Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/505

 These two apparently contradictory souls lie deeply rooted in the subsoil of man’s original constitution. The sense organs like waiting funnels form gateways for environmental stimuli which, seeping through the interstices of acquired behavior, nourish the roots below.

All roots of human action, whether that of parental love or pugnacity, grow according to the degree and mode of exercise until the entire human organism is completely moulded. A nation under the drill of incessant discipline becomes a completely fashioned fighting machine.

Which of these souls, these inborn propensities, have civilized nations through all forms of educational agencies elected to nourish and preserve? Consider the space given to man's brutal activities in the histories of all nations, the melodramatic movies, the devotion of the daily press to executions, thuggery, thievery (all modifications of the Jesse James stimuli); consider, too, the content of pictorial weeklies and certain other periodicals and fictional publications dealing with deep-laid plots of “Man’s inhumanity to man.” These forces constitute a fair sample of environmental stimuli which arouse, keep alive and feed fat man’s original glut to rapine and to plunder, to hate and fear. These are among the forces which determine the self which dominates human behavior. The wave of fear sweeping over the states to-day like a prairie fire is the expected expression of a native protective response to a very real situation. Report from the blood-stained fields of Europe, of the new and dreadful devices for the annihilation of time and space, flashes through the thin veneer of idealism and conventionalities, lays hold on the original springs of human action, brushes aside acquired behavior and strikes quick to the Faustion Self of pugnacity, fear, hatred and antagonism. Like a slow-consuming fire, civilized nations have nursed the demon of destruction which, loosened, rocks the temple of international justice, outrages the peaceful in utter disregard of solemn obligations. And this because fine words and unsupported threats are powerless in the face of deadly impulses armed with refined tools and directed with terrible sincerity to crush and kill. The role of these original impulsive forces of man has been recognized by the laymen. In a remarkable address recently delivered in Carnegie Hall, Elihu Root portrays man and civilization in these significant words:

We have learned that civilization is but a veneer thinly covering the savage nature of man; that conventions, courtesies, respect for law, regard for justice and humanity, are acquired habits, feebly constraining the elemental forces man’s nature developed through countless centuries of struggle against wild beasts and savage foes.

The Teutonic war machine is a product of careful nurture from