Refund and Reparation

Study of animals has long been popular with experimental psychologists, but they must not be mis-evaluated. Pavlov’s work was interesting: it proved dogs will be dogs. Now by light of these new observations and deductions it proved more than Pavlov knew. It proved men weren’t dogs. Must be an answer here somewhere. Let’s see. I’ve trained a lot of dogs.

I’ve also trained a lot of kids. Once I had a theory that if you trained a kid as patiently as you trained a dog, then you would have an obedient kid. Didn’t work. Hm-m-m. That’s right. It didn’t work. The more calmly and patiently one tried to make that kid into a well-trained dog— ”Come here” and he’d run away—hm-m-m. Must be some difference between kids and dogs.

Well, what do dogs have that kids don’t have. Mentally, probably nothing. But what do kids have that dogs don’t have. A good analytical mind!

Now, what if man still had his lower organism responses? Well, it seemed, on experiment, that he did. Drug him with ether and hurt him. Then give him a whiff of ether and he gets nervous. Start to put him out and he begins to fight. Other experiments all gave the same conclusion.

Lower organisms can be precisely and predictably determined in their responses. Pavlov’s dog. Any dog you ever trained. The dog may have something of an analyzer too, but he is a pushbutton animal. And so is man. Ah, yes, so is man. You know, just like rats.

Only man isn’t! Man has a wide power of choice. Interfere with that wide power and there’s trouble brewing. Aberrate him enough and he’s unpredictably push-buttonable. Cut his brain out with a knife—and he can be trained to speak woof-woof for his food. But by golly, you better cut pretty well to get a good, satisfactory one hundred percent of the time woof-woof!