Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1932-01-22
Why We Behave
Like Human Beings
What Price Progress7
Ry GEORGE DoRsEY. Ph. D. LL.p.

What Price Progress?
II IFB is easily destroyed, but the
IL matter of life Is indestructible.
Life easily tires, but the energy Of life
is not lost Life is dynamic. When
struck-as by blow Of slipper or by
chuck under the china chemical re-
action takes place; that reaction al
tiers its nature 1t is now something
else. The change may be slight; 1t
may be so great that its very dynamic
nature Is altered--the change endures
for life. GUN" 4'j
Life is impelled to action because 1t
Is reacting mechanism: certain slim
uli impel it to action. What life does
depends upon what life Is; and that,
in turn, depends upon what life does.
The life that climbed up to man never
ceased to recreate itself on higher
levels. The oftener It reacts, the
greater the ease of action; practice
makes perfect. But life itself Is not
moved by perfection; with too much
practice It grows fatigued. Had life
DGCH NOHltul WIFI pCtAONSAOA@t ~
would have stopped with bacteria and
algae. 1t essayed more difficult roles
and by greatly daring became man. 1t
could not have built up nature so
imperiOus for power or so keen FOR
experience had 1t been content to say:
desire nothing more; am perfect.
A perfect man is as finished a prod
uct of nature as a bacterium and may
be ct for Nirvana, but not to rule or
to lead men.
We begin our life with a semihuid
body Of twenty-odd chemical elements
which surrender their original nature
in becoming welded into compact
organic system. This body builds itself
up into a vastly complex machine Of
billions of Individual bodies, each re-
tanning something of its original ma
tHre, each surrendering something Of
its original nature that we may func.
tion as one individual being. The en-
ergy which drives this machine is
chemical, the impulse which drives the
machine to secure this energy is In
herent in the living protoplasm Of our
body. 3
Chemical reactions in a chemical
body. OF some reactions we are con-
scious, of most of them we are not
conscious. But the living mind and
the living body are inseparable and to-
gether make up the individual. We
never know what is in our mind" for
the mind is the living body which, be-
cause Of its nature, must react to ev-
cry vital change in its environment
Mans chief impulse at each moment
of his existence is for life: self-preser-
walton.
The culture of any people, tribe,
race, or nation at any given time is
an historical problem.
Each age carried its loaded situation
to which human beings responded in
obedience TO the impulse to live Ev-
cry age had its modes, norms, habits
opinions. manners, customs, taboos.
and its written and unwritten codes
of behavior.
Every age thought itself wise and
prattled of progress" and Jagged
from one to one hundred decades be-
hind its own wisdom. Our national
habits and social, educational, legal,
and governmental institutions jog
along in ruts worn smooth by our
forefathers, There is not city in the
United States organized as commun-
ity for the purposes of living, almost
no individual that practices what he
breaches or puts to useful purpose a
tenth part of his brains.
Our civilization as the product of
all the ages" loses much of its glamor
when viewed against the background
of what an ordinary boy or girl can
learn In two score years.
Tokyo, Peking Delhi, Cairo, Rome,
London, New York, Main Street: ran.
dom sample words. Into these life
comes In small packages called babies,
fundamentally ali alike, all human, all
blood-kin, all of one species. They
have the same general adjustment
mechanism In the same excitable pro-
topiasn, win the same Instinct for
lire and the same emotiOnal-drive
equipment. And all have parents to
tide them over the infantile period
until such time as their motor mechan-
ism VIII enable them to seek their
own food, water, and shelter, and in
general make their own adjustments.
Including Dickine a mate
These same babies one, five, twenty,
hfty years later show difference more
than skin deep, differences burned
into the very prOtOplasm of their bod
les Which means: their habits are
~, ,,,a.-k4. 80