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and Unwin, 1914), 1, 47. See also Stanton Coit, Is Civilization a Disease? (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1917).

"It is excellently recounted in J. H. Randall, Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1926). See also F. M. Stawell and F. S. Marvin. The Making of the Western Mind, a short survey of European culture (London, Methuen, 1923), and J. H. Robinson, Mind in the Making (N. Y., Harpers, 1921). 8 Cf. Lucretius, De rerum natura, trans. by Monro, by Bailey, or by Leonard. Samuel Butler, Erewhon, or Over the Range (1 ed., 1872; revised ed., 1901) Cf. also Garet Garrett, Ouroboros, or The mechanical extension of mankind (N. Y., Dutton, 1926).

10 Cf. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848).

11 F. S. Marvin, The Living Past; A sketch of western progress (3 ed., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1917).

12 J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress; An inquiry into its origin and growth (London, Macmillan, 1920).

13 Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, last stanza.

14 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 27-30 (Modern Library ed.). 15 See A. C. Barnes, The Art in Painting (N. Y., Harcourt, Brace, 1926), 241-242, for a statement of the effects of printing on painting. See Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris, Book 5, Chapter 2, for a classic account of how printing displaced architecture as the central art of western culture. Cf. R. W. Livingstone, The Legacy of Greece (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1921), 266, for an explanation of differences between Greek and modern literature in terms of the influence of printing.

16 Cf. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (N. Y., Harcourt, Brace, 1922); also his The Phantom Public (N. Y., Harcourt, Brace, 1925).

17 Logan Pearsall Smith, The English Language (Home Univ. Library), 247–248. 18 Max Eastman, Colors of Life; Poems, songs, and sonnets (N. Y., Knopf, 1918). 19 F. M. Colby, Imaginary Obligations (N. Y., Dodd, Mead, 1910), 39.

20 John Palmer, Comedy (N. Y., Doran, 1914), 5.

21 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (ed. by Selby, London, Macmillan, 1902), 107-108.

22 Bertrand and Dora Russell, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (N. Y., Century, 1923), 142–162. The quotation is from page 162.

PART II

HOW WE COME TO BE WHAT WE ARE

Chapter IV

GENERAL PHASES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Natural basis of experience

Science has taught us to believe that we live in an exceedingly complex world, however simply we may be in the habit of regarding it. Many things are happening even in an empty room. Every particle of matter in the room (and their number far surpasses the grasp of our imaginative powers) is bound by the invisible chains of gravitation to every other particle, so that the slightest displacement of one particle, were it ever for a moment still, would immediately set all others into restless movement towards a new equilibrium. But as a matter of fact the particles are never at rest, but instead keep ceaselessly shifting about at a speed quite beyond our comprehension, while at the same time they are forever emitting impulsions into space which, traveling at some 186,000 miles per second, are reflected back and forth, hither and yon, until the room is a perfect maze of paths and counterpaths. Nor is this all, for the tiny particles are curiously and wonderfully arranged into larger groups, and these too are also in ceaseless motion and are also emitting impulsions, which travel at about a thousand feet per second, and are in turn reflected and re-reflected without intermission. Nor, again, is this all, for in our room substance is acting on substance-wood is slowly decaying, iron is rusting, varnish and paint are silently combining with the materials to which they were applied, pottery is changing its composition-in truth all things composing this little world of a room that we have imagined are in ever-changing flux.

Into all this boundless confusion and chaos of motion and counter-motion there walks a man, and we eagerly note what is to happen, for he too is a remarkable summation of diverse energies. Speaking roughly, two somewhat different though intimately associated types of interaction can be distin

guished when a human being enters a room: (1) he at once affects and is affected by many of the processes already going on in the room; (2) he undergoes certain conscious experiences, which seem to differ qualitatively from the processes already described, and so are added, as it were, to the totality of activities previously exhibited in the room. (1) Quite apart from any knowledge or awareness on his part, our man on entering the room deflects and disturbs the intricate relationships there established. Bombarded on every side by its restless energies, and being himself also a system of ever-changing forces, innumerable adaptations and movements towards a new equilibrium are initiated, and in this process the man himself is to some degree altered, and to some degree alters everything else. These adjustments between the organism and its environment may be carried very far indeed without necessarily invading the field of knowledge or awareness. They may be carried even to the point of the extinction of life itself, as when a sleeping man slowly inhales a deadly gas and dies without knowing that his time has come.

(2) But human beings in many situations do undergo certain more or less conscious experiences which constitute a distinct addition to the sum of existences. In the instance we have imagined, we may think of our man as seeing the four walls of the room, with the light streaming in through the windows, and we may suppose that he hears a few sounds from out of doors. This may seem like little enough, but it is indeed a great deal, for before the man came in, the room contained only particles of one sort or another in various relations, and now it contains colors and sounds. The basic vibrations and particles are probably completely ignored, but our man can hardly avoid paying some attention to the colors and sounds.

Where do these colors and sounds, and all the other qualities of experience, come from? They are apparently a result of the bombardment of a nervous system by the forces and energies of the world. If he had no nervous system, a man would still be in intimate contact with his environment, but he would have no conscious experiences

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