And no wonder. It has given us Copernicus, Galileo, Galvani, Volta, Faraday, Pasteur, the Curies, Edison, Marconi, Westinghouse, Burbank, and thousands of others--men for the most part personally poor, but adding without measure to the material wealth of the world. If all these men are back of the big stick; if it be they who bid us give up our God, our souls, wills and even our minds, ordering us to become accustomed to the idea that we are but machines--and if in doing so they are sticking to their business and not wandering off into fields they have failed to make their own, it might (perhaps) be folly to disobey. But let us first make certain as to whose voice is on the air. We have, all of us, a few more or less cherished beliefs. We have grown up leaning upon--call them props and crutches if you will. Some of us have even been riveted to moral scruples which, when we try to go in a direction they forbid, dog us with the clanking hinderance of a ball and chain. We doubt if we could continue to be good citizens without them. We do not even know if good citizens, in the old sense of the word, are any longer desired. Without our props we are likely simply to fall--and we have never yet seen people walking upright without props of some sort. We actually doubt the advisability of trying to progress on all fours. There are new props, better than the old? Good! Let us see them. Let us test them, and make sure that they be indeed from science’s own workshop. And having mentioned the Watson brand of artificial limb, we may as well begin by experimenting with that, finding out by what still waters and into what green pastures we may wander with its aid. FOOTNOTES: [1] _America_, December, 4, 1926. [2] “The Approaching Crisis,” by Henry Nelson Wieman, teacher of philosophy at Occidental College, Los Angeles, _Century Magazine_, November, 1926. [3] _Current History_, September, 1926. CHAPTER II BEHAVIORISM FROM THE STANDPOINT OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 1. THE MISSING MR. MIND Dr. Watson practically begins his best known book, “Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist,” with the statement that he is not concerned with problems of consciousness. And one at first understands him to mean that in his capacity of behaviorist he is not concerned with problems of this sort. He knows as a human being, one supposes, that he is alive. He does not, presumably, address his books to people in a state of coma. So it would seem that, as a man, he is concerned not only with his own consciousness but with the consciousness of others; that he is like the judge who knew something when off the Bench but refused to know it when on. As we read, however, this kindly interpretation becomes untenable.