446 



The Journal of Heredity 



tions. This concentration of power 

 often includes the civic community, 

 commandeered, while personal liberty 

 suffers from countless encroachments. 

 So mechanized is war today that there 

 is ever less opportunity for brilliant 

 coups, acts of self-initiated heroism and 

 darini::. So, too, the esprit de corps of 

 the Army is stron<^ and vU^id in enforcinj:^ 

 its collective judj^ent and sentiment, 

 while, if internationalism declines, patri- 

 otic and perhaps fanatical nationalism 

 is incalculably strengthened. Thus it 

 is no wonder that when soldiers are at 

 last discharj^^ed and go back to civil and 

 industrial life, they find it hard to 

 readjust. They have lost positions to 

 others who have gained while they have 

 declined in aptness for their old jobs. 

 Instead of the closer tie of companion- 

 ship in arms there remains only that of 

 fellow-citizens. They have grown used 

 to taking orders, to "being fed, clothed, 

 cared for, and so find it hard to return 

 to doing these things for themselves, 

 and expect government consideration 

 in the form of pensions, offices and other 

 favors. They lean on the state that 

 they have served, instead of learning to 

 exercise their own individual powers. 

 In all these ways war is unfavorable to 

 the spirit of democracy and more 

 favorable to monarchical tendencies. A 

 few new and powerful leaders arise 

 because a few men have learned to 

 exercise command, while the masses 

 have learned to obey. War is as neces- 

 sary for monarchy as peace is for democ- 

 racy. One over-emphasizes order, sys- 

 tem, control ; the other magnifies beyond 

 bounds unrestrained personal liberty. 

 Here is the issue of the present struggle. 

 Germany never had a revolution such as 

 in l*'!ngland .nnd in France swept away 

 the spirit and even the vestiges of 

 feudalism, which Teutonic genius has 

 conserved and transformed into some- 

 thing which at lea^^t the neutral world 

 must admire. The least governed 

 people can [)erhaps best understand the 

 most governed, and yet here our 

 psychology fails to recognize the fact 

 that it is prepersonalities that have 

 made history, and that it is their 

 synthetic organization, one with an- 

 other, that has created civilization and 



culture, and that if these elements or 

 units in the body politic, social and 

 industrial, have their freedom repressed 

 according to any wisdom the wit of 

 man has yet devised, the whole of 

 which they are members is sure, sooner 

 or later, to lose the all-originating power 

 of free and progressive development. 

 Despite the penalties of freedom, .such 

 as license, sometimes degenerating to 

 vice and crime, despite disorder, crude, 

 often unsuccessfully and at best oft- 

 repeated trial and error methods, if 

 we believe in man and in a future that 

 is to be greater than the present, we 

 must believe that the American way 

 will lead mankind to an ever higher 

 goal of evolution and emancipation 

 from the countless repressions that 

 dwarf and stunt him in the home, the 

 school, church, industry and state. 

 The German superman is for the people 

 an irridescent dream evolved in order 

 to compensate for the fact of over- 

 institutionalized life, and even the 

 superstate there is the state that now 

 is, while our superman and state is that 

 which is to be when freedom has done 

 its perfect work. 



NEED FOR STUDY OF MAN 



Finally, in view of all this, should we 

 not in this country, along with all our 

 other psychologizing, foster as something 

 especially gennane to the spirit of our 

 institutions the study of individualities 

 and racial and all the other very 

 diversified groups which constitute our 

 heterogeneous population, and do so 

 not only for the development of 

 anthropological science, but with the 

 ideal of fitting each one's aptitudes of 

 body, health, native gifts, traits of 

 character, experiences and motor pat- 

 terns, to just that occupation that best 

 fits his own psychophysic organism, 

 striving to guide each to that environ- 

 ment, industrial, social or cultural, in 

 which his personality will find most 

 incitement to unfold freely? Should 

 not one of our ideals be to give each the 

 kind and degree of self-knowledge that 

 will make not only for maximal self- 

 reverence and self-control, but for 

 maximal freedom and the most efficient 

 life? If a democracy achieves greatness 



