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also in an intimate way with the higher nervous system. It is therefore one of the sources of the energy of the intellectual functions. And the posterior pituitary regulates, not only the reproductive female organs, but also the maternal promptings and their emotional correlates. A great deal of evidence,' writes Berman, with reference to the posterior pituitary, 'is in our possession concerning the disturbances of emotion accompanying disturbances of this gland, and controllable by its control. It might be said to energize deeply the tender emotions, and instead of saying" soft-hearted" we should say "much-pituitarized.'

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The presence of different organs and of different tendencies correlated with the functions of these organs accounts for marked differences between the sexes in interest, curiosity, and purpose. The female, for instance, holds the attention of the male, and the male that of the female, with particular intensity and persistency. Conventions and habits develop on the basis of these organically determined tendencies. Thus energy is differently directed in each sex.

If the new knowledge about the endocrine glands makes anything evident, it is the energy inequality of the sexes

an inequality which, in respect of certain physiological functions and mental activities, constitutes a superiority, and, in respect of others, an inferiority. There is not simply a difference in total energy; there are differences in the distribution of the available energy, whatever it may be. In woman that distribution does not, on the whole, favor muscular and intellectual achievements.

So far goes for the present our incomplete and somewhat uncertain knowledge. Even in this imperfection it throws some light upon our problem and upon the future of the sexes.

V

The interest of this paper is to be found mainly in the attempted demonstration of the effects of difference of energy whatever their source upon quantity and quality of mental output when everything else is equal, and in its reference to sources of difference in the distribution of energy in man and woman. That distribution is controlled by sex-biology, and places women in a position of inferiority regarding mental work.

Had our purpose been a wider one, - for instance, discussion of all the factors which may contribute to the lesser mental achievements of women, we should have had to take up, among other things, the greater variability of the male sex — a biological fact responsible for the chance production of male individuals surpassing the stabler sex in intellectual talents.

We have not even intended a complete examination of the problem of energy in its connections with mental achievement under the supposition of equal intellectual gifts. Otherwise we should not have left out of consideration childbearing and nursing, and other functions intimately connected with them. It might be said that these specific sex-functions, considered together with the particular direction they give to the interests of women, are in themselves enough to account for all the observed differences in achievements between the sexes. However that may be, we have left out these sexfunctions because we wanted to take into consideration only the unavoidable, eternal verities. Childbearing or no childbearing, there are between men and women the differences here set forth; and though childbearing should fall completely under the ban of polite fashion, to the admirable enrichment of women's leisure, this article would still stand.

WHY I LIVE IN TAHITI

BY JAMES NORMAN HALL

Ir may be well to say at the outset that I have no desire to add another chapter to the already voluminous 'Literature of Escape,' and I do not for a moment believe that why I live in Tahiti or why I live at all is a matter of any great concern except to myself. But in these days, more than ever, it would seem, if a man steps out of the ranks of those who keep office hours and country-club lockers he is looked upon - well, as odd. Perhaps he is, but it can do no harm to investigate that point of view, or at least to explain one's own.

Fortunately for those who do step out, — an insignificant number, there will always be hosts of others to keep the office hours, to march shoulder to shoulder, getting things done in the world or trying to get them done. But these dogged plodders and doers have the defects of their qualities, and one of them is that they resent having disinterested spectators along their line of march. We applaud them wholeheartedly, but they do not want applause; they want emulation, and they seem to resent not getting it. During a recent brief visit to America I found that attitude toward me unmistakable in a small circle of relatives, friends, and acquaintances - but perhaps I am wrong. It may have been mere friendly curiosity as to my reasons for choosing a small tropical island in the mid-Pacific as a place in which to live.

I

In one case at least it was more than curiosity. It was an undisguised, loving concern for my moral and spiritual welfare, for in my Aunt Harriet's picture of the South Seas there is always a white beach-comber in the middle foreground; and like a shadow behind him, reproaching him, stands the man he once was and will never be again. On the evening of my arrival at her house she followed me upstairs to the guestroom; and, having closed the door behind her, she sat down on a sofa to wait until I had unpacked my bag. When that small task was done, 'Now, dear,' she said, 'we must have a long talk. I want you to tell me why you live on that wretched little island. You must tell me what keeps you there'-and implicit in her voice and manner was an assurance of sympathy, of a desire to understand all and to forgive all.

Her question startled me a little, for I had never before thought of myself as actually living in Tahiti. I had always regarded America as home, and Tahiti and various other islands in the eastern Pacific as places where I made long and happy visits. But a moment's reflection convinced me that she was right. I had spent four out of the last five years in Tahiti or thereabout. One hardly retains the status of visitor after so long a period. Yes, assuredly, 'that wretched little island' was my home if I might be said to have one.

We talked through dinner, after dinner, and until far into the night — I warming to my theme, becoming all but eloquent regarding the advantages of solitude and a simple, fairly primitive way of living; my aunt listening with evident interest, asking from time to time very pertinent questions. At length she brought the discussion round to the question of one's duties, rights, and privileges as an American citizen. I said that I would always recognize my duty to go to the aid of the country in time of war; as for the rights and privileges, — although there were many, undoubtedly, I was willing to forgo them in order that I might live according to my own ideas of what constitutes living. My aunt was surprised that I had no deep feeling of patriotism toward America as a whole, but this seems to me natural, inevitable. Patriotism is based upon community of blood, language, tradition, ideals; and, needless to say, there is no longer such community in the United States, nor can there be again for centuries to come if ever. My aunt then questioned me as to my political opinions. I was in the course of explaining some of these, as well as I could, when she interrupted me.

'I see now what is wrong,' she said. 'You are an anarchist! You may not admit it, but it's true. If you had your way you would live in a place where there is no government at all!'

I consulted the dictionary to learn how, precisely, the word is defined. 'Anarchist: one who believes in anarchy.' 'Anarchy: absence of government; disorder; confusion.'

I admitted, then, being an anarchist in the sense that I longed to live in a state where, without confusion or disorder, quite the reverse, in fact,government had been reduced to the vanishing-point. I was about to describe such a state, not built by

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hands, but she absolutely refused to listen.

'No!' she said. 'It is late and we won't talk of this any more!'

She was really shocked, but she bade me good-night in her old gentle way as though convinced that an anarchist in her family must, somehow, be different from the general run of them. I was not sleepy and sat for a long time by the open window which overlooks some of the loveliest pastoral country in all the Mississippi Valley. The sky was cloudless, and under the ghostly light of the last-quarter moon the upland prairie seemed to be a part of that Land of Cockaigne which has always been my spiritual home no matter where my body happens to be.

Indeed, when I dream this land into being I sometimes identify it with Iowa, where I was born and reared; and, as soon as the identification is made, all of those actual residents of Iowa who do not and could not belong to this ideal commonwealth move of their own free will to California, which seems to be their spiritual home, and where, indeed, many thousands of them have already gone. When the last of them have crossed the Missouri River, invisible lethal walls rise, by magic, along the four boundaries of the state, and these are death to pass save to those people who are law-abiding without law men and women of such enlightened understanding, so tolerant, just, humane, and farsighted. that, even when all are assembled from the uttermost parts of the Western world, they are not a great company, and have plenty of room for increase even in territory of Iowa's modest dimensions. Here they live, and because they are all so richly endowed with the finest qualities of humankind at its best, the good of the individual and the good of their society are found to be synonymous.

No effort is needed to make this so; no laws need to be passed that it shall be so. It is so.

But when I approach one of the confines of this state of my own creation a feeling of drowsiness comes over me and I draw quickly back, out of danger. I realize that the walls are lethal for me, too. So I remain, gazing toward it from afar, comforting myself with the thought that the children of my children's children, if they are wise in the choice of their forbears, may, perhaps, be admitted in humble capacities as hewers of wood and drawers of water.

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II

I do not, of course, believe that this anarchic state is likely to be builded soon. Meanwhile there is no reason why one should not seek out a place where one may at least play at anarchy. This is possible in Tahiti, which is one of the reasons why I live there.

In order to play at anarchy with any success, two conditions are essential: one must follow an art or profession or trade which provides the necessities of life; and it must be of such a kind that it may be practised, for the most part, in solitude. I have such a trade. It is journalism.

'A journalist in solitude? How can that be?' you say. "The words are antipathetic.' I once thought they were, too, but I have found, in these days of specialization, that there may be all kinds of journalists just as there are all kinds of doctors, dentists, carpenters, clergymen. I do not know just how I fell into my particular branch of the trade or how long I may be able to follow it. Such as it is, I have it, and that suffices for the present.

You may ask, 'How does one play

at anarchy, granted that the conditions are favorable?'

One simply lives as though there were no government in existence. It will be understood that the fiction is more easily maintained in a country where one is an alien. The conditions are almost ideal in a small island colony half a world away from the parent Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But you must have no axes of any sort to grind, or exchange, or expose for sale there. When that is the case you may have very pleasant relationships with those who do. They realize that you are not competing or trying to compete with them; therefore they reveal to you only the best sides of their natures, and at length you are all but convinced that they have no other sides to reveal.

'What an ostrich-like attitude!' you may say.

Perhaps; but an anarchist, from the very nature of his belief, is forced to adopt it. And do not those of other faiths try, at times, to think as charitably as they can of their fellows? It is well that this should be. Suppose you have a friend who sees only your good qualities: although you may never deserve his high regard, you will often find yourself basking, to your own advantage, in the light of it. But I do not mean to infer that by living an aloof, disinterested life in Tahiti I have many baskers at my doorstep or that I have raised the standards of political or social or private morality there. In playing at anarchy the ends to be gained are, of course, sheer make-believe.

'But what do you do with your time?' you may ask. 'You must find it hanging very heavily on your hands.'

Never but for the sake of absolute veracity it is well to qualify that. Boredom is a universal spiritual disease and all men suffer from it at

times, no matter where they may be. But I can say, truthfully, that attacks of it grow increasingly rare in Tahiti. In America, the most virulent cause of boredom, in my own case, was to see multitudes of people engaged in useless, joyless occupations. To be sure, many of them did not appear to be aware of the awful tedium of their lives, but, being a sensitive man, I suffered vicariously for them. This is the least endurable of all suffering. In Tahiti I escape it, for, with the exception of the government employees, there is no one engaged in joyless work.

It is curious, in a place where there are so few distractions of the usual kind, that time so rarely drags. After a month or two of this quiet, uneventful life you find that you are losing your old conception of time. It becomes, like the air, fluid, seemingly inexhaustible; you live in it and by it, but it never intrudes itself as something not to be wasted. You do waste it, — prodigally, I suppose, in the highlatitude sense: that is, you no longer make unremitting use of it to your own material advantage, but I am not at all convinced that this is to be deplored. Often you will go for an all-day ramble up some grassy plateau which rises gradually toward the mountains, climbing on and on until you reach a vantage point where, on the one hand, you have a view into the depths of a great valley dappled with the shadows of clouds; and, on the other, of the palmclad lowlands and the broad lagoons beyond; and, beyond them again, of the sea-fifty, sixty miles of blue sea. There, listening to the silence, busy with your own thoughts or deep in fathomless reverie, you will sit until evening, surprised that evening comes so soon; and the strange thing from the old, high-latitude point of view is that such a waste of time brings not

anxiety but peace of mind. It is easy to believe that you have been fulfilling, during those long hours of idleness, a small but important function in the scheme of things - holding up a tiny mirror that inanimate Nature might see through your eyes how beautiful she is. On such days you are convinced that loafing is a virtue and that three fourths of the unhappiness of the world is caused by the fact that men have forgotten how to loaf.

A few days ago I was reading Hilaire Belloc's Cruise of the Nona. As he sailed his little boat along the coast of Wales he engaged in speculation as to the advantages and disadvantages of solitude and men's capacity for it. A young man, he thought, might live alone as long as he chose, but older men found themselves increasingly in need of companionship as the years passed. I think it is just the other way around. A young man cannot endure solitude for any length of time. He needs and should have plenty of stimulating companionship, but by the time he has reached middle life it is my conviction that he can live most profitably with very little of it. Solitude, to be sure, is not an unmixed blessing, and too much of it might be as bad for one as too little; but in these days, when men swarm like ants over the greater part of the earth, there is small danger of anyone getting too much of it. The strange thing, to me, is that so few people seem to want any of it. They fly from solitude as though it were the wrath to come, and seem to have lost the capacity for being alone even during very brief periods. But it is a sound instinct, doubtless, which keeps the bulk of mankind in towns and cities where they are carried so swiftly along in the current of human affairs that they have little time to speculate as to the importance of either the speed or the direction of the

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