A MAN IS KNOWN BY THE DILEMMAS HE KEEPS
William James said that wherever there is selection among alternatives
there is mental life. Man is a choosing animal, and his choices
determine both the ends sought and the means to be employed. We
will not discuss the question whether our choices are spontaneous
or are determined wholly or in part by environmental and hereditary
factors. Whatever determines them, our habits of choosing,--the
general character of the things we prefer,--reveal the kind of people
we are. And as learning is not merely the acquiring of more and more
information but is accompanied by a gradual transformation of habit
systems, its progress is manifest not merely by what a man knows at
any stage in his education, but also by the kind of issue that is real
to him, the questions which he permits life to put to him, the sort of
temptations he has to struggle to avoid, the kind of goods that are
vital to him. When I was a boy my parents used to tell me, “A man is
known by the company he keeps.” The saying, while designed to protect
youth from the dangerous influence of evil companionship, is not wholly
true. Many persons, from ambition or other motives, seek the society of
persons unlike themselves. Those who are more gregarious than selective
may exercise little choice among their associates. But ordinarily
people like to be with their own kind. Criminals keep company with
other criminals, golfers with other golfers, stamp collectors with
others who have the same interest. We wish our friends to be interested
in the things that interest us. Groups long associated tend to become
homogeneous. When marked differences of taste and opinion develop,
companions drift apart. Hence it is obvious that the company one keeps
is determined in part by the dilemmas he keeps.
We do not normally keep the same set of dilemmas through life. Each
stage of development presents new challenges, problems, alternatives;
as we mature our habits of judgment change. We see things in a
different light. What was once a matter of vital concern becomes a dead
issue. Our interest is caught and our choice determined by aspects of
situations to which we did not react at all at an earlier stage. We do
not solve all the problems of any stage, but we outgrow them,--get over
them.
Psychopathology today has much to say about the nature and sequence of
the dilemmas which at any period haunt the mind of an individual. The
matter is so important that I wonder more has not been made of it by
those interested in education. The public, it seems, would have the
educator fill the student’s head with useful information but expects
the student to keep the same beliefs and general outlook on life that
he had before. We speak of rising to a higher mental plane; this is
little else than learning to wrestle with more and more significant
problems. A little girl in her third summer says, “I’m a nice girl;
I don’t bite sister now.” To bite or not to bite, to keep one’s self
clean, to refrain from crying, are normally the dilemmas of early
childhood. If they are not dead issues to a person twenty years old,
they may be regarded as psychopathic symptoms. When a mature individual
is found wrestling with impulses which should have been reduced to
habit and dismissed from consciousness in earlier years, we have a
phenomenon which psychologists call “regression,” or “fixation” of
emotional interest in mental habits that are normally outgrown. Toward
the tasks and situations of adult life, the individual strives to
maintain an infantile attitude and hence fails to adjust himself.
Sometimes the regression shows a preoccupation with infantile wishes,
and sometimes with those of early adolescence; in any case there is
struggle to maintain the inhibitions or the defenses which veil the
inadequately repressed impulses.
The manner in which lessons learned from experience normally transform
an impulse from its expression in very simple and crude dilemmas to
its later and more subtle manifestations may be seen in the forms
with which people exhibit and disguise their egoism during successive
stages of development. When a very young child is beginning to
discover himself and his little world, he finds his own body and its
functions tremendously interesting. Soon he discovers that certain
of his performances command attention. He learns to make use of such
performances in order to get what he wants. He will exercise his power
over parent or nurse by throwing his toys on the floor again and again
and howling until some one picks them up. Long before he condescends to
talk, he notices when people admire him and say complimentary things
about him. A very young child will do little stunts by way of showing
off, and will exhibit irritation if ignored or left alone. He cries out
at any restraint upon his movements or resistance to his wishes.
The egoism of everyone retains something of the infantile quality. But
family discipline, social experience, and the awakening of powers of
observation and thought result in new forms of expression. This ego
interest becomes associated with an ideal of self and its importance
which the individual guards as his honor, his reputation. Every man
is intent upon keeping up his feeling of self-importance; each feels
that one so important deserves special consideration. Egoism in normal
people becomes to some extent liberated from its infantile interests
and is sublimated, that is, attached to ends that are socially
permissible. The original impulse remains, but it wrestles with new
problems. The wish to be admired is a factor in all ambition, also in
romantic love. A love affair is even more a mutual admiration society
than a phenomenon of sex interest. The impulse to command which in the
nursery led the child to throw toys on the floor for others to pick up,
later becomes a desire for leadership, a struggle for political power,
a passion for manipulating or reforming others.
We also find the infantile egoism transferred to religion, where
it plays an important part in adult life. Many of the very images
and emotional attitudes of infancy may thus be kept alive. The
believer may still feel that he is loved as the infant is loved by
the parent,--loved now by the Heavenly Father. He may again feel
that he can have what he desires by asking the father in prayer.
Self-importance survives as belief in the immortality of the soul and
as assurance of salvation. Thus with development and experience, the
same ego interest becomes transformed in the tasks it progressively
sets itself, and in widening the range of the ends for which it
strives. Each stage of development presents its peculiar problems, its
peculiar goods and evils, its possible alternative attitudes toward
the values of experience. Therefore it ought to be quite as possible
to determine a person’s mental age by noting the kind of things which
satisfy his ego interest, as by any other device of mental measurement.
In common practice this is the way in which we judge people.
A man stands revealed both by the things he strives to gain and by
those he seeks to avoid. The thing that most easily shocks him is
usually that which he himself is struggling to overcome. It represents
something to which in his secret heart he can say neither yes nor
no. His dilemma troubles him. He seeks to avoid the inner gnawing by
carrying the fight into the open. He turns his personal conflict into
the appearance of a public issue, and you then have the moral reformer.
People who repeat scandal, demand laws for the censorship of books and
plays, and search through literature intent upon deleting passages they
think are obscene, are too much preoccupied with vice and obscenity.
They are like those compulsion neurotics who spend their time writing
alibis to prove their innocence of the crime they are constantly
tempted to commit.
The thing a man must make an effort to conceal always betrays him.
We all know the type of person who strives in all things to appear
refined, who makes painful efforts for correct speech and proper
manners. There are those who are seriously concerned about being in
what they call society, and those who read books of etiquette and are
disturbed by such important questions as whether when escorting a lady
you should take her arm or let her take yours. And there is the man who
signs his name with ornate flourish and tries to impress waiters and
hotel servants with his importance, and there are the people who are
much exercised over the forgiveness of their sins. All in one way or
another place themselves on their own level.
The correlation between people’s material desires and their general
intellectual interests is so universal that it is used as a guide
in placing advertisements. There are “class” papers, each designed
to appeal to readers who occupy a certain cultural stratum. The
advertising appeals which such papers carry vary with the reading
matter. The older, more literary magazines present a sharp contrast
both in reading matter and in advertising to the newer fiction
magazines. In the first group the essay predominates, with poetry
and literary criticism, and only an occasional work of fiction. In
the second group there is hardly anything but fiction, with possibly
a brief hortatory editorial. Both types are evidently published to
interest readers of average wealth. The number of advertisements of
automobiles, real estate, and securities and other investments is
in about the same proportion in both. But the former group, which
is obviously designed to appeal to more thoughtful and intelligent
readers, contains a larger number of pages given over to advertisements
of books, schools, colleges, places of travel, works of art.
We need not discuss the cheaper fiction magazines. They are obviously
prepared for a still different reading public. The public to which
the better ones appeal is indicated by the dominant character of
the advertising, which consists largely of aids to beauty and
correspondence courses in self-improvement. The stories in such
periodicals are as typical as the advertisements. Thus it is that in
their daily preferences, as truly as in the greater issues of their
lives, people select themselves and are segregated into classes,
or spiritual types--types which may live in daily contact with one
another, yet worlds apart.
Democracy strives to ignore the cultural differences among people.
Education intensifies them. The attempt to place everyone on the
same mediocre plane, even though it be a level considerably above
the lowest, is not education; it is a kind of social work. Education
means finding one’s own level. Like all progress it is qualitative
and differentiating. Just as organic evolution is a process which
can be measured only in the extent of the differences it has made
between higher and more complex organisms and lower ones, so with
education. It brings out distinctions of human worth, places people
on the rounds of a ladder, the gradations of which are discernible in
the kind of interests they have, in the quality of their choices, the
perplexities they wrestle with and overcome, the tasks and issues they
set themselves.
The general advance of civilization is in some respects like that of
the individual. We may learn much about the general cultural attainment
of any age by noting the issues that divided people at that time and
the problems that troubled them. There are all sorts of “cultural lags”
in the course of progress, but it helps us to estimate the general
intellectual level Europe had attained at the close of the middle ages
to learn that whole communities could be terribly disturbed over the
question, “What is the evil omen of a comet which suddenly appears
in the zenith?”--so disturbed indeed that on one occasion it is said
popular pressure forced the Pope to go out and pronounce an official
curse upon a comet and command it to leave the sky, which it did much
to everybody’s peace of mind. Again, we can form something of an
opinion of the mentality of an age in which there is general interest
in such a question as “Shall a person accused of witchcraft be put to
torture to compel him to testify against himself?” or, “How far may one
walk on the Sabbath day without committing sin?” or “Does the doctrine
of the rights of man apply to negro slaves?” or “Who amongst us has
committed the unpardonable sin,” or “Will a child that dies without
baptism go to Hell,” or, by way of illustrating something of the spirit
of contemporary America, “Who’s your bootlegger?”
I have said that many of our dilemmas are not resolved, but are
outgrown. This leads us to a further observation of their educational
significance. Many of the issues which stir a community are insoluble
because they rest upon presuppositions which are unsound and so long as
the assumption remains unchallenged the issue will haunt men’s minds.
When one goes back of the issue and sees the premises to be false,
the whole wrangle becomes meaningless. The question about torturing
people accused of witchcraft presupposes the superstition that it is
possible for an individual to enter into a contract with the devil.
Get rid of belief in devils and witch trials themselves cease. So the
nightmare about the “damnation of babes” ceases to be a live issue for
a mind that has become sufficiently civilized to have passed beyond the
primitive man’s terror of Hell. And so I think it is with most popular
beliefs and public issues and partisan conflicts, as well as with many
of our private dilemmas. As stated they presuppose a disguised error,
or are the fruit of factors that remain unconscious. So long as we
accept the fatal assumption the issue is real to us. We are caught and
held in the dilemma and our educational progress stops.
Progress in thinking, without which learning is mere repeating, comes
by examining foundations. The educated mind differs from the uneducated
in the insight which enables it to file a demurrer, dismiss the case,
or restate it in terms that lead somewhere. It is in getting us over
our dilemmas that education frees our minds.
It is often said that the aim of education is to equip the student with
a set of principles and beliefs which will serve him through life.
Yes, but principles are _leading ideas_. Their function is to lead
us to correct conclusion and right action. They are instruments, not
ends in themselves, and they must occasionally be re-tested. They are
not final statements of the issues of living. Much misunderstanding
and mental suffering--most of our false dilemmas--grow out of popular
confusion about principles. Men feel that if they change their beliefs
or arrive at unexpected conclusions or resolve their dilemmas away they
are losing or compromising their principles. There is no sacrifice of
principle in re-stating an issue as a result of better knowledge and
insight. There is no defense of principle in a controversial spirit
which cares more for partisan victory than for truthfulness. The level
on which a controversy is waged is often a matter of greater importance
than the victory of either side. If the victory of either means the
triumph of the same irrational type of man, it makes little difference
who wins. In most partisan and sectarian struggles the principle at
stake--if any--is lost sight of in a mass of confusion. It frequently
happens that both sides contend for the same “ideal” and base their
contentions upon the same mistaken premises. In most cases men’s
principles are little more than phrases which justify in their own
minds their contentiousness and will to power.
An examination of its presuppositions may transform an issue into a
very different sort of problem. There is, for instance, the controversy
now raging in parts of America between religion and science. Many
educated persons say there is no conflict between religion and science.
In their own thought there may be none, because they do not mean by
either of these terms what the man on the street means by them. To him
religion is a system of dogma based upon divine revelation. He cannot
conceive of religion without belief in the stories related in the
Bible or belief in the teachings of his church. By belief he means the
firm conviction that alleged historical events and miracles happened
just as related. He conceives of science also as a body of doctrine
according to which the specific teachings of religion are held to be
untrue. Stated in these terms conflict is inevitable, a person who has
scientific knowledge cannot be religious, and the issue must be fought
to the end.
For the thinking mind the problem becomes a quite different one.
Science is a method, not primarily a system of doctrine. It is a way
of discovering truth which must be followed wherever it leads, and it
presents us with the problem of how we are to value and interpret its
discoveries. The problem presents itself differently from an ascending
series of points of view.
A student who has grown up under traditional religious influences
and has probably given the matter little thought, begins the study
of natural science, biology or geology, let us say, and learns
something of the evidence for the theory of evolution. He begins to
speculate upon its implications. He may, as many do, strive in some
manner to reconcile evolution with the account of creation set forth
in the Bible. After further thought and study this simple device for
reconciling science and religion may not satisfy him. He sees that
something more than the reinterpretation of a text is necessary.
He finds himself striving to reconcile two entirely different
world-views. As a rational explanation of the world and its origin,
religion is wholly incompatible with science. The student, considering
that this is the function of religion, and finding that as a method
of giving an account of natural processes religion fails, may discard
it, and become an apostle of science, and an opponent of religion,
save as a system of ethics. Persons who hold this rationalistic view
of religion commonly try in turn to make a gospel of science. Religion
is darkness; science is light. Religion enslaves; science liberates.
Religion holds progress in check; science is the Religion of Humanity,
and the triumph of Reason is the promise of the salvation of the
world. This view was widely prevalent in the nineteenth century. It is
the stage at which the average person with some knowledge of science
breaks off and considers the problem settled. It is an honestly taken
position, which often requires no small courage. I hope no one will
think me an apologist for religion if I suggest that this is a rather
innocent and unsophisticated attempt to solve the problem. It assumes
that it is the proper function of religion to explain nature and
improve the life of humanity. What a simple and straightforward affair
the human spirit appears to be from this point of view. No subtle
twistings and turnings, no hidden pitfalls, no twilight regions, no
dark secrets.
Suppose now one were to cease expecting religion to do the explanatory
task of science, and were also to cease trying to make a new religion
of science, is it not likely that the conflict, or contrast, between
the two might appear in altered perspective? It is possible to regard
both scientific and religious concepts as symbols--figures of speech,
each expressive of its exclusive values. In another study, I likened
the difference between science and religion to that which exists
between the two recognized symbols of the United States of America--the
map and the flag. The former is the scientific symbol; it has to do
with position, movement, measurement of distance. Maps exist for the
intellectual and practical interest. The flag stands for the emotional
interest; it has to do with certain historical associations, but is
itself no guarantee of the accuracy of any historical tradition. It is
poetry.
Once we grant that religion is poetry, a new set of problems emerges.
Is the poetry good or bad? What valuations of the possibilities--or
impossibilities--of experience are here expressed in these symbols?
Which of my ideas about the world are maps and which are flags? Much
of the popular conflict of religion and science arises out of general
confusion on this point. A super-patriot might conceivably be such a
worshipper of the flag that he would resent the disclosure of certain
geographical or historical facts which would lead to revaluation of
some of his emotional attitudes. Doubtless many Americans have an
exaggerated and emotionally determined idea of the history if not of
the geography of their country, yet it is unthinkable that they should
confuse the flag with the map. But existence as a whole is not so
easily surveyed, and such maps as we have of it often extend beyond
the comprehension of the average man. In all lower approaches to the
problem of religion, the flags which symbolize certain emotional
appreciations of the universe are confused with maps of it. In his
religion the average man is still an idolator, psychologically similiar
to the poor heathen who cannot distinguish between his god and his
wooden image. On the popular level, the conflict of religion and
science is an elaborately rationalized struggle for supremacy by a type
of mind which has not yet grasped the true inwardness of its emotional
attitudes. While the consideration of the problem remains on this
level, nothing is gained for education. There is mental grasp of the
situation when the problem is re-stated in terms of the inwardness of
religion and the objectivity of science. And it then becomes possible
to form hypotheses which inspire further pursuit of knowledge. New
knowledge leads to the better organization of knowledge previously
acquired.
We have another familiar example of the educational value of displacing
lower dilemmas by higher ones by examination of the presuppositions.
For a generation and more many minds have been preoccupied with
some aspect or other of the controversy between conservatism and
radicalism. There have been so many varieties of opinion on both sides
that it is impossible to make a clear-cut statement of the issue or
to find any particular group or theory which is representative of
either side. From the standpoint of the majority of the United States
Senate, the followers of Mr. La Follette were dangerous radicals.
From the standpoint of the communists these same La Follette men
were conservatives, counter-revolutionaries. In general the conflict
has been between those who are interested in preserving the present
order of things intact together with its traditions, established
institutions, privileges and inequalities, and those who favor some
basic changes which they believe will remedy the situation. We will not
discuss the merits of either side to this conflict. In some form or
other it comes up repeatedly. It is a real issue, but the discussion
of it may proceed on various levels of thought, and this fact has
something to do with education. Intellectuals believe that their
radicalism is the result of enlightenment, while their opponents
believe that on the whole education makes for conservatism and that
radicals are ignorant foreigners who have been misled by professional
trouble makers. The present controversy is not conducive to education
in any of its forms, or on either side. It tends to divert education
from its true aims into partisan service, and to produce in both
parties a fixed and unteachable type of mind. As the case is ordinarily
presented, a stupid and panicky conservatism is faced by a superficial
and equally intemperate radicalism.
The problem cannot be discussed intelligently, nor can the
consideration of it lead to increase of knowledge, until its
presuppositions are critically examined, and the whole matter is
re-stated in more intelligible terms. It is these presuppositions to
which I wish to call attention, for without them the controversy could
not have arisen in its present forms. Although there is a great variety
of these forms, the same presuppositions are common to all and are
usually accepted without question by both sides. The disposition to
go back and question the presuppositions is evidence that education
is going on. We have some such evidence in recent years for many have
modified their positions in regard to various aspects of the social
problem.
More attention has been given to the changes of view among radicals
than to those which have taken place among conservatives. Since events
of recent years have greatly encouraged self-expression on the part of
misinformed noisy extremists who appoint themselves spokesmen of the
latter group, we sometimes get the impression that conservatives learn
nothing. But I incline to the opinion that there has been perhaps an
equal proportion of learning by the more thoughtful minority on both
sides of the controversy.
Among radicals modification of views has occurred sufficiently to
arouse general interest in the questions “What has become of the
pre-war liberals?” “What has happened to radicalism?” A former
member of the radical group some years ago wrote a book entitled
“Tired Radicals,” in which he adopted the usual view that the change
of outlook among radicals was the result of the loss of energy and
enthusiasm which comes with middle age. But if radicalism were merely
a form of youthful enthusiasm, I believe the movement would be more
wide-spread than it has ever been in America. The suggestion is worth
considering that in some cases the change of views might indicate that
the individual has learned something. By learning I mean the better
grasp of the subject which comes when one examines the presuppositions
of both sides. Conversely, those who have not examined their
presuppositions during the last twenty years have learned nothing.
They continue talking, but they are addressing a generation that is
past and gone. Anachronisms of this sort are common occurrences among
conservatives. They occur with equal frequency among radicals. And when
a man whose education has stopped leaves the radical movement and joins
the opposition, he frequently shows himself to be not an aging prophet
who has lost his enthusiasms, but the same intensely opinionated and
militant person he was before.
When, therefore, I suggest that a change of attitude toward the social
question may be indicative of learning, I do not mean to imply that
it is the function of education to turn radicals into conservatives.
Rather its function is to give the men on each side a different mental
outlook. Back of the controversy as it has existed in our times there
is a certain presupposed philosophy which is passing away as education
increases, and its passing modifies the thinking of persons on both
sides. Humanism in education is supplanting the older Humanitarianism.
Interest in cultural values is supplanting the earlier naturalism.
Rousseau and Bentham and Comte and D. F. Strauss and William Morris
are making way for the coming social psychologists. Social philosophy
becomes analytical. The sweeping generalizations of Marx and the day
dreams of Bellamy begin to have interest chiefly for the historical
student. Democratic dogma, little questioned in the nineteenth century,
is now subjected to criticism. A different intellectual spirit is
abroad which necessarily modifies the general outlook of those who
share in it.
Let us note more specifically some of the presuppositions behind the
Radical-Conservative dilemma. There is the Humanitarian doctrine that
man is naturally good and daily growing better. All that is needed
for his perfection is freedom or opportunity. This assumption is
common to both parties, one holding that such opportunity is under
the present system granted to all who wish to take advantage of it,
the other that under the present system opportunity is granted only
to the privileged few and denied to the toiling masses, who are kept
down in wage slavery. All the evils of human life are attributed to
the present system. Remove the evil system and everybody will be good
and happy. There is much talk about “the emancipation of labor.” Both
sides assume that social justice is possible, each maintaining that
its own triumph is the triumph of justice. And both sides are disposed
to estimate the values of civilization and the meaning of personal
success in terms of material possession. The good life is the life of
the man with plenty of money. We hear much of the materialism and the
dominance of business interests today. Everyone is urged to get ahead.
A man measures his worth by the amount of his income. Conservatives can
see no ground for dissatisfaction with a system which makes for unusual
prosperity. Radicals deny that prosperity is universal, say that the
rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, interpret
all history in terms of the struggle for wealth, and spread before
the masses the promise of abundance with a minimum of toil. On both
sides we find that easy optimism which is said to be characteristic
of half-educated minds. It is assumed that the evils of the world are
only superficial, that they are contingent upon purely environmental
factors, and can be removed by legislation or by mass action. Progress
is assured. No one doubts that a prosperous and happy life is possible
to all if only wealth were properly distributed. As the control of
affairs passes more and more completely into plebeian hands and as the
tastes and dilemmas of mediocrity come to set standards of value, the
world is supposed to be getting better.
This questionable assumption leads to distortion of fact by both
parties, and must continue to do so as long as the controversy is kept
on this level. I wonder what would happen if instead of merely drawing
hasty inferences from these naïve assumptions, it should become the
practice to examine them. Perhaps the issue might be re-stated in
more significant terms. But what concerns us at present is not the
social problem as such, but the fact that the attempt to clear up the
intellectual muddle about it means that education is going on.
A glance at the nature of the presuppositions we have been discussing
will help us to understand why it is that they are so seldom examined.
They flatter. Apart from their radical or conservative implications,
such ideas are congenial to the average man. They pat him on the
back. It is no small satisfaction to believe that the environment is
responsible for all human ills, that evil may easily be removed by
mass action; that given material abundance, the good life follows
automatically; that distinctions among men are reducible to economic
factors; that the supremacy of our own type is the goal of progress. I
believe that the level at which one’s education stops, the particular
set of dilemmas in which one’s mind becomes fixed is usually determined
by some self-satisfying assumption. If my ego can remain elated over
the possession of an automobile, or the right to vote, or the belief
that I and my kind are or ought to be socially superior, or because I
can play the saxophone, or am able to resist the temptation to pick
pockets, the problems which have live interest for me will be the
problems which lie on these levels. I recently talked with a man who
was quite pleased with himself because for some years he had not been
in jail. He frequently compared the advantages and disadvantages of
life “on the inside” and “on the outside.” To his mind all days and all
people were thought of as “inside” or “outside,” a point of view which
I imagine few people linger over or find personally gratifying. But the
virtues men pride themselves on are as a rule those which compensate
them for the particular vices to which they are tempted.
The house I live in had for a number of years been rented to an elderly
Scotch woman who kept it as a “rooming house.” When she moved out she
said to me, “I hear you are going to do this house over and make it
your own home. Some day you may be sitting here and thinking, ‘What use
to go on in this house of mine?’ It’ll be a satisfaction to you to
know that you are in a respectable place. Never once in all the years
that I rented out furnished rooms did the patrol wagon have to back up
to this door at midnight.”
The things which people find consoling both reveal and determine
the plane on which their thinking takes place. I have heard a young
man say with a note of defiance, “Yes, sir, I’m a single-taxer and
I’m proud of it.” So involved is the ego in our dilemmas that we
often require the assistance of a specialist in getting over them.
Psychoanalysts whose task is chiefly that of helping people face
certain facts about themselves, speak of their work as re-education.
In a sense all education is re-education, the untying of the knots in
which our self esteem in its defense has entangled itself. Perhaps
nothing is so effective a bar to education as intellectual immodesty.
A man’s education stops at the point where he becomes incapable of
self-criticism. And because egotism is always a bit ridiculous, the
conceited mind protects itself from criticism by making its interests
sublime. In the presence of the sublime, laughter is taboo. The subject
concerning which man has lost his sense of humor is just the subject
concerning which criticism leads to self-criticism. There are persons
who cannot take a joke about “The Grand Old Party,” or the Government
at Washington, or the teachings of Karl Marx. Recently a group of
church men publicly denounced the New York newspapers because of
their humorous remarks about prohibition. Once when I was asked for a
definition of a radical I seriously offended a prominent socialist with
the innocent remark that a radical is a man who loves Labor and hates
work.
Lack of humor is always evidence of unteachableness. Ignorance is
pompous. The holy tone with which people proclaim their convictions is
uncivilized. When the American people are better educated, there will
be less solemn pantomime in the land. We could not with straight faces
indulge ourselves in the hysterical reforms, the bitter partisanships,
religious fanaticism and race prejudice which at present show how
seriously we take ourselves. Education should help people make an art
of living, and the art of living, like all arts, is play. Learn to play
with your ideals, even with your sublimities, and you will break the
hold upon you of many a crude and hampering dilemma.