CHAPTER II.

THE PLEASURES OF BUNCOMBE

The most striking contradiction of our civilisation is the fundamental

reverence for truth which we profess and the thorough-going disregard

for it which we practice. This is the veriest commonplace. The lowest

journalism fattens on pointing it out and the highest clergy prosper in

the same occupation. According to them all, the world is rotten to the

core with hypocrisy and falsehood.

But while they agree on the condition, the physicians of the world

order hopelessly differ on the remedy. Without disagreeing on the

condition, either, we want to suggest nevertheless that it is a bit

naïve of the philosophers to diagnose from the mere scarcity of truth

that the world is sick with an incurable malady. Is it not just

possible that they cannot cure us for the basic reason that we are not

ill?

And if we are not ill, the worries of the moralists should dissolve

into good cheer. Can we, then, be well though the truth be not in us?

Strangely late in the history of philosophy, we now for the first time

address ourselves to that problem.

God and Truth have from the earliest times been the two ideas that have

commanded the greatest reverence. They have been much argued by the

philosophers, with many curious parallels and one striking contrast.

Typical of the parallels are the long disputes about whether there can

reasonably be supposed to exist either an absolute god or an absolute

truth. The one contrast is that while the philosophers have discussed

at great length whether God is good, they have never discussed whether

Truth is good. Is it not a bit suspicious that this is the one thing

they have always assumed? And in a world of chaotic philosophies that

get us nowhere, is it not high time to ask if there be any sound reason

why Truth should be exempted from that fundamental scrutiny to which

even the gods have had to submit?

In addressing ourselves to this hitherto neglected question, as to

whether truth is good, we adopt in the first instance a test which has

long appealed to the common sense of mankind: _By their fruits shall ye

know them._

In defining our subject, we admit at once that the truth may have

effects outside of the immediate field in which we shall study it,

that of human affairs. It is like the question of soul. For thousands

of years the civilization which is intellectually descended from the

lands around the Mediterranean has agreed that all men have souls.

Usually those who speculated have considered that women have souls

also, a few that horses and dogs have souls, and the most generous that

all animals have them. But it is only the highest intellectuals and

the most benighted savages who have ever conceded souls to plants and

sticks and stones. We shall ignore, for the time being, such possible

extensions of our subject, and discuss Truth solely in its relation to

men (including women).

As both definition and defense of our method, we premise, further, that

mankind frequently does much better than it knows. Nearly all of us,

for instance, can keep in balance as we walk along upright, though the

physiologists are still arguing about exactly how we do it. Similarly,

the biologists tacitly agree that we know what life is; for they test

their definitions of life by measuring them against the reality which

they feel they know, though they cannot define it quite successfully.

Go through any considerable number of examples like the preceding,

selecting them, if you like, from every sphere of life, and you will

gradually reach a firm confidence in the reasonableness of human

actions as compared with the flightiness of our theories and the

contradictions so frequently involved in our explanations. That may

be because (admitting the evolutionary theory and the geological time

scale) we, and the pre-human ancestors from which we inherit our

traits, have been acting so as to save our bodies and reach our desires

for a good many million years longer than we have been speculating on

how to save our souls and protect our reputations. And practice makes

perfect.

We arrive then at a simple problem: If we ignore all theories and study

those instances where mankind has preferred truth or falsehood the

one to the other, we shall be in a position to determine which set of

choices has been of the greater benefit.

In a later and more rigorous inquiry we may go in for objective proofs,

like statistics. Here we shall use only such examples as are well-known

to everyone, so that the conclusions we state will certainly be merely

the equivalent of the reader’s own verdict, set before him in print.

Few things are more generally admitted than that parents, in most

cases, love their children and desire their greatest good. These

parents may be in error as to what constitutes good, but this is beside

the mark, for we are at the moment merely trying to find out what it is

they think is for the children’s welfare. Of course, if you ask them,

they will quote you Truth with a capital, or more likely TRUTH all in

capitals. For so have they been taught to protest. But study their

actions, which are a surer guide than their words.

THE CASE OF INFANTS

To put it bluntly, most loving parents take the greatest care to

surround children not with truth but with deception.

We cannot deceive children before they are born, so we do the next

best thing and practice every deception about them. We conceal, not

only from children but also from grown persons so far as possible, how

babies come into the world. The marriage is announced, and even made

a public occasion, but thereafter everything is mystery. Pregnancy is

concealed by an artful dress, the expectant mother hides or goes to

a remote place. In some classes of society it is rather a breach of

etiquette if the doctor talks openly about whom he is going to attend

that night. There is a blare of publicity after the birth, in which,

however, only a few things may be told--the weight and sex of the

child, whom it resembles, and in a very general way how the mother

is progressing. But the fact that the child looks red and wrinkled,

that its eyes do not focus, and several other details about it, are

of so private a nature that many mothers discover these and other

more “intimate” things only in their own children. And certainly to

most fathers the new-born looks as surprising as it looks unpleasant.

That, by the way, is a fact every parent must conceal--it would be

dreadful if anyone were ever to find out what a disagreeable shock his

first-born was to him.

The reader may here want to stop and argue with the author that all

this is but decent and proper reticence--which if he does he pleases

the author very much. For there would be nothing to argue about. The

author, too, feels that this is how all these things should be. He

certainly would hate to break any such taboos. But let us not argue

one way or the other. To do so would be unscientific. We should pursue

our inquiry with a steady view to just one thing: Is it true that

the majority of people feel and do as stated? From that survey will

emerge a general conclusion as to which it is that men really prefer in

practice, truth or falsehood.

The systematic deception of the child usually begins almost at the

moment of birth. The instrument is speech, most fittingly, since

our studies will show that this is the favorite means of deception

throughout life. At first, the child does not understand any words, and

balks the mother thereby. However, she makes capital of this dilemma

by seeing to it that her baby shall chiefly hear (and therefore learn)

only incorrect speech. This is known as teaching the child “baby talk.”

There are certain standard forms of baby talk which, through wide

usage, are not completely deceptive; as when the child is taught to

say that papa has gone bye-bye when the meaning is that papa has gone

out. Accordingly, most mothers invent a special jargon so that each

child grows up with several dozen sounds or combinations of sounds

which are either not words of any language or else are real words with

perverted meanings.

As the child grows up he discovers that he has been deceived in the

first speech taught him; and thus he gets an early and practical lesson

in one of the main concerns of life--how to deceive others.

As soon as the child has acquired a vocabulary by which he can be

misled, people begin to deceive him in ways that increase in complexity

with his growing faculties. Many of these are specially devised by his

mother and family and do not lend themselves to sociological study, for

they are seldom placed on record. But there is a general system, one

broad aspect of which is stories, especially classics, that fall under

the heads of fairy tales and folklore.

There has come to my attention a very practical way of determining what

people really think of the place of folklore in the education of the

young. As there has been prejudice to guard against, I need to describe

the manner of my investigation before I come to the matter of it.

In a very tentative and general conversation I casually introduce the

subject of bolshevism. In three cases out of four there is an immediate

hostile reaction, and then I go no further, for my desire has been to

get an opinion on a reported bolshevik undertaking, and a person who

bristles at their very name is certain to be opposed to anything they

sponsor. Correspondingly I get in some cases reactions of favorable

enthusiasm, and these are equally hopeless, for they would naturally

support any part of the bolshevik program.

In the few cases of seeming freedom from bias, I proceed to retail,

without vouching for it, what I have heard about certain educational

experiments conducted in the Soviet Union. It really makes no

difference about the truth of these reports, for a person scientific

enough to be neither strongly pro- nor strongly anti-bolshevik is also

intelligent enough to consider a hypothetical case and give the same

sort of verdict he would if it were a real one.

It is said, then, that the Soviet powers believe in the maxim of Paul

about proving all things and accepting only those that can stand the

most rigid investigation. I do not know (I must say, since the subject

has been brought up) whether the bolsheviks are trying to discourage

baby-talk, insisting that mothers shall speak a real language even to

the youngest child; but it has been represented to me that from the

time the child begins to speak the government makes an effort to see

that it is told only the truth.

One of the first things western mothers tell their children is about

Jack and the Beanstalk. The Russians feel reasonably certain that there

never was such a Jack or Beanstalk. Accordingly, neither that fabled

youngster nor the fabled plant is ever mentioned, I am told, to the

up-to-date bolshevik-sponsored child.

But, says the Russian, there are in real life things quite as

interesting and marvelous as Jack and his stalk; for instance, a child

named Tom instead of Jack, and surnamed Edison. Nothing very marvelous

is reported about this Tommy while he was small. But when he became

a sizable boy, or perhaps even later, he got an idea about how a

string could be heated till it became red and even white, and how this

string could be put in a glass bottle and hung up to give a light much

brighter than any lamp that ever existed up to that time.

The Soviet educators are said to maintain that by applying the same

ability and ingenuity to telling the story of Tom and the glowing

string that has been used in popularizing the adventures of Jack

and his Beanstalk, you could create an equally vivid story, equally

entertaining and, they contend, more beneficial since it is “true.”

In the case of a child taught to believe in the Beanstalk, it becomes

necessary to tell him later (or else to let him find out for himself)

that it never existed. Some psychologists claim that there is an

injurious mental shock involved when a child’s faith is shattered.

What the Soviets emphasize is that if Jack had been real the child’s

interest would not have had to cease at the age of five or six, but

might have continued growing until the larger boy gradually mastered

all the history and later grasped the achievements of Jack. If, then,

instead of Jack and the Beanstalk, you begin with Tom and the red-hot

string, there is no shock, they argue, no dead halt, no shifting of

interest from one thing to another, but instead a growing delight in

the whole adventurous life of Thomas Alva Edison that finally develops

into a grasp of all the sciences with which he was concerned.

I seldom get this far in my second-hand explanation before my listeners

stop me with rhapsodies on the glories of the imagination and diatribes

against the bolsheviks who now for the first time are seen by these

previously impartial people to be insidious foemen of the soul.

This counterblast used to floor me and I would stop at that point; but

more recently I have developed a flanking operation. People strong

on the beauties of the soul are nearly always great admirers of

Maeterlinck. So I apparently change the subject, falling in with their

praise of the imagination and asking if they think its subtle beauties

are anywhere more evident than in the great son of Belgium. There is

usually agreement, and soon we are communing ecstatically together

about his book on the bee.

The next step is to ask the champions of the imagination whether they

remember that Maeterlinck says near the beginning of that book (which

we have just agreed is one of his greatest works) that he has long

since given up trying to invent anything half so marvelous as the

truth. Oh, yes, they remember that, but they always understood it to

mean Truth with a capital letter, which is something very different

from a fact, and apparently means anything you are so fond of that you

are prepared to stick to it whether it is true or not. But a little

discussion about the sort of truth which Maeterlinck says he is trying

to present in the Bee, and the sort which the bolsheviks say they are

trying to present about Edison, shows that both are of the same kind.

This conclusion results in no increase of admiration for the bolsheviks

but a noticeable decrease of liking for Maeterlinck, who apparently has

been cheating some of his readers into thinking that he was telling

them Truths when he was only telling facts.

Usually the outcome of the conversation is a feeling of how blessed are

we whose imaginations have been stimulated and delighted by Little Red

Riding Hood, Bluebeard with his many wives, and tales of that sort,

and what an eclipse of the imagination is spreading its shadow over

Russia, where even little children have to be told the truth.

The Soviet campaign against folklore in general has been paralleled

by an American campaign for Santa Claus in particular, which shows

the differing temper of the two countries. Santa, it is well known,

drives reindeer. Now it happens that some friends of mine own a hundred

thousand reindeer in Alaska and have been trying to find a market for

them. Other friends of mine own and edit _The Kansas City Star_, one

of the most respectable and respected newspapers in the United States.

Theodore Roosevelt, after he had been President, thought it an honor

to be one of its editors: and the standards of personnel, management

and policy are quite as high now as then. My Alaskan friends are, in

ideals and character, not below the level of even the _Star_. However,

they were not at that time as well-known, nor was their standing in

the community possibly of as direct business value to them. You might,

therefore, suspect them of using Santa Claus to help them find a

reindeer market, no matter what they thought of the Saint himself. But

surely the _Star_, whose business sense is as keen as its ethics are

scrupulous, would not touch the enterprise unless its editors were sure

of two things: that Santa was all right, for otherwise the _Star_ would

not associate with him even for profit; and that nearly everybody else

thought Santa all right, for otherwise the _Star_ would not profit by

associating with him.

The campaign was planned to deceive the children of Kansas City into

believing that the real Santa with his real gift-bearing reindeer had

entered into an arrangement to arrive in Kansas City some weeks before

Christmas and to be on exhibition there. The _Star_ organization were

his alleged representatives and the part for which I was requisitioned

by the Lomen Reindeer Corporation was to write to the kiddies a

letter telling how I had visited Santa in his northern home and what

message he had sent by me to the children of the United States. My

letter would be printed on dozens of front pages, aggregating millions

in circulation, for this was a nation-wide campaign handled by

newspapers or department stores in many of the larger cities, such as

Cleveland, Brooklyn, Denver, Oklahoma City, and I have forgotten what

other places. The letter I wrote was deceptive, though not literally

untruthful. It was printed by all the papers engaged in the Real Santa

campaign, and between me and a thousand other willing collaborators who

all felt we were doing the nation’s children a real service, we fooled

them so thoroughly that the _Star_ (to come back to that worthy paper)

was able to stage a parade through the streets of Kansas City that was

even larger, it was said, than the American Legion could muster when

they held their National Convention in the same city the year before.

The entire police force was needed to control the crowd. Some other

cities did almost as well.

I have heard much comment on the campaign waged by the _Star_, and by

the like-minded papers of other cities, and none has been unfavorable.

I believe the mayor of Kansas City thanked the _Star_ for a great

public service--or something of that sort. But mayors do such things

rather perfunctorily--whatever is done by a prominent enough citizen

or foreigner, at that they publicly rejoice. But tradesmen are usually

more hard-headed, and their chief organizations are discreet and

particular to be always on the side of the common weal. But higher than

any of our non-religious bodies in its ideals and aims is likely to be

the Parent-Teacher Association of the city. Listen, then, to what they

said in a display proclamation which occupied, in suitably large print,

nearly a whole page of _The Kansas City Star_ on Christmas Day, 1925:

To _The Kansas City Star_:

May we express our congratulations and appreciation to _The Star_ on

the wonderful success of its enterprise in bringing Santa Claus and

his reindeer to Kansas City and acting as the host, friend and guide

of the children’s Christmas saint.

We believe all Kansas City and our neighboring towns share with us in

our felicitation. It is nothing new for _The Star_ to be generously

mindful of the children at Christmas time. We have not forgotten

_Snow White_, _The Seven Swans_ and _Peter Pan_! But this year Santa

Claus and his reindeer have been brought “in person,” have paraded

our streets, visited our schools and hospitals and have taken their

Christmas cheer directly to the children and to the older folk as well.

The Old Spirit of Christmas has been revived and stimulated, and

everybody has been made happier and better by this Yuletide visit.

With this Christmas Spirit in our hearts, we now think it most fitting

to thank _The Star_ publicity for its unique and happy achievement.

TO SANTA CLAUS AND

HIS HOST:

A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND

THANK YOU

Merchants Association:

Parent-Teacher Association:

Chamber of Commerce

You agree with them, heartily, Gentle Reader, I am sure. And so do I.

The pudgy Saint with his sleigh load of gifts and his eight reindeer

is part of the glory and romance of childhood. You and I, when we were

small and believed in him, saw with our mundane eyes nothing more than

a jolly old man in a red coat with a crinkly smile and a flowing beard;

the more blessed youngsters of today (thanks to the Lomen Corporation

in Alaska and men of humanity and vision in our cities who cooperate

with them), become personally acquainted with Dancer and Prancer, and

Donner and Blitzen, and all the other members of the famous team. They

ride in the sleigh with Santa and they ride on the backs of his deer.

They are thrilled by the no longer simulated (as in our day) interest

of their parents who now stand shivering with cold and quivering

with delight as they are shoved about by policemen to make way for a

Santa-and-Reindeer parade as large and enthusiastic as ever marched

behind a young lady that swam the channel or a young gentleman who flew

the Atlantic.

Best of all, this apparent faith of the elders enables us to stretch

the faith of the younger generation a year or two longer than was

possible before the Lomen concern thought of providing real reindeer to

make the mythical Saint more real. We used to lose such beliefs when

we were five, but today the Parent-Teacher Association, the Merchants

Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and the _Star_ are able to

stretch the faith of Kansas City at least till seven--two years of

happy unreality given to thousands of children in that one city alone.

And so in many other cities. Multiplying the clear gain, two years

for each child, by the total number of children affected, we have an

aggregate of millions of happiness-years added for this nation alone.

When the fashion spreads to other countries and continues through the

years, the total gain to the world will become incalculable.

Preserving the faith of children was the main purpose of the Santa

campaign, but the more enterprising newspapers used the opportunity

to benefit older readers as well. The Denver paper (which we will

not name, for some people mistakenly consider it wrong to deceive

grown-ups) erected an imitation snow house near where the reindeer

were kept (I think it was at the municipal buildings) and employed an

Eskimo, who had never before seen that sort of snow house except in

movies, to explain to visitors that he and other reindeer herders of

Alaska dwelt in that kind of snow house when they were at home. So far

as I could judge, and I was in Denver at the time, every grown person,

from Unitarian to Rotarian, swallowed that as readily as the children

did the Santa part, and with as much satisfaction. Such beliefs have a

moral as well as an entertainment value. It certainly makes you more

content with a hall bedroom if you can visualize the Alaska Eskimos

shivering in huts of snow.

But this about Alaska snow houses and the preservation of the faith

of adults, has been a digression. We must proceed with our systematic

inquiry into the planned and benevolent deception of the growing child.

THE CASE OF THE GRADE SCHOOL

We aim in this book at no more than establishing a reasonable

presumption either in favor of truth as opposed to deception or else

in favor of deception as opposed to truth. We shall not, therefore,

attempt a study of our educational system as a whole but shall take a

few cases that are typical.

_The Teaching of History_: Under this head we shall consider two

general problems and then a few specific instances.

One of those disadvantages of facts which their advocates usually

admit, is that they are complicated. Another is that in most cases

people cannot agree as to what are the facts. Simplification and

standardization are therefore necessary, especially for the young. This

is universally conceded.

Not till the prospective historian starts graduate work in a university

does he usually begin to have any conception of how debatable are most

of the things that he has been taught as a child. The disillusionment

then continues rapidly until he feels like selecting as the best

definition of his specialty the one usually credited to Napoleon:

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” But (and this is significant),

in spite of the high average moral tone of our populations, few

historians become crusaders against history. The simplest, and I

believe the correct, explanation is that they think that, on the whole,

deceiving children does them good.

When we entered the 1914-18 war, we suddenly discovered that most of

our school histories were anti-British. Many of them were forthwith

changed to pro-British, without a murmur from anyone except a few

people who (we all agreed, as soon as they began to protest) were

either pro-Germans or Pacifists. But the War, after we got into it,

was so short that before it was over there was not time to oust all

the anti-British propaganda from the texts. I had the instructive

experience of being in a city where a violent newspaper controversy

sprang up between correspondents, some of whom advocated anti-British

history but most of whom favored pro-British. The ground of the pros

was that we ought to stand by our former allies, that there might soon

be another war, and that we should bring up the younger generation

strong for English-speaking unity, because that was the natural basis

of the coming alignment. Some argued specifically that we might be

able to annex Canada if we used the same sort of histories as the

Canadians and therefore grew up to the same beliefs. Even the Hearst

papers, which then opposed this view and anything else that seemed to

favor the British, later came out for the principle and advocated an

English-speaking union.

The voices which suggested an impartial history were few and weak. Thus

did what we believe to be the sound common sense of the people manifest

itself. For next after patriotism comes a right world outlook. We must

know in advance what country to favor in time of trouble. And how can

the needed unanimity be secured in a democracy except by teaching the

youngsters to like the right country so that they may vote correctly

when they later come to decide tariffs, treaties and wars?

Much proof of what no one doubts is tedious and we have gone far

enough in the argument. Certainly if you are pro-British, you will see

at once that teaching love for British ideals, respect for British

institutions, cannot help but benefit any country. If you are not

pro-British, you can arrive at the same conclusion by substituting in

the discussion the name of whatever country you most admire. Call that

country X. You will then at once see the advantage of teaching the

rising generation to be pro-X, or _proex_--to coin a much-needed word.

The reader may here object that even if it is agreed that history

teaching in the schools should be chiefly for the purpose of laying

down principles to guide us in life, it does not follow that we have

to teach children to be in favor of any particular country or set of

countries. Perhaps you are a pronounced isolationist and think we are

strong enough to go it alone, then this strength would be increased

by the solidarity we would gain if we learned in school to dislike

all other nations and later ran our government and shaped our private

actions so as to get them all to dislike us. That is an old and

much-advocated principle: that real unity can be attained only in the

face of a common enemy. Very well, then, you are not a Proex but an

Antex, and you must go about trying to get the schools into your hands.

Let the best men win! It looks just now as if it would be the Antexes.

Coming to specific problems of truth in history, we need little but a

catalogue to see on which side we stand. Supposing, just for argument,

that the biographers of Lincoln could prove, as some of them have

tried to do, that he was of illegitimate descent, would you then want

that taught in the schools? The conclusive arguments against are: (1)

Such teaching would attack the Home, the most precious of all our

institutions; for Lincoln is our greatest national hero, and having

him illegitimate, even if only back in his parents’ or grandparents’

generation, would be a destructive influence. (2) That teaching would

also attack the institution of National Heroes. Lincoln is our greatest

hero; nothing is more beneficial than to have heroes to look up to; we

would not look up to Lincoln quite so much if he were in any degree

illegitimate; therefore we ought to hide the fact, if it were a fact.

(3) Nothing could be gained by encouraging children to attach scandal

to the names of great men. (4) It would be in bad taste to teach in

school about the illegitimacy of anyone. On the basis of these and

many similar reasons, all decent people will agree that the question

of whether Lincoln was illegitimate should never be mentioned in the

schools.

To be on the safe side, the author states here emphatically that the

biographers who favor the legitimacy of Lincoln, even unto the third

and fourth generation, have, in his opinion, much the best of the

argument. For this book might possibly fall into the hands of minors.

It is maintained by some that it would do no harm for adults to

know the fact, if it were a fact, that Lincoln was illegitimate.

Their reasoning is that character is formed in infancy and that the

perverting influence of a truth, no matter how improper, is negligible

in adults. We agree with that contention, and the more readily because

it is in harmony with the conclusion at which we are fast arriving (a

conclusion, by the way, at which you could arrive still faster with

less reasoning): The purpose of child training is to build character,

and all education should therefore trend toward that goal. The truth

should be admitted into the curriculum or kept out of it by that test

alone. Facts of a disturbing nature should be permitted, if at all,

only when characters have set beyond the reasonable possibility of

change.

The importance of discretion in history teaching was once brought

forcibly to my attention when I was spending a summer in northern

Vermont, and found in use three miles away across the Canadian line in

Quebec, school texts in which the War of 1812 differed so much from

the war in the Vermont histories that you would hardly believe it was

the same war. You can readily see how wise that was on both sides.

Imagine the discord that would be introduced into the teaching of

Canadian patriotism if they used Vermont histories, and similarly what

havoc a Canadian history could work, if tossed into our school system

like a stone into delicate machinery. Nor is there any halfway course

possible. If you were to cut out all the contradictions, there would

be little left of that particular war; neither would the leavings be

any good for inculcating patriotism or other moral virtues into either

Canadians or Americans. Obviously things had best remain as they are.

Or would you ever hint in the history courses that Sir Galahad never

had a bath? That Tristram’s courting, so touchingly described by Edwin

Arlington Robinson, must have smelled pretty strong even at arm’s

length (except when the wind was just right)? That some of the most

revered saints of the Church made vows never to bathe and never to be

unkind to the lice that swarmed over them? And that the only two great

bathing eras of known history were the ancient period which historians

call the decline of the Roman Empire, when civilization was going to

the dogs, and our modern period, when the Fundamentalists tell us we

are all going to the Devil? Would not such teaching suggest that there

may be a connection between clean bodies and unclean living? And what

could be worse for æsthetics or for the soap trade?

The fact was, of course, that Tristram liked the smell of his

sweetheart, and she liked his, both being used to it, and that the

sinners as well as the saints of the Middle Ages really enjoyed what we

would call the stink of foul linen. The past was not necessarily such

an unpleasant time for those who lived in it (in view of their tastes).

But, even after dwelling on that, most of us will remain convinced of

the superiority of our own taste, and will continue unwilling that

historical studies shall in any way encourage those of our youngsters

who seem to have been born with medieval propensities for dirt.

Indeed, what possible good end could be served by letting such facts

(if they be facts) gain currency through history teaching? Would

patriotism, good manners, or good morals profit thereby? Would such

teaching build character? Certainly not, and the present course is the

right one: to say nothing about bathing in the Age of Chivalry, but

to imply always that cleanliness is the natural state and passion of

man--excepting rare miscreants who come to school inadequately washed

behind the ears.

And so we might go on, canvassing our histories and our moral,

political and æsthetic judgments till we arrive at the conclusion that

in school texts at least the truth needs to be very judiciously handled.

_The Teaching of Physiology_: If the truth be a tricky thing in

history, it is no less so in many other “branches” taught in the first

eight grades of school. For instance, consider physiology. We need not

dwell on sex, which most of us instinctively and rightly feel must not

be thrust upon the young, but will instead continue under this head the

discussion with which we ended the section on history.

Cleanliness may seem to lie in the field of æsthetics, but it has the

most practical value. You would be ostracized socially if people knew

you did not bathe; you would be worse off than if you had halitosis and

four-out-of-five pyorrhea. Personality courses, books on etiquette, and

the efforts of the Hamilton Institute combined with Pelmanism would

be of little avail to gain you preferment. Listerine could not remove

the odor nor Pond’s Cream make your countenance seem agreeable. So

at least, we believe, and so the rising generation must be taught to

believe, or cleanliness may depart from among us.

But it is now said by some of the physiologists (doubtless untruly)

that nearly all the supposed scientific arguments for bathing are

fictions and fallacies. _Item_: The skin does not excrete any

appreciable amount of harmful substances from the body, nor do the

pores “breathe.” Therefore your system is not purified by “keeping the

pores open” and one argument on bathing-for-health disappears. _Item_:

A chief function of the skin is to protect the body; poisons, such as

mercury, cannot enter your body through a skin proofed with its own

secretions, but will seep through if the natural lubricants have been

washed away with warm water, soap, or other methods. Therefore your

health is, in this respect at least, the safer the less you bathe, and

another of the standard arguments vanishes. _Item_: The skin’s own

secretions keep it softer and in better condition than any substitute

yet discovered. This is a deserved pat on the shoulder for the Lord

who made us, but a rather stiff jolt for the cosmetic manufacturers.

_Item_: The body odors come chiefly from three areas or parts of the

body (that are too taboo for mention even here). Keeping these clean

goes nine-tenths of the way toward freeing you from odors that other

normal humans can detect, and changing your underwear every day, or

even every other day, would go the remaining one-tenth, thus removing

that argument for bathing.

And so on for many arguments more, the sum of which is that if you have

a healthy skin it is safe enough to bathe if you like; but with eczema

and certain other diseases you must not bathe if you want to stop the

blotches from spreading, or to sleep for the itching at night.

Now just assume, for argument’s sake, that all the above (or to be

conservative, say half of it), is true. Then ask yourself, would

you be in favor of having little children of the dirty-ear stage

find out about it? The slogan was, in the generation of our parents:

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” But the investment in soap and in

the allied industries has grown faster since then than the property

of the churches, and the soaps advertise more. Today the sales talk

sways the nation, and it is doubtful if godliness even approaches

cleanliness in popularity. We must fight harder, therefore, to keep

such physiology out of the schools, than any fundamentalist has yet

fought to keep Darwinism out of the colleges. And we shall succeed,

backed as we are by the advertising funds and the publicity genius of

the whole soap industry from Bon Ami to Zap.

But there is one disquieting thought: The interests of Listerine

and the perfumers are opposed to those of the soap and bath towel

manufacturers. Europe, too, may seek to control our cleanliness, as it

does our politics, by its insidious propaganda. But, fortunately, it

will be disunited. It will be England pleading that odors be removed

with Lifebuoy against France urging that they be covered up with

Houbigant. These may kill each other off. Then there will be apathy

and discord at home among our Napoleons of business. Some will stand

aside from the struggle, for great houses, like Colgate, make soap as

well as perfume. The underwear manufacturers will be against both, and

so will the laundries, for they will want us to get rid of odors by

frequent changes of linen. Frequent launderings wear out clothes and

thus benefit the cotton planters of the South and the wool ranchers of

the West.

The issue will be doubtful if the battle ever starts. We, the great

public, having once been won over from France and the perfume to

England and the tub, should try to prevent the issue from ever rising

again by keeping the unæsthetic new physiology out of the schools.

Furthermore, especially as this book may fall into the hands of minors,

the so-called new physiology is doubtless all wrong. So let us continue

circulating the story about the page in Venice who was clothed in gold

leaf for a pageant and who died of suffocation because his pores could

not breathe. Let us never forget suggesting, when we see a lad whose

face is covered with pimples, that he has doubtless been neglecting

his wash basin and soap. And let us soft pedal the fact, if it be a

fact, that abstinence from bathing is frequently prescribed by the most

expensive skin specialists.

_The Teaching of Geography_: The teaching of this science brings out a

new consideration--the reticence customarily practiced in it, while no

less benevolent than in the other subjects, is based on motives new in

our discussion and results in benefits of a different kind.

When facts are played down in geography teaching it is not usually

because they would be in bad taste or otherwise detrimental to the

character of the scholars, but rather because they are too complicated.

The teachers are busy and overworked, and the pupils have limited time

for the curriculum, for some of them may have to quit school soon and

go to work. A complicated idea takes a long time to teach, it is hard

to learn and difficult to remember and understand. From both the giving

and receiving end, simplicity is therefore desirable, but facts have

usually the unfortunate defect of being complicated. In the practice

of teaching it is therefore often necessary and sometimes desirable to

ignore them. We can best and most sympathetically understand this if we

take a case where we have been ourselves deceived, for we shall then be

able to testify from personal knowledge that we have benefited, or at

least that we have suffered no harm.

The best geographical example under this head is perhaps one of those

upon which we touched briefly in the first section of this book--that,

other things being equal, the farther north you go the colder it gets,

no matter what the time of year. We shall develop that topic more

fully than we did before, exploring some of its more instructive and

entertaining ramifications.

First we need perspective from the history of geographical science. As

in many other cases, we owe the beginnings of learning in this field

to the Greeks. They may have borrowed from earlier civilizations,

and probably did; but they formulated the doctrines and cast them

into the molds in which many of them are still set. One of their

chief achievements was that they worked out the laws of temperature

distribution over the earth substantially as we learned them in the

grade schools up to a few years ago, and roughly as they still remain

in the minds of the general public.

Already five hundred years before Christ, the Greeks knew that the

earth was a sphere. They understood the migration of the sun northward

over the earth in summer and southward in winter between what they

called, and what we still call, the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.

They also determined the polar circles beyond which the sun does not

rise in winter nor set in summer. This was dividing the earth into five

logical zones. The Greeks and the rest of mankind lived, they said, in

a zone that was temperate. But if you crossed the Mediterranean and

were to travel south into Africa you would get too near the sun and

come first to a section unpleasantly hot, then to one intolerable, and

last to a burning region where no living thing, either plant or animal,

could exist by reason of the fierce downpour of the sun’s heat. This

was the Torrid Zone. Going north from Greece you came similarly first

to lands unpleasantly cold, then to others intolerable, and last to a

permanently frozen region “where life is as impossible because of the

freezing as it is in the Torrid Zone because of the burning.” South of

the tropics there doubtless was another temperate zone and this might

be inhabited--probably was, in fact, though we should never know except

by inference, as no one could ever cross the burning tropics. And at

the south end of the earth would be a second frozen zone.

Thus from their doctrines of beauty, simplicity, and symmetry, and

from the principles of logic the Greeks evolved laws of temperature

distribution which are so easy to explain and understand that if

you had never heard of them before you could have grasped both them

and their necessary implications from a description no longer nor

better composed than mine that you have just read. Such a natural

law is a boon to teacher and student alike. No wonder, then, that it

held its ground from more than four hundred years before Christ to

more than fourteen hundred years after, as John Kirtland Wright has

recently proved in a long and scholarly work published by the American

Geographical Society of New York: _The Geographical Lore of the Time of

the Crusades_.

That we do not still have in the schools these Greek temperature laws

in all their pristine simplicity is due to two of mankind’s most

troublesome qualities, cupidity and skepticism. In the fifteenth

century Western Europe was greedy for the riches of the Far East, and

the road to Cathay, traveled by Marco Polo and his predecessors and

successors, had been closed by Mohammedan victories over the less

bigoted Mongols. It is usually easy to disbelieve anything that crosses

our desires, and so doubts began to arise as to whether the tropic

lands were really burning hot and the tropic oceans boiling. Henry the

Navigator gets most of the credit for cooling off the burning zone by

sending out ship after ship that went farther and farther south along

the West Coast of Africa, each returning with fearful tales of what

they had seen or imagined, but most of them nevertheless returning and

thus giving hope that others might go still farther. At last a ship did

sail to where the sun stood overhead without cooking the sailors alive.

Indeed, she returned with the story that the days had not been hotter

right below the sun than they were on some occasions in Portugal.

So began the “Conquest of the Tropics,” and so ended the simplicity of

the Greek laws of temperature distribution. Every work on meteorology

of college grade now tells you that the highest temperatures registered

by thermometers in the shade, under weather bureau conditions, are not

recorded in the Torrid Zone at all; but in the Temperate (!) Zones.

Probably the highest in-the-shade records so far taken are those of

Death Valley, California, about 900 miles north of the northern edge

of the Torrid Zone--136°; almost certainly the highest temperatures

that can be recorded in Africa are in the Sahara Desert, also north of

the tropics. If there are higher temperatures south of the Equator we

feel sure they will not be near the Equator, but near the tropic of

Capricorn or else (more likely) in the South Temperate Zone.

These principles are now known to all authors of text books, but

they are still able to maintain a degree of simplicity in the lower

school grades by implying it is average temperatures that matter, and

by saying nothing about extremes. The fact is that averages count for

some things and extremes for others, and that both are important. It

is not, of course, the average cold of January that sometimes destroys

the fruit in the South, but the one extreme night; similarly it is not

the average heat of July that kills by sunstroke in New York but the

one extreme day. Extremes are really more important, in that sense,

than averages; but averages are much simpler and more teachable. It

is so complicated to explain and remember that extremes may be high

where averages are high, that extremes may be high where averages are

low, and that extremes may be low where averages are low. We would

certainly have to lengthen out our school courses if we went into such

hairsplitting, and our millions of potential workers would be kept out

of the mills and factories even longer than they are now. Besides, the

complexities of facts are bewildering and confusing to the average

mind, and never give the feeling of enlightenment you have when you

grasp a simple principle which throws a flood of logical light on a

previously haphazard world.

It is unfortunate--or perhaps fortunate--that we have not space to go

deeply into the history of the way in which the simple Greek law of

temperature distribution has been gradually broken down by explorers

who went to remote places and came back with stories of conditions that

did not fit into the theory, and how the scientists toiled at fitting

together the mosaic pieces till they finally evolved an explanation

that does fit all the facts. But we must give at least a brief sketch.

The investigation that has been going on since the days of Prince Henry

the Navigator started from the simple Greek proposition: There is no

cold and the greatest heat on the Equator, no extreme of either heat

or cold in the North Temperate Zone, and no heat but merely intense

cold at the North Pole. The first slight exceptions to this had, of

course, been noted long before Henry’s day: The mountain tops are cold.

Other discrepancies due to sea breezes, ocean currents, and many other

things soon followed, but they were, on the whole, not very difficult

to explain as exceptions to the rule. True enough, the altitude one was

taken to be a universal exception; mountains were said to be colder

than their surroundings in any zone at any time of year, and it became

a popular saying that climbing a few feet up was like traveling a good

many miles north.

All exceptions other than altitude were explained in the Middle Ages,

and down to our day, as an inroad of conditions from one zone into the

territory of another--the Gulf Stream warmed the British Isles because

it came from the tropics, the Labrador Current cooled Newfoundland

because it came from the Arctic, and so on. New Yorkers still speak

of sunstroke waves as coming from the Equator, even on occasions when

the press reports few or no deaths south of Washington and the weather

bureau shows that Boston is hotter than Richmond (those who think about

it at all probably supposing that the heat arrives by some special

conveyance through the upper atmosphere). By similar acceptance of

theory and lack of reasoning, cold winds are still spoken of as coming

from the North Pole.

Serious trouble for the classic theory first developed when travelers

returned from the Arctic with their reports. John Davis, whose name

you find on the strait west of Greenland, said, for instance, that he

had been far within the so-called Frozen Zone “three divers times”

(1585-1588) and that he had on occasion found the weather there “as

salubrious as ever I did in the Isles of De Verde”--which was certainly

amazing, for those islands lie in the region supposed until Prince

Henry’s time (after 1400 A.D.) to be lifeless “because of the burning.”

Both before and after Davis there were, however, conflicting reports

from the Arctic explorers, those of the hero kind speaking (with

modest reserve) only about the cold, while those of the commercial

type, like Davis, dwelt on the surprising heat. On the whole there

was reason for the textbook writers to side uncompromisingly with the

Greeks (particularly in elementary education, where simplicity is most

desirable), so long as any travelers continued to support them.

The balance was more seriously disturbed than ever before when the

weather bureaus entered the field, and the U. S. Weather Bureau, for

instance, began to report from Fort Yukon, Alaska, which is within

the Arctic Circle, temperatures and humidities like those which kill

people in New York. After that the classic simplicity of the zone in

which it is “always cold” could be maintained only by ignoring the

records. This has been done with remarkable success, for the textbooks

stating or plainly inferring that it is never warm in the Arctic were

in extensive use in American schools for more than twenty years after

the Bureau at Washington began to publish at government expense Arctic

temperatures ranging up to 100° in the shade. You can verify this by

going ten years back in the geographies used by the schools of your own

neighborhood--not in every case, but in most.

There are some texts still in use which imply that it is never warm

in the Arctic, but many have felt themselves compelled to present the

following complicated explanation of Arctic summer temperatures (after

stating that the old law does hold for three-quarters of the year):

Practically all the heat comes from the sun, some arriving at any given

spot directly in the form of light, some transported there by various

agencies, such as winds, ocean currents. The amount of heat (light)

delivered straight from the sun to a unit of the earth’s surface on

a summer day depends primarily on how nearly vertical the sun is and

for how many hours it shines; but secondarily it depends on other

factors, such as clouds or dust in the atmosphere, the color of the

surface the light rays strike, and so on. The resulting temperature,

as observed either by a thermometer or by the human sensory organs, is

further modified by how long a night, during which heat was lost, has

preceded the day, and by how much “cold” was stored in that locality

by the preceding winter. In some places that are mountainous, such as

Greenland, this winter chill has been effectively stored in the form

of snow, which not only throws back the light rays without giving

them a chance to turn into heat but also neutralizes those that have

become heat by using them to lessen its own cold; other places, such

as the ocean, have also stored the “cold” effectively, and cancel the

heat of the summer with great success. Therefore it is never very hot

on mountains in the Arctic, nor on the ocean; and it is probable that

if you spent a summer in a tent on an ice floe at the North Pole

out-of-doors you would never observe a temperature higher than twenty

degrees above freezing (say 50° or 55° F.) measured five feet above the

ice. It would of course be much hotter if you put up a windbreak and

then let the sun shine on a dark tarpaulin spread on the floe.

But there are in the Arctic, the explanation would continue, thousands

of square miles of low land not very near either to mountains or to

the sea. Over these it is far colder in winter than at the North Pole

(because the air above the Pole is warmed by the heat radiated by

the ocean up through the floating ice). Winter winds are therefore

frequently warmer when they blow from the north than from some other

direction, and in some places the coldest winds are southerly. This

extreme cold makes a heavy precipitation impossible, and the average

snowfall of the Arctic lowlands for twelve months is therefore less

than the average snowfall of Virginia or Scotland. This little snow

dissolves quickly in the spring, and after that the sunlight strikes

a dark surface, which helps it turn into heat. Nor is there much cold

stored anywhere near that can become effective to neutralize the sun.

What cold had been stored up by the snow is gone, except as it is held

in a little water on or near the surface. What has been taken up by

the ground through last winter, and through the centuries, is securely

imprisoned there; for the first few inches which thaw near the surface

become an insulating blanket that confines the rest of the chill and

makes it as powerless to affect the temperature of the air as if it

were hundreds of miles away.

On the Arctic prairie that is remote from mountains or the sea, one

factor, then, far overshadows all others in determining how hot any

given day shall be. This is the quantity of heat received each hour

from the sun at that place, multiplied by the number of hours. Now,

at the Equator the sun can deliver heat no more than twelve hours out

of every twenty-four, giving the tropical prairie an equal length of

time in which to cool off. But on the prairie north of the Arctic

circle the sun shines the whole twenty-four hours, delivering less

heat per hour than at the Equator, but more per day, and without any

night in which to cool off. There is, accordingly, a period in summer,

varying in length according to where you are in the Arctic, during

which the sun delivers to your locality about the same heat per day as

at the Equator. _This is the rule_, for it is based on the broadest

principles; the places where it does not work out are exceptions, for

narrower or special reasons. And it is a fact that there are many

places on and near the Equator where the hottest day in a hundred years

does not equal the hottest days of the same century at many places in

the Arctic that are equally high above sea level.

Few will deny the interest of the preceding facts; but, says the really

sensible man, the world is full of interesting things, and we certainly

have not room for them all in the textbooks, nor time for them all in

the schools. The practical value of this curious Arctic lore is very

small to the average man, who stays at home or, at the most, goes to

Paris; though it is undeniably highly useful to those few individuals

who travel to the Arctic and who want to know in advance what sort of

weather to expect, warning them to take fly dope instead of furs if

they are going on a Midnight Sun excursion to Fort Yukon. But even

for the excursionist, facts are not an unmixed blessing. If you know

about the heat and the mosquitoes in advance, you will not have the

pleasure of discovering them; the fly dope may save you from stings,

but it also spoils the after-dinner value of the tale about how foolish

you were and how badly instructed _before you went north_, which sort

of story is the only really satisfactory way of putting your listeners

both firmly and pleasantly among the uninstructed where they belong.

And even from their point of view, too much advance knowledge is rather

a bore, for what is the drawing-room value of that which everybody has

learned in school when compared with: “Jones, you know, the Famous

Traveler, told me once that when he was in the Yukon, etc.”

Facts are tedious, anyhow, and we should think carefully before

agreeing that the simple and edifying Greek rule shall go by the board.

Consider just a few of the entertaining and instructive things, some of

them with no mean character-building value, that would have to go, too.

_Item_: All the ideas would have to go that are similar to the familiar

kindergarten ditty that has been sung by millions of little Americans

and which goes something like this (there seems to be no standard

version):

“Frosty little Eskimo,

In your house of ice and snow.”

and so on, till the final line:

“For in Greenland there is nothing green to grow!”

We might be able to salvage the house of ice and snow temporarily,

though it is a bothersome fact that of something over 14,000 Eskimos

in Greenland, by the last census, less than 300 had ever seen a snow

house. But the “nothing green to grow” would not last very long under

the combined attack of the unromantic geographers, who insist on

pointing out weather bureau records, and the historians of Greenland,

who will tell you that the country was a republic from 986 a.d. to 1261

(a good deal longer than the United States has yet been a republic) and

a dependency of Norway and Denmark thereafter; that they had churches

and monasteries administered from European archbishoprics (you may

have seen the Greenlandic church ruins in the movies some years ago,

as background for the King of Denmark hobnobbing with Eskimos). The

historians will point out that a European civilization could not have

existed in Greenland during the Middle Ages except for stock raising.

The colonists had cattle, with as many as a hundred head in a single

barn. They lived in considerable part on milk and milk products,

and wove cloth from their own sheep, making garments which you can

examine today through photographs in many books or study in the museum

collections of Europe. Both cattle and sheep raising are now again

practiced in Greenland, and have been for many decades. That means hay,

and hay means meadows with that “something green to grow” which is

denied by the kindergarten.

Such are the facts, but what of it? If we pressed them upon children

while they were at the impressionable age, we would so change their

mental picture of Greenland as to rob it of every charm it has so

long had for us. What substitute would they find for the delicious

thrills and chills that creep up and down our spines as we look with

the mind’s eye upon a world of permanent white silence and peer into

Greenlandic snow houses where Eskimos shiver (doubtless without their

teeth chattering, else it would not be so silent) as they devour (again

silently) the blubber that enables them to eke out their miserable

existence. And then there is the character-building value of thinking

what a marvelous thing is the human spirit that continues its fight

against the powers of darkness and cold even up there on the frozen

edge of the world. On the other hand, too, how fortunate we are who

live in a country of warmth and green grass--and schools. Take away,

if you must, the good old picture of the North that is always cold;

but consider first what it is you are going to give our disillusioned

children in its stead. Surely it will have to be something better than

cow pastures and a few ruined churches. We already have at home enough

of the one and many of the other.

_Teaching Through Educational Movies_: While our love for children

makes us conceal from them anything that may be injurious to their

welfare, the same affection leads us to strive for their instruction

in whatever we consider beneficial. But in this field we are sometimes

misled. I have in mind a special case, parents who were greatly

incensed at a movie called _Nanook of the North_, which, although

not true to the native life of the Eskimos, had been shown in their

children’s school and recommended as true. But these parents were

wrong, as will appear.

To begin with, the _Nanook_ story was at least as true as that of

Santa Claus, of which those parents approved. It was the same sort

of partial truthfulness, only greater. Real as well as Santa reindeer

have horns, four legs, and are driven before sleighs in harness, though

not such sleighs, quite, nor in such harness as the ordinary Christmas

pictures show. They run on the ground, not through the air; they are

very swift, though not quite so speedy as Santa’s. There are in the

world old men, too, who would like to give a present to every child

at Christmas if they could, though there is no old man that actually

succeeds in doing it. Thus the Santa story, while fiction in a way,

does represent truths.

Similarly with the movie, _Nanook_. There are Eskimos in Hudson Bay

where the picture was taken, and the people you see on the screen

are Eskimos, which is more realism, right from the start, than you

have ever had in a Santa Claus picture. The country you see, too,

is the real Hudson Bay. True enough, not even the coldest month up

there averages as cold as _Nanook_ tells you the whole year averages

(35° below zero), but then you must have something exceptional in a

movie or it would not impress. You are told, too, that the Hudson

Bay Eskimos still hunt with their primitive weapons, and this is

justified. For it would spoil the unity of the picture to tell the

truth about the weapons, though it is an interesting fact in itself

that the forefathers of the Eskimos shown on the screen have had guns

for generations, as the Hudson’s Bay Company has been trading into the

Bay since 1670. Moreover the titles do not actually say that the Bay

Eskimos hunt with primitive weapons _only_, so you can take it any way

you like. Doubtless the producer meant nothing more than to say that

the children (who are certainly Eskimos) still play at hunting (which

would be hunting of a sort) with bows and arrows.

No real Eskimos, in my belief, ever hunted seals through the ice in

the manner shown in the picture, nor do I think a seal could be killed

by that method unless he were a defective. But it is true that certain

Eskimos in other parts of the Arctic (about half of all there are) do

know how seals can be killed through ice. That the Hudson Bay Eskimos,

with whom our producer had to deal, did not know such methods was no

fault of his, and he would have been deficient in resource if he had

allowed that to stop him. Neither are there libraries in Hudson Bay

where he might have borrowed a book that described the method so he

could have studied it up and taught it to the local natives. There

he was with an expensive movie expedition, the picture just had to

be taken, and audiences in the South would demand to be shown what

they had heard of--Eskimos sealing through the ice. And so a method

was developed (perhaps by the Eskimos themselves along lines roughly

indicated by the director) which photographs beautifully and gives as

much feeling of enlightenment to an audience as if it showed the real

technique that does secure seals.

I have gone to _Nanook_ many times for the purpose of observing the

audiences. In several cases some movie fan has noticed that the

seal ostensibly speared in the picture is stiff and dead, clearly

planted there. But that, it seems to me, is all the realism you could

expect in a play. You would not demand that Fairbanks really kill

all his adversaries, though you do appreciate seeing a bit of good

swordsmanship. And in _Nanook_, what seal but a dead one could possibly

be expected to allow himself to be speared in the manner shown?

Another thing I have found _Nanook_ audiences complaining about is

that they had heard somewhere that Eskimo snow houses are warm and

comfortable, while the _Nanook_ picture shows the occupants shivering

as they strip for going to bed, and there are clouds of steam puffing

from their mouths and nostrils. These erudite fans are still more

troubled when they see the movie title which says that the Eskimos must

always keep their snow house interiors below freezing to prevent them

from melting, for they have read a book by someone who has lived in a

snow house and who has explained the principles of physics by which,

when the weather is cold enough outside (and no weather was ever quite

so cold as the _Nanook_ country is supposed to be), the snow does

not melt though it is comfortably warm inside--say, as warm as the

average British or Continental living rooms in winter. But the answer

is simple, and the producer is quite justified by it: An Eskimo snow

house is too small for inside photography, and the light might not

be good enough. So to get the best light and plenty of room for the

camera man, half the house was cut away (like the “sets” you see in

the movie studios), and the poor Eskimos were disrobing and going to

bed out of doors. But it would have spoiled the picture to introduce

such technical details. Hence the producer had to explain the shivering

people and their visible breathing by the harmless pretence that snow

house interiors have to be colder than freezing to prevent the walls

and roof from thawing.

And so on for the whole picture.

It was the very fact just stated and others like them which made my

friends angry. That may have been because the realities of the picture

were not so charitably interpreted to them as we have done above. It is

possible to make the same facts look a good deal worse if you try.

But no charity is needed, and only a proper understanding of the

case, to reconcile any parent to a movie like _Nanook_ and to its

presentation in the school. For the Eskimo, properly understood,

is really the grown-up’s Santa Claus. We love the world of the

imagination. Santa, fat, jolly and generous, portrays certain things

and qualities as we would like them to be. But in the world of fancy

we need contrasts; ugliness as well as beauty, wickedness as well as

goodness. For the proper effect, we need not only Heaven, but Hell

also. It may be pleasant to think how fortunate you will be if you go

to Heaven, but that is nothing compared to the satisfaction you get

from a reasonable prospect of being able to keep out of Hell.

What we mean, then, is that the Eskimo is really a sort of reversed

Santa; and that since Hell has begun to fade, the Arctic is our best

substitute. For somehow grown people, even those who cannot visualize

Hell, seem to be able to believe not only that Hudson Bay is in the

Arctic but also that the Arctic averages thirty-five degrees below

zero, as the picture says the Hudson Bay country does, and that it has

all the other distressing attributes.

In fact, the Arctic, peopled by Eskimos, is much more practical for

our purposes than any inferno ever was when peopled by tormented

spirits. No picture of spirits ever gets us like one of a wretched

flesh-and-blood Eskimo who shivers from one year’s end to the other.

Away up there, crouched in his foul, unventilated house, drinking oil,

he has a power to make us remarkably contented with poor lodgings,

a careless landlord, and meals at Childs’. In our little backyard

with its one wretched tree we think with a pleasant compassion of

the stunted little Arctic Mongol who has never seen even a bush. And

then, to make his usefulness complete, we remember in summer when we

are perishing with the heat that Nature has her compensations! She

mercifully sees to it that her chilled children of the snows shall at

least escape sunstroke and the after effects of too much Coca-Cola.

And how could you get these and other similar benefits from the Eskimo

and the Arctic if you did not encourage such pictures as _Nanook of the

North_, and the books that correspond? And what better time than the

impressionable years of childhood in which to acquire ideas that are

going to have such high consolatory and moral values later?

* * * * *

Perhaps, Gentle Reader, you had arrived at the truth about Truth before

you saw this treatise. If so, you will know, or you may have guessed

by the trend of this inquiry, that neither side is going to have it

all its own way. At first Truth (in the sense of facts) seemed to be

getting the worst of it, being so frequently immaterial, inexpedient,

even immoral, and nearly always in such bad taste. But the last

argument from geography has shown the merits divided, with, generally

speaking, the “practical” advantages in favor of the facts, but the

idealistic ones against them. We are likely to feel here an immediate

concern that in a crass and materialistic age the “practical” side

will prevail. Not necessarily, for we may be able to show the higher

practicality of idealism.

We will admit now, partly to save the trouble of a formal canvass,

that the rest of the argument from the schools will go, on the whole,

against us; or, rather, against the conclusions deduced. The fact is,

our position is not really at all what it has seemed to be. We keep

another, and so far unhinted, solution in reserve.

* * * * *

_A Glance over the Other Studies_: A critical study of psychological

teaching would not go against the preceding conclusions from history,

physiology, geography, and the educational movies, but in fact

decidedly in their favor, more especially as the newer developments

have tended so strongly toward an undesirable, and, in fact, degrading

materialism. Psychoanalysis and especially behaviorism come near

being a total loss from the point of view of character-building. But

chemistry has scarcely any bad aspects unless you happen to be a

pacifist, objecting to gunpowder and poison gas. But even so, what

is that when measured against soap, a product of chemistry on which

rests that perfect cleanliness revered today even beyond godliness?

Physics, too, is on the right side, especially those theories of it

that are neither so puzzling that the ordinary man can make nothing of

them, or else are clear in statement but seemingly lead to impossible

conclusions--which can, nevertheless, be experimentally verified. For

it is so valuable to be able to lay one’s hands somewhere on views

that seem either silly or impossible and can nevertheless be proved.

Reasoning from them gives such force to analogous religious views

which it does not happen to be possible to verify.

Going ahead thus to canvass the rest of the grade school and high

school sciences (for we have inadvertently progressed on our argument

a little beyond the grades before we knew it) we shall come to the

provisional conclusion that about forty per cent of the truths of

education are good and should continue to be encouraged, about forty

per cent are bad and should be ignored or suppressed, and the remaining

twenty per cent are all right in themselves but too complicated and

should be reserved for those who continue their education into the

universities.

Since our love and care prompt us to make the education of our children

their best and most logical preparation for the life which we admire,

it is not really necessary for our present examination to go beyond the

common and high schools, for they are a sort of abstract or synopsis of

the world as we both think it is and want it to be. Still it will do no

harm to take another case or two.

In politics, for instance, would you want the whole truth told about

every candidate? You can test that out with a few simple reactions.

When it was whispered around, for instance, that Harding was partly of

negro descent, was it your first inclination to try to discover if the

charge were true or not? On the contrary, you almost certainly took no

thought of truth or falsehood, but were offended and angered by the bad

taste and poor sportsmanship of whoever it was that started the yarn.

In the case of Wilson, would you have favored it (even as a Republican)

if there had been openly circulated some of the things which (as a

Republican) you firmly believed about him? Bad sportsmanship again,

and bad taste; you would not have done it and are glad no one did. Even

in the case of so innocent a thing as President Theodore Roosevelt’s

bad eye, said to have resulted from a boyish sparring bout, would

you, as a Democrat this time, have favored any campaign use of it

whatsoever? Once more, bad sportsmanship, bad taste, an emphatic no.

In the August, 1927, number of _Harper’s Magazine_ Dr. Joseph Collins,

famous as a physician in all literary circles, had an article on

_Should Doctors Tell the Truth?_ It will not take a reading of that

article, nor anything but a backward glance of the mind over our own

experiences, to make us agree with him when he says: “The longer I

practice medicine the more I am convinced that every physician should

cultivate lying as a fine art.” Nor do we quarrel with the general

conclusion that while a physician should tell the truth in certain

cases, lying is usually the kinder, the safer, and therefore the better

way.

And what of the every day social relations that are more important

than our business or professional contacts to most of us? Consider

the one remark: “How well you are looking!” Can you imagine the sort

of place this world would be if that little exclamatory sentence, or

its equivalent, were not working overtime in every country? I know my

own case. Ever since I can remember the declaration: “You are looking

better than when I saw you last,” has cheered me greatly. It was not

till a year or two ago that it first struck me that if this had been

uniformly true all these years I ought to be looking remarkably well

by now. But even so, I am still able to take a little comfort in this

serial fiction.

In view of the benevolent nature of the many sample reticences we

have considered, all of which and many more like them are sure of a

heavy vote in their favor could this nation, or any other civilized

country, be polled on the subject--in view of this and much more that

could be said in favor, is it not rather strange that most of us have

allowed ourselves to fall victims to that cynical outlook on life which

considers the deceiver, almost necessarily, wicked? You see how absurd

that is, particularly if you think back over the cases of your own

deception. As a child you may have deceived your parents occasionally

to get out of a licking; but far oftener, I am sure, you did it to

save their feelings, so they would not be offended or worried--on the

well-known and sound principle that “what you don’t know don’t hurt

you.” And, in later life, was it not usually the same? In school you

bluffed partly for marks, of course, but very often, almost oftener

than you realized, to save the feelings of a kindly teacher who trusted

you and would have been so disappointed had he known. In married life,

too, you deceive, oftener than not (I am sure the married will agree)

to save the feelings of the other party. In fact, the conjugal relation

calls for the highest known percentage of benevolent reticence. There

are, for instance, certain situations that do not seem to irk the

technically aggrieved parties, even when they know about them, so long

as they are able to keep up the appearance of not knowing. And what

is more, that public which always takes an interest in the marriage

relations of other people, does not think it reprehensible for the

technically aggrieved party to know about the dereliction and still do

nothing, so long as he does not know that the public knows he knows.

In fact, next in importance after the systematic deception of children

by parents, comes the amiable deception of husband and wife by each

other. That is not only in the nature of things, but proper according

to the highest standards, since the family is the social unit and the

home the strong citadel of our institutions.

CONCLUSION

We have now come to a point where we can survey the whole ground and

draw reasonable conclusions from the facts set down. The irresistible

main decision is against the rest of the philosophers and against all

their philosophy. This is as it should be; for what would be the profit

of a new philosophy if it failed to destroy the old? The philosophers

may, of course, rise to counter-attack; but what do we reck of that?

For we have the public with us, since we have come to a conclusion

which justifies what they always have done, what they dearly love

doing, and what they are at heart convinced is right--though they did

not know it, any more than the perfect athlete knows how he balances

when he walks.

The conclusion is, then, that like religion, truth is neither good nor

bad. There are good religions and bad religions, good truths and bad.

Generally, though, or at least more often than not, truth is, in

practice, bad--especially in the fields of æsthetics, ethics, morals,

character-building, and business (which last we have not stopped to

argue since it is so self-evident).

We pointed out in the first section of this book the necessary

imperfection of all the sciences except mathematics. Since nothing is

true there by observation or by any evidence, but merely by agreement,

it is obvious that truth in mathematics need never be bad--since we are

not obliged to agree on it if we do not like it, and nothing is bad

unless it is something we do not like.

Though we have not covered the field exhaustively, we may agree that

truth is good, usually, in engineering, chemistry, physics, and the

allied sciences. It is good in astronomy and geology whenever it

does not conflict with religion. It is good about as often as bad in

sociology, psychology, physiology, biology, and several of the related

sciences, for in these about half the time it appears to support

present-day manners, current morals and the prevalent religion. In

history, civics and many such fields it is always open to the gravest

suspicion. In the training of very young children as a general thing it

should be rather carefully avoided.

THE NECESSARY REFORMS

Having arrived at this conclusion, we must profit by it. At first

sight it will seem that, since we have found the truth bad as often

as not, the thing to do would be to proclaim our emancipation from

its tyranny. But that would be forgetting the more important part of

our findings--the benevolent nature and salutary effects of at least

a good half of all the deception there is. How could you carry on a

Santa Claus campaign, or remain happily married, if you said openly

that you were going to deceive whenever you thought it best? It is

only in prestidigitation, where “the quickness of the hand deceives

the eye,” that you can safely tell people that you are going to fool

them. In spiritualist seances, in praying for rain, or in forecasting

a year without a summer, what effect do you suppose you would produce

if you said to everybody that you were doing everything for its mere

psychological effect on them?

We can well take our pointer as to what to do from a famous general who

has announced publicly that he is going to explain in a book just how

he himself and his associates invented and circulated some of the most

effective (or outrageous) lies of the Great War. In connection with

this announcement he has had two things to explain, and he has made an

explanation that is not only satisfactory in his case but admirably

suited to broader uses.

Asked how he could, without shame, admit such lies as he proposed to

admit, he replied in substance that if you are justified in using

shrapnel, poison gas, torpedoes from submarines and bombs from

airships, you are justified in using any means at all. The main concern

is to make the nation at home and the soldiers in the field a unit

for the war, and you cannot do that unless you at least convince them

that there is good reason to fight. The more convinced they are the

better they will fight, and what propaganda does is to make them more

convinced. This argument is so familiar that it deserves no further

amplification.

The General’s second defense was against the accusation that he had

said himself that he expected another war within twenty-five years from

the last, and that such a war could not be won without propaganda. How,

then, did he justify himself in giving away his country’s secrets of

just how its citizens were fooled in the last war? His reply was that

the remedy would be very simple. All you had to do was to say: “Yes,

quite right; we fooled you in the last war. But times have changed and

that sort of thing would not work now. Besides, we would not fool you

even if it served our ends, we have become so honorable.” Having said

this, you could go ahead and fool them not only with the old methods

but, in some cases, with the very same tale. All you will have to do in

the last case is to explain: “The story which we invented in the last

war must have given the enemy the idea, for now they are actually doing

what we then accused them of.”

We may well adapt the General’s ideas to a wider field. The leaders of

thought among us must continue to proclaim their devotion to Truth, in

order that they may be able to get people to believe and act upon those

things that are for the general welfare.

The conclusions and recommendations at which we have arrived will

receive informal support from most thoughtful and all public-spirited

persons. But will that be enough, especially in view of the solid front

presented by the old-school philosophers, who still hold that the Good

is the same as the True, and that the True is whatever corresponds to

facts? It should be enough, for we have an initial advantage in the

cogency and popular appeal of our reasoning. By considering the very

same facts as the old philosophers, but merely selecting them more

judiciously and approaching them from the opposite, or scientific,

angle (of reasoning from facts to principles), we have discovered (what

has long been instinctively felt) that many facts are bad; and have

demonstrated that the Good cannot be synonymous with every kind of

fact, for that would make good synonymous with bad, which is nonsense.

The Good, we have thus demonstrated, has no necessary relation to facts

at all, but is ultimately determined by the sound instincts of the

majority.

The ancients, it seems, anticipated our findings in a measure; but that

is natural, and strengthens our position, for we are only trying to

go back to the first principles of Nature, and they understood Nature

better than we, being closer to her and yielding a freer rein to their

instincts. They expressed their conclusion in the saying that “The

voice of the people is the voice of God.” The triumph of the same idea

was poetically forecast by Tennyson when he spoke of an epoch in which

“The common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe.”

Can we secure the triumph which Tennyson foresaw, the need of which we

have shown, without a special organization to attain it? Pondering the

question, it does not seem that we need any wholly new organization,

but rather a federation of those existing agencies that believe in

acting on our principle--the principle of the sound common sense of

the majority. Consider what we have to start with: The Fundamentalists

would take care of religion, the American Legion and the Liberty

League would see to patriotism and would safeguard the status quo,

the Anti-Saloon League, the W.C.T.U., and similar organizations would

look after the prohibition of alcoholics (and other prohibitions, as

needed); the Society for the Suppression of Vice, the Watch and Ward

Society, and their kind, would protect our literary and other morals.

And so on through the list.

Of course it will never do for the benevolent organizations to

continue acting separately, each for its own end. They must unite.

The Fundamentalists must agree to support the Legion and League on

patriotism, and they must return the favor by a united Anti-Darwinism.

All of them must get behind the next Clean Books Bill, and so on till

every organization to promote the common good has the support of every

other.

Such union will be strength, but there will be more power in reserve

that may be called on when needed. Suppose, for instance, that the

schools are threatened. The toy makers, the printers of fairy tales,

and the educational movie people will see to it that Noah and his Ark

remain in our religion, Jack and the Beanstalk in our folklore, and

the permanently frozen Arctic in our geographies. The politicians

will arrange that the histories shall continue to be reticent and the

soapmakers will look out that the physiology of the skin does not get

too well understood. Back of all such individuals, corporations, or

groups, will be the sound morality and the good taste of the community,

taking care that mere facts shall not lead us too far astray.