THE DIVERSIFICATION AND CONFLICT OF IDEAS
DIVERSIFICATION IN SPECIAL GROUPS—DEMOCRACY VERSUS UNIFORMITY—FREEDOM
OF PROPOSAL AND DISCUSSION—THE VALUE OF PARTIAL
ISOLATION—IMMIGRATION—ORGANIC SELECTION OF IDEAS—IDEAS THAT DO NOT
FIT—TRANSIENT ERRORS—THE HARMFUL NOT ALWAYS ELIMINATED—THE
STRUGGLE OF IDEAS IN A TIME OF TRANSITION—GETTING DOWN TO
PRINCIPLES
The movement of intelligence in large social wholes is an intricate
organic process, in which many types of men participate, and also many
traditions and environments under the influence of which these types of
men are formed. From these diverse points of view come forecasts and
experiments in various directions, accompanied by a general process of
discussion in which all points of view are modified and a fresh
synthesis is worked out. Thus we think our way along from one stage to
another.
Accordingly, every group needs to have what we call in the individual “a
fertile mind”; so that, as new situations arise, a goodly number of
intelligent ideas may spring up to meet them, out of which the best
lines of action may be evolved through the usual methods of discussion
and trial. Thus, if a group of boys have to camp in a rocky place where
no tent-stakes can be driven, their success in putting up the tent will
depend upon having among their number those whose ingenuity or
experience will suggest good plans for using stones or logs instead of
stakes.
We need, then, to encourage the growth of special lines of tradition and
association in order that we may have expert guidance. So biologists may
suggest plans for improving the breed of animals and the quality and
yield of crops, bankers schemes of finance, and men trained in the labor
movement methods of conciliation. We cannot expect to reach high levels
of intelligence except through the medium of functional groups which, by
some adequate process of selection and training have come to represent
as nearly as may be the highest attainable faculty in a given direction.
These groups must be small, because there must be many of them and
because the members must be specially qualified; but there is nothing
undemocratic in them. Indeed the more democratic they are, that is, the
more selection is based on fair play and equal opportunity, the more
efficient they should be. It is essential, however, that they should
have a continuous organization, making possible a group spirit and a
regular development through tradition and discussion. There is no reason
why democracy should not express itself through such groups at least as
successfully as any other form of society.
Indeed few things are more obstructive of the understanding and
development of democracy than the popular idea of it as a uniform mass
of individuals without lasting group distinctions. If it is to work well
it must become differentiated into functional parts, although admission
to these, after suitable training, must be kept open. The conception of
a vast, level proletariat, which is to work out a uniform social system
on the principle of the greatest good to the greatest number is not only
repellent to all who look toward a richly diversified culture, but is
far from according with the probable development of democracy. Democracy
is primarily an increase of consciousness and personal choice in the
social system, which cannot take place except through the growth of
diversity. The higher organic life is based upon systematic
differentiation, and if differences are functional and adaptive the more
we have of them the better. If our democracy is somewhat uniform, this
is a defect which time, let us hope, will remedy.
I believe in democracy, but not in the philosophy by which it has often
been justified. It appeals to me as on the whole the best means of
enfranchising the human spirit and giving sway to those tendencies and
persons which, being truly strong in a higher sense, are fit to prevail.
I expect that a real democracy will prove to be a true aristocracy, in
which leadership will fall to those fit by nature and training to
exercise it, though I trust also to the sense and sentiment of the
masses. I doubt whether God is equally represented in all men, as some
maintain, though I believe that the men who represent him more than
others are as likely to be found in a lower social class as in a higher.
The encouragement of recognized lines of special thought is by no means
sufficient. It is equally important that we have the utmost freedom of
proposal and discussion for projects originating in unforeseen and
unaccredited quarters. The specialist, whether lawyer, economist,
biologist, business man, minister, socialist, anarchist, or what-not,
is, after all, likely to be an expression of what has already been
worked out, an organ of the institution, not confronting the new
situation in the naïve and unbiased manner which may give value to the
views of people of inferior training.
And, moreover, fruitful originality may come quite as much from urgent
contact with the situation as from more general knowledge. Workmen in
the shop have suggested innumerable improvements which the designer in
his office would never have thought of; and practicable ideas of
economic and social betterment originate largely with those who have
most reason to feel the wrong of the actual condition of things. At any
rate their point of view is essential to the formulation of a good plan,
and should have every facility to impress itself upon the general
process of thought.
The question of free speech is surrounded by a kind of illusion, as a
result of which we think of it as a matter that was important in the
past, and still is, perhaps, in other circles of society, but is not so
in our own environment. We are confident, if we think of the matter at
all, that we are not interfering with free speech, nor are any of those
other liberal-minded people our friends and associates.
But this is what people have always believed. We know how humane and
broad-minded the Emperor Marcus Aurelius was, and also how he regretted
the turbulence of the Christians and the severity he felt compelled to
use toward them—the same occurrences which have come down to us in the
Christian tradition as martyrdoms. Torquemada, of the Spanish
Inquisition, was a humane and liberal-minded man in his own view and
that of his associates, and so were the burners of witches, the German
officials in Belgium, and indeed nearly all of those we look upon as
persecutors.
The plain truth is that we are all engaged with more or less energy in
endeavoring to force upon others those modes of thought and behavior
which we, as a result of our habit and environment, have come to look
upon as decent and necessary. This is all that Torquemada did, and we,
as I say, are doing no less. The main difference is that we have become
more humane in our methods of suppression, and even somewhat aware,
vaguely and intermittently, of the illusion of which I speak, so that we
are inclined to admit, especially in matters remote from ourselves, the
importance of insisting upon freedom of speech.
It is indeed a matter for eternal vigilance and courage, not only in
resisting the unconscious encroachments of others but in keeping our own
minds open and tolerant. The question is a very real one in American
universities, where ideas that shock prevalent habits of thought can
hardly be advocated without resisting social and academic pressure, and,
perhaps, endangering one’s position, or advancement that might otherwise
be expected. This was true thirty or forty years ago as regards the
doctrine of evolution; it was true quite recently as regards socialism;
it is true now of other social and economic heresies, such as
birth-control, pacifism, or what-not, that in time may become entirely
respectable.
The need of tolerance has been greatly increased by the rise of a social
system which aims to be intelligent, recognizes change as rational, and
seeks to guide it by discussion. Under an older régime, as in the Middle
Ages, the prevalent doctrine was that there could be but one right way
of thinking and that others must be suppressed. And in a society not
organized for discussion there was more truth in this than the modern
reader of history is apt to admit. A thousand years ago freedom of
religious teaching, for example, would probably have resulted in
doctrinal and moral anarchy. Innumerable conflicting sects would have
sprung up, and there was no general organization of thought vigorous
enough to keep them within limits or maintain a voluntary unity. In
this, as in many other fields, we can dispense with a compulsory
discipline because we have developed one which is spontaneous: formerly,
if there was to be a moral whole it had to be authoritative. Even now
this is more or less true of unenlightened populations, and it is only
along with a campaign for enlightenment that we can safely demand
freedom of speech.
It is essential to the intelligent conduct of society that radical
groups, however small and unpopular, should develop and express their
views. Their proposals do good by forcing the discussion of principles
and so leading to an illumination otherwise impossible. The large and
moderate parties have a conforming tendency and usually differ but
little in principles, if indeed they are conscious of these at all. But
the radical programme is a challenge to thought, and can hardly fail to
be educative. For some time past the Socialists have been of the utmost
service in this way, and round their searching theories of human
betterment discussion has largely centred. I have often been impressed
by their value as a factor in clarifying the minds of college students.
Such theories are like the occupation of an advanced post by a
detachment of an army: they push forward the line of battle even if the
position occupied does not, in the long run, prove tenable. We easily
overlook the fact that an honest project is seldom wholly wrong, and
that even if it is there may be profit in discussing it.
The value of partial isolation as a factor in social intelligence is not
often recognized in a democracy, where, under the sway of the
brotherhood idea, we commonly assume that we cannot see too much of one
another. But if we are to have a rich organization of thought, including
many types of men, each good of its kind, we must have a corresponding
diversity of environments in which these types of men may get their
nurture. The culture of individuality, the need of which we are
beginning to recognize, cannot go far except as we also foster
distinctive groups. We need many kinds of family, of school, of church,
of community, of occupational and culture associations, each with a
tradition and spirit of its own.
There is much to be said in favor of our schools and universities
entering heartily into the lives of the communities that surround them;
but if the communities are of a spirit hostile or indifferent to culture
they may, and partly do, submerge the latter in their own barbarism. The
democratization of higher traditions must be on a plane of militant
leadership, not of concession, or it is pernicious. Better a real
culture, though in monasteries, than a general vulgarization.
The same considerations may serve to qualify our democratic criticism of
hereditary wealth and of the class differences based upon it. The man
with an inherited competence is in a position to separate himself from
the rush of competition enough to make a fresh estimate of things, and
to use his independence as a fulcrum for starting a new movement. No
doubt the great majority fail to do this; it requires other
qualifications than pecuniary; still, much fruitful initiative in
science, art, literature and social reform has in fact been supplied by
people having this advantage, and until we provide for leisure and
independence in some other way the argument for hereditary wealth will
have force. In the same way the finest ideals of life and conduct—as
distinguished, possibly, from the highest ideals—have often been the
tradition of an upper class, upon which their continuance depended. If
we are to dispense with upper classes we must at the same time provide
for continuous culture groups of a more democratic sort.
It is much the same with national variation as with that of individuals
and groups. Bagehot, in the earliest and perhaps the ablest attempt to
apply Darwinism to society, pointed out that “all great nations have
been prepared in privacy and in secret. They have been composed far away
from all distraction. Greece, Rome, Judea, were framed each by itself,
and the antipathy of each to men of different race and different speech
is one of their most marked peculiarities, and quite their strongest
common property.”[76] In modern life, however, as nations come to share
consciously and with good-will in a common organic life, this
differentiation should not be one of isolation or antipathy, but of
pride in a distinctive contribution to the higher life of the world. I
need hardly add that the independence and individuality of small
nations—which has seemed to be threatened—is essential to the general
good.
Immigration is another topic that might well be considered from the
standpoint of variety of ideas. We need as many kinds of people as
possible, provided they are good kinds, because their various
temperaments and capacities enrich our life. This seems true
biologically, as regards diversity of natural stocks, and applies also
to the ideals and habits of thought that immigrants bring with them. Our
self-esteem naturally depreciates these contributions, but it is fairly
clear that after a long course of pioneer life and crude industrialism
we are in a position to profit by culture elements that even the
peasantry of an older civilization may supply. The Slavs, Italians,
Jews, and others who have recently come to America in such numbers have
many things to learn from us, but beyond doubt they have also much to
teach.
Certainly it is a mistake to attempt to suppress foreign customs or
languages by any kind of coercion. It is true that a common language, at
least, is necessary to assimilation, but this will come naturally if our
social attitude is hospitable and our schools efficient. Moreover, a too
sudden or compulsory break with the past is a bad thing, impairing
self-respect and stability of character. Those who cherish what is best
in the old life will make all the better members of the new. Such
trouble as we have had with our immigrants, in regard to assimilation,
is almost negligible, compared with the complete failure of harsher
methods in Europe.
The larger discussion involves a struggle for survival among innumerable
ideas, springing from the innumerable diversities of person, class, and
situation. One naturally inquires what causes some of these ideas to
survive and prevail rather than others. What makes the success or
failure of a principle or a project?
Some writers will answer this question for us by pointing to specific
factors which they think are decisive—though they by no means agree as
to what these are—but I take it that the determining agent is nothing
less than the total situation, which we must grasp as a whole in order
to see the trend of things. The life of an idea depends upon the degree
and manner of its working in the actual complex state of the mind of the
people, consisting largely of impulses, habits, and traditions whose
sources are remote and obscure. Take, for example, the change in our
ideas regarding the functions and problems of women, indicated by the
contrast between the literature of the nineteenth century and that of
to-day. Certain reasons can be given for it, such as the growing
self-dependence and class-consciousness of women, their employment in
modern industry and the popularization of social and biological science.
These and many other elements are worked up by discussion, producing an
atmosphere in which the conventions of fifty years ago seem prudish and
absurd. A novel, a play, or a social programme will succeed now which
our fathers and mothers would have suppressed.
I doubt whether rules can be formulated which will help us much in
interpreting the state of the social mind and predicting what success a
given proposition will have. The attempts which have been made in this
direction, such as those of Tarde in his _Logique sociale_, seem to me
mechanical and unilluminating. If we accept the view that the higher
intelligence is a complex imaginative synthesis, there is little reason
for expecting help from such rules. What is necessary is that the
interpreter and prophet shall have the knowledge and vision to reproduce
in himself the essential influences of the time, and so, by a dramatic
process, carry on the movement in his imagination and foresee the
outcome. No formula of psychological selection will be of much use. Life
is not subject to such formulas.
If an idea is quite incapable of working in the actual situation, if
there is no soil in which it can grow, people will take no interest in
it, it will not “take hold” anywhere, but come and go as a mere flitting
impression, not even achieving definite statement. It is certain that
ideas not infrequently occur to men which will later be esteemed as
great truths, but are rejected by those to whom they occur because they
do not kindle in the actual trend of thought. This was the case with the
Darwinian idea of development through the survival of the fittest;
several persons who are known, and probably others who are not known,
having seen it vaguely long before Darwin, and it came to power only
when the situation was ripe.
It is particularly true of social and moral ideals, since these are
never novel or obscure in themselves, but are old thoughts renewed and
illuminated from time to time by successive waves of faith. The
Christian conception of a society of brothers with God as a loving
father, is probably older than civilization, and can never have been far
from men’s desires. The case is much the same with the idea of
democracy, with Rousseau’s idea of the nobility of human nature and the
depravity of institutions, and with Kant’s moral imperative.
Even if an idea impresses an individual here and there it can hardly
hold its ground without some kind of group support. Thus Hamerton says
of the development of ideas in art: “The taste and knowledge of their
contemporaries usually erect impassable barriers around artists. If
there is no feeling or desire for a certain order of truth on the part
of the public, the artist will have no stimulus to study that order of
truth; nay, if he does study and render it, he will incur insult and
abuse, and be thereby driven back into the line of subject and treatment
which his contemporaries understand.”[77]
However, an idea that gets possession of even one individual so that he
will formulate and defend it cannot be said to have failed. It takes its
part in the larger discussion, and, however contumeliously rejected, it
will leave some impress upon the ideas that are accepted. And the stone
that the builders reject may prove to be the cornerstone of to-morrow’s
edifice.
Educated men are often alarmed by the spread of superficial doctrines
which have a timely appeal to passion or interest, and seem likely to
sweep the people off their feet and into disaster. It is normal in the
history of the United States, or of any country where there is some
freedom of speech, that there should be a numerous party of radicals
advocating some social or economic heresy like populism, free silver,
revolutionary socialism, anarchism, or the like. And indeed we sometimes
narrowly escape being swamped by these waves of unreason.
But if the doctrine is really superficial it is likely to prove
transient. As time goes on people have opportunity to experiment with
it, usually on a small scale, and if they are fairly intelligent and
their social condition not desperately bad this gives rise to a sounder
judgment. In the meantime the particular situation which gave impetus to
the doctrine is likely to have changed, as the free-silver agitation,
for example, was undermined by the increased production of gold and the
advent of higher prices.
Another way by which unwise propositions tend to be eliminated is what
may be called cancellation. The multitude of frothy schemes that secure
a following might well discourage us did we not reflect that they are as
antagonistic to one another as they are to good sense, so that the net
resultant may be zero. If we have, on the one hand, extreme anarchists
who would break down all discipline, we have, on the other,
collectivists who would take away all freedom. It is in the very nature
of error to lack adaptability to the rest of life, so that it cannot
well form large wholes. The saying that no combination of wise men could
resist a combination of all the fools does not show much insight at the
best, and may be answered by saying that those who combine effectively
cannot be fools, since they are meeting one of the most exacting tests
of intelligence.
We cannot assert, however, that harmful ideas are necessarily eliminated
and that only the beneficial survive. All that we can say with
confidence in this direction is that social organisms are subject to a
struggle, and in order to survive have to exhibit a certain measure of
efficiency, or power to meet the struggle. If they have a long life it
shows that ideas and practices injurious with reference to the struggle
have been kept within limits. If we go beyond this and assert an onward
and upward tendency in life we must, I think, rely finally upon faith
rather than demonstration to support our belief.
Much that has shown a vigorous power of survival all through history we
believe to be harmful, as, for example, drink, prostitution, and many
forms of superstition. Scarcely anything has swept over the world more
triumphantly than the tobacco habit, which, to say the least, is under
suspicion. Professor Keller reminds us that there are such things as
harmful _mores_, and he instances a number of customs relating to
marriage that are clearly of this kind.[78] The scruples of the people
of India about killing poisonous snakes result in an immense increase of
these animals, and of human deaths. Many of the ancient beliefs
surviving in backward parts of our own country regarding the sowing of
crops only when the “sign of the moon” is favorable, and the like, are
of a similar nature.
The fact that extremes of riches and poverty, subjection of women and
domination of one class over another have existed throughout history is
no proof that such conditions are innocuous, but merely that they have
not been so destructive as to prevent survival. And, in general, we may
say of the social system that comes down to us from the past that, while
as a whole and in its longer tested parts it has proved capable of life,
we have no reason to think that this life is of the highest kind
practicable.
In a time of rapid change the struggle of ideas becomes both more
intense and more confused. The social whole is in somewhat the position
of a man who has been thrown out of his old occupation and is trying to
establish himself in a new one: many questions press upon him at once,
while the rules and habits he has been used to go by do not suit the
changed conditions. In a more settled time there are traditional beliefs
which serve as accepted standards of judgment—as the Scriptures or the
writings of the Fathers have served in the history of the church. But in
our own period—though we are no doubt too much in it to judge truly of
its character—it seems that hardly any authority remains, that we have
to create the law as well as make decisions under it.
The effort of intelligence to find a rational course in such a time
results in a somewhat anarchic conflict of diverse interpretations.
Extreme views of many sorts are urged, and there is no accredited
arbiter to decide among them.
“And a vast noise of rights, wrongs, powers, needs,
—Cries of new faiths that called ‘This way is plain,’
Grindings of upper against lower greeds,
Fond sighs for old things, shouts for new,—did reign.”[79]
In the midst of this the ordinary individual, who has no taste for
complex thought but longs only for peace with honor, is often in a sad
condition. He is like the little neutral country caught up into the
struggle of contending Powers and overrun by all of them, unable to
stand alone or to find a sure support.
But the more deeply the ground is rent the more fundamental are the
truths revealed. A conflict that destroys accepted principles almost
certainly brings to light others that are more general and permanent,
because after all life is rational, it seems, and the social mind, when
pushed to it, has usually been able to discover as much of this
rationality as it really needed. As regards religious belief we can
already see that ideas of a scope and depth that few could have attained
fifty years ago are now becoming domesticated in every-day thought. The
conflict in this field has resulted in the perception that none of the
contending creeds and forms is essential, but that the permanently human
and divine reality, not confined in any formulation, creates new
expression for itself along with the general growth of life.
Indeed it would seem that the struggles of the age have given us at
least one principle which change cannot easily overthrow; the principle,
namely, that life itself is a process rather than a state; so that we no
longer expect anything final, but look to discover in the movement
itself sufficient matter for reason and faith.