Man, the Unknown, by Alexis Carrel
[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 IV
MENTAL ACTIVITIES
SIMULTANEOUSLY with physiological activities, the body manifests other activities, which are called mental. The organs express themselves by mechanical work, heat, electrical phenomena, and chemical transformations, measurable by the techniques of physics and chemistry. The existence of the mind, of consciousness, is detected by other procedures, such as those employed in introspection and in the study of human behavior. The concept of consciousness is equivalent to the analysis made by ourself of our own self, and of the expression of the self of our fellow men. It is convenient to divide the mental activities into intellectual, moral, esthetic, and religious, although such classification is nothing but an artefact. In reality, the body and the soul are views taken of the same object by different methods, abstractions obtained by our reason from the concrete unity of our being. The antithesis of matter and mind represents merely the opposition of two kinds of techniques. The error of Descartes was to believe in the reality of these abstractions and to consider the material and the mental as heterogeneous, as two different things. This dualism has weighed heavily upon the entire history of our knowledge of man. For it has engendered the false problem of the relations of the soul and the body.
There are no such relations. Neither the soul nor the body can be investigated separately. We observe merely a complex being, whose activities have been arbitrarily divided into physiological and mental. Of course, one will always continue to speak of the soul as an entity. Just as one speaks of the setting and the rising of the sun, although everybody knows, since Galileo's time, that the sun is relatively immobile. The soul is the aspect of ourselves that is specific of our nature and distinguishes man from all other animals. We are not capable of defining this familiar and profoundly mysterious entity. What is thought, that strange being, which lives in the depths of ourselves without consuming a measurable quantity of chemical energy? Is it related to the known forms of energy? Could it be a constituent of our universe, ignored by the physicists, but infinitely more important than light? The mind is hidden within the living matter, completely neglected by physiologists and economists, almost unnoticed by physicians. And yet it is the most colossal power of this world. Is it produced by the cerebral cells, like insulin by the pancreas and bile by the liver? From what substances is it elaborated? Does it come from a preexisting element, as glucose from glycogen, or fibrin from fibrinogen? Does it consist of a kind of energy differing from that studied by physics, expressing itself by other laws, and generated by the cells of the cerebral cortex? Or should it be considered as an immaterial being, located outside space and time, outside the dimensions of the cosmic universe, and inserting itself by an unknown procedure into our brain, which would be the indispensable condition of its manifestations and the determining agent of its characteristics?
At all times, and in all countries, great philosophers have devoted their lives to the investigation of these problems. They have not found their solution. We cannot refrain from asking the same questions. But those questions will remain unanswered until new methods for penetrating more deeply into consciousness are discovered. Meanwhile, we feel the urge to know, and not merely to speculate or to dream. If our understanding of this essential, specific aspect of the human being is to progress, we must make a careful study of the phenomena attainable by our present methods of observation, and of their relations with physiological activities. We must also have the courage to explore those regions of the self whose horizons, on every side, are shrouded in dense mist.
Man consists of all his actual and potential activities. The functions which, at certain epochs and in certain environments, remain virtual, are as real as those which constantly express themselves. The writings of Ruysbroeck the Admirable contain as many truths as those of Claude Bernard. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, and the Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine describe two aspects, the former less frequent and the latter more usual, of the same being. The forms of human activity considered by Plato are more specific of our nature than hunger, thirst, sexual appetite, and greed. Since the Renaissance, a privileged position has arbitrarily been given to certain aspects of man. Matter has been separated from mind. To matter has been attributed a greater reality than to mind. Physiology and medicine have directed their attention to the chemical manifestations of the body's activities and to the organic disorders expressed by microscopical lesions of the tissues. Sociology has envisaged man almost uniquely from the point of view of his ability to run machines, of his output of work, of his capacity as a consumer, of his economic value. Hygiene has concerned itself with his health, the means of increasing the population, prevention of infectious diseases, and with every possible addition to our physiological welfare. Pedagogy has directed its efforts toward the intellectual and muscular development of the children. But these sciences have neglected the study of the various aspects of consciousness. They should have examined man in the converging light of physiology and psychology. They should have utilized equitably the data supplied by introspection and by the study of behavior. Both these techniques attain the same object. But one considers man from inside, and the other from outside. There is no reason to give to one a greater value than to the other.
The existence of intelligence is a primary datum of observation. This power of discerning the relations between things assumes a certain value and a certain form in each individual. Intelligence is measurable by appropriate techniques. These measurements deal only with a conventional aspect of the mind. They do not give an accurate idea of intellectual value. But they permit a rough classification of human beings. They are useful in selecting suitable men for unimportant positions, such as those open to factory hands and minor bank or store clerks. In addition, they have brought to light an important fact, the weakness of the mind of most individuals. There is, indeed, an enormous diversity in the quantity and the quality of the intelligence possessed by each one. In this respect certain men are giants, and many, dwarfs. Every human being is born with different intellectual capacities. But, great or small, these potentialities require, in order to be actualized, constant exercise and certain ill-defined environmental conditions. Intellectual power is augmented by the habit of precise reasoning, the study of logic, the use of mathematical language, mental discipline, and complete and deep observation of things. On the contrary, incomplete and superficial observations, a rapid succession of impressions, multiplicity of images, and lack of intellectual discipline hinder the development of mind. We know how unintelligent the children are who live in a crowded city, among multitudes of people and events, in trains and automobiles, in the confusion of the streets, among the absurdities of the cinemas, in schools where intellectual concentration is not required. There are other factors capable of facilitating or hampering the growth of intelligence. They consist of certain habits of living and of eating. But their effect is not clearly known. It seems that overabundance of food and excess of athletics prevent intellectual progress. Athletes are not, in general, very intelligent. In order to reach its highest development the mind probably demands an ensemble of conditions, which has occurred only at certain epochs and in certain countries. What were the mode of existence, the diet, and the education of the men of the great periods of the history of civilization? We are almost totally ignorant of the genesis of intelligence. And we believe that the mind of children can be developed by the mere training of their memory and by the exercises practiced in modern schools!
Intelligence alone is not capable of engendering science. But it is an indispensable factor in its creation. Science, in its turn, fortifies intelligence. It has brought to humanity a new intellectual attitude, the certainty given by observation, experimentation, and logical reasoning. Certainty derived from science is very different from that derived from faith. The latter is more profound. It cannot be shaken by arguments. It resembles the certainty given by clairvoyance. But, strange to say, it is not completely foreign to science. Obviously, great discoveries are not the product of intelligence alone. Men of genius, in addition to their powers of observation and comprehension, possess other qualities, such as intuition and creative imagination. Through intuition they learn things ignored by other men, they perceive relations between seemingly isolated phenomena, they unconsciously feel the presence of the unknown treasure. All great men are endowed with intuition. They know, without analysis, without reasoning, what is important for them to know. A true leader of men does not need psychological tests, or reference cards, when choosing his subordinates. A good judge, without going into the details of legal arguments, and even, according to Cardozo, starting from erroneous premises, is capable of rendering a just sentence. A great scientist instinctively takes the path leading to a discovery. This phenomenon, in former times, was called inspiration.
Men of science belong to two different types--the logical and the intuitive. Science owes its progress to both forms of minds. Mathematics, although a purely logical structure, nevertheless makes use of intuition. Among the mathematicians there are intuitives and logicians, analysts and geometricians. Hermitte and Weierstrass were intuitives. Riemann and Bertrand, logicians. The discoveries of intuition have always to be developed by logic. In ordinary life, as in science, intuition is a powerful but dangerous means of acquiring knowledge. Sometimes it can hardly be distinguished from illusion. Those who rely upon it entirely are liable to mistakes. It is far from being always trustworthy. But the great man, or the simple whose heart is pure, can be led by it to the summits of mental and spiritual life. It is a strange quality. To apprehend reality without the help of intelligence appears inexplicable. One of the aspects of intuition resembles a very rapid deduction from an instantaneous observation. The knowledge that great physicians sometimes possess concerning the present and the future state of their patients is of such a nature. A similar phenomenon occurs when one appraises in a flash a man's value, or senses his virtues and his vices. But under another aspect, intuition takes place quite independently of observation and reasoning. We may be led by it to our goal when we do not know how to attain this goal and even where it is located. This mode of knowledge is closely analogous to clairvoyance, to the sixth sense of Charles Richet.
Clairvoyance and telepathy are a primary datum of scientific observation.1 Those endowed with this power grasp the secret thoughts of other individuals without using their sense organs. They also perceive events more or less remote in space and time. This quality is exceptional. It develops in only a small number of human beings. But many possess it in a rudimentary state. They use it without effort and in a spontaneous fashion. Clairvoyance appears quite commonplace to those having it. It brings to them a knowledge which is more certain than that gained through the sense organs. A clairvoyant reads the thoughts of other people as easily as he examines the expressions of their faces. But the words to see and to feel do not accurately express the phenomena taking place in his consciousness. He does not observe, he does not think. He knows. The reading of thoughts seems to be related simultaneously to scientific, esthetic, and religious inspiration, and to telepathy. Telepathic communications occur frequently. In many instances, at the time of death or of great danger, an individual is brought into a certain kind of relation with another. The dying man, or the victim of an accident, even when such accident is not followed by death, appears to a friend in his usual aspect. The phantom generally remains silent. Sometimes he speaks and announces his death. The clairvoyant may also perceive at a great distance a scene, an individual, a landscape, which he is capable of describing minutely and exactly. There are many forms of telepathy. A number of persons, although not endowed with the gift of clairvoyance, have received, once or twice in their lifetime, a telepathic communication.
1 The existence of telepathic phenomena, as well as other metapsychic phenomena, is not accepted by most biologists and physicians. The attitude of these scientists should not be blamed. For these phenomena are exceptional and elusive. They cannot be reproduced at will. Besides, they are hidden in the enormous mass of the superstitions, lies, and illusions accumulated for centuries by mankind. Although they have been mentioned in every country and at every epoch, they have not been investigated scientifically. It is, nevertheless, a fact that they are a normal, although rare, activity of the human being. The author began their study when he was a young medical student. He was interested in this subject in the same manner as in physiology, chemistry, and pathology. He realized long ago the deficiencies of the methods used by the specialists of psychical research, of the seances where professional mediums often utilize the amateurism of the experimenters. He has made his own observations and experiments. He has used in this chapter the knowledge that he has acquired himself. And not the opinion of others. The study of metapsychics does not differ from that of psychology and physiology. Scientists should not be alarmed by its unorthodox appearance. Several attempts, as is well known, have already been made to apply scientific techniques to clairvoyance and telepathy, and have met with moderate success. The Society for Psychical Research was founded in London in 1882, under the presidency of Henry Sidgwick, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. In 1919, an International Institute of Metapsychics was established in Paris with the approval of the French Government, and under the auspices of the great physiologist, Richet, the discoverer of anaphylaxis, and of a learned physician, Joseph Teissier, Professor of Medicine at the University of Lyons. Among the members of its Committee of Administration are a professor at the Medical School of the University of Paris, and several physicians. Its president, Charles Richet, has written a treatise on Metapsychics. The Institute publishes the Revue Métapsychique. In the United States this branch of human psychology has hardly attracted the attention of the scientific institutions. However, the Department of Psychology of Duke University has undertaken some valuable metapsychical researches under the direction of Dr. J. B. Rhine.
Thus, knowledge of the external world may come to man through other channels than sense organs. It is certain that thought may be transmitted from one individual to another, even if they are separated by long distance. These facts, which belong to the new science of metapsychics, must be accepted just as they are. They constitute a part of the reality. They express a rare and almost unknown aspect of ourselves. They are possibly responsible for the uncanny mental acuteness observed in certain individuals. What extraordinary penetration would result from the union of disciplined intelligence and of telepathic aptitude! Indeed, intelligence, which has given us mastery over the physical world, is not a simple thing. We know only one of its aspects. We endeavor to develop it in the schools and universities. This aspect is but a small part of a marvelous activity consisting of reason, judgment, voluntary attention, intuition, and perhaps clairvoyance. To such a function, man is indebted for his power to apprehend reality, and to understand his environment, his fellow creatures, and himself.
Intellectual activity is, at the same time, distinct and indistinct from the flowing mass of our other states of consciousness. It is a mode of our being and changes as we do. We may compare it to a cinematographic film, which would record the successive phases of a story on a surface varying in sensitiveness from one point to another. It is even more analogous to the valleys and the hills of the long billows of the ocean, which reflect in a different manner the clouds passing in the sky. Intelligence projects its visions on the perpetually changing screen of our affective states, of our sorrows or our joys, of our love or our hatred. To study this aspect of ourselves, we separate it artificially from an indivisible wholeness. In reality, the man who thinks, observes, and reasons is, at the same time, happy or unhappy, disturbed or serene, stimulated or depressed by his appetites, his aversions, and his desires. The world, therefore, assumes a different visage, according to the affective and physiological states, which are the moving background of consciousness during intellectual activity. Everyone knows that love, hate, anger, and fear are capable of bringing confusion even to logic. In order to manifest themselves, these states of consciousness require certain modifications of the chemical exchanges. The more intense the emotional disturbances, the more active become these exchanges. We know that, on the contrary, metabolism is not modified by intellectual work. Affective functions are very near the physiological. They give to each human being his temperament. Temperament changes from one individual to the other, from one race to the other. It is a mixture of mental, physiological, and structural characteristics. It is man himself. It is responsible for his narrowness, his mediocrity, or his strength. What factors bring about the weakening of temperament in certain social groups and in certain nations? It seems that the violence of the emotional moods diminishes when wealth increases, when education is generalized, when diet becomes more elaborate. At the same time, affective functions are observed to separate from intelligence, and to exaggerate unduly certain of their aspects. The forms of life, of education, or of food brought by modern civilization perhaps tend to give us the qualities of cattle, or to develop our emotional impulses inharmoniously.
Moral activity is equivalent to the aptitude possessed by man to impose upon himself a rule of conduct, to choose between several possible acts those which he considers to be good, to get rid of his own selfishness and maliciousness. It creates in him the feeling of obligation, of duty. This peculiar sense is observed only in a small number of individuals. In most of them it remains virtual. But the fact of its existence cannot be denied. If moral sense did not exist, Socrates would not have drunk the hemlock. Today it may be observed, even in a state of high development, in certain social groups and in certain countries. It has manifested itself at all epochs. In the course of the history of mankind its importance has been demonstrated to be fundamental. It is related both to intelligence and to esthetic and religious senses. It impels us to distinguish right from wrong, and to choose right in preference to wrong. In highly civilized beings, will and intelligence are one and the same function. From will and intelligence come all moral values.
Moral sense, like intellectual activity, apparently depends on certain structural and functional states of the body. These states result from the immanent constitution of our tissues and our minds, and also from factors which have acted upon us during our development. In his essay on the Foundation of Ethics, presented at the Royal Society of Sciences of Copenhagen, Schopenhauer expressed the opinion that the moral principle has its basis in our nature. In other terms, human beings possess innate tendencies to selfishness, meanness, or pity. These tendencies appear very early in life. They are obvious to any careful observer. There are, writes Gallavardin, the pure egoists, completely indifferent to the happiness or misery of their fellow men. There are the malicious, who take pleasure in witnessing the misfortunes or sufferings of others, and even in causing them. There are those who suffer themselves from the sufferings of any human being. This power of sympathy engenders kindness and charity, and the acts inspired by those virtues. The capacity of feeling the pain of others is the essential characteristic of the human being who endeavors to alleviate, among his brothers, the burden and the misery of existence. Each one, in a certain measure, is born good, mediocre, or bad. But, like intelligence, moral sense can be developed by education, discipline, and will power.
The definition of good and evil is based both on reason and on the immemorial experience of humanity. It is related to basic necessities of individual and social life. However, it is somewhat arbitrary. But at each epoch and in each country it should be very clearly defined and identical for all classes of individuals. The good is equivalent to justice, charity, beauty. The evil, to selfishness, meanness, ugliness. In modern civilization, the theoretical rules of conduct are based upon the remains of Christian morals. No one obeys them. Modern man has rejected all discipline of his appetites. However, biological and industrial morals have no practical value, because they are artificial and take into consideration only one aspect of the human being. They ignore some of our most essential activities. They do not give to man an armor strong enough to protect him against his own inherent vices.
In order to keep his mental and organic balance, man must impose upon himself an inner rule. The state can thrust legality upon people by force. But not morality. Everyone should realize the necessity of selecting the right and avoiding the wrong, of submitting himself to such necessity by an effort of his own will. The Roman Catholic Church, in its deep understanding of human psychology, has given to moral activities a far higher place than to intellectual ones. The men, honored by her above all others, are neither the leaders of nations, the men of science, nor the philosophers. They are the saints-- that is, those who are virtuous in a heroic manner. When we watch the inhabitants of the new city, we fully understand the practical necessity of moral sense. Intelligence, will power, and morality are very closely related. But moral sense is more important than intelligence. When it disappears from a nation the whole social structure slowly commences to crumble away. In biological research, we have not given so far to moral activities the importance that they deserve. Moral sense must be studied in as positive a manner as intelligence. Such a study is certainly difficult. But the many aspects of this sense in individuals and groups of individuals can easily be discerned. It is also possible to analyze the physiological, psychological, and social effects of morals. Of course, such researches cannot be undertaken in a laboratory. Field work is indispensable. There are still today many human communities which show the various characteristics of moral sense, and the results of its absence or of its presence in different degrees. Without any doubt, moral activities are located within the domain of scientific observation.
In modern civilization individuals whose conduct is inspired by a moral ideal are very seldom encountered. However, such individuals still exist. We cannot help noticing their aspect when we meet them. Moral beauty is an exceptional and very striking phenomenon. He who has contemplated it but once never forgets its aspect. This form of beauty is far more impressive than the beauty of nature and of science. It gives to those who possess its divine gifts, a strange, an inexplicable power. It increases the strength of intellect. It establishes peace among men. Much more than science, art, and religious rites, moral beauty is the basis of civilization.
Esthetic sense exists in the most primitive human beings as in the most civilized. It even survives the disappearance of intelligence. For the idiot and the insane are capable of artistic productions. The creation of forms, or of series of sounds, capable of awakening an esthetic emotion, is an elementary need of our nature. Man has always contemplated with delight animals, flowers, trees, sky, ocean, and mountains. Before the dawn of civilization he used his rough tools to reproduce the profile of living beings on wood, ivory, and stone. Today, when his esthetic sense is not dulled by his education, his habits of life, and the stupidity of factory work, he takes pleasure in making objects after his own inspiration. He enjoys an esthetic feeling in concentrating on such work. In Europe, and especially in France, there are still cooks, butchers, stone-cutters, sabot-makers, carpenters, blacksmiths, cutlers, and mechanics who are artists. Those who make pastry of beautiful shape and delicate taste, who sculpture in lard houses, men, and animals, who forge majestic iron gates, who build handsome pieces of furniture, who carve a rough statue from stone or wood, who weave beautiful wool or silk materials, experience, as much as great sculptors, painters, musicians, or architects, the divine pleasure of creation.
Esthetic activity remains potential in most individuals because industrial civilization has surrounded them with coarse, vulgar, and ugly sights. Because we have been transformed into machines. The worker spends his life repeating the same gesture thousands of times each day. He manufactures only single parts. He never makes the complete object. He is not allowed to use his intelligence. He is the blind horse plodding round and round the whole day long to draw water from a well. Industrialism forbids man the very mental activities which could bring him every day some joy. In sacrificing mind to matter, modern civilization has perpetrated a momentous error. An error all the more dangerous because nobody revolts against it, because it is accepted as easily as the unhealthy life of great cities and the confinement in factories. However, those who experience even a rudimentary esthetic feeling in their work are far happier than those who produce merely in order to be able to consume. In its present form, industry has deprived the worker of originality and beauty. The vulgarity and the gloom of our civilization are due, at least partly, to the suppression from our daily life of the simpler forms of esthetic pleasure.
Esthetic activity manifests itself in both the creation and the contemplation of beauty. It is completely disinterested. In the joy of creation, consciousness escapes from itself and becomes absorbed in another being. Beauty is an inexhaustible source of happiness for those who discover its abode. It is hidden everywhere. It springs up from the hands which model or decorate homemade earthenware, which carve wood, which weave silk, which chisel marble, which open and repair human flesh. It animates the bloody art of the surgeons, as well as that of the painters, the musicians, and the poets. It is present also in the calculations of Galileo, in the visions of Dante, in the experiments of Pasteur, in the rising of the sun on the ocean, in the winter storms on the high mountains. It becomes still more poignant in the immensity of the sidereal and atomic worlds, in the prodigious harmony of the brain cells, or in the silent sacrifice of the man who gives his life for the salvation of others. Under its multiple forms it is always the noblest and most important guest of the human cerebrum, creator of our universe.
The sense of beauty does not develop spontaneously. It exists in our consciousness in a potential state. At certain epochs, in certain circumstances, it remains virtual. It may even vanish in nations which formerly were proud of their great artists and their masterpieces. Today, France despises the majestic remnants of her past and even destroys her natural beauties. The descendants of the men who conceived and erected the monastery of Mount Saint-Michel no longer understand its splendor. They cheerfully accept the indescribable ugliness of the modern houses in Normandy and Brittany, and especially in the Paris suburbs. Like Mount Saint-Michel and the majority of French cities and villages, Paris has been disgraced by a hideous commercialism. During the history of a civilization, the sense of beauty, like moral sense, grows, reaches its optimum, declines, and disappears.
In modern men, we seldom observe the manifestations of mystical activity, or religious sense.2 The tendency to mysticity, even in its most rudimentary form, is exceptional. Much more exceptional than moral sense. Nevertheless, it remains one of the essential human activities. Humanity has been more thoroughly impregnated with religious inspiration than with philosophical thought. In the ancient city, religion was the basis of family and social life. The cathedrals and the ruins of the temples erected by our ancestors still cover the soil of Europe. Indeed, their meaning is today scarcely understood. To the majority of modern men the churches are only museums for dead religions. The attitude of the tourists visiting the cathedrals of Europe clearly shows how completely religious sense has been eliminated from modern life. Mystical activity has been banished from most religions. Even its meaning has been forgotten. Such ignorance is probably responsible for the decadence of the churches. The strength of a religion depends upon the focuses of mystical activity where its life constantly grows. However, religious sense remains today an indispensable activity of the consciousness of a number of individuals. It is again manifesting itself among people of high culture. And, strange to say, the monasteries of the great religious orders are too small to receive all the young men and women who crave to enter the spiritual world through asceticism and mysticity.
2 Although religious activity has played an important part in the history of humanity, one cannot acquire easily a superficial knowledge of this form, now so rare, of our mental functions. Indeed, the literature concerning asceticism and mysticity is immense. The writings of the great Christian mystics are at our disposal. One may meet also, even in the new city, men and women who are centers of true religious activity. Generally, however, the mystics are out of our reach in monasteries. Or they occupy humble positions and are completely ignored. The author became interested in asceticism and mysticity at the same time as in metapsychical phenomena. He has known a few genuine mystics and saints. He does not hesitate to mention mysticity in this book, because he has observed its manifestations. But he realizes that his description of this aspect of mental activity will please neither men of science nor men of religion. Scientists will consider such an attempt as puerile or insane. Ecclesiastics, as improper and aborted, because mystical phenomena belong only in an indirect way to the domain of science. Both these criticisms will be justified. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to count mysticism among fundamental human activities.
Religious activity assumes various aspects, as does moral activity. In its more elementary state it consists of a vague aspiration toward a power transcending the material and mental forms of our world, a kind of unformulated prayer, a quest for more absolute beauty than that of art or science. It is akin to esthetic activity. The love of beauty leads to mysticism. In addition, religious rites are associated with various forms of art. Song easily becomes transformed into prayer. The beauty pursued by the mystic is still richer and more indefinable than the ideal of the artist. It has no form. It cannot be expressed in any language. It hides within the things of the visible world. It manifests itself rarely. It requires an elevation of the mind toward a being who is the source of all things, toward a power, a center of forces, whom the mystic calls God. At each period of history in each nation there have been individuals possessing to a high degree this particular sense. Christian mysticism constitutes the highest form of religious activity. It is more integrated with the other activities of consciousness than are Hindu and Tibetan mysticisms. Over Asiatic religions it has the advantage of having received, in its very infancy, the lessons of Greece and of Rome. Greece gave it intelligence, and Rome, order and measure.
Mysticism, in its highest state, comprises a very elaborate technique, a strict discipline. First, the practice of asceticism. It is as impossible to enter the realm of mysticity without ascetic preparation as to become an athlete without submitting to physical training. Initiation to asceticism is hard. Therefore, very few men have the courage to venture upon the mystic way. He who wants to undertake this rough and difficult journey must renounce all the things of this world and, finally, himself. Then he may have to dwell for a long time in the shadows of spiritual night. While asking for the grace of God and deploring his degradation and undeservedness, he undergoes the purification of his senses. It is the first and dark stage of mystic life. He progressively weans himself from himself. His prayer becomes contemplation. He enters into illuminative life. He is not capable of describing his experiences. When he attempts to express what he feels, he sometimes borrows, as did St. John of the Cross, the language of carnal love. His mind escapes from space and time. He apprehends an ineffable being. He reaches the stage of unitive life. He is in God and acts with Him.
The life of all great mystics consists of the same steps. We must accept their experiences as described by them. Only those who themselves have led the life of prayer are capable of understanding its peculiarities. The search for God is, indeed, an entirely personal undertaking. By the exercise of the normal activities of his consciousness, man may endeavor to reach an invisible reality both immanent in and transcending the material world. Thus, he throws himself into the most audacious adventure that one can dare. He may be looked upon as a hero, or a lunatic. But nobody should ask whether mystical experience is true or false, whether it is autosuggestion, hallucination, or a journey of the soul beyond the dimensions of our world and its union with a higher reality. One must be content with having an operational concept of such an experience. Mysticism is splendidly generous. It brings to man the fulfillment of his highest desires. Inner strength, spiritual light, divine love, ineffable peace. Religious intuition is as real as esthetic inspiration. Through the contemplation of superhuman beauty, mystics and poets may reach the ultimate truth.
These fundamental activities are not distinct from one another. Their limits are convenient, but artificial. They may be compared to an ameba whose multiple and transitory limbs, the pseudopods, consist of a single substance. They are also analogous to the unrolling of superposed films, which remain undecipherable unless separated from one another. Everything happens as if the bodily substratum, while flowing in time, showed several simultaneous aspects of its unity. Aspects, which our techniques divide into physiological and mental. Under its mental aspect, human activity ceaselessly modifies its form, its quality, and its intensity. This essentially simple phenomenon is described as an association of different functions. The plurality of the manifestations of the mind is born from a methodological necessity. In order to describe consciousness we are obliged to separate it into parts. As the pseudopods of the ameba are the ameba itself, the aspects of consciousness are man himself, and blend in his oneness.
Intelligence is almost useless to those who possess nothing else. The pure intellectual is an incomplete human being. He is unhappy because he is not capable of entering the world that he understands. The ability to grasp the relations between phenomena remains sterile unless associated with other activities, such as moral sense, affectivity, will power, judgment, imagination, and some organic strength. It can only be utilized at the cost of an effort. Those who want to conquer real knowledge have to endure a long and hard preparation. They submit themselves to a kind of asceticism. In the absence of concentration, intelligence is unproductive. Once disciplined, it becomes capable of pursuing truth. But to reach its goal it requires the help of moral sense. Great scientists always have profound intellectual honesty. They follow reality wherever led by it. They never seek to substitute their own desires for facts, or to hide these facts when they become troublesome. The man who longs for the contemplation of truth has to establish peace within him. His mind should be like the still water of a lake. Affective activities, however, are indispensable to the progress of intelligence. But they should consist only of enthusiasm, that passion which Pasteur called the inner god. Thought - grows only within those who are capable of love and hate. It requires the aid of the whole body, besides that of the other mental functions. When intelligence ascends the highest summits and is illuminated by intuition and creative imagination, it still needs a moral and organic frame.
The exclusive development of the affective, esthetic, or mystic activities brings into being inferior individuals, idle dreamers, narrow, unsound minds. Such types are often encountered, although intellectual education is given nowadays to everybody. However, high culture is not necessary to fertilize esthetic and religious senses and to bring forth artists, poets, and mystics, all those who disinterestedly contemplate the various aspects of beauty. The same is true of moral sense and judgment. These activities are almost sufficient within themselves. They do not require to be associated with great intelligence to supply man with an aptitude for happiness. They seem to strengthen organic functions. Their development must be the supreme goal of education, because they give equilibrium to the individual. They make him a solid building-stone of the social edifice. To those who constitute the multitudes of industrial civilization, moral sense is far more necessary than intelligence.
The distribution of mental activities varies greatly in the different social groups. Most civilized men manifest only an elementary form of consciousness. They are capable of the easy work which, in modern society, insures the survival of the individual. They produce, they consume, they satisfy their physiological appetites. They also take pleasure in watching, among great crowds, athletic spectacles, in seeing childish and vulgar moving pictures, in being rapidly transported without effort, or in looking at swiftly moving objects. They are soft, sentimental, lascivious, and violent. They have no moral, esthetic, or religious sense. They are extremely numerous. They have engendered a vast herd of children whose intelligence remains rudimentary. They constitute a part of the population of the three million criminals living in freedom, of those inhabiting the jails, and of the feeble-minded, the morons, the insane, who overflow from asylums and specialized hospitals.
The majority of criminals, who are not in penitentiaries, belong to a higher class. They are marked, however, by the atrophy of certain activities of consciousness. The born criminal, invented by Lombroso, does not exist. But there are born defectives who become criminals. In reality, many criminals are normal. They are often more clever than policemen and judges. Sociologists and social workers do not meet them during their survey of prisons. The gangsters and crooks, heroes of the cinema and the daily papers, sometimes display normal and even high mental, affective, and esthetic activities. But their moral sense has not developed. This disharmony in the world of consciousness is a phenomenon characteristic of our time. We have succeeded in giving organic health to the inhabitants of the modern city. But, despite the immense sums spent on education, we have failed to develop completely their intellectual and moral activities. Even in the elite of the population, consciousness often lacks harmony and strength. The elementary functions are dispersed, of poor quality, and of low intensity. Some of them may be quite deficient. The mind of most people can be compared to a reservoir containing a small quantity of water of doubtful composition and under low pressure. And that of only a few individuals to a reservoir containing a large volume of pure water under high pressure.
The happiest and most useful men consist of a well-integrated whole of intellectual, moral, and organic activities. The quality of these activities, and their equilibrium, gives to such a type its superiority over the others. Their intensity determines the social level of a given individual. It makes of him a tradesman or a bank president, a little physician or a celebrated professor, a village mayor or a president of the United States. The development of complete human beings must be the aim of our efforts. It is only with such thoroughly developed individuals that a real civilization can be constructed. There is also a class of men who, although as disharmonious as the criminal and the insane, are indispensable to modern society. They are the men of genius. These are characterized by a monstrous growth of some of their psychological activities. A great artist, a great scientist, a great philosopher, is rarely a great man. He is generally a man of common type, with one side over-developed. Genius can be compared to a tumor growing upon a normal organism. These ill-balanced beings are often unhappy. But they give to the entire community the benefit of their mighty impulses. Their disharmony results in the progress of civilization. Humanity has never gained anything from the efforts of the crowd. It is driven onward by the passion of a few abnormal individuals, by the flame of their intelligence, by their ideal of science, of charity, and of beauty.
Mental activities evidently depend on physiological activities. Organic modifications are observed to correspond to the succession of the states of consciousness. Inversely, psychological phenomena are determined by certain functional states of the organs. The whole consisting of body and consciousness is modifiable by organic as well as by mental factors. Mind and organism commune in man, like form and marble in a statue. One cannot change the form without breaking the marble. The brain is supposed to be the seat of the psychological functions, because its lesions are followed by immediate and profound disorders of consciousness. It is probably by means of the cerebral cells that mind inserts itself in matter. Brain and intelligence develop simultaneously in children. When senile atrophy occurs, intelligence decreases. The presence of the spirochetes of syphilis around the pyramidal cells brings about delusions of grandeur. When the virus of lethargic encephalitis attacks the brain substance, profound disturbances of personality appear. Mental activity suffers temporary changes under the influence of alcohol carried by blood from the stomach to the nervous cells. The fall of blood pressure due to a hemorrhage suppresses all manifestations of consciousness. In short, mental life is observed to depend on the state of the cerebrum.
These observations do not suffice to demonstrate that the brain alone is the organ of consciousness. In fact, the cerebral centers are not composed exclusively of nervous matter. They also consist of fluids in which the cells are immersed and whose composition is regulated by blood serum. And blood serum contains the gland and tissue secretions that diffuse through the entire body. Every organ is present in the cerebral cortex by the agency of blood and lymph. Therefore, our states of consciousness are linked to the chemical constitution of the humors of the brain as much as to the structural state of its cells. When the organic medium is deprived of the secretions of the suprarenal glands, the patient falls into a profound depression. He resembles a cold-blooded animal. The functional disorders of the thyroid gland bring about either nervous and mental excitation or apathy. Moral idiots, feeble-minded, and criminals are found in families where lesions of this gland are hereditary. Everyone knows how human personality is modified by diseases of the liver, the stomach, and the intestines. Obviously, the cells of the organs discharge into the bodily fluids certain substances that react upon our mental and spiritual functions.
The testicle, more than any other gland, exerts a profound influence upon the strength and quality of the mind. In general, great poets, artists, and saints, as well as conquerors, are strongly sexed. The removal of the genital glands, even in adult individuals, produces some modifications of the mental state. After extirpation of the ovaries, women become apathetic and lose part of their intellectual activity or moral sense. The personality of men who have undergone castration is altered in a more or less marked way. The historical cowardice of Abelard in face of the passionate love and sacrifice of Héloïse was probably due to the brutal mutilation imposed upon him. Almost all great artists were great lovers. Inspiration seems to depend on a certain condition of the sexual glands. Love stimulates mind when it does not attain its object. If Beatrice had been the mistress of Dante, there would perhaps be no Divine Comedy. The great mystics often used the expressions of Solomon's Song. It seems that their un-assuaged sexual appetites urged them more forcibly along the path of renouncement and complete sacrifice. A workman's wife can request the services of her husband every day. But the wife of an artist or of a philosopher has not the right to do so as often. It is well known that sexual excesses impede intellectual activity. In order to reach its full power, intelligence seems to require both the presence of well-developed sexual glands and the temporary repression of the sexual appetite. Freud has rightly emphasized the capital importance of sexual impulses in the activities of consciousness. However, his observations refer chiefly to sick people. His conclusions should not be generalized to include normal individuals, especially those who are endowed with a strong nervous system and mastery over themselves. While the weak, the nervous, and the unbalanced become more abnormal when their sexual appetites are repressed, the strong are rendered still stronger by practicing such a form of asceticism.
The dependence of mental activities and physiological functions does not agree with the classical conception that places the soul exclusively in the brain. In fact, the entire body appears to be the substratum of mental and spiritual energies. Thought is the offspring of the endocrine glands as well as of the cerebral cortex. The integrity of the organism is indispensable to the manifestations of consciousness. Man thinks, invents, loves, suffers, admires, and prays with his brain and all his organs.
Each state of consciousness probably has a corresponding organic expression. Emotions, as is well known, determine the dilatation or the contraction of the small arteries, through the vasomotor nerves. They are, therefore, accompanied by changes in the circulation of the blood in tissues and organs. Pleasure causes the skin of the face to flush. Anger and fear turn it white. In certain individuals, bad news may bring about a spasm of the coronary arteries, anemia of the heart, and sudden death. The affective states act on all the glands by increasing or decreasing their circulation. They stimulate or stop the secretions, or modify their chemical constitution. The desire for food causes salivation, even in the absence of any aliment. In Pavlov's dogs, salivation followed the sound of a bell, if the bell had previously rung while the animal was being fed. An emotion may set in activity complex mechanisms. When one induces a sentiment of fear in a cat, as Cannon did in a famous experiment, the vessels of the suprarenal glands become dilated, the glands secrete adrenalin, adrenalin increases the pressure of the blood and the rapidity of its circulation, and prepares the whole organism for attack or defense.
Thus, envy, hate, fear, when these sentiments are habitual, are capable of starting organic changes and genuine diseases. Moral suffering profoundly disturbs health. Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young. The old clinicians thought that protracted sorrows and constant anxiety prepare the way for the development of cancer. Emotions induce, in especially sensitive individuals, striking modifications of the tissues and humors. The hair of a Belgian woman condemned to death by the Germans became white during the night preceding the execution. On the arm of another woman, an eruption appeared during a bombardment. After the explosion of each shell, the eruption became redder and larger. Such phenomena are far from being exceptional. Joltrain has proved that a moral shock may cause marked changes in the blood. A patient, after having experienced great fright, showed a drop in arterial pressure, and a decrease in the number of the white corpuscles, and in the coagulation time of blood plasma. The French expression, se faire du mauvais sang, is literally true. Thought can generate organic lesions. The instability of modern life, the ceaseless agitation, and the lack of security create states of consciousness which bring about nervous and organic disorders of the stomach and of the intestines, defective nutrition, and passage of intestinal microbes into the circulatory apparatus. Colitis and the accompanying infections of the kidneys and of the bladder are the remote results of mental and moral unbalance. Such diseases are almost unknown in social groups where life is simpler and not so agitated, where anxiety is less constant. In a like manner, those who keep the peace of their inner self in the midst of the tumult of the modern city are immune from nervous and organic disorders.
Physiological activities must remain outside the field of consciousness. They are disturbed when we turn our attention toward them. Thus, psychoanalysis, in directing the mind of the patient upon himself, may aggravate his state of unbalance. Instead of indulging in self-analysis, it is better to escape from oneself through an effort that does not scatter the mind. When our activity is set toward a precise end, our mental and organic functions become completely harmonized. The unification of the desires, the application of the mind to a single purpose, produce a sort of inner peace. Man integrates himself by meditation, just as by action. But he should not be content with contemplating the beauty of the ocean, of the mountains, and of the clouds, the masterpieces of the artists and the poets, the majestic constructions of philosophical thought, the mathematical formulas which express natural laws. He must also be the soul which strives to attain a moral ideal, searches for light in the darkness of this world, marches forward along the mystic way, and renounces itself in order to apprehend the invisible substratum of the universe.
The unification of the activities of consciousness leads to greater harmony of organic and mental functions. In the communities where moral sense and intelligence are stimultaneously developed, nervous and nutritive diseases, criminality, and insanity are rare. In such groups, the individual is happier. But when psychological activities become more intense and specialized, they may bring about certain disturbances of the health. Those who pursue moral, scientific, or religious ideals do not seek physiological security or longevity. To those ideals they sacrifice themselves. It seems also that certain states of consciousness determine true pathological changes. Most of the great mystics have endured physiological and mental suffering, at least during a part of their life. Moreover, contemplation may be accompanied by nervous phenomena resembling those of hysteria and clairvoyance. In the history of the saints, one reads descriptions of ecstasies, thought transmission, visions of events happening at a distance, and even of levitations. According to the testimony of their companions, several of the Christian mystics have manifested this strange phenomenon. The subject, absorbed in his prayer, totally unconscious of the outside world, gently rises above the ground. But it has not been possible so far to bring these extraordinary facts into the field of scientific observation.
Certain spiritual activities may cause anatomical as well as functional modifications of the tissues and the organs. These organic phenomena are observed in various circumstances, among them being the state of prayer. Prayer should be understood, not as a mere mechanical recitation of formulas, but as a mystical elevation, an absorption of consciousness in the contemplation of a principle both permeating and transcending our world. Such a psychological state is not intellectual. It is incomprehensible to philosophers and scientists, and inaccessible to them. But the simple seem to feel God as easily as the heat of the sun or the kindness of a friend. The prayer which is followed by organic effects is of a special nature. First, it is entirely disinterested. Man offers himself to God. He stands before Him like the canvas before the painter or the marble before the sculptor. At the same time, he asks for His grace, exposes his needs and those of his brothers in suffering. Generally, the patient who is cured is not praying for himself. But for another. Such a type of prayer demands complete renunciation--that is, a higher form of asceticism. The modest, the ignorant, and the poor are more capable of this self-denial than the rich and the intellectual. When it possess such characteristics, prayer may set in motion a strange phenomenon, the miracle,
In all countries, at all times, people have believed in the existence of miracles, in the more or less rapid healing of the sick at places of pilgrimage, at certain sanctuaries.3 But after the great impetus of science during the nineteenth century, such belief completely disappeared. It was generally admitted, not only that miracles did not exist, but that they could not exist. As the laws of thermodynamics make perpetual motion impossible, physiological laws oppose miracles. Such is still the attitude of most physiologists and physicians. However, in view of the facts observed during the last fifty years this attitude cannot be sustained. The most important cases of miraculous healing have been recorded by the Medical Bureau of Lourdes. Our present conception of the influence of prayer upon pathological lesions is based upon the observation of patients who have been cured almost instantaneously of various affections, such as peritoneal tuberculosis, cold abscesses, osteitis, suppurating wounds, lupus, cancer, etc. The process of healing changes little from one individual to another. Often, an acute pain. Then a sudden sensation of being cured. In a few seconds, a few minutes, at the most a few hours, wounds are cicatrized, pathological symptoms disappear, appetite returns. Sometimes functional disorders vanish before the anatomical lesions are repaired. The skeletal deformations of Pott's disease, the cancerous glands, may still persist two or three days after the healing of the main lesions. The miracle is chiefly characterized by an extreme acceleration of the processes of organic repair. There is no doubt that the rate of cicatrization of the anatomical defects is much greater than the normal one. The only condition indispensable to the occurrence of the phenomenon is prayer. But there is no need for the patient himself to pray, or even to have any religious faith. It is sufficient that some one around him be in a state of prayer. Such facts are of profound significance. They show the reality of certain relations, of still unknown nature, between psychological and organic processes. They prove the objective importance of the spiritual activities, which hygienists, physicians, educators, and sociologists have almost always neglected to study. They open to man a new world.
3 Miraculous cures seldom occur. Despite their small number, they prove the existence of organic and mental processes that we do not know. They show that certain mystic states, such as that of prayer, have definite effects. They are stubborn, irreducible facts, which must be taken into account. The author knows that miracles are as far from scientific orthodoxy as mysticity. The investigation of such phenomena is still more delicate than that of telepathy and clairvoyance. But science has to explore the entire field of reality. He has attempted to learn the characteristics of this mode of healing, as well as of the ordinary modes. He began this study in 1902, at a time when the documents were scarce, when it was difficult for a young doctor, and dangerous for his future career, to become interested in such a subject. Today, any physician can observe the patients brought to Lourdes, and examine the records kept in the Medical Bureau. Lourdes is the center of an International Medical Association, composed of many members. There is a slowly growing literature about miraculous healing. Physicians are becoming more interested in these extraordinary facts. Several cases have been reported at the Medical Society of Bordeaux by professors of the medical school of the university and other eminent physicians. The Committee on Medicine and Religion of the New York Academy of Medicine, presided over by Dr. F. Peterson, has recently sent to Lourdes one of its members in order to begin a study of this important subject.
Mental activities are influenced by social environment as profoundly as by the fluids of the body. Like physiological activities, they improve with exercise. Driven by the ordinary necessities of life, organs, bones, and muscles work without interruption. Thus, they are compelled to develop. But, according to the mode of existence of the individual, they become more or less harmonious and strong. The constitution of an Alpine guide is much superior to that of an inhabitant of New York. Nevertheless, the organs and muscles of the latter suffice for sedentary life. Mind, on the contrary, does not unfold spontaneously. The son of a scholar inherits no knowledge from his father. If left alone on a desert island, he would be no better than Cro-Magnon men. The powers of the mind remain virtual in the absence of education and of an environment bearing the stamp of the intellectual, moral, esthetic, and religious accomplishments of our ancestors. The psychological state of the social group determines, in a large measure, the number, the quality, and the intensity of the manifestations of individual consciousness. If the social environment is mediocre, intelligence and moral sense fail to develop. These activities may become thoroughly vitiated by bad surroundings. We are immersed in the habits of our epoch, like tissue cells in the organic fluids. Like these cells, we are incapable of defending ourselves against the influence of the community. The body more effectively resists the cosmic than the psychological world. It is guarded against the incursions of its physical and chemical enemies by the skin, and the digestive and respiratory mucosas. On the contrary, the frontiers of the mind are entirely open. Consciousness is thus exposed to the attacks of its intellectual and spiritual surroundings. According to the nature of these attacks, it develops in a normal or defective manner.
Intelligence depends largely on education and environment. Also, on inner discipline, on the current ideas of one's time and one's group. It has to be molded by the habit of logical thinking, by that of mathematical language, and by a methodical study of humanities and sciences. School-teachers and university professors, as well as libraries, laboratories, books, and reviews, are adequate means for developing the mind. Even in the absence of professors, books could suffice for this task. One may live in an unintelligent social environment and yet acquire a high culture. The education of the intelligence is relatively easy. But the formation of the moral, esthetic, and religious activities is very difficult. The influence of environment on these aspects of consciousness is much more subtle. No one can learn to distinguish right from wrong, and beauty from vulgarity, by taking a course of lectures. Morality, art, and religion are not taught like grammar, mathematics, and history. To feel and to know are two profoundly different mental states. Formal teaching reaches intelligence alone. Moral sense, beauty, and mysticity are learned only when present in our surroundings and part of our daily life. We have mentioned that the growth of intelligence is obtained by training and exercise, whereas the other activities of consciousness demand a group with whose existence they are identified.
Civilization has not succeeded, so far, in creating an environment suitable to mental activities. The low intellectual and spiritual value of most human beings is due largely to deficiencies of their psychological atmosphere. The supremacy of matter and the dogmas of industrial religion have destroyed culture, beauty, and morals, as they were understood by the Christian civilization, mother of modern science. The small social groups, possessing their own individuality and traditions, have also been broken up by the changes in their habits. The intellectual classes have been debased by the immense spread of newspapers, cheap literature, radios, and cinemas. Unintelligence is becoming more and more general, in spite of the excellence of the courses given in schools, colleges, and universities. Strange to say, it often exists with advanced scientific knowledge. School children and students form their minds on the silly programs of public entertainments. Social environment, instead of favoring the growth of intelligence, opposes it with all its might. However, it is more propitious to the development of the appreciation of beauty. America has imported the greatest musicians of Europe. Its museums are organized with a magnificence so far unequaled. Industrial art is growing rapidly. Architecture has entered into a period of triumph. Buildings of extraordinary splendor have transformed the aspect of large cities. Each individual, if he wishes, may cultivate his esthetic sense in a certain measure.
Moral sense is almost completely ignored by modern society. We have, in fact, suppressed its manifestations. All are imbued with irresponsibility. Those who discern good and evil, who are industrious and provident, remain poor and are looked upon as morons. The woman who has several children, who devotes herself to their education, instead of to her own career, is considered weak-minded. If a man saves a little money for his wife and the education of his children, this money is stolen from him by enterprising financiers. Or taken by the government and distributed to those who have been reduced to want by their own improvidence and the shortsightedness of manufacturers, bankers, and economists. Artists and men of science supply the community with beauty, health, and wealth. They live and die in poverty. Robbers enjoy prosperity in peace. Gangsters are protected by politicians and respected by judges. They are the heroes whom children admire at the cinema and imitate in their games. A rich man has every right. He may discard his aging wife, abandon his old mother to penury, rob those who have entrusted their money to him, without losing the consideration of his friends. Homosexuality flourishes. Sexual morals have been cast aside. Psychoanalysts supervise men and women in their conjugal relations. There is no difference between wrong and right, just and unjust. Criminals thrive at liberty among the rest of the population. No one makes any objection to their presence. Ministers have rationalized religion. They have destroyed its mystical basis. But they do not succeed in attracting modern men. In their half-empty churches they vainly preach a weak morality. They are content with the part of policemen, helping in the interest of the wealthy to preserve the framework of present society. Or, like politicians, they flatter the appetites of the crowd.
Man is powerless against such psychological attacks. He necessarily yields to the influence of his group. If one lives in the company of criminals or fools, one becomes a criminal or a fool. Isolation is the only hope of salvation. But where will the inhabitants of the new city find solitude? "Thou canst retire within thyself when thou wouldst," said Marcus Aurelius. "No retreat is more peaceful or less troubled than that encountered by man in his own soul." But we are not capable of such an effort. We cannot fight our social surroundings victoriously.
The mind is not as robust as the body. It is remarkable that mental diseases by themselves are more numerous than all the other diseases put together. Hospitals for the insane are full to overflowing, and unable to receive all those who should be restrained. In the State of New York, according to an article in the Psychiatric Quarterly by Mr. Benjamin Malzberg and Dr. H. M. Pollock, one person out of every twenty-two has to be placed in an asylum at some time or other. In the whole of the United States, the hospitals care for almost eight times more feeble-minded or lunatics than consumptives. Each year, about sixty-eight thousand new cases are admitted to insane asylums and similar institutions. If the admissions continue at such a rate, about one million of the children and young people who are today attending schools and colleges will, sooner or later, be confined in asylums. In the state hospitals there were, in 1932, 340,000 insane. There were also in special institutions 81,580 feeble-minded and epileptics, and 10,930 on parole. These statistics do not include the mental cases treated in private hospitals. In the whole country, besides the insane, there are 500,000 feebleminded. And in addition, surveys made under the auspices of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene have revealed that at least 400,000 children are so unintelligent that they cannot profitably follow the courses of the public schools. In fact, the individuals who are mentally deranged are far more numerous. It is estimated that several hundred thousand persons, not mentioned in any statistics, are affected with psychoneuroses. These figures show how great is the fragility of the consciousness of civilized men, and how important for modern society is the problem of mental health. The diseases of the mind are a serious menace. They are more dangerous than tuberculosis, cancer, heart and kidney diseases, and even typhus, plague, and cholera. They are to be feared, not only because they increase the number of criminals, but chiefly because they profoundly weaken the dominant white races. It should be realized that there are not many more feeble-minded and insane among the criminals than in the rest of the nation. Indeed, a large number of defectives are found in the prisons. But we must not forget that most intelligent criminals are at large. The frequency of neurosis and psychosis is doubtless the expression of a very grave defect of modern civilization. The new habits of existence have certainly not improved our mental health.
Modern medicine has failed in its endeavor to assure to everyone the possession of the activities which are truly specific of the human being. Physicians are utterly incapable of protecting consciousness against its unknown enemies. The symptoms of mental diseases and the different types of feeblemindedness have been well classified. But we are completely ignorant of the nature of these disorders. We have not ascertained whether they are due to structural lesions of the brain or to changes in the composition of blood-plasma, or to both these causes. It is probable that our nervous and psychological activities depend simultaneously on the anatomical conditions of the cerebral cells, on the substances set free in the blood by endocrine glands and other tissues, and on our mental states themselves. Functional disorders of the glands, as well as structural lesions of the brain, may be responsible for neuroses and psychoses. Even a complete knowledge of these phenomena would not bring about great progress. The pathology of the mind depends on psychology, as the pathology of the organs on physiology. But physiology is a science, while psychology is not. Psychology awaits its Claude Bernard or its Pasteur. It is in the state of surgery when surgeons were barbers, of chemistry before Lavoisier, at the epoch of the alchemists. However, it would be unjust to incriminate modern psychologists and their methods for the rudimentary condition of their science. The extreme complexity of the subject is the main cause of their ignorance. There are no techniques permitting the exploration of the unknown world of the nervous cells, of their association and projection fibers, and of the cerebral and mental processes.
It has not been possible to bring to light any precise relations between schizophrenic manifestations, for example, and structural alterations of the cerebral cortex. The hopes of Kroepelin, the famous pioneer in the maladies of the mind, have not materialized. The anatomical study of these diseases has not thrown much light on their nature. Mental disorders are perhaps not localized in space. Some symptoms can be attributed to a lack of harmony in the temporal succession of nervous phenomena, to changes in the value of time for cells constituting a functional system. We know also that the lesions produced in certain regions of the cerebrum, either by the spirochetes of syphilis or by the mysterious agent of encephalitis lethargica, bring about definite modifications of the personality. This knowledge is vague, uncertain, in process of formation. However, it is imperative not to wait for a complete understanding of the nature of insanity before developing a truly effective hygiene of the mind.
The discovery of the causes of mental diseases would be more important than that of their nature. Such knowledge could lead to the prevention of these maladies. Feeblemindedness and insanity are perhaps the price of industrial civilization, and of the resulting changes in our ways of life. However, these affections are often part of the inheritance received from his parents by each individual. They manifest themselves among people whose nervous system is already unbalanced. In the families which have already produced neurotic, queer, oversensitive individuals, the insane and the feebleminded suddenly appear. However, they also spring up from lineages which have so far been free from mental disorders. There are certainly other causes of insanity than hereditary factors. We must, therefore, ascertain how modern life acts upon consciousness.
In successive generations of pure-bred dogs, nervousness is often observed to increase. We find among these animals individuals closely resembling the feeble-minded and the insane. This phenomenon occurs in subjects brought up under artificial conditions, living in comfortable kennels, and provided with choice food quite different from that of their ancestors, the shepherds, which fought and defeated the wolves. It seems that the new conditions of existence, imposed upon dogs, as well as upon men, tend to modify the nervous system unfavorably. But experiments of long duration are necessary in order to obtain a precise knowledge of the mechanism of this degeneration. The factors promoting the development of idiocy and insanity are of great complexity. Dementia praecox and circular insanity manifest themselves more especially in the social groups where life is restless and disordered, food too elaborate or too poor, and syphilis frequent. And also when the nervous system is hereditarily unstable, when moral discipline has been suppressed, when selfishness, irresponsibility, and dispersion are customary. There are probably some relations between these factors and the genesis of psychoses. The modern habits of living hide a fundamental defect. In the environment created by technology, our most specific functions develop incompletely. Despite the marvels of scientific civilization, human personality tends to dissolve.
[-- Man, the Unknown, by Alexis Carrel, Harper & Bros., New York, 1935, Chapt. 4, pp 117-158.]