44 SCIENCE REMAKING THE WORLD 



man. The horseman realizes that he is dealing with an 

 intelligent or a wilful, capricious, and perhaps vicious 

 animal, whose conduct will be affected by his own tem- 

 per. The chauffeur knows that he is handling a ma- 

 chine which cannot be punished or coaxed. Anger has 

 no effect on an auto-engine. To display or even to feel 

 any emotion toward it is simply silly. In Wells's Freu- 

 dian novel, "The Secret Places of the Heart," the man 

 who in a fit of fury smashes up his wife's dainty sedan 

 betrays thereby his subconscious animosity toward the 

 owner. The substitution of machinery for all slave and 

 animal power and even in large part for personal service 

 must in the long run have very profound effects on 

 human character. 



A professor of psychiatry tells me that he prescribes 

 automobile driving for certain types of nervous patients, 

 especially such as suffer from inability to concentrate 

 their minds on anything outside of themselves or who 

 are deficient in quick decision. The chauffeur who 

 hesitates is lost. The automobile obviously cultivates 

 celerity of decision on the part of the pedestrian as well 

 as of the driver. When the automobile first came into use 

 it was said that it was dividing the population into two 

 classes: the quick and the dead. This has ceased to be 

 a joke. More than twelve thousand persons are killed 

 each year in the United States by automobiles. How 

 many persons do you suppose were killed in Great Bri- 

 tain during the late war by all the shells and bombs 

 from German ships and airplanes and zeppelins? Six 

 hundred forty-two, or about I per cent, of our death 

 rate from motor cars. 



