If we have a theory about this brutal instinct, we had certainly better find out if it is a good theory or a bad theory, if it is provable, if the phenomena is there.

Unless you have phenomena to back this up, unless you can weigh and measure these things — and measure them accurately — they still remain in a big state of “up in the air.” Who has any authority to say what theory is valid? Nobody has any authority to say what theory is valid.

If man were found to be good and free when the instinct was lifted, and if he could reach inside of himself and lift this instinct to kill and to be brutal and savage, then you could solve the problem.

I hate such words as instincts because they are a big indefiniteness. Can you measure an instinct with amperes and watts? Can you feel one and see one? Yes, you can. We can now measure them in amperes and watts, look at them, sort them, tell you how long they are and how wide they are and how thick they are. Can we eradicate them from the mind? Yes, just like you would burn up a piece of cloth.

Is man healthier and better with them gone? Is he then able to cope with the universe better? Is he able to act better? Is he able to handle himself better? Is he more social? Is he happier? Is he freer? Is he more individualistic? Because you would lose if he weren’t those things. You don’t want prefrontal-lobotomied slaves — not in man. You want man to be as free as you can possibly make him.

Fortunately — no credit to anybody — when you pick up these instincts he becomes free and he becomes social and he is able to cope with his environment, and he no longer wants to go around and steal, murder, burn or engage in war. Fortunately.

Man is basically good, and between him and this goodness lies a savage and twisted past. He inherited it from centuries of being, centuries of savageness, and the instincts he had to wear as a primitive and as a savage. He has still got them, and they are there and they are fully and wholly on record.

Oddly enough, his basic instinct is to protect and help his fellows, himself. He is not a single, all-out-for-number-one character. But he gets these instincts, and they get in his road and they make him act like he is all out for himself. There isn’t a person who hasn’t tried very, very hard to help their fellow man — not one. Also, there isn’t one who hasn’t been cuffed for doing it.

That is a funny thing. Here we have a creature who wants to help, who wants to be unified with his fellows, who wants to be loved, who wants to be secure and at the same time adventurous, who wants to be a unified civilization. We have him all torn apart inside himself and amongst his groups so that all he does about it, really, is nag and rave and commit war.