CHANGING THE MIND
I have been reading, in this book, of a man who couldn't change his
mind because his intellectual wardrobe was not sufficient to warrant
a change. I was feeling downright sorry for the poor fellow till I
got to wondering how many people are feeling sorry for me for the
same reason. That reflection changed the situation greatly, and I
began to feel some resentment against the blunt statement in the book
as being rather too personal. Just as I begin to think that we have
standardized a lot of things, along comes some one in a book, or
elsewhere, and completely upsets my fine and comforting theories and
projects me into chaos again. No sooner do I get a lot of facts all
nicely settled, and begin to enjoy complacency, than some disturber
of the peace knocks all my facts topsy-turvy, and says they are not
facts at all, but the merest fiction. Then I cry aloud with my old
friend Cicero, _Ubinam gentium sumus_, which, being translated in the
language of the boys, means, "Where in the world (or nation) are we
at?" They are actually trying to reform my spelling. I do wish
these reformers had come around sooner, when I was learning to spell
_phthisic_, _syzygy_, _daguerreotype_, and _caoutchouc_. They might
have saved me a deal of trouble and helped me over some of the high
places at the old-fashioned spelling-bees.
I have a friend who is quite versed in science, and he tells me that
any book on science that is more than ten years old is obsolete.
Now, that puzzles me no little. If that is true, why don't they wait
till matters scientific are settled, and then write their books? Why
write a book at all when you know that day after tomorrow some one
will come along and refute all the theories and mangle the facts?
These science chaps must spend a great deal of their time changing
their intellectual clothing. It would be great fun to come back a
hundred years from now and read the books on science, psychology, and
pedagogy. I suppose the books we have now will seem like joke books
to our great-grandchildren, if people are compelled to change their
mental garments every day from now on. I wonder how long it will
take us human coral insects, to get our building up to the top of the
water.
Whoever it was that said that consistency is a jewel would need to
take treatment for his eyes in these days. If I must change my
mental garb each day I don't see how I can be consistent. If I said
yesterday that some theory of science is the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth, and then find a revision of the statement
necessary to-day, I certainly am inconsistent. This jewel of
consistency certainly loses its lustre, if not its identity, in such
a process of shifting. I do hope these chameleon artists will leave
us the multiplication table, the yardstick, and the ablative
absolute. I'm not so particular about the wine-gallon, for
prohibition will probably do away with that anyhow. When I was in
school I could tell to a foot the equatorial and the polar diameter
of the earth, and what makes the difference. Why, I knew all about
that flattening at the poles, and how it came about. Then Mr. Peary
went up there and tramped all over the north pole, and never said a
word about the flattening when he came back. I was very much
disappointed in Mr. Peary.
I know, quite as well as I know my own name, that the length of the
year is three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours, forty-eight
minutes, and forty-eight seconds, and if I find any one trying to lop
off even one second of my hard-learned year, I shall look upon him as
a meddler. That is one of my settled facts, and I don't care to have
it disturbed. If any one comes along trying to change the length of
my year, I shall begin to tremble for the safety of the Ten
Commandments. If I believe that a grasshopper is a quadruped, what
satisfaction could I possibly take in discovering that he has six
legs? It would merely disturb one of my settled facts, and I am more
interested in my facts than I am in the grasshopper. The trouble is,
though, that my neighbor John keeps referring to the grasshopper's
six legs; so I suppose I shall, in the end, get me a grasshopper suit
of clothes so as to be in the fashion.
This discarding of my four-legged grasshopper and supplying myself
with one that has six legs may be what the poet means when he speaks
of our dead selves. He may refer to the new suit of mental clothing
that I am supposed to get each day, to the change of mind that I am
supposed to undergo as regularly as a daily bath. Possibly Mr.
Holmes meant something like that when he wrote his "Chambered
Nautilus." At each advance from one of these compartments to
another, I suppose I acquire a new suit of clothes, or, in other
words, change my mind. Let's see, wasn't it Theseus whose eternal
punishment in Hades was just to sit there forever? That seems
somewhat heavenly to me. But here on earth I suppose I must try to
keep up with the styles, and change my mental gear day by day.
I think I might come to enjoy a change of suits every day if only
some one would provide them for me; but, if I must earn them myself,
the case is different. I'd like to have some one bestow upon me a
beautiful Greek suit for Monday, with its elegance, grace, and
dignity, a Roman suit for Tuesday, a science suit for Wednesday, a
suit of poetry for Thursday, and so on, day after day. But when I
must read all of Homer before I can have the Greek suit, the price
seems a bit stiff, and I'm not so avid about changing my mind. We
had a township picnic back home, once, and it seemed to me that I was
attending a congress of nations, for there were people there who had
driven five or six miles from the utmost bounds of the township.
That was a real mental adventure, and it took some time for me to
adjust myself to my new suit. Then I went to the county fair, where
were gathered people from all the townships, and my poor mind had a
mighty struggle trying to grasp the immensity of the thing. I felt
much the same as when I was trying to understand the mathematical
sign of infinity. And when I came upon the statement, in my
geography, that there are eighty-eight counties in our State, the
mind balked absolutely and refused to go on. I felt as did the old
gentleman who saw an aeroplane for the first time. After watching
its gyrations for some time he finally exclaimed: "They ain't no sich
thing."
My college roommate, Mack, went over to London, once, on some errand,
and of course went to the British Museum. Near the entrance he came
upon the Rosetta Stone, and stood inthralled. He reflected that he
was standing in the presence of a monument that marks the beginning
of recorded history, that back of that all was dark, and that all the
books in all the libraries emanate from that beginning. The thought
was so big, so overmastering, that there was no room in his mind for
anything else, so he turned about and left without seeing anything
else in the Museum. Since then we have had many a big laugh together
as he recounts to me his wonderful visit to the Rosetta Stone. I see
clearly that in the presence of that modest stone he got all the
mental clothing he could possibly wear at the time. Changing the
mind sometimes seems to amount almost to surgery.
Sometime, if I can get my stub pen limbered up I shall try my hand at
writing a bit of a composition on the subject of "The Inequality of
Equals." I know that the Declaration tells us that all men are born
free and equal, and I shall explain in my essay that it means us to
understand that while they are born equal, they begin to become
unequal the day after they are born, and become more so as one
changes his mind and the other one does not. I try, all the while,
to make myself believe that I am the equal of my neighbor, the judge,
and then I feel foolish to think that I ever tried it. The neighbors
all know it isn't true, and so do I when I quit arguing with myself.
He has such a long start of me now that I wonder if I can ever
overtake him. One thing, though, I'm resolved upon, and that is to
change my mind as often as possible.