How to Conquer
Stupidity

Leo Markun

HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD, KANSAS

CONTENTS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Perhaps stupidity is a somewhat vague term. In general, we know what it is. Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines it as the “Quality or state of being foolish; extreme dullness of understanding; crass foolishness.” Dr. L. Loewenfeld, in his thorough German treatise On Stupidity, points out that the word may be applied with regard to an individual or with regard to single acts of persons who are not considered stupid. The wisest person is capable of occasional foolish deeds.

I shall speak here of stupidity not only as weakness of understanding but also as improper response of any sort. I shall not, however, particularly concern myself with awkwardness of body. Moreover, I have considered certain aspects of mental inefficiency in How to Think Logically (No. 1063), Insanity and Other Mental Disorders (No. 1094), and several other Little Blue Books. I shall try not to repeat myself except where this appears necessary.

When we speak of a man as being stupid, we mean usually that he has less than average intelligence. But here we are again employing words which are without exactness. Intelligence cannot be measured as though it were a matter of weight or specific gravity. There are so-called Mentimeter tests, somewhat similar to the army intelligence tests with which some of my readers may be familiar; but they do not [Pg 4]entirely live up to their name. They do afford a rough index to the possession of certain qualities. They should not be used without considerable caution, however. There have been a number of unwarranted attempts made to draw deductions from these tests as though their value had been conclusively demonstrated.

Dr. George A. Dorsey truly says, “I can test your capacity or intelligence or your will only as I can pick a winner at a horse race. I know at the end of the race.” The whole idea of testing and grading seems to be based upon an academic fallacy. Who was more intelligent, Socrates or Napoleon? Pasteur or Alexander the Great? Shakespeare or Goethe? If these men had been given Alpha or Mentimeter tests, should we be able better to answer these questions now? I think not.

Stupidity is a relative matter, just as intelligence is. In a primitive tribe, the man who has good muscles, good vision, and good hearing, with a certain amount of what we call savage cunning, is amply able to take care of himself. He may become chief and he is almost certain to be well supplied with food and wives. In a civilized community, if he is extraordinarily well supplied with the endowments mentioned, he may perhaps make a fortune as an athlete. In this case he will not lack for wives, either. But if he is intellectually of low grade, he may not be able to retain his large earnings. He is likely to spend them quickly for foolish luxuries and to dissipate them by gambling. Then, when middle age weakens his muscles, he is forced to adjust himself to inferior living [Pg 5]conditions. Then he is called a fool—a term seldom applied to one actually in possession of considerable wealth.

What is stupidity in a college town may be ordinary intelligence in a mine or a sculptor’s studio or on the baseball field. It may even be genius. People who are extraordinarily developed in one direction may be underdeveloped in others. A man may be a great general or an industrial leader without having an ear for music. We are not justified in calling a scientist stupid because he absent-mindedly hands the conductor a button instead of his ticket. His act is one of stupidity, however, as I use the term here. If his absent-mindedness should manifest itself frequently while he is conducting important scientific experiments, it would be indicative of great stupidity, of unfitness for his work.

What we call folly or stupidity may amount to a lack of will power, an inability to concentrate upon the problems of life. Or it may be due to improper habit formations. Usually, but perhaps not always, it is connected with a lack of intellectual capacity in the narrow sense. The idea of stupidity is after all subjective. The martyr-masochist (we may take Jesus and Socrates as examples, although their lives as we have them seem to be masses of legends) is a hero to his follower, a “damned idiot” to the unsympathetic. But, from the point of view of their own development, they are not stupid. They do what it is within them to perform and to suffer. Here I pay no heed to the verdict of history, and rank the [Pg 6]unsuccessful with the successful Christs. When Nathan Hale was hanged, he did not know that the Revolution was going to succeed. He did not know that the school books of his country would some day set him up as a patriotic example. If these states were still British colonies, we should probably think of Hale—if we thought of him at all—as a fool. We should probably think of George Washington and all the other rebel leaders in the same way.

John Brown’s scheme was absurd. The chance that his expedition should succeed was not one in a thousand. It failed, and yet his failure helped finally to bring about the abolition of slavery. Edmund Clarence Stedman was right when he wrote in 1859:

Would Brown have been more of a fool if the United States had been destined to retain Negro slavery? In other words, is failure positive proof of stupidity?

I suppose the answer depends in the final analysis upon our definition of failure. The man who has given up his life to disinterested service can hardly be blamed for not having earned a large fortune. Even if we are unable to sympathize with his motives, we must understand that he probably succeeded in realizing most of his own ambitions. Sometimes, indeed, people work hard in one direction to forget failure where success was most desired. The laurel wreath may then fall to ashes amid the applause of the unseeing crowd.

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But in general we rate a man according to his seeming ability to adjust himself to his environment. We soon forget his petty stupidities if he is able to do some one thing better than his neighbors, provided only that his accomplishment is highly rated. At present the preacher who can send his hearers into convulsions of religious ecstasy is almost sure to get his name into Who’s Who in America and is fairly certain, if he possesses a certain flair for business, to amass a comfortable fortune. But the same man, born in an irreligious age might be simply a lazy good-for-nothing or even a patient in an insane asylum. What became of all the potential scientists who were born in the Middle Ages and accomplished nothing? Poor stupid fellows, most of them must have been called by their neighbors.

As a matter of fact, we know few people well enough to be justified in calling them stupid. Of course not all the feebleminded and demented men and women are removed from the world’s work. But it is better to keep the definitely diseased mentally out of our conception of stupidity. Since we are concerned with the conquest of folly and since the mental disorders are either incurable at present or curable only by medical treatment of one sort or another, we shall leave them out of account. What interests us primarily is the correction by the individual himself of his own minor stupidity.

We should understand, though, that mental capacity cannot be enlarged by any effort of the will. After an individual has reached his [Pg 8]full growth, his mental capacity may be decreased by an accident or disease, but there is no known way by which he or others can increase it.

Still, mental attainment can be raised, for the reason that it is never equal to mental capacity. To elevate the level of mental attainment means (in the widest sense of the word) to educate. What we call stupidity may really be ignorance or lack of order. Moreover, lack of order, that is, an imperfect scientific method or logical system, is the most common cause of ignorance. The man who has learned how to study, not the one who has acquired a few random scraps of information, is on the way to becoming educated. The slow apprentice is sometimes undervalued when he is actually laying the proper foundations for his work.

Teachers often fail to appreciate the merits of the boys and girls in their care. If they are intelligent, they can see that certain bright children are properly acquiring their Latin and their English, and may some day be teachers themselves. But that the boy who simply cannot learn his literary history may have it in him to be a poet—that they are ordinarily unable to understand, unless the boy is already writing verses for the school magazine.

A high school teacher once asked me why I didn’t think of taking up the profession of chemist. I was too amazed to reply. And yet, from the ordinary academic viewpoint of grades, he was justified in his question. I stood somewhere near the head of his class, relatively higher than I did in my English section. The [Pg 9]new science was of considerable interest to me, even if the mechanics of laboratory work proved somewhat irksome. But a professional chemist must attain a certain amount of manual dexterity and a considerable interest in the mechanics of his work. It is probable enough that some of the boys whose work in the high school class was mediocre are now on the way to becoming successful chemists.

On the other hand, I feel that I appreciate literature more intelligently than the classmates of mine who were better prepared in high school to explain the allusions in “Comus” or to tell what Wyatt and Surrey wrote. For me, at that time, the subjects were dull because they were still unclothed with flesh.

This bit of autobiography is set down here for the light it may shed upon problems of development as they are presented to the teacher and the parent. It is not always easy to tell the true trend of a child’s abilities. Sometimes, indeed, the boy or the girl knows, even if the teacher does not. When there is a question of genius, perhaps genius is necessary to recognize it. To the world it may be the living image of stupidity.

It is true that genius in the restricted sense is such a rare phenomenon that most of us need not concern ourselves about the ability to recognize it. But the products of genius, especially when they are of a novel sort, are likely to prove puzzling. No less a critic than Henry James wrote about one of Walt Whitman’s books of verse: “It has been a melancholy one to write about it.... It exhibits the effort [Pg 10]of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.” Despite all Whitman’s tricks of false poetizing, this verdict is decidedly unjust. The fact is that James was not himself poet enough to recognize poetry except in traditional garb.

To stigmatize difference as inferiority is an egregious form of egotism. It indicates a lack of the ability of self-criticism, too. Hard-headed business men are wont to look down upon poets and philosophers, and these are accustomed to retaliate in kind.

The qualities which enable a man to succeed in business are of course different in part—although by no means entirely—from those which make an artist. The musician and the sculptor must not be judged too harshly for deficiencies in their ability to carry on commercial transactions. Many artists find it advisable to leave all matters of business to agents or managers.

We must be careful, then, not to consider people stupid simply because their experiences and their ways of life do not coincide with our own. If they do not possess that particular wisdom which is ours, they may be amply compensated in some other way. The man who has lived all his life on a farm does not know the city ways: but neither does the town-bred man know how to manage cows and chickens.

When the scientist goes into a remote region and finds that the inhabitants believe in all sorts of queer superstitions, he should not consider them all stupid on this account. They [Pg 11]have had no opportunity to learn the methods or the conclusions of modern science. They should be judged no more harshly than Socrates would be for knowing nothing of the geometry of Minkowski and the equations of Lorentz. Living in his time, the philosopher could not be familiar with modern mathematics. Living where they do, the Arkansas “hill billies” naturally cling fast to the superstitions of their fathers.

But the educated man (so called) who believes that breaking a mirror will bring him seven years of bad luck is, so far as this belief is concerned, stupid. The authors of Genesis are not to be reproached for thinking that all the species of men and animals were brought simultaneously into being by a fiat of God. Considering the state of knowledge in their time, their idea was natural enough. But it is a disgrace when men calling themselves scientists now shut their eyes to the abundance of testimony for organic evolution. I think we can call them stupid without any priggishness.

However, stupidity of one sort does not altogether damn any individual. A man with very foolish prejudices and without any particular understanding of history may nevertheless be able efficiently to manage a great industrial establishment. He may or may not be a good collector of antiques. His ability to tell good music from bad must be judged without reference to his other elements of mental and physical strength and weakness.

The only criterion we have for stupidity is [Pg 12]lack of success in one or another respect. And yet, as we are all aware, the chance factors play a great part in determining success or failure. The successful general is not necessarily cleverer than the commander he defeats, even when their forces appear to be evenly matched. The millionaire may differ from the pauper simply in that he has had better opportunities.

This and other considerations have brought about various attempts to measure mental ability directly. We have already considered briefly the intelligence tests now being used by various psychologists. Of still lower value, by far, is phrenology, the pseudoscience which examines the skull to find there an index to the mental faculties and traits of character. So far as the mind has any one single organ, this is the brain. But it does not seem that the shape of the head or the existence of certain “bumps” on it bears any definite relationship to mental capacity.

Even the weighing of the brains of the dead does not seem to give any absolute conclusions. Pearson and Pearl, examining thousands of individual brains, found that the mean average brain weight of the adult Englishman was 27 grams less than that of the Bavarians, 57 grams less than that of the Hessians, 65 grams less than that of the Swedes, and 120 grams less than that of the Bohemians. Are we to conclude that the average Bohemian is proportionately more intelligent than the average Englishman? Certainly not without additional evidence.

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A man who died in an asylum in Vienna was found to have brains weighing 2028 grams and without any pathological alterations which microscopic examination could reveal. Gambetta, the famous French statesman, had brains weighing only 1241 grams, or 150 grams less than the average.

Aside from weighing the brains, all sorts of measurements and examinations have been made, but these post mortem intelligence tests remain of indefinite value. Nevertheless it appears that the structure of the brain is responsible for the difference, or for part of the difference, between a highly intelligent and a stupid individual. But the physiologists and the anatomists have not altogether solved the problem.

We do know that certain diseases sometimes reduce intellectual capacity. A serious attack of typhus fever, for instance, may leave the patient feebleminded or at least comparatively stupid. Injuries to the head or tumors of the brain may do serious injury to the mind. Or the gray matter of the brain may be injured by various drugs, leading to more or less definite mental changes.

Probably a great many fools are such simply because they have never had any chance to develop those qualities in which they might have excelled. In them we could not find any physical basis for their stupidity, I suppose, even if brains gave up their secrets in the dissecting room. Of course education is not identical with intelligence, but it affords means of arrangement and order. Perhaps it is necessary [Pg 14]to add that by education I mean more than the formal teaching of the schools and colleges. As we have seen, we do not lay undue weight upon the minor eccentricities and deficiencies of the man who can write a great poem or compose important symphonies. But let us suppose that the potential genius never learns his alphabet or his musical scales. All that remains to him in life is his stupidity.

It is sometimes said that the man who has genius in him will not be stopped by difficulties of this sort. He will somehow educate himself. Actually we have seen men with none of the usual advantages display sufficient power of will to reach their goal. But we know little of those who have been discouraged. Here we have a certain justification for the democratic idea of education for all, even if this seems to lead to some unfortunate results.

The educated fool, the man whose head is crammed full of facts and who may possess a certain fluency in argument but who is yet unmistakably stupid, exists among us in large numbers. At least in part, though, the fault belongs with the system of education. Specifically, the teacher thinks of the multiplication table or the college entrance examination as an end in itself, without regard to the individual pupil, his capabilities and his needs.

Even in our best educational institutions, little progress has been made in the synthesizing of knowledge. The student working at his psychology seldom has it borne in upon him that if the science has any meaning at all, it is an instrument for criticizing literature and [Pg 15]for understanding life. Knowledge is not bound up in little packages labeled English A and Social Ethics 4 and Biology 9a, as university catalogues seem to indicate.

The more we learn, the more specialization becomes necessary. And thus it happens that we have admiralty lawyers, physicians who have forgotten all that they ever knew except that which pertains to the genito-urinal system, specialists in the calculus of tensors or in plant histology. This tendency to specialization, which can hardly be escaped or regarded as an unmitigated evil, yet stimulates the production of wise fools.

If the university professorships are many, there is still room for instruction in the art of thinking, which means really the art of living. But here, I greatly fear, the qualified experts are pretty conspicuous by reason of their absence. It is, after all, a somewhat optimistic definition which makes man the thinking animal. Most of our reactions are instinctive or habitual or inspired by our emotions. In fact, constituted as we at present are, the attempt to do nothing except as the result of formal thought would be fatal.

But perhaps the attitude of thinking for oneself might be profitably encouraged. The ordinary teacher is literally frightened when a pupil discovers something for himself beyond the text and the commentary. This is as much as to reproach the teacher for not having done any original teaching!

It is a human trait to follow the lines of least resistance. Therefore the intelligent pupil [Pg 16]reasons out matters for himself only when he has failed to prepare the set lesson. Then he calls his act one of “bluffing.” If his recitation or his examination paper is found satisfactory, he feels that he has outwitted the teacher. Unfortunately there is a considerable amount of truth in this assumption. But it is a truth which does no credit to our educational methods.

If we are to learn how to think at all, we must learn it by ourselves, and largely through many trials and by rejecting a great many errors. (In the final analysis, all education is self-education. We cannot successfully be crammed full of knowledge by any outsider. A good teacher can do no more than stimulate and point out certain pitfalls.) Some people never learn to think for themselves—and no thinking which is copied from another deserves the name of thought at all. Originality is the leading, the differentiating, ingredient.

“A being who could not think without training,” says John Dewey, “could never be trained to think; one may have to learn to think well, but not to think.” The lower animals cannot be taught to think at all, because they do not possess the power to generalize. It seems that the same thing might be said, with some qualifications, of the less complex or “lower” races of mankind. Among us, too, we find a great many people of more or less vegetative character. Their thinking is of the simplest, and it occurs comparatively rarely.

The elements necessary to thought are, according to Dewey in How We Think, classifiable under three heads. First of all there must be an accumulation of experiences and facts from which suggestions arise. As I have tried to show in How to Think Logically, all our knowledge comes eventually from our sense impressions. The material used in thought does not arise mysteriously, out of nothing, in the mind. But with the store of experiences and facts are inferences and ideas built up out of the data afforded by the sense. Every individual selects and combines for himself.

The second element necessary for thought consists of the “promptness, flexibility, and fertility of suggestions.” That is, the experiences must be available. They must not be too deeply forgotten, but must be within easy reach when they are needed.

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The third element is the “orderliness, consecutiveness, appropriateness, in what is suggested.” The images and ideas may come up in large number and yet may not assist efficient thinking. They must first of all be relevant. Also they must be available in an orderly chain. The principle of order in thinking is of the utmost importance. Furthermore, it can be acquired much more easily than the ability to gather a great many experiences and to keep them within easy reach. Merely to hear and see much is of little avail. We know the people who travel all around the world and come home to prove themselves as stupid and as ignorant as before. It is the principle of order, indeed, which gives the ability to accumulate experiences and facts and to make use of them at will.

What causes us to look about us, to listen, to taste, to smell and to touch? Instincts and habits of various sorts. Some psychologists speak of a special instinct of curiosity, which is at the basis of all science. But I suppose the accumulation of knowledge is in general strictly utilitarian. Primitive man studied the habits of various animals not because he was trying to establish the science of zoölogy, not because he had any abstract curiosity, but because he wanted to eat certain creatures and to escape being eaten by others, and then because he had accidentally stumbled upon the fact that some animals might be partially tamed and so rendered of use to the human race.

We learn first of all by doing. Of all the proofs that the earth is approximately spherical [Pg 19]in shape, the best one to the man without special training is the fact that it has been circumnavigated. Incidentally, this proof is not of much value until the earth has been circumnavigated from north to south and from south to north through the poles.

Physics and chemistry did not originate in a disinterested will to learn, but in the attempt to solve certain problems of practical importance. Even, now, the students of the pure sciences justify themselves with the apologetic statement that any scientific discovery may prove of important usefulness.

The “Why?” of the child or of the philosopher is at bottom an attempt to learn that which may be put to use. At present, indeed, there is some tendency to make a parlor game of philosophy, to divorce it from real life. But wisdom is not desired as an ornament alone, and the true love of wisdom cannot exist in a vacuum. No valid distinction is to be made between the wisdom of life and wisdom in the abstract. The abstract is, in general, merely a representation in shorthand of the concrete. Such words as fear and valor and justice have very definite reference to behavior. They are not mere counters to be played with by learned professors.

Abstractions are to thought what levers and pulleys and inclined planes are in the handling of unwieldy masses. They assist greatly in the ease, the range, and the depth of suggestions which come up for the solution of a problem.

Thinking is problem solving. But if this word [Pg 20]makes us think of arithmetic and algebra, we should note at once that we must not depend too much upon the answers found in official keys. Teachers and preachers and writers are wont to state with all the flourishes of authority what nobody knows or what, at any rate, they are not intelligent enough to discover.

To turn from thought to unreasoning faith is obviously to confess failure. Sometimes this confession covers only a small field, sometimes it extends over the whole field of knowledge. The Fundamentalist wants to find all his science in the Bible, the Modernist perhaps only part of his psychology and philosophy.

Loewenfeld tells of an ignorant old woman who lived with a tubercular man. The health authorities warned her against using the same glass from which he drank and exposing herself in various other ways. “That’s foolishness,” she said. “If God doesn’t want me to get sick, I’ll stay well; and if he wants me to get consumption, it won’t do me any good to use a separate glass.”

Of course many religious people proceed on the more sensible assumption that “God helps those who help themselves.” Even the piety which is sure that miracles occurred in olden days does not depend upon their recurrence in our time. Yet there is a Christian sect, most of whose members belong to the “upper classes” and consider themselves educated, which teaches that only faith can cure disease.

There is not room here to discuss the utility of religion or the possible existence of a deity. The Little Blue Book reader can find ample [Pg 21]material dealing with these subjects in a number of the booklets, notably the series by Joseph McCabe. But here we may notice what a large variety of miscellaneous follies have been upheld in the name of religion. For instance, it was formerly declared that the building of railroads was inspired by Satan. At times during the Middle Ages, all men who were indiscreet enough to show themselves more learned than the multitude were denounced as followers of the same fallen angel. Mohammed declared that faithful Mussulmans might have more than one wife apiece, but that they should drink no wine. Or rather he asserted that tasting the first drop is the dangerous thing. Some of his followers employed great ingenuity in not tasting the first drop but in getting the full advantage of all the rest. When Protestant American Christianity borrowed this prohibitory tenet from Islam, some of its leaders made mental reservations to find similar evasions for themselves. Perhaps some of them have also believed that the enactment of Prohibition carried with it the legalization of polygamy. But, of course, the scandals which have circulated about certain ministers are not enough in themselves to damn religion. They simply prove that human nature is human, even within temples, tabernacles, and manses.

Much has been said and written about the stupidity of asceticism. If, however, poverty and chastity are really pleasing in the sight of God, and if they lead certainly to ineffable eternal bliss, then they are amply justified. Many a burglar has gone cheerfully to a term [Pg 22]of ten years in the penitentiary, his heart gladdened by the thought of the little fortune which he has safely hidden away to enjoy after his release. Should not all good Catholics hie them to nunneries if a little temporary self-denial can assure them of so much hereafter? But the priestly leaders see that the consistent application of this doctrine would drive a great many into apostasy and would leave no Catholics of legitimate birth for the next generation.

In theory, the Catholics have the Bible interpreted for them by the Church, but the Protestants read it and decipher its mysteries for themselves. As we know, however, each sect has its own creed. Only in a few of the Unitarian congregations are the individual members free to decide if Jehovah is a man or a sun-myth or a force found in nature. Even here I suppose nobody goes to church where he cannot agree with most of the minister’s teachings.

It is a common tendency to hear and read only those arguments which confirm one’s own beliefs. The organs of orthodox religion circulate among the orthodox, the liberal religious papers go to the liberals, the anticlerical magazines go chiefly to atheists and agnostics and deists. Very few Republicans read the Socialist papers and books, unless it be to find ammunition for anti-Socialistic arguments.

In the United States, the party system is such that no particular thought is required on the part of the voter. It is much easier to follow in one’s father’s footsteps than to attempt to differentiate the principles of one party from [Pg 23]those of another or to find out which candidate for Keeper of the Dog Pound is best qualified for the office. In a municipal election, the Republicans always stand for economy and needed improvements, the Democrats for needed improvements and economy. Whichever party has its principles approved, taxes go up and the improvements are postponed. Perhaps I am needlessly cynical: I have only lived in two or three of the cities and read about some of the others.

The citizen who is not a politician by profession can only give part of his time and thoughts to government. On the other hand, the political leaders make it their business to have the control of things—especially of the treasury—in their own hands. This is understandable enough. But the civics teachers in the schools teach their pupils that the government of the United States is perfect, or at least that it would be perfect if all the qualified voters went to the polls. Despite the evidence afforded by their senses, some good people continue to cherish this naïve belief.

But it appears that comparatively few minds are capable of probing to the root of a matter. Most are contented with shallow suggestions, with some easy appeal to authority. It is so easy to answer a complex problem with a name; to say, for instance, that a lecturer for world peace is a Bolshevist, and with that word to shut off further debate.

This fault is not confined to drug store philosophers and American Legion leaders. Professor Graham Wallas—in a book on The Art of [Pg 24]Thought, too—turns upon McDougall and the other psychologists who deny the mysterious energies hypothesized by the vitalists with the assertion that they are furnishing a system which the Bolsheviks turn to account for their propaganda.

Bolshevism is dangerous, many Italians and Spaniards have argued; therefore a dictator is necessary. But there is no true question of either ... or. The fear of Lenin’s ideas has contributed much to the decline—temporary, let us hope—of the love of liberty in America. The French Revolution had the same effect in England in the time of Burke and Godwin. Hazlitt wrote that “waking from the trance of theory we hear the words Truth, Reason, Virtue, Liberty, with the same indifference or contempt that a cynic who has married a jilt or a termagant listens to the rhapsodies of lovers.”

The reason is that these capitalized abstractions had been nothing more than words. If liberty is once associated with a reign of terror, immediately it seems corrupted to the thoughtless. The abuse, for them, reflects upon the proper use. Temporary associations must never be confounded with necessary accompaniments.

The rough and ready thinking of the multitude jumps from the frying-pan into the fire, from Lenin to Mussolini, from tyranny in the name of liberty to tyranny in the names of security and glory. If the licensed saloon-keepers were friendly with the police authorities, so are the unlicensed bootleggers. Regular [Pg 25]medicine is imperfect, but chiropractic and Christian Science are absurd.

When business is poor or wheat sells for a low price, then it is time to send out the Republicans and to elect Democrats, many people seem to think. Meanwhile the attempt to find real correctives is neglected. This is as bad as sending for the priest instead of the doctor when a child is dying of diphtheria.

Such conduct is surely indicative of disordered thinking, of a sightless groping for associations. People accustom themselves to living on the instinctive and habitual level, and in times of emergency their apparatus for thought is as if rusted by disuse.

Thinking is not simply a discharge. It must be directed against some obstacle. Must we then wait for some great difficulty to present itself before we employ our intelligence? No, for in that case we should invariably find ourselves unprepared. Thinking requires practice at least as much as piano-playing does.

But to talk of practice is perhaps to lead astray. For our instinctive and habitual and emotional responses are not sufficient in civilized life. We must regulate them with thought. Intelligence is always useful, provided only that it is worthy of its name. Sometimes it is imperatively demanded, but we can use it every day, almost every waking moment. This is not to imply that the mind must be in a constant state of strain or that we should strive to rid ourselves of our instincts and our habits without regard for their demonstrated value.

“Let me take the liberty further to observe,” [Pg 26]writes Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe to her hot-tempered brother, “that the principal end of a young man’s education is to teach him to reason justly and to subdue the violence of his passions.” Is there indeed some connection between just reasoning and the control of one’s passions? Or, in any case, was either very well taught at Oxford and Cambridge in the eighteenth century? Or, for that matter, are the ability to reason and the power to control one’s temper communicated to the students in the American colleges of the present day?

Self-control is hardly inculcated in our schools above the primary grades. Indeed it is largely a matter for parents to attend to while their children are young. Moreover, many good reasoners have exceedingly violent tempers. In the moment of passion they do what they may afterward greatly regret.

Of course it is stupid to act with unnecessary haste and violence. But a bad temper is seldom to be mended in adult life. Few persons possess sufficient strength of will to correct a tendency which should have been checked during their formative years. The hot-tempered are forced to patch up with what diplomacy they may possess the consequences of their thoughtless actions. Sometimes, indeed, a perverted sense of honor causes them to defend in cold blood the wrongs they have done while excited. Thus they add stupidity of a gross kind to their former folly. To confess that one has been in the wrong is no disgrace.

The egotism which fails to understand this is a common cause of foolish actions. Obviously [Pg 27]it is difficult to judge oneself in the same way that one judges another. We all know that human beings in general are fallible. Even the most intelligent of our friends and neighbors make mistakes. Why not we? If we truly grant the principle, we may find instances in plenty. Then we have an opportunity to correct many of our errors. But if we refuse to admit their existence, our hands are bound from the very start.

A good sense of humor is a distinct aid here. He who laughs healthily laughs sometimes at himself. Thus, consciously or unconsciously, he admits his lack of perfection. This confession does not automatically open the door to improvement, of course. It seems there are some good-natured people who carefully preserve their minor foibles in order that they may joke about them. But, if they are at all ingenious, surely they may be merry without holding fast to their faults.

The objective conception of self is absolutely prerequisite to the attainment of an exact or scientific system of thinking. In the mind which overvalues self, immortality is an uncontradictable postulate. The sun goes around the earth, and the solar system is the center and most important part of the universe. God is like man—like the egocentric “thinker,” that is. The white race—or, if it is a Chinese speaking, the yellow race—is superior to the rest. The United States is the greatest country in the world, Indiana is the fairest state in it, and Kokomo should be “boosted” everywhere for the fine city of home-loving citizens it is. [Pg 28]When civic pride lends to improvement, it is thoroughly justified. But when it is a mere expression of vainglory, it is no better than any individual’s blatant self-glorification.

The first and most important intellectual task of man is the control of his own body. The work of self-control starts early in infancy. The child must learn to put its food and drink into the proper place, to walk, to speak, and so on. This is not thinking, but it is work for the nervous system as well as for the muscles. Perhaps the beginning of generalized thought came when the child starts to mark out the boundaries between itself and the outside world. This leg can be made to move at will, that leg (which belongs to Mother Dear) will move at Baby’s command only by special favor. Previously, when Baby’s limbs had been under a less exact control and when Mother had run to obey the child’s slightest desire, if this could but be understood, the distinction between the I and the She had not been so clear.

Definitely to understand the self and its limitations is at once to rule out all magic. I cannot destroy an enemy by means of the evil eye because there is no ray of malicious animal magnetism proceeding from me. There are all sorts of forces in the universe, and my special powers conform to the usual order. If I should lean far out of the window without in some way being held back, there is no doubt that I should fall. Like an apple or a bar of iron or a cat, I am acted upon by gravitational forces. Like all living organisms, I feed and excrete for a [Pg 29]brief period, and presently my body will decompose. If I think and the milkweed does not, this does not mean that I, as a man, am subject to any special laws of nature. It simply indicates that my ancestors have been acted upon in definite ways—not all thoroughly understood at the present moment, we must concede.

I have certain senses, and objects exist for me as I see and hear and smell and taste them, or as they feel hot or cold or painful to the touch. In this way I am revealed to myself, too. If I had been deaf from birth but had nevertheless been taught to speak, my voice would be little more to me than the sensations in my throat.

Perceptions are important as they are apperceived, that is, interpreted in terms of what is already known. Proper observation involves orderly arrangement, as has already been said. In training the powers of observation, the essential thing to watch for is proper selection.

As a matter of fact, we learn this pretty well without any formal teaching. The educational critics who said that people do not observe well, because they are unable to tell offhand if the numerals on their watch dials are Roman or Arabic, was misadvised. Dewey rightfully observes that we pull out our timepieces to find the time, not to see if the fourth number is represented by IV or 4. Most of us can make the latter investigation without any difficulty when it is necessary to do so.

Every act of observation leads to a general intellectual conclusion. This thesis, like some others which are stated here, is developed in [Pg 30]my booklet entitled How to Think Logically. At this point we may consider it sufficient argument against the educators who would develop the art of observation as a thing in itself. Actually no one of the mental “faculties” is independent or is capable of its own intellectual development. Even the stupid teachers who conceive of education as mere memorizing assist to some extent in their pupils’ learning how to think and do.

All taught subjects must bear a relation to personal problems. This thought is important enough to bear repetition. Without such a unifying conception, all attempts at education are certain to be fruitless.

One learns in terms of what one already knows. The child who has seen a brook can readily imagine the greater brook which is a river. The boy in the city slums who has seen no greater body of running water than that contained in the gutter after a rain must begin his study of hydrography here.

This sort of learning prevents the formation of two different worlds, one of what is contained in books and lectures, the other of the experiences of life. No man is a pedant who assimilates his learning to actual problems.

Yet Cowper’s words in The Task are frequently justified:

[Pg 31]

The possession of considerable intelligence does not protect one from occasional lapses into folly. Certainly those who possess a great deal of formal education are not on this account free from stupid thoughts and actions. Their great danger is that of failing to see their specialties, those subjects in which they are most interested and best informed, in their proper relation to the rest of reality. Sometimes they imagine that all the world is interested in certain theories which they or their teachers have developed.

Men sometimes become interested in a certain reform movement to such an extent that nothing else matters. The universe is but a place from which alcohol or tobacco is to be driven. Or some form of recreation occupies all their thoughts. Life is worthwhile to them because it affords a certain amount of time for bowling or playing pinochle or cheering on the local baseball team.

Of course the development of the human being must be true to itself. We are not justified in quarreling with a man or calling him stupid because his interests differ from our own. But the hobby-horse must not ride unchecked when it comes into society. The ship-builder, for example, need not bore us to death about ships: he may do it quite as well talking about his score at golf. But if he would have people call him clever, he had better either remain silent and listen to others’ discussions of their vocations and avocations or else diversify his own remarks.

In conversation and in letter-writing, much is [Pg 32]merely conventional. We could save a good deal of time, no doubt, by never saying “Hello” or writing “Dear Sir.” In fact a great many of the things we do are, from a certain point of view, rather stupid. But actually we find it more troublesome and annoying to revolt against the minor conventions of life than to follow them. Taken all in all, etiquette does help much to avoid social friction of an unpleasant sort. Yet it is foolish to be too slavishly bound by the formal rules of polite society.

A famous heroine in French fiction preferred to be drowned rather than to remove her skirts so she could swim. Many people have this same attitude toward the conventions. But of course the power of thought is of little avail except if it can be applied to a practical criticism of fixed habits and rules. Nothing is too sacred for the thinker. Everything is to be tested not by the standards of sterile authority but by its value in the thinker’s own world.

It is true, though, that we are leaning more than ever upon intellectual authority. Who has knowledge enough to consider and weigh for himself the evidence against and for the theory of organic evolution, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the theory that the works attributed to Homer were written by various men and molded into something like their present form by ancient minstrels? Surely no one man can judge all three theories with reference to the full evidence. If we are to have opinions, we must base them upon the conclusions of the experts.

[Pg 33]

Very well, but what are we to do when the experts disagree? Or when we are unable to tell who is qualified to pass an opinion? Very often the difficulty may be evaded. If we know little of mathematics and physics and astronomy, it is by no means necessary that we should hold any definite opinion about relativity. The attitude of suspended judgment serves well enough.

Let us suppose, though, that we cannot escape in this manner. We are serving on a jury. The defendant has killed the woman he loves. The state calls a number of experienced alienists who declare the man perfectly sane. The defense calls upon a number of equally eminent experts who explain his psychosis, dwelling upon his inability to distinguish right from wrong. We scratch our heads to indicate that we should like to begin thinking but do not know just how to start. Probably we should never have been summoned to solve such a problem. The long hypothetical questions are too intricate for us to understand. How do we actually come to a conclusion? Perhaps we watch the defendant to see if he looks like the maniacs we have seen on the screen in short comedies. Or we say to one another in the jury room, “There’s too much of this murdering. If we let this guy off because he’s nuts, there’ll be plenty more doing the same thing.” Actually we should give the benefit of any doubt to the defendant. There are infinitely more lunatics executed than sane men who escape on the plea of insanity. But the ordinary man cannot recognize a malingerer. Sometimes the experts require weeks of observation. [Pg 34]Yet, after a hurried and necessarily perfunctory examination, they are ready to give their solemn opinions in court.

Often we are confronted with insufficient evidence and yet are required to make up our minds in one way or another. For the manufacturer the question may appear in this form: Shall I dismiss my workingmen, whom I may not be able to get back when the busy season comes, or shall I have them make up stock, which I may be unable to dispose of? Such a problem is usually solved with reference to past experiences. But the year to come may be unlike those just preceding. There are all sorts of guesses about the future. Certain experts draw intricate graphs purporting to indicate the trend of business. They speak wisely about cycles and counteracting tendencies. Sometimes they are right—no doubt more often than the mere guesser. And so the modern manufacturer leans a little, not too heavily, upon their wisdom.

Any forecaster able to predict the approximate course of the real estate boom in Florida might quickly have earned enough to retire from the forecasting profession forever. Here, apparently, was a case unexplainable by the thinker: very small causes led to very great results. A few legal measures of interest to the wealthy class seemed to make gold mines of swamps and deserts. The chief causes of the boom were of course psychological. Those speculators who understood this took their quick profits and went away. Sometimes they were in too great a hurry, and the fools to [Pg 35]whom they sold their properties made more than they.

But we must not conclude that the stupid people have all the luck. Intelligence makes opportunities and employs them to good purpose. Folly stumbles and is very conspicuous when it stumbles upon gold. At the same time, we must remember that wisdom is not the only factor making for success. A beautiful woman or even a handsome man with no brains may have the thorns removed from the roses of life just because of her or his physical attractiveness.

A matter of luck, obviously. But so is it a matter of luck that one should be more intelligent than one’s neighbors. Wisdom can be improved upon—but so can beauty. Both are controllable only to a limited extent. Perhaps the advantages of clear thinking are not so obvious as those of a clear complexion, however. There seems to be a greater demand for the latter.

If thinking is somewhat painful, so, I believe, is receiving a permanent wave or an application of beauty clay. But it is only necessary to have the fee to be seized upon by the beautifiers. While the educational institutions in America are usually hospitable enough, while they even attempt to seize upon the students who are sufficiently unresisting and permanently to “wave” their minds, the results are often unsatisfactory. In education the passive attitude is hopeless.

The problem of learning how to think is, then, first of all one for the learner himself to [Pg 36]solve. Perhaps this little book may be read by some high school and college pupils who are dissatisfied with the narrowness of their teachers, disappointed that they cannot come into contact with more stimulating minds. Ah, but narrow-mindedness and stupidity have lessons to teach, too. Sometimes it is better not to be influenced unduly by the wise: there is a certain tendency to swallow their conclusions whole. Many people accept Emerson’s theory of compensations at face value because it is Emerson’s, who would grin cynically at the same idea propounded by Dr. Frank Crane.

All our heroes should be honored distinctly this side of idolatry, if we are to think for ourselves. Of course we adapt them to ourselves in any case. “Every philosopher has his own Kant,” Henri Bergson is said to have remarked once, when Kant’s authority was invoked against some teaching of his own. We know how Jesus is made to argue for both sides of every question. He turned water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana, we are told. Yet Sheldon’s clerical hero walking “In His Steps” thought it incumbent upon him to destroy the saloons.

It is not the truth which makes one free, but the self-discovered truth. Yes, it might be replied, but the important things have already been found out. We know how the strainers after novel truths are reduced to paradoxes which they display with pride in their mere contrariness.

Here there are two replies to be made. In the first place, the truth which one laboriously [Pg 37]digs out for himself may be either old or new. Or it may be both: the ancient idea, as it is discovered by one who lives in the modern world, fits properly into his own environment. It is no longer Plato’s thought or Aristotle’s, but the new thinker’s. If it is true that there is nothing new under the sun, it is also true that there is nothing old. I am not what I was yesterday. Neither is the street which runs beside my house. Certainly there can be no exact replica of Plato or of any Platonic idea in the United States and in the twentieth century.

I would not seem to say that the truth is any more true because it contradicts old ideas. We are justified in pouncing upon every paradox to discover how many fallacies the glitter may hide. The paradoxical writers are chiefly valuable because they do make us examine their thoughts carefully. It does us little good to have the conventional ideas repeated, even when they happen to be true. We are not easily tempted to analyze them unless we are naturally of a skeptical disposition. But when the ancient idols are rudely brushed aside, we are aroused by the noise of the crash. We rush up, perhaps to punish the delinquents, perhaps to examine the gods on our own account.

Some, of course, feel that falling upon the iconoclasts is answer enough. There have always been people able to answer ideas only with blows. But the men and women who have it in them to think are likely to pick up the shattered pieces of the idol, to determine for [Pg 38]themselves if it is worth the trouble of cementing together. If it has once been truly broken, of course it can never be the same again. Perhaps the bits of metal must be melted down to be cast into a new form.

Just at present there is a great deal of argument, mostly excited, about the question: Is war a necessary evil? This is not an “academic” matter. Upon our answer depends our attitude to the League of Nations, disarmament conferences, military training in the colleges, and various other matters. As usual, most people feel qualified to say “Yes” or “No” and to defend their opinions hotly. To answer the question intelligently, a great deal of specialized knowledge is necessary. Is there any fighting instinct in men? Do racial jealousies depend merely upon misunderstanding and ignorance—or is there some deeper basis? Does war assist in the advancement of culture and civilization? Do wars promote manliness or do they weaken the race by killing off the brave and the healthy, leaving the cowards and the defective individuals to beget the next generation?

Graham Wallas says we fight better than our ancestors knew how, for we have better weapons. Yet we are not wiser than they, since we can only let accident and inertia prevent a war from breaking out. We have no positive means of controlling it, of being sure that international peace will be kept.

But we know that many wars have by no means been accidental. For example, Bismarck carefully planned the Franco-Prussian War, [Pg 39]making the French appear to be the aggressors. Certainly most of the diplomats of Europe expected the Great War to break out, and comparatively few of them made any attempt to avert it. As for the masses of the people, they cherished blind hatreds. They did not, of course, understand international politics.

Why did the United States join the Allies? Here is a question which our historians have not been able to answer satisfactorily. As a matter of fact, the question as stated is ambiguous. It calls either for causes or for reasons. Perhaps one of the important causes was the clever propaganda spread by the Allies, based to a great extent upon deliberate falsehoods. One reason frequently given during the war was that Germany was led by the godless philosophy of Nietzsche. This is utter nonsense, although it is still repeated occasionally by clergymen and Y. M. C. A. secretaries.

In 1812, when the young republic was faced with the same problem of aggression at the hands of both combatants, the United States declared war against Great Britain, not against France. But there was no definite alliance with the side which had also acted guiltily. Why did things turn out differently in the Great War?

The questions which I leave unanswered my readers may, if they will, take for exercises. After all, we citizens of the United States are supposed to be able to answer difficult political questions. Often we must decide between two candidates for Congress, both of whom we [Pg 40]know to be unfit to hold such an office, on the ground of their attitude for or against the World Court or tariff reduction or some other complicated matter.

The elementary textbooks of economics show that the “full dinner pail” argument in favor of high import taxes is absolutely fallacious. Yet this is relied upon by practically all Republican campaign speakers. Again I am not trying to prove anything—except that stupidity is widespread. Certainly it would be presumptuous and foolish for me to try to settle the tariff question in a single paragraph.

Sometimes, indeed, it seems that Hume was right when he said that “reason has no original influence,” that it “is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” Of course there is room for discussion about the “ought only to be,” in any case. The passions make people do ridiculous things: if the condition is hopeless, as Hume suggests, we need not approve it. (Not that our approval or disapproval would matter, if it were so.)

But the attitude of this little book is not so pessimistic. I prefer to consider reason something more than the art of inventing poor excuses for worse conduct. At least in some few individuals and at some rare times, intelligence is supreme. The implications of such a statement are many. I do not think that it contradicts determinism, the doctrine necessary to the scientific study of psychology that the [Pg 41]condition of the mind is fixed by anterior and exterior circumstances. But if we admit that the rule of intelligence is ever possible, we are justified in trying to learn how to think—not merely how to argue.

Wallas says that thought “may start ... without an immediate stimulus of an ‘instinctive’ impulse from the lower brain.” To discuss the matter adequately, we should need first of all to consider the various definitions of instinct. Yet it seems that there is always some sort of stimulus from without. Thought does not arise spontaneously. First there is a more or less unpleasant feeling of incompleteness. In other words, there is a difficulty, a lack of adjustment to one’s environment.

Thus, while we are wearing our gloves and see them on our hands, we do not wonder where they are. But if they are lacking and we remember having started out from home with them, we think at once: Where are my gloves? If we have entered the Order of Jesus and successfully subdued our reason according to the regular system of discipline, we never think: Is there a God? But one who has entered a monastery without fully subduing his ability to think for himself is likely enough to wonder when his sexual impulses trouble him: Is the immortality we are promised sure? Is there indeed a God?

But what shall we say of a monk who is fully convinced that he will enjoy everlasting bliss if he keeps his oath of chastity and is at the same time unable to refrain from fornication? [Pg 42]Surely he is ruled by his instincts, not by his reason. Even where religion triumphs, the victory seems to be won by the emotions, not by the intelligence. Often we find a mystical union with God—or with Jesus or Mary, to make the picture of heterosexual relations more definite—standing definitely in the place of the ordinary manifestations of sex.

At best, we cannot rate reason very highly in any description of things as they are. Wallas, defending the originality and the power of thought, yet says that some of the most important steps in the process are unconscious or half-conscious. This means that they are largely uncontrolled, so far as the will is concerned. The Freudian doctrine tells us that complex formations actually develop as a result of emotional suppressions. This much we know, that the ideas lying below the level of consciousness are not arranged in any logical system which the conscious mind can accept. Our dreams and reveries offer proof enough of this.

Flashes of insight, brilliant guesses which we attribute to intuition, demand careful verification. It sometimes happens that a man leaps out of bed in the middle of the night with the feeling that he has made a wonderful discovery. In the morning, he may not remember what it was all about. In this case he is certain that he has missed something extraordinary by reason of his failure to have a pad and pencil at hand. If he has taken notes, however, he is very likely to be disappointed in them. Either they are valuable but yet require [Pg 43]much laborious amplification or they are palpably worthless.

Robert Graves explains poetic inspiration thus: “When conflicting issues disturb his mind, which in its conscious state is unable to reconcile them logically, the poet acquires the art of self-hypnotism, as practiced by the witch-doctors, his ancestors in poetry.... On being interrupted, the poet experiences the disagreeable sensations of a sleepwalker disturbed and later finds it impossible to remember how the early versions of a poem ran.”

The important thing for us to consider here is that the poet, even if he considers his work inspired, nevertheless makes corrections in it. Sometimes the defects are small, sometimes they are so great that the whole work is worthless. Any interested reader may see what Robert Graves did with the later drafts—those he could remember, that is—of “Cynics and Romantics.” These he gives in his book On English Poetry in the chapter called “Surface Faults, an Illustration.”

The four stages in thinking, according to Graham Wallas, are preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. The two stages referred to by Graves are illumination (or “self-hypnotism”) and verification or correction.

Perhaps education would be a fair synonym for preparation. For one thing, “the ‘educated’ man can ‘put his mind on’ a certain subject and ‘turn his mind off’ in a way which is impossible to an uneducated man,” as Wallas tells [Pg 44]us. In other words, he possesses volitional control. But if education, between inverted commas, means attendance at a university or at least a good school of secondary grade, the statement is only half true. Some self-educated men do lack the ability to concentrate upon an intellectual problem. Others do not. The main difficulty is to know when to stop thinking about a difficulty. When is it truly solved?

When we have found an algebraic X, we can test it, usually without any trouble. But sometimes the solutions which flash upon us are not so easily tried. For example, I may discover some important new principles of government. Yet, not being a professional politician, I have no way of introducing even a slight innovation. Shall I test my discovery by its conformity to the laws of political science? But there is no such science, in any strict use of the word. Well, I may write a book explaining my discovery. Thus I should be following the course of Plato, when he came to the conclusion that the philosophers should rule the state.

Putting one’s ideas into a writing which is published often brings about its verification by others. Einstein worked out his theory of relativity and tested it as well as he could. Yet his own tests are not considered nearly so important as those made by certain astronomers and physicists soon after his theory was made public.

Illumination is the only one of Wallas’s four stages which cannot easily be controlled. Yet many poets and thinkers have been able to [Pg 45]use alcoholic beverages and even narcotic drugs to good advantage. If the ideas won’t come, sometimes there is nothing to do but wait.

But illumination may fail because the incubation is defective. “We can often get more result in the same time,” says Wallas, “by beginning several problems in succession, and voluntarily leaving them unfinished while we turn to others, than by finishing our work on each problem at one sitting.” The associations come up, as it seems, of themselves, although voluntary effort fails. If waiting is necessary, perhaps another difficulty may meanwhile be attacked.

Or some exercise, like walking, which involves no exceedingly complex mental demands of its own, may arouse the fugitive ideas. Idleness as well has its uses in the incubation of thought. There is such a state as that of being too busy to think. But performing some simple task all day, for instance, operating a sewing machine, need not prevent constructive thinking. The ordinary workingman of today, doing over and over again the same piece of work, is in this respect better off than the medieval laborer who made the whole pair of shoes or the whole cart by himself. If it is in him to think, his thoughts can incubate during his working hours. Moreover, he has a great deal of leisure in which to verify his conclusions or to gather material for thought.

He can read books and magazines and newspapers [Pg 46]after he is through with his work. Yet the man who reads much does not necessarily think efficiently. He must leave time for his thoughts to develop and he must acquire the art of reading critically: else his reading probably does him more harm than good.

There is, says H. G. Wells, an “empty gulf in quality between the superb and richly fruitful scientific investigations that are going on, and the general thought of other educated sections of the community.” Graham Wallas points specifically to the lack of perfection in politics, jurisprudence, and economics, as well as to deficiencies in the coördination of biology, physics, politics, and sociology.

That which is truly scientific is precise. Some of the attempts to make the social sciences exact have failed because of undue simplifications. Human behavior is a very complex matter, and it cannot accurately be set forth with any short formula—or with any long formula that is at present available.

The science of psychology, although it is now worthy of the name, is yet loosely established. We must remember that all the sciences are subject to revision. Einstein appears pretty much to have upset the laws of Newton, which have been looked upon with almost religious reverence for tens of decades. When we wish to find the truth, we do not hesitate to attack the errors to which the names of old authorities are attached. Moreover, the man who has the scientific spirit in him recognizes that the truth he discovers is very likely relative, that it may be overturned by another truth-seeker.

Darwin was a great man. Yet the scientists [Pg 48]of today, who accept his theory of organic evolution, do not hesitate to criticize his account of the machinery bringing about evolution—that is, natural selection. So it happens that the ignorant can declare Darwinism discredited, with the implication that organic evolution is denied.

Truth which is relative, which is constantly in a state of flux, is hard for the lazy-minded to accept. But scientific truth (which is, of course, erroneous to an indeterminable extent, which probably will never be entirely accurate) is yet infinitely more truthful than any fixed dogmas like those of the theologians. So long as scientific method remains in use and there are eager workers in the field, we can be certain that the truth of the scientists will approach closer and closer to absolute truth.

The warfare of science with theology is not yet ended. Where once the battleground was in the fields of physics and astronomy, now it is in the fields of biology and psychology. When the soul finally goes, what will be left for the ministers? Probably a thin residue of ethical teachings.

At present the clergy are all more or less afraid of the new biological and psychological doctrines. Either they deny them or they attempt to adjust their opinions to them, but they cannot help suspecting attacks upon their vested interests. Worse still, perhaps, would be the uncovering of their own ignorance—an ignorance of great profundity, in some instances.

A great many agnostics dislike to see Christianity [Pg 49]attacked because they believe that religion keeps the masses out of mischief. No matter how thoroughly the doctrine of “Whatever is, is right” has been spread, however, there have always been criminals and rebels. There is no evidence available showing that unbelievers are more ready than Christians or Jews or Mohammedans to murder and rob and forge checks.

To set up two standards of truth—one for the “upper” or the more intelligent classes, one for those who are regarded as inferior—is stupid and dangerous. Absolute truth is supposed to be important according to the religious teachings as well as the principles of science. When the members of a congregation suspect the minister’s agnosticism, their own faith is likely to be troubled. When there is a slave morality as well as a separate morality for masters, it must be based upon something more tangible than rewards and punishments after death. It has usually been maintained with the whip.

But in our civilized communities it seems to be necessary to maintain masters and servants without too frequently bloodying backs. I do not wish to set forth the Marxian doctrine that there is a great gulf between the capitalists and the proletarians. Yet it is obvious that some people have power and unlimited luxuries while others go hungry on occasion. It is not mere perversity or stupid ignorance, then—as James Harvey Robinson and others of his school sometimes appear to imply—which causes all sorts of obstacles to be laid in the [Pg 50]way of the frank teaching of the social sciences. It is the fear that valuable privileges will be lost.

It does not seem to me that there is any likelihood in the near future of a Bolshevistic revolution in the United States. Those who possess intelligence and the qualities of leadership feel that they cannot be the gainers by any such overthrow. But a feeling that something is being suppressed, that a censorship of ideas exists, if it once gains ground, may cause certain individuals to join the revolutionary movement.

The present capitalistic system, although it is in many ways palpably defective, yet has the merit of working. It is certain that the sudden change to a socialistic, syndicalistic, or anarchistic state would, at least for several generations, bring about famine and a general breakdown in various complex organizations which we consider essential for our civilization and culture. Perhaps we may gradually pass into socialism. A number of paternalistic tendencies (which I, personally, regret) suggest that we are on the way. The importance or lack of importance of the Socialistic Party makes no difference. Just now, when the Unitarian Church is diminishing in importance, all the old doctrines of the Unitarians are being taken over by the religious leaders who call themselves modernists.

But if we are in a transition stage, it is well that we should know what we are doing. Our fears for vested interests and special privileges must not hold us back. All attempts [Pg 51](conscious or unconscious) to make ignorance into a Chinese wall are bound to be futile. That sort of wall is undermined with dynamite before it is erected.

At present, indeed, the free study of sociology seems to mean no more than the liberty to exhibit that reason which justifies the actions brought about by passion. That is, very little intelligence has been brought to bear on the problem of the relations between men. Those who argue have opinions which seem to arise out of their own temperaments, not out of any objective study of the problem. Thus they would justify Hume’s view of reason.

James Harvey Robinson (The Mind in the Making) says: “I mean by social science our feeble efforts to study man, his natural equipment and impulses, and his relations to his fellows in the light of his origin and the history of the race.... Human affairs are in themselves far more intricate and perplexing than molecules and the chromosomes. But this is only the more reason for bringing to bear on human affairs that critical type of thought and calculation for which the remunerative thought about molecules and chromosomes has prepared the way.” He goes on to say in the next paragraph that exact scientific results, like those formulated in mechanics, are “of course” out of the question.

But we have seen that there is no absoluteness about the laws of mechanics. The accepted doctrines of chemistry have been and still are being overthrown to a considerable extent. It may be that two or three centuries [Pg 52]from now the laws of sociology will be as exact as those of physics. That is to say, they will be respected until further investigation makes it plain that they must be revised.

Precisely as psychology must be founded upon physiology and biochemistry, sociology must depend upon psychology. Just at present the study of human behavior is in an interesting but somewhat uncertain state. The psychoanalysts, Freud especially, have brought in about as much new matter as was previously contained in the science. Much of it is immediately useful, some of it is worthless or even harmful, a great deal will be found useful when it is digested. In a somewhat different direction, the experimental behaviorists (not all of whom have called themselves by this name) have contributed much to psychology. They, too, have made some assumptions which at present seem to be unwarranted, but they appear to be working in the right direction. The new contributions came just when psychology seemed to be in a hopeless state. The teachers had nothing to offer but definitions, and originality meant either the invention of new words or the use of the old ones in new senses.

Right now we perhaps stand too close to the recent developments to understand their full purport. Yet we are justified in feeling a certain amount of optimism about the future of psychology and consequently about the formation of a genuine science of sociology. Only we must take an open-minded attitude, we must not try to draw conclusions which will [Pg 53]justify our prejudices. That amounts to the stupid destruction of unborn knowledge, perhaps also of unborn wisdom. Intellectual abortion is never justified and—at least one would like to suppose so—never permanently successful. It is healthier to think freely, to pursue truth without fear.

After all, we need make no special effort to woo stupidity. It will be only too much with us, despite our best efforts to be intelligent. Those four “idols” or types of error of which Bacon wrote long ago in the Novum Organum still beset the human mind.

The “idols of the tribe” arise out of sensory deficiencies common to all men and women. “The human mind,” according to Bacon, “resembles those uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.”

We may notice in passing that Bacon here takes up definitely the scientific point of view. According to some philosophers, objects have no existence except as the senses bring them to the minds of men. If we were to agree with them, we might not speak of “uneven mirrors” except in the case of those individuals who have sensory deficiencies peculiar to themselves.

These are, to use Bacon’s fanciful term, “idols of the den.” More particularly he applies the term of predilections and prejudices caused by the special trend of an individual’s education or by the emotions under whose sway he at the moment stands. These warping [Pg 54]influences are such that we may with Bacon approve the thought of Heraclitus: “that men search for knowledge in lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.”

The “idols of the market” are the errors arising in social intercourse, largely through failure to use words in the same precise sense. Even in spite of the careful definitions set up by men of science, this condition exists. Sometimes, in fact, the scientific definitions aggravate the idols of the market; as in those cases where a word used in ordinary language is also employed for a somewhat different meaning in a field of science.

The “idols of the theater” depend upon the peculiarities of various systems of philosophy. It seems to me that these are largely “idols of the market,” although the errors described by Bacon under the first two heads are also among them.

Of course not all differences in opinion are based upon the varying uses of words. If, in a group of one hundred intelligent men, fifty men say that they believe in God and fifty that they do not, there may be five in each group who really do not disagree. These ten people may all believe in some sort of life force which can be called either a vital impulse or God. Of course the necessity to answer either “Yes” or “No” deprives some of the chance to say, “What way have I of telling?”

In our imaginary gathering, we may suppose that there are Catholics, believing in the Holy Trinity and certain that the details of dogma [Pg 55]are definitely settled by the Church. There are also Protestants of various denominations, differing somewhat as to the conception of the deity. There are Unitarians, with a still different notion. There is a Mussulman, who has no doubt that Allah revealed himself to an Arab named Mohammed. There are deists and pantheists and spiritualists and agnostics and atheists. Also there are people who seldom think about religion, but who call themselves “Baptists” or “Jews” or “Unitarians” when an inquiry is made.

Certainly it is not possible to grade people’s intelligence by the answers they make in a religious census. There is some evidence that the average believer in revealed religion is more stupid than the average doubter or unbeliever. Yet the most enthusiastic atheist must admit that some who share his opinions are decidedly less wise than some who subscribe to, let us say, the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church.

Whence arise the differences in belief? The beginning of the answer is easy, the rest difficult. Most people belong to a certain religious denomination because of the place where they were born and the confession of their parents. John Smith is a Methodist because he was begotten by James Smith upon Adeline Smith, who was then and who had always lived in Atlanta, Georgia. Samuel Cohen is an orthodox Jew because he was begotten by Saul ben Isaac Cohen upon Deborah Cohen in Cracow. And so with the Buddhist, the Hindu, the American Indian believing in a Great Spirit [Pg 56]and various little spirits, or the Catholic born in Dublin and going faithfully to mass.

Do the countries which are predominatingly Mohammedan have other religious needs than those of the predominatingly Christian countries? Or is there a peculiar religious instinct inherited among the Turks other than that which is inherited among the Irish? Lessing’s wise Nathan expresses the view that since we can learn little about God through direct experience, we should believe our parents and our ancestors. Yet this is but a form of egotism, and a dangerous form, too. Why should we consider our ancestors wiser than the ancestors of our neighbors who belong to other ecclesiastical organizations?

Robinson’s The Mind in the Making is little more than an attack upon this sort of ancestor-worship, although it does not particularly deal with religion. But we can hardly help returning again and again to the theologians when we discuss the stupidities which are honored chiefly because of their antiquity.

Of course, a change in faith, although it represents a revolt against meaningless stereotypy, does not always indicate any special intelligence. People sometimes change their religions merely as a matter of convenience. (Here, of course, we are dealing with words more than with genuine beliefs.) Samuel Cohen of Cracow may become a convert to the Roman Catholic Church because it will admit him to certain political or social advantages or because he cannot marry Michalina Riboczech, whom he much loves, on any other [Pg 57]terms. Or he may come to America and find that he is unable to earn his living except by becoming a Methodist minister. Perhaps he does not possess enough knowledge of the Talmud to be acceptable as a rabbi, but finds ignorance no barrier in a church where he can serve as a living example of conversion to the true faith.

What shall we say of the thousands of Japanese and Chinese who become Christians without any ulterior motive? They find some sort of emotional satisfaction in the new faith which they have not been able to find in their ancestral religions. Why? I do not think the question can be answered satisfactorily with our present knowledge of psychology. Nor can we tell why one brother is a bishop and the other a skeptic, except when there is an element of hypocrisy in one case.

The religious attitude is one of belief based upon little or no evidence. Beyond the field which we consider religious, we regard such an attitude as stupid. As a matter of fact, though, we are influenced everywhere by “such factors of belief as fear and hope, prejudice and passion, imitation and partisanship, the circumpressure of our caste and set.” William James, whose words I have thus employed, argues that because these elements are universal, they are therefore justifiable.

Because we have been considering absolute truth and because the argument is ingenious, I will here quote some sentences from James’s The Will to Believe:

[Pg 58]

Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other—what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives. But if a pyrrhonistic skeptic asks us how we know all this, can our logic find a reply? No! certainly it cannot. It is just one volition against another—we are willing to go in for life upon a trust or assumption which he, for his part, does not care to make.

But if this be unanswerable, then it destroys the system which James is trying to erect. If truth has any meaning at all, it must not be applied to that which is unproved and seemingly unprovable. If we are to think with any accuracy, of course we must recognize that truth and proof are not absolutes. This recognition gives us no cause for returning to the physiology and astrology of the Middle Ages or for postulating God and immortality and free will, when these conceptions seem to be unnecessary for modern scientific thought.

James wrote The Will to Believe as an attack upon the attitude represented in The Ethics of Belief by William Kingdon Clifford. Of Clifford’s viewpoint there is a brief summary in his own words:

We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know.

We may believe the statement of another person when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.

[Pg 59]

It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, then it is worse than presumption to believe.

These seem to be principles which we can apply. Certainly there exists no general need to believe whenever intellectual options present themselves. Often, as we have seen, we are expected to act on insufficient information. Thus, the man who declares that he does not know whether there is or is not a God who wishes to be worshipped must either attend church—as though he believed in this sort of divinity—or stay away—as though he did not. Or, though he conceives the possibility that Jehovah wishes to be praised, he may refrain from church attendance and prayer because he has no way of knowing what may be the proper manner in which to go about the matter.

It is not what one believes that matters, except as this is shown in what one does. Therefore a deficiency in will power is at the bottom of much stupidity. Our worldly hells are paved with good intentions. “It is in human nature,” according to Anatole France, “to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion.”

The shrewdest of business men are caught unaware and imposed upon by swindlers. Many of the tricks commonly employed depend upon the victim’s readiness to share in a doubtful deal. He is made to feel a great joy at the thought of his own acuteness, which joy occupies him to such an extent that his intellectual powers are impaired. Moreover, the victim is given to suppose that great haste is required. [Pg 60]At last, when he discovers that he has been beswindled, his vanity usually makes him keep silent. He would be loath to have people know that he is neither as honest nor as wise as he is reputed. Egotism is one of the chief causes of folly, as we have already had occasion to notice.

Some people who are not conspicuous for direct vanity yet show the vice indirectly, through their blind preferences for their own families, their own parties, their own causes. “Wrong or right, my country,” is no wiser a saying than “Right or wrong, my prejudices.” The recent attempts to make out a case for Germanic or Nordic supremacy are entirely ridiculous. As a matter of fact, most Englishmen are racially about the same as most Frenchmen.

It is by no means so evident as it once seemed that the white race is far superior to those of a darker hue. There are even Europeans and Americans who declare the Chinese and the Japanese are wiser than we. As to the negro race, there is but little evidence that it stands on a low intellectual level because of organic limitations. A few colored people of pure blood have performed outstanding achievements. We have reason to believe that their accomplishments are exceptional only because the negroes have had few educational opportunities. The colored people living in the north seem to be more alert and less stupid than those working in the fields of Mississippi and Florida.

Woltmann declares that the negroes are inferior [Pg 61]because they attain the age of puberty sooner. At this time, according to some students of the matter, brain development ceases. If this were the case, and if the rate of brain development while it lasts were the same in all races, then we should be able to grade intelligence among races according to climate. We should expect the Eskimos, to whom nubility comes late, to be far more intelligent than the Spanish and Italians, to whom it comes early. But we have no reason to come to any such conclusion.

Otto Ammon, after studying the people of Baden, came to the conclusion that the Nordics (with long heads, blue eyes, and blond hair) are superior to those of Alpine derivation (with short heads and dark hair). But he and the writers in Germany and other countries who agree with him have assumed rather than proved their conclusions. By way of rebuttal, Loewenfeld declares that the two greatest German philosophers, Kant and Schopenhauer, were both short-headed. Goethe, whatever shape his skull may have had, certainly possessed dark hair and eyes. The assumption of Nordic superiority is based upon prejudice rather than upon scientific evidence.

Is stupidity more common among the poor than among the rich? Of course we are unable to answer such questions accurately because of the lack of dependable criteria. But we know that most persons want to become wealthy and we may reasonably infer that those who acquire fortunes do excel in certain intellectual characteristics. That these traits or general [Pg 62]mental superiority is transmitted to rich men’s children is sometimes asserted. Of course they are likely to have special educational facilities. Besides this, they have unusual opportunities to show what they can do in positions of responsibility.

And yet they often prove to be inferior in business or in the professions to the children of the poor. Often they have failed to acquire habits of industry. Or else they are anxious to do no work which might seem menial or undignified.

There can be no question that most dynasties have been founded by men of unusual ability. Nevertheless, the kings and queens of Europe are in most cases persons of merely average intellect. Psychoses and neuroses are not rare among them. Perhaps a partial explanation of royal degeneration is to be found in their inbreeding. The mixed fruit of royalty and the common people is almost always declared illegitimate.

Very few great men have had children gifted with genius. So far, the laws of heredity explain comparatively little about the sudden appearance of remarkable traits. But the children of intelligent people are likely to be less stupid than those whose parents are fools. The factors of original nature and of education are both in favor of the former class.

Forms of stupidity vary much with time and place. The tendency to do as one’s fellows do is a strong one. Especially in a mob, it sometimes appears that the prevailing level of intelligence is that of the most stupid members. [Pg 63]But mob psychology deals in general with states of excitement. Sometimes actions are attributed to mere numbers which are due to emotional stress felt by all the individuals in the crowd.

For intelligence is no guarantee against impulsive action. Love and hate and fear and jealousy and sympathy make normally wise people do exceedingly foolish things. The mob is capable of killing innocent persons. So is almost any man, when his hate is aroused.

These verses of Oscar Wilde’s are justified. The passions do not exert themselves in a definite and controlled direction. Therefore love can slay about as well as hate. Probably better, for the opportunities are greater.

Physical ill health is at the bottom of much stupidity. Although the direct influence upon the higher nervous centers may be little, there are all sorts of indirect effects caused by illness. Frequently the patient is in a constant state of suppressed anger. Any trifle makes him find fault with his physician and his attendants.

Sometimes, indeed, the patient does not become angry with his nurse. He may fall into an attitude of dependence upon her. This occasionally—especially in the case of men just entering the first stage of senile dementia—leads to foolish marriages.

[Pg 64]

Old age, like childhood, is more or less the scene of folly. Comparatively few individuals are as intelligent in the 70’s and 80’s as they were in the 30’s and 40’s. Most men are physically strongest at about the age of 25. The height of mental power comes later, perhaps at about 45. After that the memory tends to decline. The other mental traits become impaired usually in the 60’s.

The folly peculiar to youth depends largely upon lack of experience. Deficiency in self-control is also an important element—one, to be sure, that frequently lasts through life. Child prodigies usually show a one-sided development. Though they may be quick thinkers, they seldom probe deeply.

The thinker is immature until he has a supply of experiences and ideas at his service. These will come, if he only learns to apply the principle of order. This is the instrument with which we make the most of our minds. When we learn how to use order, we become as gods. For then we can take the chaos about us and build it into a universe.