Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/446

434 human being also stutters in a manner similar to the barbet but in such a very rapid tempo that for the hearing organism an apparently continuous tone results. Another irrelevant speech instinct is stammering, which differs from a stutter in being a distinct explosive compound rather than a single vowel. All conventionalized social means of vocal communication arc simply habitualized stutters and stammers. When these elements of speech are conventionalized, they are ordinarily called letters, monosyllables, words, sentences and gestures. Undesirable combined series of speech compounds may be dissociated by presenting stimuli which will cause the patient to repeat the undesirable activity very rapidly until at least a large number of the stimuli cease to call it forth. This results not in an absolute, but only in a relative forgetting of the undesired response. It is suggested that the fact of relative forgetting of the superfluous response is due to a dissociation of certain organic structures involved; that this dissociation is in turn a result of a simplification or purification of the structures.

The phrase 'the struggle for existence' has received a too limited interpretation. The current representation of its meaning is one-sided, for its scientific implication is that each living thing must work for the preservation of self or offspring. Such activity may be a struggle merely against an inanimate foe. A plant in the desert, for example, uses means to defend itself against drought. One species grows ephemeral roots during a shower that it may, by means of them, suck in the water as speedily as possible. Indeed, there are countless examples of struggles for existence in which the foe is only inanimate nature and no living thing is injured. But even between living things there is often no hostility, for, in working for self preservation, one being often inadvertently aids another. Thus the bee aids the flower while getting its own sustenance. In fact, mutual aid is common in nature. The importance of mutual aid for human society becomes evident if we compare society to a living being. Social relations are observable in so simple a plant as the ulothrix, which grows in ponds and is the threadlike product of successive divisions of a germ cell into cells which are all alike except one, the root cell. This root cell attaches itself to a rock and thereby holds the whole system in place. This cell cannot, however, acquire its own nourishment, but is supplied therewith by the cells it supports. Not only is the ulothrix made up of single cells which aid each other, but each many-celled being is a unity made up of one-celled beings closely bound by mutual aid. In fact, without aid, a many-celled being would be impossible. Extending the analogy further, it becomes evident that the interests of a human society can best be furthered through mutual aid. We conclude, then, that science reveals the fact that the struggle for existence not only may not be injurious to other forms of animate life, but is often helpful. We may hope from science a further revelation of the ideal of humanity.