Alexis Carrel's Man, the Unknown

The following are extracts (for review purposes) from Man, the Unknown, Alexis Carrel, 1935:

Dedication

"To My Friends[,] Frederic R[ené] Coudert[, Jr., 1871–1955 or 1898–1972, see also here and here] and Boris A. Bakhmeteff[,] this book is dedicated[.]"

Preface

"The author of this book...spends...his time in a laboratory studying living matter.

"[T]he author...undertook it [b]ecause men cannot follow modern civilization along its present course, because they are degenerating. They have been fascinated by the beauty of the sciences of inert matter. They have not understood that their body and consciousness are subjected to natural laws, more obscure than, but as inexorable as, the laws of the sidereal world. Neither have they understood that they cannot transgress these laws without being punished. They must, therefore, learn the necessary relations of the cosmic universe, of their fellow men, and of their inner selves, and also those of their tissues and their mind. Indeed, man stands above all things. Should he degenerate, the beauty of civilization, and even the grandeur of the physical universe, would vanish. [T]his book was written...in the confusion, the noise, and the weariness of New York [City]. From Frederic R. Coudert[, Jr.] came the impulse responsible for this book. [T]he majority of the nations follow the lead of North America. Those countries that have blindly adopted the spirit and the techniques of industrial civilization...are exposed to the same dangers as the United States. Humanity's attention must turn from the machines and the world of inanimate matter to the body and the soul of man, to the organic and mental processes which have created the machines and the universe of Newton and Einstein....

"We are beginning to realize the weakness of our civilization. Many want to shake off the dogmas imposed on them by modern society. This book has been written for them, and also for those who are bold enough to understand the necessity, not only of mental, political, and social changes, but of the overthrow of industrial civilization and of the advent of another conception of human progress. This book is, therefore, dedicated to all whose everyday task is the rearing of children, the formation or the guidance of the individual....It is offered to all as a simple account of facts revealed about human beings by scientific observation." – pp. ix–xv

Chapter I:  The Need of a Better Knowledge of Man

"There is a strange disparity between the sciences of inert matter and those of life. Astronomy, mechanics, and physics are based on concepts which can be expressed, tersely and elegantly, in mathematical language....They search for reality beyond the realm of common thought[,] up to unutterable abstractions consisting only of equations of symbols....Those who investigate...the phenomena of life are as if lost in an inextricable jungle, in the midst of a magic forest, whose countless trees unceasingly change their place and their shape. They are crushed under a mass of facts[.] Descriptive science classifies phenomena. But the unchanging relations between variable quantities—that is, the natural laws, only appear when science becomes more abstract....

"The science of...living beings...still remains in the descriptive state. Man is an indivisible whole of extreme complexity....There is no method capable of apprehending him simultaneously in his entirety[.] In order to analyze ourselves, we are obliged to seek the help of various techniques and, therefore, to utilize several sciences. Naturally, all these sciences arrive at a different conception of their common object. They abstract only from man what is attainable by their special methods....They leave behind them a residue, too important to be neglected....Man, as known to the specialists, is far from being the concrete man, the real man. He is nothing but a schema, consisting of other schemata built up by the techniques of each science. He is, at the same time, the corpse dissected by the anatomists, the consciousness observed by the psychologists and the great teachers of the spiritual life, and the personality which introspection shows to everyone as [dwelling] in the depth of himself. He is the chemical substances constituting the tissues and humors of the body. He is the amazing community of cells and nutrient fluids whose organic laws are studied by the physiologists. He is the compound of tissues and consciousness that hygienists and educators endeavor to lead to its optimum development while it extends into time. He is the homo [e]conomicus who must ceaselessly consume manufactured products in order that the machines, of which he is made a slave, may be kept at work. But he is also the poet, the hero, and the saint. He is not only the prodigiously complex being analyzed by our scientific techniques, but also the tendencies, the conjectures, the aspirations of humanity. Our conceptions of him are imbued with metaphysics. They are founded on so many and such imprecise data that the temptation is great to choose among them those which please us. Therefore, our idea of man varies according to our feelings and our beliefs....Although we possess the treasure of the observations accumulated by the scientists, the philosophers, the poets, and the great mystics of all times, we have grasped only certain aspects of ourselves. We do not apprehend man as a whole. We know him as composed of distinct parts. And even these parts are created by our methods. Each one of us is made up of a procession of phantoms, in the midst of which strides an unknowable reality.

"In fact, our ignorance is profound. Most of the questions put to themselves by those who study human beings remain without answer....

"We are very far from knowing what relations exist between skeleton, muscles, and organs, and mental and spiritual activities. We are ignorant of the factors that bring about nervous equilibrium and resistance to fatigue and to diseases. We do not know how moral sense, judgment, and audacity could be augmented. What is the relative importance of intellectual, moral, and mystical activities? What is the significance of esthetic and religious sense? What form of energy is responsible for telepathic communications? Without any doubt, certain physiological and mental factors determine happiness or misery, success or failure. But we do not know what they are. We cannot artificially give to any individual the aptitude for happiness. As yet, we do not know what environment is the most favorable for the optimum development of civilized man. Is it possible to suppress struggle, effort, and suffering from our physiological and spiritual formation? How can we prevent the degeneracy of man in modern civilization? Many other questions could be asked on subjects which are to us of the utmost interest. They would also remain unanswered. It is quite evident that the accomplishments of all the sciences having man as an object remain insufficient, and that our knowledge of ourselves is still most rudimentary." – pp. 1–5

"Our mind is so constructed as to delight in contemplating simple facts. We feel a kind of repugnance in attacking such a complex problem as that of the constitution of living beings and of man. The intellect...is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life....The methods of nature are never so precise as those of man. We do not find in the universe the clearness and accuracy of our thought. We attempt, therefore, to abstract from the complexity of phenomena some simple systems whose components bear to one another certain relations susceptible of being described mathematically. This power of abstraction of the human intellect is responsible for the amazing progress of physics and chemistry....

"What method could bring to light the chemical constitution of the nucleus of the sexual cells, of its chromosomes, and of the genes that compose these chromosomes? Nevertheless, those very minute aggregates of chemicals are of capital importance, because they contain the future of the individual and of the race....We do not possess any technique capable of penetrating the mysteries of the brain, and of the harmonious association of its cells. Our mind, which loves the simple beauty of mathematical formulas, is bewildered when it contemplates the stupendous mass of cells, humors, and consciousness which make up the individual. We try, therefore, to apply to this compound the concepts that have proved useful in the realm of physics, chemistry, and mechanics, and in the philosophical and religious disciplines. Such an attempt does not meet with much success, because we can be reduced neither to a physicochemical system nor to a spiritual entity....

"The knowledge of ourselves will never attain the elegant simplicity, the abstractness, and the beauty of physics. [T]he science of man is the most difficult of all sciences." – pp. 8–10

"The environment which has molded the body and the soul of our ancestors during many millenniums has now been replaced by another. This silent revolution has taken place almost without our noticing it. We have not realized its importance. Nevertheless, it is one of the most dramatic events in the history of humanity. For any modification in their surroundings inevitably and profoundly disturbs all living beings. We must, therefore, ascertain the extent of the transformations imposed by science upon the ancestral mode of life, and consequently upon ourselves.

"Since the advent of industry, a large part of the population has been compelled to live in restricted areas. The workmen are herded together, either in the suburbs of the large cities or in villages built for them. They are occupied in the factories during fixed hours, doing easy, monotonous, and well-paid work. The cities are also inhabited by office workers[.] Factories and offices are large, well lighted, clean. Their temperature is uniform. Modern heating and refrigerating apparatuses raise the temperature during the winter and lower it during the summer. The skyscrapers of the great cities have transformed the streets into gloomy canyons. But inside of the buildings, the light of the sun is replaced by electric bulbs rich in ultra-violet rays. Instead of the air of the street, polluted by gasoline fumes, the offices and workshops receive pure air drawn in from the upper atmosphere by ventilators on the roof. The dwellers of the modern city are protected against all inclemencies of the weather. But they are no longer able to live as did our ancestors, near their workshops, their stores, or their offices....The workmen and the humblest employees live in dwellings better appointed than those of the rich of former times. The heating apparatuses that automatically regulate the temperature of the houses, the bathrooms, the refrigerators, the electric stoves, the domestic machinery for preparing food and cleaning rooms, and the garages for the automobiles, give to the abode of everybody, not only in the city and the suburbs, but also in the country, a degree of comfort which previously was found only in that of a very few privileged individuals.

"Simultaneously with the habitat, the mode of life has been transformed. This transformation is due chiefly to the increase in the rapidity of communications. Indeed, it is evident that modern trains and steamers, airplanes, automobiles, telegraph, telephone, and wireless have modified the relations of men and of nations all over the world. Each individual does a great many more things than formerly. He takes part in a much larger number of events. Every day he comes into contact with more people. Quiet and unemployed moments are exceptional in his existence. The narrow groups of the family and of the parish have been dissolved. Intimacy no longer exists. For the life of the small group has been substituted that of the herd. Solitude is looked upon as a punishment or as a rare luxury. The frequent attendance at [events] ha[s] engendered in all the habit of living in common. The telephone, the radio, and the gramophone records carry unceasingly the vulgarity of the crowd, as well as its pleasures and its psychology, into everyone's house, even in the most isolated and remote villages. Each individual is always in direct or indirect communication with other human beings, and keeps himself constantly informed about the small or important events taking place in his town, or his city, or at the other end of the world....

"Everywhere, in the cities, as well as in the country, in private houses as in factories, in the workshop, on the roads, in the fields, and on the farms, machines have decreased the intensity of human effort. Today, it is not necessary to walk. Elevators have replaced stairs. Everybody rides in buses, motors, or street cars, even when the distance to be covered is very short. Natural bodily exercises, such as walking and running over rough ground, mountain-climbing, tilling the land by hand, clearing forests with the ax, working while exposed to rain, sun, wind, cold, or heat, have given place to well-regulated sports that involve almost no risk, and to machines that abolish muscular effort. Everywhere...athletes train and fight while protected against the inclemencies of the weather. In this manner all can develop their muscles without being subjected to the fatigue and the hardships involved in the exercises pertaining to a more primitive form of life.

"The aliments of our ancestors, which consisted chiefly of coarse flour, meat, and alcoholic drinks, have been replaced by much more delicate and varied food. Beef and mutton are no longer the staple foods. The principal elements of modern diet are milk, cream, butter, cereals refined by the elimination of the shells of the grain, fruits of tropical as well as of temperate countries, fresh or canned vegetables, salads, large quantities of sugar in the form of pies, candies, and puddings. Alcohol alone has kept its place. [F]ood...is now very artificial and abundant....The regularity of the working-hours in offices and factories has entailed that of the meals. Owing to the wealth which was general until a few years ago, and to the decline in the religious spirit and in the observance of ritualistic fasts, human beings have never been fed so punctually and uninterruptedly.

"[T]he main interest of...educational establishments consists in the promotion of mental and muscular strength.

"[M]edicine, by a better conception of the nature of diseases..., has extended its beneficent influence...to all who formerly could not endure the conditions of a rougher life....It has also given to each individual much greater security against pain and disease.

"The intellectual and moral surroundings in which we are immersed have equally been molded by science. There is a profound difference between the world that permeates the mind of modern men and the world wherein our ancestors lived. Before the intellectual victories that have brought us wealth and comfort, moral values have naturally given ground. Reason has swept away religious beliefs. The knowledge of the natural laws, and the power given us by this knowledge over the material world, and also over human beings, alone are of importance.

"[S]cience is the mother of wealth, comfort, and health. However, the intellectual atmosphere, in which modern men live, rapidly changes. Financial magnates, professors, scientists, and economic experts are losing their hold over the public. The people of today are sufficiently educated to read newspapers and magazines, to listen to the speeches broadcasted by politicians, business men, charlatans, and apostles. They are saturated with commercial, political, or social propaganda, whose techniques are becoming more and more perfect. At the same time they read articles and books wherein science and philosophy are popularized....Our universe is exclusively mechanical. It cannot be otherwise, since it has been created from an unknown substratum by the techniques of physics and astronomy. Just as are all the surroundings of modern men, it is the expression of the amazing development of the sciences of inert matter." – pp. 10–17

"The profound changes imposed on the habits of men by the applications of science have occurred recently. In fact, we are still in the midst of the industrial revolution. It is difficult, therefore, to know exactly how the substitution of an artificial mode of existence for the natural one and a complete modification of their environment have acted upon civilized human beings....

"It is evident that men have joyfully welcomed modern civilization. They have abandoned the countryside and flocked to the cities and the factories. They eagerly adopt the mode of life and the ways of acting and of thinking of the new era. They lay aside their old habits without hesitation, because these habits demand a greater effort. It is less fatiguing to work in a factory or an office than on a farm. But even in the country, new techniques have relieved the harshness of existence. Modern houses make life easier for everybody. By their comfort, their warmth, and their pleasant lighting, they give their inmates a feeling of rest and contentment. Their up-to-date appointments considerably decrease the labor that, in bygone days, housekeeping demanded from women. Besides the lessening of muscular effort and the possession of comfort, human beings have accepted cheerfully the privilege of never being alone, of enjoying the innumerable distractions of the city, of living among huge crowds, of never thinking. They also appreciate being released, through a purely intellectual education, from the moral restraint imposed upon them by Puritan discipline and religious principles. In truth, modern life has set them free. It incites them to acquire wealth by any and every possible means[.] It has liberated them from all superstitions. It allows them the frequent excitation and the easy satisfaction of their sexual appetites. It does away with constraint, discipline, effort, everything that is inconvenient and laborious. The people, especially those belonging to the lower classes, are happier from a material standpoint than in former times. However, some of them progressively cease to appreciate the distractions and the vulgar pleasures of modern life. Occasionally, their health does not permit them to continue indefinitely the alimentary, alcoholic, and sexual excesses to which they are led by the suppression of all discipline....

"It is certain, nevertheless, that health is improving. Not only has mortality decreased, but each individual is handsomer, larger, and stronger. Today, children are much taller than their parents. An abundance of good food and physical exercises have augmented the size of the body and its muscular strength. Often the best athletes at the international games come from the United States. In the athletic teams of the American universities, there are many individuals who are really magnificent specimens of human beings. Under the present educational conditions, bones and muscles develop perfectly. America has succeeded in reproducing the most admirable forms of ancient beauty. However,...resistance to fatigue and worry seems to have decreased. It appears that the individuals accustomed to natural bodily exercise, to hardships, and to the inclemencies of the weather, as were their fathers, are capable of harder and more sustained efforts than our athletes. We know that the products of modern education need much sleep, good food, and regular habits. Their nervous system is delicate. They do not endure the mode of existence in the large cities, the confinement in offices, the worries of business, and even the everyday difficulties and sufferings of life. They easily break down. Perhaps the triumphs of hygiene, medicine, and modern education are not so advantageous as we are led to believe....

"In spite of the immense sums of money expended on the education of the children and the young people of the United States, the intellectual elite does not seem to have increased. The average man and woman are, without any doubt, better educated and, superficially at least, more refined. The taste for reading is greater. More reviews and books are bought by the public than in former times. The number of people who are interested in science, letters, and art has grown. But most of them are chiefly attracted by the lowest form of literature and by the imitations of science and of art. It seems that the excellent hygienic conditions in which children are reared, and the care lavished upon them in school, have not raised their intellectual and moral standards. There may possibly be some antagonism between their physical development and their mental size. After all, we do not know whether a larger stature in a given race expresses a state of progress, as is assumed today, or of degeneracy. [C]hildren are much happier in the schools where compulsion has been suppressed, where they are allowed exclusively to study the subjects in which they are interested, where intellectual effort and voluntary attention are not exacted. What are the results of such an education? In modern civilization, the individual is characterized chiefly by a fairly great activity, entirely directed toward the practical side of life, by much ignorance, by a certain shrewdness, and by a kind of mental weakness which leaves him under the influence of the environment wherein he happens to be placed. It appears that intelligence itself gives way when character weakens....

"Modern civilization seems to be incapable of producing people endowed with imagination, intelligence, and courage. In practically every country there is a decrease in the intellectual and moral caliber of those who carry the responsibility of public affairs. [D]espite the immense hopes which humanity has placed in modern civilization, such a civilization has failed in developing men of sufficient intelligence and audacity to guide it along the dangerous road on which it is stumbling. Human beings have not grown so rapidly as the institutions sprung from their brains. It is chiefly the intellectual and moral deficiencies of the political leaders, and their ignorance, which endanger modern nations.

"Finally, we must ascertain how the new mode of life will influence the future of the race. The response of the women to the modifications brought about in the ancestral habits by industrial civilization has been immediate and decisive. The birth rate has at once fallen. This event has been felt most precociously and seriously in the social classes and in the nations which were the first to benefit from the progress brought about...by the applications of scientific discoveries. Voluntary sterility is not a new thing in the history of the world. It has already been observed in a certain period of past civilizations. It is a classical symptom. We know its significance.

"It is evident, then, that the changes produced in our environment by technology have influenced us profoundly. Their effects assume an unexpected character. They are strikingly different from those which were hoped for[.]" – pp. 17–22

"Modern civilization finds itself in a difficult position because it does not suit us. It has been erected without any knowledge of our real nature. It was born from the whims of scientific discoveries, from the appetites of men, their illusions, their theories, and their desires. Although constructed by our efforts, it is not adjusted to our size and shape.

"Obviously, science follows no plan. It develops at random. Its progress depends on fortuitous conditions, such as the birth of men of genius, the form of their mind, the direction taken by their curiosity. It is not at all actuated by a desire to improve the state of human beings. The discoveries responsible for industrial civilization were brought forth at the fancy of the scientists' intuitions and of the more or less casual circumstances of their careers....Men of science do not know where they are going. They are guided by chance, by subtle reasoning, by a sort of clairvoyance. [D]iscoveries are developed without any prevision of their consequences. These consequences, however, have revolutionized the world and made our civilization what it is.

"From the wealth of science we have selected certain parts. And our choice has in no way been influenced by a consideration of the higher interests of humanity. It has simply followed the direction of our natural tendencies. The principles of the greatest convenience and of the least effort, the pleasure procured by speed, change, and comfort, and also the need of escaping from ourselves, are the determining factors in the success of new inventions. But no one has ever asked himself how we would stand the enormous acceleration of the rhythm of life resulting from rapid transportation, telegraph, telephone, modern business methods, machines that write and calculate, and those that do all the housekeeping drudgery of former times. The tendency responsible for the universal adoption of the airplane, the automobile, the cinema, the telephone, the radio, and, in the near future, of television, is as natural as that which, in the night of the ages, led our ancestors to drink alcohol. Steam-heated houses, electric lighting, elevators, biological morals, and chemical adulteration of foodstuffs have been accepted solely because those innovations were agreeable and convenient. But no account whatever has been taken of their probable effect on human beings.

"In the organization of industrial life the influence of the factory upon the physiological and mental state of the workers has been completely neglected. Modern industry is based on the conception of the maximum production at lowest cost, in order that an individual or a group of individuals may earn as much money as possible. It has expanded without any idea of the true nature of the human beings who run the machines, and without giving any consideration to the effects produced on the individuals and on their descendants by the artificial mode of existence imposed by the factory. The great cities have been built with no regard for us. The shape and dimensions of the skyscrapers depend entirely on the necessity of obtaining the maximum income per square foot of ground, and of offering to the tenants offices and apartments that please them. This caused the construction of gigantic buildings where too large masses of human beings are crowded together. Civilized men like such a way of living. While they enjoy the comfort and banal luxury of their dwelling, they do not realize that they are deprived of the necessities of life. The modern city consists of monstrous edifices and of dark, narrow streets full of gasoline fumes, coal dust, and toxic gases, torn by the noise of the taxicabs, trucks, and trolleys, and thronged ceaselessly by great crowds. Obviously, it has not been planned for the good of its inhabitants.

"Our life is influenced in a large measure by commercial advertising. Such publicity is undertaken only in the interest of the advertisers and not of the consumers....Enormous amounts of money are spent for publicity. As a result, large quantities of alimentary and pharmaceutical products, at the least useless, and often harmful, have become a necessity for civilized men. In this manner the greediness of individuals, sufficiently shrewd to create a popular demand for the goods that they have for sale, plays a leading part in the modern world.

"However, the propaganda that directs our ways of living is not always inspired by selfish motives. [I]t often aims at the common good. But its effect may also be harmful when it emanates from people having a false or incomplete conception of the human being. For example, should physicians, by prescribing special foods, as most of them do, accelerate the growth of young children? In such an instance, their action is based on an incomplete knowledge of the subject. Are larger and heavier children better than smaller ones? Intelligence, alertness, audacity, and resistance to disease do not depend on the same factors as the weight of the body. The education dispensed by schools and universities consists chiefly in a training of the memory and of the muscles, in certain social manners, in a worship of athletics. Are such disciplines really suitable for modern men who need, above all other things, mental equilibrium, nervous stability, sound judgment, audacity, moral courage, and endurance?...Although physicians, educators, and hygienists most generously lavish their efforts for the benefit of mankind, they do not attain their goal. For they deal with schemata containing only a part of the reality. The same may be said of all those who substitute their desires, their dreams, or their doctrines for the concrete human being. These theorists build up civilizations which, although designed by them for man, fit only an incomplete or monstrous image of man. The systems of government, entirely constructed in the minds of doctrinaires, are valueless. The principles of the French Revolution, the visions of Marx and Lenin, apply only to abstract men. It must be clearly realized that the laws of human relations are still unknown. Sociology and economics are conjectural sciences—that is, pseudo-sciences.

"Thus, it appears that the environment, which science and technology have succeeded in developing for man, does not suit him, because it has been constructed at random, without regard for his true self." – pp. 23–27

"The sciences of inert matter have made immense progress, while those of living beings remain in a rudimentary state....The applications of scientific discoveries have transformed the material and mental worlds. These transformations exert on us a profound influence. Their unfortunate effect comes from the fact that they have been made without consideration for our nature. Our ignorance of ourselves has given to mechanics, physics, and chemistry the power to modify at random the ancestral forms of life.

"Man should be the measure of all. On the contrary, he is a stranger in the world that he has created. He has been incapable of organizing this world for himself, because he did not possess a practical knowledge of his own nature. Thus, the enormous advance gained by the sciences of inanimate matter over those of living things is one of the greatest catastrophes ever suffered by humanity. The environment born of our intelligence and our inventions is adjusted neither to our stature nor to our shape. We are unhappy. We degenerate morally and mentally. The groups and the nations in which industrial civilization has attained its highest development are precisely those which are becoming weaker. And whose return to barbarism is the most rapid. But they do not realize it. They are without protection against the hostile surroundings that science has built about them. In truth, our civilization, like those preceding it, has created certain conditions of existence which, for reasons still obscure, render life itself impossible. The anxiety and the woes of the inhabitants of the modern city arise from their political, economic, and social institutions, but, above all, from their own weakness. We are the victims of the backwardness of the sciences of life over those of matter.

"The only possible remedy for this evil is a much more profound knowledge of ourselves....We shall thus learn how to adapt ourselves to our surroundings, and how to change them, should a revolution become indispensable. In bringing to light our true nature, our potentialities, and the way to actualize them, this science will give us the explanation of our physiological weakening, and of our moral and intellectual diseases. We have no other means of learning the inexorable rules of our organic and spiritual activities, of distinguishing the prohibited from the lawful, of realizing that we are not free to modify, according to our fancy, our environment, and ourselves. Since the natural conditions of existence have been destroyed by modern civilization, the science of man has become the most necessary of all sciences." – pp. 27–29

Chapter II:  The Science of Man

"The confusion in our knowledge of ourselves comes chiefly from the presence, among the positive facts, of the remains of scientific, philosophic, and religious systems. If our mind adheres to any system whatsoever, the aspect and the significance of concrete phenomena are changed. At all times, humanity has contemplated itself through glasses colored by doctrines, beliefs, and illusions. These false or inexact ideas must be discarded." – p. 34

"The best way to increase the intelligence of scientists would be to decrease their number. After all, the knowledge of man could be developed by a very small group of workers, provided that they were endowed with creative imagination and given powerful means for carrying out their researches. Great sums of money are wasted every year on scientific research...because those who are entrusted with this work do not generally possess the qualities necessary to the conquerors of new worlds. And also because the few individuals endowed with this exceptional power live under conditions precluding intellectual creation....Modern life is opposed to the life of the mind. However, men of science have to be mere units of a herd whose appetites are purely material and whose habits are entirely different from theirs. They vainly exhaust their strength and spend their time in the pursuit of the conditions demanded by the elaboration of thought. No one of them is wealthy enough to procure the isolation and the silence which in former times everybody could have for nothing, even in the largest cities. No attempt has so far been made to create, in the midst of the agitation of the new city, islands of solitude where meditation would be possible." – p. 49

Chapter III:  Body and Physiological Activities

"It is possible, by means of proper diet and mode of living, to augment or diminish the stature of the individuals composing a nation. Likewise, to modify the quality of their tissues and probably also of their mind. We must not blindly change the dimensions of the human body in order to give it more beauty and muscular strength. In fact, seemingly unimportant alterations of our size and form could cause profound modifications of our physiological and mental activities. There is no advantage in increasing man's stature by artificial means. Alertness, endurance, and audacity do not grow with the volume of the body. Men of genius are not tall. Mussolini is of medium size, and Napoleon was short....

"The man of the Renaissance, whose life was a constant fight, who was exposed continuously to dangers and to inclemencies,...did not resemble modern man who lives in a steam-heated apartment, an air-conditioned office, a closed car, who contemplates absurd films, listens to his radio, and plays golf and bridge. Each epoch puts its seal on human beings. We begin to observe the new types created by motor-cars, cinemas, and athletics. Some, more frequent in Latin countries, are characterized by an adipose aspect, flabby tissues, discolored skin, protruding abdomen, thin legs, awkward posture, unintelligent and brutal face. Others appear, especially among Anglo-Saxons, and show broad shoulders, narrow waist, and birdlike cranium. Our form is molded by our physiological habits, and even by our usual thoughts. Its characteristics are partly due to the muscles running under the skin or along the bones. The size of these muscles depends on the exercise to which they are submitted. The beauty of the body comes from the harmonious development of the muscles and the skeleton. It reached the height of perfection at the epoch of Pericles, in the Greek athletes whom Phidias and his disciples immortalized in their statues. The shape of the face, the mouth, the cheeks, the eyelids, and the lines of the visage are determined by the habitual condition of the flat muscles, which move in the adipose tissue underlying the skin. And the state of those muscles depends on that of our mind....Unwittingly, our visage progressively models itself upon our states of consciousness. With the advance of age it becomes more and more pregnant with the feelings, the appetites, and the aspirations of the whole being. The beauty of youth comes from the natural harmony of the lineaments of the human face. That, so rare, of an old man, from his soul.

"The visage expresses still deeper things than the hidden activities of consciousness. In this open book one can read not only the vices, the virtues, the intelligence, the stupidity, the feelings, the most carefully concealed habits, of an individual, but also the constitution of his body, and his tendencies to organic and mental diseases. In fact, the aspect of bones, muscles, fat, skin, and hair depends on the nutrition of tissues. And the nutrition of tissues is regulated by the composition of blood plasma, that is, by the activity of the glandular and digestive systems. The state of the organs is revealed by the aspect of the body. The surface of the skin reflects the functional conditions of the endocrine glands, the stomach, the intestines, and the nervous system. It points out the morbid tendencies of the individual. In fact, people who belong to different morphological classes—for instance, to the cerebral, digestive, muscular, or respiratory types—are not liable to the same organic or mental diseases. There are great functional disparities between tall and spare men, and broad and short ones. The tall type, either asthenic or athletic, is predisposed to tuberculosis and to dementia praecox. The short, py[k]nic type, to cyclic mania, diabetes, rheumatism, and gout. In the diagnosis and prognosis of diseases, ancient physicians, quite rightly, attributed great importance to temperament, idiosyncrasies, and diatheses. Each man bears on his face the description of his body and his soul." – pp. 62–4

"Through its outer surface, the body enters into communication with all the things of the cosmic universe. [T]he skin is the dwelling-place of an immense quantity of small receptor organs, each of which registers, according to its own structure, the changes taking place in the environment.

"[E]verything reaching the brain has to enter the sensory organs—that is, to influence the nervous layer enveloping our body. The unknown agent of telepathic communications is perhaps the only exception to this rule. In clairvoyance, it looks as though the subject directly grasps the external reality without the help of the usual nerve channels. But such phenomena are rare. As a rule, the senses are the gateway through which the physical and psychological universe penetrates our organism. Thus, the quality of an individual partly depends on that of his surface. For the brain is molded by the continual messages it receives from the outer world. Therefore, the state of our envelope should not be modified thoughtlessly by new habits of life....

"Atmospheric air, before reaching the pulmonary alveoli, passes through the nose, the pharynx, the larynx, the trachea, and the bronchi, where it is moistened and freed from dust and microbes. But this natural protection is now insufficient because the air of cities has been polluted by coal dust, gasoline fumes, and bacteria set free by the multitude of human beings. Respiratory mucosa is much more delicate than skin. It is defenseless against strong irritants. Its fragility may cause entire populations to be exerminated by toxic gases in the great wars of the future....

"Thus, our body constitutes a closed universe, limited on one side by the skin, and on the other by the mucosas covering our inner surfaces. [T]he skin...accomplishes the miracle of being a barrier at once closed and open. For it does not protect our nervous system against our mental surroundings. We may be wounded, and even killed, by subtle enemies which, ignoring our anatomical frontiers, invade our consciousness, like aviators bombarding a city without taking any notice of its fortifications." – pp. 65–9

"Despite its minuteness, each cell is a very complex organism....Cells can now be filmed and magnified to such an extent that, when thrown on the screen, they are larger than a man. All their organs are then visible. In the middle of their body floats a kind of ovoid, elastic-walled balloon, the nucleus, which appears to be full of an inert and transparent jelly. In this jelly are seen two nucleoli, which slowly and unceasingly change their shape. Around the nucleus there is a great agitation of small particles. The movements are particularly active around a cluster of vesicles, corresponding to the organ called by anatomists the apparatus of Golgi or of Renaut, and whose functions are connected with the nutrition of the cell. Small and indistinct granules form a kind of whirlpool in that same district. Larger globules endlessly zigzag through the cell, going as far as the extremities of its mobile and transitory arms. But the most remarkable organs are long filaments, the mitochondrias, which resemble snakes or, in certain cells, short bacteria. Vesicles, granulations, globules, and filaments glide, dance, and undulate perpetually in the free spaces of the cell body....

"The genes are generally invisible. However, we know that they dwell in the chromosomes, those elongated bodies seen in the clear fluid of the nucleus when the cell is going to divide. At this moment the chromosomes form in a more or less distinct manner two groups. These groups move away from each other. At the same time, the entire cell shakes violently, tosses its contents in all directions, and divides into two parts. These parts, the daughter cells, withdraw from each other while still united by some elastic filaments. These filaments stretch and finally give way. Thus, two new elements of the organism have become individualized.

"Cells, like animals, belong to many different races....Epithelial cells...constitute the brain, the skin, the endocrine glands, etc. Connective cells build up the framework of the organs....Around them appear various substances, such as cartilage, calcium, fibrous tissue, elastic fibers, which give skeleton, muscles, blood vessels, and organs the solidity and elasticity indispensable to their functions. In addition, they metamorphose into contractile elements. These are the muscles of the heart, of the vessels, of the digestive apparatus, and also of the locomotive system. [C]onnective and epithelial cells['] movements are slow. They glide in their medium like oil spreading over the surface of water. They drag with them their nucleus, suspended in the fluid mass of their body. They differ markedly from the mobile cells. Those cells include the different types of leu[k]ocytes of the blood and of the tissues. Their motion is rapid. The leu[k]ocytes, characterized by the presence of several nuclei, resemble am[o]ebas. The lymphocytes crawl more slowly, like small worms. The larger ones, the monocytes, have the appearance of an octopus. They extrude long tentacles from their substance, and also surround themselves with a thin, undulating membrane. After having enveloped dead cells and microbes in the folds of this membrane, they voraciously devour them....

"Besides the activities which they usually display, [t]issue cells...possess others, generally hidden, but capable of becoming actual in response to certain changes of the medium. They are thus enabled to deal with the unforeseeable events taking place in the course of normal life and during illnesses....

"The existence of tissues cannot be conceived without that of a fluid medium....All spatial ordering of bodily structures is commanded by their food requirements. The architectural plan of each organ is inspired by the need of the cells to be immersed in a medium always rich in foodstuffs and never encumbered by waste products." – pp. 72–6

"The organic medium is a part of the tissues. [It] is composed of blood, flowing in the vessels, and of fluids, plasma or lymph, which filter through the walls of the capillaries into the tissues. There is a general organic medium, the blood, and regional media, consisting of the interstitial lymph of each organ. An organ may be compared to a pond completely filled with aquatic plants and fed by a small brook. The almost stagnant water is polluted by waste products, dead fragments of plants, and chemical substances set free by them. The degree of stagnation and of pollution of the water depends on the rapidity and the volume of the brook. Such is the case with interstitial lymph. In short, the composition of the regional media inhabited by the various cells of the body rests...on blood.

"The blood is a tissue, like all the other tissues....But [its] cells are not, like those of the other tissues, immobilized in a framework. They are suspended in a viscous liquid, the plasma. Blood is a moving tissue, finding its way into all parts of the body. It carries to each cell the proper nourishment. Acting, at the same time, as a main sewer that takes away the waste products set free by living tissues. It also contains chemical substances and cells capable of repairing organs wherever necessary.

"[B]lood plasma['s] red corpuscles are not living cells. They are tiny sacks full of hemoglobin. During their passage through the lungs they take on a load of oxygen which, a few instants later, they hand over to the greedy tissue cells....The white corpuscles, on the contrary, are living organisms. Sometimes they float in the blood stream, sometimes they escape from the capillary vessels by slipping through their walls into the tissues, and creep on the surface of the cells of the mucous membranes, of the intestines, of the glands, and of all the organs....

"Each organ, each tissue, creates its own medium at the expense of blood plasma. On the reciprocal adjustment of the cells and their medium are based the health or disease, strength or weakness, happiness or misery, of each one of us." – pp. 76–80

"Between the liquids composing the organic medium, and the world of tissues and organs, there are perpetual chemical exchanges. Nutritive activity is a mode of being of the cells, as fundamental as structure and form. As soon as their chemical exchanges, or metabolism, cease, the organs come into equilibrium with their medium and die. Nutrition is synonymous with existence. Living tissues crave oxygen and take it from blood. This means, in physicochemical terms, that they possess a high reducing potential, that a complex system of chemical substances and of ferments enables them to use atmospheric oxygen for energy-producing reactions. From the oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon supplied by sugars and fats, living cells procure the mechanical energy necessary for the maintenance of their structure and for their movements, the electrical energy manifesting itself in every change of the organic conditions, and the heat indispensable to chemical reactions and physiological processes. They also find in blood plasma the nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, etc., which they utilize for the construction of new cells, and in the processes of growth and repair. With the help of their ferments they divide the proteins, sugars, and fats contained in their medium into smaller and smaller fragments, and make use of the energy so liberated. They simultaneously build up, by means of energy-absorbing reactions, certain compounds more complex and having a higher energy potential, and they incorporate them in their own substance....

"Brain, liver, and endocrine glands need a great deal of chemical energy. But muscular exercise raises the intensity of the exchanges in the most marked manner. Nevertheless, all our activities cannot be expressed in chemical terms. Intellectual work, strange to say, does not increase metabolism. It seems to require no energy, or to consume a quantity of it too small to be detected by our present techniques. It is, indeed, an astonishing fact that human thought, which has transformed the surface of the earth, destroyed and built nations, discovered new universes in the immensity of the sidereal spaces, is elaborated without demanding a measurable amount of energy. The mightiest effort of our intelligence has incomparably less effect on metabolism then the contraction of the biceps when this muscle lifts a weight of a few grams. The ambition of Caesar, the meditation of Newton, the inspiration of Beethoven, the passionate contemplation of Pasteur, did not [appreciably] modify the chemical exchanges of these great men[.]

"[B]ears and raccoons lower their metabolism in winter, and fall into a state of slower life. Certain arthropodous animals, Tardigrada, completely stop their metabolism when they are dried. A condition of latent life is thus induced. After a lapse of several weeks, if one moistens these desiccated animals, they revive, and the rhythm of their life again becomes normal. We have not yet discovered the secret of producing such a suspension of nutrition in domestic animals and in man. It would be an evident advantage in cold countries if a state of latent life could be induced in sheep and cows for the duration of the winter. It might be possible, perhaps, to prolong life, cure certain diseases, and give higher opportunities to exceptionally gifted individuals, if human beings could be made to hibernate from time to time." – pp. 80–2

"In the course of the chemical exchanges, waste products, or catabolites are set free by tissues and organs. They tend to accumulate in the regional medium and to render it uninhabitable for the cells. The phenomenon of nutrition, therefore, requires the existence of apparatuses capable of assuring, through a rapid circulation of lymph and blood, the replacement of the nutritive substances used by the tissues, and the elimination of waste products. [L]iving tissues consume large amounts of oxygen and glucose. They also liberate into the inner medium considerable quantities of carbonic, lactic, hydrochloric, phosphoric acids, etc. [The equivalent of] a human body...cultivated in vitro would demand about two hundred thousand liters of nutritive fluid. It is on account of the marvelous perfection of the apparatuses responsible for the circulation of the blood, its wealth of nutritive substances, and the constant elimination of the waste products, that our tissues can live in [only] six or seven liters of fluid[.]

"The speed of circulation is sufficiently great to prevent the composition of blood from being modified by the catabolites of tissues. The acidity of plasma increases only after violent exercise. Each organ regulates the volume and the rapidity of its blood flow by means of vasomotor nerves. The interstitial lymph becomes acid as soon as circulation slackens or stops....

"Blood maintains its composition constant by perpetually passing through apparatuses where it is purified and recuperates the nutritive substances removed by the tissues. When venous blood returns from the muscles and the organs, it is full of carbonic acid and waste products of nutrition. [D]uring its passage through the lungs, blood gets rid of carbonic acid only. It still contains nonvolatile acids, and all other waste products of metabolism. Its purification is completed during its passage through the kidneys. The kidneys separate from the blood certain substances that are eliminated in the urine. They also regulate the quantity of salts indispensable to plasma in order that its osmotic tension may remain constant. The functioning of the kidneys and of the lungs is of a prodigious efficiency. It is the intense activity of these viscera that permits the fluid medium required by living tissues to be so limited, and the human body to possess such compactness and agility." – pp. 83–5

"The nutritive material carried by the blood to the tissues derives from...atmospheric air by the agency of the lungs, from the intestinal surface, and, finally, from the endocrine glands. All substances used by the organism, with the exception of oxygen, are supplied by the intestines[.] The food is successively treated by the saliva, the gastric juice, and the secretions of pancreas, liver, and intestinal mucosa. Digestive ferments divide the molecules of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats into smaller fragments. These fragments are capable of traversing the mucous membranes, which defend our inner frontier. They are then absorbed by the blood and lymph vessels of the intestinal mucosa, and penetrate the organic medium.

"[T]he chemical elements of the outer world act on each individual in different ways, according to the specific constitution of his intestinal mucosa. From these elements are built our tissues and our humors. Man is literally made from the dust of the earth. For this reason his physiological and mental activities are profoundly influenced by the geological constitution of the country where he lives, by the nature of the animals and plants on which he generally feeds. His structure and his functions depend also on the selection he makes of certain elements among the vegetal and animal foods at his disposal. The chiefs always had a diet quite different from that of their slaves. Those who fought, commanded, and conquered used chiefly meats and fermented drinks, whereas the peaceful, the weak, and the submissive were satisfied with milk, vegetables, fruits, and cereals. Our aptitudes and our destiny come, in some measure, from the nature of the chemical substances that construct our tissues. It seems as though human beings, like animals, could be artificially given certain bodily and mental characteristics if subjected from childhood to appropriate diets....

"The organism has the peculiar property of being its own builder, of manufacturing new compounds from the chemical substances of the blood. These compounds serve to feed certain tissues and to stimulate certain functions. This sort of creation of itself by itself is analogous to the training of the will by an effort of the will. Glands, such as the thyroid, the suprarenal, the pancreas, etc., synthe[s]ize from the chemicals in solution in the organic medium a number of new compounds, thyroxin, adrenalin, insulin, etc. They are true chemical transformers. In this way, substances indispensable for the nutrition of cells and organs, and for physiological and mental activities, are produced. Such a phenomenon is as strange as if certain parts of a motor should create the oil used by other parts of the machine, the substances accelerating the combustion of the fuel, and even the thoughts of the engineer. Obviously, tissues are unable to feed exclusively on the compounds supplied by the diet after their passage through the intestinal mucosa. These compounds have to be remolded by the glands. To these glands is due the existence of the body with its manifold activities.

"Man is, first of all, a nutritive process. He consists of a ceaseless motion of chemical substances. One can compare him to the flame of a candle, or to the fountains playing in the gardens of Versailles. Those beings, made of burning gases or of water, are both permanent and transitory. Their existence depends on a stream of gas or of liquid. Like ourselves, they change according to the quality and the quantity of the substances which animate them. As a large river coming from the external world and returning to it, matter perpetually flows through all the cells of the body. During its passing, it yields to tissues the energy they need, and also the chemicals which build the temporary and fragile structures of our organs and humors. The corporeal substratum of all human activities originates from the inanimate world and, sooner or later, goes back to it. Our organism is made from the same elements as lifeless things. Therefore, we should not be surprised, as some modern physiologists still are, to find at work within our own self the usual laws of physics and of chemistry as they exist in the cosmic world. Since we are parts of the material universe, the absence of those laws is unthinkable." – pp. 85–9

"Testicles and ovaries possess functions of overwhelming importance. They generate male or female cells. Simultaneously, they secrete into the blood certain substances, which impress the male or female characteristics on our tissues, humors, and consciousness, and give to all our functions their character of intensity. The testicle engenders audacity, violence, and brutality, the qualities distinguishing the fighting bull from the ox drawing the plow along the furrow. The ovary affects the organism of the woman in an analogous manner....

"The differences existing between man and woman do not come from the particular form of the sexual organs, the presence of the uterus, from gestation, or from the mode of education. They are of a more fundamental nature. They are caused by the very structure of the tissues and by the impregnation of the entire organism with specific chemical substances secreted by the ovary. Ignorance of these fundamental facts has led promoters of feminism to believe that both sexes should have the same education, the same powers, and the same responsibilities. In reality, woman differs profoundly from man. Every one of the cells of her body bears the mark of her sex. The same is true of her organs and, above all, of her nervous system. Physiological laws are as inexorable as those of the sidereal world. They cannot be replaced by human wishes. We are obliged to accept them just as they are. Women should develop their aptitudes in accordance with their own nature, without trying to imitate the males. Their part in the progress of civilization is higher than that of men. They should not abandon their specific functions.

"[F]emales, at any rate among mammals, seem only to attain their full development after one or more pregnancies. Women who have no children are not so well balanced and become more nervous than the others. In short, the presence of the fetus, whose tissues greatly differ from hers because they are young and are, in part, those of her husband, acts profoundly on the woman. The importance to her of the generative function has not been sufficiently recognized. Such function is indispensable to her optimum development. It is, therefore, absurd to turn women against maternity. The same intellectual and physical training, and the same ambitions, should not be given to young girls as to boys. Educators should pay very close attention to the organic and mental peculiarities of the male and the female, and to their natural functions. Between the two sexes there are irrevocable differences. And it is imperative to take them into account in constructing the civilized world." – pp. 89–92

"Through his nervous system man records the stimuli impinging upon him from his environment. His organs and muscles supply the appropriate answer....The sympathetic system, autonomous and unconscious, controls the organs. Th[is] second system depends on the first. This double apparatus gives to the complexity of our body the simplicity required for its action on the outside world.

"The central system consists of the brain, the cerebellum, and the spinal cord....It is composed of a soft, whitish, extremely fragile substance, filling the skull and the spinal column....An immense number of nervous fibers intersect the organism in every direction. Their microscopic endings creep between the cells of the skin, around the acini of the glands and their excretory ducts, in the coat of the arteries and the veins, into the contractile envelopes of the stomach and the intestines, on the surface of the muscular fibers, etc. They spread their delicate network through the whole body.

"[H]eart, stomach, and intestines are quite independent of our will. However, if we pay too much attention to them, their automatism may be disturbed....

"Pavlov conditional reflexes take place in the cerebral cortex....

"Muscles...function[ly] are...a part of the brain. It is with their help and that of the bones that human intelligence has put its mark on the world. Man has been given power over his environment by the shape of his skeleton. The limbs consist of articulated levers, composed of three segments. The upper limb is mounted upon a mobile plate, the shoulder blade, while the osseous girdle, the pelvis, to which the lower limb is jointed, is almost rigid and immobile. The motive muscles lie along the bones. Near the extremity of the arm, these muscles resolve into tendons, which move the fingers and the hand itself. The hand is a masterpiece. Simultaneously, it feels and it acts. It acts as if endowed with sight. Owing to the unique properties of its skin, its tactile nerves, its muscles, and its bones, the hand is capable of manufacturing arms and tools. We never would have acquired our mastery over matter without the aid of our fingers, those five small levers, each composed of three articulated segments, which are mounted upon the metacarpus and the bones of the wrist. The hand adapts itself to the roughest work as well as to the most delicate. It has wielded with equal skill the flint knife of the primitive hunter, the blacksmith's hammer, the woodcutter's ax, the farmer's plow, the sword of the medieval knight, the controls of the modern aviator, the artist's brush, the journalist's pen, the threads of the silk-weaver. It is able to kill and to bless, to steal and to give, to sow grain on the surface of the fields and to throw grenades in the trenches. The elasticity, strength, and adaptiveness of the lower limbs, whose pendulum-like oscillations determine walking and running, have never been equaled by our machines[.] The three levers, articulated on the pelvis, adapt themselves with marvelous suppleness to all postures, efforts, and movements....

"There is another organic system composed of cerebral substance, nerves, muscles, and cartilages, which, to the same degree as the hand, has determined the superiority of man over all living beings. It consists of the tongue and the larynx, and their nervous apparatus. Owing to this system, we are capable of expressing our thoughts, of communicating with our fellow men by means of sounds. Were it not for language, civilization would not exist. The use of speech, like that of the hand, has greatly aided the development of the brain. The cerebral parts of the hand, the tongue, and the larynx extend over a large area of the brain surface." – pp. 92–8

"Organs are provided with sensitive nerves. They send frequent messages to the nervous centers[.] When a man...feels that he is in danger, that death approaches, such warning probably comes to him from the center of visceral consciousness. And visceral consciousness is rarely mistaken. Of course, in the inhabitants of the new city, sympathetic functions are often as ill balanced as mental activities. The autonomous system seems to become less capable of protecting the heart, stomach, intestines, and glands from the worries of existence. Against the dangers and brutality of primitive life it effectively defended the organs. But it is not strong enough to resist the constant shocks of modern life." – pp. 102–3

"[I]solated red and white corpuscles [can] manage to construct a segment of circulatory apparatus[.] The spontaneous tendency toward formation of the organs by their constitutive cells, like the social aptitude of the insects,...cannot be explained in the light of our present concepts.

"An organ builds itself by techniques very foreign to the human mind....An organ develops by means such as those attributed to fairies in the tales told to children in bygone times. It is engendered by cells which, to all appearances, have a knowledge of the future edifice[.]

"These methods used by the organism do not have the simplicity of ours. They appear strange to us. Our intelligence does not encounter itself in the intraorganic world....For the moment, we cannot understand the mode of organization of our body and its nutritive, nervous, and mental activities. [T]he childish physicochemical conceptions of the human being, in which so many physiologists and physicians still believe, have to be definitely abandoned. We must also dismiss the philosophical and humanistic dreams of physicists and astronomers. Following many others, Jeans believes and teaches that God, creator of the sidereal universe, is a mathematician. If that is so, the material world, the living beings, and man have been created, obviously, by different Gods. How naive our speculations! Our knowledge of the human body is, in truth, most rudimentary. It is impossible, for the present, to grasp its constitution. We must, then, be content with the scientific observation of our organic and mental activities. And, without any other guide, march forward into the unknown." – pp. 107–9

"Our body is extremely robust. It adapts itself to all climates, arctic cold as well as tropical heat. It also resists starvation, weather inclemencies, fatigue, hardships, overwork. Man is the hardiest of all animals, and the white races, builders of our civilization, the hardiest of all races. [M]an['s] endurance comes...from...his tissues'...property of growing instead of wearing out, from the strange power displayed by the organism in meeting a new situation by adaptive changes. Resistance to disease, work, and worries, capacity for effort, and nervous equilibrium are the signs of the superiority of a man. Such qualities characterized the founders of our civilization in the United States as well as in Europe. The great white races owe their success to the perfection of their nervous system—nervous system which although very delicate and excitable, can, however, be disciplined. To the exceptional qualities of their tissues and consciousness is due the predominance over the rest of the world of the peoples of western Europe, and of their swarms in the United States.

"We are ignorant of the nature of this organic robustness, of this nervous and mental superiority. Must they be attributed to the structure of the cells, to the chemical substances they synthe[s]ize, to the mode of integration of the organs by the humors and nerves? We do not know. These qualities are hereditary. They have existed in our people for many centuries. But even in the greatest and richest nations they may disappear. The history of past civilizations shows that such a calamity is possible. But it does not explain clearly its genesis. Obviously, the resistance of the body and the mind must be conserved at all costs in a great nation. Mental and nervous strength is infinitely more important than muscular strength. The descendant of a great race, if he has not degenerated, is endowed with natural immunity to fatigue and to fear. He does not think about his health or his security. He is not interested in medicine, and ignores physicians. He does not believe that the Golden Age will arrive when physiological chemists have obtained in a pure state all vitami[n]s and secretory products of endocrine glands. He looks upon himself as destined to fight, to love, to think, and to conquer. He knows that safety should not be first. His action on his environment is as essentially simple as the leap of a wild animal upon its prey. No more than the animal does he feel his structural complexity....

"Many people, although they are not ill, are not in good health. Perhaps the quality of some of their tissues is defective....Such individuals feel profoundly these organic deficiencies, which bring them much misery. The future discoverer of a method for inducing tissues and organs to develop harmoniously will be a greater benefactor of humanity than Pasteur himself. For he will present man with the most precious of all gifts, with an almost divine offering, the aptitude for happiness.

"The weakening of the body has many causes. It is well known that the quality of tissues is lowered by too poor or too rich a diet, by alcoholism, syphilis, consanguineous unions, and also by prosperity and leisure. Wealth is as dangerous as ignorance and poverty. Civilized men degenerate in tropical climates. On the contrary, they thrive in temperate or cold countries. They need a way of life involving constant struggle, mental and muscular effort, physiological and moral discipline, and some privations. Such conditions inure the body to fatigue and to sorrows. They protect it against disease, and especially against nervous diseases. They irresistibly drive humanity to the conquest of the external world." – pp. 109–112

"[M]an is...subject to the organic and functional disorders brought...by excess of food, insufficient physical exercise, and overwork. The lack of equilibrium and the neuroses of the visceral nervous system bring about many affections of the stomach and the intestines. Heart diseases become more frequent. And also diabetes. The maladies of the central nervous system are innumerable. In the course of his life, every individual suffers from some attack of neurasthenia, of nervous depression, engendered by constant agitation, noise, and worries. Although modern hygiene has made human existence far safer, longer, and more pleasant, diseases have not been mastered. They have simply changed in nature.

"This change comes undoubtedly from the elimination of infections. But it may be due also to modifications in the constitution of tissues under the influence of the new modes of life. The organism seems to have become more susceptible to degenerative diseases. It is continually subjected to nervous and mental shocks, to toxic substances manufactured by disturbed organs, to those contained in food and air. It is also affected by the deficiencies of the essential physiological and mental functions. The staple foods may not contain the same nutritive substances as in former times. Mass production has modified the composition of wheat, eggs, milk, fruit, and butter, although these articles have retained their familiar appearance. Chemical fertilizers, by increasing the abundance of the crops without replacing all the exhausted elements of the soil, have indirectly contributed to change the nutritive value of cereal grains and of vegetables. Hens have been compelled, by artificial diet and mode of living, to enter the ranks of mass producers. Has not the quality of their eggs been modified? The same question may be asked about milk, because cows are now confined to the stable all the year round, and are fed on manufactured provender....We cannot understand the characteristics of...the degenerative diseases, the diseases resulting from civilization[,] before having considered the nature of our mental activities. In disease as in health, body and consciousness, although distinct, are inseparable." – pp. 115–6

Chapter IV:  Mental Activities

"Intelligence projects its visions on the perpetually changing screen of our affective states, of our sorrows or our joys, of our love or our hatred. To study this aspect of ourselves, we separate it artificially from an indivisible wholeness....Everyone knows that love, hate, anger, and fear are capable of bringing confusion even to logic. In order to manifest themselves, these states of consciousness require certain modifications of the chemical exchanges. The more intense the emotional disturbances, the more active become these exchanges. We know that, on the contrary, metabolism is not modified by intellectual work. Affective functions are very near the physiological. They give to each human being his temperament. Temperament changes from one individual to the other, from one race to the other. It is a mixture of mental, physiological, and structural characteristics. It is man himself. It is responsible for his narrowness, his mediocrity, or his strength. What factors bring about the weakening of temperament in certain social groups and in certain nations? It seems that the violence of the emotional moods diminishes when wealth increases, when education is generalized, when diet becomes more elaborate. At the same time, affective functions are observed to separate from intelligence, and to exaggerate unduly certain of their aspects. The forms of life, of education, or of food brought by modern civilization perhaps tend to give us the qualities of cattle, or to develop our emotional impulses inharmoniously....

"Today [m]oral sense...may be observed, even in a state of high development, in certain social groups and in certain countries. It has manifested itself at all epochs. In the course of the history of mankind its importance has been demonstrated to be fundamental. It is related both to intelligence and to esthetic and religious senses....In highly civilized beings, will and intelligence are one and the same function. From will and intelligence come all moral values.

"Moral sense, like intellectual activity, apparently depends on certain structural and functional states of the body. These states result from the immanent constitution of our tissues and our minds, and also from factors which have acted upon us during our development. [H]uman beings possess innate tendencies to selfishness, meanness, or pity. These tendencies appear very early in life. They are obvious to any careful observer....

"The definition of good and evil...is related to basic necessities of individual and social life. However, it is somewhat arbitrary. But at each epoch and in each country it should be very clearly defined and identical for all classes of individuals. The good is equivalent to justice, charity, beauty. The evil, to selfishness, meanness, ugliness. In modern civilization, the theoretical rules of conduct are based upon the remains of Christian morals. No one obeys them. Modern man has rejected all discipline of his appetites. However, biological and industrial morals have no practical value, because they are artificial and take into consideration only one aspect of the human being. They ignore some of our most essential activities. They do not give to man an armor strong enough to protect him against his own inherent vices....

"Everyone should realize the necessity of selecting the right and avoiding the wrong, of submitting himself to such necessity by an effort of his own will. The Roman Catholic Church, in its deep understanding of human psychology, has given to moral activities a far higher place than to intellectual ones. [M]oral sense is more important than intelligence. When it disappears from a nation the whole social structure slowly commences to crumble away. In biological research, we have not given so far to moral activities the importance that they deserve. Moral sense must be studied in as positive a manner as intelligence....

"Moral beauty is an exceptional and very striking phenomenon. He who has contemplated it but once never forgets its aspect. This form of beauty is far more impressive than the beauty of nature and of science. It gives to those who possess its divine gifts, a strange, an inexplicable power. It increases the strength of intellect. It establishes peace among men. Much more than science, art, and religious rites, moral beauty is the basis of civilization." – pp. 126–31

"In the history of the saints, one reads descriptions of...levitations. [S]everal of the Christian mystics have manifested this strange phenomenon. The subject, absorbed in his prayer,...gently rises above the ground. But it has not been possible so far to bring these extraordinary facts into the field of scientific observation....

"In all countries, at all times, people have believed in the existence of miracles, in the more or less rapid healing of the sick at...certain sanctuaries. But after the great impetus of science during the nineteenth century, such belief completely disappeared....However, in view of the facts observed during the last fifty years this attitude cannot be sustained. The most important cases of miraculous healing have been recorded by the Medical Bureau of Lourdes....The miracle is chiefly characterized by an extreme acceleration of the processes of organic repair. There is...no need for the patient himself to pray....It is sufficient that some one around him be in a state of prayer. Such facts are of profound significance. They show the reality of certain relations, of still unknown nature, between psychological and organic processes. They prove the objective importance of the spiritual activities[.] They open to man a new world." – pp. 147–50

"The psychological state of the social group determines, in a large measure, the number, the quality, and the intensity of the manifestations of individual consciousness. If the social environment is mediocre, intelligence and moral sense fail to develop. These activities may become thoroughly vitiated by bad surroundings. We are immersed in the habits of our epoch, like tissue cells in the organic fluids. Like these cells, we are incapable of defending ourselves against the influence of the community....

"Formal teaching reaches intelligence alone. Moral sense, beauty, and mysticity are learned only when present in our surroundings and part of our daily life....

"Civilization has not succeeded, so far, in creating an environment suitable to mental activities. The low intellectual and spiritual value of most human beings is due largely to deficiencies of their psychological atmosphere. The supremacy of matter and the dogmas of industrial religion have destroyed culture, beauty, and morals, as they were understood by the Christian civilization, mother of modern science....The intellectual classes have been debased by the immense spread of newspapers, cheap literature, radios, and cinemas....School children and students form their minds on the silly programs of public entertainments. Social environment, instead of favoring the growth of intelligence, opposes it with all its might....

"Moral sense is almost completely ignored by modern society. We have, in fact, suppressed its manifestations....Ministers have rationalized religion. They have destroyed its mystical basis....In their half-empty churches they vainly preach a weak morality. They are content with the part of policemen, helping in the interest of the wealthy to preserve the framework of present society. Or, like politicians, they flatter the appetites of the crowd.

"Man is powerless against such psychological attacks. He necessarily yields to the influence of his group. If one lives in the company of criminals or fools, one becomes a criminal or a fool. Isolation is the only hope of salvation." – pp. 150–4

"It is remarkable that mental diseases by themselves are more numerous than all the other diseases put together. Hospitals for the insane are full to overflowing, and unable to receive all those who should be restrained. [S]everal hundred thousand persons, not mentioned in any statistics, are affected with psychoneuroses. These figures show how great is the fragility of the consciousness of civilized men, and how important for modern society is the problem of mental health. The diseases of the mind are a serious menace. They...are to be feared, not only because they increase the number of criminals, but chiefly because they profoundly weaken the dominant white races....The frequency of neurosis and psychosis is doubtless the expression of a very grave defect of modern civilization. The new habits of existence have certainly not improved our mental health....

"Feeble-mindedness and insanity are perhaps the price of industrial civilization, and of the resulting changes in our ways of life....We must, therefore, ascertain how modern life acts upon consciousness....

"The factors promoting the development of idiocy and insanity are of great complexity. Dementia praecox and circular insanity manifest themselves more especially in the social groups where life is restless and disordered, food too elaborate or too poor, and syphilis frequent. And also when the nervous system is hereditarily unstable, when moral discipline has been suppressed, when selfishness, irresponsibility, and dispersion are customary. There are probably some relations between these factors and the genesis of psychoses. The modern habits of living hide a fundamental defect. In the environment created by technology, our most specific functions develop incompletely. Despite the marvels of scientific civilization, human personality tends to dissolve." – pp. 154–8

Chapter V:  Inward Time

"[A]n individual and a nation cannot be placed in the same temporal scale. Social problems should not be considered in the same light as individual ones. They evolve very slowly. Our observations and our experiences are always too short. For this reason, they have little significance. The results of a modification in the material and mental conditions of the existence of a population rarely manifest themselves in less than a century. However, the investigation of the great biological questions is confined to isolated individuals. There is no provision for the continuation of their work when they die. In a like manner, scientific and political institutions are conceived in terms of individual duration. The Roman Catholic Church is the only organization to have realized that the progress of humanity is very slow, that the passing of a generation is an insignificant event in the history of the world....The advent of scientific civilization necessitates a fresh discussion of all fundamental subjects. We are witnessing our own moral, intellectual, and social failure. We have been living under the delusion that democracies would survive through the weak and short-sighted efforts of the ignorant. We begin to understand that they are decaying. Problems involving the future of the great races demand a solution. It is now imperative to prepare for distant events, to mold young generations with a different ideal. The government of nations by men who estimate time in function of their own duration leads, as we well know, to confusion and to failure. We have to stretch our temporal outlook beyond ourselves....

"Women should be mothers when they are still very young. Thus, they would not be isolated from their children by a temporal gap too great to be bridged, even by love." – pp. 186–8

"The molding of the organism according to a selected pattern must take into account the nature of duration, the constitution of our temporal dimension. Our interventions have to be made in the cadence of inner time. Man is like a viscous liquid flowing into the physical continuum. He cannot instantaneously change his direction. We should not endeavor to modify his mental and structural form by rough procedures, as one shapes a statue of marble by blows of the hammer....No profound changes of the body as a whole can be obtained rapidly. Our action must blend with the physiological processes, substratum of inner time, by following their own rhythm. [T]he mental factors act only in a progressive manner. Our interventions in the building up of body and consciousness have their full effects only when they conform to the laws of our duration....

"Under the influence of environment, personality may spread and become very thin, or concentrate and acquire great strength. The growth of personality involves a constant trimming of our self. At the beginning of life, man is endowed with vast potentialities. He is limited in his development only by the extensible frontiers of his ancestral predispositions. But at each instant he has to make a choice....In our infancy we carry within ourselves numerous virtual beings, who die one by one. In our old age, we are surrounded by an escort of those we could have been, of all our aborted potentialities. Every man is a fluid that becomes solid, a treasure that grows poorer, a history in the making, a personality that is being created. And our progress, or our disintegration, depends on physical, chemical, and physiological factors, on viruses and bacteria, on psychological influences, and, finally, on our own will. We are constantly being made by our environment and by our self." – pp. 189–90

Chapter VI:  Adaptive Functions

"When...injured[,] the organism immediately adapts itself to such a new situation. Everything happens as if a series of measures, some immediate, some delayed, were taken by the body in order to repair the lesions of the tissues....They all turn toward the end to be attained, the reconstruction of the destroyed structures....

"Tissues become what they have to be in order to accomplish the common task. For example, a shred of muscle close to the focus of fracture metamorphoses into cartilage....Later, cartilage transforms into osseous tissue....Each phenomenon results from the preceding one. [T]he actualization within the cells of certain potential properties...give[s] to anatomical structures the power to regenerate...in a manner consistent with the interests of the whole body.

"[A] wound only cicatrizes if cicatrization is advantageous to the body. When the tissues uncovered by the extirpation of the skin are completely protected against microbes, air, and other causes of irritation, regeneration does not take place. In fact, under such conditions it is useless. The wound, therefore, does not heal and remains in its initial state. Such a state is maintained as long as the tissues are guarded against the attacks of the outer world as perfectly as they would be by the regenerated skin. As soon as some blood, a few microbes, or an ordinary dressing is allowed to come in contact with the damaged surface and to irritate it, the process of healing starts and continues irresistably until cicatrization is complete.

"Skin...consists of superposed sheets of flat cells, the epithelial cells. These cells lie on the dermis—that is, on a soft and elastic layer of connective tissue containing many small blood vessels. When a piece of skin is removed, the bottom of the wound is seen to consist of fatty tissue and muscles. After three or four days its surface becomes smooth, glistening, and red. Then it abruptly begins to decrease with great rapidity. This phenomenon is due to a sort of contraction of the new tissue covering the wound. At the same time, the skin cells commence to glide over the red surface as a white edge. Finally, they cover its entire area. A definitive scar is formed. This scar is due to the collaboration of two types of tissue, the connective tissue filling the wound, and the epithelial cells, which advance over its surface from the borders. Connective tissue is responsible for the contraction of the wound. Epithelial tissue, for the membrane that ultimately covers it. The progressive decrease of the wounded area in the course of repair is expressed by an exponential curve. However, if one prevents either the epithelial tissue or the connective tissue from accomplishing its respective tasks, the curve does not change. It does not change because the deficiency of one of the factors of repair is compensated by the acceleration of the other. Obviously, the progress of the phenomenon depends on the end to be attained. If one of the regenerating mechanisms fails, it is replaced by the other. The result alone is invariable. And not the procedure. In a like manner, after a hemorrhage, arterial pressure and blood volume are reestablished by two converging mechanisms. On one side, by contraction of the blood vessels and by diminution of their capacity. On the other side, by the bringing of a quantity of liquid from the tissues and the digestive apparatus. But each of these mechanisms is capable of compensating the failure of the other." – pp. 199–203

"The knowledge of the processes of healing has brought modern surgery into being. Surgeons would not be able to treat wounds if adaptation did not exist. They have no influence on the healing mechanisms. They content themselves with guiding the spontaneous activity of those mechanisms. For example, they manage to bring the edges of a wound, or the ends of a broken bone, into such a position that regeneration takes place without defective scar and deformity. [T]hey have to make long incisions and extensive wounds. [T]he organism [is] capable of making its own repairs. Surgery is based on the existence of this phenomenon. [I]t has surpassed the most ambitious hopes of medicine of former times....

"The reason behind such success is simple. Surgery has merely learned that the normal processes of healing must not be hindered. It has succeeded in preventing microbes from getting into wounds. Operations, before the discoveries of Pasteur and Lister, were always followed by invasion of bacteria. Such attacks caused suppuration, gaseous grangrene, and infection of the whole body. They often ended in death. Modern techniques have practically eliminated microbes from operative wounds. In this manner they save the life of the patient and lead him to a rapid recovery. For microbes have the power to obstruct or delay adaptive processes and repair. As soon as wounds were protected against bacteria[,] surgery began to grow....

"This success came from the clear understanding of certain adaptive phenomena. It is indispensable, not only to preserve the wounds from infection, but also to respect, in the course of operative handling, their structural and functional conditions. Tissues are endangered [even] by most antiseptic substances. They must not be crushed by forceps, compressed by apparatuses, or pulled about by the fingers of a brutal operator. Halsted and the surgeons of his school have shown how delicately wounds must be treated if they are to keep intact their regenerative power. The result of an operation depends both on the state of the tissues and on that of the patient. Modern techniques take into consideration every factor capable of modifying physiological and mental activities." – pp. 203–5

"The individual does not generally get without effort the position he covets in the group of which he is a member. He wants wealth, knowledge, power, pleasures. He is driven by his greed, his ambition, his curiosity, his sexual appetite. But he finds himself in an environment always indifferent, sometimes hostile. He quickly realizes that he must fight for what he wants. His mode of reaction to his social surroundings depends on his specific constitution. Some people become accommodated to the world by conquering it. Others by escaping from it. Still others refuse to accept its rules. The natural attitude of the individual toward his fellow men is one of strife. Consciousness responds to the enmity of the environment by an effort directed against it. Intelligence and cunning then develop, as well as the desire to learn, the will to work, to possess, and to dominate. The passion for conquest...led...Mussolini to the building up of a great nation[.] The same spirit drives the modern human being to robbery, to murder, and to the great financial and economic enterprises characterizing our civilization. But its impulse also builds hospitals, laboratories, universities, and churches. It impels men to fortune and to death[.] But never to happiness.

"The second mode of adaptation is flight. Some abandon the struggle and descend to a social level where competition is no longer necessary. They become factory workers, proletarians. Others take refuge within their own self. At the same time they can adapt themselves, in some measure, to the social group, and even conquer it through the superiority of their intelligence. But they do not fight. They are members of the community only in appearance. In fact, they live in an inner world of their own." – pp. 219–21

"Certain forms of modern life lead directly to degeneration. There are social conditions as fatal to white men as are warm and humid climates. We react to poverty, anxieties, and sorrows by working and struggling. We can stand tyranny, revolution, and war. But we are not able to fight successfully against misery or prosperity. The individual and the race are weakened by extreme poverty. Wealth is just as dangerous. Nevertheless, there are still families which, in spite of having had money and power for centuries, have kept their strength. But, in former times, power and money derived from the ownership of land. To hold the land required struggle, administrative ability, and leadership. This indispensable effort prevented degeneration. Today, wealth does not bring in its train any responsibility toward the community. Irresponsibility, even in the absence of wealth, is harmful. In the poor, as well as in the rich, leisure engenders degeneration. Cinemas, concerts, radios, automobiles, and athletics are no substitutes for intelligent work. We are far from having solved this momentous problem of idleness created by prosperity, modern machinery, or unemployment. By imposing leisure upon man, scientific civilization has brought him great misfortune. We are as incapable of fighting the consequences of indolence and irresponsibility as cancer and mental diseases." – pp. 222–3

"The usage of the digestive functions has...been modified. Hard foods, such as stale bread or tough meat, are no longer permitted in our diet. [J]aws are made to grind resistant matter, and...the stomach is constructed to digest natural products. [C]hildren are fed chiefly on soft, mashed, pulped food, and milk. Their jaws, their teeth, and the muscles of their face are not subjected to sufficiently hard work. It is the same with the muscles and glands of their digestive apparatus. The frequency, the regularity, and the abundance of meals render useless an adaptive function that has played an important part in the survival of human races, the adaptation to lack of food. In primitive life men were subjected to long periods of fasting. When want did not compel them to starve, they voluntarily deprived themselves of food. All religions have insisted upon the necessity of fasting. Privation of food at first brings about a sensation of hunger, occasionally some nervous stimulation, and later a feeling of weakness. But it also determines certain hidden phenomena which are far more important. The sugar of the liver, the fat of the subcutaneous deposits, are mobilized, and also the proteins of the muscles and the glands. All the organs sacrifice their own substances in order to maintain blood, heart, and brain in a normal condition. Fasting purifies and profoundly modifies our tissues." – pp. 228–9

"As optimum development requires the activity of all organic systems, a decrease in the value of man necessarily follows the decay of the adaptive functions. [M]odern men need more nervous resistance, intelligence, and moral energy than muscular power. The acquisition of these qualities calls for effort, struggle, and discipline. It also demands that human beings should not be exposed to conditions of existence to which they are unadaptable. Apparently, there is no adaptation possible to ceaseless agitation, intellectual dispersion, alcoholism, precocious sexual excesses, noise, polluted air, and adulterated foods. If such is the case, we must modify our mode of life and our environment, even at the cost of a destructive revolution. After all, the purpose of civilization is not the progress of science and machines, but the progress of man." – pp. 232–3

"Any change in the environment elicits a response of all physiological and mental processes. Those movements of the functional systems...are the agents of his formation and of his progress. They are endowed with a property of capital importance. The property of being easily modified by certain chemical, physical, and psychological factors, which we know well how to handle. We can use these factors as tools, and thus successfully intervene in the development of human activities. In fact, the knowledge of the mechanisms of adaptation gives man the power of renovating and of constructing himself." – p. 234

Chapter VII:  The Individual

"Individuals have been separated into intellectual, sensitive, and voluntary types. In each category, there are the hesitating, the annoying, the impulsive, the incoherent, the weak, the dispersed, the restless, and also the reflective, the self-controlled, the honest, the well balanced. Among the intellectual, several distinct groups are observed. The broad-minded, whose ideas are numerous, who assimilate, coordinate, and unite a most varied knowledge. The narrow-minded, incapable of grasping vast ensembles, but who master perfectly the details of one subject." – p. 243

"[C]ertain individuals...are able to spread across space and time and to grasp concrete reality. [L]ike the great prophets of science, art, and religion, they often succeed in apprehending in the abysses of the unknown, elusive and sublime beings called mathematical abstractions, Platonic Ideas, absolute beauty, God." – p. 262

"The intellectual weakness observed in schools and universities, and in the population in general, comes from developmental disorders, and not from hereditary defects. When these flabby, silly young people are removed from their customary environment and placed in more primitive conditions of life, they sometimes change for the better and recover their virility. The atrophic character of the products of our civilization, therefore, is not incurable. It is far from being always the expression of a racial degeneration.

"Among the multitude of weak and defective there are, however, some completely developed men. These men, when closely observed, appear to be superior to the classical schemata. In fact, the individual whose potentialities are all actualized does not resemble the human being pictured by the specialists. He is not the fragments of consciousness which psychologists attempt to measure. He is not to be found in the chemical reactions, the functional processes, and the organs which physicians have divided between themselves. Neither is he the abstraction whose concrete manifestations the educators try to guide. He is almost completely wanting in the rudimentary being manufactured by social workers, prison wardens, economists, sociologists, and politicians. In fact, he never appears to a specialist unless this specialist is willing to look at him as a whole. He is much more than the sum of all the facts accumulated by the particular sciences. We never apprehend him in his entirety. He contains vast, unknown regions. His potentialities are almost inexhaustible. Like the great natural phenomena, he is still unintelligible. When one contemplates him in the harmony of all his organic and spiritual activities, one experiences a profound esthetic emotion. Such an individual is truly the creator and the center of the universe." – pp. 268–9

"Modern society ignores the individual. It only takes account of human beings. It believes in the reality of the Universals and treats men as abstractions. The confusion of the concepts of individual and of human being has led industrial civilization to a fundamental error, the standardization of men. If we were all identical, we could be reared and made to live and work in great herds, like cattle. But each one has his own personality. He cannot be treated like a symbol. Children should not be placed, at a very early age, in schools where they are educated wholesale. As is well known, most great men have been brought up in comparative solitude, or have refused to enter the mold of the school. [E]ducation should be the object of unfailing guidance. Such guidance belongs to the parents. They alone, and more especially the mother, have observed, since their origin, the physiological and mental peculiarities whose orientation is the aim of education. Modern society has committed a serious mistake by entirely substituting the school for the familial training. The mothers abandon their children to the kindergarten in order to attend to their careers, their social ambitions, their sexual pleasures, their literary or artistic fancies, or simply to play bridge, go to the cinema, and waste their time in busy idleness. They are, thus, responsible for the disappearance of the familial group where the child was kept in contact with adults and learned a great deal from them....When [t]he child...is only a unit in a school he remains incomplete. In order to reach his full strength, the individual requires the relative isolation and the attention of the restricted social group consisting of the family.

"The neglect of individuality by our social institutions is, likewise, responsible for the atrophy of the adults. Man does not stand, without damage, the mode of existence and the uniform and stupid work imposed on factory and office workers, on all those who take part in mass production. In the immensity of modern cities he is isolated and as if lost. He is an economic abstraction, a unit of the herd. He gives up his individuality. He has neither responsibility nor dignity. Above the multitude stand out the rich men, the powerful politicians, the bandits. The others are only nameless grains of dust. On the contrary, the individual remains a man when he belongs to a small group, when he inhabits a village or a small town where his relative importance is greater, when he can hope to become, in his turn, an influential citizen. The contempt for individuality has brought about its factual disappearance.

"Another error, due to the confusion of the concepts of human being and individual, is democratic equality. This dogma is now breaking down under the blows of the experience of the nations....The democratic creed does not take account of the constitution of our body and of our consciousness. It does not apply to the concrete fact which the individual is. Indeed, human beings are equal. But individuals are not. The equality of their rights is an illusion. The feeble-minded and the man of genius should not be equal before the law. The stupid, the unintelligent, those who are dispersed, incapable of attention, of effort, have no right to a higher education. It is absurd to give them the same electoral power as the fully developed individuals. Sexes are not equal. To disregard all these inequalities is very dangerous. The democratic principle has contributed to the collapse of civilization in opposing the development of an elite. It is obvious that, on the contrary, individual inequalities must be respected. In modern society the great, the small, the average, and the mediocre are needed. But we should not attempt to develop the higher types by the same procedures as the lower. The standardization of men by the democratic ideal has already determined the predominance of the weak. Everywhere, the weak are preferred to the strong. They are aided and protected, often admired. Like the invalid, the criminal, and the insane, they attract the sympathy of the public. The myth of equality, the love of the symbol, the contempt for the concrete fact, are, in a large measure, guilty of the collapse of individuality. As it was impossible to raise the inferior types, the only means of producing democratic equality among men was to bring all to the lowest level. Thus vanished personality....

"We have...ignored certain aspects of...man['s] physiological activities. We have not asked how tissues and consciousness would accommodate themselves to the changes in the mode of life imposed upon us. We have totally forgotten the important role of the adaptive functions, and the momentous consequences of their enforced rest. Our present weakness comes both from our unappreciation of individuality and from our ignorance of the constitution of the human being." – pp. 269–72

"We know that [m]an...cannot adapt himself to the environment created by technology, that such environment brings about his degradation....The dogmas of scientific religion and industrial morals have fallen under the onslaught of biological reality. Life always gives an identical answer when asked to trespass on forbidden ground. It weakens. And civilizations collapse. The sciences of inert matter have led us into a country that is not ours. We have blindly accepted all their gifts. The individual has become narrow, specialized, immoral, unintelligent, incapable of managing himself and his own institutions. But at the same time the biological sciences have revealed to us the most precious of all secrets—the laws of the development of our body and of our consciousness. This knowledge has brought to humanity the means of renovating itself. As long as the hereditary qualities of the race remain present, the strength and the audacity of his forefathers can be resurrected in modern man by his own will. But is he still capable of such an effort?" – p. 273

Chapter VIII:  The Remaking of Man

"Science, which has transformed the material world, gives man the power of transforming himself....It has shown him...how to mold his body and his soul on patterns born of his wishes....To progress again, man must remake himself. And he cannot remake himself without suffering....He will not submit to such treatment unless driven by necessity. While surrounded by the comfort, the beauty, and the mechanical marvels engendered by technology, he does not understand how urgent is this operation. He fails to realize that he is degenerating. Why should he strive to modify his ways of being, living, and thinking?

"Fortunately, an event unforeseen by engineers, economists, and politicians took place. The superb edifice of American finance and economics suddenly collapsed....Are the causes of the crisis uniquely economic and financial? Should we not also incriminate the corruption and the stupidity of the politicians and the financiers, the ignorance and the illusions of the economists? Has not modern life decreased the intelligence and the morality of the whole nation? Why must we pay several billions of dollars each year to fight criminals? Why do the gangsters continue victoriously to attack banks, kill policemen, kidnap, ransom, or assassinate children, in spite of the immense amount of money spent in opposing them? Why are there so many feeble-minded and insane among civilized people? Does not the world crisis depend on individual and social factors that are more important than the economic ones? It is to be hoped that the spectacle of civilization at this beginning of its decline will compel us to ascertain whether the causes of the catastrophe do not lie within ourselves, as well as in our institutions. And that we will fully realize the imperativeness of our renovation.

"Then, we will be faced by a single obstacle, our inertia. [T]he economic crisis came before the complete destruction of our ancestral qualities by the idleness, corruption, and softness of life. We know that intellectual apathy, immorality, and criminality are not, in general, hereditary....We can develop...children['s] innate qualities if we wish earnestly to do so. We have at our disposal all the might of science. There are still many men capable of using this power unselfishly. Modern society has not stifled all the focuses of intellectual culture, moral courage, virtue, and audacity. The flame is still burning. The evil is not irreparable. But the remaking of the individual demands the transformation of modern life. It cannot take place without a material and mental revolution. To understand the necessity of a change, and to possess the scientific means of realizing this change, are not sufficient. The spontaneous crash of technological civilization may help to release the impulses required for the destruction of our present habits and the creation of new modes of life....

"Man has sunk into indifference to almost everything except money. [But] the races responsible for the construction of our world are not extinct. The ancestral potentialities still exist in the germ-plasm of their weak offspring....We must not forget the stupendous task we have accomplished since the fall of the Roman Empire. In the small area of the states of western Europe, amid unceasing wars, famines, and epidemics, we have succeeded in keeping, throughout the Middle Ages, the relics of antique culture. During long, dark centuries we shed our blood on all sides in the defense of Christendom against our enemies of the north, the east, and the south. At the cost of immense efforts we succeeded in thrusting back the sleep of Islamism. Then a miracle happened. From the mind of men sharpened by scholastic discipline, sprang science. And, strange to say, science was cultivated by those men of the Occident for itself, for its truth and its beauty, with complete disinterestedness. Instead of stagnating...as it did in the Orient and...in China, this science, in four hundred years, has transformed the world. Our fathers have made a prodigious effort. Most of their European and American descendants have forgotten the past. History is also ignored by those who now profit from our material civilization. By the white who, in the Middle Ages, did not fight beside us on the European battlefields, by the yellow, the brown, and the black[.] What we accomplished once[,] we are capable of accomplishing again. Should our civilization collapse, we would build up another one. But is it indispensable to suffer the agony of chaos before reaching order and peace? Can we not rise again, without undergoing the bloody regeneration of total overthrow? Are we capable of renovating ourselves, of avoiding the cataclysms which are imminent, and of continuing our ascension?" – pp. 274–8

"The error responsible for our sufferings comes from a wrong interpretation of a great idea of Galileo. Galileo, as is well known, distinguished the primary qualities of things, dimensions and weight, which are easily measurable, from their secondary qualities, form, color, odor, which cannot be measured. The quantitative was separated from the qualitative....In man, the things which are not measurable are more important than those which are measurable. The existence of thought is as fundamental as, for instance, the physicochemical equilibria of blood serum. The separation of the qualitative from the quantitative grew still wider when Descartes created the dualism of the body and the soul. Then, the manifestations of the mind became inexplicable. The material was definitely isolated from the spiritual. Organic structures and physiological mechanisms assumed a far greater reality than thought, pleasure, sorrow, and beauty. This error switched civilization to the road which led science to triumph and man to degradation.

"[W]e must...attribute to secondary qualities the same importance as to primary qualities. We should also reject the dualism of Descartes. Mind will be replaced in matter. The soul will no longer be distinct from the body. Mental manifestations, as well as physiological processes, will be within our reach. Indeed, the qualitative is more difficult to study than the quantitative. Concrete facts do not satisfy our mind, which prefers the definitive aspect of abstractions. But science must not be cultivated only for itself, for the elegance of its methods, for its light and its beauty. Its goal is the material and spiritual benefit of man. As much importance should be given to feelings as to thermodynamics. It is indispensable that our thought embraces all aspects of reality. Instead of discarding the residues of scientific abstractions we will utilize those residues as fully as the abstractions. We will not accept the tyranny of the quantitative, the superiority of mechanics, physics, or chemistry. We will renounce the intellectual attitude generated by the Renaissance, and its arbitrary definition of the real. But we must retain all the conquests made since Galileo's day. The spirit and the techniques of science are our most precious possessions.

"It will be difficult to get rid of a doctrine which, during more than three hundred years, has dominated the intelligence of the civilized. The majority of men of science believe in the reality of the Universals, the exclusive right to existence of the quantitative, the supremacy of matter, the separation of the mind from the body, and the subordinated position of the mind. They will not easily give up this faith....The little garden which each scientist easily cultivates would be turned into a forest, which would have to be cleared. If scientific civilization should leave the road that it has followed since the Renaissance and return to the naive observation of the concrete, strange events would immediately take place. Matter would lose its supremacy. Mental activities would become as important as physiological ones. The study of moral, esthetic, and religious functions would appear as indispensable as that of mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The present methods of education would seem absurd. Schools and universities would be obliged to modify their programs. Hygienists would be asked why they concern themselves exclusively with the prevention of organic diseases, and not with that of mental and nervous disturbances. Why they pay no attention to spiritual health. Why they segregate people ill with infections, and not those who propagate intellectual and moral maladies. Why the habits responsible for organic diseases are considered dangerous, and not those which bring on corruption, criminality, and insanity....Economists would realize that human beings think, feel, and suffer, that they should be given other things than work, food, and leisure, that they have spiritual as well as physiological needs. And also that the causes of economic and financial crises may be moral and intellectual. We should no longer be obliged to accept the barbarous conditions of life in great cities, the tyranny of factory and office, the sacrifice of moral dignity to economic interest, of mind to money, as benefactions conferred upon us by modern civilization. We should reject mechanical inventions that hinder human development. Economics would no longer appear as the ultimate reason of everything. It is obvious that the liberation of man from the materialistic creed would transform most of the aspects of our existence. Therefore, modern society will oppose with all its might this progress in our conceptions.

"However, we must take care that the failure of materialism does not bring about a spiritual reaction. Since technology and worship of matter have not been a success, the temptation may be great to choose the opposite cult, the cult of mind. The primacy of psychology would be no less dangerous than that of physiology, physics, and chemistry....The study of the physical properties of blood serum...is as indispensable as that of dreams, libido, mediumistic states, psychological effects of prayer, memory of words, etc. Substitution of the spiritual for the material would not correct the error made by the Renaissance. The exclusion of matter would be still more detrimental to man than that of mind. Salvation will be found only in the relinquishing of all doctrines. In the full acceptation of the data of observation. In the realization of the fact that man is no less and no more than these data." – pp. 278–82

"This superscience will be utilizable only if...it animates our intelligence. But is it possible for a single brain to assimilate such a gigantic amount of knowledge?...In about twenty-five years of uninterrupted study, one could learn these sciences. At the age of fifty, those who have submitted themselves to this discipline could effectively direct the construction of the human being and of a civilization based on his true nature. Indeed, the few gifted individuals who dedicate themselves to this work will have to renounce the common modes of existence....They must live like the monks of the great contemplative orders[.] In the course of the history of all great nations, many have sacrificed themselves for the salvation of the community. Sacrifice seems to be a necessary condition of progress. There are now, as in former times, men ready for the supreme renunciation. If the multitudes inhabiting the defenseless cities of the seacoast were menaced by shells and gases, no army aviator would hesitate to thrust himself, his plane, and his bombs against the invaders. Why should not some individuals sacrifice their lives to acquire the science indispensable to the making of man and of his environment? [T]he task is extremely difficult. But minds capable of undertaking it can be discovered. The weakness of many of the scientists whom we meet in universities and laboratories is due to the mediocrity of their goal and to the narrowness of their life. Men grow when inspired by a high purpose, when contemplating vast horizons. The sacrifice of oneself is not very difficult for one burning with the passion for a great adventure. And there is no more beautiful and dangerous adventure than the renovation of modern man." – pp. 285–6

"The making of man requires the development of institutions wherein body and mind can be formed according to natural laws, and not to the prejudices of the various schools of educators. It is essential that the individual, from infancy, be liberated from the dogmas of industrial civilization and the principles which are the very basis of modern society....

"Great...advance has been realized in Genoa by [endocrinologist] Nicola Pende in his Institute [of Individual Biotypology and Orthogenesis] for the study of the human individual. [T]his feeling has by no means been formulated as clearly here as in Italy....

"We need...an institution capable of providing for the uninterrupted pursuit for at least a century of the investigations concerning man. Modern society should be given an intellectual focus, an immortal brain, capable of conceiving and planning its future[.] Such an organization would be the salvation of the white races in their staggering advance toward civilization. This thinking center would consist...of a few individuals...trained in the knowledge of man by many years of study. It should perpetuate itself automatically[.] Democratic rulers, as well as dictators, could receive from this source of scientific truth the information that they need in order to develop a civilization really suitable to man.

"The members of this high council would be free from research and teaching....They would dedicate their lives to the contemplation of the economic, sociological, psychological, physiological, and pathological phenomena manifested by the civilized nations and their constitutive individuals. And to that of the development of science and of the influence of its applications to our habits of life and of thought. They would endeavor to discover how modern civilization could mold itself to man without crushing any of his essential qualities. Their silent meditation would protect the inhabitants of the new city from the mechanical inventions which are dangerous for their body or their mind, from the adulteration of thought as well as food, from the whims of the specialists in education, nutrition, morals, sociology, etc., from all progress inspired, not by the needs of the public, but by the greed or the illusions of their inventors. An institution of this sort would acquire enough knowledge to prevent the organic and mental deterioration of civilized nations. Its members should be given a position as highly considered, as free from political intrigues and from cheap publicity, as that of the justices of the Supreme Court. [T]hey would be the defenders of the body and the soul of a great race in its tragic struggle against the blind sciences of matter." – pp. 286–93

"We must rescue the individual from the state of intellectual, moral, and physiological atrophy brought about by modern conditions of life. Develop all his potential activities. Give him health. Reestablish him in his unity, in the harmony of his personality. Induce him to utilize all the hereditary qualities of his tissues and his consciousness. Break the shell in which education and society have succeeded in enclosing him. And reject all systems....

"Each individual has the power to modify his way of life, to create around him an environment slightly different from that of the unthinking crowd. He is capable of isolating himself in some measure, of imposing upon himself certain physiological and mental disciplines, certain work, certain habits, of acquiring the mastery of his body and mind....In order to combat...his material, mental, and economic environment...victoriously, he must associate with others having the same purpose. Revolutions often start with small groups in which the new tendencies ferment and grow. During the eighteenth century such groups prepared the overthrow of absolute monarchy in France....Today, the principles of industrial civilization should be fought with the same relentless vigor[.] But the struggle will be harder because the mode of existence brought to us by technology is as pleasant as the habit of taking alcohol, opium, or cocaine. The few individuals who are animated by the spirit of revolt might organize in secret groups. At present, the protection of children is almost impossible. The influence of the school, private as well as public, cannot be counterbalanced. The young who have been freed by intelligent parents from the usual medical, pedagogical, and social superstitions, relapse through the example of their comrades. All are obliged to conform to the habits of the herd. The renovation of the individual demands his affiliation with a group sufficiently numerous to separate from others and to possess its own schools. Under the impulse of the centers of new thought, some universities may perhaps be led to abandon the classical forms of education and prepare youth for the life of tomorrow with the help of disciplines based on the true nature of man.

"A group, although very small, is capable of eluding the harmful influence of the society of its epoch by imposing upon its members rules of conduct modeled on military or monastic discipline. Such a method is far from being new. Humanity has already lived through periods when communities of men or women separated from others and adopted strict regulations, in order to attain their ideals. Such groups were responsible for the development of our civilization during the Middle Ages. [A]ll submitted to strict physiological and mental discipline....Two essential conditions for the progress of the individual are relative isolation and discipline. Each individual, even in the new city, can submit himself to these conditions. One has the power of refusing to go to certain plays or cinemas, to send one's children to certain schools, to listen to radio programs, to read certain newspapers, certain books, etc. But it is chiefly through intellectual and moral discipline, and the rejection of the habits of the herd, that we can reconstruct ourselves....

"It is a well-established fact that discipline gives great strength to men. An ascetic and mystic minority would rapidly acquire an irresistible power over the dissolute and degraded majority. Such a minority would be in a position to impose, by persuasion or perhaps by force, other ways of life upon the majority. None of the dogmas of modern society are immutable. Gigantic factories, office buildings rising to the sky, inhuman cities, industrial morals, faith in mass production, are not indispensable to civilization. Other modes of existence and of thought are possible. Culture without comfort, beauty without luxury, machines without enslaving factories, science without the worship of matter, would restore to man his intelligence, his moral sense, his virility, and lead him to the summit of his development." – pp. 293–6

"[N]atural selection has not played its part for a long while. [M]any inferior individuals have been conserved through the efforts of hygiene and medicine. But we cannot prevent the reproduction of the weak [o]r destroy sickly or defective children[.] The only way to obviate the disastrous predominance of the weak is to develop the strong. Our efforts to render normal the unfit are evidently useless. We should, then, turn our attention toward promoting the optimum growth of the fit. By making the strong still stronger, we could effectively help the weak. For the herd always profits by the ideas and inventions of the elite....

"We must single out the children who are endowed with high potentialities, and develop them as completely as possible. And in this manner give to the nation a non-hereditary aristocracy....The issue of the Crusaders is by no means extinct.

"[T]he separation of the population of a free country into different classes is not due to chance or to social conventions. It rests on a solid biological basis, the physiological and mental peculiarities of the individuals. In democratic countries, such as the United States and France,...any man had the possibility during the last century of rising to the position his capacities enabled him to hold. Today, most of the members of the proletarian class owe their situation to the hereditary weakness of their organs and their mind. [U]nknown farmers,...the backbone of the European nations, were...of a weaker organic and psychological constitution than the medieval barons who conquered the land and defended it victoriously against all invaders....Today, the weak should not be artificially maintained in wealth and power. It is imperative that social classes should be synonymous with biological classes. Each individual must rise or sink to the level for which he is fitted by the quality of his tissues and of his soul. The social ascension of those who possess the best organs and the best minds should be aided. Each one must have his natural place. Modern nations will save themselves by developing the strong. Not by protecting the weak." – pp. 296–9

"A great race must propagate its best elements. However, in the most highly civilized nations reproduction is decreasing and yields inferior products. Women voluntarily deteriorate through alcohol and tobacco. They subject themselves to dangerous dietary regimens in order to obtain a conventional slenderness of their figure. Besides, they refuse to bear children. Such a defection is due to their education, to the progress of feminism, to the growth of short-sighted selfishness. It also comes from economic conditions, nervous unbalance, instability of marriage, and fear of the burden imposed...by the weakness or precocious corruption of children. The women belonging to the oldest stock, whose children would, in all probability, be of good quality, and who are in a position to bring them up intelligently, are almost sterile. It is the newcomers, peasants and proletarians from primitive...countries, who beget large families. But their offspring are far from having the value of those who came from the first settlers of North America. There is no hope for an increase in the birth rate before a revolution takes place in the habits of thinking and living, and a new ideal rises above the horizon....

"Of course, the reproduction of human beings cannot be regulated as in animals....A medical examination should perhaps be imposed on people about to marry, as for admission into the army or the navy, or for employees in hotels, hospitals, and department stores. It seems that eugenics, to be useful, should be voluntary. By an appropriate education, each one could be made to realize what wretchedness is in store for those who marry into families contaminated by...insanity, or feeble-mindedness. Such families should be considered by young people at least as undesirable as those which are poor. In truth, they are more dangerous than gangsters and murderers. No criminal causes so much misery in a human group as the tendency to insanity. Voluntary eugenics is not impossible. Indeed, love is supposed to blow as freely as the wind. But the belief in this peculiarity of love is shaken by the fact that many young men fall in love only with rich girls, and vice versa....None should marry a human being suffering from hidden hereditary defects. Most of man's misfortunes are due to his organic and mental constitution and...to his heredity....No human being has the right to bring misery to another human being. Still less, that of procreating children destined to misery. Thus, eugenics asks for the sacrifice of many individuals. This necessity...seems to be the expression of a natural law. Many living beings are sacrificed at every instant by nature to other living beings. We know the social and individual importance of renunciation. Nations have always paid the highest honors to those who gave up their lives to save their country. The concept of sacrifice, of its absolute social necessity, must be introduced into the mind of modern man....

"We are incapable of inducing a progressive evolution of germ-plasm, of bringing about by appropriate mutations the appearance of superior men. We must be content with facilitating the union of the best elements of the race through education and certain economic advantages. The progress of the strong depends on the conditions of their development and the possibility left to parents of transmitting to their offspring the qualities which they have acquired in the course of their existence. Modern society must, therefore, allow to all a certain stability of life, a home, a garden, some friends. Children must be reared in contact with things which are the expression of the mind of their parents. It is imperative to stop the transformation of the farmer, the artisan, the artist, the professor, and the man of science into manual or intellectual proletarians, possessing nothing but their hands or their brains. The development of this proletariat will be the everlasting shame of industrial civilization. It has contributed to the disappearance of the family as a social unit, and to the weakening of intelligence and moral sense. It is destroying the remains of culture. All forms of the proletariat must be suppressed. Each individual should have the security and the stability required for the foundation of a family. Marriage must cease being only a temporary union....The laws relating to education, and especially to that of girls, to marriage, and divorce should, above all, take into account the interest of children. Women should receive a higher education, not in order to become doctors, lawyers, or professors, but to rear their offspring to be valuable human beings.

"The free practice of eugenics could lead not only to the development of stronger individuals, but also of strains endowed with more endurance, intelligence, and courage. These strains should constitute an aristocracy, from which great men would probably appear. Modern society must promote, by all possible means, the formation of better human stock. No financial or moral rewards should be too great for those who, through the wisdom of their marriage, would engender geniuses. The complexity of our civilization is immense....There is need today of men of larger mental and moral size[.] The establishment of a hereditary biological aristocracy through voluntary eugenics would be an important step toward the solution of our present problems." – pp. 299–303

"Although our knowledge of man is still very incomplete, nevertheless it gives us the power to intervene in his formation, and to help him unfold all his potentialities. To shape him according to our wishes, provided these wishes conform to natural laws....

"Endurance and strength generally develop in the mountains, in the countries where seasons are extreme, where mists are frequent and sunlight rare, where hurricanes blow furiously, where the land is poor and sown with rocks. The schools devoted to the formation of a hard and spirited youth should be established in such countries, and not in southern climates where the sun always shines and the temperature is even and warm. Florida and the French Riviera are suitable for weaklings, invalids, and old people, or normal individuals in need of a short rest. Moral energy, nervous equilibrium, and organic resistance are increased in children when they are trained to withstand heat and cold, dryness and humidity, burning sun and chilling rain, blizzards and fog—in short, the rigors of the seasons in northern countries. The resourcefulness and hardihood of the Yankee were probably due, in a certain measure, to the harshness of a climate where, under the sun of Spain, there are Scandinavian winters. But these climatic factors have lost their efficiency since civilized men are protected from inclemencies of the weather by the comfort and the sedentariness of their life....

"There is no doubt that consciousness is affected by the quantity and the quality of the food. Those who have to dare, dominate, and create should not be fed like manual workers[.] We have to discover what food is suitable for human beings vegetating in offices and factories. What chemical substances could give intelligence, courage, and alertness to the inhabitants of the new city. The race will certainly not be improved merely by supplying children and adolescents with a great abundance of milk, cream, and all known vitami[n]s. It would be most useful to search for new compounds which, instead of uselessly increasing the size and weight of the skeleton and of the muscles, would bring about nervous strength and mental agility. Perhaps some day a scientist will discover how to manufacture great men from ordinary children, in the same manner that bees transform a common larva into a queen by the special food which they know how to prepare." – pp. 303–5

"We know that adaptive processes stimulate organs and functions, that the...effective way of improving tissues and mind is to maintain them in ceaseless activity....If we wish to strengthen...the apparatuses responsible for...nutrition and the organs which enable the body to sustain a prolonged effort, exercises more varied than classical sports are indispensable. These exercises are the same as were practiced daily in a more primitive life....The efforts requiring the help of muscles, vessels, heart, lungs, brain, spinal cord, and mind—that is, of the entire organism—are necessary in the construction of the individual. Running over rough ground, climbing mountains, wrestling, swimming, working in the forests and in the fields, exposure to inclemencies, early moral responsibility, and a general harshness of life bring about the harmony of the muscles, bones, organs, and consciousness.

"In this manner, the organic systems enabling the body to adapt itself to the outside world are trained and fully developed. The climbing of trees or rocks stimulates the activity of the apparatuses regulating the composition of plasma, the circulation of the blood, and the respiration. The organs responsible for the manufacture of red [blood] cells and hemoglobin are set in motion by life at high altitudes. Prolonged running and the necessity of eliminating acid produced by the muscles release processes extending over the entire organism. Unsatisfied thirst drains water from the tissues. Fasting mobilizes the proteins and fatty substances from the organs. Alternation from heat to cold and from cold to heat sets at work the multiple mechanisms regulating the temperature. The adaptive systems may be stimulated in many other ways. The whole body is improved when they are brought into action. Ceaseless work renders all integrating apparatuses stronger, more alert, and better fitted to carry out their many duties.

"The harmony of our organic and psychological functions is one of the most important qualities...we may possess. [I]t always demands a voluntary effort. Equilibrium is obtained in...large measure by intelligence and self-control. Man naturally tends toward the satisfaction of his physiological appetites and artificial needs, such as a craving for alcohol, speed, and ceaseless change. But he degenerates when he satisfies these appetites completely. He must, then, accustom himself to dominate his hunger, his need of sleep, his sexual impulses, his laziness, his fondness for muscular exercise, for alcohol, etc. Too much sleep and food are as dangerous as too little....

"A man's value depends on his capacity to face adverse situations rapidly and without effort. Such alertness is attained by building up many kinds of reflexes and instinctive reactions....Honesty, sincerity, and courage are developed by the same procedures as those used in the formation of reflexes—that is, without argument, without discussion, without explanation. In a word, children must be conditioned.

"Conditioning, according to the terminology of Pavlov, is nothing but the establishment of associated reflexes. It repeats in a scientific and modern form the procedures employed for a long time by animal trainers. In the construction of these reflexes, a relation is established between an unpleasant thing and a thing desired by the subject. The ringing of a bell, the report of a gun, even the crack of a whip, become for a dog the equivalent of the food he likes....Physical pain and hardship are easily supported if they accompany the success of a cherished enterprise. Death itself may smile when it is associated with some great adventure, with the beauty of sacrifice, or with the illumination of the soul that becomes immersed in God." – pp. 305–8

"It is extremely difficult today to give children the advantages resulting from privation, struggle, hardship, and real intellectual culture. And from the development of a potent psychological agency, the inner life. This private, hidden, not-to-be-shared, undemocratic thing appears to the conservatism of many educators to be a damnable sin. However, it remains the source of all originality. Of all great actions. It permits the individual to retain his personality, his poise, and the stability of his nervous system in the confusion of the new city.

"Mental factors influence each individual in a different manner. [M]an does not progress in complete poverty, in prosperity, in peace, in too large a community, or in isolation. He would probably reach his optimum development in the psychological atmosphere created by a moderate amount of economic security, leisure, privation, and struggle. The effects of these conditions differ according to each race and to each individual. The events that crush certain people will drive others to revolt and victory. We have to mold on [each] man his social and economic world. To provide him with the psychological surroundings capable of keeping his organic systems in full activity." – pp. 309–10

"There are...two kinds of health, natural, and artificial. Scientific medicine has given to man artificial health, and protection against most infectious diseases. It is a marvelous gift. [M]an...wants natural health, which comes from resistance to infectious and degenerative diseases, from equilibrium of the nervous system. He must be constructed so as to live without thinking about his health. Medicine will achieve its greatest triumph when it discovers the means of rendering the body and the mind naturally immune to diseases, fatigue, and fear. In remaking modern human beings we must endeavor to give them the freedom and the happiness engendered by the perfect soundness of organic and mental activities.

"This conception of natural health will meet with strong opposition because it disturbs our habits of thought. The present trend of medicine is toward artificial health, toward a kind of directed physiology....We still consider a human being to be a poorly constructed machine, whose parts must be constantly re[i]nforced or repaired. [The] achievements of chemistry and physiology are extremely important [and] throw much light on the hidden mechanisms of the body. But should they be hailed as great triumphs of humanity in its striving toward health? This is far from being certain....

"The possession of natural health would enormously increase the happiness of man....

"The hope of humanity lies in the prevention of degenerative and mental diseases[.]" – pp. 311–4

"We now have to reestablish, in the fullness of his personality, the human being weakened and standardized by modern life. Sexes have again to be clearly defined. Each individual should be either male or female, and never manifest the sexual tendencies, mental characteristics, and ambitions of the opposite sex. Instead of resembling a machine produced in series, man should, on the contrary, emphasize his uniqueness. In order to reconstruct personality, we must break the frame of the school, factory, and office, and reject the very principles of technological civilization....

"We know that it is impossible to bring up individuals wholesale, that the school cannot be considered...a substitute for individual education. [A]ffective, esthetic, and religious activities also need to be developed. Parents have to realize clearly that their part is indispensable....Is it not strange that the educational program for girls does not contain in general any detailed study of infants and children, of their physiological and mental characteristics? Her natural function, which consists not only of bearing, but also of rearing, her young, should be restored to woman....

"There have been, in the past, industrial organizations which enabled...workmen to own a house and land, to work at home when and as they willed, to use their intelligence, to manufacture entire objects, to have the joy of creation. [W]ould it not be possible to use all the young men of the country in...factories for a short period, just as for military service? In this or another way the proletariat could be progressively abolished. Men would live in small communities instead of...immense droves. Each would preserve his human value within his group. Instead of being merely a piece of machinery, he would become a person. Today, the position of the proletarian is as low as was that of the feudal serf. Like the serf, he has no hope of escaping from his bondage, of being independent, of holding authority over others....The white-collar people lose their personality just as factory hands do. In fact, they become proletarians. It seems that modern business organization and mass production are incompatible with the full development of the human self. If such is the case, then industrial civilization, and not just civilized man, must go.

"In recognizing personality, modern society has to accept its disparateness. Each individual must be utilized in accordance with his special characteristics. In attempting to establish equality among men, we have suppressed individual peculiarities which were most useful. For happiness depends on one being exactly fitted to the nature of one's work. And there are many varied tasks in a modern nation. Human types, instead of being standardized, should be diversified, and these constitutional differences maintained and exaggerated by the mode of education and the habits of life. Each type would find its place. Modern society has refused to recognize the dissimilarity of human beings and has crowded them into four classes—the rich, the proletarian, the farmer, and the middle class. The clerk, the policeman, the clergyman, the scientist, the school-teacher, the university professor, the shopkeeper, etc., who constitute the middle class, have practically the same standard of living. Such ill-assorted types are herded together according to their financial position and not in conformity with their individual characteristics. Obviously, they have nothing in common. The best, those who could grow, who try to develop their mental potentialities, are atrophied by the narrowness of their life....It would be far more important to provide those who devote themselves to the things of the mind with the means of developing their personality according to their innate constitution and to their spiritual purpose. Just as, during the Middle Ages, the church created a mode of existence suitable to asceticism, mysticism, and philosophical thinking.

"The brutal materialism of our civilization not only opposes the soaring of intelligence, but also crushes the affective, the gentle, the weak, the lonely, those who love beauty, who look for other things than money, whose sensibility does not stand the struggle of modern life. In past centuries, the many who were too refined, or too incomplete, to fight with the rest were allowed the free development of their personality. Some lived within themselves. Others took refuge in monasteries, in charitable or contemplative orders, where they found poverty and hard work, but also dignity, beauty, and peace. Individuals of this type should be given, instead of the inimical conditions of modern society, an environment more appropriate to the growth and utilization of their specific qualities.

"[T]he immense number of defectives and criminals...are an enormous burden for the part of the population that has remained normal. [G]igantic sums are...required to maintain prisons and insane asylums and protect the public against gangsters and lunatics[,] useless and harmful beings[.] The abnormal prevent the development of the normal....Why should society not dispose of the criminals and the insane in a more economical manner?...We are not capable of judging men. However, the community must be protected against troublesome and dangerous elements....Criminality and insanity can be prevented only by a better knowledge of man, by eugenics, by changes in education and in social conditions....The conditioning of petty criminals with the whip, or some more scientific procedure, followed by a short stay in hospital, would probably suffice to insure order. Those who have murdered, robbed while armed with automatic pistol or machine gun, kidnapped children, despoiled the poor of their savings, misled the public in important matters, should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gases. A similar treatment could be advantageously applied to the insane, guilty of criminal acts. Modern society should not hesitate to organize itself with reference to the normal individual. Philosophical systems and sentimental prejudices must give way before such a necessity. The development of human personality is the ultimate purpose of civilization." – pp. 314–9

"The restoration of man to the harmony of his physiological and mental self will transform his universe. We should not forget that the universe modifies its aspects according to the conditions of our body. That it is nothing but the response of our nervous system, our sensory organs, and our techniques to an unknown and probably unknowable reality. That all our states of consciousness, all our dreams, those of the mathematicians as well as those of the lovers, are equally true....The esthetic feeling engendered by...colors, and the measurement of the length of their component light-waves, are two aspects of ourselves and have the same right to existence....The beauty of the universe will necessarily grow with the strength of our organic and psychological activities.

"We must liberate man from the cosmos created by the genius of physicists and astronomers, that cosmos in which, since the Renaissance, he has been imprisoned. Despite its stupendous immensity, the world of matter is too narrow for him. Like his economic and social environment, it does not fit him. We cannot adhere to the [common] faith in its exclusive reality. We know that we are not altogether comprised within its dimensions, that we extend somewhere else, outside the physical continuum. Man...also belongs to another world. A world which, although enclosed within himself, stretches beyond space and time. And of this world, if his will is indomitable, he may travel over the infinite cycles. The cycle of Beauty, contemplated by scientists, artists, and poets. The cycle of Love, that inspires heroism and renunciation. The cycle of Grace, ultimate reward of those who passionately seek the principle of all things. Such is our universe." – pp. 319–20

"[W]e are still immersed in the world created by the sciences of inert matter without any respect for the laws of our development. In a world that is not made for us, because it is born from an error of our reason and from the ignorance of our true self. To such a world we cannot become adapted. We will, then, revolt against it. We will transform its values and organize it with reference to our true needs. Today, the science of man gives us the power to develop all the potentialities of our body. We know the secret mechanisms of our physiological and mental activities and the causes of our weakness. We know how we have transgressed natural laws. We know why we are punished, why we are lost in darkness....

"For the first time in the history of humanity, a crumbling civilization is capable of discerning the causes of its decay. For the first time, it has at its disposal the gigantic strength of science. Will we utilize this knowledge and this power? It is our only hope of escaping the fate common to all great civilizations of the past." – pp. 321–2

Copyright (c) 2022 Mark D. Blackwell.