An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker by Cornelia Stratton Parker
page 153 of 164 (93%)
page 153 of 164 (93%)
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anger, fear, pain, and hunger is a basically different behavior from
behavior under repose and economic security. The emotions generated under the conditions of existence-peril seem to make the emotions and motives generative in quiet and peace pale and unequal. It seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that the most vital part of man's inheritance is one which destines him to continue for some myriads of years ever a fighting animal when certain conditions exist in his environment. Though, through education, man be habituated in social and intelligent behavior or, through license, in sexual debauchery, still, at those times when his life or liberty is threatened, his instinct-emotional nature will inhibit either social thought or sex ideas, and present him as merely an irrational fighting animal. . . . "The instincts and their emotions, coupled with the obedient body, lay down in scientific and exact description the motives which must and will determine human conduct. If a physical environment set itself against the expression of these instinct motives, the human organism is fully and efficiently prepared for a tenacious and destructive revolt against this environment; and if the antagonism persist, the organism is ready to destroy itself and disappear as a species if it fail of a psychical mutation which would make the perverted order endurable." And in conclusion, he states:-- "The dynamic psychology of to-day describes the present civilization as a repressive environment. For a great number of its inhabitants a sufficient self-expression is denied. There is, for those who care to see, a deep and growing unrest and pessimism. With the increase in knowledge is coming a new realization of the irrational direction of economic evolution. The economists, however, view economic inequality |
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