The prisoner swallowed, tore his gaze from the paddle, bent and took hold of the bars with both hands.
Poffis took the paddle in a practiced grip.
“You have committed ten serious offenses. For each offense, there must be a blow. The blows must be hard, or they will not be punishment. Hold on tight. Moklin!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Read the offenses.”
Moklin raised the list, and read slowly and distinctly. At the end of each numbered offense, Poffis delivered a staggering blow.
Toward the end, as the list went on and on, the prisoner began to sob, but continued to tightly grip the bars.
At last, the list, which seemed to Garvin, watching dazedly, to be ten times as long as when it was first read—at last this list came to an end.
Moklin said soberly, “That is the end of the list of offenses, sir.”
Poffis said, “So be it. Take the board.” He handed the paddle out through the bars.
The prisoner collapsed on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.
Poffis waited a moment, then said, “Prisoner, that ends the punishment. But punishment is not necessarily the same as repayment. You have, by your actions, done grave damage to the Integral Union itself. Yet the Integral Union feeds and shelters you. You have attacked what defended you. Are you sorry?”
“Yes,” cried the prisoner.
Poffis nodded. “Good. Look at me. Are you going to do better?”
“Yes!”
Poffis nodded slowly. “Yes, I see you mean it. Moklin!”
“Yes, sir?”
“This prisoner has hard work in front of him. He will need to sleep, but first he needs something to ease the pain, and he also needs a little warm thin gruel. Take care of this at once.”
“Yes, sir.”
Garvin, still watching in a sort of daze, saw Poffis help the prisoner to his feet, to ease him, very carefully, warning him where to put his hands and feet, onto the cot. To Garvin’s astonishment, the prisoner, still sobbing, gripped Poffis’s hand in what appeared to be gratitude.
Poffis said gently, “Don’t worry, son. You may think we’re going to half-kill you. But we’ll get you out of it.”
Moklin stepped into the cell, carrying a small bowl in one hand, and a jar of bandages in the other. Poffis stepped out of the cell and beckoned Garvin into the next room. Uncertain what to expect, Garvin followed with unspoken reservations. Poffis shut the door behind them.
“Now, just what the devil is going on at Mental Institution 16?”
Garvin said, “Why, just standard treatment.”
“Whose standard treatment?”
“Well—”
“What is it?”
Garvin drew a slow deep breath, and described it.
Poffis shook his head.
“Conceivably that may work on Earthmen. But a thing like that won’t work on Centrans.”
“Is that so?” said Garvin, his professional pride touched. “Well, all I can say is, it certainly is more scientific than the procedure you use!”
“Obviously,” said Poffis, “that’s exactly what’s wrong with it. The techniques of Science were developed for use on inanimate objects.”
As Garvin grappled with this statement, Poffis said, “Observe what has happened. Science came into existence to solve purely physical problems. To solve these problems it was necessary to exclude emotional considerations. The forces operative in this physical world are different from the forces operative in the emotional world. It is as if one were land and the other sea. The seafarer who goes ashore has little need for nets, lines and a knowledge of the tides, winds, and currents. But when he has built up his structure on solid land, is he then automatically fitted to go back to sea, relying exclusively on land methods? It won’t work, Dr. Garvin, except where, so to speak, the emotional sea has been frozen over, turned to ice on the surface. In the emotional world, to say, ‘My methods are entirely scientific,’ is similar to saying, ‘I have made an entirely scientific proposal of marriage.’ It is a cause for alarm, not confidence.”
Garvin hesitated, distracted by the uneasy suspicion that there might be some truth to Poffis’s point, but stung by the implications. If psychology wasn’t a science, then wasn’t he, Garvin, a charlatan of some kind?
Poffis said earnestly, “Why insist that your study must be a science? Should everything be jammed into the same mold, and any parts that don’t fit be thrown away? Just because a hammer is useful, should we throw away screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers and every other tool, and force the hammer to do work it isn’t meant for? Or, by some kind of verbal wizardry, have we got to represent screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers and other useful tools, as different kinds of hammers? They are not hammers, my friend, any more than all useful studies are sciences. If you let such a distortion enter into your thought, you may not only blur your picture of the subject you are thinking of, but also your picture of Science itself.”
On thinking it over, it seemed perfectly clear to Garvin that if psychology was not a science, then he, Garvin, must necessarily be a fake. If psychology was not a science, then it followed that he was no scientist, and this meant that he was less than, for instance, a physicist, or a chemist, and if he admitted to being not a scientist, it followed that he would seem to be less than one of those incredible creatures, the political scientists who, everyone agreed, were actually no scientists at all.
All this went through Garvin’s head in a flash, and at the end he said coolly, “Psychology, Major Poffis, whatever it may be among Centrans, is universally recognized among Earthmen as the ‘science of the mind.’ I certainly don’t intend to argue this proposition.”
Poffis was watching Garvin’s expression intently. “Psychology,” said Poffis, with the air of one who reluctantly concedes a point, “may deserve to be a science; it may have distinct scientific elements; but if you say psychology is and is only a science, then I say that in your respect for your subject, it appears to me that you are mistakenly throwing half your tool kit into the nearest ditch. The essence of Science is the Scientific Method, and the essence of the Scientific Method is the Repeatable Experiment. To have a repeatable experiment requires first that the object experimented upon be comparatively constant. If atoms could argue, fight back, run away, sulk, plead, throw tantrums, learn our terminology and use it against us, then we might reasonably have some doubts as to just how strictly scientific the study of atoms could be. But in that case, would the study of atoms be any the less important?”
Garvin said hesitantly, “I came here to learn your method, so that I could combine your methods and ours—”
Poffis looked doubtful. “Your method, as you have described it, suggests to me the attempt to fix a malfunctioning ground-car by the use of analytical chemistry.”
“And how would you explain your brand of psychology?”
“Very simple. To begin with, we believe in sympathy, power of will, character, habit, love, association, contrast, the power of example, the soul, the spirit—”
“What a hodgepodge! You’ve got religion in there! You’ve got—”
“What we got in there,” said Poffis, “is Truth, and we accept Truth from any source, including religion.”
“But, of all the unscientific—”
Poffis momentarily paralyzed Garvin with a poke of his long forefinger.
“The one advantage of Science is that it enables us, where it is applicable, to reach Truth. Truth is the goal, my friend, and Science is one means of reaching Truth, where Science applies. Don’t forget your quest. You are seeking Truth. Don’t mistake the means for the goal.”
Poffis went out, leaving Garvin open-mouthed. Dazedly Garvin considered Poffis’s last two sentences.
“You are seeking Truth.” Certainly this was so. Why had he ever been interested in Science in the first place? He was seeking Truth. And that warning, “Don’t mistake the means for the goal.” Could he, Garvin, possibly be like a boy who spent so much time laboring over his finicky but beloved car that he rarely actually went anywhere?
The rest of Poffis’s argument was borne in on him. How the devil did you have a science when the thing you were working with was as unstable and changeable as the human personality and the human intellect? Science! Was it an example of Science when the object of the experiment got up and tried to strangle you, as had happened twice now to poor Hardison? Was it Science when the experimenter fell in love with the object of the experiment, as had happened to Pangeist? And what about Hergeswalther, who got sucked into the patient’s fantasy, and was only gotten out again because the patient realized what was going on?
“Science!” snarled Garvin. “My foot, it’s a science. Only parts of it are scientific.” And in that case, how was it going to get him to Truth?
For the second time, it dawned on Garvin that Poffis was really a master psychologist. How the deuce had Poffis known what he, Garvin, had turned to Science for? And how had Poffis been able to drive his idea across with such effect that, just a few minutes later, Garvin was accepting them as his own? But the main thing was—how was Poffis able to make cures while he, Garvin, spent his time floundering through the dark, and as often as not accomplished little more than to give the patient a knowledge of the underlying theory, which might or might not work.