СНАР. Х Characteristics of "'Wild'' Children Effects of Solitary Confine ment, CHAPTER X ASSOCIATION HUMAN NATURE IN ISOLATION BEFORE the days of the scientific study of human nature, romancers often imagined what a man would be like who had grown up without human association. In every case they portrayed a being with our faculties and reactions, although quite without culture. We know now that a child with only animals for nurses and companions would never develop the distinctively human traits. Its mentality would be arrested on a plane but little above that of an imbecile. The observations upon human beings of "wild" upbringing who at various times have been brought among civilized people show them to be characterized by a vegetative type of existence, automatic reactions, unconsciousness of self, inability to learn the use of language, absence of social emotions, and indifference to human companionship. Selfconsciousness, the rise of personality, and the ordinary capacity for thought and emotion are impossible without the give-and-take of life in society. About a century ago, from observing the mutual contamination of prison inmates, some were led to advocate the solitary confinement of prisoners, at least for the first part of their term of incarceration. It was argued that in the silence of his cell the offender would come to see his misconduct in a new light and would resolve to change his ways. But the results of the policy showed how little the penologists understood the social side of human nature. In 1821, by act of the legislature of New York, eighty convicts in the Auburn prison were put into solitary cells without labor. At the end of a year five were dead, one had killed himself, another was mad, and the rest were melancholy. The next year the experiment was abandoned. In 1842, in England, Pentonville prison began to confine the prisoner in solitude for the first eighteen months of his sentence. For the next eight years the insanity rate among Pentonville prisoners was ten times as great as in other English prisons. Since solitude is most rack- CHAP. X ing to the more developed personalities, it is not surprising that of the Fenian leaders locked up at Mountjoy from 1865 to 1867 nearly one-half went mad before their release and many others died soon afterward. After repeated experiments, in the course of which numerous prisoners went insane, the English prison authorities cut down the maximum period of solitary confinement first to nine months and later to six months. Life Victims of long-enforced solitude generally become the prey of Hermit of melancholia, delusions, and hallucinations. They cease to have emotions, shrink from the sight of others, and perhaps return voluntarily to their cell as to a grateful shelter. Hermits, too, exhibit a variety of forms of mental disintegration. The biographies of the anchorite saints record strange noises and mysterious voices which the devout of their time deemed supernatural, but which were really sense hallucinations in no wise different from those which visit to-day the isolated lighthouse keeper, or the lonely shepherd of the Sierras. The struggles of the social self against death are pathetic. In an Italian prison Pellico gained new life when he could wave a handkerchief at a fellow-prisoner, and his spirits rose at the mere sight of a human being. In cellular confinement prisoners devise many ingenious signals to convey sympathy. In Russian prisons the "politicals" developed a clever code of taps on walls or pipes as a means of communicating. In their mad thirst for companionship the immured make pets of mice, rats, and birds, even spiders, ants, and flies. In lieu of anything better, a flower or a struggling plant may furnish support to the starving social self. Incorrigible prisoners have been softened and transformed by having small animals to pet or even a flower box to tend. Struggles Famishing of the Social Self Compan One of the early "finds" of child-study was that not a few Imaginary children have imaginary companions with names and clearly ions marked traits, with whom they talk, play, quarrel, and make up. Sometimes the isolated child projects a number of imaginary playmates with distinct personalities, who have varied experiences, develop life-histories, and live on with their creator into adult life. One investigator brought to light fifty cases of children who have invented such companions. Akin to this is the practice of "talking to one's self " which grows up in hermits, trappers, prospectors, and other solitaries, and which seems due to the fact that CHAP. X The Makebelieve of Prisoners Why Solitude the lonely soul finds a faint companionship in the sound of the voice just as the timid boy in the dark is heartened by hearing his own whistling. Even the making of objects which other human beings might admire, enjoy, or use holds comfort for the solitary. Small says: "They go to work without squares, gravers, stamps, patterns, or models. Every scrap of glass or metal, every nail and pin, turns to account as a tool. Waste from the shop, bones from the kitchen, walnut, cocoanut, acorn shells, feathers, locks of hair, the bark of trees, pebbles, every kind of fragment, affords materials. Tin plates, the bowls of spoons, stone jugs, old bottles, dippers, bed posts, table tops, cell walls, and the bottoms of chairs serve for canvas and parchment." 1 The prisoner finds relief from his loneliness by tearing pictures out of books and newspapers and fastening them on his walls. If he has a latent artistic. talent he lines his cell with drawings, which almost always represent human heads or figures. If he writes he is likely to produce autobiography, the most intimate of all literary forms. Thus, "Every trifle wrought in confinement; every color stain upon prison walls; every nonsense couplet; and every attempt at biography or philosophy, represents an effort of loneliness to people the waste of hours to which the physical presence of others is denied. It is an effort to multiply the spirits of one's own personality when all other avenues of intercourse are closed." 2 GENIUS AND SOLITUDE Still, terrible as is solitude, some souls prefer it to too much society. Various motives lead one to wish to be much by himself. Men of genius voluntarily turn recluse in order to create original works. In the words of Ruskin, "An artist should be fit for the best society and should keep out of it." Thoreau puts it: "The reason of isolation is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar; and when we soar the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none left." Even when they seek communion, geniuses are so fretted or bored by the chatter of commonplace persons that they prefer to be alone. In his Letters Wagner confesses: "I always feel it to be a useless and utterly 1 M. H. Small, "Psychical Relations of Society and Solitude," Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. VII, p. 53. 2 Ibid., p. 58. resultless proceeding to converse with any one." Nothing CHAP. X agrees with me like solitude." Schopenhauer thought that "Who does not love solitude loves not freedom." Wordsworth prizes that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude. Zimmermann declares, "Who lives with wolves must join in their How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude. World's of the Gifted men who are far above or ahead of their time are likely The to be so neglected, misunderstood, or hawked at that in despair Rejection they turn misanthrope and hold aloof from their kind. The Genius biographies of genius are full of tragedies of expansive souls, yearning for communion and sympathy, yet finding their offerings ignored or rejected, so that they end eating out their hearts in their loneliness. The world never forgives their being different. A great variety of conditions may lead to voluntary isolation. Of one hundred famous solitaries studied by Small 3 3 eighteen suffered from physical weakness and horror of muscular effort; seven had a physical deformity or some sense defect; seventeen were of a pronounced neurotic type; nine had hallucinations; eight were famed for visions, thirty were extremely subjective from childhood, three were reared in the cloister and six were bred in the midst of a solitude almost as intense; sixteen suffered from aboulia, referred to as "lack of will" or "lack of force for work." CHAP. X Too much luxury or profligate companions drove eight to the cloister; defeat of party made seven solitary; loss of friends and disappointment in love alienated fifteen, religion led twelve into retirement; science and philosophy, eleven; several were solitary per force since they were either imprisoned or banished. Perhaps a dozen really suffered isolation from entertaining ideas too advanced for their age. Impulses Our Kind What Our Demands The Curve for SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE We must, in short, recognize the existence of two opposite types. The sociable man wants to join any crowd he happens to come upon. He is glad to be one of a great congregation, a procession, a regiment, enjoys moving in step or cheering in concert with a thousand others. If he possesses a weighty secret, it presses him to communicate it and, if he curbs the impulse, he falls mentally ill. The individualist, on the contrary, prefers the trackless wood to the beaten path, empty rooms to full ones, small congregations to large ones, wilderness to towns, fields to thoroughfares. Such was the American backwoods type who, when he could hear the sound of a neighbor's ax, reckoned "Folks are gittin' too crowded," and moved on. What is it the sociable man craves? The mere sight of others? No, "a crowd is not company." (Not the presence of others but reciprocity of feeling relieves the ache in the breast. That one is dear who seems to care about us. One of the worst forms of college hazing is the "silent treatment," feigning that the obnoxious messmate does not exist. To the friendless newcomer the loneliness of the great city is hardly less cruel than that of the far hill farm. Hosts of acquaintances or admirers cannot still the thirst of the heart like a single friend. The high-placed executive, commandant, or employer may live as lonely as a castaway on a coral reef. On the other hand, no one loves a thousand as individuals. The man of wide benevolence simply loves an imaginary generalized human being. Only in this way can the missionary be said to love the race he labors among. In sooth, our taste for society like our taste for salt is soon cloyed. Many find one good friend enough and few would get more satisfaction out of a hundred friends than out of a dozen. The man with many friendships runs the risk of cultivating them too little to reap a harvest. The value of companionship, like that of any necessary of life, falls rapidly as the supply increases. |