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THE MIND IN THE MAKING
The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform
By JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON
_Author of_ "PETRARCH, THE FIRST MODERN SCHOLAR"
"MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN TIMES"
"THE NEW HISTORY", ETC.
CONTENTS
I
PREFACE
1. ON THE PURPOSE OF THIS VOLUME
2. THREE DISAPPOINTED METHODS OF REFORM
II
3. ON VARIOUS KINDS OF THINKING
4. RATIONALIZING
5. HOW CREATIVE THOUGHT TRANSFORMS THE WORLD
III
6. OUR ANIMAL HERITAGE. THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATION
7. OUR SAVAGE MIND
IV
8. BEGINNING OF CRITICAL THINKING
9. INFLUENCE OF PLATO AND ARISTOTLE
V
10. ORIGIN OF MEDIAEVAL CIVILIZATION
11. OUR MEDIAEVAL INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE
VI
12. THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
13. HOW SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE HAS THE CONDITIONS OF LIFE
VII
14. "THE SICKNESS OF AN ACQUISITIVE SOCIETY"
15. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SAFETY AND SANITY
VIII
16. SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF REPRESSION
17. WHAT OF IT?
APPENDIX
* * * * *
I.
PREFACE
This is an essay--not a treatise--on the most important of all matters
of human concern. Although it has cost its author a great deal more
thought and labor than will be apparent, it falls, in his estimation,
far below the demands of its implacably urgent theme. Each page could
readily be expanded into a volume. It suggests but the beginning of
the beginning now being made to raise men's thinking onto a plain
which may perhaps enable them to fend off or reduce some of the
dangers which lurk on every hand.
J. H. R.
NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH, NEW YORK CITY, _August, 1921._
THE MIND IN THE MAKING
1. ON THE PURPOSE OF THIS VOLUME
If some magical transformation could be produced in men's ways of
looking at themselves and their fellows, no inconsiderable part of the
evils which now afflict society would vanish away or remedy themselves
automatically. If the majority of influential persons held the opinions
and occupied the point of view that a few rather uninfluential people
now do, there would, for instance, be no likelihood of another great
war; the whole problem of "labor and capital" would be transformed and
attenuated; national arrogance, race animosity, political corruption,
and inefficiency would all be reduced below the danger point. As an old
Stoic proverb has it, men are tormented by the opinions they have of
things, rather than by the things themselves. This is eminently true of
many of our worst problems to-day. We have available knowledge and
ingenuity and material resources to make a far fairer world than that
in which we find ourselves, but various obstacles prevent our
intelligently availing ourselves of them. The object of this book is to
substantiate this proposition, to exhibit with entire frankness the
tremendous difficulties that stand in the way of such a beneficent change
of mind, and to point out as clearly as may be some of the measures to be
taken in order to overcome them.
When we contemplate the shocking derangement of human affairs which
now prevails in most civilized countries, including our own, even the
best minds are puzzled and uncertain in their attempts to grasp the
situation. The world seems to demand a moral and economic regeneration
which it is dangerous to postpone, but as yet impossible to imagine,
let alone direct. The preliminary intellectual regeneration which
would put our leaders in a position to determine and control the
course of affairs has not taken place. We have unprecedented conditions
to deal with and novel adjustments to make--there can be no doubt of that.
We also have a great stock of scientific knowledge unknown to our
grandfathers with which to operate. So novel are the conditions, so
copious the knowledge, that we must undertake the arduous task of
reconsidering a great part of the opinions about man and his relations
to his fellow-men which have been handed down to us by previous
generations who lived in far other conditions and possessed far less
information about the world and themselves. We have, however, first to
create an _unprecedented attitude of mind to cope with unprecedented
conditions, and to utilize unprecedented knowledge_ This is the
preliminary, and most difficult, step to be taken--far more difficult
than one would suspect who fails to realize that in order to take it we
must overcome inveterate natural tendencies and artificial habits of long
standing. How are we to put ourselves in a position to come to think of
things that we not only never thought of before, but are most reluctant
to question? In short, how are we to rid ourselves of our fond prejudices
and _open our minds_?
As a historical student who for a good many years has been especially
engaged in inquiring how man happens to have the ideas and convictions
about himself and human relations which now prevail, the writer has
reached the conclusion that history can at least shed a great deal of
light on our present predicaments and confusion. I do not mean by
history that conventional chronicle of remote and irrelevant events
which embittered the youthful years of many of us, but rather a study
of how man has come to be as he is and to believe as he does.
No historian has so far been able to make the whole story very plain
or popular, but a number of considerations are obvious enough, and it
ought not to be impossible some day to popularize them. I venture to
think that if certain seemingly indisputable historical facts were
generally known and accepted and permitted to play a daily part in our
thought, the world would forthwith become a very different place from
what it now is. We could then neither delude ourselves in the
simple-minded way we now do, nor could we take advantage of the
primitive ignorance of others. All our discussions of social,
industrial, and political reform would be raised to a higher plane of
insight and fruitfulness.
In one of those brilliant divagations with which Mr. H. G. Wells is
wont to enrich his novels he says:
When the intellectual history of this time comes to be written,
nothing, I think, will stand out more strikingly than the empty
gulf in quality between the superb and richly fruitful scientific
investigations that are going on, and the general thought of other
educated sections of the community. I do not mean that scientific
men are, as a whole, a class of supermen, dealing with and thinking
about everything in a way altogether better than the common run of
humanity, but in their field they think and work with an intensity,
an integrity, a breadth, boldness, patience, thoroughness, and
faithfulness--excepting only a few artists--which puts their work
out of all comparison with any other human activity.... In these
particular directions the human mind has achieved a new and higher
quality of attitude and gesture, a veracity, a self-detachment,
and self-abnegating vigor of criticism that tend to spread out and
must ultimately spread out to every other human affair.
No one who is even most superficially acquainted with the achievements
of students of nature during the past few centuries can fail to see
that their thought has been astoundingly effective in constantly adding
to our knowledge of the universe, from the hugest nebula to the tiniest
atom; moreover, this knowledge has been so applied as to well-nigh
revolutionize human affairs, and both the knowledge and its applications
appear to be no more than hopeful beginnings, with indefinite revelations
ahead, if only the same kind of thought be continued in the same patient
and scrupulous manner.
But the knowledge of man, of the springs of his conduct, of his
relation to his fellow-men singly or in groups, and the felicitous
regulation of human intercourse in the interest of harmony and
fairness, have made no such advance. Aristotle's treatises on
astronomy and physics, and his notions of "generation and decay" and
of chemical processes, have long gone by the board, but his politics
and ethics are still revered. Does this mean that his penetration in
the sciences of man exceeded so greatly his grasp of natural science,
or does it mean that the progress of mankind in the scientific
knowledge and regulation of human affairs has remained almost
stationary for over two thousand years? I think that we may safely
conclude that the latter is the case.
It has required three centuries of scientific thought and of subtle
inventions for its promotion to enable a modern chemist or physicist
to center his attention on electrons and their relation to the
mysterious nucleus of the atom, or to permit an embryologist to study
the early stirrings of the fertilized egg. As yet relatively little of
the same kind of thought has been brought to bear on human affairs.
When we compare the discussions in the United States Senate in regard
to the League of Nations with the consideration of a broken-down car
in a roadside garage the contrast is shocking. The rural mechanic
thinks scientifically; his only aim is to avail himself of his
knowledge of the nature and workings of the car, with a view to making
it run once more. The Senator, on the other hand, appears too often to
have little idea of the nature and workings of nations, and he relies
on rhetoric and appeals to vague fears and hopes or mere partisan
animosity. The scientists have been busy for a century in revolutionizing
the _practical_ relation of nations. The ocean is no longer a barrier,
as it was in Washington's day, but to all intents and purposes a smooth
avenue closely connecting, rather than safely separating, the eastern
and western continents. The Senator will nevertheless unblushingly appeal
to policies of a century back, suitable, mayhap, in their day, but now
become a warning rather than a guide. The garage man, on the contrary,
takes his mechanism as he finds it, and does not allow any mystic respect
for the earlier forms of the gas engine to interfere with the needed
adjustments.
Those who have dealt with natural phenomena, as distinguished from
purely human concerns, did not, however, quickly or easily gain
popular approbation and respect. The process of emancipating natural
science from current prejudices, both of the learned and of the
unlearned, has been long and painful, and is not wholly completed yet.
If we go back to the opening of the seventeenth century we find three
men whose business it was, above all, to present and defend common
sense in the natural sciences. The most eloquent and variedly
persuasive of these was Lord Bacon. Then there was the young Descartes
trying to shake himself loose from his training in a Jesuit seminary
by going into the Thirty Years' War, and starting his intellectual
life all over by giving up for the moment all he had been taught.
Galileo had committed an offense of a grave character by discussing in
the mother tongue the problems of physics. In his old age he was
imprisoned and sentenced to repeat the seven penitential psalms for
differing from Aristotle and Moses and the teachings of the theologians.
On hearing Galileo's fate. Descartes burned a book he had written, _On
The World_, lest he, too, get into trouble.
From that time down to the days of Huxley and John Fiske the struggle
has continued, and still continues--the Three Hundred Years' War for
intellectual freedom in dealing with natural phenomena. It has been a
conflict against ignorance, tradition, and vested interests in church
and university, with all that preposterous invective and cruel
misrepresentation which characterize the fight against new and
critical ideas. Those who cried out against scientific discoveries did
so in the name of God, of man's dignity, and of holy religion and
morality. Finally, however, it has come about that our instruction in
the natural sciences is tolerably free; although there are still large
bodies of organized religious believers who are hotly opposed to some
of the more fundamental findings of biology. Hundreds of thousands of
readers can be found for Pastor Russell's exegesis of Ezekiel and the
Apocalypse to hundreds who read Conklin's _Heredity and Environment_
or Slosson's _Creative Chemistry_. No publisher would accept a
historical textbook based on an explicit statement of the knowledge we
now have of man's animal ancestry. In general, however, our scientific
men carry on their work and report their results with little or no
effective hostility on the part of the clergy or the schools. The
social body has become tolerant of their virus.
This is not the case, however, with the social sciences. One cannot
but feel a little queasy when he uses the expression "social science",
because it seems as if we had not as yet got anywhere near a real
science of man. I mean by social science our feeble efforts to study
man, his natural equipment and impulses, and his relations to his
fellows in the light of his origin and the history of the race.
This enterprise has hitherto been opposed by a large number of
obstacles essentially more hampering and far more numerous than those
which for three hundred years hindered the advance of the natural
sciences. Human affairs are in themselves far more intricate and
perplexing than molecules and chromosomes. But this is only the more
reason for bringing to bear on human affairs that critical type of
thought and calculation for which the remunerative thought about
molecules and chromosomes has prepared the way.
I do not for a moment suggest that we can use precisely the same kind
of thinking in dealing with the quandaries of mankind that we use in
problems of chemical reaction and mechanical adjustment. Exact
scientific results, such as might be formulated in mechanics, are, of
course, out of the question. It would be unscientific to expect to
apply them. I am not advocating any particular method of treating
human affairs, but rather such a _general frame of mind, such a
critical open-minded attitude_, as has hitherto been but sparsely
developed among those who aspire to be men's guides, whether
religious, political, economic, or academic. Most human progress has
been, as Wells expresses it, a mere "muddling through". It has been
man's wont to explain and sanctify his ways, with little regard to
their fundamental and permanent expediency. An arresting example of
what this muddling may mean we have seen during these recent years in
the slaying or maiming of fifteen million of our young men, resulting
in incalculable loss, continued disorder, and bewilderment. Yet men
seem blindly driven to defend and perpetuate the conditions which
produced the last disaster.
Unless we wish to see a recurrence of this or some similar calamity,
we must, as I have already suggested, create a new and unprecedented
attitude of mind to meet the new and unprecedented conditions which
confront us. _We should proceed to the thorough reconstruction of our
mind, with a view to understanding actual human conduct and
organization_. We must examine the facts freshly, critically, and
dispassionately, and then allow our philosophy to formulate itself as
a result of this examination, instead of permitting our observations
to be distorted by archaic philosophy, political economy, and ethics.
As it is, we are taught our philosophy first, and in its light we try
to justify the facts. We must reverse this process, as did those who
began the great work in experimental science; we must first face the
facts, and patiently await the emergence of a new philosophy.
A willingness to examine the very foundations of society does not mean
a desire to encourage or engage in any hasty readjustment, but certainly
no wise or needed readjustment _can_ be made unless such an examination
is undertaken.
I come back, then, to my original point that in this examination of
existing facts history, by revealing the origin of many of our current
fundamental beliefs, will tend to free our minds so as to permit
honest thinking. Also, that the historical facts which I propose to
recall would, if permitted to play a constant part in our thinking,
automatically eliminate a very considerable portion of the gross
stupidity and blindness which characterize our present thought and
conduct in public affairs, and would contribute greatly to developing
the needed scientific attitude toward human concerns--in other words,
to _bringing the mind up to date_.
2. THREE DISAPPOINTED METHODS OF REFORM
Plans for social betterment and the cure of public ills have in the
past taken three general forms: (I) changes in the rules of the game,
(II) spiritual exhortation, and (III) education. Had all these not
largely failed, the world would not be in the plight in which it now
confessedly is.
I. Many reformers concede that they are suspicious of what they call
"ideas". They are confident that our troubles result from defective
organization, which should be remedied by more expedient legislation
and wise ordinances. Abuses should be abolished or checked by
forbidding them, or by some ingenious reordering of procedure.
Responsibility should be concentrated or dispersed. The term of office
of government officials should be lengthened or shortened; the number
of members in governing bodies should be increased or decreased; there
should be direct primaries, referendum, recall, government by
commission; powers should be shifted here and there with a hope of
meeting obvious mischances all too familiar in the past. In industry
and education administrative reform is constantly going on, with the
hope of reducing friction and increasing efficiency. The House of
Commons not long ago came to new terms with the peers. The League of
Nations has already had to adjust the functions and influence of the
Council and the Assembly, respectively.
No one will question that organization is absolutely essential in
human affairs, but reorganization, while it sometimes produces
assignable benefit, often fails to meet existing evils, and not
uncommonly engenders new and unexpected ones. Our confidence in
restriction and regimentation is exaggerated. What we usually need is
a _change of attitude_, and without this our new regulations often
leave the old situation unaltered. So long as we allow our government
to be run by politicians and business lobbies it makes little
difference how many aldermen or assemblymen we have or how long the
mayor or governor holds office. In a university the fundamental drift
of affairs cannot be greatly modified by creating a new dean, or a
university council, or by enhancing or decreasing the nominal
authority of the president or faculty. We now turn to the second
sanctified method of reform, moral uplift.
II. Those who are impatient with mere administrative reform, or who
lack faith in it, declare that what we need is brotherly love.
Thousands of pulpits admonish us to remember that we are all children
of one Heavenly Father and that we should bear one another's burdens
with fraternal patience. Capital is too selfish; Labor is bent on its
own narrow interests regardless of the risks Capital takes. We are all
dependent on one another, and a recognition of this should beget
mutual forbearance and glad co-operation. Let us forget ourselves in
others. "Little children, love one another."
The fatherhood of God has been preached by Christians for over
eighteen centuries, and the brotherhood of man by the Stoics long
before them. The doctrine has proved compatible with slavery and
serfdom, with wars blessed, and not infrequently instigated, by
religious leaders, and with industrial oppression which it requires a
brave clergyman or teacher to denounce to-day. True, we sometimes have
moments of sympathy when our fellow-creatures become objects of tender
solicitude. Some rare souls may honestly flatter themselves that they
love mankind in general, but it would surely be a very rare soul
indeed who dared profess that he loved his personal enemies--much less
the enemies of his country or institutions. We still worship a tribal
god, and the "foe" is not to be reckoned among his children. Suspicion
and hate are much more congenial to our natures than love, for very
obvious reasons in this world of rivalry and common failure. There is,
beyond doubt, a natural kindliness in mankind which will show itself
under favorable auspices. But experience would seem to teach that it
is little promoted by moral exhortation. This is the only point that
need be urged here. Whether there is another way of forwarding the
brotherhood of man will be considered in the sequel.
III. One disappointed in the effects of mere reorganization, and
distrusting the power of moral exhortation, will urge that what we
need above all is _education_. It is quite true that what we need is
education, but something so different from what now passes as such
that it needs a new name.
Education has more various aims than we usually recognize, and should
of course be judged in relation to the importance of its several
intentions, and of its success in gaining them. The arts of reading
and writing and figuring all would concede are basal in a world of
newspapers and business. Then there is technical information and the
training that prepares one to earn a livelihood in some more or less
standardized guild or profession. Both these aims are reached fairly
well by our present educational system, subject to various economies
and improvements in detail. Then there are the studies which it is
assumed contribute to general culture and to "training the mind", with
the hope of cultivating our tastes, stimulating the imagination, and
mayhap improving our reasoning powers.
This branch of education is regarded by the few as very precious and
indispensable; by the many as at best an amenity which has little
relation to the real purposes and success of life. It is highly
traditional and retrospective in the main, concerned with ancient
tongues, old and revered books, higher mathematics, somewhat archaic
philosophy and history, and the fruitless form of logic which has
until recently been prized as man's best guide in the fastnesses of
error. To these has been added in recent decades a choice of the
various branches of natural science.
The results, however, of our present scheme of liberal education are
disappointing. One who, like myself, firmly agrees with its objects
and is personally so addicted to old books, so pleased with such
knowledge as he has of the ancient and modern languages, so envious of
those who can think mathematically, and so interested in natural
science--such a person must resent the fact that those who have had a
liberal education rarely care for old books, rarely read for pleasure
any foreign language, think mathematically, love philosophy or
history, or care for the beasts, birds, plants, and rocks with any
intelligent insight, or even real curiosity. This arouses the
suspicion that our so-called "liberal education" miscarries and does
not attain its ostensible aims.
The three educational aims enumerated above have one thing in common.
They are all directed toward an enhancement of the chances of
_personal_ worldly success, or to the increase of our _personal_
culture and intellectual and literary enjoyment. Their purpose is not
primarily to fit us to play a part in social or political betterment.
But of late a fourth element has been added to the older ambitions,
namely the hope of preparing boys and girls to become intelligent
voters. This need has been forced upon us by the coming of political
democracy, which makes one person's vote exactly as good as another's.
Now education for citizenship would seem to consist in gaining a
knowledge of the actual workings of our social organization, with some
illuminating notions of its origin, together with a full realization
of its defects and their apparent sources. But here we encounter an
obstacle that is unimportant in the older types of education, but
which may prove altogether fatal to any good results in our efforts to
make better citizens. Subjects of instruction like reading and
writing, mathematics, Latin and Greek, chemistry and physics, medicine
and the law are fairly well standardized and retrospective. Doubtless
there is a good deal of internal change in method and content going
on, but this takes place unobtrusively and does not attract the
attention of outside critics. Political and social questions, on the
other hand, and matters relating to prevailing business methods, race
animosities, public elections, and governmental policy are, if they
are vital, necessarily "controversial". School boards and
superintendents, trustees and presidents of colleges and universities,
are sensitive to this fact. They eagerly deprecate in their public
manifestos any suspicion that pupils and students are being awakened
in any way to the truth that our institutions can possibly be
fundamentally defective, or that the present generation of citizens
has not conducted our affairs with exemplary success, guided by the
immutable principles of justice.
How indeed can a teacher be expected to explain to the sons and
daughters of businessmen, politicians, doctors, lawyers, and
clergymen--all pledged to the maintenance of the sources of their
livelihood--the actual nature of business enterprise as now practiced,
the prevailing methods of legislative bodies and courts, and the
conduct of foreign affairs? Think of a teacher in the public schools
recounting the more illuminating facts about the municipal government
under which he lives, with due attention to graft and jobs! So,
courses in government, political economy, sociology, and ethics
confine themselves to inoffensive generalizations, harmless details of
organization, and the commonplaces of routine morality, for only in
that way can they escape being controversial. Teachers are rarely able
or inclined to explain our social life and its presuppositions with
sufficient insight and honesty to produce any very important results.
Even if they are tempted to tell the essential facts they dare not do
so, for fear of losing their places, amid the applause of all the
righteously minded.
However we may feel on this important matter, we must all agree that
the aim of education for citizenship as now conceived is a preparation
for the same old citizenship which has so far failed to eliminate the
shocking hazards and crying injustices of our social and political
life. For we sedulously inculcate in the coming generation exactly the
same illusions and the same ill-placed confidence in existing
institutions and prevailing notions that have brought the world to the
pass in which we find it. Since we do all we can to corroborate the
beneficence of what we have, we can hardly hope to raise up a more
intelligent generation bent on achieving what we have not. We all know
this to be true; it has been forcibly impressed on our minds of late.
Most of us agree that it is right and best that it should be so; some
of us do not like to think about it at all, but a few will be glad to
spend a little time weighing certain suggestions in this volume which
may indicate a way out of this _impasse_.[1]
We have now considered briefly the three main hopes that have been
hitherto entertained of bettering things (I) by changing the rules of
the game, (II) by urging men to be good, and to love their neighbor as
themselves, and (III) by education for citizenship. It may be that
these hopes are not wholly unfounded, but it must be admitted that so
far they have been grievously disappointed. Doubtless they will
continue to be cherished on account of their assured respectability.
Mere lack of success does not discredit a method, for there are many
things that determine and perpetuate our sanctified ways of doing
things besides their success in reaching their proposed ends. Had this
not always been so, our life to-day would be far less stupidly
conducted than it is. But let us agree to assume for the moment that
the approved schemes of reform enumerated above have, to say the
least, shown themselves inadequate to meet the crisis in which
civilized society now finds itself. Have we any other hope?
Yes, there is Intelligence. That is as yet an untested hope in its
application to the regulation of human relations. It is not
discredited because it has not been tried on any large scale outside
the realm of natural science. There, everyone will confess, it has
produced marvelous results. Employed in regard to stars, rocks,
plants, and animals, and in the investigation of mechanical and
chemical processes, it has completely revolutionized men's notions of
the world in which they live, and of its inhabitants, _with the
notable exception of man himself_. These discoveries have been used to
change our habits and to supply us with everyday necessities which a
hundred years ago were not dreamed of as luxuries accessible even to
kings and millionaires.
But most of us know too little of the past to realize the penalty that
had to be paid for this application of intelligence. In order that
these discoveries should be made and ingeniously applied to the
conveniences of life, _it was necessary to discard practically all the
consecrated notions of the world and its workings which had been held
by the best and wisest and purest of mankind down to three hundred
years ago_--indeed, until much more recently. Intelligence, in a
creature of routine like man and in a universe so ill understood as
ours, must often break valiantly with the past in order to get ahead.
It would be pleasant to assume that all we had to do was to build on
well-designed foundations, firmly laid by the wisdom of the ages. But
those who have studied the history of natural science would agree that
Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes found no such foundation, but had to
begin their construction from the ground up.
The several hopes of reform mentioned above all assume that the now
generally accepted notions of righteous human conduct are not to be
questioned. Our churches and universities defend this assumption. Our
editors and lawyers and the more vocal of our business men adhere to
it. Even those who pretend to study society and its origin seem often
to believe that our present ideals and standards of property, the
state, industrial organization, the relations of the sexes, and
education are practically final and must necessarily be the basis of
any possible betterment in detail. But if this be so Intelligence has
already done its perfect work, and we can only lament that the outcome
in the way of peace, decency, and fairness, judged even by existing
standards, has been so disappointing.
There are, of course, a few here and there who suspect and even
repudiate current ideals and standards. But at present their
resentment against existing evils takes the form of more or less
dogmatic plans of reconstruction, like those of the socialists and
communists, or exhausts itself in the vague protest and faultfinding
of the average "Intellectual". Neither the socialist nor the common
run of Intellectual appears to me to be on the right track. The former
is more precise in his doctrines and confident in his prophecies than
a scientific examination of mankind and its ways would at all justify;
the other, more indefinite than he need be.
If Intelligence is to have the freedom of action necessary to
accumulate new and valuable knowledge about man's nature and
possibilities which may ultimately be applied to reforming our ways,
it must loose itself from the bonds that now confine it. The primeval
curse still holds: "Of every tree in the garden thou mayest freely
eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not
eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die." Few people confess that they are afraid of knowledge, but the
university presidents, ministers, and editors who most often and
publicly laud what they are wont to call "the fearless pursuit of
truth", feel compelled, in the interest of public morals and order, to
discourage any reckless indulgence in the fruit of the forbidden tree,
for the inexperienced may select an unripe apple and suffer from the
colic in consequence. "Just look at Russia!" Better always, instead of
taking the risk on what the church calls "science falsely so called",
fall back on ignorance rightly so called. No one denies that
Intelligence is the light of the world and the chief glory of man,
but, as Bertrand Russell says, we dread its indifference to
respectable opinions and what we deem the well-tried wisdom of the
ages. "It is," as he truly says, "fear that holds men back; fear that
their cherished beliefs should prove harmful, fear lest they
themselves should prove less worthy of respect than they have supposed
themselves to be. 'Should the workingman think freely about property?
What then will become of us, the rich? Should young men and women
think freely about sex? What then will become of morality? Should
soldiers think freely about war? What then will become of military
discipline?'"
This fear is natural and inevitable, but it is none the less dangerous
and discreditable. Human arrangements are no longer so foolproof as
they may once have been when the world moved far more slowly than it
now does. It should therefore be a good deed to remove or lighten any
of the various restraints on thought. I believe that there is an easy
and relatively painless way in which our respect for the past can be
lessened so that we shall no longer feel compelled to take the wisdom
of the ages as the basis of our reforms. My own confidence in what
President Butler calls "the findings of mankind" is gone, and the
process by which it was lost will become obvious as we proceed. I have
no reforms to recommend, except the liberation of Intelligence, which
is the first and most essential one. I propose to review by way of
introduction some of the new ideas which have been emerging during the
past few years in regard to our minds and their operations. Then we
shall proceed to the main theme of the book, a sketch of the manner in
which our human intelligence appears to have come about. If anyone
will follow the story with a fair degree of sympathy and patience he
may, by merely putting together well-substantiated facts, many of
which he doubtless knows in other connections, hope better to
understand the perilous quandary in which mankind is now placed and
the ways of escape that offer themselves.
NOTES.
[1] George Bernard Shaw reaches a similar conclusion when he
contemplates education in the British Isles. "We must teach
citizenship and political science at school. But must we? There is no
must about it, the hard fact being that we must not teach political
science or citizenship at school. The schoolmaster who attempted it
would soon find himself penniless in the streets without pupils, if
not in the dock pleading to a pompously worded indictment for sedition
against the exploiters. Our schools teach the morality of feudalism
corrupted by commercialism, and hold up the military conqueror, the
robber baron, and the profiteer, as models of the illustrious and
successful."--_Back to Methuselah_, xii.
* * * * *
II
Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed;
for everyone thinks himself so abundantly provided with it that those
even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else do not
usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already
possess.--DESCARTES.
We see man to-day, instead of the frank and courageous recognition of
his status, the docile attention to his biological history, the
determination to let nothing stand in the way of the security and
permanence of his future, which alone can establish the safety and
happiness of the race, substituting blind confidence in his destiny,
unclouded faith in the essentially respectful attitude of the universe
toward his moral code, and a belief no less firm that his traditions
and laws and institutions necessarily contain permanent qualities of
reality.--WILLIAM TROTTER.
3. ON VARIOUS KINDS OF THINKING
The truest and most profound observations on Intelligence have in the
past been made by the poets and, in recent times, by story-writers.
They have been keen observers and recorders and reckoned freely with
the emotions and sentiments. Most philosophers, on the other hand,
have exhibited a grotesque ignorance of man's life and have built up
systems that are elaborate and imposing, but quite unrelated to actual
human affairs. They have almost consistently neglected the actual
process of thought and have set the mind off as something apart to be
studied by itself. _But no such mind, exempt from bodily processes,
animal impulses, savage traditions, infantile impressions, conventional
reactions, and traditional knowledge, ever existed_, even in the case
of the most abstract of metaphysicians. Kant entitled his great work
_A Critique of Pure Reason_. But to the modern student of mind pure
reason seems as mythical as the pure gold, transparent as glass, with
which the celestial city is paved.
Formerly philosophers thought of mind as having to do exclusively with
conscious thought. It was that within man which perceived, remembered,
judged, reasoned, understood, believed, willed. But of late it has
been shown that we are unaware of a great part of what we perceive,
remember, will, and infer; and that a great part of the thinking of
which we are aware is determined by that of which we are not conscious.
It has indeed been demonstrated that our unconscious psychic life far
outruns our conscious. This seems perfectly natural to anyone who
considers the following facts:
The sharp distinction between the mind and the body is, as we shall
find, a very ancient and spontaneous uncritical savage prepossession.
What we think of as "mind" is so intimately associated with what we
call "body" that we are coming to realize that the one cannot be
understood without the other. Every thought reverberates through the
body, and, on the other hand, alterations in our physical condition
affect our whole attitude of mind. The insufficient elimination of the
foul and decaying products of digestion may plunge us into deep
melancholy, whereas a few whiffs of nitrous monoxide may exalt us to
the seventh heaven of supernal knowledge and godlike complacency. And
vice versa, a sudden word or thought may cause our heart to jump,
check our breathing, or make our knees as water. There is a whole new
literature growing up which studies the effects of our bodily
secretions and our muscular tensions and their relation to our
emotions and our thinking.
Then there are hidden impulses and desires and secret longings of
which we can only with the greatest difficulty take account. They
influence our conscious thought in the most bewildering fashion. Many
of these unconscious influences appear to originate in our very early
years. The older philosophers seem to have forgotten that even they
were infants and children at their most impressionable age and never
could by any possibility get over it.
The term "unconscious", now so familiar to all readers of modern works
on psychology, gives offense to some adherents of the past. There
should, however, be no special mystery about it. It is not a new
animistic abstraction, but simply a collective word to include all the
physiological changes which escape our notice, all the forgotten
experiences and impressions of the past which continue to influence
our desires and reflections and conduct, even if we cannot remember
them. What we can remember at any time is indeed an infinitesimal part
of what has happened to us. We could not remember anything unless we
forgot almost everything. As Bergson says, the brain is the organ of
forgetfulness as well as of memory. Moreover, we tend, of course, to
become oblivious to things to which we are thoroughly accustomed, for
habit blinds us to their existence. So the forgotten and the habitual
make up a great part of the so-called "unconscious".
If we are ever to understand man, his conduct and reasoning, and if we
aspire to learn to guide his life and his relations with his fellows
more happily than heretofore, we cannot neglect the great discoveries
briefly noted above. We must reconcile ourselves to novel and
revolutionary conceptions of the mind, for it is clear that the older
philosophers, whose works still determine our current views, had a
very superficial notion of the subject with which they dealt. But for
our purposes, with due regard to what has just been said and to much
that has necessarily been left unsaid (and with the indulgence of
those who will at first be inclined to dissent), _we shall consider
mind chiefly as conscious knowledge and intelligence, as what we know
and our attitude toward it--our disposition to increase our
information, classify it, criticize it and apply it_.
We do not think enough about thinking, and much of our confusion is
the result of current illusions in regard to it. Let us forget for the
moment any impressions we may have derived from the philosophers, and
see what seems to happen in ourselves. The first thing that we notice
is that our thought moves with such incredible rapidity that it is
almost impossible to arrest any specimen of it long enough to have a
look at it. When we are offered a penny for our thoughts we always
find that we have recently had so many things in mind that we can
easily make a selection which will not compromise us too nakedly. On
inspection we shall find that even if we are not downright ashamed of
a great part of our spontaneous thinking it is far too intimate,
personal, ignoble or trivial to permit us to reveal more than a small
part of it. I believe this must be true of everyone. We do not, of
course, know what goes on in other people's heads. They tell us very
little and we tell them very little. The spigot of speech, rarely
fully opened, could never emit more than driblets of the ever renewed
hogshead of thought--_noch grösser wie's Heidelberger Fass_. We
find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as
our own, but they probably are.
We all appear to ourselves to be thinking all the time during our
waking hours, and most of us are aware that we go on thinking while we
are asleep, even more foolishly than when awake. When uninterrupted by
some practical issue we are engaged in what is now known as a _reverie_.
This is our spontaneous and favorite kind of thinking. We allow our
ideas to take their own course and this course is determined by our
hopes and fears, our spontaneous desires, their fulfillment or
frustration; by our likes and dislikes, our loves and hates and
resentments. There is nothing else anything like so interesting to
ourselves as ourselves. All thought that is not more or less
laboriously controlled and directed will inevitably circle about the
beloved Ego. It is amusing and pathetic to observe this tendency in
ourselves and in others. We learn politely and generously to overlook
this truth, but if we dare to think of it, it blazes forth like the
noontide sun.
The reverie or "free association of ideas" has of late become the
subject of scientific research. While investigators are not yet agreed
on the results, or at least on the proper interpretation to be given
to them, there can be no doubt that our reveries form the chief index
to our fundamental character. They are a reflection of our nature as
modified by often hidden and forgotten experiences. We need not go
into the matter further here, for it is only necessary to observe that
the reverie is at all times a potent and in many cases an omnipotent
rival to every other kind of thinking. It doubtless influences all our
speculations in its persistent tendency to self-magnification and
self-justification, which are its chief preoccupations, but it is the
last thing to make directly or indirectly for honest increase of
knowledge.[2] Philosophers usually talk as if such thinking did not
exist or were in some way negligible. This is what makes their
speculations so unreal and often worthless. The reverie, as any of us
can see for himself, is frequently broken and interrupted by the
necessity of a second kind of thinking. We have to make practical
decisions. Shall we write a letter or no? Shall we take the subway or
a bus? Shall we have dinner at seven or half past? Shall we buy U. S.
Rubber or a Liberty Bond? Decisions are easily distinguishable from
the free flow of the reverie. Sometimes they demand a good deal of
careful pondering and the recollection of pertinent facts; often,
however, they are made impulsively. They are a more difficult and
laborious thing than the reverie, and we resent having to "make up our
mind" when we are tired, or absorbed in a congenial reverie. Weighing
a decision, it should be noted, does not necessarily add anything to
our knowledge, although we may, of course, seek further information
before making it.
4. RATIONALIZING
A third kind of thinking is stimulated when anyone questions our
belief and opinions. We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds
without any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told that we
are wrong we resent the imputation and harden our hearts. We are
incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find
ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes
to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas
themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem, which is
threatened. We are by nature stubbornly pledged to defend our own from
attack, whether it be our person, our family, our property, or our
opinion. A United States Senator once remarked to a friend of mine
that God Almighty could not make him change his mind on our
Latin-America policy. We may surrender, but rarely confess ourselves
vanquished. In the intellectual world at least peace is without
victory.
Few of us take the pains to study the origin of our cherished
convictions; indeed, we have a natural repugnance to so doing. We like
to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true,
and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our
assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to
them. _The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in
finding arguments for going on believing as we already do_.
I remember years ago attending a public dinner to which the Governor
of the state was bidden. The chairman explained that His Excellency
could not be present for certain "good" reasons; what the "real"
reasons were the presiding officer said he would leave us to
conjecture. This distinction between "good" and "real" reasons is one
of the most clarifying and essential in the whole realm of thought. We
can readily give what seem to us "good" reasons for being a Catholic
or a Mason, a Republican or a Democrat, an adherent or opponent of the
League of Nations. But the "real" reasons are usually on quite a
different plane. Of course the importance of this distinction is
popularly, if somewhat obscurely, recognized. The Baptist missionary
is ready enough to see that the Buddhist is not such because his
doctrines would bear careful inspection, but because he happened to be
born in a Buddhist family in Tokio. But it would be treason to his
faith to acknowledge that his own partiality for certain doctrines is
due to the fact that his mother was a member of the First Baptist
church of Oak Ridge. A savage can give all sorts of reasons for his
belief that it is dangerous to step on a man's shadow, and a newspaper
editor can advance plenty of arguments against the Bolsheviki. But
neither of them may realize why he happens to be defending his
particular opinion.