Harmony and Conflict in the Living World - Alexander F. Skutch [87]
A mind in which the combinations of ideas are wholly controlled by experience rests placidly within the limits of the given, content with what immediately occupies it and unconcerned about all else. It is not likely to be perturbed by fear of the unseen, by apprehension of the future, or by questions about the unexperienced past. But an intelligence that can associate ideas freely is forever restlessly sniffing about, like a dog that has lost its master in a crowd. In children this inner necessity to extend the series of ideas beyond immediate experience leads to the questioning age, when adults are harassed by incessant queries. In the long history of our species, a corresponding stage probably supervened upon a period when hominids accepted facts as they were given, like infants and domestic animals; and with no wise parent or elder sibling to provide correct answers to the innumerable questions that humans of the dawn were beginning to ask, confusion was bound to result. As Bühler (1930) suggested, if humankind ever enjoyed a time of paradisiacal clarity and innocence, it was due to the absence of that restless and boring "Why?"
Although the astronomer is curious about the remotest stars and the historian about the most distant past, the curiosity of most people is stirred chiefly by what will happen to them in the future, and why they suffer, as from accident, disease, or thwarted hope. So insistent is the need to extend the sequence of ideas in these
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directions that people will have answers at any price and will stop at no absurdity if only their curiosity may be satisfied. And there was never a lack of clever people ready to exploit neighbors who combined imperious curiosity with boundless credulity, who needed desperately to know why a loved member of the family was sick, why a plague or a famine afflicted a city, or how a war or some other hazardous enterprise would succeed. Hence arose multitudes of prophets, augurs, diviners, astrologers, necromancers, oneirocritics, and all the countless varieties of soothsayers and fortune-tellers. Hence oracles, with their ecstatic pythonesses and rich treasuries, like those at Delphi and Dodona, dotted the ancient lands. Many a victim poured out its innocent blood and had its bowels torn open so that the portents might be read in its entrails; many a distracted father, husband, or ruler was persuaded to do penance, to sacrifice cherished possessions, or even children, so that the angry gods might be appeased and stop the plague, cease to withhold the rain, or cause the wind to blow, as when Iphigenia was immolated at Aulis. Curiosity is the precursor of science and the array of useful inventions that it gives us; but since the first curious ape rudely tore apart some unoffending flower or insect, how many ills that mentally placid animals avoid has it brought upon primate animals and the unfortunate creatures that fall into their clutches!
The Falsification of Values
Closely associated with the confusion of thought that fell upon dawning intelligence was the falsification of values, especially in the field of aesthetics. The subject is difficult because judgments of beauty differ so widely. That in which one person delights as beautiful another deems ugly, and who shall arbitrate between them? The only objective standards of beauty seem to be harmony among the distinguishable parts of an object or scene, faithfulness to nature, conformity to the spontaneous rhythms of the human mind and body, or congruence with the enduring purposes of life. Only by