Mr Everyman’s Everyday Secrets

Northern Advocate, 22 March 1937, Page 10

Mr Everyman’s Everyday Secrets

A plan to tabulate the whole behaviour and activities of man on a scientific basis is put forward by two young men aged 24 and 25, says the “News Chronicle.” They represent a large group all over the country. They are Tom Harrisson, scientist, explorer and author of the remarkable new book, “Savage Civilisation,” and Charles Madge, poet and newspaperman.

“We have applied science to everything but ourselves,” said Mr Harrisson. “Three years ago it would not have been possible, to suggest that we study ourselves in the same way as anthropologists have studied primitive man. But science has now invented a method of wiping out all the benefits of science. Poison gas has turned our ideas upside down. “Now I ask you, how can a scientific civilisation hope to survive if there is no scientific outlook within itself? “We have studied lunatics, savages and people when they are ill. We must now study the sane and the civilised. “Mind you, I’m only speaking for myself, but as I see it what we are going to do is to collect and publish a mass of data from a mass of observers who will report on what everybody does every day. For example: How they get up in the morning, how they behave at funerals, weddings, how they eat, what they want.

[ “We are most interested in the working class because there are more of them, and we are least interested in the intellectuals because there are least of them. All previous intellectual research into the nature of mankind has avoided the huge mass of ordinary folk who make civilisation work. “When we have discovered what precisely we are, then for the first time will we be in a position to say what we can make of ourselves. “For example, I believe that to stop war it is not enough to want to stop war. We must study the history of war, expose the unnoticed warlike feelings in ourselves, and realise what will happen if we do stop war—that is the most important thing. We have not yet considered that at all. “At present the organisation is just getting under way; we need money. We don’t want further offers of help until we have the organisation to cope with them. - ’ “Science and art can no longer be separate,” said the well-known poet, Charles Madge. “We are not pro or anti anything. Facts are our concern. Theories can wait.”