124 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



so-called, will also have perfected a technique enabling man to 

 secure mastery over himself and his social relations compa- 

 rable with that which has begun in the control of physical 

 nature. 



In modern times, to mention but a single point, our knowl- 

 edge has been rapidly growing in regard to the extent to 

 which the mental life of the individual human being is subject 

 to influences which rarely or never show themselves above the 

 level of his conscious life, and, even upon these infrequent 

 occasions, come so screened and shrouded that their real 

 origin is seldom understood or appreciated. It has thus been 

 made particularly clear in the last century that man is in his 

 instinctive life close cousin to the brutes. But he has also in 

 his nature the deep grounded tendencies of hundreds of thou- 

 sands of generations of savage human ancestors. Further- 

 more, he carries into his adult life many prejudices, fears, 

 likes, and dislikes, which trace back to his own infantile and 

 childhood experiences. Any of these tendencies may well up 

 at a moment's notice to affect the attitude which he takes 

 toward any issue that may present itself in his life. He may 

 make a decision which, with a not unnatural self-flattery, he 

 calls a carefully reasoned choice. But to a sufficiently informed 

 observer it would frequently be revealed that this reasoned 

 choice represented an attempt to justify on rational grounds 

 an impulsive preference arising from some of these hidden 

 springs in human history, rather than a wholly disinterested 

 and unbiased analysis of a given situation. Moreover, man 

 at birth finds himself instantly surrounded with all the tradi- 

 tions and practices of his own time, race, and social group, 

 which from the very beginning hem in his spontaneous activi- 

 ties, furnish the stage upon which his instinctive and impulsive 

 life must be played, and, in general, set boundaries which, how- 

 ever independent, he can hardly cross. In point of fact, the 

 average individual is intensely conservative, indisposed to the 



