592 HUMAN BIOLOGY 



intentionally change our less adequate governing ideas? 

 Back of that, of course, is the previous question: Can we 

 intentionally change our present governing ideas? Are not 

 the ideas that rule our behavior themselves the creatures of 

 circumstances, generated in us by impersonal forces that 

 are beyond our conscious control? To return to our examples, 

 was it not steam-driven machinery which brought the new 

 idea of free-enterprise, and was it not the exigencies of 

 poverty and the misuse of hfe which forced the ideas of 

 factory legislation and collective bargaining? Again, was it 

 not the unspeakable horror of the late international slaughter 

 which made the war-idea so monstrous that it had to be 

 cast away? Do men ever intentionally shape new ruhng 

 ideas? Are we not in this, as in all matters, in the grip of 

 forces greater than ourselves? 



The answer to such questions is difficult to obtain and 

 even when we have ventured one answer, there will still be 

 doubt. It may help to clear the issue, however, if we 

 examine a case of idea-change which we seem, in a measure, 

 to be able to trace to conscious beginnings. 



Perhaps the most profound of the idea-changes which 

 have been effected among us is the development of the 

 scientific habit of thought. In many regions of hfe, to be sure, 

 and about a multitude of matters, that habit of thought is 

 still not developed, but in most of our western world, in 

 all that concerns physical matters, the scientific habit of 

 thought now rules with a fair degree of universality. 



To illustrate by contrast, let me recall a pathetically 

 amusing case which happened recently in a small town near 

 New York. An Italian boy had been taken ill. The sister, 

 who was a university student, suggested calling a doctor. 

 But the peasant mother would have none of it. She sent for an 

 old woman who was reputed to cure by magic. When the 

 old woman came, she directed that all the dishes in the 

 house be brought into the boy's room and spread about 

 him. Then she poured a drop of oil into each plate, pro- 

 nouncing as she did so an incantation. Then the plates were 

 gathered up, more incantations were pronounced, and she 

 left. In the course of time, the boy, being a fairly healthy 

 youngster and suffering only from an over-dose of food 



