The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams

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HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

always bad—long-continued and ardent repression, extreme dissociation that turns the mind into a set of separate compartments, persistent self-justification by inventing “reasons” that undermine the sanity of the general outlook, persistent flight into the interior world of dream or wish or memory. And it can be further laid down that a solution of a conflict which is brought about with the aid of consciousness and reason is almost invariably more satisfactory than one accomplished with the aid of unconscious processes alone.

There is one irrational distortion, however, which is nearly always helpful, and that is the distortion provided by laughter. There have been many theories of laughter, and perhaps none of them are wholly satisfactory. But this explosion, this fit of gasping cheerfulness which aerates the blood and quickens the circulation, certainly has one useful function which must have promoted its evolution during man’s rise from his pre-human ancestors, and that is the function of escaping conflict without calling in repression or leaving behind a sense of bitterness or failure. Man is the laughing animal ; he “laughs off” endless contradictions. Early man, savage, puny, and ignorant, could never have reached his present state without laughter ; his constant failures to achieve his desire, his hardships and disappointments, the incongruity between wish and reality, were all the time inflicting wounds on his mind. He laughed and had another goatit. If hope is a tonic and idealism a slightly narcotic salve, laughter is an antiseptic for mental wounds; a saving abandonment.

Yet even humour, like any other irrational solution of a conflict, can be exaggerated, turned to harm, or employed as an outlet for insanity. Humour is a frequent refuge for the inefficient. It can be a vulgar form of escape from the embarrassment of effort. In some forms of insanity, especially that brought on by alcoholism, the sufferer’s Unconscious is all the time keeping him from realizing this true state and the misery he has caused, by cheap and silly jocularity.

Man turns out to be non-rational and non-moral much oftener than he supposed. Nor can he lead an existence that is purely rational or purely moral; the mainsprings of his life are the deep-seated impulses he inherits from the past. He cannot escape them; he sterilizes himself if he merely fights against them; he loses contact with all solid earth if he tries to soar too high above them, It is his affair to permit the

AND THE HUMAN MIND

development of his impulses and yet harness their energies.

§ 14 Differences Between Minds

Pavlov, as we have already described, has demonstrated that his dogs differ among each other in their reactions. They differ in their temperaments as much as in their intelligences. Mind varies as much as body—as, indeed, we should expect if both are aspects of the single reality, life. The breeds of dogs differ as much in mental as in physical attributes—thereis the tenacious bulldog, the clever poodle, the stupid toy terrier, the savage mastiff, the intelligent airedale, the lazy pug. Koehler found that one or two of his chimpanzees were, relatively to their fellow-apes, geniuses ; and some were sulky, some cheerful, some shy, some bad-tempered. Among rats, some individuals are quieter and more docile than others; and it appears that the docility and gentleness of tame rat-breeds are due to man’s selecting the tamest animals to keep and breed from, generation after generation.

The most obvious of differences among human beings are differences in intelligence. Choose a thousand children at random ; there will be a few who are brilliant, avid of knowledge, a few who are so slow of comprehension that, however well taught, they always plod on far behind the average children of their own age; there will be a number of distinctly able but not brilliant children, and a number who are distinctly stupid, though not deficient; and _ the majority will be just ordinary in their capacities. Of late years, methods have been devised for measuring intelligence. The criticism of such “ intelligence tests ” has always been that they do not distinguish between the innate capacity for being intelligent and the acquired capacities due to training—in fact, that they measure education rather than native intelligence. But they have been improved, until now it is generally agreed that they do in large measure fulfil their purpose. They work admirably when applied to a group of children (or grown-ups) all of the same nationality and the same social class ; but they need to be applied with the greatest caution when we are comparing groups of different nationality, language, and tradition. They and similar tests for other capacities are already being used successfully and on a large scale in education and also in industry to minimize the wastage involved in trying

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