THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF SOCIOLOGY 



synthesised in our skin by the photo-chemical action of ukra-violet 

 Hght leads to discontent with the conditions of life in our cities and 

 hence to means of combating them, such as more sensible clothing, 

 or lack of clothing, and provision for quick transit to and from urban 

 and industrial areas. But nerve-physiology has far more fundamental 

 fruits than these. In a particularly striking and irrefutable manner, 

 such researches as those of Pavlov^ and other neurologists show the 

 error of the ancient aphorism that "human nature cannot be changed." 

 Sociologists should have no further connection with theories which 

 postulate any such unchangeableness. The whole group of facts 

 centering round the phenomenon of the conditioned reflex means 

 that the nervous system of the higher mammal is still pliable; that 

 new reflex paths may be established; that because we are, to a large 

 extent, what our education (in the widest sense) was, by remodelling 

 that education, the men and women of the future may be as superior 

 to us as we are to the painted Britons. We cannot too much insist on 

 this contribution of neurology to sociology. In so far as sociology is 

 normative, it must seek means to increase the general good. For this 

 purpose it has always been customary, largely because of the influence 

 of individualistic christian theology, to accept the view that ameliora- 

 tion must begin in the individual unit, and thence spread outwards 

 to the mass of humanity. But nerve-physiology seems to show that 

 just the opposite is true. Radical improvement in the social conditions 

 governing education would condition the mass of humanity to the 

 higher levels of comradeliness and social cohesion necessary for the 

 more highly organised, and hence ameliorated, state of society. It 

 must, however, be admitted that this outcome of physiology works 

 both ways. "Conditioning" may be used for good purposes but also 

 for bad ones. We need only refer to the millions of young people 

 now being conditioned in fascist countries to the notion that racial 

 struggle is inevitable in the world, that the racial or national flag is 

 the highest symbol of human effort, and that war is the most natural 

 activity of man. This conclusion of physiology receives further 

 support from anthropology. That human behaviour ("human nature") 

 may be inconceivably different according to the social structure of 

 the unit in which it is displayed, appears with great force in such a 

 book as that of Mead,^ where the sex behaviour of three diflferent 

 primitive peoples is contrasted in detail. 



^ I. P. Pavlov, Conditioned Reflexes (Oxford, 1927, tr. G. V. Anrep). 



^ M. Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (London, 1935). 



