diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 8077-8.txt | 5248 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 8077-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 115011 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
5 files changed, 5264 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/8077-8.txt b/8077-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7f823d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/8077-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5248 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Mind in the Making, by James Harvey Robinson + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Mind in the Making + The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform + +Author: James Harvey Robinson + +Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8077] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on June 12, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIND IN THE MAKING *** + + + + +Produced by Tiffany Vergon, Marc D'Hooghe, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + +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. + +The "real" reasons for our beliefs are concealed from ourselves as +well as from others. As we grow up we simply adopt the ideas presented +to us in regard to such matters as religion, family relations, +property, business, our country, and the state. We unconsciously +absorb them from our environment. They are persistently whispered in +our ear by the group in which we happen to live. Moreover, as Mr. +Trotter has pointed out, these judgments, being the product of +suggestion and not of reasoning, have the quality of perfect +obviousness, so that to question them + + ... is to the believer to carry skepticism to an insane degree, and + will be met by contempt, disapproval, or condemnation, according to + the nature of the belief in question. When, therefore, we find + ourselves entertaining an opinion about the basis of which there is + a quality of feeling which tells us that to inquire into it would be + absurd, obviously unnecessary, unprofitable, undesirable, bad form, + or wicked, we may know that that opinion is a nonrational one, and + probably, therefore, founded upon inadequate evidence.[3] + +Opinions, on the other hand, which are the result of experience or of +honest reasoning do not have this quality of "primary certitude". I +remember when as a youth I heard a group of business men discussing +the question of the immortality of the soul, I was outraged by the +sentiment of doubt expressed by one of the party. As I look back now I +see that I had at the time no interest in the matter, and certainly no +least argument to urge in favor of the belief in which I had been +reared. But neither my personal indifference to the issue, nor the +fact that I had previously given it no attention, served to prevent an +angry resentment when I heard _my_ ideas questioned. + +This spontaneous and loyal support of our preconceptions--this process +of finding "good" reasons to justify our routine beliefs--is known to +modern psychologists as "rationalizing"--clearly only a new name for a +very ancient thing. Our "good" reasons ordinarily have no value in +promoting honest enlightenment, because, no matter how solemnly they +may be marshaled, they are at bottom the result of personal preference +or prejudice, and not of an honest desire to seek or accept new +knowledge. + +In our reveries we are frequently engaged in self-justification, for +we cannot bear to think ourselves wrong, and yet have constant +illustrations of our weaknesses and mistakes. So we spend much time +finding fault with circumstances and the conduct of others, and +shifting on to them with great ingenuity the on us of our own failures +and disappointments. _Rationalizing is the self-exculpation which +occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of +misapprehension or error._ + +The little word _my_ is the most important one in all human affairs, +and properly to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It has the +same force whether it is _my_ dinner, _my_ dog, and _my_ house, +or _my_ faith, _my_ country, and _my God_. We not only resent the +imputation that our watch is wrong, or our car shabby, but that our +conception of the canals of Mars, of the pronunciation of "Epictetus", +of the medicinal value of salicine, or the date of Sargon I, are +subject to revision. + +Philosophers, scholars, and men of science exhibit a common +sensitiveness in all decisions in which their _amour propre_ is +involved. Thousands of argumentative works have been written to vent a +grudge. However stately their reasoning, it may be nothing but +rationalizing, stimulated by the most commonplace of all motives. +A history of philosophy and theology could be written in terms of +grouches, wounded pride, and aversions, and it would be far more +instructive than the usual treatments of these themes. Sometimes, +under Providence, the lowly impulse of resentment leads to great +achievements. Milton wrote his treatise on divorce as a result of his +troubles with his seventeen-year-old wife, and when he was accused of +being the leading spirit in a new sect, the Divorcers, he wrote his +noble _Areopagitica_ to prove his right to say what he thought fit, +and incidentally to establish the advantage of a free press in the +promotion of Truth. + +All mankind, high and low, thinks in all the ways which have been +described. The reverie goes on all the time not only in the mind of +the mill hand and the Broadway flapper, but equally in weighty judges +and godly bishops. It has gone on in all the philosophers, scientists, +poets, and theologians that have ever lived. Aristotle's most abstruse +speculations were doubtless tempered by highly irrelevant reflections. +He is reported to have had very thin legs and small eyes, for which he +doubtless had to find excuses, and he was wont to indulge in very +conspicuous dress and rings and was accustomed to arrange his hair +carefully.[4] Diogenes the Cynic exhibited the impudence of a touchy +soul. His tub was his distinction. Tennyson in beginning his "Maud" +could not forget his chagrin over losing his patrimony years before as +the result of an unhappy investment in the Patent Decorative Carving +Company. These facts are not recalled here as a gratuitous +disparagement of the truly great, but to insure a full realization of +the tremendous competition which all really exacting thought has to +face, even in the minds of the most highly endowed mortals. + +And now the astonishing and perturbing suspicion emerges that perhaps +almost all that had passed for social science, political economy, +politics, and ethics in the past may be brushed aside by future +generations as mainly rationalizing. John Dewey has already reached +this conclusion in regard to philosophy.[5] Veblen[6] and other +writers have revealed the various unperceived presuppositions of the +traditional political economy, and now comes an Italian sociologist, +Vilfredo Pareto, who, in his huge treatise on general sociology, +devotes hundreds of pages to substantiating a similar thesis affecting +all the social sciences.[7] This conclusion may be ranked by students +of a hundred years hence as one of the several great discoveries of +our age. It is by no means fully worked out, and it is so opposed to +nature that it will be very slowly accepted by the great mass of those +who consider themselves thoughtful. As a historical student I am +personally fully reconciled to this newer view. Indeed, it seems to me +inevitable that just as the various sciences of nature were, before +the opening of the seventeenth century, largely masses of +rationalizations to suit the religious sentiments of the period, so +the social sciences have continued even to our own day to be +rationalizations of uncritically accepted beliefs and customs. + +_It will become apparent as we proceed that the fact that an idea is +ancient and that it has been widely received is no argument in its +favor, but should immediately suggest the necessity of carefully +testing it as a probable instance of rationalization_. + + + + +5. HOW CREATIVE THOUGHT TRANSFORMS THE WORLD + + +This brings us to another kind of thought which can fairly easily be +distinguished from the three kinds described above. It has not the +usual qualities of the reverie, for it does not hover about our +personal complacencies and humiliations. It is not made up of the +homely decisions forced upon us by everyday needs, when we review our +little stock of existing information, consult our conventional +preferences and obligations, and make a choice of action. It is not +the defense of our own cherished beliefs and prejudices just because +they are our own--mere plausible excuses for remaining of the same +mind. On the contrary, it is that peculiar species of thought which +leads us to _change_ our mind. + +It is this kind of thought that has raised man from his pristine, +subsavage ignorance and squalor to the degree of knowledge and comfort +which he now possesses. On his capacity to continue and greatly extend +this kind of thinking depends his chance of groping his way out of the +plight in which the most highly civilized peoples of the world now +find themselves. In the past this type of thinking has been called +Reason. But so many misapprehensions have grown up around the word +that some of us have become very suspicious of it. I suggest, +therefore, that we substitute a recent name and speak of "creative +thought" rather than of Reason. _For this kind of meditation begets +knowledge, and knowledge is really creative inasmuch as it makes +things look different from what they seemed before and may indeed work +for their reconstruction_. + +In certain moods some of us realize that we are observing things or +making reflections with a seeming disregard of our personal +preoccupations. We are not preening or defending ourselves; we are not +faced by the necessity of any practical decision, nor are we +apologizing for believing this or that. We are just wondering and +looking and mayhap seeing what we never perceived before. + +Curiosity is as clear and definite as any of our urges. We wonder what +is in a sealed telegram or in a letter in which some one else is +absorbed, or what is being said in the telephone booth or in low +conversation. This inquisitiveness is vastly stimulated by jealousy, +suspicion, or any hint that we ourselves are directly or indirectly +involved. But there appears to be a fair amount of personal interest +in other people's affairs even when they do not concern us except as a +mystery to be unraveled or a tale to be told. The reports of a divorce +suit will have "news value" for many weeks. They constitute a story, +like a novel or play or moving picture. This is not an example of pure +curiosity, however, since we readily identify ourselves with others, +and their joys and despair then become our own. + +We also take note of, or "observe", as Sherlock Holmes says, things +which have nothing to do with our personal interests and make no +personal appeal either direct or by way of sympathy. This is what +Veblen so well calls "idle curiosity". And it is usually idle enough. +Some of us when we face the line of people opposite us in a subway +train impulsively consider them in detail and engage in rapid +inferences and form theories in regard to them. On entering a room +there are those who will perceive at a glance the degree of +preciousness of the rugs, the character of the pictures, and the +personality revealed by the books. But there are many, it would seem, +who are so absorbed in their personal reverie or in some definite +purpose that they have no bright-eyed energy for idle curiosity. The +tendency to miscellaneous observation we come by honestly enough, for +we note it in many of our animal relatives. + +Veblen, however, uses the term "idle curiosity" somewhat ironically, +as is his wont. It is idle only to those who fail to realize that it +may be a very rare and indispensable thing from which almost all +distinguished human achievement proceeds. Since it may lead to +systematic examination and seeking for things hitherto undiscovered. +For research is but diligent search which enjoys the high flavor of +primitive hunting. Occasionally and fitfully idle curiosity thus leads +to creative thought, which alters and broadens our own views and +aspirations and may in turn, under highly favorable circumstances, +affect the views and lives of others, even for generations to follow. +An example or two will make this unique human process clear. + +Galileo was a thoughtful youth and doubtless carried on a rich and +varied reverie. He had artistic ability and might have turned out to +be a musician or painter. When he had dwelt among the monks at +Valambrosa he had been tempted to lead the life of a religious. As a +boy he busied himself with toy machines and he inherited a fondness +for mathematics. All these facts are of record. We may safely assume +also that, along with many other subjects of contemplation, the Pisan +maidens found a vivid place in his thoughts. + +One day when seventeen years old he wandered into the cathedral of his +native town. In the midst of his reverie he looked up at the lamps +hanging by long chains from the high ceiling of the church. Then +something very difficult to explain occurred. He found himself no +longer thinking of the building, worshipers, or the services; of his +artistic or religious interests; of his reluctance to become a +physician as his father wished. He forgot the question of a career and +even the _graziosissime donne_. As he watched the swinging lamps he +was suddenly wondering if mayhap their oscillations, whether long or +short, did not occupy the same time. Then he tested this hypothesis by +counting his pulse, for that was the only timepiece he had with him. + +This observation, however remarkable in itself, was not enough to +produce a really creative thought. Others may have noticed the same +thing and yet nothing came of it. Most of our observations have no +assignable results. Galileo may have seen that the warts on a +peasant's face formed a perfect isosceles triangle, or he may have +noticed with boyish glee that just as the officiating priest was +uttering the solemn words, _ecce agnus Dei_, a fly lit on the end of +his nose. To be really creative, ideas have to be worked up and then +"put over", so that they become a part of man's social heritage. The +highly accurate pendulum clock was one of the later results of +Galileo's discovery. He himself was led to reconsider and successfully +to refute the old notions of falling bodies. It remained for Newton to +prove that the moon was falling, and presumably all the heavenly +bodies. This quite upset all the consecrated views of the heavens as +managed by angelic engineers. The universality of the laws of +gravitation stimulated the attempt to seek other and equally important +natural laws and cast grave doubts on the miracles in which mankind +had hitherto believed. In short, those who dared to include in their +thought the discoveries of Galileo and his successors found themselves +in a new earth surrounded by new heavens. + +On the 28th of October, 1831, three hundred and fifty years after +Galileo had noticed the isochronous vibrations of the lamps, creative +thought and its currency had so far increased that Faraday was +wondering what would happen if he mounted a disk of copper between the +poles of a horseshoe magnet. As the disk revolved an electric current +was produced. This would doubtless have seemed the idlest kind of an +experiment to the stanch business men of the time, who, it happened, +were just then denouncing the child-labor bills in their anxiety to +avail themselves to the full of the results of earlier idle curiosity. +But should the dynamos and motors which have come into being as the +outcome of Faraday's experiment be stopped this evening, the business +man of to-day, agitated over labor troubles, might, as he trudged home +past lines of "dead" cars, through dark streets to an unlighted house, +engage in a little creative thought of his own and perceive that he +and his laborers would have no modern factories and mines to quarrel +about had it not been for the strange practical effects of the idle +curiosity of scientists, inventors, and engineers. + +The examples of creative intelligence given above belong to the realm +of modern scientific achievement, which furnishes the most striking +instances of the effects of scrupulous, objective thinking. But there +are, of course, other great realms in which the recording and +embodiment of acute observation and insight have wrought themselves +into the higher life of man. The great poets and dramatists and our +modern story-tellers have found themselves engaged in productive +reveries, noting and artistically presenting their discoveries for the +delight and instruction of those who have the ability to appreciate +them. + +The process by which a fresh and original poem or drama comes into +being is doubtless analogous to that which originates and elaborates +so-called scientific discoveries; but there is clearly a temperamental +difference. The genesis and advance of painting, sculpture, and music +offer still other problems. We really as yet know shockingly little +about these matters, and indeed very few people have the least +curiosity about them.[8] Nevertheless, creative intelligence in its +various forms and activities is what makes man. Were it not for its +slow, painful, and constantly discouraged operations through the ages +man would be no more than a species of primate living on seeds, fruit, +roots, and uncooked flesh, and wandering naked through the woods and +over the plains like a chimpanzee. + +The origin and progress and future promotion of civilization are ill +understood and misconceived. These should be made the chief theme of +education, but much hard work is necessary before we can reconstruct +our ideas of man and his capacities and free ourselves from +innumerable persistent misapprehensions. There have been +obstructionists in all times, not merely the lethargic masses, but +the moralists, the rationalizing theologians, and most of the +philosophers, all busily if unconsciously engaged in ratifying +existing ignorance and mistakes and discouraging creative thought. +Naturally, those who reassure us seem worthy of honor and respect. +Equally naturally those who puzzle us with disturbing criticisms and +invite us to change our ways are objects of suspicion and readily +discredited. Our personal discontent does not ordinarily extend to any +critical questioning of the general situation in which we find +ourselves. In every age the prevailing conditions of civilization have +appeared quite natural and inevitable to those who grew up in them. +The cow asks no questions as to how it happens to have a dry stall and +a supply of hay. The kitten laps its warm milk from a china saucer, +without knowing anything about porcelain; the dog nestles in the +corner of a divan with no sense of obligation to the inventors of +upholstery and the manufacturers of down pillows. So we humans accept +our breakfasts, our trains and telephones and orchestras and movies, +our national Constitution, or moral code and standards of manners, +with the simplicity and innocence of a pet rabbit. We have absolutely +inexhaustible capacities for appropriating what others do for us with +no thought of a "thank you". We do not feel called upon to make any +least contribution to the merry game ourselves. Indeed, we are usually +quite unaware that a game is being played at all. + +We have now examined the various classes of thinking which we can +readily observe in ourselves and which we have plenty of reasons to +believe go on, and always have been going on, in our fellow-men. We +can sometimes get quite pure and sparkling examples of all four kinds, +but commonly they are so confused and intermingled in our reverie as +not to be readily distinguishable. The reverie is a reflection of our +longings, exultations, and complacencies, our fears, suspicions, and +disappointments. We are chiefly engaged in struggling to maintain our +self-respect and in asserting that supremacy which we all crave and +which seems to us our natural prerogative. It is not strange, but +rather quite inevitable, that our beliefs about what is true and +false, good and bad, right and wrong, should be mixed up with the +reverie and be influenced by the same considerations which determine +its character and course. We resent criticisms of our views exactly as +we do of anything else connected with ourselves. Our notions of life +and its ideals seem to us to be _our own_ and as such necessarily true +and right, to be defended at all costs. + +_We very rarely consider, however, the process by which we gained our +convictions_. If we did so, we could hardly fail to see that there was +usually little ground for our confidence in them. Here and there, in +this department of knowledge or that, some one of us might make a fair +claim to have taken some trouble to get correct ideas of, let us say, +the situation in Russia, the sources of our food supply, the origin of +the Constitution, the revision of the tariff, the policy of the Holy +Roman Apostolic Church, modern business organization, trade unions, +birth control, socialism, the League of Nations, the excess-profits +tax, preparedness, advertising in its social bearings; but only a very +exceptional person would be entitled to opinions on all of even these +few matters. And yet most of us have opinions on all these, and on +many other questions of equal importance, of which we may know even +less. We feel compelled, as self-respecting persons, to take sides +when they come up for discussion. We even surprise ourselves by our +omniscience. Without taking thought we see in a flash that it is most +righteous and expedient to discourage birth control by legislative +enactment, or that one who decries intervention in Mexico is clearly +wrong, or that big advertising is essential to big business and that +big business is the pride of the land. As godlike beings why should we +not rejoice in our omniscience? + +It is clear, in any case, that our convictions on important matters +are not the result of knowledge or critical thought, nor, it may be +added, are they often dictated by supposed self-interest. Most of them +are _pure prejudices_ in the proper sense of that word. We do not form +them ourselves. They are the whisperings of "the voice of the herd". +We have in the last analysis no responsibility for them and need +assume none. They are not really our own ideas, but those of others no +more well informed or inspired than ourselves, who have got them in +the same careless and humiliating manner as we. It should be our pride +to revise our ideas and not to adhere to what passes for respectable +opinion, for such opinion can frequently be shown to be not respectable +at all. We should, in view of the considerations that have been +mentioned, resent our supine credulity. As an English writer has +remarked: + +"If we feared the entertaining of an unverifiable opinion with the +warmth with which we fear using the wrong implement at the dinner +table, if the thought of holding a prejudice disgusted us as does a +foul disease, then the dangers of man's suggestibility would be turned +into advantages."[9] + +The purpose of this essay is to set forth briefly the way in which the +notions of the herd have been accumulated. This seems to me the best, +easiest, and least invidious educational device for cultivating a +proper distrust for the older notions on which we still continue to +rely. + +The "real" reasons, which explain how it is we happen to hold a +particular belief, are chiefly historical. Our most important +opinions--those, for example, having to do with traditional, +religious, and moral convictions, property rights, patriotism, +national honor, the state, and indeed all the assumed foundations of +society--are, as I have already suggested, rarely the result of +reasoned consideration, but of unthinking absorption from the social +environment in which we live. Consequently, they have about them a +quality of "elemental certitude", and we especially resent doubt or +criticism cast upon them. So long, however, as we revere the +whisperings of the herd, we are obviously unable to examine them +dispassionately and to consider to what extent they are suited to the +novel conditions and social exigencies in which we find ourselves +to-day. + +The "real" reasons for our beliefs, by making clear their origins and +history, can do much to dissipate this emotional blockade and rid us +of our prejudices and preconceptions. Once this is done and we come +critically to examine our traditional beliefs, we may well find some +of them sustained by experience and honest reasoning, while others +must be revised to meet new conditions and our more extended +knowledge. But only after we have undertaken such a critical +examination in the light of experience and modern knowledge, freed +from any feeling of "primary certitude", can we claim that the "good" +are also the "real" reasons for our opinions. + +I do not flatter myself that this general show-up of man's thought +through the ages will cure myself or others of carelessness in +adopting ideas, or of unseemly heat in defending them just because we +have adopted them. But if the considerations which I propose to recall +are really incorporated into our thinking and are permitted to +establish our general outlook on human affairs, they will do much to +relieve the imaginary obligation we feel in regard to traditional +sentiments and ideals. Few of us are capable of engaging in creative +thought, but some of us can at least come to distinguish it from other +and inferior kinds of thought and accord to it the esteem that it +merits as the greatest treasure of the past and the only hope of the +future. + + +NOTES. + +[2] The poet-clergyman, John Donne, who lived in the time of James I, +has given a beautifully honest picture of the doings of a saint's +mind: "I throw myself down in my chamber and call in and invite God +and His angels thither, and when they are there I neglect God and His +angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the +whining of a door. I talk on in the same posture of praying, eyes +lifted up, knees bowed down, as though I prayed to God, and if God or +His angels should ask me when I thought last of God in that prayer I +cannot tell. Sometimes I find that I had forgot what I was about, but +when I began to forget it I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday's +pleasures, a fear of to-morrow's dangers, a straw under my knee, a +noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a +fancy, a chimera in my brain troubles me in my prayer."--Quoted by +ROBERT LYND, _The Art of Letters_, pp. 46-47. + +[3] Instincts of the Herd, p. 44. + +[4] Diogenes Laertius, book v. + +[5] _Reconstruction in Philosophy_. + +[6] _The Place of Science in Modern Civilization._ + +[7] _Traité de Sociologie Générale, passim._ The author's term +"_derivations_" seems to be his precise way of expressing what we have +called the "good" reasons, and his "_residus_" correspond to the +"real" reasons. He well says, _"L'homme éprouve le besoin de +raisonner, et en outre d'étendre un voile sur ses instincts et sur ses +sentiments"_--hence, rationalization. (P. 788.) His aim is to reduce +sociology to the "real" reasons. (P. 791.) + +[8] Recently a re-examination of creative thought has begun as a +result of new knowledge which discredits many of the notions formerly +held about "reason". See, for example, _Creative Intelligence_, by a +group of American philosophic thinkers; John Dewey, _Essays in +Experimental Logic_ (both pretty hard books); and Veblen, _The Place +of Science in Modern Civilization_. Easier than these and very +stimulating are Dewey, _Reconstruction in Philosophy_, and Woodworth, +_Dynamic Psychology_. + +[9] Trotter, _op. cit._, p. 45. The first part of this little volume +is excellent. + + + * * * * * + + +III + + + Nous étions déjà si vieux quand nous sommes nés.--ANATOLE FRANCE. + + Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis?--ENNIUS. + + Tous les homines se ressemblent si fort qu'il n'y a point de peuple + dont les sottises ne nous doivent faire trembler.--FONTENELLE. + + The savage is very close to us indeed, both in his physical and + mental make-up and in the forms of his social life. Tribal society + is virtually delayed civilization, and the savages are a sort of + contemporaneous ancestry.--WILLIAM I. THOMAS. + + + + +6. OUR ANIMAL HERITAGE. THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATION + + +There are four historical layers underlying the minds of civilized +men--the animal mind, the child mind, the savage mind, and the +traditional civilized mind. We are all animals and never can cease to +be; we were all children at our most impressionable age and can never +get over the effects of that; our human ancestors have lived in +savagery during practically the whole existence of the race, say five +hundred thousand or a million years, and the primitive human mind is +ever with us; finally, we are all born into an elaborate civilization, +the constant pressure of which we can by no means escape. + +Each of these underlying minds has its special sciences and +appropriate literatures. The new discipline of animal or comparative +psychology deals with the first; genetic and analytical psychology +with the second;[10] anthropology, ethnology, and comparative religion +with the third; and the history of philosophy, science, theology, and +literature with the fourth. + +We may grow beyond these underlying minds and in the light of new +knowledge we may criticize their findings and even persuade ourselves +that we have successfully transcended them. But if we are fair with +ourselves we shall find that their hold on us is really inexorable. We +can only transcend them artificially and precariously and in certain +highly favorable conditions. Depression, anger, fear, or ordinary +irritation will speedily prove the insecurity of any structure that we +manage to rear on our fourfold foundation. Such fundamental and vital +preoccupations as religion, love, war, and the chase stir impulses +that lie far back in human history and which effectually repudiate the +cavilings of ratiocination. + +In all our reveries and speculations, even the most exacting, +sophisticated, and disillusioned, we have three unsympathetic +companions sticking closer than a brother and looking on with jealous +impatience--our wild apish progenitor, a playful or peevish baby, and +a savage. We may at any moment find ourselves overtaken with a warm +sense of camaraderie for any or all of these ancient pals of ours, and +experience infinite relief in once more disporting ourselves with them +as of yore. Some of us have in addition a Greek philosopher or man of +letters in us; some a neoplatonic mystic, some a mediaeval monk, all +of whom have learned to make terms with their older playfellows. + +Before retracing the way in which the mind as we now find it in +so-called intelligent people has been accumulated, we may take time to +try to see what civilization is and why man alone can become +civilized. For the mind has expanded _pari passu_ with civilization, +and without civilization there would, I venture to conjecture, have +been no human mind in the commonly accepted sense of that term. + +It is now generally conceded by all who have studied the varied +evidence and have freed themselves from ancient prejudice that, if we +traced back our human lineage far enough we should come to a point +where our human ancestors had no civilization and lived a speechless, +naked, houseless, fireless, and toolless life, similar to that of the +existing primates with which we are zoologically closely connected. + +This is one of the most fully substantiated of historical facts and +one which we can never neglect in our attempts to explain man as he +now is. We are all descended from the lower animals. We are +furthermore still animals with not only an animal body, but with an +animal mind. And this animal body and animal mind are the original +foundations on which even the most subtle and refined intellectual +life must perforce rest. + +We are ready to classify certain of our most essential desires as +brutish--hunger and thirst, the urgence of sleep, and especially +sexual longing. We know of blind animal rage, of striking, biting, +scratching, howling, and snarling, of irrational fears and ignominious +flight. We share our senses with the higher animals, have eyes and +ears, noses and tongues much like theirs; heart, lungs, and other +viscera, and four limbs. They have brains which stand them in good +stead, although their heads are not so good as ours. But when one +speaks of the animal mind he should think of still other resemblances +between the brute and man. + +All animals learn--even the most humble among them may gain something +from experience. All the higher animals exhibit curiosity under +certain circumstances, and it is this impulse which underlies all +human science. + +Moreover, some of the higher animals, especially the apes and monkeys, +are much given to fumbling and groping. They are restless, easily +bored, and spontaneously experimental. They therefore make discoveries +quite unconsciously, and form new and sometimes profitable habits of +action. If, by mere fumbling, a monkey, cat, or dog happens on a way +to secure food, this remunerative line of conduct will "occur" to the +creature when he feels hungry. This is what Thorndike has named +learning by "trial and error". It might better be called "fumbling and +success", for it is the success that establishes the association. The +innate curiosity which man shares with his uncivilized zoological +relatives is the native impulse that leads to scientific and +philosophical speculation, and the original fumbling of a restless ape +has become the ordered experimental investigation of modern times. A +creature which lacked curiosity and had no tendency to fumble could +never have developed civilization and human intelligence.[l0] + +But why did man alone of all the animals become civilized? The reason +is not far to seek, although it has often escaped writers[11] on the +subject. All animals gain a certain wisdom with age and experience, +but the experience of one ape does not profit another. Learning among +animals below man is _individual_, not _co-operative_ and _cumulative_. +One dog does not seem to learn from another, nor one ape from another, +in spite of the widespread misapprehension in this regard. Many +experiments have been patiently tried in recent years and it seems to +be pretty well established that the monkey learns by _monkeying_, but +that he rarely or never appears to _ape_. He does not learn by imitation, +because he does not imitate. There may be minor exceptions, but the fact +that apes never, in spite of a bodily equipment nearly human, become in +the least degree civilized, would seem to show that the accumulation of +knowledge or dexterity through imitation is impossible for them. + +Man has the various sense organs of the apes and their extraordinary +power of manipulation. To these essentials he adds a brain +sufficiently more elaborate than that of the chimpanzee to enable him +to do something that the ape cannot do--namely, "see" things clearly +enough to form associations through imitation.[12] + +We can imagine the manner in which man unwittingly took one of his +momentous and unprecedented first steps in civilization. Some restless +primeval savage might find himself scraping the bark off a stick with +the edge of a stone or shell and finally cutting into the wood and +bringing the thing to a point. He might then spy an animal and, quite +without reasoning, impulsively make a thrust with the stick and +discover that it pierced the creature. If he could hold these various +elements in the situation, sharpening the stick and using it, he would +have made an invention--a rude spear. A particularly acute bystander +might comprehend and imitate the process. If others did so and the +habit was established in the tribe so that it became traditional and +was transmitted to following generations, the process of civilization +would have begun--also the process of human learning, which is +noticing distinctions and analyzing situations. This simple process of +sharpening a stick would involve the "concepts", as the philosophers +say, of a tool and bark and a point and an artificial weapon. But ages +and ages were to elapse before the botanist would distinguish the +various layers which constitute the bark, or successive experimenters +come upon the idea of a bayonet to take the place of the spear. + +Of late, considerable attention has been given to the question of +man's original, uneducated, animal nature; what resources has he as a +mere creature independent of any training that results from being +brought up in some sort of civilized community? The question is +difficult to formulate satisfactorily and still more difficult to +answer. But without attempting to list man's supposed natural +"instincts" we must assume that civilization is built up on his +original propensities and impulses, whatever they may be. These +probably remain nearly the same from generation to generation. The +idea formerly held that the civilization of our ancestors affects our +original nature is almost completely surrendered. _We are all born +wholly uncivilized._ + +If a group of infants from the "best" families of to-day could be +reared by apes they would find themselves with no civilization. How +long it would take them and their children to gain what now passes for +even a low savage culture it is impossible to say. The whole arduous +task would have to be performed anew and it might not take place at +all, unless conditions were favorable, for man is not naturally a +"progressive" animal. He shares the tendency of all other animal +tribes just to pull through and reproduce his kind. + +Most of us do not stop to think of the conditions of an animal +existence. When we read the descriptions of our nature as given by +William James, McDougall, or even Thorndike, with all his reservations, +we get a rather impressive idea of our possibilities, not a picture of +uncivilized life. When we go camping we think that we are deserting +civilization, forgetting the sophisticated guides, and the pack horses +laden with the most artificial luxuries, many of which would not have +been available even a hundred years ago. We lead the simple life with +Swedish matches, Brazilian coffee, Canadian bacon, California canned +peaches, magazine rifles, jointed fishing rods, and electric +flashlights. We are elaborately clothed and can discuss Bergson's +views or D. H. Lawrence's last story. We naïvely imagine we are +returning to "primitive" conditions because we are living out of doors +or sheltered in a less solid abode than usual, and have to go to +the brook for water. + +But man's original estate was, as Hobbes reflected, "poor, nasty, +brutish, and short". To live like an animal is to rely upon one's own +quite naked equipment and efforts, and not to mind getting wet or cold +or scratching one's bare legs in the underbrush. One would have to eat +his roots and seeds quite raw, and gnaw a bird as a cat does. To get +the feel of uncivilized life, let us recall how savages with the +comparatively advanced degree of culture reached by our native Indian +tribes may fall to when really hungry. In the journal of the Lewis and +Clark expedition there is an account of the killing of a deer by the +white men. Hearing of this, the Shoshones raced wildly to the spot +where the warm and bloody entrails had been thrown out + + ... and ran tumbling over one another like famished dogs. Each tore + away whatever part he could, and instantly began to eat it; some + had the liver, some the kidneys, and, in short, no part on which we + are accustomed to look with disgust escaped them. One of them who + had seized about nine feet of the entrails was chewing at one end, + while with his hand he was diligently clearing his way by + discharging the contents at the other. + +Another striking example of simple animal procedure is given in the +same journal: + + One of the women, who had been leading two of our pack horses, + halted at a rivulet about a mile behind and sent on the two horses + by a female friend. On inquiring of Cameahwait the cause of her + detention, he answered, with great apparent unconcern, that she + had just stopped to lie in, but would soon overtake us. In fact, + we were astonished to see her in about an hour's time come on with + her new-born infant, and pass us on her way to the camp, seemingly + in perfect health. + +This is the simple life and it was the life of our ancestors before +civilization began. It had been the best kind of life possible in all +the preceding aeons of the world's history. Without civilization it +would be the existence to which all human beings now on the earth +would forthwith revert. It is man's starting point.[13] + +But what about the mind? What was going on in the heads of our +untutored forbears? We are apt to fall into the error of supposing +that because they had human brains they must have had somewhat the +same kinds of ideas and made the same kind of judgments that we do. +Even distinguished philosophers like Descartes and Rousseau made this +mistake. This assumption will not stand inspection. To reach back in +imagination to the really primitive mind we should of course have to +deduct at the start all the knowledge and all the discriminations and +classifications that have grown up as a result of our education and +our immersion from infancy in a highly artificial environment. Then we +must recollect that our primitive ancestor had no words with which to +name and tell about things. He was speechless. His fellows knew no +more than he did. Each one learned during his lifetime according to +his capacity, but no instruction in our sense of the word was +possible. What he saw and heard was not what we should have called +seeing and hearing. He responded to situations in a blind and +impulsive manner, with no clear idea of them. In short, he must have +_thought_ much as a wolf or bear does, just as he _lived_ much like +them. + +We must be on our guard against accepting the prevalent notions of +even the animal intellect. An owl may look quite as wise as a judge. A +monkey, canary, or collie has bright eyes and seems far more alert +than most of the people we see on the street car. A squirrel in the +park appears to be looking at us much as we look at him. But he cannot +be seeing the same things that we do. We can be scarcely more to him +than a vague suggestion of peanuts. And even the peanut has little of +the meaning for him that it has for us. A dog perceives a motor-car +and may be induced to ride in it, but his idea of it would not differ +from that of an ancient carryall, except, mayhap, in an appreciative +distinction between the odor of gasoline and that of the stable. Only +in times of sickness, drunkenness, or great excitement can we get some +hint in ourselves of the impulsive responses in animals free from +human sophistication and analysis. + +Locke thought that we first got simple ideas and then combined them +into more complex conceptions and finally into generalizations or +abstract ideas. But this is not the way that man's knowledge arose. He +started with mere impressions of general situations, and gradually by +his ability to handle things he came upon distinctions, which in time +he made clearer by attaching names to them. + +We keep repeating this process when we learn about anything. The +typewriter is at first a mere mass impression, and only gradually and +imperfectly do most of us distinguish certain of its parts; only the +men who made it are likely to realize its full complexity by noting +and assigning names to all the levers, wheels, gears, bearings, +controls, and adjustments. John Stuart Mill thought that the chief +function of the mind was making inferences. But making distinctions is +equally fundamental--seeing that there are really many things where +only one was at first apparent. This process of analysis has been +man's supreme accomplishment. This is what has made his mind grow. + +The human mind has then been built up through hundreds of thousands of +years by gradual accretions and laborious accumulations. Man started +at a cultural zero and had to find out everything for himself; or +rather a very small number of peculiarly restless and adventurous +spirits did the work. The great mass of humanity has never had +anything to do with the increase of intelligence except to act as its +medium of transfusion and perpetuation. Creative intelligence is +confined to the very few, but the many can thoughtlessly avail +themselves of the more obvious achievements of those who are +exceptionally highly endowed. + +Even an ape will fit himself into a civilized environment. A +chimpanzee can be taught to relish bicycles, roller skates, and +cigarettes which he could never have devised, cannot understand, and +could not reproduce. Even so with mankind. Most of us could not have +devised, do not understand, and consequently could not reproduce any +of the everyday conveniences and luxuries which surround us. Few of us +could make an electric light, or write a good novel to read by it, or +paint a picture for it to shine upon. + +Professor Giddings has recently asked the question, Why has there been +any history?[14] Why, indeed, considering that the "good" and +"respectable" is usually synonymous with the ancient routine, and the +old have always been there to repress the young? Such heavy words of +approval as "venerable", "sanctified", and "revered" all suggest great +age rather than fresh discoveries. As it was in the beginning, is now +and ever shall be, is our protest against being disturbed, forced to +think or to change our habits. So history, _namely change_, has been +mainly due to a small number of "seers",--really gropers and +monkeyers--whose native curiosity outran that of their fellows and led +them to escape here and there from the sanctified blindness of their +time. + +The seer is simply an example of a _variation_ biologically, such as +occurs in all species of living things, both animal and vegetable. But +the unusually large roses in our gardens, the swifter horses of the +herd, and the cleverer wolf in the pack have no means of influencing +their fellows as a result of their peculiar superiority. Their +offspring has some chance of sharing to some degree this pre-eminence, +but otherwise things will go on as before. Whereas the singular +variation represented by a St. Francis, a Dante, a Voltaire, or a +Darwin may permanently, and for ages to follow change somewhat the +character and ambitions of innumerable inferior members of the species +who could by no possibility have originated anything for themselves, +but who can, nevertheless, suffer some modification as a result of the +teachings of others. This illustrates the magical and unique workings +of culture and creative intelligence in mankind.[15] + +We have no means of knowing when or where the first contribution to +civilization was made, and with it a start on the arduous building of +the mind. There is some reason to think that the men who first +transcended the animal mind were of inferior mental capacity to our +own, but even if man, emerging from his animal estate, had had on the +average quite as good a brain as those with which we are now familiar, +I suspect that the extraordinarily slow and hazardous process of +accumulating modern civilization would not have been greatly +shortened. Mankind is lethargic, easily pledged to routine, timid, +suspicious of innovation. That is his nature. He is only artificially, +partially, and very recently "progressive". He has spent almost his +whole existence as a savage hunter, and in that state of ignorance he +illustrated on a magnificent scale all the inherent weaknesses of the +human mind. + + + + +7. OUR SAVAGE MIND + + +Should we arrange our present beliefs and opinions on the basis of +their age, we should find that some of them were very, very old, going +back to primitive man; others were derived from the Greeks; many more +of them would prove to come directly from the Middle Ages; while +certain others in our stock were unknown until natural science began +to develop in a new form about three hundred years ago. The idea that +man has a soul or double which survives the death of the body is very +ancient indeed and is accepted by most savages. Such confidence as we +have in the liberal arts, metaphysics, and formal logic goes back to +the Greek thinkers; our religious ideas and our standards of sexual +conduct are predominantly mediaeval in their presuppositions; our +notions of electricity and disease germs are, of course, recent in +origin, the result of painful and prolonged research which involved +the rejection of a vast number of older notions sanctioned by +immemorial acceptance. + +_In general, those ideas which are still almost universally accepted +in regard to man's nature, his proper conduct, and his relations to +God and his fellows are far more ancient and far less critical than +those which have to do with the movement of the stars, the +stratification of the rocks and the life of plants and animals_. + +Nothing is more essential in our attempt to escape from the bondage of +consecrated ideas than to get a vivid notion of human achievement in +its proper historical perspective. In order to do this let us imagine +the whole gradual and laborious attainments of mankind compressed into +the compass of a single lifetime. Let us assume that a single +generation of men have in fifty years managed to accumulate all that +now passes for civilization. They would have to start, as all +individuals do, absolutely uncivilized, and their task would be to +recapitulate what has occupied the race for, let us guess, at least +five hundred thousand years. Each year in the life of a generation +would therefore correspond to ten thousand years in the progress of +the race. + +On this scale it would require forty-nine years to reach a point of +intelligence which would enable our self-taught generation to give up +their ancient and inveterate habits of wandering hunters and settle +down here and there to till the ground, harvest their crops, +domesticate animals, and weave their rough garments. Six months later, +or half through the fiftieth year, some of them, in a particularly +favorable situation, would have invented writing and thus established +a new and wonderful means of spreading and perpetuating civilization. +Three months later another group would have carried literature, art, +and philosophy to a high degree of refinement and set standards for +the succeeding weeks. For two months our generation would have been +living under the blessings of Christianity; the printing press would +be but a fortnight old and they would not have had the steam engine +for quite a week. For two or three days they would have been hastening +about the globe in steamships and railroad trains, and only yesterday +would they have come upon the magical possibilities of electricity. +Within the last few hours they would have learned to sail in the air +and beneath the waters, and have forthwith applied their newest +discoveries to the prosecution of a magnificent war on the scale +befitting their high ideals and new resources. This is not so strange, +for only a week ago they were burning and burying alive those who +differed from the ruling party in regard to salvation, eviscerating in +public those who had new ideas of government, and hanging old women +who were accused of traffic with the devil. All of them had been no +better than vagrant savages a year before. Their fuller knowledge was +altogether too recent to have gone very deep, and they had many +institutions and many leaders dedicated to the perpetuation of outworn +notions which would otherwise have disappeared. Until recently changes +had taken place so slowly and so insensibly that only a very few +persons could be expected to realize that not a few of the beliefs +that were accepted as eternal verities were due to the inevitable +misunderstandings of a savage. + +In speaking of the "savage" or "primitive mind", we are, of course, +using a very clumsy expression. We shall employ the term, nevertheless, +to indicate the characteristics of the human mind when there was as yet +no writing, no organized industry or mechanical arts, no money, no +important specialization of function except between the sexes, no +settled life in large communities. The period so described covers all +but about five or six thousand of the half million to a million years +that man has existed on the earth. + +There are no chronicles to tell us the story of those long centuries. +Some inferences can be made from the increasing artfulness and variety +of the flint weapons and tools which we find. But the stone weapons +which have come down to us, even in their crudest forms (eoliths), are +very far from representing the earliest achievements of man in the +accumulation of culture. Those dim, remote cycles must have been full +of great, but inconspicuous, originators who laid the foundations of +civilization in discoveries and achievements so long taken for granted +that we do not realize that they ever had to be made at all. + +Since man is descended from less highly endowed animals, there must +have been a time when the man-animal was in a state of animal +ignorance. He started with no more than an ape is able to know. He had +to learn everything for himself, as he had no one to teach him the +tricks that apes and children can be taught by sophisticated human +beings. He was necessarily self-taught, and began, as we have seen, in +a state of ignorance beyond anything we can readily conceive. He lived +naked and speechless in the woods, or wandered over the plains without +artificial shelter or any way of cooking his food. He subsisted on raw +fruit, berries, roots, insects, and such animals as he could strike +down or pick up dead. His mind must have corresponded with his brutish +state. He must at the first have learned just as his animal relatives +learn--by fumbling and by forming accidental associations. He had +impulses and such sagacity as he individually derived from experience, +but no heritage of knowledge accumulated by the group and transmitted +by education. This heritage had to be constructed on man's +potentialities. + +Of mankind in this extremely primitive condition we have no traces. +There could indeed be no traces. All savages of the present day or of +whom we have any record represent a relatively highly developed +traditional culture, with elaborate languages, myths, and +well-established artificial customs, which it probably took hundreds +of thousands of years to accumulate. Man in "a state of nature" is +only a presupposition, but a presupposition which is forced upon us by +compelling evidence, conjectural and inferential though it is. + +On a geological time scale we are still close to savagery, and it is +inevitable that the ideas and customs and sentiments of savagery +should have become so ingrained that they may have actually affected +man's nature by natural selection through the survival of those who +most completely adjusted themselves to the uncritical culture which +prevailed. But in any case it is certain, as many anthropologists have +pointed out, that customs, savage ideas, and primitive sentiments have +continued to form an important part of our own culture down even to +the present day. We are met thus with the necessity of reckoning with +this inveterate element in our present thought and customs. Much of +the data that we have regarding primitive man has been accumulated in +recent times, for the most part as a result of the study of simple +peoples. These differ greatly in their habits and myths, but some +salient common traits emerge which cast light on the spontaneous +workings of the human mind when unaffected by the sophistications of a +highly elaborate civilization. + +At the start man had to distinguish himself from the group to which he +belonged and say, "I am I." This is not an idea given by nature.[16] +There are evidences that the earlier religious notions were not based +on individuality, but rather on the "virtue" which objects had--that +is, their potency to do things. Only later did the animistic belief in +the personalities of men, animals, and the forces of nature appear. +When man discovered his own individuality he spontaneously ascribed +the same type of individuality and purpose to animals and plants, to +the wind and the thunder. + +This exhibits one of the most noxious tendencies of the mind--namely, +personification. It is one of the most virulent enemies of clear +thinking. We speak of the Spirit of the Reformation or the Spirit of +Revolt or the Spirit of Disorder and Anarchy. The papers tell us that, +"Berlin says", "London says", "Uncle Sam so decides", "John Bull is +disgruntled". Now, whether or no there are such things as spirits, +Berlin and London have no souls, and Uncle Sam is as mythical as the +great god Pan. Sometimes this regression to the savage is harmless, +but when a newspaper states that "Germany is as militaristic as ever", +on the ground that some insolent Prussian lieutenant says that German +armies will occupy Paris within five years, we have an example of +animism which in a society farther removed from savagery than ours +might be deemed a high crime and misdemeanor. Chemists and physicians +have given up talking of spirits, but in discussing social and +economic questions we are still victimized by the primitive animistic +tendencies of the mind. + +The dream has had a great influence in the building up of the mind. +Our ideas, especially our religious beliefs, would have had quite +another history had men been dreamless. For it was not merely his +shadow and his reflection in the water that led man to imagine souls +and doubles, but pre-eminently the visions of the night. As his body +lay quiet in sleep he found himself wandering in distant places. + +Sometimes he was visited by the dead. So it was clear that the body +had an inhabitant who was not necessarily bound to it, who could +desert it from time to time during life, and who continued to exist +and interest itself in human affairs after death. + +Whole civilizations and religions and vast theological speculations +have been dominated by this savage inference. It is true that in very +recent times, since Plato, let us say, other reasons have been urged +for believing in the soul and its immortality, but the idea appears to +have got its firm footing in savage logic. It is a primitive inference, +however it may later have been revised, rationalized, and ennobled. + +The taboo--the forbidden thing--of savage life is another thing very +elementary in man's make-up. He had tendencies to fall into habits and +establish inhibitions for reasons that he either did not discover or +easily forgot. These became fixed and sacred to him and any departure +from them filled him with dread. Sometimes the prohibition might have +some reasonable justification, sometimes it might seem wholly absurd +and even a great nuisance, but that made no difference in its binding +force. For example, pork was taboo among the ancient Hebrews--no one +can say why, but none of the modern justifications for abstaining from +that particular kind of meat would have counted in early Jewish times. +It is not improbable that it was the original veneration for the boar +and not an abhorrence of him that led to the prohibition. + +The modern "principle" is too often only a new form of the ancient +taboo, rather than an enlightened rule of conduct. The person who +justifies himself by saying that he holds certain beliefs, or acts in +a certain manner "on principle", and yet refuses to examine the basis +and expediency of his principle, introduces into his thinking and +conduct an irrational, mystical element similar to that which +characterized savage prohibitions. Principles unintelligently urged +make a great deal of trouble in the free consideration of social +readjustment, for they are frequently as recalcitrant and obscurantist +as the primitive taboo, and are really scarcely more than an excuse +for refusing to reconsider one's convictions and conduct. The +psychological conditions lying back of both taboo and this sort of +principle are essentially the same. + +We find in savage thought a sort of intensified and generalized taboo +in the classification of things as clean and unclean and in the +conceptions of the sacred. These are really expressions of profound +and persistent traits in the uncritical mind and can only be overcome +by carefully cultivated criticism. They are the result of our natural +timidity and the constant dread lest we find ourselves treading on +holy (_i. e._, dangerous) ground.[17] When they are intrenched in the +mind we cannot expect to think freely and fairly, for they effectually +stop argument. If a thing is held to be sacred it is the center of +what may be called a defense complex, and a reasonable consideration +of the merits of the case will not be tolerated. When an issue is +declared to be a "moral" one--for example, the prohibition of strong +drink--an emotional state is implied which makes reasonable compromise +and adjustment impossible; for "moral" is a word on somewhat the same +plane as "sacred", and has much the same qualities and similar effects +on thinking. In dealing with the relations of the sexes the terms +"pure" and "impure" introduce mystic and irrational moods alien to +clear analysis and reasonable readjustments. Those who have studied +the characteristics of savage life are always struck by its deadly +conservatism, its needless restraints on the freedom of the +individual, and its hopeless routine. Man, like plants and animals in +general, tends to go on from generation to generation, living as +nearly as may be the life of his forbears. Changes have to be forced +upon him by hard experience, and he is ever prone to find excuses for +slipping back into older habits, for these are likely to be simpler, +less critical, more spontaneous--more closely akin, in short, to his +animal and primitive promptings. One who prides himself to-day on his +conservatism, on the ground that man is naturally an anarchic and +disorderly creature who is held in check by the far-seeing Tory, is +almost exactly reversing the truth. Mankind is conservative by nature +and readily generates restraints on himself and obstacles to change +which have served to keep him in a state of savagery during almost his +whole existence on the earth, and which still perpetuate all sorts of +primitive barbarism in modern society. The conservative "on principle" +is therefore a most unmistakably primitive person in his attitude. His +only advance beyond the savage mood lies in the specious reasons he is +able to advance for remaining of the same mind. What we vaguely call a +"radical" is a very recent product due to altogether exceptional and +unprecedented circumstances. + + +NOTES. + +[10] It is impossible to discuss here the results which a really +honest study of child psychology promises. The relations of the child +to his parents and elders in general and to the highly artificial +system of censorship and restraints which they impose in their own +interests on his natural impulses must surely have a permanent +influence on the notions he continues to have as an adult in regard to +his "superiors" and the institutions and _mores_ under which he is +called to live. Attempts in later life to gain intellectual freedom +can only be successful if one comes to think of the childish origin of +a great part of his "real" reasons. + +[11] Clarence Day in _Our Simian World_ discusses with delightful +humor the effects of our underlying simian temperament on the conduct +of life. + +[12] The word "imitation" is commonly used very loosely. The real +question is does an animal, or even man himself, tend to make +movements or sounds made by their fellow-creatures in their presence +It seems to be made out now that even monkeys are not imitative in +that sense and that man himself has no general inclination to do over +what he sees being done. Pray, if you doubt this, note how many things +you see others doing that you have no inclination to imitate! For an +admirable summary see Thorndike, E. L., _The Original Nature of Man_, +1913, pp. 108 ff. + +[13] "If the earth were struck by one of Mr. Wells's comets, and if, +in consequence, every human being now alive were to lose all the +knowledge and habits which he had acquired from preceding generations +(though retaining unchanged all his own powers of invention and memory +and habituation) nine tenths of the inhabitants of London or New York +would be dead in a month, and 99 per cent of the remaining tenth would +be dead in six months. They would have no language to express their +thoughts, and no thoughts but vague reverie. They could not read +notices, or drive motors or horses. They would wander about, led by +the inarticulate cries of a few naturally dominant individuals, +drowning themselves, as thirst came on, in hundreds at the riverside +landing places, looting those shops where the smell of decaying food +attracted them, and perhaps at the end stumbling on the expedient of +cannibalism. Even in the country districts men could not invent, in +time to preserve their lives, methods of growing food, or taming +animals, or making fire, or so clothing themselves as to endure a +Northern winter."--GRAHAM WALLAS, _Our Social Heritage_, p. 16. Only +the very lowest of savages might possibly pull through if culture +should disappear. + +[14] "A Theory of History", Political Science Quarterly, December, +1920. He attributes history to the adventurers. + +[15] Count Korzybski in his _Manhood of Humanity_ is so impressed by +the uniqueness and undreamed possibilities of human civilization and +man's "time-binding" capacity that he declares that it is a gross and +misleading error to regard man as an animal at all. Yet he is forced +sadly to confess that man continues all too often to operate on an +animal or "space-binding" plan of life. His aim and outlook are, +however, essentially the same as those of the present writer. His +method of approach will appeal especially to those who are wont to +deal with affairs in the spirit of the mathematician and engineer. He +is quite right in thinking that man has hitherto had little conception +of his peculiar prerogatives and unlimited opportunities for +betterment. + +[16] In the beginning, too, man did not know how children came about, +for it was not easy to connect a common impulsive act with the event +of birth so far removed in time. The tales told to children still are +reminiscences of the mythical explanations which our savage ancestors +advanced to explain the arrival of the infant. Consequently, all +popular theories of the origin of marriage and the family based on the +assumption of conscious paternity are outlawed. + +[17] Lucretius warns the reader not to be deterred from considering +the evils wrought by religion by the fear of treading on "the unholy +grounds of reason and in the path of sin".--_De Rer. Nat_. i, 80 ff. + + + * * * * * + + +IV + + Thereupon one of the Egyptian priests, who was of a very great + age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but children, and + there was never an old man who was a Hellene. Solon in return + asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind + you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you + by ancient tradition; nor any science which is hoary with age. + --PLATO'S _Timaeus_, 22 (Jowett's translation). + + The truth is that we are far more likely to underrate the originality + of the Greeks than to exaggerate it, and we do not always remember the + very short time they took to lay down the lines scientific inquiry has + followed ever since.--JOHN BURNET. + + + + +8. BEGINNING OF CRITICAL THINKING + + +The Egyptians were the first people, so far as we know, who invented a +highly artificial method of writing, about five thousand years ago, +and began to devise new arts beyond those of their barbarous +predecessors. They developed painting and architecture, navigation, +and various ingenious industries; they worked in glass and enamels and +began the use of copper, and so introduced metal into human affairs. +But in spite of their extraordinary advance in practical, +matter-of-fact knowledge they remained very primitive in their +beliefs. The same may be said of the peoples of Mesopotamia and of the +western Asiatic nations in general--just as in our own day the +practical arts have got a long start compared with the revision of +beliefs in regard to man and the gods. The peculiar opinions of the +Egyptians do not enter directly into our intellectual heritage, but +some of the fundamental religious ideas which developed in western +Asia have, through the veneration for the Hebrew Scriptures, become +part and parcel of our ways of thinking. To the Greeks, however, we +are intellectually under heavy obligation. The literature of the +Greeks, in such fragments as escaped destruction, was destined, along +with the Hebrew Scriptures, to exercise an incalculable influence in +the formation of our modern civilized minds. These two dominating +literary heritages originated about the same time--day before +yesterday--viewed in the perspective of our race's history. Previous +to the Greek civilization books had played no great part in the +development, dissemination, and transmission of culture from +generation to generation. Now they were to become a cardinal force in +advancing and retarding the mind's expansion. + +It required about a thousand years for the Greek shepherds from the +pastures of the Danube to assimilate the culture of the highly +civilized regions in which they first appeared as barbarian +destroyers. They accepted the industrial arts of the eastern +Mediterranean, adopted the Phoenician alphabet, and emulated the +Phoenician merchant. By the seventh century before our era they had +towns, colonies, and commerce, with much stimulating running hither +and thither. We get our first traces of new intellectual enterprise in +the Ionian cities, especially Miletus, and in the Italian colonies of +the Greeks. Only later did Athens become the unrivaled center in a +marvelous outflowering of the human intelligence. + +It is a delicate task to summarize what we owe to the Greeks. Leaving +aside their supreme achievements in literature and art, we can +consider only very briefly the general scope and nature of their +thinking as it relates most closely to our theme. + +The chief strength of the Greeks lay in their freedom from hampering +intellectual tradition. They had no venerated classics, no holy books, +no dead languages to master, no authorities to check their free +speculation. As Lord Bacon reminds us, they had no antiquity of +knowledge and no knowledge of antiquity. A modern classicist would +have been a forlorn outlander in ancient Athens, with no books in a +forgotten tongue, no obsolete inflections to impose upon reluctant +youth. He would have had to use the everyday speech of the +sandal-maker and fuller. + +For a long time no technical words were invented to give aloofness and +seeming precision to philosophic and scientific discussion. Aristotle +was the first to use words incomprehensible to the average citizen. It +was in these conditions that the possibilities of human criticism +first showed themselves. The primitive notions of man, of the gods, +and of the workings of natural forces began to be overhauled on an +entirely new scale. Intelligence developed rapidly as exceptionally +bold individuals came to have their suspicions of simple, spontaneous, +and ancient ways of looking at things. Ultimately there came men who +professed to doubt everything. + +As Abelard long after put it, "By doubting we come to question, and by +seeking we may come upon the truth." But man is by nature credulous. +He is victimized by first impressions, from which he can only escape +with great difficulty. He resents criticism of accepted and familiar +ideas as he resents any unwelcome disturbance of routine. So criticism +is against nature, for it conflicts with the smooth workings of our +more primitive minds, those of the child and the savage. + +It should not be forgotten that the Greek people were no exception in +this matter. Anaxagoras and Aristotle were banished for thinking as +they did; Euripides was an object of abhorrence to the conservative of +his day, and Socrates was actually executed for his godless teachings. +The Greek thinkers furnish the first instance of intellectual freedom, +of the "self-detachment and self-abnegating vigor of criticism" which +is most touchingly illustrated in the honest "know-nothingism" of +Socrates. _They discovered skepticism in the higher and proper +significance of the word, and this was their supreme contribution to +human thought_. + +One of the finest examples of early Greek skepticism was the discovery +of Xenophanes that man created the gods in his own image. He looked +about him, observed the current conceptions of the gods, compared +those of different peoples, and reached the conclusion that the way in +which a tribe pictured its gods was not the outcome of any knowledge +of how they really looked and whether they had black eyes or blue, but +was a reflection of the familiarly human. If the lions had gods they +would have the shape of their worshipers. + +No more fundamentally shocking revelation was ever made than this, for +it shook the very foundations of religious belief. The home life on +Olympus as described in Homer was too scandalous to escape the +attention of the thoughtful, and no later Christian could have +denounced the demoralizing influence of the current religious beliefs +in hotter indignation than did Plato. To judge from the reflection of +Greek thought which we find in Lucretius and Cicero, none of the +primitive religious beliefs escaped mordant criticism. + +The second great discovery of the Greek thinkers was _metaphysics_. +They did not have the name, which originated long after in quite an +absurd fashion,[18] but they reveled in the thing. Nowadays +metaphysics is revered by some as our noblest effort to reach the +highest truth, and scorned by others as the silliest of wild-goose +chases. I am inclined to rate it, like smoking, as a highly gratifying +indulgence to those who like it, and, as indulgences go, relatively +innocent. The Greeks found that the mind could carry on an absorbing +game with itself. We all engage in reveries and fantasies of a homely, +everyday type, concerned with our desires or resentments, but the +fantasy of the metaphysician busies itself with conceptions, +abstractions, distinctions, hypotheses, postulates, and logical +inferences. Having made certain postulates or hypotheses, he finds new +conclusions, which he follows in a seemingly convincing manner. This +gives him the delightful emotion of pursuing Truth, something as the +simple man pursues a maiden. Only Truth is more elusive than the +maiden and may continue to beckon her follower for long years, no +matter how gray and doddering he may become. + +Let me give two examples of metaphysical reasoning.[19] We have an +idea of an omnipotent, all-good, and perfect being. We are incapable, +knowing as we do only imperfect things, of framing such an idea for +ourselves, so it must have been given us by the being himself. And +perfection must include existence, so God must exist. This was good +enough for Anselm and for Descartes, who went on to build a whole +closely concatenated philosophical system on this foundation. To them +the logic seemed irrefragable; to the modern student of comparative +religion, even to Kant, himself a metaphysician, there was nothing +whatsoever in it but an illustration of the native operations of a +mind that has made a wholly gratuitous hypothesis and is victimized by +an orderly series of spontaneous associations. + +A second example of metaphysics may be found in the doctrines of the +Eleatic philosophers, who early appeared in the Greek colonies on the +coast of Italy, and thought hard about space and motion. Empty space +seemed as good as nothing, and, as nothing could not be said to exist, +space must be an illusion; and as motion implied space in which to +take place, there could be no motion. So all things were really +perfectly compact and at rest, and all our impressions of change were +the illusions of the thoughtless and the simple-minded. Since one of +the chief satisfactions of the metaphysicians is to get away from the +welter of our mutable world into a realm of assurance, this doctrine +exercised a great fascination over many minds. The Eleatic conviction +of unchanging stability received a new form in Plato's doctrine of +eternal "ideas", and later developed into the comforting conception of +the "Absolute", in which logical and world-weary souls have sought +refuge from the times of Plotinus to those of Josiah Royce. + +But there was one group of Greek thinkers whose general notions of +natural operations correspond in a striking manner to the conclusions +of the most recent science. These were the Epicureans. Democritus was +in no way a modern experimental scientist, but he met the Eleatic +metaphysics with another set of speculative considerations which +happened to be nearer what is now regarded as the truth than theirs. +He rejected the Eleatic decisions against the reality of space and +motion on the ground that, since motion obviously took place, the void +must be a reality, even if the metaphysician could not conceive it. He +hit upon the notion that all things were composed of minute, +indestructible particles (or atoms) of fixed kinds. Given motion and +sufficient time, these might by fortuitous concourse make all possible +combinations. And it was one of these combinations which we call the +world as we find it. For the atoms of various shapes were inherently +capable of making up all material things, even the soul of man and the +gods themselves. There was no permanence anywhere; all was no more +than the shifting accidental and fleeting combinations of the +permanent atoms of which the cosmos was composed. This doctrine was +accepted by the noble Epicurus and his school and is delivered to us +in the immortal poem of Lucretius "On the Nature of Things". + +The Epicureans believed the gods to exist because, like Anselm and +Descartes, they thought we had an innate idea of them. But the divine +beings led a life of elegant ease and took no account of man; neither +his supplications, nor his sweet-smelling sacrifices, nor his +blasphemies, ever disturbed their calm. Moreover, the human soul was +dissipated at death. So the Epicureans flattered themselves that they +had delivered man from his two chief apprehensions, the fear of the +gods and the fear of death. For, as Lucretius says, he who understands +the real nature of things will see that both are the illusions of +ignorance. Thus one school of Greek thinkers attained to a complete +rejection of religious beliefs in the name of natural science. + + + + +9. INFLUENCE OF PLATO AND ARISTOTLE + + +In Plato we have at once the skepticism and the metaphysics of his +contemporaries. He has had his followers down through the ages, some +of whom carried his skepticism to its utmost bounds, while others +availed themselves of his metaphysics to rear a system of arrogant +mystical dogmatism. He put his speculations in the form of dialogues +--ostensible discussions in the market place or the houses of +philosophic Athenians. The Greek word for logic is dialectic, which +really means "discussion". argumentation in the interest of fuller +analysis, with the hope of more critical conclusions. The dialogues +are the drama of his day, employed in Plato's magical hand as a +vehicle of discursive reason. Of late we have in Ibsen, Shaw, Brieux, +and Galsworthy the old expedient applied to the consideration of +social perplexities and contradictions. The dialogue is indecisive in +its outcome. It does not lend itself to dogmatic conclusions and +systematic presentation, but exposes the intricacy of all important +questions and the inevitable conflict of views, which may seem +altogether irreconcilable. We much need to encourage and elaborate +opportunities for profitable discussion to-day. We should revert to +the dialectic of the Athenian agora and make it a chosen instrument +for clarifying, co-ordinating and directing our co-operative thinking. + +Plato's indecision and urbane fair-mindedness is called irony. Now +irony is seriousness without solemnity. It assumes that man is a +serio-comic animal, and that no treatment of his affairs can be +appropriate which gives him a consistency and dignity which he does +not possess. He is always a child and a savage. He is the victim of +conflicting desires and hidden yearnings. He may talk like a +sentimental idealist and act like a brute. The same person will devote +anxious years to the invention of high explosives and then give his +fortune to the promotion of peace. We devise the most exquisite +machinery for blowing our neighbors to pieces and then display our +highest skill and organization in trying to patch together such as +offer hope of being mended. Our nature forbids us to make a definite +choice between the machine gun and the Red Cross nurse. So we use the +one to keep the other busy. Human thought and conduct can only be +treated broadly and truly in a mood of tolerant irony. It belies the +logical precision of the long-faced, humorless writer on politics and +ethics, whose works rarely deal with man at all, but are a stupid form +of metaphysics. + +Plato made terms with the welter of things, but sought relief in the +conception of supernal models, eternal in the heavens, after which all +things were imperfectly fashioned. He confessed that he could not bear +to accept a world which was like a leaky pot or a man running at the +nose. In short, he ascribed the highest form of existence to ideals +and abstractions. This was a new and sophisticated republication of +savage animism. It invited lesser minds than his to indulge in all +sorts of noble vagueness and impertinent jargon which continue to +curse our popular discussions of human affairs. He consecrated one of +the chief foibles of the human mind and elevated it to a religion. + +Ever since his time men have discussed the import of names. Are there +such things as love, friendship, and honor, or are there only lovely +things, friendly emotions in this individual and that, deeds which we +may, according to our standards, pronounce honorable or dishonorable? +If you believe in beauty, truth, and love _as such_ you are a +Platonist. If you believe that there are only individual instances and +illustrations of various classified emotions and desires and acts, and +that abstractions are only the inevitable categories of thought, you +would in the Middle Ages have been called a "nominalist". + +This matter merits a long discussion, but one can test any book or +newspaper editorial at his leisure and see whether the writer puts you +off with abstractions--Americanism, Bolshevism, public welfare, +liberty, national honor, religion, morality, good taste, rights of +man, science, reason, error--or, on the other hand, casts some light +on actual human complications. I do not mean, of course, that we can +get along without the use of abstract and general terms in our +thinking and speaking, but we should be on our constant guard against +viewing them as forces and attributing to them the vigor of +personality. Animism is, as already explained, a pitfall which is +always yawning before us and into which we are sure to plunge unless +we are ever watchful. Platonism is its most amiable and complete +disguise. + +Previous to Aristotle, Greek thought had been wonderfully free and +elastic. It had not settled into compartments or assumed an +educational form which would secure its unrevised transmission from +teacher to student. It was not gathered together in systematic +treatises. Aristotle combined the supreme powers of an original and +creative thinker with the impulses of a textbook writer. He loved +order and classification. He supplied manuals of Ethics, Politics, +Logic, Psychology, Physics, Metaphysics, Economics, Poetics, Zoölogy, +Meteorology, Constitutional Law, and God only knows what not, for we +do not have by any means all the things he wrote. And he was equally +interested, and perhaps equally capable, in all the widely scattered +fields in which he labored. And some of his manuals were so +overwhelming in the conclusiveness of their reasoning, so +all-embracing in their scope, that the mediaeval universities may be +forgiven for having made them the sole basis of a liberal education +and for imposing fines on those who ventured to differ from "The +Philosopher". He seemed to know everything that could be known and to +have ordered all earthly knowledge in an inspired codification which +would stand the professors in good stead down to the day of judgment. + +Aristotle combined an essentially metaphysical taste with a +preternatural power of observation in dealing with the workings of +nature. In spite of his inevitable mistakes, which became the curse of +later docile generations, no other thinker of whom we have record can +really compare with him in the distinction and variety of his +achievements. It is not his fault that posterity used his works to +hamper further progress and clarification. He is the father of book +knowledge and the grandfather of the commentator. + +After two or three hundred years of talking in the market place and of +philosophic discussions prolonged until morning, such of the Greeks as +were predisposed to speculation had thought all the thoughts and +uttered all the criticisms of commonly accepted beliefs and of one +another that could by any possibility occur to those who had little +inclination to fare forth and extend their knowledge of the so-called +realities of nature by painful and specialized research and +examination. This is to me the chief reason why, except for some +advances in mathematics, astronomy, geography, and the refinements of +scholarship, the glorious period of the Greek mind is commonly and +rightfully assumed to have come to an end about the time of +Aristotle's death. Why did the Greeks not go on, as modern scientists +have gone on, with vistas of the unachieved still ahead of them? + +In the first place, Greek civilization was founded on slavery and a +fixed condition of the industrial arts. The philosopher and scholar +was estopped from fumbling with those everyday processes that were +associated with the mean life of the slave and servant. Consequently +there was no one to devise the practical apparatus by which alone +profound and ever-increasing knowledge of natural operations is +possible. The mechanical inventiveness of the Greeks was slight, and +hence they never came upon the lens; they had no microscope to reveal +the minute, no telescope to attract the remote; they never devised a +mechanical timepiece, a thermometer, nor a barometer, to say nothing +of cameras and spectroscopes. Archimedes, it is reported, disdained to +make any record of his ingenious devices, for they were unworthy the +noble profession of a philosopher. Such inventions as were made were +usually either toys or of a heavy practical character. So the next +great step forward in the extension of the human mind awaited the +disappearance of slavery and the slowly dawning suspicion, and final +repudiation, of the older metaphysics, which first became marked some +three hundred years ago. + + +NOTES. + +[18] When in the time of Cicero the long-hidden works of Aristotle +were recovered and put into the hands of Andronicus of Rhodes to edit, +he found certain fragments of highly abstruse speculation which he did +not know what to do with. So he called them "addenda to the +Physics"--_Ta meta ta physica_. These fragments, under the caption +"Metaphysica", became the most revered of Aristotle's productions, his +"First Philosophy", as the Scholastics were wont to call it. + +[19] John Dewey deduces metaphysics from man's original reverie and +then shows how in time it became a solemn form of rationalizing +current habits and standards. _Reconstruction in Philosophy_, lectures +i-ii. It is certainly surprising how few philosophical writers have +ever reached other than perfectly commonplace conclusions in regard to +practical "morality". + + + * * * * * + + +V + + And God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the + day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. + And God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the + earth. + + And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after + its kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after + its kind: and it was so. + + And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and + let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl + of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over + every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.--Gen. i. + + + Ibi vacabimus et videbimus, videbimus et amabimus, amabimus et + laudabimus. Ecce quod erit in fine sine fine. Nam quis alius noster + est finis nisi pervenire ad regnum, cuius nullus est finis?--AUGUSTINE. + + + + +10. ORIGIN OF THE MEDIAEVAL CIVILIZATION + + +In the formation of what we may call our historical mind--namely, that +modification of our animal and primitive outlook which has been +produced by men of exceptional intellectual venturesomeness--the +Greeks played a great part. We have seen how the Greek thinkers +introduced for the first time highly subtle and critical ways of +scrutinizing old beliefs, and, how they disabused their minds of many +an ancient and naïve mistake. But our current ways of thinking are not +derived directly from the Greeks; we are separated from them by the +Roman Empire and the Middle Ages. When we think of Athens we think of +the Parthenon and its frieze, of Sophocles and Euripides, of Socrates +and Plato and Aristotle, of urbanity and clarity and moderation in all +things. When we think of the Middle Ages we find ourselves in a world +of monks, martyrs, and miracles, of popes and emperors, of knights and +ladies; we remember Gregory the Great, Abélard, and Thomas Aquinas +--and very little do these reminiscences have in common with those of +Hellas. + +It was indeed a different world, with quite different fundamental +presuppositions. Marvelous as were the achievements of the Greeks in +art and literature, and ingenious as they were in new and varied +combinations of ideas, they paid too little attention to the common +things of the world to devise the necessary means of penetrating its +mysteries. They failed to come upon the lynx-eyed lens, or other +instruments of modern investigation, and thus never gained a godlike +vision of the remote and the minute. Their critical thought was +consequently not grounded in experimental or applied science, and +without that the western world was unable to advance or even long +maintain their high standards of criticism. + +After the Hellenes were absorbed into the vast Roman Empire critical +thought and creative intelligence--rare and precarious things at +best--began to decline, at first slowly and then with fatal rapidity +and completeness. Moreover, new and highly uncritical beliefs and +modes of thought became popular. They came from the Near East +--Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor--and largely supplanted +the critical traditions of the great schools of Greek philosophy. +The Stoic and Epicurean dogmas had lost their freshness. The Greek +thinkers had all agreed in looking for salvation through intelligence +and knowledge. But eloquent leaders arose to reveal a new salvation, +and over the portal of truth they erased the word "Reason" and wrote +"Faith" in its stead; and the people listened gladly to the new +prophets, for it was necessary only _to believe_ to be saved, and +believing is far easier than thinking. + +It was religious and mystical thought which, in contrast to the +secular philosophy of the Greeks and the scientific thought of our own +day, dominated the intellectual life of the Middle Ages. + +Before considering this new phase through which the human mind was to +pass it is necessary to guard against a common misapprehension in the +use of the term "Middle Ages". Our historical textbooks usually +include in that period the happenings between the dissolution of the +Roman Empire and the voyages of Columbus or the opening of the +Protestant revolt. To the student of intellectual history this is +unfortunate, for the simple reason that almost all the ideas and even +institutions of the Middle Ages, such as the church and monasticism +and organized religious intolerance, really originated in the late +Roman Empire. Moreover, the intellectual revolution which has ushered +in the thought of our day did not get well under way until the +seventeenth century. So one may say that medieval thought began long +before the accepted beginning of the Middle Ages and persisted a +century or so after they are ordinarily esteemed to have come to an +end. We have to continue to employ the old expression for convenience' +sake, but from the standpoint of the history of the European mind +three periods should be distinguished, lying between ancient Greek +thought as it was flourishing in Athens, Alexandria, Rhodes, Rome, and +elsewhere at the opening of the Christian era, and the birth of modern +science some sixteen hundred years later. + +The first of these is the period of the Christian Fathers, culminating +in the authoritative writings of Augustine, who died in 430. By this +time a great part of the critical Greek books had disappeared in +western Europe. As for pagan writers, one has difficulty in thinking +of a single name (except that of Lucian) later than Juvenal, who had +died nearly three hundred years before Augustine. Worldly knowledge +was reduced to pitiful compendiums on which the mediaeval students +were later to place great reliance. Scientific, literary, and +historical information was scarcely to be had. The western world, so +far as it thought at all, devoted its attention to religion and all +manner of mystical ideas, old and new. As Harnack has so well said, +the world was already intellectually bankrupt before the German +invasions and their accompanying disorders plunged it into still +deeper ignorance and mental obscurity. + +The second, or "Dark Age", lasted with only slight improvement from +Augustine to Abélard, about seven hundred years. The prosperous +_villas_ disappeared; towns vanished or shriveled up; libraries were +burned or rotted away from neglect; schools were closed, to be +reopened later here and there, after Charlemagne's educational edict, +in an especially enterprising monastery or by some exceptional bishop +who did not spend his whole time in fighting. + +From about the year 1100 conditions began to be more and more +favorable to the revival of intellectual ambition, a recovery of +forgotten knowledge, and a gradual accumulation of new information and +inventions unknown to the Greeks, or indeed to any previous +civilization. The main presuppositions of this third period of the +later Middle Ages go back, however, to the Roman Empire. They had been +formulated by the Church Fathers, transmitted through the Dark Age, +and were now elaborated by the professors in the newly established +universities under the influence of Aristotle's recovered works and +built up into a majestic intellectual structure known as +Scholasticism. On these mediaeval university professors--the +schoolmen--Lord Bacon long ago pronounced a judgment that may well +stand to-day. "Having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, +and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the +cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle, their dictator), as their +persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and +knowing little history, either of nature or time [they], did out of no +great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto +us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books." + +Our civilization and the human mind, critical and uncritical, as we +now find it in our western world, is a direct and uninterrupted +outgrowth of the civilization and thought of the later Middle Ages. +Very gradually only did peculiarly free and audacious individual +thinkers escape from this or that mediaeval belief, until in our own +day some few have come to reject practically all the presuppositions +on which the Scholastic system was reared. But the great mass of +Christian believers, whether Catholic or Protestant, still professedly +or implicitly adhere to the assumptions of the Middle Ages, at least +in all matters in which religious or moral sanctions are concerned. It +is true that outside the Catholic clergy the term "mediaeval" is often +used in a sense of disparagement, but that should not blind us to the +fact that mediaeval presumptions, whether for better or worse, are +still common. A few of the most fundamental of these presuppositions +especially germane to our theme may be pointed out here. + + + + +11. OUR MEDIAEVAL INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE + + +The Greeks and Romans had various theories of the origin of things, +all vague and admittedly conjectural. But the Christians, relying upon +the inspired account in the Bible, built their theories on information +which they believed vouchsafed to them by God himself. Their whole +conception of human history was based upon a far more fundamental and +thorough supernaturalism than we find among the Greeks and Romans. The +pagan philosophers reckoned with the gods, to be sure, but they never +assumed that man's earthly life should turn entirely on what was to +happen after death. This was in theory the sole preoccupation of the +mediaeval Christian. Life here below was but a brief, if decisive, +preliminary to the real life to come. + +The mediaeval Christian was essentially more polytheistic than his +pagan predecessors, for he pictured hierarchies of good and evil +spirits who were ever aiding him to reach heaven or seducing him into +the paths of sin and error. Miracles were of common occurrence and +might be attributed either to God or the devil; the direct +intervention of both good and evil spirits played a conspicuous part +in the explanation of daily acts and motives.[20] + +As a distinguished church historian has said, the God of the Middle +Ages was a God of arbitrariness--the more arbitrary the more Godlike. +By frequent interferences with the regular course of events he made +his existence clear, reassured his children of his continued +solicitude, and frustrated the plots of the Evil One. Not until the +eighteenth century did any considerable number of thinkers revolt +against this conception of the Deity and come to worship a God of +orderliness who abode by his own laws. + +The mediaeval thinkers all accepted without question what Santayana +has strikingly described as the "Christian Epic". This included the +general historical conceptions of how man came about, and how, in view +of his origin and his past, he should conduct his life. The universe +had come into being in less than a week, and man had originally been +created in a state of perfection along with all other things--sun, +moon, and stars, plants and animals. After a time the first human pair +had yielded to temptation, transgressed God's commands, and been +driven from the lovely garden in which he had placed them. So sin came +into the world, and the offspring of the guilty pair were thereby +contaminated and defiled from the womb. + +In time the wickedness became such on the newly created earth that God +resolved to blot out mankind, excepting only Noah's family, which was +spared to repeople the earth after the Flood, but the unity of +language that man had formerly possessed was lost. At the appointed +time, preceded by many prophetic visions among the chosen people, God +sent his Son to live the life of men on earth and become their Saviour +by submitting to death. Thereafter, with the spread of the gospel, the +struggle between the kingdom of God and that of the devil became the +supreme conflict of history. It was to culminate in the Last Judgment, +when the final separation of good and evil should take place and the +blessed should ascend into the heavens to dwell with God forever, +while the wicked sank to hell to writhe in endless torment. + +This general account of man, his origin and fate, embraced in the +Christian Epic, was notable for its precision, its divine +authenticity, and the obstacles which its authority consequently +presented to any revision in the light of increasing knowledge. The +fundamental truths in regard to man were assumed to be established +once and for all. The Greek thinkers had had little in the way of +authority on which to build, and no inconsiderable number of them +frankly confessed that they did not believe that such a thing could +exist for the thoroughly sophisticated intelligence. But mediaeval +philosophy and science _were grounded wholly in authority_. The +mediaeval schoolmen turned aside from the hard path of skepticism, +long searchings and investigation of actual phenomena, and confidently +believed that they could find truth by the easy way of revelation and +the elaboration of unquestioned dogmas. + +This reliance on authority is a fundamental primitive trait. We have +inherited it not only from our mediaeval forefathers, but, like them +and through them, from long generations of prehistoric men. We all +have a natural tendency to rely upon established beliefs and fixed +institutions. This is an expression of our spontaneous confidence in +everything that comes to us in an unquestioned form. As children we +are subject to authority and cannot escape the control of existing +opinion. We unconsciously absorb our ideas and views from the group in +which we happen to live. What we see about us, what we are told, and +what we read has to be received at its face value so long as there are +no conflicts to arouse skepticism. + +We are tremendously suggestible. Our mechanism is much better adapted +to credulity than to questioning. All of us believe nearly all the +time. Few doubt, and only now and then. The past exercises an almost +irresistible fascination over us. As children we learn to look up to +the old, and when we grow up we do not permit our poignant realization +of elderly incapacity among our contemporaries to rouse suspicions of +Moses, Isaiah, Confucius, or Aristotle. Their sayings come to us +unquestioned; their remoteness makes inquiry into their competence +impossible. We readily assume that they had sources of information and +wisdom superior to the prophets of our own day. + +During the Middle Ages reverence for authority, and for that +particular form of authority which we may call the tyranny of the +past, was dominant, but probably not more so than it had been in other +societies and ages--in ancient Egypt, in China and India. Of the great +sources of mediaeval authority, the Bible and the Church Fathers, the +Roman and Church law, and the encyclopaedic writings of Aristotle, +none continues nowadays to hold us in its old grip. Even the Bible, +although nominally unquestioned among Roman Catholics and all the more +orthodox Protestant sects, is rarely appealed to, as of old, in +parliamentary debate or in discussions of social and economic +questions. It is still a religious authority, but it no longer forms +the basis of secular decisions. + +The findings of modern science have shaken the hold of the sources of +mediaeval authority, but they have done little as yet to loosen our +inveterate habit of relying on the more insidious authority of current +practice and belief. We still assume that received dogmas represent +the secure conclusions of mankind, and that current institutions +represent the approved results of much experiment in the past, which +it would be worse than futile to repeat. One solemn remembrancer will +cite as a warning the discreditable experience of the Greek cities in +democracy; another, how the decline of "morality" and the +disintegration of the family heralded the fall of Rome; another, the +constant menace of mob rule as exemplified in the Reign of Terror. But +to the student of history these alleged illustrations have little +bearing on present conditions. He is struck, moreover, with the ease +with which ancient misapprehensions are transmitted from generation to +generation and with the difficulty of launching a newer and clearer +and truer idea of anything. Bacon warns us that the multitude, "or the +wisest for the multitude's sake", is in reality "ready to give passage +rather to that which is popular and superficial than to that which is +substantial and profound; for the truth is that time seemeth to be of +the nature of a river or stream, which carrieth down to us that which +is light and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is weighty +and solid". + +It is very painful to most minds to admit that the past does not +furnish us with reliable, permanent standards of conduct and of public +policy. We resent the imputation that things are not going, on the +whole, pretty well, and find excuses for turning our backs on +disconcerting and puzzling facts. We are full of respectable fears and +a general timidity in the face of conditions which we vaguely feel are +escaping control in spite of our best efforts to prevent any +thoroughgoing readjustment. We instinctively try to show that Mr. +Keynes must surely be wrong about the Treaty of Versailles; that Mr. +Gibbs must be perversely exaggerating the horrors of modern war; that +Mr. Hobson certainly views the industrial crisis with unjustifiable +pessimism; that "business as usual" cannot be that socially perverse +and incredibly inexpedient thing Mr. Veblen shows it to be; that Mr. +Robin's picture of Lenin can only be explained by a disguised sympathy +for Bolshevism. + +Yet, even if we could assume that traditional opinion is a fairly +clear and reliable reflection of hard-earned experience, surely it +should have less weight in our day and generation than in the past. +For changes have overtaken mankind which have fundamentally altered +the conditions in which we live, and which are revolutionizing the +relations between individuals and classes and nations. Moreover, we +must remember that knowledge has widened and deepened, so that, could +any of us really catch up with the information of our own time, he +would have little temptation to indulge the mediaeval habit of +appealing to the authority of the past. + +The Christian Epic did not have to rely for its perpetuation either on +its intellectual plausibility or its traditional authority. During the +Middle Ages there developed a vast and powerful religious State, the +mediaeval Church, the real successor, as Hobbes pointed out, to the +Roman Empire; and the Church with all its resources, including its +control over "the secular arm" of kings and princes, was ready to +defend the Christian beliefs against question and revision. To doubt +the teachings of the Church was the supreme crime; it was treason +against God himself, in comparison with which--to judge from mediaeval +experts on heresy--murder was a minor offense. + +We do not, however, inherit our present disposition to intolerance +solely from the Middle Ages. As animals and children and savages, we +are naively and unquestioningly intolerant. All divergence from the +customary is suspicious and repugnant. It seems perverse, and readily +suggests evil intentions. Indeed, so natural and spontaneous is +intolerance that the question of freedom of speech and writing +scarcely became a real issue before the seventeenth century. We have +seen that some of the Greek thinkers were banished, or even executed, +for their new ideas. The Roman officials, as well as the populace, +pestered the early Christians, not so much for the substance of their +views as because they were puritanical, refused the routine reverence +to the gods, and prophesied the downfall of the State. + +But with the firm establishment of Christianity edicts began to be +issued by the Roman emperors making orthodox Christian belief the test +of good citizenship. One who disagreed with the emperor and his +religious advisers in regard to the relation of the three members of +the Trinity was subject to prosecution. Heretical books were burned, +the houses of heretics destroyed. So, organized mediaeval religious +intolerance was, like so many other things, a heritage of the later +Roman Empire, and was duly sanctioned in both the Theodosian and +Justinian Codes. It was, however, with the Inquisition, beginning in +the thirteenth century, that the intolerance of the Middle Ages +reached its most perfect organization. + +Heresy was looked upon as a contagious disease that must be checked at +all costs. It did not matter that the heretic usually led a +conspicuously blameless life, that he was arduous, did not swear, was +emaciated with fasting and refused to participate in the vain +recreations of his fellows. He was, indeed, overserious and took his +religion too hard. This offensive parading as an angel of light was +explained as the devil's camouflage. No one tried to find out what the +heretic really thought or what were the merits of his divergent +beliefs. Because he insisted on expressing his conception of God in +slightly unfamiliar terms, the heretic was often branded as an +atheist, just as to-day the Socialist is so often accused of being +opposed to all government, when the real objection to him is that he +believes in too much government. It was sufficient to classify a +suspected heretic as an Albigensian, or Waldensian, or a member of +some other heretical sect. There was no use in his trying to explain +or justify; it was enough that he diverged. + +There have been various explanations of mediaeval religious +intolerance. Lecky, for example, thought that it was due to the theory +of exclusive salvation; that, since there was only one way of getting +to heaven, all should obviously be compelled to adopt it, for the +saving of their souls from eternal torment. But one finds little +solicitude for the damned in mediaeval writings. The public at large +thought hell none too bad for one who revolted against God and Holy +Church. No, the heretics were persecuted because heresy was, according +to the notions of the time, a monstrous and unutterably wicked thing, +and because their beliefs threatened the vested interests of that day. + +We now realize more clearly than did Lecky that the Church was really +a State in the Middle Ages, with its own laws and courts and prisons +and regular taxation to which all were subject. It had all the +interests and all the touchiness of a State, and more. The heretic was +a traitor and a rebel. He thought that he could get along without the +pope and bishops, and that he could well spare the ministrations of +the orthodox priests and escape their exactions. He was the +"anarchist", the "Red" of his time, who was undermining established +authority, and, with the approval of all right-minded citizens, he was +treated accordingly. For the mediaeval citizen no more conceived of a +State in which the Church was not the dominating authority than we can +conceive of a society in which the present political State may have +been superseded by some other form of organization. + +Yet the inconceivable has come to pass. Secular authority has +superseded in nearly all matters the old ecclesiastical regime. What +was the supreme issue of the Middle Ages--the distinction between the +religious heretic and the orthodox--is the least of public questions +now. + +What, then, we may ask, has been the outcome of the old religious +persecutions, of the trials, tortures, imprisonings, burnings, and +massacres, culminating with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes? +What did the Inquisition and the censorship, both so long +unquestioned, accomplish? Did they succeed in defending the truth or +"safeguarding" society? At any rate, conformity was not established. +Nor did the Holy Roman Church maintain its monopoly, although it has +survived, purified and freed from many an ancient abuse. In most +countries of western Europe and in our own land one may now believe as +he wishes, teach such religious views as appeal to him, and join with +others who share his sympathies. "Atheism" is still a shocking charge +in many ears, but the atheist is no longer an outlaw. _It has been +demonstrated, in short, that religious dogma can be neglected in +matters of public concern and reduced to a question of private taste +and preference_. + +This is an incredible revolution. But we have many reasons for +suspecting that in a much shorter time than that which has elapsed +since the Inquisition was founded, the present attempt to eliminate by +force those who contemplate a fundamental reordering of social and +economic relations will seem quite as inexpedient and hopeless as the +Inquisition's effort to defend the monopoly of the mediaeval Church. + +We can learn much from the past in regard to wrong ways of dealing +with new ideas. As yet we have only old-fashioned and highly expensive +modes of meeting the inevitable changes which are bound to take place. +Repression has now and then enjoyed some temporary success, it is +true, but in the main it has failed lamentably and produced only +suffering and confusion. Much will depend on whether our purpose is to +keep things as they are or to bring about readjustments designed to +correct abuses and injustice in the present order. Do we believe, in +other words, that truth is finally established and that we have only +to defend it, or that it is still in the making? Do we believe in what +is commonly called progress, or do we think of that as belonging only +to the past? Have we, on the whole, arrived, or are we only on the +way, or mayhap just starting? + +In the Middle Ages, even in the times of the Greeks and Romans, there +was little or no conception of progress as the word is now used. There +could doubtless be improvement in detail. Men could be wiser and +better or more ignorant and perverse. But the assumption was that in +general the social, economic, and religious order was fairly +standardized. + +This was especially true in the Middle Ages. During these centuries +men's single objective was the assurance of heaven and escape from +hell. Life was an angry river into which men were cast. Demons were on +every hand to drag them down. The only aim could be, with God's help, +to reach the celestial shore. There was no time to consider whether +the river might be made less dangerous by concerted effort, through +the deflection of its torrents and the removal of its sharpest rocks. +No one thought that human efforts should be directed to making the lot +of humanity progressively better by intelligent reforms in the light +of advancing knowledge. + +The world was a place to escape from on the best terms possible. In +our own day this mediaeval idea of a static society yields only +grudgingly, and the notion of inevitable vital change is as yet far +from assimilated. We confess it with our lips, but resist it in our +hearts. We have learned as yet to respect only one class of +fundamental innovators, those dedicated to natural science and its +applications. The social innovator is still generally suspect. + +To the mediaeval theologian, man was by nature vile. We have seen +that, according to the Christian Epic, he was assoiled from birth with +the primeval sin of his first parents, and began to darken his score +with fresh offenses of his own as soon as he became intelligent enough +to do so. An elaborate mechanism was supplied by the Church for washing +away the original pollution and securing forgiveness for later sins. +Indeed, this was ostensibly its main business. + +We may still well ask, Is man by nature bad? And accordingly as we +answer the question we either frame appropriate means for frustrating +his evil tendencies or, if we see some promise in him, work for his +freedom and bid him take advantage of it to make himself and others +happy. So far as I know, Charron, a friend of Montaigne, was one of +the first to say a good word for man's animal nature, and a hundred +years later the amiable Shaftesbury pointed out some honestly +gentlemanly traits in the species. To the modern student of biology +and anthropology man is neither good nor bad. There is no longer any +"mystery of evil". But the mediaeval notion of _sin_--a term heavy +with mysticism and deserving of careful scrutiny by every thoughtful +person--still confuses us. + +Of man's impulses, the one which played the greatest part in mediaeval +thoughts of sin and in the monastic ordering of life was the sexual. +The presuppositions of the Middle Ages in the matter of the relations +of men and women have been carried over to our own day. As compared +with many of the ideas which we have inherited from the past, they are +of comparatively recent origin. The Greeks and Romans were, on the +whole, primitive and uncritical in their view of sex. The philosophers +do not seem to have speculated on sex, although there was evidently +some talk in Athens of women's rights. The movement is satirized by +Aristophanes, and later Plato showed a willingness in _The Republic_ +to impeach the current notions of the family and women's position in +general. + +But there are few traces of our ideas of sexual "purity" in the +classical writers. To the Stoic philosopher, and to other thoughtful +elderly people, sexual indulgence was deemed a low order of pleasure +and one best carefully controlled in the interests of peace of mind. +But with the incoming of Christianity an essentially new attitude +developed, which is still, consciously or unconsciously, that of most +people to-day. + +St. Augustine, who had led a free life as a teacher of rhetoric in +Carthage and Rome, came in his later years to believe, as he struggled +to overcome his youthful temptations, that sexual desire was the most +devilish of man's enemies and the chief sign of his degradation. He +could imagine no such unruly urgence in man's perfect estate, when +Adam and Eve still dwelt in Paradise. But with man's fall sexual +desire appeared as the sign and seal of human debasement. This theory +is poignantly set forth in Augustine's _City of God_. He furnished +therein a philosophy for the monks, and doubtless his fourteenth book +was well thumbed by those who were wont to ponder somewhat wistfully +on one of the sins they had fled the world to escape. + +Christian monasticism was spreading in western Europe in Augustine's +time, and the monkist vows included "chastity". There followed a long +struggle to force the whole priesthood to adopt a celibate life, and +this finally succeeded so far as repeated decrees of the Church could +effect it. Marriage was proper for the laity, but both the monastic +and secular clergy aspired to a superior holiness which should banish +all thoughts of fervent earthly love. Thus a highly unnatural life was +accepted by men and women of the most varied temperament and often +with slight success. + +The result of Augustine's theories and of the efforts to frustrate one +of man's most vehement impulses was to give sex a conscious importance +it had never possessed before. The devil was thrust out of the door +only to come in at all the windows. In due time the Protestant sects +abolished monasteries, and the Catholic countries later followed their +example. The Protestant clergy were permitted to marry, and the old +asceticism has visibly declined. But it has done much to determine our +whole attitude toward sex, and there is no class of questions still so +difficult to discuss with full honesty or to deal with critically and +with an open mind as those relating to the intimate relations of men +and women. + +No one familiar with mediaeval literature will, however, be inclined +to accuse its authors of prudishness. Nevertheless, modern +prudishness, as it prevails especially in England and the United +States--our squeamish and shamefaced reluctance to recognize and deal +frankly with the facts and problems of sex--is clearly an outgrowth of +the mediaeval attitude which looked on sexual impulse as of evil +origin and a sign of man's degradation. Modern psychologists have +shown that prudishness is not always an indication of exceptional +purity, but rather the reverse. It is often a disguise thrown over +repressed sexual interest and sexual preoccupations. It appears to be +decreasing among the better educated of the younger generation. The +study of biology, and especially of embryology, is an easy and simple +way of disintegrating the "impurity complex". "Purity" in the sense of +ignorance and suppressed curiosity is a highly dangerous state of +mind. And such purity in alliance with prudery and defensive hypocrisy +makes any honest discussion or essential readjustment of our +institutions and habits extremely difficult. + +One of the greatest contrasts between mediaeval thinking and the more +critical thought of to-day lies in the general conception of man's +relation to the cosmos. To the medieval philosopher, as to the +stupidest serf of the time, the world was made for man. All the +heavenly bodies revolved about man's abode as their center. All +creatures were made to assist or to try man. God and the devil were +preoccupied with his fate, for had not God made him in his own image +for his glory, and was not the devil intent on populating his own +infernal kingdom? It was easy for those who had a poetic turn of mind +to think of nature's workings as symbols for man's edification. The +habits of the lion or the eagle yielded moral lessons or illustrated +the divine scheme of salvation. Even the written word was to be +valued, not for what it seemed to say, but for hidden allegories +depicting man's struggles against evil and cheering him on his way. + +This is a perennially appealing conception of things. It corresponds +to primitive and inveterate tendencies in humanity and gratifies, +under the guise of humility, our hungering for self-importance. The +mediaeval thinker, however freely he might exercise his powers of +logical analysis in rationalizing the Christian Epic, never permitted +himself to question its general anthropocentric and mystical view of +the world. The philosophic mystic assumes the role of a docile child. +He feels that all vital truth transcends his powers of discovery. He +looks to the Infinite and Eternal Mind to reveal it to him through the +prophets of old, or in moments of ecstatic communion with the Divine +Intelligence. To the mystic all that concerns our deeper needs +transcends logic and defies analysis. In his estimate the human reason +is a feeble rushlight which can at best cast a flickering and +uncertain ray on the grosser concerns of life, but which only serves +to intensify the darkness which surrounds the hidden truth of God. + +In order that modern science might develop it is clear that a wholly +new and opposed set of fundamental convictions had to be substituted +for those of the Middle Ages. Man had to cultivate another kind of +self-importance and a new and more profound humility. He had come to +believe in his capacity to discover important truth through thoughtful +examination of things about him, and he had to recognize, on the other +hand, that the world did not seem to be made for him, but that +humanity was apparently a curious incident in the universe, and its +career a recent episode in cosmic history. He had to acquire a taste +for the simplest possible and most thoroughgoing explanation of +things. His whole mood had to change and impel him to reduce +everything so far as possible to the commonplace. + +This new view was inevitably fiercely attacked by the mystically +disposed. They misunderstood it and berated its adherents and accused +them of robbing man of all that was most precious in life. These, in +turn, were goaded into bitterness and denounced their opponents as +pig-headed obscurantists. + +But we must, after all, come to terms in some way with the emotions +underlying mysticism. They are very dear to us, and scientific +knowledge will never form an adequate substitute for them. No one need +fear that the supply of mystery will ever give out; but a great deal +depends on our taste in mystery; that certainly needs refining. What +disturbs the so-called rationalist in the mystic's attitude is his +propensity to see mysteries where there are none and to fail to see +those that we cannot possibly escape. In declaring that one is not a +mystic, one makes no claim to be able to explain everything, nor does +he maintain that all things are explicable in scientific terms. + +Indeed, no thoughtful person will be likely to boast that he can fully +explain anything. We have only to scrape the surface of our +experiences to find fundamental mystery. And how, indeed, as +descendants of an extinct race of primates, with a mind still in the +early stages of accumulation, should we be in the way of reaching +ultimate truth at any point? One may properly urge, however, that as +sharp a distinction as possible be made between fictitious mysteries +and the unavoidable ones which surround us on every side. How milk +turned sour used to be a real mystery, now partially solved since the +discovery of bacteria; how the witch flew up the chimney was a +gratuitous mystery with which we need no longer trouble ourselves. A +"live" wire would once have suggested magic; now it is at least +partially explained by the doctrine of electrons. + +It is the avowed purpose of scientific thought to reduce the number of +mysteries, and its success has been marvelous, but it has by no means +done its perfect work as yet. We have carried over far too much of +mediaeval mysticism in our views of man and his duty toward himself +and others. + +We must now recall the method adopted by students of the natural +sciences in breaking away from the standards and limitations of the +mediaeval philosophers and establishing new standards of their own. +They thus prepared the way for a revolution in human affairs in the +midst of which we now find ourselves. As yet their type of thinking +has not been applied on any considerable scale to the solution of +social problems. By learning to understand and appreciate the +scientific frame of mind as a historical victory won against +extraordinary odds, we may be encouraged to cultivate and popularize a +similar attitude toward the study of man himself. + + +NOTES. + +[20] St. Ethelred, returning from a pious visit to Citeaux in the days +of Henry II, encountered a great storm when he reached the Channel. He +asked himself what _he_ had done to be thus delayed, and suddenly +thought that he had failed to _fulfill_ a promise to write a poem on +St. Cuthbert. When he had completed this, "wonderful to say, the sea +ceased to rage and became tranquil".--_Surtees Society Publications_, +i, p. 177. + + + * * * * * + + +VI + + Narrabo igitur primo opera artis et naturae miranda.... ut videatur + quod omnis magica potestas sit inferior his operibus et indigna. + --ROGER BACON. + + I do not endeavor either by triumphs of confutation, or pleadings + of antiquity, or assumption of authority, or even, by the veil of + obscurity, to invest these inventions of mine with any majesty.... + I have not sought nor do I seek either to force or ensnare men's + judgments, but I lead them to things themselves and the concordances + of things, that they may see for themselves what they have, what + they can dispute, what they can add and contribute to the common + stock.--FRANCIS BACON (_Preface to the Great Instauration_). + + + + +12. THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION + + +At the opening of the seventeenth century a man of letters, of +sufficient genius to be suspected by some of having written the plays +of Shakespeare, directed his distinguished literary ability to the +promotion and exaltation of natural science. Lord Bacon was the chief +herald of that habit of scientific and critical thought which has +played so novel and all-important a part in the making of the modern +mind. When but twenty-two years old he was already sketching out a +work which he planned to call _Temporis Partus Maximus (The Greatest +Thing Ever)_. He felt that he had discovered why the human mind, +enmeshed in mediaeval metaphysics and indifferent to natural +phenomena, had hitherto been a stunted and ineffective thing, and how +it might be so nurtured and guided as to gain undreamed of strength +and vigor. + +And never has there been a man better equipped with literary gifts to +preach a new gospel than Francis Bacon. He spent years in devising +eloquent and ingenious ways of delivering learning from the +"discredits and disgraces" of the past, and in exhorting man to +explore the realms of nature for his delight and profit. He never +wearied of trumpeting forth the glories of the new knowledge which +would come with the study of common things and the profitable uses to +which it might be put in relieving man's estate. He impeached the +mediaeval schoolmen for spinning out endless cobwebs of learning, +remarkable for their fineness, but of no substance or spirit. He urged +the learned to come out of their cells, study the creations of God, +and build upon what they discovered a new and true philosophy. + +Even in his own day students of natural phenomena had begun to carry +out Bacon's general program with striking effects. While he was urging +men to cease "tumbling up and down in their own reason and conceits" +and to spell out, and so by degrees to learn to read, the volume of +God's works, Galileo had already begun the reading and had found out +that the Aristotelian physics ran counter to the facts; that a body +once in motion will continue to move forever in a straight line unless +it be stopped or deflected. Studying the sky through his newly +invented telescope, he beheld the sun spots and noted the sun's +revolution on its axis, the phases of Venus, and the satellites of +Jupiter. These discoveries seemed to confirm the ideas advanced long +before by Copernicus--the earth was not the center of the universe and +the heavens were not perfect and unchanging. He dared to discuss these +matters in the language of the people and was, as everyone knows, +condemned by the Inquisition. + +This preoccupation with natural phenomena and this refusal to accept +the old, established theories until they had been verified by an +investigation of common fact was a very novel thing. It introduced a +fresh and momentous element into our intellectual heritage. We have +recalled the mysticism, supernaturalism, and intolerance of the Middle +Ages, their reliance on old books, and their indifference to everyday +fact except as a sort of allegory for the edification of the Christian +pilgrim. In the mediaeval universities the professors, or "schoolmen", +devoted themselves to the elaborate formulation of Christian doctrine +and the interpretation of Aristotle's works. It was a period of +revived Greek metaphysics, adapted to prevailing religious +presuppositions. Into this fettered world Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, +and others brought a new aspiration to promote investigation and +honest, critical thinking about everyday things. + +_These founders of modern natural science realized that they would +have to begin afresh. This was a bold resolve, but not so bold as must +be that of the student of mankind to-day if he expects to free himself +from the trammels of the past_. Bacon pointed out that the old days +were not those of mature knowledge, but of youthful human ignorance. +"_These_ times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and +not those we count ancient, _ordine retrogrado_, by a computation +backward from ourselves." In his _New Atlantis_ he pictures an ideal +State which concentrated its resources on systematic scientific +research, with a view to applying new discoveries to the betterment of +man's lot. + +Descartes, who was a young man when Bacon was an old one, insisted on +the necessity, if we proposed to seek the truth, of questioning +_everything_ at least once in our lives. To all these leaders in the +development of modern science doubt, not faith, was the beginning of +wisdom. They doubted--and with good reason--what the Greeks were +supposed to have discovered; they doubted all the old books and all +the university professors' lecture notes. They did not venture to +doubt the Bible, but they eluded it in various ways. They set to work +to find out exactly what happened under certain circumstances. They +experimented individually and reported their discoveries to the +scientific academies which began to come into existence. + +As one follows the deliberations of these bodies it is pathetic to +observe how little the learning of previous centuries, in spite of its +imposing claims, had to contribute to a fruitful knowledge of common +things. It required a century of hard work to establish the most +elementary facts which would now be found in a child's book. How water +and air act, how to measure time and temperature and atmospheric +pressure, had to be discovered. The microscope revealed the complexity +of organic tissues, the existence of minute creatures, vaguely called +infusoria, and the strange inhabitants of the blood, the red and white +corpuscles. The telescope put an end to the flattering assumption that +the cosmos circled around man and the little ball he lives on. + +Without a certain un-Greek, practical inventive tendency which, for +reasons not easily to be discovered, first began to manifest itself in +the thirteenth century, this progress would not have been possible. +The new thinkers descended from the magisterial chair and patiently +fussed with lenses, tubes, pulleys, and wheels, thus weaning +themselves from the adoration of man's mind and understanding. They +had to devise the machinery of investigation as investigation itself +progressed. + +Moreover, they did not confine themselves to the conventionally noble +and elevated subjects of speculation. They addressed themselves to +worms and ditch water in preference to metaphysical subtleties. They +agreed with Bacon that the mean and even filthy things deserve study. +All this was naturally scorned by the university professors, and the +universities consequently played little or no part in the advance of +natural science until the nineteenth century. + +Nor were the moral leaders of mankind behind the intellectual in +opposing the novel tendencies. The clergy did all they could to +perpetuate the squalid belief in witchcraft, but found no place for +experimental science in their scheme of learning, and judged it +offensive to the Maker of all things. But their opposition could do no +more than hamper the new scientific impulse, which was far too potent +to be seriously checked. + +So in one department of human thought--the investigation of natural +processes--majestic progress has been made since the opening of the +seventeenth century, with every promise of continued and startling +advance. The new methods employed by students of natural science have +resulted in the accumulation of a stupendous mass of information in +regard to the material structure and operation of things, and the +gradual way in which the earth and all its inhabitants have come into +being. The nature and workings of atoms and molecules are being +cleared up, and their relation to heat, light, and electricity +established. The slow processes which have brought about the mountains +and valleys, the seas and plains, have been exposed. The structure of +the elementary cell can be studied under powerful lenses; its +divisions, conjunctions, differentiation, and multiplication into the +incredibly intricate substance of plants and animals can be traced. + +In short, man is now in a position, for the first time in his history, +to have some really clear and accurate notion of the world in which he +dwells and of the living creatures which surround him and with which +he must come to terms. It would seem obvious that this fresh knowledge +should enable him to direct his affairs more intelligently than his +ancestors were able to do in their ignorance. He should be in a +position to accommodate himself more and more successfully to the +exigencies of an existence which he can understand more fully than any +preceding generation, and he should aspire to deal more and more +sagaciously with himself and his fellow-men. + + + + +13. HOW SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE HAS REVOLUTIONIZED THE CONDITIONS OF LIFE + + +But while our information in regard to man and the world is +incalculably greater than that available a hundred, even fifty years +ago, we must frankly admit that the knowledge is still so novel, so +imperfectly assimilated, so inadequately co-ordinated, and so feebly +and ineffectively presented to the great mass of men, that its +_direct_ effects upon human impulses and reasoning and outlook are as +yet inconsiderable and disappointing. We _might_ think in terms of +molecules and atoms, but we rarely do. Few have any more knowledge of +their own bodily operations than had their grandparents. The farmer's +confidence in the phases of the moon gives way but slowly before +recent discoveries in regard to the bacteria of the soil. Few who use +the telephone, ride on electric cars, and carry a camera have even the +mildest curiosity in regard to how these things work. It is only +_indirectly_, through _invention_, that scientific knowledge touches +our lives on every hand, modifying our environment, altering our daily +habits, dislocating the anciently established order, and imposing the +burden of constant adaptation on even the most ignorant and lethargic. + +Unlike a great part of man's earlier thought, modern scientific +knowledge and theory have not remained matter merely for academic +discourse and learned books, but have provoked the invention of +innumerable practical devices which surround us on every hand, and +from which we can now scarce escape by land or sea. Thus while +scientific knowledge has not greatly affected the thoughts of most of +us, its influence in the promotion of modern invention has served to +place us in a new setting or environment, the novel features of which +it would be no small task to explain to one's great-great-grandfather, +should he unexpectedly apply for up-to-date information. So even if +modern scientific _knowledge_ is as yet so imperfect and ill +understood as to make it impossible for us to apply much of it +directly and personally in our daily conduct, we nevertheless cannot +neglect the urgent effects of scientific _inventions_, for they are +constantly posing new problems of adjustment to us, and sometimes +disposing of old ones. + +Let us recall a few striking examples of the astonishing way in which +what seemed in the beginning to be rather trivial inventions and +devices have, with the improvements of modern science, profoundly +altered the conditions of life. + +Some centuries before the time of Bacon and Galileo four discoveries +were made which, supplemented and elaborated by later insight and +ingenuity, may be said to underlie our modern civilization. A writer +of the time of Henry II of England reports that sailors when caught in +fog or darkness were wont to touch a needle to a bit of magnetic iron. +The needle would then, it had been found, whirl around in a circle and +come to rest pointing north. On this tiny index the vast extension of +modern commerce and imperialism rests. + +That lentil-shaped bits of glass would magnify objects was known +before the end of the thirteenth century, and from that little fact +have come microscopes, telescopes, spectroscopes, and cameras; and +from these in turn has come a great part of our present knowledge of +natural processes in men, animals, and plants and our comprehension of +the cosmos at large. + +Gunpowder began to be used a few decades after the lens was discovered; +it and its terrible descendants have changed the whole problem of human +warfare and of the public defense. + +The printing press, originally a homely scheme for saving the labor of +the copyist, has not only made modern democracy and nationality +possible, but has helped by the extension of education to undermine +the ancient foundations upon which human industry has rested from the +beginnings of civilization. + +In the middle of the eighteenth century the steam engine began to +supplant the muscular power of men and animals, which had theretofore +been only feebly supplemented by windmills and water wheels. And now +we use steam and gas engines and water power to generate potent +electric currents which do their work far from the source of supply. +Mechanical ingenuity has utilized all this undreamed-of energy in +innumerable novel ways for producing old and new commodities in +tremendous quantities and distributing them with incredible rapidity +throughout the earth. + +Vast factories have sprung up, with their laborious multitudes engaged +on minute contributions to the finished article; overgrown cities +sprawl over the neighboring green fields and pastures; long freight +trains of steel cars thunder across continents; monstrous masses of +wealth pile up, are reinvested, and applied to making the whole system +more and more inconceivably intricate and interdependent; and +incidentally there is hurry and worry and discontent and hazard beyond +belief for a creature who has to grasp it all and control it all with +a mind reared on that of an animal, a child, and a savage. + +As if these changes were not astounding enough, now has come the +chemist who devotes himself to making not new _commodities_ (or old +ones in new ways), but new _substances_. He juggles with the atoms of +carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, and the rest, and far +outruns the workings of nature. Up to date he has been able to produce +artfully over two hundred thousand compounds, for some of which +mankind formerly depended on the alchemy of animals and plants. He can +make foodstuffs out of sewage; he can entrap the nitrogen in the air +and use it to raise wheat to feed, or high explosives to slaughter, +his fellows. He no longer relies on plants and animals for dyes and +perfumes. In short, a chemical discovery may at any moment devastate +an immemorial industry and leave both capital and labor in the lurch. +The day may not be far distant when, should the chemist learn to +control the incredible interatomic energy, the steam engine will seem +as complete an anachronism as the treadmill. + +The uttermost parts of the earth have been visited by Europeans, and +commerce has brought all races of the globe into close touch. We have +now to reckon with every nation under heaven, as was shown in the +World War. At the same time steam and electrical communication have +been so perfected that space has been practically annihilated as +regards speech, and in matters of transportation reduced to perhaps a +fifth. So all the peoples of the earth form economically a loose and, +as yet, scarcely acknowledged federation of man, in which the fate of +any member may affect the affairs of all the others, no matter how +remote they may be geographically. + +All these unprecedented conditions have conspired to give business for +business' sake a fascination and overwhelming importance it has never +had before. We no longer make things for the sake of making them, but +for money. The chair is not made to sit on, but for profit; the soap +is no longer prepared for purposes of cleanliness, but to be sold for +profit. Practically nothing catches our eye in the way of writing that +was written for its own sake and not for money. Our magazines and +newspapers are our modern commercial travelers proclaiming the gospel +of business competition. Formerly the laboring classes worked because +they were slaves, or because they were defenseless and could not +escape from thraldom--or, mayhap, because they were natural artisans; +but now they are coming into a position where they can combine and +bargain and enter into business competition with their employers. Like +their employers, they are learning to give as little as possible for +as much as possible. This is good business; and the employer should +realize that at last he has succeeded in teaching his employees to be +strictly businesslike. When houses were built to live in, and wheat +and cattle grown to eat, these essential industries took care of +themselves. But now that profit is the motive for building houses and +raising grain, if the promised returns are greater from manufacturing +automobiles or embroidered lingerie, one is tempted to ask if there +are any longer compelling reasons for building houses or raising food? + +Along with the new inventions and discoveries and our inordinately +pervasive commerce have come two other novel elements in our +environment--what we vaguely call "democracy" and "nationality". These +also are to be traced to applied science and mechanical contrivances. + +The printing press has made popular education possible, and it is our +aspiration to have every boy and girl learn to read and write--an +ideal that the Western World has gone far to realize in the last +hundred years. General education, introduced first among men and then +extended to women, has made plausible the contention that all adults +should have a vote, and thereby exercise some ostensible influence in +the choice of public officials and in the direction of the policy of +the government. + +Until recently the mass of the people have not been invited to turn +their attention to public affairs, which have been left in the control +of the richer classes and their representatives and agents, the +statesmen or politicians. Doubtless our crowded cities have +contributed to a growing sense of the importance of the common man, +for all must now share the street car, the public park, the water +supply, and contagious diseases. + +But there is a still more fundamental discovery underlying our +democratic tendencies. This is the easily demonstrated scientific +truth that nearly all men and women, whatever their social and +economic status, may have much greater possibilities of activity and +thought and emotion than they exhibit in the particular conditions in +which they happen to be placed; that in all ranks may be found +evidence of unrealized capacity; that we are living on a far lower +scale of intelligent conduct and rational enjoyment than is necessary. + +Our present notions of nationality are of very recent origin, going +back scarcely a hundred years. Formerly nations were made up of the +subjects of this or that gracious majesty and were regarded by their +God-given rulers as beasts of burden or slaves or, in more amiable +moods, as children. The same forces that have given rise to modern +democracy have made it possible for vast groups of people, such as +make up France or the United States, to be held together more +intimately than ever before by the news which reaches them daily of +the enterprises of their government and the deeds of their conspicuous +fellow-countrymen. + +In this way the inhabitants of an extensive territory embracing +hundreds of thousands of square miles are brought as close together as +the people of Athens in former days. Man Is surely a gregarious animal +who dislikes solitude. He is, moreover, given to the most exaggerated +estimate of his tribe; and on these ancient foundations modern +nationality has been built up by means of the printing press, the +telegraph, and cheap postage. _So it has fallen out that just when the +world was becoming effectively cosmopolitan in its economic +interdependence, its scientific research, and its exchange of books +and art, the ancient tribal insolence has been developed on a +stupendous scale._ + +The manner in which man has revolutionized his environment, habits of +conduct, and purposes of life by inventions is perhaps the most +astonishing thing in human history. It is an obscure and hitherto +rather neglected subject. But it is clear enough, from the little that +has been said here, that since the Middle Ages, and especially in the +past hundred years, science has so hastened the process of change that +it becomes increasingly difficult for man's common run of thinking to +keep pace with the radical alterations in his actual practices and +conditions of living. + + + * * * * * + + +VII + + Peace sitting under her olive, and + slurring the days gone by, + When the poor are hovell'd and + hustled together, each sex, like + swine, + When only the ledger lives, and + when only not all men lie; + Peace in her vineyard--yes!--but + a company forges the wine. + --TENNYSON. + + Could great men thunder + As Jove himself does, Jove would + ne'er be quiet. + For every pelting, petty officer + Would use his heaven for thunder; + Nothing but thunder! + ... Man, proud man, + Drest in a little brief authority, + Most ignorant of what he's most + assured, + His glassy essence, like an angry + ape, + Plays such fantastic tricks before + high heaven + As make the angels weep; who, with + our spleens, + Would all themselves laugh mortal. + --SHAKESPEARE. + + + + +14. "THE SICKNESS OF AN ACQUISITIVE SOCIETY" + + +It is so difficult a task to form any correct estimate of one's own +surroundings, largely on account of our very familiarity with them, +that historical students have generally evaded this responsibility. +They have often declared that it was impossible to do so +satisfactorily. And yet no one will ever know more than we about what +is going on now. Some secrets may be revealed to coming generations, +but plenty of our circumstances will be obscure to them. And it +certainly seems pusillanimous, if not hazardous, to depute to those +yet unborn the task of comprehending the conditions under which we +must live and strive. I have long believed that the only unmistakable +contribution that the historical student can make to the progress of +intelligence is to study the past with an eye constantly on the +present. For history not only furnishes us with the key to the present +by showing how our situation came about, but at the same time supplies +a basis of comparison and a point of vantage by virtue of which the +salient contrasts between our days and those of old can be detected. +Without history the essential differences are sure to escape us. Our +generation, like all preceding generations of mankind, inevitably +takes what it finds largely for granted, and the great mass of men who +argue about existing conditions assume a fundamental likeness to past +conditions as the basis of their conclusions in regard to the present +and the still unrolled future. + +Such a procedure becomes more and more dangerous, for although a +continuity persists, there are more numerous, deeper and wider +reaching contrasts between the world of to-day and that of a hundred, +or even fifty, years ago, than have developed in any corresponding +lapse of time since the beginning of civilization. This is not the +place even to sketch the novelties in our knowledge and circumstances, +our problems and possibilities. No more can be done here than to +illustrate in a single field of human interest the need of an +unprecedentedly open mind in order to avail ourselves of existing +resources in grasping and manipulating the problems forced upon us. + +Few people realize how novel is the almost universal preoccupation +with business which we can observe on every hand, but to which we are +already so accustomed that it easily escapes the casual observer. But +in spite of its vastness and magnificent achievements, business, based +upon mass production and speculative profits, has produced new evils +and reinforced old ones which no thoughtful person can possibly +overlook. Consequently it has become the great issue of our time, the +chief subject of discussion, to be defended or attacked according to +one's tastes, even as religion and politics formerly had their day. + +Business men, whether conspicuous in manufacture, trade, or finance, +are the leading figures of our age. They exercise a dominant influence +in domestic and foreign policy; they subsidize our education and exert +an unmistakable control over it. In other ages a military or religious +caste enjoyed a similar pre-eminence. But now business directs and +equips the soldier, who is far more dependent on its support than +formerly. Most religious institutions make easy terms with business, +and, far from interfering with it or its teachings, on the whole +cordially support it. Business has its philosophy, which it holds to +be based upon the immutable traits of human nature and as identical +with morality and patriotism. It is a sensitive, intolerant +philosophy, of which something will be said in the following section. + +Modern business produced a sort of paradise for the luckier of +mankind, which endured down to the war, and which many hope to see +restored in its former charm, and perhaps further beautified as the +years go on. It represents one of the most startling of human +achievements. No doubt a great part of the population worked hard and +lived in relative squalor, but even then they had many comforts +unknown to the toiling masses of previous centuries, and were +apparently fairly contented. + + But escape was possible, for any man of capacity or character at + all exceeding the average, into the middle or upper classes, for + whom life offered, at a low cost and with the least trouble, + conveniencies, comforts, and amenities beyond the compass of the + richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages. The inhabitant + of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, + the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he + might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his + doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure + his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any + quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, + in their prospective fruits and advantages.... He could secure + forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit + to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could + dispatch his servant to the neighboring office of a bank for such + supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could + then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their + religion, language, or customs, bearing coined wealth upon his + person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much + surprised at the least interference. + +And most important of all, he could, before the war, regard this state +of affairs as + + ... normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of + further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, + scandalous, and avoidable. The projects and politics of militarism, + and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, + restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent in this + paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, + and appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary + course of social and economic life, the internationalization of which + was nearly complete in practice.[21] + +This assumption of the permanence and normality of the prevailing +business system was much disturbed by the outcome of the war, but less +so, especially in this country, than might have been expected. It was +easy to argue that the terrible conflict merely interrupted the +generally beneficent course of affairs which would speedily +re-establish itself when given an opportunity. To those who see the +situation in this light, modern business has largely solved the +age-long problem of producing and distributing the material +necessities and amenities of life; and nothing remains except to +perfect the system in detail, develop its further potentialities, and +fight tooth and nail those who are led by lack of personal success or +a maudlin sympathy for the incompetent to attack and undermine it. + +On the other hand, there were many before the war, not themselves +suffering conspicuously from the system, who challenged its +beneficence and permanence, in the name of justice, economy, and the +best and highest interests of mankind as a whole. Since the war many +more have come to the conclusion that business as now conducted is not +merely unfair, exceedingly wasteful, and often highly inexpedient from +a social standpoint, but that from an historical standpoint it is +"intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, and temporary" +(Keynes). It may prove to be the chief eccentricity of our age; quite +as impermanent as was the feudal and manorial system or the role of +the mediaeval Church or of monarchs by the grace of God; and destined +to undergo changes which it is now quite impossible to forecast. + +In any case, economic issues are the chief and bitterest of our time. +It is in connection with them that free thinking is most difficult and +most apt to be misunderstood, for they easily become confused with the +traditional reverences and sanctities of political fidelity, +patriotism, morality, and even religion. There is something +humiliating about this situation, which subordinates all the varied +possibilities of life to its material prerequisites, much as if we +were again back in a stage of impotent savagery, scratching for roots +and looking for berries and dead animals. One of the most brilliant of +recent English economists says with truth: + + The burden of our civilization is not merely, as many suppose, that + the product of industry is ill-distributed, or its conduct tyrannical, + or its operation interrupted by bitter disagreements. It is that + industry itself has come to hold a position of exclusive predominance + among human interests, which no single interest, and least of all the + provision of the material means of existence, is fit to occupy. Like + a hypochondriac who is so absorbed in the processes of his own + digestion that he goes to the grave before he has begun to live, + industrialized communities neglect the very objects for which it is + worth while to acquire riches in their feverish preoccupation with + the means by which riches can be acquired. + + That obsession by economic issues is as local and transitory as it is + repulsive and disturbing. To future generations it will appear as + pitiable as the obsession of the seventeenth century by religious + quarrels appears to-day; indeed, it is less rational, since the object + with which it is concerned is less important. And it is a poison which + inflames every wound and turns each trivial scratch into a malignant + ulcer.[22] + +Whatever may be the merits of the conflicting views of our business +system, there can be no doubt that it is agitating all types of +thoughtful men and women. Poets, dramatists, and story writers turn +aside from their old _motifs_ to play the role of economists. +Psychologists, biologists, chemists, engineers, are as never before +striving to discover the relation between their realms of information +and the general problems of social and industrial organization. And +here is a historical student allowing the dust to collect on mediaeval +chronicles, church histories, and even seventeenth-century +rationalists, once fondly perused, in order to see if he can come to +some terms with the profit system. And why not? Are we not all +implicated? We all buy and many sell, and no one is left untouched by +a situation which can in two or three years halve our incomes, without +fault of ours. But before seeking to establish the bearing of the +previous sections of this volume on our attitude toward the puzzles of +our day, we must consider more carefully the "good reasons" commonly +urged in defense of the existing system. + + + + +15. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SAFETY AND SANITY + + +So far we have been mainly engaged in recalling the process by which +man has accumulated such a mind as he now has, and the effects of this +accumulation on his mode of life. Under former conditions (which are +now passing away) and in a state of ignorance about highly essential +matters (which are now being put in quite a new light) he established +certain standards and practices in his political, social, and +industrial life. His views of property, government, education, the +relations of the sexes, and various other matters he reaffirms and +perpetuates by means of schools, colleges, churches, newspapers, and +magazines, which in order to be approved and succeed must concur in +and ratify these established standards and practices and the current +notions of good and evil, right and wrong. This is what happened in +the past, and to the great majority of people this still seems to be +the only means of "safeguarding society". Before subjecting this +attitude of mind to further criticism it will be helpful to see how +those argue who fail to perceive the vicious circle involved. + +The war brought with it a burst of unwonted and varied animation. +Those who had never extended their activities beyond the usual routine +of domestic and professional life suddenly found themselves +participating in a vast enterprise in which they seemed to be +broadening their knowledge and displaying undreamed of capacity for +co-operation with their fellows. Expressions of high idealism exalted +us above the petty cares of our previous existence, roused new +ambitions, and opened up an exhilarating perspective of possibility +and endeavor. It was common talk that when the foe, whose criminal +lust for power had precipitated the mighty tragedy, should be +vanquished, things would "no longer be the same". All would then agree +that war was the abomination of abominations, the world would be made +safe for right-minded democracy, and the nations would unite in +smiling emulation. + +Never did bitterer disappointment follow high hopes. All the old +habits of nationalistic policy reasserted themselves at Versailles. A +frightened and bankrupt world could indeed hardly be expected to +exhibit greater intelligence than the relatively happy and orderly one +which had five years earlier allowed its sanctified traditions to drag +it over the edge of the abyss. Then there emerged from the autocracy +of the Tsars the dictatorship of the proletariat, and in Hungary and +Germany various startling attempts to revolutionize hastily and +excessively that ancient order which the Hapsburg and Hohenzollern +rulers had managed to perpetuate in spite of all modern novelties. The +real character of these movements was ill understood in our country, +but it was inevitable that with man's deep-seated animistic tendencies +they should appear as a sort of wicked demon or a deadly contagion +which might attack even our own land unless prevented by timely +measures. War had naturally produced its machinery for dealing with +dissenters, sympathizers with the enemy, and those who deprecated or +opposed war altogether; and it was the easiest thing in the world to +extend the repression to those who held exceptional or unpopular +views, like the Socialists and members of the I.W.W. It was plausible +to charge these associations with being under the guidance of +foreigners, with "pacificism" and a general tendency to disloyalty. +But suspicion went further so as to embrace members of a rather small, +thoughtful class who, while rarely socialistic, were confessedly +skeptical in regard to the general beneficence of existing +institutions, and who failed to applaud at just the right points to +suit the taste of the majority of their fellow-citizens. So the +general impression grew up that there was a sort of widespread +conspiracy to overthrow the government by violence or, at least, a +dangerous tendency to prepare the way for such a disaster, or at any +rate a culpable indifference to its possibility. + +Business depression reinforced a natural reaction which had set in +with the sudden and somewhat unexpected close of the war. The unwonted +excitement brought on a national headache, and a sedative in the form +of normalcy was proffered by the Republican party and thankfully +accepted by the country at large. Under these circumstances the +philosophy of safety and sanity was formulated. It is familiar and +reassuring and puts no disagreeable task of mental and emotional +readjustment on those who accept it. Hence its inevitable popularity +and obvious soundness. + +And these are its presuppositions: No nation is comparable to our own +in its wealth and promise, in its freedom and opportunity for all. It +has opened its gates to the peoples of the earth, who have flocked +across the ocean to escape the poverty and oppression of Europe. From +the scattered colonies of the pre-revolutionary period the United +States has rapidly advanced to its world ascendancy. When the European +powers had reached a hopeless stalemate after four years of war the +United States girded on the sword as the champion of liberty and +democracy and in an incredibly short time brought the conflict to a +victorious close before she had dispatched half the troops she could +easily have spared. She had not entered the conflict with any motives +of aggrandizement or of territorial extension. She felt her +self-sufficiency and could well afford proudly to refuse to join the +League of Nations on the ground that she did not wish to be involved +in European wrangles or sacrifice a tittle of her rights of +self-determination. + +The prosperity of the United States is to be attributed largely to the +excellence of the Federal Constitution and the soundness of her +democratic institutions. Class privileges do not exist, or at least +are not recognized. Everyone has equal opportunity to rise in the +world unhampered by the shackles of European caste. There is perfect +freedom in matters of religious belief. Liberty of speech and of the +press is confirmed by both the Federal Constitution and the +constitutions of the various states. If people are not satisfied with +their form of government they may at any time alter it by a peaceful +exercise of the suffrage. + +In no other country is morality more highly prized or stoutly +defended. Woman is held in her proper esteem and the institution of +the family everywhere recognized as fundamental. We are singularly +free from the vices which disgrace the capitals of Europe, not +excepting London. + +In no other country is the schoolhouse so assuredly acknowledged to be +the corner stone of democracy and liberty. Our higher institutions of +learning are unrivaled; our public libraries numerous and accessible. +Our newspapers and magazines disseminate knowledge and rational +pleasure throughout the land. + +We are an ingenious people in the realm of invention and in the +boldness of our business enterprise. We have the sturdy virtues of the +pioneer. We are an honest people, keeping our contracts and giving +fair measure. We are a tireless people in the patient attention to +business and the laudable resolve to rise in the world. Many of our +richest men began on the farm or as office boys. Success depends in +our country almost exclusively on native capacity, which is rewarded +here with a prompt and cheerful recognition which is rare in other +lands. + +We are a progressive people, always ready for improvements, which +indeed we take for granted, so regularly do they make their +appearance. No alert American can visit any foreign country without +noting innumerable examples of stupid adherence to outworn and +cumbrous methods in industry, commerce, and transportation. + +Of course no one is so blind as not to see that here and there evils +develop which should be remedied, either by legislation or by the +gradual advance in enlightenment. Many of them will doubtless cure +themselves. Our democracy is right at heart and you cannot fool all +the people all the time. We have not escaped our fair quota of +troubles. It would be too much to expect that we should. The +difference of opinion between the Northern and Southern states +actually led to civil war, but this only served to confirm the natural +unity of the country and prepare the way for further advance. +Protestants have sometimes dreaded a Catholic domination; the Mormons +have been a source of anxiety to timid souls. Populists and advocates +of free silver have seemed to threaten sound finance. On the other +hand, Wall Street and the trusts have led some to think that corporate +business enterprise may at times, if left unhampered, lead to +over-powerful monopolies. But the evil workings of all these things +had before the war been peaceful, if insidious. They might rouse +apprehension in the minds of far-sighted and public-spirited +observers, but there had been no general fear that any of them would +overthrow the Republic and lead to a violent destruction of society as +now constituted and mayhap to a reversion to barbarism. + +The circumstances of our participation in the World War and the rise +of Bolshevism convinced many for the first time that at last society +and the Republic were actually threatened. Heretofore the socialists +of various kinds, the communists and anarchists, had attracted +relatively little attention in our country. Except for the Chicago +anarchist episode and the troubles with the I.W.W., radical reformers +had been left to go their way, hold their meetings, and publish their +newspapers and pamphlets with no great interference on the part of the +police or attention on the part of lawgivers. With the progress of the +war this situation changed; police and lawgivers began to interfere, +and government officials and self-appointed guardians of the public +weal began to denounce the "reds" and those suspected of "radical +tendencies". The report of the Lusk Committee in the state of New York +is perhaps the most imposing monument to this form of patriotic zeal. + +It is not our business here to discuss the merits of Socialism or +Bolshevism either from the standpoint of their underlying theories or +their promise in practice. It is only in their effects in developing +and substantiating the philosophy of safety and sanity that they +concern us in this discussion. + +Whether the report of the so-called Lusk Committee[23] has any +considerable influence or no, it well illustrates a common and +significant frame of mind and an habitual method of reasoning. The +ostensible aim of the report is: + + ... to give a clear, unbiased statement and history of the + purposes and objects, tactics and methods, of the various + forces now at work in the United States, and particularly + within the state of New York, which are seeking to undermine + and destroy, not only the government under which we live, but + also the very structure of American society. It also seeks to + analyze the various constructive forces which are at work + throughout the country counteracting these evil influences, + and to present the many industrial and social problems that + these constructive forces must meet and are meeting. + +The plan is executed with laborious comprehensiveness, and one +unacquainted with the vast and varied range of so-called "radical" +utterances will be overwhelmed by the mass brought together. But our +aim here is to consider the attitude of mind and assumptions of the +editors and their sympathizers. + +They admit the existence of "real grievances and natural demands of +the working classes for a larger share in the management and use of +the common wealth". It is these grievances and demands which the +agitators use as a basis of their machinations. Those bent on a social +revolution fall into two classes--socialists and anarchists. But while +the groups differ in detail, these details are not worth considering. +"Anyone who studies the propaganda of the various groups which we have +named will learn that the arguments employed are the same; that the +tactics advocated cannot be distinguished from one another, and that +articles, or speeches made on the question of tactics or methods by +anarchists, could, with propriety, be published in socialist, or +communist newspapers without offending the membership of these +organizations." So, fortunately for the reader, it is unnecessary to +make any distinctions between socialists, anarchists, communists, and +Bolsheviki. They all have the common purpose of overthrowing existing +society and "general strikes and sabotage are the direct means +advocated". The object is to drive business into bankruptcy by +reducing production and raising costs.[24] + +But it would be a serious mistake to assume that the dangers are +confined to our industrial system. "The very first general fact that +must be driven home to Americans is that the pacifist movement in this +country, the growth and connections of which are an important part of +this report, is an absolutely integral and fundamental part of +international socialism." European socialism, from which ours is +derived, has had for one of its main purposes "the creation of an +international sentiment to supersede national patriotism and effort, +and this internationalism was based upon pacificism, in the sense that +it opposed all wars between nations and developed at the same time +class consciousness that was to culminate in relentless class warfare. +In other words, it was not really peace that was the goal, but the +abolition of the patriotic, warlike spirit of nationalities". + +In view of the necessity of making head against this menace the +Criminal Anarchy statute of the State of New York was invoked, search +warrants issued, "large quantities of revolutionary, incendiary and +seditious written and printed matter were seized". After the refusal +of Governor Smith to sign them, the so-called Lusk educational bills +were repassed and signed by the Republican Governor Miller. No teacher +in the schools shall be licensed to teach who "has advocated, either +by word of mouth or in writing, a form of government other than the +government of the United States or of this state". Moreover, "No +person, firm, corporation, association, or society shall conduct, +maintain, or operate any school, institute, class, or course of +instruction in any subject without making application for and being +granted a license from the University of the State of New York [_i. +e_. the Regents]." The Regents shall have the right to send inspectors +to visit classes and schools so licensed and to revoke licenses if +they deem that an overthrow of the existing government by violence is +being taught.[25] + +But the safe and sane philosophy by no means stops with the convenient +and compendious identification of socialists of all kinds, anarchists, +pacificists and internationalists, as belonging to one threatening +group united in a like-minded attempt to overthrow society as we now +know it. This class includes, it may be observed, such seemingly +distinguishable personalities as Trotzky and Miss Jane Addams, who are +assumed to be in essential harmony upon the great issue. But there are +many others who are perhaps the innocent tools of the socialists. +These include teachers, lecturers, writers, clergymen, and editors to +whom the Lusk report devotes a long section on "the spread of socialism +in educated circles". It is the purpose of this section + + ... to show the use made by members of the Socialist Party of America + and other extreme radicals and revolutionaries of pacifist sentiment + among people of education and culture in the United States as a + vehicle for the promotion of revolutionary socialistic propaganda. + The facts here related are important because they show that these + socialists, playing upon the pacifist sentiment in a large body of + sincere persons, were able to organize their energies and capitalize + their prestige for the spread of their doctrines. [P. 969.] + +An instance of this is an article in the _New Republic_ which: + + ... includes more or less open attacks on Attorney-General Palmer, + Mr. Lansing, the House Immigration Committee, the New York _Times_, + Senator Fall, this Committee, etc. It also quotes the dissenting + opinions in the Abrams case of Justices Holmes and Brandeis, and + ends by making light of the danger of revolution in America: ... + This belittling of the very real danger to the institutions of this + country, as well as the attempted discrediting of any investigating + group (or individual), has become thoroughly characteristic of our + "Parlor Bolshevik" or "Intelligentsia". [P. 1103.] + +So it comes about, as might indeed have been foreseen from the first, +that one finds himself, if not actually violating the criminal anarchy +statute, at least branded as a Bolshevik if he speaks slightingly of +the New York _Times_ or recalls the dissenting opinion of two judges +of the Supreme Court. + +Moreover, as might have been anticipated, the issues prove to be at +bottom not so much economic as moral and religious, for "Materialism +and its formidable sons, Anarchy, Bolshevism, and Unrest, have thrown +down the gauge of battle" to all decency. + + ... What is of the greatest importance for churchmen to understand, + in order that they may not be led astray by specious arguments of + so-called Christian Socialists and so-called liberals and + self-styled partisans of free speech, is that socialism as a system, + as well as anarchism and all its ramifications, from high-brow + Bolshevism to the Russian Anarchist Association, are all the + declared enemies of religion and all recognized moral standards + and restraints. [P. 1124.] + +We must not be misled by "false, specious idealism masquerading as +progress". The fight is one for God as well as country, in which all +forms of radicalism, materialism, and anarchy should be fiercely and +promptly stamped out.[26] + + +NOTES. + +[21] Keynes, _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, pp. 11-12. + +[22] Tawney, R. H., _The Acquisitive Society_, pp. 183-184. The +original title of this admirable little work, a Fabian tract, was, +_The Sickness of an Acquisitive Society_, but the American publishers +evidently thought it inexpedient to stress the contention of the +author that modern society has anything fundamentally the matter with +it. + +[23] _Revolutionary Radicalism, Its History, Purpose, and Tactics: +with an exposition and discussion of the steps being taken and +required to curb it, being the report of the Joint Legislative +Committee investigating seditious activities, filed April 24, 1920, in +the Senate of the state of New York._ This comprises four stout +volumes (over 4,200 pages in all) divided into two parts, dealing, +respectively, with "Revolutionary and Subversive Movements at Home and +Abroad" and "Constructive Movements and Measures in America". Albany, +1920. + +[24] "While the nature of this investigation has led the committee to +lay its emphasis upon the activities of subversive organizations, it +feels that this report would not be complete if it did not state +emphatically that it believes that those persons in business and +commercial enterprise and certain owners of property who seek to take +advantage of the situation to reap inordinate gain from the public +contribute in no small part to the social unrest which affords the +radical a field of operation which otherwise would be closed to him." +(P. 10.) + +[25] The general history throughout the United States of these and +similar measures, the interference with public meetings, the trials, +imprisonments, and censorship, are all set forth in Professor +Chaffee's _Freedom of Speech_, 1920. + +[26] During the summer of 1921 the Vice-President of the United States +published in _The Delineator_ a series of three articles on "Enemies +of the Republic", in which he considers the question, "Are the 'reds' +stalking our college women?" He finds some indications that they are, +and warns his readers that, "Adherence to radical doctrines means the +ultimate breaking down of the old, sturdy virtues of manhood and +womanhood, the insidious destruction of character, the weakening of +the moral fiber of the individual, and the destruction of the +foundations of society." It may seem anomalous to some that the +defenders of the old, sturdy virtues should so carelessly brand honest +and thoughtful men and women, of whose opinions they can have no real +knowledge, as "enemies of the Republic"--but there is nothing whatever +anomalous in this. It has been the habit of defenders of the sturdy, +old virtues from time immemorial to be careless of others' +reputations. + + + * * * * * + + +VIII + + + Dans les sciences politiques, il est un ordre de vérités qui, + surtout chez les peuples libres ... ne peuvent être utiles, que + lorsqu'elles sont généralement connues et avouées. Ainsi, + l'influence du progrês de ces sciences sur la liberté, sur la + prospérité des nations, doivent en quelque sorts se mesurer sur + le nombre de ces vérités qui, par l'effet d'une instruction + élémentaire, deviennent commune à tous les esprits; ainsi les + progrès toujours croissants de cette instruction élémentaire, + liés eux mêmes aux progrès nécessaires de ces sciences, nous + répondent d'une amélioration dans les destinées de l'espèce + humaine qui peut être regardée comme indéfinie, puisqu'elle n'a + d'autres limites que celles de ces progrès mêmes.--CONDORCET. + + + + +16. SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF REPRESSION + + +Of course the kind of reasoning and the presuppositions described in +the previous section will appeal to many readers as an illustration of +excessive and unjustifiable fear lest the present order be disturbed +--a frenzied impulse to rush to the defense of our threatened +institutions. Doubtless the Lusk report may quite properly be classed +as a mere episode in war psychology. Having armed to put down the +Germans and succeeded in so doing, the ardor of conflict does not +immediately abate, but new enemies are sought and easily discovered. +The hysteria of repression will probably subside, but it is now a +well-recognized fact that in disease, whether organic or mental, the +abnormal and excessive are but instructive exaggerations and +perversions of the usual course of things. They do not exist by +themselves, but represent the temporary and exaggerated functioning of +bodily and mental processes. The real question for us here is not +whether Senator Lusk is too fearful and too indiscriminate in his +denunciations, but whether he and his colleagues do not merely furnish +an overcharged and perhaps somewhat grotesque instance of man's +natural and impulsive way of dealing with social problems. It seems to +me that enough has already been said to lead us to suspect this. + +At the outset of this volume the statement was hazarded that if only +men could come to look at things differently from the way they now +generally do, a number of our most shocking evils would either remedy +themselves or show themselves subject to gradual elimination or +hopeful reduction. Among these evils a very fundamental one is the +defensive attitude toward the criticism of our existing order and the +naïve tendency to class critics as enemies of society. It was argued +that a fuller understanding of the history of the race would +contribute to that essential freedom of mind which would welcome +criticism and permit fair judgments of its merits. Having reviewed the +arguments of those who would suppress criticism lest it lead to +violence and destruction, we may now properly recall in this +connection certain often neglected historical facts which serve to +weaken if not to discredit most of these arguments. + +Man has never been able to adapt himself very perfectly to his +civilization, and there has always been a deal of injustice and +maladjustment which might conceivably have been greatly decreased by +intelligence. But now it would seem that this chronic distress has +become acute, and some careful observers express the quite honest +conviction that unless thought be raised to a far higher plane than +hitherto, some great setback to civilization is inevitable. + +Yet instead of subjecting traditional ideas and rules to a +thoroughgoing reconsideration, our impulse is, as we have seen, to +hasten to justify existing and habitual notions of human conduct. +There are many who flatter themselves that by suppressing so-called +"radical" thought and its diffusion, the present system can be made to +work satisfactorily on the basis of ideas of a hundred or a hundred +thousand years ago. + +While we have permitted our free thought in the natural sciences to +transform man's old world, we allow our schools and even our +universities to continue to inculcate beliefs and ideals which may or +may not have been appropriate to the past, but which are clearly +anachronisms now. For, the "social science" taught in our schools is, +it would appear, an orderly presentation of the conventional +proprieties, rather than a summons to grapple with the novel and +disconcerting facts that surround us on every side. + +At the opening of the twentieth century the so-called sciences of man, +despite some progress, are, as has been pointed out, in much the same +position that the natural sciences were some centuries earlier. Hobbes +says of the scholastic philosophy that it went on one brazen leg and +one of an ass. This seems to be our plight to-day. Our scientific leg +is lusty and grows in strength daily; its fellow member--our thought +of man and his sorry estate--is capricious and halting. We have not +realized the hopes of the eighteenth-century "illumination", when +confident philosophers believed that humanity was shaking off its +ancient chains; that the clouds of superstition were lifting, and that +with the new achievements of science man would boldly and rapidly +advance toward hitherto undreamed-of concord and happiness. We can no +longer countenance the specious precision of the English classical +school of economics, whose premises have been given the lie by further +thought and experience. We have really to start anew. + +The students of natural phenomena early realized the arduous path they +had to travel. They had to escape, above all things, from the past. +They perceived that they could look for no help from those whose +special business it was to philosophize and moralize in terms of the +past. They had to look for light in their own way and in the +directions from which they conjectured it might come. Their first +object was, as Bacon put it, _light_, not _fruit_. They had to learn +before they could undertake changes, and Descartes is very careful to +say that philosophic doubt was not to be carried over to daily +conduct. This should for the time being conform to accepted standards, +unenlightened as they might be. + +Such should be the frame of mind of one who seeks insight into human +affairs. His subject matter is, however, far more intricate and +unmanageable than that of the natural scientist. Experiment on which +natural science has reared itself is by no means so readily applicable +in studying mankind and its problems. The student of humanity has even +more inveterate prejudices to overcome, more inherent and cultivated +weaknesses of the mind to guard against, than the student of nature. +Like the early scientists, he has a scholastic tradition to combat. He +can look for little help from the universities as now constituted. The +clergy, although less sensitive in regard to what they find in the +Bible, are still stoutly opposed, on the whole, to any thoroughgoing +criticism of the standards of morality to which they are accustomed. +Few lawyers can view their profession with any considerable degree of +detachment. Then there are the now all-potent business interests, +backed by the politicians and in general supported by the +ecclesiastical, legal, and educational classes. Many of the newspapers +and magazines are under their influence, since they are become the +business man's heralds and live off his bounty. + +Business indeed has almost become our religion; it is defended by the +civil government even as the later Roman emperors and the mediaeval +princes protected the Church against attack. Socialists and communists +are the Waldensians and Albigensians of our day, heretics to be cast +out, suppressed, and deported to Russia, if not directly to hell as of +old. + +The Secret Service seems inclined to play the part of a modern +Inquisition, which protects our new religion. Collected in its +innumerable files is the evidence in regard to suspected heretics who +have dared impugn "business as usual", or who have dwelt too lovingly +on peace and good will among nations. Books and pamphlets, although no +longer burned by the common hangman, are forbidden the mails by +somewhat undiscerning officials. We have a pious vocabulary of high +resentment and noble condemnation, even as they had in the Middle +Ages, and part of it is genuine, if unintelligent, as it was then. + +Such are some of the obstacles which the student of human affairs must +surmount. Yet we may hope that it will become increasingly clear that +the repression of criticism (even if such criticism becomes +fault-finding and takes the form of a denunciation of existing habits +and institutions) is inexpedient and inappropriate to the situation in +which the world finds itself. Let us assume that such people as really +advocate lawlessness and disorder should be carefully watched and +checked if they promise to be a cause of violence and destruction. But +is it not possible to distinguish between them and those who question +and even arraign with some degree of heat the standardized unfairness +and maladjustments of our times? + +And there is another class who cannot by any exaggeration be +considered agitators, who have by taking thought come to see that our +conditions have so altered in the past hundred years and our knowledge +so increased that the older ways of doing and viewing things are not +only unreasonable, but actually dangerous. But so greatly has the +hysteria of war unsettled the public mind that even this latter class +is subject to discreditable accusations and some degree of +interference. + +We constantly hear it charged that this or that individual or group +advocates the violent overthrow of government, is not loyal to the +Constitution, or is openly or secretly working for the abolition of +private property or the family, or, in general, is supposed to be +eager to "overturn everything without having anything to put in its +place". + +The historical student may well recommend that we be on our guard +against such accusations brought against groups and individuals. For +the student of history finds that it has always been the custom to +charge those who happened to be unpopular, with holding beliefs and +doing things which they neither believed nor did. Socrates was +executed for corrupting youth and infidelity to the gods; Jesus for +proposing to overthrow the government; Luther was to the officials of +his time one who taught "a loose, self-willed life, severed from all +laws and wholly brutish". + +Those who questioned the popular delusions in regard to witchcraft +were declared by clergymen, professors, and judges of the seventeenth +century to be as good as atheists, who shed doubt on the devil's +existence in order to lead their godless lives without fear of future +retribution. How is it possible, in view of this inveterate habit of +mankind, to accept at its face value what the police or Department of +Justice, or self-appointed investigators, choose to report of the +teachings of people who are already condemned in their eyes? + +Of course the criticism of accepted ideas is offensive and will long +remain so. After all, talk and writing are forms of conduct, and, like +all conduct, are inevitably disagreeable when they depart from the +current standards of respectable behavior. To talk as if our +established notions of religion, morality, and property, our ideas of +stealing and killing, were defective and in need of revision, is +indeed more shocking than to violate the current rules of action. For +we are accustomed to actual crimes, misdemeanors, and sins, which are +happening all the time, but we will not tolerate any suspected attempt +to palliate them in theory. + +It is inevitable that new views should appear to the thoughtless to be +justifications or extenuations of evil actions and an encouragement of +violence and rebellion, and that they will accordingly be bitterly +denounced. But there is no reason why an increase of intelligence +should not put a growing number of us on our guard against this +ancient pitfall. + +If we are courageously to meet and successfully to overcome the +dangers with which our civilization is threatened, it is clear that we +need _more mind_ than ever before. It is also clear that we can have +indefinitely more mind than we already have if we but honestly desire +it and avail ourselves of resources already at hand. Mind, as +previously defined, is our "conscious knowledge and intelligence, what +we know and our attitude toward it--our disposition to increase our +information, classify it, criticize it, and apply it". _It is obvious +that in this sense the mind is a matter of accumulation and that it +has been in the making ever since man took his first step in +civilization._ I have tried to suggest the manner in which man's long +history illuminates our plight and casts light on the path to be +followed. And history is beginning to take account of the knowledge of +man's nature and origin contributed by the biologist and the +anthropologist and the newer psychologists. + +Few people realize the hopeful revolution that is already beginning to +influence the aims and methods of all these sciences of man. No +previous generation of thinkers has been so humble on the whole as is +that of to-day, so ready to avow their ignorance and to recognize the +tendency of each new discovery to reveal further complexities in the +problem. On the other hand, we are justified in feeling that at last +we have the chance to start afresh. We are freer than any previous age +from the various prepossessions and prejudices which we now see +hampered the so-called "free" thinking of the eighteenth century. + +The standards and mood of natural science are having an increasing +influence in stimulating eager research into human nature, beliefs, +and institutions. With Bacon's recommendations of the study of common +_things_ the human mind entered a new stage of development. Now that +historic forces have brought the common _man_ to the fore, we are +submitting him to scientific study and gaining thereby that elementary +knowledge of his nature which needs to be vastly increased and spread +abroad, since it can form the only possible basis for a successful and +real democracy. + +I would not have the reader infer that I overrate the place of science +or exact knowledge in the life of man. Science, which is but the most +accurate information available about the world in which we live and +the nature of ourselves and of our fellow men, is not the whole of +life; and except to a few peculiar persons it can never be the most +absorbing and vivid of our emotional satisfactions. We are poetic and +artistic and romantic and mystical. We resent the cold analysis and +reduction of life to the commonplace and well substantiated--and this +is after all is said, the aim of scientific endeavor. But we have to +adjust ourselves to a changing world in the light of constantly +accumulating knowledge. It is knowledge that has altered the world and +we must rely on knowledge and understanding to accommodate ourselves +to our new surroundings and establish peace and order and security for +the pursuit of those things that to most of us are more enticing than +science itself.[27] + +No previous generation has been so perplexed as ours, but none has +ever been justified in holding higher hopes if it could but reconcile +itself to making bold and judicious use of its growing resources, +material and intellectual. _It is fear that holds us back._ And fear +is begotten of ignorance and uncertainty. And these mutually reinforce +one another, for we feebly try to condone our ignorance by our +uncertainty and to excuse our uncertainty by our ignorance. + +Our hot defense of our ideas and beliefs does not indicate an +established confidence in them but often half-distrust, which we try +to hide from ourselves, just as one who suffers from bashfulness +offsets his sense of inferiority and awkwardness by rude aggression. +If, for example, religious beliefs had been really firmly established +there would have been no need of "aids to faith"; and so with our +business system to-day, our politics and international relations. We +dread to see things as they would appear if we thought of them +honestly, for it is the nature of critical thought to metamorphose our +familiar and approved world into something strange and unfamiliar. It +is undoubtedly a nervous sense of the precariousness of the existing +social system which accounts for the present strenuous opposition to a +fair and square consideration of its merits and defects. + +Partisanship is our great curse. We too readily assume that everything +has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other. We +must be defending or attacking something; only the lily-livered hide +their natural cowardice by asking the impudent question, What is it +all about? The heroic gird on the armor of the Lord, square their +shoulders, and establish a muscular tension which serves to dispel +doubt and begets the voluptuousness of bigotry and fanaticism.[28] In +this mood questions become issues of right and wrong, not of +expediency and inexpediency. It has been said that the worthy people +of Cambridge are able promptly to reduce the most complex social or +economic problem to a simple moral issue, and this is a wile of the +Father of Lies, to which many of us yield readily enough. + +It is, however, possible for the individual to overcome the fear of +thought. Once I was afraid that men might think too much; now, I only +dread lest they will think too little and far too timidly, for I now +see that real thinking is rare and difficult and that it needs every +incentive in the face of innumerable ancient and inherent +discouragements and impediments. We must first endeavor manfully to +free our own minds and then do what we can to hearten others to free +theirs. _Toujours de l'audace!_ As members of a race that has required +from five hundred thousand to a million years to reach its present +state of enlightenment, there is little reason to think that anyone of +us is likely to cultivate intelligence too assiduously or in harmful +excess. + + + + +17. WHAT OF IT? + + +Our age is one of unprecedented responsibility. As Mr. Lippmann has so +well said: + + Never before have we had to rely so completely on ourselves. No + guardian to think for us, no precedent to follow without question, + no lawmaker above, only ordinary men set to deal with heartbreaking + perplexity. All weakness comes to the surface. We are homeless in a + jungle of machines and untamed powers that haunt and lure the + imagination. Of course our culture is confused, our thinking + spasmodic, and our emotion out of kilter. No mariner ever enters + upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born + in the twentieth century. Our ancestors thought they knew their way + from birth through all eternity; we are puzzled about day after + to-morrow.... It is with emancipation that real tasks begin, and + liberty is a searching challenge, for it takes away the guardianship + of the master and the comfort of the priest. The iconoclasts did not + free us. They threw us into the water, and now we have to swim.[29] + +We must look forward to ever new predicaments and adventures. _Nothing +is going to be settled in the sense in which things were once supposed +to be settled, for the simple reason that knowledge will probably +continue to increase and will inevitably alter the world with which we +have to make terms_. The only thing that might conceivably remain +somewhat stabilized is an attitude of mind and unflagging expectancy +appropriate to the terms and the rules according to which life's game +must hereafter be played. We must promote a new cohesion and +co-operation on the basis of this truth. And this means that we have +now to substitute purpose for tradition, and this is a concise +statement of the great revolution which we face. + + Now, when all human institutions so slowly and laboriously evolved + are impugned, every consensus challenged, every creed flouted, as + much as and perhaps even more than by the ancient Sophists, the + call comes to us ... to explore, test, and, if necessary, reconstruct + the very bases of conviction, for all open questions are new + opportunities. Old beacon lights have shifted or gone out. Some of + the issues we lately thought to be minor have taken on cosmic + dimensions. We are all "up against" questions too big for us, so + that there is everywhere a sense of insufficiency which is too deep + to be fully deployed in the narrow field of consciousness. Hence, + there is a new discontent with old leaders, standards, criteria, + methods, and values, and a demand everywhere for new ones, a + realization that mankind must now reorient itself and take its + bearings from the eternal stars and sail no longer into the unknown + future by the dead reckonings of the past.[30] + +Life, in short, has become a solemn sporting proposition--solemn +enough in its heavy responsibilities and the magnitude of the stakes +to satisfy our deepest religious longings; sporty enough to tickle the +fancy of a baseball fan or an explorer in darkest Borneo. We can play +the game or refuse to play it. At present most of human organization, +governmental, educational, social, and religious, is directed, as it +always has been, to holding things down, and to perpetuating beliefs +and policies which belong to the past and have been but too gingerly +readjusted to our new knowledge and new conditions. On the other hand, +there are various scientific associations which are bent on revising +and amplifying our knowledge and are not pledged to keeping alive any +belief or method which cannot stand the criticism which comes with +further information. The terrible fear of falling into mere +rationalizing is gradually extending from the so-called natural +sciences to psychology, anthropology, politics, and political economy. +All this is a cheering response to the new situation. + +But, as has been pointed out, really honest discussion of our social, +economic, and political standards and habits readily takes on the +suspicion of heresy and infidelity. Just as the "freethinker" who, in +the eighteenth century, strove to discredit miracles in the name of an +all-wise and foreseeing God (who could not be suspected of tampering +with his own laws), was accused of being an atheist and of really +believing in no God at all; so those who would ennoble our ideals of +social organization are described as "Intellectuals" or "parlor +Bolshevists" who would overthrow society and all the achievements of +the past in order to free themselves from moral and religious +restraints and mayhap "get something for nothing". The parallel is +very exact indeed. + +The Church always argued that there were no new heresies. All would, +on examination, prove to be old and discredited. So the Vice-President +of the United States has recently declared that: + + Men have experimented with radical theories in great and small ways + times without number and always, always with complete failure. + They are not new; they are old. Each failure has demonstrated + anew that without effort there is no success. The race never gets + something for nothing.[31] + +But is this not a complete reversal of the obvious truth? Unless we +define "radical" as that which never does succeed, how can anyone with +the most elementary notions of history fail to see that almost all the +things that we prize to-day represent revolts against tradition, and +were in their beginnings what seemed to be shocking divergences from +current beliefs and practices? What about Christianity, and +Protestantism, and constitutional government, and the rejection of old +superstitions and the acceptance of modern scientific ideas? The race +has always been getting something for nothing, for creative thought +is, as we have seen, confined to a very few. And it has been the +custom to discourage or kill those who prosecuted it too openly, not +to reward them according to their merits. + +One cannot but wonder at this constantly recurring phrase "getting +something for nothing", as if it were the peculiar and perverse +ambition of disturbers of society. Except for our animal outfit, +practically all we have is handed to us gratis. Can the most +complacent reactionary flatter himself that he invented the art of +writing or the printing press, or discovered his religious, economic, +and moral convictions, or any of the devices which supply him with +meat and raiment or any of the sources of such pleasure as he may +derive from literature or the fine arts? In short, civilization is +little else than getting something for nothing. Like other vested +interests, it is "the legitimate right to something for nothing".[32] +How much execrable reasoning and how many stupid accusations would +fall away if this truth were accepted as a basis of discussion! Of +course there is no more flagrant example of a systematic endeavor to +get something for nothing than the present business system based on +profits, and absentee ownership of stocks. + +Since the invention of printing, and indeed long before, those fearful +of change have attempted to check criticism by attacking books. These +were classified as orthodox or heterodox, moral or immoral, +treasonable or loyal, according to their tone. Unhappily this habit +continues and shows itself in the distinction between sound and +unsound, radical and conservative, safe and dangerous. The sensible +question to ask about a book is obviously whether it makes some +contribution to a clearer understanding of our situation by adding or +reaffirming important considerations and the inferences to be made +from these. Such books could be set off against those that were but +expressions of vague discontent or emulation, or denunciations of +things because they are as they are or are not as they are not. I have +personally little confidence in those who cry lo here or lo there. It +is premature to advocate any wide sweeping reconstruction of the +social order, although experiments and suggestions should not be +discouraged. What we need first is a change of heart and a chastened +mood which will permit an ever increasing number of people to see +things as they are, in the light of what they have been and what they +might be. The dogmatic socialist with his unhistorical assumptions of +class struggle, his exaggerated economic interpretation of history, +and his notion that labor is the sole producer of capital, is shedding +scarcely more light on the actual situation than is the Lusk Committee +and Mr. Coolidge, with their confidence in the sacredness of private +property, as they conceive it, in the perennial rightness and +inspiration of existing authority and the blessedness of the profit +system. But there are plenty of writers, to mention only a few of the +more recent ones, like Veblen, Dewey, J. A. Hobson, Tawney, Cole, +Havelock Ellis, Bertrand Russell, Graham Wallas, who may or may not +have (or ever have had) any confidence in the presuppositions and +forecasts of socialism, whose books do make clearer to any fair-minded +reader the painful exigencies of our own times. + +I often think of the economic historians of, say, two centuries hence +who may find time to dig up the vestiges of the economic literature of +to-day. We may in imagination appeal to their verdicts and in some +cases venture to forecast them. Many of our writers they will throw +aside as dominated by a desire merely to save the ill-understood +present at all costs; others as attempting to realize plans which were +already discredited in their own day. Future historians will, +nevertheless, clearly distinguish a few who, by a sort of persistent +and ardent detachment, were able to see things close at hand more +fully and truly than their fellows and endeavored to do what they +could to lead their fellows to perceive and reckon with the facts +which so deeply concerned them. Blessed be those who aspire to win +this glory. On the monument erected to Bruno on the site where he was +burned for seeing more clearly than those in authority in his days, is +the simple inscription, "Raised to Giordano Bruno by the generation +which he foresaw." + +We are all purblind, but some are blinder than others who use the +various means available for sharpening their eyesight. As an onlooker +it seems to me safe to say that the lenses recommended by both the +"radicals" and their vivid opponents rather tend to increase than +diminish our natural astigmatism. + +Those who agree, on the whole, at least, with the _facts_ brought +together in this essay and, on the whole, with the main _inferences_ +suggested either explicitly or implicitly, will properly begin to +wonder how our educational system and aims are to be so rearranged +that coming generations may be better prepared to understand the +condition of human life and to avail themselves of its possibilities +more fully and guard against its dangers more skillfully than previous +generations. There is now widespread discontent with our present +educational methods and their elaborate futility; but it seems to me +that we are rather rarely willing to face the fundamental difficulty, +for it is obviously so very hard to overcome. _We do not dare to be +honest enough to tell boys and girls and young men and women what +would be most useful to them in an age of imperative social +reconstruction._ + +We have seen that the ostensible aims of education are various,[33] +and that among them is now included the avowed attempt to prepare the +young to play their part later as voting citizens. If they are to do +better than preceding generations they must be brought up differently. +They would have to be given a different general attitude toward +institutions and ideals; instead of having these represented to them +as standardized and sacred they should be taught to view them as +representing half-solved problems. But how can we ever expect to +cultivate the judgment of the young in matters of fundamental social, +economic, and political readjustment when we consider the really +dominating forces in education? But even if these restraints were +weakened or removed, the task would remain a very delicate one. Even +with teachers free and far better informed than they are, it would be +no easy thing to cultivate in the young a justifiable admiration for +the achievements and traditional ideals of mankind and at the same +time develop the requisite knowledge of the prevailing abuses, +culpable stupidity, common dishonesty, and empty political buncombe, +which too often passes for statesmanship. + +But the problem has to be tackled, and it may be tackled directly or +indirectly. The direct way would be to describe as realistically as +might be the actual conditions and methods, and their workings, good +and bad. If there were better books than are now available it would be +possible for teachers tactfully to show not only how government is +supposed to run, but how it actually is run. There are plenty of +reports of investigating committees, Federal and state, which furnish +authentic information in regard to political corruption, graft, waste, +and incompetency. These have not hitherto been supposed to have +anything to do with the _science_ of government, although they are +obviously absolutely essential to an _understanding_ of it. Similar +reflections suggest themselves in the matter of business, +international relations, and race animosities. But so long as our +schools depend on appropriations made by politicians, and colleges and +universities are largely supported by business men or by the state, +and are under the control of those who are bent on preserving the +existing system from criticism, it is hard to see any hope of a kind +of education which would effectively question the conventional notions +of government and business. They cannot be discussed with sufficient +honesty to make their consideration really medicinal. We laud the +brave and outspoken and those supposed to have the courage of their +convictions--but only when these convictions are acceptable or +indifferent to us. Otherwise, honesty and frankness become mere +impudence.[34] + +No doubt politics and economics could be taught, and are being taught, +better as time goes on. Neither of them are so utterly unreal and +irrelevant to human proceedings as they formerly were. There is no +reason why a teacher of political economy should not describe the +actual workings of the profit system of industry with its restraints +on production and its dependence on the engineer, and suggest the +possibility of gathering together capital from functionless absentee +stockholders on the basis of the current rate of interest rather than +speculative dividends. The actual conditions of the workers could be +described, their present precarious state, the inordinate and wasteful +prevalence of hiring and firing; the policy of the unions, and their +defensive and offensive tactics. Every youngster might be given some +glimmering notion that neither "private property" nor "capital" is the +real issue (since few question their essentiality) but rather the new +problem of supplying other than the traditional motives for industrial +enterprise--namely, the slave-like docility and hard compulsion of the +great masses of workers, on the one hand, and speculative profits, on +the other, which now dominate in our present business system. For the +existing organization is not only becoming more and more patently +wasteful, heartless, and unjust, but is beginning, for various +reasons, to break down. In short, whatever the merits of our present +ways of producing the material necessities and amenities of life, it +looks to many as if they could not succeed indefinitely, even as well +as they have in the past, without some fundamental revision. + +As for political life, a good deal would be accomplished if students +could be habituated to distinguish successfully between the empty +declamations of politicians and statements of facts, between vague +party programs and concrete recommendations and proposals. They should +early learn that language is not primarily a vehicle of ideas and +information, but an emotional outlet, corresponding to various +cooings, growlings, snarls, crowings, and brayings. Their attention +could be invited to the rhetoric of the bitter-enders in the Senate or +the soothing utterances of Mr. Harding on accepting the nomination for +President: + +"With a Senate advising as the Constitution contemplates, I would +hopefully approach the nations of Europe and of the earth, proposing +that understanding which makes us a willing participant in the +consecration of nations to a new relationship, to commit the moral +forces of the world, America included, to peace and international +justice, still leaving America free, independent, self-reliant, but +offering friendship to all the world. If men call for more specific +details, I remind them that moral committals are broad and +all-inclusive, and we are contemplating peoples in the concord of +humanity's advancement." + +After mastering the difference between language used to express facts +and purposes and that which amounts to no more than a pious +ejaculation, a suave and deprecating gesture, or an inferential +accusation directed against the opposing party, the youth should be +instructed in the theory and practice of party fidelity and the +effects of partisanship on the conduct of our governmental affairs. In +fine, he should get some notion of the motives and methods of those +who really run our government, whether he learned anything else or +not. + +These _direct_ attempts to produce a more intelligently critical and +open-minded generation are, however, likely to be far less feasible +than the _indirect_ methods. Partly because they will arouse strenuous +opposition from the self-appointed defenders of society as now +regulated, and partly because no immediate inspection of habits and +institutions is so instructive as a study of their origin and progress +and a comparison of them with other forms of social adjustment. I hope +that it has already become clear that we have great, and hitherto only +very superficially worked, resources in History, as it is now coming +to be conceived. + +We are in the midst of the greatest intellectual revolution that has +ever overtaken mankind. Our whole conception of mind is undergoing a +great change. We are beginning to understand its nature, and as we +find out more, intelligence may be raised to a recognized dignity and +effectiveness which it has never enjoyed before. An encouraging +beginning has been made in the case of the natural sciences, and a +similar success may await the studies which have to do with the +critical estimate of man's complicated nature, his fundamental +impulses and resources, the needless and fatal repressions which these +have suffered through the ignorance of the past, and the discovery of +untried ways of enriching our existence and improving our relations +with our fellow men. + +There[35] is a well-known passage in Goethe's "Faust" where he likens +History to the Book with Seven Seals described in Revelation, which no +one in heaven, or on the earth or under the earth, was able to open +and read therein. All sorts of guesses have been hazarded as to its +contents by Augustine, Orosius, Otto of Freising, Bossuet, +Bolingbroke, Voltaire, Herder, Hegel, and many others, but none of +them were able to break the seals, and all of them were gravely misled +by their fragmentary knowledge of the book's contents. For we now see +that the seven seals were seven great ignorances. No one knew much (1) +of man's physical nature, or (2) the workings of his thoughts and +desires, or (3) of the world in which he lives, or (4) of how he has +come about as a race, or (5) of how he develops as an individual from +a tiny egg, or (6) how deeply and permanently he is affected by the +often forgotten impressions of infancy and childhood, or (7) how his +ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands of years in the dark +ignorance of savagery. + +The seals are all off now. The book at last lies open before those who +are capable of reading it, and few they be as yet; for most of us +still cling to the guesses made in regard to its contents before +anyone knew what was in it. We have become attached to the familiar +old stories which now prove to be fictions, and we find it hard to +reconcile ourselves to the many hard sayings which the book proves to +contain--its constant stress on the stupidity of "good" people; its +scorn for the respectable and normal, which it often reduces to little +more than sanctimonious routine and indolence and pious resentment at +being disturbed in one's complacent assurances. Indeed, much of its +teaching appears downright immoral according to existing standards. + +One awful thing that the Book of the Past makes plain is that with our +animal heritage we are singularly oblivious to the large concerns of +life. We are keenly sensitive to little discomforts, minor +irritations, wounded vanity, and various danger signals; but our +comprehension is inherently vague and listless when it comes to +grasping intricate situations and establishing anything like a fair +perspective in life's problems and possibilities. Our imagination is +restrained by our own timidity, constantly reinforced by the warnings +of our fellows, who are always urging us to be safe and sane, by which +they mean convenient for them, predictable in our conduct and +graciously amenable to the prevailing standards. + +But it is obvious that it is increasingly dangerous to yield to this +inveterate tendency, however comfortable and respectable it may seem +for the moment. + +History, as H. G. Wells has so finely expressed it, is coming more and +more to be "a race between education and catastrophe. Our internal +policies and our economic and social ideas are profoundly vitiated at +present by wrong and fantastic ideas of the origin and historical +relationship of social classes. A sense of history as the common +adventure of all mankind is as necessary for peace within as it is for +peace between the nations". There can be no secure peace now but a +common peace of the whole world; no prosperity but a general +prosperity, and this for the simple reason that we are all now brought +so near together and are so pathetically and intricately +interdependent, that the old notions of noble Isolation and national +sovereignty are magnificently criminal. + +In the bottom of their hearts, or the depths of their unconscious, do +not the conservatively minded realize that their whole attitude toward +the world and its betterment is based on an assumption that finds no +least support in the Great Book of the Past? Does it not make plain +that the "conservative", so far as he is consistent and lives up to +his professions, is fatally in the wrong? The so-called "radical" is +also almost always wrong, for no one can foresee the future. But he +works on a right assumption--namely, that the future has so far always +proved different from the past and that it will continue to do so. +Some of us, indeed, see that the future is tending to become more and +more rapidly and widely different from the past. The conservative +himself furnishes the only illustration of his theory, and even that +is highly inconclusive. His general frame of mind appears to remain +constant, but he finds himself defending and rejecting very different +things. The great issue may, according to the period, be a primeval +taboo, the utterances of the Delphic oracle, the Athanasian creed, the +Inquisition, the geocentric theory, monarchy by the grace of God, +witchcraft, slavery, war, capitalism, private property, or noble +isolation. All of these tend to appear to the conservative under the +aspect of eternity, but all of these things have come, many of them +have gone, and the remainder would seem to be subject to undreamed-of +modifications as time goes on. This is the teaching of the now +unsealed book. + + +NOTES. + +[27] Mr. James Branch Cabell has in his _Beyond Life_ defended man's +romantic longings and inexorable craving to live part of the time at +least in a world far more sweetly molded to his fancy than that of +natural science and political economy. There is no reason why man +should live by bread alone. There is a time, however, for natural +science and political economy, for they should establish the +conditions in which we may rejoice in our vital lies, which will then +do no harm and bring much joy. + +[28] The relation of our kinesthesia or muscular sense to fanaticism +on the one hand and freedom of mind on the other is a matter now +beginning to be studied with the promise of highly important results. + +[29] _Drift and Mastery_, pp. 196-197. + +[30] G. Stanley Hall, "The Message of the Zeitgeist", in _Scientific +Monthly_, August, 1921--a very wonderful and eloquent appeal by one of +our oldest and boldest truth seekers. + +[31] _Delineator_, August, 1921, p. II. + +[32] Adopting Mr. Veblen's definition of a vested interest which +caused some scandal in conservative circles when it was first +reported. Doubtless the seeming offensiveness of the latter part of +the definition obscured its reassuring beginning. + +[33] See Section 2 above. + +[34] The wise Goethe has said, _"Zieret Stärke den Mann und freies, +muthiges Wesen, O, so ziemet ihm fast tiefes Geheimniss noch mehr"_, +--Römische Elegien, xx. + +[35] The closing reflections are borrowed from _The Leaflet_, issued +by the students of the New School for Social Research, established in +New York in 1919, with a view of encouraging adults to continue their +studies in the general spirit and mood which permeate this essay. + + + + +APPENDIX + +SOME SUGGESTIONS IN REGARD TO READING + + +It may happen that among the readers of this essay there will be some +who will ask how they can most readily get a clearer idea of the +various newer ways of looking at mankind and the problems of the day. +The following list of titles is furnished with a view of doing +something to meet this demand. It is not a bibliography in the usual +sense of the term. It is confined to rather short and readily +understandable presentations appropriate to the overcrowded schedule +upon which most of us have to operate. All the writers mentioned +belong, however, to that rather small class whose opinions are worth +considering, even if one reserves the imprescriptible right not to +agree with all they say. There may well be better references than +those with which I happen to be acquainted, and others quite as +useful; but I can hardly imagine anyone, whatever his degree of +information, unless he happens to be a specialist in the particular +field, failing to gain something of value from any one of the volumes +mentioned. + +For the astounding revelations in regard to the fundamental nature of +matter and the ways in which the modern chemist plays with it, see +John Mills, _Within the Atom_ (D. Van Nostrand Company), and Slosson, +_Creative Chemistry_ (The Century Company). + +A general account of the evolutionary process will be found in +Crampton, _The Doctrine of Evolution_ (Columbia University Press), +chaps, i-v. For our development as an individual from the egg see +Conklin, _Heredity and Environment_ (Princeton University Press). + +The general scope of modern anthropology and the influence of this +study on our notions of mankind as we now find it can be gathered from +Goldenweiser, _Early Civilization, Introduction to Anthropology_ +(Knopf). This should be supplemented by the remarkable volume of +essays by Franz Boas, _The Mind of Primitive Man_ (Macmillan). + +Of the more recent and easily available books relating to the +reconstruction of philosophy and the newer conceptions in regard to +mind and intelligence the following may be mentioned: Dewey, +_Reconstruction in Philosophy_ and _Human Nature and Conduct_ (Holt); +Woodworth, _Dynamic Psychology_ (Columbia University Press); _Trotter, +Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_ (Macmillan)--especially the +first two sections, pp. 1-65; Bernard Hart, _The Psychology of +Insanity_ (Putnam), an admirable little introduction to the importance +of abnormal mental conditions in understanding our usual thoughts and +emotions; McDougall, _Social Psychology_ (J. W. Luce); Everett D. +Martin, _The Behavior of Crowds_ (Harpers); Edman, _Human Traits_ +(Houghton-Mifflin). For the so-called behavioristic interpretation of +mankind, see Watson, _Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist_ +(Lippincott). Haldane, _Mechanism, Life, and Personality_ (Dutton), is +a short discussion of some of the most fundamental elements in our +modern conception of life itself. + +When it comes to gaining an idea of "Freudianism" and all the +overwhelming discoveries, theories, and suggestions due to those who +have busied themselves with the lasting effects of infantile and +childish experiences, of hidden desires--sexual and otherwise, of "the +Unconscious" and psychoanalysis, while there are many books, great and +small, there would be no unanimity of opinion among those somewhat +familiar with the subjects as to what should be recommended. It would +be well if everyone could read in Havelock Ellis, _The Philosophy of +Conflict_ (Houghton-Mifflin), the essay (XVIII) on Freud and his +influence. Wilfred Lay, _Man's Unconscious Conflict_ (Dodd, Mead), is +a popular exposition of psychoanalysis, and Tansley, _The New +Psychology_ (Dodd, Mead), likewise. Harvey O'Higgins, _The Secret +Springs_ (Harpers), reports, in a pleasing manner, some of the actual +medical experiences of Dr. Edward Reede of Washington. But much of +importance remains unsaid in all these little books for which one +would have to turn to Freud himself, his present and former disciples, +his enemies, and the special contributions of investigators and +practitioners in this new and essential field of psychological +research and therapy. + +Turning to the existing industrial system, its nature, defects, and +recommendations for its reform, I may say that I think that relatively +little is to be derived from the common run of economic textbooks. The +following compendious volumes give an analysis of the situation and a +consideration of the proposed remedies for existing evils and +maladjustments: Veblen, _The Vested Interests and the Common Man_, +also his _The Engineers and the Price System_ (Huebsch); J. A. Hobson, +_Democracy after the War_ (Macmillan) and his more recent _Problems of +a New World_ (Macmillan); Tawney, _The Acquisitive Society_ (Harcourt, +Brace); Bertrand Russell, _Why Men Fight_ (Century) and his _Proposed +Roads to Freedom_ (Holt), in which he describes clearly the history +and aims of the various radical leaders and parties of recent times. + +As for newer views and criticism of the modern state and political +life in general, in addition to Mr. Hobson's books mentioned above, +the following are of importance: Graham Wallas, _The Great Society_ +(Macmillan); Harold Laski, _Authority in the Modern State_ and +_Problems of Sovereignty_ (Yale University Press); Walter Lippmann, +_Preface to Politics_ and _Drift and Mastery_ (Holt). + +J. Russell Smith, _The World's Food Resources_ (Holt), is a larger and +more detailed discussion than most of those recommended above, but +contains a number of general facts and comment of first-rate +importance. + +One who desires a highly thoughtful and scholarly review of the trend +of religious thought in recent times should read McGiffert, _The Rise +of Modern Religious Ideas_ (Macmillan). + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Mind in the Making, by James Harvey Robinson + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIND IN THE MAKING *** + +This file should be named 8077-8.txt or 8077-8.zip + +Produced by Tiffany Vergon, Marc D'Hooghe, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +https://gutenberg.org or +http://promo.net/pg + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03 + +Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* + diff --git a/8077-8.zip b/8077-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..79a2ee7 --- /dev/null +++ b/8077-8.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..34b44fb --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #8077 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8077) |