definite kind of textbook which supports and advocates a specific viewpoint regarding the American government and our economic system. We firmly believe that such groups have the clear right to advocate a particular concept of economics, or of government. But educators should not be pressured into subscribing to any particular viewpoint even at the risk of being characterized as unobjective, or the textbooks as un-American. The greater concept of Americanism requires a tolerance toward varied viewpoints on economics and politics (so long as these are in the framework of our great American established constitutional processes) which the framers of this questionnaire do not seem to subscribe to. This questionnaire is of loaded character, and we conclude that no textbook could be as biased or as unscientific in principle as the questionnaire of this Committee. A second issue which concerned our committee is the "Re-evaluation Procedure" used by our own Los Angeles Curriculum Division when complaints are received concerning teaching materials. It seems contradictory to spend great effort screening teaching materials before adopting them, if after such adoption, an anonymous complainer or two can succeed in having such materials removed by the Curriculum Division from active use while a "Re-evaluation" is made of its objectivity and value. We express our concern about this process. To foster greater citizen understanding of the program of the public schools, and to evaluate the great growth of our school system in the past few decades, our Committee presents a further recommendation: We feel that a thorough study of the entire City School System should be undertaken, which would help to strengthen public confidence in our schools and to remedy weaknesses while striving for continually better education for our children. It is our feeling that such a survey can be conducted by recognized educators and specialists with the cooperation of citizens to whom progress can be reported and where questions can be answered and recommendations of citizens can be made. This would make for a joint educator-citizen survey of our school needs and growth, a technique which other communities have used successfully in seeking to inform themselves on the needs of their own schools. It is quite clear that when citizens and groups of citizens are given the facts concerning school policies such as those which govern the adoption of teaching materials and textbooks, (Cont. on page 90) NEW OUTLOOK Living the Life Learn to live and live to learn FRANCES R. LISCHNER, M.D. Sanity And Insanity HEALTH OF BODY and health of mind are inseparably connected. A diseased mind in a healthy body, or a healthy mind in a diseased body, are alike incompatible. Health has reference to perfect harmony and complete development, and is therefore an ideal condition rather than a present reality. Progress along the line of normal development leads continually to broader vision and to a completer life. The goal of man is perfection; arriving at this goal, man will find himself in perfect harmony with nature and at one with divinity. Sickness and disease are therefore due to incomplete and imperfect develop ment. The life of the animal is cir cumscribed by its own appetites, and limited by the necessities of its environment. The animal ego in man Barrows his vision and limits his J. D. Buck, M.D. endeavors to the circle of self. Having transcended the animal plane, the nature of man aspires to the next higher; and whenever he ignores or denies this aspiration, which is his human birthright, his whole nature tends to revert to the animal plane. Whole races have thus reverted to barbarism, and besotted individuals, even in communities of advanced civilization, are often thus bestialized. This condition often results when reason is first dethroned, and where the human qualities gradually fade out and give place to the animal instincts and appetites. Such human beings not only manifest the instincts dangerous to society, for the linger of animals, but they are even more ing light of reason converted to cunning intelligence may, with the semblance of beneficence, clothe treach ery in the garb of purity. When the object of the demon's treachery is accomplished or defeated, nothing can so chill the blood and terrify the soul as the shriek of his baffled rage or the howl of his fiendish triumph. The growl of the tiger or the roar of the lion are tame in comparison to the human voice thus degraded. The numbers of the incurably insane in all civilized countries are counted by tens of thousands, and these cases are largely on the increase. Like the diseases of the physical body, mental alienation manifests every conceivable degree, and every variety of form, from the morbid and melancholy to the raving maniac. In recent cases, and in the milder forms of this disease, treatment is sometimes followed by satisfactory results; still, in spite of all advancement in the art of medicine, the number of incurable maniacs steadily increases. The number of insane thus steadily encroaches upon the number of sane in every community, and this ratio of increase is likely to become still greater. The intellectual advancement of the human race has been very marked even within the past few decades, so that within the memory of those now living the whole theater of the activity of man has changed. Culture, in its highest sense, cannot be confined to intellectual advancement; nor can real progress for man be expressed in the race for wealth, extravagance, and selfish indulgence. None of these things necessarily elevate man beyond the sphere where the animal ego reigns supreme. Man may be highly intellectual or a highly sensuous animal, but he is animal still, so long as self rules, and so long as selfish greed, no matter how expressed, inspires his efforts and shapes his ends. In his exaltation over the intellectual progress and material prosperity of the age, man has forgotten his birthright and his immortal destiny. In "free and enlightened America" the struggle for life has been transferred from the physical to the mental realm. When the country was new and sparsely settled the percentage of those who were engaged in manual labor or physical pursuits was large, and literary pursuits and mental strain were the exception. The ruling passion in America today is to avoid manual labor, to secure wealth without toil, to indulge sensuous appetites, and in every way to promote selfish interests and aims. Mental strain has thus increased manifold, and bodily disease has given place to mental alienation and to the wreck of reason. The conservative and moderating influences of the old religions have largely withdrawn, and in their place, to add to NEW OUTLOOK the mental strain and general confusion, have come that psychological babel, modern spiritualism, cultism, and that soul-destroying mildew, materialism. These innovations serve only to materialize all spiritual conceptions or tend to destroy all hope of better things, or kill out every noble aspiration of the soul. To add still further to the mental strain that the human mind must endure, socalled mental or spiritual healing, rich in assertion and poor in lasting results, seems bent on crowding the mind, all unprepared as it is, into the subjective realm, the very highway to insanity. The perfect development of an individual and the complete harmony that constitutes the ideal life, and which is the only complete health of the human being, may seem to many an impossible attainment, and thus give rise to discouragement. Every well-meaning and earnestly striving individual has only to remember that this ideal of health is none other than the ideal of religion, and that the effort to reach this ideal perfection is the effort to become Christ-like. That this goal may be reached in the present life by but very few is no reason for relinquishing all efforts toward its attainment, for no such struggle can ever be in vain. The structure and laws of action of the human brain, and the laws of the human mind, all show that narrow views and selfish aims tend to unbalance and degrade the whole human being. The nature of man is complex in both structure and func tion, and a wide range of activities is therefore necessary to maintain its integrity. Nothing so dwarfs man as selfishness; nothing so broadens and elevates man as sympathy. If for any great length of time, the one engages in specific manual labor bodily mechanism conforms to the narrow range of activities and be comes deformed. If one follows a specific line of thought to the exclu sion of all other mental exercise, the thoughts revolve in a circle that is continually narrowing, and the chan nels of which are constantly deepening till the entire process becomes automatic. Other organs atrophy for lack of use, and the entire structure thus becomes unbalanced. Many per sons are thus possessed; only a few possess real knowledge. This condi tion of possession differs from monomania only in degree, and it is often thus only a question of time as to when real insanity will declare itself. There are four things that men most desire, namely, love, wealth, fame, and power. Greed for these narrows all individual life to the hor izon of self, and the ravings of the insane might be classed as due to disappointment or even to success in 74 1 one of these realms. Outside of the thousands of the actually insane, there are other thousands who are thus drifting toward the same goal, or who are laying the foundations deep and strong for insanity in the coming generations of men and women. If one will but study the encroachments of greed for gold through all its phases down to the condition where in the midst of plenty the miser dies from utter want; if one will observe how slowly but surely every noble impulse gives place to the consuming passion, and how generosity shrivels as in a consuming fire, he cannot fail to be convinced that selfishness at last, in every form, overreaches self, and leads inevitably to defeat and ruin. Selfishness is indeed the father of every vice, and vice destroys its votaries like a very moloch. The time has now fully come when our mental habits and intellectual states are of paramount importance. If the combined skill of the medical fraternity of the world is unable in any large degree to remove the results of mental vice and to restore the insane to intellectual health, it is time to inquire into the real cause of insanity, and to endeavor to find a method for its prevention. We continually measure what we call success in life by false standards. We are in urgent need of a sealer of weights and measures in the intellectual and spiritual realm, to protect our own highest interests from the worst frauds perpetrated by ourselves. This standard is indeed not wanting, but it has been so misinterpreted and so misapplied that it has become of no avail. This standard is revealed in the Sermon on the Mount, and it may be summed up in one word, altruism. In the name of the sacred altars of religion, corporations of selfish men gather tithes and amass millions, while the poor go unhoused and the little children cry for bread. To complete the sacrilege and emphasize the awful sarcasm in the name of Him with seamless garment and with no place to lay his weary head, this corporate selfishness expresses surprise and sorrow, and appoints seasons of fasting and prayer over the fact that the great hungry, surging masses of humanity turn away from the churches and scout with scorn the very name of religion! This may possibly, by misinterpretation in certain quarters, be called a tirade against religion and the churches; very well, my brother, call it what you will, but first inquire of your soul whether it is not true, and account to your conscience for the |