22 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



ters to sketch the history and outline the elements of this new 

 knowledge, and then to glimpse some of the larger human reac- 

 tions to it. A good deal of this new knowledge is not altogether 

 new. A number of the isolated facts have been known and 

 talked about for more than two generations. But the newer 

 additions, and the light they have thrown upon old problems 

 present the opportunity for a synthesis, which must sooner or 

 later be made. 



The Chemistry of the Soul 



Besides, it is time that the secrets of the laboratories stepped 

 out into the market place, unashamed. Imaginative man has 

 played for ages immemorial with wondrous fairy tales and fan- 

 cies of what he would achieve. The sciences of physics and 

 chemistry have made every-day commonplace realities out of his 

 radiant dreams. One need not repeat the cliches of our editors. 

 But the analogy is there nevertheless. No control over heat and 

 light and electricity, today our slaves, was possible until physics 

 and chemistry took them in hand. No control of the human soul 

 is possible until it too will be taken in hand by them. We may 

 now look forward to a real future for mankind because we have 

 before us the beginnings of a chemistry of human nature. The 

 internal secretions, with their influence upon brain and nervous 

 system as well as every other part of the body corporation, as 

 essentially blood-circulating chemical substances, have been dis- 

 covered the real governors and arbiters of instincts and disposi- 

 tions, emotions and reactions, characters and temperaments, good 

 and bad. A huge complex of evidence, as various, complicated 

 and obscure as human nature itself, supports that fundamental 

 law. 



The chemistry of the soul! Magnificent phrase! It's a long, 

 long way to that goal. The exact formula is as yet far beyond 

 our reach. But we have started upon the long journey and we 

 shall get there. Then will Man truly become the experimental 

 animal of the future, experimenting not only with the externa] 

 conditions of his life, but with the constituents of his very nature 

 and soul. The chemical conditions of his being, including! 

 the internal secretions, are the steps of the ladder by whicr 

 he will climb to those dizzy heights where he will stretch ou1 

 his hands and find himself a God. < Modern knowledge of thes< 

 chemical substances, circulating in the blood, and affecting even 



