deep-down-diving and much-mud-upbringing researches are laid before us,
for after all they do not offer us any nourishment, there is nothing in
them to engage our teeth, they fail to make life more comprehensible,
and hence more bearable. What we yearn to know something about is the
process whereby the ideas of everyday are engendered in the skulls of
those about us, to the end that we may pursue a straighter and a safer
course through the muddle that is life. Why do the great majority of
Presbyterians (and, for that matter, of Baptists, Episcopalians, and
Swedenborgians as well) regard it as unlucky to meet a black cat and
lucky to find a pin? What are the logical steps behind the theory that
it is indecent to eat peas with a knife? By what process does an
otherwise sane man arrive at the conclusion that he will go to hell
unless he is baptized by total immersion in water? What causes men to be
faithful to their wives: habit, fear, poverty, lack of imagination, lack
of enterprise, stupidity, religion? What is the psychological basis of
commercial morality? What is the true nature of the vague pooling of
desires that Rousseau called the social contract? Why does an American
regard it as scandalous to wear dress clothes at a funeral, and a
Frenchman regard it as equally scandalous _not_ to wear them? Why is it
that men trust one another so readily, and women trust one another so
seldom? Why are we all so greatly affected by statements that we know
are not true?—_e. g._ in Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech, the Declaration of
Independence and the CIII Psalm. What is the origin of the so-called
double standard of morality? Why are women forbidden to take off their
hats in church? What is happiness? Intelligence? Sin? Courage? Virtue?
Beauty?
All these are questions of interest and importance to all of us, for
their solution would materially improve the accuracy of our outlook upon
the world, and with it our mastery of our environment, but the
psychologists, busily engaged in chasing their tails, leave them
unanswered, and, in most cases, even unasked. The late William James,
more acute than the general, saw how precious little was known about the
psychological inwardness of religion, and to the illumination of this
darkness he addressed himself in his book, “The Varieties of Religious
Experience.” But life being short and science long, he got little beyond
the statement of the problem and the marshaling of the grosser
evidence—and even at this business he allowed himself to be constantly
interrupted by spooks, hobgoblins, seventh sons of seventh sons and
other such characteristic pets of psychologists. In the same way one
Gustav le Bon, a Frenchman, undertook a psychological study of the crowd
mind—and then blew up. Add the investigations of Freud and his school,
chiefly into abnormal states of mind, and those of Lombroso and his
school, chiefly quackish and for the yellow journals, and the idle
romancing of such inquirers as Prof. Dr. Thorstein Veblen, and you have
exhausted the list of contributions to what may be called practical and
everyday psychology. The rev. professors, I daresay, have been doing
some useful plowing and planting. All of their meticulous pin-sticking
and measuring and chart-making, in the course of time, will enable their
successors to approach the real problems of mind with more assurance
than is now possible, and perhaps help to their solution. But in the
meantime the public and social utility of psychology remains very small,
for it is still unable to differentiate accurately between the true and
the false, or to give us any effective protection against the fallacies,
superstitions, crazes and hysterias which rage in the world.
In this emergency it is not only permissible but even laudable for the
amateur to sniff inquiringly through the psychological pasture, essaying
modestly to uproot things that the myopic (or, perhaps more accurately,
hypermetropic) professionals have overlooked. The late Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzsche did it often, and the usufructs were many curious and daring
guesses, some of them probably close to accuracy, as to the genesis of
this, that or the other common delusion of man—_i. e._, the delusion
that the law of the survival of the fittest may be repealed by an act of
Congress. Into the same field several very interesting expeditions have
been made by Dr. Elsie Clews Parsons, a lady once celebrated by Park Row
for her invention of trial marriage—an invention, by the way, in which
the Nietzsche aforesaid preceded her by at least a dozen years. The
records of her researches are to be found in a brief series of books:
“The Family,” “The Old-Fashioned Woman” and “Fear and Conventionality.”
Apparently they have wrung relatively little esteem from the learned,
for I seldom encounter a reference to them, and Dr. Parsons herself is
denied the very modest reward of mention in “Who’s Who in America.”
Nevertheless, they are extremely instructive books, particularly “Fear
and Conventionality.” I know of no other work, indeed, which offers a
better array of observations upon that powerful complex of assumptions,
prejudices, instinctive reactions, racial emotions and unbreakable vices
of mind which enters so massively into the daily thinking of all of us.
The author does not concern herself, as so many psychologists fall into
the habit of doing, with thinking as a purely laboratory phenomenon, a
process in vacuo. What she deals with is thinking as it is done by men
and women in the real world—thinking that is only half intellectual, the
other half being as automatic and unintelligent as swallowing, blinking
the eye or falling in love.
The power of the complex that I have mentioned is usually very much
underestimated, not only by psychologists, but also by all other persons
who pretend to culture. We take pride in the fact that we are thinking
animals, and like to believe that our thoughts are free, but the truth
is that nine-tenths of them are rigidly conditioned by the babbling that
goes on around us from birth, and that the business of considering this
babbling objectively, separating the true in it from the false, is an
intellectual feat of such stupendous difficulty that very few men are
ever able to achieve it. The amazing slanging which went on between the
English professors and the German professors in the early days of the
late war showed how little even cold and academic men are really moved
by the bald truth and how much by hot and unintelligible likes and
dislikes. The patriotic hysteria of the war simply allowed these eminent
pedagogues to say of one another openly and to loud applause what they
would have been ashamed to say in times of greater amenity, and what
most of them would have denied stoutly that they believed. Nevertheless,
it is probably a fact that before there was a sign of war the average
English professor, deep down in his heart, thought that any man who ate
sauerkraut, and went to the opera in a sack-coat, and intrigued for the
appellation of _Geheimrat_, and preferred German music to English
poetry, and venerated Bismarck, and called his wife “Mutter,” was a
scoundrel. He did not say so aloud, and no doubt it would have offended
him had you accused him of believing it, but he believed it all the
same, and his belief in it gave a muddy, bilious color to his view of
German metaphysics, German electro-chemistry and the German chronology
of Babylonian kings. And by the same token the average German professor,
far down in the ghostly recesses of his hulk, held that any man who read
the London _Times_, and ate salt fish at first breakfast, and drank tea
of an afternoon, and spoke of Oxford as a university was a _Schafskopf_,
a _Schuft_ and possibly even a _Schweinehund_.
Nay, not one of us is a free agent. Not one of us actually thinks for
himself, or in any orderly and scientific manner. The pressure of
environment, of mass ideas, of the socialized intelligence, improperly
so called, is too enormous to be withstood. No American, no matter how
sharp his critical sense, can ever get away from the notion that
democracy is, in some subtle and mysterious way, more conducive to human
progress and more pleasing to a just God than any of the systems of
government which stand opposed to it. In the privacy of his study he may
observe very clearly that it exalts the facile and specious man above
the really competent man, and from this observation he may draw the
conclusion that its abandonment would be desirable, but once he emerges
from his academic seclusion and resumes the rubbing of noses with his
fellow-men, he will begin to be tortured by a sneaking feeling that such
ideas are heretical and unmanly, and the next time the band begins to
play he will thrill with the best of them—or the worst. The actual
phenomenon, in truth, was copiously on display during the war. Having
myself the character among my acquaintances of one holding the
democratic theory in some doubt, I was often approached by gentlemen who
told me, in great confidence, that they had been seized by the same
tremors. Among them were journalists employed daily in demanding that
democracy be forced upon the whole world, and army officers engaged, at
least theoretically, in forcing it. All these men, in reflective
moments, struggled with ifs and buts. But every one of them, in his
public capacity as a good citizen, quickly went back to _thinking_ as a
good citizen was then expected to think, and even to a certain
inflammatory ranting for what, behind the door, he gravely
questioned....
It is the business of Dr. Parsons, in “Fear and Conventionality,” to
prod into certain of the ideas which thus pour into every man’s mind
from the circumambient air, sweeping away, like some huge cataract, the
feeble resistance that his own powers of ratiocination can offer. In
particular, she devotes herself to an examination of those general ideas
which condition the thought and action of man as a social being—those
general ideas which govern his everyday attitude toward his fellow-men
and his prevailing view of himself. In one direction they lay upon us
the bonds of what we call etiquette, _i. e._, the duty of considering
the habits and feelings of those around us—and in another direction they
throttle us with what we call morality—_i. e._, the rules which protect
the life and property of those around us. But, as Dr. Parsons shows, the
boundary between etiquette and morality is very dimly drawn, and it is
often impossible to say of a given action whether it is downright
immoral or merely a breach of the punctilio. Even when the moral law is
plainly running, considerations of mere amenity and politeness may still
make themselves felt. Thus, as Dr. Parsons points out, there is even an
etiquette of adultery. “The _ami de la famille_ vows not to kiss his
mistress in her husband’s house”—not in fear, but “as an expression of
conjugal consideration,” as a sign that he has not forgotten the
thoughtfulness expected of a gentleman. And in this delicate field, as
might be expected, the differences in racial attitudes are almost
diametrical. The Englishman, surprising his wife with a lover, sues the
rogue for damages and has public opinion behind him, but for an American
to do it would be for him to lose caste at once and forever. The plain
and only duty of the American is to open upon the fellow with artillery,
hitting him if the scene is south of the Potomac and missing him if it
is above.
I confess to an endless interest in such puzzling niceties, and to much
curiosity as to their origins and meaning. Why do we Americans take off
our hats when we meet a flapper on the street, and yet stand covered
before a male of the highest eminence? A Continental would regard this
last as boorish to the last degree; in greeting any equal or superior,
male or female, actual or merely conventional, he lifts his head-piece.
Why does it strike us as ludicrous to see a man in dress clothes before
6 P. M.? The Continental puts them on whenever he has a solemn visit to
make, whether the hour be six or noon. Why do we regard it as indecent
to tuck the napkin between the waistcoat buttons—or into the neck!—at
meals? The Frenchman does it without thought of crime. So does the
Italian. So does the German. All three are punctilious men—far more so,
indeed, than we are. Why do we snicker at the man who wears a wedding
ring? Most Continentals would stare askance at the husband who didn’t.
Why is it bad manners in Europe and America to ask a stranger his or her
age, and a friendly attention in China? Why do we regard it as absurd to
distinguish a woman by her husband’s title—_e. g._, Mrs. Judge Jones,
Mrs. Professor Smith? In Teutonic and Scandinavian Europe the omission
of the title would be looked upon as an affront.
Such fine distinctions, so ardently supported, raise many interesting
questions, but the attempt to answer them quickly gets one bogged.
Several years ago I ventured to lift a sad voice against a custom common
in America: that of married men, in speaking of their wives, employing
the full panoply of “Mrs. Brown.” It was my contention—supported, I
thought, by logical considerations of the loftiest order—that a husband,
in speaking of his wife to his equals, should say “my wife”—that the
more formal mode of designation should be reserved for inferiors and for
strangers of undetermined position. This contention, somewhat to my
surprise, was vigorously combated by various volunteer experts. At first
they rested their case upon the mere authority of custom, forgetting
that this custom was by no means universal. But finally one of them came
forward with a more analytical and cogent defense—the defense, to wit,
that “my wife” connoted proprietorship and was thus offensive to a
wife’s _amour propre_. But what of “my sister” and “my mother”? Surely
it is nowhere the custom for a man, addressing an equal, to speak of his
sister as “Miss Smith.” ... The discussion, however, came to nothing. It
was impossible to carry it on logically. The essence of all such
inquiries lies in the discovery that there is a force within the liver
and lights of man that is infinitely more potent than logic. His
reflections, perhaps, may take on intellectually recognizable forms, but
they seldom lead to intellectually recognizable conclusions.
Nevertheless, Dr. Parsons offers something in her book that may
conceivably help to a better understanding of them, and that is the
doctrine that the strange persistence of these rubber-stamp ideas, often
unintelligible and sometimes plainly absurd, is due to fear, and that
this fear is the product of a very real danger. The safety of human
society lies in the assumption that every individual composing it, in a
given situation, will act in a manner hitherto approved as seemly. That
is to say, he is expected to react to his environment according to a
fixed pattern, not necessarily because that pattern is the best
imaginable, but simply because it is determined and understood. If he
fails to do so, if he reacts in a novel manner—conducive, perhaps, to
his better advantage or to what he thinks is his better advantage—then
he disappoints the expectation of those around him, and forces them to
meet the new situation he has created by the exercise of independent
thought. Such independent thought, to a good many men, is quite
impossible, and to the overwhelming majority of men, extremely painful.
“To all of us,” says Dr. Parsons, “to the animal, to the savage and to
the civilized being, few demands are as uncomfortable, ... disquieting
or fearful, as the call to innovate.... Adaptations we all of us dislike
or hate. We dodge or shirk them as best we may.” And the man who compels
us to make them against our wills we punish by withdrawing from him that
understanding and friendliness which he, in turn, looks for and counts
upon. In other words, we set him apart as one who is anti-social and not
to be dealt with, and according as his rebellion has been small or
great, we call him a boor or a criminal.
This distrust of the unknown, this fear of doing something unusual, is
probably at the bottom of many ideas and institutions that are commonly
credited to other motives. For example, monogamy. The orthodox
explanation of monogamy is that it is a manifestation of the desire to
have and to hold property—that the husband defends his solitary right to
his wife, even at the cost of his own freedom, because she is the pearl
among his chattels. But Dr. Parsons argues, and with a good deal of
plausibility, that the real moving force, both in the husband and the
wife, may be merely the force of habit, the antipathy to experiment and
innovation. It is easier and safer to stick to the one wife than to risk
adventures with another wife—and the immense social pressure that I have
just described is all on the side of sticking. Moreover, the indulgence
of a habit automatically strengthens its bonds. What we have done once
or thought once, we are more apt than we were before to do and think
again. Or, as the late Prof. William James put it, “the selection of a
particular hole to live in, of a particular mate, ... a particular
anything, in short, out of a possible multitude ... carries with it an
insensibility to _other_ opportunities and occasions—an insensibility
which can only be described physiologically as an inhibition of new
impulses by the habit of old ones already formed. The possession of
homes and wives of our own makes us strangely insensible to the charms
of other people.... The original impulse which got us homes, wives, ...
seems to exhaust itself in its first achievements and to leave no
surplus energy for reacting on new cases.” Thus the benedict looks no
more on women (at least for a while), and the post-honeymoon bride, as
the late David Graham Phillips once told us, neglects the bedizenments
which got her a man.
In view of the popular or general character of most of the taboos which
put a brake upon personal liberty in thought and action—that is to say,
in view of their enforcement by people in the mass, and not by definite
specialists in conduct—it is quite natural to find that they are of
extra force in democratic societies, for it is the distinguishing mark
of democratic societies that they exalt the powers of the majority
almost infinitely, and tend to deny the minority any rights whatever.
Under a society dominated by a small caste the revolutionist in custom,
despite the axiom to the contrary, has a relatively easy time of it, for
the persons whose approval he seeks for his innovation are relatively
few in number, and most of them are already habituated to more or less
intelligible and independent thinking. But under a democracy he is
opposed by a horde so vast that it is a practical impossibility for him,
without complex and expensive machinery, to reach and convince all of
its members, and even if he could reach them he would find most of them
quite incapable of rising out of their accustomed grooves. They cannot
understand innovations that are genuinely novel and they don’t want to
understand them; their one desire is to put them down. Even at this late
day, with enlightenment raging through the republic like a pestilence,
it would cost the average Southern or Middle Western Congressman his
seat if he appeared among his constituents in spats, or wearing a
wrist-watch. And if a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States,
however gigantic his learning and his juridic rectitude, were taken in
crim. con. with the wife of a Senator, he would be destroyed instanter.
And if, suddenly revolting against the democratic idea, he were to
propose, however gingerly, its abandonment, he would be destroyed with
the same dispatch.
But how, then, explain the fact that the populace is constantly ravished
and set aflame by fresh brigades of moral, political and sociological
revolutionists—that it is forever playing the eager victim to new
mountebanks? The explanation lies in the simple circumstance that these
performers upon the public midriff are always careful to ladle out
nothing actually new, and hence nothing incomprehensible, alarming and
accursed. What they offer is always the same old panacea with an
extra-gaudy label—the tried, tasted and much-loved dose, the colic cure
that mother used to make. Superficially, the United States seems to
suffer from an endless and astounding neophilism; actually all its
thinking is done within the boundaries of a very small group of
political, economic and religious ideas, most of them unsound. For
example, there is the fundamental idea of democracy—the idea that all
political power should remain in the hands of the populace, that its
exercise by superior men is intrinsically immoral. Out of this idea
spring innumerable notions and crazes that are no more, at bottom, than
restatements of it in sentimental terms: rotation in office, direct
elections, the initiative and referendum, the recall, the popular
primary, and so on. Again, there is the primary doctrine that the
possession of great wealth is a crime—a doctrine half a religious
heritage and half the product of mere mob envy. Out of it have come free
silver, trust-busting, government ownership, muck-raking, Populism,
Bleaseism, Progressivism, the milder forms of Socialism, the whole
gasconade of “reform” politics. Yet again, there is the ineradicable
peasant suspicion of the man who is having a better time in the world—a
suspicion grounded, like the foregoing, partly upon undisguised envy and
partly upon archaic and barbaric religious taboos. Out of it have come
all the glittering pearls of the uplift, from Abolition to Prohibition,
and from the crusade against horseracing to the Mann Act. The whole
political history of the United States is a history of these three
ideas. There has never been an issue before the people that could not be
translated into one or another of them. What is more, they have also
colored the fundamental philosophical (and particularly epistemological)
doctrines of the American people, and their moral theory, and even their
foreign relations. The late war, very unpopular at the start, was “sold”
to them, as the advertising phrase has it, by representing it as a
campaign for the salvation of democracy, half religious and wholly
altruistic. So represented to them, they embraced it; represented as the
highly obscure and complex thing it actually was, it would have been
beyond their comprehension, and hence abhorrent to them.