is held rigidly to instructions. In children and adults alike, if the first method meets the difficulty fairly well, it is likely to be adopted without further search for a better way. This is the explanation of slovenly habits in acts of skill, in language, literary style, and in other things. But it goes further than this.

Unreflective unconscious-adaptation was the method of progress during the early history of the race. Problems were not foreseen. There was no outlook beyond immediate needs. Difficulties were met by the simplest possible adjustment, and the environment was the compelling, directing force. It was the trial-and-error method, without interpretation, without clarifying judgment. Through long years some working principles were acquired, but they were gained at an enormous cost of time and life, and the final result was, at best, an approximate and temporary makeshift. Learning the curative qualities of roots and herbs is an example of the method and of the value of the knowledge gained by it. Indeed, this way of making progress under the influence of prevailing beliefs and conditions, as well as the adjustment of knowledge and method to them, is admirably illustrated by the entire history of the art of medicine which preceded the scientific period.

Systems of medicine-if the philosophical and religious view of diseases and their cures may be so dignified-followed one another as philosophy and religion changed.1 Medicine, like other beliefs, rested on authority. Systems were respectable or disreputable. Massaria, of Padua, in the sixteenth century, would rather be wrong with Galen than right with any other physician. One system was used until another was thought to be better, though at that time the trial-and-error judgment was guided more by the underlying philosophical belief than by the results

1 Superstition in Medicine, by Hugo Magnus, 1908. The Relation of Medicine to Philosophy, by R. O. Moon, 1909.

of the treatment. It could not be otherwise, since accurate records were not kept. One uncriticised authority ruled until superseded by another. But through it all the importance of finding the cause of diseases was unrecognized. There was no problem here. The mind, then as now, played its rôle in cures, and so we have Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing.1

Naturally in the past no other method of progress than that of uncriticised trial and error could be expected. The scientific method of investigation and experimentation was unknown. Consequently, there was nothing to stimulate thought. Besides, thinking has never been popular. It is too difficult. So any means of escaping from it has always been welcome. And when, as in the earlier days, besides the pains natural to originality, the thinker risked his life, new ideas were rarely made secure until the old had been worn out by the corroding effect of time. In the past this had its justification, but in the present it is without excuse. Out of a long period of progress by unconscious trial and error some truths emerge, but they are secured at an enormous cost of time and suffering. Blind trial and error is the animal and racial way. Unfortunately, it continues to be the chief method of modern man. Unreflective adaptation is followed to-day when obstacles are not so overwhelming as to force deliberation.

Man rarely stops to think out the method of procedure unless the difficulty is so great that no plan of action immediately presents itself. A momentarily insoluble problem is needed to make him think. But this is not all that is necessary. There must not only be a problem, but the individual must see it. The common supposition that problems are recognized is an error. Usually they pass unnoticed. If an illustration of so obvious a fact of human behavior is needed, advertising is a case in point. Thousands of dollars are spent for newspaper, street-car, and 1 By George B. Cutten, 1911.

1

outdoor bulletin advertising without any intelligent effort to estimate the comparative value. To be sure, sales in a given advertised district are sometimes checked but there are too many local factors involved to give these estimates general value. Principles of advertising cannot be deduced in this way. These judgments have about as much value as the beliefs in the performances of so-called "psychics," such as foreseeing the future, mental telepathy, and the oracular nature of the writings of the ouija-board, which are still accepted on imperfect experiential evidence by the old women of both sexes. Again, the comparative cost per reader of full, half, and quarter page newspaper and magazine insertions is rarely known to business men. Yet these facts, and many more, may be ascertained by those who understand the method of scientific investigation. Some of them have already been worked out by psychologists. Business men do not have the information because they have not yet become aware of the problem. They are using the slow, expensive, uncriticised trial-anderror method.

It is

The trial-and-error method is not without results. the means, as we have said, by which the experience of the race has been achieved. Knowledge has been slowly and painfully accumulated by the unplanned elimination of errors, but when uncriticised it is a wasteful process. The amazing advance of the natural sciences during the last quarter of a century is due to a new plan of campaign. Scientists no longer wait for the tedious, unintelligent elimination of mistakes. They set definite problems, study the conditions, and then plan their investigation so that the errors of earlier workers may be eliminated. This puts intelligence into nature's unintelligent method of progress. But the scientific plan has not been generally adopted. Usually man, like the lower animals, waits for something to turn up. Then he adapts himself as best he

can.

Animals, we have observed, are dependent upon conditions that were forced upon them. To these they must adapt themselves or perish. But man can foresee and plan, if he will but use his intelligence. And by his planning he may reconstruct the environment. The world has been amazed at the success of German arms against a large part of the civilized world. The explanation is that the Germans looked ahead and planned. And in their planning they created conditions which the Allies have had to meet. We have heard much about time being on the side of the Allies. This means that they could not at once adapt themselves to the new type of war; and these new conditions were produced by Germany. Her military staff saw the problems and made their arrangements so completely that the adaptation had to come largely from her enemies. Many of the plans of the Allies were rendered obsolete by her constructive military thought. Forts were demolished like paper houses, and entirely new implements of war had to be invented and made. It is doubtful whether we shall ever have a better illustration of man's control over the conditions he must meet than this present war.

In industry, in commerce, and in military science Germany has risen above the animal method of unplanned adaptation, but in her failure to understand the collective mind of her enemies she has remained on the lower level. For her statesmen there existed no such problem. One of the many interesting psychological facts of the present war is the surprise of the German nation that the Allies do not know when they are whipped. The first magnificent Russian drive, followed immediately by the equally convincing Balkan victory, should have brought a request for peace from a purely military standpoint, which does not take into account different sorts of minds. And, again, the inability of the United States to recognize the righteousness of the German cause was to be explained, the Ger

mans thought, only by generous use of British gold and the mercenary nature of the people. But the Germans missed the point. Their ignorance of the psychology of other nations is one of the astonishing disclosures of this war. "They understand nothing of the spirit of man," as Mr. Britling said.

The array of psychological blunders of the German military and civic authorities, to carry the illustration further, is unequalled in modern history. To mention only a few, there was first the invasion of Belgium, and the scrap-ofpaper episode, which brought England into the war and shocked the civilized world. Then followed the sinking of the Lusitania, the execution of Edith Cavell and Captain Fryatt, the barbaric deportation of Belgians, the slaughter of women and children by air raids on unfortified towns, the Zimmermann nɔte urging Mexico and Japan to make war on the United States, the secret proposal through neutral Sweden to promise protection to Argentine ships, and then to sink them "without a trace," the submarine perfidy that made the United States an active enemy, the planting of disease germs in Roumania, and the aerial bombardment of hospitals, by which wounded soldiers and nurses were killed-hideous exhibitions of brutality. No efficiency was disclosed by these acts; they reveal only amazing incapacity to understand the spirit and sentiments of civilized peoples. If these acts were not always unplanned adjustment to the supposed needs of the moment, they certainly show unintelligent adaptation. Was military necessity the motive? If so, their efficiency is arguable. But surely, sinking the Lusitania, the execution of Edith Cavell and Captain Fryatt, murdering from the air innocent women and children, and bombing hospitals have not advanced the German armies. It is gross, inexcusable incompetency; and the massed psychological blunders have sealed Germany's fate. Is it asking too much to expect a nation to be efficient in various lines? Probably na