THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR* 



HARRY BEAL TORREY 

 Reed College 



The facts of behavior make a manifold appeal. Among them 

 all, those which seem especially to attract us pertain to the 

 intricate game of human relations. Whether they take the form 

 of premeditated words or unconscious deeds, elaborate rhetorical 

 statements or direct emotional reactions, whether they suggest 

 a soaring or a grovelling imagination, they challenge our powers 

 of interpretation; they entice us into a search for their meaning. 

 Attentive to their significance for us, we set up social standards, 

 we develop moral codes, and we encourage a science of conduct 

 that shall help us to formulate the courses of action we call 

 ideals. We do all this that we may be the gainers thereby, 

 somehow, somewhere, in the immediate present, the near or the 

 distant future. Our motive is personal. We follow an impulse 

 to self-preservation which reveals itself in all the races of man- 

 kind. Few individuals, indeed, are so thriftless as to fail to 

 take some such thought, crude and sporadic though it may 

 be, for the morrow. Explanations of some sort all but this 

 exceptional and degenerate few must have. For primitive man, 

 spirits and demons, naive myths and legends built on accidental 

 circumstance suffice. For the children of civilization in large 

 part, they suffice also. Nothing more dramatically proclaims 

 the essential similarity of the peoples of the earth, however 

 diverse in degree of savagery and sophistication, than the con- 

 servatism of their mythologies. It is but a few years since a 

 most distinguished British statesman solemnly defended against 

 scientific criticism the authenticity of the unclean spirits that 

 entered into the Gadarene swine. Today whole nations are 

 passionately associating their Gods and all the angels with 

 their several contributions to the inconceivable violation of 

 civilization that is now debauching Europe. 



1 Read at Berkeley, California, before Section F, A. A. A. S., August 3, 1915. 



