THE RENAISSANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY 



that cannot be approached in the spirit of scientific inquiry, 

 even that of the desirable relations between men and 

 women. 



The note thus touched upon is important. The larger 

 fields of application of modern psychology are those of 

 political, industrial, national, and international concern. 

 There is a psychological approach to almost every public 

 question. To embark upon such an experiment as nation- 

 wide prohibition without the benefit of expert psychologi- 

 cal examination is but a flagrant instance of the unwisdom 

 invited by democracy tempted to the ways of demagogy. 

 The fact that the alcoholic temptation lies so close to the 

 crime issue, that it represents a psycho-neural craving as 

 old as mankind and as widespread, that it holds a close 

 relation to the masculine psychology of escape and search 

 for intensive thrills — all this should have indicated the 

 province, along with the allied specialties of physiology 

 and psychiatry, in which the policy of wisdom in regula- 

 tion was to be sought. But political eyes are blind, and 

 political ears are deaf to the appeal of calm scientific 

 investigation, when issues must be reduced to votes and 

 the ordinary limited comprehension and prejudices of voters . 



Yet prohibition is a small concern, despite its wealth 

 of lessons in wrong ways of righting ills, as compared with 

 the stupendous dimensions of war, which is likewise a 

 psycho-political issue. To recognize that man has ever been 

 his own worst enemy, that the most intelligent of species 

 is the only one that engages in collective extermination on 

 a race-suicidal scale, is as far as the reference can here be 

 carried. It is germane for its inclusion of the mass psy- 

 chology in which social psychology finds its culminating 

 problem and expression. Human gregariousness is a formi- 

 dable quality; it makes the cosmopolitan centers, crowding 

 humanity into congested quarters, conferring the benefits 

 of cooperative enterprise, and creating the larger loyalties 



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