PARASITIC CULTURE 263 



is also, and, perhaps, more characteristically, shown in the religious, 

 social and other vagaries that often bring to light strange perversions 

 of human energy. The movement towards the emancipation of women 

 during the past few decades, with all its numerous and positive merits, 

 abounds, nevertheless, with examples of mental and emotional distemp- 

 ers that find their psychological explanation in the strangulated intellec- 

 tual energies of its votaries. Much of the current unrest among intellec- 

 tual women is probably due to specially cultivated mental organs that 

 find no adequate function to perform. All these forms of neuropsychical 

 strain and instability are, I submit, at least partially explicable in terms 

 of the useless and parasitic culture, which has become more dangerous 

 to modern society in proportion as it has been extended to the masses 

 of men and women. In earlier generations, when fewer men and women 

 were subjected to the artificial culture of the schools, the general detri- 

 ment to society was not so obvious. But now that thousands and tens 

 of thousands of boys and girls, and young men and young women, are 

 having their nervous and mental lives fashioned for activities they never 

 have a chance to perform, it may happen that higher education, instead 

 of being a means of racial advancement, will become a means of racial 

 deterioration. 

 To summarize: 



1. It is a law of the biological world that unused organs become 

 parasitic upon the life, draining off the energy of the individual and 

 tending to become diseased. 



2. It has been found that physical culture which leads to the hyper- 

 trophy of special muscles, entails a drain upon the general vitality. As 

 in life in general, so in physical education, organs that can perform 

 no adequate function are wasteful of human energy. 



3. Experimental psychology is showing that the culture of particular 

 intellectual organs and functions can not be transferred to other organs 

 and functions, except where there are elements in common. Histology 

 and pathology of the nervous system confirm the conclusions of psy- 

 chology in this respect. 



4. Intellectual culture not being transferable must become parasitic 

 and a cause of mental disorganization when it fails of application and 

 usefulness in the life of the individual. Illustrations are to be found 

 in the over-refinements of culture in academic communities, in the 

 nervous instability frequently met with among educated men and 

 women, and in the religious and social vagaries and perversions that 

 crop out in the older and more highly cultivated centers of population. 



5. The artificial culture of the secondary schools and colleges in our 

 democratic society, in proportion as it is diffused throughout larger 

 sections of our population, is likely to develop a cultured proletariat, 

 ill-balanced and inefficient as individuals, and a source of danger in our 

 civilization. 



