202 



ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



blocked, or shunted at any point, the elements such as truth, freedom, 

 or civilization atrophy. Institutions without the dynamic current 

 of the free but disciplined human spirit, one might almost say the 

 divine spirit, become mausoleums, empty monuments to dead ideals. 

 In the second place, this dynamic picture of human affairs, in which 

 the surges and resurges of the intellect and spirit play the all-im- 

 portant role, reminds us that human affairs will not be studied profit- 

 ably by the classical methods applicable to static systems — new meth- 

 ods for the dynamic study of human relations are needed. In the 



TRUTH 



Public Bosis 

 of Agreement 



MORAL VALUES 



^ ECONOMIC ^ 



^\ WELFARE 1^^ 



TECHNOLOGY 



USEFUL ARTS, 

 SCIENCES, 

 UMANITIES 



MATERIAL VALUES 



MILITARY 

 SECURITY 



FREEDOM 



CIVILIZATION 



Figure 4. — Reciprocal relations as shown in figure 3, with added "control loop" of materia! 



values. 



third place, these diagrams suggest that the circuits have no logical 

 beginnings or endings, the spirit may start moving at any point, and 

 none of the institutional elements can exist alone or have any absolute 

 value of itself; they have value only in terms of the whole circuit. 



Fourthly, figure 4 recalls the duality in the nature of man and his 

 activities by two interlocking circuits, the outer loop representing 

 the transcendental world of ideas, the inner loop representing the 

 world of material things. The figure suggests that the inner loop 

 is a control one which preserves in a world ridden with forces of 

 destruction the freedoms and institutions hard won by forces of con- 

 struction. It is a stabilizing loop, but only a stabilizing one. The 



