It is that extreme susceptibility which makes the church say "Give us the first five years of a child's life, and he will never outgrow our influence!" Children, of all people, are most open to the power of suggestion.
Now observe the cumulative action of this power, applied to the youth of humanity, and in each generation further applied to each individual youth. Certain ideas first grasped in ages of dark savagery, or even previous to that, and then believed to be of supreme importance, were forcibly impressed upon the minds of children, all children, generation after generation. To select one simple instance, observe the use of the fear-motive in controlling the young.
Among animals there are two main modifiers of conduct, desire and fear.
They act either to gratify a desire or to avoid a danger.
The young animal does not know his dangers, and it is imperative that he should know them. In those higher species where parental education is developed, the mother shows her young what things are good for it, and teaches it the terror necessary. The little bird or beast must squat and be still, must stay in the cave or lie hid in the grass; lest the fox, hawk, lion, or whatever enemy is to be dreaded should pounce upon it. And this pre-human method of culture has come down to its through long lines of savages with their real and fancied bugaboos to terrorize the young; through ancient and modern races; through the warrior mothers and nurses using "Napoleon" or "The Black Douglas" as the impending danger, to the same primitive, ignorant custom to-day—"The Goberlins 'll git yer, if you don't watch out"!
The "pain economy" and "fear economy" of the beast and savage are long left behind, but we preserve and artificially enforce the fear instinct—by suggestion. We hypnotize our children generation after generation, with disciplinary dread, and rely so wholly upon it to enforce good behavior that our citizens see no preventive of crime except fear of punishment.
Similarly we impress on the helplessly receptive minds of our children, whose earliest years are passed under the influence of uneducated house-servants, the ancient, foolish prejudices and misconceptions of our dark past. If the expanding mind of the little child could be surrounded by the influences of our highest culture, instead of our lowest; and above all things be taught to use its own power—to observe, deduce, and act accordingly, and be carefully shielded from the cumulative force of age-old falsehood and folly, we should have a set of people who would look at life with new eyes. We could see things as they are, and judge for ourselves what conduct was needed, whereas now we see things as we have been taught they are; and believe, because we have been told so, that we cannot alter conditions.
It is not lack of mental capacity which blinds us; not lack of power which chains us; but we are hypnotized—and have been for a thousand thousand years—with carefully invented lies.
"You can't alter human nature." Who says so? Is it true? Is there no difference between the nature of the modern American and the nature of a Fiji Islander? Do they respond alike under the same conditions? Are their impulses and governing tendencies the same?
Human nature has altered from its dim beginnings, under the action of changed conditions, just as dog-nature has altered from fierce wolf and slinking jackal to the dear loved companion of mankind.
There are some properties common to all natures; some common to each race and species; some common to special strains and families; but of all "natures" human nature, the broadest, most complex, most recent, is most easily alterable.