Control Of Science

( Originally Published 1920 )

BY PROFESSOR BURY

AFTER we embarked on the war it was fancied that two good things might come out of it. In the first place, it was hoped that it might be the last war, and General Smuts assured us that humanity is on the march, suggesting that when it next pitches its tents it will have safely buried the corpse of Mars with military honours. A League of Nations has been instituted, but it is far from representing the world. It has not yet seized the imagination of mankind. Some are marching on the new road to Moscow, others on the old road to Endor ; but humanity as a whole seems to be marching nowhere, nor even to have any idea that it is living in tents ; it is simply waiting to see. It is premature to speculate about the League's chances of success, but it is evident that humanity is not enthusiastic, and Mars is still as merry as ever.

In the second place, it was hoped that the foundations of liberty, for which so many noble lives were given in the past, might be enlarged and confirmed. Liberty was recognised as the cardinal principle of Western civilisation ; and if the Allies were victorious its reign would be extended and its power would penetrate even into the dark places of Russia. Mr. Wilson, indeed, when America was coming into the war, declared that the supreme object was to make the world safe for democracy. If Imperial autocrats were the only enemies, democracy and Mr. Wilson might congratulate themselves that the world is fairly safe, as the three autocracies have disappeared. But in the meantime another enemy has arisen, in the shape of Bolshevik Communism, whose avowed aim is to destroy democracy ; and Mr. Wilson and the Americans, having retired from the international scene, can hardly say that their object is achieved.

But is democracy an ideal to die for ? If it meant liberty, yes ; but unfortunately it may mean tyranny. In the large democratic States one observes that the tendency is to weaken the safeguards of liberty, not to strengthen them. Here majorities are tyrannising over minorities ; there minorities over majorities. In England proportional representation is rejected. When the American Republic, fondly imagined to be the home and citadel of freedom, forbids its citizens to drink wine in their own houses, we may venture to question Mr. Wilson's opinion that in democracy lies the hope of the world. Look around, and everywhere liberty seems to be forgotten and obscured. Bolshevism, which has been forced upon part of the world, and all the other social experiments which theorists are eager to impose upon us have this in common, that liberty is left out. There is a collective indifference to the ideal of individual liberty that is not the least disquieting among the disquieting features of the world today.

WORLD SHORTAGE OF FOOD

But this and other tendencies one might point at are not due to the war, though the war may have accelerated their growth. They may be transient phenomena ; an oscillation of the pendulum, to be followed by an oscillation the other way. The social and political changes which renew the world from age to age are not due to sudden reformations of human nature, but to the stimulus of new ideas, burning in the brain. The war will be one of the great landmarks in human history, but it has taught us nothing new about the capacities of man. There have been amazing examples of unsurpassable hero-ism ; they reassured us that the race is not degenerate. There have been amazing examples of fearless fanaticism ; that is not a new revelation. And so we may draw the not very exciting conclusion that men will behave in the new situations which confront them in much the same way as at other crises of history. In no country are hearts or brains changed. Does the number of people who think for themselves on the whole face of the planet run into seven figures ?

It would be misspent labour to attempt to draw auguries about the future from the things that men, who have not yet recovered from the sufferings of the war and the disappointments of the peace, are saying and doing in what is evidently a transient mood. It is more useful to notice that the war has given us an unpleasant glimpse of a dangerous rock that lies ahead. We have had an experience of what universal shortage of food would mean. It is due to quite exceptional conditions, but has been acute enough to remind us that all dreams or plans for the future of the race are futile if they ignore the question of population. That question is fundamental. A hundred and twenty years ago Mr. Malthus, a hard-headed English clergyman, explained the situation, for the first time, for mankind to ponder. He showed that if men were living in perfectly happy and healthy conditions, never decimated by war and disease and famine, the population of the world would increase so rapidly that very soon the fruits of the earth would be insufficient to feed it. His book made a great sensation, and " Malthusianism " became a familiar word ; but though general prosperity increased, and with it the population of the world, throughout the nineteenth century, few seriously considered the danger which he indicated. Now, Mr. Knibbs, an official statistician in Australia, has lately warned us that, if numbers go on increasing at the present rate, the limit will be reached in about four centuries ; there will not be enough food to go round. Others have calculated that the limit will be reached sooner, and perhaps it will, if the League of Nations, by international hygienic measures, should succeed in abolishing plagues. But when that day comes, no. international league will avail to avert war. The most primitive and unscrupulous instinct of man would assert its power even after centuries of universal peace, and a new struggle for existence would begin. Probably it would not last long. Four centuries hence wars will mean the extermination of the race ; science would see to that. The population question bears on what Tennyson called " the doubtful doom of humankind."

EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

The obvious precaution is a deliberate limitation of the birth-rate in every country, and if people could be induced to adopt this policy it would, be-sides providing against the future danger, greatly increase general well-being at present. If there were only 25,000,000 mouths in Great Britain, how much better off we should all be, and how many social problems would easily be solved. There is, how-ever, another side to the question. Suppose that in all white States people by common consent limited their numbers ; they would be hopelessly outnumbered and ultimately overwhelmed by the yellow and black races, which are far more prolific. Should the League of Nations ever become an effective power in the world, it may be prophesied that the problem of population will one day be its gravest anxiety.

Any one who cares for long views may be struck by another fact, of a very different order, which is more likely than the war to create a new world. It is small and obscure at present, but in the course of time it may have incalculable effects. I refer to the growth of experimental psychology. Though still in its infancy, this science seems to be confirming what many believed, and many more refused to believe, that mental phenomena are, as completely as physical phenomena, subject to invariable laws. If it succeeds in formulating those laws and laying bare, if the phrase be allowed, the machinery of mind, it will be impossible for governments to ignore them. Education and criminal law, now based on fallacious or obscure axioms like the freedom of the will, will be revolutionised, and will tend to become applied sciences like agriculture. It is to the slow and silent operations of science that we may look for a new world, not to the lessons of a war, however great, nor to the wisdom of supreme councils, nor to resolves of humanity to " strike its tents." Whether men will be happier in a world under the control of science is open to doubt; probably it will only mean a new and more efficient tyranny.