ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 21 



enacted the febrile fancy of a Poe or a de Maupassant never 

 could have conjured. The complex, the neurosis, the compulsion, 

 the obsession, the slip of speech, the trick of manner, the devotion 

 of a life-time, the culture of a nation all furnish bits for the 

 Freudian mosaic. Attractions and inhibitions, repulsions and 

 suppressions are held up as the ultimate pulling and pushing 

 forces of human nature. 



But is the problem solved? Is not human nature primarily 

 animal nature? And do we so thoroughly understand this animal 

 nature? Does not all this material of Freudianism consist of 

 variations upon social burdens imposed on the original human 

 nature? To be sure, at every moment of life, choices have to be 

 made, and choice involves the clashing of instincts and motives, 

 with victory for one or some, and defeat for the others. But the 

 Freudian material per se — the sex material — is it not merely the 

 by-product of a certain state of society? A sane society would 

 eliminate nearly all of Freudian disease, but still have original 

 human nature upon its hands. Why is it that of two individuals 

 exposed to the same situation, one will develop a complex, the 

 other will remain immune? The only soil we know of, the real 

 foundation stones of our being and living, are the cells we are 

 made of. Tell me the cellular basis of a complex, and I will grant 

 that you have arrived at some real knowledge. 



Way for the Physiologist 



There has grown up, contemporaneously with the teachings of 

 Freud, a body of discoveries and knowledge in physiology, con- 

 cerning these factors, which is like a long sword of light illumi- 

 nating a pitch-black spot in the night. The dark places in human 

 nature seem to have become the sole monopoly of the Freudians 

 and their psychology. But only seemingly. For all this time 

 the physiologist has been working. Beginning with a candle and 

 now holding in his hands the most powerful arc-lights, he has 

 explored two regions, the sympathetic nervous system and the 

 glands of internal secretion, and has come upon data which in 

 due course will render a good many of the Freudian dicta obso- 

 lete. Not that the Freudian fundamentals will be scrapped com- 

 pletely. But they will have to fit into the great synthesis which 

 must form the basis of any control of the future of human nature. 

 That future belongs to the physiologist. Already his achieve- 

 ments provide the foundations. I propose in the following chap- 



