THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1920 HUMAN CONDUCT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20691, 13 April 1929, Page 12

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1920 HUMAN CONDUCT.

Ajieuica is the land of vast projects. Hie most striking of these recently announced is the Institute of Human Relations in Yale University, with a working fund at its disposal of 1,500,000. iSoine 50 members of the University stall will attempt to coordinate and synthesize practically the whole of the results of such researches as have a bearing on human behaviour. In New Zealand, as in England, it is hardly realised what an importance is attached in the United Stales to psychological and sociological studies. Indeed, phychology has until quite recently been looked upon with superciliousness or suspicion by students of science and classics in British countries. America, however, is confronted with problems which no other country has ever had within her borders, —problems arising from the impact exerted on a young and vigorous and largely British population of millions by disparate human elements drawn from all sorts of miscellaneous material. Naturally, the desire in the United States is to find,the common ground, if any, on which peoples of ditlerent blood, tradition, language, and mentality may meet to form a

unified nation, a nation with unity in its diversity. Dr James Augell, president of Yale, a man of recognised ability, says that the study of human’ conduct is to be made one of the major objectives of the existence of his University. In other words, Yale will attempt to materialise the dictum of the poet Pope that “ the proper study of mankind is man.” It seems extraordinary that the poets and fiction writers have been active where the scientist has been inert. The best psychologists arc Shakespeare, Goethe, Dickens, and Homer. They portray men as they are and reveal to us the secret springs of action. There was a time long ago in ancient Greece when the three greatest minds of antiquity attempted to analyse human conduct. Our own day has seen a revival of the Greek spirit of free inquiry. What is man? How will he act? What is mind? These be puzzling questions. If the law of cause and effect holds in the realm of mental phenomena, then the iuquii’y must proceed along the lines of physics and chemistry. But if this is all, then freewill disappears and an iron necessity, . calculable like the velocity of falling bodies, will impel men inevitably to acts which can be predicted. Commonsense revolts “from this view.

What, then, is the alternative? If mental phenomena are not within the scope of cause and effect, are they chaotic, mere blind impulses, rushing hither and thither over an invisible background, like the vast concourse of fortuitous atoms peopling the ancient philosopher’s world of chance? The view that cause and effect arc inescapable lands ■ its in Determinism; —our conduct is fixed for us in spite of ns. The second view, that all is blind chance, removes Determinism, but also removes the mind' from the possibility of being known. How can we got to know an entity, a field of action, if we can never link two phenomena or groups of phenomena togethcl - , and say, “ these two are connected by causality ” 1 The apparent impasse, however, can be escaped. The rigid view of causality is abandoned by leading scientists even in the world of things material —there is a law of Indeterminacy even there — so that when the brain is reduced to electrons (which must be in some way connected with consciousness) these electrons do not move in fixed orbits—they may jump from one quantum orbit to another. In other words, where the solid stuff of the universe disappears from our ken on the wavering borderland between matter and mind, Determinacy disappears, and a place for volition, for willpower and personality, is left. The American institution will have at hand all the results of modern knowledge; it will therefore have a great field for speculation and for prediction. But it must not be expected that the dim recesses of our consciousness will be easily penetrated. Indeed, it is not difficult to find in inanimate things a rudimentary “ mind ” that presents some difficulties. A drop of chloroform in water will reject a fragment of a glass rod. If the glass is first covered with shellac the drop of chloroform takes it in; but when the Shellac has dissolved, the glass is ejected. One might say that the chloroform has a mind; it decides to take in and digest shellac, but spits out glass as indigestible. The venomous copperhead snake strikes back with a sharp spiral action, apparently the result of an act of will; yet the same snake, after his head has been cut off, will, if pinched on the body, make the same spiral coil backwards, apparently through some rctlex mechanism. If- it is hard to understand the behaviour of electrons, atoms, and the lower animals, how much harder is it to understand the infinitely complex action of the human mind, working even on a material basis, by the interplay of millions of brain cells? Some day we may hear from, Yale that some t one with microscope and measuring road has passed the guards in the grey gates of the brain cells, and has come through the intertwisted shell to whore the rulers of destiny lurk, to where is located “ That which alters fates, The King, the supreme self, the Master Cell." Long ago the pregnant words “ Know thyself ” were graven on the Delphic temple-wall. To-day for the first time in human history a great scat of learning is about to begin an organised effort to answer the question “ How does man act ” ? A cynic will say, “ Self-interest is the key.” But a she-wolf lays down her life for her pups; a scientist falls before the deadly rays of his laboratory. Selfinterest is no explanation here. Human conduct is more elusive than the electron: it has no parts, no magnitude, no motion, yet; iz is the most important thing in the world. It is a great quest upon which Yale is about to embark. It involves no dispute over international rights; it is on a universal territory. The world stands amused, indifferent or amazed. But a few will watch with sympathy, wondering if any clue to the labyrinth of human conduct will be found.