The Making of Civilized Men

ORATION AT THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF FOUNDING OF THE NEWHAMPSHIRE ALPHA OF PHI BETA KAPPA

WHEN OUR PREDECESSORS met in 1787 for the founding of the Phi Beta Kappa Chapter of Dartmouth College, the future was fraught with great expectations. Eleven years previously, the Declaration of Independence had proclaimed that the power of the governments comes from the consent of the governed. The industrial revolution was spreading over England. Adam Smith had published the "Wealth of Nations." In Paris, Lavoisier was laying the foundations of modern chemistry. It was the dawn of freedom, prosperity, and science. A new era began.

One hundred and fifty years have elapsed. The Phi Beta Kappa Chapter of Dartmouth College has assembled again. The location is the same. But the environment is radically different. Science, wealth, and democracy have kept their promise. They have transformed the frame of our existence, and our existence itself, down to the ground. They have created comfort, leisure, rapidity of communication. They have improved in an astonishing manner the mechanisms of life, and have given man the power to produce a superabundance of all the goods that he needs. They have liberated him from superstitions, religious beliefs, and traditional morality. At the same time, the sciences of matter, while unveiling the secrets of the constitution of the physical universe, are showing how truly prodigious is the strength of human intelligence. The younger sciences of life are manifesting their power by the conquest of infectious diseases, and by the increase in the average duration of existence. No mechanical progress has ever brought to mankind such great advantages as have the protection against bacteria and viruses, the development of modern surgery, and the knowledge of the functions of organs and humors. Lastly, the method for inventing has been invented. This method consists of the systemization of scientific research. Each year, two hundred million dollars are spent in this manner by industrial laboratories. Organized research is an inexhaustible source of discoveries. These discoveries bring to all more comfort, less work, better health, greater aptitude for happiness. Thus has become true the hope that filled the hearts of our ancestors, when democracy, technology, and science rose over the horizons of America and of Europe.

But an unexpected phenomenon took place. Neither man nor his institutions have satisfactorily adapted themselves to this immense progress. Happiness eluded us. It must be acknowledged, for instance, that the triumphs of medicine are far from having suppressed disease. Instead of dying rapidly of infections, we die more slowly, more painfully of degenerative diseases. Affections of the heart, cancer, diabetes, lesions of the kidney, of the brain, of every organ. Medicine has not decreased human suffering as much as it was hoped. Suffering is brought to man, not only by bacteria and viruses, but also by more subtle agents. Nervous fragility, intellectual weakness, moral corruption, insanity, are more dangerous for the future of civilization than yellow fever, typhus, and cancer. We must remember that as many patients are victims of insanity as of all other diseases put together. In New York State, about one person in eighteen, at some period of his life, is subjected to medical care for mental troubles. In the United States, a large percentage of the population is weak minded, that is, remains at the psychological age of twelve years. At the same time, the number of criminals has risen above four million. Each year, their depredations and repression cost the country the sum of approximately fifteen billion dollars.

A PARADOXICAL FAILURE

The requirements of mass production and the growth of industrial populations have added greatly to the complexity of social, economic, and political problems. But human intelligence has not increased. It is far from having mastered its own creation. In the midst of the abundance brought about by modern industry, part of the population lives in want. European and Asiatic nations use all the resources of technology for arming against one another. It cannot be doubted that the efficiency of the means of destruction has never been equaled. Everywhere, there is a feeling of insecurity and confusion. Moreover, the civilized races seem to be losing the courage to live. In almost every country, the reproduction of the more gifted individuals is decreasing. This phenomenon is of ominous significance. Did it not herald the crumbling of the great civilizations of the past?

There is, therefore, no more urgent duty than to search for the remedy of this paradoxical failure of science and technology.

II

Neither science nor machines are responsible for the ills of civilization. They are blind instruments in our hands. Man alone is accountable for his troubles. He has misused technology and built a world that does not fit him. For we were still ignorant of biology and psychology when science gave us the power of conquering the material world. Therefore, we modified our environment and ourselves at random, according to our inventions, illusions, and appetites, without any respect for the laws of our mind and body. But natural laws are never transgressed with impunity. "Nature cannot be cheated," wrote Emerson. In an environment preventing his spiritual and organic growth, man has deteriorated. He has become too weak to control himself and to manage his institutions. It has proved a disastrous enterprise to develop at a venture the resources of the universe, and to create blindly new habits of life. Modern society has practically failed. The only remedy is to remake man, not according to our fancy, but to the laws of his nature, and to give him such an environment as is appropriate to his specific constitution. This is the task that has been forced upon us.

III

The making of man requires a profound knowledge of his body and his soul. This knowledge lies within our reach. For the jurisdiction of science extends over the totality of the things that can be observed. Over the spiritual as well as over the physiological. Up to this time, our concepts of man were based on philosophical or scientific doctrines. Such concepts are necessarily incomplete, open to discussion, impossible to verify. We must realize that scientific concepts and philosophical concepts are two different things. There should be no blending of the various disciplines of the mind. In order to acquire a real knowledge of the human person, we have to follow strictly the road of science. The observational method brings us into intimate contact with concrete reality. On the contrary, doctrines imprison one within the limits of the human mind. "We must dismiss philosophical and scientific systems," wrote Claude Bernard, "as we would break the chains of intellectual slavery." Considered as a scientific discipline, the knowledge of man is independent of all doctrines. It has no more right to be vitalistic than mechanistic, materialistic than spiritualistic. It does not belong to Hippocrates, Paracelsus, Freud, Mrs. Eddy, or anybody else. Observation and experiment are the only sources of knowledge. Scientific method, when followed to its ultimate end, leads necessarily to truth.

We must, therefore, obtain a concept of man that is exclusively scientific. The more comprehensive this concept, the more useful it will be in the construction of human beings. To an unbiased observer, man appears as a mental and organic wholeness, intimately bound to environment. The apprehension of man in his concrete entirety leads to much richer abstractions than those which anatomy, physiology, psychology, sociology, economics, religion, consider respectively as equivalent to the human individual. When seen in this manner, man displays a body composed of tissues, organs, and blood. The body manifests certain activities that are divided arbitrarily into organic and mental. On account of methodological necessity, mental activities are separated into logical, or intellectual, processes, and non-logical processes, such as moral sense, intuition, esthetic sense, mystical sense. The manifestation of these activities is essentially simple. Man is complexity and simplicity, multiplicity and unity. And this unity, on account of its structural multiplicity, never repeats itself. Each individual is a history identical with no other. He is without his like in the whole universe. Although not entirely comprised within the physical continuum, and capable of escaping from time and space, he remains bound, to his cosmic and psychological environment. And ultimately, to his economic and social institutions.

This concept is based exclusively on observation. It does not contain any supposition or doctrine. It can be used, therefore, as a foundation for a true science of man. Such a science does not exist as yet. Up to the present time, we have applied ourselves merely to the acquisition of fragmentary concepts. First, analysis has broken the continuity of man, and of his material and social surroundings. Second, it has separated the soul from the body. The body has been divided into organs, cells, and fluids. In,the course of this dissection, the mind has vanished. Thus were born sciences having respectively as object a different aspect of man. They are called sociology, history, pedagogy, physiology, and so on. But man is much more than the sum of these analytical data. That is, of his aspects. In fact, these aspects blend into wholeness. He reacts as unity, and not as multiplicity, to cosmic, economic, and psychologic environments. And the solution of the great problems of civilization depends on the knowledge, not only of the aspects of man, but of entire man inserted into a group, a nation, and a race. Ultimately, on the science of man.

IV

The construction of the science of man requires the use of specific tools. On account of the extreme complexity of its object, this science differs from all others. Man, being multiplicity and unity, has to be studied by two different methods, one analytic, and the other synthetic. To these methods correspond two types of scientic institutions.

The institutions already in existence use the analytic method. They consider man as a multiplicity, which they divide into its parts. They carve into more or less arbitrary fragments the entirety consisting of the living being bound to its environment. Then, they analyze those fragments. In this manner were constructed biological chemistry, anatomy, physiology, genetics, pedagogy, sociology, economics. For instance, the Pasteur Institute, the Rockefeller Institute, the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft, the California Institute of Technology, are investigating the biological, physical, and chemical aspects of man and of the universe. The Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Brookings

Institute, the Mellon Institute, the laboratories of the universities, the innumerable industrial laboratories, are examples of organizations dedicated to scientific, social, economic, and technological activities. These focuses of research have accumulated analytical data of immense importance. They must continue their efforts without interruption. They are the builders of all sciences. Thus they prepare for the advent of the science of man.

V

The synthetic method has as yet no means of investigation at its disposal. It needs two types of institutions, because integration has to be made at two different levels. The level of the activities constituting the individual, and the level of the reciprocal relations between individual and environment.

At the first level of synthesis, the individual is considered in his structural and spiritual unity. He appears as a fluid being, who reacts against the conditions of the environment according to his ancestral qualities. That is, according to his mental and organic type. The development of the new science of typology alone can lead to a wise management of education, vocational training, and habits of life. There is an obvious need to use eugenics for the production of better human types. It is also necessary to discover how human activities can be molded by the material and mental factors of environment. Corollaries are the problems of moral, esthetic, and religious development, of mental deterioration and criminality. The importance of intuition in mental life requires an investigation of metapsychic phenomena, and the application of scientific method to the study of telepathy and clairvoyance. In sum, we have to acquire a thorough knowledge of the reciprocal effects of the physiological, the intellectual, and the spiritual.

The solution of those problems demands the establishment of centers for the simultaneous investigation of mind and body. In other words, for psychobiological research. The scientific institutions already in existence are concerned almost exclusively in material values. Human values, however, are spiritual as well as material. And the spiritual is within the reach of scientific method. To attempt to improve the human person is far from being Utopian. Although we are incapable of transforming hereditary tendencies, we can modify their effects. We know how to prevent and to cure some of the more dangerous hereditary diseases, such as syphilis. Moreover, we have the power to shape the organism during its growth with the help of certain environmental agencies. The natural plasticity of the body and of the mind allows tbem in some measure to obey these agencies. Through countless observations, we have learned that climate, profession, diet, athletics, intellectual and moral disciplines, and other factors, leave a profound mark on personality. Besides, numerous experiments have shown that variations even of only one condition of development, such as diet, suffice to bring about marked changes in animals. In this manner, the size of closely inbred mice was caused to increase or decrease at will. In one of the populations, the average weight of the young mice at the age of one month was 6.5 gm., while in another population, it reached 11.7 gm. The duration of life also was easily modified. In a large group, subjected to an excellent regimen, 9 per cent of the mice lived over 20 months. In another group receiving the same food, but starved two days a week, the number of mice living more than 20 months rose to 60 per cent. The death rate of the young before weaning turned out to be markedly influenced by the diet of the mothers, and dropped from 52 per cent to 19 per cent. Likewise, changes in regimen increased resistance to pneumonia. The mice of a certain strain died in the proportion of 52 per cent. A better diet lowered the death rate to 32 per cent. Another change, to 14 per cent. The addition of a chemical completely suppressed the disease. But the animals of this last group died at a more advanced age of liver tumors in the proportion of 83 per cent. In a group that received for several years excellent food but in insufficient quantity, the stature became smaller and the intelligence markedly greater. These experiments and many others show how the plasticity of the living organism can be turned to good use. The formation of the mind and the body depends obviously on the material and mental conditions of the environment and on the physiological and psychological habits of the individual. The effects of these conditions and these habits can be submitted easily to experimental analysis. Such analysis requires the foundation of Institutes of Psychobiology, permitting observations and experiments of long duration on groups of children, on young and mature individuals, and on a large number of very intelligent dogs. In this manner, civilized nations could obtain the knowledge necessary for the optimum development of the mental and organic qualities of the individual.

VI

A second and more extensive synthesis must integrate the individual and his cosmic, social, and psychological surroundings. Only the welding of all sciences having man as object will allow these sciences to contribute to the making of the civilized. The specialists of physiology, medicine, pedagogy, politics, economics, religion, or other human activities have proved their incapacity to solve the problems that concern man as a whole. In other words, the truly human problems. For instance, an educator, as an educator, is not entirely qualified to direct the education of a child. An economist, to organize the economics of a nation. An architect, to plan a city. For neither pedagogy, economics, nor architecture alone give to educators, economists, or architects a knowledge of man. In order to be true, our view of the individual and of his environment must be far more comprehensive. But we can obtain such a view neither by assembling fragments of knowledge in a mechanical way, nor by causing specialists to gather around a table, nor by organizing a committee of synthesis. Synthesis does not consist merely in collecting facts. In order to obtain water, it does not suffice to place oxygen and hydrogen in contact. One must also supply such a system with energy. In an analogous manner, synthesis requires, in the first place, the bringing together of data within the consciousness of an individual. And secondly, the blending of these data by strenuous mental efforts. Of such an effort, very few men are capable. For industrial civilization has committed the sin of almost exclusively developing specialists, that is, individuals who excel only in a field of limited dimensions. It has stifled those who, like Leonardo da Vinci, or Franklin, can master several disciplines. Minds endowed with universalistic tendencies alone have the power to solve the problems of modern society. In order to weld biology, psychology, sociology, and economics,, such minds will have to be organized into a center of synthetic thought, a focus of collective investigation of human problems. In fact, into an Institute for the Construction of the Civilized.

This institution would have, as its main task, to define the relations between the individual and the environment. It would ascertain the social and mental conditions that are indispensable to the spiritual and material life of each one of us, and to the propagation of the best strains of the race. At the same time, it would examine mechanical inventions, philosophical doctrines, diet, methods of education, habits of life, social and economic legislation, from the point of view of their effects on the individual considered as an organic and mental wholeness. And warn the public against those which are harmful. At last, it would coordinate the efforts of the institutions that are devoting themselves to the dissection of human activities. Thus would grow an analytic and synthetic knowledge that could easily be applied to the present needs of the civilized. Such an institution could supply the chiefs of the government, and the directors of the administrations in charge of public health, education, labor, agriculture, with the information required for the construction of both the individual and of the nation.

VII

In sum, the era drawing to its close has brought about the progress of machines. The era on the threshold of which we stand must be dedicated to the progress of man. The contribution to knowledge during the first part of this century was characterized by the development of institutions for analytical research, and by the creation of the specialists and of the subspecialists. Strange to say, the treasures of fragmentary information acquired in this manner have not helped in the solution of a single human problem. In order to be useful, analytical data have to be integrated. Specialism and individual research must be completed by universalism and collective research. Time has come for the though-tight compartments, in which sciences are imprisoned, to be made to communicate. Also, for the information thus obtained to be applied to the living system, consisting of individual and environment. Institutions for synthetic research are needed for this remaking of man. In the same manner that the Pasteur Institute and the Rockefeller Institute were founded many years ago for the prevention and cure of disease, new institutions must be established today for the prevention of mental and organic deterioration, and for the improvement of the individual and of civilization.

There is already, in several countries, a tendency to understand the necessity for such progress. For instance, a few weeks ago, at the opening exercises of Columbia University, a civil engineer, Boris Bakhmeteff, pointed out the antithesis between the achievements of science and technology, and the failure of humanity to organize its collective life. In Washington, Senator Bulkley is planning the establishment of a national council for the simultaneous investigation of economic and human problems. In France, Raoul Dautry, Director of the State Railroads, lately advocated the development of the science of man. "This science," he said, "which consists in facing the facts with humility, in rejecting idealism as well as materialism, and in considering man in his affective, moral, esthetic, and spiritual, as well as in his organic and humoral needs." Last year, a group of engineers, economists, biologists, historians, and other specialists gathered together in the solitude of the former monastery of Pontigny in order to try to coordinate the elements of a complete knowledge of man. Thus it is becoming apparent that life does not consist exclusively of producing and consuming. And that the purely materialistic and' analytic attitude of modern society is responsible for the deterioration of man and environment.

Man Has Not Prpgressed

The renovation of the civilized can be undertaken with the expenditure of a sum of money very much smaller than that spent every year on industrial or medical research. Is it not more important to improve man than the goods consumed by him? Are health and comfort of any value if we become mentally and spiritually worthless? Those who have given their lives to the search for the prevention and cure of disease are keenly disappointed in observing that their efforts have resulted in a large number of healthy defectives, healthy lunatics, and healthy criminals. And in no progress of man. Obviously we have failed because we have considered man as composed exclusively of tissues, bones, and blood, although tissues, bones, and blood are one with mind. I hope that the necessity for building a synthetic knowledge of man will become evident to each one of us. As far as I am concerned, I intend to devote the rest of my life to the problem of developing the human individual in the fulness of his organic and spiritual powers. For the quality of life is more important than life itself. There are still immense potentialities in the germinal cells of the American and European populations. These, races have shown their creative strength. They have expressed the prodigious diversity of their genius in Dante, Shakespeare, Newton, Pasteur, as well as in Caesar, Napoleon, Lincoln. Unfortunately, the genesis of great men is still unknown. But should we not attempt, from this moment, to construct individuals of larger mental and spiritual size? Modern society needs supersouls. The conquest of health and comfort does not suffice. The goal of civilization is the ascension of the human person. We must use theoretical and applied science, not for the satisfaction of our curiosity and of our appetites, but for the betterment of the self and for the construction of truly civilized men. Humanity has now to realize that its future depends on itself.

DR. ALEXIS CARREL French scientist, Nobel Prize winner, andhead of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research whose address in Hanover ishere published in full.

PHI BETA KAPPA The procession that moved across the campus to Webster Hall exercises celebratingthe 150 th anniversary of the Society washeaded by William H. McCarter 'l9, director of athletics, as chief marshal, PresidentHopkins 'Ol, and Prof. E. B. Watson 'O2,president of the Dartmouth chapter.

THE ADDRESS of Dr. Carrel, delivered inWebster Hall on October n, is herepublished in full. It ivas the principalevent of an afternoon and evening program celebrating the 150 th anniversary ofthe Dartmouth Chapter of Phi BetaKappa, established in 1787. (See: News of the College).