}

outdoor bulletin advertising without any intelligent effort to estimate the comparative value. To be sure, sales in a given advertised district are sometimes checked but there are too many local factors involved to give these estimates general value. Principles of advertising cannot be deduced in this way. These judgments have about as much value as the beliefs in the performances of so-called "psychics," such as foreseeing the future, mental telepathy, and the oracular nature of the writings of the ouija-board, which are still accepted on imperfect experiential evidence by the old women of both sexes. Again, the comparative cost per reader of full, half, and quarter page newspaper and magazine insertions is rarely known to business men. Yet these facts, and many more, may be ascertained by those who understand the method of scientific investigation. Some of them have already been worked out by psychologists. Business men do not have the information because they have not yet become aware of the problem. They are using the slow, expensive, uncriticised trial-anderror method.

The trial-and-error method is not without results. It is the means, as we have said, by which the experience of the race has been achieved. Knowledge has been slowly and painfully accumulated by the unplanned elimination of errors, but when uncriticised it is a wasteful process. The amazing advance of the natural sciences during the last quarter of a century is due to a new plan of campaign. Scientists no longer wait for the tedious, unintelligent elimination of mistakes. They set definite problems, study the conditions, and then plan their investigation so that the errors of earlier workers may be eliminated. This puts intelligence into nature's unintelligent method of progress. But the scientific plan has not been generally adopted. Usually man, like the lower animals, waits for something to turn up. Then he adapts himself as best he

can.

Animals, we have observed, are dependent upon conditions that were forced upon them. To these they must adapt themselves or perish. But man can foresee and plan, if he will but use his intelligence. And by his planning he may reconstruct the environment. The world has been amazed at the success of German arms against a large part of the civilized world. The explanation is that the Germans looked ahead and planned. And in their planning they created conditions which the Allies have had to meet. We have heard much about time being on the side of the Allies. This means that they could not at once adapt themselves to the new type of war; and these new conditions were produced by Germany. Her military staff saw the problems and made their arrangements so completely that the adaptation had to come largely from her enemies. Many of the plans of the Allies were rendered obsolete by her constructive military thought. Forts were demolished like paper houses, and entirely new implements of war had to be invented and made. It is doubtful whether we shall ever have a better illustration of man's control over the conditions he must meet than this present war.

In industry, in commerce, and in military science Germany has risen above the animal method of unplanned adaptation, but in her failure to understand the collective mind of her enemies she has remained on the lower level. For her statesmen there existed no such problem. One of the many interesting psychological facts of the present war is the surprise of the German nation that the Allies do not know when they are whipped. The first magnificent Russian drive, followed immediately by the equally convincing Balkan victory, should have brought a request for peace from a purely military standpoint, which does not take into account different sorts of minds. And, again, the inability of the United States to recognize the righteousness of the German cause was to be explained, the Ger

mans thought, only by generous use of British gold and the mercenary nature of the people. But the Germans missed the point. Their ignorance of the psychology of other nations is one of the astonishing disclosures of this war. "They understand nothing of the spirit of man," as Mr. Britling said.

The array of psychological blunders of the German military and civic authorities, to carry the illustration further, is unequalled in modern history. To mention only a few, there was first the invasion of Belgium, and the scrap-ofpaper episode, which brought England into the war and shocked the civilized world. Then followed the sinking of the Lusitania, the execution of Edith Cavell and Captain Fryatt, the barbaric deportation of Belgians, the slaughter of women and children by air raids on unfortified towns, the Zimmermann note urging Mexico and Japan to make war on the United States, the secret proposal through neutral Sweden to promise protection to Argentine ships, and then to sink them "without a trace," the submarine perfidy that made the United States an active enemy, the planting of disease germs in Roumania, and the aerial bombardment of hospitals, by which wounded soldiers and nurses were killed-hideous exhibitions of brutality. No efficiency was disclosed by these acts; they reveal only amazing incapacity to understand the spirit and sentiments of civilized peoples. If these acts were not always unplanned adjustment to the supposed needs of the moment, they certainly show unintelligent adaptation. Was military necessity the motive? If so, their efficiency is arguable. But surely, sinking the Lusitania, the execution of Edith Cavell and Captain Fryatt, murdering from the air innocent women and children, and bombing hospitals have not advanced the German armies. It is gross, inexcusable incompetency; and the massed psychological blunders have sealed Germany's fate. Is it asking too much to expect a nation to be efficient in various lines? Probably na

tional ability, like that of individuals, is specific and not general; then it is attained only in those fields to which serious study and thought are given. At all events, the German belief regarding the behavior of civilized nations toward her barbarous acts grew out of uncriticised experience the animal method. And the acceptance of uncriticised experience is adaptation to events as they come to us. Experience is a filing-case from which a man draws reports from his past life. And the analogy goes further. He selects from the files that for which he is looking. If one wants to believe something one will find ample justification in one's memory records. A significant psychological corollary is that another man with essentially the same "experience" will draw the opposite conclusion. In discussing questions of efficiency with business men the writer has found them differing vitally regarding matters of policy about which they should have agreed did “experience" have objective validity. The disagreement was not in the facts but in the interpretation of them and in the attitude toward them. This last is important because the mental attitude ends by altering the facts themselves. If a man expects a plan to succeed the chances are that he will carry it through, and if one anticipates failure one is quite certain to be gratified. Unbelievers are often surprised at the experiences of followers of occult phenomena. The explanation is, of course, that believers see, hear, and feel what they are expecting. "Do you never have the feeling of having previously existed in another form?" a theosophical devotee once said to the writer. To the reply, "Never, madam," came the astonished exclamation, "That is strange! I often do!" Prophecies, again, fulfil themselves for their advocates. Believers in the miraculous cures by relics or mind produce the cure if there is nothing serious the matter-by their belief. Primitive man, who was convinced that injury to his clay image would cause his death, fulfilled his fate because he lost his

nerve; and, in more recent times, Charles Kingsley, speaking through Mr. Leigh, says: "I have seen, and especially when I was in Italy, omens and prophecies before now beget their own fulfilments, by driving men into recklessness and making them run headlong upon the very ruin that they fancied was running upon them."1 "Where there's a will there's a way" may not always be true, but it is a good mental attitude to bring the desired result. No one who did not believe in ghosts ever saw one, and visible spirits vanished with the coming of science, except in groups where science has not yet penetrated. The new knowledge that attends scientific investigation alters experience.

Experience is evidently a treacherous guide because it is likely to give what one is seeking. "I have tried putting children on their honor and letting them govern themselves, but it has failed," said a teacher recently. Of course it did. He expected failure and arranged the details so that it had to fail. Another teacher replied that he had used the plan for ten years and could not get along without it. This confidence was the reason for his success. The Colorado penitentiary system which has transformed the prison and made the roads of the State would fail under a less enthusiastic believer than Warden Tynan.

The trouble is not with experience but with the experiencer. He gets what he is looking for and so does not question the result. A variety of meanings may be observed in most experiences, and the one selected is likely to be taken either from unwillingness to undergo the effort of thinking or from emotional bias, which, again, is favored by native indolence. Spiritualistic materialization illustrates uncriticised, submissive adaptation from the side of perception. One medium has said that whenever she gives a séance, the stories told afterward grow, and always to her advantage. They grow so that when they come back to her she can hardly recognize her own work. "It 1 Westward Ho!