broken and keeps right on playing. The complainer is the feeble spectator who cries because the ball has struck him. The trust member is having the fight of his life all the time. He makes terrible mistakes and retrieves them as gracefully as he can. The earnestness of the fight between employer and employed is due to the fact that each feels he is working for a principle. Socialism has a right to correct the wrongs imposed by capital. Not only that, but it will largely do so. Socialists, like everything else in nature fill a useful place as one of the forces which help to right wrongs. Capital also is trying just as hard to right wrongs. The two organized forces are simply playing an interesting game with each other. H they laugh over their respective hurts all is well. The scowler is the only loser. The labor union man and the capitalist simply represent that desirable unrest which is found in all nature. Both belong to privileged classes to be sure, but about equally balanced in power. Nature chooses people who are to be set up on one side of a TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 409 line and called capitalists. She then sets up a lot of people on the other side of the line and calls them wage earners. Nature then says to each side, "Now go to work and play a fair game. Keep an eye on your own weak points and on the strong points of the other side." How could one have a decent game of checkers all on one side of the board? How can we have a social game without arbitrarily putting capitalists on one side of the line and wage earners on the other? Both have equal value. Both are entitled to win an even number of points, and they do just that in the end. Socialists have an idea in general that a man of vast affairs is safe and comfortable in his might. But the magnate himself knows that with all of his Napoleonic movements he may in an unguarded moment get to St. Helena. We say that socialists and capitalists occupy different sides of an arbitrarily drawn line for purposes of playing the game — but let us look at the matter in another way for a moment. In the shop we note the brutality of a senior workman toward a junior workman of whom he is jealous. We observe the brutality of a superintendent toward them both, and the brutality of a general manager toward this superintendent. Brutality of the magnate of a trust toward the brutal general manager is equalled only by the brutality of magnates toward each other. It will be observed by one who, like a doctor, is in contact with all classes of people, that no line of demarca- tion exists excepting as it is drawn arbitrarily for purposes of argument. The socialist treats symptoms only, when he says that a lower cost of living must be at the expense of interest dividends on capital. If he will be patient and wait for our monistic unity bank, he will find that the basic cause of the disease will be treated. The interest dividend will be increased net because the aggregate capital at the disposal of the producer will allow 4IO TO-MORROW'S TOPICS him to earn more capital, to earn dividends for himself. The percentage may or may not be lowered, but the total amount of dividend money will be larger. The "exploited masses" include the entire mass of people, because capitalists exploit each other, and the working men exploit each other. Any one who has worked in a shop knows the latter fact, and the capitalist knows that it is true for his respective part. Wipe out railroad stock and you wipe out opportunity for the masses who own stock to get their share in the earnings. Nothing can be more purely socialistic than distribution of earnings of a well-managed railroad by people who have used it as their instrument by purchasing its securities. The socialist has much to say about people who do not own instruments being exploited by the ones who do. A well-managed railroad in the monistic unity state will be the instrument of the prole- tariat quite as well as of the capitalist. In every shop, in every corporation, in every trust, we hear individuals complain that someone else is always after them. It is nature's plan for one man always to be after another in this way. It is the duty of the employee who complains, to defeat the other employee if he can. If he feels like killing him, let him kill through his own superiority in cleverness and usefulness to the corporation. For purposes of argument, the socialists and the capitalists are necessary as separate entities, and it would be a sorry day for either one of them if the other were to be banished. Karl Marx's method of grouping data is very seductive, and unless one is a strong and clear reasoner there is danger of falling into his conclusions. By employing the monistic unity key for showing the way to brotherhood of man, one will find the theories of Karl Marx failing to establish any real lines of class difference. Olin's Johnny Green in "Socialism" can be made a totally different character throughout his entire life TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 411 if we merely start him off as a boy who has made a careful study of fish. His knowledge is then recognized as of value by many people, and his social position all proceeds from a basis of the little boy's knowledge, knowledge being the real social catalyzer, — rather than dollars. The study of fish if placed at the beginning of Johnny Green's career would change his career quite as thoroughly as the misplacing of a comma by the typesetter changed the familiar quotation, "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." He accidentally set the comma after the word "rough." The fish if placed in Johnny Green's way properly, would change his whole life course, and if he happened to be snubbed he would not know it. A natural scientist cannot well be snubbed for he does not realize the nature of any such intent. For a snubbing or an insult two parties are invariably required; — one who is capable of giving, and one who is capable of receiving. If either one of the parties is "absent" a snub cannot be given. Had the fundamental feature in Johnny Green's prospects been stated in terms of social de- velopment from the standpoint of knowledge possessed, in- stead of from Marx's standpoint of money possessed, we could show him as being deprived of very little of life's satisfactions. The character as employed by Olin is valuable for nothing beyond purposes of arousing discontent. The dollar rather than knowledge is skilfully employed as a basis for exchange of ideas, and that shows a false conception of social needs. Socialism often represents hurt pride. It is the same in all countries — in America feeling is directed against the trusts, in Russia against politics by men who have no chance to graft. In England where there are few trusts, the feeling is against landowners. At any rate socialism is a method for seeking expression of personality. The same thing goes on all of the 412 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS while in nature throughout the entire range of organic and inorganic life. One either laughs or he feels injured in ac- cordance with his personal inner nature, and not because of external circumstances — relating to his beliefs. It really makes little difference whether a man is a socialist or a cap- italist so long as he can laugh and work. This particular feature of laughing while at work brings up the question of trade unions. They have served an useful and natural purpose by placing hours and wages upon a good basis of compromise with employers, and with the public which pays all wages in the end. On the other hand a bad moral influence has been inseparable from the union system. There has been a disregard of contracts with employers, in the spirit of the Mohammedan who considers no contract with an infidel to be binding. Another immoral feature of unions is the employ- ment of brutal mass force in acts of violence against persons and property, in the spirit of the Jesuit, who believes that an end justifies the means. A bad economic feature of unions is the establishment of a uniform wage which does not en- courage development of skill, and which in consequence makes the best men work grudgingly in the spirit of the slave. The best union men are not happy while at work. Inferior men obtain a sort of mean satisfaction of triumph over men whom they know to be superior to themselves. Another bad economic feature of unions is the limited output. This brings an arbitrary force to bear against the natural law of evolution, in the spirit of the gods of poplar trees ordering the oak to produce only ten acorns per year, in order to give the poplar trees an even chance to compete with oaks. Too many good oaks would drive out too many inferior poplars if the output of oak seed were not limited by some arbitrary means in the power of the poplar oreads. Methods of unions are desirable to the extent to which they TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 413 make their members happier and more satisfied with conditions of Hfe in their daily work. That is the supreme test. The securing of a comfortable discontent which will insure con- structive evolution, and at the same time avoid destructive discontent belongs to the spirit of any institution which would thrive to-morrow. We must never forget to keep in mind the salary question in its relation to social agitators. Members of the Indolent Watchers of the Worker, for instance, employ leaders who would lose their incomes if the unemployed members were to find work. A business man said to me not long ago that he did not see what the world was coming to. Whenever he advertised for one man to fill some position there were perhaps one hundred applicants for the position. As a matter of fact this phenomenon represents nothing more than the waste of the maple tree in producing one hundred seeds from which only one tree is to grow. Every one of the remaining seeds would probably develop into a fine maple tree were it taken in charge by a gardener and given opportunity. Every one of the ninety-nine unsuccessful applicants for a position may be potent for development into an individual of great usefulness to the world, but nature is not yet ready to have such a pro- portion of people become highly useful. She introduces con- ditions of stress which will evolve one man capable of filHng the position and allow the others to seek still further for opportunities. Conditions have not been different in the past. They may not be different to-morrow because we are dealing with the history of struggle between organisms. The army of the unemployed will never be much greater nor much less as time goes on, so far as we may judge from past history or from the biologic idea. The problem of the unemployed is introduced through neg- 414 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS lect of the state to regulate nature's gregarious instinct as it applies to affairs of the state. The problem of the snug is equally due to neglect of the state to devise methods for liberating the locked up potential of people of leisure. Neglect shown by the state in its problems of the unemployed and of the snug is not to be taken in the sense of a fault. Nothing is fault in man or in state on last analysis. We have only a demonstration of nature's plan for holding progress in check while evolution gradually polishes up the various sides of questions evenly. Inconsistencies in the expressed views of statesmen may simply represent different periods of their good development. Place a Bryce and a Bryan together in a room for one day, and the one who is most successful in applying the Socratic method of questioning to the other will make the other inconsistent when he compares his morning expressions of opinion with his evening decisions relating to socialism or to capitalism, — whichever has been the subject for conver- sation. Socialism represents a state of mind rather than a mastery of principles. There are about as many different kinds of socialism to-day as there are places where different groups of discontented people get together and complain of social conditions. Almost everybody with good human sympathy, and no eagerness for stating its place in economic terms, will driftily call himself a socialist. Power, however, will always go to power under the funda- mental laws of attraction. We shall always have the sub- stantial group of people who possess a mean average of human capabilities making up the chief population, because of that law of nature which is always seeking to maintain an exemplar among varieties of plants and of animals. The plant must TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 415 do a great deal of work in order to maintain a mean position ; — so must man. Any animal or plant must work or decay, progressing or declining according to a sort of Newtonian potential, a potential varying inversely as the distance from work. Constant re-arrangement must take place in the rela- tions between capital and labor, but the ordinary laboring man to-day in America, who would have been a serf in the days of Louis the Fourteenth, can have more comfort in his daily life than was possible for even the courtiers of that monarch. All civilizations were founded upon human slavery originally. The socialist asks, "Who is to blame for fewer marriages? Who compels woman to take work which should belong to men ?" We may answer the question readily from a monistic unity standpoint. The one to be blamed is not the one toward whom the socialist points a warning finger. The one to be blamed is the one who tells youthful folks to leave the farm — to follow the gregarious instinct and go to the city. There young people will join the ranks of the unemployed and will be used as waste material for the bonfire if they lack skill or power in adaptation. If they really have skill and power in adaptation their progeny will soon become doubling roses and will go to the bonfire at a somewhat later date. It is simply a question of dates when an individual or his progeny shall go into the bonfire. The struggle of the workingman to get a fair share of the profits from his labor is similar to the struggle of one cor- poration in a trust trying to get its fair share of the profits of the trust. The difference between a workingman in a corporation and a corporation in a trust is only in the degree and character of skill employed by each respectively. Outside of the industries we find the same process going on in the professions. Honest doctors who have spent two years at a medical college after a simple high school education sometimes 41 6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS think it must be corrupt method that gives a more profitable practice to the man who has spent six years in medical studies after having finished an university course of four years. The pubHc may not know that both men are equally honest, equally sincere, equally ambitious, equally engaged in struggle. All men look at the struggle in the same way when it applies to themselves. I go shooting and fishing with men whose incomes range from a few hundred dollars per year to more than a million dollars per year, and in our conversations in camp where men freely say what is in their minds, I get to know the viewpoints of men of all classes. The good player in the game of life enjoys the struggle, no matter what his income, pro- vided that he can keep his physical condition in good standing with Captain Nature. Socialism makes comparatively slow progress for the same reason that great industries make slow progress. There is a political side. Whenever a group of men gets together for any purpose politics appears because it is inherent in human nature. There are several schools of socialism more or less antagonistic to each other, and in each school some one man or group of men desires to secure position and emoluments, precisely as among industrial corporations. One of the newer schools of socialism includes the idea that demands be made for increase in wages of fifteen per cent, on the part of employees. Waiting a while after getting this increase, fifteen per cent, more is to be asked for. The idea is to force the wage scale up to one hundred per cent., by which time the method will have capitalists out of the field, and the workingmen are then to take possession of the machinery of production. How about a corporation which does not even make the primary fifteen per cent, over and above its cost of maintenance ? Many large concerns are quite satisfied to clear five per cent, a year on their invested capital, above cost of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 417 maintenance and cost of adaptation to growth. Are the men who are to take possession of the machinery of production competent managers for that machinery? Managers in charge of large corporations have had to meet other corpora- tions in competition of the sharpest kind, and it is only through long training and development of actual genius in one or more men connected with a corporation that it is enabled to make sure of five per cent, annual net profit, after years of experience with a given plant. There is usually one genius at the head of any successful corporation. Others in high position in the same corporation believe they can manage the business better, yet when the genius dies the whole business may go to pot. If this occurs with selected and trained men in charge, would the employees be sure to show better genius ? The sociahsts, in order to maintain a hold on popular sym- pathy which will insure public approval of their really proper movements, must always have a care not to secure a "strangle hold" on production, for in that case the public becomes the under-dog in the fight. Over-production is normal and neces- sary if there is to be progress or evolution through selection of the fittest. Fulness of production is a basic remedy always for the high cost of living. An attempt to shorten hours of labor to a point where all idle men and women will be called into employment, forces the public to support these idle men and women. The public has to pay all bills in the end. It has to pay the cost of decreased efficiency in the mill. Public utilities are in the same class with factories in this regard. Imagine, for instance, a situation in which discipline of rail- ways by the unions prevailed. This would mean the taking of power from trained men, and giving it to men who want power, without the bother of training for that degree of effi- ciency which would win positions on a basis of merit and efficiency. 4i8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS If socialists limit over-production when assuming control, they may at once throw a large number of their own members out of work, and these men would have to engage in some other occupation or remain unemployed. If in the end the works should have to be given over to the state, politicians would then become supreme in the management (if we are to judge from past history), — and that is the most unfortunate acci- dent that can happen to an enterprise. The moment that profits of a large corporation become excessive, competitors interfere without waiting for socialists to correct the "wrong." There will always be a stimulating struggle between master and toiler, just as there will always be a stimulating struggle between masters and between tribes. It is always the same natural struggle, and reduced to its simple terms means that one man will always use his skill and intelligence over another for making good use of the law of survival of the fittest. We would have to eliminate jealousy and all other human traits before it could be possible to have a socialistic community not manifesting the very same traits as those which are now dis- played among capitalists. The socialistic movement never- theless has great value, and is one of the natural correctives which nature provides for abusjss. Even in the church actual management may be in the hands of politicians and great rascals, who have the superior intelligence to know where to place faithful and devout men for best efficiency in carrying out idealistic theories of the church. In the days of Aristotle, demagogues used the poor against the rich as they do to-day. There is danger to the republic in proportion to the degree to which they can turn the minds of the people from impersonal law to lawless personality. As rapidly as socialists become capitalists, it will be neces- sary for still larger bodies of socialists to develop in order to maintain the balance of argument according to nature's plan. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 419 The Christians have superstition regarding things above, and the socialists have superstition regarding things below. The same mysticism is expressed in an appeal to Heaven and in an appeal to some unseen power believed to exist beneath the surface of affairs. The prayer aloft, and the cry "go deeper down" both refer to mysticism. I call the socialists "mystic deepers" because when con- fronted by the plain facts they are always crying that "We must go deeper." It is in evidence at many of their meetings. In this country the socialist says when jumping to his feet to speak upon any question, "We must go deeper." In Germany Herr Bebel habitually said, "Wir muessen zum Grunde gehen." This is in fact nothing but an appeal to our innate love for mystery. We like to respond to almost anything which is suggestive of a mysterious force, economic or social, even when the causes for a given condition may be plainly before our eyes, — uninteresting in their obviousness. Socialism was the first step upward from anarchy. Syn- dicalism was the next step in order, but neither the anarchist, socialist, nor syndicalist has been able to decide whether in any community men should be paid in proportion to their needs, or in relation to their productive capacity. Such a vital question is so important that one might imagine the formation of a fourth group to encompass this particular point. That would leave us only one step removed from capitalism, because each man would have his individual views about the proportion required for his individual needs, — and about the character of his own productive capacity. The socialists have much to say about the state proceeding from aristocracy to democracy under their influence, but this would not be in accordance with past history. History does not teach us to anticipate aristocracy and democracy alter- nating, without an intervening period of barbarism, although 420 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS as a matter of fact that does appear to be the trend of the times in America. Concerning socialism and capitaHsm. The fear and anger of one group toward the other are simply the ordinary fear and anger which we observe as occurring between two political parties, or between almost any two groups of people holding different points of view. Their respective emotions are not in proportion to the facts in the case, but rather in accordance with the methods of statement of fact by orators. A trust which is forced to sell its products at the smallest margin of profit in order to keep competitors out of the field gives the consumer the benefit, and thus we already have socialism, although it is not commonly understood as such by the people, or stated in that way by politicians. One of the directors of the Standard Oil Company told me that if he could make a quarter of a cent profit per gallon on refined oil year after year, he would be getting rich as fast as he wanted to, but if the profits were raised to one cent per gallon it would be difficult for him to do business, because competitors would crowd him. The margin of profit by a trust may not be large. One of the leaders of the beef trust told me that he had not made any profit on beef proper during the entire year, and whatever profit had come to his firm had been upon by- products that year. If socialism was the first step away from anarchy toward capitalism, syndicalism appears to be the next step beyond socialism toward capitalism. It offers to furnish capitalism for the multitude, as a certain magnificent hotel in New York furnishes exclusiveness for the masses. From anarchy through socialism and syndicalism to capitalism, is a movement parallel to the stages from barbarism to democracy and to aristocracy in a cultural period. The tenets of anarchy were superseded by the Utopian com- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 421 munism. Next came the step toward scientific socialism — then the step toward syndicalism, the principle of which is industrial solidarity (amalgamation of all unions) and its idea the unifi- cation of labor in one great confederation. The essence of syndicalism is the control by the workers themselves, intellectual or manual, of the conditions of their own work. (Capitahsm seeks to do the same thing). Their theory holds that the worker is a slave of capitalism because the latter owns the tools (the ordinary capitalist in truth is slave of the trust magnate who owns directing position over the tools) . Syndicalism proposes that the control of technical processes now exercised by the capitalist should pass into various groups of organized workers, and the product which is now the property of the capitalists would become under syndicalism the property of the community. This is prac- tically what really happens at present. Various capitalists distribute property just as well as groups of other workers would distribute it, no matter what they called themselves. One group of syndicalists owning the tools and means for production of a certain commodity will naturally come into competition with another similar group. Just how syndicalism differs then from capitalism is not quite clear to my mind. If one believes there would be no conflict between groups of workers in relation to disposition of property, then he has not as yet learned that a hole exists in the bottom of every system. This hole lets in human nature and sinks all proposi- tions which do not take that into ballast estimates. Machinery that has thrown thousands of men out of work might be wholly beneficial were the unemployed men to engage in productive agriculture. The fact of their remaining in the cities when out of work is not to be placed to the account of fault on the part of machinery, but to pedagogical fault. Men are not as yet trained in versatility. If a mechanic out of work 422 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS had foreseen the possibihty of lack of employment, and had bought for ten dollars an acre of ground upon which he raised nut trees, the income from this acre might be quite as large as the income which he had derived during his best year of employment as a mechanic. Machinery that has taken women from the loom and spindle of our grandmothers has given them much time to spare. If unfilled lives have been turned to bridge whist and the turkey trot in consequence, the resulting waste is pedagogical in the nature of its fault. Any woman with time to spare who will study the life-cycle of one of the fungi which attack potatoes might find herself emerging into an atmosphere of life-joy which she little believed to exist in the world. From that time on she would find a shortage of spare time for even needful recreation. Subsidiary business contributory to a large business is often done outside of the main factory. Hemp is given to employees to take home, material for boxes is given out for piece work after hours at home. Nature in the same way gives us material and sets us at piece work here on earth. The fact that man really knows how to establish systematic maintenance of efficiency is evidenced by his methods of test- ing the endurance of machinery. He makes elaborate and satisfactory tests of machinery in accordance with ordinary business custom before accepting the machinery, or putting it to work, and then instructs the engineer not to run it beyond its strength. This would seem to indicate that nature speaking through man holds a machine to be a more valuable unit than man himself. The fallacy appears when we note that endur- ance of a machine can be tested by rather exact methods, while the endurance of any given man varies in character from day to day, although it may be measured arbitrarily within its limitations. The principle relating to maintenance of effi- ciency remains the same when applied to machinery or to men. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 423 Students of economics have sometimes come to this country to study the American working man. They do not find the American working man, but the foreign working man not yet adapted to our conditions. They do not even find the real anarchist in Berkman and Edelson who are nothing but young- sters intoxicated by finding themselves given notoriety in the newspapers. I have watched the development of an agitator on several occasions. He or she has commonly been of Amer- ican birth but foreign parentage. There was loss of that control given by parental tradition, and lack of environment giving correct knowledge of American conditions excepting in congested districts. Some voluble youngster who had been impressed by alpha-privative literature would make a fervent speech from the tail end of a wagon on some occasion of special unrest. His or her picture would then go into the newspapers. One who is unfamiliar with these people fails to realize the tremendous effect upon the vanity of an obscure youth when he receives heroic newspaper attention. He is promptly engaged upon salary by other agitators and finds immediate opportunity for making a living and gaining fame out of "free speech." Travellers cannot generalize if they stay long enough, and get facts enough. When they first come to this country it is easy to write about it, but if they stay long enough, they stop generalizing. If socialism has made little progress toward establishment of the wage system, or collective ownership of the means of production, it has at least forced labor questions upon the law makers; questions that do not relate so much to politics or finance as they do to humanitarian matters. The healthfulness of tenements, cost of living, and the principles which underlie under-payment, are practical matters which get the attention of later day socialists. Formerly these men engaged in profit- 424 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS less oratory over the form of the state, but finding it inflexible they are taking up questions of the malleable functions of the state and the improvement of administrative processes. Co- operation instead of coercion represents the spirit of both socialism and capitalism more and more, but this is only one phase of the world movement in evolution. Co-operation in a large way will occur first between sap- channel nations. Nations which now coerce one another will undergo evolution to the point of establishing sap channels through which finance will flow under the influence of the positive and negative pressures of debt and credit. Seriatim, the Marxians, Utopians, and revolutionary groups of various sorts having entered politics and really accomplished some- thing, will form contributory smaller sap channels, thus joining in the only form of co-operation which can be perennially effective. The early attempts of the socialists at destroying the form of the state were nothing more than methods of early effective warfare between states which destroyed each other. It was the great powers only which were enabled to destroy the state forms of each other, but the lesser powers consisting of socialistic groups have succeeded in changing function and administration within the state. Socialists and capitalists represent equally active and intelligent elements in the com- munity, and these two nicely balanced forces working upon alternating levers serve to pump to the surface vast quantities of crude ideas which are then subjected to a refining process by the exemplar public. People may sometimes further the cause of good evolution while working from untenable hypotheses, if they are vigorous enough. Take, for instance, the hypothesis that women who are militant suffragettes will agree among themselves as to what they want. That is an untenable hypothesis, because militancy as such without relation to any question of votes TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 425 was a primary actuating motive belonging to the natures of these women. Consider the idea of socialists demanding greater division of the proceeds of labor, and then being satis- fied among themselves concerning the way in which proceeds are to be divided. That also is an untenable hypothesis. Yet the militant suffragette and the socialist are both factors in good evolution because of their vigor in keeping questions tossed up to a point where the public may view them from all sides. Strikes will fail about one half of the time and will succeed about one half of the time, because they represent on the whole the entire human question, about one half of the people being usually right on any subject at one time, and the other half wrong. The balance of nature is maintained. We do not fear the demonstration of great power so long as we feel that such power is under control. There was public fear of the railroads, with their great aggregations of capital and ruthless methods, until recently. This fear was expressed in a sort of general and destructive antipathy, but now that the railroads have been obliged to bend the knee, legislators and courts at once show signs of becoming generous and treating the railroads as kindly as one pets a magnificent wild horse that he has roped. Whenever socialism threatens to become unduly powerful, nature, as usual, will bring into bearing the laws of balance. Well-ordered methods of socialists which are developed in the course of fighting genuine wrongs of capitalism will be effec- tive up to the point where capitalism, — one of nature's best institutions — is in actual danger. That is, — socialists will work coordinately while fighting a common foe. A state of tension will develop in proportion as socialists agree upon orderly and wise methods. Dissatisfied cliques of socialists will then win 426 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS at times against more orderly groups of socialists. They will employ effectively the bad methods in which all have become newly skilled and schooled, but which are discarded by orderly socialists. We have the same rules exemplified in Balkania united against Turkey. Balkania, which was temporarily united against a common foe, is now engaged once more in the same internal struggles as of old, and more destructively at present because of new schooling in methods which were learned in the war with Turkey. An automatic safety play of nature's — dissatisfaction — will lead some of the socialists into the practice of sabotage, because a primitive tendency belonging to organic nature leads every man to eliminate all others excepting himself (when engaged in competition). Sabotage is particularly expressive of the individual who is atavistic, dissatisfied with good socialism, and who returns to primitive emotions. He represents individualism in one extreme quite as much as a successful magnate represents individualism in the other ex- treme. When atavistic sabotage and syndicalism become destructive to the effective organization of socialism, and loosen the foundations of its pillars, Industrious Wreckers of the Weak then step in and make it necessary for socialism to begin all over again. This is due to lack of foresight and continuity on the part of socialism ; — no fault, mind you, but only that lack of foresight and continuity which belongs also to capitalism and to every other human institution during the course of its development, which can never become static and complete. When socialism called spirits from the vasty deep, they came. Finding that socialists cannot agree upon the real nature of their ills or upon the remedies to be applied for symptomatic treatment, these spirits from the vasty deep, having been summoned for action, become active in the field nearest at hand. They attack organizations which they under- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 427 stand more intimately than they understand capitaHsm, — capitaHsm being more or less removed from the field of their experience. Capitalism is not an entity, but a convenient abstraction, extending in all degrees from the million magnate to the dollar delver who has saved up thirty pieces of silver beyond current expenses. Socialism is not an entity, but a convenient abstrac- tion like capitalism, extending in all degrees from the coal heaver vi'ho bothers his boss, to the overseer who bothers the manager, up to wealthy trust members who likewise bother their own boss, the magnate. Finding that neither capitalism nor socialism is an entity, we then look for an actual active entity which is causing all the annoyance and find it in dissatis- faction. Dissatisfaction is the only entity in the game. It is nature's invaluable agent in the forwarding of evolution. Neither capitalism nor socialism can win, because nature has no desire to end her fine game of solitaire — evolution. Social- ism and capitalism will both lose their extreme features and will gradually come to occupy a better balanced mean position. Nature lays her plans in large ways. A noted financier going to jail because of his methods complains of unfairness because others who took the same risks managed to escape. We must remember the lesson of the thunder cloud which gradually accumulates electricity little by little until the ten- sion becomes so great that a sudden discharge takes place, — thunder then roars and reverberates. All becomes quiet for a while, but tension is gradually increasing in other clouds, and then in time there will be the thunder of an exposure again. This is nature's plan, allowing tension to accumulate up to certain degrees. When some banker is suddenly brought to bay for improper procedures, he very often complains bitterly that he is being punished for the same things which are being done by others 428 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS all about him and that he has been singled out. The principle, however, is similar to the collection of electric tension, which increases little by little until the limit is reached, and then we have the flash of lightning toward some one object. The exemplar public stands a little impropriety on the part of one man, more on the part of another, still more on the part of another, until finally tension gets to the point where the public flash occurs, and whoever stands in the way has to take the consequences of the cumulation of misdeed. This seems to be nature's way for restoring equilibrium in banking as in elec- tricity. The same question of tension applies to increase of knowl- edge in its relation to sudden discovery. One man adds a little to knowledge along certain lines, another a little more, until finally some one man adds the final fact which causes a flash, and we all see the light. Not all credit belongs to the discoverer — ^he has only added the last factor of force which releases the sum total of force along that line of observation. We put in jail the man who takes a dollar out of the other man's pocket, but do not jail the man who builds a railroad to parallel another for the purpose of taking away the profits of the first railroad. Theft, therefore, is entirely a matter of method chosen by each one of the two individuals. The difiference between revenge and retaliation may be only the difiference between war and sport. A magnate in this country tells Congress to put up the tarifif on something he is manufacturing. Another magnate in Germany tells the Reichstag to do the same thing on some other commodity, in retaliation. This is not done necessarily in a revengeful spirit, but simply as a sporty retaliation between players in the game of commerce. If we note the contented faces of diplomatists who conduct retaliations of this sort, we see nothing of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 429 revenge in their muscles of expression. The pubhc has to pay the expenses of the playing of a big commercial game for tariff stakes. I was fishing one day with a friend who did not seem to be enjoying the beautiful day. I asked him what was on his mind. His reply was that he was disturbed because certain people considered him to be mean on account of a suit against another man for fifty thousand dollars, and he asked me what I would do under the circumstances. A broker had gone to him and begged for the privilege of investing fifty thousand dollars in margins on wheat, as there was great opportunity for making money in speculation just then. My friend did not care to speculate in that way, but he happened to know just how wheat was going because he was one of the men directing the movement, although the broker did not know that. In order to be kind to the broker, and allow him to make a commission, my friend handed him a check for fifty thousand dollars, with written instructions how to invest it in margins. The broker, instead of following the written instructions of the one who knew, went out and invested the money in wheat according to his own judgment, disregarding the written instructions. He lost. My friend then felt that it was proper to sue the broker for the fifty thousand dollars that had been lost, but the broker made a great outcry, saying that he would be ruined. Here was a case of a sort that occurs often enough, in which a man sets out to be kind to another, and is then held to be cruel through no fault of his own. The great expense to society which is engendered in local- ities in which there is no minimum wage is to be reckoned in terms of the microbe which causes illness because the differ- ence between wages and the cost of healthful living must always be paid by somebody. The indirect payment is heavy when people suffer from the need for proper food and cloth- 430 TO-AIORROW'S TOPICS ing, and from lack of properly hygienic methods of living which make them vulnerable to the microbes of illness. The microbic morbidity, inefficiency and crime, which result from the lowering of physical resistance, are not directly injurious to the employer, but indirectly to the community in which employer and employee both live. All must suffer the conse- quences. On the other hand, the establishment of a minimum wage prevents the earning of anything at all by those who cannot make themselves valuable to the extent of the amount of the wage. The ones who cannot work at all must be sup- ported by others, thereby reducing the common fund to a level which would be reached by the ordinary working out of the law of supply and demand, without any interference at all on the part of any special wage question. Furthermore, the causes which lead to microbic morbidity, inefficiency and crime, remain active with or without the minimum wage. The cost to society remains the same, if we assume that in the presence of a minimum wage workers and unemployed remain in the same community. That is the point. Settlement of the question from the microbic standpoint would consist in the establishment of a carefully estimated living wage, and then sending the non-workers back to the land, where they would act as producers from the soil, at the same time oxidizing those toxins which unoxidized lead to illness, inefficiency and crime. Theoretically, the principle is clear; practically, society is not ready to apply it as yet. To-morrow there will be no minimum wage, but a minimum number of people who are allowed by the state to remain in a locality as non-producers. When the farmer is at ease in a full dress suit, and when the city man on the farm knows how to get the proper pro- portion of lime into the soil for petting the good bacteria of his orchard, we shall be approaching perfection. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 431 What are we going to do with a self-conscious country boy who walks on his heels, talks loudly, eats with his elbows out, chews gum in public and puts his feet on the furniture, but who has first rate stuff for development ? Send him to a college where he will have city surroundings. The city boy, on the other hand, already familiar with polite usages, will develop best in a college in the country, particularly in a course in agriculture. The country boy of to-morrow who is to come to the city for the purpose of learning the ways of cultured people, or of securing a position, will be taught not to chew gum nor to smoke cigarettes excepting behind a locked door. He will be taught also to be careful about the sort of newspaper which he may happen to be caught with unexpectedly. Men judge instinctively of the tastes of a young man by the sort of current literature which he chooses for his reading. Many a young man has had his prospects for advancement injured because his tastes were portrayed by the kind of literature which he happened to have in his hand. The employer notices whether the applicant carries a copy of the Literary Digest or a copy of a toxic scratcher. The country boy will not need to develop the manners of a Chesterfield. Such manners, like the pretension of religion, often stand for an attempt at hiding characteristics which the owner does not wish to have displayed, but which he realizes cannot be eradicated from his nature. Chesterfield himself practised dissimulation until it became an art with him. He was a very selfish man by nature, of the calculating, insincere, and contemptuous sort. The opposite character of Walpole with his rude ways was the more respected character of the two. The two contemporary characters represented extremes, and the mean position of having easily good manners — not painfully good — is the one that arouses least suspicion, because it belongs to the more genuine nature. 432 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Every boy who plans to devote himself to country life as a farmer should have plenty of travelling before settling down to his local work; otherwise his life will be cramped and pinched and he will have a lot of funny ideas. It is absurd to say that he cannot afford to travel. One of my friends of youthful days washed dishes on a steamer in order to get across the Atlantic, and managed to travel for more than a year in various countries by picking up errands which paid his small living expenses. He had more than a year of travel- ling, a general freedom from obligations, and returned with a dollar and seventeen cents in his pocket. It is difficult for a young man to develop to his full capacity in a small town unless he has travelled, because he is constantly being measured by the yard-sticks of people of small ideas. He cannot possible escape from the influence of suggestion that goes with the menace of their measuring. Under enlarged systems of education boys will be pried out of small holes from which their only hopeful outlook is upward toward Heaven, like looking out of a well. The tendency to measure a large man with one length of the yard-stick in the smaller towns is exemplified when the neighbors exclaim with aghastness, "What! Johnson nomi- nated for the governorship ! Why, good Lord — ^he can never be elected. Why, I have known him since he was a boy!" The fact of their having known him since he was a boy would apparently disqualify any man for holding a high position in fife. There is much imagery in the villages at the present time, but people need to have great impersonal plans brought under their reasoning and judgment. At the present day in small towns people of naturally large ideas are apt to be constantly engaged in small personal war- fare, like the feudists in sparsely settled localities. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 433 The vendetta among mountaineers is only a barbarous form of the sort of warfare that is going on under legal restrictions in most of the villages and small towns. At present, in the Southern mountains in this country, the vendetta is a natural method for limiting population, although nature depends more upon the hook worm and the microbes of various infective diseases. When these mountain people are ready to raise one hundred dollars' worth of nuts per acre every year (as they easily can do) on every mountain acre on which trees of any sort will live, and when subsistence is no longer precarious for a sparse population, a very fine type of people will later develop and will increase. Nature stands ready to allow progress, where now ignorance and the vendetta and the microbe thrive in company, awaiting the time when some teacher will show these people how to become prosperous. Social questions cannot be changed much by revolution. There are violent changes in spots, but methods change through quiet adjustment, all of the while toward ideals, with- out our conscious knowledge. Under the present organization of society people have been divided into three classes, the preacher, the soldier, and the laborer. In the great final state under monistic unity, I like to think that preacher, soldier and laborer -will all be one. Every pensioner will then have a deeper sympathetic interest in himself when any two-thirds of himself becomes especially interested in the other third. Emerson says in relation to the European system oi pension- ing poets and artists and playwrights, "No more corrupt system ever existed, iniquitous both to the receiver and to the giver, than the plan of giving pensions to those who have done a worthy deed and are yet able to work. May America never adopt this respectable form of mendicancy!" America not 434 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS only has adopted it in principle in relation to soldiers, but to a degree of practice representing rapid decline at the hands of our poHticians. When Garfield was president thirty-five years ago, the pension bill was for thirty-nine million dollars. Garfield although himself a soldier was ashamed of it, but our own Congress of 191 1 voted one hundred and fifty-six million dollars for pensions, and recently an addition of seventy-five millions more has been added. The real soldiers who were really injured and in need of government help, form only a small proportion of the ones who receive this money, and one would expect them to arise indignantly in protest against being classified among the goats. A great mass of pensioners is made up of mendicants who are voters or families of voters, and the greatest injury they ever received was the injury to their self-respect when they became pension- ers. Deserters and men who were never even headed toward the battlefield figure frequently in the list of applicants. Many of them would have gone to the poor-house at town expense were it not for the shrewdness of politicians who have influ- ence and who obtain pensions for paupers, thus saving expense to the town. Thousands who were never really soldiers receive pensions "because it is good politics" and lessens the amount of money to be collected for purchasing votes by rnak- ing voters who are pretty sure to be "on the right side." Almost any man who begins to suffer infirmities from old age and who has any claim to being a soldier can find politicians who will help him toward getting a pension if he votes right. When men come to me for a written expression of opinion that their present rheumatism was caused by sleeping in the open air when they were twenty-five years of age (in the army), they have one stereotyped expression, "Now make that state- ment good and strong." When I demur they say, "Why, Dr. X. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 435 has written this letter," which is commonly produced and which leads me to blush for my profession. They usually add that an opinion of this sort coming from me would be held in respect at Washington. It is for that very reason that the opinion is not given. The pension system is a great socialistic plan. We take from one to give to another, but not frankly when pensions are given for services not rendered. There is dishonest sub- terfuge on the part of politicians who know they are dishonest, and the recipient is pauperized because he is conscious of the fact that it is money received for services not rendered. Both lose. Many presidents, painfully conscientious, have not dared to veto pension bills which they well knew must smirch thou- sands of people in political corruption. I do not know if the vitality of America is sufficient to allow us to grow above such decomposing influence, but if not we shall decline accordingly, and the pragmaphile with judgment based upon history knows that another nation will supplant us at a comparatively early day. The United States may decline more rapidly if anything than the older civilizations because our population now in- cludes so many decadent elements which are shipped to us from other countries, because immigration of species leads to unstable hybrid forms in the progeny of crosses, and because there is something in the atmosphere which incites to strenuous methods of living. This results in deranged metabolic proc- esses and over-sensitized protoplasm, the products of which are entailed to progeny. There is material for a tremendous uplift allowing our United States of America to lead among nations on the earth provided it is in nature's plan to have systematic social organization leading toward that result. This pragmaphile idea simply faces facts, and recognizes the pres- ence of our enormous slumbering power. CHAPTER VI So far as I can perceive, the monistic unity state will have to retain the same general form of organization as we have at present, but its officers will guide a warp of eugenics through the woof, and will explain to people the real features of the causes for dissension, misconception and waste of many kinds. A vast degree of comfort for society will go with such ex- planation. A husband and wife who are under friction stress may go to a Forensic jildge of the monistic unity state, who will explain to them why they wrangle, — after the members of the tribune (bacteriologist, psychologist and sociologist) have presented their data to the judge. This may often be done to-day by the doctor. I have said many times to a man, half in fun, "Now, after this operation is performed toxic in- fluences will be lessened, and you and your wife will get on bet- ter together." Let us take a case of fibroid degeneration of the appendix for instance. Such patients commonly go to many doctors, and receive about as many opinions : — consequently they become advanced in complications which may be of small or of large importance. I usually say to the patient, "There is no need for having the appendix removed because of any dan- ger from that source, but with it removed you will get on better with your wife (or your husband) because the irritation which it causes disturbs digestive function, and the resulting toxins cause nervous instability." When I say this to a hus- band or to a wife, they almost always laugh, at the moment; 436 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 437 then they proceed to give each other a knowing look that is comical but at the same time truly pathetic, indicating the heartfelt desire to really get on well together. They sometimes tell me later that what I said proved to be quite true. Fibroid degeneration of the appendix makes only one kind of a case among many that are readily discoverable by the physician. When the proper time comes the monistic unity physician or the domestic court judge will explain to unhappy couples about many physical reasons for their suffering together — and in what way they may anticipate relief. We shall soon be developing this subject rapidly. One already begins to observe what weight of knowledge stands ready to be carried into a brand new field of sociology. The conscientious suffering of incompatible people who are thrown together is wasteful. Many thousands of cases will be removed from the divorce courts of to-morrow by the treatment which goes with atten- tion to fibroid appendices, pyloric adhesions and sagging colons, or by fixing loose kidneys, or correcting eye strain or dental defects. In fact, one hardly knows where to begin when enumerating a list of disturbances which lead to interference with function of the digestive apparatus, allowing microbes to take charge and to sensitize the protoplasm of individuals in such a way that they become irritating to each other. In our present crude stage of civilization treatment is commonly aimed at the psyche in these cases and seldom at the physi- ology, upon which the psyche depends. Perhaps to-morrow we shall ask for a radiograph of the abdominal viscera of every man who is anarchistic and of every woman who cannot keep servants in the house. Now this is only one of the many things of which the physician of to-morrow will take note, but clinical histories of cases of anarchism or of inability to keep servants in the house will 438 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS show very frequently that the individual is a victim of splanchnic neurasthenia. Scolding directed toward servants promptly results in lessen- ing their efficiency through the effects of a negative note. The scolder is therefore the loser. No doubt many employees need to be reprimanded, and some of them deserve to be guillotined, but in order to obtain the best efficiency, the best way is not to approach them with a negative statement, but with a posi- tive question — How about this that we are to have done? — How about that which you are capable of doing well? Many a man who is a disturbing element in the social world will be found to have physical defects to which the level of the colon or the character of his tooth roots gives a clue. Many a gifted woman who is in a state of unrest, and who makes life something of questionable value for those around her, will be enabled to live more happily and to be a more charming member of society, when physical defects are discovered and remedied by the methods which we already have at hand. The general tendency toward incompatibility of temperament will increase, however, and one hundred years from now it will be extremely difficult for any two people to live har- moniously together, unless in the meantime, — and this quite probably — the medical profession will learn how to exercise good control over the various microbes of incompatibility. The doctors can at least explain to people why there is so much incompatibility, and that will give the individual an opportunity to aim his will at a visible target. It will allow sweet reason- ableness and higher control to be exercised on a basis of scientific appreciation of the conditions causing disturbance. At the present time, the man who is poked by a microbe pokes out blindly in response, without regard for whom he is hitting. He is conscious only of the feeling that he is impelled to poke at something or somebody. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 439 A feeling of pity will take the place of mutual recrimina- tion when people come to appreciate the cruelty of the microbe in making good women and men incompatible, notwithstanding an earnest heartfelt desire, a Christian endeavor in determina- tion to overcome their incompatibility of temperament. There is compensation for the effects of crossness and irritability of a husband or wife, when toxic processes are exerting insidious influence. A woman of true feminine nature incidentally extends the natural maternal instinct to include her husband in its range. Her love for him may lead to really painful solicitude and fear that something may happen to him. In occasional dreams by day and by night she pictures some possible accident which may cause her to long for "the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still." Many a little shudder does she have at the mere passing thought of calamity. Should he become cross and irritable, however, it relieves her from the exquisite pain of her soul-born fear-thoughts concerning his welfare. She is guided thereafter chiefly by a sense of duty in the con- ducting of their joint affairs and is relieved from painful fears. A husband who is engrossed in complications of the day's labor is heartened almost to inspiration at the thought of a pair of loving arms about his neck when the day's work is done. What cares he for the trials and complications that beset him on every side for ten hours if he can but look for- ward to hearing a soft and sympathetic voice at the end of the day ? If there are children, he pictures the dear little faces that are eagerly awaiting a real event — the home coming of papa. In the midst of cares he hears little footsteps on the stairs running to greet him merrily. The fear that something might happen to his charges, and the constant planning for their happiness and joy, really take up so much of his thoughts that his incisive treatment of business questions is not so 440 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS clear and not so free in its sweep as it becomes when the home is shaded by toxic influences, and Carpender forms the Lar of the home. Freedom from the pain of soHcitude and tender- ness is not worth what such freedom costs, but when taking stock after a wreck there is some degree of comfort in the negative condition of freedom from such pain, and this must not be overlooked as a real compensation of value for the unlucky ones. I would not give the idea that microbic influences furnish primary exciting cause for incompatibility so often as they contribute an intensifying feature. There are cases in which even a search for the microbe would be ridiculous, because superficial and salient factors of incompatibility are more closely at hand. Take for example the Vee family. Mrs. Vee has a sensitive nature, refined tastes and an artistic tempera- ment which finds expression in music and in dainty water color painting. She is always ready to tremble in response to an unkind word. Mice make tracks in the collection of dust behind brie a brae on the mantel piece in the house, her window curtains are not very evenly arranged, and her ideas on the subject of housekeeping are unpublished. Nevertheless, her poetic nature yearns for love, and she sometimes falls asleep with her head on the window sill watching for her husband to come home at night, because in her nature there are four large L's — Loyalty, Lonesomeness, and Longing for Love. When Vee masculine does arrive it is often enough in a quarrelsome mood if things have not gone well enough with him during the day. He gives no more than desultory attention to her art work at any time, and laughs at her unpractical ideas. Vee is a man of rather prominent position in affairs, not squeamish about business methods. His brutality toward Mrs. Vee is not intentional, and represents nothing more than a vulgarity of thoughtlessness. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 441 One need not look particularly for any microbic influence in the case of the Cees, who live upon a college campus sur- rounded by the hallowed atmosphere of learning. Mrs. Cee is a competent businesslike housekeeper, who wears very low- heeled shoes. She is often chairman of various activities in town and upon the campus, and possesses respect enough for scholarship in the abstract when it does not strike too near home. In her household, however, where the immediate con- sequences of scholarship are more in evidence than its ultimate results, she looks upon the subject very much as she looks upon flies. When her knock is heard upon the study door and she promptly steps in, Professor Cee hurriedly places the mucilage brush in the ink well and sits up in an attitude of strict military attention, because he has been trained to do that. At the mo- ment he was perhaps in a transport of rhapsody of philology, and on the very verge of placing a clipping from some author at the right point in his manuscript for verifying a theory about the influences which led to the disappearance of a certain weak Latin vowel. Mrs. Cee asks him to go at once to the store for two pounds of salt pork, a box of matches, and some postage stamps, and enjoins him not to forget about the stamps. He obeys automatically, and the trifold message will be carried intact, unless some fledgling paradigm flits across his path, tempting him to capture it and rear it to maturity. In that case the stamps at least will be forgotten and the remarks which are engendered at home in consequence will interrupt his train of consecutive thought for two and one half hours. Mrs. Cee explains to him that practical things are the only things of real consequence. She is censorious and dic- tatorial generally, having found that to be necessary "because people are so lacking." One day the professor put his wife's scissors between pages of his manuscript for a moment, for a mark. Two days later he came across them in the presence of 442 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS the class and exclaimed : "Oh ! Here they are, dearest !" Both the Vees and the Cees have unconsciously developed a certain mental habit. Instead of a habit of tenderness toward each other, it is one of contenderness. How did the Vees and the Cees ever come to marry in the first place? They probably met at some house-party or wedding, where Cupid was a guest, and the love psychosis gave to each one a lot of pictures of the land of marriage — because the God of Love is a dealer in mental pictures. They became interested in these pictures without asking for the context, and each one had his or her own picture of what he or she would do for the other, without regard for what the other wanted. If Mr. Vee had married Mrs. Cee and if Mrs. Vee had married Mr. Cee, the combina- tions would have furnished opera bouffe rather than tragedy for entertainment of the neighbors. Another instance of non-toxic inamenity comes to mind. One of my friends, a splendid manly fellow, became engaged to a young woman of culture and great personal worth. He had never smoked very much,— just enough to be sociable with a pipe or cigar, and to relax the banjo strings at the end of a day's tense work. She did not like the smell of tobacco, and persuaded him to give it up. Being an idealist, and wishing her fiance to be all perfection, she persuaded him also to give up alcohol in any form, although he never drank excepting to join in the moderate cheer of a table with his good old college crowd. Several members of the latter were not ap- proved of after his marriage, and word was soon passed about among them that some of his most ardent admirers were not quite acceptable at the home. He was an enthusiastic golf player, but his wife being unaccustomed to vigorous exercise excepting at the bargain counter, did not see any particular need for his deserting her, and reminded him that his wish to leave her alone was not very gallant. There was a thinly TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 443 veiled suggestion that certain old admirers would be very glad to entertain her in his absence. As an idealist who had always been surrounded by the comforts of civilized life, she had only one besetting trouble that constantly gnawed at her heart. That trouble was caused by "things as they are." Turn in whatever direction she would, the horrid incubus of "Things as They Are" met her on every side. Every high spirited man is proud in the belief that he has the qualities for making the very best husband who ever lived, and when his ideas are supplemented by helpful suggestion along the same line by a most interested party, it is not long before silver hairs begin to appear as a result of unrelieved ambition. In less than five years our old friend was living a life of duty and looking forward to another and better world as the only one offering any real hope for him. In this particular instance, knowing both parties well, I never perceived any feature that might be laid down to toxic influences. People who are brought up to having what they want are particularly disturbed when step- ping out into life on their own responsibility and coming into violent contact with things as they are. There is no need for looking for the mischievous microbe as prime malefactor in such cases as these, even though it may accidentally play a part. We are here dealing with two primal instincts, which may become exaggerated under toxic influences but are always present in normal folks anyway. Maternal instinct on the part of the wife and gallantry on the part of the husband are not understood as such by each individual when demonstrated by the other. The reason for that is because one of these instincts actuating one individual is out of the basic natural experience of the other. The husband would not understand out of experience why his wife wished to exert control over all of his movements and to keep him always in sight. The wife would not understand out of experience why 444 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS the husband complacently allowed her freedom to call him to account, unless his silence meant an inner consciousness of the correctness of her views. The psychologist and the neighbors are amused at what the most interested parties do not understand. In days of old the knights obtained credit for gallantry, because it was very showy in advance of their marriage. In these modern days there is a deeper and more civilized gallantry, which finds expression in the avoidance of anything that will hurt the woman. Women do not comprehend this any more than men comprehend the range of maternal instinct, and it introduces the negative influence of women seeking for political power, and of men becoming restive under removal of part of their duty func- tions. It is the old story of the troubles of people being largely brought about through their failure to distinguish between wisdom and unwisdom. It is unavoidable because individuals can judge only from their set of personal experi- ences, these experiences being far apart when based primarily upon maternal instinct and upon the protective instinct mani- fested in gallantry. Almost all troubles are brought upon folks by themselves alone. Get out that note book. Write down the names of the first ten troubled people who come into mind. Would you not know how to settle eight-tenths of their trouble? Indeed you would! Very well! They would know how to settle eight-tenths of your own trouble. When cases of marital inamenity are brought to me for set- tlement, I usually say to the wife: "Here is a phylactery. Your husband has some best friend among men, hasn't he? Well, now, you are to see in him what his best friend per- ceives." To the husband I say — "Take this phylactery. Your wife has some best friend among women. You are to find in her what that best friend has discovered." The almost invariable answer is — "That is all very well, but the best TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 445 friend does not know certain characteristics as intimately as I do." My answer is — "True enough, but the best friend values other characteristics and, giving them value, remains best friend in consequence. If this kind of choice brings happiness, and your own kind of choice brings unhappi- ness, choose the kind of choice which brings happiness. We are not long on earth, and in this world one, side of a question is about as strong as the other side of a question. The chair- man of a debating society knows that well enough. If he knew in advance which side would win, there would be no fun in debating societies." An instance of microbic marital inamenity is demonstrated by a very gentle and cultivated little woman, Mrs. X., about forty-five years of age, whom I have known for nearly twenty- five years. She is refined and attractive, of affectionate nature, and apparently one of the type who would live cosily and happily at home. She has a daughter of eighteen and a son of twenty, but Mrs. X. has lived apart from her husband for many years. Mr. X. is a splendid fellow, a man much admired by men, competent and capable in business, and of the type of mind which makes him very acceptable in polite circles. Many years ago the wife suffered from neuralgia of the coccyx and I removed that structure, but would not do it to-day with my present knowledge of coccydynia as a symptom of neurasthenia. It was not more than a year or so later that she had ovarian neuralgia, and I did not know better than to remove one of the ovaries. That would not be done by me in the case to-day. Later, there was a loose kidney, which I fixed. I might or might not do that particular operation to-day for her; it would depend upon the presence or absence of secondary complications. She Stiff er^d if l/tJimj headaches and was referred to an ophthalmol((>g(stvi,,whp;gaYfei hequdlijs.tijftctl relief. Here is one of the veryiocjfiijinfiffn reaves, itljat may -bfc 446 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS found among people who are not recognized as neurasthenic by the laity. Neighbors take little note of anything beyond mental features of an individual, without reference to physical defects. No matter how much is done for a man or woman of this sort, there is always the neurasthenic habit which leads to social complications. We cannot avoid all of the efifects of our chief inherent char- acteristics, because we are given at birth just one set of brain cells. The number of cells in the brain is constant excepting when one is dropped out as a result of some shock or accident of any sort. Mrs. X. could not fully avoid her attitude toward the world and things, because that depends primarily upon the shape of one's brain cells, very much as the ability to walk depends upon the shape of the muscles of an individual. This does not mean that training may not modify natural ten- dencies. Even such methods as that of Christian Science, New Thought, or Theosophy, may take the place of more definite and systematic training of the brain cells. The will is a product of brain cell action, and brain cell action is largely dependent upon the will; consequently, the two forces are retroactive and represent simply one phase of that struggle which is taking place everywhere in nature between opposing forces. The will when used for modifying brain cell action finds a parallel in the saw-mill, which is run by burning the slabs that have been sawed off through the assistance given by other burned slabs. Although a church member and a woman of distinctly Christian type, the precept and example furnished by the church have not sufficed to make the life of Mrs. X. satis- factory. Unconsciously she had chosen the negative form of statement when conversing with her husband. Her face seldom lighted up with the animation of enthusiasm, excepting when she was engaged in derogatory conversation about somebody TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 447 or 'something. We all turn naturally toward things which arouse our enthusiasm, and her constant tendency was to enjoy such arousing by the stimulus of irritation belonging to negative statement. There was always that unconscious critical attitude which seeks ideals and complains persistently over failure to make practical adjustment to real surroundings. So far as she could determine almost everything and every- body in the world was wrong, excepting two or three close friends, and even these were often wrong from her point of view. She was always complaining that she had no luck in this world and never had half a chance. This was her attitude in a way before marriage, but instead of her luck changing . she became An Old Man of the Sea and dragged two people down into misery instead of remaining miserable all alone. As a matter of fact, she had the luck of her life when marrying Mr. X. The world seemed distressingly complicated to her. In reality it should have been very simple. There was a strong man to give protection, to furnish ample means for comfort, and the social position of both was from the outset of a most substantial sort, although she rather systematically destroyed their social position. lam sure that she cried bitterly in her room all alone many times, longing for that love which she unconsciously held off at arm's length, and which was eager to go to her. The cruel microbe had her in its toils. She was one of those refined people who are marked by nature for elimination, having reached cultural limitations. The general tendency to blame these people is probably a response to our self -protective feeling, of primal origin. We do not recognize it as such in every-day affairs, and consequently express sentiments of blame. The case is rather one for pity and for generosity in judgment, for she was really ill, although no one knew it from the nineteenth century point of view. (To- morrow people will know.) 448 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Her husband is a man of the sort who would naturally make a pet of her and who would be devotedness itself, but her constant attitude is one which would finally exhaust him. He began to look old a few years after their marriage. Her voice though cultivated and Sympathetic, carries a whine, — that whine with which we doctors are all so familiar. Mr. X. having assumed the responsibility of marrying Mrs. X. con- tinued to protect and support her, while she continued to malign him with all the virulence of toxic dictation, together with that positiveness and conviction which belongs to mis- conception. One who is right is seldom dead sure of it, but one who has misconception from toxic dictation, is apt to be very sure that he is right. After some years of trying to live happily together (both of them tried hard) Mrs. X. and her husband decided to live apart, and he, moved by a desire for companionship, became friendly with a young woman who had been in his employ. This gave the wife something definite and tangible to show to her friends as explaining "his real nature," which she said other people did not understand. She alone knew what sort of man he was and other people were deceived. As a matter of fact, few 'of us men really blame him at all. We know so well that in this new companionship he sought that delicate feminine touch so necessary to the life of any busy man. There was nothing whatsoever of moral carelessness in the nature of Mr. X. ; in fact, his whole attitude and manner of life were in direct opposition to any such direction. It was really a matter of necessity with him, after what was undoubtedly a brave struggle on his part; but the wife could not understand. Because of his infinite patience, one never heard Mr. X. make complaint at any time, nor have I at any time heard Mrs. X. express herself excepting in terms of complaint, or in some subject which would quickly xcad to complaint. She believes herself to be generous and TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 449 unselfish, and her frequent thought is for the welfare of his soul, for which she prays. She has not obtained a divorce, believing that in the end she can bring him back to right think- ing and save him — a truly noble attitude. Mrs. X. does not realize that thousands of people would envy her the social position which she occupies. As she passes on the street with her dainty gown, the socialist is disturbed over advantages of the favored few. As she walks along with her son and daughter, hundreds of unmarried people turn longing glances towards her direction and cry out against a fate which has deprived them of such happiness. There is hardly any enjoyment or satisfaction in life that Mrs. X. and her husband might not have had, if both had been equally well physically. We cannot consider a case of this sort from the sociologic standpoint very well. It is not a matter for consideration by the moralist, not even by the psychologist ; it is purely a case in which medical "first-aid" is needed and medical help of that high class which belongs to the coming field of practice among physicians of to-morrow. Nearly every daily disturbance in marital infelicity begins from employment of the negative view and statement — the critical analysis in its destructive phase — and this brought about commonly by toxins which exert an insidious depressing influence. At the beginning of every "misunderstanding" we find negative expression as the inciting cause; and an extraneous consort who alienates the affection of husband or wife is necessarily an individual who uses the positive note — who understands its power and makes use of it accordingly. The negative note has an astringent efifect upon the spirit. It contracts and hardens the lines of thought. An individual may not be at fault; the word "blame" in many cases is not to be used. Having been born with defective glands which if normal would metabolize toxins, the individual 4SO TO-MORROW'S TOPICS unconsciously falls under the influence of unmetabolized toxins. The case of Mrs. X. may serve as an example for very many cases of marital unhappiness. Let us say that she had the neurasthenic tendency to destructive analysis, but during the days of youth, when her vitahty was at its best, the tendency to negative statement was not frequently mani- fested. She hved largely with her ideals and did not have to make serious adjustment to complicated reals. Having fallen in love, both she and Mr. X. came under the influence of the love psychosis, during which time ideals are more greatly magnified and rarely anything besides the positive note was sounded. The love psychosis may overcome temporarily the influence of depressing toxins. Marriage having taken place, and adjustment to reals on the part of both people being required, the tendency to destructive criticism inherent in the physical constitution of Mrs. X. exerted itself. Toxic im- pression when exerting a depressing influence has a tendency to inhibit the development of ideals. There is no arbitrary way for distinguishing between ideals and reals; but critical analysis in its destructive phase destroys whatever ideals are in process of construction, besides taking a morbid perspective toward reals. There will be more and more marital unhappi- ness, unless bacteriology and applied psychology come to the rescue, for the reason that there will be more and more loss of efficiency of the glands which protect against unmetabolized toxins, now that civilized people are on the downward physical slope so largely. The daughter of Mrs. X. is a very close companion of the mother, who tells me this daughter has "helped to share her burdens." She also is a neurasthenic and has already begun to use the negative form of expression in much of her conver- sation, so that even before marriage she is entering the vale of toxins, or, to use the expression of the days of superstition, TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 45 1 "the vale of tears." This beautiful and talented young woman is beginning to receive much attention from suitors, but her young life is sobered and her feelings toward men given wrong direction by the mother. She will probably not marry unless the prospective husband has financial resources in evi- dence. The mother will give a warning cluck whenever any other sort of suitor gets too near. This attitude will be based upon her "practical experience" with the world and a foresight which would guard against the distress of a later separation of wife and husband. Such a separation will likely enough come if the daughter does marry. The mother as an analyst will find that the daughter's husband is lacking in many things and will speak about it, and the daughter will suffer from the effect of enteric toxins. The daughter will cause much distress for two people while she lives, if she marries. She will not for a moment lose her faith in the happy world to come, but she might just as well have that world right here, had cruel nature not labeled her for splanchnic neurasthenia. Religion is her sole refuge and comfort in life. The son of Mrs. X. is a handsome and clever anergist, but represents recessive characteristics. Whenever his cenesthesia becomes painful through the temporary uprising of a lingering natural impulse to work, he quickly inhales a cigarette and knocks down the impulse. It is an extremely discomforting process, this occasional uprising of a latent desire to work, in the presence of protoplasm which can stand little stress. The son of Mrs. X. will probably marry, acting largely upon economic grounds. He will have an instinctive feeling of inability to make much of a fight for adjustment in the world among strong men, and will respond to an economic motive when making selection from among his numerous oppor- tunities which come through his talents and general attractive- ness. His marriage, however, will result in few or no children, 452 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS and the family will soon join the ranks of the Elims who are bent for the bonfire. Society need therefore have no more deep fear of the increase of an undue proportion of anergists than of increase of anarchists. The children of Mrs. X. are unconsciously being trained for unsuccessful Hfe adjustment, in addition to their inherited tendency to difficulties in such adjustment. Psychologic habits are purely biologic phenomena, but young people acquire many habit thoughts from their nearest teachers. These habit thoughts become more or less permanent in accordance with the receptivity of the individual. Distinctive mental qualities of an individual depend upon his mechanism of physiologic adjustment. A sagging colon, an over-stimulated thyroid gland, eye-strain, — all these exert their incidental influences upon the psychology of an individual. Character represents the sum total of responses which an individual makes to external impressions. External impressions include not only direct toxic influences, but also the results of other impressions to which toxic influence has made the individual vulnerable. The morbidly sensitized man discharges brain-cell energy unduly in response to so slight a cause as an irritating noise, and the reaction influences his mode of thought, as expressed for example in his particular analysis of a given social prob- lem. Education generally belongs primarily to biology and not to psychology, which latter plays a subsidiary role, and to-morrow in all our universities biologic psychology may largely take the place of historical sense and cultural mysticism. In the meantime, habit thoughts which are founded upon the nearest external impressions will unfit the mass of people for making very successful adjustment in life. Children like those of Mrs. X. are doomed to relative failure in life, not only because of their inherited physiologic tendency to the making of unsuccessful adjustment, but also TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 453 because of thought habits in their psychology which are the resuh of suggestion from the nearest teacher — the mother. The object of Mrs. X.'s call this morning (I had not seen her for a long time) was to determine if I could be of service for a dyspepsia from which she was suffering. She was referred to a consultant, who sends me an elaborate analysis of the stomach contents, and states that, "From the enclosed analysis you will note that Mrs. X. has a hyper-acidity sufficient to account for her gastric symptoms. The fluoroscope shows the stomach to be enlarged, the greater curvature extending two fingers' breadth below the umbilicus. I suggested an antacid diet, with exercise to strengthen the abdominal muscles, and gave her a powder containing belladona and alkalies. The belladona will probably lower the hyper-sensi- tiveness of the vagi." Now this is all very well. The treatment which the consultant outlines will probably be distinctly of value and she will be much benefited for awhile, but behind the case, far behind all that we uneducated doctors as yet have taken up for relieving this little woman from her distress, lies an inheritance of defective ductless glands. She is one of the victims of modern civilization, and one of the group of which nature is disposing, by means of a method which intro- duces endless cruelties — both social and physical. We can do a great deal for these cases, but the physician and the surgeon can only keep a hand on the wheel, guiding a frail craft with fairly good direction through an unhappy life to an end, after which Mrs. X. believes there will be a reward, because she has really tried so hard to be good. In her heart she is the noblest and bravest of women. There are many causes for domestic conflict, to be sure, in relation to which neither party is an odynecen. We may find two very widely different temperaments, the purely vital 454 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS temperament and the purely mental temperament, for instance, joined in conjugal relationship. Under these circumstances, even when both parties have good health, their respective view- points will be very different. Each individual, let us say, will be right one-half of the time and wrong one-half of the time from the viewpoint of the other. Nature in her efforts at maintaining a mean type is very apt to make people of opposite temperaments attractive to each other. We have overlooked' this little joke of nature's, excepting when disparity in actual physical size has attracted our attention because of its obvious- ness. After the period of love psychosis has passed and the stage for exercise of genuine human love has arrived, personal adjustment and understanding have to be made through wise and thoughtful employment of the intellectual set of faculties. The union becomes more perfect if conjugal partners have made a study of the principles of higher control. This study will belong to pedagogy of the monistic unity state. Up to the present time the matter of adaptation has been left largely to chance. Sociologists have treated the great subject of conjugal inamenity in quite as superficial a way as criticism has treated literature. This has not been due to fault or even to carelessness, but has simply represented incomplete develop- ment of social method. The joy and duty of development of the principles of conjugal amenity will be a feature of this present century. Materials will be taken from psychology, bacteriology, and from therapeutics. Sociologists at present refer to the effects of differences in age, race, religion, tastes, social station, sex viewpoints, personal characteristics, and established habits. They call particular attention to the effect of marriages of convenience, but this term should refer to all three of the primordial needs, instead of to the social and economic needs only. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 455 All of those factors which tend toward natural divergence of interest of two people after the love psychosis has passed, cause more or less emotional stress. Emotional stress, when prolonged, separates the strands of woven love. Continued emotional stress of any sort whatsoever leads directly toward the psychopathic states. A psychopathic state, having become estabHshed, constitutes chronic mental invalidism. Study of the symptomatology in any given case at this stage belongs to the psychologist, or alienist, and not to the well meaning sociologist nor to the courts of law. Judge Gemmill of the Court of Domestic Relations, of Chicago, has recently reported upon 3,699 cases that came up before him during the past twelve months. According to the analysis of statistics in this record of a year's work. Judge Gemmill gives a tabulated statement of the cases of domestic troubles : Liquor, 42 per cent. ; immorality, 14 per cent. ; disease, 13 per cent. ; ill temper, 11 per cent. ; wife's parents, 6 per cent. ; husband's parents, i per cent. ; married too young, 4 per cent. ; laziness, 3 per cent. ; miscellaneous, 6 per cent. According to the Court's record, reconciliations were brought about in 50 per cent, of the cases of separation that had come before it during the year. Such a court must have great value even when working with the present limited knowledge which is applied in classification of the cases of domestic trouble. If a psychologist, a physiologist and a bacteriologist were to be added to the staff of Judge Gemmill's court, it is probable that much more satisfactory analysis would be made of cases in which the apparent cause for dissension was liquor, disease, ill temper and laziness. Many of these cases might be traced back to the irritation caused by actual physical ills. Many such ills are curable. The Court of Domestic Relations, im- portant as it now is, would have its potency for good greatly increased could the proportion of direct microbe influences 4S6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS be stated in tabulated reports. Reports now relate to the psychic side alone, but the psychic side is always physiologic or pathologic. Kellogg, in a contribution to the subject of marital mor- bidity of the conjugal state (N. Y. Medical Record, July 19, 1913) states, from a basis of wide experience, that cases of marital infelicity may be classified into three rather definite clinical groups — jealous, querulous and violent. The latter group includes advanced degrees of progressive mental dis- order which have resulted from prolonged emotional stress. In the jealous type of mental morbidity the husband allows suspicion to develop, and this eventually reaches the grade of open reproach and accusation. The immediate natural effect of false accusation is to release the accused from any feeling of obligation toward the accuser. Lack of positive proof which would suffice to confine the dominant idea of the accuser leaves a wide open freedom for his morbid fancy, which then proceeds to cover a large range of pernicious activity. Victims of this disorder are not really responsible for their acts when they inflict cruelties upon their wives. A wife becomes subject to the actions of a man who has reverted atavistically to a primitive feature of mind. He has retraced the steps of phylogenetic progress and is now part brute, through no fault of his own, perhaps, but through the influence of actual functional defect of his physical brain cells. He is to be looked upon by his wife and by society as an invalid who needs kindly care and consideration from all who have a sufficient degree of wisdom to bestow it. I knew an actor who regularly locked his wife in her room, putting the key in his pocket, when he went to the theatre to depict human nature for admiring audiences, who paid two dollars for the best seats. The wife was really a most trustworthy woman by nature and she accepted this treatment through fear of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 457 what he might do next in case of her non-compliance with his wishes. Where there are no children to be considered it is often best for the wife of a morbidly jealous husband to arrange among her friends for evidence sufficient for obtain- ing a divorce promptly. We are here on earth such a short time that duty makes it obligatory upon each of us to give to the world the sunniest and most efficient sides of all natures. Anything which limits the sunnier side or the efficient side must be treated as a matter of quite as much moral impor- tance as any other matter of social custom. Economic rea- sons, instead of the nobler pride, sometimes keep two people together when one of the couple has fallen ill with marital psychosis in any one of its three forms. This is not much of a tragedy if it so happens that the wife or husband, as the case may be, cares more for money than for freedom. It would be different if matters could be helped with the mental invalid, but we are dealing with a situation which lies outside of the lines of judgment and reason. We are dealing with primitive atavistic features of the mind. Both parties will be happier and capable of a higher degree of efficiency and utility when separated. In countries in which marriages of convenience are openly tolerated collateral adjustments in companionship are not held to be very destructive to social order. The matter has been reduced to a system in these countries, and so long as the face of marriage form has been saved, society disturbs itself very little about affairs of the heart that may be separately conducted. In this country, how- ever, adjustment to such a system is not considered to be polite. If there are children, or a religion, or an occupation which serve to fill the life of the wife completely, she may be enabled to make her life not only satisfactory but more than that, under conditions of ordinary separation. In any 458 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS event, the only way for kindly relieving a morbidly jealous husband from the distress of his illness is to leave him quite alone. Eugenic laws of to-morrow will perhaps stand in the way of his marriage again. Women have no legal pro- tection against an invalid of this kind to-day. A woman with the jealous type of mental disorder does not differ essentially from a man in the general range of her symptoms, excepting in two particulars : A man is apt to have an undercurrent of sense of shame remaining, when his psychosis has passed beyond control by his reasoning faculties, and he confides in no one. A woman, on the other hand, who is suffering from the jealous type of mental disorder seems to have little sense of shame. She seeks the company of sympathetic women consolers, each one of whom in turn con- fides the secret in the ordinary course of the customary run of neighborly calls. A second characteristic of jealous morbidity in a woman is the demand for extreme and exaggerated atten- tion from her husband. This symptom sometimes amounts to a well defined mania. She attempts to exercise control over his every movement and turn it to some account for herself. A husband or a wife with the jealous type of morbidity may extend the range of the psychosis to include friends and rela- tives of the other in a feeling of strong dislike. Demand is then made upon a husband or upon a wife to abjure the companionship of such relatives and friends. There is little to be gained from reasoning with people who are suffering from jealous morbidity, because their range of fancy is not under control by the will. They are to be considered as invalids and treated sympathetically as such. If reason could be applied by the morbidly jealous, it would show such obvious contradictions between wish and effect that a sense of humor would save the situation. Jealousy as one of the features of primordial selfishness, and as an emotion, cannot thrive syn- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 459 chronously with love. Oil and water will not mix. Reason would further recognize the fact that jealousy frankly admits itself to be a loser, — that its possessor acknowledges danger in competition because of a consciousness of self weakness. That feature, if taken in charge by reason, would bring pride to the rescue. Morbid jealousy being morbid is unable to bring this question within the range of reason. Hence the mental condition is pathologic and is to be considered in that way. A victim of the jealous type of morbidity may retain control of high faculties of the mind well enough to pass for a quite normal and agreeably interesting individual. For this reason the problem has not been taken up for purposes of study and for reduction to its terms. I knew one very beautiful and talented woman, a most charming conversationalist, who drove her husband to distraction, ruined his business, and finally obliged him to desert her completely. The psychosis was then levelled at her son. She tried to prevent his marriage, and when his marriage finally did occur, devoted herself to breaking up the home. Her husband having departed, she could not allow the son's wife to share a mother's love. This highly cultivated and intelligent woman did not at any moment realize that all of the inferno that she made for two families and for herself was caused by herself alone. That is not the chief point of interest in this typical case. The chief point of interest lies in the fact that neither she nor any one else recognized her actions as being due to a psychosis for which she was not responsible and for which she was to be pitied rather than blamed. Her husband and her son were men of the very finest type, distinctly masculine in all of their characteristics, cultured, and habituated to an exercise of the attractive faculties in social life. This wife and mother no doubt supposed that her feelings and actions were right 46o TO-MORROW'S TOPICS because they were her own. One of our French-Canadian guides said that he shot two deer at a time when it was against the law, but it was all right because he did it himself. The case which I have just quoted was one in which there was separation with alimony. Curiously enough in a case of this sort the courts do the right thing in a left handed way. Testi- mony relating to desertion, or even to improper companion- ship, is readily obtained in such a case. The evidence being clear, a court allows alimony for the one who is really ill and who is in need of such relief from symptoms as can be given by separation only. According to the studies of Kellogg, jealous morbidity occurs with about equal frequency in people of both sexes, but the querulous type belongs more particularly to woman. This is presumably due to the larger proportion of women who sufifer from intestinal stasis and consequent sensitization of proto- plasm. A victim of the querulous type of morbidity scolds not only her husband, but she scolds the children and members of the family for slight cause whenever her protoplasm is irritated, — and that is much of the time. As the disease pro- gresses she develops an habitual fault-finding attitude of mind that amounts to an obsession. The husband fills her whole mind as a despicable and hardly to be tolerated individual, who is the cause for all of her daily discomforts. Self pity becomes mingled with fault finding, and she believes herself to be a drudge, — exaggerating the amount and character of the work that she has to do. No thought is given to the pro- tection which she really enjoys nor to surroundings of comfort for which she may be envied by hundreds of other people. She feels that if her husband had more enterprise and did right she might have all of the enjoyment of life that seems to belong to wealthier acquaintances. It does not occur to her that she may be the one who is clipping enterprise out of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 461 her husband's heart and lessening his income through the per- sistent effect of negative suggestion. From a generally accusa- tory attitude she finally charges her husband with neglect, even though he may make a study of her comfort a definite feature of his daily life. A husband who is possessed of the querulous type of mor- bidity becomes a nagger, finding fault with his meals and with household management. He complains about the social affairs of his wife. A characteristic feature is the revolving in his mind of petty irritating affairs. He seems unable to avoid bringing these up continually at moments when peace seems to be in prospect. This repetitious indulgence in contention is not brought under control by his will. Argument, persua- sion and explanation are all lost upon him, because the condi- tion of his physical brain cells is such that reason cannot be engaged in their processes. I knew a wife of such an husband, who was always in a tremble. She died mysteriously, and I have little doubt about the way in which she died. She was a good woman, who at one time had a large circle of admiring friends, but her nervous condition became such that she was left pretty much alone with her tormentor, — and he the more ill of the two originally. One of my friends, a successful man of business, shot himself at a time when every one supposed he had no cause for distress. He had a wife of the querulous morbid type and confided to me a month or so before he shot himself that his wife had managed to persuade the two youngest daughters that he was despicable. It was the dream of his life that the daughters upon whom his heart was set would have perspicacity enough to understand the mother's morbidity as they grew older. Her influence however was the mother influence. He was too proud to make any attempt at explaining to his daughters, — in fact, he could not have explained. No one but a psychologist or a psychiatrist could 462 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS have explained to them, and it is a question whether the daughters would have understood anyway. This is the only case in my experience in which a man apparently sane has committed suicide. It is quite possible that the long stress had rendered him suddenly psychotic and that he was not sane at the time. The third type of morbidity (violent type) occurring with conjugal inamenity represents the latter stages of processes which are manifested in the jealous or querulous mor- bidities. The violent type occurs particularly among those who are naturally prone to develop the more grave psychoses as a result of long emotional stress. In cases of this sort it is not the attacked party who is driven to commit suicide or homicide, as in the two instances just quoted. By the time when a violent stage has arrived the idea that "something is wrong with" the aggressor has commonly made its way through the ivory skulls of ordinary observers. Suicide or homicide committed by these mental invalids is reported almost daily in the press. While writing this note, I stopped to look through a copy of to-day's New York Times (July 20), and find the news report of a case in which a young woman seized a bottle of acid and threw it into the eyes of her hus- band (blinding him for life) and poured acid down the neck of a young woman with whom he had stopped to speak in a drug store across the way. The context of the report indicates that the case was quite an ordinary one of the violent psychotic type of conjugal inamenity, and I have little doubt but a further investigation would reveal the fact that both the hus- band and the young woman who was injured were quite innocent of any wrong doing. Whenever the frequently occur- ring press reports give details in cases of this sort, one who knows how to read between the lines will note the frequency with which psychopathic states are responsible for what the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 463 public holds to be crime. The influence of friends or relatives counts for little, because their expenditure of effort is along lines of reason, and reason is precisely the mental process for which these unfortunates are not adapted. By the time when to-morrow's pedagogy has taken a more advanced position and is ready to instruct the public in cases of this sort, eugenics will have distinctly lessened the proportionate number of cases of conjugal inamenity in a prophylactic way. From the side of psychology, young men will be taught more about the men- tal, moral and physical nature of women; young women will be taught more about the nature and leading characteristics of men, instead of having to depend upon intuition which must come from a viewpoint which belongs to its respective sex, and consequently misleading. Young men and young women will be taught the nature of differences between natural temperaments. Methods will be explained to them for avoid- ing insidious and careless drift into the first beginnings of emotional stress. The natural tendency of stress is not toward automatic repair of either a steel bridge or a human mind. Stress cannot be relieved very successfully without the help of experts. When psychanalysis has grown out of its ridicu- lous pin feathers of metaphysics it will render great service in this field from the side of psychiatry. From the side of medicine proper the question of agents which sensitize proto- plasm will be brought forward. Causes for toxic irritation of protoplasm will then be lessened or removed, and preliminary causes leading to psychopathic states will be reported upon by the bacteriologist. There will be more and more conjugal inamenity for some years to come, — more and more divorce and separation. It will cost a lot of trouble to move up to a new position to-morrow, but it will furnish as much fun as any other new game that is played intelligently. Just as France suffered from an orgy of freedom, so we shall continue for 464 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS awhile to suffer from an orgy of sentimental anesthetization by the love psychosis. I see nothing but progress m prospect, however. France recovered from her debauch of govern- mental freedom, and we shall recover from our debauch in marriage freedom. There will be a great new expansion of freedom of spirit when the feeling of responsibility of young people relates not only to each other but to the state, to feel- ing in terms of state. The coming pedagogy, which is to deal with eugenics, may have a special department devoted to conjugethics. The habit of fault finding, when established, becomes a sort of mania — Caccethes carpendi. To distinguish the people who are really ill, and in whom the habit is not under control by the will, let us use the term "carpenders." Carpender is a creature of the Devil. All disease was ascribed to demoniacal possession at one time. Curiously enough this idea was more nearly correct than the view which now places carping as a positive action of the will, when it really represents negative action of the will. This demon (disease) whom we call Car- pender occupies quarters in which Cupid really meant to dwell and still deserves to occupy. The inconsistency of expecting to find Cupid in a niche which is occupied by Carpender must appeal to one's sense of humor. Many of the carpenders are really odynecens. If a carpender were not ill, he would at once perceive that he was losing something which he really desired at every stroke of his pick axe, and that he himself was wrong, instead of the other party. In most ordinary affairs any one who nags or scolds when in conjugal partnership is attacking darling little Cupid with a pick axe. This fact is so obvious that it indicates misconception at least if the nagger or scolder even expects Cupid to fly toward the noise of a voice. Cupid flies only toward the music of a voice. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 465 There are no available data for computation of the amount of unnecessary suffering which is caused by the morbidities of conjugal inamenity. The public has not been instructed in this subject definitely as yet. Medical literature contains in a fragmentary way enough contributions for the construction of a text book devoted to the subject of conjugethics, but up to the present time no one has compiled this material in a scientific way. When the time comes for assembling our knowledge on the subject there is danger that it may be pre- sented in a wrong way first. The psychic side being the most obvious symptomatic side, there will be danger of the subject being treated like many other medical subjects in history, — by classification from obvious mental symptoms, rather than from physical pathologic factors for the establishment of principles. The social evil will never be less unless proper marriage is made much easier of accomplishment in the first place, and unless the carpender is understood and treated as an indi- vidual who is really ill. Sociologists treat the social evil as though it were a cause instead of a symptom. In the monistic unity state the cause will be treated. This evil will never be stopped, but only brought under a certain degree of control, because it is one of nature's bonfires for using up waste ma- terials in the course of cleaning up a nation and putting the house in order. It is just as much "a natural object" as is the natural bridge of Virginia. Sociologists would cure a cough due to the presence of the pneumococcus by holding a handker- chief over th6 mouth. They mean well and will accomplish much, but will not control the subject in an intelligent way until they begin with the simpler terms of the proposition. Were I a sculptor seeking to have a vision, I would carve an heroic statue of Cupid and visualized Carpender engaged in mortal combat. The statue would then be erected in the 466 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS market place. People who escape the social ill through choice of character or by plan of law will be the survivors in any nation which is to make the greatest progress. The bonfire will always exist, but we shall know its terms. Knowing the terms of Niagara Falls does not abolish the falls, but allows our comprehension to be enriched by understanding. There will be more and more inamenity in general for awhile because it belongs with that general group of toxic demonstra- tions which develop under conditions of civilization. W^hen warfare by force of arms is giving way to intellectual warfare, and when preventive medicine is saving the highly sensitized people whose protoplasm is particularly vulnerable to the microbes of infections, we are preserving the Elims who com- plicate the intellectual warfare questions as never before in history. Nature limits breeding among the Elims to be sure, and yet under conditions of so-called peace millions of them are born, and the lives of millions of them are spared through the applied science and art of preventive medicine. In the Thirty- Years' ^^'ar ten million persons were de- stroyed out of sixteen million, but that particular war did not injure the race specifically through the removal of strong men, because massacre took ofT so many of the weak also. Massacre has been nature's well planned resource for preserving the mean type during tribal wars. In response to her attempts at limiting population, untold millions of men have been killed in the incessant conflicts between wild tribes of all countries. Nature knew that this would remove the strongest physical element. Consequently she gave victors the impulse to massacre. Massacre is looked upon as barbarous, and yet we observe that it has primordial significance — as meaning preservation of the mean type. As a result of successful preventive medicine and of warr fare without massacre civilization has now brought itself face TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 467 to face with the greatest problem in its entire history — ^the question of adjusting social methods to the presence of an disproportionate number of preserved Elims. For purposes of argument Newton's third law is practically correct. The great new success of civilization in preserving the Elims has brought us squarely up against a reaction which consists in the pres- ence of a rapidly increasing proportion of people who are below the average in mean physical type. Function being closely allied with structure the mental average will remain in constant parallel with the physical average. We shall no doubt adjust ourselves to the new conditions as soon as men awaken to a realization of their significance. Those of us who have travelled in many lands — and have come into contact with as many people as the doctor meets, must observe certain common sources for the beginning of marital infelicity which are practically universal. In the city, an especial stress in married life comes from the commendable desire of the young wife to keep her treasure all to herself. A man however who has attained to any sort of position, has established certain habits of sociability with men. He belongs to organizations and to clubs (to his credit). This is an integral part of his business, professional, and social life. Women are not so gregarious as men, and for that very reason do not understand in their inner natures that need for companionship with varied social elements. The desire of a man to leave his wife for the purpose of going to enjoy him- self with other people for an evening, or for a day, or for a week, is something wholly out of her field of experience, and she feels hurt because she herself would not leave him for any such reason. It seems to her very much like lack of interest, a criticism that she is not all-sufficient, that she does not fill all the needs of his life, which she, — to her honor let us say — is ambitious to do; in fact, her whole soul may be 468 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS glorified in that idea. Then again, men need a great deal more physical exercise than women require. It may be almost a matter of life or death with them to run off and play golf or to go on shooting and fishing trips. None of these things seem to be really necessary from the point of view of the young wife, and I have many times observed the beginning of complicated misunderstandings from stress over this par- ticular question. If young wives wish me to tell them a little secret for success, here it is. If your husband loves to meet his men companions on certain occasions without your presence, if he yearns to run away from you for his accus- tomed exercise in out-of-door sports, do not fumble wis- dom by finding some excuse for preventing him from doing this. Anticipate rather the dates of his going, make his eyes shine with joy by telling him he must go, and that you will find ways for taking a vacation yourself at the times when you suspect that he wants to go. You cannot possibly under- stand his feelings, because they are based upon characteristics belonging to his sex. Try the experiment and note the result. A little domestic vacation has wonderful value in recuperating effects for both parties, and is no reflection at all upon your ability to furnish complete and satisfying companionship of its own priceless kind. Just a bit of word further in the same connection. Do not suspect for a moment that he is in danger of becoming interested in any other woman whose wiles you fear. Good men take pride in living the lives of good citizens, and if you trust him he knows it. He knows it so well that trustfulness on your part is the most powerful factor in making even a bad man good. I know of libertines who became good because their wives were so simple as to trust them. If you are so unwise at any time as to express a suspicion as to your husband's faithfulness the immediate effect will be to make him feel that he is released from obliga- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 469 tions. Suspicion, the worst of all crimes, represents a negative phase of mind. Your husband may be quite strong enough to overcome the efifects of this shock, — for shock it will be, — but you will have unwisely and unprofitably severed one of the strongest bonds with a single sharp sentence. There is no hope that men and women in this world can ever understand each other fully, because the sex points of view are so fundamentally different; but if in another world nature plans to furnish a good fairy who will change a man into a woman and a woman into a man for a period of seven days once every five years, there will be a happiness in married life that really belongs to another world. To-morrow the domestic vacation is to become an insti- tution representing progress made. The E. D. V. Society (Enlightened Domestic Vacationists) will consist of two branches, one for women, and the other for men. In the monistic unity state when people will have to look in the index to find notes on the subject of our present civilization some such conversation will be carried on between a youth and his teacher : "You said that a long time ago, away back in the twentieth century, married people had much trouble with each other." "Yes, that was due to physical causes, and for psychic rea- sons aside from physical causes." "You have told me about the injurious physical causes; please tell me more about the normal psychic reasons." "In those days the strong maternal instinct of young mar- ried women, including the husband in its range, came into strong conflict with the natural gregarious instinct and oxidiz- ing habits of their husbands. People were still living largely in obedience to crude instincts." "Then it must have been a conflict between good natural instincts that made trouble." 470 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS "Yes, the best people, trying to adjust themselves to each other and not knowing of this cause for suffering, were the ones who suffered most." "Why, they were little better off than the Puritans !" "Same thing, my boy, suffering through devotion to what they believed to be duty." "What methods of relief were sought?" "Some who were of easy morals covertly formed secret com- panionships outside of the home. Others, not understanding the causes for trouble, attempted to break up the marriage custom altogether and to establish some other system in its place." "Terrible! How barbarous people were in those old- fashioned centuries !" "Yes, but innocently — through ignorance. Civilization was at that time upon a metaphysical basis rather than upon a scientific basis. People made arbitrary laws for the conduct- ing of what was evidently most expedient for society. Now, in the monistic unity state, we make scientific employment of the material of natural instincts, and employ methods like those of the domestic vacation for relieving stress. That is one reason for our married people being perennial chums." Do not try to break a man's vanity and conceit. They form the soft protecting mass which he throws out to guard himself against injury from the constant attacks of the world. They represent a sort of protective covering and you will only increase the development of this protective covering by taking pains to point out his faults and imperfections. They are pointed out to him many times in the course of a day by others. Let these others stand the consequences. Note the effect of his mother's failure to be disturbed by his vanity and conceit. Observe that his protective covering is reduced to small pro- portions in her presence, and how she dotes upon him and he TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 471 dotes upon her. Is the reason for this not clear ? I can speak only from a man's point of view. The woman would probably have equally good and cogent explanations for infelicity, which are observed from the feminine point of view. One thing I would impress is the fact that the beginning for misunder- standing is really unnecessary most of the time. In order to guard against attacks of the world a man throws out a cloud of self esteem, very much as the squid throws out a cloud of ink. He will do the same thing if you prick him. If you are like his mother in overlooking his defects and are construc- tively looking for his virtues, the cloud of protective self esteem will remain condensed as good sepia for you to employ in coloring your love with pleasing shades of fast color. The chief point which I wish to make in these notes is one fixed point; — that of the actually discoverable influence of the microbe as a large real factor in many cases of marital infelicity. This idea when fixed in mind allows us to bring up to our awareness that part of the subconscious mind which is quite beyond the limits of awareness generally, but which exerts a constant influence upon the psychic field. The sub- conscious mind of people in general contains already a great deal of information on the subject of morbid influences. This knowledge we do not as yet utilize very freely when com- pounding our quota of consciousness for the practical day's work and for making estimates of the nature of other people's actions. A canny Scotchman was asked why he found no fault with the nagging of his wife. He replied that it did him no harm and seemed to do her a lot of good. This quotation from the morning's newspaper indicates how little the people understand about physical causes for mental phenomena. "M. B. B. . . ., farmer, alleges that he is living proof that 472 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS a seventy-five acre farm, hung to a woman's tongue, an acre at a time, is not sufficient to keep her from nagging. In his petition for divorce B. . . . says that some time ago, when his wife's nagging had become unbearable, he proposed that for every day she did not nag hihi he would give her an acre of land. By this means, he says, he won seventy- five days of peace at a cost of an acre of ground a day, but at the end of that time he had no more land and his wife resumed her curtain lectures. Having nothing with which to purchase silence he resorted to the courts." In a case of this sort, one or two methods of proper treat- ment might have saved the farm to its original owner beside making the wife happy. Medical or surgical treatment, to the value of a very few acres, might have served for permanent cure of the nagging, or Christian Science treatment might have been quite effective in this case. The method of disposing of acres for the sake of peace was what one might call "social treatment," — entirely inadequate, — like most cases of social treatment of any sort which require fundamental study of organic causes for disturbances. The fact that Mrs. B. . . . was enabled to exercise control over her irritability for a period of seventy-five days indicates that no matter what the source of irritation, whether microbic or due to some peripheral irrita- tion, the will could remain dominant so long as incentive remained. In cases which cannot be relieved thoroughly and permanently by medical and surgical treatment, a religion like that of Christian Science will often give incentive, which then becomes effective for securing permanent control. Nagging has probably caused as much poverty and distress as alcohol has caused. It has probably driven as many people away from home as have been driven away by alcohol. The nagger and the drunkard are unlovely, but their unloveliness TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 473 is due to practically the same cause — irritation of cell proto- plasm by toxins. They are ill people and to be pitied by those of us who are grateful to a kinder providence that has allowed us to remain lovely. We must remember that the nagger and the drunkard derive no satisfaction from their indulgence. They are being punished more than we could punish them if we would. The scolder is always a loser, but does not per- ceive that fact. Children run away from a scolder as in- stinctively as a mouse runs away from a noise. They run toward the soft lovely voice as instinctively as a mouse cuddles cosily in a nest. We are all children. The soft lovely voice is a refuge, the scolding voice is a storm outside. A scolding- wife points out to her husband all of his imperfections, without observing that a charmer carefully shifts that sort of responsi- bility to others. A scolding husband who reminds his wife of her characteristics which do not belong to her ideals, fur- nishes material for those eccentric social reformers who say that life is so short that people should quickly form harmonious companionships in order not to lose efficiency and joy while they are here on earth. The free-lovers offer nothing sub- stantial in the way of relief. Their's is a quack remedy. Sub- stantial relief is to come from a study of the causes which make the scolder and the nagger more uncomfortable than they make other people. Nagging is a symptom of toxic over-stimulation of cell contents. It gives a sort of rhythmical S3''stematic scratching of irritated protoplasm and no doubt represents a method of Hberation of energy, which allows of some relief from dis- turbed cenesthesia. This rhythmical discharge of improperly centered energy seems to represent a release of energy that has been distributed unequally by the nervous system. It is dissociated from normal voluntary reasoning processes. The victim may have a deep craving for love and affection and yet 474 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS unconsciously assume an attitude of mind which is promptly destructive to kindly emotions on the part of another indi- vidual, toward whom critical nagging energy is directed. This belongs so clearly to unwisdom and is so definitely opposed to the idea of efficient conservation of affection, that it succeeds in defeating the very affection which is desired. A persistent and habitual display of unwisdom indicates a failure on the part of the individual to comprehend the real nature of situa- tions. Lack of insight into the nature of a situation, when not due to ignorance, is commonly of physical origin, and indicative of a lack of sufficient strength for supporting con- scious and unconscious adjustment to surroundings. We must all then be as kind as the canny Scot, who arbitrarily arrived at a right conclusion, as Scotchmen often do. Our new light on the subject of toxic over-stimulation of protoplasm now allows us the privilege of arriving at a right conclusion intel- ligently when dealing with many cases of "incompatibility of temperament." The psychologist could often tell a young couple in advance of their marriage that one or the other would be likely to develop "incompatibility of temperament" or the nagging habit, a few months or years after marriage. Consulting the radiograph, he would note perhaps the presence of a narrow costal angle or of a gastro-colic ligament at the level of the fourth lumbar vertebra. The psychologist would assume that talent, accomplishment, affection, and cleverness would after awhile be modified by toxic over-stimulation of protoplasm in a case of this sort, giving place to misconception and to wrong bestowal of emphasis upon the significance of events. When "incompatibility of temperament" has appeared, the odynecen may have periods of very good adjustment during his "ups," but lacks proper coordinative power at times of his "downs." He may at all times be enabled to show unstinted affection toward a pet animal, because that can be TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 475 done at one's convenience. It requires none of the mental and physical strength required for the more complex duties of harmonious adjustment to the mind of another human being. The strong ambition and mental desires of youth, when under- mined subsequently by protein toxic influence may become valleities, or the remaining strength may — through loss of balance — become concentrated upon some emotional fad with undue emphasis. A psychologist of to-morrow consulting the radiograph of his subject in any given case, may be enabled to state that after the lapse of a few years the will of that individual is likely to be devoted to valleities, to "in- compatibility of temperament," or to concentration of energy upon emotional fads. I would not assume that the psycholo- gist is really to be consulted in such matters at any time during the present century, because these notes represent little more than a conversation, carrying no very serious prophecy. Consultation of the practical radiograph of the enteron instead of the artistic photograph of the face is too reasonable a pro- ceeding for a world that is now in the sentimental stage of its development. The idea is not romantic enough. The lover sighing over a facial photograph during the stage of his love psychosis, may sigh again later as a result of mistakes which would have been avoided had the radiograph been consulted. The world will sigh just as much in the future during the stage of the love psychosis, but it will sigh less in later years of life when it really gets to the point of making use of the radiograph in prognostic questions of compatibility. Dr. M. has just now told me of his working out a mystery in good professional order. One of his patients had a baby which had periods of violent crying together with much bowel disturbance, and, on looking over records, he observed that these attacks occurred once in two weeks and lasted only one day. This periodicity of attack was curious, and he worked 476 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS out the various features, finally discovering that the husband of the patient went to his lodge and stayed out late on the night preceding each attack. The wife always complained about his leaving her and became angry about it, so that nurs- ing the baby when in this angered mood resulted in upsetting the baby for a day. When angry, her capacity for meta- bolizing toxins was impaired, and some of these toxins, ex- creted in her milk, poisoned the baby. A very pathetic part of incompatibility is the fact that each party may be ambitious to do everything possible for the other, but wishes to do it in his or her own way, from a masculine or feminine sex view- point. This would really be amusing were it not for the sad feature which is due to inevitable misunderstanding. How many cases are there of marital infelicity dependent upon inefficient adrenal glands? How many cases are there in which people with defective thyroid glands are influenced by the depressing philosophers to commit suicide ? In a ques- tion of this sort we must keep our sense of proportion which stands first in value among all senses, standing before moral sense in value, — the latter being only a child of the former. The cases in which to my personal knowledge a depressing philosopher has wielded the final stroke against the victim of defective ductless glands would not number more than a very few, but cases of marital infelicity depending upon this fundamental cause occur by the hundreds according to my own knowledge and observation. Judging from the viewpoint of the sociologist, of the moralist, or of the law court, the ques- tion of blame upon one side or the other is made a salient feature in the discussion, but from the standpoint of the physiologist, there may be no question of blame, excepting in a minor and secondary way. To be sure, the trained will counts for a great deal, and I would not for a moment belittle the importance of self-culture in its relation to marital adjust- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 477 ment ; but many of the cases of disturbance are fundamentally physiologic in their nature, and are cases for pity rather than for blame. We are to have a larger, kindlier, sweeter pity in the future, as our knowledge relating to the fundamental causes for dissension in married life becomes more general. When considering in these cases the question of physiology and of the will (which latter is but a phenomenon of physi- ology) we assume that marriage has taken place in the common way, with love as a fundamental motive. In cases of marriage with love as the impelling motive — pure love of the so-called spiritual type — and this no doubt furnishes the actuating im- pulse in most marriages without conscious recognition of the physical basis — there is frequently enough permanent love and esteem. A comradeship of this sort which lasts through life would not tolerate for a moment the thought of another con- sort. When marriage is the result of sexual passion, it cannot be a happy marriage because it was based upon a selfish motive, and the idea of other consorts may readily come to both parties later. When money or fame furnish motives for mar- riage, there is usually a pretence at following out the single consort idea for the sake of form, but there is Httle more than desultory respect for the sacred ties of marriage. When political expediency is the motive, there is little of even pre- tence at respecting the ties of marriage, and the thought of other consorts is seldom very repugnant to either party. The form of marriage is observed because of recognition of its advantage to the state in the system of monogamy. All of these marriages presumably occur without reference to thoughts about physiology — but in all of them the influences of toxins upon the protoplasm of individuals may exert a guid- ing influence in the course of events during subsequent mar- ried life. The positive note and love are synonymous terms, because 478 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS we are naturally a gregarious species, and close companion- ship — in other words, gregariousness — is favored by the posi- tive note. The negative note is the microbe's jimmy for prying us apart, in order to keep that balance w^hich nature insists upon maintaining between its opposing influences. Marital incompatibility is commonly a response to the jimmy of the microbe and perhaps also a phylogenetic relic of nature's original plan for avoiding the dangers of too close companion- ship of a gregarious species. A love which makes two people such close companions that they become asocial and out of touch with the rest of the world represents one extreme. In- compatibility which drives two people apart and leads them to seek companionship with the rest of the world instead of with each other represents the other extreme. In both cases the individuals are failing to maintain that mean position of com- fort, happiness, and utility which nature holds to be the most desirable. I can give the formula which will excite the love psychosis between two young people better than it could be done by any love powder. Let one tell the other how useful she or he will be to the other, how much he can do for her, and how much she can do for him, after each finds out what the other wants. One day I told a popular assistant on the hospital staff — in a half joking way — that he ought to marry. He took the matter seriously and said that he would rather have a Hades than a home. Nothing more was said about the matter, but subsequently it was learned that his home had been a very unhappy one. He was not qualified to take a correct view of the true world. On the other hand, I had been during all of my early years in a family in which there was never a word of irritation or of controversy. Six children grew up to love each other and their parents, believing that all the world was similar, and I was no more fitted for meeting the world as a TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 479 whole than was my friend who thought home was worse than Hades. Each man must make his own adjustments. One western railroad is said to have adopted the rule of dis- posing of the services of employees who are known to have domestic difficulties at home, because the dissension may inter- fere with their usefulness. I wonder if higher officials of the same road are happily free from such distraction? Great generals, rulers, statesmen, and philosophers of history have managed to become famous notwithstanding their domestic difficulties, which are likewise matters of history. This must always be the case, and it is one of nature's ways for preventing too rapid progress. A very delicate adjustment is necessary if men are to fit into their environment, and a very nice balance must be maintained. Difficulties in point of view at home are boimd to depend upon the personal experiences of two individuals, and each judges from the standpoint belonging to a respective sex. The greater any given question the more difficult it becomes for two personal experiences, different fundamentally, to meet and merge smoothly. This can usually be managed, however, by the will if there is no element of caprice present, caprice introducing a hopeless factor into any sort of proposition. Beliefs relating to the divorce question range between two variants; one group believing in no divorce, and the other group believing that either party should be free to terminate the marriage contract at will. A mean position between variants is held by the public in general, and it comes to be simply a question of safe-guarding society. At the present stage of our development we are to choose a position some- where near the lesser of the two evils. The lesser of the two evils should relate particularly to protection of the children of a union, and to protection of the people against unrestful folks who would repeat their marriage ventures in a nervous 48o TO-MORROW'S TOPICS \va\-, — never satisfied, but through divorce given hberty to draw more contented people into sharing their state of nervous unrest. Society needs also to protect itself against cowards who would altogether desert the ill and leave them to be cared for by some one else. So far as practical working goes up to the present time, the no-divorce group has protected society and the child best. When it is felt that divorce cannot be granted on any ground whatsoever, the unrestful variants man- age to get on somehow. This causes a considerable degree of personal suffering, to be sure, and there is real loss to the state through real loss of efficiency on the part of people with con- stantly disturbed minds. This only represents a part of that waste which is inevitable in all of nature's works, and it does not compare with the waste which would be caused at the present stage of our development by people who were free to run amuck with certificates of divorce. Mr. Moody recently presented statistics before the New York State Divorce and Marriage Commission showing that in this country there were granted over one thousand divorces, and through legal separation more than seventy thousand children were deprived of one or more parents, in the year of 1912. Separations are more harmful than divorces because they introduce the feature of compulsory celibacy. People who do not know what compulsory celibacy means in terms of moral result will find out if they live long enough. There would seem to be pressing need for uniform divorce laws agreed upon by a Federal Commission, if we are to judge from the fact that the largest number of divorces are in states in which the law is most lax. The laws of the Roman Catholic Church are stronger than any state laws in the matter of influence against divorce. If divorce is to be obtained with great difficulty only, the unstable element which marries thoughtlessly and runs away without much feeling of responsi- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 481 bility, is much more careful about entering into marriage. This end of the question is perhaps more important than the end relating to separation of united parties. Most of us in the medical profession know of cases in which divorce could to advantage be granted without much discussion, in cases in which no statutory grounds exist. At the same time, we know of a great many other and larger number of instances in which people who are never very certain about what they think on any subject, would exert harmful influence upon society if they were separated. It is much better for these people to be held together by the strong arm of the law, for society's sake, even though they are as uncomfortable in this position as they would promptly proceed to make themselves in new marital combinations if they were allowed .to go free. The Church of Social Revolution is said to hold as a tenet the idea that divorce may be granted when love ceases. This fails to take into consideration the love psychosis. It asks people to begin to think of separation at the time when they should properly begin to think of sanity. Reduced to its simplest terms the easy divorce proposition means free-love. Such an idea injures many young people of really good stuff during the time when a propagandist remains ascendant with his notoriety. Such propagandists (usually neurotics) come and go, leaving a trail of trouble in their wake. When an intense neurotic social reformer happens to present an erotic phase with his psychology, a particularly harmful lot of tenets may be formulated by him, because he introduces the sex element insidiously. Easily obtained divorces would be desirable if proper selec- tion of parties for separation could be made. At the present time liberality would be abused by bargain hunters who never could be satisfied, and who would persist in seeking various adjustments in attempts at pleasing themselves. Eventually 482 TO-MORRO\\"S TOPICS the divorce court may properl}' constitute a department in the Federal Health Department. A number of people cry for easy divorce laws and a change of the whole social system. They have idealistic remedies to offer just as people have remedies to offer in politics, business, and religion. Sometimes it seems to me that it might be better if these people were to become quietly and comfortably im- moral. They might then cease to ask the whole public to emulate ^-Esop's tailless fox. There are certain people who are alwajs in a state of unrest and whom the most moral people in the world would like to see made comfortable at almost any cost. The public would excuse a good deal if these disturbers would only become quiet and lea\e our institu- tions alone. Many people who break the moral code if they are unhappily mated may not do so for any original reason beyond the desire for congenial company. There is always a craving in the normal mind for companionship. The author of "The Home Beautiful" has brought suit for divorce. This is indeed pathetic. An idealist is more keenly alive to things which should be hoped for, if unfortunate sur- roundings make a contrast that brings out ideals in high relief. We might not have had this book were it not for that fact. Compensation again ! One of my guides in northern Minnesota, discussing local social conditions, said that he was not married because, — ^to use his own words : "Women up here won't take no chances on havin' to work. They won't marry a feller for luck, unless he's got it already. H a woman's a sport, she says: T don't need to do no work,' and if she's a lady, she says : 'I'll be damned if I'll work anyhow.' " Only a small proportion of marriages endure upon the attraction basis. The ones that succeed are mostly switched TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 483 over upon the duty and obligation basis, but this in itself is an inspiration, and there is joy in mutual work of helpmates, on the basis of duty to the family and to society. When four judges of the Supreme Court of the United States agree upon one opinion, and the five other judges agree in dissenting, what can a poor ordinary man and wife expect to do with a knotty question? When maternity clubs equal bridge clubs in number, a very substantial nation will be established. Nature has not as yet completed the evolution of any chosen nation to the point where this is at all a probable prospect, but we may fairly anticipate that a nation capable of this sort of action may be here to-morrow. The child is the basic unit upon which all formulas of progress are built. When we get to a system of eugenics perhaps a society will be formed for promoting the happiness and usefulness of people who do not marry at present because of physical defects which injure them not the least bit, excepting in appearance, but which have the tendency to interfere with the beginning of the love psychosis. (Defective morals rarely introduce such an obstacle to marriage. ) There are fine char- acters and beautiful natures among women who are blind. There are fine characters and beautiful natures among men who are lame. Think how happy thousands of these good people could be if some society were to make it an object and an occupation to manage to get them together. Some of the most lovable people whom I have ever known were blind or lame. The question of the unmarried settles itself along lines of natural law. In localities in which cultural limitations are being approached, there are many bachelors and maids, because they have lost the breeding urge. They find trivial reasons for not marrying, and these suffice. In some whole countries 484 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS this fundamental cause for avoidance of marriage is over- looked, that is, the approach to cultural limitations and loss of the urge toward increasing population (insidious influences which are under nature's direction). Hundreds of cultivated unmarried women in New England know perfectly well that they would be snapped up in a moment if they were to go anywhere along the frontier, from Mexico to Vancouver, where the wave of progress is being pushed by the physical energy of men who would be glad enough to find helpmates. In every city there are thousands of cultivated bachelors who are fully aware of the fact that if they were to go to the small towns in search of a wife they would find plenty of splendid women of fine capabilities all ready to become attracted to men of cultivated tastes. This voluntary movement of supply toward demand is not made on the part of unmarried women and unmarried men, not because of lack of knowledge on the subject, but because inclination has been lost through the natural tendency of the cultivated family to come to a state of rest. As a general proposition it is best for highly culti- vated people who are unmarried to remain unmarried, be- cause if they have approached cultural limitations, their progeny would on the whole show too large a proportion of neurasthenic traits for the welfare of society. Furthermore, it is particularly difficult for highly cultivated, middle aged people to adapt themselves to each other unless they have made a definite study of the principles of higher control, and are not largely devoted to seeking methods for securing per- sonal ease and comfort. The questions which are brought to the doctor by newly married couples are not always so complex as the questions brought to him by people who regret having escaped the troubles of Enoch Arden. A letter in this morning's mail from a highly esteemed young friend is to the point. "My TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 485 wife's mother, an old lady of sixty-five, lives all alone in another town. She has been quite unable to get on with any of her married sons or daughters. The wives of her sons are not congenial, and the husband of another daughter is not all that he should be, from her point of view. By common consent of all of her relatives she is described as very difficult to live with. Now she is old and lonely and wishes to live with us, and I am quite perplexed. I want to do everything that is right in the way of making a lonely and restless old lady happy, even though her own temperament has created the loneliness and discontent from which she suffers. The matter is all in my hands, and I must decide if the mother-in-law is to come and live in our home. Whatever you say will be in strict confidence, but I know that your advice will at least give me a point from which to work, my own feelings being quite unstable, as I have found when trying to get a footing on this question." The substance of my letter in reply is as follows: "Do not bring the old lady into your home, for that would mean unkindness to three people. We assume that her atti- tude is due to misconception, — that being the cause for most of the trouble in this world. Misconception relates to the shape of the set of physical brain cells of an individual, — a constant quantity always, excepting through loss of individual cells by accident. If this good lady's physical brain cells at the age of sixty-five have not been trained to resist those kinds of external impression which cause disagreeable unrest, or if they are vulnerable to the influence of toxins which are potent for causing misconception, you cannot safely take her into the home. Extend to her as much pity as you please, as much love as duty dictates. Look about in various ways for the purpose of giving her comfort, but do not fall into the fallacy of assuming that the gratification of a wish on her part will change the habits of her physical brain cells, or modify to 486 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS any appreciable extent the influence of unrest. There will be much of misconception requiring adjustment in your little home, anyway, under the best of circumstances. The introduc- tion of an established perennial fountain of misconception will not bring song into the lives of a pair of canary birds upon its brink." A patient contributing to the surgeon's alternating moods of thought this morning was a handsome girl of eighteen who burned her arm with carbolic acid. Something about her manner led me to inquire rather particularly beyond the state- ment that the bottle of carbolic acid was accidentally broken, and the story was elicited that she had attempted to commit suicide, and had attempted it several times during the past year. She looks strong and well, with good color and bright eyes, and although she has a romantic disposition I find there is no love question involved. It is the other old story. She has been reading the depressing philosophers with an older friend who ought to know better and has decided that nothing in life is worth while. I told her she could make her life one of utility, and she replied, "If nothing is of any use, of what use is utility?" I said to her, "The red squirrel does not ask that question, and he is very happy. Utility is a means for carrying out one of nature's directions to us, and the greatest happiness consists in following that dictation of nature and seeking continually to be useful to other people." This young lady has never been poor and has taken up no occupation. It was a disadvantage. Had she ever felt the pinch of poverty, she would have been wide awake to the demand for being useful to others. Could this young lady be taken into welfare work or into other positions where needs would be evident, her feeling of a love for utility would be aroused. Could she become interested in any TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 487 branch of natural science, her keen mind would at once com- prehend the fact that the need of the world for new knowl- edge in every department of science is very great, and she would be inspired to do her share, even though she has a physical defect of the adrenal group of glands which insidiously turns her mind unwittingly toward the depressing philoso- phers and the feeling that nothing is of any use. Something of the romantic side of her nature appears in her statement that she had made up her mind to commit suicide several times during the past year, but waited for the turn of a penny, which she threw up to see if it came down "heads" or "tails." She held the bottle of carbolic acid in one hand and tossed up a penny with the other, and every time until the last it came up "tails — No !" This last time it was "heads — Yes !" The impression caused a sudden fainting feeling, she fell to the floor and broke the bottle, which burned her arm. The lay- man would find nothing morbid in conversation with her, — in fact, it is a particularly keen bright mind — and a jury of any twelve men would decide that she was "more than sane." I explained to her some ways for finding joy in a useful life of service to others, but presume that it will be difficult for me to overcome the influence of philosophers for whose mentality she has greater and deeper respect. There is just one point which a whole jury of laymen would overlook, a point which the majority of psychologists and psychiatrists would probably overlook; there is in evidence a defect — not marked — of one of her ductless glands — the thyroid. The defect is not very plainly in evidence and would not be considered for treatment at the present time by most physicians, and yet to me it gives a clue to the entire mental attitude of this fine young woman. I shall send her to medical authorities who will make her almost well. Toxins which are not metabolized produce upon her brain cells an impression which makes her choice that of 488 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS reading the books of depressing philosophers. Moral suasion is not the line of treatment for her. Psychiatry, even with its skilled suggestion, would be of temporary value only. We must go deeper. She is simply one of the victims of cruel nature's way of limiting further development of her family. Although the case is one for the twentieth century physician, we must know that self-culture, use of the will, and inspiring occupation also help to carry one by the danger of thoughts of suicide, even when inefficient ductless glands are allowing toxins to escape into the circulation. I have never known of a case of suicide of an individual who was engaged in the study of any branch of natural science, or in welfare or uplift work. They see too much that must be done next week. Toxic influence among these people may make demonstration in the form of neuralgia, rheumatism, or some other way than in thought of self-destruction, which always means concentrated attention upon self. The mind blazing outward warms the world — blazing inward, sears the soul. Surgeons often hear a woman say that although she fears to undergo some operation, which might be postponed, she wants it in order to be more useful to her husband and chil- dren. If a cynic were to hear that as often as we doctors hear it, he would change his views about women. Doctors have faith in human nature because they know so many dear mothers, devoted wives and brave men. The cynic may say as many sharp, clever, cutting words as he wishes to say against women, and his words will all be true. She may say as many sharp, cutting clever things against men, and these remarks also will all be true. The trouble, however, is not with the women or men who are criticized, but with the unlucky cynic who is not ingenious at training his or her mind to make observations of another sort. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 489 A woman-hater or a man-hater is often one who has been punctured by the sharp end of the V of his vanity, which was turned against him by some one who was clever. Sometimes writers seek to turn an honest penny by making comparison between the sexes. One writer, when well warmed up, may become a strong special pleader showing that man is superior to woman. Then some clever woman responds and becomes a bright special pleader for women. Both are pretty sure to be right as far as they go, but whether the conclusions are pessimistic or optimistic will depend upon the one who is writing, and not upon the sex which is written about. Practi- cally it is impossible to compare the mental superiority of the two sexes, because normally each has been given its own kind of capacity. When nature has chosen to halt the development of a nation, she allows women to show signs of physical decad- ence first. In men she seems to allow mental decadence to take place first, but as between moral men and moral women or intellectual men and intellectual women no one but the special pleader can find "superiority" as a peculiar possession of either sex. Are women as a mass better than men as a mass ? Are they more courteous? Note the object lesson at a ticket window with people in line, when a woman comes up in a hurry. Are they less cruel than men? Note what they wear on their hats when they know that such adornment means the death of little motherless birds. Are they more virtuous than men? Let every handsome boy remember some of his early experi- ences. Now to make comparison in this way would be special pleading and unfair. I do not believe that one sex is any better or any worse than the other, considered as mass. We find as much that is fine, noble, beautiful, tender, courageous, in one as in the other. My answer to the cynic, however, is this. If he will observe 490 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS closely he will note what a good looking lot of women are really in orderly line at the ticket window, and what a lot of attractive women do not need to have feathers in their hats for the purpose of softening the lines of their faces. It is the exceptional ones who attract attention most, because they are exceptional. The relative value of the element of courtesy toward the other sex is not always placed properly. When the noted desperado Slim Jim came from Utah to shoot an acquaintance of his in New York, they met in Union Square. Slim Jim killed the other man outright and he himself received wounds from which he died later. He was under my care and before his death told me of many of his past experiences, in the free way with which patients often speak with doctors. He said that on one occasion he held up a stage coach in New Mexico and all of the men had their hands up while he proceeded to get a part of what he thought the world owed him. There was a woman in the farther end of the coach, and when he came to her she picked up a green umbrella and began whack- ing him over the head and drove him out. "What could I do under the circumstances?" he remarked. "I couldn't shoot her." There are many women who would at once claim this incident as demonstrating the fact that one woman with an umbrella is braver than nine men with revolvers. Relative largeness of mind may be determined by observing which things people hold to be personal or impersonal. Women are said to be natural smugglers because they look upon the government as an impersonal affair which does not concern them. There is no cruelty in the faces of many women who wear aigrettes in their hats, because the mother birds whose httle ones died of starvation are impersonal relatively as the square of the distance between nest and hat, both of which look much alike in some styles. Almost any one of the women TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 491 would weep over a little starved birdie if she had it to bury under a rose bush in the garden, and that represents fineness of mind which is quite as important as largeness of mind. "Women are said to take everything personally," remarked one. "I don't," replied the other. Froebel says, "The destiny of nations lies far more in the hands of women, mothers, than in the hands of those who possess power. We must cultivate women who are the educa- tors of the human race, else a new generation cannot accom- plish its task." Fashion destroys the sweet and sympathetic nature in woman, and changes her character to one of striving, with little durable satisfaction. Women in men's business and in the practice of the profes- sions, managing a shop or in editorial work, attend to it with a fidelity so high that it is almost painful to observe. The sacrifices which a woman has to make from her nature in order to win success in some manly occupation represents great and unnecessary waste. She has to meet the world with a surface which hardens daily by contact with obstacles, but never in my observation does she develop the chrome steel armor for turning away any missile, and which must be developed by the man of affairs; each impact leaving his surface better polished than before, instead of dented. The hardening process with woman extends more deeply than with men, but she seldom acquires that elastic surface hardness which protects the valuables within. Workers in iron and workers in steel know that a particular kind of steel is to be well chosen in preparation for hardening processes. Nature selected man for the elastic hardening process, rather than woman. It is quite true that no business or occupation be- longs to man other than in a generic sense. All steel is made from iron, which retains atomic qualities as an element. 492 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Woman in order to follow man's occupation must suppress and overcome part of her nature, just as a successful man must suppress and overcome part of his own nature. It is the best part that suffers most in woman. The great majority of American women attend faithfully to household work, bring up their children carefully, and always will do so; but the uneasy women and the viragents who try to make men of themselves are more in evidence simply because they are more conspicuous. We do not see nor hear so much of the great solid body of useful women in the home. Display is no test of value. One's respect for women in men's occupations is consequent upon the respect with which they approach their undertakings. Women's natural fondness for order, fidelity to detail, exactness in execution of duty, forces them to take their work so seriously that they are wounded in the give-and- take process which is common among men. One trait is apt to remain conspicuous. They have frequently expressed to me a lack of confidence in other women who are their rivals. This attitude no doubt represents idealism, noble in its funda- mental origin. They demand more of their rivals than they observe to be accomplished by them. I know many women in men's occupations who retain sweetness and grace along with their cultivated dignity and sternness. They carry wisdom and knowledge well balanced, without making the mistake of treating wisdom and knowledge as synonymous terms, but there is always the feeling that I would like to ask them to allow me to bear their knocks. I am naturally too broad shouldered to look with complacency upon the idea of women taking knocks, and always feel like saying, "Please come in out of the world. Let me stand out there and be called a thief and a har, professionally incompetent, an ignoramus, and all that sort of thing." It makes women look grave to be called such names and to have their motives questioned. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 493 They waste and divert valuable energy by making response. Show me the woman who will not resent having her character called into question, and I will show you one who has lost some of the finest points in feminine nature. The man, on the other hand, laughs and says, "Oh, I guess they will find out! Too busy at present!" I do not like to think of women as carrying chrome steel armor plate. They belong, to my mind, rather in the group of yachts which appeal to us through their grace of manner and alertness in action. A yacht carrying armor plate is to my mind a sorry spectacle. When women take up men's occupation, no matter how clever they may be, the question to ask is if they are happy in this occupation. If they are not happy, if it does not satisfy a deep down need of their natures, it seems like a profitless expenditure of energy. Women are prone to be strongly partisan. Great causes are furthered by partisans. (Excepting justice.) If women would only go into agriculture and horticulture instead of competing in the professions and business with man, it would always be constructive, instead of being some- times competitive in a destructive way. The emoluments are more certain, and one who imagines that full range for the intellect is not given in competition with nature has a crude idea about games. Thirty thousand dollars has been given for a certain carnation, and many millions of dollars are annually paid for special products of horticulture. The emoluments of horticulture are greater than those of the professions for people with a similar degree of education. Women say that opportunities in horticulture are not open for them. Are they waiting for men to open these opportunities for them ? What does that mean? Plato, in his dream of an ideal republic, held that so far as 494 TO-AIORROVV'S TOPICS guardianship of the State is concerned there is no distinction between the powers of men and of women, excepting such as custom has made. He did not perhaps recognize the fact that natural law guided in the making of custom. Following natural law, custom divided the guardianship in such a way that the more purely educati\e part has gone to the responsi- bility of women, while the defensive military part has gone to men. Both sexes are guided by the points of view belong- ing to their respective sexes. Women cannot readily see the reason why we should expend for a single battleship enough money to erect the buildings of a great university. They seem to believe it is because men enjoy the vainglorious sport of warfare, — and men do enjoy it — because warfare belongs to nature's law, from the first microbic attack upon the amoeba through all stages of warfare to the driving of the Turk from Europe. It will always be so, and the stronger animal physi- cally will be the one who is to make the laws relating to the shooting, even though the cost of four shots from a big gun would send a poor boy through college. If vainglory could be confined to one country matters would be simplified. Men, on the other hand, cannot instinctively see at a glance why children should not work sixteen hours a day in the mill if cheaper goods are to be sold to the public in consequence. At least they do not observe that saving at the spigot wastes at the bung. Women are keenly alive to this part of guardian- ship of a state. Both men and women say with Ruskin, "There is no wealth but life," but each has a different viewpoint in regard to the ways of procedure for aiding the state with the wealth of life. The woman problem is only one phase of the larger problem of humanity, and it will grow on as an oak tree grows, slowly but surely along with other great trees in the forest of human questions. At present the woman movement grows almost TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 495 too slowly under restrictions, because of a certain amount of opposing sex animus, but more particularly because the suffrage movement is now part of a political game. It is probable that it must make its way, however, as part of a political game, because it is the way in which public questions in general are managed, and the methods of custom must be taken into consideration. Some of us see beyond the present political aspect of the movement and a deeper meaning and prospect which will evince itself in substantial progress in economic, social, eugenic and esthetic standards. The per- sonnel of its militant leaders at the present moment is some- what repellent to men of finer sensibilities whose ideal woman stands upon a pedestal — not upon a platform. Militancy be- longs to a crude stage in politics, but no doubt has played a natural and desirable part — a necessary step toward more refined politics. Would women militants upon two sides have averted the 1914 war? What is your guess? My guess is that each partisan would have determined to give the other side what it deserved. It is possible that women might vote against a controlling armament. The effect of a controlling armament is observed every day in the street. One boy says to another, "I can lick you." Peace then follows (after awhile). Moham- medans already exceed Christians in numbers and they are rapidly increasing in proportionate numbers over Christians. Will Christian women not make big guns when the time comes again in the future as it has in the past for Mohammedans to sweep over Christians, in any country ? We may make an estimate of the relative degree of genius influence belonging to the two armies which are fighting each other on the woman suffrage question. We make that estimate by noting the number of children of the leading militants and leading reactionaries. The smaller the number of children belonging to each group relatively, the greater the proportion 496 TO-MORROW S TOPICS of influence that would naturally eliminate the family and state. Progress of the state results in a way from violent conflict between opposing forces of the two armies, because they call the attention of the large normal exemplar public to mistakes and opportunities. This public is composed of men and women exactly equivalent to eacli other in nature's plan, consisting therefore of allied forces of equal value. The militants con- sist largely of divagates who would not have children anyway. This fact allows us to avoid a fallacy. The leading militants are not childless for the reason that they are seeking man's occupations, but they are seeking man's occupations because of approach to cultural limitations and therefore childless when sex types merge into each other. At this stage breeding in- stinct is lessened, perverted, or lost. A heightening of mental activity (doubling of rose) may occur at this stage with fine display of intellectuality. In the chosen nation cavalry will be trained as cavalry, men as men. Infantry will be trained as infantry, women as women. That is for the best interest of the state, — of the exemplar public. Men will be trained to be most normally masculine and women will be trained to be most normally feminine. This does not mean that women in the chosen nation may not vote or otherwise have a hand in all of the afTairs of state, but there will be none of the present-day confusion, in mistaking variant wings for substantial centre. Women will play their part from a basis of state politics. At present the opposing forces which attract most attention arc bent upon discussing the political position of women, rather than their economic position. The final result will be progress, for it is nature's way to develop things clumsily and expensively (from our point of view). Feminism is being represented by a group of women of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 497 unquestioned capacity, but who do not fviUy meet the approval of women of the exemplar feminine type. The extreme example of the feminist is one who looks upon the idea of the home as of sentimental origin. The exemplar feminine woman's truest and deepest heartfelt wish is for a home of her really own. A feminist woman is admired — an exemplar woman is beloved. Women of the beloved type believe that a family is a cor- poration in which the various interests, following the laws of relativity, are like those of a business corporation. A business corporation commonly finds it most expedient to have one representative of its economic and political position. Femin- ists bring figures to refute the idea that woman is being re- moved from a compact organization and is being set up as an independent member of the firm. These figures are correct as applied to the past, but not for the future. The woman with political independence, acting in that freedom, will in- stinctively seek for more and more occupations for women, so that all may have incomes insuring a continuance of inde- pendence. You and I would do likewise. In logical sequence the husband having become less necessary than previously, it will be to the economic advantage of many women to become unmarried mothers. This condition prevails at present in some European cities, in Bavarian manufacturing towns for example. The triumph of feminism would consist in disintegration of the family and the setting up of its members into economic and political competition with each other. This being the case, we may anticipate that capable feminist women divagates will arrange themselves upon one side of the line, and capable feminine exemplars will arrange themselves upon the other side of the line. A compromise situation will be reached in which feminists will gain certain political, economic and sex 498 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS advantages for women. At the same linu' tlic home makers will bestir themselves to make the home even more ideal than it has been in the past. Thus an ad\ance in civilization will result from the feminist movement on the whole, but the two types of women will remain distinct from each other. Indi- viduals among women will identify themselves with the admirable divagate feminist, or with the lovable exemplar woman, according to their respective natures. The whole movement will end with better identification of types of women. Which one of the two sorts of fine women am I to be? That is a question which every young woman will ask herself. She will answer it in accordance with the dictates of her physical constitution, of which the psychic state is but one form of expression. Biologically feminism is sex war, and the war is now on. When in the course of decline sexes approach each other in type and the breeding instinct becomes lessened or lost, one sex will demand economic and political equality with the other. Furthermore, it will be difficult to deny the justice of such a demand. Women will act phylogenetically by recapitulating the history of a race warfare. This will be at first destructive until a place for politics is hacked out. Then politics, in ordinary course, will be naturally accompanied by attempts of women to occupy all positions now occupied by men. If women were not capable of filling most of the places occupied by men there would be no war. As a matter of fact they are capable of taking practically all of such places. These are largely the women who have approached the masculine type and who are not of the mother type. In olden times feudal barons con- ducted social evolution. Now it is to be the feudal barren- nesses who are to conduct social evolution for awhile. The whole movement belongs to one of the tricks of nature for eliminating over-population. Sex warfare is retained for the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 499 last movement. Because of the proportion of women with one child, or with no childiPen at all, among the militant feminist leaders, I assume that the Twentieth Century is to be notable for "The War of the Feudal Barrennesses." Should some great devastating general war break out, however, mem- bers of the two sexes will go back to their original businesses for many decades. I have noted one peculiar 'feature of the feminist move- ment. Women whom I have met for the first time have sailed straight into me, bow on, with yards all set, — stating their arguments, conclusions and threats hiatusless. They did not know the first thing about my position on the subject. I do not remember to have had a similar experience with men propagandists of any sort whatsoever. If an exemplar feminine woman wishes to marry she need do little more than allow the fact to be known that she desires to have six children. If a divagate feminist woman is devoted to thoughts of great public activity, and of children only incidentally, she is not at all sure of marrying, and is more likely to be obliged to take up some occupation that will give her independence. Going into a "vocation" is apt to mean that she will go into nothing else, because her psyche is pointed that way. During the procedure of sex warfare people will express much feeling. Feeling is mechanical, the equivalent of heat liberated by friction. Many a family has produced a long list of famous men. The Adams family was notable for its selection of mothers. When the time comes for women to go into professions such lineage will soon end. Women who have little or no breeding instinct remaining strive keenly for positions in competition with men, and sex warfare become merely a part of the general struggle. In the course of progress of an ascending cultural period, nature furnishes sex partners who serve the purpose of increasing 500 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS numerical strength of its people. In the course of decline of a nation nature makes not partners but contestants, who enter into economic warfare with each other, and who serve an useful purpose in making display of the intellectual possi- bilities of that nation. The nation blossoms and dies. In the field of medicine women naturally pass competitive examinations with higher marks than are obtained by men. On this basis they would obtain more of the positions on hospital staffs and in public medical service than are now obtained by men, as a result of excellent examination marks. It will be necessary for men to consciously recognize the fact that sex warfare is now on. They will have to protect their positions as women would protect their own positions were they in power. A hospital staff composed wholly of women and with positions depending upon scholarship, would find ways for keeping men from the staff. This would not be fair according to definitions of fairness, but it would be fair according to the familiar and generally accepted saying that "all is fair in love and war." At the present time the Jews obtain high marks in competitive examinations for hospital staff positions. A hospital with none but Jews on its staff, with positions depending upon examination marks only, would find ways for keeping Aryans from the staff. This is a parallel to the woman question and a phase of the biologic struggle between organisms as a whole question. By the time when women take a large part in politics we shall be advanced in culture but nearer the end of our cultural period. In the 3rd E stage of Grecian and Egyptian civiliza- tion women came to have nearly all of the freedom and powers of men in functions of the state. Breeding then came to a pause. The rose had doubled. Advance in culture by the chosen race (advancing beyond to-day's culture) will be made when women devote themselves to the raising of men TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 501 who become leaders; and the women can then be free to develop the glorious field of feminine work. It is often said that a woman's work at home is not appreciated at its true value. Value, however, like energy, is never lost. The effect is cumulative, and the cumulative effect of the value of women's home work makes a tremendous impress upon civili- zation. There is not so much noise about it. Is it noise that women want when they prefer masculine work? Observe what happens to the families of noise women. Any one who is familiar with the high degree of efficiency of efficient women in household management will have no fears for that part of the government which may fall into the hands of this particular class of women. The danger will come from the women whose theoretical ideas of government and of administration are based upon psychology belonging to viraginity. This group, unencumbered by household duties, will not only be most active but most free to act. That is the danger. My ideas on this point would be passed over quite lightly if a layman were to read them, but they will not be read lightly by members of our profession who understand my meaning. The Minnesota Women's Suffrage League has chosen the darning needle for its emblem; and this is their slogan — "Darn the government, darn the socks. That is the way to the ballot box." They are quite right. If women who darn the socks want to darn the government we will let them do it. We are not afraid of any untoward influence coming from that group. It may be after all the viragint who gives a false note to the present women's movement and arouses prejudice. I have never seen any logical reason why women should not vote, excepting for a sort of prejudice which has been aroused by destructive viragint leaders. At the present time women in politics seem to unite only S02 TO-MORROW S TOPICS against the common enemy, man. When united for a common cause among themselves nothing can stand against them. Will there ever be a woman president? I do not know. There have been some pretty able queens. If for any reason, at any future time, the country finds any one woman par- ticularly fitted to be president, there is no logical reason why she should not rule as queens have ruled. It is said that if women take up the responsibilities of government they will also have to bear arms and go to war.' Have they not done so previously? Have not women been among the best fighters in the field in some of the earlier history of warfare? Even as sportswomen in the field, we find women \\'ith all of the endurance and enthusiasm of men, and I have known some of the best mothers who were equally able with their husbands to share the hardships of the field. The wife of William Penn assumed the management of colonial afltairs after his death, executing the task with tact and business capacity. Watson says, "She became in fact our governor, ruling us by her deputies or lieutenant governors, during all the term of her children's minority." If a woman were to go\'ern the world's affairs in place of man it would no doubt be done well, only in a different way from man'.s way. Nature would never allow public affairs to be badly managed for a long time anyway. Nature when giving women a wish to have a hand in public affairs, as the sexes approach each other in type in these later days, is exerting an influence toward the limiting of population, — but the whole question will slowly revolve itself into one of politics and along nat- ural lines. The suffragette who said to her troubled friend : "Trust in God and She will help you," was not wrong. Nature as a whole is expressed as "she," and the Sumerian deity was The Creatress. The greatest honors arc given to the woman after TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 503 all in nature, because woman is recognized as the one to extend the race. My friend Many Lightnings tells me that according to the former custom of the Sioux Indians, a young girl was allowed to run, climb trees, and engage in all activities en- gaged in by boys until she became twelve years of age. She was then separated from the boys and allowed to develop her feminine nature. Her voice was always to be low like the murmur of the brook beneath the trees. She learned that motherhood was the noblest accomplishment, and while she did not vote, she was practically the ruler in the tribe. All men honored her. They acceded to her wishes, and she held a sway quite as influential as that of any man in the tribe, because of the fundamental plan of nature to give all honor to the one most immediately in the position to carry out nature's plan for extension of tribal power. My assumption that women are to have the vote and are to take part in political government is based upon the obvious fact that at the present stage of our cultural period, in several civilized countries, the sexes are following a declining trend, approaching each other in type. There is a mental and physical levelling process. An entirely different view would be taken if we were free to assume that each sex would retain its integrity of type. When the sexes in any one nation ap- proach each other in type, it seems to mean that nature is about through with playing the game of mutation and evolu- tion with people of that nation. A mean type having been established and tried out, nature then throws it away and takes up another lot. Suffrage for either sex represents, basically, the method belonging to a means for government. If universal suffrage were a natural right, we would not have to draw lines excluding incompetent men and women. This exclusion of the incompetent brings the subject at once to the question of general expediency, and we have to decide 504 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS when it will be more expedient in the interest of free con- stitutional government to ask competent women to take part. When that time comes a levelling process will follow, because men and women are by nature adapted to such widely different spheres of function. Each sphere is quite complete in itself, furnishing a full range for all human capabilities within its encompassing circle. We already observe that each sex loses something from its mass through attrition consequent upon friction between two spheres in moving contact with each other. The force that keeps both spheres in motion (instead of at rest) is what? Politics. Politics is what? Warfare and compromise ! Women have done well in warfare, but have failed in compromise — neither occupation belonging to their best forte, however. If politics is warfare and compromise, and if two spheres rotating under the influence of this force come into contact with each other, both of these spheres are obliged to yield to a law in physics and to lose a part of their mass. Government has but one meaning fundamentally — protection for the state. Women are the intimate natural protectors for younger individuals in the state. Men are the intimate natural protectors for older individuals in the state. Woman's sphere rotates about the axis of the child. Man's sphere rotates about the axis of the adult. Both spheres are as complemental to each other as are the two wheels of a cart. If we merge both wheels into one no one but a trick rider can make it bear a burden or run without wobbling. At the present time many of the suffragettes believe their party to have been singled out for tyrannical attack by other political parties. When the suffrage party is not in the field each one of the other parties thinks it has been singled out for tyran- nical attack on the part of the others. We have then nothing but the plain human question playing its ordinary role in the warfare of the organic world. I am not sure that the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 505 woman suffrage question would grow very rapidly if women were forced to vote and take charge of one half of the govern- ment at once. It is my impression there would be a sudden cessation of heart-consuming desire to want such things. I may be mistaken in this, but I am mistaken only about half of the time generally. At the great woman suffrage parade in New York recently, one of the banners bore this legend, "If men have the vote, why not we?" Bystanders with a sense of humor observed that this particular banner was being borne by a corps of men. Serious interest in the cause had not led them to observe this seeming incongruity. How seriously we take all human questions, anyway! Nothing matters very much after all. What happens in the course of one hundred years means very little — or in one thousand years, or in ten thousand years. Ten thousand years of human activity is a mere passing incident, and the activities of the past ten thousand years are not to compare in interest with the activ- ities of the coming ten thousand years. Nations will come and go like moving pictures, from the plains to the market. Let us take our part in all of these serious questions of the day and do our duty upon sides which are opposed to each other, but let us not make ourselves too uncomfortable about it, because such discomfort interferes with the beautiful con- templative side of hfe that is given us to enjoy. I would rather think of a dear little head cosily snuggled against my shoulder, reading about Marcus Aurelius, than to think of its wit angrily engaged in the warfare of refuting my political views — and no doubt with success. This may represent selfish personal preference rather than any popular feeling. If you will promise — honest and true — not to tell anybody, I will give you a little secret that was sent to me by wireless. Militancy represents a state of mind rather than a political need. People who are militant in public are militant at home 5o6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS and amongst themselves, like the socialists and like the capital- ists. If that were not the case, militant suffragettes would get together and agree upon what they want. If they were to do that, a political power of the first magnitude would 1)0 prepared to render public service. It may be cowardly on my part — this insistence upon leaving women to settle ques- tions cruelly amongst themselves. Perhaps we should be more gallant; stepping into their breaches (Careful, type- setter!) and giving each group what it wishes politically. Are men themselves not disagreed over great and small public questions ? Indeed they are ! And the mean men tyrants must fight it out with each other too. Each side gains head- way in proportion to its internal cohesive compromise asso- ciations which form mass. The last word, however, will never be spoken upon this question. A little girl was asked in court about her father's last words. She replied, "There weren't any. Mother was there." Are the women of any country in the world slaves to tyrant man? I guess that idea would set some clever folks to chuck- ling. The Chinese woman's foot is modelled according to her own planning. A man would not do that to her. Is there any man who would not exchange the pain of a business complica- tion for the pain of a childbirth and be done with the question so promptly? Women, like the men of any country, are pretty well off but they do not know it. Were they to find content- ment in appreciation of their luck, evolution would be halted and nature's ambition defeated. Whatever one says in rela- tion to the other sex represents the state of mind of the indi- vidual who is speaking rather than the round plump facts in the case. We have to remember when puzzled by movements of militant suffragettes, undesirable labor leaders, or other dis- turbing elements, that the leaders are salaried. This fact, TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 507 if kept well in mind, will explain the nature of enthusiasm relative to many peculiar views and actions. All of these leaders would lose their positions if questions were to be settled. If we keep clearly in view one motive of salaried leaders who cannot afford to have idea jobs settled, it will make the mathematics of some situations more understandable than if we try to add up a sum total after leaving out an indispensable integral factor. I watched a big, lazy boss on a street job. His pay was equal to that of two hardworking Italians who were digging. He did not allow them to work very fast because that would have brought payment for his services to a close too soon. Both feeling and emotion are particularly well developed as elements of the feminine mind. So also is the development of the single idea, — in other words, concentration of conscious- ness upon a subject, carrying with it some strong emotional tone. Development of the single idea may result in a mind of small scope if all of the faculties are turned to the support of one, under ordinary conditions. The single idea of great potency may be developed under the influence of feeling and emotion, in minds of wide resource. Under the latter cir- cumstances it is capable of untoward influence when it becomes unwieldy through loss of proportion. It is this feature at present which is introducing a disturbing element, and which explains much of the psychology of militant suffragettes in cases in which salary does not explain the origin of inspiration. Hysteria furnishes its quota of influence among the militants, and so does plain love of notoriety. Women are more imita- tive than men; consequently mimicry also plays its part in the psychology of the militant suffragist movement. It is probable that women gaining the suffrage will raise standards distinctly for awhile, but both men and women will finally follow decadent lines together; because the generic 5o8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS differences are none. Sex differences are being abolished and there will be left a generic similarity of both sexes which will follow the laws of protoplasm toward senility, in the future as in the past, when nature has mingled the characteristics of parents up to the limit allowed by any given fund of national protoplasmic energy. To be sure I do not approve of the outrages committed by militant suffragettes in England, yet one must laugh and observe that it brings the woman question to the fore over the entire world. Whatever is good and whatever is bad in the question will be brought out in plain view. Hysterics and the notoriety seekers will come to the front as they always do when emotional questions set their protoplasm to vibrating violently. They will commit crimes and various outrages in the name of woman suffrage. Is the English man horrified? To be sure he is ! Would he have all his bloomin' trouble stopped? Wy, bless me 'eart, no! If his morning paper gives no account of any new and ingenious outrage, he goes about disappointed and disgruntled all day. Woman suffrage will progress so far as its constructive ideas carry it and no farther. Individuals who are trained in methods of destruction will act like socialists and turn upon more progressive women's organizations which limit the ex- pression of these individuals' individuality. If the militant suffragettes are capable of doing as much damage as they are doing at present without the vote, what will they do when they have it? Still larger questions, requiring better methods of approach and of compromise are always before legislative bodies. Warfare by force of bricks represents bankruptcy of reason. Suffragettes who destroy property show their individual unfitness for the rights of citizenship because they would presumably do the same thing when in power. Men have TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 509 quite as acute questions of other sorts to deal with, without thinking destruction of property to be desirable. When they do destroy property they come into conflict with the law. The fact is that the suffragette movement as now conducted arouses the emotions, and thereby attracts the hysterics. Hysterics are really the ones at whose doors should be laid the responsibility for violent demonstration. There are great changes to be made in favor of women. There are great advantages to come from women having power and voice in affairs of the town, state and nation, but it is the ones who prove themselves to be the substantial women, the women of homes, who are to constitute the feminine public behind such affairs when advanced politics of the movement has become established. Other suffragettes complain that Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughter are extremely hard people to work with because they wish to keep the centre of the stage, and are very jealous of all other martyrs who want to be sent to prison and suffer from hunger. They insist upon having most of the suffering themselves. A good deal of unnecessary discussion is intro- duced into the woman question by keeping it as a whole ques- tion instead of dividing it into two parts. It should be pre- sented in two aspects. One phase relates to women who are approaching cultural limitations and developing the masculine type of mind. They may fairly demand many rights, as good citizens of the state, — which they often are. The other phase of the question includes the idea that maternal women of still greater importance to the state, and perhaps more truly representative of their sex may be obliged to take part in activ- ities for which they have no taste nor trained capacity. The masculine and feminine types of mind grade into each other like the physical grades. We may say that the feminine mind is prone to concentration upon a concrete idea and to develop 5IO TO-MORROW'S TOPICS feeling in connection with it, meanwhile ignoring general ideas and impersonal thought. One would not have to search far to find some man whom this characterization would fit, or, on the other hand, to find some woman who did not retreat from general ideas and impersonal attitude in relation to them. The feminine and masculine types of mind and of body are therefore only "relatively different from each other." The women suffragists are not distinctly individual in their small vices. I attended a suffrage luncheon not long ago. There were some half dozen men present and twenty women. Most of the men were of the sort who are serenely superior to small vices and did not even smoke (I was an exception), but many of the women smoked, and they chose for material the form of tobacco which we commonly associate in idea with men of decadent proclivities. Among my deities neither Diana nor Martha nor Cornelia ever smoked. In the good old days of my youth, there was distinction in small vices of the differ- ent sexes. Where men swore, women shed tears and had a headache. Where men drank rum, women drank tea. Tea and tears were the equivalents of rum and swearing. Growth must necessarily be slow, and slow progress in Eng- land or any old established civilization is essential. The crustacean cannot grow until its shell is cracked, and the suffragettes in England are trying to crack a shell. Rapid growth of ideas in England would not be safe because a crus- tacean is not safe when it emerges from its cracked shell — enemies all get after it during that toothsome stage. Suffragism will break down those established social barriers which have protected women and it will lead to new adjust- ments for protection against evil influences. We need have no fear that such adjustments will not be made, but features of a disintegrating process are to be met meanwhile. One of the marks of the disintegrating process is a more sharply out- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 511 lined division between the bifurcate branches of feminine divagates. Viragints will be apt to wear costumes which approximate the attire of men — for instance, severely plain tweed skirt, blouse and tie, sensible boots, and a felt or straw hat of the type worn by men. The play-thing group on the other hand will affect the slit skirt and alluring adjuncts, their gowns artistically accentuating what they are supposed to conceal. Their choice will be for soft, clinging, or transparent fabrics, which leave no good curve neglected. Dress, which means so much in both instances, has a far deeper significance than mere desire for novelty or utility. It represents certain features of the decline, when the sexes are approaching each other in type. Nature struggling to maintain a mean type is dividing off the variants and leading them to classify them- selves by means of external signs. The breeding instinct is not aroused by the dress of either branch of the bifurcates. Sex instinct, as differentiated from breeding instinct, is ab- normally heightened by one branch, and abnormally lessened by the other. It is probable that women, through the new movement, will get into better methods of team play. Girls are already getting together in societies for healthy out-door recreation, just as boys get together for that purpose. We were talking about daughters — a nouveau riche mother and I. She said that her young daughter was not allowed to go to the theatre because something must be kept in reserve for her when she grew up. What do you think of that idea, backed by large capital? This good mother was moulding nothing but a soft-wad to be shot out of her cannon against the powers of social disintegration ? Are you a Soft-Wad ? When a woman loses her beauty she loses her ornamental value, and must then be prepared to have intellectual value. One merges into the other insensibly, and the intellectual 512 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS beauty of face belonging with the well-developed cultured mind is quite as attractive as the ornamental beauty of earlier years. Plain women who turn to intellectual pursuit often acquire a sort of beauty which they never would have de- veloped as flowers of society. A sweetly sympathetic face that is freckled makes one dote on freckles. Women demand a continued demonstration of love. A man is more apt to be satisfied with the evidences of love which he detects in others, knowing that it is due to his efforts. He is not so prone to ask for open demonstration. His feelers give ample testimony. "The clinging vine" is wonderfully beautiful as an idea, but may become a destructive weight. Nature limits expansive development of some of our best men through the weight of a clinging vine. One of my acquaintances who has a sanitarium for the care of neurasthenics near a large Eastern city tells me that he dreads to be called upon by members of the old families of that vicinity. Their decadent traits are so striking and so strong, in combination with an extremely high degree of intelli- gence, that such people make the most troublesome and diffi- cult class of patients. No one but the doctor can realize the state of unrest belong- ing to over-sensitized protoplasm as it occurs among the scions of nobility. Perhaps the unhappiest people whom I have ever met were the ones who had been trained to the last degree in the social graces and in ways of culture, but whose minds had not been turned into useful channels. These spirited, restless, unsatisfied people go to Monte Carlo. They wander over the face of the earth or engage in purposeless social struggles at home. I have had under my care many an one whose history would make a novel, and yet the entire history would be of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 513 no real consequence to the world. If the same people had been engaged in some study of science their lives would have been completely filled, there would have been a life-satisfaction for them, and the social world would have profited by their presence instead of being subjected to a destructive attrition resulting from their friction applied to its surface. To-morrow social efficiency experts will utilize such waste material. The rapid increase of cancer, insanity, childlessness, work- lessness and the high cost of living depend upon the same causes, and all may be made to increase or decrease together should any chosen nation care to take charge of the matter. We laave learned how to control tuberculosis by working out methods for its prevention clumsily, and against tremendous opposition on the part of the public. No one but a few heroes in the profession can know what it meant to face the public with their new knowledge on the subject of tuberculosis, and to carry it into action which meant protection for the public. Just as we have learned now to inhibit tuberculosis even in the presence of marked inherent tendency, so we shall un- doubtedly learn to control cancer, insanity, and the cost of living, all of which are due to microbe influence in causing doubling of the rose. High living corresponds to the demand for fertilization and care of the double rose. Otherwise the rose is subjected to attack by its enemies to a far greater extent than is the normal rose. Very much as we took up the tuberculosis question, and cut down the death-rate tremend- ously, so we may take up cancer, insanity, and the cost of living, — understanding their terms and learning how to man- age them. Between 1870 and the present time Germany has developed to become perhaps the first of all countries in all that civiliza- tion means, and were it not for the fact of the rapidly decreasing birth-rate in Germany which has now appeared, — 514 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS indicating protoplasmic limitations, — we might imagine that German scholars would go on to the settling of these questions in advance of their settlement by other nations. Nature gave a little cry of alarm when Mr. J. J. Hill epigrammatically said that it was not the high cost of living, but the cost of high living that troubled people at the present time. He exposed a secret of nature, but people were looking the other way, and will soon forget the remark, so nature need not be alarmed. As to worklessness anything which is not utihzed by nature goes into the bonfire; and when in the course of culture and civilization a great number of Elims are thrown out of the machinery of utility, there is no place for them excepting in the bonfire. Statistics seem to prove that if drug habitues increase at the present rate, one of every four individuals will belong to that group in fifty years from the present time. This I doubt. There really may be fewer drug habitues proportionately at that time, because these unfortunates belong to the elim group. The ways for obtaining morbid effects are becoming more and more refined and injurious, killing more exquisitely and rapidly. In olden times the elims had to depend mostly upon alcohol, which killed slowly and clumsily, allowing time for breeding. Then came opium, which is more refined, — mor- phine, still more insidious and polite in its stroke, — and cocain, which is perhaps the most rapid in its action of abstracting members of the elim group from human society. To-morrow still more refined ways will be found for taking the elims quickly to the bonfire, leaving a larger proportion of homer- gists to carry on the work of the world, with less interruption from the vagaries of odynecens. Odynecens are allied to allergists in a way, because of the after-effects of drugs which are employed for quieting disturbed cenesthesia of microbic TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 515 origin. After-effects of drugs appear to depend upon the calling out of antibodies through the influence of drugs upon cell tissues. Therefore we find in these people proteolytic changes which are similar to the proteolytic changes occurring in people who are suffering from allergic effects of microbic toxins. When studying morphine addictees the fact has not been seized upon that hepatic and gastro-enteric disturbances often precede as well as accompany the use of habit-forming drugs. In the future no one will think of treating a case of addiction to any drug without first obtaining a report upon colonic toxins. The mental feature of narcotic addictees has in the past been discussed chiefly by moralists and by psychologists, who did not realize that no matter what is whirling through the head of an addictee, the mental feature in itself might be and often is secondary to microbic influence. It is quite pos- sible that in the presence of drug addiction, nature continues to try to protect the individual by calling out antibodies for meet- ing by-products (of morphine for instance). If this supposition is correct, the pathologist of the future will be enabled to collect blood from the drug habitue and by adding the drug or some of its products, secure precipitates indicating the presence of antibodies furnished by nature (Bishop). If that proves to be true, it would seem to mean that one could with- stand the influence of almost all the drugs, just as he with- stands microbic toxins up to a certain point, without showing marked mental effect. The line of treatment would include the idea of keeping the patient upon that amount of the drug which can be balanced by antibodies during the time when the physician is at work diminishing the enteric toxins. Reduc- tion of the drug would be accomplished side by side with reduction of microbic or other toxins. Some drug addictees who lose the pleasure which comes to them from the use of 5i6 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS drugs, wish to undergo treatment for the purpose of being "cured" up to the point at which they can enjoy the drug again. Under these circumstances we are dealing with a distinctly decadent group, who represent that part of a community which nature is ehminating. The "hectic hustler" is said by Europeans to represent a salient type in American character, a development caused by the influence of our "climate. I had not believed this to be true. It did not seem reasonable to believe that the descendants of Puritan, Cavalier, Junker and Slav, subjected to the influences of such widely different climates as are found on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, on the Canadian border, and between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, would show any characteristic response to "climate." Yet I found a parallel in botany. The walnut tree, or so-called English walnut (Juglans regia), when transplanted to this country, lives and grows throughout this whole climatic range, and in the entire range its nuts appear to present three characteristic North American features. They store up a larger proportion of starch in the kernel, and a larger proportion of tannin and of bitter extractives in the pellicle than are commonly stored in the nuts of this species from other parts of the world. The trees here grow with a hustle, but seem to be shorter lived than they are in Europe or in Asia. There are peculiarly violent extremes in relation to relative productiveness of these exotics, some of them bearing enormously and others very sparingly. "Climatic influences" appear to influence this species in the whole of another continent also — that of South America. In all of South America the nuts of the walnut seem to be notably oily, and the trees have a peculiar tendency to produce three-cham- bered nuts. Whatever we may understand by the meaning "climate," it may be used as a convenient term for describing something belonging to an entire continent, which apparently TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 517 produces characteristic influence upon men and upon walnut trees at least. When coming to this country from Europe one may notice upon arriving in New York a certain air of crudeness about everything. If the journey is continued to Chicago, still more crudeness is observed, — to San Francisco, more yet. In any one city there are areas which give the same comparative atmosphere of culture or lack of it. New York in the vicinity of Washington Square has the fine flavor and mellowness of all that is best in social life. On Riverside Drive, there is a change to a general brut social air. If we observe the result of activities in various localities we note the fact that apprecia- tion of art, science, and literature are at their best among the mellower surroundings, but that great projects and the results of sheer physical force in making advance are more in evidence in the brut localities. There is a warm human glow of talent and genius, virtue, vice and good-fellowship in the "Bohemian crowd" of the large cities of the world. Freedom from the weightier re- sponsibilities of better organized society and lack of interest in the greater vanities of social position and wealth, allow my Bohemian friends to concentrate attention upon their art in music, painting, literature, the drama, and other luxurious emotional occupations, — whenever they choose to concentrate attention upon anything in particular. They don't have to concentrate attention unless they feel like it. There is a certain freedom of the spirit which is most attractive. Who does not instinctively enroll himself by preference among the Bohemians in the fancy-free days of youth ? And yet, nature does not approve. Verily, the bonfire is kept bright with varying hues from material prepared for it by the microbe in the midst of this carelessly singing and sighing unstable element in our population, which is always in a state of flux. 5i8 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS The crowd of to-day is not the crowd of to-morrow in the old haunts. Some of the members catch their Hne of thought in the estabHshed machinery of society, in commerce, or in science, and they are drawn out of and away from Bohemia by the power of that pull, before nature has taken aim at them with disapproving eye. Here and there an odd char- acter survives in the old quarters for years. A few individuals adapt themselves to the hfe, but on the whole we find the spirit of Bohemia and new votaries rather than familiar faces, at the end of a decade. It gives one a feeling of sadness when he returns to make inquiry about old friends and acquaintances who once engaged the most human part of his nature. Alcohol, morphine, and cocain, have permitted tuberculosis, pneumonia, and a dozen passing infections to take their toll from careless lives. Now and then a wounded bird has fluttered to some safe place and has escaped. The Bohemians are to-day as gay and merry as of yore at the same old resorts, but when we ask about friends of former days there is generally one answer — "Gone 1" And mostly to the bonfire ! Some became hopelessly indolent and vicious. Others, — hopelessly ambitious — gripped in the clutch of engrossing ideas, — could not halt for consideration of anything so commonplace as three regular meals a day and eight hours of sleep, when divine afflatus colored cheek and forehead with its flush. The more nervous they became the more commendable this condition seemed to be (almost a duty), for then was the over-sensitized proto- plasm more impressionable. Then did the quicker stroke of pen or brush bring out more vivid images of the imagined world. Working beyond strength brought more immediate results in literary and artistic fruit, but it was fruit ripened by toxic forcing, falling early, half green, and half flavored. It was not that fruit of wholesome daily life, which with greater exercise of patience would have become the rosy luscious fruit TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 519 of cool October, instead of the tumbling windfall of hot August. Out of Bohemia will always come bushels of unsea- sonable yellow windfalls and some good fruit of music, paint- ing, literature and the drama. In this haunt of good-fellowship, genius, virtue, poverty, talent, and vice, the spirit will always be free. There will be fraternity and liberty, but not that safe equality belonging to convention and to the home and children which carries one steadily beyond the bonfire, in the ceaseless swinging of the social circle about it. Would you live in Bohemia? Ware the bonfire ! Catch hold of your own child and grasp your own doorstep. Be quick about it ! There, now you are safe ! Faults and virtues are not confined to Bohemia. They are only more in evidence where there is freedom from the conventions. We have the hectic hustler in the best established business circles. He may be of great value to the world at large, like the genius, but at the expense of himself and his family. His over-sensitized protoplasm brings quick results from expendi- ture of talent, but in later years he becomes neurasthenic him- self, and entails asthenic protoplasm to his children, who become neurasthenic distributors of any fortune which he may have gained, thereby exerting morbid influence upon society. It is true that the microbe captures the indolent anergist quite as often as it catches the hectic hustler. The microbe is com- missioned by nature to send both of them to the bonfire, because she wishes to establish a wholesome exemplar type. We are to encourage only the healthy hustler. In America there is a constant tendency to nervous tension even in sports. A ball game is not restful, because the specta- tors are all in a state of tension clear up to the point of strain in a good game. It is typical of our American sports. 'Rah ! 'Rah ! 'Rah ! I'm going to the next game. City noises belong among the injurious luxuries of tension 520 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS carelessness. They interfere with the waves of genius, in- crease those of nervousness, and cause greater irregularity of the mental waves for all of us. In the midst of all the din there may be lonesomeness. A young girl speaking of the lonesomeness of a big city told me to-day that she was glad to have a headache because then she had something with her for company. The sense of lonesomeness is something that is intangible, different from the craving for food and for water. The lone- some individual feels, without realizing what it is that he needs, but it is fundamentally a craving for sympathy, — that triumph of gregarious instinct. It does not depend upon actual isolation alone. A man may be in the woods far, far from his friends, enjoying nature, and yet not lonesome, even though he is missing for the time being that which would be socially stimulating. He is not lonesome when some business trip for a short time keeps him away from his family. He may be alone prospecting in distant fields, and yet thinking of friends at home waiting for his return. If he is the head of a family, he has already found a sovereign remedy for the trouble of soli- tude. The trapper does not suffer a bit, for solitude is a need in his work, — nor does the hermit suffer from lonesomeness, for he is morbid, and is really shirking life. People of many instincts feel the need for dependence upon others, and that is the reason why suffering occurs in the lone- someness of a great city. There is no actual physical separa- tion from people in a city. One is close to them physically, and yet he may be as far away from them if he is a new comer in the city as he would be were they entirely out of sight. The stream of unfamiliar faces on the streets, the factory whistle, and the noise of the elevated trains are meaningless impres- sions to him. To be alone in a crowd means more distress than to be alone among the trees and birds and animals. The TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 521 birds and animals all manifest interest of one sort or another in his presence even though they simply run away from him. A boy on his first day at a boarding school, away from home, knows what loneliness is, even though plenty of other boys are round about. The explorer is separated from his friends and from his family because he wishes to be separated from them in order to carry on his work, but the separation that goes with a hall bedroom in a crowded street may give rise to a loneliness that causes intense depression and sickness of heart, — espe- cially at a time of the year when other people are getting together at Thanksgiving or Christmas time. I have heard no expression of suffering from illness that was greater than the expression of suffering on the part of young people who had come to New York to make their way, and who were "heart sick with lonesomeness." It is a joy to invite them to run in and see me for a minute — any time — no matter if I am busy. I just now came from a magnificent house facing the park, with marble columns and great halls, but without a single cozy corner in sight. If the family ever assembled anywhere in the house it was in some bedroom. There is no spirit of com- fort and happiness in that house, and yet the people have means for purchasing everything that fancy might dictate. When coming out of the door I passed two newsboys standing nearby on the street, one of whom said to the other, "Gee, Jimmy, I wis't I could live in there." The other answered, "Gee !" That is what made me think of that house in particu- lar, for the newsboys had patches on their coats, and their clothes were rather carefully repaired, which meant that some- body loved them. We are fond of speaking of our independence, but that in itself is often an expression of crudity. The so-called freedom 522 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS of young people who try the graceless vulgar dances is no more freedom than the freedom of a sheep with burs in its wool following the rest of the flock over a dilapidated fence. All are led by a law as inexorable as any of the laws of the Medes and Persians. (The instinct of ovisness.) Nature has made a law decreeing that our gregarious habit is to be obeyed closely by all people of mediocre taste, and when one sheep goes over the fence, all others of the common lot are to follow the fashion. If that be independence, I have missed getting the right significance of the word. If that be freedom, then a barrel rolling down the cellar stairs is really moving upward when it is filled with material that goes by the name of "excelsior." The spirit of real freedom consists in the posses- sion of a proud and capable individuality. It would lose caste by engaging in the graceless dances, which consist in expendi- ture of neurotic tension by portraying a symbol which has one significance only. If dogs in the street play at make-believe, why should we not giggle when young people remove their delicate bloom of modesty by doing the same thing — showing their independence by lowering caste. A dance fundamentally expresses emotion and dramatic feeling. The aim of the emo- tion and of the dramatic feeling is expressed in symbols, and the kennel symbol is misunderstood by no one of intelligence and understanding — otherwise the symbol would be a failure (which it is not, or it would be dropped) . The origin of the kennel dances seems not to be well deter- mined, but I have seen practically the same thing as variations of the cake walk nearly forty years ago, and to the accom- paniment of music of primitive character, which some of the cake walkers had heard in their native jungles. The dance and music seem so fitting and characteristic, that I have little doubt but these cake walk variations were gradually taken farther north and gained foothold in New York in parts of TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 523 the city where a deep blush — over certain house doors at night — has become symbohc of the district. The French have a most delicious way of reducing crude carbon to its crystalline form with an electric flash, and one of the illustrated Parisian newspapers, under the picture of a pair of trotters, had this legend — "If it is a boy what shall we name him ?" Occasionally some very innocent person may really be so verdant as not to know the significance of a kennel dance. The reason why I am convinced of this is because the question of having the police stop the couchee-couchee dances in the Mid- way at Chicago, at the time of the World's Fair, was left to the decision of a committee of citizens. One member of this committee, a woman of known responsibility and sincerity, went about making independent investigation. She was allowed to see all the movements of the dance, and was in- formed by the astute agent of a troupe that the entire world had been misinformed on the subject. It was really a dance having origin in religious ceremony, she was informed. The agent spoke truly but he did not go further and explain that the religious ceremony was an appeal to one of the Greek deities who has not lately appeared in polite circles. The good commissioner reported back to her committee that the dance was really of religious nature, and she saw nothing objection- able excepting lack of grace. Managers in the Midway found it very profitable to present dances without grace which led people to pay out their half dollars in exchange for mistaken idea. If people want to be bad let them be conscientiously and honestly bad. One vulgarity of the turkey trot and of the bunny hug lies in the pretence that the philology of the nomen- clature describes no intent. There is a joy and exhilaration in following the rhythm of almost any dance, even the one-one-one. Additional figures mav be introduced which add to their attractiveness. At a 524 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS house party not long ago I outlined an interweaving floor course for turkey trotters, the couples to pass each other according to a definite plan. The hostess enthusiastically proposed to name this after me as its inventor. Now wouldn't that have been the irony of fate? Another case of Schenck's Rules ! There is healthful exercise in almost any dance when it is enjoyed at the proper hour, but as between dancing at two o'clock in the morning or trying to catch an Hesperia syhanus at seven o'clock in the morning, give me the rhopalo- cerous lepidopteran to furnish incentive for action, and the incidental securing of oxygen and red cheeks. There was quite as much outcry against the waltz when it first appeared, as the tango now arouses. The possibilities of the waltz for improper employment were not so great as those of the tango, and it is a pity that the tango and the more easily learned one- step dances could not have developed from more inspiring origin. Any dance, however, represents true expression of feehng. It is symbolic of the trend of thought of the day and consequently we must accept the new dances as being inseparable from an expression of the innate feelings of a large part of the pubhc in this period of downward slope. There is no doubt but the tango when danced with the idea of bringing out grace and beauty with its steps can be made a most attractive and unobjectionable dance. Even the one- step may be unobjectionable when danced innocently, although it can never be beautiful. All depends upon the dancers, rather than upon the dance. The objection to the new dances lies in the fact of easy opportunity for making them both ugly and vulgar. The psychological reason for the recent revival of dancing has apparently puzzled most of the sociologists, but if the question of sex appeal is taken into consideration, and the fact that the dances arose in popularity from a basis of sex appeal, no matter how innocent some of them may TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 525 have become later, the psychology of the great new movement will probably be revealed clearly. . After we have reached a dance which Plato proposed for the ideal republic, and we can go no further in pairs, a futurist dance, named "The Valerian Cat," may be introduced. Among the present occidental dances of erotic motive, aside from the turkey trot, we have the grizzly bear, the bunny hug, and crab crawl; but the tango, which is commonly included in this group, does not necessarily belong there. It has many graceful steps aside from suggestive intent. The tango simply gives opportunity for a dancer to return "hot from the hands pro- miscuously applied," without actually being forced into pro- miscuity of attention. All of these dances possess a motive in addition to that of simple atavism toward primitive instincts. This other motive represents nature's struggle in efforts at arousing normal sex instinct when it begins to lag among influ- ences of decline. Erotic dances do not mean that civilization is a failure ; they mean only that limitations of culture are being approached and that elims who are innately conscious of such limitations mark themselves with a caste sign by unloosing virtue's robe in the presence of an audience. Young men and women who are restless in the desire to do something original do not always perceive the opportunity which is open to them in this field. Not long ago a young woman who is much in demand socially was asked in my presence if she would be a guest at a week-end house party. Her standing was such that frankness could be permitted, and she replied, "Oh, yes, thank you, it will be delightful ! But tell me first if you are counting upon me to play bridge for stakes, or to dance any of the rags. In that case, please get someone else in my place." A few minutes later one of the pretty invitors said, "Just think of the nerve of the thing — her presumption in telling us what we shall do at the house party!" The other one responded. 526 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS "Yes, what a nerve ! But say, she really did not tell us what we should do, but only what she would not do." "Oh, well," said the first commentator, "it amounts to the same thing, and I call it an insult." We have in this case an example of what machinists would call an automatic feeder for insult. "They all do it" is the bleating cry of the common run of flock sheep. The independent noble stag and hind range far away in free- dom from the bleating all-do-its. That is what I mean by opportunity right now for people to be original. The prefacing of the turkey trot by a few moments of mallard nodding would also be original and appropriate. It is all a matter of taste. Taste is synonymous with test in social lexicons. In Rome the dance gradually became so depraved that the Senate made a decree to expel all dancing and dancers from the city. That did not help matters very much for Rome, because the dance in that city, as in ours, represented a lock step toward the bonfire, a lock step that was agreed upon by a large part of the "exhibiting element" on the down slope. It is a hopeful sign when a social body of recognized high standing takes direct action against destructive social influ- ences. The Pope promptly placed a ban upon the modern dances. It is reported that the Kaiser has forbidden all officers of the German army when in uniform to dance the tango and the one step dances, and they are to avoid families where these are danced. The Berliner Salon asserts that dis- missal will be the punishment for infringement of this order. The Berliner Tageblatt learns that members of the ballet and o f the royal opera house have been warned against taking part in charity entertainments at which tango engagements were included. Nothing could be more hopeful in the course of progress than the issuing of such a decree which acts in two ways : First, by checking the greatest social downward move- ment of the day, and retroactively, having a tendency to TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 527 establish the Kaiser as first in social order among all rulers, — because of his firm stand. There is no doubt that many of these dances lose their bad significance when danced by large num- bers of innocent people. The danger lies in bad possibilities and in their origin, which are so thinly concealed that the tendency will be for the bad features always to come into evidence, on occasions when the dances might otherwise not be really improper. This I have observed sometimes when the modern dances were being conducted in orderly manner. Some one couple in a spirit of fun or daring would instantly attract attention by introducing a lunge and a leer. I have seen a whole roomful of people who were enjoying themselves laugh but look sad when this occurred. All dignity was instantly lowered. The Queen of England has very recently allied herself with the social leaders who have power and the will to stop degrading dances at leading social entertainments among the nobles — and this is most heartening for sociologists. Captain Gibbons of the Naval Academy at Annapolis promptly barred the turkey trot and other make-believe sym- bols of that sort, when a teacher appeared among the mid- shipmen. No doubt the same thing would occur at West Point if anyone were to attempt to introduce at the digni- fied hall any symbolic amusement belonging to the kennel. There is always a stately "really best" society. Social leaders of the sort who employ press agents, and who unhook and drop down their characters in the presence of observers, seldom get into this set. Annapolis is pretty well toward the South where the turkey trot would never find wide favor anyway, excepting as a cake walk in taboo quarters. There is less of toxic tension in the South, where an easier, quieter life leads to more delightful social existence. It is one of the compensations which go with a lesser degree of activity than 528 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS we find at the North — although the latter accompHshes more perhaps in a business way. The South has always been the region in which climatic influences allowed of gentler ways of life, where the courtesies and politenesses take high rank, and where there is always to be found that delicate sense of propriety in connection with nature's aristocrat, the woman, which will not allow her to dance symbolic dances belonging to the kennel. The Roman Catholic Church has always exercised beneficent influence upon people of the sort who, when left to their "independence," promptly take higher intelligence in both hands and start straight toward perdition with it. The admonitory word which is preached from the altar has been distinctly efficient in keeping moral influence compact, no matter how many individuals were bleating about their independence while en- gaged in crowding the tail end of the flock. Certain fashionable people have lately been prevented from giving coiretypus dances in public hotels and halls. One famous proprietor told me, however, that such leaders would be allowed to hire private rooms, and exhibit their standards of taste when the doors were shut. This would avoid cor- ruption of servants who might inadvertently watch a "society performance." When members of the exhibition set engage in kennel dances, the working girls' commissioner takes note, and ex- plains to the working girls that examples of morality are not often given by fashionable people. Breakfast is now an institution at some of the exclusive dances. Society partakes of bacon and eggs at five o'clock in the morning. Pretty faces soon pale under this stress, and they are danced in a neurotic whirl over the ropes into the bonfire. Compensations as usual are to be found for kennel TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 529 dances, as for crafting. The latter gives opportunity for the medical profession to rank above other callings; the former gives opportunity for an emperor to take rank socially above all other rulers. Crafting, which is synonymous w^ith intrigue, represents an instance in which morality has not kept pace with development of the higher functions of the intellect; and this is true also of demoralizing dances. In proportion as these degrading influences are marked, a profession or a ruler taking a compensatory opposite position becomes sali- ently superior. People have been taken away from the stuffy rooms in which they played bridge, and sent to indulge in much needed exercise. That is one good compensation when dancing is confined to hours in which brain cells contain a good store of granular protoplasm. The dances that are just now receiving so much attention represent a reversal to that primitive bestiality which all civi- lization has persistently tried to eradicate since the earliest days of history. This primitive bestiality has always smoul- dered beneath the surface, and appears here and there in weak places where decay has removed the protecting veneer of civilization. Reversal to primitive barbarism will occur in an increasing degree as rapidly as cultural limitations are reached in various parts of the land. We need not be disturbed about it, because civilization has plenty of resources of its own, and our feeling need not be one of alarm but simply one of pity for fellow beings who pass in descent of the ladder while others are going up. Our only prayer shall be, like that of Burns, never to meet a friend of ours coming down while we are going up. The only question which a mother needs to ask is, if any particular dance is good enough for her daughter. We shall never go back to the "good old fashioned times" in dancing or in anything else because there never have been any "good old times" in fact. It is one of the most hopeful S30 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS commentaries upon human nature that we prefer to remember only what was ideal in the past. That shows our natural taste. There will be more suggestive dances in the future, and more that is bad in every way, because there are so many declining mothers who are losing control over their sons and daughters. These die off hopefully, however. We shall never go back to old times. The atavism which is demonstrated in dances of erotic import belongs to an unripe civilization, and in this fruit of our times there is no mean stage between that of greenness and decomposition. The turkey trotter is either green or rotten. Practically all that is bad, but likewise all that is new and good, — that is the main point — are to be retained side by side. The new bad and the new good are not to be dropped, but are to be used as labels for marking the social caste of individuals. Thus we see at a glance that a certain teacher of ethics has influenced thousands of people in new ways for being useful, and for holding their heads high, with more grace than is displayed in any bending of the knee in a dance. The compensating feature rests in splendid opportunity which is right now given to fine men and women for showing their fineness. It introduces a test for strength and nobility of nature's real aristocrats, who are self reliant in their modesty and morality. Our national aristocrats need no chaperones for upholding caste. Side by side with the green or rotting trotters we are developing clean boy scouts and clean camp fire girls. Perhaps we would not feel the inspiration of healthy upward movements so keenly and joy- ously were it not for the opportunity of making comparison with the downward elements. Blessed be the compensations! You are chooser! When sexuality begins to show itself in suggestive dances rather than in the raising of fine children, the rose is doubling rapidly, but we need not be disturbed. It is only the elims TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 531 who are swinging toward the bonfire. They will end their family lineage and give place to new strong families. ( Since these notes were written, a year or so ago, a marked change for the better has taken place in the character of dancing in America. There is no doubt but the direction of brightest of red blood is still toward the legs instead of toward the head, in the way of popular entertainment, but an auto- matic adjustment between modesty and the dance has been of hopeful character.) The servant problem is becoming more and more difficult, and the reason is clear. It is a social question. Under present methods of living the servants are separated widely from householders throughout the whole range of human interest. In former years, and in the South to-day, there was and is close sympathy between servant and householder; but the tendency during the past few years has been toward a wider separation between the two. We are now in a transition stage, and shall get back again to having good servants when we plan systematically for their comfort, recreation, and edu- cation. The family with many servants or an association of families, to-morrow may have a separate house in which the servants are to live and have their own children. There will be a casino for the servants, with amusements and educa- tional and social plans developed in their interest. The pay of domestic servants at the present time is very much better than the pay of shop girls, but it is clear that the social ques- tion is one of primary consideration with them, dominating the financial question. Advances in sociology will take up this question and settle it in a rational way when families or associations of families establish more human connections between themselves and their servants. The servant question will become more and more difficult 532 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS of solution for some years to come, and one reason will be biologic in its nature. (In addition to the social reason.) In the course of doubling of the rose, exhibition instinct is de- veloped at the expense of mutual helpfulness instinct. The brotherhood of man idea decreases proportionately as the exhi- bition idea increases. People at the summit of development or in the course of decline are not eager to bring out in a kindly way the best there is in servants; they prefer rather to make rapid changes in the hope of finding a good servant already made. Avoidance of self sacrifice in this matter bears its own fruit in a more unstable and unsatisfactory serving class. Among members of families, exhibition instinct supplants not only the brotherhood of man idea, but even parental and fra- ternal love. The spectacle of members of families warring over property furnishes an object lesson to the point. Any one of those families, if without large property, might be united in common efifort and mutual helpfulness, until such time as accumulated property allowed various members to stop work and to go on social exhibition. A flock of ordinary doves becomes a by-word and synonym for peace. Let the pigeon fancier select the more notable ones for exhibition purposes, and his cultural efforts quickly result in making it a difficult matter to find one even pair of doves that will get on well with each other. In this country tipping was rather rare twenty-five years ago. The man who wanted to purchase special favors for himself to the detriment of other people, or who thought it morally right to encourage small blackmailers, had to exercise a bit of caution, because self-respect was found among many employees who were engaged in rendering service at that time. Country houses twenty-five years ago were places in which the servants entered into the spirit of hospitality with their masters, with little thought beyond a gracious desire to please. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 533 Now they are impudent to the reluctant giver of a tip. The custom is an importation from Europe, where self-respect is not supposed to exist below or above the social stratum of the individual. It fits the environment in Europe as a two foot seam of coal fits a six foot seam of slate. In this country self-respect twenty-five years ago was felt in the social mass more equally. Later developments seem to indicate that nature has a plan requiring the formation of lines of social cleavage, and the confining of self-respect to its respective social layers. If we can learn anything from history we understand that America is to undergo the same stratification that has been made in the older civilizations until a better nation than any yet developed supplants us. At the present time I cannot avoid tipping, any more than a toad encased in clay can jump. I try to tip judiciously, and do not allow any tipping of my own employees. I can at least enjoy giving hospitality and service myself. That seems to me to be one solution of the question. The only discomfort connected with my plan has been the confusion of guests who sometimes mistook the kindly spirit and pleasant faces of my employees for a revenue notice. The tipping system has destroyed much of the pleasure we used to find in going to a restaurant where one could get particularly nice things. The open palms, and the attitude of the waiters if there is any danger of their not getting more than they have earned spoils it all. So long as I cannot change the whole system myself all alone, I am obliged to tip freely, and do not seem to be able to reduce the matter to a principle. When the interest of the waiter is in the size of his prospective tip rather than in the old-fashioned way of being personally interested in pleasing the guest, things have arrived at a stage which leaves me out-of-date in tastes. In the monistic unity state there will be no tipping. 534 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS The custom of tipping house servants by guests in Europe is well established as a permanent custom. On one occasion when a guest at the house of a certain Geheimrath, I gave the butler Swedish gold on leaving. He turned to the host in my presence and complained that I had given him Swedish gold. I had recently come from Sweden, and had not noticed which piece was given. There is self-respect within the class that is willing to take tips. It indicates the natural trend in nature's plan of social stratification, allowing each class to become a club within its own stratum of standards. All who are eligible within the limitations of a stratum maintain class respect, and show respect to others in that stratum. Waiters maintain self-respect among themselves by classi- fying other people as their prey. They lose the brotherhood- of-man idea, but the ones who suffer most are the ones who bring about the condition. We read in the newspapers various accounts of "the future mothers who are spending their time at bridge gambling and drinking." This is commented upon by writers along with the inevitable stupid question about what we are coming to. As a matter of fact, the great mass of healthy sensible "future mothers" in all countries are not engaged in anything more thrilling than studies of household economics. This substan- tial normal part is the social part of which we hear least. It is only the doubling roses — the elims — who introduce ques- tions of what we are coming to. We see a good deal of the people who dine on lobster and champagne in blazing restaurants after midnight, and whose conversation is iterant of marital unhappiness. We must not judge of destiny from the example of these variants. Seven tenths of all people, let us say, are sensibly and quietly adjust- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 535 ing themselves to each other. These are not so much in evi- dence as the ones who talk loudly without conversation, in the bright light, and who sometimes interfere with our sense of proportion. The happiest and most substantial part of any society, the largest part also, will always be that which is "good old- fashioned" in any civilized state. The "up-to-date, rapid people" are the variants. They are the blue peas of Mendel, which exemplify recessive characteristics. For the most part they belong to nature's laboratory of society very much like other animals which are used for experimental purposes. The girl who thinks it up-to-date to drink and smoke is a blue pea of Mendel, and I always imagine that her tender baby — if she accidentally has one — will smell a little of alcohol and smoke when it is first born. The brazen immorality which we observe to be on the increase in the gay capitals of the world at the present time means only that better opportunities for exhibition are now given to the dims who are singing their swan songs of cheer- less joy. There is more immorality now to be publicly observed in the large cities of the civilized world than was to have been seen a dozen years ago, at the beginning of the twentieth century. In Moscow, New York, Berlin, and London, those of us who have occasion to travel, are struck by what seems to be an extremely rapid movement downward on the slide, instead of a new climb toward the peaks in the blue sky. It means nothing beyond proof that facilities for display on the part of the elims are greater than they were previously. Rats gnaw holes in elevators, and let the wheat run out. Microbes eat holes in protoplasm and let character run out. Statistics show, however, that more and more good wheat is being raised, and I believe as a parallel that more character is being 536 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS raised every year; although it is possible that none of the present civilized nations on earth are intended by nature to dominate the world in progress and accomplishment. One reason for a bit of doubt about the permanent dominance of any one of the present civilized races is the apparent exten- sion of the tendency toward underhand procedure. This repre- sents a negative phase of procedure — opposed to positive prog- ress. It is destructive relatively to its proportionate occurrence in human procedure. Craftiness wins for the fox at the expense of the rabbit, but this feature of destructiveness be- longs to a balancing plan in nature's economy. If foxes were to exercise subtlety against one another instead of against rabbits, the genus Vulpes would be a steady loser. That is what is happening now among men, and it portends disappear- ance of the present civilized nations — unless members of some one race awaken to the situation and find means for eliminat- ing the defect. There is no doubt but morality in general is being advanced to higher planes, and specific immorality may perhaps be controllable. Mature people of the present day say the country is going to the dogs. This observation would depress us considerably did not history come to the rescue. History shows us that mature people have said this for thousands of years, but the world has steadily advanced in culture, morals and safety. They point to woman's dress. The present costumes in women's dress represent a working of natural law. As the sexes approach each other in type in the ordinary course of decline, sex appeal must be made more and more strongly by the attracting sex. In the cities, where decadence occurs most rapidly, new forms of sex appeal are more in evidence — being proportionate to the need. They are only of temporary service, however, for we may observe that suggestive fashions in dress which would make a backwoods- TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 537 man bellow and paw the ground, hardly cause the fading city rose to look up from his newspaper. The enlivening of sex attraction through the art of sugges- tive clothing gives unsatisfactory results at best, as might be anticipated. Women are likely to receive insults which they themselves have invited. They may obtain lowered ideas of men while bringing about this very lowering of ideas them- selves ; in fact, whatever women find in men is a reflection of themselves. A thoroughly fine woman finds men to be fine; a gossipy and suspicious one knows out of her own experience that people are fit subjects for gossip and suspicion. Sex attraction dress, however, has a compensating side, such dress shows a trend toward lightness and healthfulness which will result in greater freedom of muscle action and better circula- tion of good, nourishing blood. The healthful side of dress and dance did not furnish original motive for their develop- ment. Nothing could have been more ridiculously distant from the heads of the original promoters of sex dress or sex dance than thoughts of healthful activity. Among the letters on my table is this from a young friend recently married, who had been advised to substitute a flexible waist support for a tight corset. "You say it is best to be conventional in dress, but spoke with disapproval of my wear- ing corsets. It is unconventional not to wear them, and you have no idea what martyrdom one has to undergo by dis- carding this uncomfortable and disfiguring garment. I will- ingly adopted your idea because I wanted to be able to move freely and run up stairs and pick up things for myself. Some of my friends considered it almost immodest when they found out. The majority were shocked at my 'queerness' of not wanting to be stylish. Others said, 'Well, as long as you are married it does not matter now.' Not being strong minded, or a faddist, and very much disliking to be queer, I venture to 538 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS ask again what you think on such a subject. Nobody can tell by looking at me, but they are distressed when they do find out. Is it better to go against public opinion and be queer for the sake of comfort, or should one be conventional at the sacrifice of personal freedom? My mother and my husband are my only advocates, and they are prejudiced. Please for- give me for troubling you with such a trivial question, but I am really in doubt as to what to do." Here is the substance of my answer : "It all depends upon what you think most important — health, grace and comfort, — or being stiffly fitted into a custom. If you can invent some sort of support for clothing which will not interfere with graceful movement and good muscle action, or if you can find some other good folks who are not queer and yet who can manage clothing needing a little support like that given by a corset, all will be well. Movements of the body are truly graceful only when they are unhampered. Muscle action results in fine strong development of muscles only when they are relieved from artificial supports. Muscles degenerate under the influence of supports. Further than that, organs which depend upon good muscle support begin to decline in vigor as soon as women have graduated from the freedom of the dress of childhood. This is simply a doctor's opinion, and I have not the least idea of the extent to which you can make it dovetail into custom. Concerning the question of modesty or immodesty in relation to the corset, it is a question simply of prudery or of no prudery. There is no doubt but a graceful woman without corsets is more attractive to men than one who wears corsets. This added attractiveness will enhance the admiration from that type of men who have an appreciation of the poetry of form and motion and is quite proper, although it may also increase the degree of unwelcome scrutiny to which a handsome woman like yourself is subjected under all circumstances. Because TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 539 corsets do not conceal but often accentuate and sometimes distort the natural lines of the figure, the question of modesty really resolves itself into a question of the comparative beauty of natural and of artificial form. It is best for a vi^oman not to sacrifice any comfort or health on any theoretical basis of modesty in dress, when the question relates only to choice between natural or artificial form — form being the ultimate aim in both cases." The sculptor who does not confine himself to the beautiful, but who wishes like a novelist to depict the ugly for suggest- ing instinctive comparison, might carve a woman wearing nothing but a corset. He would carve a man standing before her, holding his hands over his eyes, not because of the nude, but in distress at the spectacle. The marble should depict a trail of deformed and neurasthenic children writhing in her wake. In her eagerness to have things right in this world a woman dons a tight corset, high-heeled shoes, a coil of false hair, a blot of false color, and then marches to the polls in order to do with the ballot what Samson's weapon has failed to do for her. It is best for men at least to be conventional in their dress, and to indicate the classification in which one belongs by an exhibition of mental attainments only. It is not so bad per- haps for a clergyman to button his collar behind. It avoids the vanity of a pretty cravat. If the artist wears his flowing tie, or the social democrat his soft hat, it allows opportunity for the passing observer to save time in accounting for peculiarities. The dress suit places all men on the same level of dress, and forces men to show individuality in mentality if they wish to be distinguished one from another. Provincial men who are self-centered become nervous when first getting into a dress suit. They are afraid when putting one on. Isn't that odd? 540 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Self is the only thought in the mind of the man who is putting on a dress suit reluctantly. There is a common tendency to draw arbitrary lines in social life, but this cannot be done scientifically, any more than lines can be drawn between socialism and capitalism. We are simply dealing with the spectrum, all of the colors of which belong to one ray, and the colors of social sets all merge into one another as human nature. A man stand- ing in the red light sees others at a distance looking green from his spectrum point. A man standing in the green, sees a fiery red group at a distance, but in fact these all belong to the same ray of human nature light. The chief function of the smart set is public exhibition of characteristics of Homo sapiens, rather than standardization of character or of accom- plishment. Consequently we find in this set every sort of individual character, from the dull rascal to the possessor of the finest type of mind. A "set" is simply one of the club groups into which people are naturally divided. The question of class in society relates to a habit of our species, which seems to have foundation in primordial instinct toward aggregation of people of Hke likings. They respond to nature's purpose of trying out the different groups in order to give them proper place in the game of life. The fashionable set, the socialist set, the literary set, all have certain likings in common, but also certain likings in particular. The likings in particular are definite but indefinable, to use an Hibernianism. The fact of their being definite but indefinable takes them back to infinity, where primordial instinct begins. An object lesson is observed when the settlement worker of high social caste finds someone who is "just as good" and invites her to the house. The guest really is "just as good as anybody," but a certain unmistakable unfitness will be observed, as when a thoroughbred horse is hitched up with a trotting horse. They TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 541 are both horses of great value. One is as good as the other, but bred to dififerent gaits, which cannot be trained out, because the impression came from ancestors and from early and late environment. For convenience in comprehending the question of social sets we may make our estimates from the social club basis, each set being a sort of club. In a national way, the Chinese scholar does not belong in the same social group with the Jewish scholar, nor is the Jewish scholar in the same social group with the Gentile scholar, yet all may have the same rank as scholars. In a similar way the different social sets in a given city in which all are Gentiles, fall natur- ally into social club divisions. If we arbitrarily designate classes by letters, group A will consist of people having certain likings in common. We may find all ranges of character and attainments in Class A, from the statesman and philanthropist to the butterfly and the feeble-minded, and yet members recognize in each other something which affiliates them with Class A. Group B also includes people of wide range of character and attainment, from the professor and business magnate to the spendthrift and the anergist, yet members of Group B recognize instinctively something belonging to Group B in the likings of the spendthrift and of the magnate. Group C and Group D are formed in the same way. We cannot say that Group A or B or C or D contains the best people or the worst people, because each group really does contain some of the best and some of the worst. The difference between the social sets, then, does not relate to comparative goodness or comparative badness. It does not relate to high education or to moderate education. It relates to nothing more than defi- nite but indefinable likings. No matter how frivolous the fashionable set may be, it nevertheless consists of wide-open minds. The butterfly method of flying from one thing to another gives a freedom 542 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS of mind which does not belong to the mole forcing its difficult way in straighter lines. The fashionable set reads the best and most serious books, as well as the most flippant, and its judgment represents the current trend of thought as surely as the butterfly is influenced by the direction of the wind. Pro- vincial people are really bound in concepts which amount to prejudices, no matter how fine or how useful the concepts may be. Such prejudices, however, seem to be essential for the accomplishment of work, according to nature's plans. If the mole could see the fox and the raccoon approaching he would stop digging, but the butterfly keeps on flying even when the kingbird is after him. The fashionable set is not much given to poetry and religion at present, because the best of poetry and religion happen to be founded upon older superstition, and current thought at this point of our cultural period does not care much for superstition. The lack of interest of the fashionable set in these subjects is fundamental, and repre- sentative in character. It is unfortunate in a way that freedom from superstition leads in a direction away from outlets into poetry and religion ; but it is due to the fact that we are always in a transition stage, like everything else in nature. When some great mind or set of minds can formulate the principles of the monistic unity church and state and put them in orderly form for human guidance, we may have again a liberation of the poetry and religion with which human nature is naturally filled to overflowing. Fashionable people often laugh in the face of the clergyman who tells them what God does and intends to do — employing the phraseology of definite assertion. They reply that they know as much about it as the clergyman does. It is this phraseology of definite assertion, almost a stereotyped form in sermons, which repels the thinker, unless he looks beyond the phraseology and joins in the spiritual intention of the clergyman. TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 543 There is nearly as much happiness to be found in the fashionable set as amongst the shop-workers. I did not think so at one time. I saw so much of misery in the fashionable set, through the Hving beyond means, through the jealousies of display, the tearing apart of families over money questions, and the mistakes belonging to a free translation of morality, that I believed the shop-worker with his little savings and plain comfort to be the happier. In later years, with wider knowledge of folks, and close personal friendships both in the fashionable set and among shop-workers, I am convinced there is just as much happiness and just as much unhappiness in one set as in the other. It is merely a question of human nature being liberated through the action of different forces in the two sets, but it is always human nature that is being liberated, nothing more, nothing less. The smart set in all countries consists largely of doubling roses which are desirable for that adornment and social display belonging to the nature of mankind. It is showy and beautiful and does not pretend to belong to the utility group in classifi- cation. The kind of conversation at fairs of the fair, varies according to the nature of the entertainment. Sometimes when studying the habits of our species I have had much amuse- ment from getting near enough to various groups of exhibitors to catch the drift of their chatting. That old note book carried headings like "T. D." (Topics of the Day). "A. T. L.'^ (Art, Theatre, Literature). "S., P." (Science, Philosophy). "R. H. B." (Rattle-headed Banter). At dances in which women of really fine temper and sensibilities could take part there were sometimes marks under all of the headings, but pre- ponderance of "R. H. B." increased proportionately with the showiness of the exhibition. At masque balls, for instance, the latter heading was sometimes the only one which furnished a row of marks in the note book. 544 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS A fashionable society woman said to me the other day that her whole life seemed to be spent in planning for some sort of display, but the net result was the loss of more real friends than she made. The expenditure of her good money brought no proportionate return. Members of the smart set become "ghastly weary" of show- ing themselves off — to use the expression of one of my friends. They tire of the worn out professional entertainers. They tire of seeking for surprises which may possibly please their friends. They are dulled by the plane of thought inspired by the cabaret. Everything gets to seem so hollow and valueless. Yet these lives represent nature's plan. They have a mission to perform in making display. It is not so interesting perhaps as science, but display is a sort of duty function nevertheless. Exhibition in plants and animals represents normal function, with sex attraction as its primal basis. When in the course of decline exhibition instinct becomes exaggerated, the breed- ing part of sex instinct has a tendency to fall away proportion- ately. Just as the beautiful doubling cherry loses stamens, so people of the exhibition set demonstrate a tendency toward loss of breeding instinct. They are unconsciously following two lines of duty — that of making exhibition, and of bringing their lineage to the point of stasis because their cultural limi- tations are being approached or have been reached. Were people of the exhibition set to find complete joy and satisfac- tion in these two processes, the mass of exemplars would obvi- ously follow their lead too rapidly for the best interests of the race. The woman who devotes herself to fashionable exhibition is nothing more than a puppet with a string which is being yanked and jerked by nature in a spirit of great glee. I was discussing that point with one of my friends not long ago. Said she, "You are just right. But what's a fellow going to TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 545 do about it? My whole life is expended in restless movement, action, exhibition of myself and friends. It is a ceaseless whirl, and nothing in it but suspicion, worry, heartaches and devilish gloating over mean satisfactions. Do you tell me that in doing all this I am playing the part of a victim of one of nature's pranks?" "Indeed you are, my dear girl," I replied. "You are simply being worked and jerked by a string tied to your foot and nature is laughing at the antics of excitement which you have named enjoyment. There was nothing else for you to do excepting to employ a higher intelligence and continue to select words which signify pleasure when you find yourself instinctively pulled toward distress." "But what are we to do about it?" she asked. "There is nothing to be done about it," I replied. "It is your duty to make exhibition as a part of nature's plan, but if you do not wish to be a catostomus teres call it duty and have it go by the right name. With your social engagements classified under the head of exhibition duty, the pain can be borne more easily, like that of any other artist who is using the highest type of intelligence and deepest feeling for purposes of making expression. Do not speak of enjoyment, however, when you really mean to describe a craving for excitement which is instinctive. The fast set is that group in the exhibition set which has perhaps the least real enjoyment but the most frequent and expensive excite- ment." Many others mistake excitement for pleasure. The woman who is active in the exhibition set is in a psychic state of unease and dissatisfaction much of the time, — impelled by a law of nature. Her protoplasm is irritated by organic cell stimuli which relate to the three primal motor activities, but she is unaware of the nature of an impulse which keeps her tediously engaged in making display of those elaborate psychi- cal activities which are an outgrowth from primitive impulses. 546 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS These psychical activities, however, have social value, and nature sets the fashionable victim at the task of making display to which she responds obediently. Are you getting out of life every day quite as much as you put into life? If you are not getting out of life as much as you are putting into it, and if you really prefer to be happy rather than excited, follow the Rothschild dictum in finance — which is, to stop your losses and let your profits run on. The dictum applies quite as well to social custom in general as it does to finance in particular. Social profits are to be found only in work which is really being done for somebody else, this being a fundamental fact belonging to the welfare of a gre- garious species. The exhibition set which devotes itself to expense regardless of pleasure is exploited by clever people. In Europe, it is no longer a secret that impecunious nobles conduct financial arrangements which secure peerages for the aspiring. Even the prices are matters of familiar quotation. In this country the social climbers pay heavy tribute to the shrewd woman of high position who is in need of cash for maintaining her elevated discomfort, and who deals in special introductions. I have one permanent standard for judging a man or a woman of any set. I ask myself if this man could plough a field that was full of sumac roots. I ask if that woman could work a batch of butter dry. Try my scheme and see what fun you will get out of it. Voluntary time wasting, and the expression for instance that some game "serves to pass the time away," cannot be understood at all by men to whom the loss of half an hour is like the loss of half a pint of blood. Thousands of women of education and refinement spend a large part of every day in card playing. This is done largely by time-wasters of the elim group. Imagine how a country would progress if all TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 547 these minds were to be engaged in any department of natural science whatsoever. A game of cards when one is wearied in good work is a fine thing, but a game of golf, which will oxidize toxins, is still better. Dr. Sangrado, in Gil Bias, says, "High living is a poisoned bait, a trap set by sensuality to cut short the days of wretched man." The allergic poet, pate de foie gras, and the girl with a preserved complexion are all luxuries in their way, and desir- able, but not for purposes of daily consumption. Fashionable life that seems at first glance to be rather far removed from simple processes is mechanistic in character and follows the laws of protoplasm. When people become aggregated in cities after the manner of aggregations of their structural cells, there is much social occupation in sight every day. The tendency on that account is to extend activities into the night hours, when neuricity is running low. On account of the lessened tension of the charge of neuricity at that time, there is relaxation from the vigor which makes for morality, for all of the higher virtues, and for better cerebral processes in general. Because of occupation being extended into the night hours, people retire late and arise late on the following morning, thereby missing the opportunity for doing the best work of which they would be capable on morning neuricity. A customary parallel is found in plant life. Plants grow and store up nourishment most rapidly in the early morning hours, according to the testimony from experimental work relating to that point. The tendency for men to place a check upon their own best development belongs to that automatic mechan- ism which regulates and prevents too rapid development of a species. Although fashionable gatherings are for purposes of exhibition, and desirable from that standpoint, nature wishes to keep this feature within bounds. When a ball is 548 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS continued into the early morning hours, at a time when neuricity granules are low in stock, waste materials of toxic character combine with unmetabolized microbic toxins and injure protoplasm. Children of people who keep these late hours are prone to become neurasthenics, and by the second or third generation in fashionable life the family has com- monly run out. The rapidity with which any given family runs out varies with the degree of original protoplasmic vigor that was meted out by nature for that particular family. It also varies with the degree of social exhibition which is carried on during night hours. In the large cities a family runs out much more rapidly on this account than it does in smaller towns, in which people exhibit themselves in the early morning hours much less frequently during the course of the year. Even in smaller towns it is not long before the roses have left the cheeks of young people of a fashionable social set, and then comes the neurasthenic habit with its unfolding of flowers of culture, in musical, literary, or artistic talent. Breeding is then lessened or it ceases altogether. Perversions of natural instincts commonly appear and nature has played her game to a finish with that family, — making room for trying out another family that is to become socially ascendant for awhile and take the place of a family that has been dissipated by means of nature's chemical mechanism. A judge once told me that he sat up all night in order to write out an opinion, and that he often worked until the small hours of the morning. My comment was that I would not give much for that opinion. If he had told me of retiring at ten o'clock and arising at six in the morning, the opinion would have been entitled to more respect. His life work had been of high order on the whole, but his descendants are already descendants. This is said sympathetically and with a full feeling of pity. His children have most charming characteristics. They are TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 549 delicately and daintily constructed and observant of all of the social amenities. They are attractive as social companions, but neurasthenic, and not capable of sustained exertion in any field of work. The sons have tried to engage in various kinds of occupation, but cannot screw their heads down to a firm seat in any moving structure of the world's progress. When descendants begin to be descendants with "wild traits," it is not always their fault when they prefer to break the hearts of loving parents, who had been ambitious for them; — whose chief stimulus in life, in fact, lay in the children. These descendants with atavistic traits have a sort of con- sciousness of helplessness when they drift far away from the ideals of proud fathers and mothers. Some have spirit suffi- cient for allowing them to break away from influences of disintegration, but for the most part their course in life is determined by the character of their protoplasm. It has lost that quality of vigor which made the parents ascendant. This character of protoplasm which was entailed to them is the result of no conscious fault on the part of the parents, for it belongs only to nature's course in cultural processes. Such course however is to be greatly modified to-morrow. To one with a fair sense of humor, the seriousness with which people consider the matter of social position furnishes a good deal of amusement. We see women who are capable of great enjoyment in life devoting themselves to complicated social activities which bring them nothing but endless trouble and discomfort without reward. And among men — ^how seri- ous the temporary rulers are! I have known many state governors personally, but cannot remember the names of all of them. They come into the field rapidly. There is a brief day of banging of the big bass drum, the taking off of hats to people in the upper windows, — and then they are gone, never to be remembered, unless when in office they have com- 550 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS mitted some unpardonable error or have executed some adroit act of permanent value to the state, and which may be looked up by historians who are studious enough. The serious deference to social position is comical. Some- times at a reception in Europe I have been engaged in conver- sation with some foreign colleague who was discussing in a most rational and sensible way various questions of sport, science, or politics, and behaving himself very properly as a well-ordered dignified citizen. Some duke or prince would be ushered into the room. Interest in me was instantly lost. A far-away look would come into the eyes of my colleague; his knees A\ould become weak and shaky, and I have always wanted to kill the poor thing to put it out of its misery. On one occasion at a dinner abroad I mistook a high minister for a certain chancellor, and he was so pleased at the distinction that it resulted in the obtaining of introductions to a number of people whom I wished to meet, and placed me in position for obtaining some very choice invitations for shooting. This appeal to human nature I once saw put to very practical use by Dr. Welch when we were not being served promptly at a cro^\'ded restaurant in Berlin. The waiters were all busy. My friend finally attracted the attention of an inconspicuous waiter, — addressed him as "Herr Hauptkell- ner," and we had the best of service for an hour. It is amusing to watch social climbers who plan feverishly and connive exhaustively in order to enter the rarified air of exclusive social circles. The reason for exclusion of these people from the higher circles is apparent to almost every one excepting to themselves. Notwithstanding the aid of steps carefully constructed upon women's clubs, dogs, charity, horses, suffrage, bridge, publicity, the opera, graft, cultivation of people who know some one else, fashionable schools for the children, et cetera, they fail to enter the portals of the really TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 551 best society, chiefly because their efforts are all expended upon cultivating near friends rather than dear friends. They do not satisfy with their lack of sincerity any instinctive need of utility. Social rulers of the first class address each other by such abbreviated names as "Nicky," "Georgie," "Willie," etc., but no such informality occurs among social strivers. Anyone of the latter addresses another as nothing less than "Colonel." There is no brotherhood of man idea activating any of the social strivers. It does not extend even to include their own relatives, unless the latter can give them some sort of a nervous boost. Exhibition comes incidentally and seldom agreeably to folks of the really best society, while it is made the chief object in life of the climber, who does not realize that excitement rather than pleasure is the impelling motive. With unlimited freedom in sophistical nomenclature, morbid excitement is called pleasure, when it is really far from that. The climber persistently seeks what the social idealist persistently avoids. Through the expenditure of a great deal of money, employ- ment of publicity agents, and other business or political methods, one may break into a certain fashionable exhibition set which finds good use for the money expended by a striver, so long as this money holds out. If by any accident the money departs, the climber is dropped with a bump which awakens it, after that particular and special utility feature of its life has vanished. It awakens, looks about, and observes that it has lived a life of falsehood among the false. No matter how much of money, diplomacy and energy are expended by the climber, it can never have the social position of an admiral of the Navy on a small salary, or of the cultivated and honorable descendant of an old well-established family, the finances of which may be very low. It is interesting to watch the methods of social climbers in court circles. One day at a shooting box when rain had driven 552 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS us under cover, the matter was discussed in a very amusing way by Their Highnesses. A certain family of Americans formed one subject for comment, which ran something Hke this : "Mrs. X. plans to meet the V's through her daughter, to whom Captain H. is giving attention, and then their daughter will meet the G's and the G's will introduce her to the T's, and the mother and father hope to follow all the way up to court." This matter was discussed with much amusement and the plan all understood, while the climbers to my certain knowledge had no idea that any one of the distinguished group had the slightest suspicion about their plans, or even remembered their names at that time. They were trying hard to place their names, while members of the court circle had already "cop- pered them to lose." Almost anyone may get into these inner circles if he is known as an horticulturist or antiquarian, an impersonal wag, or a good shot, provided that he possesses the common qualifi- cations of a gentleman in addition. The way into exclusive circles is extremely simple and easy for those who care nothing about it in a social way, excepting for the genuine enjoyment of association with people of similar hobbies. It is a long, complicated, expensive and often futile course on the part of those who are chiefly interesting to themselves. The most hopeless of all people socially are those who "know somebody." In America and England the term "climbers" is employed, but I like the German "strivers" better, because it makes better suggestion of the state of tension of these ambitious people. Let us suppose that this particular family of strivers, filled with anxiety, and suffering more or less daily disappointment, might accidentally fall into some atmosphere of real useful- ness. We will imagine them taking up some study in natural science, for instance the removal of tannin from caribou moss. A small part of the expenditure of energy which they devote TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 553 to the systematic struggle for social position would probably allow them to succeed in solving that problem. Caribou moss and its congeners, which deeply carpet the ground over the larger parts of the earth in the far North and the far South, contain a food supply which would render these parts of the earth habitable by a large population of man, if the tannin con- tent could be removed from the plants readily. The caribou, reindeer, and rodent animals which disregard the tannin, be- come fat upon this food. A few years of study of the problem by some one intelligent student would probably result in the devising of methods for liberating from lichens a vast food sup- ply for man and for many domesticated animals. If our family of strivers were to have their attention engaged upon this subject, life would be filled to overflowing with interesting questions daily. There would be almost dramatic excitement, ■ — if they cared for that sort of thing, — when they were upon the verge of discovery of various processes promising success. They would be surrounded by a host of helpful admiring friends, of whose sincerity there could be not the least doubt. If they were to finally succeed (as they likely enough would) they might then be entertained by kings, and the question of social position would become a bore rather than an object to be attained. Let us imagine a case in which the family of strivers did not have quite sufficient intelligence for managing the subject of removal of tannin from caribou moss. They might devote themselves to some question requiring less scientific method. For instance, the question of making use of the caplin. This very valuable little fish which occurs in such vast quantities in the north, is not as yet used excepting locally. Where it is found near civilized countries, as in New- foundland, it is wasted by being used as fertilizer for the land. Methods for preserving this fish and supplying the markets of the world, could be devised without much trouble by any 554 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS one who would give serious attention to the subject. The result would be a great addition to the wealth of the world, and honor would be accorded to anyone who developed the means, although high social position would not be as certain a perquisite as it would be after discovery of means for remov- ing tannin from caribou moss, indicating a higher grade of intellectual process. (The inventor of the method for preserv- ing nieue hering was knighted in Holland). Incidentally, the strivers could pay all of their bills without much difficulty. Non-payment of bills is a characteristic feature of the elim group of strivers, and often forms a distressing complication which prevents their recognition as true ladies and gentlemen, — in a most disheartening way. We are accustomed to think of people who avoid payment of their bills as belonging to natural gemein stock, but this is not always true. There are many decadent ends of families of excellent blood who avoid payment of bills because family funds are running low and they are obliged to maintain the honor of their family names. This can be done only by using the family name as cheese in traps for the grocer, the tailor, and the jeweler. We must offer sympathy to them in their pilgrimage toward the bonfire. There is still another class, and a fairly large one, of men who weakly mean to pay bills if they ever have enough money saved up. They take no steps to save up money and are constantly in debt. There are thousands of young men, particularly of the clerk class, who are ambitious and hoping to get ahead, and yet their lynx-eyed employers know perfectly well that they are not saving any money, and if advanced in position would do as badly for the firm as they do for themselves. I have been surprised at the knowledge which employers had of the habits of men in their employ, even to the smallest details. They told me of their watching for opportunities to advance men TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 555 but could not advance men who saved nothing, because the habits which employees apply for themselves would naturally be applied to the business of the employer. If a young man runs into debt because he has large ideas, and his aim is direct and logical toward ultimate profit, that places him in the ex- cusable class. Employers know all about it, because they do the same thing themselves, but if an employee runs into debt because of his temperament and cannot save anything out of his salary because he is simply gratifying his daily wishes, it is a weakness which belongs to the elimination group — the one which is headed for the bonfire. People who for any reason are disappointed in not having the social position which they desire, may find consolation in the greater degree of freedom to enjoy the spirit and the joys of this world, than is given to the ones who are bound by rigid social form. Social position, like religion, becomes a formal matter. It requires so much method that all of one's time is in danger of being taken up by method, to the exclusion of real social joy and religious piety ; another instance of technic outrunning essentials. This is as it should be, however, be- cause social and religious order and method are essential for the well-being of the state. An individual may never- theless rejoice if he has freedom from the responsibilities of high social or religious position. I know an elderly couple who lost all of their money. They formerly entertained ex- tensively, and carried all of the complicated responsibilities of social form. Now they sing all day long since the money is gone, and say they were never so happy in their lives pre- viously. They are on a tiny salary, keeping chickens and enjoying life. Their former butler came to call upon them one day when I was present. He looked very grand. Why is this couple happy? One reason is because a former butler would call respectfully when their money was gone. 556 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS If you struggle for a high social position perhaps no one will remember it very long after you are dead. If you exhaust health in making a fortune many people may be petulantly impatient to have you move along and leave them the money, but if you invent something much needed by the world, or establish some method for easing the life work of others, you may do it without undue struggle and obtain satisfaction in the accomplishment. People who are obliged to take a bed in the common ward at the hospital because of financial circumstances, and who think it social degradation, depress the whole ward. Some who have been brought up in luxury cannot possibly be pleased, and I suppose they were seldom pleased even when surrounded by luxuries in former years. One of my patients, a clergyman's wife who was cultivated, refined and gentle in her ways, had to go into the common ward. Her social posi- tion in the home town was really of the best. She made every one happy in the ward, besides getting a lot of good material for a short story with which she earned seventy-five dollars later. Tout selons sur le point de vue. Social equality has little relation to the environment. We find women just as sweet, useful and inspiring among those of lowly position as among those of high formal position. Individuals take their relative positions in their respective circles. There are climbers among the lower classes as well as among the higher classes. Human nature is always the same. The socialist versus capitalist question is found everywhere in nature. While the men folks are engaged with the subject in its relation to capital, women in fashionable life in the cities have to deal with the nerve racking question of keeping un- fashionable relatives and acquaintances in proper place. Oh, it is so distressing! Quite as much so as its cousin germane TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 557 question relating to capital. The unfashionable relatives are "just as good" and they know it, and repression is an open challenge for them to expend ceaseless energy in proving it. The capitalist has not only the abstract impersonal socialist to deal with, but also the extremely personal socialists of poor relatives and acquaintances who cannot understand why one who is well-to-do should not share his property more gener- ously with them. If he is an emploA'er with positions to be filled he is considered to be a mean fellow if he does not gratify relatives and acquaintances by giving them the posi- tions. He could do it as well as not if he only had the mind to do so — they believe. i\Iy sjTnpathy goes out to the capitalist, and to his fashionable wife and daughters, quite as much as it is given to their poor and unfashionable relatives. Are all of these people of the different sets not human beings like ourselves and deserving sjTupathy? Perhaps the greatest object of pity is the fashionable striver who must keep up appearances on small funds. Such headaches and heartaches ! Such self-sacrifice in giving up noble independence in order to run along with the bleating flock, following that blind impulse which was given by nature to a gregarious animal! Should fortune come at last through any chance, then may the in- defatigable striver perhaps attain to a House of Mirth. Suc- cess at last! The attitude of kindly friendliness and the habit of finding every single human being interesting allows a man to avoid saying anything unkind of another. If one endeavors to avoid making unkind remarks mereh- through ordinary intention and effort of the will, there will be frequent failure. He will often be tempted by the wonderful opportunities for saying clever things at some one's else expense. Then again, there will be times when his protoplasm is not feeling at its best, and the simplest and easiest sort of remark to make is unkind 558 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS in its nature, reflecting the condition of his own protoplasm. All of this refers to one's attitude when the other party is absent. It does not include the idea of avoiding the most direct sort of critical attack as a matter of principle and belief if the other party is present to make answer in his own way. It does not prevent one from writing critical things of another as a matter of principle or belief if the other man is given opportunity to reply after his own mind. In fact, the most cultivated gentleman is perhaps the one most often called upon to attack others, because the very nature of his training leads him to see vantage points and to perceive the necessity for attack in the ordinary course of progress and evolution. My ideal cultivated gentleman is not that one who always avoids hurting the feelings of another, but rather the one who, serenely impersonal, remains a friend of the opponent who is defeated or who defeats him. We have another type of cultivated gentleman, whose gracious presence appears to radiate benignity. He carefully and skilfully avoids hurting the feelings of others who are present on any occasion, yet he requires to be kept always in sight for purposes of best social result. It is vulgar to dislike people. The reason why it is vulgar is because of the ease and commonness of the process. It is because of the small degree of effort required. Anybody can dislike people without half trying. A mark of better self- culture is to find somebody interesting. That requires a bit of skill and training in method, like any other procedure in science or in good sport. You may not agree with this man's views, you may be opposed to that man's methods, but he is interest- ing and not to be disliked. The scientific collector of mineral- ogical specimens does not dislike this or that specimen. He will have favorites to be sure, and may go into raptures over some of the things in his collection, while dust may be allowed TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 559 to collect upon other specimens. But dislike any of them — never? Make a collection of all the people whom you can get together under the classification of acquaintance, dislike none of them. Every one of them is interesting. Furthermore, there is somebody who actually loves every one of them, curious though it may seem to you at times. If one can main- tain a feehng of kindly friendhness and a policy of finding people interesting rather than likeable or dislikeable, he carries a policy of insurance against the accidents of acquaintanceship. He is superior to the influence of those practical jokes which are played by misconception and which lower one's dignity whenever he is fooled — as we all are, daily, by thinking wrongly of other folks. One may fairly ask the question if universal tolerance and kindness, through understanding of the causes for ill temper, would not lead us to condemn less frequently than we should. Is it not a dangerous position if we justify an attitude of habitual tolerance ? Does it lead to a tendency for every one to act according to his own conscience, thereby taking away mental and moral vigor? Answer may be made in two ways. If one is thinking only of his own ease and comfort, the principles of tolerance would lead him back to the amoebic or jelly-fish stage of existence. If on the other hand his idea is one of accomplishment, he can arise in his might and indigna- tion against bad principles and can fight for principles up to the limit of his physical endurance, remaining meanwhile wholly impersonal. One may attack a bad principle on this basis and yet love or at least be interested in the one who advocates that principle. I have always been grateful to any one who defeated me in argument and showed that I was wrong, although he has sometimes had a tough time of it, — my way was so sot. The plan of finding every one interesting does away entirely 56o TO-MORROW'S TOPICS with the unaccountable antagonisms which make so many people uncomfortable without reason. This unaccountable antagonism belongs to phylogeny and represents a relic of primordial self-protection. Relic antagonism is like an appendix or a wisdom tooth — useless for our present needs. The people who are most susceptible to this instinctive antagon- ism, this relic of former days, are ones who show other atavistic traits as a rule. There is a reversal toward the primi- tive type of mind. Like many other features of expression, relic antagonism is amenable to control by the will when a method has been found. The method of finding all people interesting, allowing no unaccountable antagonisms to enter, really settles the whole question. The unaccountable antagon- isms when cultivated or retained by an individual demonstrate vulgarity, because it is so easy to yield to this primal impulse. A fair degree of self-culture will allow of elimina- tion of such antagonisms. Any one who allows himself to be enslaved by vestigial mental relics is as badly off as one who sufifers from toothache in a wisdom tooth or who has chronic appendicitis. There is opportunity right now for a novelist with vision to take up the subject under a caption like "Remorse Over His Relics." If it is nature's plan to compel all plants and animals to fight out their chances for place, is it wrong then in principle for us to make life easier for others? Logically we should make life as hard for others as possible and let them make it hard for us in turn, but as a matter of fact we find here as in all other demonstrations of nature's law, that a midway posi- tion of compromise seems to be the most desirable. The pity of Christ tempered the cruelty of God. Every man has to repeat his ontogenetic or organic development in history, and his phylogenetic or race trait history, before taking his place as an adult individual. Thus the ovum progresses from the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 561 amoeba to the tadpole, to the salamander, and to the ape before the child is born. After birth the child is barbarous and destructive until it has developed up to the point of making adaptation to the conditions of modern environment for adult man. We find among adult people many withered remnants of man's earlier nature when cruelty was essential for advanc- ing the strongest, and the ones best fitted for survival. For instance, duelling is a sport based upon this withered instinct. The sport is not engaged in to any great extent excepting between men who have acquired skill with those weapons which are employed in the game. Having acquired skill with these weapons men then go about seeking injury to their honor. It is anachronistic honor to be sure. I have known perhaps twenty duellists, and almost all of these (ex- cepting the German students) were seducers of women, non- payers of bills, gamblers, and otherwise men of ignoble fundamental tastes, proving their adherence to the undeveloped type of man. Very often they belonged to good families, and were perhaps highly educated, but with reversal to a primitive type through decadence. They were unable to engage in fair mental competition with their peers. This does not include the German student duellists, although they, like other duellists, make a sport of primitive traits. As a result of custom, having become skilled in the use of weapons, the student goes about suggesting insult. Carrying the suggestion in mind he soon finds response and announces to his colleague, "Sie haben mich fixiert!" Then follows the duel, although great pains are taken for avoiding serious injury, and for getting scars in the right place — where they may be seen and admired by women. The new methods of antisepsis threatened to dispose of this vanity of scars by allowing surgeons to obtain scars which were barely visible. That would never do in the world! S62 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS Consequently, the student who has received a cut will some- times place salt or some other irritant upon the wound after the surgeon has applied dressings, in order to make sure of having a sign which will place young ladies in captivance. I have known many German student duellists who were wholly honorable fellows, but the more serious duelling is usually done by men of the sort who might spend a riotous night of dishonor in advance of the morning meeting in the cause of honor. The sport of duelling belongs in the same category with bull baiting and other remnants of earlier savage days. Student duels are mostly gentle like games of tennis, remain- ing as harmless relics of the fighting of knighthood days. Duelling among older men, while belonging to the same origin, is expressive of mental limitations between adversaries who are incapable of coping with each other according to methods of civilization. It is done largely by men without adequate sense or humor, otherwise the ludicrousness of the honor question would make opponents burst out laughing in each other's faces when they met upon the field. Most of the adult duellists whom I have known were neurotics, with toxic pallor of facial capillaries. One of the bright periodicals which takes many a morose fling at the subject of vivisection, vaccination, and other medi- cal topics I had always thought to be insincere rather than hemianopsic. Opportunity for a test came when the statement was made that "We know a prominent surgeon who believes in removing appendices from infants in order to avoid future danger from appendicitis." A letter was at once addressed to the editor, asking for the name of that surgeon- — to which the editor replied that he was not at liberty to give it. Why not? If a prominent surgeon had really expressed himself to that effect, there surely could be no cause for a libel suit in giving TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 563 his name. The editor had simply told an interesting untruth — and not his first one at that. He did not know any such sur- geon. This sort of ridicule is all right in private conversation perhaps, but my familiarity with the standards and customs of our profession, and my personal acquaintance with nearly every prominent surgeon in America at that time, made me feel very certain that the editor was not prepared to verify the direct assertion which he had put into print for the purpose of misguiding the public. One has always to be on guard against motives underlying news. When a certain Captain Choice made a warning speech about the menace of Japan, which was quoted widely in the press, I wrote to a lecture bureau and found that he received three hundred dollars for each lecture of this sort, and that explained in a way the presence of the milk in the cocoanut. I cut out a newspaper report of the speech, and sent it together with the lecture bureau letter to one of my esteemed personal friends in Japan, an admiral in the Imperial Navy. He wrote in reply, "You are not alone in having such men as Captain Choice in your country. We have a few of the same sort here. I wish we could put them all into two old boats, and let them sink each other." There is some compensation for the negative tone of our yellow daily press when it pubHshes exposures of crookedness on the part of public officials. There is no doubt but watch dogs of the press do call attention to those secret procedures which undermine nations in which the press is timid, subsi- dized, or censored. We are given the impression that crime and criminals are the most heroic things about us, but one compensation is really to allow our best citizens to apply chloride of lime freely and promptly enough to make our municipal governments clean on some scrubbing days at least. All's well ! 564 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS What if we were to have a newspaper upon which the entire faculty of some university could be engaged for writing edi- torials? One would imagine that such a newspaper might be a tremendous success if the entire faculty of a great university were engaged on good salary to furnish editorials, yet the editor-in-chief would wield a blue pencil in each hand, and he would have to be a modern Goethe, or a William Morris. Each department would insist upon having a dis- proportionate amount of space. University professors on salaries of a few well trimmed dollars per year would be glad to have an extra thousand dol- lars a year for furnishing editorials for a newspaper. Each one would conscientiously furnish carefully considered information and views. They would resent the editorial blue pencilling even if Alexander von Humboldt were to wield the pencil. The same question of authority and of propriety of ideas toward things of the world are always present in an institution requiring at its head a wise, ingenious, resourceful and strong "editor" who is called "Prexy." Response to stimuli varies with the number of neuricity granules in the nerve cells. Take for instance, the blue pencil in the hand of a tired editor on a newspaper. His only com- fort when overworked lies in finding mediocrity in the stuff that is handed in to him for publication. Any stroke of genius causes discomfort, because he must rise to meet it. It is easier to move the blue pencil on an even plane, or to apply Pascal's Law to a small sensation area, than it is to lift one hundred and seventy-five pounds of protoplasm up to a volant idea. An overworked editor's whole tendency will naturally be toward keeping the newspaper on a dead level of mediocrity. It is hard enough to get a bit of genius past the editor anyway, and much depends upon his habits of life and their influence in maintaining elasticity of cell nuclei. We find the same thing TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 565 in teaching institutions. A more rapid combustion is required by the teacher. He is forced to exercise a greater effort of thought in responding to evidences of genius on the part of a student. If we trace surprising information carefully enough we shall often find that it represents nothing but very plain misstate- ment. Gene Stratton-Porter in the charming "Moths of the Limber lost" traces back a statement seriously made in a work on popular natural history, to the effect that larvae of a certain moth eat several thousand times their own weight in a day. On hunting up the original reference, it was found that the figures showed a larva to eat several thousand times the original weight which it had when first emerging from the egg, before completing its development. Quite a different matter ! For that reason I never believe surprising statements about other people until opportunity is given for knowledge of the real facts. If a natural history writer can make such a mis- statement, prompted only by the idea of interesting, think how much more misleading statements might be made by one who had definite reason for promulgating a wrong idea. We must never forget that one may sometimes reach a right conclusion from a wrong premise if his logic is bad enough. In rhabdomancy, the douser finds his forked witch hazel stick turning in his hands at a place in which an instinctive survey of the surroundings has impressed his subjective mind with the feeling that water or metal, or whatever he is seeking, will be found at that point. He may be quite unconscious of the reason for the forked stick turning in his hand, not knowing that his mind has been impressed with certain features of the environment. The muscle impulse is in that case co-ordinated with the action of the subjective mind, quite separately from the action of the reasoning mind. If the douser wishes to find a leak in the water main, the large body of water in the whole 566 TO-MORROWS TOPICS main does not turn the rod in his hands, but some little fact like that of greener grass or a thrifty tree at a certain spot causes co-ordinated action between muscle and subjective mind. If he seeks potash, the rod does not turn to beryl which is found in the same vicinity. If he seeks beryl, the rod does not turn to potash. It turns to whatever he is seeking. It is not true that he would always find these things quite as well without the rod, for it serves to concentrate attention, and allows him to suppress the image of conflicting impressions upon his reasoning mind, which would confuse his instinctive impression. The douser is not always a painfully scrupulous man. I was shooting at one time with a quaint character, a good fellow who was general cattle buyer, and water and oil finder for a certain county. Several of the country people told me that he was very expert in the use of a divining rod which he had patented. One day when we were shooting in company with one of the neighbors, the latter asked him why he had not shown me his wonderful invention. His reply was that he had meant to do so when there was plenty of time to give a demon- stration. A few minutes afterward when we were alone, our friend, the douser, nudged me in the ribs with his elbow and said : "Say, you needn't say anything about it, but I wouldn't show that thing to you." One manufacturer in New York who needed to use a large amount of water and who brought a douser down from Greene County to locate it, became con- vinced of the value of his services when water was found at a depth of eight hundred feet. In a case of this sort I presume that even Bleton himself would suspect that he was outdone. Bletonism rested on the claim of the possession of hypersensi- tiveness to the recognition of vibrations of various subterra- nean substances. Some of us who have had experience with hysterics and who are familiar with their peculiar sensitization TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 567 of protoplasm might not wholly scout the idea of a sensitive- ness to vibrations proceeding from metals or other substances situated not far below the surface. The idea is spooky and is probably not true, and yet we cannot wholly dismiss the idea that certain spooky individuals receive spooky impressions from metals or other substances in such a way as to distinguish between them by their respective vibrations. A blinded bat flies about freely in a room strung with wires without hitting a wire or objects of furniture in the room. With this object lesson in view our minds must be open to testimony relating to morbid degrees of hypersensitiveness in certain people. The only thing which we are to avoid is the ascribing of super- natural features to such natural phenomena. Often there flits in and out of mind an idea of mine, which would be developed if there were the time — the development in the city of a society of farm tenters, the S. F. T's. An hour or two by rail from almost any of the large Eastern cities in America one may find hundreds of acres of rough land which can be purchased at an average of twenty-five dollars per acre, and almost anybody can save up twenty-five dollars. A pretty good tent may be bought for five or six dollars. Is there a clerk who cannot save that? Bedding and cooking outfit do not cost much. It is lots of fun to live in a tent and do one's own cooking upon one's really truly own land. How many clerks or young people on small wages there are who could save up enough money to buy an acre of land and a tenting outfit! (An anchoring sense of proprietorship obtained for thirty-five dollars). On week ends they could run out to the acre and look after crops which would be raised. Should it be annual crops or tree crops ? I imagine that tree crops would be the most satisfactory — fruit trees or nut trees. A little party of farm tenters owning adjoining acres might make an 568 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS attractive social circle, every member getting red cheeks and good muscles at the week-end and developing a life pension at the same time. In what better way could one secure an old- age pension as a reward for fun ? Tree crops managed in this way will give such return that one would be pretty fully safe- guarded against actual poverty when the time came for losing position or for retiring. The question arises if this might be done with the degree of attention that could be given to the acre once a week. That is my reason for thinking of tree crops instead of annual crops. With annual crops there would be the cost of clearing, ploughing and of harrowing, and one or even two people could not quite manage such annual crops as would likely be chosen ; but with tree crops attention once a week is just about enough to ensure good development of the orchards. The first cost of setting out tree crops is not greater than the first cost of preparing for an annual crop, and subsequent cost is much less and the returns greater, speaking in a general way. There are almost no annual crops which will give a return of one hundred dollars per acre, the average being very much less, while there are many tree crops bringing in several hundred dollars per year to the acre. The average, even under conditions of neglect, would be about that of well cared for annual crops, but the possibilities are far greater with tree crops. Beside that, the trees are more pic- turesque and inspiring, to me at least, than the lesser grains and vegetables, although that may be a matter of taste. Some of the tenters, particularly the women, would be sure to wish to raise flower crops, but one would not like to be responsible for the welfare of an acre of flowers, or of anything else for that matter, left wholly to itself without protection for five and a half or six days in the week. The idea of the society of farm tenters includes the idea of there being really a society, and groups of members constituting colonies could employ at TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 569 a very little expense some neighbor or some one of the members to remain in charge during the week, as watchman. Any one who will take the train this very next Sunday morning from almost any city in the East and who will ride out in almost any direction for an hour, then starting off for a tramp across country, is pretty sure to find just the sort of place that would be suitable for such a colony. Perhaps it would be essential to have some permanent building made for a community tool house. In winter and at season ends there is not so much to be done with the trees, and the members could then, meeting at week ends, devote more time to the social side, besides hav- ing all sorts of outdoor sports on the acres which would not suffer at that time of the year. There could be upon the acres or in their vicinity skating, sledding, tennis, in fact, any game suitable for place, taste, and date, to say nothing of the walking trips for the purpose of studying the natural history of the locality, or for more superficial delights. During the spring, in addition to tree crops, it would be little trouble to spade up enough of the land to give a variety of vegetables and flowers sufficient for immediate use of the tenters, with no idea of rais- ing enough of these latter for purposes of sale. It would be a comparatively simple matter to raise many things which one enjoys, for the limited requirements of the tent farm colony, but the trees would give the income. There would be radishes and roses, turnips and tulips, potatoes and pansies, lettuce and lilies, cabbage and coreopsis, in that sort of joyous medley of beauty and utility which is truly Greek in funda- mental conception. Not only the proud tenters themselves with their sense of substantial ownership would enjoy the acres, but they could invite their impecunious young friends to come out and help work and play. The cabaret would not then put the finishing touch on victims destined for the bonfire so readily as it does to-day. Young people go to the cabaret and its 570 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS appurtenances to "see life" but they are viewing death instead. Come on, now, boys, let us get up the S. F. T. clubs and have bright eyes that can look straight and level at everybody on Monday morning. If one were to arrange a series of clubs for people who would definitely devote time to oxidizing their toxins, I believe it would be a very valuable monument. We might give the club some such euphonious name as "The Oxytoxins." Who says yes? Founders of fortunes have tried in many ways to devise means for perpetuating the family name, but have almost invariably left the fortune in such a way that it removed the incentive to work from beneficiaries of the fortune, and after awhile their progeny reached cultural limitations and ceased to have descendants. The best disposition for a fortune is not to arrange for allowing relatives to escape work, but rather to allow eager young people who are restricted by financial needs to accom- plish work into which the whole enthusiasm of their natures will be thrown. Some of the relatives of a man of wealth are often impatient if he remains unduly unburied. They want him to be expeditious about allowing them to begin to hate each other over the disposition of his collection. Were he to bestow it only where it would set willing people at work in science or art, instead of allowing certain anergistic relatives to avoid work, it would serve a better purpose. His memory is more honored if he sets other people at work in educational institutions in which teachers and scholars have great uncom- pleted tasks ever in view. The excuse for giving to relatives is that he wishes to give to his own flesh and blood ; in other words, to his own protoplasm. But his entailed protoplasm will follow the laws of protoplasm and begin to disappear when softened by the avoidance of obstacles, just as surely as the TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 571 sun sets. He can safely give only to the workers among his relatives. When giving to anergistic relatives he is simply hastening the departure of his family name from earth. Now if we start from the well known premise that cultural limita- tions vary according to the inherent fund of physical energy in any individual, and if physical energy is best maintained under conditions which oxidize toxins and build strong tissues, one line of thought (schematic only in this presentation) for any one wishing to maintain a family name, without regard for sociologic features of the question, would suggest an agri- cultural family plan. Given a fortune which has been ac- quired by an individual. This is to be invested temporarily for the benefit of the state, the income going primarily to the support of education. Out of this income, however, money enough would be taken for purchasing a sufficient number of acres for the support of each member of the family under in- tensive methods of cultivation of these acres. In addition, a large enough proportion would be taken from the income of the fund to carry the cost of cultivation of the soil and to supply all immediate needs. Any beneficiary family that through illness could not profit from the acres would at least have a sure living. The indolent beneficiary family would have a sure living without opportunity to waste. The ambi- tious beneficiary family would receive not only the income resulting from profits from the soil, but would win also, as a prize, a certain stated part of the income from the fund. For instance, the family winning one thousand dollars from the acres would be allowed to win from the fund twice the amount of money earned from the acres, that is, if one thousand dollars were earned from the acres in any one year, then two thousand dollars would 'go as a prize to the beneficiary family making the thousand dollars from the acres. On the basis of this plan, a fortune instead of lessening incentive to work, and 572 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS consequently removing impulse to continue the family, would then stimulate incentive to work. This work being out of doors would give a fund of physical energy which would carry individuals much farther along in development before reaching cultural limitations. In this way a tremendously strong family could be built up, instead of, as under present conditions, the strongest member being the one who originally acquired the fortune, — the family then rapidly falling away through the customary working of natural law in relation to protoplasm. The question arises as to what extent prizes may be given to winners from the acres. For instance, if one bene- ficiary family were to make ten thousand dollars in a year from the acres, receiving in consequence twenty thousand dollars from the fund, we might, and probably would ha\'e the entire income from a very large fortune used up by the older ambi- tious individuals. The younger ones, equally ambitious and equally on the way to success, would then be deprived of opportunities for winning. Under these circumstances, it would be necessary probably to fix a certain stated point, up to which point a beneficiary family could win prizes from the estate. Each beneficiary family profiting to the extent, let us say, of thirty thousand dollars a year would ha\e shown capacity enough in methods of success and would require no further stimulus. Each successful beneficiary family would be expected to go on funding its new branch in the same way that the original funding was done. How about the children of any beneficiary family which failed to win prizes, and who would have only the income belong- ing to that particular family? In such a case, they would have to take their chances with the world precisely as other children do under present conditions, with or without refer- ence to any original fund. Established families which have run through several generations without notable loss, have TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 573 lived largely upon great landed estates, and the loss from development of anergists in the family has not been as rapid as it would have been under any attempt at establishing a family under conditions of urban life. The Baldwin apple cannot last for five hundred years. There is a similarity between the Baldwin apple, the accumula- tion of wealth by a family, and the accumulation of powder for a rocket. Nature wishes to have a display made of power. Wealth of family and powder of rocket, gradually collected together and put into form, are carried to the point where they can make great and desirable display. The exhausted family and the charred stick then fall to the ground inert. A family fortune has many effects incidental to those of display ; some- times it exerts an explosive force prematurely, driving rela- tives apart and upsetting the orderly arrangement of social conventions, because of power given to the profligate and to the unwise. Nature fears the effect of a great family fortune. She does not wish any family to remain coherent with great mass power for many generations, because of the danger to her institutions from the momentum and velocity acquired by such a power. It seems as though we might all observe the final effects of the collection of great fortunes, because the ruins are all about us on every hand. Nature blinds us to the fact because the observation might lead us to be on guard against collecting such power. That would defeat the ends of nature. According to her plans great collections of power not only serve for making great and desirable display, but they serve for furthering all progress. Nature employs this method for furthering progress in what would seem to be a cruel way, — ^killing us and throwing us away after we have served her purposes with a family fortune for a few generations. A great deal of thought has been expended upon methods for keeping a great fortune intact for an unlimited number of 574 TO-MORROW'S TOPICS generations. All of these methods must fail for the reason that the basic question relates to senescence of the allotment of protoplasmic energy for any one family. The very act of securing a fortune sufficient for founding a family income has at the same time a distinct tendency to injure the health of the founder and to nullify the results of his ambition in this way. It often enough occurs that a num- ber of children are born before he has injured his protoplasm and lessened his own capacity for enjoyment of life. The founder of a fortune commonly has great physical endurance along with genius or talent, because he represents cumulative family influence toward development. The rose having doubled the family begins to reach cultural limitations at the moment when the founder of a fortune hopes to perpetuate the family name through opportunity given his children by withdrawal of obstacles. Nature does not wish him to recognize the fact that withdrawal of obstacles means withdrawal of incentive. There will probably, in fact, be little change of to-morrow's detail in this habit of our species, because the tendency to expend health and strength unwisely in acquiring a fortune is a response to one of nature's dictations. Extinction of the family shortly afterward then comes in due course, according to natural law. This process is probably expressed in the legends of "action and reaction are equal," "no positive with- out its corresponding negative." We may recognize the fact, without finding ways for making much change, because this famihar story seems to represent one of those habits which various animals and plants have developed instinctively in the past, leading to their own destruction. My farm family idea is schematic rather than practical, because in fact the farm is about the last place in the world to which the beneficiaries of a founded fortune are likely to wish to go. It would represent opposition to natural law — ■ TO-MORROW'S TOPICS 575 nature wishing to have the family eliminated shortly after the rose has begun to double. Here and there we find old families maintaining position fairly well because of a return to country life, but so far as I know there has been no successful Aryan plan for pre- serving family name and fortune— most of the beneficiaries gradually reaching cultural limitations and disappearing, even when under the deterring influence of country residence. The long tenure of protoplasmic vigor of the family of the Mikado and of the Arabian horse is probably not due to accident but to the application of principles, details of which I have been unable to obtain at this writing, beyond the statement that accessions of "fresh blood" are made systematically. INDEX Adam, s Advertising for help, 400 Esthete, the, 209 Aged men's views, 253 Agriculture and intellect, 230 Alcohol, Id Alpha-privative cults, 348 Anarchists, 266 Anger, 291 Anticlimax traits, 329 Athletes, 233 Authors versus editors, 264 Automobilists, 220 B Back to the land, 210 Barren hillsides, 244 Beliefs are alpenstocks, 79 Bergson and American philosophy, 186 Bergson, James and Hocking, 180 Big business, 405 Billion gods, 53 Birds, voices of, 215 Bishops, 5, 104 Blase folks, 277 Bona, 54 Brain capacity, 104 Brotherhood of man, 64 Brown waters, 251 Brutality toward animals, 342 Buck fever, 249 Business man at the head of the world, 363 C Camera heart and gun heart, 221 Capitalists, 404 Caribou Charlie, 233 Cats and birds, 219 Chicago kokosh, 284 Christ divine, 34 Christians and grafting, 43 Christian Science, 62 Christs, false, 35 Church and humanity, 32 Church, Christian, 10 Church, imperialistic, 9 Churches, merger of, 28 Civilized nations disappear, 354 Classifications from the top, 184 Clergyman, the, 88 Clergyman's conscience, 326 Commonplace, the, 265 Compensations, 343 Consciousness, 71 Country boys, 431 Creative evolution, 190 Creeds, 60, 74 Creeds and paranoia, 74 Cults, 61 Cyclothemia, 114 577 578 INDEX D Degree of D. D. L., 58 Dementia pracox, chemical, 105 Descent from divinity, 93 Destination, our, 41 Destiny of a nation, 371 Destructive traits, 349 Devotional exercises, 86 Divine thoughts, 16 Division of wealth, 404 Doctrine of a Providence, 15 Dogma, 52 Dogs, 222 Double standard, the, 65 Dreams, 151 Dual nature, the, 330 E Educational conviction, 22 Eel's tail heart, 241 Emotions, 272 Envy, 290 Esoteric philosophy, 176 Evangelists, 20 Everybody interesting, 293 Everything is alive, 206 "Exposures,"' 390 Eyes, 304 F Fairies, 4 Faith, 97 Fault finding, 337 Fear means antagonism, 138 Fears, 339 Feeling versus intellect, 180 Food supply, 239 Forty immortals, 251 Freud, 153 Freud versus Christian Science, 161 Friends, 292 Function and structure, 174 Future life, 3 Gambling, 314 Goats and falsehood, 253 God made by man, 14 Government control of utilities, 3 Graft, 378 H Happiness and contentment, 276 Hardships, no Has every man his price? 306 Hatred, 291 Hen or egg first, 268 Homergist versus allergist, 96 Humanism, 37 Humility, 33 Hybrid trees, 243 Hypocrisy, 322 Hysteria, 130 Idols, 17 Immorality, 58 Impersonal criticism, 301 Injustice, 310 Innovators, 301 Insanities, toxic, no Insanity, vaccination against, 103 Inspired books, 83 Instinct, 226 Investigators, 241 "Ists," 149 / Jealousy, 288 Jealousy as an utility, 273 Jeanne d'Arc, 150 Jeffries, S. Jonny Green, 410 K Karl Marx, 410 Kindly friendliness, 285 INDEX 579 King Microbe, 355 Knowledge, agents for, 23 Knowledge versus superstition, 23 Law, the, 324 Life, 46 Life worth the living, 345 Link, Doctor, 229 Literacy test, 389 Literary variant, a, 263 Littleness, 31 Lock-step in style, 173 Lombroso and Nordau, 183 "Looking upon" people, 177 Luck, 280 M Mala, 56 Man a mirror, yz Man, chief end of, 348 Man the groaning animal, 192 Man's inventions, 297 Marlin, the, 218 Martyrs, 341 Masters, 91 Materialism, 38 Measuring men, 432 Melancholia, 116 Meliorists, 53 Merribrooke, 196 Milk and mind on low barometer, 266 Minimum wage, 429 Mint juleps, 316 Miracles, 87 Misanthropy, 280 Misconception, 120 Misconception and animals, 221 Missionaries, 73 Mohammed and Swedenborg, 79 Monistic unity state, 3 Morbidly sensitized, the, 135 Mormon prophet, 82 Moses, 4 Motives, 287 Mud, beauties of, 207 Municipal officials, 369 Mystery, 136 Mysticism, 146 N National Board of Health, 391 Negative cheer, 193 Nervousness, 125 Neurotics, 127 New Thought Church, 64 Nietzsche, 254 Nuclear men, 269 Nurserymen, 240 O One hundred years from now, 195 Ovisness, 383 Pagans, 30 Pantheism, 206 Paranoia, 118 Pathos, 333 Peace and the microbe, 362 Pensions, 433 People who are misunderstood, 337 Personal conversation, 294 Personal magnetism, 286 Philosophies, 39 Philosophies of life, 277 Physiology and morals, 67 Pilgrims, 18 Plant resources, 238 Poetry, 182 Policeman and ants, 379 Policy unit, the, 267 Political positions, 371 S8o INDEX Political ring, the, 349 Politics, practical, 372 Potatoes, 230 Power and fame, 306 Premonition, 137 Prescience, 139 Problem of the snug, 397 Producers, 395 Profanity, 317 Psychanalysis, 159 Psyche and the appendix, 170 Psychiatrists in court, 184 Psychiatry, 114 "Psychic" means "physiologic," 102 Psychic states, 271 Psychological laboratory, 113 Psychoses, 124 Psychotic monks, 75 R Rationalists, 26 Rats, 250 Real and not real, 228 Red gods, 208 Red squirrel, the, 200 Religion and superstition, 181 Religion, development of, 12 Religion of the entities, 11 Religious motive, the, 38 Revivals, 21 Riddle of the Universe, 40 Rochefort and Leidy, 255 Roman Catholic Church, 24 Russia, 3S2 Sabbath Day, 7 Sabotage, 426 Saints or prophets, 100 Santayana, 258 Science and art described, 148 Science versus metaphysics, 178 Science in localities, 242 Scriptures founded by man, 16 "Seeing things," 140 Seers, 137 Self entertainment, 282 Selfishness in sorrovif, 278 Sensitiveness, 129 Sensitive people, 301 Shavif and Hubbard, 334 Simeon Stylites, 82 Simple Sam, 157 Simplifying things, 54 Sin, 54 Smells, 226 Social agitators are salaried, 413 Social Club, the, 335 Socialism, 406 Soul, the, 98 Soul, ponderable, 50 Specialized functions, 228 Spiritual life, 91 Spring flowers and birds, 213 Starvation, 235 Statesmen, 393 Static culture question, 351 Strikes, 399 Strong opinions, 296 Styles in dress, 384 Successful man, the, 275 Suicide, loi Sympathy, 332 Syndicalism, 421 Tammany Hall, 385 Telepathy, 137 Telephone voices, 336 Territorial expansion, 392 Theft, 318 Theology, essentials of, 42 Theology and logic, 51 Theology is nervous, 41 INDEX S8i Theology versus science, 43 Theosophy, "]■] The Threat, 24 Thrills, 45 Thunder cloud simile, 427 Tolstoy and Wallace, 252 Towser, 155 Toxic hieroglyphics, m, 116 Trade unions, 412 Trance mediums, 143 Travellers, 211 Tree Planting Association, the, 244 Trusts, 41 S Truth, 98 Truth, the, 33 Truthfulness, 318 U Unbalanced men, 270 Unemployed, the, 413 Unhappy material, 295 United Balkania, 355 Unsatisfactory incomes, 308 V Vaccination, 102 Vanity, 298 Varietal hybrid peoples, 352 W Wage earners, 409 Waking sex, the, 68 "Waste," 396 Wealth, origin of, 395 White azalea, 210 Will, the, 302 World tipping over, 202 Worship, 44 Yourself as a unit, 306 THE COUNTRY LITE PRESS GARDEN aTY, N. Y.