The Misbehaviorists

...Those who have not access to his book will find an article of his in the files of The Century, entitled The Approaching Crisis, which sums up not only his doctrine but a somewhat widely current belief, as follows: This decline [of religion] has been largely due to its [religion's] inadequate adjustment to scientific method and discovery...

...But Professor Wieman, not through any particular personal eminence but by the possession of quite the contrary quality, represents a very common type of American thought and thus gains a certain importance...

...It was Wundt who discovered what is known as "reaction time," or that innocent-seeming period which elapses between the happening of an event and our response to it...

...of his way to add: Whenever two or three are gathered together to converse about this matter [the joy-giving behavior of the universe] we have a genuine church...

...At the present time it is research in the field of psychology and sociology which is demanding a transformation in our thinking...

...The contact is made by chance and nothing else...

...The mere word, of course, gives no trouble...

...The synapse," says Professor Pillsbury, "is the point where action leaves its impress upon the nervous system...

...It would not be fair, however, to dismiss our Professor Wieman here, ruling him out on a mere technicality...

...We can only act and think in the future as we have habituated the synapse in the past...

...And if we were born with certain channels of association already opened, it must have been because of chance acting upon some ancestor...

...But even behaviorists see that without at least a theory reaching back of matter, the motions of matter are hardly thinkable and totally unimportant...

...Let it take what comfort it can from the declarations of certain other specialists, who maintain that there is no light on earth or in heaven but the cold light of introspection...

...Professor Loeb, however, seems to be negatively tropic in this regard, and to prefer darkness, for he adds: The need of the struggle for food, the sexual instinct with its poetry and its chain of consequences, the maternal instincts with the felicity and the sufFering caused by them —are the roots from which our inner life develops...

...The yokel, formerly alleged to have thought with his feet, thus comes to his own...

...They say they are not interested in the problems of consciousness, but their every page shows them to be interested in almost nothing else...

...If a machinist wished to describe the movements of a locomotive in terms of alternately negative and positive tropisms between the piston and the cylinder-head, nobody need blame him— unless he went further and said that there was no such thing as steam...

...there is nothing inside the brain but a lot of neurones...

...For the nerve force has worn for itself a channel, so to speak, which has become the path of least resistance, and only another chance—one which grows more and more unlikely with every impulse which wears the first path smooth—can alter the procedure...

...Wundt brought psychology squarely within the scope of the experimental method, and helped rid It of a lunatic fringe of dreamers...

...The mystic synapse is recorder—and avenger as well...

...J. B. Watson, of Johns Hopkins, agrees that if we could stop these throat movements we could—oh, consummation devoutly to be wished!—stop thinking altogether...

...It is said to be positively tropic to light...

...Here was something better than the dogma, "If you think you think a thing, it must be so...

...I must here pause to apologize to the behaviorists for using the words "heroism," "idea," and the like...

...The behaviorists, so far as I am aware, have not yet discovered humor...

...We can measure this objectively by the length of time the individual stayed in his various positions—and the yearly increases he received in his earnings...

...Let us suppose now that an impression has been made upon one of the five senses, say a soldier hears the command to charge...

...Between the sensory neuron, or neurons, charged with the order to advance, and the motor neurons, ready to convert the order into action, the association neuron waves its anemone-like tentacles...

...The other end is a mere knob, and is called the axon...

...These neurones, however, deserve more than passing mention, and fully to understand their behavior we must remember that there are three sets of them, one connected with the sensory organs, another with the motor system, while in between lurks a third set, those of association, serving as mediator between the other two...

...But if the contact is with an axon into which has been instilled the idea that he who iights and runs away may live to fight another day, there is soon going to be a soldier a.w.o.l...

...J. B. Eggen, for example, is constrained to assure us in Current History for September, 1926: There is no such thing as the mind in the old sense of the word, and it cannot be considered as a separate thing from the body...

...It would, of course, be easy to meet these assertions with counter-assertions, particularly as to the alleged decline of religion, and to claim that the whole "crisis" is imaginary...

...Watson is no back number, and the results of his philosophy he sums up thus: One of the most important elements in the judging of personality, character and ability is the history of the individual's yearly achievements...

...This is not intended to be funny...

...If it gets to the right motor neuron, the soldier's legs will carry him forward in obedience to the command...

...I have even met otherwise well-informed Christians who did not know exactly what the word psychology signifies...

...The study of it promised much...

...A tropism, it should perhaps be explained for the benefit of the elder generation, is a tendency to move toward or away from any external object, the operation being carried out by means of chemical or mechanical changes within the subject...

...Our wishes and hopes, disappointments and sufferings," says Professor Loeb in The Mechanist Conception of Life, "have their.source in the instincts which are comparable to the light instincts of the heliotropic animals...

...It means a study of the soul...

...It all depends upon the intervening association neuron...

...The synapse once made, chance steps back and leaves habit in command...

...This brain which does not think, this mind which is only a form of reaction, is necessarily the theatre of blindly acting forces...

...Unfortunately the mechanist conception in psychology is by no means on the wane...

...Its use renders it all-powerful, its neglect bars further way for either temptation on the one hand or profitable deeds on the other...

...But I do not believe that he credits his own explanation...

...For some of these instincts, the chemical basis is at least sufficiently indicated to arouse the hope that their analysis from the mechanistic point of view is only a question of timt...

...It is a simple structure, consisting of a nucleus from one end of which projects the dendrite, or brush, formed of several filaments not unlike the sensitive filaments of a sea-anemone...

...But some will say that Professor Loeb is a back number, that the mechanist conception of life is on the wane, that it is unfair to attribute to modern thought any ideas which were current several years ago...

...Or will it get to a wrong one, say one which will cause his legs to turn and run...

...It would be easier, however, for the devout to hitch his chariot to this new star, if the professional star-gazers would but agree among themselves which star it is...

...It runs through all the writings of those who strive so enthusiastically to drag themselves down below the atom •—far, far below the atom as physicists understand it...

...To get the full flavor of these arguments we must follow them to their less eminent channels of expression...

...No need of a recording angel to set down our shortcomings against us...

...What he doubtless has in mind (or should I say subvocal speech...

...But will it...

...To him, psychology is the study of certain muscular movements of the throat and chest not accompanied by sounds, and the ideal reasoner an ignorant man attempting to read to himself...

...If psychologists would say that associations were formed, not by chance, but in obedience to a force or law to them unknown, there would be few to carp...

...If from our leading magazines he receives the same average price per word for his stories at thirty that he received at twenty-four, the chances are he is a haclc writer and will never do anything but that...

...This knowledge [of the materialists]," says A. S. Eddington, professor of astronomy at Cambridge, "is only an empty shell...

...To make terms with vitalists like Jung, Freud and McDougall, while remaining at odds with men like A. Bethe, author of Diirfen wir den Ameisen u. Bienen Psychische Qualitaten, who holds that honeybees move in response to a force (einer Kraft) diffused through space, which makes them blindly fly forth to the flowery fields when empty and to return to their hives when laden—to do this would be like entering into a treaty with a handful of refugees while still under the guns of an untaken citadel...

...but being a mechanist, he understands by instinct a purely mechanical process...

...But Russell is something of a traitor in this company...

...Thus the heliotrope, which always strives to turn toward the sun, got its name...

...Jacques Loeb, formerly of the University of California, also puts instinct in charge...

...The man who runs up a descending escalator should be the beau-ideal...

...Behavior at least was tangible and capable of proof...

...Why, chancel Here at last is a point upon which all thoroughgoing behaviorists are agreed...

...It required our Professor Wieman, of Los Angeles, near Hollywood, to add the keystone to the arch by describing even God as a "behavior of the universe...

...So let his crisis be granted and some attention paid to his remedy...

...Hope, he says...

...We do not think with our brain...

...If psychology of this sort is to transform our thinking, religion must simply cease to exist...

...But unfortunately the new school, too, had its lunatic fringe, and soon the entire fabric began to ravel until today the fringe threatens to become the whole garment...

...We are not, as Dr...

...Curiously enough, this is precisely the difficulty among psychologists themselves...

...So what is it which determines what synapse, what connection shall be made...

...And be Professor Wieman's opinion what it may, it is unquestionably to this, the real Simon Pure, that religion must adjust itself if it is to escape the censure of its critics...

...Absurdity creeps in only when the observer alleges that there is nothing outside of his own field of interest...

...The behaviorist carefully removes part of the brain of a dog, scratches the animal's leg, notes with cries of joy that a motion something like that of walking ensues, and concludes that every dog walks because of the irritating effects of the ground upon the soles of its feet...

...So, before religion attempts to adjust itself to these psychologists of the modern school, it might be well for the psychologists themselves to bring their theories into line with the real discoveries of the day...

...The only religious people I know of who have been sufficiently mechanical to meet his demand are certain eastern nations who instinctively delegate their devotions to prayer-wheels operated by the wind...

...This is also called the receiving end...

...Should a tentacle chance to make synapse with a heroism-laden sensory cell which says "Charge I" the machine-gun nest ahead will probably be taken...

...It is knowledge of structural form, not knowledge of content...

...It was refreshing to see the science emerge from the clouds of individual, untrained, subjective whims which had been befogging it...

...The same desire evidently actuates Professor Wieman when, having used the words "religious vision" to describe an appreciation of that behavior of the universe which yields enjoyment, and having instanced the gregarious habits of young mothers meeting to exchange confidences which would not be understood by bachelors, he goes out...

...He is merely making for himself an opportunity to deny the existence of God...

...William McDougall, of Harvard, a vitalist and friendly to Freud and Jung, practically limits psychology to instinct...

...He says: Since the only thing we can do is to move our bodies, the popular votaries of the [behavioristic] creed are likely to infer that we ought to move them as much as possible...

...He thus laid the basis for those intelligence tests first brought to public notice by the Frenchman, Alfred Binet, and I am far from wishing to minimize the importance of his work...

...is that psychology which seems to be emerging from among its competitors as psychology, per se, for the reason that it offers little or no resemblance to anything else—behaviorism, to wit...

...Through the auditory nerve the message has reached one of the first group of neurons...

...If the individual is a writer, we should want to draw a curve of the prices he gets for his stories year by year...

...The mind is not a thing with which we react, it is a form of reaction...

...For if you endow the association neuron with the power of choice, with will, you have entered the forbidden domain of consciousness and upset the entire mechanistic theory...

...Here again religion has been woefully negligent and suffered itself to lag behind the times...

...Watson would quickly inform us, interested in consciousness, only in conduct or behavior...

...Here also lies the basis of character and destiny," chimes in Miss Clara Stevens, growing lyrical upon the subject in The Open Court...

...Or if he happened to run at the initial trial, he is a confirmed coward meriting only a firing-squad...

...True, human conduct had long since been made the subject of definite and recorded observations, but the observers—some of them—had called themselves scholastics, not psychologists, and so far as Wundt and his immediate entourage were concerned, their labors had been largely lost sight of...

...Such was the church, and the only sort of church, that Jesus established...

...We can have nothing to do with the habituating of a neuron whose first motion was dictated by chance...

...All througlh the physical world runs this unknown content which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness...

...Now what religion, I would ask, has ever squared itself with this conception...

...He would be among the first to admit that there are psychologists and psychologists, some of them probably no better than philosophers or metaphysicians...

...Evidently we must revise our estimation of the saints and hereafter canonize only those whose names appear among the upper brackets in incometax returns...

...This confusion of personality, character and ability is seriously intended...

...And it is to this association neurone which religion must adjust itself if it expects to be invited out to dine with experimental psychology...

...Bertrand Russell himself is appalled, after attempting to apply this criterion to "Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Milton and Blake...

...This modern and formidable psychology dates from the experiments of one Wilhelm Wundt, in the University of Leipzig about fifty years ago...

...There is, of course, no heroism, or cowardice, or idea of any sort involved...

...When the dendrite of one cell comes in contact with the axon of another, a connection is made, known as a synapse...

...The order to charge having been translated into forward-moving legs in the first instance, the soldier is now a perpetual candidate for citations and distinguished service medals...

...David Wechsler, associate professor of the Psychological Corporation of New York, says, for instance, that the theory which regards thinking as sub-vocal speech is not so far-fetched as it seems...

...The pupils are not more naif than the masters, but they are frequently more plain spoken, less inclined to hide the nakedness of their thought behind a vagueness or obscurity which may be mistaken for the cloak of reason...

...The lady, of course, has here allowed her enthusiasm to carry her too far...

...He can laugh...

...Summing up the behaviorist belief (not, perhaps, without the saving grace of irony) Bertrand Russell assures us that at last "it has been ascertained that there is no such thing as mind...

...For it must be admitted, I think, that religion has gone its way without paying much attention to the psychologists...

...Yet it seems to me that the behaviorist rather than behaviorism is at fault...

...Professor Thorndike's famous experiments on cats doubtless laid bare a number of facts, and much may be learned by observing the conduct even of bipeds...

...Most books dealing with the matter devote at least half of their pages to explaining what psychology is not, and their remaining pages to the attempt to set forth the author's ideas as to the true scope and subject-matter of the science...

...Clearly we are dealing here, not with science at all, but with a positive, anti-religious passion...

...The second of the virtues, once set between faith and charity, is here invoked to express the author's reaction to the prospect that some day all the movements of the inner life may be reduced to the level of so many warping planks exposed to variations in humidity and to changing temperatures...

...But as the science bearing that name began its career by ignoring the soul, and continues in some quarters by categorically denying its existence, the situation is a little difficult...

...We think with our muscles...