James
Harvey Robinson
(1863–1936)
The Mind in the Making:
The Relation of Intelligence
to Social Reform
Harper
& Brothers, 1921. [1]
Chapter
3: “On Various Kinds of Thinking”
The truest and most profound
observations on Intelligence have in the past been made by the poets and, in
recent times, by story-writers. They have been keen observers and recorders and
reckoned freely with the emotions and sentiments. Most philosophers, on the
other hand, have exhibited a grotesque ignorance of man's life and have built
up systems that are elaborate and imposing, but quite unrelated to actual human
affairs. They have almost consistently neglected the actual process of thought
and have set the mind off as something apart to be studied by itself. But no such mind, exempt from bodily
processes, animal impulses, savage traditions, infantile impressions,
conventional reactions, and traditional knowledge, ever existed, even in
the case of the most abstract of metaphysicians. Kant entitled his great work A Critique of Pure Reason. But to the
modern student of mind pure reason seems as mythical as the pure gold,
transparent as glass, with which the celestial city is paved.
Formerly philosophers thought
of mind as having to do exclusively with conscious thought. It was that within
man which perceived, remembered, judged, reasoned, understood, believed,
willed. But of late it has been shown that we are unaware of a great part of
what we perceive, remember, will, and infer; and that a great part of the
thinking of which we are aware is determined by that of which we are not
conscious. It has indeed been demonstrated that our unconscious psychic life
far outruns our conscious. This seems perfectly natural to anyone who considers
the following facts:
The sharp distinction between
the mind and the body is, as we shall find, a very ancient and spontaneous
uncritical savage prepossession. What we think of as "mind" is so
intimately associated with what we call "body" that we are coming to
realize that the one cannot be understood without the other. Every thought
reverberates through the body, and, on the other hand, alterations in our
physical condition affect our whole attitude of mind. The insufficient
elimination of the foul and decaying products of digestion may plunge us into
deep melancholy, whereas a few whiffs of nitrous monoxide may exalt us to the
seventh heaven of supernal knowledge and godlike complacency. And vice versa, a
sudden word or thought may cause our heart to jump, check our breathing, or
make our knees as water. There is a whole new literature growing up which
studies the effects of our bodily secretions and our muscular tensions and
their relation to our emotions and our thinking.
Then there are hidden
impulses and desires and secret longings of which we can only with the greatest
difficulty take account. They influence our conscious thought in the most
bewildering fashion. Many of these unconscious influences appear to originate
in our very early years. The older philosophers seem to have forgotten that
even they were infants and children at their most impressionable age and never could
by any possibility get over it.
The term
"unconscious", now so familiar to all readers of modern works on
psychology, gives offense to some adherents of the past. There should, however,
be no special mystery about it. It is not a new animistic abstraction, but
simply a collective word to include all the physiological changes which escape
our notice, all the forgotten experiences and impressions of the past which
continue to influence our desires and reflections and conduct, even if we
cannot remember them. What we can remember at any time is indeed an
infinitesimal part of what has happened to us. We could not remember anything
unless we forgot almost everything. As Bergson says, the brain is the organ of forgetfulness
as well as of memory. Moreover, we tend, of course, to become oblivious to
things to which we are thoroughly accustomed, for habit blinds us to their
existence. So the forgotten and the habitual make up a great part of the
so-called "unconscious".
If we are ever to understand
man, his conduct and reasoning, and if we aspire to learn to guide his life and
his relations with his fellows more happily than heretofore, we cannot neglect
the great discoveries briefly noted above. We must reconcile ourselves to novel
and revolutionary conceptions of the mind, for it is clear that the older philosophers,
whose works still determine our current views, had a very superficial notion of
the subject with which they dealt. But for our purposes, with due regard to
what has just been said and to much that has necessarily been left unsaid (and
with the indulgence of those who will at first be inclined to dissent), we shall consider mind chiefly as conscious
knowledge and intelligence, as what we know and our attitude toward it – our
disposition to increase our information, classify it, criticize it and apply it.
We do not think enough about
thinking, and much of our confusion is the result of current illusions in
regard to it. Let us forget for the moment any impressions we may have derived
from the philosophers, and see what seems to happen in ourselves. The first
thing that we notice is that our thought moves with such incredible rapidity
that it is almost impossible to arrest any specimen of it long enough to have a
look at it. When we are offered a penny for our thoughts we always find that we
have recently had so many things in mind that we can easily make a selection
which will not compromise us too nakedly. On inspection we shall find that even
if we are not downright ashamed of a great part of our spontaneous thinking it
is far too intimate, personal, ignoble or trivial to permit us to reveal more
than a small part of it. I believe this must be true of everyone. We do not, of
course, know what goes on in other people's heads. They tell us very little and
we tell them very little. The spigot of speech, rarely fully opened, could
never emit more than driblets of the ever renewed hogshead of thought – noch grösser wie's Heidelberger Fass. We
find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as our own,
but they probably are.
We all appear to ourselves to
be thinking all the time during our waking hours, and most of us are aware that
we go on thinking while we are asleep, even more foolishly than when awake.
When uninterrupted by some practical issue we are engaged in what is now known
as a reverie. This is our spontaneous
and favorite kind of thinking. We allow our ideas to take their own course and
this course is determined by our hopes and fears, our spontaneous desires,
their fulfillment or frustration; by our likes and dislikes, our loves and
hates and resentments. There is nothing else anything like so interesting to ourselves
as ourselves. All thought that is not more or less laboriously controlled and
directed will inevitably circle about the beloved Ego. It is amusing and
pathetic to observe this tendency in ourselves and in others. We learn politely
and generously to overlook this truth, but if we dare to think of it, it blazes
forth like the noontide sun.
The reverie or "free
association of ideas" has of late become the subject of scientific
research. While investigators are not yet agreed on the results, or at least on
the proper interpretation to be given to them, there can be no doubt that our
reveries form the chief index to our fundamental character. They are a
reflection of our nature as modified by often hidden and forgotten experiences.
We need not go into the matter further here, for it is only necessary to observe
that the reverie is at all times a potent and in many cases an omnipotent rival
to every other kind of thinking. It doubtless influences all our speculations
in its persistent tendency to self-magnification and self-justification, which
are its chief preoccupations, but it is the last thing to make directly or
indirectly for honest increase of knowledge.[2] Philosophers usually talk as if such thinking did not exist or were in some way
negligible. This is what makes their speculations so unreal and often
worthless. The reverie, as any of us can see for himself, is frequently broken
and interrupted by the necessity of a second kind of thinking. We have to make
practical decisions. Shall we write a letter or no? Shall we take the subway or
a bus? Shall we have dinner at seven or half past? Shall we buy U. S. Rubber or
a Liberty Bond? Decisions are easily distinguishable from the free flow of the
reverie. Sometimes they demand a good deal of careful pondering and the
recollection of pertinent facts; often, however, they are made impulsively.
They are a more difficult and laborious thing than the reverie, and we resent
having to "make up our mind" when we are tired, or absorbed in a
congenial reverie. Weighing a decision, it should be noted, does not necessarily
add anything to our knowledge, although we may, of course, seek further
information before making it.
Chapter
4: “Rationalizing”
A third kind of thinking is
stimulated when anyone questions our belief and opinions. We sometimes find
ourselves changing our minds without any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we
are told that we are wrong we resent the imputation and harden our hearts. We
are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves
filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their
companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us,
but our self-esteem, which is threatened. We are by nature stubbornly pledged
to defend our own from attack, whether it be our person, our family, our
property, or our opinion. A United States Senator once remarked to a friend of
mine that God Almighty could not make him change his mind on our Latin-America
policy. We may surrender, but rarely confess ourselves vanquished. In the
intellectual world at least peace is without victory.
Few of us take the pains to
study the origin of our cherished convictions; indeed, we have a natural
repugnance to so doing. We like to continue to believe what we have been
accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast
upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for
clinging to them. The result is that most
of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing
as we already do.
I remember years ago
attending a public dinner to which the Governor of the state was bidden. The
chairman explained that His Excellency could not be present for certain
"good" reasons; what the "real" reasons were the presiding
officer said he would leave us to conjecture. This distinction between
"good" and "real" reasons is one of the most clarifying and
essential in the whole realm of thought. We can readily give what seem to us
"good" reasons for being a Catholic or a Mason, a Republican or a
Democrat, an adherent or opponent of the League of Nations .
But the "real" reasons are usually on quite a different plane. Of
course the importance of this distinction is popularly, if somewhat obscurely,
recognized. The Baptist missionary is ready enough to see that the Buddhist is
not such because his doctrines would bear careful inspection, but because he
happened to be born in a Buddhist family in Tokio. But it would be treason to
his faith to acknowledge that his own partiality for certain doctrines is due
to the fact that his mother was a member of the First Baptist church of Oak Ridge
The "real" reasons
for our beliefs are concealed from ourselves as well as from others. As we grow
up we simply adopt the ideas presented to us in regard to such matters as
religion, family relations, property, business, our country, and the state. We
unconsciously absorb them from our environment. They are persistently whispered
in our ear by the group in which we happen to live. Moreover, as Mr. Trotter
has pointed out, these judgments, being the product of suggestion and not of
reasoning, have the quality of perfect obviousness, so that to question them
... is to the
believer to carry skepticism to an insane degree, and will be met by contempt,
disapproval, or condemnation, according to the nature of the belief in
question. When, therefore, we find ourselves entertaining an opinion about the
basis of which there is a quality of feeling which tells us that to inquire
into it would be absurd, obviously unnecessary, unprofitable, undesirable, bad
form, or wicked, we may know that that opinion is a nonrational one, and probably,
therefore, founded upon inadequate evidence.[3]
Opinions, on the other hand,
which are the result of experience or of honest reasoning do not have this
quality of "primary certitude". I remember when as a youth I heard a
group of business men discussing the question of the immortality of the soul, I
was outraged by the sentiment of doubt expressed by one of the party. As I look
back now I see that I had at the time no interest in the matter, and certainly
no least argument to urge in favor of the belief in which I had been reared.
But neither my personal indifference to the issue, nor the fact that I had
previously given it no attention, served to prevent an angry resentment when I
heard my ideas questioned.
This spontaneous and loyal
support of our preconceptions – this process of finding "good"
reasons to justify our routine beliefs – is known to modern psychologists as
"rationalizing" – clearly only a new name for a very ancient thing.
Our "good" reasons ordinarily have no value in promoting honest
enlightenment, because, no matter how solemnly they may be marshaled, they are
at bottom the result of personal preference or prejudice, and not of an honest
desire to seek or accept new knowledge.
In our reveries we are
frequently engaged in self-justification, for we cannot bear to think ourselves
wrong, and yet have constant illustrations of our weaknesses and mistakes. So
we spend much time finding fault with circumstances and the conduct of others,
and shifting on to them with great ingenuity the on us of our own failures and
disappointments. Rationalizing is the
self-exculpation which occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of misapprehension
or error.
The little word my is the most important one in all
human affairs, and properly to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It
has the same force whether it is my
dinner, my dog, and my house, or my faith, my country, and
my God. We not only resent the imputation that our watch is wrong, or
our car shabby, but that our conception of the canals of Mars, of the
pronunciation of "Epictetus", of the medicinal value of salicine, or
the date of Sargon I, are subject to revision.
Philosophers, scholars, and
men of science exhibit a common sensitiveness in all decisions in which their amour propre is involved. Thousands of
argumentative works have been written to vent a grudge. However stately their
reasoning, it may be nothing but rationalizing, stimulated by the most
commonplace of all motives. A history of philosophy and theology could be
written in terms of grouches, wounded pride, and aversions, and it would be far
more instructive than the usual treatments of these themes. Sometimes, under Providence
All mankind, high and low,
thinks in all the ways which have been described. The reverie goes on all the
time not only in the mind of the mill hand and the Broadway flapper, but
equally in weighty judges and godly bishops. It has gone on in all the
philosophers, scientists, poets, and theologians that have ever lived.
Aristotle's most abstruse speculations were doubtless tempered by highly
irrelevant reflections. He is reported to have had very thin legs and small
eyes, for which he doubtless had to find excuses, and he was wont to indulge in
very conspicuous dress and rings and was accustomed to arrange his hair carefully.[4] Diogenes the Cynic exhibited the impudence of a touchy soul. His tub was his
distinction. Tennyson in beginning his "Maud" could not forget his
chagrin over losing his patrimony years before as the result of an unhappy
investment in the Patent Decorative Carving Company. These facts are not
recalled here as a gratuitous disparagement of the truly great, but to insure a
full realization of the tremendous competition which all really exacting
thought has to face, even in the minds of the most highly endowed mortals.
And now the astonishing and
perturbing suspicion emerges that perhaps almost all that had passed for social
science, political economy, politics, and ethics in the past may be brushed
aside by future generations as mainly rationalizing. John Dewey has already
reached this conclusion in regard to philosophy.[5] Veblen[6] and other writers have revealed the various unperceived presuppositions of the traditional
political economy, and now comes an Italian sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto, who,
in his huge treatise on general sociology, devotes hundreds of pages to
substantiating a similar thesis affecting all the social sciences.[7] This conclusion may be ranked by students of a hundred years hence as one of
the several great discoveries of our age. It is by no means fully worked out,
and it is so opposed to nature that it will be very slowly accepted by the
great mass of those who consider themselves thoughtful. As a historical student
I am personally fully reconciled to this newer view. Indeed, it seems to me inevitable
that just as the various sciences of nature were, before the opening of the
seventeenth century, largely masses of rationalizations to suit the religious
sentiments of the period, so the social sciences have continued even to our own
day to be rationalizations of uncritically accepted beliefs and customs.
It
will become apparent as we proceed that the fact that an idea is ancient and
that it has been widely received is no argument in its favor, but should
immediately suggest the necessity of carefully testing it as a probable
instance of rationalization.
Chapter
5: “How Creative Thought Transforms the World”
This brings us to another
kind of thought which can fairly easily be distinguished from the three kinds
described above. It has not the usual qualities of the reverie, for it does not
hover about our personal complacencies and humiliations. It is not made up of
the homely decisions forced upon us by everyday needs, when we review our little
stock of existing information, consult our conventional preferences and
obligations, and make a choice of action. It is not the defense of our own
cherished beliefs and prejudices just because they are our own – mere plausible
excuses for remaining of the same mind. On the contrary, it is that peculiar
species of thought which leads us to change
our mind.
It is this kind of thought
that has raised man from his pristine, subsavage ignorance and squalor to the
degree of knowledge and comfort which he now possesses. On his capacity to
continue and greatly extend this kind of thinking depends his chance of groping
his way out of the plight in which the most highly civilized peoples of the
world now find themselves. In the past this type of thinking has been called Reason.
But so many misapprehensions have grown up around the word that some of us have
become very suspicious of it. I suggest, therefore, that we substitute a recent
name and speak of "creative thought" rather than of Reason. For this kind of meditation begets knowledge,
and knowledge is really creative inasmuch as it makes things look different
from what they seemed before and may indeed work for their reconstruction.
In certain moods some of us
realize that we are observing things or making reflections with a seeming disregard
of our personal preoccupations. We are not preening or defending ourselves; we
are not faced by the necessity of any practical decision, nor are we apologizing
for believing this or that. We are just wondering and looking and mayhap seeing
what we never perceived before.
Curiosity is as clear and
definite as any of our urges. We wonder what is in a sealed telegram or in a
letter in which some one else is absorbed, or what is being said in the
telephone booth or in low conversation. This inquisitiveness is vastly
stimulated by jealousy, suspicion, or any hint that we ourselves are directly
or indirectly involved. But there appears to be a fair amount of personal
interest in other people's affairs even when they do not concern us except as a
mystery to be unraveled or a tale to be told. The reports of a divorce suit
will have "news value" for many weeks. They constitute a story, like
a novel or play or moving picture. This is not an example of pure curiosity,
however, since we readily identify ourselves with others, and their joys and
despair then become our own.
We also take note of, or
"observe", as Sherlock Holmes says, things which have nothing to do
with our personal interests and make no personal appeal either direct or by way
of sympathy. This is what Veblen so well calls "idle curiosity". And
it is usually idle enough. Some of us when we face the line of people opposite
us in a subway train impulsively consider them in detail and engage in rapid inferences
and form theories in regard to them. On entering a room there are those who
will perceive at a glance the degree of preciousness of the rugs, the character
of the pictures, and the personality revealed by the books. But there are many,
it would seem, who are so absorbed in their personal reverie or in some
definite purpose that they have no bright-eyed energy for idle curiosity. The tendency
to miscellaneous observation we come by honestly enough, for we note it in many
of our animal relatives.
Veblen, however, uses the
term "idle curiosity" somewhat ironically, as is his wont. It is idle
only to those who fail to realize that it may be a very rare and indispensable
thing from which almost all distinguished human achievement proceeds. Since it
may lead to systematic examination and seeking for things hitherto
undiscovered. For research is but diligent search which enjoys the high flavor
of primitive hunting. Occasionally and fitfully idle curiosity thus leads to
creative thought, which alters and broadens our own views and aspirations and
may in turn, under highly favorable circumstances, affect the views and lives
of others, even for generations to follow. An example or two will make this
unique human process clear.
Galileo was a thoughtful
youth and doubtless carried on a rich and varied reverie. He had artistic
ability and might have turned out to be a musician or painter. When he had
dwelt among the monks at Valambrosa he had been tempted to lead the life of a
religious. As a boy he busied himself with toy machines and he inherited a
fondness for mathematics. All these facts are of record. We may safely assume also
that, along with many other subjects of contemplation, the Pisan maidens found
a vivid place in his thoughts.
One day when seventeen years
old he wandered into the cathedral of his native town. In the midst of his
reverie he looked up at the lamps hanging by long chains from the high ceiling
of the church. Then something very difficult to explain occurred. He found
himself no longer thinking of the building, worshipers, or the services; of his
artistic or religious interests; of his reluctance to become a physician as his
father wished. He forgot the question of a career and even the graziosissime donne. As he watched the
swinging lamps he was suddenly wondering if mayhap their oscillations, whether
long or short, did not occupy the same time. Then he tested this hypothesis by counting
his pulse, for that was the only timepiece he had with him.
This observation, however
remarkable in itself, was not enough to produce a really creative thought.
Others may have noticed the same thing and yet nothing came of it. Most of our
observations have no assignable results. Galileo may have seen that the warts
on a peasant's face formed a perfect isosceles triangle, or he may have noticed
with boyish glee that just as the officiating priest was uttering the solemn
words, ecce agnus Dei, a fly lit on
the end of his nose. To be really creative, ideas have to be worked up and then
"put over", so that they become a part of man's social heritage. The highly
accurate pendulum clock was one of the later results of Galileo's discovery. He
himself was led to reconsider and successfully to refute the old notions of
falling bodies. It remained for Newton
On the 28th of October, 1831,
three hundred and fifty years after Galileo had noticed the isochronous
vibrations of the lamps, creative thought and its currency had so far increased
that Faraday was wondering what would happen if he mounted a disk of copper
between the poles of a horseshoe magnet. As the disk revolved an electric
current was produced. This would doubtless have seemed the idlest kind of an experiment
to the stanch business men of the time, who, it happened, were just then
denouncing the child-labor bills in their anxiety to avail themselves to the
full of the results of earlier idle curiosity. But should the dynamos and
motors which have come into being as the outcome of Faraday's experiment be
stopped this evening, the business man of to-day, agitated over labor troubles,
might, as he trudged home past lines of "dead" cars, through dark
streets to an unlighted house, engage in a little creative thought of his own
and perceive that he and his laborers would have no modern factories and mines
to quarrel about had it not been for the strange practical effects of the idle curiosity
of scientists, inventors, and engineers.
The examples of creative
intelligence given above belong to the realm of modern scientific achievement,
which furnishes the most striking instances of the effects of scrupulous,
objective thinking. But there are, of course, other great realms in which the
recording and embodiment of acute observation and insight have wrought
themselves into the higher life of man. The great poets and dramatists and our modern
story-tellers have found themselves engaged in productive reveries, noting and
artistically presenting their discoveries for the delight and instruction of
those who have the ability to appreciate them.
The process by which a fresh
and original poem or drama comes into being is doubtless analogous to that
which originates and elaborates so-called scientific discoveries; but there is
clearly a temperamental difference. The genesis and advance of painting,
sculpture, and music offer still other problems. We really as yet know
shockingly little about these matters, and indeed very few people have the
least curiosity about them.[8] Nevertheless, creative intelligence in its various forms and activities is what
makes man. Were it not for its slow, painful, and constantly discouraged
operations through the ages man would be no more than a species of primate
living on seeds, fruit, roots, and uncooked flesh, and wandering naked through
the woods and over the plains like a chimpanzee.
The origin and progress and
future promotion of civilization are ill understood and misconceived. These
should be made the chief theme of education, but much hard work is necessary
before we can reconstruct our ideas of man and his capacities and free
ourselves from innumerable persistent misapprehensions. There have been obstructionists
in all times, not merely the lethargic masses, but the moralists, the
rationalizing theologians, and most of the philosophers, all busily if
unconsciously engaged in ratifying existing ignorance and mistakes and
discouraging creative thought. Naturally, those who reassure us seem worthy of
honor and respect. Equally naturally those who puzzle us with disturbing
criticisms and invite us to change our ways are objects of suspicion and
readily discredited. Our personal discontent does not ordinarily extend to any critical
questioning of the general situation in which we find ourselves. In every age
the prevailing conditions of civilization have appeared quite natural and
inevitable to those who grew up in them. The cow asks no questions as to how it
happens to have a dry stall and a supply of hay. The kitten laps its warm milk
from a china saucer, without knowing anything about porcelain; the dog nestles
in the corner of a divan with no sense of obligation to the inventors of upholstery
and the manufacturers of down pillows. So we humans accept our breakfasts, our
trains and telephones and orchestras and movies, our national Constitution, or
moral code and standards of manners, with the simplicity and innocence of a pet
rabbit. We have absolutely inexhaustible capacities for appropriating what
others do for us with no thought of a "thank you". We do not feel
called upon to make any least contribution to the merry game ourselves. Indeed,
we are usually quite unaware that a game is being played at all.
We have now examined the
various classes of thinking which we can readily observe in ourselves and which
we have plenty of reasons to believe go on, and always have been going on, in
our fellow-men. We can sometimes get quite pure and sparkling examples of all
four kinds, but commonly they are so confused and intermingled in our reverie
as not to be readily distinguishable. The reverie is a reflection of our longings,
exultations, and complacencies, our fears, suspicions, and disappointments. We
are chiefly engaged in struggling to maintain our self-respect and in asserting
that supremacy which we all crave and which seems to us our natural
prerogative. It is not strange, but rather quite inevitable, that our beliefs
about what is true and false, good and bad, right and wrong, should be mixed up
with the reverie and be influenced by the same considerations which determine its
character and course. We resent criticisms of our views exactly as we do of
anything else connected with ourselves. Our notions of life and its ideals seem
to us to be our own and as such
necessarily true and right, to be defended at all costs.
We
very rarely consider, however, the process by which we gained our convictions. If we did so, we
could hardly fail to see that there was usually little ground for our
confidence in them. Here and there, in this department of knowledge or that,
some one of us might make a fair claim to have taken some trouble to get
correct ideas of, let us say, the situation in Russia, the sources of our food
supply, the origin of the Constitution, the revision of the tariff, the policy
of the Holy Roman Apostolic Church, modern business organization, trade unions,
birth control, socialism, the League of Nations, the excess-profits tax, preparedness,
advertising in its social bearings; but only a very exceptional person would be
entitled to opinions on all of even these few matters. And yet most of us have
opinions on all these, and on many other questions of equal importance, of
which we may know even less. We feel compelled, as self-respecting persons, to
take sides when they come up for discussion. We even surprise ourselves by our omniscience.
Without taking thought we see in a flash that it is most righteous and
expedient to discourage birth control by legislative enactment, or that one who
decries intervention in Mexico
It is clear, in any case,
that our convictions on important matters are not the result of knowledge or
critical thought, nor, it may be added, are they often dictated by supposed
self-interest. Most of them are pure
prejudices in the proper sense of that word. We do not form them ourselves.
They are the whisperings of "the voice of the herd". We have in the
last analysis no responsibility for them and need assume none. They are not
really our own ideas, but those of others no more well informed or inspired
than ourselves, who have got them in the same careless and humiliating manner
as we. It should be our pride to revise our ideas and not to adhere to what
passes for respectable opinion, for such opinion can frequently be shown to be
not respectable at all. We should, in view of the considerations that have been
mentioned, resent our supine credulity. As an English writer has remarked:
"If we feared the
entertaining of an unverifiable opinion with the warmth with which we fear
using the wrong implement at the dinner table, if the thought of holding a
prejudice disgusted us as does a foul disease, then the dangers of man's
suggestibility would be turned into advantages."[9]
The purpose of this essay is
to set forth briefly the way in which the notions of the herd have been
accumulated. This seems to me the best, easiest, and least invidious
educational device for cultivating a proper distrust for the older notions on
which we still continue to rely.
The "real" reasons,
which explain how it is we happen to hold a particular belief, are chiefly
historical. Our most important opinions – those, for example, having to do with
traditional, religious, and moral convictions, property rights, patriotism, national
honor, the state, and indeed all the assumed foundations of society – are, as I have already suggested,
rarely the result of reasoned consideration, but of unthinking absorption from
the social environment in which we live. Consequently, they have about them a quality
of "elemental certitude", and we especially resent doubt or criticism
cast upon them. So long, however, as we revere the whisperings of the herd, we
are obviously unable to examine them dispassionately and to consider to what
extent they are suited to the novel conditions and social exigencies in which
we find ourselves to-day.
The "real" reasons
for our beliefs, by making clear their origins and history, can do much to
dissipate this emotional blockade and rid us of our prejudices and
preconceptions. Once this is done and we come critically to examine our
traditional beliefs, we may well find some of them sustained by experience and
honest reasoning, while others must be revised to meet new conditions and our
more extended knowledge. But only after we have undertaken such a critical examination
in the light of experience and modern knowledge, freed from any feeling of
"primary certitude", can we claim that the "good" are also
the "real" reasons for our opinions.
I do not flatter myself that
this general show-up of man's thought through the ages will cure myself or
others of carelessness in adopting ideas, or of unseemly heat in defending them
just because we have adopted them. But if the considerations which I propose to
recall are really incorporated into our thinking and are permitted to establish
our general outlook on human affairs, they will do much to relieve the
imaginary obligation we feel in regard to traditional sentiments and ideals.
Few of us are capable of engaging in creative thought, but some of us can at
least come to distinguish it from other and inferior kinds of thought and
accord to it the esteem that it merits as the greatest treasure of the past and
the only hope of the future.
[1] Read the complete book here. Ed.
[2] The
poet-clergyman, John Donne, who lived in the time of James I, has given a
beautifully honest picture of the doings of a saint's mind: "I throw
myself down in my chamber and call in and invite God and His angels thither, and
when they are there I neglect God and His angels for the noise of a fly, for
the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door. I talk on in the same
posture of praying, eyes lifted up, knees bowed down, as though I prayed to
God, and if God or His angels should ask me when I thought last of God in that
prayer I cannot tell. Sometimes I find that I had forgot what I was about, but
when I began to forget it I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a
fear of to-morrow's dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a
light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain
troubles me in my prayer." – Quoted by Robert Lynd, The Art of Letters, pp. 46-47.
[3] Instincts of the Herd, p. 44.
[4] Diogenes Laertius, book v.
[5] Reconstruction
in Philosophy.
[6] The
Place of Science in Modern Civilization.
[7] Traite
de Sociologie Generale, passim. The author's term "derivations" seems to be his precise way of expressing what we
have called the "good" reasons, and his "residus" correspond to the "real" reasons. He well
says, "L'homme eprouve le besoin de
raisonner, et en outre d'etendre un voile sur ses instincts et sur ses
sentiments" – hence, rationalization. (p. 788.) His aim is to reduce
sociology to the "real" reasons. (p. 791.)
[8] Recently a re-examination of creative thought has begun as a result of
new knowledge which discredits many of the notions formerly held about
"reason". See, for example, Creative
Intelligence, by a group of American philosophic thinkers; John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic (both
pretty hard books); and Veblen, The Place
of Science in Modern Civilization. Easier than these and very stimulating
are Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy,
and Woodworth, Dynamic Psychology.
[9] Trotter, op. cit. [See note 3.
Ed.], p. 45. The first part of this little volume is excellent.
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