I am afraid, then, it will not be possible to let Dr. Watson have the baby after all. Behaviorism has no ethics; no standard of conduct. Yet behaviorists are preparing to build “infant laboratories,” and to save children from “unscientific parents.” Dr. Watson, in particular, calls upon us to make “systematic, long-sustained genetic studies upon the human species, begun in infancy and continued until past adolescence,”--an excellent idea. And he demands it because only thus can we gain that “experimental control over human conduct so badly needed both for general social control and for individual happiness.” He has, then, ethical notions, though he nowhere explains how he came by them. What are they? This question at least can be answered by noting what sort of conditioning he wishes to give the reflexes. And of these, love should be the most important. “The original situation which calls out the observable love responses seems to be the stroking or manipulation of some erogenous zone, tickling, shaking, gentle rocking, patting and turning upon the stomach across the attendant’s knee,” so psychology from the standpoint of a behaviorist would have us believe. And sex emotions, however understood, become later on the touch-offs of the gonads and of the interstitial glands. How are these reflexes to be conditioned so as to act in response to something besides tickling, shaking, gentle rocking, patting and turning upon the stomach across the attendant’s knee? They are not to be conditioned at all. The behaviorist wants to condition fear and rage as much as possible, but he advises that love be left where we find it soon after birth. “In our opinion,” says Dr. Watson (still in this same book) “conditioned love responses [i. e. responses awakened otherwise than directly through the aforementioned zones], especially those directed [towards] father and mother, breeding too great dependence upon parents as they do, are probably the most sinister factors in the whole system of human organization.” And he laments the fact that such conditioning is not only tolerated by society, but actually encouraged by it. This is a most melancholy philosophy, and seems to put masturbation above marriage. And what of the future? “The research psychologists in the infant-behavior laboratories, once they are established, will in time learn how to remove these conditioned emotional reactions.” No doubt parents frequently do make their children too dependent. So Dr. Watson advises that babies be hard-boiled; for the conditioning which he objects to takes place, according to his own account, chiefly during the second year. A certain physician in a once-notorious book, entitled “_Les Civilisées_,” insists that another of the characters, generally considered much debauched, is entirely normal and healthy, “_parce qu’il ne cherche pas les femmes que par le coït_.” Our leading behaviorist is more civilized still, for he says:[23]