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Chapter II

THE SCIENCE OF MAN

OUR IGNORANCE 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.

   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 Discourse on Method, gave to those who seek the truth, and divide our subject into as many parts as are necessary in order to make a complete inventory of each one of them. But it should be clearly understood that such a division is only a methodological expedient, created by ourselves, and that man remains indivisible.

   There is no privileged territory. In the abysses of our inner world everything has a meaning. We cannot choose only those things that please us, according to the dictates of our feelings, our imagination, the scientific and philosophical form of our mind. A difficult or obscure subject must not be neglected just because it is difficult and obscure. All methods should be employed. The qualitative is as true as the quantitative. The relations that can be expressed in mathematical terms do not possess greater reality than those that cannot be so expressed. Darwin, Claude Bernard, and Pasteur, whose discoveries could not be described in algebraic formulas, were as great scientists as Newton and Einstein. Reality is not necessarily clear and simple. It is not even sure that we are always able to understand it. In addition, it assumes infinitely varied aspects. A state of consciousness, the humeral bone, a wound, are equally real things. A phenomenon does not owe its importance to the facility with which scientific techniques can be applied to its study. It must be conceived in function, not of the observer and his method, but of the subject, the human being. The grief of the mother who has lost her child, the distress of the mystical soul plunged in the "dark night," the suffering of the patient tortured by cancer, are evident realities, although they are not measurable. The study of the phenomena of clairvoyance should not be neglected any more than that of the chronaxy of nerves, though clairvoyance can neither be produced at will nor measured, while it is possible to measure chronaxy exactly by a simple method. In making this in ventory, we should utilize all possible means and be content with observing the phenomena that cannot be measured.

   It often happens that undue importance is given to some part at the expense of the others. We are obliged to consider all the different aspects of man, physicochemical, anatomical, physiological, metapsychical, intellectual, moral, artistic, religious, economic, and social. Every specialist, owing to a well-known professional bias, believes that he understands the entire human being, while in reality he only grasps a tiny part of him. Fragmentary aspects are considered as representing the whole. And these aspects are taken at random, following the fashion of the moment, which in turn gives more importance to the individual or to society, to physiological appetites or to spiritual activities, to muscular development or to brain power, to beauty or to utility, etc. Man, therefore, appears with many different visages. We arbitrarily choose among them the one that pleases us, and forget the others.

   Another mistake consists in suppressing a part of reality from the inventory. There are many reasons accounting for this. We prefer to study systems that can easily be isolated and approached by simple methods. We generally neglect the more complex. Our mind has a partiality for precise and definitive solutions and for the resulting intellectual security. We have an almost irresistible tendency to select the subjects of our investigations for their technical facility and clearness rather than for their importance. Thus, modem physiologists principally concern themselves with physicochemical phenomena taking place in living animals, and pay less attention to physiological and functional processes. The same thing happens with physicians when they specialize in subjects whose techniques are easy and already known, rather than in degenerative diseases, neuroses, and psychoses, whose study would require the use of imagination and the creation of new methods. Everyone realizes, however, that the discovery of some of the laws of the organization of living matter would be more important than, for example, that of the rhythm of the cilia of tracheal cells. Without any doubt, it would be much more useful to free humanity from cancer, tuberculosis, arteriosclerosis, syphilis, and the innumerable misfortunes caused by nervous and mental diseases, than to engross oneself in the minute study of physicochemical phenomena of secondary importance manifesting themselves in the course of diseases. On account of technical difficulties, certain matters are banished from the field of scientific research, and refused the right of making themselves known.

   Important facts may be completely ignored. Our mind has a natural tendency to reject the things that do not fit into the frame of the scientific or philosophical beliefs of our time. After all, scientists are only men. They are saturated with the prejudices of their environment and of their epoch. They willingly believe that facts that cannot be explained by current theories do not exist. During the period when physiology was identified with physical chemistry, the period of Jacques Loeb and of Bayliss, the study of mental functions was neglected. No one was interested in psychology and in mind disorders. At the present time, scientists who are concerned solely in the physical, chemical, and physicochemical aspects of physiological processes still look upon telepathy and other metapsychical phenomena as illusions. Evident facts having an unorthodox appearance are suppressed. By reason of these difficulties, the inventory of the things which could lead us to a better understanding of the human being, has been left incomplete. We must, then, go back to a naive observation of ourselves in all our aspects, reject nothing, and describe simply what we see.

   At first glance, the scientific method seems not to be applicable to the analysis of all our activities. It is obvious that we, the observers, are unable to follow human personality into every region where it extends. Our techniques do not grasp things having neither dimensions nor weight. They only reach those situated in space and time. They are incapable of measuring vanity, hatred, love, beauty, or the dreams of the scientist, the inspiration of the poet, the elevation of the mystical soul toward God. But they easily record the physiological aspects and the material results of these psychological states. Mental and spiritual activities, when they play an important part in our life, express themselves by a certain behavior, certain acts, a certain attitude toward our fellow men. It is only in this manner that the moral, esthetic, and mystic functions can be explored by scientific methods. We also have at our disposal the statements of those who have traveled in these almost unknown regions. But the verbal expression of their experiences is, in general, disconcerting. Outside the domain of intelligence, nothing is clearly definable. Of course, the elusiveness of a thing does not signify its non-existence. When one sails in dense fog, the invisible rocks are none the less present. From time to time their menacing forms emerge from the white mist. And at once they are swallowed up again. To this phenomenon can be truthfully compared the evanescent visions of artists and, above all, of great mystics. Those things which our techniques are incapable of grasping nevertheless stamp the initiated with a visible mark. In such indirect ways does science know the spiritual world which, by definition, it is forbidden to enter. Man in his entirety is located within the jurisdiction of the scientific techniques.

   The critical review of the data concerning man yields a large amount of positive information. We are thus enabled to make a complete inventory of human activities. Such an inventory will lead to the building up of new schemata, richer than the classical ones. But our knowledge will not, in this manner, progress very strikingly. We shall have to go farther and build up a real science of man. A science capable of undertaking, with the help of all known techniques, a more exhaustive examination of our inner world, and also of realizing that each part should be considered as a function of the whole. In order to develop such a science, we must, for some time, turn our attention away from mechanical inventions and even, in a certain measure, from classical hygiene and medicine, from the purely material aspects of our existence. Everybody is interested in things that increase wealth and comfort. But no one understands that the structural, functional, and mental quality of each individual has to be improved. The health of the intelligence and of the affective sense, moral discipline, and spiritual development are just as necessary as the health of the body and the prevention of infectious diseases.

   No advantage is to be gained by increasing the number of mechanical inventions. It would perhaps be as well not to accord so much importance to discoveries of physics, astronomy, and chemistry. In truth, pure science never directly brings us any harm. But when its fascinating beauty dominates our mind and enslaves our thoughts in the realm of inanimate matter, it becomes dangerous. Man must now turn his attention to himself, and to the cause of his moral and intellectual disability. What is the good of increasing the comfort, the luxury, the beauty, the size, and the complications of our civilization, if our weakness prevents us from guiding it to our best advantage? It is really not worth while to go on elaborating a way of living that is bringing about the demoralization and the disappearance of the noblest elements of the great races. It would be far better to pay more attention to ourselves than to construct faster steamers, more comfortable automobiles, cheaper radios, or telescopes for examining the structure of remote nebulae. What real progress will be accomplished when aircraft take us to Europe or to China in a few hours? Is it necessary to increase production unceasingly, so that men may consume larger and larger quantities of useless things? There is not the shadow of a doubt that mechanical, physical, and chemical sciences are incapable of giving us intelligence, moral discipline, health, nervous equilibrium, security, and peace.

   Our curiosity must turn aside from its present path, and take another direction. It must leave the physical and physiological in order to follow the mental and the spiritual. So far, sciences concerning themselves with human beings have confined their activities to certain aspects of their subject. They have not succeeded in escaping from Cartesian dualism. They have been dominated by mechanism. In physiology, hygiene, and medicine, as well as in the study of education and of political and social economy, scientists have been chiefly absorbed by organic, humoral, and intellectual aspects of man. They have not paid any great attention to his affective and moral form, his inner life, his character, his esthetic and religious needs, the common substratum of organic and psychological activities, the intimate relations of the individual and of his mental and spiritual environment. A radical change is indispensable. This change requires both the work of specialists devoting their efforts to the particular knowledge related to our body and our mind, and of scientists capable of integrating the discoveries of the specialists in function of man as a whole. The new science must progress, by a double effort of analysis and synthesis, toward a conception of the human individual at once sufficiently complete and sufficiently simple to serve as a basis for our action.

   Man cannot be separated into parts. He would cease to exist if his organs were isolated from one another. Although indivisible, he assumes different aspects. His aspects are the heterogeneous manifestations of his unity to our sense organs. He can be compared to an electric lamp whose presence is recorded in a different manner by a thermometer, a voltmeter, a photographic plate, or a selenium cell. We are incapable of directly apprehending him in his simplicity. We can only grasp him through our senses and our scientific instruments. According to our means of investigation, his activity appears to be physical, chemical, physiological, or psychological. The analysis of his manifoldness naturally demands the help of various techniques. As he manifests himself exclusively through the agency of these techniques, he necessarily takes on the appearance of being multiple.

   The science of man makes use of all other sciences. This is one of the reasons for its slow progress and its difficulty. For example, in order to study the influence of a psychological factor on a sensitive individual, the methods of medicine, physiology, physics, and chemistry have to be employed. Let us suppose that our subject receives bad news. This psychological event may express itself simultaneously by moral suffering, nervous agitation, circulatory disturbances, lesions of the skin, physicochemical modifications of the blood, etc. When dealing with man we are obliged to employ the methods and concepts of several sciences, even for the simplest experiment. If we study the effects of a given food, either animal or vegetable, on a group of individuals, we must first learn the chemical composition of that food. And also the physiological and psychological states, and the ancestral characteristics of the individuals who are to be the subjects of the investigation. Then we have to record accurately the changes in weight, in height, in the form of the skeleton, in muscular strength, in susceptibility to diseases, in the physical, chemical, and anatomical characteristics of the blood, in nervous equilibrium, in intelligence, courage, fertility, longevity, which take place during the course of the experiment.

   Obviously, no one scientist is capable of mastering all the techniques indispensable to the study of a single human problem. Therefore, progress in knowledge of ourselves requires the simultaneous efforts of various specialists. Each specialist confines himself to one part of the body, or consciousness, or of their relations with the environment. He is anatomist, physiologist, chemist, psychologist, physician, hygienist, educator, clergyman, sociologist, economist. Each speciality is divided into smaller and smaller parts. There are specialists in glandular physiology, in vitamines, in diseases of the rectum, in those of the nose, in education of small children or of adults, in hygiene of factories and of prisons, in psychology of all categories of individuals, in domestic economy, rural economy, etc. Such a division of the work has made possible the development of the particular sciences. Specialization is imperative. Scientists have to devote their attention to one department of knowledge. And it is impossible for a specialist, actively engaged in the pursuit of his own task, to understand the human being as a whole. Indeed, such a state of affairs is rendered necessary by the vast extent of the field of each science. But it presents a certain danger. For example, Calmette, who had specialized in bacteriology, wished to prevent the spread of tuberculosis among the French population. He, naturally, prescribed the use of the vaccine he had invented. If, in addition to being a bacteriologist, he had possessed a more general knowledge of hygiene and medicine, he would have advised also the adoption of measures with regard to dwellings, food, working conditions, and the way of living of the people. A similar occurrence took place in the United States in the organization of the elementary schools. John Dewey, who is a philosopher, undertook to improve the education of American children. But his methods were suited to the schema, the abstraction, which his professional bias made him take for the concrete child.

   Still more harm is caused by the extreme specialization of the physicians. Medicine has separated the sick human being into small fragments and each fragment has its specialist. When a specialist, from the beginning of his career, confines himself to a minute part of the body, his knowledge of the rest is so rudimentary that he is incapable of thoroughly understanding even that part in which he specializes. A similar thing happens to educators, clergymen, economists, and sociologists who, before limiting themselves entirely to their particular domain, have not taken the trouble to acquire a general knowledge of man. The more eminent the specialist, the more dangerous he is. Scientists who have strikingly distinguished themselves by great discoveries or useful inventions often come to believe that their knowledge of one subject extends to all others. Edison, for example, did not hesitate to impart to the public his views on philosophy and religion. And the public listened to his words with respect, imagining them to carry as much weight on these new subjects as on the former ones. Thus, great men, in speaking about things they do not thoroughly understand, hinder human progress in one of its fields, while having contributed to its advancement in another. The daily press often gives us the dubious benefit of the sociological, economic, and scientific opinions of manufacturers, bankers, lawyers, professors, physicians, whose highly specialized minds are incapable of apprehending in their breadth the momentous problems of our time. However, modern civilization absolutely needs specialists. Without them, science could not progress. But, before the result of their researches is applied to man, the scattered data of their analyses must be integrated in an intelligible synthesis.

   Such a synthesis cannot be obtained by a simple roundtable conference of the specialists. It requires the efforts of one man, not merely those of a group. A work of art has never been produced by a committee of artists, nor a great discovery made by a committee of scholars. The syntheses needed for the progress of our knowledge of man should be elaborated in a single brain. It is impossible to make use of the mass of information accumulated by the specialists. For no one has undertaken to coordinate the data already obtained, and to consider the human being in his entirety. Today there are many scientific workers, but very few real scientists. This peculiar situation is not due to lack of individuals capable of high intellectual achievements. Indeed, syntheses, as well as discoveries, demand exceptional mental power and physiological endurance. Broad and strong minds are rarer than precise and narrow ones. It is easy to become a good chemist, a good physicist, a good physiologist, a good psychologist, or a good sociologist. On the contrary, very few individuals are capable of acquiring and using knowledge of several different sciences. However, such men do exist. Some of those whom our scientific institutions and universities have forced to specialize narrowly could apprehend a complex subject both in its entirety and in its parts. So far, scientific workers devoting themselves, within a minute field, to prolonged study of a generally insignificant detail, have always been the most favored. An original piece of work, without any real importance, is considered of greater value than a thorough knowledge of an entire science. Presidents of universities and their advisers do not realize that synthetic minds are as indispensable as analytic ones. If the superiority of this kind of intellect were recognized, and its development encouraged, specialists would cease to be dangerous. For the significance of the parts in the organization of the whole could then be correctly estimated.

   At the beginning of its history more than at its zenith a science needs superior minds. To become a great physician requires more imagination, judgment, and intelligence than to become a great chemist. At the present time our knowledge of man can only progress by attracting a powerful intellectual elite. Great mental capacities should be required from the young men who desire to devote themselves to biology. It seems that the increased number of scientific workers, their being split up into groups whose studies are limited to a small subject, and over-specialization have brought about a shrinking of intelligence. There is no doubt that the quality of any human group decreases when the number of the individuals composing this group increases beyond certain limits. The Supreme Court of the United States consists of nine men whose professional value and character are truly eminent. But if it were composed of nine hundred jurists instead of nine, the public would immediately lose, and rightly, its respect for the highest court of this country.

   The best way to increase the intelligence of scientists would be to decrease their number. After all, the knowledge of man could be developed by a very small group of workers, provided that they were endowed with creative imagination and given powerful means for carrying out their researches. Great sums of money are wasted every year on scientific research, in America as well as in Europe, because those who are entrusted with this work do not generally possess the qualities necessary to the conquerors of new worlds. And also because the few individuals endowed with this exceptional power live under conditions precluding intellectual creation. Neither laboratories, nor apparatus, nor organization can give to scientists the surroundings indispensable to their success. Modern life is opposed to the life of the mind. However, men of science have to be mere units of a herd whose appetites are purely material and whose habits are entirely different from theirs. They vainly exhaust their strength and spend their time in the pursuit of the conditions demanded by the elaboration of thought. No one of them is wealthy enough to procure the isolation and the silence which in former times everybody could have for nothing, even in the largest cities. No attempt has so far been made to create, in the midst of the agitation of the new city, islands of solitude where meditation would be possible. Such an innovation, however, is an obvious necessity. The construction of vast syntheses is beyond the reach of minds unceasingly dispersed in the confusion of our present modes of existence. The development of the science of man, even more than that of the other sciences, depends on immense intellectual effort. The need of such an effort demands a revision, not only of our conception of the scientist, but also of the conditions under which scientific research is carried on.

   Human beings are not good subjects for scientific investigation. One does not easily find people with identical characteristics. It is almost impossible to verify the results of an experiment by referring the subject to a sufficiently similar control. Let us suppose, for example, that we wish to compare two methods of education. For such a study we choose two groups of children, as nearly alike as possible. If these children, although of the same age and the same size, belong to different social classes, if their food is not the same, if they live in different psychological atmospheres, the results cannot be compared. In a like manner, the effects of two modes of life on children belonging to one family have little value. For, human races not being pure, there are often profound differences between the offspring of the same parents. On the contrary, the results will be conclusive when the children, whose behavior is compared under different conditions, are twins from a single ovum. We are generally obliged to be content with approximate information. This is one of the factors that have impeded the progress of the science of man.

   In researches dealing with physics and chemistry, and also with physiology, one always attempts to isolate relatively simple systems, and to determine their exact conditions. But when the human being has to be studied as an entirety, and in his relations with his environment, such a limitation of the subject is impossible. The observer must be endowed with sound judgment in order not to lose his way in the complexity of the facts. The difficulties become almost insurmountable in retrospective investigations. Such studies require a very experienced mind. Of course, we should as rarely as possible utilize the conjectural science which is called history. But there have been in the past certain events, revealing the existence in man of extraordinary potentialities. A knowledge of the genesis of these qualities would be of great importance. What factors caused, during the epoch of Pericles, the simultaneous appearance of so many geniuses? A similar event occurred at the time of the Renaissance. Whence sprang the immense expansion, not only of intelligence, scientific imagination, and esthetic intuition, but also of physical vigor, audacity, and the spirit of adventure in the men of this period? Why did they possess such mighty physiological and mental activities? One easily realizes how useful would be precise information regarding the mode of life, the food, the education, the intellectual, moral, esthetic, and religious surroundings of the people who lived during the time immediately preceding the appearance of a pleiad of great men.

   Another cause of the difficulties in experimenting on human beings is the fact that the observer and his subject live at about the same rhythm. The effects of a certain diet, of an intellectual or moral discipline, of political or social changes, are felt but slowly. It is only after a lapse of thirty or forty years that the value of an educational method can be estimated. The influence of a given mode of living upon the physiological and mental activities of a human group does not manifest itself before a generation has passed. Inventors of new systems of diet, physical culture, hygiene, education, morals, social economy, are always too early in publishing the success of their own inventions. It is only now that the result of the Montessori system, or of the educational principles of John Dewey, could be profitably analyzed. We should wait another quarter of a century to know the significance of the intelligence tests which psychologists have made in the schools during these past years. The only way to ascertain the effect of a given factor on man is to follow a great number of individuals through the vicissitudes of their life right up to their death. And even then the knowledge thus obtained will be grossly approximate.

   The progress of humanity appears to us to be very slow because we, the observers, are units of the herd. Each one of us can make but few observations. Our life is too short. Many experiments should be conducted for a century at the least. Institutions should be established in such a way that observations and experiments commenced by one scientist would not be interrupted by his death. Such organizations are still unknown in the realm of science. But they already exist in other lines of endeavor. In the monastery of Solesmes three successive generations of Benedictine monks have devoted themselves, over a period of about fifty-five years, to the reconstruction of Gregorian music. A similar method should be applied to the investigation of certain problems of human biology. Institutions, in some measure immortal, like religious orders, which would allow the uninterrupted continuation of an experiment as long as might be necessary, should compensate for the too short duration of the existence of individual observers.

   Certain data, urgently needed, can be procured with the help of short-lived animals. For this purpose, mice and rats have been chiefly used. Colonies consisting of many thousands of these animals have been employed to study different diets, their influence on the rapidity of growth, on size, disease, longevity, etc. Unfortunately, rats and mice have only very remote analogies with man. It is dangerous, for example, to apply to children, whose constitution is so different, conclusions of researches made on these animals. Besides, the mental states accompanying anatomical and functional changes in bones, tissues, and humors under the influence of food and mode of life, cannot be properly investigated on such low types of animals. By observing more intelligent animals, such as monkeys and dogs, one would obtain more detailed and important information.

   Monkeys, despite their cerebral development, are not good subjects for experimentation. Their pedigree is not available. They cannot be bred easily or in sufficiently large numbers. They are difficult to handle. On the contrary, intelligent dogs can be procured readily. Their ancestral characteristics are easily traced. Such animals propagate rapidly. They mature in a year. Generally, they do not live beyond fifteen years. Detailed psychological observations can be made without trouble, especially on shepherd dogs, which are sensitive, intelligent, alert, and attentive. With the aid of these animals of pure breed, and in sufficient number, the complex and important problem of the influence of environment on the individual could be elucidated. For example, we should ascertain whether the increase in stature, which is taking place in the population of the United States, is an advantage or a disadvantage. It is also imperative to know what effect modern life and food have on the nervous system of children, and on their intelligence, alertness, and audacity. An extensive experiment carried out on several hundred dogs over a period of twenty years would give some precise information on these subjects, which are of paramount importance to millions of people. It would indicate, more rapidly than the observation of human beings, in what direction the diet and mode of living of the population should be changed. Such study would effectively supplement the incomplete and brief experiments which now appear to satisfy nutrition specialists. However, the observation of even the highest type of animal cannot entirely replace that of man. In order to develop definitive knowledge, experiments on groups of human beings should be started under such conditions that they could be continued by several generations of scientists.

   A better knowledge of ourselves cannot be acquired merely by selecting positive facts in the mass of information concerning man, and by making a complete inventory of his activities. Neither would the completion of these data by new observations and experiments, and the building up of a true science of man be sufficient. Above all, we need a synthesis that can be utilized. The purpose of this knowledge is not to satisfy our curiosity, but to rebuild ourselves and our surroundings. Such a purpose is essentially practical. The acquisition of a large quantity of new data, if these data remain scattered in the brains and in the books of specialists, is absolutely useless. A dictionary does not confer a literary or philosophical culture upon its owner. Our ideas must be assembled as a living whole, within the intelligence and the memory of a few superior individuals. Thus, the efforts which humanity has made, and is ceaselessly making, to attain a better knowledge of itself would become productive.

   The science of man will be the task of the future. We must now be content with an initiation, both analytic and synthetic, into those characteristics of the human being which scientific criticism has demonstrated to be true. In the following pages man will appear to us as naively as to the observer and to his techniques. We shall view him in the form of fragments carved by these techniques. But as far as is possible, these fragments will be replaced in the whole. Such knowledge is, of course, most inadequate. But it is certain. It contains no metaphysical elements. It is also empirical, because no principle governs the choice and the order of the observations. We do not seek to prove or to disprove any theory. The different aspects of man are considered as simply as, when ascending a mountain, one considers the rocks, torrents, meadows, and pines, and even, above the shadows of the valley, the light of the peaks. In both cases, the observations are made as the chances of the way decide. These observations are, however, scientific. They constitute a more or less systematized body of knowledge. Naturally, they do not have the precision of those of astronomers and physicists. But they are as exact as is permitted by the techniques employed, and the nature of the object to which the techniques are applied. For instance, we know that men are endowed with memory and esthetic sense. Also that the pancreas secretes insulin, that certain mental diseases depend on lesions of the brain, that some individuals manifest phenomena of clairvoyance. Memory, and the activity of insulin can be measured. But not esthetic emotion or moral sense. The characteristics of telepathy, or the relations between mental diseases and the brain, lend themselves still less to exact study. Nevertheless, all these data, although approximate, are sure.

   This knowledge may be reproached with being commonplace and incomplete. It is commonplace because body and consciousness, duration, adaptation, and individuality are well known to specialists in anatomy, physiology, psychology, metapsychics, hygiene, medicine, education, religion, and sociology. It is incomplete because a choice had to be made among an immense number of facts. And such a choice is bound to be arbitrary. It is limited to what appears to be most important. The rest is neglected, for a synthesis should be short and understandable at a single glance. Human intelligence is capable of retaining only a certain number of details. It would, then, seem that our knowledge of man, in order to be useful, must be incomplete. The likeness of a portrait is due to the selection of details, and not to their number. A drawing more forcibly expresses the character of an individual than a photograph does. We are going to trace only rough sketches of ourselves, similar to anatomical figures chalked on a blackboard. Our sketches will be true, in spite of the intentional suppression of details. They will be based on positive data and not on theories and dreams. They will ignore vitalism and mechanism, realism and nominalism, soul and body, mind and matter. But they will contain all that can be observed. Even the inexplicable facts left out by classical conceptions of man, those facts that stubbornly refuse to enter the frame of conventional thought, and therefore may lead to unknown realms. Thus, our inventory will include all actual and potential activities of the human being. In this manner we shall become initiated into a knowledge of ourselves, which is only descriptive and still not far from the concrete. Such knowledge does not claim definitiveness or infallibility. It is empirical, approximative, commonplace, and incomplete. But also scientific and intelligible to everybody.

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