homo oeconomicus
who must ceaselessly consume manufactured
products in order that the machines, of which he is made a slave, may be kept at work.
But he is also the poet, the hero, and the saint. He is not only the prodigiously complex
being analyzed by our scientific techniques, but also the tendencies, the conjectures, the
aspirations of humanity. Our conceptions of him are imbued with metaphysics. They are
founded on so many and such imprecise data that the temptation is great to choose among
them those which please us. Therefore, our idea of man varies according to our feelings
and our beliefs. A materialist and a spiritualist accept the same definition of a crystal of
sodium chloride. But they do not agree with one another upon that of the human being. A
mechanistic physiologist and a vitalistic physiologist do not consider the organism in the
same light. The living being of Jacques Loeb differs profoundly from that of Hans
Driesch. Indeed, mankind has made a gigantic effort to know itself. Although we possess
the treasure of the observations accumulated by the scientists, the philosophers, the poets,
and the great mystics of all times, we have grasped only certain aspects of ourselves. We
do not apprehend man as a whole. We know him as composed of distinct parts. And even
these parts are created by our methods. Each one of us is made up of a procession of
phantoms, in the midst of which strides an unknowable reality.
In fact, our ignorance is profound. Most of the questions put to themselves by those
who study human beings remain without answer. Immense regions of our inner world are
still unknown. How do the molecules of chemical substances associate in order to form
the complex and temporary organs of the cell? How do the genes contained in the nucleus
of a fertilized ovum determine the characteristics of the individual deriving from that
ovum? How do cells organize themselves by their own efforts into societies, such as the
tissues and the organs? Like the ants and the bees, they have advance knowledge of the
part they are destined to play in the life of the community. And hidden mechanisms
enable them to build up an organism both complex and simple. What is the nature of our
duration of psychological time, and of physiological time? We know that we are a
compound of tissues, organs, fluids, and consciousness. But the relations between
consciousness and cerebrum are still a mystery. We lack almost entirely a knowledge of
the physiology of nervous cells. To what extent does will power modify the organism?
How is the mind influenced by the state of the organs? In what manner can the organic
and mental characteristics, which each individual inherits, be changed by the mode of
life, the chemical substances contained in food, the climate, and the physiological and
moral disciplines?
We are very far from knowing what relations exist between skeleton, muscles, and
organs, and mental and spiritual activities. We are ignorant of the factors that bring about
nervous equilibrium and resistance to fatigue and to diseases. We do not know how moral
sense, judgment, and audacity could be augmented. What is the relative importance of
intellectual, moral, and mystical activities? What is the significance of esthetic and
religious sense? What form of energy is responsible for telepathic communications?
Without any doubt, certain physiological and mental factors determine happiness or
misery, success or failure. But we do not know what they are. We cannot artificially give
to any individual the aptitude for happiness. As yet, we do not know what environment is
the most favorable for the optimum development of civilized man. Is it possible to
suppress struggle, effort, and suffering from our physiological and spiritual formation?
How can we prevent the degeneracy of man in modern civilization? Many other
questions could be asked on subjects which are to us of the utmost interest. They would
also remain unanswered. It is quite evident that the accomplishments of all the sciences
having man as an object remain insufficient, and that our knowledge of ourselves is still
most rudimentary.
2
Our ignorance may be attributed, at the same time, to the mode of existence of our
ancestors, to the complexity of our nature, and to the structure of our mind. Before all,
man had to live. And that need demanded the conquest of the outer world. It was
imperative to secure food and shelter, to fight wild animals and other men. For immense
periods, our forefathers had neither the leisure nor the inclination to study themselves.
They employed their intelligence in other ways, such as manufacturing weapons and
tools, discovering fire, training cattle and horses, inventing the wheel, the culture of
cereals, etc., etc. Long before becoming interested in the constitution of their body and
their mind, they meditated on the sun, the moon, the stars, the tides, and the passing of
the seasons. Astronomy was already far advanced at an epoch when physiology was
totally unknown. Galileo reduced the earth, center of the world, to the rank of a humble
satellite of the sun, while his contemporaries had not even the most elementary notion of
the structure and the functions of brain, liver, or thyroid gland. As, under the natural
conditions of life, the human organism works satisfactorily and needs no attention,
science progressed in the direction in which it was led by human curiosity--that is, toward
the outer world.
From time to time, among the billions of human beings who have successively
inhabited the earth, a few were bora endowed with rare and marvelous powers, the
intuition of unknown things, the imagination that creates new worlds, and the faculty of
discovering the hidden relations existing between certain phenomena. These men
explored the physical universe. This universe is of a simple constitution. Therefore, it
rapidly gave in to the attack of the scientists and yielded the secret of certain of its laws.
And the knowledge of these laws enabled us to utilize the world of matter for our own
profit. The practical applications of scientific discoveries are lucrative for those who
promote them. They facilitate the existence of all. They please the public, whose comfort
they augment. Everyone became, of course, much more interested in the inventions that
lessen human effort, lighten the burden of the toiler, accelerate the rapidity of
communications, and soften the harshness of life, than in the discoveries that throw some
light on the intricate problems relating to the constitution of our body and of our
consciousness. The conquest of the material world, which has ceaselessly absorbed the
attention and the will of men, caused the organic and the spiritual world to fall into
almost complete oblivion. In fact, the knowledge of our surroundings was indispensable,
but that of our own nature appeared to be much less immediately useful. However,
disease, pain, death, and more or less obscure aspirations toward a hidden power
transcending the visible universe, drew the attention of men, in some measure, to the
inner world of their body and their mind. At first, medicine contented itself with the
practical problem of relieving the sick by empiric recipes. It realized only in recent times
that the most effective method of preventing or curing illness is to acquire a complete
understanding of the normal and diseased body--that is, to construct the sciences that are
called anatomy, biological chemistry, physiology, and pathology. However, the mystery
of our existence, the moral sufferings, the craving for the unknown, and the
metapsychical phenomena appeared to our ancestors as more important then bodily pain
and diseases. The study of spiritual life and of philosophy attracted greater men than the
study of medicine. The laws of mysticity became known before those of physiology. But
such laws were brought to light only when mankind had acquired sufficient leisure to turn
a little of his attention to other things than the conquest of the outer world.
There is another reason for the slow progress of the knowledge of ourselves. Our mind
is so constructed as to delight in contemplating simple facts. We feel a kind of
repugnance in attacking such a complex problem as that of the constitution of living
beings and of man. The intellect, as Bergson wrote, is characterized by a natural inability
to comprehend life. On the contrary, we love to discover in the cosmos the geometrical
forms that exist in the depths of our consciousness. The exactitude of the proportions of
our monuments and the precision of our machines express a fundamental character of our
mind. Geometry does not exist in the earthly world. It has originated in ourselves. The
methods of nature are never so precise as those of man. We do not find in the universe
the clearness and accuracy of our thought. We attempt, therefore, to abstract from the
complexity of phenomena some simple systems whose components bear to one another
certain relations susceptible of being described mathematically. This power of abstraction
of the human intellect is responsible for the amazing progress of physics and chemistry.
A similar success has rewarded the physicochemical study of living beings. The laws of
chemistry and of physics are identical in the world of living things and in that of
inanimate matter, as Claude Bernard thought long ago. This fact explains why modern
physiology has discovered, for example, that the constancy of the alkalinity of the blood
and of the water of the ocean is expressed by identical laws, that the energy spent by the
contracting muscle is supplied by the fermentation of sugar, etc. The physicochemical
aspects of human beings are almost as easy to investigate as those of the other objects of
the terrestrial world. Such is the task which general physiology succeeds in
accomplishing.
The study of the truly physiological phenomena--that is, of those resulting from the
organization of living matter--meets with more important obstacles. On account of the
extreme smallness of the things to be analyzed, it is impossible to use the ordinary
techniques of physics and of chemistry. What method could bring to light the chemical
constitution of the nucleus of the sexual cells, of its chromosomes, and of the genes that
compose these chromosomes? Nevertheless, those very minute aggregates of chemicals
are of capital importance, because they contain the future of the individual and of the
race. The fragility of certain tissues, such as the nervous substance, is so great that to
study them in the living state is almost impossible. We do not possess any technique
capable of penetrating the mysteries of the brain, and of the harmonious association of its
cells. Our mind, which loves the simple beauty of mathematical formulas, is bewildered
when it contemplates the stupendous mass of cells, humors, and consciousness which
make up the individual. We try, therefore, to apply to this compound the concepts that
have proved useful in the realm of physics, chemistry, and mechanics, and in the
philosophical and religious disciplines. Such an attempt does not meet with much
success, because we can be reduced neither to a physicochemi-cal system nor to a
spiritual entity. Of course, the science of man has to use the concepts of all the other
sciences. But it must also develop its own. For it is as fundamental as the sciences of the
molecules, the atoms, and the electrons.
In short, the slow progress of the knowledge of the human being, as compared with the
splendid ascension of physics, astronomy, chemistry, and mechanics, is due to our
ancestors' lack of leisure, to the complexity of the subject, and to the structure of our
mind. Those obstacles are fundamental. There is no hope of eliminating them. They will
always have to be overcome at the cost of strenuous effort. The knowledge of ourselves
will never attain the elegant simplicity, the abstractness, and the beauty of physics. The
factors that have retarded its development are not likely to vanish. We must realize
clearly that the science of man is the most difficult of all sciences.
3
The environment which has molded the body and the soul of our ancestors during many
millenniums has now been replaced by another. This silent revolution has taken place
almost without our noticing it. We have not realized its importance. Nevertheless, it is
one of the most dramatic events in the history of humanity. For any modification in their
surroundings inevitably and profoundly disturbs all living beings. We must, therefore,
ascertain the extent of the transformations imposed by science upon the ancestral mode of
life, and consequently upon ourselves.
Since the advent of industry, a large part of the population has been compelled to live in
restricted areas. The workmen are herded together, either in the suburbs of the large cities
or in villages built for them. They are occupied in the factories during fixed hours, doing
easy, monotonous, and well-paid work, The cities are also inhabited by office workers,
employees of stores, banks, and public administrations, physicians, lawyers, school-
teachers, and the multitude of those who, directly or indirectly, draw their livelihood from
commerce and industry. Factories and offices are large, well lighted, clean. Their
temperature is uniform. Modern heating and refrigerating apparatuses raise the
temperature during the winter and lower it during the summer. The skyscrapers of the
great cities have transformed the streets into gloomy canyons. But inside of the buildings,
the light of the sun is replaced by electric bulbs rich in ultra-violet rays. Instead of the air
of the street, polluted by gasoline fumes, the offices and workshops receive pure air
drawn in from the upper atmosphere by ventilators on the roof. The dwellers of the
modern city are protected against all inclemencies of the weather. But they are no longer
able to live as did our ancestors, near their workshops, their stores, or their offices. The
wealthier inhabit the gigantic buildings of the main avenues. At the top of dizzy towers,
the kings of the business world possess delightful homes, surrounded by trees, grass, and
flowers. They live there, as sheltered from noise, dust, and all disturbances, as if they
dwelt on the summit of a mountain. They are more completely isolated from the common
herd than were the feudal lords behind the walls and the moats of their fortified castles.
The less wealthy, even those with quite modest means, lodge in apartments whose
comfort surpasses that which surrounded Louis XIV or Frederick the Great. Many have
their residence far from the city. Each evening, express trains transport innumerable
crowds to suburbs, where broad roads running between green strips of grass and rows of
trees are bordered with pretty and comfortable houses. The workmen and the humblest
employees live in dwellings better appointed than those of the rich of former times. The
heating apparatuses that automatically regulate the temperature of the houses, the
bathrooms, the refrigerators, the electric stoves, the domestic machinery for preparing
food and cleaning rooms, and the garages for the automobiles, give to the abode of
everybody, not only in the city and the suburbs, but also in the country, a degree of
comfort which previously was found only in that of very few privileged individuals.
Simultaneously with the habitat, the mode of life has been transformed. This
transformation is due chiefly to the increase in the rapidity of communications. Indeed, it
is evident that modern trains and steamers, airplanes, automobiles, telegraph, telephone,
and wireless have modified the relations of men and of nations all over the world. Each
individual does a great many more things than formerly. He takes part in a much larger
number of events. Every day he comes into contact with more people. Quiet and
unemployed moments are exceptional in his existence. The narrow groups of the family
and of the parish have been dissolved. Intimacy no longer exists. For the life of the small
group has been substituted that of the herd. Solitude is looked upon as a punishment or as
a rare luxury. The frequent attendance at cinema, theatrical, or athletic performances, the
clubs, the meetings of all sorts, the gigantic universities, factories, department stores, and
hotels have engendered in all the habit of living in common. The telephone, the radio, and
the gramophone records carry unceasingly the vulgarity of the crowd, as well as its
pleasures and its psychology, into everyone's house, even in the most isolated and remote
villages. Each individual is always in direct or indirect communication with other human
beings, and keeps himself constantly informed about the small or important events taking
place in his town, or his city, or at the other end of the world. One hears the chimes of
Westminster in the most retired houses of the French countryside. Any farmer in
Vermont, if it pleases him to do so, may listen to orators speaking in Berlin, London, or
Paris.
Everywhere, in the cities, as well as in the country, in private houses as in factories, in
the workshop, on the roads, in the fields, and on the farms, machines have decreased the
intensity of human effort. Today, it is not necessary to walk. Elevators have replaced
stairs. Everybody rides in buses, motors, or street cars, even when the distance to be
covered is very short. Natural bodily exercises, such as walking and running over rough
ground, mountain-climbing, tilling the land by hand, clearing forests with the ax, working
while exposed to rain, sun, wind, cold, or heat, have given place to well-regulated sports
that involve almost no risk, and to machines that abolish muscular effort. Everywhere
there are tennis-courts, golf-links, artificial skating-rinks, heated swimming-pools, and
sheltered arenas where athletes train and fight while protected against the inclemencies of
the weather. In this manner all can develop their muscles without being subjected to the
fatigue and the hardships involved in the exercises pertaining to a more primitive form of
life.
The aliments of our ancestors, which consisted chiefly of coarse flour, meat, and
alcoholic drinks, have been replaced by much more delicate and varied food. Beef and
mutton are no longer the staple foods. The principal elements of modern diet are milk,
cream, butter, cereals refined by the elimination of the shells of the grain, fruits of
tropical as well as temperate countries, fresh or canned vegetables, salads, large
quantities of sugar in the form of pies, candies, and puddings. Alcohol alone has kept its
place. The food of children has undergone a profound change. It is now very artificial and
abundant. The same may be said of the diet of adults. The regularity of the working-hours
in offices and factories has entailed that of the meals. Owing to the wealth which was
general until a few years ago, and to the decline in the religious spirit and in the
observance of ritualistic fasts, human beings have never been fed so punctually and
uninterruptedly.
It is also to the wealth of the post-war period that the enormous diffusion of education
is due. Everywhere, schools, colleges, and universities have been erected, and
immediately invaded by vast crowds of students. Youth has understood the role of
science in the modern world. "Knowledge is power," wrote Bacon. All institutions of
learning are devoted to the intellectual development of children and young people. At the
same time, they give great attention to their physical condition. It is obvious that the main
interest of these educational establishments consists in the promotion of mental and
muscular strength. Science has demonstrated its usefulness in such an evident manner
that it has obtained the first place in the curriculum. A great many young men and women
submit themselves to its disciplines. Scientific institutions, universities, and industrial
corporations have built so many laboratories that every scientific worker has a chance to
make use of his particular knowledge.
The mode of life of modern men is profoundly influenced by hygiene and medicine and
the principles resulting from the discoveries of Pasteur. The promulgation of the
Pastorian doctrines has been an event of the highest importance to humanity. Their
application rapidly led to the suppression of the great infectious diseases which
periodically ravaged the civilized world, and of those endemic in each country. The
necessity for cleanliness was demonstrated. Infantile mortality at once decreased. The
average duration of life has augmented to an amazing extent and has reached fifty-nine
years in the United States, and sixty-five years in New Zealand. People do not live
longer, but more people live to be old. Hygiene has considerably increased the quantity of
human beings. At the same time, medicine, by a better conception of the nature of
diseases and a judicious application of surgical techniques, has extended its beneficent
influence to the weak, the defective, those predisposed to microbial infections, to all who
formerly could not endure the conditions of a rougher life. It has permitted civilization to
multiply its human capital enormously. It has also given to each individual much greater
security against pain and disease.
The intellectual and moral surroundings in which we are immersed have equally been
molded by science. There is a profound difference between the world that permeates the
mind of modern men and the world wherein our ancestors lived. Before the intellectual
victories that have brought us wealth and comfort, moral values have naturally given
ground. Reason has swept away religious beliefs. The knowledge of the natural laws, and
the power given us by this knowledge over the material world, and also over human
beings, alone are of importance. Banks, universities, laboratories, medical schools,
hospitals, have become as beautiful as the Greek temples, the Gothic cathedrals, and the
palaces of the Popes. Until the recent economic crisis, bank or railroad presidents were
the ideals of youth. The president of a great university still occupies a very high place in
the esteem of the public because he dispenses science. And science is the mother of
wealth, comfort, and health. However, the intellectual atmosphere, in which modern men
live, rapidly changes. Financial magnates, professors, scientists, and economic experts
are losing their hold over the public. The people of today are sufficiently educated to read
newspapers and magazines, to listen to the speeches broadcasted by politicians, business
men, charlatans, and apostles. They are saturated with commercial, political, or social
propaganda, whose techniques are becoming more and more perfect. At the same time
they read articles and books wherein science and philosophy are popularized. Our
universe, through the great discoveries of physics and astronomy, has acquired a
marvelous grandeur. Each individual is able, if it so pleases him, to hear about the
theories of Einstein, or to read the books of Eddington and of Jeans, the articles of
Shapley and of Millikan. The public is as interested in the cosmic rays as in cinema stars
and baseball-players. Everyone is aware that space is curved, that the world is composed
of blind and unknown forces, that we are nothing but infinitely small particles on the
surface of a grain of dust lost in the immensity of the cosmos, and that this cosmos is
totally deprived of life and consciousness. Our universe is exclusively mechanical. It
cannot be otherwise, since it has been created from an unknown substratum by the
techniques of physics and astronomy. Just as are all the surroundings of modem men, it is
the expression of the amazing development of the sciences of inert matter.
4
The profound changes imposed on the habits of men by the applications of science have
occurred recently. In fact, we are still in the midst of the industrial revolution. It is
difficult, therefore, to know exactly how the substitution of an artificial mode of
existence for the natural one and a complete modification of their environment have acted
upon civilized human beings. There is, however, no doubt that such an action has taken
place. For every living thing depends intimately on its surroundings, and adapts itself to
any modification of these surroundings by an appropriate change. We must, therefore,
ascertain in what manner we have been influenced by the mode of life, the customs, the
diet, the education, and the intellectual and moral habits imposed on us by modern
civilization. Have we benefited by such progress? This momentous question can be
answered only after a careful examination of the state of the nations which were the first
to profit by the application of scientific discoveries.
It is evident that men have joyfully welcomed modern civilization. They have
abandoned the countryside and flocked to the cities and the factories. They eagerly adopt
the mode of life and the ways of acting and of thinking of the new era. They lay aside
their old habits without hesitation, because these habits demand a greater effort. It is less
fatiguing to work in a factory or an office than on a farm. But even in the country, new
techniques have relieved the harshness of existence. Modern houses make life easier for
everybody. By their comfort, their warmth, and their pleasant lighting, they give their
inmates a feeling of rest and contentment. Their up-to-date appointments considerably
decrease the labor that, in bygone days, housekeeping demanded from women. Besides
the lessening of muscular effort and the possession of comfort, human beings have
accepted cheerfully the privilege of never being alone, of enjoying the innumerable
distractions of the city, of living among huge crowds, of never thinking. They also
appreciate being released, through a purely intellectual education, from the moral
restraint imposed upon them by Puritan discipline and religious principles. In truth,
modern life has set them free. It incites them to acquire wealth by any and every possible
means, provided that these means do not lead them to jail. It opens to them all the
countries of the earth. It has liberated them from all superstitions. It allows them the
frequent excitation and the easy satisfaction of their sexual appetites. It does away with
constraint, discipline, effort, everything that is inconvenient and laborious. The people,
especially those belonging to the lower classes, are happier from a material standpoint
than in former times. However, some of them progressively cease to appreciate the
distractions and the vulgar pleasures of modern life. Occasionally, their health does not
permit them to continue indefinitely the alimentary, alcoholic, and sexual excesses to
which they are led by the suppression of all discipline. Besides, they are haunted by the
fear of losing their employment, their means of subsistence, their savings, their fortune.
They are unable to satisfy the need for security that exists in the depth of each of us. In
spite of social insurances, they feel uneasy about their future. Those who are capable of
thinking become discontented.
It is certain, nevertheless, that health is improving. Not only has mortality decreased,
but each individual is handsomer, larger, and stronger. Today, children are much taller
than their parents. An abundance of good food and physical exercises have augmented
the size of the body and its muscular strength. Often the best athletes at the international
games come from the United States. In the athletic teams of the American universities,
there are many individuals who are really magnificent specimens of human beings. Under
the present educational conditions, bones and muscles develop perfectly. America has
succeeded in reproducing the most admirable forms of ancient beauty. However, the
longevity of the men proficient in all kinds of sports and enjoying every advantage of
modern life is not greater than that of their ancestors. It may even be less. Their resistance
to fatigue and worry seems to have decreased. It appears that the individuals accustomed
to natural bodily exercise, to hardships, and to the inclemencies of the weather, as were
their fathers, are capable of harder and more sustained efforts than our athletes. We know
that the products of modern education need much sleep, good food, and regular habits.
Their nervous system is delicate. They do not endure the mode of existence in the large
cities, the confinement in offices, the worries of business, and even the everyday
difficulties and sufferings of life. They easily break down. Perhaps the triumphs of
hygiene, medicine, and modern education are not so advantageous as we are led to
believe.
We should also ask ourselves whether there are no inconveniences attached to the great
decrease in the death rate during infancy and youth. In fact, the weak are saved as well as
the strong. Natural selection no longer plays its part. No one knows what will be the
future of a race so well protected by medical sciences. But we are confronted with much
graver problems, which demand immediate solution. While infantile diarrhea,
tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid fever, etc., are being eliminated, they are replaced by
degenerative diseases. There are also a large number of affections of the nervous system
and of the mind. In certain states the multitude of the insane confined in the asylums
exceeds that of the patients kept in all other hospitals. Like insanity, nervous disorders
and intellectual weakness seem to have become more frequent. They are the most active
factors of individual misery and of the destruction of families. Mental deterioration is
more dangerous for civilization than the infectious diseases to which hygienists and
physicians have so far exclusively devoted their attention.
In spite of the immense sums of money expended on the education of the children and
the young people of the United States, the intellectual elite does not seem to have
increased. The average man and woman are, without any doubt, better educated and,
superficially at least, more refined. The taste for reading is greater. More reviews and
books are bought by the public than in former times. The number of people who are
interested in science, letters, and art has grown. But most of them are chiefly attracted by
the lowest form of literature and by the imitations of science and of art. It seems that the
excellent hygienic conditions in which children are reared, and the care lavished upon
them in school, have not raised their intellectual and moral standards. There may possibly
be some antagonism between their physical development and their mental size. After all,
we do not know whether a larger stature in a given race expresses a state of progress, as
is assumed today, or of degeneracy. There is no doubt that children are much happier in
the schools where compulsion has been suppressed, where they are allowed exclusively
to study the subjects in which they are interested, where intellectual effort and voluntary
attention are not exacted. What are the results of such an education? In modern
civilization, the individual is characterized chiefly by a fairly great activity, entirely
directed toward the practical side of life, by much ignorance, by a certain shrewdness,
and by a kind of mental weakness which leaves him under the influence of the
environment wherein he happens to be placed. It appears that intelligence itself gives way
when character weakens. For this reason perhaps, this quality, characteristic of France in
former times, has so markedly failed in that country. In the United States, the intellectual
standard remains low, in spite of the increasing number of schools and universities.
Modern civilization seems to be incapable of producing people endowed with
imagination, intelligence, and courage. In practically every country there is a decrease in
the intellectual and moral caliber of those who carry the responsibility of public affairs.
The financial, industrial, and commercial organizations have reached a gigantic size.
They are influenced not only by the conditions of the country where they are established,
but also by the state of the neighboring countries and of the entire world. In all nations,
economic and social conditions undergo extremely rapid changes. Nearly everywhere the
existing form of government is again under discussion. The great democracies find
themselves face to face with formidable problems--problems concerning their very
existence and demanding an immediate solution. And we realize that, despite the
immense hopes which humanity has placed in modern civilization, such a civilization has
failed in developing men of sufficient intelligence and audacity to guide it along the
dangerous road on which it is stumbling. Human beings have not grown so rapidly as the
institutions sprung from their brains. It is chiefly the intellectual and moral deficiencies of
the political leaders, and their ignorance, which endanger modern nations.
Finally, we must ascertain how the new mode of life will influence the future of the
race. The response of the women to the modifications brought about in the ancestral
habits by industrial civilization has been immediate and decisive. The birth rate has at
once fallen. This event has been felt most precociously and seriously in the social classes
and in the nations which were the first to benefit from the progress brought about,
directly or indirectly, by the applications of scientific discoveries. Voluntary sterility is
not a new thing in the history of the world. It has already been observed in a certain
period of past civilizations. It is a classical symptom. We know its significance.
It is evident, then, that the changes produced in our environment by technology have
influenced us profoundly. Their effects assume an unexpected character. They are
strikingly different from those which were hoped for and which could legitimately be
expected from the improvements of all kinds brought to the habitat, the mode of life, the
diet, the education, and the intellectual atmosphere of human beings. How has such a
paradoxical result been obtained?
5
A simple answer could be given to this question. Modern civilization finds itself in a
difficult position because it does not suit us. It has been erected without any knowledge
of our real nature. It was born from the whims of scientific discoveries, from the appetites
of men, their illusions, their theories, and their desires. Although constructed by our
efforts, it is not adjusted to our size and shape.
Obviously, science follows no plan. It develops at random. Its progress depends on
fortuitous conditions, such as the birth of men of genius, the form of their mind, the
direction taken by their curiosity. It is not at all actuated by a desire to improve the state
of human beings. The discoveries responsible for industrial civilization were brought
forth at the fancy of the scientists' intuitions and of the more or less casual circumstances
of their careers. If Galileo, Newton, or Lavoisier had applied their intellectual powers to
the study of body and consciousness, our world probably would be different today. Men
of science do not know where they are going. They are guided by chance, by subtle
reasoning, by a sort of clairvoyance. Each one of them is a world apart, governed by his
own laws. From time to time, things obscure to others become clear to him. In general,
discoveries are developed without any prevision of their consequences. These
consequences, however, have revolutionized the world and made our civilization what it
is.
From the wealth of science we have selected certain parts. And our choice has in no
way been influenced by a consideration of the higher interests of humanity. It has simply
followed the direction of our natural tendencies. The principles of the greatest
convenience and of the least effort, the pleasure procured by speed, change, and comfort,
and also the need of escaping from ourselves, are the determining factors in the success
of new inventions. But no one has ever asked himself how we would stand the enormous
acceleration of the rhythm of life resulting from rapid transportation, telegraph,
telephone, modern business methods, machines that write and calculate, and those that do
all the housekeeping drudgery of former times. The tendency responsible for the
universal adoption of the airplane, the automobile, the cinema, the telephone, the radio,
and, in the near future, of television, is as natural as that which, in the night of the ages,
led our ancestors to drink alcohol. Steam-heated houses, electric lighting, elevators,
biological morals, and chemical adulteration of food-stuffs have been accepted solely
because those innovations were agreeable and convenient. But no account whatever has
been taken of their probable effect on human beings.
In the organization of industrial life the influence of the factory upon the physiological
and mental state of the workers has been completely neglected. Modern industry is based
on the conception of the maximum production at lowest cost, in order that an individual
or a group of individuals may earn as much money as possible. It has expanded without
any idea of the true nature of the human beings who run the machines, and without giving
any consideration to the effects produced on the individuals and on their descendants by
the artificial mode of existence imposed by the factory. The great cities have been built
with no regard for us. The shape and dimensions of the skyscrapers depend entirely on
the necessity of obtaining the maximum income per square foot of ground, and of
offering to the tenants offices and apartments that please them. This caused the
construction of gigantic buildings where too large masses of human beings are crowded
together. Civilized men like such a way of living. While they enjoy the comfort and banal
luxury of their dwelling, they do not realize that they are deprived of the necessities of
life. The modern city consists of monstrous edifices and of dark, narrow streets full of
gasoline fumes, coal dust, and toxic gases, torn by the noise of the taxicabs, trucks, and
trolleys, and thronged ceaselessly by great crowds. Obviously, it has not been planned for
the good of its inhabitants.
Our life is influenced in a large measure by commercial advertising. Such publicity is
undertaken only in the interest of the advertisers and not of the consumers. For example,
the public has been made to believe that white bread is better than brown. Then, flour has
been bolted more and more thoroughly and thus deprived of its most useful components.
Such treatment permits its preservation for longer periods and facilitates the making of
bread. The millers and the bakers earn more money. The consumers eat an inferior
product, believing it to be a superior one. And in the countries where bread is the
principal food, the population degenerates. Enormous amounts of money are spent for
publicity. As a result, large quantities of alimentary and pharmaceutical products, at the
least useless, and often harmful, have become a necessity for civilized men. In this
manner the greediness of individuals, sufficiently shrewd to create a popular demand for
the goods that they have for sale, plays a leading part in the modern world.
However, the propaganda that directs our ways of living is not always inspired by
selfish motives. Instead of being prompted by the financial interests of individuals or of
groups of individuals, it often aims at the common good. But its effect may also be
harmful when it emanates from people having a false or incomplete conception of the
human being. For example, should physicians, by prescribing special foods, as most of
them do, accelerate the growth of young children? In such an instance, their action is
based on an incomplete knowledge of the subject. Are larger and heavier children better
than smaller ones? Intelligence, alertness, audacity, and resistance to disease do not
depend on the same factors as the weight of the body. The education dispensed by
schools and universities consists chiefly in a training of the memory and of the muscles,
in certain social manners, in a worship of athletics. Are such disciplines really suitable for
modern men who need, above all other things, mental equilibrium, nervous stability,
sound judgment, audacity, moral courage, and endurance? Why do hygienists behave as
though human beings were exclusively liable to infectious diseases, while they are also
exposed to the attacks of nervous and mental disorders, and to the weakening of the
mind? Although physicians, educators, and hygienists most generously lavish their efforts
for the benefit of mankind, they do not attain their goal. For they deal with schemata
containing only a part of the reality. The same may be said of all those who substitute
their desires, their dreams, or their doctrines for the concrete human being. These
theorists build up civilizations which, although designed by them for man, fit only an
incomplete or monstrous image of man. The systems of government, entirely constructed
in the minds of doctrinaires, are valueless. The principles of the French Revolution, the
visions of Marx and Lenin, apply only to abstract men. It must be clearly realized that the
laws of human relations are still unknown. Sociology and economics are conjectural
sciences--that is, pseudo-sciences.
Thus, it appears that the environment, which science and technology have succeeded in
developing for man, does not suit him, because it has been constructed at random,
without regard for his true self.
6
To summarize. The sciences of inert matter have made immense progress, while those
of living beings remain in a rudimentary state. The slow advance of biology is due to the
conditions of human existence, to the intricacy of the phenomena of life, and to the form
of our intelligence, which delights in mechanical constructions and mathematical
abstractions. The applications of scientific discoveries have transformed the material and
mental worlds. These transformations exert on us a profound influence. Their unfortunate
effect comes from the fact that they have been made without consideration for our nature.
Our ignorance of ourselves has given to mechanics, physics, and chemistry the power to
modify at random the ancestral forms of life.
Man should be the measure of all. On the contrary, he is a stranger in the world that he
has created. He has been incapable of organizing this world for himself, because he did
not possess a practical knowledge of his own nature. Thus, the enormous advance gained
by the sciences of inanimate matter over those of living things is one of the greatest
catastrophes ever suffered by humanity. The environment born of our intelligence and
our inventions is adjusted neither to our stature nor to our shape. We are unhappy. We
degenerate morally and mentally. The groups and the nations in which industrial
civilization has attained its highest development are precisely those which are becoming
weaker. And whose return to barbarism is the most rapid. But they do not realize it. They
are without protection against the hostile surroundings that science has built about them.
In truth, our civilization, like those preceding it, has created certain conditions of
existence which, for reasons still obscure, render life itself impossible. The anxiety and
the woes of the inhabitants of the modern city arise from their political, economic, and
social institutions, but, above all, from their own weakness. We are the victims of the
backwardness of the sciences of life over those of matter.
The only possible remedy for this evil is a much more profound knowledge of
ourselves. Such a knowledge will enable us to understand by what mechanisms modem
existence affects our consciousness and our body. We shall thus learn how to adapt
ourselves to our surroundings, and how to change them, should a revolution become
indispensable. In bringing to light our true nature, our potentialities, and the way to
actualize them, this science will give us the explanation of our physiological weakening,
and of our moral and intellectual diseases. We have no other means of learning the
inexorable rules of our organic and spiritual activities, of distinguishing the prohibited
from the lawful, of realizing that we are not free to modify, according to our fancy, our
environment, and ourselves. Since the natural conditions of existence have been
destroyed by modern civilization, the science of man has become the most necessary of
all sciences.
Chapter II
THE SCIENCE OF MAN
1
O
UR
I
GNORANCE
of ourselves is of a peculiar nature. It does not arise from difficulty in
procuring the necessary information, from its inaccuracy, or from its scarcity. On the
contrary, it is due to the extreme abundance and confusion of the data accumulated about
itself by humanity during the course of the ages. Also to the division of man into an
almost infinite number of fragments by the sciences that have endeavored to study his
body and his consciousness. This knowledge, to a large extent, has not been utilized. In
fact, it is barely utiliz-able. Its sterility manifests itself in the meagerness of the classical
abstractions, of the schemata that are the basis of medicine, hygiene, education,
sociology, and political economy. There is, however, a living and rich reality buried in
the enormous mass of definitions, observations, doctrines, desires, and dreams
representing man's efforts toward a knowledge of himself. In addition to the systems and
speculations of scientists and philosophers, we have the positive results of the experience
of past generations, and also a multitude of observations carried out with the spirit and,
occasionally, with the techniques of science. But we must make a judicious choice from
these heterogeneous things.
Among the numerous concepts relating to the human being, some are mere logical
constructs of our mind. We do not find in the outer world any being to whom they apply.
The others are purely and simply the result of experience. They have been called by
Bridgman operational concepts. An operational concept is equivalent to the operation or
to the set of operations involved in its acquisition. Indeed, all positive knowledge
demands the use of a certain technique, of certain physical or mental operations. When
we say that an object is one meter long, we mean that it has the same length as a rod of
wood or of metal, whose dimension is, in its turn, equal to that of the standard meter kept
at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris. It is quite evident that the
things we can observe are the only ones we really know. In the foregoing example, the
concept of length is synonymous with the measurement of such length. According to
Bridgman, concepts dealing with things situated outside the experimental field are
meaningless. Thus, a question has no signification if it is not possible to discover the
operations permitting us to answer it.
The precision of any concept whatsoever depends upon that of the operations by which
it is acquired. If man is defined as a being composed of matter and consciousness, such a
proposition is meaningless. For the relations between consciousness and bodily matter
have not, so far, been brought into the experimental field. But an operational definition is
given of man when we consider him as an organism capable of manifesting
physicochemical, physiological, and psychological activities. In biology, as in physics,
the concepts which will always remain real, and must be the basis of science, are linked
to certain methods of observation. For example, our present idea of the cells of the
cerebral cortex, their pyramidal body, their dendritic processes, and their smooth axon,
results from the techniques invented by Ramon y Cajal. This is an operational concept.
Such a concept will change only when new and more perfect techniques will be
discovered. But to say that cerebral cells are the seat of mental processes is a worthless
affirmation, for there is no possibility of observing the presence of mental processes in
the body of cerebral cells. Operational concepts are the only solid foundation upon which
we can build. From the immense fund of knowledge we possess about ourselves, we must
select the data corresponding to what exists not only in our mind, but also in nature.
We know that among the concepts relating to man, some are specific of him, others
belong to all living beings, and still others are those of chemistry, physics, and
mechanics. There are as many systems of concepts as of strata in the organization of
living matter. At the level of the electronic, atomic, and molecular structures found in
man's tissues, as well as in trees, stones, or clouds, the concepts of space-time continuum,
energy, force, mass, entropy, should be used. And also those of osmotic tension, electric
charge, ions, capillarity, permeability, diffusion. The concepts of micella, dispersion,
adsorption, and flocculation appear at the level of the material aggregates larger than
molecules. When the molecules and their combinations have erected tissue cells, and
when these cells have associated together to form organs and organisms, the concepts of
chromosome, gene, heredity, adaptation, physiological time, reflex, instinct, etc., must be
added to those already mentioned. They are the very concepts of physiology. They exist
simultaneously with the physicochemical concepts, but cannot be reduced to them. At the
highest level of organization, in addition to electrons, atoms, molecules, cells, and tissues,
we encounter a whole composed of organs, humors, and consciousness. Then,
physicochemical and physiological concepts become insufficient. To them we must join
the psychological concepts characteristic of man, such as intelligence, moral sense,
esthetic sense, and social sense. The principles of minimum effort and of maximum
production or of maximum pleasure, the quest for liberty, for equality, etc., have to be
substituted for the thermodynamic laws and those of adaptation.
Each system of concepts can only be legitimately used in the domain of the science to
which it belongs. The concepts of physics, chemistry, physiology, and psychology are
applicable to the superposed levels of the bodily organization. But the concepts
appropriate at one level should not be mingled indiscriminately with those specific of
another. For example, the second law of thermodynamics, the law of dissipation of free
energy, indispensable at the molecular level, is useless at the psychological level, where
the principles of least effort and of maximum pleasure are applied. The concepts of
capillarity and of osmotic tension do not throw any light on problems pertaining to
consciousness. It is nothing but word play to explain a psychological phenomenon in
terms of cell physiology, or of quantum mechanics. However, the mechanistic
physiologists of the nineteenth century, and their disciples who still linger with us, have
committed such an error in endeavoring to reduce man entirely to physical chemistry.
This unjustified generalization of the results of sound experiments is due to
overspecialization. Concepts should not be misused. They must be kept in their place in
the hierarchy of sciences. The confusion in our knowledge of ourselves comes chiefly
from the presence, among the positive facts, of the remains of scientific, philosophic, and
religious systems. If our mind adheres to any system whatsoever, the aspect and the
significance of concrete phenomena are changed. At all times, humanity has
contemplated itself through glasses colored by doctrines, beliefs, and illusions. These
false or inexact ideas must be discarded. Long ago, Claude Bernard in his writings
mentioned the necessity of getting rid of philosophical and scientific systems as one
would break the chains of intellectual slavery. But such freedom has not yet been
attained. Biologists and, above all, educators, economists, and sociologists, when facing
extremely complex problems, have often yielded to the temptation to build up theories
and afterwards to turn them into articles of faith. And their sciences have crystallized in
formulas as rigid as the dogmas of a religion.
We meet with troublesome reminders of such mistakes in all the departments of
knowledge. The quarrel of the vital-ists and the mechanists, the futility of which astounds
us today, arose from one of the most famous of these errors. The vitalists thought that the
organism was a machine whose parts were integrated with one another by a factor that
was not physicochemical. According to them, the processes responsible for the unity of
the living being were governed by an independent spiritual principle, an entelechy, an
idea analogous to that of an engineer who designs a machine. This autono mous factor
was not a form of energy and did not produce energy. It was only concerned with the
management of the organism. Evidently, entelechy is not an operational concept. It is
purely a mental construct. In short, the vitalists considered the body as a machine, guided
by an engineer, whom they called entelechy. And they did not realize that this engineer
was nothing but the intelligence of the observer. As for the mechanists, they believed that
all physiological and psychological activities could be explained by the laws of physics,
chemistry, and mechanics. They thus built a machine, and, like the vitalists, they were the
engineer of this machine. Then, as Woodger pointed out, they forgot the existence of that
engineer. Such a concept is not operational. It is evident that mechanism and vitalism
should be rejected for the same reason as all other systems. At the same time, we must
free ourselves from the mass of illusions, errors, and badly observed facts, from the false
problems investigated by the weak-minded of the realm of science, and from the pseudo-
discoveries of charlatans and scientists extolled by the daily press. Also from the sadly
useless investigations, the long studies of meaningless things, the inextricable jumble that
has been standing mountain high ever since biological research became a profession like
those of the school-teacher, the clergyman, and the bank clerk.
This elimination completed, the results of the patient labor of all sciences concerning
themselves with man, the accumulated wealth of their experience, will remain as the
unshakable basis of our knowledge. In the history of humanity, the expression of all our
fundamental activities can be read at a single glance. In addition to positive observations,
to sure facts, there are many things neither positive nor indubitable. They should not be
rejected. Of course, operational concepts are the only foundation upon which science can
be solidly built. But creative imagination alone is capable of inspiring conjectures and
dreams pregnant with the worlds of the future. We must continue asking questions which,
from the point of view of sound, scientific criticism, are meaningless. And even if we
tried to prevent our mind from pursuing the impossible and the unknowable, such an
effort would be vain. Curiosity is a necessity of our nature, a blind impulse that obeys no
rule. Our mind turns around all external objects and penetrates within the depths of
ourselves, as instinctively and as irresistibly as a raccoon explores, with its clever little
paws, the slightest details of its narrow world. Curiosity impels us to discover the
universe. It inexorably draws us in its train to unknown countries. And unclimbable
mountains vanish before it like smoke before the wind.
2
A thorough examination of man is indispensable. The barrenness of classical schemata
is due to the fact that, despite the great scope of our knowledge, we have never
apprehended our whole being with a sufficiently penetrating effort. Thus, we must do
more than consider the aspect of man at a certain period of his history, in certain
conditions of his life. We must grasp him in all his activities, those that are ordinarily
apparent as well as those that may remain potential. Such information can only be
obtained by looking carefully in the present and in the past for all the manifestations of
our organic and mental powers. Also by an examination, both analytic and synthetic, of
our constitution and of our physical, chemical, and mental relations with our
environment. We should follow the wise advice that Descartes, in his
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