The Science of Human Nature by William Henry Pyle (if you liked this book TXT) 📖

compared to the number in some other parts of our country. As far as we have any evidence, the native stocks are the same in the two cases, but in New England the influences turn men into the direction of science, art, and literature. Everything there is favorable. In other parts of the country, the influences turn men into other spheres of activity. They become large landowners, men of business and affairs.

The question may be asked whether genius makes its way to the front in spite of unfavorable circumstances. Sometimes it doubtless does. But pugnacity and perseverance are not necessarily connected with intellectual genius. Genius may be as likely to be timid as belligerent. Therefore unfavorable circumstances may crush many a genius.

The public schools ought to be on the watch for genius in any and all kinds of work. When a genius is found, proper training ought to be provided to develop this genius for the good of society as well as for the good of the individual himself. A few children show ability in drawing and painting, others in music, others in mechanical invention, some in literary construction. When it is found that this ability is undoubtedly a native gift and not a passing whim, special opportunity should be provided for its development and training. It will be better for the general welfare, as well as for individual happiness, if each does in life that for which he is by nature best fitted. For most of us, however, there is not much difference in our abilities. We can do one thing as well as we can many other things. But in a few there are undoubted special native gifts.

Summary. This is an orderly world, in which everything has a cause. All events are connected in a chain of causes and effects. Human beings live in this world of natural law and are subject to it. Human life is completely within this world of law and order and is a part of it. Education is possible only because we can change human beings by having influences act upon them.

Individuals receive their original traits from their ancestors, probably as parts or units. Mendelism is the doctrine of the pure transmission of unit characters. Eugenics is the science of improving the human race by selective breeding. An individual’s life is the result of the interaction of his hereditary characteristics and his environment.

CLASS EXERCISES

Try to find rock containing the remains of animals. You can get information on such matters from a textbook on geology.

Read in a geology about the different geological epochs in the history of the earth.

Make a comparison of the length of infancy in the lower animals and in man. What is the significance of what you find? What advantage does it give man?

What is natural selection? How does it lead to change in animals? Does natural selection still operate among human beings? (See a modern textbook on zoölogy.)

By observation and from consulting a zoölogy, learn about the different classes of animal forms, from low forms to high forms.

By studying domestic animals, see what you can learn about heredity. Enumerate all the points that you find bearing upon heredity.

In a similar way, make a study of heredity in your family. Consider such characteristics as height, weight, shape of head, shape of nose, hair and eye color. Can you find any evidence of the inheritance of mental traits?

Make a complete outline of Chapter II.

REFERENCES FOR CLASS READING Davenport: Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. Kellicott: The Social Direction of Human Evolution. CHAPTER III
MIND AND BODY

Gross Dependence. The relation of mind to body has always been an interesting one to man. This is partly because of the connection of the question with that of life after death. An old idea of this relation, almost universally held till recently, was that the mind or spirit lived in the body but was more or less independent of the body. The body has been looked upon as a hindrance to the mind or spirit. Science knows nothing about the existence of spirits apart from bodies. The belief that after death the mind lives on is a matter of faith and not of science. Whether one believes in an existence of the mind after death of the body, depends on one’s religious faith. There is no scientific evidence one way or the other. The only mind that science knows anything about is bound up very closely with body. This is not saying that there is no existence of spirit apart from body, but that at present such existence is beyond the realm of science.

The dependence of mind upon body in a general way is evident to every one, upon the most general observation and thought. We know the effect on the mind of disease, of good health, of hunger, of fatigue, of overwork, of severe bodily injury, of blindness or deafness. We have, perhaps, seen some one struck upon the head by a club, or run over by an automobile, and have noted the tremendous consequences to the person’s mind. In such cases it sometimes happens that, as far as we can see, there is no longer any mind in connection with that body. The most casual observation, then, shows that mind and body are in some way most intimately related.

Finer Dependence. Let us note this relation more in detail, and, in particular, see just which part of the body it is that is connected with the mind. First of all, we note the dependence of mind upon sense organs. We see only with our eyes. If we close the eyelids, we cannot see. If we are born blind, or if injury or disease destroys the retinas of the eyes or makes the eyes opaque so that light cannot pass through to the retinas, then we cannot see.

Similarly, we hear only by means of the ears. If we are born deaf, or if injury destroys some important part of the hearing mechanism, then we cannot hear. In like manner, we taste only by means of the taste organs in the mouth, and smell only with the organs of smell in the nose. In a word, our primary knowledge of the world comes only through the sense organs. We shall see presently just how this sensing or perceiving is accomplished.

Dependence of Mind on Nerves and Brain. We have seen how in a general way the mind is dependent on the body. We have seen how in a more intimate way it is dependent on the special sense organs. But the part of the body to which the mind is most directly and intimately related is the nervous system. The sense organs themselves are merely modifications of the nerve ends together with certain mechanisms for enabling stimuli to act on the nerve ends. The eye is merely the optic nerve spread out to form the retina and modified in certain ways to make it sensitive to ether vibrations. In addition to this, there is, of course, the focusing mechanism of the eye. So for all the sense organs; they are, each of them, some sort of modification of nerve-endings which makes them sensitive to some particular force or substance.

Let us make the matter clear by an illustration. Suppose I see a picture on the wall. My eyes are directed toward the picture. Light from the picture is refracted within the eyes, forming an image on each retina. The retina is sensitive to the light. The light produces chemical changes on the retina. These changes set up an excitation in the optic nerves, which is conducted to a certain place in the brain, causing an excitation in the brain. Now the important point is that when this excitation is going on in the brain, we are conscious, we see the picture.

As far as science can determine, we do not see, nor hear, nor taste, nor smell, nor have any other sensation unless a sense organ is excited and produces the excitation in the brain. There can be no doubt about our primary, sensory experience. By primary, sensory experience is meant our immediate, direct knowledge of any aspect of the world. In this field of our conscious life, we are entirely dependent upon sense organs and nerves and brain. Injuries to the eyes destroying their power to perform their ordinary work, or injuries to the optic nerve or to the visual center in the brain, make it impossible for us to see.

These facts are so self-evident that it seems useless to state them. One has but to hold his hands before his eyes to convince himself that the mind sees by means of eyes, which are physical sense organs. One has but to hold his hands tight over his ears to find out that he hears by means of ears—again, physical sense organs.

But simple and self-evident as the facts are, their acceptance must have tremendous consequences to our thinking, and to our view of human nature. If the mind is dependent in every feature on the body with its sense organs, this must give to this body and its sense organs an importance in our thought and scheme of things that they did not have before. This close dependence of mind upon body must give to the body a place in our scheme of education that it would not have under any other view of the mind. We wish to emphasize here that this statement of the close relation of the mind and body is not a theory which one may accept or not. It is a simple statement of fact. It is a presupposition of psychology. By “presupposition” is meant a fundamental principle which the psychologist always has in mind. It is axiomatic, and has the same place in psychology that axioms have in mathematics. All explanations of the working of the mind must be stated in terms of nerve and brain action, and stimulation of sense organs.

Since the sense organs are the primary and fundamental organs through which we get experience, and since the sensations are the elementary experiences out of which all mental life is built, it is necessary for us to have a clear idea of the sense organs, their structure and functions, and of the nature of sensations.

Vision. The Visual Sense Organs. The details of the anatomy of the eye can be looked up in a physiological textbook. The essential principles are very simple. The eye is made on the principle of a photographer’s camera. The retina corresponds to the sensitive plate of the camera. The light coming from objects toward which the eyes are directed is focused on the retina, forming there an image of the object. The light thus focused on the retina sets up a chemical change in the delicate nerve tissue; this excitation is transmitted through the optic nerve to the occipital (back) part of the brain, and sets up brain action there. Then we have visual sensation; we see the object.

The different colors that we see are dependent upon the vibration frequency of the ether. The higher frequencies give us the colors blue and green, and the lower frequencies give us the colors yellow and red. The intermediate frequencies give us the intermediate colors blue-green and orange. By vibration frequencies is meant the rate at which the ether vibrates, the number of vibrations a second. If the reader wishes to know something about these frequencies, such information can be found in a textbook on physics.

It will be found that the vibration rates of the ether are very great. It is only within a certain range of vibration frequency that sunlight affects the retina. Slower rates of vibration than that producing red do not affect the eye, and faster than that producing violet do not affect the eye.