Epilogue
This book began by describing a new method of cinematography
designed to objectivize human behavior and shed light on behavior structures
which we normally fail to see or ignore, either because the sight of human
beings is too familiar to us or because the processes involved are too
slow or too rapid for our powers of observation. This method must surely
have many other fields of application, e.g., psychiatry, work study, and
traffic research. It would be particularly desirable if the same technique
were admitted to the field of ethnological research as well. Primitive
peoples still possess original customs, original handicrafts, and original
forms, of community life, but at the present rate of development it will
not be long before they all become things of the past. The motor patterns
associated with them ought, while they are still observable, to be recorded
in the form of accelerated long shots and slow-motion close-ups. Films
of this type represent documentary records of authentic and uninfluenced
procedures and could supply valuable instruction to later generations of
investigators pursuing problems which may, in a hundred years' time, present
quite another appearance. Almost all such sequences hitherto recorded on
film have been especially set up for the occasion. These possess value
too, of course, but only when unobtrusively filmed records of the same
procedures also exist.
In view of the material presented here and the considerations
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arising therefrom, it is hoped that scientifically directed
research into human behavior has been shown to be valid and meaningful.
To view things from this angle is not, repeat not, to depreciate human
beings or impugn their uniqueness and dignity. Nothing they may have achieved
and produced loses one whit by being viewed from the aspect of nature and
evolution; on the contrary, this mode of examination actually throws our
human peculiarities into sharper relief. Now that no further doubt attaches
to our ancestry – and here lies the crucial point which has simply failed
to penetrate the consciousness of human society in general – it is time
to form conclusions in regard to self-assessment. We shall cope with our
manifold problems, in particular the vast problem of war or peace, only
if we know more about the workings of nature within us, if we isolate the
phenomena in human behavior which still link us with our animal past, distinguish
what is innate and uncontrollable in us, and discover how we can operate
on these mechanisms with our conscious ego. Psychologists, who have always
made man the starting point of their inquiries, have produced valuable
results in this way. The plain fact is, however, that in the present state
of knowledge another starting point would be more natural and correct.
If we want to understand the latest and most complicated link in the long
evolutionary chain, it is expedient to base individual inquiries upon the
modest beginnings of that chain.
Problems of child education and upbringing are particularly
affected by this line of research. Until now, the developing human being
has been equipped for life with every conceivable form of information save
one: self-knowledge. How does our mysterious ego take shape, and what are
the details of its composition? What forces operate within us, how do they
manifest themselves, and how can we best make use of them under prevailing
circumstances? How do we behave toward other people, notably our partners
in sex, how do the latter react, and how can we arrive at a harmonious
relationship? And, finally, how can we build a fruitful life in full awareness
of our own potentials and limitations?
Modern educators still tend to present earlier generations
as paragons, existing institutions as right and good, existing schools
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of thought as more or less correct. Discipline may require
this to a certain extent, but when a developing individual has attained
a degree of maturity, it is surely only fair to draw his or her attention
to the relativity of good and evil, the relative value of various systems,
the relative truth of current beliefs. The overwhelming majority of people
need suitable leadership and suitable examples, true, but this makes it
all the more important to develop a critical appreciation of how far a
leader should be trusted and how far an example merits imitation. If man
wishes to develop still further, children must be regarded not as artificial
organs belonging to parents or society but as developing individuals worthy
of respect. The older generation should step down from its pedestal. Young
people must be acquainted with past achievements, but these should speak
for themselves. The educating generation should muster the courage to promote
genuinely free development, even at the risk of breeding opposition to
its own beliefs. If the avoidable tensions in this world are to be diminished,
this is the only road to take.
A Babylonian confusion of languages reigns in the sciences
which concern themselves with man. Countless conceptual systems have been
constructed in accordance with a diversity of viewpoints, each fully consistent
in itself but none compatible with the rest. The practical effect of this
is that the same words are associated with different concepts, a circumstance
which necessarily leads to pointless controversy and time-wasting misunderstandings.
People have become gravely infected with a resigned belief that this state
of affairs is more or less inevitable, that the phenomenon is a simple
consequence of the scope of the subject and the necessity for specialization.
This may have been true while no neutral system of reference existed, for
each school of thought could with equal justification claim that its own
mode of definition was the best and most correct. Ever since the nature
of our ancestry was proved, however, a natural and neutral system of reference
has existed, namely, the development of life. Just as each new structure
and each new phenomenon has proceeded from it, so the conceptual systems
of all specialized sciences ought to go back to the common source of that
development. This book has sought to show how a
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conceptual bridge of this kind can be built, e.g., to
political science, economics, and aesthetics. It remains to be seen whether
this line of thought can be pursued further, but even if it proves to be
a dead end, nothing can detract from the demand that such bridges should
be sought. As much as fifty years ago, the Russian economist Bogdanov and
the German sociologist Plenge – proceeding from different viewpoints –
endeavored to found a school of general organizational research. They never
realized their ideal, which was a system of reference embracing all the
sciences. Today comparative behavioral research provides the natural basis
for such a system of reference. Many concepts in this branch of biology
will have to be reformulated for the benefit of this wider objective in
a clearer and more universally applicable way, but the concepts developed
from the study of animal behavior do, necessarily, constitute the point
of departure.
Are we at all capable of wanting what we want? Our free
will is subject to still another limitation imposed upon it by the concepts
which we ourselves have evolved and labeled with verbal designations. It
is all too easy to forget that these concepts are the highly personal work
of man, and that this does not necessarily make them a mirror of reality.
They are pigeonholes in which we file a multiplicity of phenomena so as
to help us survey, ponder, and express them. This is how human evolution
began. In the beginning was "the word" – or, more precisely, the concept
furnished with a verbal designation. These "pigeonholes," which are transmitted
from one brain to another by way of upbringing and tradition, encourage
us to believe that the phenomena contained by them belong together naturally
– in other words, that these units are realities which actually exist in
the world. They are not. Each concept or term is merely a useful device,
a mental tool. Each of them, when provided with a verbal symbol, is a useful
functional unit and, in that sense, another form of acquired or artificial
organ. Once again, there is a danger that servants will become masters,
that these filing systems will cease to serve our purposes and compress
our thoughts into their own mold. We have now reached the very stage at
which it might be expedient to submit this master-servant relationship
to critical scrutiny. However
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long and faithfully it may have served us, a concept which
no longer does its job has no right to impede us further. We must discard
it, like any tool that has ceased to be useful.
Nothing can be more important to a young scientist than
the realization that words are not to be trusted. We need them and could
not think without them, but they must be handled with the utmost caution.
They restrict our freedom of thought and lead our wishes by the hand. Once
a brain has employed certain concepts for twenty or thirty years it is
scarcely in a position to part with them, and once they have propagated
themselves for generations they acquire the stability of a firmly rooted
tree. The young and developing brain is still free and untrammeled in this
respect. It can put each such servant to the test before committing itself.