1 64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



effort to restore the equilibrium of brain centers. Dancing is a pastime 

 as ancient as war itself. It involves none but the very oldest brain 

 paths. It depends upon the very simplest and most primitive form of 

 reaction, carrying us back to the infancy of man and allowing us to revel 

 in the old and racially familiar memories. It affords complete rest and 

 relaxation and tends quickly to establish equilibrium. 



To those who do not understand this law of psychological compensa- 

 tion and who have been accustomed to regard the world as getting very 

 serious and civilized and dignified, intent on moral and social improve- 

 ment, there is something almost as ludicrous in the spectacle of dancing 

 America as there is something pathetic and tragic in that of warring 

 Europe. For in Europe, where the temper of the people lends itself less 

 readily to these lighter forms of release, the reaction has taken the 

 form of a return to most primitive bloodshed. Consequently the war 

 came to us as a distinct shock. One heard everywhere the comment — 

 "It is impossible. I thought we had got far beyond all that." The 

 culture of Germany, France and England was so high that it was un- 

 believable that these people should suddenly develop hate in its most in- 

 tense form with a frenzied desire to kill one another. To the psycholo- 

 gist, however, it seems not unreasonable. It is a temporary reversion 

 to completely primitive instincts restoring the balance to an over- 

 wrought social brain. 



Before the war we heard everywhere of "unrest," a great spiritual 

 unrest. But the significance of this unrest was not understood. It 

 was not due to untoward social or economic conditions, for the world has 

 never seen conditions so favorable for the greatest happiness of the 

 greatest number. Its cause rather was to be found in an asymmetrical 

 development of human personality, too much thought, too much effort, 

 too much " efficiency," and not enough balance, not enough mere somatic 

 vitality. In England this unrest displayed itself as a high degree of 

 social irritability. On the stage it appeared as a carping criticism of 

 social life and social institutions; in literature as a hysterical pursuit 

 of new Utopias ; in political life as jarring rumors of civil war. 



In Eussia just before the outbreak of the war the streets of Petrograd 

 were barricaded by strikers and progressives jealous of real or fancied 

 wrongs. Instantly when war was declared a great inward "peace" 

 settled down upon the warring nations. The restless soul ceased in a 

 moment its feverish upward striving after new inventions, new philoso- 

 phy, new science and new thought. The brain centers were short-cir- 

 cuited. The social mind sank to the old level. It lived again in the 

 old primitive emotions and the old racially familiar scenes, in pictures 

 of bloodshed and rapine, in memories of the drum-beat and of the tread 

 of marching armies. To be sure there was sorrow and suffering and 

 anxious faces and hunger and hardship and countless woes but these 



