BIOLOGY AND HUMAN PROBLEMS 



siderable proportion of crime is caused, primarily, by 

 defects in the central nervous system. Even slight lapses 

 from ideal behavior may be traced to physical unfitness. 

 We all know how much more at peace we are with the 

 rest of creation when we do not rise in the morning de- 

 pressed by a headache or a torpid liver. Only recently have 

 we learned what intimate relations exist between the 

 presence of adenoids, decayed teeth, and eye defects and the 

 backwardness or obstreperousness of our children. Can 

 one assume that adults do not have similar physical 

 handicaps? 



But, at any rate, I have not finished. Scientific Humanism 

 must take other factors into account. Man's career is 

 determined by the sum total of his heredity and his en- 

 vironment. So is the career of every other organism. But 

 man differs from all other animals in his response to mental 

 training. And here is where greater opportunities for 

 improvement exist than in any other department. Hereto- 

 fore education has been of too uniform a type. We have 

 tried to shape the heads of our youths in a single mould. 

 How much better it would be to analyze their capacities 

 and to train them according to their nature. A similar 

 system should be applied to adults. They have had little 

 aid in determining their fitness for particular vocations; 

 hence, they often do not fit their jobs at all and are unhappy 

 in them. Proper attention to psychological requirements 

 could rectify this situation. These are practical matters. 

 As such it is easy to recognize their importance. Never- 

 theless, if psychologists worked from now till the day of 

 doom on such special problems, and if their findings were 

 adopted by all the nations of the earth, the essential ingre- 

 dient of the remedy for the satisfying life would have been 

 missed. Improper conditioning of the mind, to use the 

 behavioristic term, is the cause, I am convinced, of more 

 unhappiness than all other factors combined. This is a 



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