Discourse on
Method,
"so strongly depends on temperament and the disposition of bodily organs, that
if it is possible to find some means which will make men generally more wise and more
clever than they have been till now, I believe that it is in medicine one should seek it. It is
true that the medicine now practiced contains few things having so remarkable a
usefulness. But, without having any intention of scorning it, I am confident that there is
no one, even among those whose profession it is, who does not admit that everything
already known about it is almost nothing in comparison with what remains to be learned,
and that people could be spared an infinity of diseases, both bodily and mental, and
perhaps even the weakening of old age, if the causes of those troubles and all the
remedies with which nature has provided us were sufficiently well known." Medicine has
received from anatomy, physiology, psychology, and pathology the more essential
elements of the knowledge of ourselves. It could easily enlarge its field, embrace, in
addition to body and consciousness, their relations with the material and mental world,
take in sociology and economics, and become the very science of the human being. Its
aim, then, would be not only to cure or prevent diseases, but also to guide the
development of all our organic, mental, and sociological activities. It would become
capable of building the individual according to natural laws. And of inspiring those who
will have the task of leading humanity to a true civilization. At the present time,
education, hygiene, religion, town planning, and social and economic organizations are
entrusted to individuals who know but a single aspect of the human being. No one would
ever dream of substituting politicians, well-meaning women, lawyers, literary men, or
philosophers for the engineers of the steel-works or of the chemical factories. However,
such people are given the incomparably heavier responsibility of the physiological,
mental, and sociological guidance of civilized men, and even of the government of great
nations. Medicine aggrandized according to the conception of Descartes, and extended in
such a manner as to embrace the other sciences of man, could supply modern society with
engineers understanding the mechanisms of the body and the soul of the individual, and
of his relations with the cosmic and social world.
This superscience will be utilizable only if, instead of being buried in libraries, it
animates our intelligence. But is it possible for a single brain to assimilate such a gigantic
amount of knowledge? Can any individual master anatomy, physiology, biological
chemistry, psychology, metapsychics, pathology, medicine, and also have a thorough
acquaintance with genetics, nutrition, development, pedagogy, esthetics, morals, religion,
sociology, and economics? It seems that such an accomplishment is not impossible. In
about twenty-five years of uninterrupted study, one could learn these sciences. At the age
of fifty, those who have submitted themselves to this discipline could effectively direct
the construction of the human being and of a civilization based on his true nature. Indeed,
the few gifted individuals who dedicate themselves to this work will have to renounce the
common modes of existence. They will not be able to play golf and bridge, to go to
cinemas, to listen to radios, to make speeches at banquets, to serve on committees, to
attend meetings of scientific societies, political conventions, and academies, or to cross
the ocean and take part in international congresses. They must live like the monks of the
great contemplative orders, and not like university professors, and still less like business
men. In the course of the history of all great nations, many have sacrificed themselves for
the salvation of the community. Sacrifice seems to be a necessary condition of progress.
There are now, as in former times, men ready for the supreme renunciation. If the
multitudes inhabiting the defenseless cities of the seacoast were menaced by shells and
gases, no army aviator would hesitate to thrust himself, his plane, and his bombs against
the invaders. Why should not some individuals sacrifice their lives to acquire the science
indispensable to the making of man and of his environment? In fact, the task is extremely
difficult. But minds capable of undertaking it can be discovered. The weakness of many
of the scientists whom we meet in universities and laboratories is due to the mediocrity of
their goal and to the narrowness of their life. Men grow when inspired by a high purpose,
when contemplating vast horizons. The sacrifice of oneself is not very difficult for one
burning with the passion for a great adventure. And there is no more beautiful and
dangerous adventure than the renovation of modern man.
4
The making of man requires the development of institutions wherein body and mind
can be formed according to natural laws, and not to the prejudices of the various schools
of educators. It is essential that the individual, from infancy, be liberated from the
dogmas of industrial civilization and the principles which are the very basis of modem
society. The science of the human being does not need costly and numerous organizations
in order to start its constructive work. It can utilize those already existing, provided they
are rejuvenated. The success of such an enterprise will depend, in certain countries, on
the attitude of the government and, in others, on that of the public. In Italy, Germany, or
Russia, if the dictator judged it useful to condition children according to a definite type,
to modify adults and their ways of life in a definite manner, appropriate institutions
would spring up at once. In democratic countries progress has to come from private
initiative. When the failure of most of our educational, medical economic, and social
beliefs becomes more apparent, the public will probably feel the necessity of a remedy
for this situation.
In the past, the efforts of isolated individuals have caused the ascent of religion,
science, and education. The development of hygiene in the United States is entirely due
to the inspiration of a few men. For instance, Hermann Biggs made New York one of the
most healthful cities of the world. A group of unknown young men, under the guidance
of Welch, founded the Johns Hopkins Medical School, and initiated the astonishing
progress of pathology, surgery, and hygiene in the United States. When bacteriology
sprang from Pasteur's brain, the Pasteur Institute was created in Paris by national
subscription. The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was founded in New York
by John D. Rockefeller, because the necessity for new discoveries in the domain of
medicine had become evident to Welch, Theobald Smith, T. Mitchell Prudden, Simon
Flexner, Christian Herter, and a few other scientists. In many American universities,
research laboratories, destined to further the progress of physiology, immunology,
chemistry, etc., were established and endowed by enlightened benefactors. The great
Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations were inspired by more general ideas. To develop
education, raise the scientific level of universities, promote peace among nations, prevent
infectious diseases, improve the health and the welfare of everybody with the help of
scientific methods. Those movements have always been started by the realization of a
need, and the establishment of an institution responding to that need. The state did not
help in their beginnings. But private institutions forced the progress of public institutions.
In France, for example, bacteriology was at first taught exclusively at the Pasteur
Institute. Later, chairs and laboratories of bacteriology were established in all state
universities. The institutions necessary for the rebuilding of man will probably develop in
a similar manner. Some day, a school, a college, a university may understand the
importance of the subject. Slight efforts in the right direction have already been made.
For instance, Yale University has created an Institute for the study of human relations.
The Macy Foundation was established for the development of integrative ideas
concerning man, his health, and his education. Greater advance has been realized in
Genoa by Nicola Pende in his Institute for the study of the human individual. Many
American physicians begin to feel the necessity for a broader comprehension of man.
However, this feeling has by no means been formulated as clearly here as in Italy. The
already existing organizations have to undergo important changes in order to become
fitted for the work of human renovation. They must, for instance, eliminate the remnants
of the narrow mechanisticism of the last century, and understand the imperativeness of a
clarification of the concepts used in biology, of a reintegration of the parts into the whole,
and of the formation of true scholars, as well as of scientific workers. The direction of the
institutions of learning, and of those which apply to man the results of the special
sciences, from biological chemistry to political economy, should not be given to
specialists, because specialists are exaggeratedly interested in the progress of their own
particular studies, but to individuals capable of embracing all sciences. The specialists
must be only the tools of a synthetic mind. They will be utilized by him in the same way
as the professor of medicine of a great university utilizes the services of pathologists,
bacteriologists, physiologists, chemists, and physicists in the laboratories of his clinic.
None of these scientists is ever given the direction of the treatment of the patients. An
economists, an endocrinologist, a social worker, a psychoanalyst, a biological chemist,
are equally ignorant of man. They cannot be trusted beyond the limits of their own field.
We should not forget that our knowledge of man is still rudimentary, that most of the
great problems mentioned at the beginning of this book remain unsolved. However, an
answer must be given to the questions which concern the fate of hundreds of millions of
individuals and the future of civilization. Such an answer can be elaborated only in
research institutes dedicated to the promotion of the science of man. Our biological and
medical laboratories have so far devoted their activities to the pursuit of health, to the
discovery of the chemical and physiochemical mechanisms underlying physiological
phenomena. The Pasteur Institute has followed with great success the road opened by its
founder. Under the direction of Duclaux and of Roux, it has specialized in the
investigation of bacteria and viruses, in the means of protecting human beings from their
attacks, in the discovery of vaccines, sera, and chemicals for the prevention or the cure of
diseases. The Rockefeller Institute undertook the survey of a broader field. The study of
the agents responsible for diseases, and of their effects on animals and men, was pursued
simultaneously with that of the physical, chemical, physiochemical, and physiological
activities manifested by the body. Such investigations should now progress further. The
entire man has to be brought into the domain of biological research. Each specialist must
freely continue the exploration of his own field. But no important aspect of the human
being should remain ignored. The method used by Simon Flexner in the direction of the
Rock-feller Institute could be profitably extended to the organization of the biological or
medical institutes of tomorrow. At the Rockefeller Institute, living matter is being studied
in an exhaustive manner, from the structure of the molecules to that of the human body.
However, in the organization of this vast ensemble of researchers, Flexner did not impose
any program on the staff of his Institute. He was content with selecting scientists who had
a natural propensity for the exploration of these different fields. A similar policy could
lead to the development of laboratories for the investigation of the psychological and
sociological activities, as well as the chemical and physiological.
The biological institutes of the future, in order to be productive, will have to guard
against the confusion of concepts, which we have mentioned as one of the causes of the
sterility of medical research. The supreme science, psychology, needs the methods and
the concepts of physiology, anatomy, mechanics, chemistry, physical chemistry, physics,
and mathematics-- that is, of all sciences occupying a lower rank in the hierarchy of
knowledge. We know that the concepts of a science of higher rank cannot be reduced to
those of a science of lower rank, that large-scale phenomena are no less fundamental than
small-scale phenomena, that psychological events are as real as physiochemical ones.
Mathematics, physics, and chemistry are indispensable but not basic sciences in the
researches concerning living organisms. They are as indispensable as, but not more basic
than, speaking and writing are, for instance, to a historian. They are not capable of
constructing the concepts specific to the human being. Like the universities, the research
institutions entrusted with the study of man in health and disease should be led by
scientists possessing a broad knowledge of physiology, chemistry, medicine, and
psychology. The biological workers of tomorrow must realize that their goal is the living
organism and not merely artificially isolated systems or models. That general physiology,
as considered by Bayliss, is a very small part of physiology. That organismal and mental
phenomena cannot be dismissed. The studies to be undertaken in the laboratories for
medical research should include all the subjects pertaining to the physical, chemical,
structural, functional, and psychological activities of man, and to the relations of those
activities with the cosmic and social environment.
We know that the evolution of humanity is very slow, that the study of its problems
demands the lifetime of several generations of scientists. We need, therefore, an
institution capable of providing for the uninterrupted pursuit for at least a century of the
investigations concerning man. Modern society should be given an intellectual focus, an
immortal brain, capable of conceiving and planning its future, and of promoting and
pushing forward fundamental researches, in spite of the death of the individual
researchers, or the bankruptcy of the research institutes. Such an organization would be
the salvation of the white races in their staggering advance toward civilization. This
thinking center would consist, as does the Supreme Court of the United States, of a few
individuals; the latter being trained in the knowledge of man by many years of study. It
should perpetuate itself automatically, in such a manner as to radiate ever young ideas.
Democratic rulers, as well as dictators, could receive from this source of scientific truth
the information that they need in order to develop a civilization really suitable to man.
The members of this high council would be free from research and teaching. They
would deliver no addresses. They would dedicate their lives to the contemplation of the
economic, sociological, psychological, physiological, and pathological phenomena
manifested by the civilized nations and their constitutive individuals. And to that of the
development of science and of the influence of its applications to our habits of life and of
thought. They would endeavor to discover how modern civilization could mold itself to
man without crushing any of his essential qualities. Their silent meditation would protect
the inhabitants of the new city from the mechanical inventions which are dangerous for
their body or their mind, from the adulteration of thought as well as food, from the whims
of the specialists in education, nutrition, morals, sociology, etc., from all progress
inspired, not by the needs of the public, but by the greed or the illusions of their
inventors. An institution of this sort would acquire enough knowledge to prevent the
organic and mental deterioration of civilized nations. Its members should be given a
position as highly considered, as free from political intrigues and from cheap publicity, as
that of the justices of the Supreme Court. Their importance would, in truth, be much
greater than that of the jurists who watch over the Constitution. For they would be the
defenders of the body and the soul of a great race in its tragic struggle against the blind
sciences of matter.
5
We must rescue the individual from the state of intellectual, moral, and physiological
atrophy brought about by modern conditions of life. Develop all his potential activities.
Give him health. Reestablish him in his unity, in the harmony of his personality. Induce
him to utilize all the hereditary qualities of his tissues and his consciousness. Break the
shell in which education and society have succeeded in enclosing him. And reject all
systems. We have to intervene in the fundamental organic and mental processes. These
processes are man himself. But man has no independent existence. He is bound to his
environment. In order to remake him, we have to transform his world.
Our social frame, our material and mental background, should be rebuilt. But society is
not plastic. Its form cannot be changed in an instant. Nevertheless, the enterprise of our
restoration must start immediately, in the present conditions of our existence. Each
individual has the power to modify his way of life, to create around him an environment
slightly different from that of the unthinking crowd. He is capable of isolating himself in
some measure, of imposing upon himself certain physiological and mental disciplines,
certain work, certain habits, of acquiring the mastery of his body and mind. But if he
stands alone, he cannot indefinitely resist his material, mental, and economic
environment. In order to combat this environment victoriously, he must associate with
others having the same purpose. Revolutions often start with small groups in which the
new tendencies ferment and grow. During the eighteenth century such groups prepared
the overthrow of absolute monarchy in France. The French Revolution was due to the
encyclopedists far more than to the Jacobins. Today, the principles of industrial
civilization should be fought with the same relentless vigor as was the
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