Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers, and Swells: The Best of Early Vanity Fair

by Unknown

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  How much more fruitful the behaviorist method is than the method of mental interpretation, at least where animals are concerned, may be seen in the experimental study of the process of learning in animals, which practically begins with [Edward L.] Thorndike’s Animal Intelligence. A cage or a maze is constructed, the animal is put inside and food outside, or vice versa, and its attempts to get at the food are observed. Its first attempts are entirely random, and only succeed by accident; but after a certain number of trials with the same cage or maze, the animal learns exactly what to do, and becomes as expert as a trained acrobat. Of course the task must be sufficiently easy for the first accidental success to be achieved before the animal is weary of trying, but provided this condition is fulfilled, any animal of an intelligent species will gradually achieve perfection. If it is then allowed to forget, it learns again much more quickly than the first time. These experiments on learning are of great importance, and may in time throw light on the best methods of human education.

  The study of animal instinct is another important branch of comparative psychology which is much more fruitful when conducted by behaviorist methods than when entangled in discussions as to what an animal “foresees” or “desires”. These discussions lead nowhere, because we have no means of testing the various hypotheses. Observations of behavior, on the contrary, yield definite results, and give whatever genuine knowledge is possible as to the instincts of animals. These instincts are much clearer and more definite than those of human beings, and yet they are the source from which human instincts have developed. For all who wish to understand human instincts, accordingly, animal instincts are very enlightening. A book such as [W. H. R.] Rivers’ Instinct and the Unconscious shows how they throw light even upon such a subject as the nervous disorders caused by the war, many of which were of the nature of a throw-back to some more primitive form of the instinct of fear.

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  This brings us to the matters dealt with by psychoanalysis, which is primarily a method of understanding and airing certain kinds of nervous disorders. It is undoubtedly a very valuable method, representing an immense advance. But the subject has been obscured by the emphasis laid on the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious. There was formerly a notion that we ought to be “conscious” of all that goes on in our “minds”, and when this notion had to be abandoned, people resorted to “unconscious” mental processes as something rather strange and mysterious.

  In fact, however, everybody—whether layman, psychologist, or philosopher—has had the very vaguest ideas as to what was meant by “consciousness”. William James threw out a challenge in his essay called Does “Consciousness” Exist?, but the effect of this challenge was less than it ought to have been. It seems to be the rule that our mental processes are unconscious, and the exception when they are conscious; and even when they are conscious, this is a quite unimportant characteristic of them. What is more, the unconscious desires with which Freudians operate appear to be, not mental states at all, but merely tendencies to a certain kind of behavior. When this is realized, and psychoanalytic material is re-stated in the language of behaviorism, the mystery surrounding “unconscious wishes” disappears, and the facts concerned cease to be surprising. Thus, in regard to the “unconscious” or “sub-conscious”, behaviorism as a method has advantages quite as great as in regard to animal psychology.

  As a method, however, it is not obliged to claim that it can cover the whole field of psychology; when it advances this claim it ceases to be merely a method and becomes a psychological theory. It is time to consider it from this point of view.

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  Behaviorism as a theory holds that none of the facts upon which psychology is based are essentially private to one observer. This involves the view that there is no such thing as “thought”, as opposed to bodily movements; for bodily movements can be observed by others, but my thoughts, if they exist, can only be observed by myself. We are thus faced with the question: Do people think? And, if so, what happens when they think?

  To this question Mr. [John B.] Watson gives a very radical answer: People do not think, they only talk. What is called “thinking” consists of talking to oneself. He maintains that, if we had suitable instruments, we could discover incipient little movements of a man’s throat and tongue when he “thinks”, and that these are the movements of beginning to pronounce the words to himself. A person who can “think”, according to this view, is merely a person who has learned to pronounce words in the right order, like a rat which has learned to take the right turns in a maze. Freud relates somewhere that, when he was lecturing in America, after he had explained that dreams are always egoistic, a lady got up and said that might be true in Austria, but was not true in America, where dreams were often full of virtue. I hope nobody will retort by maintaining that Mr. Watson’s view of thinking may be correct in America, but is not correct in Europe.

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  Mr. Watson’s view of thought is not so easily disposed of as some might be inclined to suppose. To begin with: we only know the thoughts of others through their behavior, and especially through what they say or write, so that any evidence that thinking is more than talking must be derived from observation of ourselves. Now, obviously something goes on when we think. Is this of the nature of small bodily movements? Or is it of some quite different nature? Before going into the question, I recommend the reader to think concentratedly about a bubble with his mouth open. Nine people out of ten will feel an almost irresistible impulse to bring their lips together so as to form the letter B. This little experiment will show the reader that Mr. Watson may be right.

  There are, however, great difficulties in the way of accepting his view as the whole of the truth. To begin with, many people are “visual” types; they “think” mainly in visual images, and even words are represented rather by the look of them in print than by the pronunciation of them. Most of their “thinking” is not in words at all, but in more or less vague images. This seems to be true of the bulk of the human race, and only untrue of writers and orators, to whom words as such are specially important. If so, Mr. Watson’s theory of thinking may be true of “thinkers”, but not of ordinary mortals. Purely verbal thinking may be the highest stage, not the lowest. In that case, what happens when the rest of us think? Or, for that matter, what happens in sensation, for example when we see something?

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  The traditional view is that when we look at an object something occurs which is called a “perception”, and that when afterwards we remember the object or imagine a similar one, something occurs which is called an “image”. Both of these seem to be radically different occurrences from matter in motion. Mr. Watson denies the “image” altogether; that is to say, he denies that what we take to be images are anything radically different from sensations or perceptions. They may be fainter, and they may have no proximate cause external to the nervous system; but they are not a different kind of entity. This is a difficult question, upon which there has been much controversy. Let us, for the sake of argument, concede Mr. Watson’s contention as to images. What, then, shall we say of perceptions?

  It is, of course, admitted by the behaviorist that we perceive things. This is essential to his position. In acquiring physical knowledge, we are all supposed to perceive the same things; this is the advantage of physical knowledge over the psychological knowledge supposed to be derived from introspection, which no other observer can directly verify. But the question arises: How does the behaviorist know that he perceives things? Does not this knowledge involve that very introspection which he professes to discard?

  It is a perfectly possible hypothesis that animals, although they perceive objects just as well as we do, are quite unaware that they do so. A cat, we may suppose, can have the knowledge which we should express by saying “there is a mouse”, but not the knowledge “I see a mouse”. Perceptions
are fleeting occurrences, which do not have the persistence believed to belong to physical things. You may open your eyes for a moment, see the things in your room, and then shut your eyes again. You believe that the things in your room have not existed only during the moment when your eyes were open, but something did exist only during that moment. This something is what is called a perception. It is impossible to deny that we have knowledge of fleeting occurrences of this sort. And it is impossible to identify these fleeting perceptions with the movement of the eyelids or the stimulus to the optic nerve or the disturbance in the brain caused by this stimulus.

  And the odd thing is that, when we come to reflect, we find these fleeting perceptions to be what we really know about the external world. The permanent objects of traditional physics and common sense are inferred from what we perceive. And the publicity of physical observation is only a matter of degree, because no two people, looking at the “same” object, have precisely similar visual impressions. The momentary perception, moreover, is more like what the most modern physics requires as its substratum than is the permanent “thing” of common sense. Matter and bodies, which used to be thought to persist through time, have been dissolved by Einstein and Relativity into series of “events”, each brief and evanescent like my perception when I open my eyes for a moment.

  It seems, therefore, that what occurs in this moment is the sort of thing to be taken as the ultimate reality out of which both mind and matter are constructed. If so, we shall require new categories and new modes of thought. The behaviorist may remain justified as against traditional psychology, but not as against the revolutionary physics of our time. The physicists have undermined our belief in “matter” at the same time that the psychologists have undermined our belief in “mind”. Therefore, the work of the psychologists cannot be used to further the cause of matter, but must be placed to the account of a “tertium quid”, which the American realists, following a suggestion of Dr. H. M. Sheffer [the logician], call “neutral stuff”. But this opens a very large question, which cannot be dealt with as an appendix to a discussion of Behaviorism.

  THE WOMAN BEHIND THE MASK

  COLETTE

  FROM NOVEMBER 1924

  He gazed abstractedly at the foaming torrent of masqueraders streaming past him, vaguely disturbed by the vivid colours and by the dissonances produced by two orchestras that were placed too close together. The hood of his monk’s gown was too tight across his temples and his mask made his nose twitch irritably. Nevertheless he savoured this mood, half of unrest, half of pleasure, which made the passing of the hours almost unnoticed. He had wandered through all the corridors of the opera house, had tasted the golden dust of the ballroom floor, had recognized some rather bored friends and had found the indifferent arms of a very fat girl—whose fancy had impelled her to represent a sylph—wound about his neck. Embarrassed by his domino, tripping in the manner of all males suddenly encumbered with skirts, this doctor in the monk’s garb did not dare to remove either his mask or his domino on account of the rather college-boy sort of prank that he was perpetrating.

  “I shall spend the night at the Nogents,” he had said to his wife. “They’ve just telephoned me and I’m afraid the poor old lady . . . but, do you know I had an almost childish desire to go to that ball. It’s ridiculous, don’t you think, for a man of my age never to have seen a fancy dress opera ball?”

  “Yes, dear, absolutely absurd! If I’d known, perhaps I shouldn’t have married you.”

  “But you—don’t you want to go to this—this green and violet ball? Even without me . . . if you would enjoy it, dearest?”

  She had shuddered—one of those long shivers of disgust in which one could see her hair and her delicate hands tremble and her throat quiver as if at the touch of a slimy creature or the sight of something repulsive.

  “I! Can you see me in that mob? delivered into all those hands? I’m not a prude—but I am—I am fastidious—and I can’t help it!”

  Leaning against the balustrade of a box just over the grand stairway, he thought of that trembling doe, his wife, while he stared at the bare back of a sultana squeezed by two enormous hands with long dirty nails. Crowding out of the sleeves of a Venetian signor, these hands left their impress on the soft white feminine flesh. Because he was thinking of his wife, he started perceptibly when he heard at his side a little “ha-hum”, a ghost of a cough that was habitual with her. He turned and saw, mounted on the balustrade, what was clearly a Pierrot from the flowing sleeves, the wide pantaloons, the skull cap, the chalky whiteness of the bit of skin that was visible under the lace ruffle of the mask. The thin stuff of the costume and of the cap, shot with threads of violet and silver, shone like the iridescent-salt-water eels that you catch at night, spearing them from a boat to which they have been attracted by a pine torch.

  Overcome with surprise he waited for the little “ha-hum” again; but in vain. The eel-like Pierrot, seated nonchalantly, beat with one swinging heel on the marble balustrade and revealed of herself only two satin shoes, and a black gloved hand resting on one hip. The two slanting slits in the mask, carefully veiled with tulle, allowed only a smothered flash of indistinct fire from her eyes.

  He had to speak—

  “Irene!”

  Then he stopped, remembering his own deception. But little used to making believe, he had forgotten to disguise his voice. The Pierrot scratched herself with a movement free and rather common.

  The husband breathed again. “Ah, it is not she!”

  But the Pierrot drew from a pocket a golden box and opened it to take out a stick of rouge; and the anxious husband recognized an ancient snuff-box with a little mirror inside of it, his present to her on their last anniversary.

  He pressed his hand to his heart with a movement so sudden and so unconsciously theatrical that the eel-like Pierrot noticed it.

  “Is that a declaration, Violet Domino?”

  He did not answer. Half choked with astonishment, suspense, and dark forebodings, he listened for a long, long moment to the scarcely disguised voice of his wife. The eel looked at him, perched lightly, with her head on one side like a bird.

  Then she shrugged her shoulders, jumped to the ground and moved away. The movement released the anxious husband, who, becoming actively and normally jealous, became once more capable of thought. He rose and followed her, very deliberately and without haste.

  “She is here with someone,” he thought. “In less than an hour I shall know all.”

  A hundred dominoes, violet or green, showed that he need not fear being either noticed or recognized. Irene walked carelessly ahead of him. He was thunderstruck at noticing that she swayed her hips, and dragged her feet a little, as if she were wearing mules.

  A Byzantine, in emerald and gold brocade, seized her in passing, and she drooped into his arms, her slender figure swallowed up in his embrace. Her husband ran towards the couple and reached them just in time to hear Irene cry coquettishly—“You brute, you!”

  She moved away with the same relaxed and easy step, stopping often, gazing in at the open doors of boxes, scarcely ever turning round. She hesitated at the foot of a staircase, turned abruptly, went back to the entrance of the orchestra, and insinuated herself adroitly, into a noisy group of people, with a movement like that of a sword gliding into its sheath. Ten pairs of arms imprisoned her. A wrestler, almost naked, thrust her against the edge of the lowest tier of boxes and held her there.

  She yielded under the weight of the man, turned her head for a laugh that was matched by the laughs of the others; and the man in the violet domino saw the teeth of the wrestler shining under the flap of his mask. Then she extricated herself lightly and sat down upon the steps which led to the ball-room. Two steps behind her, her husband watched her. She fixed her mask, smoothed her rumpled jacket and readjusted her close-fitting cap. She seemed as calm as if she were alone. Then after a few minutes rest, she s
et forth again.

  On the dance floor, she put her arm on the shoulder of a warrior who asked her, without words, to dance. She danced with him, pressed close to his side.

  “He is the one!” said the husband to himself.

  But she did not exchange a single word with the warrior and left him, calmly, at the end of the dance.

  She went and drank a glass of champagne at the buffet, then a second glass, paid for them, watched, motionless, the beginning of a fight between two men, surrounded by a crowd of shrieking women. She amused herself also by putting her little black impish hands on the white throat of a woman dressed as a Hollander, in a gold headdress. The latter cried out nervously.

  At last the anxious husband, following her, saw her stop, as if compelled, beside a young man, seated panting and out of breath on a bench, fanning himself with his mask. She bent and, taking his beautiful, fresh but rather brutal face mockingly by the chin, kissed his half-open mouth.

  But her husband, instead of throwing himself upon them and tearing the two apart, lost himself in the crowd.

  Stupefied, he no longer feared—he no longer hoped—that she was deceiving him. He was sure, now, that she knew neither the dance-intoxicated youth whom she was kissing, nor the warrior with whom she had danced. He was certain that she was not waiting or looking for anyone, and that, abandoning the lips that she held with her own, like a flower drained of honey, she would set off one instant later in search of another—to forget and to taste until she should finally become satiated and go home—the strange pleasure of being alone, free, really herself, in her native animalism, of being unknown, in the solitude absolute and inviolate conferred upon her by a fancy dress costume and a little mask.