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Self-Renunciation

2. The female beetle is the lowliest of the earth's creatures to practice self-renunciation and is the lowliest to have an enduring social structure. Starting thus, nature no where permits an enduring society in the absence of an attitude of self-renunciation. Benjamin Kidd in the Science of Power shows very forcibly the part which self-renunciation has played in social evolution. It has long been one of the marvels of mankind why the Negroes have not developed greater and more enduring social structures. Strange to say abnormal human beings throw a clear light on this subject. We now show how this can be done.

Dr. G. V. Hamilton says, "Forenoons spent with nervous patients and afternoons with healthy monkeys can teach you surprising truths about human nature. For about nine years I spent mornings listening to nervous patients in my consulting room, and my afternoons watching a tribe of monkeys which I kept in my forty acres of live oaks near Santa Barbara . . . Throughout these years my purpose was, of course, to try to add to our understanding of human nature."

In the book, Understanding Human Nature, by Dr. Alfred Adler, the author says, "Our examination of nervous diseases prove that the psychic anomalies, complexes, mistakes, which are found in nervous diseases are fundamentally not different in structure from the activity of normal individuals. The same elements, the same premises, the same movements, are under consideration. The sole difference is that in the nervous patient they appear more marked, and are more easily recognized. The advantage of this discovery is that we can learn from the abnormal cases, and sharpen our eye for the discovery of related movements and characteristics in the normal psychic life. It is solely a question of that training, ardor, and patience which are required of any profession."

Suicides are abnormal beings. In them self-renunciation is over-developed. The fact that the white people have a far greater number of suicides proportionately than colored people suggests the presence among them of the attitude of self-renunciation which expressing itself in a higher way than suicide has made their social structure strong, progressive, and enduring. The self-renunciation of George Washington and Ex-President Calvin Coolidge shown in declining to aspire for the third term in the presidency of the nation illustrates the part played by the attitude in the stabilization of society. Revolutions to displace men clinging to authority for too long a period take place where self-renunciation is weak. Where this attitude is weak, one generation does not make the sacrifices needed to advance properly the interests of the next generation.