Man is regulated by his Glands of Internal Secretion.  At the beginning of the third decade of the twentieth century, after he had struggled, for we know at least fifty thousand years, to define and know himself, that summary may be accepted as the truth about himself.  It is a far-reaching induction, but a valid induction, supported by a multitude of detailed facts.

Amazingly enough, the incontestable evidence, that first pointed to, and then proved up to the hilt, this answer to the question:  What is Man? has been gathered in less than the last fifty years.  Darwin and Huxley, and Spencer, who first opened men’s eyes to their origins, were ignorant of the very existence of some of them, and had not the faintest notion or suspicion of the real importance or function of any of them.

THE PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS

Now, there are certain prejudices and problems which appear to be rudely brushed away by the dogmatic arrogance of the principle stated.  What, you say, is Man but an affair of his peculiar gland chemistry?  But what of mind, soul, consciousness?  Still another of these pathetically one-sided and superficial theories of man as a machine pure and simple which would make him the most complicated of mechanisms, a marvel of intricate parts, but would deprive him of his essence as self-conscious unique in the universe.  Man, thinking man, at any rate, dreads to lose the cherished impregnable conviction that he is something apart, inherently, and therefore infinitely different from every other phenomenon in the range of his cosmos.

A thorough dissection of the relation and attitude toward psychic material of the consistent physiologist, who refuses to deal in contradictory terms, would lead us a little too far.  So would the reconciliation between the claims of mind and the concept of the organism as a system of chemical reactions.  The most fundamental aspects of that herculean task, warned by the sign, No Trespassing, we shall leave to the metaphysicians.  The influence of the glands of internal secretion upon the mind we must consider, but at present postpone.  Yet the hot-headed contenders on both sides may be reminded of certain facts.

We live in the most iconoclastic of ages.  There are sane people alive today going quietly about their business who deny the very existence of consciousness.  These heretics of course pooh-pooh absolutely the lions of metaphysics.  On the other hand, it may be pointed out to our mechanists who believe in mechanism to the bitter end, that even if man can be described entirely as a mere transformer of energy, there is no reason why he cannot also be described as a transformer of energy plus someone who makes use of the transformer and of the energy transformed.  The stone wall before the honest mechanist is the abolition of purpose, and design, an old insoluble problem upon his premises.  Preach, until you are blue in the face, behaviorist