# The Scientific Monthly/Volume 3/November 1916/A Neglected Factor in the Question of National Security

The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 5 (November, 1916), pp. 498-501.
A NEGLECTED FACTOR IN THE QUESTION OF NATIONAL SECURITY
THE question of national preparation in anticipation of future international strife can not fail to consider man as he natively is, divested of the mantle of acquired behavior; he must be viewed from the standpoint of his naked natural birthright, however much it may be desirable to consider him as we wish him to be, if the question is to be answered on practical rather than idealistic grounds.
By birthright we mean that complex of inherited tendencies as we find it unencumbered, unmodified or redirected by environmental influences. This complex constitutes “original man”; it is man’s inborn organization with which he begins his life-long struggle with unescapable environment. Innumerable catalogues have been made of man’s native equipment (instincts, reflexes, tendencies) with which he starts the conquest of the external world. It suffices for our purose to know that man’s original complex exceeds in variety of tendencies that of any other animal, and that the virility and dominance of certain tendencies may vary endlessly with the individual.
What a man is, and what he will do, is a result of the play of environmental stimuli upon the leanings, bents, tendencies, loged in his constitution. Native endowment and environment fit each other as lock and key. The limit, character and direction of man’s behavior can not transcend his original nature—a “soft pine” germ-plasm spells a soft pine character and this remains true no matter how favorably the environmental forces may be applied. By no pedagogical device has it been, or ever will be, possible to transform a weak inherited complex into an oak character.
The future security of the state or the home must not fail to regard man biologically, as possessed of powerful destructive tendencies as well as powerful tendencies of love, sympathy and kindness. “Two souls,” as Faust says, “dwell within his breast,” the one of sociability and helpfulness, the other of jealousy and antagonism to his mates. Wanton blindness to this poetic expression of man’s dual nature wobbles the security of any nation unwilling to turn the unsmitten cheek. In this matter the evil component of man must be reckoned with the good. To cherish the latter is noble; to blink the former is not only perilous, but beggars courage. ​These two apparently contradictory souls lie deeply rooted in the subsoil of man’s original constitution. The sense organs like waiting funnels form gateways for environmental stimuli which, seeping through the interstices of acquired behavior, nourish the roots below.
All roots of human action, whether that of parental love or pugnacity, grow according to the degree and mode of exercise until the entire human organism is completely moulded. A nation under the drill of incessant discipline becomes a completely fashioned fighting machine.
Which of these souls, these inborn propensities, have civilized nations through all forms of educational agencies elected to nourish and preserve? Consider the space given to man's brutal activities in the histories of all nations, the melodramatic movies, the devotion of the daily press to executions, thuggery, thievery (all modifications of the Jesse James stimuli); consider, too, the content of pictorial weeklies and certain other periodicals and fictional publications dealing with deep-laid plots of “Man’s inhumanity to man.” These forces constitute a fair sample of environmental stimuli which arouse, keep alive and feed fat man’s original glut to rapine and to plunder, to hate and fear. These are among the forces which determine the self which dominates human behavior. The wave of fear sweeping over the states to-day like a prairie fire is the expected expression of a native protective response to a very real situation. Report from the blood-stained fields of Europe, of the new and dreadful devices for the annihilation of time and space, flashes through the thin veneer of idealism and conventionalities, lays hold on the original springs of human action, brushes aside acquired behavior and strikes quick to the Faustion Self of pugnacity, fear, hatred and antagonism. Like a slow-consuming fire, civilized nations have nursed the demon of destruction which, loosened, rocks the temple of international justice, outrages the peaceful in utter disregard of solemn obligations. And this because fine words and unsupported threats are powerless in the face of deadly impulses armed with refined tools and directed with terrible sincerity to crush and kill. The role of these original impulsive forces of man has been recognized by the laymen. In a remarkable address recently delivered in Carnegie Hall, Elihu Root portrays man and civilization in these significant words:
We have learned that civilization is but a veneer thinly covering the savage nature of man; that conventions, courtesies, respect for law, regard for justice and humanity, are acquired habits, feebly constraining the elemental forces man’s nature developed through countless centuries of struggle against wild beasts and savage foes.
The Teutonic war machine is a product of careful nurture from ​the cradle of many generations. It is not an accident that military toys are given to children during the most plastic and favorably formative period of life. Inflammable youth is fed upon an inflammable diet morning, noon and night; at no time can his ears, eyes or touch escape those environmental stimuli which fall upon and make permanent his native tendency to combat, to resent, to hate. Out of this stuff European nations wove and are continuing to weave the ideational web of war. The gory field of Europe is the inevitable consequence. So sure as martial ideas are fabricated, so sure as these ideas are persistently entertained, so sure will war result, for it is the very essence of ideas to issue into action.
If it is true that environmental stimuli quicken and actualize latent tendencies and if it is equally true that failure to feed such tendencies during the ripening period tends to weaken, if not eradicate, them, then, the good John Galsworthy’s statement that “this war is an operation to excise the trampling instinct” is surely open to serious question. According to the laws of instinctive development, fixation of the trampling instinct rather than excision is the inevitable consequence of the war. The iron heel of the treading, trampling instinct thrives least through inaction and is quickened, sharpened and enthroned by action in a favorable environment. War is such an environment; it unlocks the trampling heel of the dominating, professional Junker aa a key loosens the lock. Junkerism resides within the breast of every man in every land and differs from mortal to mortal only in the degree of its original vigor. Excision through opportunity is a myth born of flimsier stuff than paper dreams.
Again let it be said that the question of national security can not fail to consider man’s dual and original endowments. Peel off the thin veneer of conventionality, and tap him at his foundation, and one side of him stands revealed as a fighter, full of original pugnacity, anger, resentment and, under provocation, may become the most ruthlessly ferocious of beasts. These “Original Movers” fitted man to survive and are operative to-day under one guise or another. As Rochefoucauld says,
There is something in the misfortunes of our very friends that does not altogether displease us; and an apostle of peace will feel a certain vicious thrill run through him, and enjoy a vicarious brutality, as he turns to the column in his newspaper at the top of which “Shocking Atrocity” stands printed in large letters. See how the crowds flock round a street brawl! Consider the enormous annual sale of revolvers to persons, not one in a thousand of whom has any serious intention of using them, but of whom each one has his carnivorous self-consciousness agreeably tickled by the notion, as he clutches the handle of his weapon, that he will be rather a dangerous customer to meet!
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