“I hadn’t finished,” said Shonto dreamily. “That will be the result unless men learn to think. They have brains, why don’t they think? Because they have been relieved of the necessity for thinking by the ancient spellbinders whom we still worship to-day. That’s why they don’t think. Man is naturally lazy—more so mentally than any other way. If others have done his thinking for him, he should worry! It gives him time to pursue the things that he likes—money, pleasure, love, self-aggrandizement.”
“Well, I understand all that. But it doesn’t help.”
“We’re going to make him think in spite of himself,” said Shonto. “We’re going to give him a quicker brain, so that he will be compelled to think willy-nilly. His brain is good, but it needs exercise. And he has not been obliged to exercise it. Hence it has become slothful. Considering the progress that our few thinkers have made, the brain of the average man is far below normal. We must bring it up to normal so that it will exercise itself and grow whether he wants it to or not. Then he’ll shed his stupidity and open his eyes, and maybe something will go bust in the wheels of the system that rules us. We’re going to feed him the extract of the thyroid glands of sheep, sharpen his intellect, put the zip of life into him. Then he’ll think, and he’ll probably get mad. But we are only at the beginning of this great study of the glands and their secretions, and what they may do for man.
“The thyroid is the gland of energy. It controls the growth of certain organs and tissues of brain and sex. The internal secretions of our thyroid glands, mind you, are not necessary to life. If these secretions are inadequate, we may go on living, but we shall be below normal mentally, and our level of energy will remain low. But when more thyroid is introduced into the system our vital chemical reactions will speed up. It has been proved and accepted without qualification by men of science that the more thyroid a person has the more energetic will he be. Our dull people are, in many cases, only victims of an insufficiency of thyroid. One’s memory is affected by his thyroid glands. And without memory, who can learn? Judgment depends on memory, doesn’t it? It requires memory, the association of experiences. Quick thinking calls for thyroid glands that are normal. Do you know, Charmian, that many criminals are only the victims of their glands—and that science can probably correct this in time by supplying the unfortunates with the gland secretions which they lack? Do you realize that it is, even now, an established scientific fact that idiocy can be cured by feeding the subject the extract of the thyroid glands of sheep? And—and— Well, I simply have great hopes for the race if science eventually finds it possible to quicken the thinking apparatus by the introduction of gland extracts.”
“Has anything been accomplished along that line?” she asked. “Have you accomplished anything?”
“I have,” he told her. “I am convinced that we are on the right track.”
“Tell me of some case,” she begged.
He seemed to be searching his mind. “The greater part of the cases that I have handled,” he said at last, “were concerned with subjects whose maladies I cannot discuss with you because of their delicate nature. In brief, subjects who were troubled with the problems of sex. And such cases as I have had that called for the introduction of thyroxin are still in the experimental stage. Only time will tell whether we are right or not.”
“But can’t you notice results?”
“Oh, yes—in many cases. But whether or not the results will be permanent no one can say at present.”