Edited by Theodore Morrison
and
Philip E. Burnham
Carvel E. Collins
C. P. Lee
Mark Schorer
Richard P. Scowcroft
Wallace Stegner
Carvel E. Collins
C. P. Lee
Mark Schorer
Richard P. Scowcroft
Wallace Stegner
Harper & Brothers,
Hardback, [1943].
8vo. ix+390 pp. Preface by the editor [vii-ix].
Contents*
Preface
I. Observation of America
Walden / E.B. White [One Man’s Meat, 1942]
The National Capitol: 1835 / Harriet Martineau [Retrospect
of Western Travel, 1837]
A Revival / Frances Trollope [Domestic Manners
of the Americans, 1832]
The Newspaper "Game" / Robert Benchley [America
To Sleep, Perchance to Steam / S.J. Perelman [The
Dream Department, 1943]
Inertrum, Neutronium, Chromaloy, P-P-P-Proot! /
Angelica Gibbs [The New Yorker, 13 Feb 1943]
The American Political Parties / D. W. Brogan [U.S.A.
II. American Documents and
Problems
Rules
by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One / Benjamin Franklin [1773]
Common
Sense / Thomas Paine [Common Sense, 1776, abridged]
On Agrarian Economy / Thomas Jefferson [Notes
on Virginia, 1782]
A Plan for Education / Thomas Jefferson [Notes
on Virginia, 1782]
M'Culloch v. Maryland
Instructions to the Panama Mission / Henry Clay [abridged]
Civil
Disobedience / Henry David Thoreau [1849, abridged]
On Equal Rights / Abraham Lincoln [speech
in Springfield, Illinois, 26 Jun 1857, abridged]
First
Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861 / Abraham Lincoln [abridged]
I Would Save the Union
/ Abraham Lincoln [letter
to Horace Greeley, 22 Aug 1862]
We
Cannot Escape History / Abraham Lincoln [Annual Message to Congress, 1 Dec
1862]
Democracy / Abraham Lincoln [attributed to Lincoln
The
Fortune of the Republic / Ralph Waldo Emerson [1879, abridged]
Letters on the "Open Door" / John Hay
The Chicago
The St.
Louis
Two Early American Political Thinkers: Tom Paine,
Thomas Jefferson / Vernon
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism / R.H. Tawney [eponymous
book, 1926]
Plymouth Rock and Ellis Island
/ Louis Adamic [From Many Lands, 1940, abridged]
The Indispensable Opposition / by Walter Lippmann [Atlantic
Monthly, Aug 1939]
The Vials of Wrath / Winston Churchill [The World
Crisis, 1923]
War Message / Woodrow Wilson [message to the Congress,
2 Apr 1917, abridged]
Memorandum of March 25, 1919 / Lloyd George [The
Aftermath, 1929, by Winston Churchill]
Wilsonism / Harold Nicolson [Peacemaking, 1933]
The Four Freedoms
/ Franklin D. Roosevelt [President’s message to the 77th Congress, 6
Jan 1941]
The Four Freedoms / Office of War Information [released
9 Aug 1942]
III. Science
How Short Wave Works / Charles J. Rolo [Radio
Goes to War, 1942]
Why the Sky Looks Blue / James Jeans [The Stars in
Their Courses, 1933]
The Hurricane / Richard Hughes [In Hazard, 1938]
Seasickness / W.H. Michael [Harper’s Magazine, Nov
1940]
Running the Grand Canyon / John Wesley Powell [Exploration
of the Colorado River of the West, 1875,
abridged]
Pecking at a Sandstone Cliff / Wallace Stegner [Mormon
Country, 1942]
The Origins of Modern Science / Alfred North
Whitehead [Science and the Modern World, 1926, abridged]
IV. Thinking
Four
Kinds of Thinking / James Harvey Robinson [The Mind in the
Making, 1921]
On Indifference to Scientific Truth / James Harvey
Robinson [The Humanizing of Knowledge, 1926]
Habits of Thought / Robert H. Thouless [How To Think
Straight, 1939]
The Breakdown of Modern Philosophy / Etienne Gilson [The
Unity of Philosophical Experience, 1937]
Fashions in Ideas / Irwin Edman [Philosopher’s
Holiday, 1938]
Climates of Opinion / Carl Becker [The Heavenly City
of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers, 1933]
V. The Future
The Price of Free World Victory / Henry A.
Wallace [an address, 8 May 1942]
International Utopias / Zechariah Chafee, Jr. [American
Scholar, summer 1942]
Wanted: American Radicals / James B. Conant [Atlantic
Monthly, May 1943]
The General Educational Stream of the Liberal Arts /
Howard Mumford Jones [an address, 20 May 1938]
The Uniqueness of Man / Julian Huxley [Man Stands
Alone,1941]
*Sources as given in the book’s footnotes.
==================================================
I was misled by the title into thinking that this
book is a sort of propaganda to raise the morale during the Second World War. As
such, I wanted to read it as a companion volume to The English Spirit (1942), ed. Anthony Weymouth, a British
collection of talks delivered on the BBC and later collected in book form with
the same purpose. It’s always interesting to compare the British and the American
way, be it national propaganda or detective fiction or, if you like, Wimbledon and the US Open. As soon as I glanced at the
table of contents, however, I realised this book is something different. And
when I read the preface by Mr Morrison, the editor in chief, I realised it is
something completely different.
As it turned out, this is a book for “students in
uniform – prospective officers of the armed forces.” The editors consulted the
list of writers and works suggested by the Army and the Navy for the general
education of their soldiers, and they offer this comprehensive selection that
should stimulate “reading the virtue of which would be to make a well-informed
and thoughtful citizen of America in the world Americans will face during and
after the war.” If I understand correctly Mr Morrison, Director of English A, Harvard
University, the title of the book refers to the danger of modern war, which
“requires prolonged specialized training”, dehumanizing soldiers, turning them
into mindless machines. The editors thought, and so far as I am concerned were
correct, that this book is “suitable for any contemporary American student,
military or civilian” because it fosters the “qualities that can turn the
civilian into a fighter without destroying his capacity for membership in a
society at peace.” In other words, a soldier must be a citizen first,
preferably a well-educated one.
To begin with, a couple of caveats. First, many of the
essays included here are heavily abridged; I am going to mention this several
times in the following paragraphs, but it’s good to keep it in mind from the
beginning. Second, many of these pieces, particularly in the first two parts,
require for their full appreciation a solid knowledge of American history which
I don’t possess. I have read them as a human being interested in human nature,
a citizen of the world if you like, rather than for whatever national significance
they may have. If I seem to neglect certain essays, this is because I found
them dated, dull or both; two or three I admit I couldn’t finish. As a general
rule, I have tried to put all pieces in their right historical context – by the
way, only one piece, “Running the Grand Canyon”, has a prefatory note about
that; for the rest, the modern citizen who reads must navigate the Web – but I
have also tried to emphasise their intrinsic, timeless value.
I was curious to meet for the first time two
distinguished American men of letters from the nineteenth century, Henry David Thoreau
and Ralph Waldo Emerson. I must say their names are more impressive than their
writing. Both have little to offer but promising beginnings:
[Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”:]
I heartily accept the motto, "That
government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted
up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this,
which also I believe "That government is best which governs not at
all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of
government which they will have.
[Emerson, “The Fortune of the Republic”:]
It is a rule that holds in economy as well
as in hydraulics that you must have a source higher than your tap. The mills,
the shops, the theatre and the caucus, the college and the church, have all
found out this secret.
I understand Mr Thoreau objects to government and,
within certain limits, approves of civil disobedience. What I don’t understand
is why and what alternatives he suggests. To abolish government? To improve it?
How? Perhaps he answered these questions in the full version, quite a bit
longer than this one, of his essay. The most interesting part of this excerpt
is the description of Mr Thoreau’s experience in prison, where he spent a
single night for unpaid taxes. But this is an end in itself. It’s not used to
build a thought-provoking argument. It merely is described, albeit with touching
humour and tenderness.
Somerset Maugham once memorably described Emerson as
“a nimble skater who cuts elegant and complicated figures on a surface of frozen
platitudes.”[1] He referred to the
celebrated Essays, but the remark
fully applies to “The Fortune of the Republic”. Mr Emerson’s style is picturesque
but neither especially lucid nor terribly compelling. He does have flashes of
brilliance now and then. Unfortunately, these are dissolved soon enough into
empty rhetoric or irrelevant digressions. In the end I was left completely at
sea what the fortune of the republic according to Mr Emerson was. Perhaps the
full version of the essay may rectify my ignorance, but somehow I don’t really
believe that.
I like the presidents better. I should think America
Those who labour in the earth are the
chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made
his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in
which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the
face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a
phaenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example.
[…]
While we have land to labour then, let us
never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling a distaff.
Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry: but, for the general
operations of manufacture, let our work-shops remain in Europe .
It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring
them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and
principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence of
government. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure
government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners
and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. A degeneracy in
these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.[2]
Abraham Lincoln must have been a man of formidable
intelligence and rare nobility. What impress me most in his words here are the intellectual
power and the candour. He is a master rhetorician and he can employ deadly
sarcasm, but these are exceptions. For the most part in his speeches, he
appeals to reason and advances rational arguments. His superb polemical skills
are on fine display in the Springfield
There is a natural disgust in the minds of
nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the
white and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope,
upon the chances of being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to
himself. If he can, by much drumming and repeating, fasten the odium of that
idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. He
therefore clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an
occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the Dred Scott decision. He
finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes all
men, black as well as white; and forthwith he boldly denies that it includes
negroes at all, and proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend it does, do
so only because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with negroes.
He will have it that they cannot be consistent else. Now I protest against that
counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for
a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either,
I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but
in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without
asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.
Chief Justice Taney, in his opinion in the
Dred Scott case, admits that the language of the Declaration is broad enough to
include the whole human family, but he and Judge Douglas argue that the authors
of that instrument did not intend to include negroes, by the fact that they did
not at once, actually place them on an equality with the whites. Now this grave
argument comes to just nothing at all, by the other fact, that they did not at
once, or ever afterwards, actually place all white people on an equality with
one or another. And this is the staple argument of both the Chief Justice and
the Senator, for doing this obvious violence to the plain unmistakable language
of the Declaration. I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to
include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all
respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect,
moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable
distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men crated equal – equal
in 'certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness.' This they said, and this meant. They did not mean to assert the
obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet,
that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no
power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that
the enforcement of it might follow as fast circumstances should permit. They
meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to
all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even
though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby
constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness
and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere. The assertion that
'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation
from Great Britain
Note Mr Lincoln’s provocative opinions in the first
paragraph, namely that there is a “natural disgust” in all white people towards
the coloured and that a black woman is in “some respects” (which?) not his
equal. One mustn’t make too much of such opinions. In the proper context they
lose much of their sting. Mr Lincoln evidently was a man of inflexible
integrity. He knew very well his mind and he made a sharp distinction between
his private beliefs and his professional obligations. I understand his letter
to Horace Greeley, then editor of the New
York
I would save the Union .
I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the
national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not
save the Union , unless they could at the same
time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not
save the Union unless they could at the same
time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this
struggle is to save the Union , and is not
either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing
any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I
would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I
would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because
I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I
do not believe it would help to save the Union .
I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I
shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall
try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so
fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to
my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed
personal wish that all men every where could be free.
This is admirably honest. Mr Lincoln makes it as
clear as it could be that his major official duty is not to abolish slavery. Note how carefully worded is his statement.
He doesn’t say he supports or approves slavery. He says he wouldn’t let it
interfere with his saving the Union . On the
other hand, he explicitly states that if he could both preserve the Union and abolish slavery, he would do that. He does say that
he would save the Union even if this means that no slave shall be freed, but
his personal wish suggests that, once
he has managed to preserve the Union, he would work to secure freedom for all. In
his First Inaugural Address, Mr Lincoln is even more emphatic about his
position on slavery:
Apprehension seems to exist among the
people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration,
their property, and their peace, and personal security, are to be endangered.
There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the
most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been open to
their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who
now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare
that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no
lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Those who
nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this, and
many similar declarations, and had never recanted them.
In this impressive address, as beautifully written as
it doubtless sounded at the time, Mr Lincoln addresses the status quo with
customary objectivity and precision. This is what one would expect from a
lawyer but seldom finds in a politician. He is perfectly aware that slavery is
the only “substantial dispute” between the North and the South, and though he
appeals for a peaceful solution, he must have known that civil war was
imminent. I found especially fascinating the long discourse of the Union, by
which I take it Mr Lincoln means the whole of the United States
It is seventy-two years since the first
inauguration of a President under our National Constitution. During that period
fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have, in succession,
administered the executive branch of the government. They have conducted it
through many perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope
of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term
of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal
Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.
I hold that, in contemplation of universal
law and of the Constitution, the Union of
these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the
fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no
government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own
termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National
Constitution, and the Union will endure
forever – it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided
for in the instrument itself.
Again, if the United States
Descending from these general principles,
we find the proposition that, in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual
confirmed by the history of the Union itself.
The Union is much older than the Constitution.
It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured
and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further
matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and
engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778.
And, finally, in 1787 one of the declared objects for ordaining and
establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union ."
But if the destruction of the Union by one
or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union
is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of
perpetuity.
It follows from these views that no State
upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and
ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within
any State or States, against the authority of the United States
I therefore consider that, in view of the
Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my
ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon
me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully
executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my
part; and I shall perform it so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters,
the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or in some
authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as
a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union
that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself.
It’s a pity that we don’t have anything here from Mr
Lincoln’s Second
Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865). He sums up the causes of the Civil War
with epigrammatic brilliance that Oscar Wilde might have envied:
Both parties deprecated war; but one of
them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would
accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
I can only recommend you to read both addresses
complete (if you haven’t already). I have no doubt that people well-versed into
American history (presumably but not necessarily all Americans) will grasp many
subtle meanings which I missed. But even if you are a perfect newcomer to the
American Civil War and have to educate yourself on the way, as it were, these
speeches remain, quite apart from what historical value they may have, moving
human documents.
Bertrand Russell once gave Mr Lincoln as an example
(together with Spinoza) of those great men who “become greater the more they
are studied”[3]. I am beginning to understand
why. Many nineteenth-century writers with far greater pretensions never managed
to achieve one tenth of Mr Lincoln’s eloquence, common sense, wit and wisdom.
The only trouble with Mr Lincoln’s writings here is
the inept abridgement. The Springfield
I have just read yours of the 19th.
addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any
statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not,
now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may
believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If
there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in
deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
As to the policy I "seem to be
pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
Ben Franklin is almost as exciting as the presidents,
Tom Paine even more so. “Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a
Small One” is obviously, perhaps a little too obviously, aimed at the British
crown and her presumably disgraceful management of the American colonies.
Though Ben Franklin doesn’t have the flair for writing and the biting wit of
Jonathan Swift, the piece is an amusing satire. Mr Franklin, “a modern
simpleton” as he describes himself, separates his “Rules” into 24 numbered points.
Here are several favourites:
IV. However peaceably your Colonies have
submitted to your Government, shewn their Affection to your Interest, and
patiently borne their Grievances, you are to suppose them always inclined to
revolt, and treat them accordingly. Quarter Troops among them, who by their
Insolence may provoke the rising of Mobs, and by their Bullets and Bayonets
suppress them. By this Means, like the Husband who uses his Wife ill from
Suspicion, you may in Time convert your Suspicions into Realities.
VI. To confirm these Impressions, and
strike them deeper, whenever the Injured come to the Capital with Complaints of
Mal-administration, Oppression, or Injustice, punish such Suitors with long
Delay, enormous Expence, and a final Judgment in Favour of the Oppressor. This
will have an admirable Effect every Way. The Trouble of future Complaints will
be prevented, and Governors and Judges will be encouraged to farther Acts of
Oppression and Injustice; and thence the People may become more disaffected,
and at length desperate.
XI. To make your Taxes more odious, and
more likely to procure Resistance, send from the Capital a Board of Officers to
superintend the Collection, composed of the most indiscreet, ill-bred and
insolent you can find. Let these have large Salaries out of the extorted
Revenue, and live in open grating Luxury upon the Sweat and Blood of the
Industrious, whom they are to worry continually with groundless and expensive
Prosecutions before the above-mentioned arbitrary Revenue-Judges, all at the
Cost of the Party prosecuted tho' acquitted, because the King is to pay no
Costs.
Common Sense is a work of much greater accomplishment
and substance. It is justly famous, though mostly for its historical
significance, I think, which is indeed unjust. Many of the ideas in this
pamphlet are timeless, and the style is admirable; the very first paragraph is
a masterpiece of provocative clarity:
Some Writers have so confounded Society
with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas
they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by
our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness
positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our
vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The
first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Tom Paine is a tremendous writer. He wields a
versatile pen that ranges from cool and scientific precision to purple patch
that can leave indifferent but the most callous reader. Unlike Mr Thoreau, Mr
Paine doesn’t fade off into rambling insignificance after the beginning. Unfortunately,
his famous pamphlet is extremely
abridged. Little more than the beginning and the ending are given here. This
was enough, however, to induce me to read the complete work, something I had
wanted to do for quite some time. It is a great work that deserves a detailed
review. Here I want to give some fascinating quotes from Mr Parrington’s abovementioned
biographical essay[4]. He calls Mr Paine
“Republican Pamphleteer” and continues:
No more striking figure emerges from the
times than the figure of the Thetford Quaker. English in birth and rearing, in
middle life Paine came to embody the republican spirit of the American
revolution; and that spirit he made it his after business to carry overseas and
spread among the discontented of all lands. He was the first modern
internationalist, at home wherever rights were to be won or wrongs corrected. “My
country is the world,” he asserted proudly, “to do good, my religion.”
Throughout his later life he was a fearless skirmisher on the outposts of
democracy – another “Free-born John” Lilburn, seeking to complete the great
work begun and thwarted in an earlier century; and his career remains a
stirring record of a time when revolution threatened to sweep away the power
and privilege of all kings and aristocracies. Naturally his zeal cost him dear
in reputation. The passions of all who feared the loss of sinecures gathered
about his head, and he became the victim of an odium theologicum et politicum,
without parallel in our history. The Tories hunted him in packs, and their
execration and vituperation outran all decency. In London America
[…]
When he landed in Philadelphia America Franklin ’s letter of introduction, he set sail for new
worlds, cherishing the unmilitant plan of setting up in Philadelphia America
The amazing influence of Common Sense on a
public opinion long befogged by legal quibble flowed from its direct and skillful
appeal to material interests. For a first time in a tedious inconsequential
debate, it was openly asserted that governmental policies rest on economic
foundations; that the question of American independence was only a question of
expediency, and must be determined in the light of economic advantage. Government
is no more than a utility, and that policy which was most likely to secure
freedom and security “with the least expense and greatest benefit” must be
preferred. The point of issue before the American people, therefore, whether a
more useful arrangement would result from continuing the old connection with
England, or for setting up for themselves; and it must be decided, not in the
court room or council chambers, but in the counting-house and market place, in
the field and shop, wherever plain Americans were making a living. Let the
common people consult their own needs, and determine the case without regard to
legal or constitutional precedents. It was a simple matter to be judged in the
light of common sense and their particular interests.
This was but the beginning of a long
assault on the British constitution which was to engage him much in after life.
Common Sense was a pronouncement of the new philosophy of republicanism that
was taking firm hold of the American mind, and which the French Revolution was
to spread so widely. It was a notable contribution, of which Paine to the end
of his life was justly proud.
[…]
A thoroughgoing idealist in aim, generous
and unsparing in service to humanity, he was a confirmed realist in the
handling of facts. He refused to be duped by imposing appearances or great
reputations, but spoke out unpleasant truths which gentlemen wished to keep
hidden. Clear and direct in expression, he seasoned his writings with homely
figures and a frequent audacity of phrase that made wide appeal. He was
probably the greatest pamphleteer that the English race has produced and one of
its great idealists.
During his residence abroad Paine
habitually thought and spoke of himself as an American. He conceived it to be
his mission to disseminate throughout Europe the beneficent principles of the
American Revolution; yet nowhere was he hated more virulently than in America
Mr Thoreau is the only other writer who enjoys the
dubious honour to have among the contents something written about him. I say the “dubious” honour
because Mr White’s “Walden” is a tedious account of one-day trip to Concord and
Walden Pond during which he spent just about the same amount of money as Thoreau
did for a whole year just about a century ago. The rest of the first part isn’t
terribly stimulating, either. The pieces are mostly of historical interest:
there is little in them that has withstood the test of time. If you are
peculiarly interested in Washington politics and Cincinnati religious hysteria
during the 1830s as perceived by two English ladies (Harriet Martineau and
Frances Trollope, respectively), or in the condition of American newspapers
(Robert Benchley) and the birth of science fiction (Angelica Gibbs) in the
early twentieth century, you might find these essays more engrossing than I
did.
The final of the second part is remarkable, though.
It begins with a short excerpt from the President Roosevelt’s speech to the
congress given on 6 January, 1941. He defines the four kinds of freedom thus:
In the future days, which we seek to make
secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and
expression – everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to
worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want – which,
translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to
every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the
world.
The fourth is freedom from fear – which,
translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such
a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to
commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the
world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium.
It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and
generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new
order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
These are noble sentiments. They were developed with
a fine rhetorical flourish by the Office of War Information a year and a half
later. They make a chilling read today. In 1942, though very well aware of the
practical difficulties, people seriously considered making the world a
fundamentally better place. However, they couldn’t have predicted (or could
they?) the impact of nuclear weapons and the outcome of WWII, much less the
shrinking of the world to a global village. So the results were things like the
Cold War and the Berlin Wall, which we have managed to survive, and treats like
terrorism, overpopulation, globalisation and environmental destruction, which
is not yet clear if we will survive.
The other essays from the second part didn’t leave
much of an impression. Exceptions were Louis Adamic’s “Plymouth Rock and Ellis
Island”, an interesting study of the US
Thus the essence of freedom of opinion is
not in mere tolerance as such, but in the debate which toleration provides: it
is not in the venting of opinion, but in the confrontation of opinion. That
this is the practical substance can readily be understood when we remember how
differently we feel and act about the censorship and regulation of opinion
purveyed by different media of communication. We find then that, in so far as
the medium makes difficult the confrontation of opinion in debate, we are
driven towards censorship and regulation.
[…]
We must insist that free oratory is only
the beginning of free speech; it is not the end, but a means to an end. The end
is to find the truth. The practical justification of civil liberty is not that
self-expression is one of the rights of man. It is that the examination of
opinion is one of the necessities of man. For experience tells us that only when
freedom of opinion becomes the compulsion to debate that the seed which our
fathers planted has produced its fruit. When that is understood, freedom will
be cherished not because it is a vent for our opinions but because it is the
surest method of correcting them.
Though Mr Lippmann speaks of politics, I would extend
his argument to human communication in general. But with one proviso of utmost
importance! It must be recognised that in nearly all cases debates stem from
difference of personal opinions, not absolute truths. There is no excuse for
the conceited fellow who treats his opponent in such a debate with contempt and
lack of elementary civility. Only in strictly scientific matters can there be a
search for objective truth; even then, of course, disagreements must never lead
to animosity. In the vast majority of everyday debates between ordinary people,
it is crucial to realise that there are at least two equally valid sides. There
is no excuse, either, for the prig who disapproves of other people’s aesthetic
opinions or lifestyle or anything else that’s nobody’s business but their own.
The science section is the only distinctly
disappointing one in the book. It is much too short and superficial. Perhaps in
1943, when the radio was still something of a novelty, the fact that the
ionosphere reflects short waves might have been interesting, but today it is
merely a quaint footnote in the history of science. If you are one of the last
persons on earth who doesn’t know why the sky is blue, Mr Jeans’ waves-and-piers
analogy is a pleasant way to learn. The essays on hurricanes and seasickness
are slightly mores substantial, but nowadays you can learn all this – and much
more – from the Web. I think more mind-stretching matters, like astronomy or
evolutionary biology for instance, would have afforded the future officers a
better scientific education. Also, philosophical works on the essence of
science, for instance by Bertrand Russell or Karl Popper, would have been
welcome. The final essay by Mr Whitehead is an attempt to provide something
like that, but it’s more like a brief historical overview. Very brief indeed!
One of the greatest pleasures of this kind of book is
the discovery of new authors, people whom you’ve never heard about, yet who
write beautifully and have something fascinating to say. James Harvey Robinson
(1863–1936), an obscure American historian and prolific writer unread today, was
one such discovery. He won me completely with the very first paragraph of “Four
Kinds of Thinking”[5]:
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.
The essay is one of the absolute highlights of the
book. The end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth seem to have
been heady times for psychology, heady enough, at any rate, for historians to
write whole books about it. “We do not think enough about thinking”, Mr
Robinson says, and continues to analyse our thinking with engaging candour. I
think he is doing a very fine job for an amateur. Consider his masterful dissection
our “favourite kind of thinking”. Who can fail to identify, at least to some
extent, with this passage?
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 three other kinds of thinking Mr Robinson further
speaks of are making practical decisions (i.e. making up our minds), rationalizing
(i.e. finding “good” reasons, as opposed to the “real” ones, to justify our
inborn beliefs and prejudices) and creative thought (changing our minds in a
highly productive direction). The second and the third kind are obviously far
more interesting, and with potentially momentous consequences. Here it becomes
obvious why Mr Robinson was deeply interested in the matter as a historian. He
suggests the highly controversial, but hardly to be rejected lightly, idea 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”. It is a staggering thought to contemplate! Mr Robinson
advocates an intellectual freedom and honesty, an appeal to reason and a
refusal to subject to any authority, however ancient, much like the widespread
sceptical outlook proposed by Bertrand Russell a few years later[6].
Alas, today, nearly a century later, it remains yet another unattainable ideal.
As to the last kind of thinking, it is not always, of
course, that a change of mind leads to creative thought. Mr Robinson is well
aware of that. He gives as examples two great scientists, Galilei and Faraday,
who from “idle curiosity (to borrow a phrase from Verblen but without the
ironic context) changed the world. People like these, very few in all
conscience, who can be stimulated to create a worthy final product, for
instance a scientific theory or a work of art out of what to others is merely
“idle curiosity”, have made the human race what it is today.
I can only advise you to read this tremendously
stirring essay complete (see ToC above), but to whet your appetite, here are
some selections from Mr Robinson’s exquisite prose; his emphasis is carefully
preserved:
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.
[…]
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.
[…]
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. […] 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.
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.
[…]
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.
Mr Robinson’s second essay, “On Indifference to
Scientific Truth”, is much shorter but scarcely less compelling. He speculates
what determines the success of new ideas and reaches the disconcerting
conclusion that their truth “plays an altogether secondary role”. Much more
important, it seems, are an idea’s congeniality to man’s prejudices and its
practical utility for society. The most stunning proof of this in human history
is, of course, religion. I wish Mr Robinson had elaborated further on this
topic, but the little he does say explains as well as anything the ancient
origins and the remarkable popularity of religion ever since, no matter how
obviously untrue or frankly ridiculous its doctrines may seem to the rational
mind. Bertrand Russell might have been proud to pen these lines:
Religion shares with poetry and romance
the appeal to man’s natural and deep longings and spontaneous inclinations.
Indeed, among the many definitions of religion none is better perhaps than that
of Santayana, to whom it seems to be poetry sometimes mistaking itself for
science. Religion has concerned itself, at least during historic times, with
those terrors, awes, obligations and aspirations which rest on a belief in
supernatural beings, good and bad. It has to do with our vivid fears in a world
of sad mischance; with the hopes, restraints and sacred duties which promise in
some way to offset life’s incalculable tragedies.
The poetic elements in religion are
supplemented by more or less definitely formulated beliefs about man’s origin
and nature and the workings of the things about him. These convictions are
commonly of ancient and untraceable genesis, although they may finally be very
logically and precisely stated by a Thomas Aquinas or a Calvin and form a part
of a closely woven philosophical system.
One may not, however, take the same
liberties with religious beliefs that he may with the fancies of the poet. The
adherents of a particular religious creed are not free to pick and choose, and
to reject what comes to seem improbable. The “truth” once delivered stands, for
it depends largely on the form of its original delivery. It is the word of the
Most High or of some prophet inspired by him. At least this has seemed
inevitable to a great majority of Christians and their leaders since the
founding of their faith.
Religion therefore makes a double appeal,
that of poetry and of divinely certified truth about all the great concerns of
life. It meets questions about our origin, duty and possible fates, without any
call for painful critical thinking, suspension of judgment and dubious,
ever-to-be-revised, theories and hypotheses.
The rest of the fourth part was, not unexpectedly,
something of a letdown. All other essays are actually variations on the general
themes outlined by Mr Robinson. Mr Gilson rashly and superficially declares
that science has killed philosophy, never for a moment considering the
possibility of philosophy having died of old age. Mr Erdman’s “Fashions in
Ideas” is an amusing trifle, “not a chapter of history but of reminiscence”,
but rather badly limited to New York
Only “Habits of Thought” by Mr Thouless, which is in
fact a study of the background forces that mould rationalizing, can stand
comparison with Mr Robinson’s essays. It argues that our minds are conditioned by
instinctive thought habits, call them prejudices if you like, very much the
product of our environment. For the most part, these thought habits are just as
useful, and just as harmless, as bodily habits. Problems arise when they are challenged.
Then they may prevent us from viewing dispassionately important issues,
especially international affairs, and even from attaining new truths. Mr
Thouless is smart enough to recognise that the other way round is equally
dangerous, namely holding iconoclast opinions not because you are convinced
they are true but because they are different and likely to provoke scandal
(i.e. they question the accepted thought habits of society). Nor should this go
unrewarded with suitable feedback. Mr Thouless gives an interesting literary
example:
We have taken Bernard Shaw as an example
of a writer who questions orthodox and conventional thought habits. Similarly
we might take G. K. Chesterton as a writer whose function it is to question the
thought habits of those who are unorthodox and unconventional.
A little later, he concludes thus:
Clearly it is neither desirable nor
possible to get rid of all thought habits. Such an aim would be absurd. The
formation of thought habits is as inevitable as the formation of bodily habits
and just as useful. But we must be ready continually to revise them. Thought
habits once serviceable may prevent us from attaining to new truths. We differ
from the lower animals in the possession of a rich and complicated brain. This
is an instrument to give flexibility and adaptability to our behavior. If we allow
ourselves merely to become creatures of habit, we become automatic and
mechanical like the lower animals. We are allowing our brains to degenerate
into mere mechanisms when they were meant for plasticity and change. It is like
using a razor for digging the ground.
[2] Mr Jefferson calls the
chapters of his book “queries”. “A Plan for Education” is
excerpt from Query 14, “Laws: The administration of justice and description of
the laws?” “On Agrarian Economy” comes from Query 19, “Manufactures: The
present state of manufactures, commerce, interior and exterior trade?”. The
full title is Notes on the State of
Virginia, written in 1781 and revised in 1782, first published anonymously
in Paris London
[3] “How to Read and Understand History”, reprinted
in Understanding History and Other Essays,
Philosophical Library, [1957], p. 22. In his essay “Knowledge and Wisdom”,
having given his definition of wisdom, Russell even stated that “Abraham
Lincoln conducted a great war without ever departing from what I have been calling
wisdom.” See Portraits from Memory and Other Essays, Spokesman, 1995 [1954], p. 163.
[4] Cf. “The Fate of Thomas Paine” by Bertrand
Russell. First published in Great
Democrats, ed. A. Barratt Brown, 1934. Reprinted in Why I Am Not a Christian, and other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, ed. Paul Edwards, 1957.
[5] In the book this excerpt appears as chapters 3
to 5 under the more suitable titles “Various Kinds of Thinking”,
“Rationalizing” and “How Creative Thought Transforms the World”. They are
slightly, and silently, abridged. Mr Robinson’s footnotes are omitted, too.
[6] Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays, 1928.
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