Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/504

 A NEGLECTED FACTOR IN THE QUESTION OF NATIONAL SECURITY

GEORGE F. ARPS OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

HE question of national preparation in anticipation of future international strife can not fail to consider man as he natively is, divested of the mantle of acquired behavior; he must be viewed from the standpoint of his naked natural birthright, however much it may be desirable to consider him as we wish him to be, if the question is to be answered on practical rather than idealistic grounds.

By birthright we mean that complex of inherited tendencies as we find it unencumbered, unmodified or redirected by environmental influences. This complex constitutes “original man”; it is man’s inborn organization with which he begins his life-long struggle with unescapable environment. Innumerable catalogues have been made of man’s native equipment (instincts, reflexes, tendencies) with which he starts the conquest of the external world. It suffices for our purose to know that man’s original complex exceeds in variety of tendencies that of any other animal, and that the virility and dominance of certain tendencies may vary endlessly with the individual.

What a man is, and what he will do, is a result of the play of environmental stimuli upon the leanings, bents, tendencies, loged in his constitution. Native endowment and environment fit each other as lock and key. The limit, character and direction of man’s behavior can not transcend his original nature—a “soft pine” germ-plasm spells a soft pine character and this remains true no matter how favorably the environmental forces may be applied. By no pedagogical device has it been, or ever will be, possible to transform a weak inherited complex into an oak character.

The future security of the state or the home must not fail to regard man biologically, as possessed of powerful destructive tendencies as well as powerful tendencies of love, sympathy and kindness. “Two souls,” as Faust says, “dwell within his breast,” the one of sociability and helpfulness, the other of jealousy and antagonism to his mates. Wanton blindness to this poetic expression of man’s dual nature wobbles the security of any nation unwilling to turn the unsmitten cheek. In this matter the evil component of man must be reckoned with the good. To cherish the latter is noble; to blink the former is not only perilous, but beggars courage.