Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 34

The remaining selections upon isolation and r.e.t.a.r.dation ill.u.s.trate the different types of situations in which isolation makes for r.e.t.a.r.dation and r.e.t.a.r.dation in turn emphasizes the isolation. The reversion of a man of scientific training in the solitudes of Patagonia to the animal level of mentality suggests that the low intelligence of the savage, the peasant, and the backward races is probably due more to the absence of stimulating contacts than to original mental inferiority. So the individuality and conservatism of the farmer, his failure to keep pace with the inhabitant of the town and city, Galpin a.s.signs to deficiency in social contacts. Then, too, the subtler forms of handicap in personal development and achievement result from social types of isolation, as race prejudice, the sheltered life of woman, exclusiveness of social cla.s.ses, and make for increased isolation.

Up to this point, isolation has been treated statically as a cause.

Under the heading, "Isolation and Segregation" it is conceived as an effect, an effect of compet.i.tion, and the consequent selection and segregation.

The first effect of the introduction of compet.i.tion in any society is to break up all types of isolation and provincialism based upon lack of communication and contact. But as compet.i.tion continues, natural and social selection comes into play. Successful types emerge in the process of compet.i.tive struggle while variant individuals who fail to maintain the pace or conform to standard withdraw or are ejected from the group.

Exiled variants from several groups under auspicious circ.u.mstances may in turn form a community where the process of selection will be directly opposite to that in their native groups. In the new community the process of selection naturally accentuates and perfects the traits originally responsible for exclusion. The outcome of segregation is the creation of specialized social types with the maximum of isolation. The circle of isolation is then complete.

This circular effect of the processes of compet.i.tion, selection, and segregation, from isolation to isolation, may be found everywhere in modern western society. Individual variants with criminalistic tendencies exiled from villages and towns through the process of selection form a segregated group in city areas popularly called "breeding places of crime." The tribe of Pineys, Tin Town, The Village of a Thousand Souls, are communities made up by adverse selection of feeble-minded individuals, outcasts of the compet.i.tive struggle of intelligent, "high-minded" communities. The result is the formation of a criminal type and of a feeble-minded caste. These slums and outcast groups are in turn isolated from full and free communication with the progressive outside world.

National individuality in the past, as indicated in the selections upon "Isolation and National Individuality," has been in large degree the result of a cultural process based upon isolation. The historical nations of Europe, biologically hybrid, are united by common language, folkways, and mores. This unity of mother tongue and culture is the product of historical and cultural processes circ.u.mscribed, as Shaler points out, by separated geographical areas.

A closer examination of the cultural process in the life of progressive historical peoples reveals the interplay of isolation and social contacts. Grote gives a penetrating a.n.a.lysis of Grecian achievement in terms of the individuality based on small isolated land areas and the contacts resulting from maritime communication. The world-hegemony of English-speaking peoples today rests not only upon naval supremacy and material resources but even more upon the combination of individual development in diversified areas with large freedom in international contacts.

II. MATERIALS

A. ISOLATION AND PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY

1. Society and Solitude[95]

It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words than in that speech: "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a G.o.d." For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue that it should have any character at all of the divine nature except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation, such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen, as Epimenides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly and really in divers of the ancient hermits and Holy Fathers of the Church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little: _Magna civitas magna solitudo_ ("A great town is a great solitude"), because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go further, and affirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and, even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast and not from humanity.

2. Society in Solitude[96]

What period do you think, sir, I recall most frequently and most willingly in my dreams? Not the pleasures of my youth: they were too rare, too much mingled with bitterness, and are now too distant. I recall the period of my seclusion, of my solitary walks, of the fleeting but delicious days that I have pa.s.sed entirely by myself, with my good and simple housekeeper, with my beloved dog, my old cat, with the birds of the field, the hinds of the forest, with all nature, and her inconceivable Author.

But what, then, did I enjoy when I was alone? Myself; the entire universe; all that is; all that can be; all that is beautiful in the world of sense; all that is imaginable in the world of intellect. I gathered around me all that could delight my heart; my desires were the limit of my pleasures. No, never have the voluptuous known such enjoyments; and I have derived a hundred times more happiness from my chimeras than they from their realities.

The wild spot of the forest [selected by Rousseau for his solitary walks and meditations] could not long remain a desert to my imagination. I soon peopled it with beings after my own heart, and, dismissing opinion, prejudice, and all fact.i.tious pa.s.sions, I brought to these sanctuaries of nature men worthy of inhabiting them. I formed with these a charming society, of which I did not feel myself unworthy. I made a golden age according to my fancy, and, filling up these bright days with all the scenes of my life that had left the tenderest recollections, and with all that my heart still longed for, I affected myself to tears over the true pleasures of humanity--pleasure so delicious, so pure, and yet so far from men! Oh, if in these moments any ideas of Paris, of the age, and of my little author vanity, disturbed my reveries, with what contempt I drove them instantly away, to give myself up entirely to the exquisite sentiments with which my soul was filled. Yet, in the midst of all this, I confess the nothingness of my chimeras would sometimes appear, and sadden me in a moment.

3. Prayer as a Form of Isolation[97]

He who prays begins his prayer with some idea of G.o.d, generally one that he has received from instruction or from current traditions. He commonly retires to a quiet place, or to a place having mental a.s.sociations of religious cast, in order to "shut out the world." This beginning of concentration is followed by closing the eyes, which excludes a ma.s.s of irrelevant impressions. The body bows, kneels, or a.s.sumes some other posture that requires little muscular tension and that may favor extensive relaxation. Memory now provides the language of prayer or of hallowed scripture, or makes vivid some earlier experiences of one's own. The worshiper represents to himself his needs, or the interests (some of them happy ones) that seem most important, and he brings them into relation to G.o.d by thinking how G.o.d regards them. The presupposition of the whole procedure is that G.o.d's way of looking at the matters in question is the true and important one. Around G.o.d, then, the interests of the individual are now freshly organized. Certain ones that looked large before the prayer began, now look small because of their relation to the organizing idea upon which attention has focused.

On the other hand, interests that express this organizing idea gain emotional quality by this release from competing, inhibiting considerations. To say that the will now becomes organized toward unity and that it acquires fresh power thereby is simply to name another aspect of the one movement. This movement is ideational, emotional, and volitional concentration, all in one, achieved by fixation of attention upon the idea of G.o.d.

Persons who have been troubled with insomnia, or wakefulness or disturbing dreams, have been enabled to secure sound sleep by merely relaxing the muscles and repeating mechanically, without effort at anything more, some formula descriptive of what is desired. The main point is that attention should fix upon the appropriate organizing idea.

When this happens in a revival meeting one may find one's self unexpectedly converted. When it happens in prayer one may be surprised to find one's whole mood changed from discouragement to courage, from liking something to hating it (as in the case of alcoholic drinks, or tobacco), or from loneliness to the feeling of companionship with G.o.d.

This a.n.a.lysis of the structure of prayer has already touched upon some of its functions. It is a way of getting one's self together, of mobilizing and concentrating one's dispersed capacities, of begetting the confidence that tends toward victory over difficulties. It produces in a distracted mind the repose that is power. It freshens a mind deadened by routine. It reveals new truth, because the mind is made more elastic and more capable of sustained attention. Thus does it remove mountains in the individual, and, through him, in the world beyond.

The values of prayer in sickness, distress, and doubt are by no means measurable by the degree to which the primary causes thereof are made to disappear. There is a real conquest of trouble, even while trouble remains. It is sometimes a great source of strength, also, merely to realize that one is fully understood. The value of having some friend or helper from whom I reserve no secrets has been rendered more impressive than ever by the Freud-Jung methods of relieving mental disorders through (in part) a sort of mental house-cleaning, or bringing into the open the patient's hidden distresses and even his most intimate and reticent desires. Into the psychology of the healings that are brought about by this psychoa.n.a.lysis we need not go, except to note that one constant factor appears to be the turning of a private possession into a social possession, and particularly the consciousness that another understands. I surmise that we shall not be far from the truth here if we hold that, as normal experience has the _ego-alter_ form, so the continuing possession of one's self in one's developing experience requires development of this relation. We may, perhaps, go as far as to believe that the bottling up of any experience as merely private is morbid. But, however this may be, there are plenty of occasions when the road to poise, freedom, and joy is that of social sharing. Hence the prayer of confession, not only because it helps us to see ourselves as we are, but also because it shares our secrets with another, has great value for organizing the self. In this way we get relief from the misjudgments of others, also, and from the mystery that we are to ourselves, for we lay our case, as it were, before a judge who does not err. Thus prayer has value in that it develops the essentially social form of personal self-realization.

To complete this functional view of prayer we must not fail to secure the evolutionary perspective. If we glance at the remote beginnings, and then at the hither end, of the evolution of prayer we discover that an immense change has taken place. It is a correlate of the transformed character of the G.o.ds, and of the parallel disciplining of men's valuations. In the words of Fosd.i.c.k, prayer may be considered as dominant desire. But it is also a way of securing domination over desire. It is indeed self-a.s.sertion; sometimes it is the making of one's supreme claim, as when life reaches its most tragic crisis; yet it is, even in the same act, submission to an over-self. Here, then, is our greater problem as to the function of prayer. It starts as the a.s.sertion of any desire; it ends as _the organization of one's own desires into a system of desires recognized as superior and then made one's own_.

4. Isolation, Originality, and Erudition[98]

The question as to how far the world's leaders in thought and action were great readers is not quite an easy one to answer, partly because the sources of information are sometimes scanty, and partly because books themselves have been few in number. If we could prove that since the days of Caxton the world's total of original thought declined in proportion to the increase of published works, we should stand on firm ground, and might give orders for a holocaust such as that which Hawthorne once imagined. But no such proof is either possible or probable. We can only be impressed by the fact that the finest intellectual epoch of history was marked by a comparative absence of the ma.n.u.scripts which were books to the Greeks, and if a further a.n.a.lysis of the lives of men of light and leading in all ages should show that their devotion to the books of the period was slight, it will only accentuate the suspicion that even today we are still minus the right perspective between the printed volume and the thinking mind.

Buddha, Christ, St. Paul, Mohammed--these are names of men who changed the course of history. But do they suggest vast scholarship, or a profound acquaintance with books in any sense whatever? They were great originators, even though they built on other men's foundations, but their originality was not inspired by libraries. Can we imagine Mohammed poring over ancient ma.n.u.scripts in order to obtain the required knowledge and impetus for his new religion? With Buddha was it not 1 per cent papyrus roll and 99 per cent meditation? When St. Paul was struck down on the way to Damascus, he did not repair to the nearest Jewish seminary to read up prophecy. He says: "I went into Arabia." The desert solitude was the only place in which to find a rationale of his new experience. And was it not in a similar life of solitude that Jesus--Essene-like--came to self-realization? Deane's _Pseudepigrapha: Books that Influenced our Lord and His Apostles_ does not suggest that the Messiah obtained his ideas from the literature of the Rabbis, much less from Greek or other sources; indeed, the New Testament suggests that in the earliest years he showed a genius for divine things.

It will be urged that to restrict this inquiry to great names in religion would be unfair because such leaders are confessedly independent of literature; indeed, they are often the creators of it.

True; but that fact alone is suggestive. If great literature can come from meditation alone, are we not compelled to ask: "Where shall wisdom be found and where is the place of understanding?" Is enlightenment to be found only in the printed wisdom of the past? We know it is not, but we also know it is useless to set one source of truth over against another, as if they were enemies. The soul has its place and so has the book; but need it be said that the soul has done more wonderful things than the book? Language is merely the symbol; the soul is the reality.

But let us take other names with different a.s.sociations--e.g., Plato, Charlemagne, Caesar, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Bismarck. Can it be said of any one of these that he owed one-third of his distinction to what he learned from ma.n.u.scripts or books? We do know, indeed, that Bismarck was a wide reader, but it was on the selective principle as a student of history and affairs. His library grew under the influence of the controlling purpose of his life--i.e., the unification of Germany, so that there was no vague distribution of energy. Of Shakespeare's reading we know less, but there is no evidence that he was a collector of books or that he was a student after the manner of the men of letters of his day. The best way to estimate him as a reader is to judge him by the references in his plays, and these do not show an acquaintance with literature so extensive as it is intensive. The impression he made on Ben Johnson, an all-round scholar, was not one of learning--quite otherwise. The qualities that impressed the author of _Timber, or Discoveries upon Men and Matter_, were Shakespeare's "open and free nature," his "excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped." And, true to himself, Ben Jonson immediately adds: "_Sufflaminandus erat_, as Augustus said of Haterius." Shakespeare, when in the company of kindred spirits, showed precisely the kind of talk we should expect--not Latin and Greek or French and Italian quotations, not a commentary on books past or present, but a stream of conversation marked by brilliant fancy, startling comparison, unique contrast, and searching pathos, wherein life, not literature, was the chief subject.

B. ISOLATION AND r.e.t.a.r.dATION

1. Feral Men[99]

What would the results be if children born with a normal organism and given food and light sufficient to sustain life were deprived of the usual advantage of human intercourse? What psychic growth would be possible?

Perhaps no character ever aroused greater interest than Caspar Hauser.

More than a thousand articles of varying merit have been written concerning him. In the theaters of England, France, Germany, Hungary, and Austria, plays were founded on his strange story and many able men have figured in the history of his case.

According to a letter which he bore when found at Nurnberg one afternoon in 1828, he was born in 1812, left on the doorstep of a Hungarian peasant's hut, adopted by him, and reared in strict seclusion.

At the time of his appearance in Nurnberg, he could walk only with difficulty. He knew no German, understood but little that was said to him, paid no heed to what went on about him, and was ignorant of social customs. When taken to a stable, he at once fell asleep on a heap of straw. In time it was learned that he had been kept in a low dark cell on the ground; that he had never seen the face of the man who brought him food, that sometimes he went to sleep after the man gave him a drink; that on awakening he found his nails cut and clean clothing on his body; and that his only playthings had been two wooden horses with red ribbons.

When first found, he suffered much pain from the light, but he could see well at night. He could distinguish fruit from leaves on a tree, and read the name on a doorplate where others could see nothing in the darkness. He had no visual idea of distance and would grasp at remote objects as though they were near. He called both men and women _Bua_ and all animals _Rosz_. His memory span for names was marvelous. Drawing upon the pages of Von Kolb and Stanhope, a writer in _The Living Age_ says that he burned his hand in the first flame that he saw and that he had no fear of being struck with swords, but that the noise of a drum threw him into convulsions. He thought that pictures and statuary were alive, as were plants and trees, bits of paper, and anything that chanced to be in motion. He delighted in whistles and glittering objects, but disliked the odor of paint, fabrics, and most flowers. His hearing was acute and his touch sensitive at first, but after interest in him had lessened, all his senses showed evidence of rapid deterioration. He seemed to be wanting in s.e.x instinct and to be unable to understand the meaning of religious ceremonies. Merker, who observed him secretly during the early days which he spent in jail, declared that he was "in all respects like a child." Meyer, of the school at Ansbach, found him "idle, stupid, and vain." Dr. Osterhausen found a deviation from the normal in the shape of his legs, which made walking difficult, but Caspar never wearied of riding on horseback.

His autopsy revealed a small brain without abnormalities. It simply gave evidence of a lack of development.

To speak of children who have made the struggle for life with only animals for nurses and instructors is to recall the rearing of Cyrus in a kennel and the fabulous story of the founding of Rome. Yet Rauber has collected many cases of wild men and some of them, taken as they are from munic.i.p.al chronicles and guaranteed by trustworthy writers, must be accepted as authentic.

a) The Hessian Boy. Was discovered by hunters in 1341, running on all fours with wolves; was captured and turned over to the landgrave. Was always restless, could not adapt himself to civilized life, and died untamed. The case is recorded in the Hessian chronicles by Wilhelm Dilich. Rousseau refers to it in his _Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de Pinegalite parmi les hommes_.

b) The Irish Boy. Studied and described by Dr. Tulp, curator of the gymnasium at Amsterdam; features animal, body covered with hair; lived with sheep and bleated like them; stolid, unconscious of self; did not notice people; fierce, untamable, and indocible; skin thick, sense of touch blunted so that thorns and stones were unnoticed. Age about sixteen. (Rauber.)

c) The Lithuanian Boys. Three are described. The first was found with bears in 1657; face not repulsive nor beastlike; hair thick and white; skin dry and insensitive; voice a growl; great physical strength. He was carefully instructed and learned to obey his trainer to some degree but always kept the bear habit; ate vegetable food, raw flesh, and anything not containing oils; had a habit of rolling up in secluded places and taking long naps. The second, said to have been captured in 1669, is not so well described as the third, which Dr. Connor, in the _History of Poland_, says was found in 1694. This one learned to walk erect with difficulty, but was always leaping restlessly about; he learned to eat from a table, but mastered only a few words, which he spoke in a voice harsh and inhuman. He showed great sagacity in wood life.

d) The Girl of Cranenburg. Born in 1700; lost when sixteen months old; skin dark, rough, hard; understood but little that was said to her; spoke little and stammeringly; food--roots, leaves, and milk. (Rauber.)

e) Clemens of Overd.y.k.e. This boy was brought to Count von der Ricke's Asylum after the German struggle with Napoleon. He knew little and said little. After careful training it was gathered that his parents were dead and that a peasant had adopted him and set him to herd pigs. Little food was given him, and he learned to suck a cow and eat gra.s.s with the pigs. At Overd.y.k.e he would get down on his hands and knees and pull up vegetables with his teeth. He was of low intelligence, subject to fits of pa.s.sion, and fonder of pigs than of men.[100]

f) Jean de Liege. Lost at five; lived in the woods for sixteen years; food--roots, plants, and wild fruit; sense of smell extraordinarily keen; could distinguish people by odor as a dog would recognize his master; restless in manner, and always trying to escape. (Rauber.)

g) The Savage of Aveyron. After capture, was given into the care of Dr. Itard by Abbe Sicard. Dermal sense duller than in animals; gaze wandering; language wanting and ideas few; food--raw potatoes, acorns, and fruit; would eagerly tear open a bird and eat it raw; indolent, secretive; would hide in the garden until hunger drove him to the kitchen; rolled in new snow like an animal; paid no heed to the firing of a gun, but became alert at the cracking of a nut; sometimes grew wildly angry; all his powers were then enlarged; was delighted with hills and woods, and always tried to escape after being taken to them; when angry would gnaw clothing and hurl furniture about; feared to look from a height, and Itard cured him of spasms of rage by holding his head out of a window; met all efforts to teach him with apathy, and learned but little of language.[101]

h) The Wolf Children of India. The two cases described by a writer in _Chambers' Journal_ and by Rauber were boys of about ten years. Both ate raw food but refused cooked food; one never spoke, smiled, or laughed; both shunned human beings of both s.e.xes, but would permit a dog to eat with them; they pined in captivity, and lived but a short time.[102]

i) Peter of Hanover. Found in the woods of Hanover; food--buds, barks, roots, frogs, eggs of birds, and anything else that he could get out of doors; had a habit of wandering away in the spring; always went to bed as soon as he had his supper; was unable to walk in shoes at first, and it was long before he would tolerate a covering for his head. Although Queen Caroline furnished him a teacher, he could never learn to speak; he became docile, but remained stoical in manner; he learned to do farm work willingly unless he was compelled to do it; his sense of hearing and of smell was acute, and before changes in the weather he was sullen and irritable; he lived to be nearly seventy years old.[103]