PART IV

HOW CAN THEY BE RELEASED?

XXVI

THE INESCAPABLE TASK

Capacity for high motivation, but doubt of the existence of such

capacity because our performance is low; low performance due, not

chiefly to external obstacles nor to remains of the beast in us, but

to self-imposed bondage to our past and present selves, the instrument

that binds us being that which is high, not low, in us, even our

intelligence and reason--this is what we behold. The same intelligence

that masters external circumstance by looking behind and before, by the

same process subjects us to ourselves. On the other hand, intelligence

chafes at the bondage that it has created, and knows itself as the

agent of emancipation.

Such is our self-imprisoning, self-releasing, deeply paradoxical human

nature. But there is a difference. We imprison ourselves automatically,

but we do not automatically release ourselves. The door closes with a

spring lock; it opens only by directed effort. At least, adherence to

the _status quo_ requires as a rule little reflection, while release

from it into something better requires much. In particular, the

_habit_ of releasing myself from what I am and have been depends upon

continuous alertness joined with self-detachment or objectivity with

respect to myself.

Our greatest lack is a habit of self-release, a habit of being free

and freely cooperative. Such a habit cannot be acquired by repetition

of impulsive revolts or impulsive repentances, nor by jumping at

novelties; it requires self-discipline; it depends upon practising a

technic.

But a technic for freedom in the sphere of life’s values and policies

can scarcely be said to exist. Scientific method is indeed the

technic of free intelligence conceived as a disinterested observer of

events; but something more than on-looking is involved in living. Our

difficulty lies in inadequate procedures in the weighing of values and

the choice of ends. Here, too, scientific method--as we shall presently

see in more detail--is essential to freedom; we are not too enamored

of science nor too ready to use its technic, but not enough so. Yet

scientific method is only one factor in the technic of self-release.

In the absence of the other factors, it becomes, in fact, a servant

of inferior, reactionary, or even destructive ways of life, as we

abundantly see at the present moment.

The inescapable task for our culture--for education, religion, social

organization, and (I surmise) literature and the other arts--is to

develop a technic for freedom in the sense of continuous release from

continuously-forming precedents--release into selves that are neither

precedent-ridden nor yet fidgety or flighty but creative.

This implies much more than readiness to participate in reform

movements. Excitement over the dust and rubbish that have accumulated,

or even willingness to clean Augean stables, does not get at causes; it

deals only with the products of self-poisoning processes, not with the

sources of the poison; it produces little beyond oscillation between

the fulness of a vice and the emptiness of a virtue.

Even the religion that glories in its ascription of infinite value to

persons has failed to develop a technic for releasing personality from

its self-imposed limitations. Indeed, the maintenance of some of these

limitations in the form of beliefs, institutions, and rules of conduct

has been erected into a virtue.

Meantime, religion conducts a largely futile struggle against the

bondage of sin. The churches pray, exhort, instruct, but all this

is effective, for the most part, only with sins that already lack

social standing. Current religion knows not how to deal with the

deep depravity of our respectable faults, and indeed it scarcely

recognizes them as faults. On the other hand, it magnifies petty

virtues and a-dynamic goodness. It offers emotional elevation and a

sense of selfhood through worship, but since God is rarely worshipped

as a creative power here and now at work within the moral order, the

worshipper’s self remains complacent and accommodating, an arrived and

secure soul; it does not become a chrysalis breaking from its shell.

Any adequate religion will call for a different way of paying respect

to the Creator, and a different way of receiving him into our lives.

Worship must come to include within itself a technic for continually

transcending the religious self and the religious organization of

yesterday and of today, a technic for free reconstruction within the

whole realm of our deepest hopes, our highest ideals, our ultimate

convictions, and our profoundest fellowships and loyalties.

Considerable liberty in the sense of toleration of dissent already

exists, it is true, in large areas of Protestantism, but this is not

the same as a technic for freedom. When we merely tolerate dissent, we

the tolerators do not dissolve the special privilege claimed by our

past and present selves; our own souls remain indoors, and we decline

the responsibility for exploration and the changing of our maps.

What of the schools, then? Surely they are emancipators of personality?

Yes and no. Education, as we moderns of the West practise it, contains

the most remarkable ambiguity. For it sincerely intends to develop the

specifically human capacity for intelligent self-control, but with

equal sincerity it intends to keep the teacher (that is, the generation

that is passing away) in control of the pupil (the generation that is

arriving).

We justify this dualism, or at least keep it alive and

respectable-looking, by the violent assumption that we who are about to

die already possess wisdom, already know how to live, already incarnate

pure intelligence to such a degree that the next generation cannot

do better than walk in our footsteps. “Acquire self-control,” we say

to the young, but we mean, “Form a habit of doing what we oldsters

want you to do.” This reminds one of the old skit on the doctrine of

predestination:

You can and you can’t; you will, and you won’t;

You’ll be damned if you do, you’ll be damned if you don’t.

Or, still better, it illustrates Paul’s famous confession: “There is

war in my members.... The good that I would do, I do not, and the

evil that I would not do, that I do.” What we should do is to make

our educational system a systematic warning against walking in our

footsteps.

The whole conception of education as primarily a process of handing on

the intelligence that we possess is an error. For intelligence is not a

deposit that one can possess; it is not composed of particular mental

acts and habits; endeavor to possess it, and you gather to yourself

ashes and smoking embers--the flame has escaped you.

Under the surface of contemporary education these two irreconcilables

are already in conflict. We are beginning to see that the prime

function of schools is to put the young into possession of methods

for inquiry and for testing. And in the light of this function we are

beginning to ask, What is it to teach patriotism, or religious loyalty,

or social-mindedness? The result is conflict that goes deeper than a

contest between two finished views of the state or of the church or

of social organization. It is a contest between two opposed ways of

acquiring and holding views, opposed ways of dealing with standards, of

handling ever-rising new issues, of choosing our loyalties.

The effect of making education an instrument whereby the wisdom of a

departing generation shall control the arriving one never is what the

theory of it calls for. Theoretically, the impartially selected best

in contemporary civilization should be transmitted; actually some sort

of partizanship is propagated. A state school in Canada and one in

the United States, though they be within sight of each other, do not

develop a common rationality in respect to either of the two countries

or in respect to Great Britain. The teaching of what is called

patriotism is the inculcation of partizanship and of the closed mind.

There is nothing in it that enables pupils to discriminate between

different varieties of patriotism, or that prepares them for a possibly

unprecedented type.

Religious education in the church school, likewise, is partizan. It is

directed towards the perpetuation of a specific loyalty, not towards

the capacity and the habit of weighing loyalties. Even if Christians

already have the truth, this does not justify partizan methods in

teaching it; for the truth, one would guess, requires no special

privilege. Indeed, it is worth asking whether partizanship on behalf

of a good thing does not always obscure its goodness. Would it be

un-Christian so to teach the young that they should freshly and freely

weigh Christianity and its alternatives, my denomination and other

denominations, our civilization and other actual or possible ones?

Because we do not thus educate we have churches that have no technic

for correcting their corporate errors, no technic for squarely meeting

new situations, no technic for getting denominations together even when

these denominations know that they ought to do it. Moreover, no just

balance is held between majorities and minorities in the churches, or

between laymen and clergy or clerical officers.

Whether the need for conversion is greater in church education or

in state education might be questioned; in any case the spiritual

sickness of both is the same, and the remedy is the same. Both display

a self-imprisonment of the spirit, though both aspire to freedom;

both take steps towards freedom, but hesitate, fear, and compromise

or become inefficient from both points of view. In this juncture our

inescapable duty is to go forward, not into discrete freedoms doled

out piecemeal, but into freedom as an all-inclusive technic and habit

whereby we shall continuously outgrow ourselves both individually and

collectively.

Some parts of such a technic are now in process of experimental

development. We shall in due time point them out. Other parts we have

still to seek. The assumption under which the seeking must proceed

is that the technic of freedom is not a pattern that we impose upon

conduct, but itself a manifestation of freedom, and therefore something

more like friendship or worship.

XXVII

THE FUNCTION OF MINORITIES

To say “freedom” is to be reminded of the old, old story of the

struggle of apparent weakness against obvious power; the desperate

straits of a truth against which men stop their ears; the plight of

the simply human as against the institutional; the contrast between

injustice in obscure corners and massive but inert virtue in the

market-place.

Freedom connotes minorities. There is no instance of a majority that,

having become secure in its power, spontaneously secretes freedom from

within itself for any considerable time. It appears to be about as

easy for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle as for those who

have power over men to cultivate freedom in the same men. Even under

constitutions that guarantee individual liberty, actual liberty exists,

if at all, through continuous struggle of a dissatisfied few against

the lethargy of a satisfied many. The only exceptions that I can think

of are the few teachers and parents who, imbued with respect for the

personalities of the young, endeavor to educate them through their

freedom instead of by canalizing their minds.

Our reliance must be, then, not upon might and power, but upon the

kind of spiritual strength that can reside in those who are accounted

weak. Let us consider, then, the function of minorities, and the

more effective methods of performing this function. This subject is

strangely neglected, and when not neglected, strangely misunderstood.

It is a truism of history that the privileges that we enjoy simply

because we are men were won for us from reluctant power first of all

through the daring dreams, and then the daring struggle, of a few.

We glory in these early minorities, or minor forces as the world

measures force, yet for the most part our present citizens regard it

as a misfortune to be in a minority, especially if it is small and

its triumph seems far away. Pity or contempt towards those who are

“different” is the conventional thing among us, but when have success

and power, however unjust, been contemptible?

Up to the present time we in America have almost entirely failed to

develop and utilize the capacities of political minorities. The popular

assumption is that the function of a minority party is to win the next

election, and then to rule as the majority party. If the election goes

against us, we think that the next thing to do is to expire or to make

terms with the dominant majority, as Mr. Roosevelt did after a single

defeat of the Progressive Party, and as Democratic leaders have done

for many years when their party has been out of power. The assumed

principle is, Win the election, or else give up, or compromise and

divide the benefits.

But this leaves out of account one of the chief services that a

minority might perform, especially a minority that maintains a

continuous existence through a long period of defeats. This service

is nothing less than helping the majority party to use its power more

wisely than it is capable of using it without outside help. To make the

party in power think twice before acting; to make it aware that all

that is hidden will be brought to light; to make it conscious that

nothing is settled until it is settled right; and to keep alive the

idea that the last and the least of our citizens must be taken into

account--this is a service that the majority cannot perform for itself,

and that neither a short-lived nor compromising minority can perform,

but only a minority whose convictions are deep enough to sustain it

indefinitely.

Whatever party or individual is in power, real grievances exist;

somebody is oppressed, or exploited, or thwarted in his legitimate

claims. It is the function of the minority to listen to his cry and to

become voice for him in the centers of administration and legislation.

It is likewise the function of the minority to keep its thinking

“ahead of the game” and to initiate ideas that require to be mulled

over before action is taken. When a vital idea is apprehended it is

to be talked about, and thought through, and revised, and kept before

people’s minds until it has the effect that is its due.

I have spoken as if the tools of a political minority were weapons,

and as if strife were of the essence of the technic that freedom

requires. But herein I have merely used existing notions of politics

in order to point the way to something better. That strife is not the

process whereby minorities can best perform most of their functions

will be shown in a subsequent section. At the present moment what most

concerns us is to perceive that minorities are a normal part of any

live society, political or other; to ascertain the needs that only

minorities can meet, and in the light of what we thus find to set forth

some items in a rational policy for individual conduct.

First of all, we need to give more attention than is customary to the

effects of power upon those who wield it, and we need to educate

the young with direct reference to these effects. The reason for

continuous universal education with respect to this matter is the

all-pervasiveness of the problem and of the difficulty. We have to deal

not only with power lodged in officers of state, but also in parents,

employers, labor leaders, investors, clergymen and ecclesiastical

officers, and leaders in many civic groups; not only with power lodged

in adults but also the power of the young over one another in play and

social relations; finally, we have to do not merely with the conduct

of leaders, but also with that of members of majorities or of other

dominant groups. Education on this point is needed not only in order to

put those who wield power upon guard against themselves, but also to

make the generality of men reasonably critical towards their leaders,

and towards all dominant parties or groups. In short, the whole

populace should acquire a habit of sensitiveness towards all power and

authority wheresoever it is lodged.

Let us see, now, what the dangers are. They have their center in

the fact that consciousness of possessing power tends to divert the

possessor’s attention from main issues to subordinate ones. The

experience of being a cause, and of being able to bring things to pass,

is enjoyable; therefore it seeks to prolong itself as though it were a

good _per se_, whereas it is really good only when its consequences,

on the whole, are wholesome. Thus the stake that one properly has in

one’s selfhood becomes exaggerated and distorted. This produces in the

victim at one time undue respect for precedents that he himself has

created, at other times undue responsiveness to the seductions of the

moment. The resulting pseudo-virtue of consistency, and the obverse

pseudo-virtue of “adaptability” or “practicality” alike put one’s

present self into the foreground instead of the issues that the self

should be meeting.

Instead of “one’s self” in this description, we may read, upon

occasion, “one’s party,” “one’s church,” “one’s set,” or “one’s

institution”; the truth of the description is unaffected. In short,

consciousness of power tends to beget self-will in individuals and in

groups.

Not only does this self-will tend to dislocate issues _ab initio_; it

also cumulatively surrounds itself with products of its own that wall

it off from surrounding realities. One now uses “vested interests” as

the measure of other interests; one measures one’s efficiency by the

ratio between planned result and actual result, not realizing that

the lack of a better plan, a wider horizon, spells inefficiency; one

consorts with persons of like mind, whether partners or beneficiaries,

erects their joint opinion into an orthodoxy, and becomes callous

towards outsiders and towards unaccustomed ideas; at last the fate

that was implicit in the situation from the beginning fulfils its

measure--incapacity to reconstruct from within, and ignoble terror

before the danger of explosion from without.

It is scarcely needful to dwell upon the less subtle consequences of

possessing power, such as exaggeration of the importance of security

for oneself and one’s possessions; secretiveness; the temptation to

employ illegitimate means and to justify them by the importance of the

ends in view, and the danger, at last, of conscienceless corruption.

Let no one think that this is a description merely of political

parties, cliques, office-holders, and bosses, nor that the economic

sphere is the only one that needs to be considered along with the

political. No; the psychology of the matter applies to the whole

experience of wielding power. Many years ago a woman became, as she

thought, disillusioned concerning a leader who was widely known for

his utterly unselfish devotion to the common weal. “For,” said she,

“I have learned that in his family he is dictatorial to the point

of tyranny, whereas outside his family he teaches and practises the

exact opposite.” It was my privilege to point out that there is here

no psychological inconsistency. “He was born into a social system

that took for granted that a husband and father would be the ‘head of

the family,’ and as such would make decisions for the whole family,

and employ the family means to carry his decisions through. From this

root his domestic habits grew as grows the grass. On the other hand,

outside the family he encountered a contrary set of assumptions, and he

developed a contrasting set of habits. These habits truly reveal his

capacity for sensitive response to persons; if he were to start his

family experience _de novo_ under the assumptions of the new day, with

no consciousness of the old-fashioned power as ‘head of the family,’ he

would form domestic habits that would satisfy you.”

Knowledge of the psychology of power is needed in our religious

organizations. For here additional emotional sanctions gather around

the conduct of clerical leaders, and around institutional acts, past

and present. The religiousness of both leader and led reinforces the

tendencies that have been described, and then partly overlooks, partly

hushes up, partly defends, and partly sanctifies the results.

One great communion, the Roman Catholic, not only concentrates all

power in a hierarchy, but also identifies the authority of the

hierarchy with the authority of an unchanging God. Theoretically

it does not follow that all priestly acts and policies are sound,

for distinction is made between the bishop or the Pope acting

as an individual and the same person wielding divine authority.

Nevertheless in practice this distinction tends to fade out. What the

Pope says “goes” without anybody’s stopping to inquire whether or

not it is _ex cathedra_. If the bishops in the United States adopt a

policy--concerning parochial schools, say--that they have a perfect

right to reject or to reconsider, opposition to it is instantly branded

as disloyalty to the church. A bishop has been known to go as far as to

assert that it is improper to discuss and evaluate episcopal conduct

except in official conclaves. In this situation the moral necessity

of institutional self-criticism is unprovided for. Minorities can

scarcely function at all. Even when oppressive use of power is made by

an occasional ecclesiastic, there is no known way to resist it without

being accused of straight disloyalty to Mother Church; and when a

high official becomes prideful, puffed up, and notorious for pompous

display, no way is at hand for deflating him.

Protestant bodies, though they offer far more opportunity for

reconstruction from within, even providing organs for lay participation

therein, nevertheless do not escape the tendencies that accompany

the exercise of power, nor provide adequate means for resisting

these tendencies. The immunities of officialdom, though they be not

denominated in the bond, are there. “Respect for the cloth” leads

to the coddling of theological students; by means of easy tests it

certifies intellectual weakness along with strength, and then piously

puts up with the resulting qualities of pulpit and pastoral skill.

For how many of the sermons preached last Sunday was there any real

occasion? Where real occasion for a sermon existed, was the needed and

serviceable sermon forthcoming? What is an efficient or successful

minister? The point of this question is not that ministers are human,

fallible, and of varying degrees of ability, but that the immunity

from real tests that their official position gives them misleads both

them and their parishioners. Keeping the church machinery going and

attracting support for it, or even increasing the membership, does

not of itself indicate anything as to what is happening within the

spiritual life. Here, as in politics, industry, and education, the

possession of power generates illusions.

A striking example of this illusory self-involution is the continuance

of denominational competition in rural communities after the facts

and the wickedness of it have been exposed. Denominational officers

responsible for this condition have become so far ankylosed by the

poison of officialdom that they take only the feeblest steps towards

reform, and meantime the laity, though it does not believe in this

competition, contributes the money for keeping it going.

Nothing will effectively counteract these tendencies except a further

development within Protestantism of the functions of minorities. Among

other things, we need a more critical church press and also more

periodicals devoted to religion but entirely independent of official

support. We must ask more questions, and questions with a sharper

point. We must not hesitate to bring about losses of some kinds of

power in order that spiritual powers of better quality may be released.

Genial humor and good-natured satire might well be employed as one

antidote to the sense of personal enlargement that so commonly attends

elevation to office. If we Protestants gasp at the effect upon Catholic

“dignitaries” of the authority that they wield, we should at least

snicker out loud at the effect upon our own bishops.

Active, unabashed, good-natured minorities are needed wherever our

life is organized, and indeed wherever, organized or not, we move in

masses. We owe a debt to anybody who employs unfashionable good taste.

There is room for coteries of persons bent upon reaching out beyond

the conventional to the beautiful and the true. We need minorities

in morals, too; minorities that will openly place the weak points

over against the strong points in current moral standards as well as

practice, and that will also pay the cost of experiments in living upon

a higher plane. We cannot have moral evolution without in some way

abandoning old standards and adopting new ones. If this abandoning and

adopting is desultory, hit-and-miss, and especially if it is compelled

to be secret, evolution becomes unduly slow and costly, or else unduly

fast and costly. The rational procedure is to recognize that there is

a place for minorities that seriously experiment with reconstructions

for the benefit of all. The widespread moral confusion and haste of

the present day is a natural result of the lack of critical minorities

thinking and experimenting in the open during the preceding two or

three generations when the conditions of existence were being rapidly

transformed by economic forces.

From some of the current concepts of education one would infer that in

the school and college world at least minorities must be flourishingly

performing their indispensable functions. One would expect students to

obtain a material part of their training in rationality from belonging

to this or that minority, and from the reciprocal modification of

majorities and minorities by each other. Some experience of this

kind is had, in fact, in self-government schemes of some sorts; yet

it appears that the educational possibilities of majority-minority

situations are rarely worked out either by pupils acting alone or

by pupils acting under the guidance of supervisors. Instead of the

learning of deficiencies and the enlargement of horizon that should

result from the interplay of groups, we find, too often, cock-crowing

by the victorious majority and a sense of futility upon the part of the

defeated minority.

This in the elementary and secondary schools. When we come to the

colleges, we find conditions even worse. The majority-minority

relations are so irrational that anything more ominous for the future

of society can scarcely be found. “Campus customs,” often trivial,

sometimes offensive, are enforced upon every last student with the

ruthlessness of a Czarist régime. If one refuses, say, to wear a green

cap, one is thrown into water or otherwise manhandled; or, if physical

penalties have been abolished, there are psychical penalties not less

compelling. The faculty of a certain college is proud to have rooted

physical violence completely out of the campus; yet on the same campus

there is a law that a freshman must deliver a match to any upper-class

man who demands one, and another law permits any upper-class man to

examine the socks that any freshman is wearing. “What would happen to

a freshman who refused to submit to these laws?” a visitor asked. The

reply was that if he persisted in his disobedience life would be made

so miserable for him that he would leave college. The visitor asked

again, “What would happen if a freshman sent to the college paper a

dignified communication in opposition to these customs?” The editor

answered that the communication would not be printed, but that if it

were printed the writer would suffer the penalty.

The quality of such campus laws must be judged by the effects upon both

those who command and those who obey. The pain, physical or mental,

even though it amount to cruelty, is not the worst of the matter, by

any means. A deeper wound by far is inflicted upon the perpetrators

themselves through the closing of their minds to thought and to the

conditions of rational social existence. Where minorities have no

voice, the mind of the majority decays. Perhaps the clearest sign

of what really happens here is the sheepish submissiveness of the

minority, and the salving of its sores by the thought that next year

one will have the privilege of tormenting somebody else.

“All the general student offices for the next three years have been

allotted. Even the freshmen who are to hold office in their senior

year have been picked out,” said one who knew. “How was it done?”

“Oh, politicians from the fraternities put their heads together and

distributed the plums.” “But how about the elections? Can these

politicians deliver the vote?” “Certainly.”

This may be an extreme case, but certainly “delivering the votes”

is common upon our campuses, and partizanship is taken as normal.

Majority-minority relations are made up of deals, combinations, sharp

practices, squabbles, and occasional corruption of the ballot. The

minutes of a certain chapter of a fraternity actually contain the

record of a motion, duly made and carried, that the chapter combine

with other fraternities therein named to get and divide the college

offices.

When we find such things in Pennsylvania colleges, or Ohio colleges,

or Illinois colleges, we are justified in asking whether academic

experience may not be contributing to the gang politics and the

political corruption proved to have been present in these states.

Though the means for proving a connection are lacking, the likelihood

of it is sufficient to give pause to the wise. At least this can be

asserted, that this sort of college experience contains no corrective

for this sort of political conduct.

One looks in vain for anything in the teaching or the administration

of colleges that promises to go far in the opposite direction.

Professors, who might be expected to be wise in such rudimentary

matters of the education of intelligence, are handicapped by lack of

reasonable minority-majority relations within their faculty. College

administration is in too many respects autocratic; a professor has too

much reason to suppose that minorities are unwelcome and futile. The

contacts of students with such mentors, whether in the classroom or

outside it, will not go far towards curing the ills of the campus.

Nor will the cure come, as far as now appears, from presidents and

deans. The “administrative mind,” admirable as it is for its ability to

fit human and other factors together in a general scheme, is the victim

of its own strength. It thinks of human problems in terms of possible

manipulation by a manager; it seeks quick results, and it is tempted to

value them above fine human relations; it fits men into its own plan

instead of developing in men a capacity to make plans. Prediction

is, of course, precarious, but the present indications are that our

best reliance for reform in this part of higher education is upon the

students themselves. Their power, measured in administrative scales, is

minor, but they are capable of attaining the spirit that overtops all

mechanics of administration. We know this because of what we already

see in individuals and minority groups upon many campuses. Students

are beginning to ask to be educated! And much of the best criticism

of the mass-folly of collegians comes from collegians themselves. The

growth of these minorities in number, in size, in insight, and in

articulateness is to be expected. There is room for hope that some day

minorities upon the campus will perform their true educational function.

The indispensable functions of minorities, then, are these: To bring

into the open any oppression, injustice, untruth, failure or defect

that the powers that be are committing or permitting or failing

to perceive; to apprehend and to define new issues, especially in

situations in which the majority has a strong motive for continuing

the _status quo_; to bring it to pass that ideas shall be thrashed out

before action is taken; to protect the ruling majority from becoming

the victim of its own power; finally, being convinced where truth and

right lie, to stick to the conviction through thick and thin without

compromise unless right reason shows that the conviction is erroneous.

Let any minority that pursues this policy become the majority if it

can; let it secure control if it can by fair and open means, and then

let it beware of its own power, and let it accept help from minorities

that now will arise in their turn.

The most important changes that are to occur tomorrow are in the

keeping of some minority now in existence or soon to arise. The most

creative thought will take its rise from discontent and criticism, not

from fattened respectability. The most significant part of society

in state, in church, in the industrial order, in education, is some

minority. Minorities can be wise or foolish. It is not necessarily

creditable to walk with the few nor discreditable to march with the

many (but only dangerous!). Nevertheless, the most significant part of

any society is some minority in which creative changes are germinating.

Without minorities society, as an order of reason, would perish.

XXVIII

RELEASE THROUGH COOPERATIVE THINKING

That release from the trammels of selfhood is to be found in some sort

of self-identification with other selves is one of the surest insights

men have achieved through millennial ponderings upon the meaning of

life. But the nature and the process of this mingling of personalities

have been variously conceived. Sympathy, particularly with sufferers;

oneness with a congregation of worshippers; obedience, as of soldiers

to a commander; fellowship through common loyalty to a person, a cause,

or an institution; friendship and affection; “letting go” in a crowd,

as in religious frenzies ancient and modern, in drinking bouts, or in

a football game--all these have recommended themselves as modes of

emancipation. All of them do in fact bring a sense of enlargement; we

are here on track of some conceivably universal good. Yet the contrasts

and the clashes between these heterogeneous modes of self-enlargement

warn us to think twice. When we do think twice, we shall ask from what

we need to be released, and into what, and what is the final result of

each of these types of experience.

As a rule, we struggle to be released without first inquiring into the

nature of our bondage, and as a result we hail as salvation almost any

experience that promotes the flow of self-forgetting emotion. Real

release, in any large and permanent sense, must be that which brings to

fruition the motive that is in all and through all our motivation--to

be a rational, self-guiding self in a society of such selves; and the

chains that must be struck off are the specific ones that we ourselves

have forged through partial and defective self-activity in the past.

I shall take for granted, without devoting a section to discussing

the point, that current thought is right, along with considerable

ancient thought, when it values friendship, affection, and generally

sympathetic relations between individuals as, in some degree, the

actual attainment of the life of reason. The same is true of the

experience of beauty, of delight in truth, and of play. All these

are genuinely emancipating experiences. They are a rational good in

themselves, and they fit into the framework of rationality in the

larger relations. It is in these larger relations that our problem is,

in practice, farthest from solution. In the modern world the individual

is obliged to make specific reactions to extensive social masses and

forces; further, many of these reactions must be made by the individual

as a member of some class, organization, or institution. Here is where

the shoe of precedent pinches most; here is where the capacity of the

individual to achieve any large freedom is most in question.

It is perhaps scarcely necessary to argue that dividing the world

of persons into a few who command and a many who obey is neither

practicable nor inherently rational. The impossibility of it and the

irrationality rest back upon the same fact, namely, that both those who

command and those who obey know themselves and one another as persons.

There is something present all ’round that is stronger than force. A

full measure of obedience never can be exacted from the many, and the

few cannot bring themselves to exact it. It is fascinating to witness

the possessors of power compromising with themselves in the use of

it; it is inspiring to see strength of spirit in those who are shorn

of power. Persons just have to get together upon the sheer basis of

personality.

There is a kind of freedom, as also a kind of get-together, in

herd-action, no doubt. For such action takes down the bars and lets

something inside of us caper. This capering may be lightsome, as in

a New Orleans Mardi Gras or a New York City election-night jamboree;

or it may be strenuous, as in mass support of a football team engaged

in a hard game; or it may be destructive, as in an angry mob. By

emotional release of this sort people can be made to cohere on behalf

of an institution, a party, or a cause. Consequently leaders of many

interests--political, economic, religious--have developed a technic for

causing people to move in herds when, because of emotional release,

they think they are acting freely as individuals.

It is not to be denied that release of this general type, though it

be partial, though it lends itself to self-deception, though it be

dangerous, may be serviceable at times. Leastways, one can scarcely

fail to sympathize when minds long subjected to a narrow and numbing

routine break loose and go on a spiritual picnic! There are times

when frolicsome nonsense brings benefits deeper than the momentary

satisfaction. We must not forget that even our better and wiser selves

perpetually rebreathe the partly exhausted air that issues from our

own lungs. We ever need the open! Further, when alternatives have been

weighed and a decision reached, it may sometimes be the part of wisdom,

though it be dangerous, to put all our energy into an executive act,

postponing further thought for the time being.

But mass-action in which critical thought is not a concurrent item

never is wholly safe. It is least dangerous in play-activities in which

the many actually play, not merely look on; it is most perilous when

a whole population, or a class in society, or a party, acts as a unit

under the inspiration of some high sentiment, religious, patriotic, or

other. For now concentration of mind upon a given end that stirs deep

emotion not merely postpones thought, but controls thought. The mind is

now ready to affirm or deny anything whatever in the interest of its

consuming passion; or, if ‘interest’ rather than ‘passion’ is the type

of control, unlimited ingenuity is employed in digging out evidence

that we are already acting wisely and fairly.

At this point the problem of release of our powers takes this form: How

are the functions of thought to be performed and made effective where

men act in groups, societies, classes, and masses? A special phase of

this problem concerns the method of rational action where conflict

arises or is threatened between two sets of persons.

A phrase that has been coming into use recently, “cooperative thinking”

points the way to a solution, the only possible solution, of this

problem. There are two aspects of it. One is “thinking” in the strict

sense of active inquiry by analytic methods; the other is “cooperation”

as contrasted, on the one hand, with thinking in solitude, and on the

other hand, with the strife-and-victory attitude and habit.

Such thinking is, of course, not an invention, nor a new discovery. It

exists in circles of friends who muse by the fireside without desire

to win victories over one another; it exists in some families and

partnerships, in which the members pool their views and thereby attain

harmony of action; it characterizes the old Quaker type of deliberation

in which there was much silence and listening, but freedom to speak,

with the final word of the chairman (no vote having been taken), “It

seems to be the sense of the meeting that ...”; it can be witnessed

in assemblies in the interest of scientific research, when each

participant in discussion takes the attitude of inquiry.

What has to be done with this already old experience of thinking

together is threefold: To extend the practice from these restricted

groups to other groups and to the larger aggregations of men; to

extend it from the few interests in which it is now recognized to all

interests that call for corporate action; and to dig deeper into the

nature and the conditions of cooperative thinking, particularly in

areas of conflict, and to improve the technic of it.

In view of some items of recent history, some readers may ask, “Do you

mean discussion method, so called? If so, then, ...?” If by discussion

method we are to understand a particular _a, b, c_, procedure,

this is not what I mean, for I am not convinced that cooperative

thinking is restricted to any one, or any other number, of particular

procedures. Even in the few examples to which allusion has been

made there is great variety. On the other hand, there is distinct

advantage in the formulation of specific procedures that have been

successful--formulations that, most of all, enable persons assembling

together for the first time to find their own mind and discern their

problems most promptly.[9]

The leading promoters of discussion method, whatever the particular

technic that they favor, appear to have in mind the same goal, on the

whole, as that which I have defined. If the goal, and the roads that

lead towards it, have not always been clearly seen, I am willing to

think that this is incidental to the newness and the incompleteness

of some phases of our experience in this field. Consequently, if I

now point out some misconceptions and pitfalls, it is not because I

wish to hold back the movement that goes under the name of discussion

method, but because I believe that it represents in important measure a

principle of rationality itself.

First, then, genuinely cooperative thinking must be something more than

a friendly adjustment of conflicting present interests, or pooling

of present desires. Let us gladly grant that arbitration, pooling,

and adjustment by compromise have their place. When opponents--say,

employers and employes--“get their feet under the same table,”

something is likely to be gained, even if conflicting desires are

adjusted without inquiry into the validity of any of them. But in the

end we must distinguish between the two questions, How can I get what I

want with the least friction? and, What wants, of myself and of others,

are reasonable?

An illustration of the principle is easily found in industrial

conflicts. In most contests between capital and labor, each party

occupies a fixed base of assumed self-interest. Now and then, it is

true, a declaration is heard that the interest of the employer and the

interest of the worker are at bottom one; but this is interpreted as

meaning, according to one’s starting point, either that high profits

for the employer carry with them benefits for the worker in the way

of wages, or that high wages for the worker increase the prosperity

of the investor by stabilizing labor and by enabling workers to buy

goods. Meantime, evidence accumulates that something is wrong with the

assumptions that underlie this type of thought. Are not the interests

of capital and the interests of labor, as they are here understood,

fundamentally antagonistic to each other and to the common weal?

Clearly, the great task of thought and of conference between these

two--rather three--interests is to face unflinchingly the true nature

of the ends that each party seeks, and to evaluate them all by weighing

them in the same scales.

A parallel instance is the habit of excluding from conferences between

nations questions of “vital interest,” “national honor,” “purely

domestic concern,” or a specified topic such as the Monroe Doctrine.

What is the implication of such reservations? Is it that we desire

the privilege of acting arbitrarily? Or, is it that we possess a

rationality that others do not possess? Or, finally, is it that we

distrust thought as a guide where our emotions are most intense?

How is cooperative thinking related to debating? Undoubtedly debate,

which proceeds by settled rules, is a splendid step on the road from

squabbling to peace. The rules of order for deliberative assemblies

are a mighty achievement of reason. They make mere force take a back

seat. For they make it possible for the last man to be heard. They

provide for pause, a second thought, amendment and postponement; they

enable minorities actually to modify the thinking of majorities, and

they are one instrument of a genuinely common will--a will proved to

be common by the loyal acquiescence of minorities in final decisions

by vote. Nevertheless, debate is only a half-way house. For it is

a clash between conclusions already held rather than a seeking for

deeper insight. Moreover, because it has the form and uses a method of

conflict, it is not favorable to friendly and candid examination of

motives. It is not a method of self-criticism, nor of help to others in

self-criticism.

Discussion method, even in its present forms, is a clear addition

to the tools of reason. For it does not endeavor to make one’s

initial position prevail. Rather, its attitude is that of seeking

to know rather than seeking to convince or to win. It is a method

of mutual self-modification. It smooths the path towards the larger

truths, which are always the potentially common-to-all rather than

the particular-tome. Its hardest task and its severest test will be

found in the necessity, ultimately, of submitting to mutual scrutiny

our basic assumptions, which represent our deepest-rooted and most

persistent desires.

Cooperative revision of conduct in the realm of basic desires through

analytical thought! Release from our self-bound selves by what one

may dare call the intellectual love of one another! This is the goal

towards which cooperative thought must move. In the end, nothing less

will suffice.

We shall be tempted to content ourselves with a less radical good, a

less radical rationality than this. We shall be tempted not only by

timidity and desire for special privileges, but also by our regard

for what is really good within one another. The evil in life is due

chiefly to misplaced and displaced desires that are not fundamentally

evil but fundamentally good. There is reason, always, for respect,

considerateness, gentleness, therefore. Any attempt to think

cooperatively must rely upon bringing the reasonableness of such

attitudes to clear consciousness. But at once we are tempted, even

out of regard for one another, to soften issues, or to pool interests

rather than weigh our wants, or to equilibrate our present views

instead of deepening our problem and obtaining fresh data.

There is no painless operation that can cure us of our deeper

irrationalities. Discussion, when it is good, does not anesthetize

its participants, nor make them dozy with the sweet food of specious

solutions for problems, but keeps them awake by the prick of

self-criticism. When discussion is at its best it treads the dangerous

edge where intrenched interests and supposedly sacred convictions

practice the philosophy of preparedness.

Sometimes cooperative thinking must manifest its virtues by producing

repentance. For, though a kernel of good impulse can be found in our

conduct, the direction that conduct takes often is destructive. I can

administer spiritual poison to myself through my love of life; when I

pursue my just rights I can become insensitive and cruel; I can become

so absorbed in the mechanisms and immediate motives of my occupation

that I fail of ethical perspective. For me, in such situations, there

is no salvation into rationality without an about-face.

No method of conference will render minorities dispensable. In even

the sincerest discussion we need participants who have the “show me”

spirit. Always there is a residuum of problem or of evidence not yet

mastered; always there is the one-sidedness of men; always there will

be leaders who are in danger of dominating the thought of others;

friendliness may produce an illusory sense of unanimity or of having

solved a problem; and even while discussion is going on conditions in

the world are changing and problems are shifting. Discussion groups in

which minorities fade out should be carefully scrutinized.

The promotion of discussion method has brought to the fore still

another set of interesting and important questions. Are all questions

whatsoever to be treated as open? However we answer this query, are

we to set down as prejudiced every mind that tenaciously holds that

condition _a_ is right, condition _b_ wrong, and change _c_ required?

Does cooperative thinking imply that such an individual is to act as if

he did not see what he is sure that he does see? And does it justify in

others an everlasting “Perhaps so; perhaps not”? Is nothing ever to be

taken as settled? Does willingness to consider the other man’s point of

view estop us from action that may, from his point of view, constitute

antagonism?

The rational answers to these questions appear to be as follows: The

only sense in which we can properly assume that all questions are open

is that everyone should be ready to weigh specific evidence when it is

offered and to go after evidence upon specific proof that it is needed.

The most learned man, and the ethically insightful one, can be at home

in a discussion group upon this condition; he cannot be at home if the

notion of open-mindedness is so applied as to make specific grounds

and sharp distinctions seem unimportant. The open mind is not the

same as the empty mind, as has been said; it is far more likely to be

the full mind. That is, readiness to listen, to weigh, and to revise,

rather than non-committance, is the essential requirement. Truly

cooperative thinking will not make pussy-cats of us all; there still

will be prophets, and they will express convictions that have point.

They will be helped, however, to be circumspect, even though, as seems

to be inevitable, conduct will result that, from some points of view,

constitutes antagonism.

Cooperative thinking thus understood offers a marvellous emancipation

to us who are caught in the web of selfhood. An emancipation both

negative and positive, both from something and into something. It

offers, to begin with, as real a “letting go” as the emotional sprees

that simulate freedom. When I enter wholeheartedly into discussion, as

we are coming to understand this term, I rise out of my inhibitions,

my strains, my defence-attitudes, my feeling that the weal or the woe

of myself, my party, my institution, or society in general is hanging

by a thread that I am holding between my fingers. What a relief! And

what a smoothing out of the wrinkles of the mind ensues when one casts

out pride of being right, and, instead of being embarrassed when one is

found to be in error, rejoices in being set right. This is one phase of

the becoming “as a little child” that Jesus recommended.

But this is a letting go, not into a controlling emotion, but into

a more limber use of intelligence. The change is like that which a

tennis player, or a piano player, experiences when he learns how to

relax his wrist. Questions now bob up where they were not suspected;

one sees hitherto unrealized meanings in the other fellow’s thought;

one’s own notions now appear in a new perspective, and one actually

understands one’s own ideas better than before; the as-yet-unknown

and the as-yet-unfinished come out of the shadows and show themselves

for what they are, and therefore the lure of study increases. New

possibilities now seem worth trying, and expectancy of unprecedented

good is nourished.

Here are conditions that favor invention, originality, and

creativeness. There is, first, release from tensions; then, vivid

consciousness of a problem; next, stimulation by varied data and

alternatives, and finally, criticism of all proposed solutions. No

doubt the climax of creativity will occur as a rule in moments of

solitary reflection, but this free fellowship of mind prepares the

way. It starts the appropriate mood and attitude; it helps define

our discontents; it gets us out of our ruts. Cooperative _thinking_

does not flatten out the individual; rather, it saves him from the

merely type-reactions of both himself and his professional and social

environment.

A little way back we contemplated the pseudo-emancipation of

herd action. Let us close this section by noticing the opposite

pseudo-emancipation of smart minds that are not cooperative. We have

had in recent years not a little free-lance criticism of everything

in our civilization. With much of the “de-bunking” that has resulted,

these pages have shown sympathy. But much of this criticism fails

to attain complete objectivity because the critic takes no means to

correct his own necessarily faulty personal equation. His personality,

his theory of the universe, or his dominant mood so mingles with his

description of actualities that the final effect is the pitting of a

newly conventionalized individual against older conventions. This will

be found in fiction, in essay, and in criticism. These authors feel,

perhaps, that they are exercising great freedom, whereas in fact much

of their capacity for apprehending fact, for critical judgment, and for

reconstruction is bound by their solitariness or their partizanship.

Full emancipation comes only through some form of cooperative thinking.

XXIX

MY INTRACTABLE SELF

The problem of releasing our powers is the problem of both mastering

and submitting to the process of becoming a person. A submission that

is also a mastering! Here is the paradox of rationality in a finite

and growing being. A sort of dialectic is involved: Self-affirmation,

followed by self-denial, and then realization that this denial of self

is in reality a higher and fuller affirmation of selfhood.

I am not conscious, when I say this, of being under the influence

of Hegel, and certainly I do not regard this process as abstractly

logical. It is not the logical inconsistency of our self-assertiveness

that is so troublesome, but the consequences of it in pain, injustice,

sensuality, on the one hand, and on the other hand the numbing of high

motives of which we are by nature capable.

This interplay of apparent opposites appears in the large in the

majority-minority-majority cycle. Power in the majority gives rise from

within itself to power-in-weakness in a minority; this after struggle

grows into the major self-affirmation of the society in question, and

then, in turn, a new minority is required.

A parallel cycle is fulfilled in the individual through the medium of

cooperative thinking. Before the experience of cooperative thinking

he affirms or believes or acts upon the basis of a narrow experience;

cooperative thinking submits his case to a wider, more varied

experience, in which he ceases to take himself as the majority; but

behold, this submission frees and intensifies his own individuality,

whereupon the cycle begins over again.

The point in this cycle at which the chief obstacles to the growth

of persons are encountered is the second step--the denial of one’s

accumulated self. The chief hindrances are emotional. They are fear

of the unknown, and reaching after utter security (which in fact one

never experiences until one ceases to grasp after it); pride (which

does one the dishonor of identifying oneself with one’s possessions or

products); sensitiveness to opposition or contradiction (which easily

becomes either pugnacity, or argumentativeness, or smartness, or the

habit of being on the defensive); and indolent contentment with the

merely good, coupled with only languid approval of the better. In all

these states the self withdraws from actuality, covering its eyes as

if they could not bear the light. Consequently, a prime necessity,

if we are to be released from bondage to self, is the attainment of

objectivity, particularly objectivity towards our own sensitive points.

There are several trails that lead into or at least towards this

fruitful mountain valley. The scientific study of man helps; learning

what others think about us helps; a third trail, which is the least

laborious and painful, is laughter. I mean the laughter, not of scorn

or derision, but of humorous sympathy. Put yourself into some funny

classification, even if it be only partly or remotely true, and lo, you

are playing with yourself instead of making of your little self such

a dreadfully serious matter! Humor in this sense--not the biting-dog

sense--is a method of objectivity or truth-finding. It has a wondrous

capacity to make small things look small, and large things large. “Just

think, mother!” a humorous magazine makes a freshly graduated collegian

say, as he holds up his “sheepskin,” “Now I’m an educated man!”

Genial humor, moreover, is a normal expression of confidence in the

meaningfulness of life. When I laugh good-humoredly at my own foibles

I as much as say, “I wasn’t all there, was I?” When Immanuel Kant,

who was less than five feet tall, stumbled and fell, he rose smiling,

saying that it was no matter, he wasn’t tall enough to fall far! The

meaning of comedy is that we look straight at the incongruities in

ourselves without being abashed or losing our self-respect--_we_ are

free and happy in spite of our blunders, more free and happy because

we do not dodge the fact of our blundering. The stage comedy that we

enjoy most is the one that most completely hits off the characteristic

foibles of humanity in the large, that is of us the spectators. Here we

play with our selfhood, see deeper into it, and renew our confidence

that we can be rational.

Man is like a bear in a cage, says Robert Frost--so different from a

bear freely roaming, so ridiculous, yet ... But see for yourself how

humor without acerbity works.

THE BEAR

By Robert Frost

The bear puts both arms round the tree above her

And draws it down as if it were a lover

And its choke-cherries lips to kiss goodby,

Then lets it snap back upright in the sky.

Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall.

(She’s making her cross-country in the fall.)

Her great weight creaks the barbed wire in the staples

As she flings over and off down through the maples,

Leaving on one wire tooth a lock of hair.

Such is the uncaged progress of the bear.

The world has room to make a bear feel free.

The universe seems cramped to you and me.

Man acts more like a poor bear in a cage

That all day fights a nervous inward rage,

His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.

He paces back and forth and never rests

The toe-nail click and shuffle of his feet,

The telescope at one end of his beat,

And at the other end the microscope,

Two instruments of nearly equal hope,

And in conjunction giving quite a spread.

Or if he rests from scientific tread,

’Tis only to sit back and sway his head

Through ninety-odd degrees of arc it seems,

Between two metaphysical extremes.

He sits back on his fundamental butt

With lifted snout and eyes (if any) shut

(He almost looks religious but he’s not),

And back and forth he sways from cheek to cheek,

At one extreme agreeing with one Greek,

At the other agreeing with another Greek,

Which may be thought but only so to speak.

A baggy figure equally pathetic

When sedentary and when peripatetic.

_The Nation_, April 18, 1928, p. 447.

Humor helps us to be objective in even the most serious and sacred

matters. In the sermons of some of the most spiritually illuminated

and illuminating preachers of our day laughter is continually near the

surface, and often above the surface. The chuckle of the congregation

is not a sign that the mind has been distracted by unspiritual

influences, but that the point has got home. “I wonder,” said a

distinguished theologian, “whether God has a sense of humor?”

The laughter that makes us objective towards our limitations and yet

confident of our powers is not the same as the laughter of Lazarus

in Eugene O’Neill’s play. The point that Lazarus strives and strives

to make convincing is that selfhood is really insignificant and that

lightsome laughter is the appropriate mood for dealing with this

fact. As the drama was staged--magnificently staged--at the Pasadena

Community Playhouse, the laughter that Lazarus evoked in others was not

lightsome. Even his own “followers” did not attain to happy humor, and

the masks that they wore expressed abandon without the salt of thought.

_Thinking laughter_ was reserved for Lazarus alone, but his philosophy

and his laugh never, in fact, blended with each other. In spite of the

fact that he applied hope-bearing terms such as “life” and “God” to the

lifeless and undivine dust into which we are to be resolved, he could

not make laughter really natural and free in the contemplation of such

a destiny; it was, instead, an irruption suggestive of a pathological

condition.

The kind of lightsomeness that releases the bound self is the kind that

expresses belief in the significance of selfhood. Its function is, not

to solve our problems, but to take the stiffness out of the joints

of our mind. The main work has still to be done by rigorous thinking

and--as I have more than once hinted--by vigorous repenting.

In some situations repenting is the only way in which straight thinking

can perform its functions. By repentance I mean the frank, unequivocal

realization and acknowledgment (to oneself at least) that one has been

in the wrong in a sense so deep that the self expressed therein must be

disavowed, together with the positive espousal of a contrary selfhood.

In any such reversal of self there will be emotion, but not necessarily

any standard emotion. Upon this point there is much misunderstanding

and unfinished thinking. The most common view of repentance is that

it is the climax of chagrin, a humiliating experience, or even a

grovelling of spirit that anyone who respects himself would shun if

he could. This notion arose, no doubt, through the grovelling of

“subjects” before a human “sovereign” whom they had offended. Then, the

qualities of a human sovereign having been ascribed to God, religion

made of repentance the abject thing of our tradition.

The ability to repent is one of the noblest attributes of man. The act

is a privilege, not a dour necessity. It is, or can be, free growth

from within, a normal event in rational living on the part of finite

beings; therefore to be expected, provided for in our life-policies,

and lived through in dignity rather than abjectness.

The emotions that can occur in such a crisis cover a whole spectrum

from self-loathing to gladness. The state that we most need to

cultivate is gladness or joy that we are able to break through the

shell of self into a larger world. What a hell our selfhood would be if

one could no longer repent of anything! Repentance is not the winter’s

grave of our self-respect; it is the springtime of it.

It is needless to ask what class in society is impoverishing itself

most by neglecting the grace of repentance. For nearly every class

and institution has built up one or another defence-mechanism whereby

it employs some supposed virtue of its own as a justification for

continuing on its present course. Neither in the State nor in the

church; neither in education nor in business and industry; neither in

the family nor in the larger social groupings, do we find the habit of

facing faults in a manly and rational way; in none of them does one

hear the spring-song of growth through repentance.

Nor is this note audible in the vocalizations of most of our

_intelligentsia_ who occupy themselves so much with the fact of their

own emancipation and the lack of it in their contemporaries. The

function of the critic is both important and permanent, but the goal of

criticism is neither the chagrin that depresses the powers of another,

nor yet inflation of the critic’s self-esteem through applause from the

irresponsible. As in games the best sort of sportsmanship encourages

and helps a competitor to do his best, so the discoverer of our defects

should so reveal us to ourselves that we desire to improve ourselves.

Criticism at its best is a sympathetic entering into the problems of

others; it is not taking “pot shots” at them. When the problem for

another is to achieve repentance, the problem for the critic is to make

repentance seem attractive as well as necessary.

The writer or the speaker who merely utters flings at our

faults suffers in his own person the same sort of closing-up or

self-involution that he produces in those whom he “lambastes” or

denounces. Lacking the sympathy or the humor to enter into the

human-nature situation of another, he forfeits the capacity of

self-criticism also. He becomes opinionated, dogmatic, sometimes

intolerant, and at last careless of fact and unable to repent of his

own follies.

Some of our difficulty, as I have indicated, arises from habits and

traditions generated by experience under arbitrary governments, when

citizens had compelling motive for concealment and for putting the

best foot forward. But in addition we must admit that our nature

spontaneously shrinks from paying the cost of freedom; it longs

for joy, but fears to grasp it. Self-overcoming, therefore, and

self-discipline are indispensable.

Hence the peculiar service of the self-disciplined individuals who

openly reverse themselves with evident happiness. We know how the young

are helped to be self-critical and at the same time self-confident when

a parent or a teacher makes amends for his errors, either intellectual

or administrative. The late Josiah Strong told with utter simplicity

how he, a Christian minister, discovered that his preaching had

misconstrued the Gospel, and how through self-reversal he experienced

a kind of joyful conversion (see My Religion in Everyday Life). Harry

Emerson Fosdick has experienced, we may be sure, a sense of happy

emancipation as he has publicly abandoned positions that he publicly

took during the War. The revivalist, Gypsy Smith, having repeated in

public a story that was damaging and offensive to the then Mayor Hylan,

“took it all back” in public without qualification or self-excuse.

One can safely guess that a few more acts like these on the part of

preachers and evangelists would recommend religion more effectively

than rivers of argument, denunciation, and pleading.

Is it Quixotic to hope for an ultimate reversal of the popular

assumption that of course every individual and organization will be

on the defensive with respect to what he or it is and is doing? May

not this defensive attitude at last be seen to be what it verily is,

weakness rather than strength? May not repentance become the expected

thing, acquiring the dignity and the educational force that belong to

any necessary aspect of our rationality? The growth of cooperative

thinking is one sign that this hope is not entirely without ground.

Even “rights” and “vital interests” will be safer when this day comes

than they are now. Demonstrate that you are unarmed, and others will

lay down their arms; then you can “talk it over.” Where wrong has been

done, an unreserved acknowledgment of it has time and again smitten

the hardness of men’s spirits, and streams of generosity have burst

forth. Often and often what we most need is someone who will take the

initiative in repentance.

The diagnosis of humanity’s sickness that was made in Part III

indicated that the affected part is our intelligence, and that

recovery depends upon sharpening our wits. It should now be evident

that sharpening our wits is different from putting an edge upon a

tool that is no part of ourselves. Our “wits” are not constituted of

any impersonal intelligence, but of intelligence that quivers through

and through with personality and the laws of its growth. Intellect,

as such, cannot whittle itself to a point, as we see in the practical

stupidities of intellectual men; the total attitude of the person

towards himself and towards others is involved.

Shall we say, then, that the problem of release from our self-imposed

bondage finds its solution in the Greek idea of being ourselves, or in

the Christian idea of being saved from ourselves? The answer lies in

the fact that when we become objective towards ourselves we come upon

the requirement of repentance. We do, indeed, need to be ourselves,

but not these selves that we behold in each of us! Here not only does

naturalism in any of its current forms prove to be inadequate as a

theory of motivation, but also all naïve confidence in ourselves

whencesoever it be derived. Self-denial is not a vagary of unhealthy

minds; it is a law of reason; it is fundamental in the motivation of a

man. We save our lives by losing them. The solution of the problem is

far more Christian than it is Greek.

A remark was made some way back that the technic of freedom will be

found to be, not a pattern to be imposed upon conduct, but something

more like friendship or worship. The meaning of this possibly cryptic

utterance will be the subject of the next and concluding chapter.

XXX

THE REALM OF FREE SPIRITS

The spirit of man, when it is most awake, eager, and demanding, pants

for the open spaces and for companionship there. But what sort of open

spaces? Real emancipation is not only release from something but also

release into something. How, then, shall we describe the realm into

which our spirits, when they breathe freedom, struggle to press? What

could really satisfy a man?

The question can be answered only in and through the act of struggling

to be free. _Solvitur ambulando._ Wants become defined through the

interplay of satisfactions and discomforts that awaken thought. I did

not want to stop at Daggett to have the contents of my car examined

by the California State Bureau of Plant Quarantine and Pest Control,

but when my questioning taught me that I might inadvertently import an

insect that would destroy the orange groves amid which I write these

words, I acquired a desire for the examination. But this learning,

mark! was not the plastering upon me of an external compulsion; rather,

events guided me back to myself, making me act from within more fully

than before. It is experience that teaches us what we want, but it

does it by pricking us awake so that we ask questions and compare

satisfaction with satisfaction, desire with desire.

Having been at this business of self-discovery for some time, there

is no reason why we might not analyse the incidents and the processes

of it, and thereby arrive at a general description of the attitudes

that we take in our struggles to emancipate ourselves from ourselves.

Attitudes are, of course, leanings “towards,” and hence pointers-out of

a direction and possibly a goal. What, then, is this “life” concerning

which we say:

’Tis life of which our nerves are scant;

’Tis life, and more of life, we want?

This question can be asked and answered without saying whether this

which we want really exists or is ultimately attainable. I shall not

enter into the metaphysical question whether we are in process of

discovering an ideal world that already exists; or whether we are

participating in the creation of an ideal reality that shares existence

with the unideal; or whether ideals are, in last analysis, chimerical.

My sole question is this: If our likes could be filled to the very

brim, what kind of world should we then find ourselves living in? It is

appropriate to remark, however, that unless we permit our wants to go

exploring, we cannot find out what the resources of the world are. We

learn where food is, and where it is not, because hunger sets us upon a

quest. Nature teaches us when we, the pupils, put questions to her. If,

then, we desire to know whether our world-system is a fit habitation

for persons, we must make the experiment of acting as persons, and then

observe what happens. We must know what we want, and then go after it.

There is a tendency, which grows naturally out of the order in which

the sciences developed--first the physical, then the biological, then

the psychological and sociological--to invert the order of inquiry

that has just been named, asking first what the environment contains

and only afterwards what our desires are. Then, under a general theory

of adaptation, the assumption is made that our desires, in the nature

of the case, must be adapted to the particular environment that most

occupies scientific attention. If we say that we want something

more than _this_ environment provides, we are assured that we have

misinterpreted ourselves, and that what we “really” want is only

that which the already-assumed environment is ready to supply. Love

is “in reality” only “galloping gonads,” as a college student put

it; and idealistic cravings are “in reality” an expression of some

physiological vacuum.

This type of procedure regards itself as strictly objective, whereas

it is infected with subjectivity in that a particular mental habit

prevents consideration of unaccustomed questions. It is sheer

self-imitation that makes us believe that the fundamental apprehension

of our world is to be had by way of the physical sciences. It is a

self-deceived subjectivity that restricts the description of our wants

to sub-human categories instead of letting these wants speak for

themselves.

The universe may make possible what we want, or it may not; the issue

must be determined by observation and experiment under hypotheses

adapted to testing the free flight of desire. This free flight is what

now concerns us, and what we want to know is the direction in which it

goes when it is most free, most completely personal and venturesomely

rational. To change the figure, what is the medium that our wings must

press against in order to fly? The answer is partly implied in the

preceding sections.

_First_, how small or weak must a minority be in order to become

totally insignificant and rationally negligible? I do not see how we

can give any answer to this question that will not assume, rightly

or wrongly, that there is a realm of free spirit that lives by

forces resident within itself, and not by permission of anything

external to itself. Whatever matter may prove to be, and whatever

factor of determinism may reside in the temporal process; however

irrational and self-defeating we may at times become, something that

is self-nourishing appears to be capable of asserting itself in the

weakest minority.

_Second_, how broad must cooperation in thinking be in order that I may

become fully emancipated from myself? Who is to be included, and who is

to be excluded from the fellowship of intelligence? Again, I do not see

what answer can be given that will not assume that inclusive good-will

is an inherent aspect of intelligence. Good-will assumes, likewise, to

be a self-sustaining thing; it cannot be either purchased or compelled;

rather, it creates the fellowship of minds from within mind.

_Third_, is the grace of repentance whereby we break through our shell

into freedom a matter of arbitrary liking or a matter of obligation?

Knowing the blunderous way that we live, and the hurts that our

blunders entail, how can we possibly say that repentance may wait upon

our convenience? How can we possibly maintain the rightful supremacy of

rationality unless we assume that “I ought” is inherently involved in

it? How could we possibly be at home and free in an a-moral universe?

_Fourth_, what reservations are made by the mind that fully emancipates

itself from its self-imposed bondage? Is a taboo placed upon any

subject or material of thought? Is there any area of the universe that

is “posted” so that we may not hunt upon it?

Men used to assume that there are such areas. The name of God was

spoken with a hush; men even forbade themselves to speak it at all.

They became mute and abject in the presence of supposedly fearsome

forces, whether divine or demoniac; yes, some men and institutions

and old thoughts were even walled off so that eyes might not see.

All this was self-imprisonment from which it is necessary to achieve

self-release. We must reach the point where we realize that it is only

a pseudo-sanctity, a piece of mere conventionality, that reserves any

kind of actuality from the peering eyes of anyone who desires to know.

We are guilty of no irreverence when we investigate the pedigrees and

weigh the conduct of all the gods; we must be able with tranquillity

to endure uncertainties while waiting for evidence; and, as for the

sanctity of any temple built by men, what men have built that they can

rebuild or replace.

At this point release from the thralldom of selfhood is equivalent

to making ourselves at home in the universe. The experience takes

different forms with different persons. Freedom to doubt, coming to

some persons like the sun suddenly emerging from a black cloud, makes

them dance and skip; occasionally it reproduces, almost point for

point, the emotional phenomena of religious conversion. That some,

upon realizing their release, should luxuriate in skepticisms is

not strange; they are like children from the city streets let loose

in the country and pulling up wildflowers by the roots. With other

persons the experience of release takes the form of glad consecration

to the rigorous labor and the strict methods whereby alone we can

know the truth. Still others feel the fellowship side of their new

world. Separated from other minds hitherto by prejudice and fear, they

now discover friends on all hands, and they glow with friendliness

themselves. Not a few have said, “Behold, God is here, and I knew it

not.” For they feel that they are dealing with what L. P. Jacks calls

“a living universe.”

Thus, underlying our motivation when we most radically claim freedom is

the implicit assumption that we are living in a universe in which no

mental reservations are really needed by anyone. But we cannot go as

far as this without assuming likewise that no reservations on behalf

of any sort of self-interest are necessary. Here is where the shoe

pinches most, and here is where self-deception most enslaves us. When

we get beneath the surface of our mental reservations--theological,

ethical, economic, social, political--we usually find that they are

servants of some form of self-interest, whether of an individual, or

of an institution, or of a social class. How desperately we cling to

our littleness! But our very desperation is a defence-reaction towards

something dimly appreciated as greater. We are like a very small child

who wanted to get out of bed all by himself, but found himself hanging

to the mattress, afraid to let go because he could not feel the floor

under his toes, and yet not strong enough to pull himself back. The

sickness of our society is in its fear to let go what it regards as

its security, though it does not really secure. We employ argument and

systems of thought to protect us, but we are like some persons accused

of crime who refuse to make a clean breast of their conduct even to the

attorney who defends them. Our salvation must come from a cooperative

thinking that is more than abstract. I have already remarked that

cooperative thinking assumes that the realm of intelligence is the

realm likewise of good-will or active respect for all persons. In the

end, then, our struggle against our bondage is a struggle towards a

cooperative intelligence that is likewise a cooperative choice and

enjoyment of the good, whatever the good is.

I promised to keep as clear of metaphysics as the case permits. I

have not even argued, though I am convinced, that the best clue we

have to the general character of the universe consists in this,

that persons exist, and are, as a matter of fact, in the process of

achieving freedom, and of achieving it cooperatively. The experience of

becoming free, even though it be incomplete, even though it never can

be completed, surely casts a beam of light into the problem of being.

An original, self-sustaining light. For the becoming of freedom is

an experience, a datum, primary and underived. We do not learn it by

inference from some otherwise-known system of things; we do not need

to ask whether a place can be made for it in a view of nature that is

derived from the pre-human world. It is here; it makes its own place,

and our view of nature must be sufficiently large and objective to

include it. This does not deny either the general self-consistency of

nature that we call law, nor yet any specific connection of events that

can be shown to be probable. Any experience whatever, the experience

of becoming free not excepted, occurs under conditions that can

theoretically be formulated in a general proposition. But the event

need not repeat or continue the conditions under which it arises. Out

of a songless egg, someone has said, emerges the song of a lark.

The realization that one is freely a member of such a realm of spirits

as I have described is not only like worship, it is indistinguishable

from worship. For it is just the opposite of spiritual isolation. This

outward movement from self, though it be initiated within us, is not,

in any complete and exclusive sense, initiated by us. It is wrought

through us as much as by us! It chooses us as much as we choose it.

Over and over again the experience repeats itself of being certain,

just where we are most original, that then and there we are organs

of something greater than our particular selves. It is as if each

particular self were enveloped and suffused and already partly actuated

by some self-like principle that is abroad in the universe.

INDEX

Academic freedom, 188 ff.

Accidents, preventable, 159.

Acquisitive instinct, 39.

Adolescence, see “Youth”.

Advertising, 13, 38, 52.

Affection, 231.

“American Tragedy, An”, Dreiser’s, 29.

Amusements, 52, 130, 139.

Analytical method in psychology, 40, 81, 93.

Anger, 179 ff.

“Areopagitica”, Milton’s, 185.

Argumentativeness, 243.

“Arrowsmith”, Sinclair Lewis’s, 31.

Art and artists, 78, 106, 109 f., 118, 125.

Assemblage, freedom of, 191.

Authority, 26, 176, 195.

Averages as standards of judgment, 173.

Ayres, C. E. 194 (note.)

Balance sheet as index of values, 126.

Balderston, J. L., 146 (note).

“Bear, The”, Robert Frost’s, 244.

Beauty, 109, 160, 231.

Behaviorism, 41, 52, 93.

Bible, 22.

Biography, recent, 110 ff.

Biology, Ch. IV, 39.

Bondage of our powers, Part III, Part IV.

Browning, R., 9.

Buddha, The, 146.

Business, motives of, Ch. XV;

see also “Industrialism”.

Calkins, M. W., 85, 94 (note).

Canada, 213.

Capitalism and capitalists, 39, 50, 121;

see also “Industrialism”, “Profits”, and “Labor”.

Catholic Church, see “Roman Catholic Church”.

Character, 44.

Childhood, Chs. XII, XIII.

Child-study movement, 97 f.

China, 61, 181.

Christianity, Ch. VIII, 61 ff., 162, 210 f., 214, 250.

Christians, 113.

Church, v, 57, 59 f., 138, 140, 153, 168, 174, 186 ff., 201 ff., 247;

see also “Protestantism” and “Roman Catholic Church”.

Church school, see “Religious Education”.

Class interest, 133, 139.

Colleges and universities, 138, 186, 188 ff., 193, 201, 224 ff.

Comedy, 244.

Common man, the, 119.

Competition, 23, 49.

Compromise, policy of, 173.

Conditioned reflex, 41 f., 84.

Configuration, see “Gestalt-psychology”.

Conflict between men, 50, 133, 139, 218.

Conflict, inner, 153.

Confucius, 90.

Constitution of the U. S., 185, 191 f.

Continuity in nature, 74.

Contracts, 54, 190.

Conventionality, 108, Ch. XXII.

Conversion, 59.

Coolidge, Calvin, 200.

Cooperative thinking, Ch. XXVIII, 255, 257.

Courts of law, 190.

Creation, special, 5.

Creative activity, 104, 106 ff., 210.

Criticism, function of, 248.

Crowd-action, 182, 232.

Curiosity, 41.

Cynicism, vi, 29, 32, 151 f.

Darwin, Charles, 25.

Debate, 236.

Defence mechanisms, 127, 243, 247, 257.

Democracy, 22.

Democratic Party, 217.

Depravity, 26, 56 f., 60, 70, 113, 163, Ch. XXII.

Desires, see “Wants”.

Determinism, 29.

Dignity of man, 21, 26.

Discomforts, 160.

Discussion method, 234 _et passim_.

Disillusionment, Part I, Part II.

Domiciliary privacy, 191.

Doubt, 256.

Drama, material of, 27 ff.;

see also “Comedy”, and “Tragedy”.

Dreiser, Theodore, 29 f.

Drives and pulls, psychic, 144 ff.

Dynamics of mind, vi, 43, 82, 86, _et passim_.

Dynamic view of physical nature, 82, 85.

Economic imperialism, 51.

Economic interpretation of history, 136.

Economic order, the, 136, 138, 165;

see also “Capitalism”, etc.

Economic production, Ch. XVII.

Education, 4, Ch. XIII, 176, 184, 210, 212 ff., 247;

see also “Schools”, “Colleges and universities”, and “Religious

education”.

Efficiency, 4, 8, 13, 32, 52 f., 127, 133, 201.

Ego, the, 44;

see also “Self, the personal”, etc.

Elliott, Harrison, 234 (note).

Emerson, R. W., 9, 25 f.

Environment, influence of, 104 f., 252;

see also Ch. XIII.

Ethics, problems of, 23, 54, 79, 86, 124, 138, 140, 161, 171, 173.

Evangelism, 58, 176.

Evolution, Ch. IV, 52, Ch. X, 145, 156, 163;

see also “Variations”, “Mutations”, and “Continuity”.

Experience as source of wisdom, 197.

Experimental schools, Ch. XIII.

Ezekiel the prophet, 21.

Faculty psychology, 37.

Family, the, 40, 52, 121, 126, 130, 132, 135, 138, 164 f., 175, 221,

233, 248.

Fate, 28.

Faust, Dr., 4.

Fear, 10, 243;

see also “security, desire for”.

Fellowship, see “Friendship”.

Food, desire for, 39, 41, 75 ff.

Force, belief in and use of, 18, 133, 176.

Fosdick, H. E., 249.

Francis, Saint, of Assisi, 162.

Freedom, 10, 72, 104 f., 125, 130, 162, 176, Ch. XXIV, 200, 210, 216,

Ch. XXX, 255, 258.

Friendship, 213, 231, 233, 257.

Frost, Robert, 244.

Fundamentalism, 22, 24 f.

Galileo, 189.

Gandhi, M. K., 49.

Gautama, the Buddha, 146.

Germany, 204.

Gestalt-psychology, 42, 84 ff.

Ghosts, 37, 80.

God, 25 f., 50, 58, 60, 63 f., 70, 113 f., 118, 136 f., 140, 146,

154 f., 156, 172, 205, 211, 245 ff., 256 f., 258.

Goldman, Emma, 187.

Good men, badness of, 161.

Good-will, 255.

Government, and its forms, 160, 167;

see also, “Courts of Law”, “Laws of the State”, and “U. S.

Constitution”.

Grace, divine, 57.

Great Britain, 213.

Great men, Ch. XIV.

Greed, 179;

See also, “Profits”, etc.

Greek notion of self-realization, 250.

Health, 159.

Hegel, 242.

Help, mutual, 23.

Herd-action, 182, 232.

Heredity, 104 f.;

see also, “Environment, influence of”.

Hero-worship, 116.

“Higher nature”, our, 158, 161.

History, 110 ff., 136.

Humanitarianism, 23, 32.

Human nature, the paradox of, 209.

Humor, 243 ff.

Huxley, Thomas, 23 f.

Hylan, J. F., 249.

Immanence of God, 9.

Imperialism, economic, 51.

Industry, 8, 247.

Industrialism, v, 46, 48, 56, 58 f., 61 ff., 90, Ch. XV, 139, 155.

Instincts, theory of, 28, 39, 41 f., 45, 82 f., 84, 87, 93, 97, 145.

Institutionalism, 164.

Intelligence tests, 89 ff., 93, 104.

Intelligentsia, the, 248.

Interests, 78, 235.

Invention, 8.

Irrationality of man, Ch. V.

Jacks, L. P., 257.

James, William, 80, 82, 101.

Jealousy, 39, 179.

Jesus, 63 f., 127, 140, 146, 174, 198, 201.

John, Gospel of, 4.

Kant, Immanuel, 244.

Koffka, K., 84, 94 (note).

Krutch, J. W., 30.

Labor, labor movement, 64, 121, 132;

see also, “Workingmen”.

Ladd, G. T., 82.

Land hunger, 131.

Lauder, Harry, 123.

Laws of nature, 258;

see also, “Science”, etc.

Laws of the State, 166 f., 190;

see also, “Constitution of the U. S.”

Laughter, 243 ff.

“Lazarus”, Eugene O’Neill’s play, 246.

Lewis, Sinclair, 31, 201.

Life, 125, 252.

Lincoln, Abraham, 75, 90.

Literature of disillusionment, Ch. V, 52, 56, 92 f., 210.

Louis XIV, 90.

“Lower classes, the”, 174.

“Lower nature, our”, Ch. XX, Ch. XXIII.

Lust, 179, 181 f.

Lynchings, 182.

MacCurdy, J. T., 87, 94 (note).

“Main Street”, Sinclair Lewis’s story, 79.

Majorities, 216 f., 242;

see also, “Minorities.”

Malice, 179.

Marot, Helen, 129, also note.

Mastery, motives of, 124.

Maturity, Ch. XII (esp. 99-101), Ch. XXV.

Mearns, H., 108.

Mencken, H. L., 201.

Metaphysics, 71, 81, 252, 258.

Milton, 185.

Minorities, Ch. XXVII, 238, 242, 255;

see also, “Majorities.”

Modern spirit, the, 69.

“Morality Play for the Leisured Class, A”, Balderston’s comedy, 146.

Morals, experimentation in, 224.

“Motive”, two senses of, 143.

Münsterberg, H., 82.

Musical compositions of children, 110 (note).

Mutations, biological, 74.

Mysticism, 65, 156.

Nation, The (periodical), 245.

Nationalism, 23, 51, 167.

Naturalism, 73, 113, 115, 250.

Nature, 74, 258;

see also, “Science”, etc.

Nature and nurture, 104.

Neighborhood Playhouse, The, 146.

Nero, 90.

New York Court of Appeals, 190.

Obligation, 255.

Occidental civilization, 49, 61.

Occupational introversion, 167.

O’Neill, Eugene, 30, 32, 246.

Open-mindedness, 239.

Organic view of physical nature, 82, 84 f.

“Organism, the”, 36.

Orthodoxies, various, 127, 166, 168 f., 187, 220.

Pain, 148.

Parker, Carleton, 129, also note.

Partizanship in education, 213.

Pasadena Community Playhouse, 246.

Passions, the, Ch. XXIII.

Patriotism, 213.

Paul, the Apostle, 157, 212.

Peace Treaty of Versailles, 18 f.

Penn, William, 90.

Persons, see “Self”, etc.

Pessimism, 69 f.

Pictures by children, 109 f.

Plato, 146, 156.

Play, 231.

Pleasure, devotion of youth to, 196.

Poems by the young, 108.

Political corruption, 227.

Political parties, 217.

Pope, the, 187.

Power, desire for and effects of possessing, 123, 218 ff.

Profit system and profit motive, 17, 39, 50 f., 58, 70, 121, 139, 175.

Progressive Education Association and magazine, 109 f.

Progressive Party, 217.

Propaganda, 13, 15, 117, 160.

Property, ethics of, 54 f., 62.

Prophets, 118, 239.

Protestantism, 62 f., 64 f., 211, 222.

Psychiatry, 93, 100;

see also, “Psychoanalysis”.

Psychoanalysis, 43, 52, 86 ff., 101 f., 172.

Psychology, vi, 23, 25, 35, Ch. VI, 45 f., 52, 156, Ch. XI, 85 ff.,

114.

Psychology of religion, v.

Pugnacity, 39, 51, 124, 243.

Puritanism, 62.

Quaker meetings, 234.

Race superiority, 14.

Rashness of youth, 202.

Rationality in children, 106.

Rationalization, 22 f., 43, 45, 54.

Reading matter, 160.

Reason and the irrational, 163, Ch. XXI, 170.

Recapitulation theory, the, 97.

Reflexes, conditioned, 41 f., 84.

Reform movements, 210.

Regeneration, 57, 60, 156.

Release of our capacities, Part IV.

Religion, v, 4, 123, 125, 139, 162, 184, 186 ff., 210;

see also, “Church”, “Protestantism”, “Roman Catholic Church”.

Religious education, v, 213.

Repentance, 60 f., 176, 238, 246 f., 255.

Research and researchers, 31, 118, 234.

Respectable faults, Ch. XXII.

Revenge, 179.

Revivals, see “Evangelism”.

Rivalry, 39.

Roman Catholic Church, 62, 64 f., 221.

Roosevelt, Theodore, 217.

Rotary Clubs, 52, 60, 127.

Russia, 204.

Sacco-Vanzetti case, the, 190.

Sacrament, production as a, 140.

Satan, 156.

Savagery, 3 f.

Schools, 38, 102 f., Ch. XIII, 138, 153, 161, 186, 212, 224 f.;

see also, “Colleges and universities”.

Science and scientific method, 7 f., 31, 78, 125, 193 f., 234.

Secular, the idea of the, 139.

Security, desire for, 122, 130, 132, 257.

Self, the personal, 43, 55, 86, 124, 131 f., Ch. XVII, Ch. XVIII,

158, 165 f., 170 f., 193 f., 220, 230, Ch. XXIX, 256 f.

Service, motive of, 127.

Sex impulse and conduct, 39 f., 44, 52 f., 70, 75 ff., 99, 157, 165;

see also, “Lust”.

Sin, 211.

Sinclair, Upton, 187.

Skepticism, 256.

“Smart” minds, 241, 243.

Smith, Gypsy, 249.

Social capacities of children, 106 f.

Social distance, 166 ff., 173.

Social recognition, 125, 130, 132.

Social workers, 118 f.

Society, life of, v, 143 ff., 210.

Sociology, 23.

Socrates, 146, 177.

Sophists, the, 146.

Soul, the, 37.

Sovereignty, political, 167.

Speech, freedom of, 191.

Sphinx, The, Ch. VI.

“Spiritual” affairs, 136.

Spiritual life, 137.

“Spoon River Anthology” of Masters, 29.

State, the civil, 15, 62, 167, 247.

Stoics, The, 3.

Strong, Josiah, 249.

Survival, 125.

Sympathy, 231.

Tagore, R., 49.

Tennyson, A., 9.

Tests, see “Intelligence tests”.

Thanksgiving Day, 63.

Thayer, Judge, 190.

Theological seminaries, 138.

Theology, 25 f., 46, 57, 113, 115 f., 156.

Thinking cooperatively, Ch. XXVIII.

Thorndike, E. L., 83, 94 (note).

Thrift, 63.

Times, The New York, 7.

Timidity of age, 198.

Toleration, religious, 211.

Tragedy, nature of, 71.

Transfer of training, 113 ff.

Truth, 23, 256.

Twentieth century, 7.

Unconscious, the, 43, 87 f.

United States, The, 9, 213.

United States Constitution, The, 185, 191 f.

Valentine, 199 f.

Valuation, vii, 145 f.

Vested interests, 220.

Victorian period, 29.

Wages, 121, 131 f., 139.

Wants, 3 f., Ch. VI, 38, 70, 252, _et passim_.

War, nature and causes of, 51, 62, 70, 139, 176, 182 ff.

War, The Great, Ch. III, 52, 56, 158, 249.

Washington, George, 90.

Watson, J. B., 84, 94 (note).

Wealth, 64.

Wesley, J., 187.

Whitehead, A. N., 81 f., 84 f., 94 (note).

Wilberforce, W., 24.

Williams, Whiting, 129 (also note), 142.

Wisdom from experience, 198.

Woodworth, R. S., 84, 94 (note).

Work, 148.

Workmanship, 132.

Workingmen, 39, 50, Ch. XVI;

see also, “Labor”, “Industrialism”, etc.

World-self, 258.

Worship, 141, 154 f., 175, 211, 213, 258.

Yale University, vii.

Youth and age, Ch. XXV.

[FOOTNOTES]

[1] This and several other paragraphs first appeared in the New York

Times, 1926.

[2] Reprinted, with modifications, from Religious Education, January,

1928, pp. 62-65.

[3] In the present section I endeavor to show merely what psychology

has contributed to this mood. In due time (Section II) I shall discuss

in a direct manner the present status of the psychology of motivation,

asking what really is established.

[4] For parallel evidence of musical creativeness in children see the

July-August-September 1926, issue of the same magazine, Progressive

Education.

[5] Carleton H. Parker, The Casual Laborer and other Essays, New York,

1920.

Helen Marot, The Creative Impulse in Industry, New York, 1918.

Whiting Williams, Mainsprings of Men, New York, 1925.

[6] _Mainsprings of Men._ New York, 1925, p. 224.

[7] By John L. Balderston (New York, 1924). I shall take the liberty

of telling parts of the story of this play in my own language, not

scrupling to modify the plot slightly and the dialog considerably.

[8] Ayres, C. E., Science the False Messiah.

[9] See Harrison Elliott: _The Process of Group Thinking_, Association

Press, 1928.