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Chapter VII
THE INDIVIDUAL
HUMAN BEINGS are not found anywhere in nature. There are only individuals. The individual differs from the human being because he is a concrete event. He is the one who acts, loves, suffers, fights, and dies. On the contrary, the human being is a Platonic Idea living in our minds and in our books. He consists of the abstractions studied by physiologists, psychologists, and sociologists. His characteristics are expressed by Universals. Today we are again facing a problem which engrossed the philosophical minds of the Middle Ages, the problem of the reality of general ideas. In defense of the Universals, Anselm sustained against Abelard an historical fight, whose echoes are still heard after eight hundred years. Abelard was defeated. However, Anselm and Abelard, the realists who believed in the existence of the Universals and the nominalists who did not believe in it, were equally right.
Indeed, we need both the general and the particular, the human being and the individual. The reality of the general-- that is, of the Universals--is indispensable to the construction of science, because our mind readily moves only among abstractions. For modern scientists, as for Plato, Ideas are the sole reality. This abstract reality leads our mind to the knowledge of the concrete. The general helps us to grasp the particular. Owing to the abstractions created by the sciences of the human being, each individual can be clothed in convenient schemata. Although not made to his measure, these schemata approximately fit him. At the same time, the empirical consideration of the concrete facts determines the evolution and the progress of the schemas, of the Ideas, of the Universals. It continually enriches these abstractions. The study of a multitude of individuals develops a more and more complete science of the human being. The Ideas, instead of being immutable in their beauty, as Plato thought, move and expand as soon as our mind becomes immersed in the ever-flowing waters of empirical reality.
We live in two different worlds--the world of facts and that of their symbols. In order to acquire knowledge of ourselves, we utilize both observation and scientific abstractions. But the abstract may be mistaken for the concrete. In such an instance, facts are treated as symbols and the individual is likened to the human being. Most of the errors made by educators, physicians, and sociologists come from such confusion. Scientists accustomed to the techniques of mechanics, chemistry, physics, and physiology, and unfamiliar with philosophy and intellectual culture, are liable to mingle the concepts of the different disciplines and not to distinguish clearly the general from the particular. However, in the concept of man, it is important to define exactly the part of the human being and that of the individual. Education, medicine, and sociology are concerned with the individual. They are guilty of a disastrous error when they look upon him only as a symbol, as a human being. Indeed, individuality is fundamental in man. It is not merely a certain aspect of the organism. But it permeates our entire being. It makes the self a unique event in the history of the world. It stamps its mark on the whole of body and consciousness, and, although remaining indivisible, on each component of this whole. For the sake of convenience we will consider separately the organic, humoral, and mental aspects of the individual, instead of apprehending him in his oneness.
Individuals are easily distinguished from one another by the lineaments of their visages, their gestures, their way of walking, their intellectual and moral characters. Time causes many changes in their appearance. Despite these changes, each individual can always be identified, as Bertillon has shown long since, by the dimensions of certain parts of his skeleton. The lines of the finger tips are also indelible characteristics. Fingerprints are the genuine signature of man. However, the configuration of the skin is only one of the aspects of the individuality of tissues. In general, the latter is not evidenced by any morphological peculiarity. The cells of the thyroid gland, the liver, the skin, etc., of one individual appear to be identical with those of another individual. In every one the pulsations of the heart are nearly, although not quite, the same. The structure and functions of organs do not seem to be marked by individual properties. However, their specificity would doubtless be evidenced by more subtle methods of examination. Certain dogs are endowed with such a sharp olfactory sense that they recognize the specific smell of their master among a crowd of other men. Likewise, the tissues of one individual are capable of perceiving the specificity of his humors and the foreign character of the humors of another.
The individuality of tissues may manifest itself in the following way. Fragments of skin, some supplied by the patient himself and others by a friend or a relative, are grafted on the surface of a wound. After a few days the grafts coming from the patient are adherent to the wound and grow larger, whereas those taken from the other people loosen and grow smaller. The former survive, and the latter die. One very rarely finds two individuals so closely alike that they are able to exchange their tissues. Many years ago, Cristiani transplanted into a little girl, whose thyroid function was deficient, a few fragments of the thyroid gland of her mother. The child was cured. Some ten years later she married and became pregnant. Not only were the grafts still alive, but they increased in size, as normal thyroid glands do in like circumstances. Such a result is quite exceptional. However, between identical twins, glandular transplantation would doubtless succeed. As a rule, the tissues of one individual refuse to accept those of another individual. When, by the suture of the vessels, blood circulates again in a transplanted kidney, the organ immediately secretes urine. At first, it behaves normally. After a few weeks, however, albumin, then blood, appear in the urine. And a disease similar to nephritis rapidly brings on atrophy of the kidney. However, if the grafted organ comes from the animal itself, its functions are permanently reestablished. Obviously, the humors recognize, in foreign tissues, certain differences of constitution, which are not revealed by any other test. Cells are specific of the individual to whom they belong. This peculiarity of our body has so far prevented the wide use of the transplantation of organs for therapeutic purposes.
The humors possess a similar specificity. This specificity is detected by a definite effect of the blood serum of one individual upon the red corpuscles of another individual. Under the influence of serum the corpuscles often agglutinate. The accidents noticed after blood transfusion are due to such a phenomenon. It is, therefore, indispensable that the corpuscles of the donor should not be agglutinated by the serum of the patient. According to a remarkable discovery made by Landsteiner, human beings are divided into four groups, the knowledge of which is essential to the success of transfusion. The serum of the members of certain groups agglutinates the corpuscles of the members of certain other groups. One of the groups is composed of universal donors, whose cells are not agglutinated by the serum of any other group. No inconvenience results from the mingling of their blood with that of any other person. These characteristics persist during the entire life. They are transmitted from generation to generation, according to the laws of Mendel. In addition, Landsteiner discovered about thirty sub-groups, by using special serological methods. In transfusion, their influence is negligible. But it is indicative of the existence of resemblances and differences between smaller groups of individuals. The test of agglutination of blood corpuscles by serum, although most useful, is still imperfect. It only brings to light certain relations between categories of individuals. It does not disclose the more subtle characteristics that single out each individual from all others in his category.
The properties specific to each animal are evidenced by the results of the transplantation of organs. There is no means by which they can easily be detected. Repeated injections of one individual's serum into the veins of another, belonging to the same blood group, bring about no reaction, no formation of antibodies in measurable amount. A patient, therefore, can be subjected without danger to several consecutive transfusions. His humors react against neither the corpuscles nor the serum of the donor. However, the differences specific of the individual, which preclude successful exchanges of organs, would probably be revealed by sufficiently delicate tests. The specificity of tissues and humors depends on proteins and chemical groups called haptens by Landsteiner. Haptens are carbohydrates and fatty substances. The compounds resulting from the union of a hapten with a protein, when injected into an animal, determine the appearance in its serum of antibodies specifically opposed to the hapten. The specificity of the individual depends on the inner structure of the large molecules resulting from haptens and proteins. Individuals of the same race are more similar to each other than to individuals belonging to other races. The protein and carbohydrate molecules are made up of a large number of groups of atoms. The possible permutations of these groups are practically infinite. It is probable that, among the gigantic crowds of human beings who have inhabited the earth, no two individuals have ever been of identical chemical constitution. The personality of the tissues is linked in a manner still unknown with the molecules entering into the construction of the cells and the humors. Our individuality takes its roots in the very depths of ourself.
Individuality stamps all the component parts of the body. It is present in the physiological processes, as well as in the chemical structure of the humors and cells. Everyone reacts in his own way to the events of the outside world--to noise, to danger, to food, to cold, to heat, to the attacks of microbes and viruses. When animals of pure stock are injected with equal quantities of a foreign protein, or of a suspension of bacteria, they never respond to those injections in an identical manner. A few do not respond at all. During great epidemics human beings behave according to their individual characteristics. Some fall ill and die. Some fall ill, but recover. Others are entirely immune. Still others are slightly affected by the disease, but without presenting any specific symptoms. Each one manifests a different adaptivity to the infective agent. As Richet said, there is a humoral personality just as there is a mental personality.
Physiological duration bears also the mark of our individuality. Its value, as we know, is not the same for every human being. Besides, it does not remain constant during the course of our life. As each event is recorded within the body, our organic and humoral personality becomes more and more specific during the process of aging. It is enriched by all the happenings of our inner world. For cells and humors, like mind, are endowed with memory. The body is permanently modified by each disease, each injection of serum or of vaccine, each invasion of the tissues by bacteria, viruses, or foreign chemical substances. These events determine within ourselves allergic states--that is, states in which our reactivity is modified. In this manner, tissues and humors acquire a progressively growing individuality. Old people differ from one another far more than children do. Every man is a history unlike all others.
Mental, structural, and humoral individualities blend in an unknown manner. They bear to one another the same relations as do psychological activities, cerebral processes, and organic functions. They give us our uniqueness. They cause every man to be himself and nobody else. Identical twins coming from the same ovum, having the same genetical constitution, are, however, two quite different persons. Mental characteristics are a more delicate reagent of individuality than organic and humoral characteristics. Everyone is defined simultaneously by the number, quality, and intensity of his psychological activities. There are no individuals of identical mentality. Indeed, those whose consciousness is rudimentary closely resemble each other. The richer the personality, the greater the individual differences. All the activities of consciousness rarely develop at the same time in one individual. In most men, some of them are weak or lacking. There is a marked difference not only in the intensity of those functions, but also in their quality. Moreover, the number of their possible combinations is infinite. No task is more difficult than to analyze the constitution of a given individual. The complexity of mental personality being extreme, and the psychological tests insufficient, it is impossible to classify individuals accurately. They can, however, be divided into categories according to their intellectual, affective, moral, esthetic, and religious characteristics, to the combinations of these characteristics, and to their relations with the various types of physiological activities. There are also some obvious relations between psychological and morphological types. The physical aspect of an individual is an indication of the constitution of his tissues, humors, and mind. Between the more definite types there are many intermediate ones. The possible classifications are almost innumerable. They are, consequently, of little value.
Individuals have been separated into intellectual, sensitive, and voluntary types. In each category, there are the hesitating, the annoying, the impulsive, the incoherent, the weak, the dispersed, the restless, and also the reflective, the self-controlled, the honest, the well balanced. Among the intellectual, several distinct groups are observed. The broad-minded, whose ideas are numerous, who assimilate, coordinate, and unite a most varied knowledge. The narrow-minded, incapable of grasping vast ensembles, but who master perfectly the details of one subject. Intelligence is more frequently precise and analytical than capable of great syntheses. There are also the group of the logicians and that of the intuitives. Most of the great men belong to this latter group. There are many combinations of the intellectual and affective types. The intellectual may be emotional, passionate, enterprising, and also cowardly, irresolute, and weak. Among them, the mystical type is exceptional. The same multiplicity of combinations exists in the groups characterized by moral, esthetic, and religious tendencies. Such a classification evidences the prodigious variety of the human types.1 The study of psychological individuality is as deceptive as would be that of chemistry, if the number of the elements should become infinite.
1 Dumas, Georges. Traté de Psychologie, 1924, t. II, livre II., chapitre III, p. 575.
Each individual is conscious of being unique. Such uniqueness is real. But there are great differences in the degree of in-dividualization. Certain personalities are very rich, very strong. Others are weak, easily modified by environment and circumstances. Between simple weakening of the personality and psychoses, there are many intermediate states. People suffering from certain neuroses have the feeling that their personality is being dissolved. Other diseases really destroy personality. Encephalitis lethargica brings about cerebral lesions which may profoundly modify the individual. The same may be said of dementia praecox and general paralysis. In other diseases the psychological changes are only temporary. Hysteria engenders double personality. The patient seems to become two different individuals. Each of these artificial persons ignores the thoughts and acts of the other. Likewise, one can, during hypnotic sleep, modify the identity of the subject. If another personality is imposed upon him by suggestion, he takes the attitudes and feels the emotions of his second self. In addition to those who thus become two persons, there are others whose personalities are incompletely disassociated. In this category are many types of neurotics, those who practice automatic writing, a number of mediums, and also the queer, weak, unsteady beings who are so numerous in modern society.
It is not yet possible to make a complete survey of psychological individuality, and to measure its component parts. Neither can we exactly determine its nature, and how one individual differs from another. We are not even capable of discovering the essential characteristics of a given man. And still less his potentialities. Each youth, however, should insert himself in his social group according to his aptitudes and to his specific mental and physiological activities. But he cannot do it, because he is ignorant of himself. Parents and educators share with him such ignorance. They do not know how to detect the nature of the individuality of children. And they endeavor to standardize them. Modern business methods take no account of the personality of the workers. They ignore the fact that all men are different. Most of us are unaware of our own aptitudes. However, everybody cannot do everything. According to his characteristics, each individual adjusts himself more easily to a certain type of work or a certain mode of living. His success and happiness depend on the affinity between himself and his environment. He should fit into his social group as a key fits into its lock. Parents and school-teachers should set themselves first and foremost to acquire a knowledge of the inherent qualities and the potentialities of each child. Unfortunately, scientific psychology cannot give them very effective help. The tests applied to school children and students by inexperienced psychologists have no great significance. They give an illusive confidence to those unacquainted with psychology. In fact, they should be accorded less importance. Psychology is not yet a science. Today, individuality and its potentialities are not measurable. But a wise observer, trained in the study of human beings, is sometimes capable of discovering the future in the present characteristics of a given individual.
A disease is not an entity. We observe individuals suffering from pneumonia, syphilis, diabetes, typhoid fever, etc. Then, we construct in our mind certain Universals, certain abstractions, which we call diseases. Illness expresses the adaptation of the organism to a pathogenic agent, or its passive destruction by this agent. Adaptation and destruction assume the form of the sick individual and the rhythm of his inner time. The body is more rapidly destroyed by degenerative diseases during youth than during old age. It replies to all enemies in a specific manner. The form is its reply depends on the inherent properties of the tissues. Angina pectoris, for example, announces its presence by acute suffering. The heart seems to be gripped in steel claws. But the intensity of the pain varies according to the sensitiveness of the individual. When the patient is not sensitive, the disease takes another aspect. Without warning, without pain, it kills its victim. Typhoid fever, as we know, is accompanied by high temperature, headache, diarrhea, general depression. It is a serious illness necessitating a long sojourn in the hospital. However, certain individuals, although suffering from this malady, continue to attend to their usual occupations. In the course of epidemics of influenza, diphtheria, yellow fever, etc., some patients feel only a slight fever, a little discomfort. In spite of the lack of symptoms, they are affected by the disease.Their mode of response to the infection is due to the inherent resistance of their tissues. As we know, the adaptive mechanisms which protect the body from microbes and viruses differ in each individual. When the organism is incapable of resistance, as in cancer, it is being destroyed at a rhythm and in a manner determined by its own properties. In a young woman, a cancer of the breast rapidly brings on death. On the contrary, in extreme old age, it evolves very slowly, as slowly as the body itself. Disease is a personal event. It consists of tie individual himself. There are as many different diseases as patients.
However, it would have been impossible to build up a science of medicine merely by compiling a great number of individual observations. The facts had to be classified and simplified with the aid of abstractions. In this way disease was born. And medical treatises could be written. A kind of science was built up, roughly descriptive, rudimentary, imperfect, but convenient, indefinitely perfectible and easy to teach. Unfortunately, we have been content with this result. We did not understand that treatises describing pathological entities contain only a part of the knowledge indispensable to those who attend the sick. Medical knowledge should go beyond the science of diseases. The physician must clearly distinguish the sick human being described in his books from the concrete patient whom he has to treat, who must not only be studied, but, above all, relieved, encouraged, and cured. His role is to discover the characteristics of the sick man's individuality, his resistance to pathogenic factors, his sensibility to pain, the value of his organic activities, his past, and his future. The outcome of an illness in a given individual has to be predicted, not by a calculation of the probabilities, but by a precise analysis of the organic, humoral, and psychological personality of this individual. In fact, medicine, when confining itself to the study of diseases, amputates a part of its own body.
Many physicians still persist in pursuing abstractions exclusively. Some, however, believe that a knowledge of the patient is as important as that of the disease. The former desire to remain in the realm of symbols. The latter feel the necessity of apprehending the concrete. Today the old quarrel of the realists and the nominalists is being revived around the schools of medicine. Scientific medicine, installed in its palaces, defends, as did the church of the Middle Ages, the reality of the Universals. It anathematizes the nominalists who, following the example of Abelard, consider Universals and disease as creations of our mind, and the patient as the only reality. In fact, a physician has to be both realist and nominalist. He must study the individual as well as the disease.
The distrust which the public feels toward medicine, the inefficiency, and sometimes the ridicule, of therapeutics, are, perhaps, due to the confusion of the symbols indispensable to the building up of medical sciences with the concrete patient who has to be treated and relieved. The physician's lack of success comes from his living in an imaginary world. Instead of his patients, he sees the diseases described in the treatises of medicine. He is a victim of the belief in the reality of Universals. Moreover, he mixes the concepts of principle and method, of science and technology. He does not realize sufficiently that the individual is a whole, that adaptive functions extend to all organic systems, and that anatomical divisions are artificial. The separation of the body into parts has so far been to his advantage. But it is dangerous and costly for the patient, and ultimately for the physician.
Medicine has to take into account the nature of man, of his unity, and of his uniqueness. Its sole purpose is to relieve the suffering of the individual, and to cure him. Indeed, physicians must use the spirit and the methods of science. They have to become capable of recognizing and treating diseases and, still better, of preventing them. Medicine is not a discipline of the mind. There is no valid motive for cultivating it for itself, or for the advantage of those who practice it. The goal of all our efforts should be exclusively the healing of the sick. But medicine is the most difficult of all human attainments. It should not be likened to any science. A professor of medicine is not an ordinary teacher. He differs profoundly from other professors. While the fields covered by his colleagues specialized in the study of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, pathology, pharmacology, etc., are limited and clearly defined, he must acquire an almost universal knowledge. In addition, he needs sound judgment, great physical endurance, and ceaseless activity. He should possess higher qualities than those of a laboratory worker. He is set a task very different from that of a man of science. The latter can confine himself entirely to the world of symbols. Physicians, on the contrary, have to face both concrete reality and scientific abstractions. Their mind must simultaneously grasp the phenomena and their symbols, search into organs and consciousness, and enter, with each individual, a different world. They are asked to realize the impossible feat of building up a science of the particular. Of course, they might use the expedient of indiscriminately applying their scientific knowledge to each patient, as, for instance, a salesman trying to fit the same ready-made coat to people of different sizes. But they do not really fulfill their duty unless they discover the specific peculiarities of each patient. Their success depends not only on their knowledge, but also on their ability to grasp the characteristics which make each human being an individual.
The uniqueness of each man has a double origin. It comes simultaneously from the constitution of the ovum, from which he originates, and from his development and his history. We have already mentioned how, before fertilization, the ovum expels half of its nucleus, half of each chromosome--that is, half the hereditary factors, the genes, which are arranged in a linear series along the chromosomes. We know how the head of a spermatozoon penetrates the ovum, after having also lost half of its chromosomes, how the body, with all its characteristics and tendencies, derives from the union of the male and female chromosomes within the nucleus of the fertilized egg. At this moment the individual exists only in a potential state. He contains the dominant factors responsible for the visible characteristics of his parents. And also the recessive factors, which have remained hidden during their entire life. According to their relative position in the new individual's chromosomes, the recessive factors will manifest their activity or will be neutralized by dominant factors. These relations are described by the science of genetics as the laws of heredity. They merely express the origin of the inherent characteristics of each human being. But these characteristics are nothing but tendencies or potentialities. According to the circumstances encountered by the embryo, the fetus, the child, and the adolescent during their development, these tendencies become actual or remain virtual. And each man's history is as unique as were the nature and the arrangement of his constitutive genes when he was an ovum. Thus, the originality of the human being depends both on heredity and on development.
We know that individuality springs from these two sources. But not what part each of them plays in our formation. Is heredity more important than development, or vice versa? Watson and the behaviorists proclaim that education and environment are capable of giving human beings any desired form. Education would be everything, and heredity nothing. Geneticists believe, on the contrary, that heredity imposes itself on man like ancient fate, and that the salvation of the race lies, not in education, but in eugenics. Both schools forget that such a problem cannot be solved by arguments, but only by observations and experiments.
Observations and experiments teach us that the parts of heredity and of development vary in each individual, and that generally their respective values cannot be determined. However, in children conceived by the same parents, brought up together and in the same manner, there are striking differences in form, stature, nervous constitution, intellectual aptitudes, and moral qualities. It is obvious that these differences are of ancestral origin. Animals behave in a like way. Let us take as an example a litter of shepherd dogs, still being suckled by their mother. Each of the nine or ten puppies presents distinct characteristics. Some react to a sudden noise, to the report of a pistol, for example, by crouching on the ground, some by standing up on their little paws, others by advancing toward the noise. Some conquer the best teats, others let themselves be pushed out of their place. Some ramble away from their mother and explore the neighborhood of their kennel. Others stay with her. Some growl when touched. Others remain silent. When the animals brought up together under identical conditions have grown into adults, most of their characteristics are found unchanged by development. Shy and timorous dogs remain shy and timorous all their lives. Those that were fearless and alert sometimes lose these qualities as they grow older, but, in general, they become still more fearless and active. Among the characteristics of ancestral origin, some are not utilized, the others develop. Twins originating in the same ovum possess the same inherent characteristics. At first, they are quite identical. However, if they are parted right at the beginning of their lives and are brought up in different ways and in different countries, they lose such identity. After eighteen or twenty years, they show marked differences, and also great resemblances, especially from an intellectual point of view. From this it appears that, given dissimilar surroundings, identity of constitution does not determine the formation of identical individuals. It is also evident that disparity of environment does not efface identity of constitution. According to the conditions under which development takes place, some or others of the potentialities are actualized. And two beings, originally identical, become different.
What influence do the genes, those particles of nuclear substance originating from our ancestors, exert on the formation of the individual, on the building up of body and consciousness? In what measure does the constitution of the individual depend on that of the egg? Many observations and experiments have shown that certain aspects of the individual are already present in the ovum, that others are only potential. The genes, therefore, exercise their influence, either in an inexorable manner by imposing on the individual characteristics which develop fatally, or in the form of tendencies which become, or fail to become, effective, according to the circumstances of the development. Sex is inevitably determined from the time of the union of the paternal and maternal cells. The egg of the future male possesses one chromosome less than that of the female, or an atrophied chromosome. In this manner, all the cells of the body of the man differ from those of the body of the woman. Weakness of mind, insanity, hemophilia, deafmutism, as is known, are hereditary defects. Certain diseases, such as cancer, hypertension, tuberculosis, etc., are transmitted also from parents to children, but as a tendency. The conditions of development may impede or favor their actualization. It is the same with strength, alertness, will power, intelligence, and judgment. The value of each individual is determined in a large measure by his hereditary predispositions. But as human beings are not of pure breed, the characteristics of the products of a given marriage cannot be predicted. However, it is known that children born in families of superior people are more likely to be a superior type than those born in an inferior family. Owing to the hazards of the nuclear unions, a great man's descendants may include mediocre children, or an obscure family may give birth to a great man. The tendency to superiority is by no means irresistible, like that to insanity, for example. Eugenics succeeds in producing superior types only under certain conditions of development and education. It has no magic power, and is not capable, when unaided, of greatly improving the individuals.
The ancestral tendencies, transmitted according to the laws of Mendel and other laws, give a special aspect to the development of each man. In order to manifest themselves, they naturally require the cooperation of the environment. The potentialities of tissues and consciousness actualize only through the chemical, physical, physiological, and mental factors of such environment. One cannot distinguish, in general, the inherited from the acquired. Indeed, certain peculiarities, such as the color of eyes and of hair, short-sightedness, and feeblemindedness, are evidently of hereditary origin. But many other characteristics depend on the influence environment has upon body and mind. The development of the organism bends in different directions, in compliance with its surroundings. And its inherent properties become actual or remain virtual. It is certain that hereditary tendencies are profoundly modified by the circumstances of our formation. But we must also realize that each individual develops according to his own rules, to the specific qualities of his tissues. Moreover, the original intensity of our tendencies, their capacity for actualization, varies. The destiny of certain individuals is inexorably determined. That of others more or less depends on the conditions of their development.
It is impossible to predict in what measure a child's hereditary tendencies will be affected by his education, mode of life, and social surroundings. The genetical constitution of the tissues of a human being is always a mystery. We do not know how the genes of his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents are grouped in the egg from which he originated. Neither do we know whether certain nuclear particles of some distant and forgotten ancestor are not present in him. Nor whether spontaneous changes in the genes themselves may not cause the appearance of some unforeseen characteristics. It sometimes happens that a child, whose ancestral tendencies have been known for several generations, manifests completely new and unexpected aspects. However, the probable results of a given environment upon a given individual can be anticipated in a certain measure. A seasoned observer is able to grasp the significance of the growing characteristics of a child, as well as of a puppy, very early in its life. Developmental conditions cannot transform a weak, apathetic, dispersed, timid, inactive child into an energetic man, a powerful and audacious leader. Vitality, imagination, boldness are never entirely due to environment. Neither can they be repressed by it. Indeed, the circumstances of development are efficient only within the limits of the hereditary predispositions, of the immanent qualities of tissues and consciousness. But we never know the exact nature of these predispositions. We must, however, presume them to be favorable, and act accordingly. It is imperative that each individual should receive an education conducive to the growth of his virtual qualities, until the qualities in question are proven not to exist.
The chemical, physiological, and psychological factors of the environment favor or hinder the development of the inherent tendencies. In fact, these tendencies can express themselves only by certain organic forms. If the body is deprived of the calcium and phosphorus indispensable to the building up of the skeleton, or of the vitamines and glandular secretions which permit the utilization of this material by cartilage in the formation of bones, the limbs become deformed and the pelvis narrow. Such a commonplace accident may prevent the actualization of potentialities which destined this or that woman to be a prolific mother, perhaps to beget a new Lincoln or a new Pasteur. The lack of a vitamine or an infectious disease may cause the testicles, or any other gland, to atrophy and, in this manner, stop the development of an individual who, owing to his ancestral qualities, could have become the leader of a nation. All the physical and chemical conditions of the environment are capable of affecting the actualization of our potentialities. To their molding influence is due, in a large measure, the organic and mental aspect of each human being.
Psychological factors act still more effectively on the individual. They give to our life its intellectual and moral form. They induce discipline or dispersion. They lead us to the neglect or the mastery of ourselves. Through circulatory and glandular changes, they also transform the activities and the constitution of the body. The discipline of the mind and of the physiological appetites has a definite effect, not only on the psychological attitude of the individual, but also on his organic and humoral structure. We do not know in what measure the mental influences emanating from the environment are capable of promoting or stifling ancestral tendencies. Without any doubt, they play a leading part in the destiny of the individual. They sometimes annihilate the highest mental qualities. They develop certain individuals beyond all expectations. They help the weak, and render the strong yet stronger. Young Bonaparte read Plutarch and endeavored to think and to live as the great men of antiquity did. It is hot immaterial that a child idolize Babe Ruth or George Washington, Charlie Chaplin or Lind-bergh. To play at being a gangster is not the same thing as to play at being a soldier. Whatever his ancestral tendencies may be, each individual is started by his developmental conditions upon a road which may lead him either to the solitude of the mountains, to the beauty of the hills, or to the mud of the marshes where most civilized men delight in living.
The influence of environment upon individualization varies according to the state of tissues and consciousness. In other words, the same factor, acting on several individuals, or upon the same individual at different periods of his existence, does not have identical effects. It is well known that the response of a given organism to environment depends on its hereditary tendencies. For example, the obstacle that stops one man stimulates another to a greater effort, and determines in him the actualization of potentialities which so far had remained hidden. Likewise, at successive periods of life, before or after certain diseases, the organism responds to a pathogenic influence in different ways. The effect of an excess of food or sleep is not the same on a young man as on an old one. Measles are an insignificant disease in children and a serious one in adults. In addition, the reactivity of a subject varies according to his physiological age, and also to all his previous history. It depends on the nature of his individualization. In sum, the part of environment in the actualization of the hereditary tendencies of a given subject is not exactly definable. The immanent properties of the tissues and the conditions of their development are inextricably mingled in the formation of the body and the soul of each individual.
The individual is obviously a center of specific activities. He appears as distinct from the inanimate world and also from other living beings. At the same time, he is linked to his environment and to his fellow men. He could not exist without them. He is characterized by being independent of, and dependent on, the cosmic universe. But we do not know how he is bound to other beings, where his spatial and temporal frontiers are. Personality is rightly believed to extend outside the physical continuum. Its limits seem to be situated beyond the surface of the skin. The definiteness of the anatomical contours is partly an illusion. Each one of us is certainly far larger and more diffuse than his body.
We know that our visible frontiers are, on one side, the skin and, on the other side, the digestive and respiratory mucosas. Our anatomical and functional integrity, as also our survival, depends on their inviolability. Their destruction and the invasion of the tissues by bacteria bring on death and disintegration of the individual. We also know that they can be crossed by cosmic rays, oxygen from the atmosphere, light, heat, and sound waves, and substances resulting from the intestinal digestion of food. Through these surfaces the inner world of our body is in continuity with the cosmic world. But this anatomical frontier is only that of one aspect of the individual. It does not enclose our mental personality. Love and hatred are realities. Through these feelings, men are bound to one another in a positive manner, whatever may be the distance between them. To a woman, the loss of her child causes greater suffering than the loss of a limb. The breaking of an affective bond may even bring about death. If we could visualize those immaterial links, human beings would assume new and strange aspects. Some would hardly extend beyond their anatomical limits. Others would stretch out as far as a safe in a bank, the sexual organs of another individual, certain foods or beverages, perhaps to a dog, a jewel, some object of art. Others would appear immense. They would expand in long tentacles attached to their family, to a group of friends, to an old homestead, to the sky and the mountains of their native country. Leaders of nations, great philanthropists, saints, would look like fairy-tale giants, spreading their multiple arms over a country, a continent, the entire world. There is a close relation between us and our social environment. Each human being occupies a certain place in his group. He is shackled to it by mental chains. His position may appear to him as more important than life itself. If he is deprived of it by financial losses, illness, persecution, scandal, or crime, he may prefer suicide to such a change. Obviously, the individual projects on all sides beyond his anatomical frontiers.
But man diffuses through space in a still more positive way.2 In telepathic phenomena, he instantaneously sends out a part of himself, a sort of emanation, which joins a far-away relative or friend. He thus expands to great distances. He may cross oceans and continents in a time too short to be estimated. He is capable of finding in the midst of a crowd the person whom he must meet. Then he communicates to this person certain knowledge. He can also discover in the immensity and confusion of a modern city the house, the room of the individual whom he seeks, although acquainted neither with him nor with his surroundings. Those endowed with this form of activity behave like extensible beings, amebas of a strange kind, capable of sending pseudopods to prodigious distances. The hypnotist and his subject are sometimes observed to be linked together by an invisible bond. This bond seems to emanate from the subject. When communication is established between the hypnotist and his subject, the former can, by suggestion from a distance, command the latter to perform certain acts. At this moment, a telepathic relation is established between them. In such an instance, two distant individuals are in contact with each other, although both appear to be confined within their respective anatomical limits.
2 The psychological frontiers of the individual in space and time are obviously suppositions. But suppositions, even when very strange, are convenient and help to group together facts that are temporarily un-explainable. Their purpose is merely to inspire new experiments. The author realizes clearly that his conjectures will be considered naive or heretical by the layman, as well as by the scientist That they will equally displease materialists and spiritualists, vitalists and mechanicists. That the equilibrium of his intellect will be doubted. However, one cannot neglect facts because they are strange. On the contrary, one must investigate them. Metapsychics may bring to us more important information on the nature of man than normal psychology does. The societies of psychical research, and especially the English Society, have attracted to clairvoyance and telepathy the attention of the public. The time has come to study these phenomena as one studies physiological phenomena. But metapsychical researches must not be undertaken by amateurs, even when those amateurs are great physicists, great philosophers, or great mathematicians. To go beyond one's own field and to dabble in theology or spiritism is dangerous, even for men as illustrious as Isaac Newton, William Crookes, or Oliver Lodge. Experimenters trained in clinical medicine, having a profound knowledge of the human being, of his physiology and psychology, of his neuroses, of his aptitude to lie, of his susceptibility to suggestion, of his skill at prestidigitation, are alone qualified to investigate this subject. The author hopes that his suppositions about the spatial and temporal limits of the individual will possibly inspire, instead of smiles or futile discussions, experiments made with the techniques of physiology and physics.
Thought seems to be transmitted, like electromagnetic waves, from one region of space to another. We do not know its velocity. So far, it has not been possible to measure the speed of telepathic communications. Neither biologists, physicists, nor astronomers have taken into account the existence of metapsychical phenomena. Telepathy, however, is a primary datum of observation. If, some day, thought should be found to travel through space as light does, our theories about the constitution of the universe would have to be modified. But it is not sure that telepathic phenomena are due to the transmission of a physical agent. Possibly there is no spatial contact between individuals who are in communication. In fact, we know that mind is not entirely described within the four dimensions of the physical continuum. It is situated simultaneously within the material universe and elsewhere. It may insert itself into the cerebral cells and stretch outside space and time, like an alga, which fastens to a rock and lets its tendrils drift out into the mystery of the ocean. We are totally ignorant of the realities that lie outside space and time. We may suppose that a telepathic communication is an encounter, beyond the four dimensions of our universe, between the immaterial parts of two minds. But it is more convenient to consider these phenomena as being brought about by the expansion of the individual into space.
The spatial extensibility of personality is an exceptional fact. Nevertheless, normal individuals may sometimes read the thoughts of others, as clairvoyants do. In a perhaps analogous manner some men have the power of carrying away and convincing great multitudes with seemingly commonplace words, of leading people to happiness, to battle, to sacrifice, to death. Caesar, Napoleon, Mussolini, all great leaders of nations, grow beyond human stature. They encircle innumerable throngs of men in the net of their will and their ideas. Between certain individuals and nature there are subtle and obscure relations. Such men are able to spread across space and time and to grasp concrete reality. They seem to escape from themselves, and also from the physical continuum. Sometimes they project their tentacles in vain beyond the frontiers of the material world, and they bring back nothing of importance. But, like the great prophets of science, art, and religion, they often succeed in apprehending in the abysses of the unknown, elusive and sublime beings called mathematical abstractions, Platonic Ideas, absolute beauty, God.
In time, as in space, the individual stretches out beyond the frontiers of his body. His temporal frontiers are neither more precise nor more fixed than his spatial ones. He is linked to the past and to the future, although his self does not extend outside the present. Our individuality, as we know, comes into being when the spermatozoon enters the egg. But before this moment, the elements of the self are already in existence, scattered in the tissues of our parents, of our parents' parents, and of our most remote ancestors. We are made of the cellular substances of our father and our mother. We depend on the past in an organic and indissoluble manner. We bear within ourselves countless fragments of our ancestors' bodies. Our qualities and defects proceed from theirs. In men, as in race-horses, strength and courage are hereditary qualities. History cannot be set aside. We must, on the contrary, make use of the past to foresee the future and to prepare our destiny.
It is well known that characteristics acquired by the individual in the course of his life are not transmitted to his descendants. However, germ-plasm is not immutable. It may change under the influence of the organic medium. It can be altered by disease, poison, food, and secretions of endocrine glands. Syphilis in parents may cause profound disorders in the body and consciousness of their children. For this reason, the descent of men of genius sometimes consists of inferior beings, weak and unbalanced. Treponema pallidum has exterminated more great families than have all the wars of the world. Likewise, alcoholics, morphinomaniacs, and cocaine addicts may beget defectives, who pay during their entire life for the vices of their fathers. Indeed, the consequences of one's faults are easily passed on to one's descendants. But it is far more difficult to give them the benefit of one's virtues. Each individual puts his mark on his environment, his house, his family, his friends. He lives as if surrounded by himself. Through his deeds, he may transfer his qualities to his descendants. The child depends on his parents for a long period. He has time to learn all that they can teach him. He uses his innate capacity for imitation and tends to become like them. He takes on their true visage, and not the mask that they wear in social life. In general, his feeling toward his father and mother is one of indifference and of some contempt. But he willingly imitates their ignorance, vulgarity, selfishness, and cowardice. Of course, there are many types of parents. Some of them leave their offspring a heritage of intelligence, goodness, esthetic sense, and courage. After their death their personality goes on living through their scientific discoveries, their artistic production, the political, economic, or social institutions they have founded, or more simply through the house which they have built, and the fields which they have cultivated with their own hands. It is by such people that our civilization has been created.
The influence of the individual upon the future is not equivalent to an extension of the self in time. It takes place by means of the fragments of cell substance directly transmitted by him to his children, or of his creations in the domains of art, religion, science, philosophy, etc. Sometimes, however, personality seems really to extend beyond physiological duration. There is in certain individuals a psychical element capable of traveling in time.3 As already mentioned, clairvoyants perceive not only events spatially remote, but also past and future events. They seem to wander as easily in time as in space. Or to escape from the physical continuum and contemplate the past and the future as a fly could contemplate a picture if, instead of walking on its surface, it flew at some distance above it. The facts of prediction of the future lead us to the threshold of an unknown world. They seem to point to the existence of a psychic principle capable of evolving outside the limits of our bodies. The specialists of spiritism interpret certain of these phenomena as proof of the survival of consciousness after death. The medium believes himself to be inhabited by the spirit of the deceased. He may reveal to the experimenters some details known only to the dead man, and the exactness of which is verified later. According to Broad, these facts could be interpreted as indicating the persistence after death, not of the mind, but of a psychic factor capable of grafting itself temporarily upon the organism of the medium. This psychic factor, in uniting with a human being, would constitute a sort of consciousness belonging both to the medium and to the defunct. Its existence would be transitory. It would progressively break up and finally disappear. The results obtained by the spiritists' experiments are of great importance. But their significance is not precise. For the clairvoyant there are no secrets. At the present time, therefore, it does not seem possible to make a distinction between the survival of psychic principle and a phenomenon of mediumistic clairvoyance.
3 See footnote #2.
To summarize. Individuality is not merely an aspect of the organism. It also constitutes an essential characteristic of each component part of this organism. It remains virtual in the fertilized ovum, and progressively unfolds its characteristics as the new being extends into time. The ancestral tendencies of this being are forced to actualize by his conflict with the environment. They incline his adaptive activities in a certain direction. In fact, the mode of utilization of its surroundings by the body is determined by its innate properties. Each individual responds to these surroundings in his own way. He chooses among the things of the outer world those which increase his individualization. He is a focus of specific activities. These activities are distinct but indivisible. The soul cannot be separated from the body, the structure from the function, the cell from its medium, the multiplicity from the unity, or the determining from the determined. We are beginning to realize that our surface is not our real frontier, that it merely sets up between us and the cosmic universe a plane of cleavage indispensable to our action. We are constructed like the castles of the Middle Ages, whose dungeons were surrounded by several lines of fortifications. Our inner defenses are numerous and entangled one with another. The skin is the barrier that our microscopic enemies must not traverse. But we extend much farther beyond it. Beyond space and time. We know the individual's center, yet ignore where his outer limits are located. These limits, in fact, are hypothetical. Perhaps they do not exist. Each man is bound to those who precede and follow him. He fuses in some manner into them. Humanity does not appear to be composed of separate particles, as a gas is of molecules. It resembles an intricate network of long threads extending in space-time and consisting of series of individuals. Individuality is doubtless real. But it is much less definite than we believe. And the independence of each individual from the others and from the cosmos is an illusion.
Our body is made up of the chemical substances of the environment. These substances enter it and become modified according to its individuality. They are built up into temporary edifices, tissues, humors, and organs, which ceaselessly disintegrate and are reconstructed during our whole life. After our death, they return to the world of inert matter. Certain chemical compounds assume our racial and individual peculiarities. They become truly ourselves. Others only pass through the body. They participate in the existence of our tissues without taking any of their characteristics, just as wax does not modify its chemical composition when made into statues of different shapes. They flow through the organism like a large river, from which cells draw the substances required for their growth, their maintenance, and their expenditure of energy. According to Christian mystics, we receive from the outer world certain spiritual elements. The grace of God permeates soul and body, just as atmospheric oxygen, or nitrogen from the food, diffuses in our tissues.
Individual specificity persists during the entire life, although tissues and humors continually change. The organs and their medium move at the rhythm of physiological time, that is, at the rhythm of irreversible processes, towards definitive transformations and death. But they always keep their inherent qualities. They are not modified by the stream of matter in which they are immersed, any more than the spruce trees on the mountains by the clouds passing through their branches. However, individuality grows stronger or weaker according to environmental conditions. When these conditions are particularly unfavorable, it dissolves. Sometimes, mental personality is less marked than organic personality. One may rightly ask whether it still exists in modem men. Some observers doubt its reality. Theodore Dreiser considers it a myth. It is certain that the inhabitants of the new city show great uniformity in their mental and moral weakness. Most of the individuals belong to the same type. A mixture of nervousness and apathy, of vanity and lack of confidence in themselves, of muscular strength and tendency to fatigue. Of genesic impulses, both irresistible and not strong, sometimes homosexual. Such a state is due to profound disorders in the formation of personality. It does not consist only in an attitude of mine, a fashion which could easily change. It expresses either a degeneration of the race, or a defective development of the individual, or both these phenomena.
This debasement is, in a certain measure, of hereditary origin. The suppression of natural selection, as already mentioned, has caused the survival of children whose tissues and consciousness are defective. The race has been weakened by the preservation of such reproducers. The relative importance of this factor of degeneration is not yet known. As we have already mentioned, the influence of heredity cannot be distinguished clearly from that of environment. Feeble-mindedness and insanity surely have an ancestral cause. The intellectual weakness observed in schools and universities, and in the population in general, comes from developmental disorders, and not from hereditary defects. When these flabby, silly young people are removed from their customary environment and placed in more primitive conditions of life, they sometimes change for the better and recover their virility. The atrophic character of the products of our civilization, therefore, is not incurable. It is far from being always the expression of a racial degeneration.
Among the multitude of weak and defective there are, however, some completely developed men. These, men, when closely observed, appear to be superior to the classical schemata. In fact, the individual whose potentialities are all actualized does not resemble the human being pictured by the specialists. He is not the fragments of consciousness which psychologists attempt to measure. He is not to be found in the chemical reactions, the functional processes, and the organs which physicians have divided between themselves. Neither is he the abstraction whose concrete manifestations the educators try to guide. He is almost completely wanting in the rudimentary being manufactured by social workers, prison wardens, economists, sociologists, and politicians. In fact, he never appears to a specialist unless this specialist is willing to look at him as a whole. He is much more than the sum of all the facts accumulated by the particular sciences. We never apprehend him in his entirety. He contains vast, unknown regions. His potentialities are almost inexhaustible. Like the great natural phenomena, he is still unintelligible. When one contemplates him in the harmony of all his organic and spiritual activities, one experiences a profound esthetic emotion. Such an individual is truly the creator and the center of the universe.
Modern society ignores the individual. It only takes account of human beings. It believes in the reality of the Universals and treats men as abstractions. The confusion of the concepts of individual and of human being has led industrial civilization to a fundamental error, the standardization of men. If we were all identical, we could be reared and made to live and work in great herds, like cattle. But each one has his own personality. He cannot be treated like a symbol. Children should not be placed, at a very early age, in schools where they are educated wholesale. As is well known, most great men have been brought up in comparative solitude, or have refused to enter the mold of the school. Of course, schools are indispensable for technical studies. They also fill, in a certain measure, the child's need of contact with other children. But education should be the object of unfailing guidance. Such guidance belongs to the parents. They alone, and more especially the mother, have observed, since their origin, the physiological and mental peculiarities whose orientation is the aim of education. Modern society has committed a serious mistake by entirely substituting the school for the familial training. The mothers abandon their children to the kindergarten in order to attend to their careers, their social ambitions, their sexual pleasures, their literary or artistic fancies, or simply to play bridge, go to the cinema, and waste their time in busy idleness. They are, thus, responsible for the disappearance of the familial group where the child was kept in contact with adults and learned a great deal from them. Young dogs brought up in kennels with others of the same age do not develop as well as puppies free to run about with their parents. It is the same with children living in a crowd of other children, and with those living in the company of intelligent adults. The child easily molds his physiological, affective, and mental activities upon those of his surroundings. He learns little from children of his own age. When he is only a unit in a school he remains incomplete. In order to reach his full strength, the individual requires the relative isolation and the attention of the restricted social group consisting of the family.
The neglect of individuality by our social institutions is, likewise, responsible for the atrophy of the adults. Man does not stand, without damage, the mode of existence, and the uniform and stupid work imposed on factory and office workers, on all those who take part in mass production. In the immensity of modern cities he is isolated and as if lost. He is an economic abstraction, a unit of the herd. He gives up his individuality. He has neither responsibility nor dignity. Above the multitude stand out the rich men, the powerful politicians, the bandits. The others are only nameless grains of dust. On the contrary, the individual remains a man when he belongs to a small group, when he inhabits a village or a small town where his relative importance is greater, when he can hope to become, in his turn, an influential citizen. The contempt for individuality has brought about its factual disappearance.
Another error, due to the confusion of the concepts of human being and individual, is democratic equality. This dogma is now breaking down under the blows of the experience of the nations. It is, therefore, unnecessary to insist upon its falseness. But its success has been astonishingly long. How could humanity accept such faith for so many years? The democratic creed does not take account of the constitution of our body and of our consciousness. It does not apply to the concrete fact which the individual is. Indeed, human beings are equal. But individuals are not. The equality of their rights is an illusion. The feeble-minded and the man of genius should not be equal before the law. The stupid, the unintelligent, those who are dispersed, incapable of attention, of effort, have no right to a higher education. It is absurd to give them the same electoral power as the fully developed individuals. Sexes are not equal. To disregard all these inequalities is very dangerous. The democratic principle has contributed to the collapse of civilization in opposing the development of an elite. It is obvious that, on the contrary, individual inequalities must be respected. In modem society the great, the small, the average, and the mediocre are needed. But we should not attempt to develop the higher types by the same procedures as the lower. The standardization of men by the democratic ideal has already determined the predominance of the weak. Everywhere, the weak are preferred to the strong. They are aided and protected, often admired. Like the invalid, the criminal, and the insane, they attract the sympathy of the public. The myth of equality, the love of the symbol, the contempt for the concrete fact, are, in a large measure, guilty of the collapse of individuality. As it was impossible to raise the inferior types, the only means of producing democratic equality among men was to bring all to the lowest level. Thus vanished personality.
Not only has the concept of the individual been confused with that of the human being, but the latter has been adulterated by the introduction of foreign elements, and deprived of certain of its own elements. We have applied to man concepts belonging to the mechanical world. We have neglected thought, moral suffering, sacrifice, beauty, and peace. We have treated the individual as a chemical substance, a machine, or part of a machine. We have amputated his moral, esthetic, and religious functions. We have also ignored certain aspects of his physiological activities. We have not asked how tissues and consciousness would accommodate themselves to the changes in the mode of life imposed upon us. We have totally forgotten the important r61e of the adaptive functions, and the momentous consequences of their enforced rest. Our present weakness comes both from our unappreciation of individuality and from our ignorance of the constitution of the human being.
Man is the result of heredity and environment, of the habits of life and thought imposed upon him by modern society. We have described how these habits affect his body and his consciousness. We know that he cannot adapt himself to the environment created by technology, that such environment brings about his degradation. Science and machines are not responsible for his present state. We alone are guilty. We have not been capable of distinguishing the prohibited from the lawful. We have infringed natural laws. We have thus committed the supreme sin, the sin that is always punished. The dogmas of scientific religion and industrial morals have fallen under the onslaught of biological reality. Life always gives an identical answer when asked to trespass on forbidden ground. It weakens. And civilizations collapse. The sciences of inert matter have led us into a country that is not ours. We have blindly accepted all their gifts. The individual has become narrow, specialized, immoral, unintelligent, incapable of managing himself and his own institutions. But at the same time the biological sciences have revealed to us the most precious of all secrets--the laws of the development of our body and of our consciousness. This knowledge has brought to humanity the means of renovating itself. As long as the hereditary qualities of the race remain present, the strength and the audacity of his forefathers can be resurrected in modern man by his own will. But is he still capable of such an effort?
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