PARASITIC CULTURE 263 
is also, and, perhaps, more characteristically, shown in the religious, 
social and other vagaries that often bring to light strange perversions 
of human energy. The movement towards the emancipation of women 
during the past few decades, with all its numerous and positive merits, 
abounds, nevertheless, with examples of mental and emotional distemp- 
ers that find their psychological explanation in the strangulated intellec- 
tual energies of its votaries. Much of the current unrest among intellec- 
tual women is probably due to specially cultivated mental organs that 
find no adequate function to perform. All these forms of neuropsychical 
strain and instability are, I submit, at least partially explicable in terms 
of the useless and parasitic culture, which has become more dangerous 
to modern society in proportion as it has been extended to the masses 
of men and women. In earlier generations, when fewer men and women 
were subjected to the artificial culture of the schools, the general detri- 
ment to society was not so obvious. But now that thousands and tens 
of thousands of boys and girls, and young men and young women, are 
having their nervous and mental lives fashioned for activities they never 
have a chance to perform, it may happen that higher education, instead 
of being a means of racial advancement, will become a means of racial 
deterioration. 
To summarize: 
1. It is a law of the biological world that unused organs become 
parasitic upon the life, draining off the energy of the individual and 
tending to become diseased. 
2. It has been found that physical culture which leads to the hyper- 
trophy of special muscles, entails a drain upon the general vitality. As 
in life in general, so in physical education, organs that can perform 
no adequate function are wasteful of human energy. 
3. Experimental psychology is showing that the culture of particular 
intellectual organs and functions can not be transferred to other organs 
and functions, except where there are elements in common. Histology 
and pathology of the nervous system confirm the conclusions of psy- 
chology in this respect. 
4. Intellectual culture not being transferable must become parasitic 
and a cause of mental disorganization when it fails of application and 
usefulness in the life of the individual. Illustrations are to be found 
in the over-refinements of culture in academic communities, in the 
nervous instability frequently met with among educated men and 
women, and in the religious and social vagaries and perversions that 
crop out in the older and more highly cultivated centers of population. 
5. The artificial culture of the secondary schools and colleges in our 
democratic society, in proportion as it is diffused throughout larger 
sections of our population, is likely to develop a cultured proletariat, 
ill-balanced and inefficient as individuals, and a source of danger in our 
civilization. 
