[The following are excerpts from the important book, Man, the Unknown, by Alexis Carrel (1873-1944), 1912 Nobel Prize Winner for Physiology and Medicine (transplantation and repair of bodily organs, pioneered blood vessel suturing).]

Man, the Unknown

Chapter I

THE NEED OF A BETTER KNOWLEDGE OF MAN

   THERE is a strange disparity between the sciences of inert matter and those of life. Astronomy, mechanics, and physics are based on concepts which can be expressed, tersely and elegantly, in mathematical language. They have built up a universe as harmonious as the monuments of ancient Greece. They weave about it a magnificent texture of calculations and hypotheses. They search for reality beyond the realm of common thought up to unutterable abstractions consisting only of equations of symbols. Such is not the position of biological sciences. Those who investigate the phenomena of life are as if lost in an inextricable jungle, in the midst of a magic forest, whose countless trees unceasingly change their place and their shape. They are crushed under a mass of facts, which they can describe but are incapable of defining in algebraic equations. From the things encountered in the material world, whether atoms or stars, rocks or clouds, steel or water, certain qualities, such as weight and spatial dimensions, have been abstracted. These abstractions, and not the concrete facts, are the matter of scientific reasoning. The observation of objects constitutes only a lower form of science, the descriptive form. Descriptive science classifies phenomena. But the unchanging relations between variable quantities--that is, the natural laws, only appear when science becomes more abstract. It is because physics and chemistry are abstract and quantitative that they had such great and rapid success. Although they do not pretend to unveil the ultimate nature of things, they give us the power to predict future events, and often to determine at will their occurrence. In learning the secret of the constitution and of the properties of matter, we have gained the mastery of almost everything which exists on the surface of the earth, excepting ourselves.

   The science of the living beings in general, and especially of the human individual, has not made such great progress. It still remains in the descriptive state. Man is an indivisible whole of extreme complexity. No simple representation of him can be obtained. There is no method capable of apprehending him simultaneously in his entirety, his parts, and his relations with the outer world. In order to analyze ourselves, we are obliged to seek the help of various techniques and, therefore, to utilize several sciences. Naturally, all these sciences arrive at a different conception of their common object. They abstract only from man what is attainable by their special methods. And those abstractions, after they have been added together, are still less rich than the concrete fact. They leave behind them a residue, too important to be neglected. Anatomy, chemistry, physiology, psychology, pedagogy, history, sociology, political economy do not exhaust their subject. Man, as known to the specialists, is far from being the concrete man, the real man. He is nothing but a schema, consisting of other schemata built up by the techniques of each science. He is, at the same time, the corpse dissected by the anatomists, the consciousness observed by the psychologists and the great teachers of the spiritual life, and the personality which introspection shows to everyone as lying in the depth of himself. He is the chemical substances constituting the tissues and humors of the body. He is the amazing community of cells and nutrient fluids whose organic laws are studied by the physiologists. He is the compound of tissues and consciousness that hygienists and educators endeavor to lead to its optimum development while it extends into time. He is the homo oeconomicus who must ceaselessly consume manufactured products in order that the machines, of which he is made a slave, may be kept at work. But he is also the poet, the hero, and the saint. He is not only the prodigiously complex being analyzed by our scientific techniques, but also the tendencies, the conjectures, the aspirations of humanity. Our conceptions of him are imbued with metaphysics. They are founded on so many and such imprecise data that the temptation is great to choose among them those which please us. Therefore, our idea of man varies according to our feelings and our beliefs. A materialist and a spiritualist accept the same definition of a crystal of sodium chloride. But they do not agree with one another upon that of the human being. A mechanistic physiologist and a vitalistic physiologist do not consider the organism in the same light. The living being of Jacques Loeb differs profoundly from that of Hans Driesch. Indeed, mankind has made a gigantic effort to know itself. Although we possess the treasure of the observations accumulated by the scientists, the philosophers, the poets, and the great mystics of all times, we have grasped only certain aspects of ourselves. We do not apprehend man as a whole. We know him as composed of distinct parts. And even these parts are created by our methods. Each one of us is made up of a procession of phantoms, in the midst of which strides an unknowable reality.

   In fact, our ignorance is profound. Most of the questions put to themselves by those who study human beings remain without answer. Immense regions of our inner world are still unknown. How do the molecules of chemical substances associate in order to form the complex and temporary organs of the cell? How do the genes contained in the nucleus of a fertilized ovum determine the characteristics of the individual deriving from that ovum? How do cells organize themselves by their own efforts into societies, such as the tissues and the organs? Like the ants and the bees, they have advance knowledge of the part they are destined to play in the life of the community. And hidden mechanisms enable them to build up an organism both complex and simple. What is the nature of our duration of psychological time, and of physiological time? We know that we are a compound of tissues, organs, fluids, and consciousness. But the relations between consciousness and cerebrum are still a mystery. We lack almost entirely a knowledge of the physiology of nervous cells. To what extent does will power modify the organism? How is the mind influenced by the state of the organs? In what manner can the organic and mental characteristics, which each individual inherits, be changed by the mode of life, the chemical substances contained in food, the climate, and the physiological and moral disciplines?

   We are very far from knowing what relations exist between skeleton, muscles, and organs, and mental and spiritual activities. We are ignorant of the factors that bring about nervous equilibrium and resistance to fatigue and to diseases. We do not know how moral sense, judgment, and audacity could be augmented. What is the relative importance of intellectual, moral, and mystical activities? What is the significance of esthetic and religious sense? What form of energy is responsible for telepathic communications? Without any doubt, certain physiological and mental factors determine happiness or misery, success or failure. But we do not know what they are. We cannot artificially give to any individual the aptitude for happiness. As yet, we do not know what environment is the most favorable for the optimum development of civilized man. Is it possible to suppress struggle, effort, and suffering from our physiological and spiritual formation? How can we prevent the degeneracy of man in modern civilization? Many other questions could be asked on subjects which are to us of the utmost interest. They would also remain unanswered. It is quite evident that the accomplishments of all the sciences having man as an object remain insufficient, and that our knowledge of ourselves is still most rudimentary.

   Our ignorance may be attributed, at the same time, to the mode of existence of our ancestors, to the complexity of our nature, and to the structure of our mind. Before all, man had to live. And that need demanded the conquest of the outer world. It was imperative to secure food and shelter, to fight wild animals and other men. For immense periods, our forefathers had neither the leisure nor the inclination to study themselves. They employed their intelligence in other ways, such as manufacturing weapons and tools, discovering fire, training cattle and horses, inventing the wheel, the culture of cereals, etc., etc. Long before becoming interested in the constitution of their body and their mind, they meditated on the sun, the moon, the stars, the tides, and the passing of the seasons. Astronomy was already far advanced at an epoch when physiology was totally unknown. Galileo reduced the earth, center of the world, to the rank of a humble satellite of the sun, while his contemporaries had not even the most elementary notion of the structure and the functions of brain, liver, or thyroid gland. As, under the natural conditions of life, the human organism works satisfactorily and needs no attention, science progressed in the direction in which it was led by human curiosity--that is, toward the outer world.

   From time to time, among the billions of human beings who have successively inhabited the earth, a few were bora endowed with rare and marvelous powers, the intuition of unknown things, the imagination that creates new worlds, and the faculty of discovering the hidden relations existing between certain phenomena. These men explored the physical universe. This universe is of a simple constitution. Therefore, it rapidly gave in to the attack of the scientists and yielded the secret of certain of its laws. And the knowledge of these laws enabled us to utilize the world of matter for our own profit. The practical applications of scientific discoveries are lucrative for those who promote them. They facilitate the existence of all. They please the public, whose comfort they augment. Everyone became, of course, much more interested in the inventions that lessen human effort, lighten the burden of the toiler, accelerate the rapidity of communications, and soften the harshness of life, than in the discoveries that throw some light on the intricate problems relating to the constitution of our body and of our consciousness. The conquest of the material world, which has ceaselessly absorbed the attention and the will of men, caused the organic and the spiritual world to fall into almost complete oblivion. In fact, the knowledge of our surroundings was indispensable, but that of our own nature appeared to be much less immediately useful. However, disease, pain, death, and more or less obscure aspirations toward a hidden power transcending the visible universe, drew the attention of men, in some measure, to the inner world of their body and their mind. At first, medicine contented itself with the practical problem of relieving the sick by empiric recipes. It realized only in recent times that the most effective method of preventing or curing illness is to acquire a complete understanding of the normal and diseased body--that is, to construct the sciences that are called anatomy, biological chemistry, physiology, and pathology. However, the mystery of our existence, the moral sufferings, the craving for the unknown, and the metapsychical phenomena appeared to our ancestors as more important then bodily pain and diseases. The study of spiritual life and of philosophy attracted greater men than the study of medicine. The laws of mysticity became known before those of physiology. But such laws were brought to light only when mankind had acquired sufficient leisure to turn a little of his attention to other things than the conquest of the outer world.

   There is another reason for the slow progress of the knowledge of ourselves. Our mind is so constructed as to delight in contemplating simple facts. We feel a kind of repugnance in attacking such a complex problem as that of the constitution of living beings and of man. The intellect, as Bergson wrote, is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life. On the contrary, we love to discover in the cosmos the geometrical forms that exist in the depths of our consciousness. The exactitude of the proportions of our monuments and the precision of our machines express a fundamental character of our mind. Geometry does not exist in the earthly world. It has originated in ourselves. The methods of nature are never so precise as those of man. We do not find in the universe the clearness and accuracy of our thought. We attempt, therefore, to abstract from the complexity of phenomena some simple systems whose components bear to one another certain relations susceptible of being described mathematically. This power of abstraction of the human intellect is responsible for the amazing progress of physics and chemistry. A similar success has rewarded the physicochemical study of living beings. The laws of chemistry and of physics are identical in the world of living things and in that of inanimate matter, as Claude Bernard thought long ago. This fact explains why modern physiology has discovered, for example, that the constancy of the alkalinity of the blood and of the water of the ocean is expressed by identical laws, that the energy spent by the contracting muscle is supplied by the fermentation of sugar, etc. The physicochemical aspects of human beings are almost as easy to investigate as those of the other objects of the terrestrial world. Such is the task which general physiology succeeds in accomplishing.

   The study of the truly physiological phenomena--that is, of those resulting from the organization of living matter--meets with more important obstacles. On account of the extreme smallness of the things to be analyzed, it is impossible to use the ordinary techniques of physics and of chemistry. What method could bring to light the chemical constitution of the nucleus of the sexual cells, of its chromosomes, and of the genes that compose these chromosomes? Nevertheless, those very minute aggregates of chemicals are of capital importance, because they contain the future of the individual and of the race. The fragility of certain tissues, such as the nervous substance, is so great that to study them in the living state is almost impossible. We do not possess any technique capable of penetrating the mysteries of the brain, and of the harmonious association of its cells. Our mind, which loves the simple beauty of mathematical formulas, is bewildered when it contemplates the stupendous mass of cells, humors, and consciousness which make up the individual. We try, therefore, to apply to this compound the concepts that have proved useful in the realm of physics, chemistry, and mechanics, and in the philosophical and religious disciplines. Such an attempt does not meet with much success, because we can be reduced neither to a physicochemi-cal system nor to a spiritual entity. Of course, the science of man has to use the concepts of all the other sciences. But it must also develop its own. For it is as fundamental as the sciences of the molecules, the atoms, and the electrons.

   In short, the slow progress of the knowledge of the human being, as compared with the splendid ascension of physics, astronomy, chemistry, and mechanics, is due to our ancestors' lack of leisure, to the complexity of the subject, and to the structure of our mind. Those obstacles are fundamental. There is no hope of eliminating them. They will always have to be overcome at the cost of strenuous effort. The knowledge of ourselves will never attain the elegant simplicity, the abstractness, and the beauty of physics. The factors that have retarded its development are not likely to vanish. We must realize clearly that the science of man is the most difficult of all sciences.

   The environment which has molded the body and the soul of our ancestors during many millenniums has now been replaced by another. This silent revolution has taken place almost without our noticing it. We have not realized its importance. Nevertheless, it is one of the most dramatic events in the history of humanity. For any modification in their surroundings inevitably and profoundly disturbs all living beings. We must, therefore, ascertain the extent of the transformations imposed by science upon the ancestral mode of life, and consequently upon ourselves.

   Since the advent of industry, a large part of the population has been compelled to live in restricted areas. The workmen are herded together, either in the suburbs of the large cities or in villages built for them. They are occupied in the factories during fixed hours, doing easy, monotonous, and well-paid work, The cities are also inhabited by office workers, employees of stores, banks, and public administrations, physicians, lawyers, school-teachers, and the multitude of those who, directly or indirectly, draw their livelihood from commerce and industry. Factories and offices are large, well lighted, clean. Their temperature is uniform. Modern heating and refrigerating apparatuses raise the temperature during the winter and lower it during the summer. The skyscrapers of the great cities have transformed the streets into gloomy canyons. But inside of the buildings, the light of the sun is replaced by electric bulbs rich in ultra-violet rays. Instead of the air of the street, polluted by gasoline fumes, the offices and workshops receive pure air drawn in from the upper atmosphere by ventilators on the roof. The dwellers of the modern city are protected against all inclemencies of the weather. But they are no longer able to live as did our ancestors, near their workshops, their stores, or their offices. The wealthier inhabit the gigantic buildings of the main avenues. At the top of dizzy towers, the kings of the business world possess delightful homes, surrounded by trees, grass, and flowers. They live there, as sheltered from noise, dust, and all disturbances, as if they dwelt on the summit of a mountain. They are more completely isolated from the common herd than were the feudal lords behind the walls and the moats of their fortified castles. The less wealthy, even those with quite modest means, lodge in apartments whose comfort surpasses that which surrounded Louis XIV or Frederick the Great. Many have their residence far from the city. Each evening, express trains transport innumerable crowds to suburbs, where broad roads running between green strips of grass and rows of trees are bordered with pretty and comfortable houses. The workmen and the humblest employees live in dwellings better appointed than those of the rich of former times. The heating apparatuses that automatically regulate the temperature of the houses, the bathrooms, the refrigerators, the electric stoves, the domestic machinery for preparing food and cleaning rooms, and the garages for the automobiles, give to the abode of everybody, not only in the city and the suburbs, but also in the country, a degree of comfort which previously was found only in that of very few privileged individuals.

   Simultaneously with the habitat, the mode of life has been transformed. This transformation is due chiefly to the increase in the rapidity of communications. Indeed, it is evident that modern trains and steamers, airplanes, automobiles, telegraph, telephone, and wireless have modified the relations of men and of nations all over the world. Each individual does a great many more things than formerly. He takes part in a much larger number of events. Every day he comes into contact with more people. Quiet and unemployed moments are exceptional in his existence. The narrow groups of the family and of the parish have been dissolved. Intimacy no longer exists. For the life of the small group has been substituted that of the herd. Solitude is looked upon as a punishment or as a rare luxury. The frequent attendance at cinema, theatrical, or athletic performances, the clubs, the meetings of all sorts, the gigantic universities, factories, department stores, and hotels have engendered in all the habit of living in common. The telephone, the radio, and the gramophone records carry unceasingly the vulgarity of the crowd, as well as its pleasures and its psychology, into everyone's house, even in the most isolated and remote villages. Each individual is always in direct or indirect communication with other human beings, and keeps himself constantly informed about the small or important events taking place in his town, or his city, or at the other end of the world. One hears the chimes of Westminster in the most retired houses of the French countryside. Any farmer in Vermont, if it pleases him to do so, may listen to orators speaking in Berlin, London, or Paris.

   Everywhere, in the cities, as well as in the country, in private houses as in factories, in the workshop, on the roads, in the fields, and on the farms, machines have decreased the intensity of human effort. Today, it is not necessary to walk. Elevators have replaced stairs. Everybody rides in buses, motors, or street cars, even when the distance to be covered is very short. Natural bodily exercises, such as walking and running over rough ground, mountain-climbing, tilling the land by hand, clearing forests with the ax, working while exposed to rain, sun, wind, cold, or heat, have given place to well-regulated sports that involve almost no risk, and to machines that abolish muscular effort. Everywhere there are tennis-courts, golf-links, artificial skating-rinks, heated swimming-pools, and sheltered arenas where athletes train and fight while protected against the inclemencies of the weather. In this manner all can develop their muscles without being subjected to the fatigue and the hardships involved in the exercises pertaining to a more primitive form of life.

   The aliments of our ancestors, which consisted chiefly of coarse flour, meat, and alcoholic drinks, have been replaced by much more delicate and varied food. Beef and mutton are no longer the staple foods. The principal elements of modern diet are milk, cream, butter, cereals refined by the elimination of the shells of the grain, fruits of tropical as well as temperate countries, fresh or canned vegetables, salads, large quantities of sugar in the form of pies, candies, and puddings. Alcohol alone has kept its place. The food of children has undergone a profound change. It is now very artificial and abundant. The same may be said of the diet of adults. The regularity of the working-hours in offices and factories has entailed that of the meals. Owing to the wealth which was general until a few years ago, and to the decline in the religious spirit and in the observance of ritualistic fasts, human beings have never been fed so punctually and uninterruptedly.

   It is also to the wealth of the post-war period that the enormous diffusion of education is due. Everywhere, schools, colleges, and universities have been erected, and immediately invaded by vast crowds of students. Youth has understood the role of science in the modern world. "Knowledge is power," wrote Bacon. All institutions of learning are devoted to the intellectual development of children and young people. At the same time, they give great attention to their physical condition. It is obvious that the main interest of these educational establishments consists in the promotion of mental and muscular strength. Science has demonstrated its usefulness in such an evident manner that it has obtained the first place in the curriculum. A great many young men and women submit themselves to its disciplines. Scientific institutions, universities, and industrial corporations have built so many laboratories that every scientific worker has a chance to make use of his particular knowledge.

   The mode of life of modern men is profoundly influenced by hygiene and medicine and the principles resulting from the discoveries of Pasteur. The promulgation of the Pastorian doctrines has been an event of the highest importance to humanity. Their application rapidly led to the suppression of the great infectious diseases which periodically ravaged the civilized world, and of those endemic in each country. The necessity for cleanliness was demonstrated. Infantile mortality at once decreased. The average duration of life has augmented to an amazing extent and has reached fifty-nine years in the United States, and sixty-five years in New Zealand. People do not live longer, but more people live to be old. Hygiene has considerably increased the quantity of human beings. At the same time, medicine, by a better conception of the nature of diseases and a judicious application of surgical techniques, has extended its beneficent influence to the weak, the defective, those predisposed to microbial infections, to all who formerly could not endure the conditions of a rougher life. It has permitted civilization to multiply its human capital enormously. It has also given to each individual much greater security against pain and disease.

   The intellectual and moral surroundings in which we are immersed have equally been molded by science. There is a profound difference between the world that permeates the mind of modern men and the world wherein our ancestors lived. Before the intellectual victories that have brought us wealth and comfort, moral values have naturally given ground. Reason has swept away religious beliefs. The knowledge of the natural laws, and the power given us by this knowledge over the material world, and also over human beings, alone are of importance. Banks, universities, laboratories, medical schools, hospitals, have become as beautiful as the Greek temples, the Gothic cathedrals, and the palaces of the Popes. Until the recent economic crisis, bank or railroad presidents were the ideals of youth. The president of a great university still occupies a very high place in the esteem of the public because he dispenses science. And science is the mother of wealth, comfort, and health. However, the intellectual atmosphere, in which modern men live, rapidly changes. Financial magnates, professors, scientists, and economic experts are losing their hold over the public. The people of today are sufficiently educated to read newspapers and magazines, to listen to the speeches broadcasted by politicians, business men, charlatans, and apostles. They are saturated with commercial, political, or social propaganda, whose techniques are becoming more and more perfect. At the same time they read articles and books wherein science and philosophy are popularized. Our universe, through the great discoveries of physics and astronomy, has acquired a marvelous grandeur. Each individual is able, if it so pleases him, to hear about the theories of Einstein, or to read the books of Eddington and of Jeans, the articles of Shapley and of Millikan. The public is as interested in the cosmic rays as in cinema stars and baseball-players. Everyone is aware that space is curved, that the world is composed of blind and unknown forces, that we are nothing but infinitely small particles on the surface of a grain of dust lost in the immensity of the cosmos, and that this cosmos is totally deprived of life and consciousness. Our universe is exclusively mechanical. It cannot be otherwise, since it has been created from an unknown substratum by the techniques of physics and astronomy. Just as are all the surroundings of modem men, it is the expression of the amazing development of the sciences of inert matter.

   The profound changes imposed on the habits of men by the applications of science have occurred recently. In fact, we are still in the midst of the industrial revolution. It is difficult, therefore, to know exactly how the substitution of an artificial mode of existence for the natural one and a complete modification of their environment have acted upon civilized human beings. There is, however, no doubt that such an action has taken place. For every living thing depends intimately on its surroundings, and adapts itself to any modification of these surroundings by an appropriate change. We must, therefore, ascertain in what manner we have been influenced by the mode of life, the customs, the diet, the education, and the intellectual and moral habits imposed on us by modern civilization. Have we benefited by such progress? This momentous question can be answered only after a careful examination of the state of the nations which were the first to profit by the application of scientific discoveries.

   It is evident that men have joyfully welcomed modern civilization. They have abandoned the countryside and flocked to the cities and the factories. They eagerly adopt the mode of life and the ways of acting and of thinking of the new era. They lay aside their old habits without hesitation, because these habits demand a greater effort. It is less fatiguing to work in a factory or an office than on a farm. But even in the country, new techniques have relieved the harshness of existence. Modern houses make life easier for everybody. By their comfort, their warmth, and their pleasant lighting, they give their inmates a feeling of rest and contentment. Their up-to-date appointments considerably decrease the labor that, in bygone days, housekeeping demanded from women. Besides the lessening of muscular effort and the possession of comfort, human beings have accepted cheerfully the privilege of never being alone, of enjoying the innumerable distractions of the city, of living among huge crowds, of never thinking. They also appreciate being released, through a purely intellectual education, from the moral restraint imposed upon them by Puritan discipline and religious principles. In truth, modern life has set them free. It incites them to acquire wealth by any and every possible means, provided that these means do not lead them to jail. It opens to them all the countries of the earth. It has liberated them from all superstitions. It allows them the frequent excitation and the easy satisfaction of their sexual appetites. It does away with constraint, discipline, effort, everything that is inconvenient and laborious. The people, especially those belonging to the lower classes, are happier from a material standpoint than in former times. However, some of them progressively cease to appreciate the distractions and the vulgar pleasures of modern life. Occasionally, their health does not permit them to continue indefinitely the alimentary, alcoholic, and sexual excesses to which they are led by the suppression of all discipline. Besides, they are haunted by the fear of losing their employment, their means of subsistence, their savings, their fortune. They are unable to satisfy the need for security that exists in the depth of each of us. In spite of social insurances, they feel uneasy about their future. Those who are capable of thinking become discontented.

   It is certain, nevertheless, that health is improving. Not only has mortality decreased, but each individual is handsomer, larger, and stronger. Today, children are much taller than their parents. An abundance of good food and physical exercises have augmented the size of the body and its muscular strength. Often the best athletes at the international games come from the United States. In the athletic teams of the American universities, there are many individuals who are really magnificent specimens of human beings. Under the present educational conditions, bones and muscles develop perfectly. America has succeeded in reproducing the most admirable forms of ancient beauty. However, the longevity of the men proficient in all kinds of sports and enjoying every advantage of modern life is not greater than that of their ancestors. It may even be less. Their resistance to fatigue and worry seems to have decreased. It appears that the individuals accustomed to natural bodily exercise, to hardships, and to the inclemencies of the weather, as were their fathers, are capable of harder and more sustained efforts than our athletes. We know that the products of modern education need much sleep, good food, and regular habits. Their nervous system is delicate. They do not endure the mode of existence in the large cities, the confinement in offices, the worries of business, and even the everyday difficulties and sufferings of life. They easily break down. Perhaps the triumphs of hygiene, medicine, and modern education are not so advantageous as we are led to believe.

   We should also ask ourselves whether there are no inconveniences attached to the great decrease in the death rate during infancy and youth. In fact, the weak are saved as well as the strong. Natural selection no longer plays its part. No one knows what will be the future of a race so well protected by medical sciences. But we are confronted with much graver problems, which demand immediate solution. While infantile diarrhea, tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid fever, etc., are being eliminated, they are replaced by degenerative diseases. There are also a large number of affections of the nervous system and of the mind. In certain states the multitude of the insane confined in the asylums exceeds that of the patients kept in all other hospitals. Like insanity, nervous disorders and intellectual weakness seem to have become more frequent. They are the most active factors of individual misery and of the destruction of families. Mental deterioration is more dangerous for civilization than the infectious diseases to which hygienists and physicians have so far exclusively devoted their attention.

   In spite of the immense sums of money expended on the education of the children and the young people of the United States, the intellectual elite does not seem to have increased. The average man and woman are, without any doubt, better educated and, superficially at least, more refined. The taste for reading is greater. More reviews and books are bought by the public than in former times. The number of people who are interested in science, letters, and art has grown. But most of them are chiefly attracted by the lowest form of literature and by the imitations of science and of art. It seems that the excellent hygienic conditions in which children are reared, and the care lavished upon them in school, have not raised their intellectual and moral standards. There may possibly be some antagonism between their physical development and their mental size. After all, we do not know whether a larger stature in a given race expresses a state of progress, as is assumed today, or of degeneracy. There is no doubt that children are much happier in the schools where compulsion has been suppressed, where they are allowed exclusively to study the subjects in which they are interested, where intellectual effort and voluntary attention are not exacted. What are the results of such an education? In modern civilization, the individual is characterized chiefly by a fairly great activity, entirely directed toward the practical side of life, by much ignorance, by a certain shrewdness, and by a kind of mental weakness which leaves him under the influence of the environment wherein he happens to be placed. It appears that intelligence itself gives way when character weakens. For this reason perhaps, this quality, characteristic of France in former times, has so markedly failed in that country. In the United States, the intellectual standard remains low, in spite of the increasing number of schools and universities.

   Modern civilization seems to be incapable of producing people endowed with imagination, intelligence, and courage. In practically every country there is a decrease in the intellectual and moral caliber of those who carry the responsibility of public affairs. The financial, industrial, and commercial organizations have reached a gigantic size. They are influenced not only by the conditions of the country where they are established, but also by the state of the neighboring countries and of the entire world. In all nations, economic and social conditions undergo extremely rapid changes. Nearly everywhere the existing form of government is again under discussion. The great democracies find themselves face to face with formidable problems--problems concerning their very existence and demanding an immediate solution. And we realize that, despite the immense hopes which humanity has placed in modern civilization, such a civilization has failed in developing men of sufficient intelligence and audacity to guide it along the dangerous road on which it is stumbling. Human beings have not grown so rapidly as the institutions sprung from their brains. It is chiefly the intellectual and moral deficiencies of the political leaders, and their ignorance, which endanger modern nations.

   Finally, we must ascertain how the new mode of life will influence the future of the race. The response of the women to the modifications brought about in the ancestral habits by industrial civilization has been immediate and decisive. The birth rate has at once fallen. This event has been felt most precociously and seriously in the social classes and in the nations which were the first to benefit from the progress brought about, directly or indirectly, by the applications of scientific discoveries. Voluntary sterility is not a new thing in the history of the world. It has already been observed in a certain period of past civilizations. It is a classical symptom. We know its significance.

   It is evident, then, that the changes produced in our environment by technology have influenced us profoundly. Their effects assume an unexpected character. They are strikingly different from those which were hoped for and which could legitimately be expected from the improvements of all kinds brought to the habitat, the mode of life, the diet, the education, and the intellectual atmosphere of human beings. How has such a paradoxical result been obtained?

   A simple answer could be given to this question. Modern civilization finds itself in a difficult position because it does not suit us. It has been erected without any knowledge of our real nature. It was born from the whims of scientific discoveries, from the appetites of men, their illusions, their theories, and their desires. Although constructed by our efforts, it is not adjusted to our size and shape.

   Obviously, science follows no plan. It develops at random. Its progress depends on fortuitous conditions, such as the birth of men of genius, the form of their mind, the direction taken by their curiosity. It is not at all actuated by a desire to improve the state of human beings. The discoveries responsible for industrial civilization were brought forth at the fancy of the scientists' intuitions and of the more or less casual circumstances of their careers. If Galileo, Newton, or Lavoisier had applied their intellectual powers to the study of body and consciousness, our world probably would be different today. Men of science do not know where they are going. They are guided by chance, by subtle reasoning, by a sort of clairvoyance. Each one of them is a world apart, governed by his own laws. From time to time, things obscure to others become clear to him. In general, discoveries are developed without any prevision of their consequences. These consequences, however, have revolutionized the world and made our civilization what it is.

   From the wealth of science we have selected certain parts. And our choice has in no way been influenced by a consideration of the higher interests of humanity. It has simply followed the direction of our natural tendencies. The principles of the greatest convenience and of the least effort, the pleasure procured by speed, change, and comfort, and also the need of escaping from ourselves, are the determining factors in the success of new inventions. But no one has ever asked himself how we would stand the enormous acceleration of the rhythm of life resulting from rapid transportation, telegraph, telephone, modern business methods, machines that write and calculate, and those that do all the housekeeping drudgery of former times. The tendency responsible for the universal adoption of the airplane, the automobile, the cinema, the telephone, the radio, and, in the near future, of television, is as natural as that which, in the night of the ages, led our ancestors to drink alcohol. Steam-heated houses, electric lighting, elevators, biological morals, and chemical adulteration of food-stuffs have been accepted solely because those innovations were agreeable and convenient. But no account whatever has been taken of their probable effect on human beings.

   In the organization of industrial life the influence of the factory upon the physiological and mental state of the workers has been completely neglected. Modern industry is based on the conception of the maximum production at lowest cost, in order that an individual or a group of individuals may earn as much money as possible. It has expanded without any idea of the true nature of the human beings who run the machines, and without giving any consideration to the effects produced on the individuals and on their descendants by the artificial mode of existence imposed by the factory. The great cities have been built with no regard for us. The shape and dimensions of the skyscrapers depend entirely on the necessity of obtaining the maximum income per square foot of ground, and of offering to the tenants offices and apartments that please them. This caused the construction of gigantic buildings where too large masses of human beings are crowded together. Civilized men like such a way of living. While they enjoy the comfort and banal luxury of their dwelling, they do not realize that they are deprived of the necessities of life. The modern city consists of monstrous edifices and of dark, narrow streets full of gasoline fumes, coal dust, and toxic gases, torn by the noise of the taxicabs, trucks, and trolleys, and thronged ceaselessly by great crowds. Obviously, it has not been planned for the good of its inhabitants.

   Our life is influenced in a large measure by commercial advertising. Such publicity is undertaken only in the interest of the advertisers and not of the consumers. For example, the public has been made to believe that white bread is better than brown. Then, flour has been bolted more and more thoroughly and thus deprived of its most useful components. Such treatment permits its preservation for longer periods and facilitates the making of bread. The millers and the bakers earn more money. The consumers eat an inferior product, believing it to be a superior one. And in the countries where bread is the principal food, the population degenerates. Enormous amounts of money are spent for publicity. As a result, large quantities of alimentary and pharmaceutical products, at the least useless, and often harmful, have become a necessity for civilized men. In this manner the greediness of individuals, sufficiently shrewd to create a popular demand for the goods that they have for sale, plays a leading part in the modern world.

   However, the propaganda that directs our ways of living is not always inspired by selfish motives. Instead of being prompted by the financial interests of individuals or of groups of individuals, it often aims at the common good. But its effect may also be harmful when it emanates from people having a false or incomplete conception of the human being. For example, should physicians, by prescribing special foods, as most of them do, accelerate the growth of young children? In such an instance, their action is based on an incomplete knowledge of the subject. Are larger and heavier children better than smaller ones? Intelligence, alertness, audacity, and resistance to disease do not depend on the same factors as the weight of the body. The education dispensed by schools and universities consists chiefly in a training of the memory and of the muscles, in certain social manners, in a worship of athletics. Are such disciplines really suitable for modern men who need, above all other things, mental equilibrium, nervous stability, sound judgment, audacity, moral courage, and endurance? Why do hygienists behave as though human beings were exclusively liable to infectious diseases, while they are also exposed to the attacks of nervous and mental disorders, and to the weakening of the mind? Although physicians, educators, and hygienists most generously lavish their efforts for the benefit of mankind, they do not attain their goal. For they deal with schemata containing only a part of the reality. The same may be said of all those who substitute their desires, their dreams, or their doctrines for the concrete human being. These theorists build up civilizations which, although designed by them for man, fit only an incomplete or monstrous image of man. The systems of government, entirely constructed in the minds of doctrinaires, are valueless. The principles of the French Revolution, the visions of Marx and Lenin, apply only to abstract men. It must be clearly realized that the laws of human relations are still unknown. Sociology and economics are conjectural sciences--that is, pseudo-sciences.

   Thus, it appears that the environment, which science and technology have succeeded in developing for man, does not suit him, because it has been constructed at random, without regard for his true self.

   To summarize. The sciences of inert matter have made immense progress, while those of living beings remain in a rudimentary state. The slow advance of biology is due to the conditions of human existence, to the intricacy of the phenomena of life, and to the form of our intelligence, which delights in mechanical constructions and mathematical abstractions. The applications of scientific discoveries have transformed the material and mental worlds. These transformations exert on us a profound influence. Their unfortunate effect comes from the fact that they have been made without consideration for our nature. Our ignorance of ourselves has given to mechanics, physics, and chemistry the power to modify at random the ancestral forms of life.

   Man should be the measure of all. On the contrary, he is a stranger in the world that he has created. He has been incapable of organizing this world for himself, because he did not possess a practical knowledge of his own nature. Thus, the enormous advance gained by the sciences of inanimate matter over those of living things is one of the greatest catastrophes ever suffered by humanity. The environment born of our intelligence and our inventions is adjusted neither to our stature nor to our shape. We are unhappy. We degenerate morally and mentally. The groups and the nations in which industrial civilization has attained its highest development are precisely those which are becoming weaker. And whose return to barbarism is the most rapid. But they do not realize it. They are without protection against the hostile surroundings that science has built about them. In truth, our civilization, like those preceding it, has created certain conditions of existence which, for reasons still obscure, render life itself impossible. The anxiety and the woes of the inhabitants of the modern city arise from their political, economic, and social institutions, but, above all, from their own weakness. We are the victims of the backwardness of the sciences of life over those of matter.

   The only possible remedy for this evil is a much more profound knowledge of ourselves. Such a knowledge will enable us to understand by what mechanisms modem existence affects our consciousness and our body. We shall thus learn how to adapt ourselves to our surroundings, and how to change them, should a revolution become indispensable. In bringing to light our true nature, our potentialities, and the way to actualize them, this science will give us the explanation of our physiological weakening, and of our moral and intellectual diseases. We have no other means of learning the inexorable rules of our organic and spiritual activities, of distinguishing the prohibited from the lawful, of realizing that we are not free to modify, according to our fancy, our environment, and ourselves. Since the natural conditions of existence have been destroyed by modern civilization, the science of man has become the most necessary of all sciences.

[-- Man, the Unknown, by Alexis Carrel, Harper & Bros., New York, 1935, Chapt. 1, pp 1-29.]

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