,,the ,,mind ,,in ,,the ,,making ,the ,relation of ,intelligence to ,social ,reform ,by ,,james ,,harvey ,,robinson ,author of ,,petrarch1 ,,the ,,first ,,modern ,,scholar ,,mediaeval ,,and ,,modern ,,times ,,the ,,new ,,history1 ,,etc4 ,,contents ,i ,,preface #a4 ,,on ,,the ,,purpose ,,of ,,this ,,volume #b4 ,,three ,,disappointed ,,methods ,,of ,,reform ,,ii #c4 ,,on ,,various ,,kinds ,,of ,,thinking #d4 ,,rationalizing #e4 ,,how ,,creative ,,thought ,,transforms ,,the ,,world ,,iii #f4 ,,our ,,animal ,,heritage4 ,,the ,,nature ,,of ,,civilization #g4 ,,our ,,savage ,,mind ,,iv #h4 ,,beginning ,,of ,,critical ,,thinking #i4 ,,influence ,,of ,,plato ,,and ,,aristotle ,v #aj4 ,,origin ,,of ,,mediaeval ,,civilization #aa4 ,,our ,,mediaeval ,,intellectual ,,inheritance ,,vi #ab4 ,,the ,,scientific ,,revolution #ac4 ,,how ,,scientific ,,knowledge ,,has ,,the ,,conditions ,,of ,,life ,,vii #ad4 ,,the ,,sickness ,,of ,,an ,,acquisitive ,,society #ae4 ,,the ,,philosophy ,,of ,,safety ,,and ,,sanity ,,viii #af4 ,,some ,,reflections ,,on ,,the ,,philosophy ,,of ,,repression #ag4 ,,what ,,of ,,it8 ,,appendix 99 99 99 99 99 ,i4 ,,preface ,this is an essay--not a treatise--on the most important of all matters of human concern4 ,although it has cost its author a great deal more thought and labor than will be apparent1 it falls1 in his estimation1 far below the demands of its implacably urgent theme4 ,each page could readily be expanded into a volume4 ,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 hand4 ,j4 ,h4 ,r4 ,,new ,,school ,,for ,,social ,,research1 ,,new ,,york ,,city1 ,august1 #aiba4 ,,the ,,mind ,,in ,,the ,,making #a4 ,,on ,,the ,,purpose ,,of ,,this ,,volume ,if some magical transformation could be produced in men's ways of looking at themselves and their fellows1 no inconsiderable part of the evils which now afflict society would vanish away or remedy themselves automatically4 ,if the majority of influential persons held the opinions and occupied the point of view that a few rather uninfluential people now do1 there would1 for instance1 be no likelihood of another great war2 the whole problem of labor and capital would be transformed and attenuated2 national arrogance1 race animosity1 political corruption1 and inefficiency would all be reduced below the danger point4 ,as an old ,stoic proverb has it1 men are tormented by the opinions they have of things1 rather than by the things themselves4 ,this is eminently true of many of our worst problems to-day4 ,we have available knowledge and ingenuity and material resources to make a far fairer world than that in which we find ourselves1 but various obstacles prevent our intelligently availing ourselves of them4 ,the object of this book is to substantiate this proposition1 to exhibit with entire frankness the tremendous difficulties that stand in the way of such a beneficent change of mind1 and to point out as clearly as may be some of the measures to be taken in order to overcome them4 ,when we contemplate the shocking derangement of human affairs which now prevails in most civilized countries1 including our own1 even the best minds are puzzled and uncertain in their attempts to grasp the situation4 ,the world seems to demand a moral and economic regeneration which it is dangerous to postpone1 but as yet impossible to imagine1 let alone direct4 ,the preliminary intellectual regeneration which would put our leaders in a position to determine and control the course of affairs has not taken place4 ,we have unprecedented conditions to deal with and novel adjustments to make--there can be no doubt of that4 ,we also have a great stock of scientific knowledge unknown to our grandfathers with which to operate4 ,so novel are the conditions1 so copious the knowledge1 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 themselves4 ,we have1 however1 first to create an unprecedented attitude of mind to cope with unprecedented conditions1 and to utilize unprecedented knowledge ,this is the preliminary1 and most difficult1 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 standing4 ,how are we to put ourselves in a position to come to think of things that we not only never thought of before1 but are most reluctant to question8 ,in short1 how are we to rid ourselves of our fond prejudices and open our minds8 ,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 prevail1 the writer has reached the conclusion that history can at least shed a great deal of light on our present predicaments and confusion4 ,i do not mean by history that conventional chronicle of remote and irrelevant events which embittered the youthful years of many of us1 but rather a study of how man has come to be as he is and to believe as he does4 ,no historian has so far been able to make the whole story very plain or popular1 but a number of considerations are obvious enough1 and it ought not to be impossible some day to popularize them4 ,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 thought1 the world would forthwith become a very different place from what it now is4 ,we could then neither delude ourselves in the simple-minded way we now do1 nor could we take advantage of the primitive ignorance of others4 ,all our discussions of social1 industrial1 and political reform would be raised to a higher plane of insight and fruitfulness4 ,in one of those brilliant divagations with which ,mr4 ,h4 ,g4 ,wells is wont to enrich his novels he says3 ,when the intellectual history of this time comes to be written1 nothing1 ,i think1 will stand out more strikingly than the empty gulf in quality between the superb and richly fruitful scientific investigations that are going on1 and the general thought of other educated sections of the community4 ,i do not mean that scientific men are1 as a whole1 a class of supermen1 dealing with and thinking about everything in a way altogether better than the common run of humanity1 but in their field they think and work with an intensity1 an integrity1 a breadth1 boldness1 patience1 thoroughness1 and faithfulness--excepting only a few artists--which puts their work out of all comparison with any other human activity4444 ,in these particular directions the human mind has achieved a new and higher quality of attitude and gesture1 a veracity1 a self-detachment1 and self-abnegating vigor of criticism that tend to spread out and must ultimately spread out to every other human affair4 ,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 universe1 from the hugest nebula to the tiniest atom2 moreover1 this knowledge has been so applied as to well-nigh revolutionize human affairs1 and both the knowledge and its applications appear to be no more than hopeful beginnings1 with indefinite revelations ahead1 if only the same kind of thought be continued in the same patient and scrupulous manner4 ,but the knowledge of man1 of the springs of his conduct1 of his relation to his fellow-men singly or in groups1 and the felicitous regulation of human intercourse in the interest of harmony and fairness1 have made no such advance4 ,aristotle's treatises on astronomy and physics1 and his notions of generation and decay and of chemical processes1 have long gone by the board1 but his politics and ethics are still revered4 ,does this mean that his penetration in the sciences of man exceeded so greatly his grasp of natural science1 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 years8 ,i think that we may safely conclude that the latter is the case4 ,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 atom1 or to permit an embryologist to study the early stirrings of the fertilized egg4 ,as yet relatively little of the same kind of thought has been brought to bear on human affairs4 ,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 shocking4 ,the rural mechanic thinks scientifically2 his only aim is to avail himself of his knowledge of the nature and workings of the car1 with a view to making it run once more4 ,the ,senator1 on the other hand1 appears too often to have little idea of the nature and workings of nations1 and he relies on rhetoric and appeals to vague fears and hopes or mere partisan animosity4 ,the scientists have been busy for a century in revolutionizing the practical relation of nations4 ,the ocean is no longer a barrier1 as it was in ,washington's day1 but to all intents and purposes a smooth avenue closely connecting1 rather than safely separating1 the eastern and western continents4 ,the ,senator will nevertheless unblushingly appeal to policies of a century back1 suitable1 mayhap1 in their day1 but now become a warning rather than a guide4 ,the garage man1 on the contrary1 takes his mechanism as he finds it1 and does not allow any mystic respect for the earlier forms of the gas engine to interfere with the needed adjustments4 ,those who have dealt with natural phenomena1 as distinguished from purely human concerns1 did not1 however1 quickly or easily gain popular approbation and respect4 ,the process of emancipating natural science from current prejudices1 both of the learned and of the unlearned1 has been long and painful1 and is not wholly completed yet4 ,if we go back to the opening of the seventeenth century we find three men whose business it was1 above all1 to present and defend common sense in the natural sciences4 ,the most eloquent and variedly persuasive of these was ,lord ,bacon4 ,then there was the young ,descartes trying to shake himself loose from his training in a ,jesuit seminary by going into the ,thirty ,years' ,war1 and starting his intellectual life all over by giving up for the moment all he had been taught4 ,galileo had committed an offense of a grave character by discussing in the mother tongue the problems of physics4 ,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 theologians4 ,on hearing ,galileo's fate4 ,descartes burned a book he had written1 ,on ,the ,world1 lest he1 too1 get into trouble4 ,from that time down to the days of ,huxley and ,john ,fiske the struggle has continued1 and still continues--the ,three ,hundred ,years' ,war for intellectual freedom in dealing with natural phenomena4 ,it has been a conflict against ignorance1 tradition1 and vested interests in church and university1 with all that preposterous invective and cruel misrepresentation which characterize the fight against new and critical ideas4 ,those who cried out against scientific discoveries did so in the name of ,god1 of man's dignity1 and of holy religion and morality4 ,finally1 however1 it has come about that our instruction in the natural sciences is tolerably free2 although there are still large bodies of organized religious believers who are hotly opposed to some of the more fundamental findings of biology4 ,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 ,chemistry4 ,no publisher would accept a historical textbook based on an explicit statement of the knowledge we now have of man's animal ancestry4 ,in general1 however1 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 schools4 ,the social body has become tolerant of their virus4 ,this is not the case1 however1 with the social sciences4 ,one cannot but feel a little queasy when he uses the expression social science1 because it seems as if we had not as yet got anywhere near a real science of man4 ,i mean by social science our feeble efforts to study man1 his natural equipment and impulses1 and his relations to his fellows in the light of his origin and the history of the race4 ,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 sciences4 ,human affairs are in themselves far more intricate and perplexing than molecules and chromosomes4 ,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 way4 ,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 adjustment4 ,exact scientific results1 such as might be formulated in mechanics1 are1 of course1 out of the question4 ,it would be unscientific to expect to apply them4 ,i am not advocating any particular method of treating human affairs1 but rather such a general frame of mind1 such a critical open-minded attitude1 as has hitherto been but sparsely developed among those who aspire to be men's guides1 whether religious1 political1 economic1 or academic4 ,most human progress has been1 as ,wells expresses it1 a mere muddling through4 ,it has been man's wont to explain and sanctify his ways1 with little regard to their fundamental and permanent expediency4 ,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 men1 resulting in incalculable loss1 continued disorder1 and bewilderment4 ,yet men seem blindly driven to defend and perpetuate the conditions which produced the last disaster4 ,unless we wish to see a recurrence of this or some similar calamity1 we must1 as ,i have already suggested1 create a new and unprecedented attitude of mind to meet the new and unprecedented conditions which confront us4 ,we should proceed to the thorough reconstruction of our mind1 with a view to understanding actual human conduct and organization4 ,we must examine the facts freshly1 critically1 and dispassionately1 and then allow our philosophy to formulate itself as a result of this examination1 instead of permitting our observations to be distorted by archaic philosophy1 political economy1 and ethics4 ,as it is1 we are taught our philosophy first1 and in its light we try to justify the facts4 ,we must reverse this process1 as did those who began the great work in experimental science2 we must first face the facts1 and patiently await the emergence of a new philosophy4 ,a willingness to examine the very foundations of society does not mean a desire to encourage or engage in any hasty readjustment1 but certainly no wise or needed readjustment can be made unless such an examination is undertaken4 ,i come back1 then1 to my original point that in this examination of existing facts history1 by revealing the origin of many of our current fundamental beliefs1 will tend to free our minds so as to permit honest thinking4 ,also1 that the historical facts which ,i propose to recall would1 if permitted to play a constant part in our thinking1 automatically eliminate a very considerable portion of the gross stupidity and blindness which characterize our present thought and conduct in public affairs1 and would contribute greatly to developing the needed scientific attitude toward human concerns--in other words1 to bringing the mind up to date4 #b4 ,,three ,,disappointed ,,methods ,,of ,,reform ,plans for social betterment and the cure of public ills have in the past taken three general forms3 7,i7 changes in the rules of the game1 7,,ii7 spiritual exhortation1 and 7,,iii7 education4 ,had all these not largely failed1 the world would not be in the plight in which it now confessedly is4 ,i4 ,many reformers concede that they are suspicious of what they call ideas4 ,they are confident that our troubles result from defective organization1 which should be remedied by more expedient legislation and wise ordinances4 ,abuses should be abolished or checked by forbidding them1 or by some ingenious reordering of procedure4 ,responsibility should be concentrated or dispersed4 ,the term of office of government officials should be lengthened or shortened2 the number of members in governing bodies should be increased or decreased2 there should be direct primaries1 referendum1 recall1 government by commission2 powers should be shifted here and there with a hope of meeting obvious mischances all too familiar in the past4 ,in industry and education administrative reform is constantly going on1 with the hope of reducing friction and increasing efficiency4 ,the ,house of ,commons not long ago came to new terms with the peers4 ,the ,league of ,nations has already had to adjust the functions and influence of the ,council and the ,assembly1 respectively4 ,no one will question that organization is absolutely essential in human affairs1 but reorganization1 while it sometimes produces assignable benefit1 often fails to meet existing evils1 and not uncommonly engenders new and unexpected ones4 ,our confidence in restriction and regimentation is exaggerated4 ,what we usually need is a change of attitude1 and without this our new regulations often leave the old situation unaltered4 ,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 office4 ,in a university the fundamental drift of affairs cannot be greatly modified by creating a new dean1 or a university council1 or by enhancing or decreasing the nominal authority of the president or faculty4 ,we now turn to the second sanctified method of reform1 moral uplift4 ,,ii4 ,those who are impatient with mere administrative reform1 or who lack faith in it1 declare that what we need is brotherly love4 ,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 patience4 ,capital is too selfish2 ,labor is bent on its own narrow interests regardless of the risks ,capital takes4 ,we are all dependent on one another1 and a recognition of this should beget mutual forbearance and glad co-operation4 ,let us forget ourselves in others4 ,little children1 love one another4 ,the fatherhood of ,god has been preached by ,christians for over eighteen centuries1 and the brotherhood of man by the ,stoics long before them4 ,the doctrine has proved compatible with slavery and serfdom1 with wars blessed1 and not infrequently instigated1 by religious leaders1 and with industrial oppression which it requires a brave clergyman or teacher to denounce to-day4 ,true1 we sometimes have moments of sympathy when our fellow-creatures become objects of tender solicitude4 ,some rare souls may honestly flatter themselves that they love mankind in general1 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 institutions4 ,we still worship a tribal god1 and the foe is not to be reckoned among his children4 ,suspicion and hate are much more congenial to our natures than love1 for very obvious reasons in this world of rivalry and common failure4 ,there is1 beyond doubt1 a natural kindliness in mankind which will show itself under favorable auspices4 ,but experience would seem to teach that it is little promoted by moral exhortation4 ,this is the only point that need be urged here4 ,whether there is another way of forwarding the brotherhood of man will be considered in the sequel4 ,,iii4 ,one disappointed in the effects of mere reorganization1 and distrusting the power of moral exhortation1 will urge that what we need above all is education4 ,it is quite true that what we need is education1 but something so different from what now passes as such that it needs a new name4 ,education has more various aims than we usually recognize1 and should of course be judged in relation to the importance of its several intentions1 and of its success in gaining them4 ,the arts of reading and writing and figuring all would concede are basal in a world of newspapers and business4 ,then there is technical information and the training that prepares one to earn a livelihood in some more or less standardized guild or profession4 ,both these aims are reached fairly well by our present educational system1 subject to various economies and improvements in detail4 ,then there are the studies which it is assumed contribute to general culture and to training the mind1 with the hope of cultivating our tastes1 stimulating the imagination1 and mayhap improving our reasoning powers4 ,this branch of education is regarded by the few as very precious and indispensable2 by the many as at best an amenity which has little relation to the real purposes and success of life4 ,it is highly traditional and retrospective in the main1 concerned with ancient tongues1 old and revered books1 higher mathematics1 somewhat archaic philosophy and history1 and the fruitless form of logic which has until recently been prized as man's best guide in the fastnesses of error4 ,to these has been added in recent decades a choice of the various branches of natural science4 ,the results1 however1 of our present scheme of liberal education are disappointing4 ,one who1 like myself1 firmly agrees with its objects and is personally so addicted to old books1 so pleased with such knowledge as he has of the ancient and modern languages1 so envious of those who can think mathematically1 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 books1 rarely read for pleasure any foreign language1 think mathematically1 love philosophy or history1 or care for the beasts1 birds1 plants1 and rocks with any intelligent insight1 or even real curiosity4 ,this arouses the suspicion that our so-called liberal education miscarries and does not attain its ostensible aims4 ,the three educational aims enumerated above have one thing in common4 ,they are all directed toward an enhancement of the chances of personal worldly success1 or to the increase of our personal culture and intellectual and literary enjoyment4 ,their purpose is not primarily to fit us to play a part in social or political betterment4 ,but of late a fourth element has been added to the older ambitions1 namely the hope of preparing boys and girls to become intelligent voters4 ,this need has been forced upon us by the coming of political democracy1 which makes one person's vote exactly as good as another's4 ,now education for citizenship would seem to consist in gaining a knowledge of the actual workings of our social organization1 with some illuminating notions of its origin1 together with a full realization of its defects and their apparent sources4 ,but here we encounter an obstacle that is unimportant in the older types of education1 but which may prove altogether fatal to any good results in our efforts to make better citizens4 ,subjects of instruction like reading and writing1 mathematics1 ,latin and ,greek1 chemistry and physics1 medicine and the law are fairly well standardized and retrospective4 ,doubtless there is a good deal of internal change in method and content going on1 but this takes place unobtrusively and does not attract the attention of outside critics4 ,political and social questions1 on the other hand1 and matters relating to prevailing business methods1 race animosities1 public elections1 and governmental policy are1 if they are vital1 necessarily controversial4 ,school boards and superintendents1 trustees and presidents of colleges and universities1 are sensitive to this fact4 ,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 defective1 or that the present generation of citizens has not conducted our affairs with exemplary success1 guided by the immutable principles of justice4 ,how indeed can a teacher be expected to explain to the sons and daughters of businessmen1 politicians1 doctors1 lawyers1 and clergymen--all pledged to the maintenance of the sources of their livelihood--the actual nature of business enterprise as now practiced1 the prevailing methods of legislative bodies and courts1 and the conduct of foreign affairs8 ,think of a teacher in the public schools recounting the more illuminating facts about the municipal government under which he lives1 with due attention to graft and jobs6 ,so1 courses in government1 political economy1 sociology1 and ethics confine themselves to inoffensive generalizations1 harmless details of organization1 and the commonplaces of routine morality1 for only in that way can they escape being controversial4 ,teachers are rarely able or inclined to explain our social life and its presuppositions with sufficient insight and honesty to produce any very important results4 ,even if they are tempted to tell the essential facts they dare not do so1 for fear of losing their places1 amid the applause of all the righteously minded4 ,however we may feel on this important matter1 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 life4 ,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 it4 ,since we do all we can to corroborate the beneficence of what we have1 we can hardly hope to raise up a more intelligent generation bent on achieving what we have not4 ,we all know this to be true2 it has been forcibly impressed on our minds of late4 ,most of us agree that it is right and best that it should be so2 some of us do not like to think about it at all1 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 impasse4#a ,we have now considered briefly the three main hopes that have been hitherto entertained of bettering things 7,i7 by changing the rules of the game1 7,,ii7 by urging men to be good1 and to love their neighbor as themselves1 and 7,,iii7 by education for citizenship4 ,it may be that these hopes are not wholly unfounded1 but it must be admitted that so far they have been grievously disappointed4 ,doubtless they will continue to be cherished on account of their assured respectability4 ,mere lack of success does not discredit a method1 for there are many things that determine and perpetuate our sanctified ways of doing things besides their success in reaching their proposed ends4 ,had this not always been so1 our life to-day would be far less stupidly conducted than it is4 ,but let us agree to assume for the moment that the approved schemes of reform enumerated above have1 to say the least1 shown themselves inadequate to meet the crisis in which civilized society now finds itself4 ,have we any other hope8 ,yes1 there is ,intelligence4 ,that is as yet an untested hope in its application to the regulation of human relations4 ,it is not discredited because it has not been tried on any large scale outside the realm of natural science4 ,there1 everyone will confess1 it has produced marvelous results4 ,employed in regard to stars1 rocks1 plants1 and animals1 and in the investigation of mechanical and chemical processes1 it has completely revolutionized men's notions of the world in which they live1 and of its inhabitants1 with the notable exception of man himself4 ,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 millionaires4 ,but most of us know too little of the past to realize the penalty that had to be paid for this application of intelligence4 ,in order that these discoveries should be made and ingeniously applied to the conveniences of life1 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--indeed1 until much more recently4 ,intelligence1 in a creature of routine like man and in a universe so ill understood as ours1 must often break valiantly with the past in order to get ahead4 ,it would be pleasant to assume that all we had to do was to build on well-designed foundations1 firmly laid by the wisdom of the ages4 ,but those who have studied the history of natural science would agree that ,bacon1 ,galileo1 and ,descartes found no such foundation1 but had to begin their construction from the ground up4 ,the several hopes of reform mentioned above all assume that the now generally accepted notions of righteous human conduct are not to be questioned4 ,our churches and universities defend this assumption4 ,our editors and lawyers and the more vocal of our business men adhere to it4 ,even those who pretend to study society and its origin seem often to believe that our present ideals and standards of property1 the state1 industrial organization1 the relations of the sexes1 and education are practically final and must necessarily be the basis of any possible betterment in detail4 ,but if this be so ,intelligence has already done its perfect work1 and we can only lament that the outcome in the way of peace1 decency1 and fairness1 judged even by existing standards1 has been so disappointing4 ,there are1 of course1 a few here and there who suspect and even repudiate current ideals and standards4 ,but at present their resentment against existing evils takes the form of more or less dogmatic plans of reconstruction1 like those of the socialists and communists1 or exhausts itself in the vague protest and faultfinding of the average ,intellectual4 ,neither the socialist nor the common run of ,intellectual appears to me to be on the right track4 ,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 justify2 the other1 more indefinite than he need be4 ,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 ways1 it must loose itself from the bonds that now confine it4 ,the primeval curse still holds3 ,of every tree in the garden thou mayest freely eat2 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil1 thou shalt not eat of it2 for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die4 ,few people confess that they are afraid of knowledge1 but the university presidents1 ministers1 and editors who most often and publicly laud what they are wont to call the fearless pursuit of truth1 feel compelled1 in the interest of public morals and order1 to discourage any reckless indulgence in the fruit of the forbidden tree1 for the inexperienced may select an unripe apple and suffer from the colic in consequence4 ,just look at ,russia6 ,better always1 instead of taking the risk on what the church calls science falsely so called1 fall back on ignorance rightly so called4 ,no one denies that ,intelligence is the light of the world and the chief glory of man1 but1 as ,bertrand ,russell says1 we dread its indifference to respectable opinions and what we deem the well-tried wisdom of the ages4 ,it is1 as he truly says1 fear that holds men back2 fear that their cherished beliefs should prove harmful1 fear lest they themselves should prove less worthy of respect than they have supposed themselves to be4 ',should the workingman think freely about property8 ,what then will become of us1 the rich8 ,should young men and women think freely about sex8 ,what then will become of morality8 ,should soldiers think freely about war8 ,what then will become of military discipline8' ,this fear is natural and inevitable1 but it is none the less dangerous and discreditable4 ,human arrangements are no longer so foolproof as they may once have been when the world moved far more slowly than it now does4 ,it should therefore be a good deed to remove or lighten any of the various restraints on thought4 ,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 reforms4 ,my own confidence in what ,president ,butler calls the findings of mankind is gone1 and the process by which it was lost will become obvious as we proceed4 ,i have no reforms to recommend1 except the liberation of ,intelligence1 which is the first and most essential one4 ,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 operations4 ,then we shall proceed to the main theme of the book1 a sketch of the manner in which our human intelligence appears to have come about4 ,if anyone will follow the story with a fair degree of sympathy and patience he may1 by merely putting together well-substantiated facts1 many of which he doubtless knows in other connections1 hope better to understand the perilous quandary in which mankind is now placed and the ways of escape that offer themselves4 ,,notes4 #a ,george ,bernard ,shaw reaches a similar conclusion when he contemplates education in the ,british ,isles4 ,we must teach citizenship and political science at school4 ,but must we8 ,there is no must about it1 the hard fact being that we must not teach political science or citizenship at school4 ,the schoolmaster who attempted it would soon find himself penniless in the streets without pupils1 if not in the dock pleading to a pompously worded indictment for sedition against the exploiters4 ,our schools teach the morality of feudalism corrupted by commercialism1 and hold up the military conqueror1 the robber baron1 and the profiteer1 as models of the illustrious and successful4--,back to ,methuselah1 xii4 99 99 99 99 99 ,,ii ,good sense is1 of all things among men1 the most equally distributed2 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 possess4--,,descartes4 ,we see man to-day1 instead of the frank and courageous recognition of his status1 the docile attention to his biological history1 the determination to let nothing stand in the way of the security and permanence of his future1 which alone can establish the safety and happiness of the race1 substituting blind confidence in his destiny1 unclouded faith in the essentially respectful attitude of the universe toward his moral code1 and a belief no less firm that his traditions and laws and institutions necessarily contain permanent qualities of reality4--,,william ,,trotter4 #c4 ,,on ,,various ,,kinds ,,of ,,thinking ,the truest and most profound observations on ,intelligence have in the past been made by the poets and1 in recent times1 by story-writers4 ,they have been keen observers and recorders and reckoned freely with the emotions and sentiments4 ,most philosophers1 on the other hand1 have exhibited a grotesque ignorance of man's life and have built up systems that are elaborate and imposing1 but quite unrelated to actual human affairs4 ,they have almost consistently neglected the actual process of thought and have set the mind off as something apart to be studied by itself4 ,but no such mind1 exempt from bodily processes1 animal impulses1 savage traditions1 infantile impressions1 conventional reactions1 and traditional knowledge1 ever existed1 even in the case of the most abstract of metaphysicians4 ,kant entitled his great work ,a ,critique of ,pure ,reason4 ,but to the modern student of mind pure reason seems as mythical as the pure gold1 transparent as glass1 with which the celestial city is paved4 ,formerly philosophers thought of mind as having to do exclusively with conscious thought4 ,it was that within man which perceived1 remembered1 judged1 reasoned1 understood1 believed1 willed4 ,but of late it has been shown that we are unaware of a great part of what we perceive1 remember1 will1 and infer2 and that a great part of the thinking of which we are aware is determined by that of which we are not conscious4 ,it has indeed been demonstrated that our unconscious psychic life far outruns our conscious4 ,this seems perfectly natural to anyone who considers the following facts3 ,the sharp distinction between the mind and the body is1 as we shall find1 a very ancient and spontaneous uncritical savage prepossession4 ,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 other4 ,every thought reverberates through the body1 and1 on the other hand1 alterations in our physical condition affect our whole attitude of mind4 ,the insufficient elimination of the foul and decaying products of digestion may plunge us into deep melancholy1 whereas a few whiffs of nitrous monoxide may exalt us to the seventh heaven of supernal knowledge and godlike complacency4 ,and vice versa1 a sudden word or thought may cause our heart to jump1 check our breathing1 or make our knees as water4 ,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 thinking4 ,then there are hidden impulses and desires and secret longings of which we can only with the greatest difficulty take account4 ,they influence our conscious thought in the most bewildering fashion4 ,many of these unconscious influences appear to originate in our very early years4 ,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 it4 ,the term unconscious1 now so familiar to all readers of modern works on psychology1 gives offense to some adherents of the past4 ,there should1 however1 be no special mystery about it4 ,it is not a new animistic abstraction1 but simply a collective word to include all the physiological changes which escape our notice1 all the forgotten experiences and impressions of the past which continue to influence our desires and reflections and conduct1 even if we cannot remember them4 ,what we can remember at any time is indeed an infinitesimal part of what has happened to us4 ,we could not remember anything unless we forgot almost everything4 ,as ,bergson says1 the brain is the organ of forgetfulness as well as of memory4 ,moreover1 we tend1 of course1 to become oblivious to things to which we are thoroughly accustomed1 for habit blinds us to their existence4 ,so the forgotten and the habitual make up a great part of the so-called unconscious4 ,if we are ever to understand man1 his conduct and reasoning1 and if we aspire to learn to guide his life and his relations with his fellows more happily than heretofore1 we cannot neglect the great discoveries briefly noted above4 ,we must reconcile ourselves to novel and revolutionary conceptions of the mind1 for it is clear that the older philosophers1 whose works still determine our current views1 had a very superficial notion of the subject with which they dealt4 ,but for our purposes1 with due regard to what has just been said and to much that has necessarily been left unsaid 7and with the indulgence of those who will at first be inclined to dissent71 we shall consider mind chiefly as conscious knowledge and intelligence1 as what we know and our attitude toward it--our disposition to increase our information1 classify it1 criticize it and apply it4 ,we do not think enough about thinking1 and much of our confusion is the result of current illusions in regard to it4 ,let us forget for the moment any impressions we may have derived from the philosophers1 and see what seems to happen in ourselves4 ,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 it4 ,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 nakedly4 ,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 intimate1 personal1 ignoble or trivial to permit us to reveal more than a small part of it4 ,i believe this must be true of everyone4 ,we do not1 of course1 know what goes on in other people's heads4 ,they tell us very little and we tell them very little4 ,the spigot of speech1 rarely fully opened1 could never emit more than driblets of the ever renewed hogshead of thought--noch grsser wie's ,heidelberger ,fass4 ,we find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as our own1 but they probably are4 ,we all appear to ourselves to be thinking all the time during our waking hours1 and most of us are aware that we go on thinking while we are asleep1 even more foolishly than when awake4 ,when uninterrupted by some practical issue we are engaged in what is now known as a reverie4 ,this is our spontaneous and favorite kind of thinking4 ,we allow our ideas to take their own course and this course is determined by our hopes and fears1 our spontaneous desires1 their fulfillment or frustration2 by our likes and dislikes1 our loves and hates and resentments4 ,there is nothing else anything like so interesting to ourselves as ourselves4 ,all thought that is not more or less laboriously controlled and directed will inevitably circle about the beloved ,ego4 ,it is amusing and pathetic to observe this tendency in ourselves and in others4 ,we learn politely and generously to overlook this truth1 but if we dare to think of it1 it blazes forth like the noontide sun4 ,the reverie or free association of ideas has of late become the subject of scientific research4 ,while investigators are not yet agreed on the results1 or at least on the proper interpretation to be given to them1 there can be no doubt that our reveries form the chief index to our fundamental character4 ,they are a reflection of our nature as modified by often hidden and forgotten experiences4 ,we need not go into the matter further here1 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 thinking4 ,it doubtless influences all our speculations in its persistent tendency to self-magnification and self-justification1 which are its chief preoccupations1 but it is the last thing to make directly or indirectly for honest increase of knowledge4#b ,philosophers usually talk as if such thinking did not exist or were in some way negligible4 ,this is what makes their speculations so unreal and often worthless4 ,the reverie1 as any of us can see for himself1 is frequently broken and interrupted by the necessity of a second kind of thinking4 ,we have to make practical decisions4 ,shall we write a letter or no8 ,shall we take the subway or a bus8 ,shall we have dinner at seven or half past8 ,shall we buy ,u4 ,s4 ,rubber or a ,liberty ,bond8 ,decisions are easily distinguishable from the free flow of the reverie4 ,sometimes they demand a good deal of careful pondering and the recollection of pertinent facts2 often1 however1 they are made impulsively4 ,they are a more difficult and laborious thing than the reverie1 and we resent having to make up our mind when we are tired1 or absorbed in a congenial reverie4 ,weighing a decision1 it should be noted1 does not necessarily add anything to our knowledge1 although we may1 of course1 seek further information before making it4 #d4 ,,rationalizing ,a third kind of thinking is stimulated when anyone questions our belief and opinions4 ,we sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without any resistance or heavy emotion1 but if we are told that we are wrong we resent the imputation and harden our hearts4 ,we are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs1 but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship4 ,it is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us1 but our self-esteem1 which is threatened4 ,we are by nature stubbornly pledged to defend our own from attack1 whether it be our person1 our family1 our property1 or our opinion4 ,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 policy4 ,we may surrender1 but rarely confess ourselves vanquished4 ,in the intellectual world at least peace is without victory4 ,few of us take the pains to study the origin of our cherished convictions2 indeed1 we have a natural repugnance to so doing4 ,we like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true1 and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them4 ,the result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do4 ,i remember years ago attending a public dinner to which the ,governor of the state was bidden4 ,the chairman explained that ,his ,excellency could not be present for certain good reasons2 what the real reasons were the presiding officer said he would leave us to conjecture4 ,this distinction between good and real reasons is one of the most clarifying and essential in the whole realm of thought4 ,we can readily give what seem to us good reasons for being a ,catholic or a ,mason1 a ,republican or a ,democrat1 an adherent or opponent of the ,league of ,nations4 ,but the real reasons are usually on quite a different plane4 ,of course the importance of this distinction is popularly1 if somewhat obscurely1 recognized4 ,the ,baptist missionary is ready enough to see that the ,buddhist is not such because his doctrines would bear careful inspection1 but because he happened to be born in a ,buddhist family in ,tokio4 ,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 ,ridge4 ,a savage can give all sorts of reasons for his belief that it is dangerous to step on a man's shadow1 and a newspaper editor can advance plenty of arguments against the ,bolsheviki4 ,but neither of them may realize why he happens to be defending his particular opinion4 ,the real reasons for our beliefs are concealed from ourselves as well as from others4 ,as we grow up we simply adopt the ideas presented to us in regard to such matters as religion1 family relations1 property1 business1 our country1 and the state4 ,we unconsciously absorb them from our environment4 ,they are persistently whispered in our ear by the group in which we happen to live4 ,moreover1 as ,mr4 ,trotter has pointed out1 these judgments1 being the product of suggestion and not of reasoning1 have the quality of perfect obviousness1 so that to question them 444 is to the believer to carry skepticism to an insane degree1 and will be met by contempt1 disapproval1 or condemnation1 according to the nature of the belief in question4 ,when1 therefore1 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 absurd1 obviously unnecessary1 unprofitable1 undesirable1 bad form1 or wicked1 we may know that that opinion is a nonrational one1 and probably1 therefore1 founded upon inadequate evidence4#c ,opinions1 on the other hand1 which are the result of experience or of honest reasoning do not have this quality of primary certitude4 ,i remember when as a youth ,i heard a group of business men discussing the question of the immortality of the soul1 ,i was outraged by the sentiment of doubt expressed by one of the party4 ,as ,i look back now ,i see that ,i had at the time no interest in the matter1 and certainly no least argument to urge in favor of the belief in which ,i had been reared4 ,but neither my personal indifference to the issue1 nor the fact that ,i had previously given it no attention1 served to prevent an angry resentment when ,i heard my ideas questioned4 ,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 thing4 ,our good reasons ordinarily have no value in promoting honest enlightenment1 because1 no matter how solemnly they may be marshaled1 they are at bottom the result of personal preference or prejudice1 and not of an honest desire to seek or accept new knowledge4 ,in our reveries we are frequently engaged in self-justification1 for we cannot bear to think ourselves wrong1 and yet have constant illustrations of our weaknesses and mistakes4 ,so we spend much time finding fault with circumstances and the conduct of others1 and shifting on to them with great ingenuity the on us of our own failures and disappointments4 ,rationalizing is the self-exculpation which occurs when we feel ourselves1 or our group1 accused of misapprehension or error4 ,the little word my is the most important one in all human affairs1 and properly to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom4 ,it has the same force whether it is my dinner1 my dog1 and my house1 or my faith1 my country1 and my ,god4 ,we not only resent the imputation that our watch is wrong1 or our car shabby1 but that our conception of the canals of ,mars1 of the pronunciation of ,epictetus1 of the medicinal value of salicine1 or the date of ,sargon ,i1 are subject to revision4 ,philosophers1 scholars1 and men of science exhibit a common sensitiveness in all decisions in which their amour propre is involved4 ,thousands of argumentative works have been written to vent a grudge4 ,however stately their reasoning1 it may be nothing but rationalizing1 stimulated by the most commonplace of all motives4 ,a history of philosophy and theology could be written in terms of grouches1 wounded pride1 and aversions1 and it would be far more instructive than the usual treatments of these themes4 ,sometimes1 under ,providence1 the lowly impulse of resentment leads to great achievements4 ,milton wrote his treatise on divorce as a result of his troubles with his seventeen-year-old wife1 and when he was accused of being the leading spirit in a new sect1 the ,divorcers1 he wrote his noble ,areopagitica to prove his right to say what he thought fit1 and incidentally to establish the advantage of a free press in the promotion of ,truth4 ,all mankind1 high and low1 thinks in all the ways which have been described4 ,the reverie goes on all the time not only in the mind of the mill hand and the ,broadway flapper1 but equally in weighty judges and godly bishops4 ,it has gone on in all the philosophers1 scientists1 poets1 and theologians that have ever lived4 ,aristotle's most abstruse speculations were doubtless tempered by highly irrelevant reflections4 ,he is reported to have had very thin legs and small eyes1 for which he doubtless had to find excuses1 and he was wont to indulge in very conspicuous dress and rings and was accustomed to arrange his hair carefully4#d ,diogenes the ,cynic exhibited the impudence of a touchy soul4 ,his tub was his distinction4 ,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 ,company4 ,these facts are not recalled here as a gratuitous disparagement of the truly great1 but to insure a full realization of the tremendous competition which all really exacting thought has to face1 even in the minds of the most highly endowed mortals4 ,and now the astonishing and perturbing suspicion emerges that perhaps almost all that had passed for social science1 political economy1 politics1 and ethics in the past may be brushed aside by future generations as mainly rationalizing4 ,john ,dewey has already reached this conclusion in regard to philosophy4#e ,veblen#f and other writers have revealed the various unperceived presuppositions of the traditional political economy1 and now comes an ,italian sociologist1 ,vilfredo ,pareto1 who1 in his huge treatise on general sociology1 devotes hundreds of pages to substantiating a similar thesis affecting all the social sciences4#g ,this conclusion may be ranked by students of a hundred years hence as one of the several great discoveries of our age4 ,it is by no means fully worked out1 and it is so opposed to nature that it will be very slowly accepted by the great mass of those who consider themselves thoughtful4 ,as a historical student ,i am personally fully reconciled to this newer view4 ,indeed1 it seems to me inevitable that just as the various sciences of nature were1 before the opening of the seventeenth century1 largely masses of rationalizations to suit the religious sentiments of the period1 so the social sciences have continued even to our own day to be rationalizations of uncritically accepted beliefs and customs4 ,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 favor1 but should immediately suggest the necessity of carefully testing it as a probable instance of rationalization4 #e4 ,,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 above4 ,it has not the usual qualities of the reverie1 for it does not hover about our personal complacencies and humiliations4 ,it is not made up of the homely decisions forced upon us by everyday needs1 when we review our little stock of existing information1 consult our conventional preferences and obligations1 and make a choice of action4 ,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 mind4 ,on the contrary1 it is that peculiar species of thought which leads us to change our mind4 ,it is this kind of thought that has raised man from his pristine1 subsavage ignorance and squalor to the degree of knowledge and comfort which he now possesses4 ,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 themselves4 ,in the past this type of thinking has been called ,reason4 ,but so many misapprehensions have grown up around the word that some of us have become very suspicious of it4 ,i suggest1 therefore1 that we substitute a recent name and speak of creative thought rather than of ,reason4 ,for this kind of meditation begets knowledge1 and knowledge is really creative inasmuch as it makes things look different from what they seemed before and may indeed work for their reconstruction4 ,in certain moods some of us realize that we are observing things or making reflections with a seeming disregard of our personal preoccupations4 ,we are not preening or defending ourselves2 we are not faced by the necessity of any practical decision1 nor are we apologizing for believing this or that4 ,we are just wondering and looking and mayhap seeing what we never perceived before4 ,curiosity is as clear and definite as any of our urges4 ,we wonder what is in a sealed telegram or in a letter in which some one else is absorbed1 or what is being said in the telephone booth or in low conversation4 ,this inquisitiveness is vastly stimulated by jealousy1 suspicion1 or any hint that we ourselves are directly or indirectly involved4 ,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 told4 ,the reports of a divorce suit will have news value for many weeks4 ,they constitute a story1 like a novel or play or moving picture4 ,this is not an example of pure curiosity1 however1 since we readily identify ourselves with others1 and their joys and despair then become our own4 ,we also take note of1 or observe1 as ,sherlock ,holmes says1 things which have nothing to do with our personal interests and make no personal appeal either direct or by way of sympathy4 ,this is what ,veblen so well calls idle curiosity4 ,and it is usually idle enough4 ,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 them4 ,on entering a room there are those who will perceive at a glance the degree of preciousness of the rugs1 the character of the pictures1 and the personality revealed by the books4 ,but there are many1 it would seem1 who are so absorbed in their personal reverie or in some definite purpose that they have no bright-eyed energy for idle curiosity4 ,the tendency to miscellaneous observation we come by honestly enough1 for we note it in many of our animal relatives4 ,veblen1 however1 uses the term idle curiosity somewhat ironically1 as is his wont4 ,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 proceeds4 ,since it may lead to systematic examination and seeking for things hitherto undiscovered4 ,for research is but diligent search which enjoys the high flavor of primitive hunting4 ,occasionally and fitfully idle curiosity thus leads to creative thought1 which alters and broadens our own views and aspirations and may in turn1 under highly favorable circumstances1 affect the views and lives of others1 even for generations to follow4 ,an example or two will make this unique human process clear4 ,galileo was a thoughtful youth and doubtless carried on a rich and varied reverie4 ,he had artistic ability and might have turned out to be a musician or painter4 ,when he had dwelt among the monks at ,valambrosa he had been tempted to lead the life of a religious4 ,as a boy he busied himself with toy machines and he inherited a fondness for mathematics4 ,all these facts are of record4 ,we may safely assume also that1 along with many other subjects of contemplation1 the ,pisan maidens found a vivid place in his thoughts4 ,one day when seventeen years old he wandered into the cathedral of his native town4 ,in the midst of his reverie he looked up at the lamps hanging by long chains from the high ceiling of the church4 ,then something very difficult to explain occurred4 ,he found himself no longer thinking of the building1 worshipers1 or the services2 of his artistic or religious interests2 of his reluctance to become a physician as his father wished4 ,he forgot the question of a career and even the graziosissime donne4 ,as he watched the swinging lamps he was suddenly wondering if mayhap their oscillations1 whether long or short1 did not occupy the same time4 ,then he tested this hypothesis by counting his pulse1 for that was the only timepiece he had with him4 ,this observation1 however remarkable in itself1 was not enough to produce a really creative thought4 ,others may have noticed the same thing and yet nothing came of it4 ,most of our observations have no assignable results4 ,galileo may have seen that the warts on a peasant's face formed a perfect isosceles triangle1 or he may have noticed with boyish glee that just as the officiating priest was uttering the solemn words1 ecce agnus ,dei1 a fly lit on the end of his nose4 ,to be really creative1 ideas have to be worked up and then put over1 so that they become a part of man's social heritage4 ,the highly accurate pendulum clock was one of the later results of ,galileo's discovery4 ,he himself was led to reconsider and successfully to refute the old notions of falling bodies4 ,it remained for ,newton to prove that the moon was falling1 and presumably all the heavenly bodies4 ,this quite upset all the consecrated views of the heavens as managed by angelic engineers4 ,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 believed4 ,in short1 those who dared to include in their thought the discoveries of ,galileo and his successors found themselves in a new earth surrounded by new heavens4 ,on the #bhth of ,october1 #ahca1 three hundred and fifty years after ,galileo had noticed the isochronous vibrations of the lamps1 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 magnet4 ,as the disk revolved an electric current was produced4 ,this would doubtless have seemed the idlest kind of an experiment to the stanch business men of the time1 who1 it happened1 were just then denouncing the child-labor bills in their anxiety to avail themselves to the full of the results of earlier idle curiosity4 ,but should the dynamos and motors which have come into being as the outcome of ,faraday's experiment be stopped this evening1 the business man of to-day1 agitated over labor troubles1 might1 as he trudged home past lines of dead cars1 through dark streets to an unlighted house1 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 scientists1 inventors1 and engineers4 ,the examples of creative intelligence given above belong to the realm of modern scientific achievement1 which furnishes the most striking instances of the effects of scrupulous1 objective thinking4 ,but there are1 of course1 other great realms in which the recording and embodiment of acute observation and insight have wrought themselves into the higher life of man4 ,the great poets and dramatists and our modern story-tellers have found themselves engaged in productive reveries1 noting and artistically presenting their discoveries for the delight and instruction of those who have the ability to appreciate them4 ,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 discoveries2 but there is clearly a temperamental difference4 ,the genesis and advance of painting1 sculpture1 and music offer still other problems4 ,we really as yet know shockingly little about these matters1 and indeed very few people have the least curiosity about them4#h ,nevertheless1 creative intelligence in its various forms and activities is what makes man4 ,were it not for its slow1 painful1 and constantly discouraged operations through the ages man would be no more than a species of primate living on seeds1 fruit1 roots1 and uncooked flesh1 and wandering naked through the woods and over the plains like a chimpanzee4 ,the origin and progress and future promotion of civilization are ill understood and misconceived4 ,these should be made the chief theme of education1 but much hard work is necessary before we can reconstruct our ideas of man and his capacities and free ourselves from innumerable persistent misapprehensions4 ,there have been obstructionists in all times1 not merely the lethargic masses1 but the moralists1 the rationalizing theologians1 and most of the philosophers1 all busily if unconsciously engaged in ratifying existing ignorance and mistakes and discouraging creative thought4 ,naturally1 those who reassure us seem worthy of honor and respect4 ,equally naturally those who puzzle us with disturbing criticisms and invite us to change our ways are objects of suspicion and readily discredited4 ,our personal discontent does not ordinarily extend to any critical questioning of the general situation in which we find ourselves4 ,in every age the prevailing conditions of civilization have appeared quite natural and inevitable to those who grew up in them4 ,the cow asks no questions as to how it happens to have a dry stall and a supply of hay4 ,the kitten laps its warm milk from a china saucer1 without knowing anything about porcelain2 the dog nestles in the corner of a divan with no sense of obligation to the inventors of upholstery and the manufacturers of down pillows4 ,so we humans accept our breakfasts1 our trains and telephones and orchestras and movies1 our national ,constitution1 or moral code and standards of manners1 with the simplicity and innocence of a pet rabbit4 ,we have absolutely inexhaustible capacities for appropriating what others do for us with no thought of a thank you4 ,we do not feel called upon to make any least contribution to the merry game ourselves4 ,indeed1 we are usually quite unaware that a game is being played at all4 ,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 on1 and always have been going on1 in our fellow-men4 ,we can sometimes get quite pure and sparkling examples of all four kinds1 but commonly they are so confused and intermingled in our reverie as not to be readily distinguishable4 ,the reverie is a reflection of our longings1 exultations1 and complacencies1 our fears1 suspicions1 and disappointments4 ,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 prerogative4 ,it is not strange1 but rather quite inevitable1 that our beliefs about what is true and false1 good and bad1 right and wrong1 should be mixed up with the reverie and be influenced by the same considerations which determine its character and course4 ,we resent criticisms of our views exactly as we do of anything else connected with ourselves4 ,our notions of life and its ideals seem to us to be our own and as such necessarily true and right1 to be defended at all costs4 ,we very rarely consider1 however1 the process by which we gained our convictions4 ,if we did so1 we could hardly fail to see that there was usually little ground for our confidence in them4 ,here and there1 in this department of knowledge or that1 some one of us might make a fair claim to have taken some trouble to get correct ideas of1 let us say1 the situation in ,russia1 the sources of our food supply1 the origin of the ,constitution1 the revision of the tariff1 the policy of the ,holy ,roman ,apostolic ,church1 modern business organization1 trade unions1 birth control1 socialism1 the ,league of ,nations1 the excess-profits tax1 preparedness1 advertising in its social bearings2 but only a very exceptional person would be entitled to opinions on all of even these few matters4 ,and yet most of us have opinions on all these1 and on many other questions of equal importance1 of which we may know even less4 ,we feel compelled1 as self-respecting persons1 to take sides when they come up for discussion4 ,we even surprise ourselves by our omniscience4 ,without taking thought we see in a flash that it is most righteous and expedient to discourage birth control by legislative enactment1 or that one who decries intervention in ,mexico is clearly wrong1 or that big advertising is essential to big business and that big business is the pride of the land4 ,as godlike beings why should we not rejoice in our omniscience8 ,it is clear1 in any case1 that our convictions on important matters are not the result of knowledge or critical thought1 nor1 it may be added1 are they often dictated by supposed self-interest4 ,most of them are pure prejudices in the proper sense of that word4 ,we do not form them ourselves4 ,they are the whisperings of the voice of the herd4 ,we have in the last analysis no responsibility for them and need assume none4 ,they are not really our own ideas1 but those of others no more well informed or inspired than ourselves1 who have got them in the same careless and humiliating manner as we4 ,it should be our pride to revise our ideas and not to adhere to what passes for respectable opinion1 for such opinion can frequently be shown to be not respectable at all4 ,we should1 in view of the considerations that have been mentioned1 resent our supine credulity4 ,as an ,english writer has remarked3 ,if we feared the entertaining of an unverifiable opinion with the warmth with which we fear using the wrong implement at the dinner table1 if the thought of holding a prejudice disgusted us as does a foul disease1 then the dangers of man's suggestibility would be turned into advantages4#i ,the purpose of this essay is to set forth briefly the way in which the notions of the herd have been accumulated4 ,this seems to me the best1 easiest1 and least invidious educational device for cultivating a proper distrust for the older notions on which we still continue to rely4 ,the real reasons1 which explain how it is we happen to hold a particular belief1 are chiefly historical4 ,our most important opinions--those1 for example1 having to do with traditional1 religious1 and moral convictions1 property rights1 patriotism1 national honor1 the state1 and indeed all the assumed foundations of society--are1 as ,i have already suggested1 rarely the result of reasoned consideration1 but of unthinking absorption from the social environment in which we live4 ,consequently1 they have about them a quality of elemental certitude1 and we especially resent doubt or criticism cast upon them4 ,so long1 however1 as we revere the whisperings of the herd1 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-day4 ,the real reasons for our beliefs1 by making clear their origins and history1 can do much to dissipate this emotional blockade and rid us of our prejudices and preconceptions4 ,once this is done and we come critically to examine our traditional beliefs1 we may well find some of them sustained by experience and honest reasoning1 while others must be revised to meet new conditions and our more extended knowledge4 ,but only after we have undertaken such a critical examination in the light of experience and modern knowledge1 freed from any feeling of primary certitude1 can we claim that the good are also the real reasons for our opinions4 ,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 ideas1 or of unseemly heat in defending them just because we have adopted them4 ,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 affairs1 they will do much to relieve the imaginary obligation we feel in regard to traditional sentiments and ideals4 ,few of us are capable of engaging in creative thought1 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 future4 ,,notes4 #b ,the poet-clergyman1 ,john ,donne1 who lived in the time of ,james ,i1 has given a beautifully honest picture of the doings of a saint's mind3 ,i throw myself down in my chamber and call in and invite ,god and ,his angels thither1 and when they are there ,i neglect ,god and ,his angels for the noise of a fly1 for the rattling of a coach1 for the whining of a door4 ,i talk on in the same posture of praying1 eyes lifted up1 knees bowed down1 as though ,i prayed to ,god1 and if ,god or ,his angels should ask me when ,i thought last of ,god in that prayer ,i cannot tell4 ,sometimes ,i find that ,i had forgot what ,i was about1 but when ,i began to forget it ,i cannot tell4 ,a memory of yesterday's pleasures1 a fear of to-morrow's dangers1 a straw under my knee1 a noise in mine ear1 a light in mine eye1 an anything1 a nothing1 a fancy1 a chimera in my brain troubles me in my prayer4--,quoted by ,,robert ,,lynd1 ,the ,art of ,letters1 pp4 #df-dg4 #c ,instincts of the ,herd1 p4 #dd4 #d ,diogenes ,laertius1 book v4 #e ,reconstruction in ,philosophy4 #f ,the ,place of ,science in ,modern ,civilization4 #g ,trait de ,sociologie ,gnrale1 passim4 ,the author's term derivations seems to be his precise way of expressing what we have called the good reasons1 and his residus correspond to the real reasons4 ,he well says1 ,l'homme prouve le besoin de raisonner1 et en outre d'tendre un voile sur ses instincts et sur ses sentiments--hence1 rationalization4 7,p4 #ghh47 ,his aim is to reduce sociology to the real reasons4 7,p4 #gia47 #h ,recently a re-examination of creative thought has begun as a result of new knowledge which discredits many of the notions formerly held about reason4 ,see1 for example1 ,creative ,intelligence1 by a group of ,american philosophic thinkers2 ,john ,dewey1 ,essays in ,experimental ,logic 7both pretty hard books72 and ,veblen1 ,the ,place of ,science in ,modern ,civilization4 ,easier than these and very stimulating are ,dewey1 ,reconstruction in ,philosophy1 and ,woodworth1 ,dynamic ,psychology4 #i ,trotter1 op4 cit41 p4 #de4 ,the first part of this little volume is excellent4 99 99 99 99 99 ,,iii ,nous tions dj si vieux quand nous sommes ns4--,,anatole ,,france4 ,simia quam similis1 turpissima bestia1 nobis8--,,ennius4 ,tous les homines se ressemblent si fort qu'il n'y a point de peuple dont les sottises ne nous doivent faire trembler4--,,fontenelle4 ,the savage is very close to us indeed1 both in his physical and mental make-up and in the forms of his social life4 ,tribal society is virtually delayed civilization1 and the savages are a sort of contemporaneous ancestry4--,,william ,i4 ,,thomas4 #f4 ,,our ,,animal ,,heritage4 ,,the ,,nature ,,of ,,civilization ,there are four historical layers underlying the minds of civilized men--the animal mind1 the child mind1 the savage mind1 and the traditional civilized mind4 ,we are all animals and never can cease to be2 we were all children at our most impressionable age and can never get over the effects of that2 our human ancestors have lived in savagery during practically the whole existence of the race1 say five hundred thousand or a million years1 and the primitive human mind is ever with us2 finally1 we are all born into an elaborate civilization1 the constant pressure of which we can by no means escape4 ,each of these underlying minds has its special sciences and appropriate literatures4 ,the new discipline of animal or comparative psychology deals with the first2 genetic and analytical psychology with the second2#aj anthropology1 ethnology1 and comparative religion with the third2 and the history of philosophy1 science1 theology1 and literature with the fourth4 ,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 them4 ,but if we are fair with ourselves we shall find that their hold on us is really inexorable4 ,we can only transcend them artificially and precariously and in certain highly favorable conditions4 ,depression1 anger1 fear1 or ordinary irritation will speedily prove the insecurity of any structure that we manage to rear on our fourfold foundation4 ,such fundamental and vital preoccupations as religion1 love1 war1 and the chase stir impulses that lie far back in human history and which effectually repudiate the cavilings of ratiocination4 ,in all our reveries and speculations1 even the most exacting1 sophisticated1 and disillusioned1 we have three unsympathetic companions sticking closer than a brother and looking on with jealous impatience--our wild apish progenitor1 a playful or peevish baby1 and a savage4 ,we may at any moment find ourselves overtaken with a warm sense of camaraderie for any or all of these ancient pals of ours1 and experience infinite relief in once more disporting ourselves with them as of yore4 ,some of us have in addition a ,greek philosopher or man of letters in us2 some a neoplatonic mystic1 some a mediaeval monk1 all of whom have learned to make terms with their older playfellows4 ,before retracing the way in which the mind as we now find it in so-called intelligent people has been accumulated1 we may take time to try to see what civilization is and why man alone can become civilized4 ,for the mind has expanded pari passu with civilization1 and without civilization there would1 ,i venture to conjecture1 have been no human mind in the commonly accepted sense of that term4 ,it is now generally conceded by all who have studied the varied evidence and have freed themselves from ancient prejudice that1 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 speechless1 naked1 houseless1 fireless1 and toolless life1 similar to that of the existing primates with which we are zoologically closely connected4 ,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 is4 ,we are all descended from the lower animals4 ,we are furthermore still animals with not only an animal body1 but with an animal mind4 ,and this animal body and animal mind are the original foundations on which even the most subtle and refined intellectual life must perforce rest4 ,we are ready to classify certain of our most essential desires as brutish--hunger and thirst1 the urgence of sleep1 and especially sexual longing4 ,we know of blind animal rage1 of striking1 biting1 scratching1 howling1 and snarling1 of irrational fears and ignominious flight4 ,we share our senses with the higher animals1 have eyes and ears1 noses and tongues much like theirs2 heart1 lungs1 and other viscera1 and four limbs4 ,they have brains which stand them in good stead1 although their heads are not so good as ours4 ,but when one speaks of the animal mind he should think of still other resemblances between the brute and man4 ,all animals learn--even the most humble among them may gain something from experience4 ,all the higher animals exhibit curiosity under certain circumstances1 and it is this impulse which underlies all human science4 ,moreover1 some of the higher animals1 especially the apes and monkeys1 are much given to fumbling and groping4 ,they are restless1 easily bored1 and spontaneously experimental4 ,they therefore make discoveries quite unconsciously1 and form new and sometimes profitable habits of action4 ,if1 by mere fumbling1 a monkey1 cat1 or dog happens on a way to secure food1 this remunerative line of conduct will occur to the creature when he feels hungry4 ,this is what ,thorndike has named learning by trial and error4 ,it might better be called fumbling and success1 for it is the success that establishes the association4 ,the innate curiosity which man shares with his uncivilized zoological relatives is the native impulse that leads to scientific and philosophical speculation1 and the original fumbling of a restless ape has become the ordered experimental investigation of modern times4 ,a creature which lacked curiosity and had no tendency to fumble could never have developed civilization and human intelligence4l#j ,but why did man alone of all the animals become civilized8 ,the reason is not far to seek1 although it has often escaped writers#aa on the subject4 ,all animals gain a certain wisdom with age and experience1 but the experience of one ape does not profit another4 ,learning among animals below man is individual1 not co-operative and cumulative4 ,one dog does not seem to learn from another1 nor one ape from another1 in spite of the widespread misapprehension in this regard4 ,many experiments have been patiently tried in recent years and it seems to be pretty well established that the monkey learns by monkeying1 but that he rarely or never appears to ape4 ,he does not learn by imitation1 because he does not imitate4 ,there may be minor exceptions1 but the fact that apes never1 in spite of a bodily equipment nearly human1 become in the least degree civilized1 would seem to show that the accumulation of knowledge or dexterity through imitation is impossible for them4 ,man has the various sense organs of the apes and their extraordinary power of manipulation4 ,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--namely1 see things clearly enough to form associations through imitation4#ab ,we can imagine the manner in which man unwittingly took one of his momentous and unprecedented first steps in civilization4 ,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 point4 ,he might then spy an animal and1 quite without reasoning1 impulsively make a thrust with the stick and discover that it pierced the creature4 ,if he could hold these various elements in the situation1 sharpening the stick and using it1 he would have made an invention--a rude spear4 ,a particularly acute bystander might comprehend and imitate the process4 ,if others did so and the habit was established in the tribe so that it became traditional and was transmitted to following generations1 the process of civilization would have begun--also the process of human learning1 which is noticing distinctions and analyzing situations4 ,this simple process of sharpening a stick would involve the concepts1 as the philosophers say1 of a tool and bark and a point and an artificial weapon4 ,but ages and ages were to elapse before the botanist would distinguish the various layers which constitute the bark1 or successive experimenters come upon the idea of a bayonet to take the place of the spear4 ,of late1 considerable attention has been given to the question of man's original1 uneducated1 animal nature2 what resources has he as a mere creature independent of any training that results from being brought up in some sort of civilized community8 ,the question is difficult to formulate satisfactorily and still more difficult to answer4 ,but without attempting to list man's supposed natural instincts we must assume that civilization is built up on his original propensities and impulses1 whatever they may be4 ,these probably remain nearly the same from generation to generation4 ,the idea formerly held that the civilization of our ancestors affects our original nature is almost completely surrendered4 ,we are all born wholly uncivilized4 ,if a group of infants from the best families of to-day could be reared by apes they would find themselves with no civilization4 ,how long it would take them and their children to gain what now passes for even a low savage culture it is impossible to say4 ,the whole arduous task would have to be performed anew and it might not take place at all1 unless conditions were favorable1 for man is not naturally a progressive animal4 ,he shares the tendency of all other animal tribes just to pull through and reproduce his kind4 ,most of us do not stop to think of the conditions of an animal existence4 ,when we read the descriptions of our nature as given by ,william ,james1 ,mc,dougall1 or even ,thorndike1 with all his reservations1 we get a rather impressive idea of our possibilities1 not a picture of uncivilized life4 ,when we go camping we think that we are deserting civilization1 forgetting the sophisticated guides1 and the pack horses laden with the most artificial luxuries1 many of which would not have been available even a hundred years ago4 ,we lead the simple life with ,swedish matches1 ,brazilian coffee1 ,canadian bacon1 ,california canned peaches1 magazine rifles1 jointed fishing rods1 and electric flashlights4 ,we are elaborately clothed and can discuss ,bergson's views or ,d4 ,h4 ,lawrence's last story4 ,we navely imagine we are returning to primitive conditions because we are living out of doors or sheltered in a less solid abode than usual1 and have to go to the brook for water4 ,but man's original estate was1 as ,hobbes reflected1 poor1 nasty1 brutish1 and short4 ,to live like an animal is to rely upon one's own quite naked equipment and efforts1 and not to mind getting wet or cold or scratching one's bare legs in the underbrush4 ,one would have to eat his roots and seeds quite raw1 and gnaw a bird as a cat does4 ,to get the feel of uncivilized life1 let us recall how savages with the comparatively advanced degree of culture reached by our native ,indian tribes may fall to when really hungry4 ,in the journal of the ,lewis and ,clark expedition there is an account of the killing of a deer by the white men4 ,hearing of this1 the ,shoshones raced wildly to the spot where the warm and bloody entrails had been thrown out 444 and ran tumbling over one another like famished dogs4 ,each tore away whatever part he could1 and instantly began to eat it2 some had the liver1 some the kidneys1 and1 in short1 no part on which we are accustomed to look with disgust escaped them4 ,one of them who had seized about nine feet of the entrails was chewing at one end1 while with his hand he was diligently clearing his way by discharging the contents at the other4 ,another striking example of simple animal procedure is given in the same journal3 ,one of the women1 who had been leading two of our pack horses1 halted at a rivulet about a mile behind and sent on the two horses by a female friend4 ,on inquiring of ,cameahwait the cause of her detention1 he answered1 with great apparent unconcern1 that she had just stopped to lie in1 but would soon overtake us4 ,in fact1 we were astonished to see her in about an hour's time come on with her new-born infant1 and pass us on her way to the camp1 seemingly in perfect health4 ,this is the simple life and it was the life of our ancestors before civilization began4 ,it had been the best kind of life possible in all the preceding aeons of the world's history4 ,without civilization it would be the existence to which all human beings now on the earth would forthwith revert4 ,it is man's starting point4#ac ,but what about the mind8 ,what was going on in the heads of our untutored forbears8 ,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 do4 ,even distinguished philosophers like ,descartes and ,rousseau made this mistake4 ,this assumption will not stand inspection4 ,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 environment4 ,then we must recollect that our primitive ancestor had no words with which to name and tell about things4 ,he was speechless4 ,his fellows knew no more than he did4 ,each one learned during his lifetime according to his capacity1 but no instruction in our sense of the word was possible4 ,what he saw and heard was not what we should have called seeing and hearing4 ,he responded to situations in a blind and impulsive manner1 with no clear idea of them4 ,in short1 he must have thought much as a wolf or bear does1 just as he lived much like them4 ,we must be on our guard against accepting the prevalent notions of even the animal intellect4 ,an owl may look quite as wise as a judge4 ,a monkey1 canary1 or collie has bright eyes and seems far more alert than most of the people we see on the street car4 ,a squirrel in the park appears to be looking at us much as we look at him4 ,but he cannot be seeing the same things that we do4 ,we can be scarcely more to him than a vague suggestion of peanuts4 ,and even the peanut has little of the meaning for him that it has for us4 ,a dog perceives a motor-car and may be induced to ride in it1 but his idea of it would not differ from that of an ancient carryall1 except1 mayhap1 in an appreciative distinction between the odor of gasoline and that of the stable4 ,only in times of sickness1 drunkenness1 or great excitement can we get some hint in ourselves of the impulsive responses in animals free from human sophistication and analysis4 ,locke thought that we first got simple ideas and then combined them into more complex conceptions and finally into generalizations or abstract ideas4 ,but this is not the way that man's knowledge arose4 ,he started with mere impressions of general situations1 and gradually by his ability to handle things he came upon distinctions1 which in time he made clearer by attaching names to them4 ,we keep repeating this process when we learn about anything4 ,the typewriter is at first a mere mass impression1 and only gradually and imperfectly do most of us distinguish certain of its parts2 only the men who made it are likely to realize its full complexity by noting and assigning names to all the levers1 wheels1 gears1 bearings1 controls1 and adjustments4 ,john ,stuart ,mill thought that the chief function of the mind was making inferences4 ,but making distinctions is equally fundamental--seeing that there are really many things where only one was at first apparent4 ,this process of analysis has been man's supreme accomplishment4 ,this is what has made his mind grow4 ,the human mind has then been built up through hundreds of thousands of years by gradual accretions and laborious accumulations4 ,man started at a cultural zero and had to find out everything for himself2 or rather a very small number of peculiarly restless and adventurous spirits did the work4 ,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 perpetuation4 ,creative intelligence is confined to the very few1 but the many can thoughtlessly avail themselves of the more obvious achievements of those who are exceptionally highly endowed4 ,even an ape will fit himself into a civilized environment4 ,a chimpanzee can be taught to relish bicycles1 roller skates1 and cigarettes which he could never have devised1 cannot understand1 and could not reproduce4 ,even so with mankind4 ,most of us could not have devised1 do not understand1 and consequently could not reproduce any of the everyday conveniences and luxuries which surround us4 ,few of us could make an electric light1 or write a good novel to read by it1 or paint a picture for it to shine upon4 ,professor ,giddings has recently asked the question1 ,why has there been any history8#ad ,why1 indeed1 considering that the good and respectable is usually synonymous with the ancient routine1 and the old have always been there to repress the young8 ,such heavy words of approval as venerable1 sanctified1 and revered all suggest great age rather than fresh discoveries4 ,as it was in the beginning1 is now and ever shall be1 is our protest against being disturbed1 forced to think or to change our habits4 ,so history1 namely change1 has been mainly due to a small number of seers1--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 time4 ,the seer is simply an example of a variation biologically1 such as occurs in all species of living things1 both animal and vegetable4 ,but the unusually large roses in our gardens1 the swifter horses of the herd1 and the cleverer wolf in the pack have no means of influencing their fellows as a result of their peculiar superiority4 ,their offspring has some chance of sharing to some degree this pre-eminence1 but otherwise things will go on as before4 ,whereas the singular variation represented by a ,st4 ,francis1 a ,dante1 a ,voltaire1 or a ,darwin may permanently1 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 themselves1 but who can1 nevertheless1 suffer some modification as a result of the teachings of others4 ,this illustrates the magical and unique workings of culture and creative intelligence in mankind4#ae ,we have no means of knowing when or where the first contribution to civilization was made1 and with it a start on the arduous building of the mind4 ,there is some reason to think that the men who first transcended the animal mind were of inferior mental capacity to our own1 but even if man1 emerging from his animal estate1 had had on the average quite as good a brain as those with which we are now familiar1 ,i suspect that the extraordinarily slow and hazardous process of accumulating modern civilization would not have been greatly shortened4 ,mankind is lethargic1 easily pledged to routine1 timid1 suspicious of innovation4 ,that is his nature4 ,he is only artificially1 partially1 and very recently progressive4 ,he has spent almost his whole existence as a savage hunter1 and in that state of ignorance he illustrated on a magnificent scale all the inherent weaknesses of the human mind4 #g4 ,,our ,,savage ,,mind ,should we arrange our present beliefs and opinions on the basis of their age1 we should find that some of them were very1 very old1 going back to primitive man2 others were derived from the ,greeks2 many more of them would prove to come directly from the ,middle ,ages2 while certain others in our stock were unknown until natural science began to develop in a new form about three hundred years ago4 ,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 savages4 ,such confidence as we have in the liberal arts1 metaphysics1 and formal logic goes back to the ,greek thinkers2 our religious ideas and our standards of sexual conduct are predominantly mediaeval in their presuppositions2 our notions of electricity and disease germs are1 of course1 recent in origin1 the result of painful and prolonged research which involved the rejection of a vast number of older notions sanctioned by immemorial acceptance4 ,in general1 those ideas which are still almost universally accepted in regard to man's nature1 his proper conduct1 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 stars1 the stratification of the rocks and the life of plants and animals4 ,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 perspective4 ,in order to do this let us imagine the whole gradual and laborious attainments of mankind compressed into the compass of a single lifetime4 ,let us assume that a single generation of men have in fifty years managed to accumulate all that now passes for civilization4 ,they would have to start1 as all individuals do1 absolutely uncivilized1 and their task would be to recapitulate what has occupied the race for1 let us guess1 at least five hundred thousand years4 ,each year in the life of a generation would therefore correspond to ten thousand years in the progress of the race4 ,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 ground1 harvest their crops1 domesticate animals1 and weave their rough garments4 ,six months later1 or half through the fiftieth year1 some of them1 in a particularly favorable situation1 would have invented writing and thus established a new and wonderful means of spreading and perpetuating civilization4 ,three months later another group would have carried literature1 art1 and philosophy to a high degree of refinement and set standards for the succeeding weeks4 ,for two months our generation would have been living under the blessings of ,christianity2 the printing press would be but a fortnight old and they would not have had the steam engine for quite a week4 ,for two or three days they would have been hastening about the globe in steamships and railroad trains1 and only yesterday would they have come upon the magical possibilities of electricity4 ,within the last few hours they would have learned to sail in the air and beneath the waters1 and have forthwith applied their newest discoveries to the prosecution of a magnificent war on the scale befitting their high ideals and new resources4 ,this is not so strange1 for only a week ago they were burning and burying alive those who differed from the ruling party in regard to salvation1 eviscerating in public those who had new ideas of government1 and hanging old women who were accused of traffic with the devil4 ,all of them had been no better than vagrant savages a year before4 ,their fuller knowledge was altogether too recent to have gone very deep1 and they had many institutions and many leaders dedicated to the perpetuation of outworn notions which would otherwise have disappeared4 ,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 savage4 ,in speaking of the savage or primitive mind1 we are1 of course1 using a very clumsy expression4 ,we shall employ the term1 nevertheless1 to indicate the characteristics of the human mind when there was as yet no writing1 no organized industry or mechanical arts1 no money1 no important specialization of function except between the sexes1 no settled life in large communities4 ,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 earth4 ,there are no chronicles to tell us the story of those long centuries4 ,some inferences can be made from the increasing artfulness and variety of the flint weapons and tools which we find4 ,but the stone weapons which have come down to us1 even in their crudest forms 7eoliths71 are very far from representing the earliest achievements of man in the accumulation of culture4 ,those dim1 remote cycles must have been full of great1 but inconspicuous1 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 all4 ,since man is descended from less highly endowed animals1 there must have been a time when the man-animal was in a state of animal ignorance4 ,he started with no more than an ape is able to know4 ,he had to learn everything for himself1 as he had no one to teach him the tricks that apes and children can be taught by sophisticated human beings4 ,he was necessarily self-taught1 and began1 as we have seen1 in a state of ignorance beyond anything we can readily conceive4 ,he lived naked and speechless in the woods1 or wandered over the plains without artificial shelter or any way of cooking his food4 ,he subsisted on raw fruit1 berries1 roots1 insects1 and such animals as he could strike down or pick up dead4 ,his mind must have corresponded with his brutish state4 ,he must at the first have learned just as his animal relatives learn--by fumbling and by forming accidental associations4 ,he had impulses and such sagacity as he individually derived from experience1 but no heritage of knowledge accumulated by the group and transmitted by education4 ,this heritage had to be constructed on man's potentialities4 ,of mankind in this extremely primitive condition we have no traces4 ,there could indeed be no traces4 ,all savages of the present day or of whom we have any record represent a relatively highly developed traditional culture1 with elaborate languages1 myths1 and well-established artificial customs1 which it probably took hundreds of thousands of years to accumulate4 ,man in a state of nature is only a presupposition1 but a presupposition which is forced upon us by compelling evidence1 conjectural and inferential though it is4 ,on a geological time scale we are still close to savagery1 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 prevailed4 ,but in any case it is certain1 as many anthropologists have pointed out1 that customs1 savage ideas1 and primitive sentiments have continued to form an important part of our own culture down even to the present day4 ,we are met thus with the necessity of reckoning with this inveterate element in our present thought and customs4 ,much of the data that we have regarding primitive man has been accumulated in recent times1 for the most part as a result of the study of simple peoples4 ,these differ greatly in their habits and myths1 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 civilization4 ,at the start man had to distinguish himself from the group to which he belonged and say1 ,i am ,i4 ,this is not an idea given by nature4#af ,there are evidences that the earlier religious notions were not based on individuality1 but rather on the virtue which objects had--that is1 their potency to do things4 ,only later did the animistic belief in the personalities of men1 animals1 and the forces of nature appear4 ,when man discovered his own individuality he spontaneously ascribed the same type of individuality and purpose to animals and plants1 to the wind and the thunder4 ,this exhibits one of the most noxious tendencies of the mind--namely1 personification4 ,it is one of the most virulent enemies of clear thinking4 ,we speak of the ,spirit of the ,reformation or the ,spirit of ,revolt or the ,spirit of ,disorder and ,anarchy4 ,the papers tell us that1 ,berlin says1 ,london says1 ,uncle ,sam so decides1 ,john ,bull is disgruntled4 ,now1 whether or no there are such things as spirits1 ,berlin and ,london have no souls1 and ,uncle ,sam is as mythical as the great god ,pan4 ,sometimes this regression to the savage is harmless1 but when a newspaper states that ,germany is as militaristic as ever1 on the ground that some insolent ,prussian lieutenant says that ,german armies will occupy ,paris within five years1 we have an example of animism which in a society farther removed from savagery than ours might be deemed a high crime and misdemeanor4 ,chemists and physicians have given up talking of spirits1 but in discussing social and economic questions we are still victimized by the primitive animistic tendencies of the mind4 ,the dream has had a great influence in the building up of the mind4 ,our ideas1 especially our religious beliefs1 would have had quite another history had men been dreamless4 ,for it was not merely his shadow and his reflection in the water that led man to imagine souls and doubles1 but pre-eminently the visions of the night4 ,as his body lay quiet in sleep he found himself wandering in distant places4 ,sometimes he was visited by the dead4 ,so it was clear that the body had an inhabitant who was not necessarily bound to it1 who could desert it from time to time during life1 and who continued to exist and interest itself in human affairs after death4 ,whole civilizations and religions and vast theological speculations have been dominated by this savage inference4 ,it is true that in very recent times1 since ,plato1 let us say1 other reasons have been urged for believing in the soul and its immortality1 but the idea appears to have got its firm footing in savage logic4 ,it is a primitive inference1 however it may later have been revised1 rationalized1 and ennobled4 ,the taboo--the forbidden thing--of savage life is another thing very elementary in man's make-up4 ,he had tendencies to fall into habits and establish inhibitions for reasons that he either did not discover or easily forgot4 ,these became fixed and sacred to him and any departure from them filled him with dread4 ,sometimes the prohibition might have some reasonable justification1 sometimes it might seem wholly absurd and even a great nuisance1 but that made no difference in its binding force4 ,for example1 pork was taboo among the ancient ,hebrews--no one can say why1 but none of the modern justifications for abstaining from that particular kind of meat would have counted in early ,jewish times4 ,it is not improbable that it was the original veneration for the boar and not an abhorrence of him that led to the prohibition4 ,the modern principle is too often only a new form of the ancient taboo1 rather than an enlightened rule of conduct4 ,the person who justifies himself by saying that he holds certain beliefs1 or acts in a certain manner on principle1 and yet refuses to examine the basis and expediency of his principle1 introduces into his thinking and conduct an irrational1 mystical element similar to that which characterized savage prohibitions4 ,principles unintelligently urged make a great deal of trouble in the free consideration of social readjustment1 for they are frequently as recalcitrant and obscurantist as the primitive taboo1 and are really scarcely more than an excuse for refusing to reconsider one's convictions and conduct4 ,the psychological conditions lying back of both taboo and this sort of principle are essentially the same4 ,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 sacred4 ,these are really expressions of profound and persistent traits in the uncritical mind and can only be overcome by carefully cultivated criticism4 ,they are the result of our natural timidity and the constant dread lest we find ourselves treading on holy 7i4 e41 dangerous7 ground4#ag ,when they are intrenched in the mind we cannot expect to think freely and fairly1 for they effectually stop argument4 ,if a thing is held to be sacred it is the center of what may be called a defense complex1 and a reasonable consideration of the merits of the case will not be tolerated4 ,when an issue is declared to be a moral one--for example1 the prohibition of strong drink--an emotional state is implied which makes reasonable compromise and adjustment impossible2 for moral is a word on somewhat the same plane as sacred1 and has much the same qualities and similar effects on thinking4 ,in dealing with the relations of the sexes the terms pure and impure introduce mystic and irrational moods alien to clear analysis and reasonable readjustments4 ,those who have studied the characteristics of savage life are always struck by its deadly conservatism1 its needless restraints on the freedom of the individual1 and its hopeless routine4 ,man1 like plants and animals in general1 tends to go on from generation to generation1 living as nearly as may be the life of his forbears4 ,changes have to be forced upon him by hard experience1 and he is ever prone to find excuses for slipping back into older habits1 for these are likely to be simpler1 less critical1 more spontaneous--more closely akin1 in short1 to his animal and primitive promptings4 ,one who prides himself to-day on his conservatism1 on the ground that man is naturally an anarchic and disorderly creature who is held in check by the far-seeing ,tory1 is almost exactly reversing the truth4 ,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 earth1 and which still perpetuate all sorts of primitive barbarism in modern society4 ,the conservative on principle is therefore a most unmistakably primitive person in his attitude4 ,his only advance beyond the savage mood lies in the specious reasons he is able to advance for remaining of the same mind4 ,what we vaguely call a radical is a very recent product due to altogether exceptional and unprecedented circumstances4 ,,notes4 #aj ,it is impossible to discuss here the results which a really honest study of child psychology promises4 ,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 live4 ,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 reasons4 #aa ,clarence ,day in ,our ,simian ,world discusses with delightful humor the effects of our underlying simian temperament on the conduct of life4 #ab ,the word imitation is commonly used very loosely4 ,the real question is does an animal1 or even man himself1 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 done4 ,pray1 if you doubt this1 note how many things you see others doing that you have no inclination to imitate6 ,for an admirable summary see ,thorndike1 ,e4 ,l41 ,the ,original ,nature of ,man1 #aiac1 pp4 #ajh ff4 #ac ,if the earth were struck by one of ,mr4 ,wells's comets1 and if1 in consequence1 every human being now alive were to lose all the knowledge and habits which he had acquired from preceding generations 7though retaining unchanged all his own powers of invention and memory and habituation7 nine tenths of the inhabitants of ,london or ,new ,york would be dead in a month1 and #ii per cent of the remaining tenth would be dead in six months4 ,they would have no language to express their thoughts1 and no thoughts but vague reverie4 ,they could not read notices1 or drive motors or horses4 ,they would wander about1 led by the inarticulate cries of a few naturally dominant individuals1 drowning themselves1 as thirst came on1 in hundreds at the riverside landing places1 looting those shops where the smell of decaying food attracted them1 and perhaps at the end stumbling on the expedient of cannibalism4 ,even in the country districts men could not invent1 in time to preserve their lives1 methods of growing food1 or taming animals1 or making fire1 or so clothing themselves as to endure a ,northern winter4--,,graham ,,wallas1 ,our ,social ,heritage1 p4 #af4 ,only the very lowest of savages might possibly pull through if culture should disappear4 #ad ,a ,theory of ,history1 ,political ,science ,quarterly1 ,december1 #aibj4 ,he attributes history to the adventurers4 #ae ,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 all4 ,yet he is forced sadly to confess that man continues all too often to operate on an animal or space-binding plan of life4 ,his aim and outlook are1 however1 essentially the same as those of the present writer4 ,his method of approach will appeal especially to those who are wont to deal with affairs in the spirit of the mathematician and engineer4 ,he is quite right in thinking that man has hitherto had little conception of his peculiar prerogatives and unlimited opportunities for betterment4 #af ,in the beginning1 too1 man did not know how children came about1 for it was not easy to connect a common impulsive act with the event of birth so far removed in time4 ,the tales told to children still are reminiscences of the mythical explanations which our savage ancestors advanced to explain the arrival of the infant4 ,consequently1 all popular theories of the origin of marriage and the family based on the assumption of conscious paternity are outlawed4 #ag ,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 sin4--,de ,rer4 ,nat4 i1 #hj ff4 99 99 99 99 99 ,,iv ,thereupon one of the ,egyptian priests1 who was of a very great age1 said3 ,o ,solon1 ,solon1 you ,hellenes are but children1 and there was never an old man who was a ,hellene4 ,solon in return asked him what he meant4 ,i mean to say1 he replied1 that in mind you are all young2 there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition2 nor any science which is hoary with age4 --,,plato',s ,timaeus1 #bb 7,jowett's translation74 ,the truth is that we are far more likely to underrate the originality of the ,greeks than to exaggerate it1 and we do not always remember the very short time they took to lay down the lines scientific inquiry has followed ever since4--,,john ,,burnet4 #h4 ,,beginning ,,of ,,critical ,,thinking ,the ,egyptians were the first people1 so far as we know1 who invented a highly artificial method of writing1 about five thousand years ago1 and began to devise new arts beyond those of their barbarous predecessors4 ,they developed painting and architecture1 navigation1 and various ingenious industries2 they worked in glass and enamels and began the use of copper1 and so introduced metal into human affairs4 ,but in spite of their extraordinary advance in practical1 matter-of-fact knowledge they remained very primitive in their beliefs4 ,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 gods4 ,the peculiar opinions of the ,egyptians do not enter directly into our intellectual heritage1 but some of the fundamental religious ideas which developed in western ,asia have1 through the veneration for the ,hebrew ,scriptures1 become part and parcel of our ways of thinking4 ,to the ,greeks1 however1 we are intellectually under heavy obligation4 ,the literature of the ,greeks1 in such fragments as escaped destruction1 was destined1 along with the ,hebrew ,scriptures1 to exercise an incalculable influence in the formation of our modern civilized minds4 ,these two dominating literary heritages originated about the same time--day before yesterday--viewed in the perspective of our race's history4 ,previous to the ,greek civilization books had played no great part in the development1 dissemination1 and transmission of culture from generation to generation4 ,now they were to become a cardinal force in advancing and retarding the mind's expansion4 ,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 destroyers4 ,they accepted the industrial arts of the eastern ,mediterranean1 adopted the ,phoenician alphabet1 and emulated the ,phoenician merchant4 ,by the seventh century before our era they had towns1 colonies1 and commerce1 with much stimulating running hither and thither4 ,we get our first traces of new intellectual enterprise in the ,ionian cities1 especially ,miletus1 and in the ,italian colonies of the ,greeks4 ,only later did ,athens become the unrivaled center in a marvelous outflowering of the human intelligence4 ,it is a delicate task to summarize what we owe to the ,greeks4 ,leaving aside their supreme achievements in literature and art1 we can consider only very briefly the general scope and nature of their thinking as it relates most closely to our theme4 ,the chief strength of the ,greeks lay in their freedom from hampering intellectual tradition4 ,they had no venerated classics1 no holy books1 no dead languages to master1 no authorities to check their free speculation4 ,as ,lord ,bacon reminds us1 they had no antiquity of knowledge and no knowledge of antiquity4 ,a modern classicist would have been a forlorn outlander in ancient ,athens1 with no books in a forgotten tongue1 no obsolete inflections to impose upon reluctant youth4 ,he would have had to use the everyday speech of the sandal-maker and fuller4 ,for a long time no technical words were invented to give aloofness and seeming precision to philosophic and scientific discussion4 ,aristotle was the first to use words incomprehensible to the average citizen4 ,it was in these conditions that the possibilities of human criticism first showed themselves4 ,the primitive notions of man1 of the gods1 and of the workings of natural forces began to be overhauled on an entirely new scale4 ,intelligence developed rapidly as exceptionally bold individuals came to have their suspicions of simple1 spontaneous1 and ancient ways of looking at things4 ,ultimately there came men who professed to doubt everything4 ,as ,abelard long after put it1 ,by doubting we come to question1 and by seeking we may come upon the truth4 ,but man is by nature credulous4 ,he is victimized by first impressions1 from which he can only escape with great difficulty4 ,he resents criticism of accepted and familiar ideas as he resents any unwelcome disturbance of routine4 ,so criticism is against nature1 for it conflicts with the smooth workings of our more primitive minds1 those of the child and the savage4 ,it should not be forgotten that the ,greek people were no exception in this matter4 ,anaxagoras and ,aristotle were banished for thinking as they did2 ,euripides was an object of abhorrence to the conservative of his day1 and ,socrates was actually executed for his godless teachings4 ,the ,greek thinkers furnish the first instance of intellectual freedom1 of the self-detachment and self-abnegating vigor of criticism which is most touchingly illustrated in the honest know-nothingism of ,socrates4 ,they discovered skepticism in the higher and proper significance of the word1 and this was their supreme contribution to human thought4 ,one of the finest examples of early ,greek skepticism was the discovery of ,xenophanes that man created the gods in his own image4 ,he looked about him1 observed the current conceptions of the gods1 compared those of different peoples1 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 blue1 but was a reflection of the familiarly human4 ,if the lions had gods they would have the shape of their worshipers4 ,no more fundamentally shocking revelation was ever made than this1 for it shook the very foundations of religious belief4 ,the home life on ,olympus as described in ,homer was too scandalous to escape the attention of the thoughtful1 and no later ,christian could have denounced the demoralizing influence of the current religious beliefs in hotter indignation than did ,plato4 ,to judge from the reflection of ,greek thought which we find in ,lucretius and ,cicero1 none of the primitive religious beliefs escaped mordant criticism4 ,the second great discovery of the ,greek thinkers was metaphysics4 ,they did not have the name1 which originated long after in quite an absurd fashion1#ah but they reveled in the thing4 ,nowadays metaphysics is revered by some as our noblest effort to reach the highest truth1 and scorned by others as the silliest of wild-goose chases4 ,i am inclined to rate it1 like smoking1 as a highly gratifying indulgence to those who like it1 and1 as indulgences go1 relatively innocent4 ,the ,greeks found that the mind could carry on an absorbing game with itself4 ,we all engage in reveries and fantasies of a homely1 everyday type1 concerned with our desires or resentments1 but the fantasy of the metaphysician busies itself with conceptions1 abstractions1 distinctions1 hypotheses1 postulates1 and logical inferences4 ,having made certain postulates or hypotheses1 he finds new conclusions1 which he follows in a seemingly convincing manner4 ,this gives him the delightful emotion of pursuing ,truth1 something as the simple man pursues a maiden4 ,only ,truth is more elusive than the maiden and may continue to beckon her follower for long years1 no matter how gray and doddering he may become4 ,let me give two examples of metaphysical reasoning4#ai ,we have an idea of an omnipotent1 all-good1 and perfect being4 ,we are incapable1 knowing as we do only imperfect things1 of framing such an idea for ourselves1 so it must have been given us by the being himself4 ,and perfection must include existence1 so ,god must exist4 ,this was good enough for ,anselm and for ,descartes1 who went on to build a whole closely concatenated philosophical system on this foundation4 ,to them the logic seemed irrefragable2 to the modern student of comparative religion1 even to ,kant1 himself a metaphysician1 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 associations4 ,a second example of metaphysics may be found in the doctrines of the ,eleatic philosophers1 who early appeared in the ,greek colonies on the coast of ,italy1 and thought hard about space and motion4 ,empty space seemed as good as nothing1 and1 as nothing could not be said to exist1 space must be an illusion2 and as motion implied space in which to take place1 there could be no motion4 ,so all things were really perfectly compact and at rest1 and all our impressions of change were the illusions of the thoughtless and the simple-minded4 ,since one of the chief satisfactions of the metaphysicians is to get away from the welter of our mutable world into a realm of assurance1 this doctrine exercised a great fascination over many minds4 ,the ,eleatic conviction of unchanging stability received a new form in ,plato's doctrine of eternal ideas1 and later developed into the comforting conception of the ,absolute1 in which logical and world-weary souls have sought refuge from the times of ,plotinus to those of ,josiah ,royce4 ,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 science4 ,these were the ,epicureans4 ,democritus was in no way a modern experimental scientist1 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 theirs4 ,he rejected the ,eleatic decisions against the reality of space and motion on the ground that1 since motion obviously took place1 the void must be a reality1 even if the metaphysician could not conceive it4 ,he hit upon the notion that all things were composed of minute1 indestructible particles 7or atoms7 of fixed kinds4 ,given motion and sufficient time1 these might by fortuitous concourse make all possible combinations4 ,and it was one of these combinations which we call the world as we find it4 ,for the atoms of various shapes were inherently capable of making up all material things1 even the soul of man and the gods themselves4 ,there was no permanence anywhere2 all was no more than the shifting accidental and fleeting combinations of the permanent atoms of which the cosmos was composed4 ,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 ,things4 ,the ,epicureans believed the gods to exist because1 like ,anselm and ,descartes1 they thought we had an innate idea of them4 ,but the divine beings led a life of elegant ease and took no account of man2 neither his supplications1 nor his sweet-smelling sacrifices1 nor his blasphemies1 ever disturbed their calm4 ,moreover1 the human soul was dissipated at death4 ,so the ,epicureans flattered themselves that they had delivered man from his two chief apprehensions1 the fear of the gods and the fear of death4 ,for1 as ,lucretius says1 he who understands the real nature of things will see that both are the illusions of ignorance4 ,thus one school of ,greek thinkers attained to a complete rejection of religious beliefs in the name of natural science4 #i4 ,,influence ,,of ,,plato ,,and ,,aristotle ,in ,plato we have at once the skepticism and the metaphysics of his contemporaries4 ,he has had his followers down through the ages1 some of whom carried his skepticism to its utmost bounds1 while others availed themselves of his metaphysics to rear a system of arrogant mystical dogmatism4 ,he put his speculations in the form of dialogues --ostensible discussions in the market place or the houses of philosophic ,athenians4 ,the ,greek word for logic is dialectic1 which really means discussion4 argumentation in the interest of fuller analysis1 with the hope of more critical conclusions4 ,the dialogues are the drama of his day1 employed in ,plato's magical hand as a vehicle of discursive reason4 ,of late we have in ,ibsen1 ,shaw1 ,brieux1 and ,galsworthy the old expedient applied to the consideration of social perplexities and contradictions4 ,the dialogue is indecisive in its outcome4 ,it does not lend itself to dogmatic conclusions and systematic presentation1 but exposes the intricacy of all important questions and the inevitable conflict of views1 which may seem altogether irreconcilable4 ,we much need to encourage and elaborate opportunities for profitable discussion to-day4 ,we should revert to the dialectic of the ,athenian agora and make it a chosen instrument for clarifying1 co-ordinating and directing our co-operative thinking4 ,plato's indecision and urbane fair-mindedness is called irony4 ,now irony is seriousness without solemnity4 ,it assumes that man is a serio-comic animal1 and that no treatment of his affairs can be appropriate which gives him a consistency and dignity which he does not possess4 ,he is always a child and a savage4 ,he is the victim of conflicting desires and hidden yearnings4 ,he may talk like a sentimental idealist and act like a brute4 ,the same person will devote anxious years to the invention of high explosives and then give his fortune to the promotion of peace4 ,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 mended4 ,our nature forbids us to make a definite choice between the machine gun and the ,red ,cross nurse4 ,so we use the one to keep the other busy4 ,human thought and conduct can only be treated broadly and truly in a mood of tolerant irony4 ,it belies the logical precision of the long-faced1 humorless writer on politics and ethics1 whose works rarely deal with man at all1 but are a stupid form of metaphysics4 ,plato made terms with the welter of things1 but sought relief in the conception of supernal models1 eternal in the heavens1 after which all things were imperfectly fashioned4 ,he confessed that he could not bear to accept a world which was like a leaky pot or a man running at the nose4 ,in short1 he ascribed the highest form of existence to ideals and abstractions4 ,this was a new and sophisticated republication of savage animism4 ,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 affairs4 ,he consecrated one of the chief foibles of the human mind and elevated it to a religion4 ,ever since his time men have discussed the import of names4 ,are there such things as love1 friendship1 and honor1 or are there only lovely things1 friendly emotions in this individual and that1 deeds which we may1 according to our standards1 pronounce honorable or dishonorable8 ,if you believe in beauty1 truth1 and love as such you are a ,platonist4 ,if you believe that there are only individual instances and illustrations of various classified emotions and desires and acts1 and that abstractions are only the inevitable categories of thought1 you would in the ,middle ,ages have been called a nominalist4 ,this matter merits a long discussion1 but one can test any book or newspaper editorial at his leisure and see whether the writer puts you off with abstractions--,americanism1 ,bolshevism1 public welfare1 liberty1 national honor1 religion1 morality1 good taste1 rights of man1 science1 reason1 error--or1 on the other hand1 casts some light on actual human complications4 ,i do not mean1 of course1 that we can get along without the use of abstract and general terms in our thinking and speaking1 but we should be on our constant guard against viewing them as forces and attributing to them the vigor of personality4 ,animism is1 as already explained1 a pitfall which is always yawning before us and into which we are sure to plunge unless we are ever watchful4 ,platonism is its most amiable and complete disguise4 ,previous to ,aristotle1 ,greek thought had been wonderfully free and elastic4 ,it had not settled into compartments or assumed an educational form which would secure its unrevised transmission from teacher to student4 ,it was not gathered together in systematic treatises4 ,aristotle combined the supreme powers of an original and creative thinker with the impulses of a textbook writer4 ,he loved order and classification4 ,he supplied manuals of ,ethics1 ,politics1 ,logic1 ,psychology1 ,physics1 ,metaphysics1 ,economics1 ,poetics1 ,zology1 ,meteorology1 ,constitutional ,law1 and ,god only knows what not1 for we do not have by any means all the things he wrote4 ,and he was equally interested1 and perhaps equally capable1 in all the widely scattered fields in which he labored4 ,and some of his manuals were so overwhelming in the conclusiveness of their reasoning1 so all-embracing in their scope1 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 ,philosopher4 ,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 judgment4 ,aristotle combined an essentially metaphysical taste with a preternatural power of observation in dealing with the workings of nature4 ,in spite of his inevitable mistakes1 which became the curse of later docile generations1 no other thinker of whom we have record can really compare with him in the distinction and variety of his achievements4 ,it is not his fault that posterity used his works to hamper further progress and clarification4 ,he is the father of book knowledge and the grandfather of the commentator4 ,after two or three hundred years of talking in the market place and of philosophic discussions prolonged until morning1 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 examination4 ,this is to me the chief reason why1 except for some advances in mathematics1 astronomy1 geography1 and the refinements of scholarship1 the glorious period of the ,greek mind is commonly and rightfully assumed to have come to an end about the time of ,aristotle's death4 ,why did the ,greeks not go on1 as modern scientists have gone on1 with vistas of the unachieved still ahead of them8 ,in the first place1 ,greek civilization was founded on slavery and a fixed condition of the industrial arts4 ,the philosopher and scholar was estopped from fumbling with those everyday processes that were associated with the mean life of the slave and servant4 ,consequently there was no one to devise the practical apparatus by which alone profound and ever-increasing knowledge of natural operations is possible4 ,the mechanical inventiveness of the ,greeks was slight1 and hence they never came upon the lens2 they had no microscope to reveal the minute1 no telescope to attract the remote2 they never devised a mechanical timepiece1 a thermometer1 nor a barometer1 to say nothing of cameras and spectroscopes4 ,archimedes1 it is reported1 disdained to make any record of his ingenious devices1 for they were unworthy the noble profession of a philosopher4 ,such inventions as were made were usually either toys or of a heavy practical character4 ,so the next great step forward in the extension of the human mind awaited the disappearance of slavery and the slowly dawning suspicion1 and final repudiation1 of the older metaphysics1 which first became marked some three hundred years ago4 ,,notes4 #ah ,when in the time of ,cicero the long-hidden works of ,aristotle were recovered and put into the hands of ,andronicus of ,rhodes to edit1 he found certain fragments of highly abstruse speculation which he did not know what to do with4 ,so he called them addenda to the ,physics--,ta meta ta physica4 ,these fragments1 under the caption ,metaphysica1 became the most revered of ,aristotle's productions1 his ,first ,philosophy1 as the ,scholastics were wont to call it4 #ai ,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 standards4 ,reconstruction in ,philosophy1 lectures i-ii4 ,it is certainly surprising how few philosophical writers have ever reached other than perfectly commonplace conclusions in regard to practical morality4 99 99 99 99 99 ,v ,and ,god made the two great lights2 the greater light to rule the day1 and the lesser light to rule the night2 he made the stars also4 ,and ,god set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth4 ,and ,god said1 ,let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind1 cattle and creeping thing1 and beast of the earth after its kind3 and it was so4 ,and ,god said1 ,let us make man in our image1 after our likeness3 and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea1 and over the fowl of the air1 and over the cattle1 and over all the earth1 and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth4--,gen4 i4 ,ibi vacabimus et videbimus1 videbimus et amabimus1 amabimus et laudabimus4 ,ecce quod erit in fine sine fine4 ,nam quis alius noster est finis nisi pervenire ad regnum1 cuius nullus est finis8--,,augustine4 #aj4 ,,origin ,,of ,,the ,,mediaeval ,,civilization ,in the formation of what we may call our historical mind--namely1 that modification of our animal and primitive outlook which has been produced by men of exceptional intellectual venturesomeness--the ,greeks played a great part4 ,we have seen how the ,greek thinkers introduced for the first time highly subtle and critical ways of scrutinizing old beliefs1 and1 how they disabused their minds of many an ancient and nave mistake4 ,but our current ways of thinking are not derived directly from the ,greeks2 we are separated from them by the ,roman ,empire and the ,middle ,ages4 ,when we think of ,athens we think of the ,parthenon and its frieze1 of ,sophocles and ,euripides1 of ,socrates and ,plato and ,aristotle1 of urbanity and clarity and moderation in all things4 ,when we think of the ,middle ,ages we find ourselves in a world of monks1 martyrs1 and miracles1 of popes and emperors1 of knights and ladies2 we remember ,gregory the ,great1 ,ablard1 and ,thomas ,aquinas --and very little do these reminiscences have in common with those of ,hellas4 ,it was indeed a different world1 with quite different fundamental presuppositions4 ,marvelous as were the achievements of the ,greeks in art and literature1 and ingenious as they were in new and varied combinations of ideas1 they paid too little attention to the common things of the world to devise the necessary means of penetrating its mysteries4 ,they failed to come upon the lynx-eyed lens1 or other instruments of modern investigation1 and thus never gained a godlike vision of the remote and the minute4 ,their critical thought was consequently not grounded in experimental or applied science1 and without that the western world was unable to advance or even long maintain their high standards of criticism4 ,after the ,hellenes were absorbed into the vast ,roman ,empire critical thought and creative intelligence--rare and precarious things at best--began to decline1 at first slowly and then with fatal rapidity and completeness4 ,moreover1 new and highly uncritical beliefs and modes of thought became popular4 ,they came from the ,near ,east --,mesopotamia1 ,syria1 ,egypt1 and ,asia ,minor--and largely supplanted the critical traditions of the great schools of ,greek philosophy4 ,the ,stoic and ,epicurean dogmas had lost their freshness4 ,the ,greek thinkers had all agreed in looking for salvation through intelligence and knowledge4 ,but eloquent leaders arose to reveal a new salvation1 and over the portal of truth they erased the word ,reason and wrote ,faith in its stead2 and the people listened gladly to the new prophets1 for it was necessary only to believe to be saved1 and believing is far easier than thinking4 ,it was religious and mystical thought which1 in contrast to the secular philosophy of the ,greeks and the scientific thought of our own day1 dominated the intellectual life of the ,middle ,ages4 ,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 ,ages4 ,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 revolt4 ,to the student of intellectual history this is unfortunate1 for the simple reason that almost all the ideas and even institutions of the ,middle ,ages1 such as the church and monasticism and organized religious intolerance1 really originated in the late ,roman ,empire4 ,moreover1 the intellectual revolution which has ushered in the thought of our day did not get well under way until the seventeenth century4 ,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 end4 ,we have to continue to employ the old expression for convenience' sake1 but from the standpoint of the history of the ,european mind three periods should be distinguished1 lying between ancient ,greek thought as it was flourishing in ,athens1 ,alexandria1 ,rhodes1 ,rome1 and elsewhere at the opening of the ,christian era1 and the birth of modern science some sixteen hundred years later4 ,the first of these is the period of the ,christian ,fathers1 culminating in the authoritative writings of ,augustine1 who died in #dcj4 ,by this time a great part of the critical ,greek books had disappeared in western ,europe4 ,as for pagan writers1 one has difficulty in thinking of a single name 7except that of ,lucian7 later than ,juvenal1 who had died nearly three hundred years before ,augustine4 ,worldly knowledge was reduced to pitiful compendiums on which the mediaeval students were later to place great reliance4 ,scientific1 literary1 and historical information was scarcely to be had4 ,the western world1 so far as it thought at all1 devoted its attention to religion and all manner of mystical ideas1 old and new4 ,as ,harnack has so well said1 the world was already intellectually bankrupt before the ,german invasions and their accompanying disorders plunged it into still deeper ignorance and mental obscurity4 ,the second1 or ,dark ,age1 lasted with only slight improvement from ,augustine to ,ablard1 about seven hundred years4 ,the prosperous villas disappeared2 towns vanished or shriveled up2 libraries were burned or rotted away from neglect2 schools were closed1 to be reopened later here and there1 after ,charlemagne's educational edict1 in an especially enterprising monastery or by some exceptional bishop who did not spend his whole time in fighting4 ,from about the year #aajj conditions began to be more and more favorable to the revival of intellectual ambition1 a recovery of forgotten knowledge1 and a gradual accumulation of new information and inventions unknown to the ,greeks1 or indeed to any previous civilization4 ,the main presuppositions of this third period of the later ,middle ,ages go back1 however1 to the ,roman ,empire4 ,they had been formulated by the ,church ,fathers1 transmitted through the ,dark ,age1 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 ,scholasticism4 ,on these mediaeval university professors--the schoolmen--,lord ,bacon long ago pronounced a judgment that may well stand to-day4 ,having sharp and strong wits1 and abundance of leisure1 and small variety of reading1 but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors 7chiefly ,aristotle1 their dictator71 as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges1 and knowing little history1 either of nature or time they1 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 books4 ,our civilization and the human mind1 critical and uncritical1 as we now find it in our western world1 is a direct and uninterrupted outgrowth of the civilization and thought of the later ,middle ,ages4 ,very gradually only did peculiarly free and audacious individual thinkers escape from this or that mediaeval belief1 until in our own day some few have come to reject practically all the presuppositions on which the ,scholastic system was reared4 ,but the great mass of ,christian believers1 whether ,catholic or ,protestant1 still professedly or implicitly adhere to the assumptions of the ,middle ,ages1 at least in all matters in which religious or moral sanctions are concerned4 ,it is true that outside the ,catholic clergy the term mediaeval is often used in a sense of disparagement1 but that should not blind us to the fact that mediaeval presumptions1 whether for better or worse1 are still common4 ,a few of the most fundamental of these presuppositions especially germane to our theme may be pointed out here4 #aa4 ,,our ,,mediaeval ,,intellectual ,,inheritance ,the ,greeks and ,romans had various theories of the origin of things1 all vague and admittedly conjectural4 ,but the ,christians1 relying upon the inspired account in the ,bible1 built their theories on information which they believed vouchsafed to them by ,god himself4 ,their whole conception of human history was based upon a far more fundamental and thorough supernaturalism than we find among the ,greeks and ,romans4 ,the pagan philosophers reckoned with the gods1 to be sure1 but they never assumed that man's earthly life should turn entirely on what was to happen after death4 ,this was in theory the sole preoccupation of the mediaeval ,christian4 ,life here below was but a brief1 if decisive1 preliminary to the real life to come4 ,the mediaeval ,christian was essentially more polytheistic than his pagan predecessors1 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 error4 ,miracles were of common occurrence and might be attributed either to ,god or the devil2 the direct intervention of both good and evil spirits played a conspicuous part in the explanation of daily acts and motives4#bj ,as a distinguished church historian has said1 the ,god of the ,middle ,ages was a ,god of arbitrariness--the more arbitrary the more ,godlike4 ,by frequent interferences with the regular course of events he made his existence clear1 reassured his children of his continued solicitude1 and frustrated the plots of the ,evil ,one4 ,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 laws4 ,the mediaeval thinkers all accepted without question what ,santayana has strikingly described as the ,christian ,epic4 ,this included the general historical conceptions of how man came about1 and how1 in view of his origin and his past1 he should conduct his life4 ,the universe had come into being in less than a week1 and man had originally been created in a state of perfection along with all other things--sun1 moon1 and stars1 plants and animals4 ,after a time the first human pair had yielded to temptation1 transgressed ,god's commands1 and been driven from the lovely garden in which he had placed them4 ,so sin came into the world1 and the offspring of the guilty pair were thereby contaminated and defiled from the womb4 ,in time the wickedness became such on the newly created earth that ,god resolved to blot out mankind1 excepting only ,noah's family1 which was spared to repeople the earth after the ,flood1 but the unity of language that man had formerly possessed was lost4 ,at the appointed time1 preceded by many prophetic visions among the chosen people1 ,god sent his ,son to live the life of men on earth and become their ,saviour by submitting to death4 ,thereafter1 with the spread of the gospel1 the struggle between the kingdom of ,god and that of the devil became the supreme conflict of history4 ,it was to culminate in the ,last ,judgment1 when the final separation of good and evil should take place and the blessed should ascend into the heavens to dwell with ,god forever1 while the wicked sank to hell to writhe in endless torment4 ,this general account of man1 his origin and fate1 embraced in the ,christian ,epic1 was notable for its precision1 its divine authenticity1 and the obstacles which its authority consequently presented to any revision in the light of increasing knowledge4 ,the fundamental truths in regard to man were assumed to be established once and for all4 ,the ,greek thinkers had had little in the way of authority on which to build1 and no inconsiderable number of them frankly confessed that they did not believe that such a thing could exist for the thoroughly sophisticated intelligence4 ,but mediaeval philosophy and science were grounded wholly in authority4 ,the mediaeval schoolmen turned aside from the hard path of skepticism1 long searchings and investigation of actual phenomena1 and confidently believed that they could find truth by the easy way of revelation and the elaboration of unquestioned dogmas4 ,this reliance on authority is a fundamental primitive trait4 ,we have inherited it not only from our mediaeval forefathers1 but1 like them and through them1 from long generations of prehistoric men4 ,we all have a natural tendency to rely upon established beliefs and fixed institutions4 ,this is an expression of our spontaneous confidence in everything that comes to us in an unquestioned form4 ,as children we are subject to authority and cannot escape the control of existing opinion4 ,we unconsciously absorb our ideas and views from the group in which we happen to live4 ,what we see about us1 what we are told1 and what we read has to be received at its face value so long as there are no conflicts to arouse skepticism4 ,we are tremendously suggestible4 ,our mechanism is much better adapted to credulity than to questioning4 ,all of us believe nearly all the time4 ,few doubt1 and only now and then4 ,the past exercises an almost irresistible fascination over us4 ,as children we learn to look up to the old1 and when we grow up we do not permit our poignant realization of elderly incapacity among our contemporaries to rouse suspicions of ,moses1 ,isaiah1 ,confucius1 or ,aristotle4 ,their sayings come to us unquestioned2 their remoteness makes inquiry into their competence impossible4 ,we readily assume that they had sources of information and wisdom superior to the prophets of our own day4 ,during the ,middle ,ages reverence for authority1 and for that particular form of authority which we may call the tyranny of the past1 was dominant1 but probably not more so than it had been in other societies and ages--in ancient ,egypt1 in ,china and ,india4 ,of the great sources of mediaeval authority1 the ,bible and the ,church ,fathers1 the ,roman and ,church law1 and the encyclopaedic writings of ,aristotle1 none continues nowadays to hold us in its old grip4 ,even the ,bible1 although nominally unquestioned among ,roman ,catholics and all the more orthodox ,protestant sects1 is rarely appealed to1 as of old1 in parliamentary debate or in discussions of social and economic questions4 ,it is still a religious authority1 but it no longer forms the basis of secular decisions4 ,the findings of modern science have shaken the hold of the sources of mediaeval authority1 but they have done little as yet to loosen our inveterate habit of relying on the more insidious authority of current practice and belief4 ,we still assume that received dogmas represent the secure conclusions of mankind1 and that current institutions represent the approved results of much experiment in the past1 which it would be worse than futile to repeat4 ,one solemn remembrancer will cite as a warning the discreditable experience of the ,greek cities in democracy2 another1 how the decline of morality and the disintegration of the family heralded the fall of ,rome2 another1 the constant menace of mob rule as exemplified in the ,reign of ,terror4 ,but to the student of history these alleged illustrations have little bearing on present conditions4 ,he is struck1 moreover1 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 anything4 ,bacon warns us that the multitude1 or the wisest for the multitude's sake1 is in reality ready to give passage rather to that which is popular and superficial than to that which is substantial and profound2 for the truth is that time seemeth to be of the nature of a river or stream1 which carrieth down to us that which is light and blown up1 and sinketh and drowneth that which is weighty and solid4 ,it is very painful to most minds to admit that the past does not furnish us with reliable1 permanent standards of conduct and of public policy4 ,we resent the imputation that things are not going1 on the whole1 pretty well1 and find excuses for turning our backs on disconcerting and puzzling facts4 ,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 readjustment4 ,we instinctively try to show that ,mr4 ,keynes must surely be wrong about the ,treaty of ,versailles2 that ,mr4 ,gibbs must be perversely exaggerating the horrors of modern war2 that ,mr4 ,hobson certainly views the industrial crisis with unjustifiable pessimism2 that business as usual cannot be that socially perverse and incredibly inexpedient thing ,mr4 ,veblen shows it to be2 that ,mr4 ,robin's picture of ,lenin can only be explained by a disguised sympathy for ,bolshevism4 ,yet1 even if we could assume that traditional opinion is a fairly clear and reliable reflection of hard-earned experience1 surely it should have less weight in our day and generation than in the past4 ,for changes have overtaken mankind which have fundamentally altered the conditions in which we live1 and which are revolutionizing the relations between individuals and classes and nations4 ,moreover1 we must remember that knowledge has widened and deepened1 so that1 could any of us really catch up with the information of our own time1 he would have little temptation to indulge the mediaeval habit of appealing to the authority of the past4 ,the ,christian ,epic did not have to rely for its perpetuation either on its intellectual plausibility or its traditional authority4 ,during the ,middle ,ages there developed a vast and powerful religious ,state1 the mediaeval ,church1 the real successor1 as ,hobbes pointed out1 to the ,roman ,empire2 and the ,church with all its resources1 including its control over the secular arm of kings and princes1 was ready to defend the ,christian beliefs against question and revision4 ,to doubt the teachings of the ,church was the supreme crime2 it was treason against ,god himself1 in comparison with which--to judge from mediaeval experts on heresy--murder was a minor offense4 ,we do not1 however1 inherit our present disposition to intolerance solely from the ,middle ,ages4 ,as animals and children and savages1 we are naively and unquestioningly intolerant4 ,all divergence from the customary is suspicious and repugnant4 ,it seems perverse1 and readily suggests evil intentions4 ,indeed1 so natural and spontaneous is intolerance that the question of freedom of speech and writing scarcely became a real issue before the seventeenth century4 ,we have seen that some of the ,greek thinkers were banished1 or even executed1 for their new ideas4 ,the ,roman officials1 as well as the populace1 pestered the early ,christians1 not so much for the substance of their views as because they were puritanical1 refused the routine reverence to the gods1 and prophesied the downfall of the ,state4 ,but with the firm establishment of ,christianity edicts began to be issued by the ,roman emperors making orthodox ,christian belief the test of good citizenship4 ,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 prosecution4 ,heretical books were burned1 the houses of heretics destroyed4 ,so1 organized mediaeval religious intolerance was1 like so many other things1 a heritage of the later ,roman ,empire1 and was duly sanctioned in both the ,theodosian and ,justinian ,codes4 ,it was1 however1 with the ,inquisition1 beginning in the thirteenth century1 that the intolerance of the ,middle ,ages reached its most perfect organization4 ,heresy was looked upon as a contagious disease that must be checked at all costs4 ,it did not matter that the heretic usually led a conspicuously blameless life1 that he was arduous1 did not swear1 was emaciated with fasting and refused to participate in the vain recreations of his fellows4 ,he was1 indeed1 overserious and took his religion too hard4 ,this offensive parading as an angel of light was explained as the devil's camouflage4 ,no one tried to find out what the heretic really thought or what were the merits of his divergent beliefs4 ,because he insisted on expressing his conception of ,god in slightly unfamiliar terms1 the heretic was often branded as an atheist1 just as to-day the ,socialist is so often accused of being opposed to all government1 when the real objection to him is that he believes in too much government4 ,it was sufficient to classify a suspected heretic as an ,albigensian1 or ,waldensian1 or a member of some other heretical sect4 ,there was no use in his trying to explain or justify2 it was enough that he diverged4 ,there have been various explanations of mediaeval religious intolerance4 ,lecky1 for example1 thought that it was due to the theory of exclusive salvation2 that1 since there was only one way of getting to heaven1 all should obviously be compelled to adopt it1 for the saving of their souls from eternal torment4 ,but one finds little solicitude for the damned in mediaeval writings4 ,the public at large thought hell none too bad for one who revolted against ,god and ,holy ,church4 ,no1 the heretics were persecuted because heresy was1 according to the notions of the time1 a monstrous and unutterably wicked thing1 and because their beliefs threatened the vested interests of that day4 ,we now realize more clearly than did ,lecky that the ,church was really a ,state in the ,middle ,ages1 with its own laws and courts and prisons and regular taxation to which all were subject4 ,it had all the interests and all the touchiness of a ,state1 and more4 ,the heretic was a traitor and a rebel4 ,he thought that he could get along without the pope and bishops1 and that he could well spare the ministrations of the orthodox priests and escape their exactions4 ,he was the anarchist1 the ,red of his time1 who was undermining established authority1 and1 with the approval of all right-minded citizens1 he was treated accordingly4 ,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 organization4 ,yet the inconceivable has come to pass4 ,secular authority has superseded in nearly all matters the old ecclesiastical regime4 ,what was the supreme issue of the ,middle ,ages--the distinction between the religious heretic and the orthodox--is the least of public questions now4 ,what1 then1 we may ask1 has been the outcome of the old religious persecutions1 of the trials1 tortures1 imprisonings1 burnings1 and massacres1 culminating with the ,revocation of the ,edict of ,nantes8 ,what did the ,inquisition and the censorship1 both so long unquestioned1 accomplish8 ,did they succeed in defending the truth or safeguarding society8 ,at any rate1 conformity was not established4 ,nor did the ,holy ,roman ,church maintain its monopoly1 although it has survived1 purified and freed from many an ancient abuse4 ,in most countries of western ,europe and in our own land one may now believe as he wishes1 teach such religious views as appeal to him1 and join with others who share his sympathies4 ,atheism is still a shocking charge in many ears1 but the atheist is no longer an outlaw4 ,it has been demonstrated1 in short1 that religious dogma can be neglected in matters of public concern and reduced to a question of private taste and preference4 ,this is an incredible revolution4 ,but we have many reasons for suspecting that in a much shorter time than that which has elapsed since the ,inquisition was founded1 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 ,church4 ,we can learn much from the past in regard to wrong ways of dealing with new ideas4 ,as yet we have only old-fashioned and highly expensive modes of meeting the inevitable changes which are bound to take place4 ,repression has now and then enjoyed some temporary success1 it is true1 but in the main it has failed lamentably and produced only suffering and confusion4 ,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 order4 ,do we believe1 in other words1 that truth is finally established and that we have only to defend it1 or that it is still in the making8 ,do we believe in what is commonly called progress1 or do we think of that as belonging only to the past8 ,have we1 on the whole1 arrived1 or are we only on the way1 or mayhap just starting8 ,in the ,middle ,ages1 even in the times of the ,greeks and ,romans1 there was little or no conception of progress as the word is now used4 ,there could doubtless be improvement in detail4 ,men could be wiser and better or more ignorant and perverse4 ,but the assumption was that in general the social1 economic1 and religious order was fairly standardized4 ,this was especially true in the ,middle ,ages4 ,during these centuries men's single objective was the assurance of heaven and escape from hell4 ,life was an angry river into which men were cast4 ,demons were on every hand to drag them down4 ,the only aim could be1 with ,god's help1 to reach the celestial shore4 ,there was no time to consider whether the river might be made less dangerous by concerted effort1 through the deflection of its torrents and the removal of its sharpest rocks4 ,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 knowledge4 ,the world was a place to escape from on the best terms possible4 ,in our own day this mediaeval idea of a static society yields only grudgingly1 and the notion of inevitable vital change is as yet far from assimilated4 ,we confess it with our lips1 but resist it in our hearts4 ,we have learned as yet to respect only one class of fundamental innovators1 those dedicated to natural science and its applications4 ,the social innovator is still generally suspect4 ,to the mediaeval theologian1 man was by nature vile4 ,we have seen that1 according to the ,christian ,epic1 he was assoiled from birth with the primeval sin of his first parents1 and began to darken his score with fresh offenses of his own as soon as he became intelligent enough to do so4 ,an elaborate mechanism was supplied by the ,church for washing away the original pollution and securing forgiveness for later sins4 ,indeed1 this was ostensibly its main business4 ,we may still well ask1 ,is man by nature bad8 ,and accordingly as we answer the question we either frame appropriate means for frustrating his evil tendencies or1 if we see some promise in him1 work for his freedom and bid him take advantage of it to make himself and others happy4 ,so far as ,i know1 ,charron1 a friend of ,montaigne1 was one of the first to say a good word for man's animal nature1 and a hundred years later the amiable ,shaftesbury pointed out some honestly gentlemanly traits in the species4 ,to the modern student of biology and anthropology man is neither good nor bad4 ,there is no longer any mystery of evil4 ,but the mediaeval notion of sin--a term heavy with mysticism and deserving of careful scrutiny by every thoughtful person--still confuses us4 ,of man's impulses1 the one which played the greatest part in mediaeval thoughts of sin and in the monastic ordering of life was the sexual4 ,the presuppositions of the ,middle ,ages in the matter of the relations of men and women have been carried over to our own day4 ,as compared with many of the ideas which we have inherited from the past1 they are of comparatively recent origin4 ,the ,greeks and ,romans were1 on the whole1 primitive and uncritical in their view of sex4 ,the philosophers do not seem to have speculated on sex1 although there was evidently some talk in ,athens of women's rights4 ,the movement is satirized by ,aristophanes1 and later ,plato showed a willingness in ,the ,republic to impeach the current notions of the family and women's position in general4 ,but there are few traces of our ideas of sexual purity in the classical writers4 ,to the ,stoic philosopher1 and to other thoughtful elderly people1 sexual indulgence was deemed a low order of pleasure and one best carefully controlled in the interests of peace of mind4 ,but with the incoming of ,christianity an essentially new attitude developed1 which is still1 consciously or unconsciously1 that of most people to-day4 ,st4 ,augustine1 who had led a free life as a teacher of rhetoric in ,carthage and ,rome1 came in his later years to believe1 as he struggled to overcome his youthful temptations1 that sexual desire was the most devilish of man's enemies and the chief sign of his degradation4 ,he could imagine no such unruly urgence in man's perfect estate1 when ,adam and ,eve still dwelt in ,paradise4 ,but with man's fall sexual desire appeared as the sign and seal of human debasement4 ,this theory is poignantly set forth in ,augustine's ,city of ,god4 ,he furnished therein a philosophy for the monks1 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 escape4 ,christian monasticism was spreading in western ,europe in ,augustine's time1 and the monkist vows included chastity4 ,there followed a long struggle to force the whole priesthood to adopt a celibate life1 and this finally succeeded so far as repeated decrees of the ,church could effect it4 ,marriage was proper for the laity1 but both the monastic and secular clergy aspired to a superior holiness which should banish all thoughts of fervent earthly love4 ,thus a highly unnatural life was accepted by men and women of the most varied temperament and often with slight success4 ,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 before4 ,the devil was thrust out of the door only to come in at all the windows4 ,in due time the ,protestant sects abolished monasteries1 and the ,catholic countries later followed their example4 ,the ,protestant clergy were permitted to marry1 and the old asceticism has visibly declined4 ,but it has done much to determine our whole attitude toward sex1 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 women4 ,no one familiar with mediaeval literature will1 however1 be inclined to accuse its authors of prudishness4 ,nevertheless1 modern prudishness1 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 degradation4 ,modern psychologists have shown that prudishness is not always an indication of exceptional purity1 but rather the reverse4 ,it is often a disguise thrown over repressed sexual interest and sexual preoccupations4 ,it appears to be decreasing among the better educated of the younger generation4 ,the study of biology1 and especially of embryology1 is an easy and simple way of disintegrating the impurity complex4 ,purity in the sense of ignorance and suppressed curiosity is a highly dangerous state of mind4 ,and such purity in alliance with prudery and defensive hypocrisy makes any honest discussion or essential readjustment of our institutions and habits extremely difficult4 ,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 cosmos4 ,to the medieval philosopher1 as to the stupidest serf of the time1 the world was made for man4 ,all the heavenly bodies revolved about man's abode as their center4 ,all creatures were made to assist or to try man4 ,god and the devil were preoccupied with his fate1 for had not ,god made him in his own image for his glory1 and was not the devil intent on populating his own infernal kingdom8 ,it was easy for those who had a poetic turn of mind to think of nature's workings as symbols for man's edification4 ,the habits of the lion or the eagle yielded moral lessons or illustrated the divine scheme of salvation4 ,even the written word was to be valued1 not for what it seemed to say1 but for hidden allegories depicting man's struggles against evil and cheering him on his way4 ,this is a perennially appealing conception of things4 ,it corresponds to primitive and inveterate tendencies in humanity and gratifies1 under the guise of humility1 our hungering for self-importance4 ,the mediaeval thinker1 however freely he might exercise his powers of logical analysis in rationalizing the ,christian ,epic1 never permitted himself to question its general anthropocentric and mystical view of the world4 ,the philosophic mystic assumes the role of a docile child4 ,he feels that all vital truth transcends his powers of discovery4 ,he looks to the ,infinite and ,eternal ,mind to reveal it to him through the prophets of old1 or in moments of ecstatic communion with the ,divine ,intelligence4 ,to the mystic all that concerns our deeper needs transcends logic and defies analysis4 ,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 life1 but which only serves to intensify the darkness which surrounds the hidden truth of ,god4 ,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 ,ages4 ,man had to cultivate another kind of self-importance and a new and more profound humility4 ,he had come to believe in his capacity to discover important truth through thoughtful examination of things about him1 and he had to recognize1 on the other hand1 that the world did not seem to be made for him1 but that humanity was apparently a curious incident in the universe1 and its career a recent episode in cosmic history4 ,he had to acquire a taste for the simplest possible and most thoroughgoing explanation of things4 ,his whole mood had to change and impel him to reduce everything so far as possible to the commonplace4 ,this new view was inevitably fiercely attacked by the mystically disposed4 ,they misunderstood it and berated its adherents and accused them of robbing man of all that was most precious in life4 ,these1 in turn1 were goaded into bitterness and denounced their opponents as pig-headed obscurantists4 ,but we must1 after all1 come to terms in some way with the emotions underlying mysticism4 ,they are very dear to us1 and scientific knowledge will never form an adequate substitute for them4 ,no one need fear that the supply of mystery will ever give out2 but a great deal depends on our taste in mystery2 that certainly needs refining4 ,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 escape4 ,in declaring that one is not a mystic1 one makes no claim to be able to explain everything1 nor does he maintain that all things are explicable in scientific terms4 ,indeed1 no thoughtful person will be likely to boast that he can fully explain anything4 ,we have only to scrape the surface of our experiences to find fundamental mystery4 ,and how1 indeed1 as descendants of an extinct race of primates1 with a mind still in the early stages of accumulation1 should we be in the way of reaching ultimate truth at any point8 ,one may properly urge1 however1 that as sharp a distinction as possible be made between fictitious mysteries and the unavoidable ones which surround us on every side4 ,how milk turned sour used to be a real mystery1 now partially solved since the discovery of bacteria2 how the witch flew up the chimney was a gratuitous mystery with which we need no longer trouble ourselves4 ,a live wire would once have suggested magic2 now it is at least partially explained by the doctrine of electrons4 ,it is the avowed purpose of scientific thought to reduce the number of mysteries1 and its success has been marvelous1 but it has by no means done its perfect work as yet4 ,we have carried over far too much of mediaeval mysticism in our views of man and his duty toward himself and others4 ,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 own4 ,they thus prepared the way for a revolution in human affairs in the midst of which we now find ourselves4 ,as yet their type of thinking has not been applied on any considerable scale to the solution of social problems4 ,by learning to understand and appreciate the scientific frame of mind as a historical victory won against extraordinary odds1 we may be encouraged to cultivate and popularize a similar attitude toward the study of man himself4 ,,notes4 #bj ,st4 ,ethelred1 returning from a pious visit to ,citeaux in the days of ,henry ,,ii1 encountered a great storm when he reached the ,channel4 ,he asked himself what he had done to be thus delayed1 and suddenly thought that he had failed to fulfill a promise to write a poem on ,st4 ,cuthbert4 ,when he had completed this1 wonderful to say1 the sea ceased to rage and became tranquil4--,surtees ,society ,publications1 i1 p4 #agg4 99 99 99 99 99 ,,vi ,narrabo igitur primo opera artis et naturae miranda4444 ut videatur quod omnis magica potestas sit inferior his operibus et indigna4 --,,roger ,,bacon4 ,i do not endeavor either by triumphs of confutation1 or pleadings of antiquity1 or assumption of authority1 or even1 by the veil of obscurity1 to invest these inventions of mine with any majesty4444 ,i have not sought nor do ,i seek either to force or ensnare men's judgments1 but ,i lead them to things themselves and the concordances of things1 that they may see for themselves what they have1 what they can dispute1 what they can add and contribute to the common stock4--,,francis ,,bacon 7,preface to the ,great ,instauration74 #ab4 ,,the ,,scientific ,,revolution ,at the opening of the seventeenth century a man of letters1 of sufficient genius to be suspected by some of having written the plays of ,shakespeare1 directed his distinguished literary ability to the promotion and exaltation of natural science4 ,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 mind4 ,when but twenty-two years old he was already sketching out a work which he planned to call ,temporis ,partus ,maximus 7,the ,greatest ,thing ,ever74 ,he felt that he had discovered why the human mind1 enmeshed in mediaeval metaphysics and indifferent to natural phenomena1 had hitherto been a stunted and ineffective thing1 and how it might be so nurtured and guided as to gain undreamed of strength and vigor4 ,and never has there been a man better equipped with literary gifts to preach a new gospel than ,francis ,bacon4 ,he spent years in devising eloquent and ingenious ways of delivering learning from the discredits and disgraces of the past1 and in exhorting man to explore the realms of nature for his delight and profit4 ,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 estate4 ,he impeached the mediaeval schoolmen for spinning out endless cobwebs of learning1 remarkable for their fineness1 but of no substance or spirit4 ,he urged the learned to come out of their cells1 study the creations of ,god1 and build upon what they discovered a new and true philosophy4 ,even in his own day students of natural phenomena had begun to carry out ,bacon's general program with striking effects4 ,while he was urging men to cease tumbling up and down in their own reason and conceits and to spell out1 and so by degrees to learn to read1 the volume of ,god's works1 ,galileo had already begun the reading and had found out that the ,aristotelian physics ran counter to the facts2 that a body once in motion will continue to move forever in a straight line unless it be stopped or deflected4 ,studying the sky through his newly invented telescope1 he beheld the sun spots and noted the sun's revolution on its axis1 the phases of ,venus1 and the satellites of ,jupiter4 ,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 unchanging4 ,he dared to discuss these matters in the language of the people and was1 as everyone knows1 condemned by the ,inquisition4 ,this preoccupation with natural phenomena and this refusal to accept the old1 established theories until they had been verified by an investigation of common fact was a very novel thing4 ,it introduced a fresh and momentous element into our intellectual heritage4 ,we have recalled the mysticism1 supernaturalism1 and intolerance of the ,middle ,ages1 their reliance on old books1 and their indifference to everyday fact except as a sort of allegory for the edification of the ,christian pilgrim4 ,in the mediaeval universities the professors1 or schoolmen1 devoted themselves to the elaborate formulation of ,christian doctrine and the interpretation of ,aristotle's works4 ,it was a period of revived ,greek metaphysics1 adapted to prevailing religious presuppositions4 ,into this fettered world ,bacon1 ,galileo1 ,descartes1 and others brought a new aspiration to promote investigation and honest1 critical thinking about everyday things4 ,these founders of modern natural science realized that they would have to begin afresh4 ,this was a bold resolve1 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 past4 ,bacon pointed out that the old days were not those of mature knowledge1 but of youthful human ignorance4 ,these times are the ancient times1 when the world is ancient1 and not those we count ancient1 ordine retrogrado1 by a computation backward from ourselves4 ,in his ,new ,atlantis he pictures an ideal ,state which concentrated its resources on systematic scientific research1 with a view to applying new discoveries to the betterment of man's lot4 ,descartes1 who was a young man when ,bacon was an old one1 insisted on the necessity1 if we proposed to seek the truth1 of questioning everything at least once in our lives4 ,to all these leaders in the development of modern science doubt1 not faith1 was the beginning of wisdom4 ,they doubted--and with good reason--what the ,greeks were supposed to have discovered2 they doubted all the old books and all the university professors' lecture notes4 ,they did not venture to doubt the ,bible1 but they eluded it in various ways4 ,they set to work to find out exactly what happened under certain circumstances4 ,they experimented individually and reported their discoveries to the scientific academies which began to come into existence4 ,as one follows the deliberations of these bodies it is pathetic to observe how little the learning of previous centuries1 in spite of its imposing claims1 had to contribute to a fruitful knowledge of common things4 ,it required a century of hard work to establish the most elementary facts which would now be found in a child's book4 ,how water and air act1 how to measure time and temperature and atmospheric pressure1 had to be discovered4 ,the microscope revealed the complexity of organic tissues1 the existence of minute creatures1 vaguely called infusoria1 and the strange inhabitants of the blood1 the red and white corpuscles4 ,the telescope put an end to the flattering assumption that the cosmos circled around man and the little ball he lives on4 ,without a certain un-,greek1 practical inventive tendency which1 for reasons not easily to be discovered1 first began to manifest itself in the thirteenth century1 this progress would not have been possible4 ,the new thinkers descended from the magisterial chair and patiently fussed with lenses1 tubes1 pulleys1 and wheels1 thus weaning themselves from the adoration of man's mind and understanding4 ,they had to devise the machinery of investigation as investigation itself progressed4 ,moreover1 they did not confine themselves to the conventionally noble and elevated subjects of speculation4 ,they addressed themselves to worms and ditch water in preference to metaphysical subtleties4 ,they agreed with ,bacon that the mean and even filthy things deserve study4 ,all this was naturally scorned by the university professors1 and the universities consequently played little or no part in the advance of natural science until the nineteenth century4 ,nor were the moral leaders of mankind behind the intellectual in opposing the novel tendencies4 ,the clergy did all they could to perpetuate the squalid belief in witchcraft1 but found no place for experimental science in their scheme of learning1 and judged it offensive to the ,maker of all things4 ,but their opposition could do no more than hamper the new scientific impulse1 which was far too potent to be seriously checked4 ,so in one department of human thought--the investigation of natural processes--majestic progress has been made since the opening of the seventeenth century1 with every promise of continued and startling advance4 ,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 things1 and the gradual way in which the earth and all its inhabitants have come into being4 ,the nature and workings of atoms and molecules are being cleared up1 and their relation to heat1 light1 and electricity established4 ,the slow processes which have brought about the mountains and valleys1 the seas and plains1 have been exposed4 ,the structure of the elementary cell can be studied under powerful lenses2 its divisions1 conjunctions1 differentiation1 and multiplication into the incredibly intricate substance of plants and animals can be traced4 ,in short1 man is now in a position1 for the first time in his history1 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 terms4 ,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 ignorance4 ,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 generation1 and he should aspire to deal more and more sagaciously with himself and his fellow-men4 #ac4 ,,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 hundred1 even fifty years ago1 we must frankly admit that the knowledge is still so novel1 so imperfectly assimilated1 so inadequately co-ordinated1 and so feebly and ineffectively presented to the great mass of men1 that its direct effects upon human impulses and reasoning and outlook are as yet inconsiderable and disappointing4 ,we might think in terms of molecules and atoms1 but we rarely do4 ,few have any more knowledge of their own bodily operations than had their grandparents4 ,the farmer's confidence in the phases of the moon gives way but slowly before recent discoveries in regard to the bacteria of the soil4 ,few who use the telephone1 ride on electric cars1 and carry a camera have even the mildest curiosity in regard to how these things work4 ,it is only indirectly1 through invention1 that scientific knowledge touches our lives on every hand1 modifying our environment1 altering our daily habits1 dislocating the anciently established order1 and imposing the burden of constant adaptation on even the most ignorant and lethargic4 ,unlike a great part of man's earlier thought1 modern scientific knowledge and theory have not remained matter merely for academic discourse and learned books1 but have provoked the invention of innumerable practical devices which surround us on every hand1 and from which we can now scarce escape by land or sea4 ,thus while scientific knowledge has not greatly affected the thoughts of most of us1 its influence in the promotion of modern invention has served to place us in a new setting or environment1 the novel features of which it would be no small task to explain to one's great-great-grandfather1 should he unexpectedly apply for up-to-date information4 ,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 conduct1 we nevertheless cannot neglect the urgent effects of scientific inventions1 for they are constantly posing new problems of adjustment to us1 and sometimes disposing of old ones4 ,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 have1 with the improvements of modern science1 profoundly altered the conditions of life4 ,some centuries before the time of ,bacon and ,galileo four discoveries were made which1 supplemented and elaborated by later insight and ingenuity1 may be said to underlie our modern civilization4 ,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 iron4 ,the needle would then1 it had been found1 whirl around in a circle and come to rest pointing north4 ,on this tiny index the vast extension of modern commerce and imperialism rests4 ,that lentil-shaped bits of glass would magnify objects was known before the end of the thirteenth century1 and from that little fact have come microscopes1 telescopes1 spectroscopes1 and cameras2 and from these in turn has come a great part of our present knowledge of natural processes in men1 animals1 and plants and our comprehension of the cosmos at large4 ,gunpowder began to be used a few decades after the lens was discovered2 it and its terrible descendants have changed the whole problem of human warfare and of the public defense4 ,the printing press1 originally a homely scheme for saving the labor of the copyist1 has not only made modern democracy and nationality possible1 but has helped by the extension of education to undermine the ancient foundations upon which human industry has rested from the beginnings of civilization4 ,in the middle of the eighteenth century the steam engine began to supplant the muscular power of men and animals1 which had theretofore been only feebly supplemented by windmills and water wheels4 ,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 supply4 ,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 earth4 ,vast factories have sprung up1 with their laborious multitudes engaged on minute contributions to the finished article2 overgrown cities sprawl over the neighboring green fields and pastures2 long freight trains of steel cars thunder across continents2 monstrous masses of wealth pile up1 are reinvested1 and applied to making the whole system more and more inconceivably intricate and interdependent2 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 animal1 a child1 and a savage4 ,as if these changes were not astounding enough1 now has come the chemist who devotes himself to making not new commodities 7or old ones in new ways71 but new substances4 ,he juggles with the atoms of carbon1 hydrogen1 oxygen1 nitrogen1 chlorine1 and the rest1 and far outruns the workings of nature4 ,up to date he has been able to produce artfully over two hundred thousand compounds1 for some of which mankind formerly depended on the alchemy of animals and plants4 ,he can make foodstuffs out of sewage2 he can entrap the nitrogen in the air and use it to raise wheat to feed1 or high explosives to slaughter1 his fellows4 ,he no longer relies on plants and animals for dyes and perfumes4 ,in short1 a chemical discovery may at any moment devastate an immemorial industry and leave both capital and labor in the lurch4 ,the day may not be far distant when1 should the chemist learn to control the incredible interatomic energy1 the steam engine will seem as complete an anachronism as the treadmill4 ,the uttermost parts of the earth have been visited by ,europeans1 and commerce has brought all races of the globe into close touch4 ,we have now to reckon with every nation under heaven1 as was shown in the ,world ,war4 ,at the same time steam and electrical communication have been so perfected that space has been practically annihilated as regards speech1 and in matters of transportation reduced to perhaps a fifth4 ,so all the peoples of the earth form economically a loose and1 as yet1 scarcely acknowledged federation of man1 in which the fate of any member may affect the affairs of all the others1 no matter how remote they may be geographically4 ,all these unprecedented conditions have conspired to give business for business' sake a fascination and overwhelming importance it has never had before4 ,we no longer make things for the sake of making them1 but for money4 ,the chair is not made to sit on1 but for profit2 the soap is no longer prepared for purposes of cleanliness1 but to be sold for profit4 ,practically nothing catches our eye in the way of writing that was written for its own sake and not for money4 ,our magazines and newspapers are our modern commercial travelers proclaiming the gospel of business competition4 ,formerly the laboring classes worked because they were slaves1 or because they were defenseless and could not escape from thraldom--or1 mayhap1 because they were natural artisans2 but now they are coming into a position where they can combine and bargain and enter into business competition with their employers4 ,like their employers1 they are learning to give as little as possible for as much as possible4 ,this is good business2 and the employer should realize that at last he has succeeded in teaching his employees to be strictly businesslike4 ,when houses were built to live in1 and wheat and cattle grown to eat1 these essential industries took care of themselves4 ,but now that profit is the motive for building houses and raising grain1 if the promised returns are greater from manufacturing automobiles or embroidered lingerie1 one is tempted to ask if there are any longer compelling reasons for building houses or raising food8 ,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 nationality4 ,these also are to be traced to applied science and mechanical contrivances4 ,the printing press has made popular education possible1 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 years4 ,general education1 introduced first among men and then extended to women1 has made plausible the contention that all adults should have a vote1 and thereby exercise some ostensible influence in the choice of public officials and in the direction of the policy of the government4 ,until recently the mass of the people have not been invited to turn their attention to public affairs1 which have been left in the control of the richer classes and their representatives and agents1 the statesmen or politicians4 ,doubtless our crowded cities have contributed to a growing sense of the importance of the common man1 for all must now share the street car1 the public park1 the water supply1 and contagious diseases4 ,but there is a still more fundamental discovery underlying our democratic tendencies4 ,this is the easily demonstrated scientific truth that nearly all men and women1 whatever their social and economic status1 may have much greater possibilities of activity and thought and emotion than they exhibit in the particular conditions in which they happen to be placed2 that in all ranks may be found evidence of unrealized capacity2 that we are living on a far lower scale of intelligent conduct and rational enjoyment than is necessary4 ,our present notions of nationality are of very recent origin1 going back scarcely a hundred years4 ,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 or1 in more amiable moods1 as children4 ,the same forces that have given rise to modern democracy have made it possible for vast groups of people1 such as make up ,france or the ,united ,states1 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-countrymen4 ,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 days4 ,man ,is surely a gregarious animal who dislikes solitude4 ,he is1 moreover1 given to the most exaggerated estimate of his tribe2 and on these ancient foundations modern nationality has been built up by means of the printing press1 the telegraph1 and cheap postage4 ,so it has fallen out that just when the world was becoming effectively cosmopolitan in its economic interdependence1 its scientific research1 and its exchange of books and art1 the ancient tribal insolence has been developed on a stupendous scale4 ,the manner in which man has revolutionized his environment1 habits of conduct1 and purposes of life by inventions is perhaps the most astonishing thing in human history4 ,it is an obscure and hitherto rather neglected subject4 ,but it is clear enough1 from the little that has been said here1 that since the ,middle ,ages1 and especially in the past hundred years1 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 living4 99 99 99 99 99 ,,vii ,peace sitting under her olive1 and slurring the days gone by1 ,when the poor are hovell'd and hustled together1 each sex1 like swine1 ,when only the ledger lives1 and when only not all men lie2 ,peace in her vineyard--yes6--but a company forges the wine4 --,,tennyson4 ,could great men thunder ,as ,jove himself does1 ,jove would ne'er be quiet4 ,for every pelting1 petty officer ,would use his heaven for thunder2 ,nothing but thunder6 444 ,man1 proud man1 ,drest in a little brief authority1 ,most ignorant of what he's most assured1 ,his glassy essence1 like an angry ape1 ,plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven ,as make the angels weep2 who1 with our spleens1 ,would all themselves laugh mortal4 --,,shakespeare4 #ad4 ,,the ,,sickness ,,of ,,an ,,acquisitive ,,society ,it is so difficult a task to form any correct estimate of one's own surroundings1 largely on account of our very familiarity with them1 that historical students have generally evaded this responsibility4 ,they have often declared that it was impossible to do so satisfactorily4 ,and yet no one will ever know more than we about what is going on now4 ,some secrets may be revealed to coming generations1 but plenty of our circumstances will be obscure to them4 ,and it certainly seems pusillanimous1 if not hazardous1 to depute to those yet unborn the task of comprehending the conditions under which we must live and strive4 ,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 present4 ,for history not only furnishes us with the key to the present by showing how our situation came about1 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 detected4 ,without history the essential differences are sure to escape us4 ,our generation1 like all preceding generations of mankind1 inevitably takes what it finds largely for granted1 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 future4 ,such a procedure becomes more and more dangerous1 for although a continuity persists1 there are more numerous1 deeper and wider reaching contrasts between the world of to-day and that of a hundred1 or even fifty1 years ago1 than have developed in any corresponding lapse of time since the beginning of civilization4 ,this is not the place even to sketch the novelties in our knowledge and circumstances1 our problems and possibilities4 ,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 us4 ,few people realize how novel is the almost universal preoccupation with business which we can observe on every hand1 but to which we are already so accustomed that it easily escapes the casual observer4 ,but in spite of its vastness and magnificent achievements1 business1 based upon mass production and speculative profits1 has produced new evils and reinforced old ones which no thoughtful person can possibly overlook4 ,consequently it has become the great issue of our time1 the chief subject of discussion1 to be defended or attacked according to one's tastes1 even as religion and politics formerly had their day4 ,business men1 whether conspicuous in manufacture1 trade1 or finance1 are the leading figures of our age4 ,they exercise a dominant influence in domestic and foreign policy2 they subsidize our education and exert an unmistakable control over it4 ,in other ages a military or religious caste enjoyed a similar pre-eminence4 ,but now business directs and equips the soldier1 who is far more dependent on its support than formerly4 ,most religious institutions make easy terms with business1 and1 far from interfering with it or its teachings1 on the whole cordially support it4 ,business has its philosophy1 which it holds to be based upon the immutable traits of human nature and as identical with morality and patriotism4 ,it is a sensitive1 intolerant philosophy1 of which something will be said in the following section4 ,modern business produced a sort of paradise for the luckier of mankind1 which endured down to the war1 and which many hope to see restored in its former charm1 and perhaps further beautified as the years go on4 ,it represents one of the most startling of human achievements4 ,no doubt a great part of the population worked hard and lived in relative squalor1 but even then they had many comforts unknown to the toiling masses of previous centuries1 and were apparently fairly contented4 ,but escape was possible1 for any man of capacity or character at all exceeding the average1 into the middle or upper classes1 for whom life offered1 at a low cost and with the least trouble1 conveniencies1 comforts1 and amenities beyond the compass of the richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages4 ,the inhabitant of ,london could order by telephone1 sipping his morning tea in bed1 the various products of the whole earth1 in such quantity as he might see fit1 and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep2 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 world1 and share1 without exertion or even trouble1 in their prospective fruits and advantages4444 ,he could secure forthwith1 if he wished it1 cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality1 could dispatch his servant to the neighboring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient1 and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters1 without knowledge of their religion1 language1 or customs1 bearing coined wealth upon his person1 and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference4 ,and most important of all1 he could1 before the war1 regard this state of affairs as 444 normal1 certain1 and permanent1 except in the direction of further improvement1 and any deviation from it as aberrant1 scandalous1 and avoidable4 ,the projects and politics of militarism1 and imperialism1 of racial and cultural rivalries1 of monopolies1 restrictions1 and exclusion1 which were to play the serpent in this paradise1 were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper1 and appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life1 the internationalization of which was nearly complete in practice4#ba ,this assumption of the permanence and normality of the prevailing business system was much disturbed by the outcome of the war1 but less so1 especially in this country1 than might have been expected4 ,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 opportunity4 ,to those who see the situation in this light1 modern business has largely solved the age-long problem of producing and distributing the material necessities and amenities of life2 and nothing remains except to perfect the system in detail1 develop its further potentialities1 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 it4 ,on the other hand1 there were many before the war1 not themselves suffering conspicuously from the system1 who challenged its beneficence and permanence1 in the name of justice1 economy1 and the best and highest interests of mankind as a whole4 ,since the war many more have come to the conclusion that business as now conducted is not merely unfair1 exceedingly wasteful1 and often highly inexpedient from a social standpoint1 but that from an historical standpoint it is intensely unusual1 unstable1 complicated1 unreliable1 and temporary 7,keynes74 ,it may prove to be the chief eccentricity of our age2 quite as impermanent as was the feudal and manorial system or the role of the mediaeval ,church or of monarchs by the grace of ,god2 and destined to undergo changes which it is now quite impossible to forecast4 ,in any case1 economic issues are the chief and bitterest of our time4 ,it is in connection with them that free thinking is most difficult and most apt to be misunderstood1 for they easily become confused with the traditional reverences and sanctities of political fidelity1 patriotism1 morality1 and even religion4 ,there is something humiliating about this situation1 which subordinates all the varied possibilities of life to its material prerequisites1 much as if we were again back in a stage of impotent savagery1 scratching for roots and looking for berries and dead animals4 ,one of the most brilliant of recent ,english economists says with truth3 ,the burden of our civilization is not merely1 as many suppose1 that the product of industry is ill-distributed1 or its conduct tyrannical1 or its operation interrupted by bitter disagreements4 ,it is that industry itself has come to hold a position of exclusive predominance among human interests1 which no single interest1 and least of all the provision of the material means of existence1 is fit to occupy4 ,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 live1 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 acquired4 ,that obsession by economic issues is as local and transitory as it is repulsive and disturbing4 ,to future generations it will appear as pitiable as the obsession of the seventeenth century by religious quarrels appears to-day2 indeed1 it is less rational1 since the object with which it is concerned is less important4 ,and it is a poison which inflames every wound and turns each trivial scratch into a malignant ulcer4#bb ,whatever may be the merits of the conflicting views of our business system1 there can be no doubt that it is agitating all types of thoughtful men and women4 ,poets1 dramatists1 and story writers turn aside from their old motifs to play the role of economists4 ,psychologists1 biologists1 chemists1 engineers1 are as never before striving to discover the relation between their realms of information and the general problems of social and industrial organization4 ,and here is a historical student allowing the dust to collect on mediaeval chronicles1 church histories1 and even seventeenth-century rationalists1 once fondly perused1 in order to see if he can come to some terms with the profit system4 ,and why not8 ,are we not all implicated8 ,we all buy and many sell1 and no one is left untouched by a situation which can in two or three years halve our incomes1 without fault of ours4 ,but before seeking to establish the bearing of the previous sections of this volume on our attitude toward the puzzles of our day1 we must consider more carefully the good reasons commonly urged in defense of the existing system4 #ae4 ,,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 has1 and the effects of this accumulation on his mode of life4 ,under former conditions 7which are now passing away7 and in a state of ignorance about highly essential matters 7which are now being put in quite a new light7 he established certain standards and practices in his political1 social1 and industrial life4 ,his views of property1 government1 education1 the relations of the sexes1 and various other matters he reaffirms and perpetuates by means of schools1 colleges1 churches1 newspapers1 and magazines1 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 evil1 right and wrong4 ,this is what happened in the past1 and to the great majority of people this still seems to be the only means of safeguarding society4 ,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 involved4 ,the war brought with it a burst of unwonted and varied animation4 ,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 fellows4 ,expressions of high idealism exalted us above the petty cares of our previous existence1 roused new ambitions1 and opened up an exhilarating perspective of possibility and endeavor4 ,it was common talk that when the foe1 whose criminal lust for power had precipitated the mighty tragedy1 should be vanquished1 things would no longer be the same4 ,all would then agree that war was the abomination of abominations1 the world would be made safe for right-minded democracy1 and the nations would unite in smiling emulation4 ,never did bitterer disappointment follow high hopes4 ,all the old habits of nationalistic policy reasserted themselves at ,versailles4 ,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 abyss4 ,then there emerged from the autocracy of the ,tsars the dictatorship of the proletariat1 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 novelties4 ,the real character of these movements was ill understood in our country1 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 measures4 ,war had naturally produced its machinery for dealing with dissenters1 sympathizers with the enemy1 and those who deprecated or opposed war altogether2 and it was the easiest thing in the world to extend the repression to those who held exceptional or unpopular views1 like the ,socialists and members of the ,i4,w4,w4 ,it was plausible to charge these associations with being under the guidance of foreigners1 with pacificism and a general tendency to disloyalty4 ,but suspicion went further so as to embrace members of a rather small1 thoughtful class who1 while rarely socialistic1 were confessedly skeptical in regard to the general beneficence of existing institutions1 and who failed to applaud at just the right points to suit the taste of the majority of their fellow-citizens4 ,so the general impression grew up that there was a sort of widespread conspiracy to overthrow the government by violence or1 at least1 a dangerous tendency to prepare the way for such a disaster1 or at any rate a culpable indifference to its possibility4 ,business depression reinforced a natural reaction which had set in with the sudden and somewhat unexpected close of the war4 ,the unwonted excitement brought on a national headache1 and a sedative in the form of normalcy was proffered by the ,republican party and thankfully accepted by the country at large4 ,under these circumstances the philosophy of safety and sanity was formulated4 ,it is familiar and reassuring and puts no disagreeable task of mental and emotional readjustment on those who accept it4 ,hence its inevitable popularity and obvious soundness4 ,and these are its presuppositions3 ,no nation is comparable to our own in its wealth and promise1 in its freedom and opportunity for all4 ,it has opened its gates to the peoples of the earth1 who have flocked across the ocean to escape the poverty and oppression of ,europe4 ,from the scattered colonies of the pre-revolutionary period the ,united ,states has rapidly advanced to its world ascendancy4 ,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 spared4 ,she had not entered the conflict with any motives of aggrandizement or of territorial extension4 ,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-determination4 ,the prosperity of the ,united ,states is to be attributed largely to the excellence of the ,federal ,constitution and the soundness of her democratic institutions4 ,class privileges do not exist1 or at least are not recognized4 ,everyone has equal opportunity to rise in the world unhampered by the shackles of ,european caste4 ,there is perfect freedom in matters of religious belief4 ,liberty of speech and of the press is confirmed by both the ,federal ,constitution and the constitutions of the various states4 ,if people are not satisfied with their form of government they may at any time alter it by a peaceful exercise of the suffrage4 ,in no other country is morality more highly prized or stoutly defended4 ,woman is held in her proper esteem and the institution of the family everywhere recognized as fundamental4 ,we are singularly free from the vices which disgrace the capitals of ,europe1 not excepting ,london4 ,in no other country is the schoolhouse so assuredly acknowledged to be the corner stone of democracy and liberty4 ,our higher institutions of learning are unrivaled2 our public libraries numerous and accessible4 ,our newspapers and magazines disseminate knowledge and rational pleasure throughout the land4 ,we are an ingenious people in the realm of invention and in the boldness of our business enterprise4 ,we have the sturdy virtues of the pioneer4 ,we are an honest people1 keeping our contracts and giving fair measure4 ,we are a tireless people in the patient attention to business and the laudable resolve to rise in the world4 ,many of our richest men began on the farm or as office boys4 ,success depends in our country almost exclusively on native capacity1 which is rewarded here with a prompt and cheerful recognition which is rare in other lands4 ,we are a progressive people1 always ready for improvements1 which indeed we take for granted1 so regularly do they make their appearance4 ,no alert ,american can visit any foreign country without noting innumerable examples of stupid adherence to outworn and cumbrous methods in industry1 commerce1 and transportation4 ,of course no one is so blind as not to see that here and there evils develop which should be remedied1 either by legislation or by the gradual advance in enlightenment4 ,many of them will doubtless cure themselves4 ,our democracy is right at heart and you cannot fool all the people all the time4 ,we have not escaped our fair quota of troubles4 ,it would be too much to expect that we should4 ,the difference of opinion between the ,northern and ,southern states actually led to civil war1 but this only served to confirm the natural unity of the country and prepare the way for further advance4 ,protestants have sometimes dreaded a ,catholic domination2 the ,mormons have been a source of anxiety to timid souls4 ,populists and advocates of free silver have seemed to threaten sound finance4 ,on the other hand1 ,wall ,street and the trusts have led some to think that corporate business enterprise may at times1 if left unhampered1 lead to over-powerful monopolies4 ,but the evil workings of all these things had before the war been peaceful1 if insidious4 ,they might rouse apprehension in the minds of far-sighted and public-spirited observers1 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 barbarism4 ,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 threatened4 ,heretofore the socialists of various kinds1 the communists and anarchists1 had attracted relatively little attention in our country4 ,except for the ,chicago anarchist episode and the troubles with the ,i4,w4,w41 radical reformers had been left to go their way1 hold their meetings1 and publish their newspapers and pamphlets with no great interference on the part of the police or attention on the part of lawgivers4 ,with the progress of the war this situation changed2 police and lawgivers began to interfere1 and government officials and self-appointed guardians of the public weal began to denounce the reds and those suspected of radical tendencies4 ,the report of the ,lusk ,committee in the state of ,new ,york is perhaps the most imposing monument to this form of patriotic zeal4 ,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 practice4 ,it is only in their effects in developing and substantiating the philosophy of safety and sanity that they concern us in this discussion4 ,whether the report of the so-called ,lusk ,committee#bc has any considerable influence or no1 it well illustrates a common and significant frame of mind and an habitual method of reasoning4 ,the ostensible aim of the report is3 444 to give a clear1 unbiased statement and history of the purposes and objects1 tactics and methods1 of the various forces now at work in the ,united ,states1 and particularly within the state of ,new ,york1 which are seeking to undermine and destroy1 not only the government under which we live1 but also the very structure of ,american society4 ,it also seeks to analyze the various constructive forces which are at work throughout the country counteracting these evil influences1 and to present the many industrial and social problems that these constructive forces must meet and are meeting4 ,the plan is executed with laborious comprehensiveness1 and one unacquainted with the vast and varied range of so-called radical utterances will be overwhelmed by the mass brought together4 ,but our aim here is to consider the attitude of mind and assumptions of the editors and their sympathizers4 ,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 wealth4 ,it is these grievances and demands which the agitators use as a basis of their machinations4 ,those bent on a social revolution fall into two classes--socialists and anarchists4 ,but while the groups differ in detail1 these details are not worth considering4 ,anyone who studies the propaganda of the various groups which we have named will learn that the arguments employed are the same2 that the tactics advocated cannot be distinguished from one another1 and that articles1 or speeches made on the question of tactics or methods by anarchists1 could1 with propriety1 be published in socialist1 or communist newspapers without offending the membership of these organizations4 ,so1 fortunately for the reader1 it is unnecessary to make any distinctions between socialists1 anarchists1 communists1 and ,bolsheviki4 ,they all have the common purpose of overthrowing existing society and general strikes and sabotage are the direct means advocated4 ,the object is to drive business into bankruptcy by reducing production and raising costs4#bd ,but it would be a serious mistake to assume that the dangers are confined to our industrial system4 ,the very first general fact that must be driven home to ,americans is that the pacifist movement in this country1 the growth and connections of which are an important part of this report1 is an absolutely integral and fundamental part of international socialism4 ,european socialism1 from which ours is derived1 has had for one of its main purposes the creation of an international sentiment to supersede national patriotism and effort1 and this internationalism was based upon pacificism1 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 warfare4 ,in other words1 it was not really peace that was the goal1 but the abolition of the patriotic1 warlike spirit of nationalities4 ,in view of the necessity of making head against this menace the ,criminal ,anarchy statute of the ,state of ,new ,york was invoked1 search warrants issued1 large quantities of revolutionary1 incendiary and seditious written and printed matter were seized4 ,after the refusal of ,governor ,smith to sign them1 the so-called ,lusk educational bills were repassed and signed by the ,republican ,governor ,miller4 ,no teacher in the schools shall be licensed to teach who has advocated1 either by word of mouth or in writing1 a form of government other than the government of the ,united ,states or of this state4 ,moreover1 ,no person1 firm1 corporation1 association1 or society shall conduct1 maintain1 or operate any school1 institute1 class1 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 i4 e4 the ,regents4 ,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 taught4#be ,but the safe and sane philosophy by no means stops with the convenient and compendious identification of socialists of all kinds1 anarchists1 pacificists and internationalists1 as belonging to one threatening group united in a like-minded attempt to overthrow society as we now know it4 ,this class includes1 it may be observed1 such seemingly distinguishable personalities as ,trotzky and ,miss ,jane ,addams1 who are assumed to be in essential harmony upon the great issue4 ,but there are many others who are perhaps the innocent tools of the socialists4 ,these include teachers1 lecturers1 writers1 clergymen1 and editors to whom the ,lusk report devotes a long section on the spread of socialism in educated circles4 ,it is the purpose of this section 444 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 propaganda4 ,the facts here related are important because they show that these socialists1 playing upon the pacifist sentiment in a large body of sincere persons1 were able to organize their energies and capitalize their prestige for the spread of their doctrines4 ,p4 #ifi4 ,an instance of this is an article in the ,new ,republic which3 444 includes more or less open attacks on ,attorney-,general ,palmer1 ,mr4 ,lansing1 the ,house ,immigration ,committee1 the ,new ,york ,times1 ,senator ,fall1 this ,committee1 etc4 ,it also quotes the dissenting opinions in the ,abrams case of ,justices ,holmes and ,brandeis1 and ends by making light of the danger of revolution in ,america3 444 ,this belittling of the very real danger to the institutions of this country1 as well as the attempted discrediting of any investigating group 7or individual71 has become thoroughly characteristic of our ,parlor ,bolshevik or ,intelligentsia4 ,p4 #aajc4 ,so it comes about1 as might indeed have been foreseen from the first1 that one finds himself1 if not actually violating the criminal anarchy statute1 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 ,court4 ,moreover1 as might have been anticipated1 the issues prove to be at bottom not so much economic as moral and religious1 for ,materialism and its formidable sons1 ,anarchy1 ,bolshevism1 and ,unrest1 have thrown down the gauge of battle to all decency4 444 ,what is of the greatest importance for churchmen to understand1 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 speech1 is that socialism as a system1 as well as anarchism and all its ramifications1 from high-brow ,bolshevism to the ,russian ,anarchist ,association1 are all the declared enemies of religion and all recognized moral standards and restraints4 ,p4 #aabd4 ,we must not be misled by false1 specious idealism masquerading as progress4 ,the fight is one for ,god as well as country1 in which all forms of radicalism1 materialism1 and anarchy should be fiercely and promptly stamped out4#bf ,,notes4 #ba ,keynes1 ,the ,economic ,consequences of the ,peace1 pp4 #aa-ab4 #bb ,tawney1 ,r4 ,h41 ,the ,acquisitive ,society1 pp4 #ahc-ahd4 ,the original title of this admirable little work1 a ,fabian tract1 was1 ,the ,sickness of an ,acquisitive ,society1 but the ,american publishers evidently thought it inexpedient to stress the contention of the author that modern society has anything fundamentally the matter with it4 #bc ,revolutionary ,radicalism1 ,its ,history1 ,purpose1 and ,tactics3 with an exposition and discussion of the steps being taken and required to curb it1 being the report of the ,joint ,legislative ,committee investigating seditious activities1 filed ,april #bd1 #aibj1 in the ,senate of the state of ,new ,york4 ,this comprises four stout volumes 7over #d1bjj pages in all7 divided into two parts1 dealing1 respectively1 with ,revolutionary and ,subversive ,movements at ,home and ,abroad and ,constructive ,movements and ,measures in ,america4 ,albany1 #aibj4 #bd ,while the nature of this investigation has led the committee to lay its emphasis upon the activities of subversive organizations1 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 him4 7,p4 #aj47 #be ,the general history throughout the ,united ,states of these and similar measures1 the interference with public meetings1 the trials1 imprisonments1 and censorship1 are all set forth in ,professor ,chaffee's ,freedom of ,speech1 #aibj4 #bf ,during the summer of #aiba the ,vice-,president of the ,united ,states published in ,the ,delineator a series of three articles on ,enemies of the ,republic1 in which he considers the question1 ,are the 'reds' stalking our college women8 ,he finds some indications that they are1 and warns his readers that1 ,adherence to radical doctrines means the ultimate breaking down of the old1 sturdy virtues of manhood and womanhood1 the insidious destruction of character1 the weakening of the moral fiber of the individual1 and the destruction of the foundations of society4 ,it may seem anomalous to some that the defenders of the old1 sturdy virtues should so carelessly brand honest and thoughtful men and women1 of whose opinions they can have no real knowledge1 as enemies of the ,republic--but there is nothing whatever anomalous in this4 ,it has been the habit of defenders of the sturdy1 old virtues from time immemorial to be careless of others' reputations4 99 99 99 99 99 ,,viii ,dans les sciences politiques1 il est un ordre de vrits qui1 surtout chez les peuples libres 444 ne peuvent tre utiles1 que lorsqu'elles sont gnralement connues et avoues4 ,ainsi1 l'influence du progrs de ces sciences sur la libert1 sur la prosprit des nations1 doivent en quelque sorts se mesurer sur le nombre de ces vrits qui1 par l'effet d'une instruction lmentaire1 deviennent commune tous les esprits2 ainsi les progrs toujours croissants de cette instruction lmentaire1 lis eux mmes aux progrs ncessaires de ces sciences1 nous rpondent d'une amlioration dans les destines de l'espce humaine qui peut tre regarde comme indfinie1 puisqu'elle n'a d'autres limites que celles de ces progrs mmes4--,,condorcet4 #af4 ,,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 institutions4 ,doubtless the ,lusk report may quite properly be classed as a mere episode in war psychology4 ,having armed to put down the ,germans and succeeded in so doing1 the ardor of conflict does not immediately abate1 but new enemies are sought and easily discovered4 ,the hysteria of repression will probably subside1 but it is now a well-recognized fact that in disease1 whether organic or mental1 the abnormal and excessive are but instructive exaggerations and perversions of the usual course of things4 ,they do not exist by themselves1 but represent the temporary and exaggerated functioning of bodily and mental processes4 ,the real question for us here is not whether ,senator ,lusk is too fearful and too indiscriminate in his denunciations1 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 problems4 ,it seems to me that enough has already been said to lead us to suspect this4 ,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 do1 a number of our most shocking evils would either remedy themselves or show themselves subject to gradual elimination or hopeful reduction4 ,among these evils a very fundamental one is the defensive attitude toward the criticism of our existing order and the nave tendency to class critics as enemies of society4 ,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 merits4 ,having reviewed the arguments of those who would suppress criticism lest it lead to violence and destruction1 we may now properly recall in this connection certain often neglected historical facts which serve to weaken if not to discredit most of these arguments4 ,man has never been able to adapt himself very perfectly to his civilization1 and there has always been a deal of injustice and maladjustment which might conceivably have been greatly decreased by intelligence4 ,but now it would seem that this chronic distress has become acute1 and some careful observers express the quite honest conviction that unless thought be raised to a far higher plane than hitherto1 some great setback to civilization is inevitable4 ,yet instead of subjecting traditional ideas and rules to a thoroughgoing reconsideration1 our impulse is1 as we have seen1 to hasten to justify existing and habitual notions of human conduct4 ,there are many who flatter themselves that by suppressing so-called radical thought and its diffusion1 the present system can be made to work satisfactorily on the basis of ideas of a hundred or a hundred thousand years ago4 ,while we have permitted our free thought in the natural sciences to transform man's old world1 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 past1 but which are clearly anachronisms now4 ,for1 the social science taught in our schools is1 it would appear1 an orderly presentation of the conventional proprieties1 rather than a summons to grapple with the novel and disconcerting facts that surround us on every side4 ,at the opening of the twentieth century the so-called sciences of man1 despite some progress1 are1 as has been pointed out1 in much the same position that the natural sciences were some centuries earlier4 ,hobbes says of the scholastic philosophy that it went on one brazen leg and one of an ass4 ,this seems to be our plight to-day4 ,our scientific leg is lusty and grows in strength daily2 its fellow member--our thought of man and his sorry estate--is capricious and halting4 ,we have not realized the hopes of the eighteenth-century illumination1 when confident philosophers believed that humanity was shaking off its ancient chains2 that the clouds of superstition were lifting1 and that with the new achievements of science man would boldly and rapidly advance toward hitherto undreamed-of concord and happiness4 ,we can no longer countenance the specious precision of the ,english classical school of economics1 whose premises have been given the lie by further thought and experience4 ,we have really to start anew4 ,the students of natural phenomena early realized the arduous path they had to travel4 ,they had to escape1 above all things1 from the past4 ,they perceived that they could look for no help from those whose special business it was to philosophize and moralize in terms of the past4 ,they had to look for light in their own way and in the directions from which they conjectured it might come4 ,their first object was1 as ,bacon put it1 light1 not fruit4 ,they had to learn before they could undertake changes1 and ,descartes is very careful to say that philosophic doubt was not to be carried over to daily conduct4 ,this should for the time being conform to accepted standards1 unenlightened as they might be4 ,such should be the frame of mind of one who seeks insight into human affairs4 ,his subject matter is1 however1 far more intricate and unmanageable than that of the natural scientist4 ,experiment on which natural science has reared itself is by no means so readily applicable in studying mankind and its problems4 ,the student of humanity has even more inveterate prejudices to overcome1 more inherent and cultivated weaknesses of the mind to guard against1 than the student of nature4 ,like the early scientists1 he has a scholastic tradition to combat4 ,he can look for little help from the universities as now constituted4 ,the clergy1 although less sensitive in regard to what they find in the ,bible1 are still stoutly opposed1 on the whole1 to any thoroughgoing criticism of the standards of morality to which they are accustomed4 ,few lawyers can view their profession with any considerable degree of detachment4 ,then there are the now all-potent business interests1 backed by the politicians and in general supported by the ecclesiastical1 legal1 and educational classes4 ,many of the newspapers and magazines are under their influence1 since they are become the business man's heralds and live off his bounty4 ,business indeed has almost become our religion2 it is defended by the civil government even as the later ,roman emperors and the mediaeval princes protected the ,church against attack4 ,socialists and communists are the ,waldensians and ,albigensians of our day1 heretics to be cast out1 suppressed1 and deported to ,russia1 if not directly to hell as of old4 ,the ,secret ,service seems inclined to play the part of a modern ,inquisition1 which protects our new religion4 ,collected in its innumerable files is the evidence in regard to suspected heretics who have dared impugn business as usual1 or who have dwelt too lovingly on peace and good will among nations4 ,books and pamphlets1 although no longer burned by the common hangman1 are forbidden the mails by somewhat undiscerning officials4 ,we have a pious vocabulary of high resentment and noble condemnation1 even as they had in the ,middle ,ages1 and part of it is genuine1 if unintelligent1 as it was then4 ,such are some of the obstacles which the student of human affairs must surmount4 ,yet we may hope that it will become increasingly clear that the repression of criticism 7even if such criticism becomes fault-finding and takes the form of a denunciation of existing habits and institutions7 is inexpedient and inappropriate to the situation in which the world finds itself4 ,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 destruction4 ,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 times8 ,and there is another class who cannot by any exaggeration be considered agitators1 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 unreasonable1 but actually dangerous4 ,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 interference4 ,we constantly hear it charged that this or that individual or group advocates the violent overthrow of government1 is not loyal to the ,constitution1 or is openly or secretly working for the abolition of private property or the family1 or1 in general1 is supposed to be eager to overturn everything without having anything to put in its place4 ,the historical student may well recommend that we be on our guard against such accusations brought against groups and individuals4 ,for the student of history finds that it has always been the custom to charge those who happened to be unpopular1 with holding beliefs and doing things which they neither believed nor did4 ,socrates was executed for corrupting youth and infidelity to the gods2 ,jesus for proposing to overthrow the government2 ,luther was to the officials of his time one who taught a loose1 self-willed life1 severed from all laws and wholly brutish4 ,those who questioned the popular delusions in regard to witchcraft were declared by clergymen1 professors1 and judges of the seventeenth century to be as good as atheists1 who shed doubt on the devil's existence in order to lead their godless lives without fear of future retribution4 ,how is it possible1 in view of this inveterate habit of mankind1 to accept at its face value what the police or ,department of ,justice1 or self-appointed investigators1 choose to report of the teachings of people who are already condemned in their eyes8 ,of course the criticism of accepted ideas is offensive and will long remain so4 ,after all1 talk and writing are forms of conduct1 and1 like all conduct1 are inevitably disagreeable when they depart from the current standards of respectable behavior4 ,to talk as if our established notions of religion1 morality1 and property1 our ideas of stealing and killing1 were defective and in need of revision1 is indeed more shocking than to violate the current rules of action4 ,for we are accustomed to actual crimes1 misdemeanors1 and sins1 which are happening all the time1 but we will not tolerate any suspected attempt to palliate them in theory4 ,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 rebellion1 and that they will accordingly be bitterly denounced4 ,but there is no reason why an increase of intelligence should not put a growing number of us on our guard against this ancient pitfall4 ,if we are courageously to meet and successfully to overcome the dangers with which our civilization is threatened1 it is clear that we need more mind than ever before4 ,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 hand4 ,mind1 as previously defined1 is our conscious knowledge and intelligence1 what we know and our attitude toward it--our disposition to increase our information1 classify it1 criticize it1 and apply it4 ,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 civilization4 ,i have tried to suggest the manner in which man's long history illuminates our plight and casts light on the path to be followed4 ,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 psychologists4 ,few people realize the hopeful revolution that is already beginning to influence the aims and methods of all these sciences of man4 ,no previous generation of thinkers has been so humble on the whole as is that of to-day1 so ready to avow their ignorance and to recognize the tendency of each new discovery to reveal further complexities in the problem4 ,on the other hand1 we are justified in feeling that at last we have the chance to start afresh4 ,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 century4 ,the standards and mood of natural science are having an increasing influence in stimulating eager research into human nature1 beliefs1 and institutions4 ,with ,bacon's recommendations of the study of common things the human mind entered a new stage of development4 ,now that historic forces have brought the common man to the fore1 we are submitting him to scientific study and gaining thereby that elementary knowledge of his nature which needs to be vastly increased and spread abroad1 since it can form the only possible basis for a successful and real democracy4 ,i would not have the reader infer that ,i overrate the place of science or exact knowledge in the life of man4 ,science1 which is but the most accurate information available about the world in which we live and the nature of ourselves and of our fellow men1 is not the whole of life2 and except to a few peculiar persons it can never be the most absorbing and vivid of our emotional satisfactions4 ,we are poetic and artistic and romantic and mystical4 ,we resent the cold analysis and reduction of life to the commonplace and well substantiated--and this is after all is said1 the aim of scientific endeavor4 ,but we have to adjust ourselves to a changing world in the light of constantly accumulating knowledge4 ,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 itself4#bg ,no previous generation has been so perplexed as ours1 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 resources1 material and intellectual4 ,it is fear that holds us back4 ,and fear is begotten of ignorance and uncertainty4 ,and these mutually reinforce one another1 for we feebly try to condone our ignorance by our uncertainty and to excuse our uncertainty by our ignorance4 ,our hot defense of our ideas and beliefs does not indicate an established confidence in them but often half-distrust1 which we try to hide from ourselves1 just as one who suffers from bashfulness offsets his sense of inferiority and awkwardness by rude aggression4 ,if1 for example1 religious beliefs had been really firmly established there would have been no need of aids to faith2 and so with our business system to-day1 our politics and international relations4 ,we dread to see things as they would appear if we thought of them honestly1 for it is the nature of critical thought to metamorphose our familiar and approved world into something strange and unfamiliar4 ,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 defects4 ,partisanship is our great curse4 ,we too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other4 ,we must be defending or attacking something2 only the lily-livered hide their natural cowardice by asking the impudent question1 ,what is it all about8 ,the heroic gird on the armor of the ,lord1 square their shoulders1 and establish a muscular tension which serves to dispel doubt and begets the voluptuousness of bigotry and fanaticism4#bh ,in this mood questions become issues of right and wrong1 not of expediency and inexpediency4 ,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 issue1 and this is a wile of the ,father of ,lies1 to which many of us yield readily enough4 ,it is1 however1 possible for the individual to overcome the fear of thought4 ,once ,i was afraid that men might think too much2 now1 ,i only dread lest they will think too little and far too timidly1 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 impediments4 ,we must first endeavor manfully to free our own minds and then do what we can to hearten others to free theirs4 ,toujours de l'audace6 ,as members of a race that has required from five hundred thousand to a million years to reach its present state of enlightenment1 there is little reason to think that anyone of us is likely to cultivate intelligence too assiduously or in harmful excess4 #ag4 ,,what ,,of ,,it8 ,our age is one of unprecedented responsibility4 ,as ,mr4 ,lippmann has so well said3 ,never before have we had to rely so completely on ourselves4 ,no guardian to think for us1 no precedent to follow without question1 no lawmaker above1 only ordinary men set to deal with heartbreaking perplexity4 ,all weakness comes to the surface4 ,we are homeless in a jungle of machines and untamed powers that haunt and lure the imagination4 ,of course our culture is confused1 our thinking spasmodic1 and our emotion out of kilter4 ,no mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the twentieth century4 ,our ancestors thought they knew their way from birth through all eternity2 we are puzzled about day after to-morrow4444 ,it is with emancipation that real tasks begin1 and liberty is a searching challenge1 for it takes away the guardianship of the master and the comfort of the priest4 ,the iconoclasts did not free us4 ,they threw us into the water1 and now we have to swim4#bi ,we must look forward to ever new predicaments and adventures4 ,nothing is going to be settled in the sense in which things were once supposed to be settled1 for the simple reason that knowledge will probably continue to increase and will inevitably alter the world with which we have to make terms4 ,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 played4 ,we must promote a new cohesion and co-operation on the basis of this truth4 ,and this means that we have now to substitute purpose for tradition1 and this is a concise statement of the great revolution which we face4 ,now1 when all human institutions so slowly and laboriously evolved are impugned1 every consensus challenged1 every creed flouted1 as much as and perhaps even more than by the ancient ,sophists1 the call comes to us 444 to explore1 test1 and1 if necessary1 reconstruct the very bases of conviction1 for all open questions are new opportunities4 ,old beacon lights have shifted or gone out4 ,some of the issues we lately thought to be minor have taken on cosmic dimensions4 ,we are all up against questions too big for us1 so that there is everywhere a sense of insufficiency which is too deep to be fully deployed in the narrow field of consciousness4 ,hence1 there is a new discontent with old leaders1 standards1 criteria1 methods1 and values1 and a demand everywhere for new ones1 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 past4#cj ,life1 in short1 has become a solemn sporting proposition--solemn enough in its heavy responsibilities and the magnitude of the stakes to satisfy our deepest religious longings2 sporty enough to tickle the fancy of a baseball fan or an explorer in darkest ,borneo4 ,we can play the game or refuse to play it4 ,at present most of human organization1 governmental1 educational1 social1 and religious1 is directed1 as it always has been1 to holding things down1 and to perpetuating beliefs and policies which belong to the past and have been but too gingerly readjusted to our new knowledge and new conditions4 ,on the other hand1 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 information4 ,the terrible fear of falling into mere rationalizing is gradually extending from the so-called natural sciences to psychology1 anthropology1 politics1 and political economy4 ,all this is a cheering response to the new situation4 ,but1 as has been pointed out1 really honest discussion of our social1 economic1 and political standards and habits readily takes on the suspicion of heresy and infidelity4 ,just as the freethinker who1 in the eighteenth century1 strove to discredit miracles in the name of an all-wise and foreseeing ,god 7who could not be suspected of tampering with his own laws71 was accused of being an atheist and of really believing in no ,god at all2 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 nothing4 ,the parallel is very exact indeed4 ,the ,church always argued that there were no new heresies4 ,all would1 on examination1 prove to be old and discredited4 ,so the ,vice-,president of the ,united ,states has recently declared that3 ,men have experimented with radical theories in great and small ways times without number and always1 always with complete failure4 ,they are not new2 they are old4 ,each failure has demonstrated anew that without effort there is no success4 ,the race never gets something for nothing4#ca ,but is this not a complete reversal of the obvious truth8 ,unless we define radical as that which never does succeed1 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 tradition1 and were in their beginnings what seemed to be shocking divergences from current beliefs and practices8 ,what about ,christianity1 and ,protestantism1 and constitutional government1 and the rejection of old superstitions and the acceptance of modern scientific ideas8 ,the race has always been getting something for nothing1 for creative thought is1 as we have seen1 confined to a very few4 ,and it has been the custom to discourage or kill those who prosecuted it too openly1 not to reward them according to their merits4 ,one cannot but wonder at this constantly recurring phrase getting something for nothing1 as if it were the peculiar and perverse ambition of disturbers of society4 ,except for our animal outfit1 practically all we have is handed to us gratis4 ,can the most complacent reactionary flatter himself that he invented the art of writing or the printing press1 or discovered his religious1 economic1 and moral convictions1 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 arts8 ,in short1 civilization is little else than getting something for nothing4 ,like other vested interests1 it is the legitimate right to something for nothing4#cb ,how much execrable reasoning and how many stupid accusations would fall away if this truth were accepted as a basis of discussion6 ,of course there is no more flagrant example of a systematic endeavor to get something for nothing than the present business system based on profits1 and absentee ownership of stocks4 ,since the invention of printing1 and indeed long before1 those fearful of change have attempted to check criticism by attacking books4 ,these were classified as orthodox or heterodox1 moral or immoral1 treasonable or loyal1 according to their tone4 ,unhappily this habit continues and shows itself in the distinction between sound and unsound1 radical and conservative1 safe and dangerous4 ,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 these4 ,such books could be set off against those that were but expressions of vague discontent or emulation1 or denunciations of things because they are as they are or are not as they are not4 ,i have personally little confidence in those who cry lo here or lo there4 ,it is premature to advocate any wide sweeping reconstruction of the social order1 although experiments and suggestions should not be discouraged4 ,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 are1 in the light of what they have been and what they might be4 ,the dogmatic socialist with his unhistorical assumptions of class struggle1 his exaggerated economic interpretation of history1 and his notion that labor is the sole producer of capital1 is shedding scarcely more light on the actual situation than is the ,lusk ,committee and ,mr4 ,coolidge1 with their confidence in the sacredness of private property1 as they conceive it1 in the perennial rightness and inspiration of existing authority and the blessedness of the profit system4 ,but there are plenty of writers1 to mention only a few of the more recent ones1 like ,veblen1 ,dewey1 ,j4 ,a4 ,hobson1 ,tawney1 ,cole1 ,havelock ,ellis1 ,bertrand ,russell1 ,graham ,wallas1 who may or may not have 7or ever have had7 any confidence in the presuppositions and forecasts of socialism1 whose books do make clearer to any fair-minded reader the painful exigencies of our own times4 ,i often think of the economic historians of1 say1 two centuries hence who may find time to dig up the vestiges of the economic literature of to-day4 ,we may in imagination appeal to their verdicts and in some cases venture to forecast them4 ,many of our writers they will throw aside as dominated by a desire merely to save the ill-understood present at all costs2 others as attempting to realize plans which were already discredited in their own day4 ,future historians will1 nevertheless1 clearly distinguish a few who1 by a sort of persistent and ardent detachment1 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 them4 ,blessed be those who aspire to win this glory4 ,on the monument erected to ,bruno on the site where he was burned for seeing more clearly than those in authority in his days1 is the simple inscription1 ,raised to ,giordano ,bruno by the generation which he foresaw4 ,we are all purblind1 but some are blinder than others who use the various means available for sharpening their eyesight4 ,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 astigmatism4 ,those who agree1 on the whole1 at least1 with the facts brought together in this essay and1 on the whole1 with the main inferences suggested either explicitly or implicitly1 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 generations4 ,there is now widespread discontent with our present educational methods and their elaborate futility2 but it seems to me that we are rather rarely willing to face the fundamental difficulty1 for it is obviously so very hard to overcome4 ,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 reconstruction4 ,we have seen that the ostensible aims of education are various1#cc and that among them is now included the avowed attempt to prepare the young to play their part later as voting citizens4 ,if they are to do better than preceding generations they must be brought up differently4 ,they would have to be given a different general attitude toward institutions and ideals2 instead of having these represented to them as standardized and sacred they should be taught to view them as representing half-solved problems4 ,but how can we ever expect to cultivate the judgment of the young in matters of fundamental social1 economic1 and political readjustment when we consider the really dominating forces in education8 ,but even if these restraints were weakened or removed1 the task would remain a very delicate one4 ,even with teachers free and far better informed than they are1 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 abuses1 culpable stupidity1 common dishonesty1 and empty political buncombe1 which too often passes for statesmanship4 ,but the problem has to be tackled1 and it may be tackled directly or indirectly4 ,the direct way would be to describe as realistically as might be the actual conditions and methods1 and their workings1 good and bad4 ,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 run1 but how it actually is run4 ,there are plenty of reports of investigating committees1 ,federal and state1 which furnish authentic information in regard to political corruption1 graft1 waste1 and incompetency4 ,these have not hitherto been supposed to have anything to do with the science of government1 although they are obviously absolutely essential to an understanding of it4 ,similar reflections suggest themselves in the matter of business1 international relations1 and race animosities4 ,but so long as our schools depend on appropriations made by politicians1 and colleges and universities are largely supported by business men or by the state1 and are under the control of those who are bent on preserving the existing system from criticism1 it is hard to see any hope of a kind of education which would effectively question the conventional notions of government and business4 ,they cannot be discussed with sufficient honesty to make their consideration really medicinal4 ,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 us4 ,otherwise1 honesty and frankness become mere impudence4#cd ,no doubt politics and economics could be taught1 and are being taught1 better as time goes on4 ,neither of them are so utterly unreal and irrelevant to human proceedings as they formerly were4 ,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 engineer1 and suggest the possibility of gathering together capital from functionless absentee stockholders on the basis of the current rate of interest rather than speculative dividends4 ,the actual conditions of the workers could be described1 their present precarious state1 the inordinate and wasteful prevalence of hiring and firing2 the policy of the unions1 and their defensive and offensive tactics4 ,every youngster might be given some glimmering notion that neither private property nor capital is the real issue 7since few question their essentiality7 but rather the new problem of supplying other than the traditional motives for industrial enterprise--namely1 the slave-like docility and hard compulsion of the great masses of workers1 on the one hand1 and speculative profits1 on the other1 which now dominate in our present business system4 ,for the existing organization is not only becoming more and more patently wasteful1 heartless1 and unjust1 but is beginning1 for various reasons1 to break down4 ,in short1 whatever the merits of our present ways of producing the material necessities and amenities of life1 it looks to many as if they could not succeed indefinitely1 even as well as they have in the past1 without some fundamental revision4 ,as for political life1 a good deal would be accomplished if students could be habituated to distinguish successfully between the empty declamations of politicians and statements of facts1 between vague party programs and concrete recommendations and proposals4 ,they should early learn that language is not primarily a vehicle of ideas and information1 but an emotional outlet1 corresponding to various cooings1 growlings1 snarls1 crowings1 and brayings4 ,their attention could be invited to the rhetoric of the bitter-enders in the ,senate or the soothing utterances of ,mr4 ,harding on accepting the nomination for ,president3 ,with a ,senate advising as the ,constitution contemplates1 ,i would hopefully approach the nations of ,europe and of the earth1 proposing that understanding which makes us a willing participant in the consecration of nations to a new relationship1 to commit the moral forces of the world1 ,america included1 to peace and international justice1 still leaving ,america free1 independent1 self-reliant1 but offering friendship to all the world4 ,if men call for more specific details1 ,i remind them that moral committals are broad and all-inclusive1 and we are contemplating peoples in the concord of humanity's advancement4 ,after mastering the difference between language used to express facts and purposes and that which amounts to no more than a pious ejaculation1 a suave and deprecating gesture1 or an inferential accusation directed against the opposing party1 the youth should be instructed in the theory and practice of party fidelity and the effects of partisanship on the conduct of our governmental affairs4 ,in fine1 he should get some notion of the motives and methods of those who really run our government1 whether he learned anything else or not4 ,these direct attempts to produce a more intelligently critical and open-minded generation are1 however1 likely to be far less feasible than the indirect methods4 ,partly because they will arouse strenuous opposition from the self-appointed defenders of society as now regulated1 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 adjustment4 ,i hope that it has already become clear that we have great1 and hitherto only very superficially worked1 resources in ,history1 as it is now coming to be conceived4 ,we are in the midst of the greatest intellectual revolution that has ever overtaken mankind4 ,our whole conception of mind is undergoing a great change4 ,we are beginning to understand its nature1 and as we find out more1 intelligence may be raised to a recognized dignity and effectiveness which it has never enjoyed before4 ,an encouraging beginning has been made in the case of the natural sciences1 and a similar success may await the studies which have to do with the critical estimate of man's complicated nature1 his fundamental impulses and resources1 the needless and fatal repressions which these have suffered through the ignorance of the past1 and the discovery of untried ways of enriching our existence and improving our relations with our fellow men4 ,there#ce is a well-known passage in ,goethe's ,faust where he likens ,history to the ,book with ,seven ,seals described in ,revelation1 which no one in heaven1 or on the earth or under the earth1 was able to open and read therein4 ,all sorts of guesses have been hazarded as to its contents by ,augustine1 ,orosius1 ,otto of ,freising1 ,bossuet1 ,bolingbroke1 ,voltaire1 ,herder1 ,hegel1 and many others1 but none of them were able to break the seals1 and all of them were gravely misled by their fragmentary knowledge of the book's contents4 ,for we now see that the seven seals were seven great ignorances4 ,no one knew much 7#a7 of man's physical nature1 or 7#b7 the workings of his thoughts and desires1 or 7#c7 of the world in which he lives1 or 7#d7 of how he has come about as a race1 or 7#e7 of how he develops as an individual from a tiny egg1 or 7#f7 how deeply and permanently he is affected by the often forgotten impressions of infancy and childhood1 or 7#g7 how his ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands of years in the dark ignorance of savagery4 ,the seals are all off now4 ,the book at last lies open before those who are capable of reading it1 and few they be as yet2 for most of us still cling to the guesses made in regard to its contents before anyone knew what was in it4 ,we have become attached to the familiar old stories which now prove to be fictions1 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 people2 its scorn for the respectable and normal1 which it often reduces to little more than sanctimonious routine and indolence and pious resentment at being disturbed in one's complacent assurances4 ,indeed1 much of its teaching appears downright immoral according to existing standards4 ,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 life4 ,we are keenly sensitive to little discomforts1 minor irritations1 wounded vanity1 and various danger signals2 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 possibilities4 ,our imagination is restrained by our own timidity1 constantly reinforced by the warnings of our fellows1 who are always urging us to be safe and sane1 by which they mean convenient for them1 predictable in our conduct and graciously amenable to the prevailing standards4 ,but it is obvious that it is increasingly dangerous to yield to this inveterate tendency1 however comfortable and respectable it may seem for the moment4 ,history1 as ,h4 ,g4 ,wells has so finely expressed it1 is coming more and more to be a race between education and catastrophe4 ,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 classes4 ,a sense of history as the common adventure of all mankind is as necessary for peace within as it is for peace between the nations4 ,there can be no secure peace now but a common peace of the whole world2 no prosperity but a general prosperity1 and this for the simple reason that we are all now brought so near together and are so pathetically and intricately interdependent1 that the old notions of noble ,isolation and national sovereignty are magnificently criminal4 ,in the bottom of their hearts1 or the depths of their unconscious1 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 ,past8 ,does it not make plain that the conservative1 so far as he is consistent and lives up to his professions1 is fatally in the wrong8 ,the so-called radical is also almost always wrong1 for no one can foresee the future4 ,but he works on a right assumption--namely1 that the future has so far always proved different from the past and that it will continue to do so4 ,some of us1 indeed1 see that the future is tending to become more and more rapidly and widely different from the past4 ,the conservative himself furnishes the only illustration of his theory1 and even that is highly inconclusive4 ,his general frame of mind appears to remain constant1 but he finds himself defending and rejecting very different things4 ,the great issue may1 according to the period1 be a primeval taboo1 the utterances of the ,delphic oracle1 the ,athanasian creed1 the ,inquisition1 the geocentric theory1 monarchy by the grace of ,god1 witchcraft1 slavery1 war1 capitalism1 private property1 or noble isolation4 ,all of these tend to appear to the conservative under the aspect of eternity1 but all of these things have come1 many of them have gone1 and the remainder would seem to be subject to undreamed-of modifications as time goes on4 ,this is the teaching of the now unsealed book4 ,,notes4 #bg ,mr4 ,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 economy4 ,there is no reason why man should live by bread alone4 ,there is a time1 however1 for natural science and political economy1 for they should establish the conditions in which we may rejoice in our vital lies1 which will then do no harm and bring much joy4 #bh ,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 results4 #bi ,drift and ,mastery1 pp4 #aif-aig4 #cj ,g4 ,stanley ,hall1 ,the ,message of the ,zeitgeist1 in ,scientific ,monthly1 ,august1 #aiba--;a very wonderful and eloquent appeal by one of our oldest and boldest truth seekers4 #ca ,delineator1 ,august1 #aiba1 p4 ,,ii4 #cb ,adopting ,mr4 ,veblen's definition of a vested interest which caused some scandal in conservative circles when it was first reported4 ,doubtless the seeming offensiveness of the latter part of the definition obscured its reassuring beginning4 #cc ,see ,section #b above4 #cd ,the wise ,goethe has said1 ,zieret ,strke den ,mann und freies1 muthiges ,wesen1 ,o1 so ziemet ihm fast tiefes ,geheimniss noch mehr1 --,rmische ,elegien1 xx4 #ce ,the closing reflections are borrowed from ,the ,leaflet1 issued by the students of the ,new ,school for ,social ,research1 established in ,new ,york in #aiai1 with a view of encouraging adults to continue their studies in the general spirit and mood which permeate this essay4 ,,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 day4 ,the following list of titles is furnished with a view of doing something to meet this demand4 ,it is not a bibliography in the usual sense of the term4 ,it is confined to rather short and readily understandable presentations appropriate to the overcrowded schedule upon which most of us have to operate4 ,all the writers mentioned belong1 however1 to that rather small class whose opinions are worth considering1 even if one reserves the imprescriptible right not to agree with all they say4 ,there may well be better references than those with which ,i happen to be acquainted1 and others quite as useful2 but ,i can hardly imagine anyone1 whatever his degree of information1 unless he happens to be a specialist in the particular field1 failing to gain something of value from any one of the volumes mentioned4 ,for the astounding revelations in regard to the fundamental nature of matter and the ways in which the modern chemist plays with it1 see ,john ,mills1 ,within the ,atom 7,d4 ,van ,nostrand ,company71 and ,slosson1 ,creative ,chemistry 7,the ,century ,company74 ,a general account of the evolutionary process will be found in ,crampton1 ,the ,doctrine of ,evolution 7,columbia ,university ,press71 chaps1 i-v4 ,for our development as an individual from the egg see ,conklin1 ,heredity and ,environment 7,princeton ,university ,press74 ,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 ,goldenweiser1 ,early ,civilization1 ,introduction to ,anthropology 7,knopf74 ,this should be supplemented by the remarkable volume of essays by ,franz ,boas1 ,the ,mind of ,primitive ,man 7,macmillan74 ,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 mentioned3 ,dewey1 ,reconstruction in ,philosophy and ,human ,nature and ,conduct 7,holt72 ,woodworth1 ,dynamic ,psychology 7,columbia ,university ,press72 ,trotter1 ,instincts of the ,herd in ,peace and ,war 7,macmillan7--especially the first two sections1 pp4 #a-fe2 ,bernard ,hart1 ,the ,psychology of ,insanity 7,putnam71 an admirable little introduction to the importance of abnormal mental conditions in understanding our usual thoughts and emotions2 ,mc,dougall1 ,social ,psychology 7,j4 ,w4 ,luce72 ,everett ,d4 ,martin1 ,the ,behavior of ,crowds 7,harpers72 ,edman1 ,human ,traits 7,houghton-,mifflin74 ,for the so-called behavioristic interpretation of mankind1 see ,watson1 ,psychology from the ,standpoint of a ,behaviorist 7,lippincott74 ,haldane1 ,mechanism1 ,life1 and ,personality 7,dutton71 is a short discussion of some of the most fundamental elements in our modern conception of life itself4 ,when it comes to gaining an idea of ,freudianism and all the overwhelming discoveries1 theories1 and suggestions due to those who have busied themselves with the lasting effects of infantile and childish experiences1 of hidden desires--sexual and otherwise1 of the ,unconscious and psychoanalysis1 while there are many books1 great and small1 there would be no unanimity of opinion among those somewhat familiar with the subjects as to what should be recommended4 ,it would be well if everyone could read in ,havelock ,ellis1 ,the ,philosophy of ,conflict 7,houghton-,mifflin71 the essay 7,,xviii7 on ,freud and his influence4 ,wilfred ,lay1 ,man's ,unconscious ,conflict 7,dodd1 ,mead71 is a popular exposition of psychoanalysis1 and ,tansley1 ,the ,new ,psychology 7,dodd1 ,mead71 likewise4 ,harvey ,o',higgins1 ,the ,secret ,springs 7,harpers71 reports1 in a pleasing manner1 some of the actual medical experiences of ,dr4 ,edward ,reede of ,washington4 ,but much of importance remains unsaid in all these little books for which one would have to turn to ,freud himself1 his present and former disciples1 his enemies1 and the special contributions of investigators and practitioners in this new and essential field of psychological research and therapy4 ,turning to the existing industrial system1 its nature1 defects1 and recommendations for its reform1 ,i may say that ,i think that relatively little is to be derived from the common run of economic textbooks4 ,the following compendious volumes give an analysis of the situation and a consideration of the proposed remedies for existing evils and maladjustments3 ,veblen1 ,the ,vested ,interests and the ,common ,man1 also his ,the ,engineers and the ,price ,system 7,huebsch72 ,j4 ,a4 ,hobson1 ,democracy after the ,war 7,macmillan7 and his more recent ,problems of a ,new ,world 7,macmillan72 ,tawney1 ,the ,acquisitive ,society 7,harcourt1 ,brace72 ,bertrand ,russell1 ,why ,men ,fight 7,century7 and his ,proposed ,roads to ,freedom 7,holt71 in which he describes clearly the history and aims of the various radical leaders and parties of recent times4 ,as for newer views and criticism of the modern state and political life in general1 in addition to ,mr4 ,hobson's books mentioned above1 the following are of importance3 ,graham ,wallas1 ,the ,great ,society 7,macmillan72 ,harold ,laski1 ,authority in the ,modern ,state and ,problems of ,sovereignty 7,yale ,university ,press72 ,walter ,lippmann1 ,preface to ,politics and ,drift and ,mastery 7,holt74 ,j4 ,russell ,smith1 ,the ,world's ,food ,resources 7,holt71 is a larger and more detailed discussion than most of those recommended above1 but contains a number of general facts and comment of first-rate importance4 ,one who desires a highly thoughtful and scholarly review of the trend of religious thought in recent times should read ,mc,giffert1 ,the ,rise of ,modern ,religious ,ideas 7,macmillan74