Thinking and doing / by Harry Roberts.

  • Harry Roberts
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Thinking and doing / by Harry Roberts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Few of us, nowadays, have occasion to journey for miles over moors or through forests in order to collect something for our supper. Instead, we ’phone up the butcher, or run round to the shop at the corner, or go into the garden, and obtain with- out much effort or trouble all we need. Civilization consists very largely in our having thus arranged material things around us, instead of having to go and find them each time we want them. It is no longer necessary for most of us to go far from our homes and from our families in order to get some- thing to eat and something to wear; but the old instinct remains in us. In some it has become very weak through disuse, but in others it is nearly as strong as ever; and so we find people with thou- sands of pounds in the bank, with large comfortable houses to live in, and with lots of people to wait on them and fetch them everything they fancy, who yet are subject to periodic fits of restlessness which drive them to go out for long walks or rides, or even farther afield into unexplored countries where they will experience every sort of physical hard- ship and discomfort, away from their friends and from all the pleasant things that civilization has given them. Such people are as much impelled by inherited forces, quite unrelated to present-day cir- cumstances, as are the dog who barks at the motor- car and the horse that shies at the tar-barrel. Here I must introduce to you a phenomenon, or happening, which will throw a light on many of our acts, the motives of which might otherwise be obscure. I have told you that, without our willing it, the sight or smell of attractive food often sets 3
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