Human Nature
By
Herbert N. Casson

An
esspc eBook

Introduction

Is it not true that the most important thing in the world is Human Nature?
     Is it not true that everything else is the mere scaffolding of the job? Governments! Literature! Commerce! Science! Beliefs! Professions! Are not all these secondary to Man himself?
     Is it not true that the main process which is now going on, upon this earth, is the ripening of Human Nature?
     And is it not true that all methods and systems of Efficiency must be based, not only upon Science and industry, but upon the facts of Human Nature?
     If you answer "Yes" to these questions, you will be interested in the following sixteen chapters, in which I intend to describe this marvellous substance called Human Nature, and to point out its axioms and peculiarities.
     Human Nature is not a satisfactory name to describe the sort of thing that a human being is. But it is the best name we have. It is better than Mind or Soul or Personality or Ego or Will. It means the whole person— — brain and body and feelings and will. It includes everything— — good, bad and indifferent.
     There is no single word in the English language to denote this human substance— — this amazing compound of thought and feelings and flesh and bone and fears and hopes and habits and conscious and subconscious and all the rest of it.
     Hitherto we have studied Human Nature in sections. The merchant studies Man as a buyer and seller. The doctor studies him as a mechanism or a process. The clergyman studies him as a believer. The manufacturer studies him as a producer. And so forth. But no one studies him as a whole. No one takes a bird's-eye view of him and puts down carefully the exact sort of thing he is.
     We have studied horse nature and dog nature and rose nature and iron nature. We have counted and weighed the stars. We have charted the continents and the oceans. But we have not yet studied ourselves, all in all, as the supreme phenomenon of this earth.
     One by one we have solved other mysteries of Nature, scores of them. We fly more swiftly than any bird. We swim under water. We travel a mile a minute on land. We send a cablegram around the earth in twelve seconds. We have mastered steam and electricity and radium. But we have not yet either learned or mastered the variables of Human Nature. The last mystery is Man Himself.
     We are too close to ourselves to study ourselves. Just as very few men know the shape of their own noses, so there are very few who have even tried to study their own natures in an impartial and scientific way.
     Rousseau wrote a book mercilessly describing himself. So did Marie Bashkirtseff. But both books were written rather for dramatic effect than as a scientific study of Human Nature.
     No sensible normal person has ever yet analysed himself for the benefit of the human race; and certainly I do not intend to do so. The time is not yet ripe for such a confession. If any man dared to pick himself to pieces, in full view of the public, he would at once lose his reputation for sense and self-respect. He would render a great service to us all, but we would make him one of the martyrs of Science.
     So, my main purpose in writing this textbook of Man is to prepare the way for some future Darwin of Human Nature— — for someone who will study himself and other people for thirty years, as Darwin studied earthworms.
     In a previous book I called attention to "The Axioms of Business"; and in this case I wish to call attention to the Axioms of Human Nature.
     I wish to show that in spite of the differences of race and religion and rank and education, all people are substantially the same up to a certain point. The super-structures may be very different, but the foundations are the same.
     In spite of civilization, the Axioms of Human Nature are the same as they were centuries ago. They are the same in London, Fez, Paris, Baghdad, New York and Pekin.
     Civilization is superficial. It is more glitter than gold. It fools most of us. It lures us to believe that a new human race has arrived; but this is not true.
     Surely the unprecedented savageries of War have shown us that civilization is barely skin-deep. At any time a mad cyclone of Fear can sweep away the whole flimsy structure of civilization, and huddle us together in huts and trenches, in a squalid struggle against Hunger and Cold and Death.
     Did not Carlyle teach us not to be fooled by clothes and outward show?
     Did not Bacon and Newton and Locke and Darwin and Huxley teach us not to be fooled by opinions.
     And has not the practical sense of the British people mainly consisted in the courage to face the facts and to find out the truth, in spite of the myths and make-believes that rule most nations?
     So, now that we have become more teachable, the time has come for us to take stock or ourselves. We are about to change our methods or Education— — of Manufacturing— — of Government. We are about to put to the test our whole assortment of national habits, so that we shall never again be unprepared for the eternal struggle of life.
     And we had best begin with an honest unsparing study of Human Nature. We had best begin at the source of all things and deal with Causes rather than with Results.
     As to my own fitness for daring to write on such a subject, I have nothing much to say in self-defence. On this subject we are all ignorant amateurs. There are no authorities and I do not pretend to be one. I am only preparing the way for an authority, as Descartes prepared the way for Darwin.
     My main excuse is that I have had an unusually good opportunity to study Human Nature from many points of view. I have been fortunate enough to live among Red Indians and Londoners— — in the wilderness and in the greatest of cities— — among the very poor and among the rich— — among the illiterate and among the educated. Also, my business experience has been of a very varied nature, allowing me to see the details of many trades and industries.
     Therefore, while I do not say that this study of Human Nature is scientific, in the sense in which Darwin's "Origin of Species" is scientific, I do say that it is based on a lifetime of observation, and not upon any theory or creed.
     Some day, let us hope, we may have scientific instruments for the study of human thoughts and feelings. Some day we may map the mind and heart of man, so that the mysteries of Personalitly may be made clear.
     That time has not yet come. We are still, most of us, so primitive that we do not regard it as either possible or desirable to obtain such accurate self-knowledge. We prefer to muddle along with foggy brains, whimsical feelings, weak wills and mysterious bodies.
     Some future generation, less befogged by the Past than we are, may solve this problem of Human Nature. All that we can do at present, in these pioneering days, is to outline what the problem is— — to cleat away the rubbish of traditional opinion— — and to sketch as truly as we can the basic Facts that cannot be denied.

Chapter I. Everybody wants

It is Human Nature to Want. Every person is a bundle of wants. No one is complete. No one has enough. Everybody wants.
     Every one is hungry several times a day and wants food. There is no exception to this rule. Even Shelley could not live on thought. He wanted three meals a day as a regularly as a ploughman.
     There is not an Archbishop in the world, and never has been, who subsists on spiritual things. He demands bacon and eggs and potatoes and bread and all the rest of it.
     We have been led so far astray be poets and idealists that we have made it a habit to despise grocers; but every one of us, in our personal arrangements, puts the grocer first of all.
     First air, then food— — these are the two principal necessities of all new-born babes. Every infant begins life with a cry for food. It wants. That is the beginning of all human life.
     Food is the important fact in the world— — until you get it. That is why it is so selfish and dishonest for the well-fed to be contemptuous of the miseries of the poor.
     How much attention would the members of the Royal Society pay to Science and Philosophy if they had been twenty-four hours without food? None at all. The whole of their profound thoughts would be concentrated on groceries.
     It has been well said that "the world moves on its stomach." The Great War taught us to appreciate sugar and bread and potatoes. Everybody wants, and the first of all wants if food.
     Next comes Clothing. A starving man would give his trousers for a loaf of bread; but as soon as he has eaten the bread he will set out to get another pair of trousers. All human beings want Clothing for three reasons— — (I) Warmth; (2) Decency; (3) Fashion.
     These two "wants"— — Food and Clothing, create two-thirds of the Trade and Commerce of the world. No matter how intellectual and spiritual we may become, we shall still need, first of all, to be protected against Hunger and Cold.
     Food! Clothing! Shelter! These are the three basic wants. A meal! A garment! A house! These are the chief "wants" of everybody— — of kings, poets, costers, sailors, generals, sergeants, newsboys and philosophers.
     How long would Oxford and Cambridge carry on without Food, Clothing, and Shelter— — the three fundamental things which, in their structure of Learning, they almost entirely ignore?
     These three are the A B C of human life; but there are many others. Our whole existence is mainly a matter of "wants" satiated or thwarted. The savage on the banks of the Congo wants a necklace of beads. The poet wants a tablet in Westminster Abbey. The maiden wants a husband. Everybody wants.
     Practically all Business is based on the supply of "wants." All advertising is the creation of new "wants" and the education of old ones. All ships and railroads provide transportation for restless human beings who want to be in a different place. All factories and shops are run to supply the "wants" of mankind.
     Human nature is a conscious substance that is filled with desire. It hungers. It craves. It longs and lusts for what it does not possess. Its eternal cry is— — "I wish I had something else."
     The morbid creed of the Buddhists teaches them to seek a final state of Nirvana, or wantlessness. "There can be no peace," say the Buddhists priests, "until the human soul ceases to want."
     This may be true. Who knows? But it certainly is true that no Buddhist priest, while alive on earth, has reached a state of Nirvana. Whatever is conscious has wants. To be entirely without wants is death.
     Always and everywhere the shuttle of Life is driven by Desire. This is the Fact that explains the migration of birds and fishes and animals. It explains the migrations of tribes and nations. It explains the Roman Empire and the Discovery of America and the Great War.
     The men who most keenly realized this Fact have been the leaders in every line of action. The commercial leader is the one who gives the people what they want. The same is true of the military and literary and journalistic leaders. The political leaders, too, either give the people what they want, or promise to do so.
     It I had a great shop, such as Barkers or Harrods, I would have this sentence printed in large letters over the main entrance— — Here is where you can get what you want. This is the ideal motto for every large shop and market-place.
     Every successful merchant knows that "a buyer is one who wants an article more than he wants the price." Consequently the new art of Salesmanship consists in creating and strengthening the wants of the people.
     You must either give the people what they want or persuade them to want what you have got. These are the only two methods that lead to commercial success. There is no third way. Success is not only what you do yourself; it is mainly what other people do for you.
     There is a vast difference between Ability and Success, and in this book I am referring to Success. Most poets, artists, inventors and pioneers can never understand this difference. They ignore what the people want. They work to please themselves. They listen only to their own thoughts. They create their own ideals. Then, naturally, as they ignore the public, the public ignores them. The public refuses to buy their poems or paintings or machines, and they are compelled to live in poverty.
     This is not as unjust as it seems. You cannot eat your cake and have it. If you strive ably to please the public, the public will make you rich. But if you only strive ably to please yourself, you must be content to take your pay in self-approval, and hope that in after years the public may appreciate you and honour your memory.
     If you are in the business world you must study the wants of the people. You dare not please yourself, unless you are a man of average ideas and feelings. Your dare not indulge any fads and fancies. Your debts— — your obligations, will not allow you to do as you please.
     Many a firm has been wrecked because its Directors fancied that they could dare to please themselves. They substituted their own wants for the wants of the public, and the public punished them. The public pronounced a sentence of bankruptcy against them, because they violated the law of mutual service, upon which all trade and commerce are based.
     So, as you can see, this Axiom— — "Everybody wants," is of the highest practical importance, It underlies morality as well as business. It is the foundation of disposition and character as well as success. Criminals and lunatics are those whose wants have run amok.
     No system of Education will ever be worth what it costs until it trains the wants of our children. How to gratify the wants that are legitimate! How to restrain the wants that are unsocial! If teachers cannot do this, of what moral use is it to do anything else?
     Does not a nation evolve into a nobler life by refining its wants? If the next generation is to be kindlier and abler then we are, must we not train the babe in the cradle that it cannot have whatever it cries for? And must we not train the boys and girls to study the wants of others, until they learn that the only real enjoyment comes from useful work and social service.
     Everybody wants! It is one of those obvious truths which most people have ignored. It is the first Great Fact which confronts us when we begin to study the elements of Human Nature.

Chapter II. Everybody feels

Even Herbert Spencer, who was the least sentimental of men, admitted in his old age that "the brain is half feeling."
     Our so-called brains are not ruled by logic and reason and mathematics. Far from it.
     We do not naturally seek for FACTS. Certainly not. If there is any one thing that the average human brain dislikes, despises and rejects, it is a Fact.
     Hundreds— — thousands of times, when some rash discoverer has found a new Fact, and held it up with impulsive joy to show the people, the people have rushed upon him and trampled him and his Fact to death.
     No— — Reason is a recent thing. Science is new. Civilization, as we call it, is the experiment of the moment. It is like a new, brilliant, perishable flower suddenly appearing on an old old tree.
     Talk about "ancient" history! There is really no such thing. No written history is ancient. The human race existed for tens of thousands of years without any written history at all. More than nine-tenths of the life of mankind was prehistoric. Why do we stubbornly refuse to recognize this truth?
     Suppose that the whole lifetime of the human race up to the present were condensed into the space of twelve hours. Is it not true that the first eleven and a half hours were prehistoric? Is it not true that Babylon and Assyria sprang up about twenty minutes ago? Did not Bacon discover Scientific Method about two minutes ago; and did not Watt invent the steam engine about half a minute ago?
     Taking twelve hours as the human period, and allowing that this is rightly the year 108,000, our industrial era has been in existence for about thirty seconds.
     Push this fact into your mind, if you can make room for it, and then you will appreciate the importance of feeling.
     Deep— — deep underneath the thin varnish of Learning and Reason and Science is the solid permanent structure of Feeling. As long as we are not put to the test we are rational and dignified; but any sharp, violent collision usually scrapes the varnish off the best of us.
     The love of Truth is not an instinct. It is acquired, like a taste for olives. Very few ever attain to it.
     After thousands of years of evolution, we have in most countries acquired an appearance of law and order and self-restraint. To do this was a great deal; but it should not deceive us. Few men, and few cities, are as civilized as they look.
     If you doubt that the noblest of cities may not have the lowest depths of savagery you have only to go, as I did once, into the caverns of the Cowgate, in Edinburgh, on a Saturday night.
     The finest feelings, too, as well as the most brutal, are to be found invariably amongst rough masses of men. A flower is most loved when it blooms in the slums. I have always found more helpful sympathy and tenderness among the poor than among the rich; and as for generosity, the gifts of the rich are not to be compared, relatively, with the gifts of the poor. Many a worker gives his mate a half of all he owns, and thinks nothing of it.
     Thus, while science is a few centuries old, Feeling is as old as the human race itself. It is the main substance of which Mankind has been developed.
     Feelings— — Jealousy! Hate! Sorrow! Scorn! Laughter! Shame! Anger! Compassion! Despair! Love! Above all else— — Love!
     These are the main ingredients out of which Human Nature was made. They had full sway in the early days and they still break loose in wild explosions.
     Just as this seemingly solid planet is a whirling mass of flame, covered by a thin crust of earth, so Human Nature a seething fiery mass of Feelings, covered by a thing crust of Custom and Law.
     If you wish to erect a structure that will be high and strong, you must lay the foundations deep in the ancient feelings of the human heart. You cannot defy sentiment. You cannot fight Feeling with Chemistry. That fact, as long as the earth lasts, will never have to be proved again.
     Laws are strong. Customs are stronger. But both are effects rather than causes. Both are created by Feeling and can only be safely enforced as long as they have Feeling behind them.
     The songs of a nation! The jokes! The sobs! The music! The flowers! The sunsets! The storms! These are the basic things that create and destroy Governments and creeds and markets.
     So we cannot escape or ignore this world power which we call Feeling. We cannot proceed as though the only real forces in human life were Money and Mathematics and Permanent Secretaries.
     We cannot have an Efficiency that is based on Machinery and Automatism and Regimentation and Card Systems. There can never be any net gain in any sort of Efficiency that is mechanical and not human.
     Efficiency, as I teach it, means restoration of friendliness between master and man. It means the discovery of Human Nature in our shops and factories. It means Staff Training and Mass Meetings and Workers' Committees and the Square Deal in all matters.
     Many a time I have seen the output increased and the costs reduced by a single mass meeting at which workers and Directors mingled in a friendly way.
     A well-managed factory has heart-power as well as coal-power and muscle-power. It has people at work, not things. It appreciates "peace and goodwill among men."
     As we have learned, there is nothing that counts for more in war than the morale of the army— — the spirit— — the Feeling. So it is in industry. A company can develop a spirit of victory and enthusiasm in the breasts of its workers.
     A retail shop, too, has its own disposition, as well as its merchandise. One shop is frigid— — haughty— — indifferent, while another shop is friendly— — cheerful— — obliging. Ask any woman shopper, and she can tell you the disposition of the shops in her town.
     As Sheldon proved, beyond all question, the essence of Salesmanship is the skill to know and feel what the customer knows and feels. No mere display of the goods— — no clever arguments— — no shrewdness in bargaining, can ever take the place of a sympathetic understanding of the customer's point of view. As Sheldon said, the very first thing in selling is to secure "favourable attention"; and this can be done more easily by Feeling than by logic and energy. No skilled salesman will ever try to make a sale to an angry or suspicious customer without first trying to get him into a more sociable humour.
     The same is true of Education. What boy can be well educated who is not fond of his teachers and proud of his school? What boy can be led to desire knowledge who detests his lessons, fears or despises his professors, and regards his college as an institution of boredom, tempered by sports?
     When shall we ever rescue Education from the pedants and traditionalists, and build up a system that will train the Feelings of out children, not repress or ignore them? When shall we make the search for knowledge the supreme game of games? When shall we teach Life, not Death?
     This one element of Human Nature, you see, is a theme that calls for the deepest study and research. I doubt if there is a single human problem which can be solved without considering this matter of Feeling.
     No matter whether it is a home or factory, a college or a trade union, it is largely ruled by its Feelings. I am neither applauding nor condemning this truth; but pointing it out as one of the obvious truths, which we are all apt to forget.
     Feelings were made before Facts. Before Opinions, too. Before almost everything else. And no man can understand the place he is living in not the people he is living with, nor his own nature, until he appreciates the terrific power of this mysterious planetary force called Feeling.

Chapter III. Everybody fears

Fear! This is a feeling so universal and so basic that it compels us to give it a chapter of its own.
     Fear is perhaps the most powerful of motives. It is as old as life itself. It is always and everywhere one of the main causes of human action.
     The first law of Nature, we know, is self-preservation. We want to live. We feel a joy in being conscious. And consequently we fear anything that may injure or destroy us.
     By some strange instinct, which does not seem to come from either teaching or experience, we are afraid of whatever we do not understand. The tiny lamb is afraid of the cow. The young bird is afraid of the boy. The savage is afraid of the gramophone.
     "This world is full of dangers. Watch out. Be suspicious. Be ready to run or fight." This seems to be the first definite thought that takes shape in a young brain. It is fear.
     "Yes," you may reply. "This is true of savage tribes, but it is not true of civilized people. No one can say, for instance, that a Londoner is mainly influenced by Fear."
     This is exactly what I do say— — that Fear is everywhere and eternal. Fear drives its victims in London just as commonly as it does in the mud villages of the Congo.
     There are many varieties of Fear. The savage is afraid of lions and tigers and snakes and other savages. The Londoner is afraid of bankruptcy and scandal and cancer and burglars.
     Is it not the main fault of our system of Government that practically every vote taken in a Parliament is decided largely by Fear— — the Fear of a reduced majority?
     The Fear of Public Opinion! Does this not rule, like an Oriental despot, in Parliaments and parlours alike? It is a much nobler sort of Fear than Fear of snakes, and very likely it can never be abolished. But it is Fear, nevertheless, and we should not flatter ourselves that we are free from it.
     No man is a complete coward. If he were, his life would be unbearable. And neither is any man completely free from fears.
     Every man has his own assortment of fears. The soldier who has won the V.C. commits suicide because he dare not face a scandal. The orator who confronts a hostile mob with perfect composure is terrified of the wrath of his wife. The daredevil of the Air Force, who has fought down many enemy planes, flees to Australia to escape the exposure of a bankruptcy. And so on.
     Many men have found out, as I have, that they can plunge into a wild danger with a keen feeling of apprehensive pleasure; but they are humbled and terrified by an attack of toothache or sciatica.
     If I could live without pain, I wouldn't mind living for ever; but if pain were the price of either Earth or Heaven, I would refuse to pay it.
     Yet, on the other hand, there are few men and many women who suffer pain daily to enjoy their lives. The price of motherhood is pain— — such pain as men never know; yet women walk into the torture-chamber gladly to receive their babes.
     In all true sport there is an element of danger; so that Fear may be changed into enjoyment. This is a strange fact which shows us a way to overcome our fears. If we can learn to take Life as an adventure— — as a game— — as a risky but enjoyable sport, we can largely eliminate Fear.
     Wherever there is Cruelty there is always Fear behind it. No matter how much a bully may threaten and swank, he cannot convince any thoughtful person of his courage. If he is cruel, he is afraid. This is a fact of Human Nature, as certain as that fire will burn and water will flow.
     The first humane Societies sprang up in England. Here kindness to animals— — to prisoners— — to lunatics— — to children— — to slaves, first became a national habit. Here, in the most secure country in the world, Fear first began to die out of the natures of men, and Kindness and Fairness came to take its place.
     The great Hope of the human race is that some day we shall have a civilization in which there shall be no fear. No war. No oppression. No poverty. No violence. This is a dream and may never come true; but it is an ideal that is worthy of all our efforts. Meanwhile, whether we are idealists or not, we can face our own personal fears and overcome them, for the most practical reasons.
     You can ask yourself— — "Is Fear the ruling motive in my own firm? Am I afraid of my superiors? Are the workers whom I manage afraid of me? Do I try to get better results by threats? Am I trying to build up my own success by relying upon Fear?"
     You may even go further than this if you dare to impartially study your own nature. You can ask yourself— — "Have I eliminated Fear from my own home? Do I use my sex I embitter the conversation of my home with threats? Do I depend upon Fear to enforce a sullen obedience to my will, instead of developing a family-will by confidence and loving kindness?"
     The beastliness of it— — to terrorize a home or a shop or a factory! It is often done, in all countries. It is always inefficient, as well as brutal, and the time has come to take warning and to put gentleness and reasonableness in the place of Fear.
     Fear links us with the jungle and the cave and the battlefield. It is the ghost that haunts the dark places of Human Nature.
     No mother or nurse should ever teach a child to be afraid of the dark. No tale of horror should be read by children, except in daylight and with proper comments by an older person. Every parent should try to eradicate fears as diligently as a good gardener eradicates weeds.
     The churches have long ago given up their attempt to scare people into righteousness by threatening them with the fires of Hell. So, too, in business life and home life we are learning that terror is not an uplifting influence. We are finding a better way.
     There is in every child and in every grown person a latent Courage that can be developed. There is a lion and a mouse in every individual and it is best to put the lion in control. It is one of the secrets of Success— — one of the secrets of Leadership, to master your own fears.
     If a man is at heart a coward— — if he has not made himself "the Captain of his soul," he is sure at some critical moment in his career to surrender or run away.
     There is no patent Keating's Powder for the mind, to destroy the vermin of Fear; but there are definite methods of developing Courage and Hardihood. You can, for instance, read the literature of Courage. Read the biographies of brave men. Avoid the company of weaklings. Do some definite act that you are afraid to do.
     Then ask yourself— — "What is the worst that can happen to me?"
     "Is it Poverty? Well, what then? Can I be poorer than come of the great men were whose tablets are now in Westminster Abbey?
     "Is it Imprisonment? Well, why is this so unthinkable? Were not Milton and Galileo in jail? And Cervantes and Columbus and Thoreau and scores of others— — the noblest in the world?
     "Is it Scandal? Is it likely that I can fear any worse than Clive or George Eliot or a few of the Kings of England?
     " Is it Death? Well, what then? Is not Death as natural as Life? Does it not come to everyone?
     "Would it no be doubly terrible if it did not come to me? And why should I spoil my few years of precious Life by a silly fear of a thing so inevitable as Death?"
     Thus, it is possible for us to attain the heights reached by Marcus Aurelius when he said— — "Whatever is agreeable to thee is agreeable to me, oh Universe!"

Chapter IV. Everybody imitates

The baby mimics the mother. Everyone knows that. That is one of the first intelligent things that every baby does.
     But it is also true that the mother mimics the baby. So does the father. So do the brothers and sisters and grandparents.
     It is Human Nature to mimic— — to imitate— — to do what others do. If other people yawn, so do you. If they laugh, so do you. If they are excited or sad of angry, so are you.
     This is a highly important fact that is not taught in school; and no one can steer his way safely through the cross currents of life unless he observes this truth, that everybody imitates.
     A baby learns by imitation long before he can understand the meaning of words. Imitation is the beginning of Education.
     But it does not cease with babyhood. The small boy cries, "Me too." The youth says, "It is the customary thing."
     Whether we are young or old, we are all more or less like chameleons— — we change our opinions and habits according to our environment. We do as we see others do. We have a horror of being "queer."
     No doubt, in the early days of the human race, this similarity was necessary for safety. It was a device of self-preservation.
     When all the members of a Zulu tribe dressed alike, painted their faces alike and spoke alike, they could easily recognize each other as friends. But if one non-imitative Zulu had cut his hair off, and painted his body in a new and fantastic way, he would very likely have been attacked and killed as an enemy.
     Imitation meant tribal unity. It prevented revolutionary changes. It was a method of Education, but it was also the prevention of improvement. It always has been, and is to-day, the basis of conservatism and national stagnation.
     We all know the tyranny of Fashion. Any man who would dare walk down the Strand in the costume of 1640, would be regarded as a silly mummer. He might even be arrested as a menace to the public peace.
     People do what others do. They go where others go. They wear what others wear. They say what others say. They think what others think. That is the law of IMITATION.
     Instinctively, we do not like strangers, or new ideas or new habits. Hence, we used to burn a man at the stake because he would not imitate our religious habits.
     Whoever starts anything new is in danger. All pioneers are persecuted, some by martyrdom and others by bankruptcy. As Andrew Carnegie once cannily said, "Pioneering doesn't pay."
     Public opinion has always compelled uniformity. It turned Egypt into stone by destroying all initiative. It was more tolerant in Rome, and it is marvellously tolerant to-day in the British Empire. But this fact still remains true, even in London, that the way of pioneer is hard.
     There are few nonconformists, whether in creed or commerce. No sort of nonconformity lasts more than a generation. The son of famous Radical is always a Tory, no matter what he calls himself.
     We are all caught fast, more or less, in the strong centripetal pull of Imitation. It is this pull which creates political parties and societies and sects. It protects, too, the old ways and routine which we inherit from the past.
     No man can stand alone. No man can be complete by himself. As an ancient Hebrew poet has said:

     "If I be not for myself,
     Who shall be for me?
     But if I be by myself,
     What am I?"
     Imitation is what bee-keepers call " the spirit of the hive." It is one of the ingredients of patriotism. It adds unquestionably to the happiness of a home, or the prosperity of a firm, or the power of a nation.
     Have we not all been impressed by the contagion of a great mass meeting? Ten thousand people who laugh at the same time— — who applaud— — who thrill at the same vivid thought!
     A crowd of people who are all alike vastly enjoys itself. It becomes on Person under the spell of a great speaker. It is uplifted with a higher consciousness. All the little separate units are melted into one red-hot mass. That is why always and everywhere, the Orator is the Master.
     If you wish to create a company feeling among your employees you must do it by mass meetings. There is no other way. You must create enthusiasm by making laugh and think and applaud at the same time. You must use the principle of Imitation to weld people together.
     How did we create our army? By first dressing all regiments alike. There must be a uniform to give uniformity. Then we drilled them TOGETHER— — all alike. We marched individual into a fraction. We trained them together until they had one thought— — one feeling— — one will. And we did this by appealing to the instinct of Imitation. Is this not an object-lesson, for all time, for all Managers and Employers who have to deal with Human Nature en masse?
     Back of all Staff Training is this principle of Imitation. If you want Team-play and Loyalty from your employees, you must have them taught in classes, so that they shall think and do the same things. No individual tuition or experience can take the place of a class or a mass meeting.
     Most employees learn by Imitation. But they imitate each other. They are not properly taught. They "pick up" little odds and ends of knowledge. And much of what they learn is incorrect.
     Tom imitated Bill, and Bill had learned from Joe, and Joe never knew it. Thus does a wrong work-habit pass down from generation to generation. A torrent of blind unreasoning Imitation is pouring through most of our factories, increasing costs, lowering wages and destroying profits. So, no one can say truly that this matter of Imitation is not a practical one.
     Sales problems, too, compels us to consider the power of imitation in forming national habits. Everybody wants "the right thing"— — the thing that is customary. How does a thing become "right"? By being advertised. By being sold by clever salesmen. By being sold at the best shops. By being bought by titled and wealthy people by being satisfactory in price and quality. And so forth.
     The whole profession of Advertising would become futile and obsolete if the instinct of Imitation were to be flung out of Human Nature. The fact the Advertising is so powerful, as a Business-Builder, proves beyond all question that everybody imitates. We are not like eagles, we human beings, we are like sheep.
     If you have a new article, or a new idea, for sale, you must not announce it as absolutely new. The average man does not want to have experiments tried on him. He prefers to wait and see what the crowd will do.
     The telephone was scoffed out of England as a "scientific toy," until a blundering judge called it a "telegraph." After that, people began to think that it might have some practical value.
     If you are too original, the crowd will pass you by, and chuck a few stones at you in disapproval. If you are an artist or a poet or an inventor, and if you prefer to be paid in fame, after death, then no matter. But if you want money as well as fame, you must modify your originality to suit the crowd.
     The best way, in my opinion, for both artists and manufacturers is to blend a little new with the old. Which is the best loved song in the world? Is it not "Home, Sweet Home" with variations? Or can anything look fairer than your pretty daughter in a new dress? Or the face of your sweetheart in a new hat?
     Blend the new with the old. That is the secret of progress without revolution. It is our historic British way. It has been proved in the building of businesses and empires.
     Make peace with this power of Imitation. Don't ignore it. Use it. It can make you rich, if you want to be rich.
     No man is as original as he thinks he is, and it would be disastrous for him if he were. He is the creature of his generation and he can never shake himself free from it.
     Take away from your mind the ideas created by your generation— — your town— — your trade— — your family! What have you left? Very little.
     In general, it is a wise policy to conform in all non-essentials. Don't be so silly as to be original in the small things that don't matter. And in the larger things, temper the wind of your originality to the shorn lambs of your generation. Don't go so far ahead of the flock that it cannot follow you.

Chapter V. Everybody is different

People are not as different as they think they are. The main purpose of this book is to prove that the variables in Human Nature are not as important as the unities.
     Nearly every man thinks he is unique. Every famous man is sure of it. Every person who has the least little bit of originality is morbidly conscious of it.
     Nearly every business man tells me— — "My business is unique. You cannot apply to it the common ordinary principles of Efficiency. It has too many variables."
     Now, this is mainly a delusion. It is partly true, as I shall point out in this chapter. It is a curious fact of Human Nature that we are intensely conscious of the small part of our nature that is different; and we are quite oblivious of the large part of our nature that is ordinary.
     In my own experience, I have found that the average business is about 15 per cent unique, and 85 per cent common as mud. And as for the average individual, I doubt if even Carlyle or Whistler or Walt Whitman had more than 40 per cent of originality.
     There is many a man who has a most conspicuous vanity, who, if he could be chemically analysed, would very likely be shown to have an originality of .0001 per cent.
     Give a man an inch of genius and he will fancy there is a mile of it. Nevertheless, we must not deny him his inch. Everybody is different— — this is a fact of Human Nature which is of the highest importance of all the Leaders and Managers of men.
     No two blades of ribbon-grass are alike. Neither are any two snowflakes. Nature pushes her products towards variety. She is not content with creating tens of thousands of species. She goes further. She puts a tiny Identification Disc on almost everything she makes.
     Physically, every man carries his Identification Disc on his thumb. No two thumbprints are alike. Knowing this, the police of several countries have now established a card index of thumb-prints, so that a criminal cannot deny his identity.
     Mentally, there are many differences; and these are more difficult to discover. Men differ a little in their bodies; more in their minds; and most of all in their feelings.
     Emotionally, even the commonest species of Man I divided up into separate individuals. People may look alike, all but their thumbs. They may think alike, so nearly that we cannot tell one from the other. But no two people feel alike. This is self-evident.
     If you have five dice, you have 7,776 possibilities. You have one chance out of 7,776 that you will throw five sixes. What, then, must be the chances of complete uniformity when you have 5,000,000,000 cells in every brain?
     No, it is quite true that people are not like Ford cars. They were not made with standardized interchangeable parts. There are differences of thumb-prints and brain-prints and heart-prints. Most of all, in heart-prints.
     Just as there are, in the universe, the two eternal forces— — Centripetal and Centrifugal— — so there are in Human Nature the two forces of Imitation and Originality. Both are normal. We cannot afford to neglect either. He who wishes to live a balanced life of usefulness and sanity must allow both of these forces to shape his character.
     The Centrifugal force, pushing people apart, is the main cause of quarrels, lawsuits and wars. It creates self-conceit, selfishness and genius. It produces the criminal, the lunatic, the inventor, the pioneer, the artist, the hermit. It brings out the best and the worst attributes in Human Nature.
     We try to be different from other people in some way that will prove us to be superior to them. Our self-respect is based, usually, on our scorn and contempt for our neighbours, rather than upon our own superiority.
     The old despise the young, and the young despise the old. The rich despise the poor, and the poor despise the rich. The pious despise the gay, and the gay despise the pious.
     From your own point of view no one else is exactly right. You assume yourself to be the standard by which others are to be measured. This is plainly absurd and unjust, but is it not exactly what we do? Is not a great part of our conversation, among all classes, the scorning and criticizing of people who differ from us?
     Do we not build up our own point of view into a fortress from which we fire upon outsiders? Do we not ignore the fact that everybody is inevitably different from everybody else? Do we not forget that it takes all sorts of people to make a world?
     As we saw in the last chapter, everybody imitates. " Birds of a feather flock together." We prefer our own sort. But we carry this preference too far. We dislike and attack the other flocks of birds whose feathers are not like ours. Labour attacks Capital. Capital attacks Labour. And so forth.
     Several idealists have written books on "Cosmic Consciousness." They have declared that a tiny individual may have a feeling of absolute Life, high above all the feelings and ideals of his own nature. So far as I have been able to find, this is mere word mongering. I have never met any cosmic-souled persons nor any individual who has risen above his personal wants and purposes.
     Consciousness is personal. There is no other sort. It is I— — Me— — My. The quality of your consciousness depends upon the kind of person you are. The consciousness of a Zulu warrior is a dull glimmer compared to the brilliant consciousness of a Huxley, but it is personal always. No brain can outleap its limitations.
     When Descartes cleared away the rubbish of tradition and chose the one central Fact upon which to base his new philosophy, what was that one Fact? It was, " I think; therefore I am." In his opinion, and he was one of the wisest of men, the very starting point of philosophy is man's consciousness of himself as a different entity. The first of thoughts is— — "Everybody is different."
     Every nation thinks itself the apex of the human race. So does every petty tribe in the African jungle. Every shabby little species is a chosen people. The Thibetans hold this thought more firmly than the British. "We are the central people; all the others are inferior to us."
     Self-pride! Self-pity! Self-will! Here you have the causes of most criminals and lunatics. It is the feeling of separateness carried too far. "I want my place in the sun, no matter who else suffers." It is this self-madness that destroys individuals and firms and nations. It is high treason to the human race.
     We meet with this spirit in business, but in a lesser degree. Business life polishes the sharp angles off the natures of men. We learn to live and let live. There is still a great deal of vanity and greed in business, but no violence— — no compulsion. It is the essential nature of Business that it shall be mutual— — each one serving and obliging other people.
     Take Salesmanship, for instance. Is it not the fine art of a salesman that he knows how to secure favourable attention by recognizing the customer's point of view? And is it not true that the modern trained salesman is one of the highest types of manhood— — a sort of human shuttle, weaving many separate threads into a web of trade and commerce?
     The salesman studies how to sell people what they want, or better still, what they need. Hence, he must study his customers as well as his goods. He must note each man's little fraction of originality. He must treat each customer in a way that seems special and distinctive, as far as possible.
     In a factory, too, we can apply this principle, that everybody is different. Here are twenty machines all alike. They are being operated by twenty men, all different. They foreman must know these human differences. He must not treat his workers as thought they were machines. Every successful foreman knows this.
     This task of studying Human Nature is too much for most foremen. It should be specialized. The proper way is to have an Employment Department, which shall have employees tested as well as trained. Certain kinds of worker to the job, not the job to the worker. This is one of the latest developments in Business Efficiency.
     Most of all, perhaps, it is the Managing Director who must study and co-ordinate the various abilities of his staff. He must combine the many colours of the spectrum into the white light of Efficiency. He must harmonize the Works, the Sales and the Office, each of which has its distinct point of view. He can never make his foremen, his salesmen and his clerks think alike. He can only co-ordinate their differences for the good of all.
     He can introduce Humour and Sympathy. He can teach each Department to appreciate the others. He can control, not forbid, Initiative. He can construct a company point of view. Once this is done, most of his other problems will solve themselves.

Chapter VI. Everybody believes

As you may have noticed, every one of the precious chapters might easily have been expanded into a book. And as for this chapter, on Beliefs, it might easily be expanded into a whole library. In fact, most of the books in every library contain Beliefs— — not a thing else but beliefs.
     Why does everybody believe? Because it is so much easier to believe than to find out.
     What is a Belief? It is an easy answer to a hard question.
     When a man does not know a certain thing, why doesn't he say— — " I don't know"? To this question I am obliged to say— — "I don't know." It is one of the darkest mysteries of Human Nature.
     If people do not really value Knowledge, why do they pretend that they possess it?
     And if they do value Knowledge why are they not more diligent in searching for it?
     Why was Man's safety and progress made to depend on his knowledge of the facts, and why was his nature so fashioned that he ahs always and everywhere preferred the silliest fables to the most self-evident facts? Why is Imagination so quick and why is Reason so slow?
     In the past there has been nothing too foolish, or too self-destructive, for men to believe. Millions of men have fought and died to defend beliefs which would to-day be considered too silly for words.
     Even the wise Epictetus believed that future events could be foretold by cutting open a crow and studying its entrails. Even Marcus Aurelius believed in the power of Zeus. Even practical men of to-day— — hundreds of them— — believe in the unluckiness of opals and peacock feathers and Fridays and number thirteen.
     Among savages, there is one universal answer to all hard questions— — "the spirits did it." If there is an eclipse, it is because the sun-god is angry. If there is an earthquake, it is because the sun and moon are quarrelling. If a man has indigestion, there is an evil spirit inside him. And so on.
     Until very recently, the world was packed with ghosts and demons and witches and fairies. It was populous with imaginary creatures Two great hosts of spirits— — one good and one evil— — were battling savagely to see which could capture the greater number of human creatures.
     Parke Godwin, the eminent American publicist, once informed me that when he was a boy he had frequently seen old women pointed out as witches in the streets of New York. In the American town of Salem twenty-seven old women were judicially executed as witches. Over 1,000 were killed in Como, Italy, and over 7,000 in Treves. Witchcraft was named as a crime by the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Hebrews, Germans, French, Italians, Spanish, Americans and English. Scarcely anyone doubted it for 1,500 years. Yet to-day we agree that it was all nonsense— — brutal and cowardly nonsense.
     In these later days we have not lost our credulity; but it has become a rather pleasant thing. It has lost its repulsive nature. It has changed from pessimism to optimism. It has become Spiritualism and Christian Science.
     The Christian Science doctrine is that diseases are errors— — that all things are mental— — that a right Belief can give you health and salvation. This, as you can see, is a recrudescence of medievalism; but it is not so harmful, as it is based on a blind belief in the goodness of the universe, and not on a blind belief in the evilness of the universe.
     But to-day our most powerful beliefs are not religious nor mystical nor metaphysical. They are social and industrial and political. The beliefs that rule us— — that shape our lives— — are the beliefs of the home, the shop, the factory and the market-place.
     Superstition has not been destroyed. Far from it. It has taken on new forms. It is disguised as business and politics and manufacturing and social customs. In its essence superstition is simply this— — it is an unreasoning fear that harm will be caused by doing or not doing certain things. It is Belief, based on fears or feelings or mere custom. And you can find it almost everywhere in the business world.
     Human Nature is being refined, but it is not so vastly different from the Human Nature of the fourteenth century. A ripe apple is still an apple. And in the spiral of human progress the same old instincts appear again and again in various forms.
     The outworn Beliefs of the past are called Superstition. We all agree as to this. But the active Beliefs of to-day are called PUBLIC OPINION, and at that dread name we all bow the knee.
     A man knows full well the silly Beliefs of his grandfather; but he does not know his own. If he is drifting along with a stream, he does not feel its force; but if he turns about and resists the current, he will soon learn how strong it is.
     If you imagine that Socrates would be popular to-day, just go into any ordinary factory and ask Socratic questions. Ask why— — why— — why? The Works Manager and the foreman may not give you a drink of hemlock; but they will resist you, thwart you, fool you and trick you, just as far as they dare. Their factory is run mainly by Beliefs, not by Facts. Their safety, so they foolishly think, depends on these beliefs; and so they make war on any Efficiency Expert who attempts to rationalize the factory.
     There is not one scrap of evidence, for instance, that Scientific Management will throw employees out of work; yet this superstition prevails in almost every Trade Union in America and Great Britain.
     There is not one scrap of evidence that Scientific Management cannot be applied to certain "unique" trades; yet scores of manufacturers believe this to be so. If any man believes his trade is unique, he is mistaken. He is superstitious. There is nothing in Trade and Commerce that cannot be classified, any more than there is in the sea and the forest.
     Everything is impossible until it is done. Every trade is unique until some pioneer digs into it and explores it and classifies its data. So strong are the Beliefs of men, that Science has always to fight its way. Every foot of the way is a tangle of obstructions. There is never a broad highway and probably never will be.
     Manufacturers, as well as dervishes, suffer from delusions— — from Beliefs that are not true, but which are pleasant to believe.
     "My workers are loyal and contented."
     "My foremen are highly skilled."
     "My customers are satisfied with my goods."
     "My competitors are not worth troubling about."
     Such are the Beliefs that are most dangerous at the present time.
     The great Movement towards Efficiency, or Scientific Management, is a determination to put Fact in place of Beliefs. It is an attempt to do in Business what has already been done in geology and chemistry and astronomy and physiology. The March of Science has begun in our shops and offices and mills and factories.
     Beliefs are slowly being driven out of the civilized world. Hundreds of Beliefs have been utterly destroyed. All scientists know clearly that a Belief, as such, has no value at all. And slowly and reluctantly all intelligent people are being convinced that Beliefs are the mere ghosts of the brain.
     We do not believe that two and two make four. We know it. We do not believe that aeroplanes can fly. We know it. We do not believe in motors and railways and machinery and microscopes. These things have nothing to do with Belief.
     Of what use if an opinion on sulphuric acid? Or on bricklaying? Or on a planning department? Can all the Public Opinion of the world change ink into milk or wastefulness into efficiency?
     As you can see, this is a subject of the most vital importance to all practical men. Everybody believes. The old instinct of credulity is latent in all of us, and very active in many of us. We must rigidly ask ourselves— — "Am I Managing my affairs by Beliefs or by Facts? Is my mind befogged by opinions or illumined by knowledge?"
     That brilliant Frenchman, Descartes, drew up four rules in 1637, by which Beliefs could be put to the test. These famous rules had a powerful effect. They cleared the way for the Age of Science. And we need them to-day in industry. Here they are:
     (1) Never to accept anything as true unless I recognize it clearly to be so, and to account my own opinions as nothing.
     (2) To divide every difficulty into as many portions as possible.
     (3) To conduct my thoughts in order, by beginning with the simplest objects and mounting to the most complex.
     (4) To make everywhere enumerations so complete and surveys so wide that I shall be sure of omitting nothing.
     So, if we wish to be successful in this world of difficulties and delusions, we must doubt all Beliefs. We must gather the Facts. We must keep Opinion in its place. We must trust the truth.

Chapter VII. Everybody thinks

As I have already pointed out, there are two main elements in Human Nature— — centrifugal and centripetal. The one is the instinct of self-preservation and the other is the instinct of the perpetuation of the species. These seem to be the two Master-Motives of all human action. They are basic in Man just as much as they are in dogs and whales and eagles.
     The one is my feeling for myself; and the other is my feeling for my fellows. Both are natural. Both are right— — wise— — good. Evil, as we call it, arises from a lack of harmony and balance and development of the various elements of Human Nature. Evil is whatever is abnormal, discordant and inefficient. This will be made plainer as we proceed.
     Human Nature is the same as Earth Nature. The law of the Universe is the law of you and me. Centrifugal and centripetal! Repulsion and Attraction! Self and Society! Originality and Imitation! Thought and Belief!
     You and I are akin to the stars. We are not on this planet. We are a part of this planet. This planet has secreted us as an oyster secretes a pearl. There you have, in the simplest words, the Great Secret— — the most obvious of all Facts which only a few minds have ever comprehended.
     Does this Earth think? No, but it produces nerve-mechanisms that do think. Is an oyster like a pearl? Is an acorn like an oak? Is an egg like an eagle? Here we are walking amidst the most fantastic mysteries.
     Everybody thinks! This is a centrifugal function— — thinking. It is the exact opposite of imitation. It is the development of the self. The more you think, the less you imitate. The more you think, the more different you become to other people.
     Imitation is a social quality. Thought is not. Thought is for the Thinker. Thought isolates a man from his fellows. There you have, very likely, the reason why Thinkers and Inventors have always been disliked and persecuted. Thought is centrifugal.
     Eventually, Thought helps the crowd as well as the Thinker. But the crowd does not recognize this at the time. It fears the Thinker as an anti-social person. It rushes upon him, kills him; and later, when understands his Thought, it erects a statue to his memory.
     The human brain is primarily a mechanism for handling the movements of the body. It is a mental switchboard— — the control-point of the nervous system. As to where the brain ends, and where the spinal cord begins, I dare say that no one knows.
     The brain appears to be the flowering out of the spinal cord. At the top of the spinal cord there is first the Medulla Oblongata, an almost vertical enlargement, which controls the automatic activities of the body. This, very likely, was the earliest sort of brain.
     Then, above and back of the Medulla Oblongata, is the Cerebellum, or little brain. This has the higher function of controlling the conscious activities of the body. But it is not the thinking part. If a man had only a Medulla Oblongata and a Cerebellum, he would not be human.
     The main brain— — the part that thinks— — is the large upper mass which we call the Cerebrum. It is this that makes us human. It is composed of thousands of millions of nerve-cells (or grey matter), and nerve-fibres (or white matter).
     Here, in this upper brain, dwells the Self. Here are the feelings, ideas, wishes, fears, decisions— — the whole equipment of consciousness. Here sits the Ego, or whatever you are, turning the search-light of attention upon the sensations that fly in from the eyes, ears, tongue, nose and fingers.
     The five senses are like five chutes and the brain is like a warehouse. The sensations come tumbling into the warehouse, and SOMETHING picks them up and sorts them out and compares them and puts them on the shelves of memory.
     This process, of sorting and comparing sensations, is what we call Thought. To notice and compare! There you have in four words the nature of Thought. It is never less. It is never more. To notice— — that is the first operation. To compare— — that is the second operation.
     Thought, you see, is not necessarily wise not useful nor accurate. It is the Self sorting out and putting together its odds and ends. The value of the Thought depends upon two things:
     (1) The number and variety of the sensations.
     (2) The skill of the Self in sorting them out and putting them together.
     The dark, disorderly little brain-warehouse of a Hottentot is not to be compared with the large, orderly, illuminated brain-warehouse of an Isaac Newton or La Place. But the process is thinking in both cases. All human beings think. Human Nature is a thinking substance. Very likely many of the lower animals think, too; but that is another story.
     The important point to remember is that thinking is a simple universal operation in all human minds. It is not a rare elaborate process, as text-books lead us to believe. It is not a process produced by education. On the contrary, there have been many schools and colleges that deliberately tried to prevent the thinking process in the brains of their students.
     Many a so-called college teaches its students not to notice, not to compare. It puts out the search-light of attention. It prevents the Self from studying and sorting its sensations. It turns the brain-warehouse into a dark morgue. This has been, all through the ages, the strange tragedy of what we call Education.
     As I have shown, it is easier to imitate then to think. It is easier to imagine than to reason. Consequently, our schools and universities are always prone to take the easier course. They treat the brain as a mere place of storage and try to fill its shelves of memory with certain historic odds and ends. They do not treat the brain as a workshop, as a place of action and decision.
     Take two boys, both alike in mental capacity. Send one to a public school and a University, and send the other into a great engineering work. At the age of twenty-five, which boy will have the more active brain and the greater skill in noticing and comparing? Is it not a fact that the schooled young man will have a more cultured accent, a better manner, and so forth; but that the other young man, unschooled, will have a far more active and efficient brain for the production of thought? Is this not true in all countries, that Education tends to aim at culture, not at thinking?
     Practically all of the great Thinkers who created our industrial system were unschooled. Crompton, Arkwright, Hargreaves, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Edison— — all these men went to work as boys. College professors call them "illiterate." So they may be from the point of view from a university; but from the point of view of practical creative Thought is it not the professor who is "illiterate"?
     No, Thought is not a thing of culture and genius and learning. It is creative. It is an active force of the brain. It is not merely receptive and passive.
     It notices. It compares. It sorts over its sensations. It puts two and two together and makes four. It builds up sensations into ideas, and ideas into principles. It is critical and constructive.
     It invents. It uses the plus and minus method. It adds or subtracts. It persists in a series of rearrangements until it produces something new. Invention is not at all a matter of genius— — of brilliant inspiration. It is rather a matter of perseverance and concentration.
     Thought is not merely in books and oratory. It is mainly in things. That is a fact that colleges forget. A Rolls Royce car is a structure of Thoughts. So is the Manchester Ship Canal. So is the lead pencil in your pocket.
     Here, then, is the root of the whole matter. Everybody can think. Nature gave everybody a thinking apparatus. No one can monopolize Thought. No one can bottle it or book it or control the output of ideas. Hundreds of times the rulers of the world have tried to establish an ownership of Thought; but always there came Thinkers who overthrew them.
     Everybody thinks. Your employees think. Your customers think. Your children think. It is Human Nature to think, just as much as it is to feel.
     And Thought is the greatest of all Prime Movers. It governs Governments. It rules rulers. It is the King of Kings and Lord and Lords. It pulls down and builds up. It is Power and more then Power. It is ultimately Goodness and Truth and the ripeness of the human race.

Chapter VIII. Everybody has habits

The law of Habit is a centripetal quality of Human Nature. It is akin to the quality of imitation. It is different from imitation in this way, that it means a large degree of automatism.
     Habit means that we imitate ourselves. We do a thing in the same way we did it before. We do it more and more mechanically, until it becomes automatic and ultimately unconscious.
     Habit and Change are the two opposite qualities of Human Nature. The one leads to fixation and the other leads to explosion, if you fail to balance the one with the other.
     They are laws of the universe, as well as of you and me. They are operative in earth nature and plant nature and animal nature, as well as in the nature of human beings.
     In fact, all things seem to be like islands of Habit in a sea of Change. We, like coral insects, are related to both sea and the islands. We cannot develop our own natures without the use of both Habit and Change.
     Many writers and orators denounce Habit as a stubborn and reactionary influence. It is. But if it were possible to abolish Habit, what would be left?
     You could as well abolish the mortar between the bricks of a building and leave the building. Habit gives cohesiveness; and although many impatient radicals dislike cohesiveness, it can never be abolished. Without it there would be little in the universe except whirling fire-mists and star dust.
     Habit gives rhythm and regularity. It gives us day and night, and the seasons, and the harvest. It gives us nations and codes and governments. It gives us, as individuals, skill and leisure and orderliness.
     Habit is really a clever device of Nature to save labour, making work rhythmical and automatic. It saves thought by transferring the control of actions from the conscious brain to the unconscious. It saves will in the same way, by introducing automatism. And it saves time by preventing the delays of study and decision.
     Habit is physical as well as mental. It is inherent in the nervous system. Action makes tissue; tissue makes gristle; gristle makes bone. That is the physical basis of habit.
     Doing makes doing easier. The first time is the hardest. The tenth time is easy. The thousandth time is automatic. That is the evolution of Habit.
     "The old ways are the easiest." Of course they are. "The new ways are difficult." Of course they are. So it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.
     Nothing can be more futile than to sneer and rave at the foolish customs of other people. We do not blame coal for being black or iron for being heavy. Habit is a property of Human Nature, always and everywhere. There has never been a revolutionist in any age who was not bound fast in certain senseless Habits of his own, and of his own, and of which he was quite oblivious.
     We are all more or less inconsistent in this matter of Habits. We— —

     "Atone for sins we are inclined to,
     By damning those we have no mind to."
     This is Intolerance. It is the cause of gossip and quarrels and wars and all manner of antisocial things. It is destructive in a nation or in a business organization. It is the quality of Habit carried too far.
     One of the main benefits of travel is that it frees us from the tyranny of Habit. It teaches us to live and let live— — to think and let think. The first time a man visits a foreign country he ridicules every Habit that is different. He scoffs and sneers. He grumbles and fusses. Later, as he grows wiser and more tolerant, he learns that most Habits are not right or wrong. They are merely local.
     A very great deal of what we call " Truth" is no more than a Habit of Thought, created by a local point of view. But very few realize this who have not read many books or travelled in several countries, or studied the Habit-making tendencies of Human Nature.
     So, we cannot rely upon Habit as a safe guide through life. Neither can we escape it. Habit is like the weather. It is good, bad and indifferent. It is helpful and hurtful. It cures and it kills. It is a blind purposeless force which can lift us up or hurl us down.
     Habit is structural, both in the world of Matter and the world of Mind. Is not part of the brain a veritable Mechanism of Habit? Is not the Medulla oblongata the Habit Department of the brain?
     Is not disease, usually, the breakdown of some part of the automatic mechanism of the body? And is not pain, almost always, the jangling of a warning bell to call the attention of the conscious self to a need of repairs in the unconscious self? Something has got out of order in the Habit Department.
     We cannot afford to ignore this Law of Habit, you see. Eventually, most of us will die before our time because of our ignorance of our Habit Department. Only 3 per cent will be killed accidentally. And the rest of us will be killed by a breakdown in the automatic mechanism of the body. So we are informed by insurance actuaries.
     You are being developed or destroyed by you habits. This is scientifically true. It is not a mere copy-book motto or exhortation. This is why you cannot afford to have a ragbag of haphazard habits. This is why you must, every now and then, challenge your Habits and the Habits of your firm. The most injurious practice may accidentally become a Habit and hold us tighter and tighter until it kills us.
     The vital question is— — do you possess your Habits or do your Habits possess you? Have you any Habit that dominates you and sneers at you and says to you— — "I am indispensable! You cannot live without me." If you have, better give it a month's holiday, so that you can know that you are the owner of yourself.
     In 1920 I made an experiment of this kind. For three months I ate no meant, bread, potatoes nor vegetables. I ate no cooked food of any sort. I drank no liquors, tea or coffee. I lived on milk, dates, figs, walnuts, peaches, pears and bananas. As a result, I gained 35lbs in weight and reached the highest level of health that I have ever known.
     A perfect meal, as I found it, consists of a dozen dates, a dozen walnuts, a few raisins, a pear and a quart of milk. But at the end of the three months I abandoned my perfect meals and went back to the eating Habits of my generation. As I have pointed out, we cannot afford to be too queer. We must respect the Law of Imitation and Habits as well as the Law of Thought and Change.
     The wisest procedure is to find out the best way which is not too different from the customary way. Then make it a Habit.
     If you have a mill or factory, you must study the work-habits of your employees. You must remember that all manner of follies can become regular work-habits if you are not keen and critical.
     Frequently you ask a foreman— — "Why do you do this?" He replies— — "Because we have always done it." That is a foolish answer. It is not to be tolerated in any efficient works. There must be a reason back of every work-habit.
     This is the very pith of Scientific-Management— — to take nothing for granted— — to challenge every work-habit— — to note exactly what is being done and then to find out what is the best, easiest and quickest way. It is the reconstruction of work-habits.
     A factory is composed of people, machinery and habits, is it not? Hitherto we have been very keen to get the latest improved machinery, but we have neglected to improve the people and the habits. To do this is the main purpose of Efficiency.
     Most businesses, at present, are very largely traditional. They are clogged and muddled by Old Habits that are not suitable to the changed conditions of to-day. We have allowed Habit to go too far. We have not balanced it with Thought and Improvement. And the time has now come to overhaul our Habits, as individuals and firms and nations.
     The great Leaders of this generation will be those men who can help us to change our Habits wherever they are restricting our development. This is the high art of Leadership— — not to praise the hurtful and foolish Habits of the crowd, but to win the crowd upwards to a nobler and more useful set of Habits. To be a habit-maker— — that is what leadership means.

Chapter IX. Everybody changes

Change! This is a centrifugal quality of Human Nature. It is akin to the quality of thinking. It is different from thinking for this reason— — that it means action.
     To properly describe Human Nature I am obliged to include change as an essential element. Change is not optional. It is not occasional. It is inevitable and universal.
     We all agree that this is true of the universe. We know the story of the stars. We know that nothing is destroyed, but that every atom of every star is changing. From gaseous to liquid! From liquid to solid! From solid to gaseous! Such is the eternal process out of which Life comes as an incident.
     We know this; but we are apt to forget that it applies to Us as much as it does to stars. We, too, are in a state of flux. "Everything flows," said a Greek thinker. "There is no such thing as rest," said Robert Kennedy Duncan, the eminent scientist.
     The stability of the earth is a delusion. There is nothing stable. Every stone is mastered by Decay, just as truly as every soap-bubble. There is no difference, except in time, and time is not important in an eternal universe.
     So, also, the stability of your own nature is a delusion. You are not the same person that you were five years ago. You are a river of sensations— — ideas— — feelings— — decisions. The flow persists, but the things that flow have changed.
     Since the discovery of radium we have reason to believe that even the elements are changing. We suspect that gold is breaking down into copper— — that silver is breaking down into lead. The transmutation of metals is now a proved fact, not a guess nor a fancy.
     The one only thing that lasts is energy. All its forms are transient. Every change leads to another. Nothing goes on for ever, neither plant nor planet. The only absolutely certain thing is change.
     The stability of your own body is a delusion. Every motion you make— — every word you speak, wears it away; and every meal restores it. The whole body is renewed at least once every seven years.
     The incessant duel between Decay and Development goes on in every human body— — in every tree— — in every business organization. There is harmony between the two that we cannot comprehend. Neither one is Master of the other. Each one prepares the way for the other. A green leaf feeds the tree; and so does a dead leaf. Life springs eternally out of Decay; and Decay springs eternally out of Life.
     Such is Nature's endless cycle. It is apparently contradictory, just as the motion of a wheel is. A fly on the top of a wheel might say— — " This wheel is going north." Another fly on the bottom of the wheel would say— — "This wheel is going south." Both flies would be right, from their little fly point of view. But both would be wrong, from an outside point of view. In the same way Life and Decay, which seem contradictory to you and me, are no more than two sides of the same Wheel "that spins forever down the ringing grooves of Change."
     However, I am not writing this book from the point of view of the universe. It matters very little to the universe whether you are conscious or unconscious— — whether you are on the upside or the downside of the Wheel. But it matters a great deal to you.
     From your personal point of view, you must resist Decay. You must battle against the pull of the past— — against what we call inertia and degeneracy.
     We, as human creatures, are the conscious phenomena of the universe; and we must struggle against the unconscious phenomena, which will eventually overwhelm us.
     We cannot make friends with Decay. We are too small— — too transient, to act as though we were outside of the cosmic process and independent of it. We cannot afford to resign ourselves to Fate or Nirvana or any other sort of inertia. We have our part to play in the sublime Drama of existence; and we must remember that we are the partisans of Life, not Death.
     We can improve or degenerate. We must do one or the other, as it is impossible for us to remain always as we are. That is the practical fact that we receive from this chapter.
     No human being has ever found who was not improvable. No one has reached his limit. No one is petrified into changelessness. Everyone is plastic as long as the flow of his life continues.
     Again and again men have tried to freeze life into a certain mould. Egypt tried to do this; did it more successfully than any other nation; and then— — Egypt died. In Egypt, Life made Love to Death, until the sands of the desert covered up the defenceless abode of Life.
     Again and again the rich, comfortable Few have tried to prevent Change. They have made cast-iron laws and creeds and habits. They did this in Babylon and Nineveh and Persia and Spain. But they forgot the sort of universe they were living in. They forgot Human Nature, and so all their fine glittering structures of culture went down. Nature flicked them aside as a potter throws a defective pot upon the scrap-heap.
     Ever since Darwin wrote his "Origin of Species"— — ever since he dared to pull aside the veil that hid the face of Life, we have known that this is a universe of change. The Greeks guessed it; but we KNOW it, as positively as we know the rise and fall of the tides.
     Darwin gave us the most cheering book that has ever been written. He showed us that all better things come by development. He told us about "environment" and "natural selection"— — the causes of improvement. And he framed for us the law of " The survival of the fittest," which make clear to us that the universe is a just and righteous universe.
     Every scrap of Human Nature is IMPROVEABLE. That is not a theory. It is not a hope. It is a fact. We have learned that all plants, fishes, birds and animals have already improved up from the crudest beginnings. A collie dog, with his affection and gentle ways, has been improved from a wolf. Wheat— — that feeds a score of nations, has been improved from a wild grass that grew in the valley of the Euphrates. Shakespeare was improved from a dumb and helpless babe. And so on. On all sides of us there are proofs of the marvellous plasticity of things.
     Here is a small piece of coal, no bigger than my fist. If I apply fire to it— — presto— — it becomes power. It can lift me 10,000 feet in the air. Or if Nature applies pressure to it, it may become a diamond. Originally, this piece of black coal was sunshine. So, who knows what is what in this world of magic? Coal— — power— — diamond— — sunshine— — all different forms of the same thing.
     This sensational improvability is the basis of all practical optimism. When we see what has been done already we do not despair. We know that Russia may be efficient and scientific— — that the slums of our British cities may be changed into Kingsways and Garden Cities.
     In spite of our superficial vanity and self-conceit, the truth is that very few of us appreciate ourselves. We do not realize our own improvability. We take ourselves as finished products, whereas we are mostly raw materials.
     This is the supreme waste of the world— — this waste of undeveloped Human Nature. The streets of all cities are crowded with 30 per cent people who might, is they chose, lift up their lives to par. They regard themselves as fixed, not fluent. They undervalue the power of Change.
     Mentally, most of us are the merest beginnings, compared with what we might be. As Professor Marvin, the noted chemist, once said— — "In dissecting human brains, nothing has more thoroughly impressed me than the poverty of thinking tissue which characterizes the average cerebrum."
     We forget that the brain is an organism, not a pint pot. It is like a violin. It has vast possibilities of thought and feeling. You can always make your best better. You can always make you most more.
     Your full power! Who can say what this is? Who can set limits to the development of a man who dares to train his aptitudes and to battle against his difficulties and to have full confidence in the improvability of his own nature?

Chapter X. Everybody needs praise and blame

Praise is a necessity to all human beings and to a few of the lower animals. It is non-existent in plants and minerals. It is a mental necessity of the higher living creatures.
     Where there is no praise there is morbidity, sullenness, dejection, shamelessness, laziness, inertia and crime.
     There is a hunger for praise in every human heart. There is a horror of blame. This quality of Human Nature is universal and it is vastly more powerful than we have ever cared to admit.
     Why do we crave for Praise? Very likely because it means Safety and Comfort. We instinctively feel— — "If people approve of me, I'll be safe." As we commonly say, and rightly, "Self-preservation is the first law of Nature." Hence the passion for Praise, as it is an evidence of security.
     No sort of human society as ever been found in which there were no Honours and Ranks. Every tiny group of savages has is little code of Public Opinion, and its rewards and penalties. And one of the twelve principles of Efficiency, as given by Harrington Emerson, is "Rewards."
     There is always a House of Lords and there always will be. There will always be Titles and Degrees and Monuments and Statues and Biographies and Westminster Abbey. In every tribe and every age there has always been the Roll of Honour in some form.
     The first people who called attention to this quality of Human Nature were the phrenologists. They located what they call the "Bump of Approbativeness." But they did not appreciate Praise and Blame as balancing motives of human conduct.
     "Approbativeness"! It is like the quality of Habit. It is the most powerful social cement. It makes us seek our own kind. It binds tribes and nations together.
     More than this, it is the motive that underlies Ambition. It makes men crave friendship and success. Is it not one of the hardest penalties of poverty that no one praises the poor?
     No one can ever be indifferent to the opinions of others regarding himself. We all crave general approval. A pretty little Jewish girl, whom I knew very well, once came crying to her mother and said— — "Mamma, I don't want to be a Jew any more. Nobody loves the Jews." That was the cry of Approbativeness.
     Just as all Blame and not Praise makes slaves and outlaws, so does all Praise and no Blame make fools and despots. Praise, carried too far, becomes Flattery— — the power that rules rulers— — the power that is stronger than Kings. All Praise made Kaiser. It made all the tyrants of history, wherever there have been no free speech and free press to keep them human.
     Flattery has slain its thousands. Few minds can resist it. It is as seductive as opium and as fatal. And the higher a man climbs, the louder is its voice. It cannot, as the poet Gray has said, "soothe the dull cold ear of Death"; but it can soothe any living ear. It is like a deadly gas that blows over us as a fragrance.
     "The much-lauded honours of life are vain and mean," said Marcus Aurelius. He could afford to say this because he was the Emperor of Rome. He was the most highly honoured man in the world. And even he, the wisest of men, held all his honours to the last.
     The fact is that Praise is as necessary as food, if we get it in moderation and balanced, when necessary, by Blame. Praise is a sort of sunshine that ripens us. Also, when it is too intense, it rots us.
     In my own experience with eminent men I have discovered that the more famous a man is, the more greedy he is for praise. In my early days as a journalist I worked out a most successful rule for interviewing eminent personages. In every case I brought a little incense of Praise to the altar. I made a study of every Great Man before I interviewed him, and introduced myself with a quotation from one of his speeches or an appreciation of one of his exploits. I talked to Him, which is the only sure way to gain any Great Man's favour. It is a rule that has very few exceptions, that when a man builds himself up into a Personage, the key to his favour is Praise.
     Great men know full well how their greatness was created. They know that Public Opinion has made them and can unmake them. They respect their Creator. That is the secret of their susceptibility to Praise.
     Praise and Blame! Are they not woven into the very fabric of our social life? What moment is more glorious than when the King pins the Victoria Cross on the breast of a hero, while thousands applaud him and the bands plays in his honour? And what moment is more terrible than that final moment in a court-room, at the end of a murder trial, when the Jury come back and the Judge asks— — " What say you— — Guilty or not Guilty?"
     Praise and Blame! Are they not the Heaven and Hell of all religions? Do not all nations give their god what they value most— — Praise? "Te Deum Laudamus! The Hallelujah Chorus! Praise God from whom all blessing flow! Is it not all Praise— — Praise— — Praise?"
     We have used up the whole vocabulary of Praise in WORSHIP and COURTSHIP. We have given it over to the priests, the poets and the lovers. This is most interesting and important fact. It may explain, perhaps, why we use so little Praise in the world of Trade and Commerce. In worship and courtship and poetry we overdo Praise. We go to absurd extremes. We make Praise foolish. Then, in practical life, we overdo Blame. Is it not true?
     Have we not tried to manage our homes and our shops and our factories by penalties rather then by Rewards? What is the dark record of the factory system? Is it not largely a tale of fines and threats, and "get on or get out"? And has it not all been a costly and brutal mistake?
     Have we not destroyed the MORALE of our workers by clubbing them with Blame? Have we not forgotten that slave labour invariably ruins nations as well as firms? Have we not omitted Praise from our schemes of factory management?
     The war taught us the value of Praise and we shall no doubt soon learn to have a D.S.O. for employees. We shall have in every well-managed factory a Legion of Honour, for the oldest or the ablest workers.
     We have learned that men only WORK for money, but for Praise they DIE. We have had our eyes opened to the nobler motives of life. We have been taught that our cities and factories were packed with heroes, who were suddenly brought to light by the opportunities of the war.
     When Kitchener, just before his death, put his hand on the shoulder of a young V.C. and said— — " My lad, I'm proud of you," he showed all Managing Directors a better way. He showed them the omnipotence of Praise.
     We may take it as an axiom of management that every worker has a right to self-respect. He has a right to Praise, when he deserves it; and he needs Blame, when he deserves it. Such is the Justice that the mass of men wish for.
     Practically, it comes to this— — that we should make both Praise and Blame definite. No man is all good or all bad. If you praise him, be specific. If you blame him, be specific. A man will take the severest blame without bitterness if you point out his merits as well as his defects. Both are indispensable to human development— — Praise and Blame.

Chapter XI. Everybody respects leadership

The universe has a certain tendency to order. This is shown in a thousand ways. It is shown in crystals, in snowflakes, in flowers, in the regularity of the stars.
     As we may truthfully say— — Nature organizes. Nature puts someone in the centre. Nature has decreed Leadership. This is what Darwin discovered and called "the survival of the fittest."
     Most animals and all human beings respect Leadership. I have never heard of any tribe of savages so degraded but what they had a Head Man. Theoretical Democracy, in which all are equal, has never existed and never can. It is one of the silliest delusions in the world.
     Every mob, even, develops its Leaders. Even the most rabid theorists of individualism are forced to organize to defend the principles of non-organization.
     About fifty years ago, when the Kropotkin brand of Anarchism was flourishing in Boston, forty or fifty of the Anarchists decided to have weekly meetings. They resolved to fight " the slavish principle of organization." They met, and the first thing they did was to elect a Chairman. The second thing they did was to make rules. Then, after several stormy meetings, they suddenly realized that they had become organized, and they dissolved in wild confusion. They could not escape Leadership any more than they could escape food.
     Wherever there are two men in any sort of co-operation, one of them is a Leader. No one can avoid Leadership except the hermit.
     Wherever there is a group of men, they crystallize around the one who is most masterful, resourceful and courageous. This is the germ principle that produces Organization.
     Among the preliminary forms of life this quality of Leadership is most highly developed among the BEES. In a single hive there are as many as 90,000 bees and all are passionately devoted to one Queen. This Queen is not a Leader in the sense that she legislates or commands. She is, strictly speaking, not a Queen at all. She is a Mother— — the one and only Mother in the hive. She will have, in a season, a family of 40,000 children. She is indispensable. Without her, the little bee-city would at once fall into confusion and decay.
     Probably no other creatures are as well disciplined as bees. They are ruled by one over-mastering instinct— — duty to the young. They live, work and die for but one thing— — the preservation of their species.
     They are so fierce that Man cannot conquer them. They will fight against any odds. They can be tricked, but not tamed. They scorn Man's clumsy ways. Out they go with sword and basket to gather the liquefied sunshine which we call honey. The sun, as we may say, kisses the flowers and the little bees gather the kisses.
     The brain of a man is 1/40 of his weight, and the brain of a bee is 1/174 of its weight; so that a bee is relatively not very much inferior to a man. Moreover, a bee uses ALL its brain and the man does not.
     A bee-hive is the perfection of Organization and leadership. There were "functional foremen" in bee-hives long before Taylor invented the phrase. In every hive there are nurses, housemaids, masons, chemists, sweepers, wax-makers, guards, honey-collectors, princesses, babies, professional males, usually known as drones, and the one idolized Queen.
     The five Great Events of the hive are:
     (1) The birth of the Queen's children.
     (2) The massacre of the drones.
     (3) The swarm.
     (4) The harvest of honey.
     (5) The long winter sleep.
     No other living things are as clean— — as earnest— — as industrious— — as true to a patriotic ideal. Their workmanship is perfect; no other manufactured product is superior in quality to a comb of honey. And it is all due to this instinct of Organization.
     To a lesser degree this bee nature is in all human beings. Did not England pay a monstrous price as ransom for the worthless Richard I when he was kidnapped by the Austrians, because they could not live without their King? Did we not again and again rush out and import a King from anywhere, so that we should not suffer the incredible misfortune of being Kingless? Did we not bring in one King from Scotland, another from Holland, and a third from Germany, because of this innate quality that everybody respects, Leadership?
     Also, is it not true that the solidity of the British Empire is mainly due to a nobler definition of Leadership, which has been developed in Great Britain? Is it not true that the British people have been less spoiled by power and more willing to accept responsibility than any other people? Have they not been the first to create alliance of FREE nation? And consequently, does not the British Empire stand as the survival of the fittest form of Leadership that the world has ever known.
     I, who am a Canadian, may say this without self-praise; and in fact, it was first said by General Smuts— — a Boer.
     As yet this matter of Leadership is felt, rather than comprehended, even in England. There are few great individual Leaders, and the nation as a whole is perhaps more just and tolerant than any of its citizens.
     The parliamentary mechanism whereby we choose our Leaders is as crude as a spinning-jenny or a log canoe. It is difficult to push worthy man up, and it is difficult to pull a worthless man down. All sort of incompetent nonentities climb boldly up to the seats of the mighty and remain there unharmed for life. As yet, we have not been wise enough to invent any easy up, easy down process, by which every Leader would be judged strictly by results. This is one of the disappointments of Democracy that may eventually be overcome.
     We cannot depend upon heredity to give us Leadership. And neither can we depend upon our present rule-of-thumb political system, which gives us Leaders who dare not lead. A mere vote-catcher is a poor substitute for a Leader. Phrases and tricks are not the things that make men loyal. Far better to have a Cromwell who would say— — "Take away that bauble!"
     We are at present muddling forward in the bog of metaphysical Democracy into which the French Revolution pushed us. "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity!" In spite of all our flounderings, we have not yet secured any one of these three. And we never shall secure them, until we put LEADERSHIP first. That was what the French Revolution and the American Revolution forgot.
     Leadership! You must have it in every nation— — every shop— — every mill— — every factory. No system will take it's place. Men want to be loyal to a man. They will never do their best for a Board or a Committee.
     This is the universal defect of government ownership. It provides no Leadership. How can workers be loyal to a Permanent Secretary and a non-permanent Cabinet Minister? That is perhaps the main reason for the inefficiency and bankruptcy or Civil Service.
     There must always be Leadership as long as there is life. Everyman must lead his inferiors and follow his betters. There is no other way, not in this part of the universe.

Chapter XII. Everybody is sexed

As this is a business book, for business men, I need not concern myself about sex except where it is an active influence in the business world. If I could leave this chapter out, I would gladly do so, because it will create more controversy than all the other chapters combined. It is not a chapter of opinion, but of facts, as far as I have been able to find the facts.
     It deals with a subject of vast importance, upon which all of us have very little real knowledge and a great deal of absolutely worthless opinion. On this subject neither man nor woman have ever been fair and scientific. And probably they never can be.
     When we explore this subject we are afloat upon the whirlpool of Passion. We are flung about among uncharted rocks. We are on a voyage upon which the rudder of Reason is quite powerless to keep us on a straight course.
     I have studied only two books on this subject— — Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis; and Evolution of Sex, By Geddes and Thompson. And neither of these books deals with the influence of sex upon trade and commerce.
     As yet, very few scientists have studied Sex in an analytical way. Those who have done so have become almost fanatical on the subject. Professor Freud, for instance, has gone so far as to say that most mental diseases have a sex origin.
     But one fact has been made clear— — that there are basic differences between men and women. Man is Man and Woman is Woman.
     There are two distinct varieties of Human Nature— — masculine and feminine. There are no neuters. There is an eternal cleavage of Sex that cuts the human race into two different halves. Man alone is not human. Woman alone is not human. Human Nature is a dual substance.
     Men and women are different. They are different mentally as well as physically. Man is not superior. Neither is woman. None but a non-sexed Judge could ever say that one was superior to the other. There are two points of view on this subject of Sex, and they can never be brought together.
     As to the origin of Sex, we know how, but not why. The why is one of the darkest mysteries. We know that life began with a cell. We know that the cell divided itself up into a number of cells, some larger than the others. We know that the small cells were male and the large cells were female.
     From the first, there is a striking difference between these two varieties of cells. The small male cells are more energetic, more mobile. They are katabolic. The large female cells are more sluggish, more nutritive. They are anabolic.
     The male cells are more violent and less enduring. The female cells are more passive and more enduring. Thus we can see, by studying these primal units of life, why the male is active, eager, passionate, variable, progressive and original; and we can see why the female is passive, conservative, stable, sympathetic, faithful and patient.
     Men are more like animals, which use up energy; and women are more like plants, which store up energy. Men are centrifugal, and women are centripetal. Men are for self-preservation, and women are for the preservation of the race.
     A study of anatomy and physiology shows that men and women are structurally equal. Neither one has a better organized body than the other. Their five senses are equally acute, except that a woman has a keener sense of smell. Tests of the blood show that the male has more red corpuscles and more haemoglobin then the female.
     There are four times as many suicides among men; and five times as many criminals; and a thousand times as many vagrants.
     Women influence men more than men influence women. Few women go to prize-fights; but many men go to balls and teas. Always and everywhere it is the male who seeks the female. He is the seeker; she is the sought.
     In human evolution, it is the male who originates new characteristics; but it is the female who decides which is best. As Darwin has said— — "Sexual selection depends on the ardour, courage and rivalry of the males; and on the perception, taste and will of the female." The female picks the male she likes best, and so decides what will be the qualities of the children. It is thus very easy to see how man, and not woman, became inventive.
     The male, from the cell days onwards is always restless and active. The female is quieter and stationary. Thus civilization came to be built up by the male, but it was built up around the female.
     Women, very likely, were the first to work, but men were the first to trade. Women were the first industrialists, but they worked always with small hand tools. Man, being lazy, daring and inventive, created machinery and power. Also, being fond of risk and a natural gambler, he built up the structure of trade and commerce. Being restless and fond of travel, he invented railroads, steamships and international trade. Women, being stationary, sat still and evolved the home and social customs and refinement.
     The masculine things of the world are such as Law; Police; Invention; Football; Mining; Mechanics; Engineering; Railroading; Seamanship; Exploration; Politics; Factories; Gambling; Finance; Science; Aviation; Philosophy; Journalism and Oratory.
     The feminine things of the world are such as Housekeeping; Children; Society; Nursing; Cooking; Dressmaking; Charity; Buying and Insurance.
     Other things in the world seem to have no sex origin, such as Poetry; Drama; Art; Music; Song; Fiction; Teaching and Health.
     Man is more national and woman is more local. Man is more for principles and woman is more for details. Man grasps the abstract and woman holds fast to the concrete. Man is more for experiment and woman is more for safety and security.
     Man has created System; Organization; Efficiency. Not a single authoritative book, as yet, has been written on Efficiency by a woman. The whole development of Scientific Management has been masculine. Few women there are who understand it and none who have helped to create it.
     Thus, woman deals with the simple and man with the complex. Woman prefers things that are personal and man prefers things that are organized. Woman pounds wheat with a flat stone, and man builds a flourmill that grinds 1,000 barrels an hour. Woman spins her cotton with a whirling stick, and man builds Oldham with its 13,000,000 spindles, whirled by the power of coal.
     Man takes life as an adventure and a sport. Why? Because he creates life by his greatest pleasure. And woman takes life as a task, because she creates life by her greatest pain.
     So, have I not written enough to prove that men and women are basically different? If so, then it is an easy matter to show how vitally important this fact is to us in business. It is a fact that we cannot ignore. We must think of it when we sell and when we advertise and when we hire employees and when we design new merchandise.
     At present there is confusion in the placing of workers. Women are doing work that ought to be done by men; and men are doing work that ought to be done by women. Out of the 303 classified occupations in the United States, women are now in 294. They are even trying to be lawyers and engineers.
     During the Great War over 2,000,000 women sprang up out of the homes and went to work in the shops and factories. This fact will inevitably change our industrial system. It has already created Welfare Work. It has humanized our factories to an incredible degree. It has toned down the rampant masculinity which in the past has debased industry into warfare. And it will make all manner of changes which we do not now foresee.
     In the matter of merchandise man is still the originator of new designs, and it is woman still who decides which shall succeed and which shall fail.
     Women are the buyers. They buy for themselves, for the children, and partly for the men. They buy four-fifths of all that is sold. They rule in the market place. They are more powerful than banks or factories. They are the buying power of the world. They are not organized nor organizable, fortunately, else they would be the supreme despots of commerce and manufacturing.
     Everyone who has goods to design, to make or to sell, must remember this feminine mastery of the markets. He must cater to women as the poets in the ancient days catered to kings. Give women what they fancy and they will make you rich.
     In practically all trades and professions it is necessary to remember that there are tow very different sorts of people— — male and female. Everybody is sexed. Apply this idea to your employership, to your salesmanship, to your manufacturing policy, and you will be surprised to see how it will help to solve some of your problems and to make the crooked places straight.

Chapter XIII. Everybody is conscious and subconscious.

In this chapter I am compelled to deal with one of the strangest mysteries of human personality— — the subconscious self. This is a subject that sensible people usually avoid, because it has been messed about by spiritualists and "psychic research" between science and superstition. It is still a realm of guesses and ghosts.
     But a few facts have become clear and ought to be made known. You cannot understand the phenomenon which we call Human Nature— — you cannot understand or control your own disposition, without knowing the function of the Subconscious Self.
     It is an undeniable fact that every human mind is two-fold. A small part of it is conscious; a large part of it is unconscious. It is like a combined workshop and warehouse, in which one workman lives. The workshop is well lighted, but the warehouse is in darkness, and all manner of things are stored in the warehouse which the workman has quite forgotten. Some day, perhaps, we shall find a way to take stock of the contents of this warehouse. And whoever first learns how to do this will be the Master Psychologist of the human race.
     The vital fact to bear in mind, on this subject, is that consciousness is delusive. It is never complete. You are never wholly conscious of all your contents.
     Consciousness is partly like a lantern that is carried here and there in a large dark building. You have within you the dry tinder of passion of efficiency, which may at any time be lit by the spark of opportunity.
     A man is like the earth itself— — he has a thin crust of consciousness and underneath— — deep underneath, are the blazing fires of the Subconscious Self. This explains how a man can be suddenly volcanic— — how a quiet, gentle person will in an instant flash into a blaze of either heroism or crime.
     At the top of the spinal cord is the Medulla oblongata. It is this part of the brain that controls the Subconscious Self. It is a sort of mental switchboard in charge of the automatic activities of the body.
     Apparently, it is a marvellous device to set free the conscious part of the brain. It makes possible all the higher activities of the mind. It organizes the details into a routine, and this routine is not conscious except when it is out of order.
     This unconscious routine includes the functioning of the body, and more. It includes the fixed habits of work of play of morbidity. Possibly, but I am not sure of this, it may even include what we call character.
     It is quite possible that we may learn how to form Character by dealing directly with the automatic part of the mind. This is one of the most wonderful possibilities of the New Education.
     A man's Character is that part of him which is basic. It is the Subconscious Self, mainly. His reputation is what he has on display in the windows of the workshop; but his Character is what he has stored on the shelves of the dark warehouse.
     Whenever we study abnormal Human Nature we find it largely caused by a breakdown of the Subconscious part of the brain. The beginning of insanity is a group of ideas fused together by a strong feeling. This is called a "complex." It is a tiny congestion that may harden into madness.
     An obsession— — a delusion— — a fixed group of ideas that do not yield to reason! This is what makes people "queer," and which may develop into a brain disease. In its earlier stages it is not dangerous and may be cured; but in its last stages it is lunacy.
     The truth is that no one is perfectly balanced. No brain is 100 per cent sane. All of us are more of less swayed and swung by emotion. None of us is absolutely rational in all the processes of the mind. Do not all of us, on certain subjects, prefer feeling to fact, and opinion to the most evident truths?
     In every individual there is a conflict of wishes and feelings and ideas. Few people, if any, ever succeed in harmonizing their mental and emotional forces. The Parliament of the brain is practically never unanimous. Idea opposes idea. Feeling clashes with feeling. Complex battles with complex.
     There is the pull of the Past and the call of the Future. There is the drag of the man you were and the dream of the man you might be. There is the low and the high— — the brutal and the noble— - the clumsy and the efficient.
     There is the reason— — the apex of the whole human structure— — last of all to push upwards into place. And there are the instincts, created by the sensations of the body and mind. The nerves, the secretions, the organs of the body, all send certain sensations to the brain. These sensations are the inside facts, which we know very little about and usually describe by the vague name of Instincts.
     So, the mind is not a unit. It is a continent of battling forces. It has its light and darkness— — its conscious and subconscious. At any time there may be a savage insurrection from the dark region of the lower self. At any time the Huns and Visigoths may overwhelm Rome.
     What can we do? We can consciously sonstruct a reliable and rational subconscious self. We can establish a brain authority.
     Control! That is the keyword. Control— — instead of ceaseless conflict and haphazard. Rescue yourself from moods. — — Bring your passions to heel. Regulate your anger. Rigorously challenge your beliefs.
     Appreciate the immense value of humour. No man ever laughed himself mad; but millions have laughed themselves into sense and sanity. There is more value in Punch than Punch knows. We could far more easily spare our peers than our comedians.
     We can avoid self-repression and secrecy. We can clear the brain of plots and counterplots. We can turn the light into the dark corners and chase out the shadows. We can talk it out. Often, when you tell a Doctor your troubles and fears, and he gives you medicine, and you are cured, it was not the medicine that cured you; it was the telling.
     You cannot completely harmonize your brain; but your can obtain a safe, steady, reliable majority. You can co-ordinate. You can, in a large degree, become " the Captain of your soul."
     Let me illustrate all this in another way. We had this whole matter of Conscious and Subconscious forced upon our attention by the phenomenon of shell shock.
     During the War hundreds of soldiers suffered from Shell Shock. Some were struck blind. Some became deaf of dumb. Others lost their memories. All of them had their brains more of less twisted or upset.
     There is a sort of Shall Shock which doctors call neurosis. It is a very common form of mental illness. It fills the asylums. Three-fourths of the patients in our insane asylums have perfectly healthy brains. Their trouble is mental, no physical. They are cases of Shell Shock.
     In a case of Shell Shock a soldier has had his brain thrown form its foundations by a violent fear. He has suffered dislocation of the mind. It is a wrench— — a mental sprain.
     In the same way a neuropath is a person whose brain has become weakened or unbalanced by a fear or an anxiety or an anger. Just as a pea in the shoe causes a limp, so a disturbing thought fixed in the mind makes serious trouble. The law of mentality is that the mind must master its facts. As fast as facts come into the brain, the brain must understand them and absorb them. If any fact masters the brain, so that the brain has a horror of it, that is what we call Shell Shock or Neurosis.
     Anyone who broods over a trouble or a sorrow— — anyone who sits alone and dwells upon a wrong or a fancied wrong— — is in danger of Shell Shock.
     The wives of rich men, for instance, are usually cursed with idleness; the brain has nothing to think about. So it turns in on itself. These women first become selfish, then morbid, and finally unbalanced.
     People who have failed in life— — the poor, for instance— — have a fixed sensation of defeat. They have been flung back by the world. It is too strong and too rough for them. They brood over their defeats and become Shell Shocked.
     In most cases this Shell Shock is the clutch of the Dead Hand of the Past. Some tragic event tyrannizes over the mind. There is a certain scrap of memory which the mind has failed to master. It is enslaved by fear or a mystery. It is not in control of itself.
     It would seem as though life is like a river; dashing forward. If it is suddenly checked it is apt to become a stagnant pool, foul and morbid. This is the usual case of neurosis. The energy or desire of life is baffled and checked. The mind is disorganized like a defeated army.
     Often this experience turns people into semi-criminals. They try to sneak around the obstacle by trickery, by lies, by some sort of fraud. The mind has been hurled back from the real world of fact and it proceeds to create its own world of make-believe. It rejects the fact and creates a mess of substitutes.
     There you have in a sentence the cause of much crime and most of the insanity and failure in the world.
     These are great facts which no one clearly understands as yet. No one has solved the mystery of the Subconscious Self; but we have gone far enough to know that there is such a thing as a spirit of sanity.
     This spirit prevents us from brooding over the defeats of the past. It strengthens us against sudden fears. It lifts us high above jealousies and revenges. It develops us out of idleness and selfishness.
     It gives us mastery over every fact that enters the brain. That is one of the secrets of happiness and character and success.

Chapter XIV. Everybody has ideals

There is something ethereal as well as earthy in Human Nature. There are Ideals as well as Instincts. There is a Superconscious as well as a Subconscious.
     The word "Ideals" is not satisfactory to describe what I wish to say; but it is as good as any other. There is no word in the English language to describe that tendency of the mind to create structures or fancy fortified against fact.
     This is a quality of Human Nature which we cannot ignore. It makes for good and evil. It pushes the race forward and pulls it back. It lures it to the Future and links it to the Past. It makes martyrs, heroes, lunatics, inventors, theorists, poets, cranks, revolutionists and conservatives.
     Just as there is a tendency to crystallization in nature— — to form fanciful and decorative shapes— — so there is a tendency in the human mind to take a few facts or beliefs and to from them into fanciful and decorative shapes. A complete history of this tendency would include most of the institutions and habits of mankind.
     It is in the very nature of the mind to embroider, to ornament, to decorate any of its facts of feelings or ideas. It has a passion for scene-painting— — for building up pretty structures.
     The mind throws a glory, a glamour, over certain things; and it is quite whimsical as to what there things may be. It has a golden haze in which it enshrines any matter that may attract its attention in a favourable way.
     Just as children create a world of make-believe, so mature men and women do the same thing. This is true of all ages and all peoples. It is a universal truth, which we do not like to admit when it is declared of ourselves.
     Our Ideals are, in a way, the opiates of the mind. They are mental intoxicants. They stimulate and depress. They save us from the harshness and crudity of the actual world, and, no doubt, make life far more endurable for us than it would be otherwise.
     Our Ideals! Our Dreams! What would life be without them? Our short lives wither like the leaves of summer-time, and yet we dream of the eternal June and nightless days and light that casts no shadow.
     The Quest of the Golden Grail! The Pilgrim's Progress! The Pursuit of Happiness! Always the Search— — the Migration— — the journey through the Wilderness to the Promised Land!
     Has not every nation its fairy tales— — its pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow? In the earlier ages, was not the earth populous with elves and witches and mermaids and giants and spirits? And is it not still populous in this age with abstractions and delusions and old ghosts of theories and beliefs?
     Has not every nation its poetry and music and oratory, all dealing with Ideals rather than with facts? And are we not in the very holy of holies of Human Nature when we deal with this quality of Sentiment and Imagination?
     Money— — mathematics— — science— — reason— — these are all NEW. They are very young and experimental, compared with the power of the mind to paint pictures and to create decorative shapes.
     All our trade and commerce— — all our mills and railroads and finance— — all these things are but yesterday. They have been forced upon the most competent nations by a very few efficient people; but they are not yet secure nor established. The problem of creating nations that shall be both scientific and humane has not yet been solved.
     It is said that there is a sort of small rat in Norway called a "lemming." These lemmings multiply very rapidly; but once a year a host of lemmings will start on a wild migration westwards, across plains and mountains, and finally straight on into the sea. As many as 100,000 of these foolish little lemmings will leap into the sea and drown.
     This would show that even the lower animals have Ideals of a sort. They create a make-believe in the distance, and rush towards it. They have a Fancy which they cherish more passionately than any Fact.
     These Fancies and Ideals, when they become national, have tremendous power. They usually overwhelm and defeat anyone who denies them. They are the stained-glass treasures of the mind. They are the things we do not reason about. If they are base, they degrade us, and if they are noble, they inspire and uplift us.
     The Ideals of Liberty— — Equality— - Fraternity— — Purity— — Truth— — none of these are Facts in the scientific sense. Our reverence for them is not based on any sort of data. They are Ideals, created by the artists of the mind.
     There is Youth— — how perfect is seems to the old! There is Wealth— — how satisfying it seems to the poor! There is Marriage— — how rapturous is seems to the young!
     There is the glamour of Oxford and Cambridge— — what is it but an Ideal? If we should find out what actually goes on at these venerated places of learning, how incredibly paltry it would be! If some coldly impartial expert were to make a time and motion study of the Oxford and Cambridge operations, would it not appear to thousands of people to be a highly improper and almost sacrilegious thing?
     There is the glamour of Liberal and Conservative, Protestant and Catholic, Labour and Capital. There is the glamour of London and Paris and New York. There is the glamour of the Navy and the Army and the Law and the Church. There is the glamour of Shakespeare and Goethe and Wagner and Parliament and Democracy and Aristocracy and Art.
     When you consider the flashing brilliance of these glamours, is it any wonder that a sensible practical man has some trouble in finding his way along the narrow path of industry and thrift?
     These glamours have been organized into parties, institutions, professions. Most of our Ideals are bought and sold like cotton and potatoes. Almost all the glittering super-structures of any nation consists of people whose merchandise is Ideals. This is a matter of the most vital importance, which must be taken in hand by the Reconstruction Departments of the future.
     May we not hope that, as the human race slowly ripens, that it will learn to judge its deals by their results? This test is applied mercilessly to those who hold up a new Ideal. An Efficiency Expert, for instance, has built up an Ideal into a profession. But he is compelled to prove what he claims. He is challenged. He is doubted. And if he cannot show that his Ideal is worth more than it costs, he is derided and flung aside, as he ought to be.
     Why, then, should we not apply the same fair test to those who make a living by selling the old Ideals? Why should we not judge a tree by its fruits, which is the only just and sensible test?
     In business life we have Ideals on every side of us. In general we find that they are of the greatest benefit to us when they are new or based upon the facts; and, on the other hand, we find that they are deadly and destructive if they consist of glamour and nothing more.
     Take the cotton trace, for example. James Watt and Hargreaves and Whitney and Crompton and Arkwright founded the cotton trade. They had Ideals and there was glamour about their Ideals; but it was all based on facts. Their glamour was not a make-believe. Their dreams came true and more.
     But the cotton men of to-day— — what of their Ideals? Are they worthily improving what those early inventors created? Are they resolutely solving the new problems in the spirit of Arkwright and Watt? Are they only reaping the fields that earlier generations have sown, or are they also breaking up new ground, so as to pay to the unborn what they owe to the dead? No doubt some cotton men are, and no doubt some others are not. But these are the test questions which they must put to themselves to test the nature of their Ideals.
     All of us, in all trades and professions, must beware of Ideals that bear no fruit. We must always keep within sight of the facts. We must never forget our tendency to idealize. We are apt to believe what we want to believe, and to glorify anything that seems to be profitable to us for the moment. And thus we presently find ourselves in a fool's paradise.
     Have Ideals, of course. Every man has. They spring for Human Nature always and everywhere. But don't worship them as idols. Master them. Use them. Modify them with experience and test them by common sense.
     Find the Ideals that suit you. That is one of the secrets of fame and happiness— — to find the ideal that naturally springs out of your own aptitudes. Don't surrender your Will and your Reason to an outworn Ideal that has become petrified into a bureaucracy. Nothing is more squalid than that. Don't pick up the haphazard Ideals of your class or your neighbourhood. Let your Ideals grow up within you and control them.
     Follow the Facts; but not as a mere mathematician. Imagination, too, has its uses. So has the glamour. So has fancy.
     In Human Nature, which is constructed of apparent opposites, there must be always the Ideal, which is a dream or a memory; and there must be always the actual undecorated Fact.
     In general we should beware of the ideals that are either too new or too old. Every new truth begins as a heresy and ends as a superstition. It is practical only when it is in its prime.

Conclusion

If ever a book was meant to be practical, this book is. It is a fourteen-lesson Course on Yourself. And its fourteen Axioms of Human Nature are meant to be used, not merely discussed.
     I have always had less sympathy with the Idealists than with the Positivists, the Utilitarians, the Pragmatists. I believe in dealing with the small finite matters that we can understand, and not with the Infinite and the Absolute. And I believe that the test of all theories and systems is results.
     So, I am offering you this book as a tool— — as a help to self-mastery and self-development. If anyone who is shallow or ill-natured over-throws it with a gibe, no matter. I have only written it for such people as may make use of it, and who are seriously seeking for a clearer knowledge of themselves.
     This book has grown up out of my own experience. I have been compelled to notice that whenever I studied any subject deeply I have always arrived at Human Nature. All roads have led to the same place.
     If I studied Factory Management I presently found myself stopped by this central jungle of Human Nature through which there seemed to be no path. If I studied Organization, or Sales, of Advertising, or Efficiency, I always came, in the end, to the same place.
     The most logical and useful systems often came to naught, I found, because they did not make allowance for the oddities of Human Nature. Everywhere the central problem, out of which the other problems grew, was PEOPLE. It was People— — People— — People. Apparently, no problem could be completely solved without a clearer knowledge of People.
     So I began to study Human Nature. At first I had no theory, and I threw away my opinions as far as I could. I put down a fact and then tested it to see if it were universal.
     I followed the regular Efficiency method of taking nothing for granted. I doubted all the glittering generalities, all the self-praise, all the superficial and ornamental things with which the Human Race has bedecked itself.
     I did not ask what Man is supposed to be. I asked what he is. Actually, what has built up his nature? What are his motives? What are his ingredients? How was he planned and constructed? Deep underneath all the veneer and the make-believe what is the nature of the human mechanism?
     The first striking fact that I discovered was that Man has more in common with the lower animals than we usually believe. I looked down the list of my fourteen Axioms with amazement to realize that practically all of them were true of my collie dog, as well as of myself.
     They were true only in a limited sense, of course. The wants, feelings, fears and thought of a dog are rudimentary compared to those of a man. But the difference seemed clearly to be mainly one of development.
     The second fact that I noticed was that several of these Axioms are true of plants. I and the rose-bush, evidently, had several interesting qualities in common.
     The third fact was so startling that if left me breathless. I noticed that these Axioms linked me to the earth itself— — to the sun, moon and stars— — to the universe which we foolishly call matter and force, as though it were not also feeling and thought and spirituality and tenderness.
     I noticed that most of the Axioms were either Centripetal or Centrifugal. Just as the stars are held in place by the inter-working of these two mysterious forces, so the nature of man is balanced and harmonized by the same two forces, which apparently conflict— — the eternal Warp and Woof of all things.
     In fact, the fourteen Axioms seemed to divide themselves equally, half of them being centripetal and half centrifugal, as follows: Centripetal Centrifugal Everybody imitates Everybody wants " " Fears " " feels " " Believes " " differs " " Has habits " " thinks " " Respects " " changes " " Leadership " " has ideals " " Is sexed " "is conscious " "Needs praise and sub-conscious
     and blame
     The centripetal qualities are those which make us social. They spring from the herd instinct. They are, perhaps, more feminine than masculine.
     The centrifugal qualities are those which individualize us. They spring from personal consciousness. They are more masculine than feminine.
     Each set of qualities needs to be offset be the other. If a man has centripetal qualities only, he is mere raw material. He is undeveloped. He has no personality. If he has centrifugal qualities only, he is a crank, an outlaw, a genius or a lunatic.
     A normal human being is one who has poise, balance, equilibrium. The very structure of the mind is maintained by the equal pull of two forces.

     To illustrate this theory more definitely I have prepared a chart of human nature, which is bound with this chapter. This chart shows that every good quality must only be developed up to a certain point— — the "Line of Maturity." If it is pushed beyond this line, it becomes abnormal and leads to Insanity.
     Human development requires that we shall both develop and repress. We must unfold and restrict. We must add and subtract. If you have no ambition, you are defective; and if you have too much, you are defective. We must say to ourselves— — "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not."
     We must avoid extremes, if we wish to lead useful, happy successful lives. We must keep away from the Equator and the Poles. We must live in the temperate zone.
     This is the law of Sanity, that no part of the brain shall be developed beyond the point of self-control. There must be a rounding out of the mind. There must be a balancing of qualities, so that one does not grow too strong for the others.
     Thus, it is not only true that human qualities are divided into two varieties— — the centripetal and the centrifugal. But it is also true that every quality has its centripetal and centrifugal tendency.
     As you will notice, I have dealt only with the qualities of Human Nature that are universal. The keynote of the book is "everybody." I have had nothing to say about the Few who are humorous or musical or inventive or artistic. I have dealt only with the things that all of us have in common.
     The fact is that we civilized people have built up a fancy decorative superstructure and we have neglected its foundations. We have built a marvellous palace on the sands. Savage tribes have a basis and no superstructure, and we have a superstructure and no basis. Here you have in a sentence the underlying cause of most of our troubles.
     The first basic truth is that we are all the same physically. Both King and Coster. Every average man has 500 muscles, 200 bones, 4 gallons of blood, 25 feet of intestines, and a heart that beats 72 times a minute. There is enough iron in him to make four tenpenny nails; enough fat to make seventy-five candles; and enough hydrogen to fill a small balloon. Chemically, all men are practically the same.
     The second fact is that we are all the same mechanically. As a scientist has said (Professor R.W.Woodworth)— — "We are probably justified in inferring that the sensory and motor processes and the elementary brain activities, though differing in degree from one individual to another, are about the same from one race to another."
     No one is unique. No one is separate. We are all made of the same raw material. The differences are few and mainly superficial; the resemblances are many and basic.
     When we were children, we thought that the earth was flat. We thought that it was motionless. We thought that over our heads was "up." Since then we have learned that we were wrong. These three opinions were delusions. The earth is not flat; it is not motionless; it has no " up" and no "down."
     So the time has now come to abandon a fourth delusion— — the delusion that we are separate and superior. This, too, is a delusion that arises from our being local, self-centred and childish. Now that we have become more mature we will put away childish things.
     The time has come to study ourselves, to put away pleasing delusions and opinions, to seek sincerely and humbly for the facts. No matter what we are supposed to be; let us find out what we actually are.
     Science began with rocks, plants, insects, stars— — lower things of the universe. Hence forward it must dare to deal with the higher things. The last and greatest mystery is man himself. From this time onwards, what can be more important than the making of better people? Of what avail is all else unless we can develop a saner, nobler, kindlier Human Race? Of what use if chemistry if we use it to murder each other? Of what use if wealth if the tax-gatherer must have it? Of what use if government if it gives us no protection? Of what use is education if it creates an artificial caste of culture and separates people who are basically the same?
     This book, as you have seen, is a fragment. I know full well it is. But it is a fragment of some great new knowledge that is coming. It is a book of the dawn that has been written in the dark. It will help a little, I hope, to bring the day of self-knowledge; and then, when the day comes, its crudities and blemishes will be forgiven.

Afterword

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Table of Contents

Human Nature

Introduction

Chapter I. Everybody wants

Chapter II. Everybody feels

Chapter III. Everybody fears

Chapter IV. Everybody imitates

Chapter V. Everybody is different

Chapter VI. Everybody believes

Chapter VII. Everybody thinks

Chapter VIII. Everybody has habits

Chapter IX. Everybody changes

Chapter X. Everybody needs praise and blame

Chapter XI. Everybody respects leadership

Chapter XII. Everybody is sexed

Chapter XIII. Everybody is conscious and subconscious.

Chapter XIV. Everybody has ideals

Conclusion

Afterword