BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



that make patriotism possible and national ideals realiza- 

 ble. Yet it sets nation against nation and multiplies to 

 colossal proportions the menace of conflicts inherent in 

 the contentious motives of the industrial members of the 

 human herd. Collective psychology is itself a specialty, 

 considering the contagion of example, the spread of 

 prejudice, the vogue of fad and fashion, the lowered 

 mentality under crowd pressure, the insanity of the fren- 

 zied mob. To reconcile the social with the industrial 

 nature, to direct social pressure wisely and form public 

 opinion judiciously, is the problem of civilization. The 

 Freudian recognition of the conflict is in the name of the 

 censor, which may be a Puritan conscience or a worldly 

 Mrs. Grundy, a Calvinistic restraint, or an aristocratic 

 oppression. Through it all we recognize that man cannot 

 follow his original nature and become a useful citizen or a 

 civilized being. Man is the only animal who reconstructs 

 his own nature, and in that process finds the glorious 

 opportunities of realizing his potentialities. Civilization 

 is psychological reconstruction. 



Psychology makes no pretense to be all things to all 

 men. It aims to be a naturalistic science among the sciences, 

 but deals with the psychic realm which is alike the instru- 

 ment of human understanding however directed, and also 

 the subject matter, when the mind explores its own nature. 

 The renaissance of psychology is a story of rapid expansion 

 within hardly more than a single generation. It seems 

 worth the effort to include in a single canvas, however 

 crowded, the movements of ideas and inquiry contributing 

 to its recent advance, and to do so from the unifying point 

 of view of a naturalistic psycho-biology. 



Psychology, in coming in line with the natural sciences, 

 plays its part in the rationalization of knowledge, and an 

 important one. Many of its fundamental problems are 

 ancient; but the solutions shift with the temper of the 



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