654 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



a rigid social discipline, a growing sense of the necessity of enforcing on 

 individuals conformity to a high plane of moral conduct. So long as the 

 citizens of these empires retained their moral and physical vigour,' so long 

 were their civilisations intact and worth preserving. But as soon as that 

 vigour showed signs of relaxing or decaying, the process of degeneration 

 began. The restraints that once held the social structure together were 

 no longer enforced with the same rigour. It would appear that the intelli- 

 gence had proceeded too far in the regulation of conduct and the control 

 of the instincts. It is said, for example, that the fall of Greek civilisation 

 began when control of the parental instinct became so great as to interfere 

 disastrously with the continuance of the race. What seems to emerge 

 from these facts about civilisations that have decayed is that, after a certain 

 point, the control of the primary impulses produces a suicidal result, that 

 in limiting the play of instincts, there has in every case resulted the eventual 

 atrophy of them, with finally the decadence or disappearance of the race. 



We can approach this problem in a more cogent way if we consider the 

 case of the individual. The progress from childhood to manhood is in one 

 respect very much the control and redirection of the strongest impulses. 

 A man of thirty will certainly not show the same impulsive afiection for his 

 mother as he did when he was a boy of ten ; and a similar process will have 

 taken place in the expression of his other impulses. In another way, it 

 may happen that, through lack of encouragement, the impulsive boy will 

 find less and less opportunity, as he grows older, to express his emotions. 

 Examples of what is commonly called hardness are not difficult to find in 

 everyday life ; but it is a mistake to assume that the tender impulses are 

 not to be found in the hard man. In the early part of this article, we insisted 

 on the fact that the instincts are a vital part of man's inheritance, and that 

 in their expression the only factor that is constant or unchangeable for 

 each individual is the capacity for experiencing the emotion. In other 

 words, if adequate play is not given to the impulses that arise from the 

 instincts, these unexpressed impulses recoil on the individual and seriously 

 affect his whole life. It is as if the steam in an engine were not allowed 

 to escape after a certain point, and in consequence deranged the working 

 of the machinery. 



There emerges, then, quite clearly from these considerations the vital 

 need for allowing the motive power that the instincts give to man to be 

 used to the fullest degree. We saw in the beginning of this article how 

 the impulse that arises from the emotion of anger may be expressed in many 

 different ways. From that fact we can proceed to the conclusion that for 

 the other impulses the attitude of society ought to be the same : viz. that 

 the impulse in itself is not the thing that is to be eradicated or allowed to 

 decay ; but that it should be directed into channels which wiU permit of 

 full expression, and which at the same time will be injurious neither to the 

 individual nor to the community to which he belongs, 



THE MENTAL ABILITY OF THE QUAKERS (By E. K. Hankiu, 

 M.A., Sc.D., Agra, India). 



If a community adopts a system of education in which efforts to develop 

 intelligence are quite subordinated to the teaching of religious dogma and 

 " formal discipline," and if its members hold a creed in which sensible reason- 

 ing about many matters of daily conduct is regarded as a temptation of the 

 Evil One, what effect will such a mental regime have on their ability ? An 

 answer to this question is given by the history of the Quakers. 



This religious sect, properly known as the " Society of Friends," was 

 founded by George Fox in the year 1648.* Besides ordinary theological 



1 Sewel, History of the Quakers, English edition of i8ii, vol. i, p. 26. 



