Let that sink in. Be hypnotized the other way for awhile!
You Can Alter Human Nature!
We are naturally displeased with human nature as we see it about us. It so inert—so subservient—so incredibly dull.
Put yourself in the place of a bright youngster, two hundred years hence, looking back at these suffering times. Suppose he is studying "ancient history," and has been given pictures and books describing the life of our day. "But why did they live so?" he will ask. "Weren't they people like us? Couldn't they see—hear—feel? Hadn't they arms and hands and brains? Here's this—this—what do you call it? 'Overcrowding in cities.' What made them overcrowd?" Then the professor will have to explain. "It was their belief that governed them. They believed that economic laws necessitated all that kind of thing. Everybody believed it."
"But how could they believe it? They had intelligence; look at the things they invented, the scientific discoveries they made, the big businesses they managed! What made them believe it?" And unless the professor understands the peculiar effect of race-hypnotism he will be pushed for an answer.
What indeed makes us believe that so many human beings have to remain inferior to so few; that this kind of animal cannot be improved and elevated like any other kind? What makes us believe that because one man is inferior to another, therefore the other must take advantage of him? What makes us believe that while the wide earth responds submissively to our modifying hand; while we master arts and sciences, develop industries, probe mysteries, achieve marvels; we are, and must ourselves remain a set of helpless, changeless undesirables?
"But," the professor will say to the child, "they felt thus and so, you see." "Felt!" that sturdy son of the future will say, "Didn't they know that feeling could be changed as easy as anything?"
It will be hard indeed, when human nature is altered a little more, to make it patient with the besotted conviction of unalterableness that paralyzes it now.
A baby's opening mind should be placed among the most beautiful and rational conditions, specially arranged for easy observation and deduction. It should be surrounded by persons of the best wisdom now ours; and whatever it may lack of what we do not yet know to be true, it should be religiously guarded from what we do know to be false.
Every college should have its course in Humaniculture, and the most earnest minds should be at work to steadily raise the standard of that new science.