"Psychology isn't our business. We're specialists."
I slightly sneered at him. "Son, when you are trying to stop wars, psychology is the only business you're in! You're in the business of trying to answer the questions about what makes men tick—including the tick they make these days that sounds so much like an infernal machine. But you think that's still the reason—business."
"A lot of big shots," Paul answered, "have called on the psychologists to contribute. Asked them to speed the work on their science and the science of sociology—so we'll have a solid technical basis for establishing peace."
"Yeah. They have. And not one God-damned super-brain in the barrel has stopped to note for a moment—so far as I'm aware—that the psychologists are 'way ahead of them. The science of personality—of behavior—of consciousness and instinct—is well along. The psychologists could tell them why men fight. They could tell them why—so far as present evidence indicates—men are going to go right ahead having wars—atomic bombs, germs, and all—into the far, foreseeable future."
"Why?" he asked mildly.
"Oh—because they exploit individualism and never take any responsibility for it. Their hostilities and aggressions, frustrations and fears—add up, inside their groups, and burst out, since they're never even noticed, let alone dealt with, on the personal and private level, where they originate."
"So you have written," he grinned. "So what? Should we pure scientists simply say that peace is hopeless? Quit cold? Or try for peace with what we do know?"
"You and your pure science! Pure is a word that should be forbidden all of you. What's pure in a science that deals exclusively with the object and rules out the subject doing the dealing?"
"Just," Paul answered, "the result. If we hadn't ruled man out of man's investigations, we'd still believe the earth was flat, the sky was a cup, and the stars were holes in it. We'd still be premedieval—"
"Yet—when you did establish the objective facts to a considerable degree—set up physics and chemistry and biology—did you boys then turn that knowledge and that method upon yourselves?"