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Title: The meaning of a liberal education
Author: Everett Dean Martin
Release date: March 25, 2025 [eBook #75711]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: W. W. Norton & Co, 1926
Credits: Carla Foust, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MEANING OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION ***
THE MEANING OF
A LIBERAL EDUCATION
_The People’s Institute
“Lectures-in-Print” Series_
PSYCHOLOGY
by Everett Dean Martin $3.00
BEHAVIORISM
by John B. Watson $3.00
INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
by H. A. Overstreet $3.00
INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY
by Charles S. Myers $2.50
THE MEANING OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION
by Everett Dean Martin $3.00
MODERN SCIENCE AND PEOPLE’S HEALTH
Edited by Benjamin C. Gruenberg $2.50
_Other Volumes in Preparation_
_W·W·NORTON & COMPANY, INC._
70 Fifth Avenue New York
THE MEANING OF
A LIBERAL EDUCATION
BY
EVERETT DEAN MARTIN
_Director, The People’s Institute, New York
Lecturer, The New School for
Social Research_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
W·W·NORTON & COMPANY, INC.
_Publishers_
Copyright, 1926
W·W·NORTON & COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS
To her who lovingly gave me the first and most
important instruction, and inspired the
desire for scholarship,
MY MOTHER
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
PREFACE
Most books that deal with the subject of education, and there are
many, are concerned with the training of the young. Much is said about
educational methods but very little about content. There is discussion,
also, of the effectiveness of institutions, schools and colleges, and
the interest of the State in education. This book does not deal with
such matters.
It is concerned with other problems. What is an educated person like?
How does he differ from the uneducated? Does he think differently and,
if so, why? We shall be empirical in our study. We shall study persons
who are generally recognized as outstanding educated minds and ask what
it is that characterizes them. Is an educated person one who is like
Socrates, Erasmus, Montaigne, Goethe, Arnold, Santayana?
The theme of this book is that education is more than information, or
skill, or propaganda. In each age education must take into account
the conditions of that age. But the educated mind is not a mere
creature of its own time. Education is emancipation from herd opinion,
self-mastery, capacity for self-criticism, suspended judgment, and
urbanity.
It is often believed that education, adult education in particular, is
an avocation or an interest to occupy the individual in his leisure
time, like music or stamp collecting. The work of The People’s
Institute at Cooper Union, New York, where these lectures were given,
is essentially that of adult education. I have tried to think through
with those who attended the lectures what it is that for ten years
we have been trying to achieve. Adult education is now becoming an
important interest in American life, and the inquiry seems timely.
This book, then, contends that education is a spiritual revaluation
of human life. Its task is to _reorient_ the individual, to enable
him to take a richer and more significant view of his experiences, to
place him above and not within the system of his beliefs and ideals.
If education is not liberalizing, it is not education in the sense of
the title of the book. I use the term “liberal” not in the political
sense, as if it meant half measures, but in its original sense meaning
by a liberal education the kind of education which sets the mind free
from the servitude of the crowd and from vulgar self-interests. In this
sense, education is simply philosophy at work. It is the search for the
“good life.” Education is itself a way of living.
I have written the book not from the standpoint of the professional
educator for whom education is frequently--if it be adult education--an
enterprise designed for the uplift of other people, but from the
standpoint of one who is concerned that his own education shall not
stop in middle-life. No one is fit to be a teacher in whose own mental
process education has ceased to go on. One is a student first and only
incidentally a teacher. The best teacher is the seeker after truth
amongst his students. Probably the most successful educator cannot tell
what is the secret of his success in teaching. That which is important
about the philosophy of education is not method but that background of
knowledge which enables its possessor to judge what is worth knowing
and doing.
EVERETT DEAN MARTIN.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE vii
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. LIBERAL EDUCATION VERSUS ANIMAL TRAINING 23
III. LIBERAL EDUCATION VERSUS PROPAGANDA 45
IV. LIBERAL EDUCATION VERSUS BOOK LEARNING 66
V. THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF DOUBT 84
VI. A MAN IS KNOWN BY THE DILEMMAS HE KEEPS 107
VII. THE FREE SPIRIT 127
VIII. THE APPRECIATION OF HUMAN WORTH 146
IX. EDUCATION AND WORK 160
X. EDUCATION AND MORALS 180
XI. THE CLASSICAL TRADITION: PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 197
XII. HUMANISM: ERASMUS AND MONTAIGNE 220
XIII. SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION: HUXLEY 252
XIV. THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 286
XV. POSTSCRIPT--ADULT EDUCATION IN AMERICA 308
THE MEANING OF
A LIBERAL EDUCATION
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The evidence is unmistakable that there is an important change in the
attitude of the public toward education. There is an increasingly
general demand for it in some form or other. Everywhere and in all
classes of society the interest in acquiring better knowledge is
apparent.
In England and on the continent of Europe there are thousands of
classes and groups patiently pursuing long and serious courses of
study. American colleges and universities are crowded and many students
are each year turned away. Vast and increasing numbers register
annually for correspondence and university extension courses. The
demand for more education is shown also in the increasing number
of lecture courses, people’s colleges, and other centers of public
discussion.
While people do not always know just what it is they demand and
frequently the thing which they receive is not education, nevertheless
there is a new and very wide-spread interest. This new interest shows
itself not only in the increasing number of persons engaged in some
kind of educational activity but also in the fact that people are
beginning to see that education properly may be extended into adult
life.
Until recently, people have thought of education as something for
children, something which a man either got or missed in his early
years, something which he generally forgot in his mature years. To
the average person, education was a matter of fond memories or of
unpleasant associations with teachers, school houses and experiences
of childhood. The “highly” educated person was the exceptional person
in the community, discussions of the philosophy of education did not
appeal to a wide public interest. Now higher branches of learning
are being pursued by numbers of people outside regular educational
institutions. Something very significant is happening. Perhaps at no
time since the thirteenth century has the desire for knowledge so
nearly approached a mass movement.
Certain qualifications must however be made. While much of the demand
for education is genuine and spontaneous, much of it is spurious,
irrelevant, inconsequential. The increased attendance at school or
university does not necessarily mean that more education is going on.
It is frequently said that our colleges are crowded with inferior
students. Athletics, fraternities, schools of business and the
automobile tend to displace science and the classics. American youth
has acquired its ideal of college life from the motion pictures. We
should not infer from the large numbers engaged in adult education
that democracy has suddenly decided to rid itself of intellectual
shoddiness. If the advertisements of correspondence courses in
self-improvement which regularly appear in the popular magazines are
an indication of the instruction offered for sale, people might better
spend their money for patent medicine or in having their fortunes
told. At best adult education consists largely of brief courses of
a vocational nature. Even worker’s education, a movement which has
inspired hope in many liberals, may easily be over estimated. Much
of it is little more than a recrudescence of antiquated radical
propaganda, designed to enable the proletariat to “emancipate itself
from the slavery of capitalism,” and to get it “ready for a millennial
industrial democracy.” The initiative often comes not from studious
minded workers, but from enthusiastic intellectuals and idealistic
uplifters. The cultural gesture is often pathetic or comic. It is
not uncommon for those who have completed the courses of study in a
“workers” college to find themselves more unadjusted than they were
before.
It is sought to make of adult education something which will broaden
the interests and sympathies of people regardless of their daily
occupation--or along with it--to lift men’s thought out of the monotony
and drudgery which are the common lot, to free the mind from servitude
and herd opinion, to train habits of judgment and of appreciation of
value, to carry on the struggle for human excellence in our day and
generation, to temper passion with wisdom, to dispel prejudice by
better knowledge of self, to enlist all men, in the measure that they
have capacity for it, in the achievement of civilization.
Adult education is a way of living which should be open to all who care
for it for its own sake. It is not surprising that it frequently fails
of its true aims. Education has always been regarded as a mere means to
ends that have nothing to do with it. It is to be expected, therefore,
that education in our day should be regarded primarily as a means of
entrance to the already overcrowded professions, or to material gain or
better social position. Doubtless it must remain so until the community
becomes sufficiently civilized so that some degree of liberal education
is the expected thing in all classes, an interest and a goal, a
spiritual bond of union somewhat like the idea of catholic religion in
the middle ages. This is an ideal which will not be realized by magic.
There is no cheap popular substitute for education. Nor are we nearing
the goal while as now almost anything passes for education.
Almost any method of salesmanship or trick of influencing people for
any ends whatever is now “education.” Every one educates the public. It
is marvelous how large a portion of the population of these states is
qualified to instruct. Education has become the game men perpetually
work to convert their neighbors. It is the cure for every social ill.
How shall we put an end to the crime wave, abolish war, how to prevent
social revolution,--or bring revolution about, how induce unwilling
people to accept cheerfully the coercion of national prohibition or
give lip service to some one’s favorite brand of patriotism? The answer
is in all cases--education. If you are engaged in increasing the sale
of a certain soap, in putting everyone on guard against that social
disability of which one’s best friend will not tell him, if you can
frighten a multitude with the danger of pyorrhea and thus increase your
profit in tooth paste--all this is now called education.
Many see in the general movement for more education a great hope for
humanity. It was the belief in its political benefits that led to the
compulsory education of children in the nineteenth century. Men were
sure that all that held the world back was ignorance. People would
surely wish to have their ignorance removed. Remove it, teach men the
laws of a reasonable and beneficent nature, and mankind in general
would be wise and happy and good. Ingersoll used to rejoice whenever he
visited a town where the schoolhouse was larger than the church.
As the humanitarians of the nineteenth century held that public school
education must inevitably put an end to tyranny and superstition, so
many of our contemporaries look upon adult education as the guarantor
of a new and better civilization. There is to be an end of bigotry and
partisan strife and of crowd hysteria and of the vulgarities which
beset democracy. They see genius appreciated, a selection by the masses
of a sincere and competent leadership. Men everywhere are to learn “not
only how to make a living, but how to live.”
Finally, it is hoped that adult education will give us new methods
and aims which will be carried back into our schools and colleges and
transform them. A better informed adult population will naturally take
a more active and intelligent interest in the education of youth. And
when teachers try to instruct adults it will become necessary for them
to make their teaching interesting and significant. The teachers will
also learn something about life, gleaning sheaves of ripe wisdom out
of the mature experience of their students; they will become better
teachers. All this may or may not come to pass. The point of interest
is that there is this tendency to make a gospel of education.
We Americans have a weakness for new gospels. They are a pleasant form
of verbal exercise. Liberty, Democracy, Social Reform, the Cause of
Labor, Psychoanalysis--all have been put to such evangelistic use. Now
we are to become an educated nation by the simple process of everyone
educating everyone else. Education is like reform, it is something
which is always good for other people. There is much talk about adult
education and there are many conferences. But I have not attended a
conference for the discussion of this subject in which anyone spoke
of adult education as his own pursuit of knowledge. And as with most
gospels, we are in such a hurry to save souls that we would begin
proclaiming the new salvation to the nation before pausing to find out
what education is.
Education has one thing in common with religion. One must come to it
with clean hands and a pure heart or one can never know the secret
power of it. This is as true of a nation as of an individual. As a
people we have certain traits which may be praiseworthy in themselves,
but are distinctly hostile to the work of education. I will enumerate
them and then briefly indicate their element of hostility. They
are, first, our genius for organization; second, our well-known
utilitarianism; third, our cleverness in finding shortcuts to the ends
we seek; and fourth, our tendency to make propaganda.
The American way of doing things is to proceed to organize them. Our
genius for organization is probably our most generally recognized
national characteristic. It has given us such prestige as we enjoy
among the nations of the earth. Ours is the land of the Woolworth
Building, the Ford factories, the Anti-saloon League, Rotary, the Ku
Klux Klan, and the college cheer leader. In organization there is power
and there is efficiency, as seen in the success of our industries.
Labor, politics, morals, religion, charity have all followed the
same course. In fact a man gains recognition in this country only by
virtue of his membership in some power-seeking group. He who remains
unorganized is lost. And without a chairman, a committee, an executive
secretary and a press agent no human interest can survive. We simply do
not know what to do with it or how to think about it.
Organization, which is instrument or means, tends to become an end in
itself. This is the fate of most organized causes; a movement arises
with its standardized labels and values, its stereotyped mannerisms,
its rigamarole. Success is estimated in terms of material effects,
tangible results, numbers and power. The organizer takes precedence
over those who possess the interest which it is his task to serve.
When a man becomes a labor organizer, he stops work. Many university
presidents are not themselves teachers or even scholars. They are
good organizers, and with very much the same methods and standards
of value one could as well organize a labor union or an insurance
company. This is no criticism of the college president. His practical
ability is requisite of modern conditions. But ways of thinking and of
feeling are elusive and essentially personal, and when the attempt is
made to institutionalize them they vanish and a lifeless imitation is
substituted. You may as well try to organize the weather as to organize
faith, hope and love. “Organized charity” is almost a contradiction
in terms. Organized religion is a garden of artificial flowers, badly
faded too. The spiritual life of the race was carefully weeded out long
ago.
To know the effect of organization upon education, one need only attend
a convention of the National Educational Association, or familiarize
oneself with the public school system anywhere. The system supplants
education. The present interest in adult education is in part a protest
against the system. The thirst for knowledge is nowhere more genuine
and healthy than in such groups as those which attend The People’s
Institute of New York and other educational centers where learning
is pursued with a minimum of organization. In such places people who
desire further knowledge of some subject in which they are interested
come together, voluntarily, and their only basis of association is
their common intellectual interest. There is no cult or “movement”;
there are no promoters for there is nothing to promote. There are
no ulterior ends to serve and there are no outside influences or
regulations save those necessary to insure honest scholarship and
competent instruction. Many adult students would resent any attempt at
further organization.
There is in existence at the present time a World Association for adult
education, and there was recently formed an American Association.
But these associations have no ambition to guide or control or to
standardize. Nor are they equipped to do so. One of the greatest
services that such an association, made up of teachers and students,
could perform would be to work to prevent the diversion of the present
interest in popular education to ends that are not educational.
“Adult Education” is becoming a slogan, a phrase to capitalize, a
label to attach to various activities which have hitherto borne other
brands,--Americanization for instance, or social work, or community
organization, or reforms and propagandas of one sort or another. Much
that is now labeled Adult Education has a curiously familiar look.
There are faces one has seen before somewhere in other climes that then
enjoyed the sunshine of popular interest. Praiseworthy enterprises
no doubt, and not less praiseworthy is the somewhat tardy discovery
that the organizers have all along been speaking the prose of adult
education without knowing it.
The danger is that persons with long experience in promoting and
administering many things may also conceive of each educational task
as primarily one of organization. In a recent conference on adult
education in a New England state, an enthusiastic public school
administrator in a burst of oratory proposed that adult education be
made compulsory. Another called attention to the appalling extent of
illiteracy, particularly as regards the use of the English language,
and urged that adult education be promoted as a preventive of crime.
A third, a dean in an eastern college, insisted that adult education
at once be departmentalized; graded, I suppose, into its primary,
secondary, collegiate and post-graduate branches. Nothing has yet
been said about an adult kindergarten, though doubtless many people
could profit by attending such an institution. Perhaps the associated
kindergartens have not yet discovered the fact that they also have been
engaged in adult education.
We shall be disappointed if it is our hope to send the grown-up
population of the country back to Public School to receive still more
of the thing that caused many of them to leave. One of the leading
educators in America recently asked a group of teachers whether any
among them were so well satisfied with what they had accomplished in
their own sphere that they could wish to extend their work through the
adult years.
It is very difficult for the man of the system to think of education
itself, he is too much preoccupied with gradations, requirements,
discipline, reports, with seeing that a given minimum of identical work
is done by all in a given time. He thinks in terms of buildings and
equipment, submission to authority, conformity to herd opinion, service
to the state. All or at least some of these things are necessary, but
it is obvious that they do not constitute an education. This lesson
America has got to learn. There can be no quantity production of the
things of the spirit.
Another national trait which influences our education is our
utilitarianism. I do not use this term in the sense that it was used by
those philosophers who held the principle of the Greatest Happiness.
I refer to that in us which is spoken of as “Yankee shrewdness.”
Except in politics and religion, we are a sensible people. And by
sensible I mean--and most Americans would agree--practical. We can be
very efficient when we wish to,--that is, when there is anything to
gain by it. We are straightforward, and except in matters concerning
which we prefer to deceive ourselves, not easily taken in. Whatever we
profess, we are born pragmatists. Our first question about anything is
‘what good is it’, that is, what use is it? We demand results and we
get them. We get things done because our philosophy of life is one of
action, and our prevailing ethical standard is one of service. In the
solution of a practical problem, and most problems to which we give our
attention are practical, we pride ourselves on our directness. We come
to the point. We dispense with the unnecessary, the ornamental, the
traditional. It is a valuable trait.
But things sometimes have meanings other than that of usefulness. There
are values which can not be measured in terms of money or personal
advantage, or of time lost or gained, or of industrial efficiency.
Health for instance is good not merely because the healthy man can
do more work; it is good for its own sake. Yet people are frequently
advised to guard their health for strictly economic reasons, and
practical people have the habit of showing us the cost of disease,
presenting statistics of labor-time lost, estimating the loss to the
community as so many thousands of dollars annually.
I have known people to take a like utilitarian view of human
relationships, making friends for the sake of commercial and social
advancement, furnishing their houses, selecting their motor cars and
even their clothes with the view to keeping up their credit at the
bank. Many a man openly says that he belongs to certain clubs, and
sometimes one even joins a church, for business reasons. How much the
practical man misses is evident from the fact that it never occurs to
him that there are other reasons for doing these things.
Practical men love to philosophize about the value of education. When
I was a student I once rode up to the college with a farmer who was
passing the campus on his way home from town. He informed me in no
uncertain terms that he had no use for that institution. It irritated
him to see all those “young loafers” wasting their time learning Latin
and Greek and lawn tennis. Not one of them, not even the faculty, knew
how to do anything; he had recently tested them out. He had asked the
professor of Greek how many feet of lumber could be sawed from a log
twenty-three inches in diameter and twenty feet long, and the professor
did not know.
The farmer’s point of view is now that of many modern institutions of
learning. Educators are determined to give people the knowledge they
need for success in life and work. Courses are offered in scenario
writing, millinery, salesmanship. Whether courses are anywhere offered
in paper hanging--with credit toward the bachelor’s degree, I do not
know. But it is held that as thinking is really part of acting, only
that knowledge is real which can be put in operation. There is a truth
in this statement if one takes a sufficiently broad view of activity.
But the tendency is to make an easy and crude distinction between
knowledge which is useful, and that which is merely “ornamental.” This
distinction does not always hold. Knowledge may be like art, it may
have values which are more than use or ornamentation. Dr. Horace Kallen
divides values into economic values and æsthetic values. Economic goods
are those which are valuable because they are the means of getting some
good other than themselves. Aesthetic goods are those which have value
in themselves. Art is excellence. Education is the art of making living
itself an art. It is the achievement of human excellence; it transcends
both the useful and the ornamental. It is a way of life, just as truly
as the religious life is a way of life, or the moral life, or the
single life.
People motivated by a narrow utilitarianism do not really desire
education. They are quite content with a vulgar substitute--if it
pays. Education does not transform them; they tend to transform it
after their own likeness. That many are seeking “education” from
such motives is evident. One has only to study the advertising pages
of the popular magazines to note the kind of appeal that is made to
induce the ambitious to enroll in certain correspondence schools. The
prospective student is given the promise that if he will subscribe for
certain courses he may some day sit in the boss’s chair, and associate
with the big men at the top who do real things. Usually there is an
alluring picture of these big men at their desks, thinking great
ideas; a picture which gives about the same notion of the lives of the
successful as one sees in the motion pictures. Sometimes the picture
is of two men one on either side of the manager’s desk. One stands
meekly, hat in hand, dressed as a laborer. On his face are the marks of
sorrow, humility, hunger. The other man has the look of the typical
“go-getter.” The latter is seated; he is evidently giving an order.
Such a picture is not intended to be a comment upon the inequalities
of our industrial system. The reader is informed that both men started
at the bottom, that one improved his mind and his opportunities, the
other’s is a wasted life.
Such advertisements are typical, and are worthy of note because they
indicate something of the nature of the prevailing American interest in
education. Here is an illustration of a domestic scene: The man stands
at the door dejected. He has just been discharged from his position,
and has come home to tell his wife. She sympathetically replies that he
ought long ago to have bought that course of lessons. Or she consoles
him with the question, “Why is it that all the others have gone ahead
and you have not?”
By contrast there is a series of invitations to enter the temple of
knowledge in which a wife is portrayed leaning affectionately over
her husband’s shoulder. He holds a pay envelope in his hand and says,
“I am making real money now.” It is well, when telling people of the
advantages of education, to give them an idea of the conversation which
takes place in the homes of the cultured.
But that anyone should seriously enter upon a course of study of
the world’s classics in order that he may impress people with his
knowledge, appear genteel, make himself attractive to women or gain
entrance to an exclusive social set, is, I believe, a distinctly
modern contribution to educational theory. There recently came into
my possession half a shelf of little old books bound in leather.
They contain a translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey, some novels
of Fielding and Smollet, and a book or two of seventeenth century
religious meditations. The volumes are discolored with age and are worn
with much reading, broken bindings are carefully repaired with hand
stitching and torn pages pasted together by someone who prized and
reverenced their content. They are part of the small library of a New
England farmer of the early years of the Republic, who read his books
by his kitchen fireside when the day’s work was done, who lived with
them for years, and found in them a perpetual source of interest and
wisdom and a refuge in an existence of loneliness and toil. Imagine
anyone trying to sell that man a work of art with the promise that a
casual reading of it would enable him to appear more cultivated than he
really was.
Today a much advertised and in fact admirable selection of classic
literature is offered with precisely this appeal. A full page display
appears in the Sunday papers depicting a gaudy dining-room with three
people conventionally dressed for dinner seated at the table. There are
two men and a beautiful woman. She is talking to the man on her right,
and is evidently fascinated with his brilliant conversation. The man
on the left sits dumb and miserable and unnoticed; he can not join in
such sophisticated and scintillating discussion. We are informed that
the poor man has neglected to read his fifteen minutes a day. It is to
this sort of thing that popular utilitarianism, aided and appealed to
by commercialism, would divert a hesitating interest in education.
Even in the best of educational institutions the utilitarian point of
view with its emphasis upon a narrow efficiency has its dangers. It is
the source of that specialization which crams the student’s head full
of information concerning one subject, leaving him in ignorance of all
else and hence unable to gain a proper perspective of the knowledge
that he does possess.
In “Science and the Modern World,” Whitehead says
“The modern chemist is likely to be weak in zoölogy, weaker still
in his general knowledge of the Elizabethan drama, and completely
ignorant of the principles of rhythm in English versification. It
is probably safe to ignore his knowledge of ancient history. Of
course I am speaking of general tendencies; for chemists are no worse
than engineers, or mathematicians, or classical scholars. Effective
knowledge is professionalised knowledge, supported by a restricted
acquaintance with useful subjects subservient to it.
This situation has its dangers. It produces minds in a groove. Each
profession makes progress, but it is progress in its own groove. Now
to be mentally in a groove is to live in contemplating a given set of
abstractions. The groove prevents straying across country, and the
abstraction abstracts from something to which no further attention is
paid. But there is no groove of abstraction which is adequate for the
comprehension of human life....
The dangers arising from this aspect of professionalism are great,
particularly in our democratic societies. The directive force of
reason is weakened. The leading intellects lack balance. They see
this set of circumstances, or that set; but not both sets together.
The task of coordination is left to those who lack either the force
or the character to succeed in some definite career.... The point is
that the discoveries of the nineteenth century were in the direction
of professionalism, so that we are left with no expansion of wisdom
and with greater need of it. Wisdom is the fruit of a balanced
development. It is this balanced growth of individuality which it
should be the aim of education to secure.”
A philosophy which reduces learning to mere efficiency, makes of
education only a means to something other than personal development.
It sees each good as an economic good, a means only, making everything
exist only for the sake of something else to be obtained. But there
are goods which exist for their own sakes and one such good is human
excellence.
In the words of Dr. L. P. Jacks, “The civilization of power aims at
the _exploitation of the world_, which is thought of as a dead or
mechanical thing, existing that men may exploit it. That of culture
aims at the _development of man_, thought of as a citizen of a universe
which can be loved, enjoyed and reverenced: education being the name of
the process which leads him to love, enjoy and reverence it.”
Another and even more serious danger is our passion for shortcuts.
Business prospers by rapid turnover. Practical men demand quick
results. We are an impatient people, always in a hurry. We have not
time for the tedious labor processes necessary to produce well-made
articles of handicraft. Consequently we have learned to be satisfied
with hastily and cheaply made commodities which somewhat resemble the
real articles and will do just as well--for the time being. Why should
we not buy cheap furniture, when we expect to move every first day of
October? Why not wear garments made of shoddy, when everyone knows
the fashions will change even before shoddy can be worn threadbare?
Why erect buildings that will stand for centuries in cities where
everything is torn-down and rebuilt in a decade, and even churches
move about following the shifting elements of the population which
constitute their membership? Just why we are all moving about in such
a hurry no one knows. Some people think that this restless haste is
progress. Whether it is or not, it is certainly modern.
But something of the shoddiness enters into the minds and hearts of
men, when shortcuts are sought in matters of mental growth which are
essentially processes of slow maturing. Education requires time. The
only time wasted is that spent trying to save time. There should be no
haste or crowding or cramming. Mastery of any subject requires years of
familiarity with it. The formal training one receives in an institution
is but the introduction. Most people never get beyond a mere bowing
acquaintance with knowledge.
A prominent American manufacturer, so we are told, once made the
statement that if he wished to know anything he would employ an expert
to tell him about it in five minutes. Among workers in adult education
there is a demand for easy text books, primers which will give to
people in a few pages and in words of one syllable the essentials of
philosophy, psychology, literature and natural science. Simple and
clear statement is always desirable. No author really knows his subject
matter until he can “talk United States” in presenting it. But that
is another story. People who can read nothing more profound than the
tabloid papers are a menace to education. They only retard the progress
of any class they enter.
Yet there is a wide demand for tabloid information. We like outlines
of history, psychology, philosophy; primers of relativity; ABC’s of
atoms. Such books have value only for the student who after reading
them consults the original sources. But what people want is education
without effort, ready-made education. I recently saw an advertisement
in which there was offered for sale “a whole library in one volume.”
Another advertisement offers “The Essentials of a Liberal Education;
Twenty Centuries of thought on your Library Shelf,”--one shelf is all
that is required! And in addition the publishers will provide you with
“easy reading courses.”
The following example is typical of what happens to education when
wisdom lifteth up her voice in the street. A full page advertisement
appears in a Sunday newspaper. There is a picture of two successful
business men looking at a newspaper. The article which has caught their
attention reads, “R. P. Clark Made President of Big Mercantile Corp.
Began as Office Boy 21 years ago.” Here are a few lines quoted from
their comments,
“That fellow amazes me! Do you remember when he first came to us as
an office boy?... and all the other fellows had a head start on him
with their college degrees. He must have found an unusual way to
make up for his lack of schooling--he must have found a secret means
of improving his chances both in business and society. Clark knew
how tremendously he was handicapped by his lack of schooling and he
determined to find _a shortcut to education_. And this he found in
Elbert Hubbard’s Famous Scrapbook.”
There you have it. I have never seen a more complete statement of the
average man’s idea of education. Mastery of the tricks which bring
early success; belief that there is somewhere a secret magic, knowledge
of which will immediately transform one’s personality;--the shortcut.
No appreciation of the fact that it is never information which
transforms a person, but the persistent effort put forth to acquire
it. Education is on the air, in these enlightened times one can get
it anywhere--like bootleg whiskey. It is proposed now to give adult
education by radio. All you need do to achieve scholarship is to turn
it on, close your eyes, and go to sleep. You can get it without effort,
without knowing that you are getting it, or just who is educating you.
I mentioned earlier that one of the dangers to education in America
is our weakness for propaganda. Few people know the difference
between education and advertising. The latter is commonly spoken
of as education by those engaged in it. I once knew an advertising
manager for a fruit grower’s organization. He conceived a brilliant
idea. Just as we have Health Week, Clean-Up Week, Fire Prevention
Week, he arranged in various localities an Orange Eating Week. He
told me that he could educate the public to eat as many oranges as he
chose. Press agents are everywhere busy “educating the public” for all
sorts of objects; to respect the rights of vested capital, to give
money to build cathedrals, to vote a straight party ticket. I once
attended a banquet given by an organization of manufacturers. There
I met a splendid-looking elderly gentleman and was told that he was
the attorney for the organization. As I had never before seen him, I
inquired if he had offices in New York. My informant said, “Oh, no, he
lives in Washington. His job is to educate Congress.”
In spite of all this popular interest, or perhaps because of it, the
cause of education is in a bad way. It is dangerous to encourage
people to think they are educated when they are not, or to believe
they are acquiring it when they are in fact getting something else.
Much that passes for adult education serves only to make people more
superficial and opinionated than they were before. It is very doubtful
if the general level of our intellectual life has been raised by such
knowledge as the public has gained. The public can read and we have
with us the Hearst papers and the tabloids. Literacy has placed the
bulk of the population daily at the mercy of the propagandist and the
press agent. With libraries and colleges and high schools everywhere,
and after a century of science, vast sections of the population can be
swept by such movements as the Ku Klux Klan and Fundamentalism. State
after state prohibits the teaching in its schools of such scientific
knowledge as will lead to a belief in evolution. Crazy reform,
fantastic religious innovation, political foolishness and unbalanced
partisanship may at any time sweep over the country. Intelligence in
this country makes a poor showing in competition with quackery and
complacent ignorance for popular leadership.
It is common to lay the blame for the present state of affairs at the
door of the schools and colleges. Without doubt they must accept some
measure of responsibility in the matter. In many instances the only
alternative to a general slump in standards of scholarship has been a
narrow academic pedantry. There has been much yielding to the pressure
of popular prejudice, much display of conventional morality as a
cover for second-rate educational activity. Faculties are well aware
how little a student may know and get through college. The colleges
themselves seem to have participated in the general cheapening of
education by their generosity in granting honorary degrees. Almost any
one who is successful in business or prominent in politics becomes a
“Doctor.” Erasmus in the fifteenth century, even though he had already
become probably the leading classical scholar of his times, studied
and taught at Paris for nine years before he was granted his doctor’s
degree. When the late Mr. Bryan threatened to print all his college
degrees on his card, in answer to the repeated statement that he was an
ignoramus, the joke was really on the colleges.
But too much is demanded of institutions of learning. Large numbers
of students come to them with no background of cultural tradition,
and they return to an environment which is distinctly hostile to
intellectual pursuits. The public clamor that some one educate us in
spite of ourselves is only another way of shouting, “We have piped
unto you and ye have not danced.” The ultimate responsibility for the
condition of education rests upon the average members of society,
and it is reducible to a moral factor. Carlyle once said that people
could only be taken in by quacks when they had a certain element of
quackery in their own souls. When multitudes regard education merely
as a shortcut to financial success, or as a device for appearing to be
something they are not, or as an instrument for converting others to
their own partisan beliefs, they will of course get the “education”
they desire.
Once I thought that ignorance was an innocent thing, a sort of
spiritual vacuum passively waiting to be filled with precious truths.
Except in children ignorance is by no means an innocent thing. It is a
very active element in human life. We must overcome strong resistances
before we may begin to learn some things. We keep ourselves in
ignorance because there are facts and truths whose existence we prefer
not to admit. The man who strives to educate himself--and no one else
can educate him--must win a certain victory over his own nature. He
must learn to smile at his dear idols, analyze his every prejudice,
scrap if necessary his fondest and most consoling belief, question his
presuppositions, and take his chances with the truth. The greater the
need of education, the stronger the resistance to it.
Whether the present increase of interest in education is to be an empty
gesture depends upon whether the thing demanded is really education.
There is no one right way, and certainly each age with its special
needs and peculiar industrial and cultural environment should make its
own contribution to educational achievement. But there is something
which belongs to no special time and to all times, a way of approaching
our tasks or valuing experiences. No one who is merely a creature of
his own times is really educated. There is conceivable a world in
which,--great as are the historical accidents that separate them--a
Socrates, or a Plato, or a Cicero, or an Erasmus, a Voltaire, a Goethe,
a Huxley would be at home. Much as they differ, there is yet something,
which the educated have in common, a quality of spirit, something that
may not be defined, but that right-minded people recognize. We shall
strive from various avenues of approach to envisage it, for to miss it
is to miss all. It is the meaning of a liberal education.
CHAPTER II
LIBERAL EDUCATION VS. ANIMAL TRAINING
In a sense no living person is yet educated, for the learning process
is never completed. But there must come a time when the process results
in some differences in behavior. Often these differences seem to be
small and irrelevant, amounting merely to added social grace or more
correct use of language. Something more than this must differentiate
the educated from the uneducated or so much human energy would not be
expended in the effort to get education.
When we inquire what the difference is, we find there is much
confusion. In the process of education knowledge is acquired. Many a
person’s education consists of what he has learned. May one possess
much knowledge or information and remain uneducated? I know a physician
who has great skill and wide professional information, yet he is
essentially vulgar in his tastes and enjoyments and bigoted in his
human relationships, and his judgments concerning most things are
narrow and hasty and are determined largely by passion and prejudice.
You feel that his learning has never become integrated with his
personality. It is a property annexed to his estate over which he is
an absentee landlord. It has made no changes in his general habits of
thought and behavior.
There are people whom no one would think educated, who yet have an
astounding amount of information. They know all about race horses, or
bridge, or baseball scores, or stocks and bonds. Many have a knowledge
of such things which may be greater both in range and accuracy than
that which some professional scholars have of their special subjects.
Shall we say then that some kinds of knowledge have educational value
and that others have not? But why should not all knowledge be equally
education? Is there a psychological reason for the alleged difference
or is the exclusion of some kinds of knowledge the result merely of a
conventional attitude? Our discussion of education resolves itself into
a philosophical problem.
The issue of practical education versus the so-called cultural comes
up whenever people are interested in the subject. Partisans of the
latter type of learning are inclined to look down upon the former. They
say it is not education but only skill and efficiency. They hold that
education is scholarship and properly has to do with such subjects as
the classics, the humanities, philosophy, etc., which discipline the
mind and ennoble the spirit. This is the traditional view.
Those who take the opposite view ask what earthly purpose can useless
and sequestered learning serve? They are suspicious of education for
“refinement” or the “genteel tradition.” Is it not the aim of the
pursuit of knowledge to enable one to do something, to attain mastery,
to equip the mind to function well in an environment which demands
activity of us all? Is not anything well learned culture? An excellent
statement of this point of view can be found in Huxley’s lectures on
education.
There has been much discussion of this question in the universities
and colleges. There are those who deplore the decline of interest in
the classics and philosophy. They say that institutions of higher
learning are becoming mere “intellectual cafeterias,” that the change
from classical education to an elective system embracing all sorts of
vocational courses is a distinct loss, inasmuch as the knowledge so
acquired lacks coordination and balance, while specialization crowds
out the general and cultural subjects that form the foundation of
education.
On the other hand, why should not a University teach anything
that people wish to know? There was once resistance to including
the sciences, chemistry and physics and biology. The liberalizing
effect and cultural value of these subjects is now recognized, and
their usefulness is a social gain. Then why not domestic science,
agriculture, mechanics, business methods? What is wrong with the
schools of business at Harvard and Columbia?
A similar issue exists in secondary education. It is often said that
high schools pay too much regard to college entrance requirements,
since only a small portion of graduates expect to continue their
education. The students have gained only a most superficial
introduction to the classics and have learned nothing practical.
Schools of trade, commerce, and of technology are increasing in number
and the movement for such training is guided by principles of education
very different from those of the classical tradition.
Those of us who are interested in adult education meet the same
problem. Writing of worker’s education Dr. Horace M. Kallen says,
“... The complexity of the tasks of any union official has grown so
great, their variety so considerable, that it is no longer possible
for an official merely to pass from the worker’s bench to the
official’s desk and completely discharge his duties.... Schools
would have to be provided analogous to the schools of business
administration maintained in the colleges.... Out of the instruction
there would in the course of time emerge a communicable permanent
record, on which the necessary accessories of books could be built.
Such a school of officials would be a nucleus from which the
educational process could ultimately radiate into every shop.
“Labor education would finally thus become conversant with control
rather than escape. In such a conversancy more and more of the
energies now seeking relief in the vapors of the social mechanisms
of escape, would find satisfactory enchannelment in the technique of
control.
“It is the essential function of labor education to envisage, to
forecast and to enable this transition. The various arts would then
develop no longer as compensations against, but as expressions
and prophetic fulfillments, as criticisms and mitigations of,
the processes of this movement; they too would more largely be
coterminous with industrial life.”
Dr. Kallen would probably not go so far as to say that the sole aim
of Labor Education is to equip the members of the working class
with such knowledge as will enable them to master the industrial
environment and change the social system. But there are those who hold
such a view, just as there are those who hold that the worker should
receive only such education as will make him a more competent workman.
Both views, one held by extreme radicals, the other by conservative
capitalists, have in common the belief that education for workers is
purely practical training. “Cultural” subjects are sometimes studied,
and there is a lively demand for them, but the tendency is to regard
this interest as an “escape” from reality into a world of fanciful
contemplation and mere verbal exercise. It is an intellectual luxury,
a form of entertainment or inspiration to which a worker is entitled,
but it is an interest which is a little under suspicion of being
“bourgeois.”
Hence in all phases of education, this issue is debated. The issue
is inevitable in a time like the present, with a classical tradition
surviving in an industrial civilization. Have we any need in the modern
world of cultural traditions which have their origin in antiquity?
Should we or could we dispense with all educational values except those
which are coterminous with the present industrial situation?
Wherever such an issue arises, I have learned to suspect both sides. As
a rule both are based upon a common presupposition which is an error.
Here the presupposition is that the important factor in education is
the question what is to be taught, rather than the spirit of learning
itself. Education is conceived of as knowledge acquired. Attention is
fixed not on the learning process through which an individual becomes
reoriented to his world, but upon the end result, something fixed
and done, a certain amount of information stored up. Is this what we
mean by learning? Is it receiving and memorizing a given something
either cultural or practical? Or is it an adventure in any kind of
truth-seeking which changes the quality of one’s future experience
and enables one to behave not merely efficiently but wisely, with a
broad view and a sympathetic understanding of the many ways in which
men have striven to create meaning and value out of the possibilities
of human life? If this last is correct, the real question is not what
shall be learned but how and why and to what end. Is learning a venture
in spiritual freedom that is humanism, or is it a routine process of
animal training? Both cultural and practical knowledge may be reduced
to animal training--and they generally are. It is there that the issue
between them arises.
To my mind, an educated person is not merely one who can do something,
whether it is giving a lecture on the poetry of Horace, running a
train, trying a lawsuit, or repairing the plumbing. He is also one who
knows the significance of what he does, and he is one who cannot and
will not do certain things. He has acquired a set of values. He has a
“yes” and a “no,” and they are his own. He knows why he behaves as he
does. He has learned what to prefer, for he has lived in the presence
of things that are preferable. I do not mean that he is merely trained
in the conventions of polite society or the conformities of crowd
morality. He will doubtless depart from both in many things. Whether
he conforms or not, he has learned enough about human life on this
planet to see his behavior in the light of a body of experience and
the relation of his actions to situations as a whole. Such a person is
acquiring a liberal education and it makes little difference whether he
has been trained in philosophy or mechanics. He is being transformed
from an automaton into a thinking being.
The antithesis of liberal education and practical training arises in
part out of a misunderstanding on both sides of a principle stated
in Aristotle’s “Politics.” In this book there is set forth the
philosopher’s theory of education. He is seeking for his times just
what our practical educators seek for ours--to train youth to deal
masterfully with existing conditions. Unlike many moderns he sees
that such training applies to the whole personality. This is evident
for example in his discussion of music where he considers the general
psychological effects of various kinds of rhythm.
There were three important facts in the environment of the Greek youth
to which the educator had to assist the student to adapt himself.
The way in which the intelligent person faced these facts was the
meaning of liberal education in Aristotle’s time. There was first
a psychological fact. Popular myth was ceasing to function as an
explanation of the processes of nature and as a basis for the control
of behavior. Fortunately for the Greeks, no priestly class had gained
control of their spiritual life. Stories of the doings of the gods
were coming to be regarded as mere poetry, in the modern sense of the
term. Philosophers did not hesitate to subject religious beliefs to
the judgment of reason. The assertion had been made that “Man is the
measure of all things.” A spirit of intellectual freedom prevailed
that was unique in ancient times, I might say in any time. There was a
disposition to investigate, to classify natural phenomena, to speculate
upon their nature and causes. Men were faced with the necessity of
thinking their experience through to find meanings which elsewhere were
a matter of myth and folkway. Thought must be clarified and made exact
if behavior was to be guided by reason. Philosophy, which included the
beginnings of science, and education were almost the same thing,--the
search for the good life. I will discuss this point further in a later
lecture.
The second fact concerning which the Greek youth must learn to behave
intelligently was political in its nature. It was the existence of an
aristocratic democracy in which as a citizen he must participate with
important results for both himself and the state. The free citizen must
have learned to judge what is good.
The third fact which challenged the educator was sociological; it was
the existence of slavery. This institution, which in the end was one
of the causes of the breakdown of ancient civilization, seemed to be
perfectly natural to the philosopher. Aristotle thinks that some people
are slavish by nature. He has no thought of educating such persons,
though they may be trained to perform their tasks well. All should be
so trained that they may live happily and well in the stations in life
where they are. As most mechanical labor was performed by slaves, and
by hirelings whose social status was not very different from that of
the slave, the Greeks candidly despised mechanic arts. Knowledge of
them was thought to be a slavish kind of skill. Aristotle likewise
looked down upon trade and commerce as debasing the mind, just as hard
labor was thought to demean the body. The free man must be so trained
that his privileges, his leisure and authority over others would make
for general human happiness. This education of the free man was called
“Liberal Education.” It was the education of a leisure class. It was
a training for leadership and responsibility: not a mere initiation
into the idealogy of an exploiting class, together with the passwords
current in exclusive circles. Neither did it mean--at least for the
ancient Greek--the accumulation of dead and inconsequential knowledge
the only purpose of which was a pedantic display of erudition. In ages
that followed, the study of the classics tended to become something of
this sort. But this tendency marked a decline, a loss of the spirit of
liberal education as it had once existed. Athenian education, in spite
of the institution of slavery, developed men of wisdom and nobility
of spirit and civilization of interest in such numbers that ancient
Greece became the pioneer of western civilization and has remained the
inspiration and guide to men in most of their efforts to attain a life
of reason and beauty.
The fact that the liberal tradition had its origin in a society in
which slavery prevailed has left traces in education which persist
even to the present time. It is one of the things that cause people
to believe that there are different types of education proper to
different social strata. Education becomes a mark of distinction. It is
for the privileged few. It is itself a privilege and a kind of vested
interest. There is a higher knowledge and a lower knowledge. In part
this distinction goes back to primitive times. In early civilization,
everyone learned to do everything which the people of the tribe could
do. There was no specialization; all alike learned to fish, to hunt,
to fight, to dance. The primitive magic was associated with every
human interest and every form of activity, and for every type of
performance there was a magic formula. In time it became the special
function of the elders and medicine men to remember the formulae and
pass them on to their successors. Knowledge of the formulae became the
special privilege of the priestly class. Knowledge of labor processes
remained with the mass. The former was higher knowledge and developed
into ancient wisdom. In certain religions it led to an esoteric
intellectualism. The distinction gains emphasis among peoples like the
Hebrews, Moslems and Christians whose religion is the “Religion of the
Book.” The “Higher Knowledge” is now a divine revelation preserved
in the Sacred Book. With each of the peoples mentioned religious
scholarship becomes the basis of all learning, and dominates education.
Any accretions of general culture which are acquired and added to
theology, become tinctured by it. A priestly tradition is mingled with
the classic culture as the philosophy of Aristotle becomes elaborated
first by the Arabs, and then by the Rabbis and Christian scholars of
the Middle Ages. What Aristotle meant simply as the training of the
free man in self-mastery, in time became a professionalized “higher
learning,” a sequestered scholarship largely unrelated to the existing
environment.
Mediæval education became scholasticism. It was still a higher
knowledge set apart from other interests: it did not include
proficiency in the arts of industry, but rather in book learning and
in disputation. Liberal it was not, though it still in a sense had to
do with leisure. The good life had become one of pious contemplation.
Aristotle’s free citizen was displaced by the cenobite and the
candidate for holy orders. The life of Reason became one of skill
in the formal logic with which a given system of life and thought
was elaborated. Scholastic education made possible a high type of
scholarship; it carried very far its training in the subtleties of
argument. But it exhausted itself in a world of abstractions which it
mistook for realities. It was a discipline, not a voyage of discovery.
It was a matter of routine learning by memorizing. Its aim was to
mold the mind of the student to a fixed type. It placed him in an
environment so manipulated as to determine his habits of thinking once
for all, to give support to required beliefs. It was education by
indoctrination. It developed a type of mind which could be depended
on to do and say the expected thing on the expected occasion, one
which would hold certain desired convictions and no others. For such
an educational system, learning was accepting and retaining something
provided in advance. In this sense it was passive. Mentality was the
product of environment. Scholastic education though it dealt with
“things of the spirit” was from one point of view “animal training.”
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the scholars of the
Renaissance turned from theological education to human letters. A
revival of interest in the literature of antiquity became a sort of
passion. Those who sought through the study of Greek and Latin poets,
essayists, and philosophers to revive the spirit of the lost pagan
civilization were called Humanists. They had a philosophy of education
very different from that of scholasticism which was at that time on
the decline. There was the promise that education might again become
liberal, in the sense I use the term. Wherever the “New Learning”
was carried it had a liberalizing influence. It roused the hostility
of “obscurantists” and created a jolly row in many institutions of
learning. It awakened pagan ideas throughout Italy, even in high
ecclesiastical circles. It was bringing “refinement” to France. It
was receiving something of a triumph in Northern Europe under the
leadership of Erasmus, when the Reformation again turned general
interest to theology. What the result of this humanistic movement in
education might have been had it gone on unchecked no one can say. No
one now believes it could have been what its leaders expected. They
tried to produce an imitation in their own times of the manners and
ways of men who had lived centuries earlier in a wholly different
environment. Such an attempt of course is futile. But it is conceivable
that as larger and larger numbers of people achieved freedom in the
modern world a liberal education might have done in our day what the
Greeks sought to do in theirs--lay the foundations of freedom in a
well-considered basis of philosophy. In that event the whole of modern
education might have been vitalized by a cultural tradition which could
take into account the conditions under which modern men live and work
without degenerating into narrow utilitarianism and mere mechanical
efficiency.
What chiefly survived from the Renaissance--at least in Protestant
countries--is the traditional education, in which the ancient classics
are taught as tedious drill in language with the aim of improving the
student’s literary style, also of disciplining his soul by compelling
him to do something disagreeable, and finally so that he may be able
to repeat a few Latin or Greek phrases, remember the names of a few
ancient writers and perhaps if he has been very diligent, retain a
sufficient number of vague memory traces to enjoy a book like Professor
Erskine’s “Private Life of Helen of Troy.”
But to call this liberal education requires both humor and imagination.
Little attempt is made to get behind the language into literary
appreciation, or back of the literature to the ways and values of
ancient life and the wisdom of the ages, or to see the relation of
such wisdom to the problems of living in the modern world. Traditional
education has again become an artificial thing, aloof from reality,
a higher knowledge set apart by itself. That is, if one may call it
knowledge at all. Most college graduates after a few years do not
remember enough Latin to enable them to translate their own diplomas,
so badly are the classics taught, even as mere language drill.
Much of the spirit of scholasticism, though little of its thoroughness
and subtlety, persisted in the later Protestantism. Its influence
necessarily tended to make this teaching of the humanities formal and
innocuous. After the Renaissance, members of the nobility and gentry,
and later an increasing number of the middle class, sought higher
education for its refining influence, as an adornment rather than as a
way of life. The result is a culture that is for the most part external
to the sphere of our activities and interests, something borrowed, not
won; seldom an expression or valuation or glorification of modern life.
This also is a routine and a moulding to type. It is again a form of
animal training.
* * * * *
The development of science in the nineteenth century led to a demand
for the education requisite for modern life. The application of science
to industry created a new environment. New knowledge was required and
new mental habits must be formed if there was to be effective control.
Natural science gave men a new intellectual discipline and a new
world-view. With it came a new hope for the race. Mankind need only
learn the laws of nature and obey them to become wise and happy and
good. The new knowledge dispelled ignorance and superstition and set
the mind free. There was much criticism of traditional education, and
much faith in the liberalizing effects of scientific training as well
as in its practical results. Today scientific research occupies a most
important place in education. In many colleges and universities it has
almost supplanted the classical studies. No modern person can be really
educated without some training in scientific methods.
But science also may become mere animal training. Each science is a
profession, acquired as a technical training like learning a trade. Of
things outside his own trade the scientist may be quite ignorant and
lacking in curiosity. He is often unable to see the significance of his
specialty for knowledge as a whole. Within his chosen field of study
he may come to resent new discovery--especially if it fails to confirm
some favorite theory. In some of the sciences, notably psychology,
biology, medicine and the social sciences, there are intense partisan
divisions, often rivalling in dogmatism and bitterness, those of
theology. Each “school” develops its cult ideas, its jargon credo, and
ritual. Herd opinion holds sway over scientists as over other men.
Certain phrases and mannerisms are adopted, just as among Rotarians,
because they show that one belongs to the crowd. The psychologist
today, for instance, must boast his ignorance of philosophy and make a
noise like a biologist. The advancement of knowledge is by no means the
sole motive in scientific training; there is also much molding to type
even though this latter objective is in conflict with the spirit of
science itself.
Much contemporary educational philosophy is openly and avowedly a
technique of animal training; so much so that it quite properly
borrows its pedagogical principles from animal psychology. It would be
difficult to over estimate the importance of animal experimentation
for modern theories of education. Schools of education are deeply
interested in the psychology of the learning process. Education is
learning, and learning is habit formulation. Habits are the acquired
modes of response of men and animals. They may be organized in the
nervous tissue by any environmental factors which “condition” certain
reflexes; that is, chain certain responses to given stimuli. It is
possible for an animal experimenter or an educator of children to
organize the environmental situation in such a manner that definite
systems of desired responses may be regularly obtained whenever a
stimulus of a certain kind is given. A simple and well-known experiment
which will serve to explain what we mean by the conditioned reflex is
that of Pavlov. A hungry dog when shown meat secretes saliva. At the
time the dog sees the meat a bell is rung. This is repeated a number
of times until the dog will secrete saliva at the sound of the bell,
without the presence of the meat stimulus. The saliva response, induced
by the bell stimulus, is the conditioned reflex.
It is said that all learning takes place after this fashion. An animal,
a cat, may be placed in a cage, the door being so arranged that escape
is possible only when the cat strikes a certain latch. After a period
during which the cat makes all sorts of frantic random movements, the
successful movement finally occurs and the cat escapes. The experiment
is repeated and perhaps the period of futile activity will not be so
long as at first. After a number of trials the cat will give up the
random movements and at once unlock the door. The gradual shortening of
the interval of time required for the desired response may be plotted.
It is then called the animal’s “learning curve.”
Such curves may also be made of human learning processes. It is said
that there is no essential difference between this animal learning and
our own learning whether it be to swim or play tennis, or to memorize
a poem, or solve a problem in algebra, or to master the technique of
a profession. One’s education thus consists wholly of one’s organized
systems of responses, or habit patterns. We speak of education
as the development of personality. But from this point of view
personality is nothing but the sum total of an individual’s conditioned
reflexes:--that is, it is merely the manner in which the organism has
been taught to work. One eminent Behaviorist among the psychologists
compares personality to the running of a gas engine.
I will not enter upon a psychological discussion of this view of
education, except to say that the method of animal training which is
taken for granted is open to serious criticism. The theory proceeds
on the assumption that _insight into the situation_ is not necessary
to learning. The cat in the cage hits upon the successful gesture as
a matter of pure chance. After a number of experiments, each said to
place the animal in an identical situation, the successful action
becomes “over determined,” and fixed as a habit. It is doubtful whether
such training is learning at all. The animal--and conceivably the human
being--need never take in the situation. The successful art, the more
this learning process is perfected, degenerates into a mere gesture,
related to the event in a purely external and arbitrary manner. It is
difficult to see how educational methods guided by such a theory could
do much to train the student in habits of independent judgment.
Professor Wolfgang Köhler spent four years studying the intelligence
of apes at the anthropoid station in Tenerife. His experiments with
these animals followed a procedure quite the reverse of that we have
been discussing. He arranged his experiments so that there could be
no chance and no routine, so that the situation as a whole implied a
definite action on the part of the animal, an action which would be
natural to it once it gained insight into the situation. From simple
tasks he moved to more complex ones, always keeping the moment of
insight as the crucial factor in the experiment. An ape is placed in a
cage and fruit is put outside beyond the animal’s reach. A stick has
also been placed within reach. After vain attempts to reach the fruit
with its hand, the ape suddenly sits quietly looking the situation
over: it looks from the fruit to the stick, then seizes the latter and
pulls in the fruit. Later the animal is required to choose between a
long stick and a shorter one, then two sticks are put within reach
which must be joined before success may be attained.
From such tasks the animal is led on to those which finally test the
limitations of its insight. So far as I know no use has yet been made
of such psychological study of animal learning by our educators. But
if we must resort to animal psychology in order to understand the
processes of human learning it would seem that Köhler’s methods would
be more suggestive to the educator than those which assume that the
learner is throughout an automaton without understanding.
The so-called “new psychology” has filled modern education with
confusion. Fads and fancies of all sorts prevail, each with its
psychological jargon. “Progressive” experimental schools everywhere
give voice to “modern ideas.” In many such schools there is a minimum
of discipline, pupils are encouraged to take the initiative in all
things, to study what they like, and when they choose. Everything
is made as easy and as interesting as possible, and there is much
talk about permitting the student to express himself and develop
his personality. So long as we confine our attention merely to the
methods of teaching we have the impression that this “new” education
is anything but standardized. We get a different impression when we
turn to examine the ideals of scholarship, the valuations, and general
outlook on life which the newer philosophy of education accepts
uncritically. In fact very little thought is given to these matters.
The prevailing interests and trends of a democratic, industrial age are
taken as the ultimate criteria. It might almost be said that education
has come to be regarded merely as a function of the environment.
Now it is one thing to train a mind to deal effectively with its
environment and to achieve some value in the modifications which it
makes in that environment. It is a different thing to hold that mind
is the product of the environment. A well-known psychologist says that
the aim of his science is to predict and control behavior. He offers
us the conditioned reflex as the means to any desired result, and says
that if he could have full control of the environment of a given number
of children, he would permit some one to select by lot the future life
and career of each child, and he would form the mind of each according
to the chosen pattern. Our modern environmentalists have more in common
with mediæval scholasticism than they think. The aim of both is to
produce an individual who will react under all circumstances according
to a prearranged pattern.
Scholasticism, as we have seen, consisted chiefly of memory drill and
training in logic and disputation. Law and theology were sometimes
studied, but proficiency in such subjects does not in itself mean
that a man has acquired a liberal education. He may only have learned
to do the conventional trick when the expected signal is given,
much like a trained dog in a circus. The same must be said of much
modern professional training. The scholastic spirit haunts the legal
mind to this day. Also it is possible--perhaps usual--for one to
study medicine, and never once get an idea of what medicine means to
the scientist. Most people educated by school teachers and college
professors are in fact trained in this way. Think of what passes for
moral and religious training. With respect to the most important
questions in life, people have been so “conditioned” that they do not
try to solve problems as they arise, but to say and do the expected
thing on occasion. I once heard a professor in a theological seminary
instruct his class in the art of visiting the sick. The students were
busy copying in their note books the speeches which it is correct for
a pastor to make on such occasions. The following is typical of such
instruction. “As you enter the sick-room it is well to say When God
puts a man down on his back, it is so that he may look up into Heaven.”
In such habit formation, learning is mere repetition. There is nothing
of independence of judgment, no reflection on ends, no development of
the capacity to deal with new situations. The better one is trained the
more automatic one’s behavior becomes. And here we see the limitations
to much so-called practical education,--“education for work and for
life.”
Yes, but do we live simply to do things and to serve, to perform,
however well, the tasks required by our times? Is all the world a
stage, and are men merely actors who have learned well or poorly the
lines written for them by someone else or dictated by necessity? And
is there to be no understanding of the meaning of the part we play, or
of the drama as a whole? Is no one through his education to contribute
something original to the drama of life?
It seems to me that the animal training theory rests upon two
presuppositions, both of which are wrong. The first is that the mind
consists of what it has learned, that is, that it is the product
of environment. This is really not a psychological doctrine, but a
metaphysical assumption. It is the mechanist theory; an idea which
works well as scientific method, but which leads to false conclusions
when taken as a description of ultimate reality.
The second presupposition is a by-product of present-day industrial
democracy. It is that education is a means to efficient service, with
its rewards, getting on, general prosperity, etc. But is industry
the end and aim of our existence? It is said that man if he is to
be happy must be able to express himself in his work. I would not
dispute this statement, but it is important to consider what it is
that finds expression in one’s work. If work, in addition to being the
means to some material end or bodily good, is also to be a form of
self-expression, then the point of interest is the kind of selfhood, or
quality of experience expressed. Then work exists for education, not
education for work.
Something is possible to mankind, which transcends work and by which
work itself is valued. As mere craftsmen we lose the sense of what
good workmanship is and become the blind slaves of necessity or of
desire the moment that education ceases to be the goal of labor. I
do not mean merely that we learn by doing. That is the way animals
learn and it is all they learn. By repeated performance an individual
learns how to do a task, but he does not thereby learn what to do, nor
why it is done. Education has to do with insight, with valuing, with
understanding, with the development of the power of discrimination,
the ability to make choice amongst the possibilities of experience and
to think and act in ways that distinguish men from animals and higher
men from lower. The ancients thought of education as the attainment of
the virtues, wisdom, courage, temperance, justice. It is the pursuit
of that knowledge which gives self-mastery. It is an interest which
is never exhausted, but grows always broader and richer. It consists
not in learning tricks but in developing ourselves. It is a victory
won in some secret chamber of the mind which gradually transforms the
whole personality and reveals itself as an indefinable quality in
every word and act. It is a spiritual awakening; and if this awakening
does not come, a person is not being educated however much he knows.
I think it is the inability to win this psychological victory, or the
disinclination to make the effort necessary to it, that accounts for
the fact that some people cannot be educated. Though the change in
the quality of the personality is indefinable, it is a very concrete
fact in human life. Its presence is evident in the work of writers as
different otherwise as Sir Thomas More, Galsworthy, Anatole France,
Jonathan Edwards, Henry Adams, etc. There is a quality of the educated
mind which may best be described as a kind of sincerity, and conversely
the outstanding trait of ignorance is that of clever insincerity. The
pathetic thing about the wrongly educated,--those who are trained
merely to produce an effect, or get results, is that in the deeper
human relationships they seldom know what sincerity is. Education is
the antithesis of vulgarity.
Directly and immediately, it is useless. It is a kind of living which
is of value for its own sake, a personal achievement which possesses
intrinsic worth. It is not _for_ anything. To subject it to an ulterior
end--citizenship, efficiency, the economic emancipation of the working
class, increased income; or to educate people for “character,” or to
perpetuate a religious faith, or any other purpose however good, is to
make education a means to something quite irrelevant. Such misuse shows
that people are not interested in their education but in something
else. Education, the development of people, is not a means, it is
itself the true end of civilization.
While education is not _for_ anything, indirectly it improves
everything that people do. Make education the aim and meaning of
living, and all becomes different. Experience has a new center of
gravity. Facts fall into new and more significant perspective. Objects,
distinctions, relationships, qualities, are seen which before passed
unnoticed. And as personality does not exist in a vacuum but in
the relationships established between organism and environment, no
improvement of it can fail to make itself felt in the quality of one’s
work. Animal training may give one the means to make a living; liberal
education gives living a meaning.
CHAPTER III
LIBERAL EDUCATION VS. PROPAGANDA
Whoever is concerned about his education should be on his guard against
propaganda. He who assists in the education of another should be doubly
cautious. The temptation to convert people to our own particular
cause, movement or belief is almost irresistible. An epidemic itch for
manipulating the public has infected the whole population. Perhaps
never was the business of “selling” ideas and interests of all sorts so
common a practice or so cleverly done. Press agents, publicity experts,
advertisers and propagandists have become a pest. Much of the news is
“treated” for interests which may or may not be disclosed. Militarists,
pacifists, prohibitionists, birth controlists, social workers, business
interests, anti-vivisectionists, radicals, reactionaries and all kinds
of reformers insinuate themselves everywhere like crawling insects.
Every legislative body is over-run with lobbyists. Every government,
our own included, fights with propaganda as deadly as poison gas.
Churches have reduced even the spreading of the gospel to the level of
advertising. And to judge by the popularity of one of the vulgarest
books ever written about the founder of Christianity, a large number
of churchmen are happy to believe that Jesus Christ was the world’s
greatest salesman and business executive!
It ought not to be necessary to say that propaganda is not education.
But the confusion of the two is common. It is often very difficult
to enlist the interest of people even in their own education if the
propagandist motive is left out of it. I find that our students are
often at first perplexed. They ask me, “What party or creed or social
movement do you represent? What are you trying to convert us to?” I
have even been asked why I lecture at all, if it is not my purpose to
tell students what they should think and do. The idea of a course of
study as an adventure in truth-seeking, an investigation deliberately
planned without made-in-advance conclusions or ulterior aims, is
difficult for many minds. If no partisan motive is apparent, students
often suspect that there must be some dark and secret conspiracy.
People like to have their instructors labeled and tagged. Otherwise
they feel that they are not being given anything. They prefer to be
told what to think.
And of course everyone wishes to tell his fellows what to think. The
general interest in our neighbor’s “education” rather than our own
is responsible for much of the present confusion of education with
propaganda. This is especially true in the education of children.
Scarcely one person in ten believes children should be told the truth.
Children are credulous and easily acquire habits which become fixed for
life: hence the tendency to take advantage of their innocence and while
giving them the instruction which it is now recognized that society
owes them, to add something which certain people wish them to believe
when they grow up. Consequently there has hardly ever been a time when
education was not to some extent diverted into propagandist channels.
Governments and churches and ruling classes and commercial groups have
always sought to get their hands on the institutions for the education
of youth and utilize them for their own interests. The tendency is
universal. Radicals denounce the Fundamentalists, the capitalists and
the Catholic Church for doing this sort of thing, and then do the same
thing themselves; as for example, in the revolutionary propaganda that
sometimes passes as “worker’s education,” the socialist Sunday School,
the system of public education in Soviet Russia.
The habit of speaking of propaganda as if it were education has
grown with the activities of the advertising profession and other
expert manufacturers of public opinion. Anyone with anything to sell
“educates” the public to buy his product. The word is so commonly
used for advertising that few question the legitimacy of such use. In
fact the popularity of this use of the word education has a definite
psychological cause. Many people would like to get their education
by the easy method of reading subway advertisements. It is pleasant
moreover to feel that we are being educated when we glance at the
billboards on the way from New York to Philadelphia or look over the
back pages in the Saturday Evening Post.
I once heard an editor of a farm journal boast that his paper had
educated the housewives of his state to buy cereal in packages
rather than in bulk. A recent well-written book on the psychology of
advertising by a gentleman who styles himself a “Public Relations
Counsel” explains the technique of making propaganda. The author refers
to such propagandist efforts as education, and says that the difference
between education and propaganda is this: when your side of the case is
given publicity, that is education; when your opponent publishes his
side, that is propaganda.
It is doubtful, however, if members of the advertising profession
are the worst sinners in this respect. Nearly everyone with a cause
to promote does the same. We often hear single-taxers, socialists,
patriotic societies, or vegetarians, speak of their propaganda as
education. In the report on the prohibition situation issued by the
Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, the suggestion is
made that there be a campaign of “education” in the interest of the
enforcement of the Volstead Act.
Although the educator and the propagandist are both concerned with
the dissemination of information, they have nothing else in common.
They use contrary methods and they strive for opposite goals. The
propagandist is interested in _what_ people think; the educator in
_how_ they think. The propagandist has a definite aim. He strives to
convert, to sell, to secure assent, to prove a case, to support one
side of an issue. He is striving for an _effect_. He wishes people
to come to a conclusion; to accept his case and close their minds
and act. The educator strives for the open mind. He has no case to
prove, which may not later be reversed. He is willing to reconsider,
to be experimental, to hold his conclusions tentatively. The result
for which he strives is a type of student who will not jump at the
propagandist’s hasty conclusions or be taken in by his catchwords.
To the one “learning” is passively accepting something; criticism of
the matter offered is not encouraged. To the other, learning comes by
examining. The propagandist need have no respect for the personalities
of those he manipulates. The educator must respect his student, since
the development of personality is his aim. In the end the question is
whether people are to be _used_ for purposes other than their own. This
is the sole object of the propagandist; its successful achievement is
the defeat of the educator.
Even in the service of a good cause, propaganda makes for
superficiality in both him who gives and him who receives it. The
convert has seen the light. He is on the right side. He need have
no more doubts or hesitation. Curiosity and further speculation
are no longer necessary. Reasoning henceforth can become special
pleading--mere rationalization, an array of clever plausibilities
designed to strengthen the faith and protect the devotee against the
danger that he may change his mind. He now becomes a propagandist
himself, a lay preacher as it were, whose mission in life is to convert
and uplift others. He begins to harp on one string. In his eagerness to
convince he resorts to the obvious, the thing said for effect. He is
more concerned with the force of his arguments than with the accuracy
of his statements. He is so busy with the general good that he neglects
to purify himself. With unwashed hands he breaks his bread and serves
it to his neighbors. I have seldom seen a person who has spent years
making converts, who has not lost in intellectual integrity. Emerson
noted this trait in the abolitionists of his day. It is a quality which
world menders of all types have in common. Sooner or later the passion
to convert, like any other passion over-indulged, warps the whole
personality. The propagandist becomes intemperate. He loses something
in delicacy and sense of humor. There is in his manner a mixture
of emotion and coercion and a kind of slyness. Finally from much
repetition of stock phrases the great cause itself becomes hackneyed
and professionalized. Most of the messages which men would carry to the
masses slip through the propagandists’ fingers and dribble out before
they arrive at their destination.
I have tried to make clear the differences between propaganda and
education. If I am correct, it follows that whenever the educator
becomes a propagandist he gives up his proper function. I do not mean
that a school teacher should not advocate political change or any other
reform he chooses. He is a citizen as well as a teacher, and has the
right to express his convictions, however unpopular they may be. But it
is not as a teacher that he does so. Ordinarily the public insists that
there are certain views that he may not express either in or outside
his class-room. At the same time he is required to be the advocate of
popular moral, religious and political prejudices, however erroneous
he knows them to be. Public education suffers much from this lack of
freedom, for it operates to keep independent minds out of the teaching
profession. Unless any subject may be presented and every relevant fact
discussed without fear or favor, the instruction offered students is a
cheat.
It is however in the process of teaching itself that the spirit of
the propagandist may supplant that of the educator. It is much easier
to appeal to authority than to experiment, to command assent than to
awaken curiosity, to tell the student what he must believe than to
wait for the maturing of his judgment. There are five devices commonly
in use among propagandists which may defeat the effort for a liberal
education. They are the fixation of ideas by repetition, the trick of
over-simplification, insinuation by appeal to prejudice, distortion of
fact, and coercion.
Psychology has taught the advertising profession the selling power of
mere monotonous repetition. At one of the stations of the Hudson Tube I
counted five posters all displaying the same advertisement of a certain
shaving cream. The advertiser had not leased so much space because of
extravagance, nor was he afraid that people would fail to notice his
advertisement if he displayed it on only one board. It was so large and
vivid that the passerby could easily see it. His aim was to deepen the
impression by repetition. For the same reason a flashing intermittent
electric sign on which the same letters are illuminated again and again
is more effective than one with a continuous light. Another example of
this method is the poster containing the name of a popular cigarette
together with the command, “Read this out loud.”
Advertisement of this nature makes no attempt to argue or explain or
persuade, or to call attention to the merit of the article for sale.
Many commodities in common use owe their popularity not to the fact
that people are persuaded that they are superior to a rival but because
a trade word has become fixed in memory through endless repetition.
A similar method is often used in selling ideas and movements.
Santayana says, “A confused competition of propaganda is carried on
by the most expert psychological methods--for instance, by always
repeating a lie instead of retracting when it is exposed. A formula of
this nature may not be a conscious lie, it need only be so fixed in
the mind by long repetition that it becomes compulsive. The person who
continues repeating it becomes unable to consider the facts which would
contradict it.”
Thus the religious propagandist will continue repeating an obsolete
dogma long after its untruth is a matter of common knowledge. The use
which propagandists make of rumor is another example of this principle.
During the war we saw much of this sort of thing. The wildest
fabrications were accepted uncritically; when everyone was repeating
them it seemed disloyal to question their bases of fact. In any
political campaign the editorials and speeches are made up largely of
repetitions. Popular moral ideas are psychologically similar; we call
them platitudes. In fact public discussion which is mostly propaganda
of one sort or another consists almost wholly of monotonous repetition.
Anyone who has had experience with an open forum will, I think, agree
with me that the discussion from the floor--and not unfrequently the
platform also--shows an amazing monotony of repetition. I have known
men for years to gain the recognition of the chair and repeat the
same phrases night after night, no matter what was the subject under
discussion. We love routine.
There is I believe less routine learning, less mere memory drill, in
our schools now than in former years. I doubt if many students learn
geography or history or the multiplication tables or Latin grammar
in the manner I was made to learn these subjects. However, it is
not in these subjects, which are at best the mere scaffolding of
knowledge, that humdrum does the greatest harm. It is in its failure
to stimulate genuine thinking about the important human interests that
education commonly falls short of its liberalizing function. There is
a dullness about sing-song repetition of the multiplication table or
the recital of the names of the rivers of China, but it does not equal
in monotony the uniformity with which college graduates will say the
same things about politics, the protective tariff, the labor problem,
the constitution of the United States, or the relation of commerce to
culture. I recently heard a professor, who holds an important chair in
one of our leading universities say that his institution strove not
so much for scholarship as to develop a certain type of college man.
No doubt he had in mind a desirable type of man, but any attempt to
mould a group to a single form can succeed only at the expense of the
individuality of the student. Moreover, such a goal naturally causes
the authorities to adopt methods of drill and standardization. Whenever
the aim of education is fixed in advance, it tends to propaganda and
illiberalism.
The habit of repetition develops a credulous and incurious mind. It
produces a type of person who not only accepts his beliefs second-hand,
but also tends to over-simplify any subject under consideration, and
so never get to the bottom of it as an educated mind should strive
to do. It is very convenient to stop speculation with a half-true
generalization stated as the conclusion of the whole matter. We love
big words; catch phrases are easy to remember and to repeat. Moral and
religious teachers know this, hence their use of aphorisms. One does
not stop to analyze an aphorism; it is self-evident, final.
Propagandists and advertisers are also aware of this human trait, and
they delight in making slogans for us. “I’d walk a mile for a Camel,”
“Children cry for it,” “Four out of five now lose,” are examples of a
type of advertising familiar to all. Recently an effort was made in New
York to check the “crime wave” with a slogan. A poster addressed to
potential robbers was displayed in various parts of the city containing
the words, “You can’t win.” A comparison of the number of convictions
with the number of crimes of violence would seem to indicate that this
slogan had about the same measure of truthfulness as most others.
Slogans used in commercial advertising are for the most part innocent
enough. But there are slogans used in types of propaganda which are
not innocent. I will discuss the distortion of fact later; my point
is that the type of phrase-making we are discussing tends at best to
close the mind. Every movement tends to dry up into a verbal cult
with a fixed phraseology the repetition of which seems to satisfy
the adherents’ hunger for truth. The thinking of most men consists of
little more than the repetition of the phrases which characterize the
group to which they belong. There are groups which regularly assemble
to listen to their familiar verbal formulas repeated again and again,
deriving much satisfaction from the time-worn phrases. Any deviation
from regularity or omission of any part is resented in the same spirit
that caused primitive men to hold that any deviation from the magic
ritual was sinful. It was the observation of this wide-spread trait
in many forms that led me to the conclusion that there is practically
only one soap-box speech on socialism, one address on the principles
of the single tax, one revival sermon, one type of campaign speech for
each party. At least I find that most members of any movement all say
the same thing. If one knows what kind of an “_ist_” a man happens to
be and is familiar with the ritual of that “_ism_,” one can ordinarily
predict what the man will say on any subject. Frequently propagandists
do not recognize their own principles when they hear them stated in
ordinary English.
And once the cult phrases are thoroughly learned it is very difficult
for an individual to learn anything more. This is why the teaching
of any subject should never be permitted to take on a set form, for
cult ideas reduce an issue or situation to a statement so simple that
it is a mere caricature. Subjects that require exhaustive analysis
and deep meditation or much more information than anyone possesses
are settled with amazing finality by oracular-minded people. How many
matters of vital importance are met with such phrases as “One hundred
percent American,” “My country right or wrong,” “Every Bolshevik
should be stood up against a wall and shot,” “Plenty of room at the
top,” “Reward of Merit,” “Progressive,” “Reactionary,” “The cure
for democracy is more democracy,” “Let the people rule,” “Down with
capitalist exploitation,” “Labor produces all wealth,” “The demon rum,”
“Godless evolution.”
The habit which politicians, professional reformers and other
propagandists have of appealing to popular prejudice in order to gain
adherents is a well-known phenomenon of social psychology. Every
political campaign is an orgy of this sort of thing. Mayor Hylan of
New York, when his incompetence was exposed, diverted attention by
denouncing the “interests.” In the same city a few years ago those who
were opposed to modernizing the public school system stirred up a large
section of the population with the assertion that the “Gary School” was
a Steel Trust school. During the war men were elected to office not
because of their record but according to how strenuously they professed
their Americanism and denounced alleged pro-Germans and socialists. A
“friend of the people” attacks Wall Street as a matter of course. Any
man who questions the wisdom of the prohibition laws is immediately
said to be in league with the “liquor interests.” In prohibition
propaganda effective use was made of the fact that many brewers were
of German descent. In the South the Ku Klux Klan is mainly anti-Negro,
in the Middle West it is anti-Catholic. In the East it takes on an
anti-Semitic coloring. It is by such appeals that multitudes are
marshalled and led first in one direction and then in another, always
to the temporary advantage of a group of leaders. Into all this an
ulterior purpose, a quite personal interest is often insinuated. During
the war I made a collection of advertisements in which all sorts of
articles were urged upon the purchaser with the statement that in
buying such goods the public was helping win the war.
It is obvious that whenever a crowd movement is created its propaganda
has a marked illiberal influence upon institutions of learning. During
the war public education in this country suffered seriously. A spirit
of intolerance often wholly irrelevant to the winning of the war took
possession of many educators. Eminent scientists lost their heads and
ceased to behave with that good judgment which people expect of a
scholar in a critical situation.
Such results of propaganda are not limited to times of warfare. I know
a college where the work of every department was seriously disorganized
for a semester by a religious revival in the town. The pressure of
religious prejudices upon institutions of learning in this country is
one of the most serious forces with which education has to contend.
The hostility in the West and South toward the teaching of any other
account of the origin of man than that contained in the book of
Genesis, is not new. It is merely the giving of legislative support to
religious dogma which strikes us as new. And that has also happened
many times in history. Popular religion has always watched education
with jealous eyes. However, there is one factor in the present
Fundamentalist attack upon the theory of evolution which seems to have
escaped general notice. There is revealed an attitude toward education
in general which should give us concern because it seems to be held by
many people who are not rural Fundamentalists. When those who conceived
of teaching as imparting a doctrine--let us say of special creation
or the authority of the Bible--found that students were being made
acquainted with biological science and its various hypotheses regarding
the evolution of species, they could not understand that science could
be taught in any other spirit than that of theology. They still thought
of teaching as imposing upon the uncritical student mind a system of
belief, a rival creed but still something alleged to be a final truth,
which must be accepted on authority. Persons who speak in this manner
of teaching simply do not know what education is. How could a scientist
go about teaching evolution in this way? Nobody but a propagandist
ever teaches a theory. The scientific laboratory itself is a witness
against such a philosophy of education. Here the student is exposed to
the phenomena to be studied, and to the sources of information and is
aided to discover the facts for himself and draw his own conclusions.
Science learned by any other process is a mere pretense to knowledge. I
suspect it was not the doctrine of evolution so much as permitting the
student to draw his own conclusions from the facts that most disturbed
the advocates of popular religious dogma. Yet few people saw the
issue in this light. At the Dayton trial of the instructor who broke
the statute passed by the legislature of Tennessee, chief emphasis
seems to have been laid on the issue whether after all evolution is
contrary to Genesis. Most people seem to have accepted without comment
the Fundamentalist notion of what teaching is. The whole meaning of
education is involved in this issue. Education is not the substitution
of new creeds for old. Appeals to popular prejudice will continue
to do harm to education so long as it is conceived of as “teaching”
any beliefs whatsoever. As long as students are to be indoctrinated,
naturally every group will wish its own propaganda taught.
In this connection I should say a word about adult education. Those
engaged in this branch of instruction are loud in their criticism
of the propaganda which passes for education in school and college.
Many of them have turned to adult education in order to spread some
propaganda of their own. Teachers in this field are constantly
tempted to yield to the prejudices of their students in order to
gain popularity and keep up attendance. Each type of institution or
special group has its peculiar prejudices and will insist that the
instruction given in its classes be so presented as to lend support
to its interests and beliefs. Where churches maintain classes, adult
education will tend to take on a certain color. It will assume another
in the trade union, still another when the appeal is to radicals. We
have already seen that a school of adult education may be in fact a
socialist theological seminary. Many others merely provide continued
employment for people who had been professional Americanization
propagandists in the hectic years that followed the war.
A favorite method among propagandists is distortion of fact. It
is difficult for anyone who takes an intensely partisan view of a
situation to be honest with himself or careful about matters of
fact. Respect for the truth is, I think, an acquired taste. And the
propagandist is a special pleader. There is always the tendency to
load the dice, to over-emphasize anything that lends support and to
gloss over and explain away any fact that might weaken the case. Rumor,
allegation, mere surmise, will, if it happens to be useful, to put
out as fact established beyond the possibility of doubt. An excellent
example of this practice is a statement recently issued by a committee
of one of the large Protestant denominations attacking both the
Governor of the State and the Mayor of New York. On the occasion of the
latter’s visit to the South I quote a sentence or two.
“The South will be interested to know Mr. Walker’s connection with
New York’s odorous prize-fighting game and with those elements in
New York which are doing their best to murder American standards of
morality.... Let it remember the propaganda which is systematically
organized to incite to crime in the South and West in order that the
prohibition law may be overthrown by these criminal activities....
Let it remember that Governor Smith and his friends were the first
political group in America to introduce a religious issue into a
convention of a political party, an atrocious thing to do in a
country where all religions stand on the same basis.”
Note how the impression is given that the Mayor’s alleged sympathy
with those who wish to repeal the Volstead Act is a connection with
propaganda systematically organized to incite to crime and undermine
American morals. The reference to Governor Smith is typical of much
propaganda.
This method of championing causes is so common that it is almost
impossible to get at the truth about any public question. I have very
little interest in what is happening in Russia. If I had, I should not
know what to believe. Spokesmen for both the Bolshevists and their
enemies seem to be about equally unable to tell the truth.
The pursuit of knowledge is the pursuit of the truth about something,
and since propaganda is not the pursuit of truth, its influence upon
educational institutions is illustrated by many of the text books on
American History in common use in the Public Schools. When attempts
were made to write the account of the American Revolution with
fairness to both sides and, in the light of established fact, certain
over-patriotic propagandists became much excited and thought they had
discovered a pro-British conspiracy to deliver this republic again
into the clutches of the British monarchy.
Subject matter which is even remotely associated with popular
dogmas of religion, morals, patriotism, is likely to be modified so
as to appear to be in harmony with such dogmas when presented to
students. Each religious sect has its own version of Church history.
Radicals who wish to hold the environment--hence the present social
system--responsible for human failure, are always inclined to accept
uncritically the biological doctrine of the inheritance of acquired
characters. Patriotism makes it almost impossible for students anywhere
to gain a correct knowledge of the history of their own country. The
moral interest inevitably influences the study of literature. We have
already discussed the teaching of the classics. Their educational value
consists chiefly in opening windows upon a way of life very different
from our own. It broadens our sympathy with all that is human to gain
an understanding of men who were inspired by ideals often the contrary
of those held sacred in our own parish. Yet it is just this educational
value which is commonly lost in the teaching of the classics,
especially in Puritanical communities. The least significant books of
antiquity, writings like Caesar’s Commentaries and Cicero’s political
orations, are often selected as required studies. It is not an accident
that the works most commonly studied are those least shocking to
conventionally minded people, not those which give the student the
best account of ancient civilization. Likewise in the teaching of
modern literature, there is so much expurgation, censorship, evasion,
that most students get the impression that literature is produced by
Sunday School teachers for the edification of very nice people. If, as
many believe, it is best to protect younger students in this manner,
I think they should at least be led to understand what is happening.
Otherwise they are likely to leave school convinced that their own
one-sided and somewhat infantile view of life and letters is the
correct and only possible view and so influence the public authorities
to enact legislation establishing censorships over literature and art,
designed to impose their own limitations upon everyone.
Finally when opportunity is favorable or occasion requires it, most
propagandists will resort to coercion. History has revealed this fact
again and again. It has often been said that the martyrs of today are
the persecutors of tomorrow. With the possibility of the seizure of
power in sight, methods of moral suasion become irksome; they are too
slow. Men must be forced to do what is good for them. Propaganda is
designed to gather a crowd to the support of an idea. I have shown
elsewhere that when the crowd mind appears any group will practice
coercion if it can. Hardly a generation passed after the Edict of
Milan, setting Christians free from persecution, before the Christians
themselves practiced persecution. The French Revolution set up a
guillotine in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity. New England
pilgrims of religious liberty persecuted Quakers and other “heretics.”
Radicals proclaim their faith in industrial democracy, free speech, the
brotherhood of man, and the Bolsheviks gain power by a coup d’etat, and
hold it by means of a policy of terror. Santayana says that the many
propagandas which today float in the blue sky of liberalism are only
waiting to show their true colors and resort to open attack and that
whoever is victorious will make an end of liberalism. When physical
force is not in actual use, it hides just around the corner. In much
moral suasion there is a note of intolerance and of invasion. The man
who knows he is right puts you always on the defensive.
Even commercial advertising frequently reveals this spirit. Perhaps
advertisers got the idea from the posters used by the government
during the war. We all remember the commanding figure of Uncle Sam,
finger pointed at our faces and beneath the figure the words, “_You_
buy Liberty Bonds.” Many advertisements now seek to command in such
a manner. We are ordered to buy this and that--not asked if we want
it. Or our privacy is otherwise invaded. I recently saw on a subway
platform an advertisement of soap which contained these words, “Are you
clean or only nearly clean?”
When a crowd of world reformers becomes a crusade, men do not confine
themselves to asking impertinent questions. They are not even deterred
by constitutional guaranties of personal rights. The storm rages
until it blows itself out and leaves behind only the debris of what
before had been good feeling among men. When a crusade is on--and
there are usually several going at the same time in a democracy like
ours--educational institutions are pressed into its service, and are
forced to take sides, or at best maintain a precarious middle of the
road policy. This is not the task of those interested in education.
They are not “in the middle of the road.” They are not on the trampled
highway at all. Their task, while others are wrangling over unreal
issues that today take their toll of life and tomorrow are forgotten,
is to keep the lights of civilization burning, to humanize their own
behavior with reasonableness and good taste.
As Emerson said, history has been mean: all nations have been mobs.
The populace runs after this passing cause and that popular hero. To
the populace your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of
all standards. But there is a time in each man’s education when he
arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is
suicide, that he must take himself for better or for worse. All men
preen themselves on the improvement of society and no man improves.
Society never advances, it recedes as fast on one side as it gains on
the other. Society is a wave; the wave moves forward, but the water
of which it is composed does not. Whoso would be a man must be a
non-conformist.
Such a suggestion as this at once meets serious objection. It is
contrary to the habits of this busybody age. Many will ask, how
can we have done with propaganda? We live in the age of publicity
and organization, of causes and needed reforms. Great movements
challenge our complacency and invite our support. What, without these
interests, could we live for? How could we accomplish anything for the
common good? Is not the educated person as you depict him aloof and
ineffective, a monastic sort of person who disdains the common ways
and devotes his days to idle contemplation? And have you not yourself
said again and again that intellect does not exist as a sequestered,
inactive thing or end in itself, but that thinking is a part of doing?
How then can intellect be trained in indifference to the affairs of men?
But I have not argued that one seclude himself. Is there nothing to
occupy the modern man except to stuff himself with half-truths and
regulate society? Does existence lose its value at the mere suggestion
that man mind his own business? What I have said is that a person
cannot educate himself by filling his head with propaganda.
I do think people of our age are too much devoted to causes and not
enough to their own education. Perhaps I should say that people’s
devotion to causes is too narrow, too impatient, too uncritical.
Doubtless we should serve our cause better if we stopped to look before
we leap. I am not sure that ignorance, however devoted and active, ever
accomplishes much good for mankind.
I might ask in turn, do our propagandas often get the results expected?
Look at pacifist propaganda, or the slogan about the war to end war,
look at socialist propaganda today after a half century and more of
it, consider prohibition. The intellectuals of our generation have
exhausted themselves running after this and that new sociological
magic. And there is a general feeling of frustration and futility.
Where progress has been made in our times, it has been in matters
that do not lend themselves easily to propaganda; success had been
achieved in the arts and sciences. Intellect has failed when playing at
leadership of social movements.
The ends sought by propaganda may be and often are good. But education
is also an end. We are not required to occupy ourselves with any cause
to the extent that we fail to educate ourselves. The first social
obligation of any man is his own education. I am a mere muddler and
a nuisance if I act on the principle that I have any obligations to
society that go beyond my knowledge of means and ends and of good
and evil. Social service should be a by-product of education. I do
not imagine that Socrates or Erasmus sought education in order that
they could be more useful to society. Social obligation or no social
obligation, you and I have the right to such education as we have the
native intelligence to acquire. We have that right because we are
the kind of animals we are. No cause is more important than this. Let
us serve where and when we can, but let us not surrender our mental
integrity for any man’s sake.
CHAPTER IV
LIBERAL EDUCATION VS. BOOK LEARNING
Is education something one can “get” in an institution? We are seeking
to discover what an educated person is like,--as Plato would say, to
“find” the educated man. Whether the learning process takes place
in an institution or out of it is from this point of view a matter
of small interest. I should like to picture the liberally educated
individual as a mellow amateur, competent and well-informed, but with
all natural and human, wholly at ease with his knowledge and master
of his technique; one whose thinking is play and whose mind does not
squeak as it runs along. But there frequently appears in educational
circles a professionalism that is rather formidable and terrifying.
I do not mean the specialized knowledge requisite for the so-called
learned professions. One may be highly trained professionally, and like
William James and Mr. Justice Holmes, retain the spirit of the amateur
always. By professionalism I mean a certain artificiality of manner,
bookishness, over-strictness in regard to petty rules, a disposition
to identify education with the display of just that knowledge which
the educated are conventionally supposed to possess. Many people think
of education as something “high-brow,” a fastidiousness which belongs
to the élite. There are those who give the impression that education
is a thing of books and schools and formalities; and that there is a
recognized fraternity of the finished products of the system. As proof
that one belongs to this fraternity there are degrees and credits which
show that the candidate has passed certain examinations and has done a
required amount of reading. We have seen that people may seek education
because they hope it will give them a certain prestige. I once heard
a man say, “I’d give ten thousand dollars if I only knew Greek.” I
wondered why Greek had such value in his eyes. I learned that he had
been in the company of two elderly men, one a clergyman and the other a
physician. He was humiliated because of his ignorance when the two fell
to discussing some Greek text reminiscent of college days. It never
occurred to him that he could secure a few text books and acquire this
coveted knowledge in his spare time whenever he chose to do so.
People persist in thinking that education comes to a man by virtue
of his attendance at some place where it may be “got.” We frequently
hear someone say, “I _had_ so many years of Latin,” or “I _took_
mathematics,” or “I did not _get_ much history.” Formal education,
which is book knowledge acquired in a school,--this possession which
men measure and grade and standardize,--may or may not be an aid to
general culture. The thing I mean by liberal education is too elusive
for the man with the yard stick.
With the modern theories of learning there has come some difference
of opinion regarding the educational value of books. Traditional
education consisted almost wholly of book knowledge. Knowledge of the
books written about a subject was rated as familiarity with the subject
itself.
There is a recent tendency, both within and without institutions of
learning, to skim over as many as possible of the latest books. This
leaves little or no time for the great books, knowledge of which is
essential to a liberal education. In the library of a very up-to-date
writer on sociological and economic subjects, I did not find a single
book, except a few school texts, written before nineteen hundred.
Modern writers all seem to desire to express the movements of the day.
But it is difficult to see how one’s judgment of the present can be
very sound, if one has no background of the cultural traditions of the
race. Ideas of life gained from an exclusive study of the present are
necessarily second-rate. Professor John Erskine says, “To live only
in the moment, to imagine only one’s own place was once thought to be
the fate of the stupid. We have made it the ideal of education.... No
college is liberal which trains its students to identify the excellent
or the important exclusively with the contemporary.” He says that
education should prejudice us in favor of authors who are wise, and
that there have not been many great men nor many great ideas. One may
acquire a liberal education from the reading of relatively few books.
“The Student ... ought to know Hobbes; he ought to know Pascal, and
Plato and Bacon and Homer, and Spinoza and Galileo, and Leonardo da
Vinci.”
And I would add that anyone pursuing his education ought to know
Erasmus and Montaigne, Butler’s “Hudibras,” and something of Hume,
Voltaire, Anatole France, and the best of the classic poets. This is
not a great deal of reading. It can moreover be done in a leisurely
manner, and this is important. Our modern habit of cluttering up the
mind with all sorts of second-rate, up-to-date printed matter accounts
in part for the jumpiness and hectic quality of the modern spirit. No
one seems to take time for quiet reflection any more. Everyone is too
busy keeping up-to-date, gaining a superficial knowledge of the latest
thing, and before we can pause to separate the true from the false in
it, it is already out of date and something still more “modern” is the
fashion.
There is a tendency among very modern educators to reduce book learning
to a minimum. It is said that book knowledge is only hear-say,
second-hand information. The student does not make a fact his own
so long as he must take someone’s word for it. What books tell you
prevents your finding out for yourself. You know an emotion only when
you feel it, a fact when you deal with it, a truth when you discover
it. “We learn by doing.” A leading progressive educator says, “The
school of tomorrow is going to get away from mere reciting what has
been got from books. That is, we are going to give up the notion that
the school is the place where we assign certain set tasks and the child
goes off and prepares those things and then comes back to convince us
that he has done what was required.... In the school of the future,
the child is going to live, really live. This means what he learns he
learns because he needs it then and there.”
This rather extreme form of protest against formal book learning is
really an attempt to correct the opposite extreme. We all know persons,
conventionally educated, who substitute reading for living, and the
book for reality. There are those who never talk about events or ideas,
but always quote what some book says about them, as if they believed
that work, love, joy, pain, became fit subjects of contemplation
only in print. The world of actions and things gives way to a world
of words only. Human existence becomes a sort of grown-up children’s
game of authors. Education becomes an evasion of the challenge of
real situations. Emotion and fancy are exhausted in doing nothing. It
becomes preferable to read about things than to experience them. The
individual thinks he has acquired wisdom; he merely has a taste for
reading and a good memory.
In these days when educators are frantically striving to find some new
method of teaching which will save democracy from mediocrity, it is
the habit to blame the older education for any and all intellectual
futility. I believe, however, that futile persons would be ineffective
no matter what the method of instruction. The statement quoted above
to the effect that in the schools of the future the children are going
to live and are to stop reciting required lessons and learn what they
need “here and now,” is a little like the platitude that one can learn
more out of life than out of books, a saying which always flatters the
illiterate. It seems to be thoroughly modern to believe that the best
way to get an education is to stop studying and just _live_,--whatever
that is.
I am of the opinion, however, that anyone who can learn from life can
also learn from books without spoiling his mind. There is a difference
between learning from books and merely learning to repeat passages
from them, and I had thought that in really learning from books one
was learning from life. Whether one can get more information from
books than from things depends somewhat on the books, also what it is
one wishes to learn, as well as one’s capacity to learn. Manipulation
of objects--doing--has no more educational value than repeating
words. Either may become a mere routine exercise. Education is the
organization of knowledge into human excellence. It is not the mere
possession of knowledge, but the ability to reflect upon it and grow in
wisdom. It would seem that as few people acquire wisdom from practical
experience as from books.
The high-school educated multitude, which prefers the radio to reading,
finds the tales of classic literature tedious except when presented in
the “movies,” reads history only in outline, and natural science only
when popularized in a series of ABC books, is probably correct in its
feeling that books cannot teach it much; and what it is learning from
life is manifest in the sort of life it lives. The habit of reading
good books, ability to know the good ones from the inferior, capacity
to enjoy books for the beauty and wisdom that may be found in them, are
essential parts of a liberal education. A school that implants good
habits of discriminating reading in its students is a good school. One
that fails to do this is a bad school. The modern educational system
has taught the public to read,--and the public reads mostly trash.
That education in a so-called democracy may be official and
professionalized and at the same time superficial and illiberal is
manifest. Thomas Davidson, a pioneer teacher of adults in this country,
expressed great hope in the promise of public education in America.
But there is one fact about such intellectual life as there is in
this country which seems to have escaped Davidson’s attention, I
suppose because his own case was an exception. It is a fact which I
believe may be one of the causes of the small influence which learning
exerts in the daily life and thought and preferences of our people.
Thousands of people say that their education is of no use to them in
later years. It is an interest which they do not keep up but leave
behind at the school-house door. They think that education belongs
properly in the school, and except for some practical advantage most
people seldom think of making any cultural achievement of their own
outside the school. Most advance in scholarship in this country is the
work of professionals, members of university faculties. Outside the
institutions of learning, there is very little independent creative
thought. Exception must be made of our literary men, but these too are
professionals. There are almost no men of leisure who carry on the
progress of civilization as educated amateurs. In this respect we are
much like Germany before the war, where advance in scholarship was
almost confined to the universities and the attempt was made to create
knowledge by the machinery of organized research.
An example of the situation in our country is to be found in the fact
that almost every member of the American Philosophical Association is
a Ph.D. and a teacher of philosophy in a degree-granting institution.
It might almost be said that philosophy, beyond the merest introduction
to the subject, is studied in order that students may become teachers
of still other teachers. I suspect that a similar situation exists
in other learned societies. This confinement of scholarship to the
professional student leaves the public without guidance and at the
mercy of quacks. It causes a break between education and other
interests which the public school strives in vain to bridge over,
because in such a situation the school itself becomes official and
sequestered. Thus education is constantly being done up in little
packages and sent out from the places where it is grown, like the
garden seeds which Congressmen used to send to their constituents and
which nobody planted. Education does not take root because nobody
plants it. People think that culture is the special function of the
professional gardeners, and there are even educators who would be
astonished and jealous if they saw anything but elementary scholarship
growing at large outside their walls.
In this respect, it seems to me, Great Britain has had the advantage.
Many of her greatest contributions to science and philosophy came
from outside the regular university faculties. Such men as Hobbes,
Milton, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Spencer, Mill and Darwin may have received
conventional training, but they went out and did something with it
afterwards. They helped create an ideal of the educated man which we
have yet to gain. Hence Great Britain has had many amateur scholars who
were also men of affairs, men like Mr. Balfour and the Haldanes, whose
influence has helped keep education from being over-professionalized.
Some of the highest educational attainments in history have been
reached without the setting up of any institution at all, in our sense
of the term. Protagoras, Socrates, and Abelard simply gathered groups
of fellow students about them who lived for years in their company,
first as disciples then as assistants. Such education to be sure was
for the selected few, but after a man had spent some time with his
teacher, he acquired a philosophy which changed his way of life. The
modern attempt to educate everyone really educates hardly anyone. The
public school imparts a certain elementary instruction--in eight or ten
years about as much as a normally intelligent youth could master in
two years if he set his mind to it. In matters of taste and standards
of value, public school education makes little difference; or in
developing thirst for knowledge, tolerance, independence of judgment.
The task of giving instruction to the youth of an entire community is
so great that thoroughness is almost impossible. The task falls to the
state, and the state is a vested interest and the protector of other
vested interests, interests which are not always consistent with the
desire for knowledge. There are factions in the community which the
public authorities must conciliate. We have seen what can happen to the
teaching of biology and history when such factions become organized to
control the public education of a state. Public servants are nowhere
eager to have education so free to pursue its proper function that
there is developed an alert and critically minded public to whom they
must justify certain of their practices. What the state desires of
education is soldiers, reliable voters, law-abiding citizens, contented
working men, prosperous traders. Hence a spirit of docility and
credulity, often of timidity, prevails in the school.
Where there are large numbers in attendance, the individual student
receives little personal attention. The education of backward students
is sometimes given more consideration than that of the normally
intelligent. The chief aim is to get the student through and pass him
along to the next grade, and the pace at which the instructor moves is
set by the mediocre. Whether this state of affairs will be remedied by
the use of intelligence tests remains to be seen. At present mental
measurement is a sort of fad. The system requires that all shall learn
the same lesson in the same manner at the same time.
Standardization develops a kind of mass mind, which in mature years
renders men very susceptible to crowd appeal. Learning imposed upon
the student by the system is put on the outside like a mental uniform.
Habits become stereotyped in the elementary, non-reflective aspects of
behavior and knowledge. There is little in this to guide the student
to the spiritual values of a liberal education. Most of those who pass
through the system never know that such values exist.
The public school system is a great bureaucracy with autocracy at the
top and deference to authority all the way down through the hierarchy
of superintendents, principals, and instructors, to the students.
The administrator holds dominion over the teacher. Little is left to
personal initiative. Any system which requires little responsibility of
its employees but much deference to petty authority in time comes to
be filled with persons to whom such servitude is not irksome. Serious
scholarship is rare. The teacher is not encouraged to independence
of judgment concerning the subject which for years it is his work
to teach. Teaching becomes a trade and is practised with as little
intellectual interest as most trades. Other than idealizing the
existing situation together with whatever persons or interests control
the school system, little attention is given to the social setting into
which the school sends its students when they leave.
Dr. Kallen says, “Free public education and private instruction
purchasable at a price are both but the community’s device to meet
present needs by transmitting the past unchanged. They provide a
grammar of assent, not a logic of inquiry. The mental posture they
habituate the youth in is not the posture of reflection. The mental
posture they habituate the youth in is the posture of conformity.
They require belief, not investigation. They impose reverence for
the past and idealization of the present. They envision the future
as a perpetuation of the past, not as a new creation of it. They are
Main Street’s most powerful instrument of self-reproduction without
variation.... They enable government both visible and invisible to
continue by consent, for they forestall and inhibit in the citizens
of the land the technique of doubt and dissent which is the necessary
condition of good government and the true inwardness of that eternal
vigilance so notoriously the price of liberty.”
Here and there, in spite of the system, someone gets his feet on the
path which leads to liberal education. But in general it cannot be
said that the public school has realized the dreams of those who in
the early nineteenth century hoped that free universal education would
place democratic institutions on the solid foundations of enlightened
public opinion and general respect for truth. It was believed that the
curse of ignorance would be removed; that humbug and insolence would
be driven from the control of affairs; that labor would be ennobled by
understanding, and freedom secured by the attainment of self-mastery.
All were now to have access to scholarship; the precious wisdom of the
great minds of all times, no longer the possession of the favored few,
should be made to live in the daily experience of the nations.
We are not so utopian in our hopes for the future of society as were
the Humanitarian idealists of the nineteenth century. Perhaps people
have expected too much of public education and have required too
little. We need not be astonished that the education of the public is
committed to a system which becomes an end in itself; that is human.
Nor need we be astonished that public education is administered and
carried on by persons most of whom do not know what education is; that
is the democratic way of dealing with public affairs. If you are to get
your education, whoever you are you must not be content to let it be a
public affair. You must make it your private affair.
Severe criticism of both the public school and the university is
common. There is much talk about capitalistic influence, and the
denial of academic freedom by prominent business men who contribute
to endowments and constitute boards of trustees. In so far as this
criticism comes from professional radical propagandists it need not be
taken very seriously. Such persons merely want their own propaganda
included in the curriculum. University presidents no doubt often play
politics and do other things common to professional money-raisers.
Faculties are often little more than pedantic trade unions, and if we
are to judge the colleges of the country by the number of first-rate
scholars who graduate from them or by the extent of their influences as
a whole on the cultural standards of the country, we may well question
whether higher education in America succeeds any better than the public
school.
But I wonder why so much criticism is directed at trustees and
faculties and so little at the students. The habit of constantly
denouncing someone because we are not better educated is rather
ludicrous. If our people really desire education they can have it. If
I am dissatisfied with my ignorance, I may seek knowledge at any time,
and no one else, in or out of college, can ever gain wisdom for me.
Anyone who has kept up his interest in his education after graduation
knows that what is learned in school and college is at best a small
part of it--merely the beginning of an education. Anyone who does not
continue his studies through the years of a busy life and thinks that
the brief introduction to the tools of scholarship which he received
in his adolescence is education, should apologize to his college, not
criticize it. Granted that there is much bad teaching, there is more
bad studying,--or I should say, hardly any studying at all. Professor
James Harvey Robinson used to say, “A college is a place where there is
much teaching and no learning.”
Is it not possible that a large portion of the population cannot be
educated? Such persons are not all necessarily dull, they may be
naturally uninterested in education, and it is likely that many enter
institutions of learning with the mistaken notion that it is education
they desire, when what they really want is success, a good time, and a
little training in what they think are the manners and ways of speech
of polite society. The finishing school once supplied this need; now
the colleges have to do it.
The motives which lead people to seek college education divide the
students into three types. First there are the few who love learning.
The spirit which once caused groups of young men to follow Abelard or
Erasmus still brings an occasional youth to college. Such students may
need guidance, advice and the fellowship of mature scholars. It is not
necessary to force them to study, or offer them “snap courses,” or
cram them for examination. Much of the procedure and regulation--the
regimentation common in institutions of learning--is unnecessary and
sometimes harmful to them. Most of them would become educated persons
even if they never saw a college class-room.
A second type of student attends college and university in large
numbers. The motive is preparation for a professional career. Many of
the best students belong to this type. Whether in addition to their
professional training they ever gain a liberal education--we have
seen that the two are not necessarily the same--will depend largely
upon what they do after they get their degrees. If they then have an
interest in educating themselves, their technical training ought to be
an advantage, for most of them have learned how to study. But so much
purely technical knowledge must be drilled into a man’s head that the
student who is preparing for a degree in engineering, law, medicine
or scientific research has very little time for anything else. Many of
the most successful physicians, engineers and scientists need adult
education quite as much as do ordinary working men.
The third type, the majority of undergraduate students, are for the
most part pleasant young men and women of the upper middle class. Their
parents are “putting them through college” because it is the expected
thing to do. A man wishes to give his children every advantage. While
a bachelor’s degree is not exactly a social necessity, there are many
who would have something like an inferiority complex without it. I knew
one family in New York City who almost went into mourning when the only
son failed in his Harvard entrance examinations. Students of this type
enjoy four happy years, largely at public expense, with other young
people of their own age in an environment designed to keep them out of
mischief. I have no doubt this grown-up kindergarten life is good for
them; most of them seem to appreciate it. In later years they remain
enthusiastically loyal to Alma Mater, coming back to football games
and class reunions and contributing to the support of the college.
As alumni their influence is not always on the side of progress in
education, but perhaps they make up for this failure in other ways.
I am prepared, moreover, to say that the existence of hundreds of
centers filled with such care-free young people may be a good thing
for the country. They keep alive a tradition of good cheer and of
man’s right to happiness in a country that is otherwise sordidly
commercial. A leisure class is a social necessity for it serves as an
example to other people showing them how to enjoy their idle hours. The
English aristocracy with its horse races and other out-door sports has
done much to make life interesting to all classes in that otherwise
factory-ridden country, and its example has been followed by people in
other lands. Now about the only leisure class we have in America is the
undergraduate student body. A privileged class is always popular with
the rest of the population in a normally constituted state. And so the
whole country enjoys vicariously the amusements of its undergraduate
boys and girls. The college youth with his automobile, his pipe, and
his big fur coat is a favorite hero in the motion pictures. Moreover,
the fact that the period of loafing is limited to four years is a
blessing, for by taking turns a greater number may enjoy the privilege
than the industry of the country could possibly support in permanent
idleness.
But while all this may be good for the country, it is not very good for
the colleges. It is bad for the morale of any institution to sail under
false colors, and colleges are popularly supposed to be educational
institutions. The college faculties themselves must to some extent
share this popular delusion, or else they would not permit the public
to go on believing it. The attempt to live up to this erroneous idea
puts everybody under a strain, students and faculty alike, and is
the one unpleasant thing about college life. Instructors are forever
annoying the students, trying to get some work out of them. Attendance
on classes is required, and a series of examinations is arranged which
nobody enjoys and which do no good anyway. They only make it necessary
to send an occasional student home, and then there are tears, other
students are frightened and sometimes lose sleep cramming for the next
examination, and the instructor loses popularity, especially if his
course is an elective one.
It is among this type of undergraduates that “campus opinion” has
its origin. Campus opinion is distinctly hostile to learning, and it
holds sway over students with the same tenacity as other crowd ideas
among the uneducated elements of the population. The student who takes
his education seriously loses caste and is regarded as a joke. Few
young people are sufficiently non-gregarious to stand out against the
scornful laughter of their fellows.
What the average student gets from college, then, is an opportunity to
complete his adolescence in an interesting and healthy environment, the
experience of being away from home and on his own, and fraternity and
club life--pleasant in itself--in which friendships are formed that
last through life and are often useful business connections in after
years. There is also athletics, through which the student may develop
his muscles, gain the desirable moral quality of good sportsmanship,
and satisfy any ambition he may have to become a college hero. One
always becomes famous in college outside the class-room, never in it.
Incidentally, if a student is naturally clever at picking up bits of
information with a minimum of reading, he gains a bowing acquaintance
with about as much knowledge as should be the possession of one with a
fair secondary education. Finally, he forms certain habits and acquires
certain manners and tastes which mould him to the type of the average
college graduate, and goes out in the world to take his place in the
social and business circles of his home town, where, if he should ever
mention Aristotle, people would think he was crazy.
The college graduate can play a good game of tennis, wear his clothes
well, talk about the latest novel, walk across a room with grace and
dignity, and share the club opinions of his set, and there is nothing
offensive in his table manners. I do not mean to underrate these
accomplishments. The person who does not have them, however great his
achievement in scholarship, is a boor, too lacking in sensitiveness
to assimilate the knowledge he has stored in his head. But these are
accomplishments that should be learned at home, as a matter of course;
colleges ought not to be necessary for training of this sort.
Wherein the education of the average college graduate fails of its
true ends is seen in what might be called the deeper things of the
spirit. No profound intellectual passion has been awakened, no habit
of independent judgment formed. The college man shares the usual
popular prejudices of his community. He runs with the crowd after the
hero of the hour, and shows the same lack of discrimination as do
the uneducated. He votes the same party ticket, is intolerant along
with his neighbors, and puts the same value on material success as do
the illiterate. His education has made very little difference in his
religious beliefs, his social philosophy, his ethical values, or his
general outlook on the world. Like all opinionated and half-educated
people, he jumps to hasty conclusions, believes what others believe,
does things because others do them, worships the past, idealizes the
present.
In contrast with this, let me quote a passage from John Stuart Mill.
The author meant it to be a description of the scientist. It stands as
a suggestion of what a liberally educated mind should be.
“To question all things;--never to turn away from any difficulty;
to accept no doctrine either from ourselves or from other people
without a rigid scrutiny by negative criticism; letting no fallacy,
or incoherence, or confusion of thought, step by unperceived; above
all, to insist upon having the meaning of a word clearly understood
before using it, and the meaning of a proposition before assenting to
it;--these are the lessons we learn ‘from workers in Science.’ With
all this vigorous management of the negative element, they inspire no
scepticism about the reality of truth or indifference to its pursuit.
The noblest enthusiasm, both for the search after truth and for
applying it to its highest uses, pervades those writers.”
When all is said, the ignorance and folly of men are things that
institutions cannot cure. Each must discover the path of wisdom
for himself. One does not “get” an education anywhere. One becomes
an educated person by virtue of patient study, quiet meditation,
intellectual courage, and a life devoted to the discovery and service
of truth.
CHAPTER V
THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF DOUBT
The seventh book of Plato’s Republic begins with the Parable of the
Cave. To show “how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened” the
philosopher draws a picture of human beings living in an underground
den, all of them from childhood chained with their backs to the light
so that all they can see is moving shadows cast upon the opposite
wall. This world of shadows is the system of popular beliefs. To
these people “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadow of
images.” Plato tells us to imagine what would happen if the prisoners
were released and disabused of their error. If any one of them is
suddenly compelled to turn and face the light, the glare blinds him
and he suffers a sharp pain. If he is reluctantly dragged up into
the outside world of sunlight he is at first dazzled. After he is
accustomed to the new vision, all reality will appear different. He
will see the difference between shadow and substance. He will know that
popular belief is error. If now he should return, what a difference
there would be between his new wisdom and that which in the den passed
for wisdom! “And if they were in the habit of conferring honors among
themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows,
and to remark which of them went before and which followed after,
and which were together, and who were therefore best able to draw
conclusions as to the future, do you think he would care for such
honors and glories?--And if there were a contest and he had to compete
in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of
the den and while his eyes were yet weak,” we are told that he would
fumble and be ridiculous, and men would say, “Up he went and down he
came without his eyes,” and they would pass a law that no one should
even think of ascending any more or try to release another and lead him
up.
I will not discuss the metaphysical implications of this parable about
which there is dispute. Plato says we shall not misapprehend him if
we interpret this upward journey as education. Whoever would face the
light must turn his back on the crowd and its shadows. He must climb
into another world of values. The educated man thinks differently. His
beliefs are different from those of the herd. He is being set free from
its delusions, even from what it holds to be important. This is not
because he wishes to be aloof or superior, but because he is gaining a
different conception of what believing itself is. He has a new approach
to things in general, new habits of judging. He is beginning to form
his own judgments, and to judge is to weigh, to consider, to question,
to seek evidence, to doubt.
Common men cherish their naïve faiths and ask no questions. They
imagine that education is simply greater information of the same sort
which they also possess in some measure, and that it is the part of
wisdom to establish the reality of their shadows. They resent a wisdom
which is different from their own and unsettles belief. He who acquires
information without the will to doubt is a common man and his kind
understand him. Hence men tend to display their information and conceal
their education. However much a man may know, so long as he does not
become _re-oriented_, the crowd does not suspect him, but admires
his learning. He is like a former Mayor of New York in his high hat
at the head of the Policeman’s Parade. The multitude used to stand
with their mouths open gazing at him. Each in imagination saw in the
exalted figure himself risen to a place of honor and success. So it
is with the “brainy man.” The “lightening calculator” or the man who
can recite from memory the population statistics of the cities of the
United States is a museum wonder. But when it was announced in a New
York theater that only twelve men could understand Einstein’s theory of
relativity, I am told that the crowd hissed.
Information is a kind of skill. Everyone can possess this skill to the
extent he chooses, and people do not resent an exhibition of unusual
skill of such a nature. In America most men and boys have some measure
of skill at the game of baseball, so this game is the popular national
form of sport. The skillful professional ball-player is simply one of
the common boyhood ideals realized. He differs from the spectators of
the game in degree, but not in kind. He plays the same game they all
played, and is the same sort of person they all were as boys--only more
so. So with most kinds of information, the amount one may acquire makes
only a quantitative difference, not a difference in kind. But as a man
becomes educated he discovers that he is playing a new game; he is
becoming a different kind of person, with different likes and dislikes,
different interests, different ideals and faiths, and such beliefs as
he has he holds differently.
What the multitude most fears in education is the danger that the
crowd faith will be lost in the process. This fear is often justified.
Old beliefs will be lost and they should be. The fear appears in
consciousness as solicitude for the spiritual welfare of the person
being educated. It is really anxiety over the menace of education to
herd living and thinking. It is the function of education to lure the
individual out of the pack and give him opportunity to know his own
mind, a thing he can never do so long as he runs and barks and bites
along with all the rest. To return to Plato’s figure, every person who
climbs out of the cave not only loses his own faith in the reality of
shadows but weakens the faith of those who remain behind. Cave men
make strenuous efforts to resist education. Their common practice is
to maintain their own systems of pseudo education in which no one is
permitted to turn his eyes away from the wall.
Again, education has been likened to leaven. When it is honest it is
very much like yeast. Before the culture is introduced the solution
of ideas is in equilibrium. The mind has simply accepted what was
poured into it by parents, teachers, priests, and politicians. In the
solution there is reflected a compact, “still,” neatly ordered little
system of knowledge. “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.”
Duty is clear, all is conventionally arranged, truth is eternal and
logic can prove it. Human rights are decreed by the founders of the
republic. The course of destiny is disclosed to reason and faith and
the promise sealed in divine revelation. At this stage, most minds
are carefully sealed up or a prophylactic is stirred in, for if those
sugary solutions are exposed to a live spiritual culture they begin
to “work.” Then they are spoiled for certain purposes. With the
fermentation there is sometimes foam and gas; but a chemical change is
taking place, brewing a mind with a “kick” in it. It is interesting
that bread and wine and education are all made by a similar process;
hence an educational Volsteadism has often been enforced so that many
of the best minds have had to be “home brewed.”
Professor Dewey somewhere speaks of education as freeing the mind of
“bunk.” It is a large task. No one wholly succeeds. I never saw a
completely “debunked” individual. Strive as we may to eradicate it,
there is always in our thinking an amount of error, of wish-fancy
accepted as objective fact, of exaggeration, special pleading,
self-justification. Many of our beliefs are not founded in reason at
all, but are demanded by some unconscious and repressed impulse in
our nature. Men make a virtue of their faith when in fact they are
_victims_ of it; they can no more help believing certain things than a
neurotic can stop a compulsive habit.
It is said that it is easy to doubt and that to believe is an
accomplishment. It is not so. It is easier to believe than to doubt.
The things we must train ourselves to doubt are as a rule just
the things we wish to believe. It is children and savages and the
illiterate who have the most implicit faith. It is said that unbelief
is sin. This is not so; it is nobler to doubt than to believe, for to
doubt is often to take sides with fact against oneself. Nietzsche said
that this trait is characteristic of “higher men.” It was Huxley, as I
remember it, who considered that man could in nothing fall so low as
when he deliberately took refuge in the absurd. Even with a rationalist
like Huxley doubt is not merely a function of the intellect. Under
certain circumstances it is a moral necessity.
The pursuit of knowledge is not the same, however, as scrupulous
avoidance of error. He who strives to do his own thinking must accept
responsibility for himself. He must expect that he will make mistakes.
He may end in total failure. He must take his chances and be willing
to pay the cost of his adventure. I know professional scholars who
are so afraid they may write or say something which their colleagues
will show to be wrong that they never express an opinion of their own
or commit themselves to any downright statement. Such equivocation
and qualifying--playing safe--is not what I mean by doubt. I do not
mean merely that one should be always on guard against the possibility
of error, but that one should learn to hold all one’s beliefs with
a half-amused light-heartedness. Most minds are loaded down with
the seriousness of their convictions. Solemnity in the presence of
our eternal verities is awkwardness, and makes us always a little
ridiculous, giving us the appearance of one about to shake hands with
the President. Why not enjoy the humor of the situation? Our great
truths may all the while be “spoofing” us. It will do no harm to give
them a sly wink now and then.
Crowd men have no sense of humor. It is very difficult to educate
solemn and opinionated people. Like Omar, they always come out by that
same door wherein they went. I have known students to complete a course
of study having learned nothing, because of their disinclination to
consider any fact which might cause them to surrender some belief about
religion or economic theory with which they entered. Whoever leaves an
institution of learning with the same general outlook on life that he
had when he first came might better have employed his time otherwise.
He is not a student; he is a church-member.
A well-known reformer says in his autobiography that his education,
to the present time, has been a long process of “un-learning.” The
progressive disillusionment began in college when he was forced to
abandon the religious dogmas of his childhood. It continued through a
series of hard experiences and misdirected efforts to improve the world
from each of which he reaped a harvest of doubt, leaving behind the
exposure of one economic or sociological fallacy after another, until
in the end he had left only his faith in Woodrow Wilson and in the
proletariat. Then he lost Wilson.
Perhaps one who still has the proletariat is not utterly disillusioned.
If the education continues that too may go the way of earlier beliefs.
It is one thing to despair of a society only one section of which can
stand the test of our idealism. It is quite another matter if one is
led to re-examine one’s idealism. It is this latter kind of doubt which
has the greater importance. The significant thing is not the particular
belief which a man gives up or retains but the manner in which he
believes what he does believe. Change the latter and you change a basic
habit pattern; you change the man.
Not all scepticism has educational value. There is a kind of doubting
which is merely the negative response of the unteachable, the
suspiciousness of the wilfully ignorant, the refusal of the incurious
to examine disturbing and challenging evidence. There are, as an
eighteenth century philosopher said, minds that are moulded to the form
of one idea. Many people, after they have accepted one idea, tame it
and keep it as a sort of watchdog to frighten all other ideas away.
This refusal to be convinced may appear to be scepticism; it is only
stubbornness. The late Mr. Bryan and his followers were very sceptical
of evolution. But this hostile attitude is very different from the
scepticism of those scientists who hold that the theory is a mere
working hypothesis which is yet to be confirmed. The scepticism of
ignorance is motivated by the desire to save an old faith. Savages have
been known to exhibit this incredulity toward certain aspects of our
more advanced knowledge. If you were to tell the natives of Borneo that
there is no dragon in the sky which eats up the moon during an eclipse,
that there are no spirits and no magic, I imagine they would laugh in
your face and think you a fool. Many a discovery and invention has been
greeted by a grinning and incredulous public even in civilized society.
The scepticism which has value is that which leads one on to further
study and investigation. And it is characterized by intellectual
modesty.
Philosophic doubt is not the pitiable condition of the soul that timid
spirits imagine. It is not pessimism or cynicism, but a healthy and
cheerful habit. It gives peace of mind. Men who stop pretending can
sleep o’ nights. There is a certain scepticism which is in no sense the
spirit that denies. It is a frank recognition of things as they come.
It is almost a test of a man’s honesty, among those who have stopped
to think about the nature and limitations of our knowledge. Certainly
cultivated people do not exhibit the same degree of cock-sureness
as do the ignorant. People think the old saying about “doubting the
intelligence that doubts” is funny. Popular audiences will always
laugh at it. But why not? It is a platitude that the more a man learns
the more he realizes how little he knows. Existence is filled with
inscrutable mystery. To none of the profound questions that we ask of
it is there any final answer. We must be satisfied ultimately with
surmise, with symbol and poetic fancy. Speculations about the soul,
God, the ultimate nature of reality and the course of destiny, and as
to whether existence has any meaning or purpose beyond our own, or
whether our life itself is worthwhile--all these speculations and many
others of similar nature lead to no conclusions in fact, and we return
always to the point from which we started. The very terms in which we
put such questions are often meaningless when closely examined by the
intellect, and the answer to them is determined by our own moods.
There is a general belief that science can answer the riddle. But
science is only one possible view of things, the one best adapted to
the needs of creatures like ourselves. It cannot deal with questions
of value. It can tell us how things operate, their relative mass and
positions in space and time, but it cannot tell us what they are in
themselves, nor why they exist nor anything about their goodness
or beauty. The more exact scientific knowledge becomes, the more
closely it approaches mathematics. Pure mathematics deals only with
abstractions and logical relations and can dismiss the whole world of
objects. Science presupposes the data of experience and the validity
of its own logical principles. It substitutes its mechanized order of
things for things as we experience them.
Human reasoning is partial in all its processes. We think successfully
about things when we ignore all the aspects or qualities of them except
those which are relevant to the purpose at hand. The H₂O-ness of water
is no more the ultimate nature of water than is its wetness, or its
thirst quenching quality. That it is H₂O is only one of the things that
may be said about water. Now if we add together bits of one-sided and
partial scientific knowledge, we do not thereby gain a sum total which
is the equivalent of reality as a whole. We have a useful instrument
for dealing with our environment, because in thought we have greatly
simplified it by ignoring in each instance all that is irrelevant. But
what we now have is a universe of discourse, a human construction which
is what it is because we are always more interested in some aspects of
things than in others.
All our ideas are views--they have been likened to snapshots. The
world of which we are part is in flux. It comes to us as process,
and our intellect does not grasp the movement any more than we can
restore the movement of a man running by adding together a series of
photographs. The movement always takes place between the pictures.
Intellect is an instrument, not a mirror. Our world is not reducible
to a form of thought, and when men speak of truth, reality, cause,
substance, they are really only saying what they mean by certain words.
The world, as James said, has its meanings for us because we are
interested spectators, and so far as we can see none of these meanings
are final. Whitehead and others have shown that some of the basic
concepts of physical science which have held sway since the seventeenth
century are now subject to revision. Santayana says that knowledge
is faith--animal faith. It would be strange if it were otherwise, if
hairy little creatures such we are, whose ancestors lived in trees and
made queer guttural noises, should so organize human discourse as to
be able to say the last word about reality as a whole. It is well that
we should marvel at our achievements of knowledge, for they are man’s
noblest work; but let us remember that human reason, itself a phase and
part of the process of nature, can only view the whole process from
its own partial standpoint, and that is enough unless we aspire to
infallibility.
Man is a disputatious animal who loves to speak like Sir Oracle.
Uneducated people, ashamed of their ignorance, commit themselves
hastily and cling to their commitments, for to change one’s mind is an
admission that one was mistaken. We wish to be vindicated as having
all along been in the right. Hence it is more natural to contend for
a principle than to test a hypothesis. The ego becomes identified
with certain convictions. We feel ourselves personally injured if our
convictions are subjected to criticism. We are not ordinarily grateful
to the person who points out our errors and sets us right. But if our
education is to proceed, we must get over our delusion of infallibility.
This fiction of infallibility is very common, and those who have not
learned to doubt this fiction, who are sure that they have the truth
and are on the side of the right are as a rule the more ignorant
and provincial elements of the population. It is no accident that
Fundamentalism, prohibition, and other forms of moral regulation exist
in inverse ratio to urbanity and have their strongholds in rural
communities. People to whom it never occurs to ask how they know so
clearly they are right when better informed people have doubts on the
subject, are the ones who naturally strive to coerce their neighbors.
To many minds there are no social or moral problems. The answer is
always known by the crusader. It is very simple. To him there can be
no two opinions. The standards which prevail in his own parish, the
self-expression of his own type, are the will of God. Principles of
right and wrong are known immediately without reflection or regard
to the situations where they are to be applied; they are revealed to
conscience. “Right is right and wrong is wrong everywhere and forever
the same!”
Men who hold such a view learn little from experience, and this is why
crowds never change their minds. They have first to be disintegrated
and a new crowd formed about new standards, because each crowd
represents its will as a divine command, a matter of eternal principle.
To learn anything from experience it is necessary to take into account
the results of our behavior. But when you do a thing merely because
it is demanded by a universal principle which must be vindicated at
all costs, or because it is a divine command to be carried out with
unquestioning obedience, you need not consider the results. Hence you
cannot be shown that you were mistaken. In this sense men’s gods and
their _a priori_ ideas have the function of preserving their fiction
of infallibility. There always appears what Professor Overstreet calls
the proclamation of “the One Right Way.” Differences of opinion are
held to be not mere differences of point of view, but the difference
between Right and Wrong, Good and Evil. Those who think differently
are the wicked, the ungodly, the _enemy_. They must be convinced by
being vanquished, silenced. Every knee must bow and every tongue
confess. There is no longer a meeting of minds in the search for
truth. The triumph of the Right is in the belief of the average man a
knockout. There must be no compromise; any attitude other than intense
partisanship is disloyalty. One in a discussion must line up for or
against a proposition, take sides, have a ready answer for anything
that the other side says, and be sure that nothing will cause one to
modify one’s views. Is any one ever convinced by public debate? Or does
one emerge from a church quarrel, a political campaign, a session of
the legislature, a convention of a trade union with a broader outlook
or better understanding?
The egotism of the ignorant keeps them in ignorance. There is an
amusing notion that the masses are kept in ignorance by clever
conspirators against freedom and progress. The average man’s reasoning
consists chiefly of the repetition of cant phrases in support of
preconceived ideas. He wishes to hear only what he can applaud, and he
applauds what saves his face and puts his enemies to shame. Theological
disputation has always been carried on in this spirit, and so have most
popular discussions of morals, politics and economic problems.
Professor Overstreet says that this “One Right Way” attitude is
essentially adolescent. This does not mean that it is essentially
youthful. Adolescence is the period when there is normally an
exaggerated emotional interest in the ego. A delayed adolescent type
of mentality is common. Psychologists speak of it as narcissism,--a
fixation of interest upon the idea of self. Among psychopathic
individuals and also among crowds this _narcissism_ is very dominant
and leads to exaggerated notions of self-importance and to other fixed
ideas. Inability to entertain any doubt of self becomes inability to
question any idea which one would like to believe true. Hence the
delusion of infallibility. I think that vast numbers of otherwise
normal people are made susceptible to crowd thinking because they
simply do not know that there are ways of life and thought different
from their own which good people may and do honestly hold. Crowd
appeal at once entrenches prejudice and flatters the ego, compensating
it perhaps for any half-conscious feeling of inferiority it may have
because for instance a man over-rates school education and “did not get
it.”
It is interesting to note how this delusion of infallibility may often
lead men to believe and assert the most incredible fabrications. I
quote from a recent New York newspaper an exaggerated example which
will illustrate what I mean.
“The League of Nations has been asked to do a lot of strange things
by people all over the world, but it remained for a New York business
man to request action on the most unusual topic of all. Announcement
is made by the league secretariat that it has received a letter
from the New Yorker declaring his opinion that ‘brain enslavement,’
otherwise known as spirit writing or receiving messages from the
dead, is the cause of many evils. He said he wanted the league to
stop this system all over the world, making the specific charge that
the American courts of ‘so-called justice’ are controlled by the
spirit movement.”
Note the last sentence; the “specific charge” is very typical. There is
not the least notion that so sweeping an indictment should be supported
by evidence. It _must be_ so, for how can the alleged tolerant attitude
of the courts be explained otherwise? An explanatory idea is asserted
as an established fact. Here we have a mind incapable of entertaining
doubt. As usual in unhealthy reasoning, the thinking in this case is
a syllogism. Spiritualism is a form of brain enslavement which is the
cause of wide-spread evil. All who do not sufficiently oppose it are
controlled by it. The courts do not sufficiently resist it. Therefore
the courts are controlled by the spirit movement. If the premises are
true the conclusion of course follows logically. The trouble with
diseased thinking is not its logic, but its inability to examine
its premises in the light of fact. A healthy mind would doubt these
premises before reaching such a ridiculous conclusion. Doubt makes for
sanity.
I do not wish the force of this example to be lost. Most people will
see it so long as we are talking about spirits, for there is much
wholesome doubt about the doings of spirits. But let us substitute for
spirits something else concerning which surmise commonly passes as
established fact, and we have something very familiar. “The American
courts are controlled by Wall Street,” or by the Catholic Church, or
by British propagandists, or the attempt is being made by labor unions
or by Communists. So it is with popular thinking on most subjects.
Acquaintance with facts does not seem to be necessary for the formation
of opinion. I can easily assert alleged facts on my own authority;
it hurts my pride when I am asked for evidence. I once heard a
fundamentalist preacher say that everyone who doubted the infallibility
of the Bible merely sought an excuse for living a life of sin. Such
statements must be true; they are so logical, moreover they justify a
man in his fixed beliefs and put doubters always in the wrong. Many
people even in their reading do little more than seek confirmation
for notions founded on such thinking. The censorship of books is
hardly necessary to keep people’s minds in the beaten path. Many
people cannot read a book with which they do not agree. We disguise
our infallibility under the infallibility of our favorite author. He
becomes an authority. We read our own meanings into his text when
necessary. We pick out the passages which support us and quote them on
all occasions. For instance, a mind saturated with the teachings of
Karl Marx will take in nothing else and will view every other author
from the standpoint of his agreement with Marx. It is always so with
the sectarian mind, whether in religion or in politics.
The sort of logic which we have just been considering leads men to
assume extreme positions of all sorts. Opinionated and undisciplined
minds always tend to carry an idea to extremes, to jump to a
conclusion, to let enthusiasm carry belief beyond the limits of good
judgment. This all or none attitude is supposed to be zeal in the
service of principle. It is merely intemperance. Education strives for
the virtue of temperance, and temperance--which among the uneducated
becomes merely abstinence from the use of alcoholic beverages--is the
avoidance of rash assertion, and of ill-considered and hasty inference.
The temperate man stops to think. Careful thought seldom leads one
wild. An educated mind is not so likely to “go off half-cocked.” It
has fewer enthusiasms and so accumulates a reserve; a sense of the
ridiculous helps it keep its balance.
Most men feel uncomfortable when they must hold their minds open
and judgment in abeyance. Judgment suspended gives a feeling of
unstable equilibrium, of tension; it is irksome like resistance to
temptation. In addition to this discomfort in being unsettled, there
is a disturbing feeling of insecurity in the thought that we live in
a world in which certitude is rare and difficult. In many situations
it is necessary to act before all the evidence is at hand. We must act
on faith and take our chances. All men cherish their faiths, but few
have the courage to act on faith. We naturally wish to feel ourselves
more secure than we really are in a world where much is left to chance.
A formula generally believed gives such a delusion of security. The
greater the number of those who believe, the more convinced is the
average man of the truth of the formula and the more safe he feels.
I think this wish to feel at home in the universe has inspired much of
religion. It is also one of the reasons why, as older religions wane,
each man must have his “cause,” his social gospel, his movement. These
things afford a sense of comradeship in which there is safety. They
give one “something to tie to,” something enduring to believe in. And
as each cause or movement claims the future and looks forward to sure
vindication and triumph, the future becomes predictable and congenial.
This search for an ideal security has had its influence on philosophy.
Many philosophers, from the time of the ancient Greeks till now,
have sought to construct systems of ideas, verbal forms in which in
contemplation they could find refuge from the universal change in
which all things come and pass away. Inasmuch as it is possible to
think of an object or class and to mean the same even when the objects
themselves are no longer present, a system of abstract and unusual
universal ideas is set up and thought of as existing in itself, outside
the process of time and change. The system of thought so conceived
is held to be more enduring than the world of changing objects. The
ideal world is then the real world. In it alone is knowledge of the
Truth which abides forever. Such systems appear to me to be elaborate
attempts to sustain a fictitious security by taking refuge from reality
in a logical arrangement of man’s own empty forms of thought. From the
point of view of education it should be said that such philosophies
require much learning before one can understand them, but they tend to
dogmatism and the closed mind.
A modern method of supporting the fiction of security--less austere and
sophisticated than some of those of official philosophy--prevails among
those who speak the language of science. It is known as mechanism.
As scientific _method_, mechanism is indispensable. It is found by
exact measurement and careful scrutiny that given two identical
material situations, the same result will follow. There is a certain
orderliness about the processes of nature, which if we ignore all else
but the movement and masses and temporal and spatial relationships of
particles of matter, lends itself to statement in mathematical terms.
In this manner events are predictable with great accuracy. And now
because it becomes possible for human reason to interpret facts of
nature when they are thought of only with respect to mass, movement,
position, it is held that nature itself is really nothing but mass,
motion, position, etc. The laws and methods of interpretation are
thought to constitute the nature of that which is interpreted. A method
deliberately adopted in order to give a mathematically rational account
of certain selected aspects of nature is now taken for a correct
picture of ultimate reality. The reason which measures masses and
distances believes it has discovered itself as the true nature of the
thing measured. The universe is held to be at once like a machine, and
at the same time essentially rational. Security is again grounded in
forms of thought.
It is said that all futures are predictable by the new logic of science
if we only knew enough about complex phenomena to be able to strip them
down to that which can be expressed in mathematical terms. Of course
no one professes to be able to calculate the curve of the whole, or to
have worked out a quantitative statement of many of the phenomena of
life. But it is a scientific faith that it might conceivably be done.
This seems to me to be merely saying that we could reduce the universe
to reason if we only could do it, which is tautology. I am not sure
that a universe so reduced would be anything more than a bare system of
thought about only one aspect of the universe. But scepticism here is
as distasteful to many scientists as the scientists’ own scepticism is
distasteful to theologians.
I am not asserting dogmatically that we cannot know truth or the
nature of reality. I am not suggesting that we cannot be educated
without ending in universal scepticism or agnostic negation. It seems
to me that we have, or can have, such knowledge as will make our
intellects fairly adequate instruments in the performance of their
proper functions. But I do not see what such functioning has to do
with ascribing finality to our beliefs or trying to legislate for
all possible worlds. I am not suggesting an attitude of despair in
the pursuit of truth, but am trying to state the very reason for any
learning at all, for what is the use of it if we know it all before we
start?
Education may not end in doubt, but it ends when a man stops doubting.
But why speak of the end of a process that should continue through
life? As I see it, the process is more often discontinued at the point
of some fictitious certainty than in any moment of doubt. Doubt, the
willingness to admit that conjecture is subject to revision, is a spur
to learning. The recognition that our truths are not copies of eternal
realities but are human creations designed to meet human needs, puts
one in a teachable frame of mind. And the discovery that thinking
may be creative makes intellectual activity interesting. Much has
been written by indoctrinators about the wretchedness of the dogmatic
sceptic. I wonder how these writers, themselves so innocent of doubt,
know so much about him. I have never found such a man. I do not believe
he ever existed. There are writers who question things that most men
do not even know exist, compared with whom professional “freethinkers”
are often naïve. But such writers are often gentle and cheerful spirits
whose minds are not at all paralyzed by doubt, but are active, subtle,
stimulating.
Humanity during the course of civilization has fixed certain habits,
made certain discoveries, constructed certain systems of ordered
knowledge by emphasizing the relevant and significant. There is little
likelihood that the whole structure will come tumbling about our
heads because somebody examines into its nature. In fact the highest
achievement of civilization would appear to be a mind capable of
understanding our human ways of thinking for what they are. But if
our learning should cause us to abandon all our consoling beliefs and
ideals and pet theories; if it should reveal human folly in our every
great cause, and futility in our every scheme of social reconstruction,
even then we cannot for such reasons shirk the task of educating
ourselves. There would remain for each of us the ideal of what an
educated mind might become; no knowledge could take from us the ideals
of courage, of preserving our integrity, of standing undaunted before
the challenge to our spirit.
Again a question arises similar to that we discussed at the close
of the chapter on propaganda. Does not education, then, cause doubt
and indifference so that the educated remain aloof and fail to take
their share of social responsibility or participate in the activities
of their times? Is it not the mass of “common people” therefore, and
not the scholars, which accomplishes the overthrow of tyrannies and
achieves progress? In a day when everybody is a professional or amateur
reformer and people are led to believe that they can make their lives
count only as they participate in some mass movement, it is natural
that this question should present itself as we consider what education
means.
History should aid us to an answer here. The author of “Our Times,”
Mark Sullivan, after giving an account of the partisan strife and
popular movements of the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
suggests that perhaps all this expenditure of energy and intensity
of enthusiasm was but part of the passing show and came to nothing,
while the so-called leaders who seemed to be creating history were but
the puppets of deeper and silent forces. He suggests that the enduring
changes are those of science and the arts. I believe we have here one
of the important lessons of history. Progress in civilization has been
the work almost wholly of scientists, philosophers, artists, engineers,
and unique individuals. The rest has been froth and foam, a struggle
to liberate mankind from the clutches of its most recent liberators,
crowd devouring crowd, mass movements marching to Utopia down blind
alleys. Unfortunately there is some truth in the statement that the
intelligence of the race has little influence upon mass movements.
This is not because scholarship is aloof, however, so much as because
the multitude in its enthusiasms does not heed the counsels of wisdom.
When I become a zealot for a movement I lose my critical faculties.
In exalting my cause I would persuade myself that my existence is of
more importance to the world than it really is. No one so devoted and
earnest could possibly be in the wrong, and in the righteousness of my
cause, I have infallibility. What need have I of the wisdom that comes
by taking thought when I have the truth by intuition and intensity of
feeling?
If it is true that men can only be made to act under the lash of blind
faith and enthusiasm, then the estate of man is a sorry one indeed.
For most of the things done will end in tragic failure. It is only the
conceit of ignorance to believe that the world can be straightened once
for all by people who do not know what they are doing. Moreover, to say
that ignorance is necessary to the accomplishment of good is to say,
that ignorance is desirable and better for man than knowledge. There
have been those who held such a view. Obscurantists always hold it. It
is the philosophy of pessimism, and it is interesting to note that it
is the believer and the devotee, the man of action and not the gentle
doubter who finally ends in pessimism.
For want of intelligence the devotees of causes have been the mischief
makers in all times. We cannot always know who does the most good
in the world, but the evil that men do lives after them and it is
sometimes possible to estimate the amount of harm done. Who has done
the most harm in human history, the sceptics or the believers, the
devotees of causes or the devotees of culture and urbanity? St. Bernard
with his crusade, or Abelard with his doubts? The men who conducted the
Inquisition, or the men who doubted the doctrine of the Trinity? Calvin
and the obscurantists on both sides of the Reformation, or Erasmus and
the Humanists? Cromwell and his Puritans or Voltaire and the Deists?
Robespierre or Goethe?
The devotees to causes have kept human life in turmoil. If the
immorality they would cure has slain its thousands, their “morality”
has slain its tens of thousands. In most cases the strife has been
useless and for causes that might have been won in other ways, really
won. The devotee of a cause requires little provocation to practice
persecution, and only the opportunity to play the tyrant.
Doubt not only has educational value: it preserves social sanity. I
would suggest as part of everyone’s education the reading of such
authors as Lucian, Epicurus, Abelard, Hobbes, Montaigne, Rabelais,
Erasmus, Lessing, Voltaire, Hume and Anatole France. There is no blood
on these men’s hands. They have quietly smiled in the face of bigotry
and superstition. In their words there is laughter and there is light.
Perhaps no one of them ever intended to be a liberator of mankind. They
merely thought and spoke as free spirits, and their very presence puts
sham and cant and unction and coercion and mistaken zeal to shame. They
have done more for freedom and truth than all the armies of crusading
devotees.
CHAPTER VI
A MAN IS KNOWN BY THE DILEMMAS HE KEEPS
William James said that wherever there is selection among alternatives
there is mental life. Man is a choosing animal, and his choices
determine both the ends sought and the means to be employed. We
will not discuss the question whether our choices are spontaneous
or are determined wholly or in part by environmental and hereditary
factors. Whatever determines them, our habits of choosing,--the
general character of the things we prefer,--reveal the kind of people
we are. And as learning is not merely the acquiring of more and more
information but is accompanied by a gradual transformation of habit
systems, its progress is manifest not merely by what a man knows at
any stage in his education, but also by the kind of issue that is real
to him, the questions which he permits life to put to him, the sort of
temptations he has to struggle to avoid, the kind of goods that are
vital to him. When I was a boy my parents used to tell me, “A man is
known by the company he keeps.” The saying, while designed to protect
youth from the dangerous influence of evil companionship, is not wholly
true. Many persons, from ambition or other motives, seek the society of
persons unlike themselves. Those who are more gregarious than selective
may exercise little choice among their associates. But ordinarily
people like to be with their own kind. Criminals keep company with
other criminals, golfers with other golfers, stamp collectors with
others who have the same interest. We wish our friends to be interested
in the things that interest us. Groups long associated tend to become
homogeneous. When marked differences of taste and opinion develop,
companions drift apart. Hence it is obvious that the company one keeps
is determined in part by the dilemmas he keeps.
We do not normally keep the same set of dilemmas through life. Each
stage of development presents new challenges, problems, alternatives;
as we mature our habits of judgment change. We see things in a
different light. What was once a matter of vital concern becomes a dead
issue. Our interest is caught and our choice determined by aspects of
situations to which we did not react at all at an earlier stage. We do
not solve all the problems of any stage, but we outgrow them,--get over
them.
Psychopathology today has much to say about the nature and sequence of
the dilemmas which at any period haunt the mind of an individual. The
matter is so important that I wonder more has not been made of it by
those interested in education. The public, it seems, would have the
educator fill the student’s head with useful information but expects
the student to keep the same beliefs and general outlook on life that
he had before. We speak of rising to a higher mental plane; this is
little else than learning to wrestle with more and more significant
problems. A little girl in her third summer says, “I’m a nice girl;
I don’t bite sister now.” To bite or not to bite, to keep one’s self
clean, to refrain from crying, are normally the dilemmas of early
childhood. If they are not dead issues to a person twenty years old,
they may be regarded as psychopathic symptoms. When a mature individual
is found wrestling with impulses which should have been reduced to
habit and dismissed from consciousness in earlier years, we have a
phenomenon which psychologists call “regression,” or “fixation” of
emotional interest in mental habits that are normally outgrown. Toward
the tasks and situations of adult life, the individual strives to
maintain an infantile attitude and hence fails to adjust himself.
Sometimes the regression shows a preoccupation with infantile wishes,
and sometimes with those of early adolescence; in any case there is
struggle to maintain the inhibitions or the defenses which veil the
inadequately repressed impulses.
The manner in which lessons learned from experience normally transform
an impulse from its expression in very simple and crude dilemmas to
its later and more subtle manifestations may be seen in the forms
with which people exhibit and disguise their egoism during successive
stages of development. When a very young child is beginning to
discover himself and his little world, he finds his own body and its
functions tremendously interesting. Soon he discovers that certain
of his performances command attention. He learns to make use of such
performances in order to get what he wants. He will exercise his power
over parent or nurse by throwing his toys on the floor again and again
and howling until some one picks them up. Long before he condescends to
talk, he notices when people admire him and say complimentary things
about him. A very young child will do little stunts by way of showing
off, and will exhibit irritation if ignored or left alone. He cries out
at any restraint upon his movements or resistance to his wishes.
The egoism of everyone retains something of the infantile quality. But
family discipline, social experience, and the awakening of powers of
observation and thought result in new forms of expression. This ego
interest becomes associated with an ideal of self and its importance
which the individual guards as his honor, his reputation. Every man
is intent upon keeping up his feeling of self-importance; each feels
that one so important deserves special consideration. Egoism in normal
people becomes to some extent liberated from its infantile interests
and is sublimated, that is, attached to ends that are socially
permissible. The original impulse remains, but it wrestles with new
problems. The wish to be admired is a factor in all ambition, also in
romantic love. A love affair is even more a mutual admiration society
than a phenomenon of sex interest. The impulse to command which in the
nursery led the child to throw toys on the floor for others to pick up,
later becomes a desire for leadership, a struggle for political power,
a passion for manipulating or reforming others.
We also find the infantile egoism transferred to religion, where
it plays an important part in adult life. Many of the very images
and emotional attitudes of infancy may thus be kept alive. The
believer may still feel that he is loved as the infant is loved by
the parent,--loved now by the Heavenly Father. He may again feel
that he can have what he desires by asking the father in prayer.
Self-importance survives as belief in the immortality of the soul and
as assurance of salvation. Thus with development and experience, the
same ego interest becomes transformed in the tasks it progressively
sets itself, and in widening the range of the ends for which it
strives. Each stage of development presents its peculiar problems, its
peculiar goods and evils, its possible alternative attitudes toward
the values of experience. Therefore it ought to be quite as possible
to determine a person’s mental age by noting the kind of things which
satisfy his ego interest, as by any other device of mental measurement.
In common practice this is the way in which we judge people.
A man stands revealed both by the things he strives to gain and by
those he seeks to avoid. The thing that most easily shocks him is
usually that which he himself is struggling to overcome. It represents
something to which in his secret heart he can say neither yes nor
no. His dilemma troubles him. He seeks to avoid the inner gnawing by
carrying the fight into the open. He turns his personal conflict into
the appearance of a public issue, and you then have the moral reformer.
People who repeat scandal, demand laws for the censorship of books and
plays, and search through literature intent upon deleting passages they
think are obscene, are too much preoccupied with vice and obscenity.
They are like those compulsion neurotics who spend their time writing
alibis to prove their innocence of the crime they are constantly
tempted to commit.
The thing a man must make an effort to conceal always betrays him.
We all know the type of person who strives in all things to appear
refined, who makes painful efforts for correct speech and proper
manners. There are those who are seriously concerned about being in
what they call society, and those who read books of etiquette and are
disturbed by such important questions as whether when escorting a lady
you should take her arm or let her take yours. And there is the man who
signs his name with ornate flourish and tries to impress waiters and
hotel servants with his importance, and there are the people who are
much exercised over the forgiveness of their sins. All in one way or
another place themselves on their own level.
The correlation between people’s material desires and their general
intellectual interests is so universal that it is used as a guide
in placing advertisements. There are “class” papers, each designed
to appeal to readers who occupy a certain cultural stratum. The
advertising appeals which such papers carry vary with the reading
matter. The older, more literary magazines present a sharp contrast
both in reading matter and in advertising to the newer fiction
magazines. In the first group the essay predominates, with poetry
and literary criticism, and only an occasional work of fiction. In
the second group there is hardly anything but fiction, with possibly
a brief hortatory editorial. Both types are evidently published to
interest readers of average wealth. The number of advertisements of
automobiles, real estate, and securities and other investments is
in about the same proportion in both. But the former group, which
is obviously designed to appeal to more thoughtful and intelligent
readers, contains a larger number of pages given over to advertisements
of books, schools, colleges, places of travel, works of art.
We need not discuss the cheaper fiction magazines. They are obviously
prepared for a still different reading public. The public to which
the better ones appeal is indicated by the dominant character of
the advertising, which consists largely of aids to beauty and
correspondence courses in self-improvement. The stories in such
periodicals are as typical as the advertisements. Thus it is that in
their daily preferences, as truly as in the greater issues of their
lives, people select themselves and are segregated into classes,
or spiritual types--types which may live in daily contact with one
another, yet worlds apart.
Democracy strives to ignore the cultural differences among people.
Education intensifies them. The attempt to place everyone on the
same mediocre plane, even though it be a level considerably above
the lowest, is not education; it is a kind of social work. Education
means finding one’s own level. Like all progress it is qualitative
and differentiating. Just as organic evolution is a process which
can be measured only in the extent of the differences it has made
between higher and more complex organisms and lower ones, so with
education. It brings out distinctions of human worth, places people
on the rounds of a ladder, the gradations of which are discernible in
the kind of interests they have, in the quality of their choices, the
perplexities they wrestle with and overcome, the tasks and issues they
set themselves.
The general advance of civilization is in some respects like that of
the individual. We may learn much about the general cultural attainment
of any age by noting the issues that divided people at that time and
the problems that troubled them. There are all sorts of “cultural lags”
in the course of progress, but it helps us to estimate the general
intellectual level Europe had attained at the close of the middle ages
to learn that whole communities could be terribly disturbed over the
question, “What is the evil omen of a comet which suddenly appears
in the zenith?”--so disturbed indeed that on one occasion it is said
popular pressure forced the Pope to go out and pronounce an official
curse upon a comet and command it to leave the sky, which it did much
to everybody’s peace of mind. Again, we can form something of an
opinion of the mentality of an age in which there is general interest
in such a question as “Shall a person accused of witchcraft be put to
torture to compel him to testify against himself?” or, “How far may one
walk on the Sabbath day without committing sin?” or “Does the doctrine
of the rights of man apply to negro slaves?” or “Who amongst us has
committed the unpardonable sin,” or “Will a child that dies without
baptism go to Hell,” or, by way of illustrating something of the spirit
of contemporary America, “Who’s your bootlegger?”
I have said that many of our dilemmas are not resolved, but are
outgrown. This leads us to a further observation of their educational
significance. Many of the issues which stir a community are insoluble
because they rest upon presuppositions which are unsound and so long as
the assumption remains unchallenged the issue will haunt men’s minds.
When one goes back of the issue and sees the premises to be false,
the whole wrangle becomes meaningless. The question about torturing
people accused of witchcraft presupposes the superstition that it is
possible for an individual to enter into a contract with the devil.
Get rid of belief in devils and witch trials themselves cease. So the
nightmare about the “damnation of babes” ceases to be a live issue for
a mind that has become sufficiently civilized to have passed beyond the
primitive man’s terror of Hell. And so I think it is with most popular
beliefs and public issues and partisan conflicts, as well as with many
of our private dilemmas. As stated they presuppose a disguised error,
or are the fruit of factors that remain unconscious. So long as we
accept the fatal assumption the issue is real to us. We are caught and
held in the dilemma and our educational progress stops.
Progress in thinking, without which learning is mere repeating, comes
by examining foundations. The educated mind differs from the uneducated
in the insight which enables it to file a demurrer, dismiss the case,
or restate it in terms that lead somewhere. It is in getting us over
our dilemmas that education frees our minds.
It is often said that the aim of education is to equip the student with
a set of principles and beliefs which will serve him through life.
Yes, but principles are _leading ideas_. Their function is to lead
us to correct conclusion and right action. They are instruments, not
ends in themselves, and they must occasionally be re-tested. They are
not final statements of the issues of living. Much misunderstanding
and mental suffering--most of our false dilemmas--grow out of popular
confusion about principles. Men feel that if they change their beliefs
or arrive at unexpected conclusions or resolve their dilemmas away they
are losing or compromising their principles. There is no sacrifice of
principle in re-stating an issue as a result of better knowledge and
insight. There is no defense of principle in a controversial spirit
which cares more for partisan victory than for truthfulness. The level
on which a controversy is waged is often a matter of greater importance
than the victory of either side. If the victory of either means the
triumph of the same irrational type of man, it makes little difference
who wins. In most partisan and sectarian struggles the principle at
stake--if any--is lost sight of in a mass of confusion. It frequently
happens that both sides contend for the same “ideal” and base their
contentions upon the same mistaken premises. In most cases men’s
principles are little more than phrases which justify in their own
minds their contentiousness and will to power.
An examination of its presuppositions may transform an issue into a
very different sort of problem. There is, for instance, the controversy
now raging in parts of America between religion and science. Many
educated persons say there is no conflict between religion and science.
In their own thought there may be none, because they do not mean by
either of these terms what the man on the street means by them. To him
religion is a system of dogma based upon divine revelation. He cannot
conceive of religion without belief in the stories related in the
Bible or belief in the teachings of his church. By belief he means the
firm conviction that alleged historical events and miracles happened
just as related. He conceives of science also as a body of doctrine
according to which the specific teachings of religion are held to be
untrue. Stated in these terms conflict is inevitable, a person who has
scientific knowledge cannot be religious, and the issue must be fought
to the end.
For the thinking mind the problem becomes a quite different one.
Science is a method, not primarily a system of doctrine. It is a way
of discovering truth which must be followed wherever it leads, and it
presents us with the problem of how we are to value and interpret its
discoveries. The problem presents itself differently from an ascending
series of points of view.
A student who has grown up under traditional religious influences
and has probably given the matter little thought, begins the study
of natural science, biology or geology, let us say, and learns
something of the evidence for the theory of evolution. He begins to
speculate upon its implications. He may, as many do, strive in some
manner to reconcile evolution with the account of creation set forth
in the Bible. After further thought and study this simple device for
reconciling science and religion may not satisfy him. He sees that
something more than the reinterpretation of a text is necessary.
He finds himself striving to reconcile two entirely different
world-views. As a rational explanation of the world and its origin,
religion is wholly incompatible with science. The student, considering
that this is the function of religion, and finding that as a method
of giving an account of natural processes religion fails, may discard
it, and become an apostle of science, and an opponent of religion,
save as a system of ethics. Persons who hold this rationalistic view
of religion commonly try in turn to make a gospel of science. Religion
is darkness; science is light. Religion enslaves; science liberates.
Religion holds progress in check; science is the Religion of Humanity,
and the triumph of Reason is the promise of the salvation of the
world. This view was widely prevalent in the nineteenth century. It is
the stage at which the average person with some knowledge of science
breaks off and considers the problem settled. It is an honestly taken
position, which often requires no small courage. I hope no one will
think me an apologist for religion if I suggest that this is a rather
innocent and unsophisticated attempt to solve the problem. It assumes
that it is the proper function of religion to explain nature and
improve the life of humanity. What a simple and straightforward affair
the human spirit appears to be from this point of view. No subtle
twistings and turnings, no hidden pitfalls, no twilight regions, no
dark secrets.
Suppose now one were to cease expecting religion to do the explanatory
task of science, and were also to cease trying to make a new religion
of science, is it not likely that the conflict, or contrast, between
the two might appear in altered perspective? It is possible to regard
both scientific and religious concepts as symbols--figures of speech,
each expressive of its exclusive values. In another study, I likened
the difference between science and religion to that which exists
between the two recognized symbols of the United States of America--the
map and the flag. The former is the scientific symbol; it has to do
with position, movement, measurement of distance. Maps exist for the
intellectual and practical interest. The flag stands for the emotional
interest; it has to do with certain historical associations, but is
itself no guarantee of the accuracy of any historical tradition. It is
poetry.
Once we grant that religion is poetry, a new set of problems emerges.
Is the poetry good or bad? What valuations of the possibilities--or
impossibilities--of experience are here expressed in these symbols?
Which of my ideas about the world are maps and which are flags? Much
of the popular conflict of religion and science arises out of general
confusion on this point. A super-patriot might conceivably be such a
worshipper of the flag that he would resent the disclosure of certain
geographical or historical facts which would lead to revaluation of
some of his emotional attitudes. Doubtless many Americans have an
exaggerated and emotionally determined idea of the history if not of
the geography of their country, yet it is unthinkable that they should
confuse the flag with the map. But existence as a whole is not so
easily surveyed, and such maps as we have of it often extend beyond
the comprehension of the average man. In all lower approaches to the
problem of religion, the flags which symbolize certain emotional
appreciations of the universe are confused with maps of it. In his
religion the average man is still an idolator, psychologically similiar
to the poor heathen who cannot distinguish between his god and his
wooden image. On the popular level, the conflict of religion and
science is an elaborately rationalized struggle for supremacy by a type
of mind which has not yet grasped the true inwardness of its emotional
attitudes. While the consideration of the problem remains on this
level, nothing is gained for education. There is mental grasp of the
situation when the problem is re-stated in terms of the inwardness of
religion and the objectivity of science. And it then becomes possible
to form hypotheses which inspire further pursuit of knowledge. New
knowledge leads to the better organization of knowledge previously
acquired.
We have another familiar example of the educational value of displacing
lower dilemmas by higher ones by examination of the presuppositions.
For a generation and more many minds have been preoccupied with
some aspect or other of the controversy between conservatism and
radicalism. There have been so many varieties of opinion on both sides
that it is impossible to make a clear-cut statement of the issue or
to find any particular group or theory which is representative of
either side. From the standpoint of the majority of the United States
Senate, the followers of Mr. La Follette were dangerous radicals.
From the standpoint of the communists these same La Follette men
were conservatives, counter-revolutionaries. In general the conflict
has been between those who are interested in preserving the present
order of things intact together with its traditions, established
institutions, privileges and inequalities, and those who favor some
basic changes which they believe will remedy the situation. We will not
discuss the merits of either side to this conflict. In some form or
other it comes up repeatedly. It is a real issue, but the discussion
of it may proceed on various levels of thought, and this fact has
something to do with education. Intellectuals believe that their
radicalism is the result of enlightenment, while their opponents
believe that on the whole education makes for conservatism and that
radicals are ignorant foreigners who have been misled by professional
trouble makers. The present controversy is not conducive to education
in any of its forms, or on either side. It tends to divert education
from its true aims into partisan service, and to produce in both
parties a fixed and unteachable type of mind. As the case is ordinarily
presented, a stupid and panicky conservatism is faced by a superficial
and equally intemperate radicalism.
The problem cannot be discussed intelligently, nor can the
consideration of it lead to increase of knowledge, until its
presuppositions are critically examined, and the whole matter is
re-stated in more intelligible terms. It is these presuppositions to
which I wish to call attention, for without them the controversy could
not have arisen in its present forms. Although there is a great variety
of these forms, the same presuppositions are common to all and are
usually accepted without question by both sides. The disposition to
go back and question the presuppositions is evidence that education
is going on. We have some such evidence in recent years for many have
modified their positions in regard to various aspects of the social
problem.
More attention has been given to the changes of view among radicals
than to those which have taken place among conservatives. Since events
of recent years have greatly encouraged self-expression on the part of
misinformed noisy extremists who appoint themselves spokesmen of the
latter group, we sometimes get the impression that conservatives learn
nothing. But I incline to the opinion that there has been perhaps an
equal proportion of learning by the more thoughtful minority on both
sides of the controversy.
Among radicals modification of views has occurred sufficiently to
arouse general interest in the questions “What has become of the
pre-war liberals?” “What has happened to radicalism?” A former
member of the radical group some years ago wrote a book entitled
“Tired Radicals,” in which he adopted the usual view that the change
of outlook among radicals was the result of the loss of energy and
enthusiasm which comes with middle age. But if radicalism were merely
a form of youthful enthusiasm, I believe the movement would be more
wide-spread than it has ever been in America. The suggestion is worth
considering that in some cases the change of views might indicate that
the individual has learned something. By learning I mean the better
grasp of the subject which comes when one examines the presuppositions
of both sides. Conversely, those who have not examined their
presuppositions during the last twenty years have learned nothing.
They continue talking, but they are addressing a generation that is
past and gone. Anachronisms of this sort are common occurrences among
conservatives. They occur with equal frequency among radicals. And when
a man whose education has stopped leaves the radical movement and joins
the opposition, he frequently shows himself to be not an aging prophet
who has lost his enthusiasms, but the same intensely opinionated and
militant person he was before.
When, therefore, I suggest that a change of attitude toward the social
question may be indicative of learning, I do not mean to imply that
it is the function of education to turn radicals into conservatives.
Rather its function is to give the men on each side a different mental
outlook. Back of the controversy as it has existed in our times there
is a certain presupposed philosophy which is passing away as education
increases, and its passing modifies the thinking of persons on both
sides. Humanism in education is supplanting the older Humanitarianism.
Interest in cultural values is supplanting the earlier naturalism.
Rousseau and Bentham and Comte and D. F. Strauss and William Morris
are making way for the coming social psychologists. Social philosophy
becomes analytical. The sweeping generalizations of Marx and the day
dreams of Bellamy begin to have interest chiefly for the historical
student. Democratic dogma, little questioned in the nineteenth century,
is now subjected to criticism. A different intellectual spirit is
abroad which necessarily modifies the general outlook of those who
share in it.
Let us note more specifically some of the presuppositions behind the
Radical-Conservative dilemma. There is the Humanitarian doctrine that
man is naturally good and daily growing better. All that is needed
for his perfection is freedom or opportunity. This assumption is
common to both parties, one holding that such opportunity is under
the present system granted to all who wish to take advantage of it,
the other that under the present system opportunity is granted only
to the privileged few and denied to the toiling masses, who are kept
down in wage slavery. All the evils of human life are attributed to
the present system. Remove the evil system and everybody will be good
and happy. There is much talk about “the emancipation of labor.” Both
sides assume that social justice is possible, each maintaining that
its own triumph is the triumph of justice. And both sides are disposed
to estimate the values of civilization and the meaning of personal
success in terms of material possession. The good life is the life of
the man with plenty of money. We hear much of the materialism and the
dominance of business interests today. Everyone is urged to get ahead.
A man measures his worth by the amount of his income. Conservatives can
see no ground for dissatisfaction with a system which makes for unusual
prosperity. Radicals deny that prosperity is universal, say that the
rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, interpret
all history in terms of the struggle for wealth, and spread before
the masses the promise of abundance with a minimum of toil. On both
sides we find that easy optimism which is said to be characteristic
of half-educated minds. It is assumed that the evils of the world are
only superficial, that they are contingent upon purely environmental
factors, and can be removed by legislation or by mass action. Progress
is assured. No one doubts that a prosperous and happy life is possible
to all if only wealth were properly distributed. As the control of
affairs passes more and more completely into plebeian hands and as the
tastes and dilemmas of mediocrity come to set standards of value, the
world is supposed to be getting better.
This questionable assumption leads to distortion of fact by both
parties, and must continue to do so as long as the controversy is kept
on this level. I wonder what would happen if instead of merely drawing
hasty inferences from these naïve assumptions, it should become the
practice to examine them. Perhaps the issue might be re-stated in
more significant terms. But what concerns us at present is not the
social problem as such, but the fact that the attempt to clear up the
intellectual muddle about it means that education is going on.
A glance at the nature of the presuppositions we have been discussing
will help us to understand why it is that they are so seldom examined.
They flatter. Apart from their radical or conservative implications,
such ideas are congenial to the average man. They pat him on the
back. It is no small satisfaction to believe that the environment is
responsible for all human ills, that evil may easily be removed by
mass action; that given material abundance, the good life follows
automatically; that distinctions among men are reducible to economic
factors; that the supremacy of our own type is the goal of progress. I
believe that the level at which one’s education stops, the particular
set of dilemmas in which one’s mind becomes fixed is usually determined
by some self-satisfying assumption. If my ego can remain elated over
the possession of an automobile, or the right to vote, or the belief
that I and my kind are or ought to be socially superior, or because I
can play the saxophone, or am able to resist the temptation to pick
pockets, the problems which have live interest for me will be the
problems which lie on these levels. I recently talked with a man who
was quite pleased with himself because for some years he had not been
in jail. He frequently compared the advantages and disadvantages of
life “on the inside” and “on the outside.” To his mind all days and all
people were thought of as “inside” or “outside,” a point of view which
I imagine few people linger over or find personally gratifying. But the
virtues men pride themselves on are as a rule those which compensate
them for the particular vices to which they are tempted.
The house I live in had for a number of years been rented to an elderly
Scotch woman who kept it as a “rooming house.” When she moved out she
said to me, “I hear you are going to do this house over and make it
your own home. Some day you may be sitting here and thinking, ‘What use
to go on in this house of mine?’ It’ll be a satisfaction to you to
know that you are in a respectable place. Never once in all the years
that I rented out furnished rooms did the patrol wagon have to back up
to this door at midnight.”
The things which people find consoling both reveal and determine
the plane on which their thinking takes place. I have heard a young
man say with a note of defiance, “Yes, sir, I’m a single-taxer and
I’m proud of it.” So involved is the ego in our dilemmas that we
often require the assistance of a specialist in getting over them.
Psychoanalysts whose task is chiefly that of helping people face
certain facts about themselves, speak of their work as re-education.
In a sense all education is re-education, the untying of the knots in
which our self esteem in its defense has entangled itself. Perhaps
nothing is so effective a bar to education as intellectual immodesty.
A man’s education stops at the point where he becomes incapable of
self-criticism. And because egotism is always a bit ridiculous, the
conceited mind protects itself from criticism by making its interests
sublime. In the presence of the sublime, laughter is taboo. The subject
concerning which man has lost his sense of humor is just the subject
concerning which criticism leads to self-criticism. There are persons
who cannot take a joke about “The Grand Old Party,” or the Government
at Washington, or the teachings of Karl Marx. Recently a group of
church men publicly denounced the New York newspapers because of
their humorous remarks about prohibition. Once when I was asked for a
definition of a radical I seriously offended a prominent socialist with
the innocent remark that a radical is a man who loves Labor and hates
work.
Lack of humor is always evidence of unteachableness. Ignorance is
pompous. The holy tone with which people proclaim their convictions is
uncivilized. When the American people are better educated, there will
be less solemn pantomime in the land. We could not with straight faces
indulge ourselves in the hysterical reforms, the bitter partisanships,
religious fanaticism and race prejudice which at present show how
seriously we take ourselves. Education should help people make an art
of living, and the art of living, like all arts, is play. Learn to play
with your ideals, even with your sublimities, and you will break the
hold upon you of many a crude and hampering dilemma.
CHAPTER VII
THE FREE SPIRIT
Freedom is not as precious to the members of this postwar generation
as it was to some of their ancestors. The nation which once followed
the leadership of Mazzini and Garibaldi now suffers a dictatorship with
apparently little protest. In England, the stronghold of liberalism,
a conservative government places a censorship upon the words of the
man who is probably that country’s best-known writer. Socialism has
its beginnings in that passion for freedom and humanity which inspired
the youth of the early nineteenth century and ends at Moscow with a
constitution from which even a Bill of Rights is omitted. In America
we now see that democracy does not guarantee liberty. The government
shows decreasing respect for the immunities of the individual. Crowd
movements spread intolerance and are ever demanding more strict
regulation in matters of personal conduct and private judgment. One
frequently hears the remark, “The talk about personal liberty is
disgusting nonsense.”
There are various reasons for this change of spirit. The individual
rather willingly permits himself to be transformed from a private
person to a numerical unit in his group or mass because as part of
a public he gains power through the force of numbers. Individualism
in a society in which every one is chiefly interested in industrial
competition tends to become little more than the stock argument of
those who wish to defend economic privilege. Other privileges are lost
sight of in a standardized world. Moreover, as people begin to see that
freedom is not something with which all men are equally endowed by
their creator, but is achieved in varying degree, there is a tendency
to minimize its importance. We are naturally somewhat suspicious of
the freedom of others. Those who themselves have little capacity for
it would impose their own limitations upon all others. From childhood
onward we wish to be able to do what we see others doing. When this
is impossible, there is a tendency to restrain them from doing what
we cannot do. Masterful spirits grant themselves privileges which may
appear wicked to the crowd. The free mind allows too much. When on
the other hand a person who has not attained some degree of mastery
declares his independence, we do not speak of him as free, we say that
he “takes liberties.”
Thus where the ideals of the educated mind prevail there is a general
gain in freedom through increase in mastery. Where the ideals of the
ignorant and wrongly educated predominate, there is a decline in
freedom and an increase in the disposition to take liberties. It is the
custom today to rule out of the consideration of values any reference
to the things of the mind, and to try to ground all values, freedom
included, on a strictly economic and legal foundation, as if they were
produced by and existed only for a brainless and impersonal equilibrium
of social forces. We are beginning to see that for a people which loses
sight of the inwardness of the sources of freedom, constitutional
guarantees do not long guarantee, and each power-seeking group begins
to take liberties with the organized life of the community. The
so-called liberalism of those modern writers who make apology for this
sort of thing has in it little of the spirit of liberal education. It
is rather the plebeianization of scholarship. I as a liberal am not
obliged to throw my hat in the air over each degradation of value that
marks the triumphant progress of democracy.
It is the ideal of the educated man, not the demands of the crowd which
is the best guarantee of freedom. I believe we are chiefly indebted to
this ideal for such freedom as we enjoy. Education when it is genuine
must for its own sake move in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom.
It must wander where truth leads the way. It must attain independence
of judgment and a certain decent privacy for contemplation. It is in
itself freedom from servitude and from routine. It broadens one’s
interests and hence one’s sympathetic understanding of others. Nothing
human is alien to it. The educated mind, having business of its own,
minds its own business. Hence it grows in tolerance. Freedom is always
freedom for something,--freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom
from meddlesome interference, freedom from the crushing weight of
authority and tradition, freedom in matters of religious belief. Every
such freedom is largely the result of the influence of education, and
each exists in any community in inverse ratio to its ignorance and
provincialism.
The classical tradition has its origin, as we saw, in the efforts of
Greek philosophers to teach free men the essentials of the good life.
It has by no means remained true to its ideal, but each rediscovery
of its meaning has had a liberalizing effect. The modern sense of the
worth of the individual--which is only recently on the decline--and
the humanist philosophy of education alike show the influence of the
Renaissance. The eighteenth century, stilted and formal as it was,
could with some justification call itself the age of the Enlightenment.
It was the age of Voltaire, the age of great educational advance. It
was also the age from which we derive most of our pronouncements about
liberty and the rights of man. I would almost go so far as to say that
when education is not liberalizing, it is not really education but is
a highly systematized species of propaganda. This liberalizing quality
is so essential to education, and is so clearly a way of the spiritual
life, that its presence determines the genuineness of any movement or
philosophy that may bear the name Liberalism.
The term “free spirit” has been so frequently abused, that I hesitate
to use it. It suggests Rousseau’s Emile, educated to obey only the
benign laws of nature and his own impulses. “He follows no formula,
yields neither to authority nor to example, and neither acts nor speaks
save as it seems best to him.” One thinks of such phrases as Max
Stirner’s “Ego and His Own,” or Whitman’s “Spontaneous Me,” or “The
Beautiful Soul” of nineteenth century Romanticism. One is reminded of
the young woman from Nebraska who came to live in Greenwich Village,
New York City, and said her soul felt as if it had taken off its shoes
and stockings. The cult of spiritual freedom had quite a vogue in New
York a few years ago. I believe it originated in the Latin Quarter of
Paris. The devotee of it displayed his free spirit by wearing a flowing
tie and corduroy trousers, by his obvious disdain of barbershops and
laundries, by his talk which was mostly about sex, socialism and the
new art, and by his general air of lassitude and disillusionment.
I believe that this pose, together with much of the sentimental
liberalism which passes for “emancipation” among intellectuals, may
be traced back to Jean Jacques Rousseau. Nearly all the basic ideas
of contemporary liberalism as well as those of the “newer education”
frequently associated with the liberal movement, may be found in the
writings of Rousseau. It is amusing to hear liberals proclaim these old
ideas as if they were the most advanced theories of life and education.
And you have but to compare Rousseau with Erasmus or Voltaire or Huxley
to see how far away he is from the spirit of liberal education. The
latter is tender-hearted and hard-headed. Rousseau is soft-headed and
hard-hearted. An emotional egoism feeds on dreams of social revolt
and of an idyllic return to nature. Rousseau hates civilization, with
its duties and responsibilities. He becomes romantic and sentimental
about Nature. His ideal of the free man is Robinson Crusoe. “We are
born sensible.” “The natural man is complete in himself; he is the
numerical unit, the absolute whole, who is related only to himself or
to his fellow-man. Civilized man is but a fractional unit.” “Civilized
man is born, lives and dies in a state of slavery. At his birth he
is stitched in swaddling clothes; at his death he is nailed in a
coffin, and as long as he preserves the human form he is fettered by
our institutions.” Hence if you would educate, “Observe nature and
follow the route which she traces for you.” “All wickedness comes from
weakness. A child is bad only because he is weak; make him strong and
he will be good.” “Keep the child dependent on things alone, and you
will have followed the order of nature in his education.” “Do not let
him know what obedience is when he acts, nor what control is when
others act for him. Equally in his actions and in yours let him feel
his liberty.”
“O men, be humane; it is your foremost duty.... Why would you take from
those little innocents the enjoyment of a time so short and of a good
so precious which they cannot abuse? Why would you fill with bitterness
and sorrow those early years so rapidly passing, which will no more
return to them than to you? Fathers, do you know the moment when death
awaits your children? Do not prepare for yourselves regrets by taking
from them the few moments which nature has given them.”
“The only habit which a child should be allowed to form is to contract
no habit whatsoever.”
“It is absolutely certain that the learned societies of Europe are but
so many public schools of falsehood; and very surely there are more
errors in the Academy of Sciences than in the whole tribe of Hurons.”
“Happy the people among whom one can be good without effort and just
without virtue.”
I trust that these passages selected almost at random from Rousseau’s
treatise on education, “Emile,” do not give a wholly unfair impression
of this author’s philosophy of life. Man in the state of nature is wise
and good. Civilization has corrupted him by enslaving him. If he does
evil it is not because he is bad, but because he is weak. We should not
hang the criminal but blame the society which made him what he is.
The proper function of education is to enable the individual--the
little innocent--to grow up naturally without discipline, without
forming any habits, never sacrificing present enjoyment to future
knowledge, inspired always by the ideal of that happy state in which
one may be good without effort. The ideal education therefore is the
life of the North American aborigine or what Rousseau imagined such a
life to be. Freedom here is the return to nature.
From the times of Hobbes and of Montaigne onward there seems to have
been a growing interest in “Man in the state of nature.” But whereas
with most writers this interest was largely a matter of theory and
speculation, with Rousseau man in the state of nature becomes an ideal,
a norm.
It would appear that in this dream of the return to nature, there
is symbolized an infantile wish to escape from the tasks and
responsibilities and restraints of adult life. Psychologists speak
of such an “infantile return” as _regression_. This regressive ideal
of freedom is a very different thing from the liberalizing influence
of education as I understand it. I have characterized education as a
victory won over one’s wish-fancies and childish egoism, as the lifting
of the problems of life to higher and more significant dilemmas, as
the attainment of mastery. A humanistic liberalism seeks freedom
as broadmindedness; it strives for a highly civilized, urbane and
sophisticated state of mind in which insight is deepened and interest
is widened. Rousseauian liberalism seeks freedom in relaxation of
effort, in denial of the claims of civilization, in the idealization of
nature and of primitive man.
Many persons who today style themselves liberals are of the Rousseauian
type. There are those who proudly call themselves rebels. A certain
naturalism is carried to the point of hostility to form as such
and to orderliness of any sort. There is frequently a disdain of
“respectability,” and a tendency to play the intellectual vagabond.
I think this is one reason why certain liberals are much taken with
modern imitations of the primitive in art. The element of regression
which characterizes the paintings and sculpture of certain “rebels” is
patent to the psychologist. Many of these works of art closely resemble
the typical drawings of dementia praecox patients. In dementia,
regression, or infantile return, is complete and final. The patient
is free from a disturbing world, having returned to precisely the
“sensibility,” as Rousseau terms it, with which he was born.
Utopian schemes of social reconstruction, and the notion that merely
changing the present system would put an end once for all to human
misery, are in many cases disguised forms of the wish to return to
childhood and thus escape the vicissitudes of adult life in civilized
society. The burden of our industrial civilization is so great that it
is no wonder many should take this path of escape. However, the utopian
fantasy is by no means confined to those who have the hardest struggle.
And there can be no objection to it when it inspires well-considered
efforts for social improvement. There is a type of “liberal” however,
who regards the attempt to solve any concrete problem of civilization
as a compromise of his idealism.
Another aspect of the philosophy of Rousseau has influenced
contemporary liberalism with somewhat paradoxical results. The basis of
that happy state in which one may be just without virtue is elaborated
in “The Social Contract.” Rousseau was not the first to hold the
contract theory of organized society. Both Hobbes and Locke made use
of this idea. But with Rousseau it becomes a doctrine with distinctly
illiberal implications. The argument is somewhat as follows:
Man finds it impossible to continue in the blissful state of nature.
In order to preserve their freedom, men voluntarily enter into a
mutual agreement, according to which each gives over his individual
sovereignty and receives back an equal portion of the common will,
leaving him as free as he was before. Thus there comes into being a
collective sovereign power. All others are of course usurpations and
are destructive of freedom. This new sovereign can do no wrong, there
is no need to protect the individual against it because it is made up
precisely of the wills of all individuals, and the people will not do
injury to themselves since each seeks happiness. Such sovereignty,
which is really the absolute dominion of the mass over its members, can
neither be delegated nor divided, and its exercise is _liberty_.
But is it? This tree is known by the fruit it bears. Notice that for
purposes of this theory, all aspects of the individual will are now
denied except those which may be pooled into a sort of group will and
drawn out again in equal and identical portions for all men. That is,
society is transformed from a plurality of individuals to the unity
of a mass. Man acting as a mass unit takes precedence in all things
over man acting as a private person. Privacy is gone. Liberty is not
personal independence, but the freedom of the group to do what it wills
unchecked. Mass action can do no wrong. According to the logic of this
view no proper bounds may be set to the rule of “the people,” except
such as the sovereign will itself chooses to set. Accordingly, liberty
becomes the rule of all over each in any matter whatsoever concerning
which neighbors choose to restrain or meddle with one another. This
means that myself as person must in all things take orders from that
attenuated public-meeting self of me and of other men which we have
each received in equal portion from the mass will. Everything unique in
me is whittled away from this mass-self and I count only by virtue of
my membership as a numerical unit of the group. And now since any check
or hindrance to the sovereignty of the mass is seen as an unjustifiable
restriction upon its liberty, there is a tendency to extend the tyranny
of the mass to every possible human concern. The demand for liberty
is no longer the assertion of the right of private judgment for those
capable of exercising it; it is “Let the people rule.” No wonder men
come to distinguish between personal liberty and the rights of The
People. The idolatry of the mass turns freedom inside out.
So much for theory. In common practice each majority tends to regard
itself as the sovereign will and play the tyrant, all in the name of
liberty. Each militant minority and struggle group in society seeks
by hook or crook to capture the machinery of law and force its will
upon the public, and in the effort to make its own group will the
sovereign will, the members of each group persuade themselves that in
thus resisting restraint upon their particular mass movement they are
fighting for liberty. A spirit of factiousness spreads through the
community, restriction and regulation increase and multiply, all in
the exercise of crowd-liberty. If your crowd is now in possession of
social power, you are called a conservative. If it is still struggling
to make its will supreme, you may call yourself a liberal. It is an
ironical turn of history that brings it about that many restrictions
upon the freedom of the individual are advocated in the name of
liberalism. Liberalism shades off into a form of radicalism which would
set up a dictatorship to accomplish its ends. Many people use the terms
interchangeably. Radicals in recent years, as the illiberal aims of the
movement unmask themselves, tend to repudiate the name liberal, and
to denounce the liberal as one who having started out along a certain
road, hesitates or turns back at the last minute. Such liberalism finds
itself in the difficult position of having proposed measures which it
hesitated to carry out. It is embarrassed by its own radical offspring.
Such liberalism has little in common with that which is the aim of
liberal education. As it appears in contemporary America, it is a
sort of abortive mass movement caused by the mingling of two social
philosophies which for want of better terms I will call the Lockean and
the Rousseauian traditions.
John Locke wrote his essay on Government at the close of the
seventeenth century. This book together with his “Essay on the Human
Understanding,” did much to shape the thinking of the eighteenth
century, and made a strong impression upon Samuel Adams, Thomas
Paine, Jefferson and other leaders of the American Revolution. The
“self-evident truths” set forth in our Declaration of Independence
clearly reveal this influence. I do not wish to imply that Locke
was the author of American liberalism. He merely has his place in a
tradition which goes back to Magna Charta and is essentially British.
The quarrel between the colonies and the ministers of King George was
a phase of the greater struggle between Parliament and the crown.
For centuries the Englishman has stood up for his individual rights,
has stubbornly resisted any attempt of the sovereign to invade his
privacy or to seize his property without his consent. The Englishman is
naturally jealous of his government. He looks upon it with suspicion
and seeks to limit its exercise of power. He gives it no peace until it
guarantees him security from interference with his personal freedom.
Jefferson’s remark that that government is best which governs least
is typical of the spirit of British liberalism. It was this spirit
which inspired the revolt of the Puritans against both the King and the
Church. The same sentiment is expressed in the petition of Rights which
was presented to the throne about the time that Locke wrote the essay
on government. And it was in this same spirit that the founders of the
Republic framed the Constitution of the United States. They rather
grudgingly granted the government certain specific powers, and sought
by means of various checks and balances to limit the exercise of them.
Even then the public was so alive to the dangers of the new sovereignty
that it refused to adopt the constitution until it was amended by the
addition of the Bill of Rights.
There were added to this assertion of the inalienable rights of the
individual in opposition to the sovereign power the deeper sense of
the importance of the individual gained in the Reformation, and the
insistence upon the right and duty of exercising private judgment which
came with the rationalism of the eighteenth century. The eighteenth
century, with its “appeal to reason” in opposition to the authority
of priest and Bible, was in fact an intellectual declaration of
independence which became for educated minds an essential part of the
liberal tradition. Liberalism owes much to the Deists and men like
Hume. It is not a mere coincidence that a large number of the leaders
of the American Revolution were “freethinkers.” Thus liberalism became
something more than a political movement. It became a philosophy of
personal liberty, of independence of authority, of tolerance. The
rights which the liberal claimed for himself he was--at least in
theory--willing to grant to others. He took the side of the “under
dog.” The tradition is best represented in England by such men as
Priestley, Martineau, Kingsley, Cobden, Bright, Morley, J. S. Mill,
Huxley, and in America by Paine, Jefferson, Channing, Emerson, Theodore
Parker, Lincoln, and Ingersoll.
The decline of liberalism to the level of Bryanism, the betrayal by
“One Hundred Percent Americanism” of the spirit in which the Republic
was founded, the spread of bigotry among the masses, the prevailing
partisan spirit and the illiberalism of professed “liberals,” the
changing of our constitution from a guarantee of personal liberty to
the authorization of Federal interference with the daily habits and
customs of the individual--these are not matters for which we may hold
recent immigrants responsible. They are, I regret to say, symptomatic
of tendencies which are most commonly manifest among Americans of
British descent. They show how far the spirit of a nation may drift
in one hundred and fifty years when it renounces its intellectual
leadership.
Liberalism as a political movement was early divorced from liberalism
as an intellectual movement. The former became Andrew Jacksonism,
“shirt-sleeve democracy,” free-soil-ism, abolitionism, populism, the
Single Tax movement, opposition to big business, Progressiveism.
Ever since the time of the settlement of New England the pioneer and
frontiersman, the “debtor class,” the town laborer and the farmer,
have had to carry on a struggle against the “money powers” of the
large industrial centers. The conflict of “the poor against the
rich”--generally characterized by a demand for governmental regulation
of industry and cheap money--reached its culmination in the “Free
Silver” issue of 1896. Of this “battle for humanity,” the author of
“Our Times” quotes William Allen White.
“It was a fanaticism like the Crusades. Indeed, the delusion that was
working on the people took the form of religious frenzy. Sacred hymns
were torn from their pious tunes to give place to words which deified
the cause and made gold--and all its symbols, capital, wealth,
plutocracy--diabolical. At night, from ten thousand little white
schoolhouse windows, lights twinkled back vain hope to the stars.
For the thousands who assembled under the schoolhouse lamps believed
that when their legislature met and their governor was elected, the
millennium would come by proclamation. They sang their barbaric
songs in unrhythmic jargon, with something of the same mad faith
that inspired the martyrs going to the stake. Far into the night the
voices rose--women’s voices, children’s voices, the voices of old
men, of youths and of maidens, rose on the ebbing prairie breezes, as
the crusaders of the revolution rode home, praising the people’s will
as though it were God’s will, and cursing wealth for its iniquity. It
was a season of shibboleths and fetiches and slogans. Reason slept;
and the passions--jealousy, covetousness, hatred--ran amuck; and
whoever would check them was crucified in public contumely.”
The demand for governmental regulation has been on the increase since
1896 and has almost worked a revolution in our form of government. I
will not discuss the degree to which such an extension of the powers
of the central government is desirable. I am aware of the fact that
the motive is largely that of protecting the economic independence
of the average individual. The point I wish to make is that the
methods advocated reveal the change that has come over liberalism.
Notwithstanding Jefferson’s statement about the government which
governed least, the extensions of the powers of government have not
ever been limited to matters industrial, and we find men calling
themselves liberals accepting all sorts of restrictions upon their
liberty without complaint. Liberalism has taken on a partisan
spirit with all the intolerance, hysteria, and coerciveness that
usually characterizes crowd movements. The same elements that voted
“liberal” with Mr. Bryan thirty years ago, later supported Bryan the
fundamentalist, and today are staunch prohibitionists. I cannot help
feeling that something of the fundamentalist was lurking under the
skin of the American liberal all along. The tradition of personal
independence derived from our British ancestors had about reached this
stage of decline, when efforts were made to supplant it with a very
different type of liberalism from continental Europe.
The “old liberalism” was in theory individualistic; the “new
liberalism” was socialistic. It brought with it such ideas as “the
class struggle,” “mass action,” the “cooperative commonwealth.”
Freedom was to be gained for all in the form of the “emancipation”
of the working class. Youthful intellectuals idealized the
proletariat, organized socialist locals, talked about the “materialist
interpretation of history,” denounced “the capitalists,” addressed
one another as “comrade,” closed their letters to one another with
the words, “Yours for the Revolution,” and a few took the trouble to
study the writings of Karl Marx. The old liberalism was seen as mere
“bourgeois idealogy,” mental slavery, a system of ideas fabricated by
the master class in order to keep the working class in perpetual wage
slavery. The new liberal felt himself intellectually emancipated. If
he was very, very liberal, he styled himself a radical. The movement
reached its maximum strength about the year 1910, and then began
to decline. It appealed to some who had been liberals of the older
American type, but the response of labor was negligible. Radicalism
professed to be a spontaneous revolt of oppressed working people. In
fact it was a cult, with its dogmas about labor, which existed chiefly
among middle-class intellectuals. Its leaders--and it consisted mostly
of leaders with very little rank and file--were seldom working men.
Although its economic creed is the product of the nineteenth century,
a study of the history of this movement would show it to be in direct
line of descent from Rousseau. Many of the basic ideas are distinctly
Rousseauian. Civilization, which Rousseau hated, is now the wicked
capitalist system. There is the same emphasis on the collective will,
on mass action, on the idea of revolution, the same belief that The
People is the only rightful sovereign, that society exists by virtue
of a sort of covenant among men which can be altered at will, and that
universal happiness may be attained by changing the system which is
responsible for all misery and misbehavior.
Radicalism, carried to its logical conclusion, is Communism, in which
there is no pretense of liberalism, no place for freedom. It has
greatest appeal for a type of mind which is by nature doctrinaire
and inelastic, and its propaganda tends to fixed opinion and to
illiberalism. A generation ago Nietzsche said of it,
“In every country of Europe, and the same in America, there is at
present something which makes an abuse of this name: a very narrow,
prepossessed, enchained class of spirits, who desire almost the
opposite of what our intentions and instincts prompt.... Briefly and
regrettably, they belong to the _levellers_, these wrongly named free
spirits--as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic
taste and its modern ideas: all of them men without solitude, without
personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor
honorable conduct ought to be denied; only, they are not free, and
are ludicrously superficial, especially in their innate partiality
for seeing the cause of almost _all_ human misery and failure in
the old forms in which society has hitherto existed--a notion which
happily inverts the truth entirely! What they would fain attain with
all their strength, is the universal, green-meadow happiness of the
herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of
life for everyone.”
The word liberal is commonly associated with that extension of
democracy which the crowd thinks is progress. If you favor this
progress, you are said to be a liberal. If you doubt that it is
progress you are thought to oppose progress as such and so are
a conservative. If the progress of democracy were accompanied
by a corresponding advance of culture and gain in wisdom and
broadmindedness, this use of the term liberal would be appropriate.
Men become free only as they achieve self-government. I take it that a
man governs himself to the degree that he acts upon his own judgment.
Freedom thus presupposes first that people are capable of judging
things for themselves, and second, that they are permitted to do so.
If the progress of democracy resulted in fewer laws and wiser laws,
we should in time have self-government. But the reverse is the case:
the extension of democracy brings about an extension of the powers of
government and the multiplication of foolish laws. It does not follow
that people’s judgment is improved because they can vote about more
and more things. Nor is there any assurance that they will not begin
voting about things that are none of their business and thus destroy
the right of private judgment, which is the exercise of freedom. You
do not decide things for yourself when everything is submitted to a
referendum or regulated by the legislature. If the people or their
representatives should vote to establish a censorship of books, or to
prohibit smoking tobacco, or to compel church attendance on Sunday,
that would be democracy; but it would not be a gain for freedom.
Self-government is impossible when every private matter is turned into
a public question. Men with third-rate minds--and there are enough of
them once they get together to constitute a solid majority--shrink from
the responsibility of exercising private judgment, but are prepared and
eager to decide any matter whatsoever once it becomes a public issue.
They are, moreover, disinclined to allow a large measure of personal
freedom to one another or to any one. Self-government in a democracy
therefore means not private judgment but national independence,
universal franchise, and no constitutional restraints upon the will of
the majority. In common practice, “liberty” is the legally recognized
right of the crowd to tell the individual what he may not do in matters
which concern only himself. Any man has _liberty_ when he has a voice
in the government of the land. He has _freedom_ when he governs
himself. His freedom may be prevented either by lack of judgment or by
outside interference. The effect of education in the community is to
improve judgment and lessen outside interference with the exercise of
it. Properly defined, a liberal is a person who strives for precisely
these results. Liberalism, in this sense, and education are the same.
I said that a man is free when he acts according to his own judgment.
This does not mean that the free man is able to choose anything he
wishes. Necessity constrains him just as it does the unfree. It means,
however, that his assent or dissent in any matter follows from his
personal insight into the implications of the situation. He does the
required thing even when he does not like it, because he has the
intelligence to see that it is required under the circumstances. He is
not compelled to take some other person’s word as to what is required.
He is free not only because he is independent of the will of another in
reaching his decision, but primarily because he knows what he is doing
and why he does it.
There is a very old, extra-canonical legend according to which the Lord
Jesus, passing by, saw a man digging in the field on the Sabbath day,
and he said to the man, “If thou knowest what thou doest, blesséd art
thou; if thou knowest not, curséd art thou.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE APPRECIATION OF HUMAN WORTH
I have a number of neighbors whose sons and daughters are at present
suffering the agony of preparation for college. What a nightmare it
is possible to make of education! Three or four years of attendance
at expensive private schools where the sole aim seems to be to get
the student through his college entrance examinations with a passing
grade. Students terrified, parents anxiously awaiting reports of work
done or not done, teachers tired out, one student fails in his Latin,
another in algebra, a third is sent home because of loss of interest in
study, and there are tears, family conferences, special tutors, reviews
and memory drills in vacation time, until finally the student “gets
through” and drops the subject, his interest in it dead.
I am not one of those who believe that education may be achieved
without effort. But study is not work only, it is also a form a
enjoyment. There are many things which it is a delight to know, not
because such knowledge is useful or is required for a passing grade,
but because it is an aid to the appreciation of value. It is fun.
There are people who attend concerts from a sense of duty, striving
thereby to improve their souls, but it is possible to listen to music
with no other motive than the wish to enjoy it. It is the person who
enjoys music who in the end becomes the discriminating listener. The
same is true of the reading of books. William James once said the
classics are necessary to education because knowledge of them makes us
“connoisseurs of human excellence.” Literature has a charm which is
often lost when it is made “required reading.”
An intelligent boy of seventeen who was having difficulty with his
school work recently said to me, “I think it is because I really am
not interested, and the things I wish to know they do not teach in our
school because the colleges will not give credit for them.” When I
asked him what study would interest him, he replied that he thought he
would like to try philosophy and requested me to suggest a good book
for a beginner, declaring that he intended to take up this study in
addition to his school work.
I have no doubt that had he made this request of one of his instructors
he would have been told that he had better spend his time preparing
his lessons. But I took a chance that his interest might be genuine,
and told him that I thought he would find Plato’s “Republic” a good
introduction to Philosophy, and suggested that he read the first
four books. During the previous semester he had been permitted to
drop one of his courses because reading was “too great a strain upon
his eyes.” When I next saw the boy I inquired how he had got on with
the “Republic.” He said, “Why, I found it so exciting that I did not
stop at the end of the first four books, but read all ten.” When I
asked him what he found interesting in the dialogues, he said, “I do
not understand many of the conclusions they reached, but I enjoyed
listening in on those conversations. They are so logical, and I liked
the way Socrates leads the others along, springs surprises on them, and
makes them see what they mean by what they say. I begin to see what the
difference is between thinking and just talking--and many passages
were beautiful also.” For the first time in his life, he had realized
that the pursuit of knowledge could be an interesting adventure.
Moreover, his parents told me that he had shown improvement in his
regular studies.
When the ancients said that knowledge is knowledge of the good,
they meant in part that with the increase of knowledge comes better
discrimination. If education is _for_ anything it is that we learn to
choose the good. By the “good” I do not mean good in general, or good
as an abstraction of philosophical discourse, nor the conventionally
good. I mean any excellence whatsoever. In order to see and appreciate
excellence, you must yourself have struggled for it. He who has never
striven to surpass himself, surrounds himself with the shoddy, the
second-rate, the cheap. In matters of taste, of sentiment, of good
workmanship, he cannot distinguish between that which is genuine and
that which is imitation. In matters of taste there is much that is
purely arbitrary and conventional, so that what is good taste in one
age may be bad taste in another. Nevertheless, there is a psychological
soundness in our use of the word taste to designate certain judgments
of worth. It implies some degree of self-restraint, a sensitiveness to
subtle stimuli which comes with the habit of giving attention to minute
differences of quality. In contrast, animals which gulp down their food
hastily and in great quantities do not pause to taste it. Similarly,
the mind which has not disciplined itself “swallows things whole,”
as we say. It is not disturbed by the incongruous or the hideous. It
is sensitive only to coarser stimuli: it prefers the hackneyed, the
raucous, the loud and flashy.
I once knew a church in a small town which worshipped in a plain
rectangular old building with colonial windows. When a rival
denomination erected a monstrous building with a huge circular
stained-glass window facing the street, the group which worshipped
in the old structure became dissatisfied. After much difficulty
in securing the money, a committee was sent to a near-by city and
purchased a quantity of gaudily-colored translucent paper similar to
that one used occasionally to see on the front door of a saloon. This
paper the congregation proudly pasted on its colonial window panes.
The architecture of the average church in this country and the hymns
the people sing are much better indications of the level of their
spiritual life than are the creeds they profess. The general cultural
level of the population is revealed by the style of houses men build,
the kind of furniture with which they surround themselves, the type of
motion picture which becomes popular, the magazines on the news stands,
the character of the journals which have the largest circulation,
the “song hits” of the day, the programs which are broadcast for the
radio. These things all have spiritual significance, they indicate a
prevailing type of reaction toward all the values of experience.
The public is curiously indifferent to the lack of genuineness of
sentiment; “hocum” and bathos; deliberate and obvious counterfeits
of emotional reactions characterize practically every appeal to
the general public. Think of the popularity of a play like “Abie’s
Irish Rose,” or of that, a generation ago, of a song like “After the
Ball,” or of a book like “The Man Nobody Knows.” Think of the typical
Chautauqua lecture or political address. Think of the notorious
insincerity of the motion pictures. People ask, “What is the matter
with the movies?” The answer is, the audience. Half-educated people do
not seem to be sensitive to the difference either between good and bad
workmanship or between artistic sincerity and insincerity. Standards
of value, in all the older forms of art, have been set by the knowing
ones. The artist was obliged to submit his creation to the criticism
of persons who had some background of tradition and general knowledge.
With the quantity production methods of the motion pictures, it becomes
possible for the first time to make the man on the street the critic,
on whose judgment depends survival, and as the New Testament says,
“By what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.” In selecting our
preferences we pass judgment on ourselves.
The multitude dupes itself with its desire to get something for
nothing; hence its love of the miraculous. All appeals to it are thus
over-capitalized, and made to appear grand and glorious. Shirking
the effort necessary for real achievement leads to the preference of
quackery. There is a story that a physician who had yielded to the
temptation to make easy money by advertising himself as the discoverer
of a magic remedy for disease, received a call from a former friend and
colleague who disapproved of the practice. When the visitor sought to
persuade him that such methods would not pay, the other stepped to the
window and said, “Come now, look with me at the faces of the people
passing along the street; how many of them do you think would become
your patients and how many mine?” I am told by a professor of biology
who gives a pre-medical course in a Western university that less than a
third of the cases of sickness in the country are treated by reputable
members of the medical profession.
I have been somewhat interested in the popularization of psychology.
On the occasion of a visit to a great public library, I was assured
by the librarian that there was a tremendous popular demand for books
which deal with the subject of psychology. I was shown a section in
which these books were kept so that they would be easily accessible.
The greater number were written by persons who had no knowledge of
the subject. They were utterly misleading. Psychology was commonly
presented as a wonderful, easily practiced device for performing
miracles, a system of secret formulae for curing disease, for getting
into harmony with the divine source of all being, for manipulating the
“subconscious” in ways that assured peace, prosperity, self-mastery,
and power over others. I think it is a conservative statement to
say that nine-tenths of the stuff that bears the name “Psychology”
in popular magazines devoted to the subject, in widely advertised
books, in lectures and correspondence courses in self-improvement, is
pure charlatanism and sleight-of-hand arranged for those who wish to
indulge themselves in systematic self-deception. It is not mere lack of
information which causes people to prefer the cheap. With respect to
the things of the mind, people have various standards of living.
A teacher of economics says that by a person’s standard of living we
mean to designate those things which he insists upon having even if
it is necessary to give up marriage and parenthood to possess them.
However much people may desire and strive for comfort and abundance,
from the standpoint of economics, those who marry and beget children
in poverty have a low standard of living. Hence the standard is
not directly a function of the amount of per capita wealth, but is
psychologically determined. And the standard often applies to other
things besides material possession. Persons who have a high standard
are often poor. They might easily turn their efforts to the acquiring
of wealth, but they will deprive themselves and postpone marriage for
the sake of some cultural interest, education, a scholarly or literary
career. They will go without a motor car in order to have money to
buy books. It would be interesting to make a comparative study of the
families of college professors and certain groups of artisans, who have
about the same income as that of the average professor, in order to
see which type had the greater number of children, and which sent the
greater number of their young people to college, also which possessed
the greater number of automobiles or radios. Thus the standard of
living applies not to what one wishes to possess, but to what one is
willing to pay for a certain kind of living. It has to do with quality,
not mere quantity. This principle applies to intellectual standards of
value. People are content with the second-rate because it is easier.
With learning there comes a new reverence. Perhaps I might speak of
it as the educated man’s faith. Respect for the excellent is possible
only to a mind which has learned to recognize distinctions of worth.
An undiscriminating multitude clings to its idols or substitutes new
idolatries for old precisely because it is blind to those differences
of value which constitute the meaning of existence for mankind. People
seek something “given” to believe in, some universal formula of
salvation, because they are unable to distinguish the relative worth
of concrete experiences actual or possible. Those who shrink from the
responsibility of their own yes or no take refuge in an imaginary
_cosmic_ yes and no. But ground your faith in the difference between
the better and the worse, and you have a faith which grows stronger
with the increase of knowledge. All other “faiths” grow weaker because
they are substitutes and evasions, futile attempts to possess value
without the exercise of discrimination.
If existence as a whole has a purpose or a universal meaning, I do
not see how our minds could know it, or what use it could ever be to
the mind that grasped it. I have tried to show that our thoughts and
beliefs are _human ways_, that our thinking is partial. As James said,
all meanings depend upon the fact that we are “interested spectators”
and prefer some things to others. Aside from our human interests and
preferences, everything being so far as we can see equally inevitable,
has the same degree of existence, or right to be, and all is equally
important. Nothing then has any special importance. And if nothing is
important, nothing has any meaning. It might be said that each thing
has meaning for the whole. But since the whole lies beyond our ken,
such a statement does not help us much. The world of meanings and of
truths therefore does not have an independent existence but is related
to our preferences and is a human creation. I am not, however, at
present concerned with the problem of the meaning of truth. Truth is
itself a value. I am trying to state a simple creed by which a man may
best order his life and discover that which an intelligent mind may
reverence. It is, “I believe in the distinction of worth.”
The loss of belief in distinction turns both society and the world of
values upside down. It is symptomatic of the dominance of mediocrity.
With the degradation of power there is a corresponding degradation of
value. The power which rules the modern world is the power of numbers.
Many will say it is the power of money. This too is a numerical force,
having nothing to do with quality or the discrimination of value: the
possession of money does not as such lift the possessor out of the
mass. There is much talk about the conflict of the masses with the
capitalists, but since on both sides the struggle is one for economic
advantage rather than for spiritual value, it may be regarded merely
as the conflict between successful and unsuccessful mass units over a
common interest. Money power and the power of numbers are not really
a confrontation of contrasting valuations of the possibilities of
experience. On both sides the conflict is waged on about the same
level and for identical ends. Capitalism is not really the foe of
democracy, it is democracy’s first-born child. The self-made successful
business man is the “success” in democratic society, its ideal. He is
what the mass as a whole strives to become. Some people think this is
individualism. Infrequently it is, usually it is not. Dollars still
are numbered, and money power is the power of numbers. Its power is
the same as concentrated mass power, since it is of this same order.
We speak of “amassing” money. The mass idea and the ideals of the mass
prevail all round. Capitalism holds sway by virtue of its mass appeal,
and by virtue of the fact that the capitalist is the realization of the
average man’s ambition. The mass because it is powerful and can grant
or withold favors, lords it over the realm of values. Emphasis is laid
upon that which produces an identical type of reaction in a maximum
number of people. The commonplace is rated high because it is the
average.
The rare, the unique, the excellent, cannot be syndicated and
drops out of consideration. The standards which prevail are those
of undifferentiated men. Mass appeal asserts the equal importance
of all individuals, as if a man’s worth consisted in his mere
“number-oneness.” This is the democratic dogma of equality. Critics
of the dogma frequently say that it represents the foolish attempt to
declare all men equal in all respects. I doubt this. It seems to me
that this dogma is perfectly correct so far as it goes. It declares
all men to be equal _before the law_. And law is no respecter of
persons, hence all men are equal before that which does not respect
their personalities. Which is to say that all men are equal in one
respect--that each is a numerical unit when he is considered as a
member of the mass. It is not denied that men may be unequal in other
respects. The point is that these “other respects” do not get a
hearing. But the only recognition of the individual that amounts to
anything is that which recognizes the differences of one from another.
When we emphasize excellence, good workmanship, sincerity, ability,
virtue, wisdom, we have in mind matters concerning which the
differences among men are the differences between superiority
and inferiority. Hence discrimination of value is recognition of
distinctions of worth among men. Lose sight of distinctions of
worth--of the very desirability of distinction as a social good--and
all values decline to the level of mediocrity.
In the supremacy of man as mass the mediocre man, he who in all things
corresponds to type, and is most reducible to average, is King. For him
books and journals are published; clergymen and editors speak for him
and say what they think he believes; laws are made in his interest.
Programs for the radio and motion pictures are made to please him. His
dilemmas are held up as the dilemmas of every one. His goods become the
standards to which all are expected to conform. He has purchasing power
and he has votes. He can make and unmake heroes. He determines the
direction of the course of events in his day and generation. Society
moves in the direction of the type of man about whom there is most
general concern, the man whose preferences set the pace.
The goal set by “modern ideas” would seem to be not the attainment of
a higher level of values, not greater personal worth among men, but
the more complete supremacy of man as mass. Recognition of personal
worth is discouraged, for it necessitates the admission that some
persons are by nature, or as a result of effort, superior to others.
Such an admission is contrary to the idealization of the mass, which is
the worship of the power of numbers. Personal distinction is frowned
upon and discounted. Differences of superiority or inferiority are,
if grudgingly admitted, said to be the result not of difference in
native endowment or of individual achievement, but mere products of
environment. Hence human excellence is an accident.
There is a wide-spread tendency to minimize and deny the significance
of personality. An advanced school of psychology holds that belief
in the existence of personality is a superstition. Personality is
simply the way the nervous organization works and is similar to the
running of a gas engine. Any hereditary differences of capacity or of
teachableness are negligible. All individual traits are reducible to
conditioned reflexes which are what they are because of the coincidence
of certain stimuli. I am what I am because somebody co-operating with
the environment conditioned me in this way. I have absolutely nothing
to do with the matter. Consciousness, interest, attention, will, have
no place in this psychology. The same may be said of all attempts to
explain the phenomena of life in mechanistic terms. Historic movements
are explained as if individuals had nothing to do with them. Social
change is said to be the product of impersonal economic forces, and
progress the result of mass action. Thus the Great Man at best only
represents the mass tendencies of his times. Even for discoveries in
science and creative achievement in the arts, the mass is given credit
although it may have resisted these things when they were new.
I believe that such attempts to _depersonalize_ humanity are
consciously or unconsciously motivated by the wish to avoid the
recognition of the possibility of superiority in an age when the
values of civilization are largely committed to the tender custody of
man acting as mass in the struggle for power. Whether distinctions of
worth are recognized or not, deny that they may exist, deny that men
may have greater or less worth in themselves, and human achievement
becomes merely the attainment of bodily comfort, or social power, or
satisfaction of egoistic desires. There are many who would hold that
such is the case. But our existence is not measured by what we can
get or what we can do, but by what with our getting and doing we may
_become_. Mankind differs from other animals not merely in getting and
doing, man is himself different, and is more than they. It is in this
that his evolution is seen. The same is true of the individuals in the
mass; some are more in themselves than others. So obvious a truth would
never require statement except in a standardized, crowd-manipulating
age in which there is much that encourages the inferior to abound.
I am not suggesting that we devise some plan for picking out all the
superior individuals for preferment and honor, or that we weed out the
inferior ones by some process of elimination, or that the educated man
should or could pose as a superior person. He who must make an effort
to exhibit any excellence has attained little of it. If the world is
spiritually right side up, people will be selected by the standards
of value that prevail. When you buy a newspaper, vote a party ticket,
go to a theatre, listen to a lecture, read a book, express a moral
sentiment or show any preference whatever, you are doing more than just
that thing. Our daily choices determine what we ourselves become, and
they do something else also; the total of them has survival value for
some particular type of man. We are thus daily deciding whose dilemmas
shall determine the quality of living, and what kind of human life is
to be lived on this planet, and who shall thrive and who shall perish.
Human progress is not something we achieve directly by joining a
movement and forcing our convictions upon others. It is something we
help determine every day in the choices we make. The elements of it
come like the variations which appear in the structure of plants and
animals. And as Darwin said it is the function of the environment,
in causing modifications of species, to select certain variants
for survival and to eliminate others; so also in the progress of
civilization do our daily preferences operate. Natural selection and
primitive custom operate blindly and automatically and without reason.
It is because education improves judgment and the appreciation of value
that Thomas Davidson spoke of it as “conscious evolution.”
The education of a people at any time is its answer to the riddle of
life. This answer is more than giving an account of the processes of
nature; it is the opening and closing of doors upon the possibilities
of experience--and upon various human types. Thus education is
selective. It is the sifting out of the relative worth of men. It finds
the significance of living to be the struggle for excellence. Its goal
is a higher type of living man and woman. Its great task therefore,
in the modern world, is the reassertion of the _inequalities_ which
mass appeal ignores, the rediscovery for the modern spirit of the
distinction between superiority and inferiority. It is impossible
to lift any mind from a lower to a higher plane when that which
distinguishes one plane from another is obliterated by placing all on
a level. Appreciation of distinctions of worth is an essential of a
liberal education, as it is of the whole spiritual life of man.
CHAPTER IX
EDUCATION AND WORK
In the closing sentence of the preceding chapter, I used the words
“spiritual life.” Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that I did not have
in mind anything vaguely metaphysical, supernatural or mystical. I
meant the phrase to designate a hierarchy of values which is possible
to an organism capable of exercising choice among its experiences.
It is in the sense that it deals with qualities and their relative
importance that education may be said to be spiritual, spiritual in a
purely naturalistic sense. It is the ordering of interests and habit
patterns so that behavior is characterized by a tone and a significance
that it would not otherwise possess.
There are those who write and speak of education as if the mind and its
ideas existed in a world apart from the world of things. It is possible
for a man to pursue his studies in complete isolation from the world
about him. But as mental life is possible only in response to some
environment, such pursuit of learning merely substitutes an artificial
and sequestered environment for the actual one. If the meanings and
values disclosed in this artificial environment remain permanently
different from those which might be realized in the world of our daily
tasks and relationships, such education is merely an elaborate escape
from reality. The educated mind responds to our common world. It
differs from the uneducated mind not in that it responds to a different
set of situations, but in that it responds with a different system of
values. Education is not so much a special interest separated from
other interests as it is a method of transforming all our interests.
It ought to have something of importance to do with work, since most
people are engaged in some form of work most of their time. And when in
an industrial age like the present, the whole life of society revolves
about the system of production of wealth, it is impossible to precede
with education and ignore the challenge to it of our industrialism. It
may not be the task of education to provide a solution of the labor
problem. But education certainly fails of its function when men are
unable to retain its values while struggling with such problems.
People rarely behave like educated human beings when they are
confronted by an economic issue. Liberality of outlook, tolerance,
temperance of judgment, self-control, ability to see when one is
making oneself ridiculous, respect for the truth, are not often found
on either side of an industrial conflict. Fantastic notions of the
relation of education to work abound because there is much confusion
about the meaning and value of work for human personality. Labor is at
the same time idealized and despised.
Ruskin, Carlyle, and many humanitarians have held labor to be most
praiseworthy. Work is a blessing, in it are peace of mind and
self-respect. Work is noble, and it ennobles him who does it. A
contemporary writer on the subject of education warns us that the hand
may not be “dishonored with impunity.” By dishonored he means that hand
work may be considered inferior to brain work to the extent that there
is great disparity between the rewards. Distinction has been made
between work of hand and work of brain. The former is real work. Once
in a parade of working men in Pittsburgh, I saw on a banner carried
at the head of a column of metal workers, these words in very large
capitals, _We Work_. The implication was that some others, slightly to
their discredit, did not really work. From the idealization of work to
the idealization of the worker is a logical step. The working class,
a class which in earlier centuries was looked upon as the despised
“proletariat,” attained a new status in nineteenth century thought.
Men began to look to labor as the one class capable of righting the
age-long wrongs of humanity, and to believe the control of society by
organized labor to be the only means to the establishment of peace and
justice. Most of the writers who praised labor were themselves members
of the so-called leisure class. A few like Tolstoi vainly tried to
support themselves by manual toil. Many who wrote convincingly of the
blessings of labor did not personally avail themselves of its ennobling
advantages. In the earlier humanitarian sentiment of the nobility of
labor, the worker was envisaged as a free and independent person in
whose wholesome activity there was healthfulness. Good workmanship
commanded general respect and revealed the dignity of labor. There were
simplicity and grandeur in the primitive act of a man eating his bread
in the sweat of his brow. He who lived close to earth gained something
of the silent, calm majesty of nature. Able to cope with natural forces
and giving mankind as good as he received, he need ask favor of no man.
Rousseau says, “Outside of society, an isolated man, owing nothing to
any one, has a right to live as he pleases; but in society, where he
necessarily lives at the expense of others, he owes them in labor the
price of his support; to this there is no exception. To work, then, is
a duty indispensable to social man. Rich or poor, powerful or weak,
every idle citizen is a knave.
“Now of all the occupations which can furnish subsistence to man, that
which approaches nearest to the state of Nature is manual labor; of all
the conditions the most independent of fortune and of men, is that of
the artisan. The artisan depends only on his labor. He is free--as free
as the husbandman is a slave; for the latter is dependent on his field,
whose harvest is at the discretion of others. The enemy, the prince,
a powerful neighbor, may take away from him this field; on account
of it he may be harassed in a thousand ways; but wherever there is a
purpose to harass the artisan, his baggage is soon ready; he folds his
arms and walks off. Still, agriculture is the first employment of man;
it is the most honorable, the most useful, and consequently the most
noble that he can practice. I do not tell Emile to learn agriculture,
for he knows it. All rustic employments are familiar to him; it is
with them that he began, and to them he will ever be returning. I
say to him, then, Cultivate the heritage of your fathers. But if you
lose this heritage, or if you have none, what are you to do? Learn a
trade.... I wish to give him a rank which he cannot lose, a rank which
will honor him as long as he lives. I wish to raise him to the state of
manhood; and whatever you may say of it, he will have fewer equals by
this title than by all those which he will derive from you.... It is
important to learn a trade, less for the sake of knowing the trade than
for overcoming the prejudices which despise it. You say you will never
be compelled to work for a living. Ah, so much the worse--so much the
worse for you! But never mind; do not work from necessity, but work
for glory....
“You enter the first shop whose trade you have learned: ‘Foreman, I am
in need of employment.’ ‘Fellow-workman, stand there and go to work.’
Before noon comes you have earned your dinner, and if you are diligent
and frugal, before the week has passed you will have the wherewithal
to live for another week; you will have lived a free, healthy, true,
industrious and just man. It is not to lose one’s time to gain it in
this way.”
Here as always Rousseau is romantic. This is all very beautiful--until
you try it. I am inclined to think that most men who entertain this
view have never worked for a living. The happy few amongst the
toilers of earth may here and there have enjoyed this independence.
It is certainly not the experience of the rank and file in our
present industrial system. With the development of the system, and
the consequent organization of labor, the idealization of work is
supplanted by the idealization of the labor movement and its aims.
In the writings of Marx, labor as work is represented merely as so
much homogeneous effort-filled time which is measured and reckoned in
strictly numerical terms, as if its qualitative or personal elements
could be ignored or were non-existent. Skill and artistic genius are
represented as the mere telescoping or contraction of a number of
labor-time units into a given period--a speeding up, as it were, not
something inherently superior in kind. This point of view might satisfy
one who was concerned only with the number of hours of employment
and indifferent to what he did or how he did it. But it takes little
account of that pride in achievement without which those who assert the
dignity of labor are making a virtue of necessity.
Marxians assert with much truth that pride in achievement is crushed
by the methods of machine production and by the exploitation of
labor under a system of “wage slavery.” But this is to abandon the
older idealization of work and of workmanship. Labor is now viewed
_realistically_ as an irksome servitude. Marxians argue that labor
creates all wealth and is therefore justly entitled to it all. It is
beside our point to enter into a discussion of this proposition. I am
merely seeking to show that in this philosophy, emphasis is shifted
from the idealization of work to the idealization of the labor movement
itself. A Marxian could agree with Aristotle that mechanical toil is
debasing, only he would add “under the present system.” Emancipate
labor, give it its rights, reward it justly and force all to do their
share of it, and then work will be ennobling. Which is to say, work
will be ennobling only in an ideal society. This position is an attempt
to restore with one hand what is taken away with the other. Work is
robbed of its dignity when excellence in it is not thought worthy
of consideration, when superiority of workmanship is represented
merely as a greater quantity of abstract labor-time. Advocates of
the cause of labor do not say much about the distinction between
superior and inferior workmanship. And here we have an example of
the mass-psychology of which I spoke earlier. In the degree that you
consider men as mass, you ignore individual worth.
There has been a slight tendency to regard labor as an instinct. The
impulse to work is of course a universal human trait. Work is normal,
natural, right, and those who have no desire for it are going contrary
to the demands of human nature. Some such position as this is taken by
Mr. Veblin in his delightful satire, “The Instinct of Workmanship.”
The author of this book holds with McDougall that man has an instinct
to work, but that unfortunately the instinct has been corrupted. This
corruption began in primitive times with elders, medicine men and
warriors. And throughout historic time, with each succeeding privileged
class, human nature has become steadily more perverted and abject,
until this instinct reaches its final stage of corruption in the
present capitalist system. Thus a last count is added to the indictment
of capitalism. It has corrupted labor’s instinct of workmanship.
I have never known whether Mr. Veblin meant his humor to be taken
seriously, or intended his book to be a subtle thrust at the
theologians. His argument may be regarded as a clever parody of
the doctrine of the fall of man in Adam’s sin, with the consequent
curse upon all the descendants of our first parent. In any case, his
contention adds somewhat to the confusion as to the true significance
of labor. I have not found evidence to prove that man has an instinct
of workmanship. Hence the relation of education to work is not that of
the rational control of instinct, for if the knowledge of simple labor
processes were innate, men would not even need “practical” education in
them.
Not all men have held a high opinion of labor. Nietzsche says work is a
disgrace. There are doubtless many people who secretly agree with him.
I have known working men who suffered from an “inferiority complex.” It
is possible that the protest of labor is not wholly against injustice,
but is in part a protest against the feeling of inferiority. It is
not uncommon to find young people who are ashamed to work. It is not
only among the rich and privileged that we find those who look down
on labor. The same attitude exists in all classes, for much the same
reason that the majority of people despise the poor and emulate the
rich. Work has in the past been the lot of the slave. Most men are at
present driven to labor by necessity, and many entertain the hope of
escaping from the necessity as soon as possible.
We have even Biblical authority for this attitude. The punishment of
Adam for his act of disobedience is a life of labor. Henceforth he must
earn his living, tilling the ground and eating his bread in the sweat
of his brow--in other words, labor is a curse. And so it is regarded
by the law of the land. When a man is convicted of a crime the court
sentences him to prison and to “hard labor”--until such time as he is
pardoned and may return to his career of crime and life of leisure.
It is interesting to note the place assigned to work by the Hebrew and
Christian religions which, having their origin in the folkways and the
daydreams of the masses, are very sympathetic to the poor toilers of
earth. Yet we are told that to keep the Sabbath holy, the day must not
be defiled with labor. There is no mention of the blessedness of labor
in the Beatitudes; the command to consider the birds of the air and the
lilies of the field which toil not neither do they spin and yet are
clothed and fed, reveals a spirit very remote from that of industry.
Heaven is thought of as a place of eternal rest.
A similar popular valuation of labor is revealed in the myths of
antiquity. The gods do not work. Vulcan, the exception to this rule,
is always made to appear ridiculous among the gods; they are said to
laugh at his awkwardness. The “labors” of Hercules are not really
toil but exhibitions of miraculous strength. For the most part in the
legends which have expressed the wish-fancies of mankind, the hero
does everything but work; he fights, makes love, kills dragons, goes
on strange voyages, wins a kingdom, in fact, his adventures may be
interpreted as symbolic expressions of the wish of mankind to escape
the common burden of toil.
I think, moreover, men belittle their work when they accept the
broad distinction between the “brain” worker and the “hand” worker.
Psychologists say that thinking is as truly bodily activity as is any
other form of labor, and there is very little so-called work that does
not require thought. There is every conceivable gradation from that
labor which is almost wholly routine, to that which consists of nothing
but solving problems. No one knows the point where labor ceases to be
brain work and becomes manual. The world’s work requires of men many
kinds of activity, some of great importance, some of little. There is
no use either of idealizing it or in despising it. Men do their work
because they have to and are neither noble nor ignoble because of it.
The problem is how can I in my situation make my position a place
where a man has really lived and toiled and thought and realized
values through his effort, and has not permitted himself to become an
automaton or a fool. The labor problem however tends to become one
primarily not of the significance of work at all, but of improving the
material conditions of those who toil. This latter problem is wholly
justifiable. But because of the prevailing mental confusion about labor
itself, it is generally assumed that if a man works he should receive a
different sort of “education” from that of other educated people, and
that his training should be the means to ends that have little to do
with interest in education as such.
There are those who always view the education of workers strictly from
the standpoint of its value for social security. Just as a well-known
statistician not long ago advised the American investor to support
the Church, whether or not he agreed with its doctrines, because
the influence of the Church upon the masses, he said, was on the
side of invested capital, so there are those who believe that giving
educational opportunity to working men is a sort of premium paid upon a
general policy of social insurance.
The fear of the menace of labor often inspires efforts for the
education of workers in the hope that with better knowledge labor will
become safe and sane. There is a wide-spread belief that education
like religion is a conservative influence. If working men were only
better informed they would have a more sympathetic understanding of the
intentions of their employers; they would show some appreciation of
their economic opportunities under our free institutions; they would
know better than to go on strike, or listen to their union leaders,
or dally with socialistic ideas. Perhaps so, but I have yet to see an
educational effort which was consciously directed to these ends that
was either sincere or intellectually respectable.
From a wholly different point of view, the relation of education to
work would seem to present no problem at all. Work itself is said to
be the only genuine method of education. A popular writer who holds
advanced ideas on this subject, says that the four years at college are
wasted, that “as early as fifteen or sixteen a youth should be brought
into contact with realities and kept in contact with realities from
that age on. That does not mean that he will make an end of learning
then, but only that he will henceforth go on learning--and continue
learning for the rest of his life--in relation not to the ‘subjects’ of
a curriculum, but to the realities he is attacking.” In this passage
one detects the odor of Rousseau. We discussed this theory when we were
considering liberal education as animal training. At best it is but
half true. If learning necessarily came from contact with realities,
every one would be educated. But there is no assurance that people will
see the significance of the realities they “attack.” The importance of
experimental study is not a new discovery. Science has long employed
the laboratory method. And even laboratory work, work done in an
environment which is carefully arranged to stimulate discovery, does
not always develop habits of independent judgment.
The notion that experience is necessarily the best teacher is popular.
The newspapers encourage it. If a man makes a success in business,
interviewers seek his opinion on every conceivable subject. In worker’s
classes there is occasionally a student who has no doubt that his
experience in the shop is a better education than that which people get
from books. Such students do not as a rule gain much from study, for no
matter what subject is under discussion, they always know more about it
than the instructor.
Experience as such teaches just what is experienced and nothing more.
Few minds are able to reflect judiciously upon experience or to draw
correct conclusions from it. Labor is something that can be known only
by one who has experienced it, and this experience is important for
anyone who desires a broad knowledge of human life. But it is with work
as it is with travel: each is an aid to education only as it quickens
insight. The man on the Bowery who boasts that he has traveled over
America from coast to coast may really never have left the Bowery; in
each place he has visited, he finds himself in the same sort of lodging
house, in the same environment, among the same sort of companions, all
with the same interests.
So with many kinds of work. Much of it is mere routine. He who from day
to day does the same thing, until he is able to perform the movements
with a minimum of effort and attention, is certainly acquiring a habit,
but we have seen that not all habit formation is education. Those
who work with certain kinds of machinery frequently complain of the
monotony of their work. I think that one of the serious objections to
such work is that it has so little educational value. Perhaps this
objection may be offset by the fact that machine production makes
possible a shortening of the working day and hence gives the worker
more leisure time. Some think that adult education is important because
it gives people something to do in their unemployed hours. But people
do not always improve their minds during the time when they are free
from labor, and many whose work is routine, possess by nature or
develop routine habits of mind which interfere with their education.
They become victims of fixed ideas, of slogans and catchwords.
Perhaps the nearest approach to a real integration of education and
work is vocational training. This is the “education” which most people
seek. Universities offer an increasing number of courses in practical
subjects such as engineering, mining, business methods. Various trades
are taught in public schools. By far the greater number of courses
offered to adult students are sold with the promise that they will
increase the purchaser’s efficiency and “put more pay in his envelope.”
I have already discussed this useful knowledge. Both the individual
and society profit by it. And in addition to its practical advantages,
there is a sincerity and lack of pretense about such education which
distinguish it from much of the traditional education. It must be
thorough or it cannot meet the test of practical experience. If
men learned mechanics with no more thoroughness than that which
characterizes the study of the classics, the country would go into
bankruptcy.
But as I have tried to show, this training for practical efficiency
is too narrow. It does not necessarily widen the student’s interests
or deepen his insight or improve his judgment concerning matters that
lie outside the range of his technical information. Advocates of this
type of education often become partisan and declare that it alone is
education.
It is doubtless too soon to speculate upon the effects of our new
policy of reducing immigration to the point where it is almost
negligible. Whether the effect is to intensify competition among
working people, or to lessen it because of a labor shortage, in either
case the result is obvious. Somebody must do the actual work of the
country. We shall soon have a working class in America that is more
than one generation old. That is, we are now for the first time in
our history tending toward a relatively fixed and permanent working
class. The various national strains in it will be held together long
enough to become acquainted with one another, long enough to find more
in common than a common opposition to capital, long enough to develop
a working class tradition which is American. Workers will not only
strive individually to become middle class; they will be obliged to
improve their condition as a class. To the economic struggle there
will be added efforts for culture. Many workers are already beginning
to seek education as an aid to a more satisfactory and less sordid
existence while working at their tasks. Sooner or later education
must cease to be the distinguishing mark of a privileged class, or a
device which aids a man to the goal of his ambition; it must become a
universal practice of learning how to live like a civilized being in
any occupation.
I have said that people’s ideas of the relation of education to work
are for the most part confused and fantastic, and that among the
causes of this confusion was a misconception of the meaning of labor.
We saw that the older romantic idealization of labor gives way to
the idealization of Labor not as work but as an organized movement.
There are “friends of Labor” who think of workers’ education as class
education. And by class education they do not mean the extension of the
opportunity for liberal education to people who toil for their daily
bread. They are not interested in liberal education, any more than
they are interested in work. They wish working men to be given such
instruction as will be useful in the “class struggle.” Labor is to have
its own kind of education.
It is said that educators are but the retainers, the “high-brow”
policemen of the vested interests and must always teach what the
masters require. The educators’ task is to train the masses to be more
productive and willing servants of the masters, to train the sons of
the owners in the idealogy so that they may work it to advantage, to
mould them to the type of the most successful and provide them with the
insignia and passwords of culture which will show that they belong to
the fraternity of the privileged. Traditional education, being nothing
but a weapon of the ruling class, is not for the workers. The workers
are now passing through a period of discipline which is preparing
them to be the future masters of the world. As the old education was
for the old master class, the new must likewise be the ideology of
the future master class, the organized proletariat. The workers must
educate themselves, for any education that capitalists provide for
them will be the capitalist education which enslaves the worker. The
new education in proletarian ideals must be wholly different from the
past. Its aim is not to provide useless and ornamental knowledge, or
escapes and consolations, but to equip labor to emancipate itself from
the rule of capital and to conquer and control industrial society. Thus
labor education is sometimes little more than old fashioned radical
propaganda. Where this is not the case, workers may still be urged to
the pursuit of knowledge by militant appeal. The following is quoted
from a bulletin issued by a state director of labor education in the
West:
“He (the worker) lives in a society committed to the practice of
buying his labor cheap and selling its product dear, to the theory
that property is sacred and life of little value. In support of this
position toward labor, the press, the pulpit, and too often the
school lend their aid....
“All this passion for justice will accomplish nothing, believe me,
unless you get knowledge. You may be strong and clamorous, you
may win a victory, you may effect a revolution, but you will be
trodden down again under the feet of knowledge unless you get it for
yourselves. Even if you should win that victory, you will be trodden
down again under the feet of knowledge if you leave knowledge in the
hands of privilege, because knowledge will always win over ignorance.”
If as an individual a man is interested in his education only in so
far as it may be to his economic advantage, we regard him as a rather
stupid materialist. It is no less stupidly materialistic to urge a
class to seek knowledge merely for the sake of a common economic
advantage. As a rule, ignorant men place a strictly material valuation
upon education. If education is nothing but the training of certain
groups of animals in the best methods for taking material advantage
of one another, it makes little difference which group wins in the
class struggle. This theory means that the belief that education can
make a difference in the kind of living is a delusion, and that the
only significant differences in human life are the results of economic
forces.
Have we, in the notion of a special type of education for the working
class, a correct view of the relation between education and work?
Let us admit for the sake of argument, that traditional education is
class education, elaborated in the interest of the dominant elements
in society. Even then it might have a function other than that of an
aid to systematic exploitation. It might serve as a guide to the use
of leisure time. It might aid men in discriminating between ends which
were worthy of effort and those which were not. It might be necessary
for the development of personality, and to enable people to discover
that which would give some intelligible meaning to their existence.
Hitherto the privilege of the fortunate few, it might conceivably be a
good which may now be the possession of the many.
I cannot see that the interests I have just mentioned are necessarily
those of any particular class. And it would seem that insofar as
traditional education has failed, the failure has been the result of
subordinating these very universal human interests to the special
economic advantages of a particular class. Along with the class spirit,
irrelevant factors enter into education. Education becomes illiberal
and propagandist, a drill in herd opinion. Prejudice is not removed; it
is intensified. A spirit of intolerance is bred concerning anything
which might effect class interest.
And now it is argued that since liberal education has been spoiled by
one class in making it the servant of its class interests, the working
class is justified in again spoiling it for its own special interests.
If men prefer a substitute to the real thing, it is their own affair.
But a person is either being educated or he is not, and whether he is
or not is a matter quite independent of his particular occupation. Of
course a man’s education will make a difference in the spirit in which
he works and in the quality of his workmanship, for it changes the man.
If traditional education is unfit for the working man, it is not fit
for anyone. I can see no reason why economic differences should be made
the basis of cultural differences. The knowledge that has value should
be accessible to all regardless of their economic interests, or the
profession they practice. If a bad education should not be given to a
worker, it is not because he is a working man but because he is a man.
Anything that it is good for one class to know is good for another. A
banker may appreciate Shakespeare’s sonnets, so may a tailor; but there
is not one Shakespeare for the first and another Shakespeare for the
second. If biology is worth knowing, its value is not changed because a
machinist studies it. If a philosophy is true, it is true for the man
who can understand it, whether he be a railroad president or a coal
miner. There is no proletarian arithmetic or capitalist algebra or
Marxian astronomy.
To be sure, a worker’s education should take account of the economic
situations in his environment. So should the education of all men.
It is sometimes said that within the ranks of labor there is a new
civilization in the making. Working men are said to have ideals and
standards, an ethic and culture of their own which are now manifest
as working class “idealogy.” I have not noticed it. From the time I
was a small boy, I have had somewhat unusual opportunities to know the
labor movement, and during the last twenty years have sought to make
a psychological study of it. The “labor point of view” is commonly
that which propagandists wish the worker to have. In America the
“revolutionary class-conscious proletariat” exists only on paper. If
we consider the ideals, habits and ambitions of working people, it is
difficult to conclude that they form a culture group apart. The working
man votes for Al Smith and Calvin Coolidge, dresses like the grocer
and the bank clerk, drives a motor car if he can afford it, reads the
popular journals, has about the same ideas of patriotism, morals,
government, and success in life as his employer, and tends in every way
to become more and more “middle class.”
Suppose the change contemplated by many radicals should occur and
that there should be a “social revolution.” What of the education of
workers then? The worker would still spend his days at the machine or
bench. Is it not conceivable that men might then in their pursuit of
knowledge have some interests other than the economic? Under no system
should people permit their entire personalities to be drawn into and
used up by industry. Industry is a means, not an end. It is in its
proper place when it makes possible the achievement of culture. As a
man becomes educated, he should learn so far as circumstances permit,
to put his work in its proper place. The relation of education to work
is no different from its relation to all the interests and activities
and demands which life makes of us. A community may be said to have
a culture only when all men--each in his own way,--cooperate in the
realization of certain values, which give to all their actions and
strivings a perspective, an order, a meaning. It is in this sense that
Europe in the thirteenth century may be said to have had a culture.
In discussing the cultural values of any period of history, there is
danger of over-simplification. The picture which I have of that century
may not be historically correct, but it will serve to illustrate my
point. Catholic Christianity at the close of the Middle Ages possessed
a set of values which entered into everything that people did or
thought and gave it meaning. The secular did not really exist for
the men of that age. All work was religious work. Everywhere there
was ceremony, the shrine, sacredness. The fields were blessed before
plowing; harvest was a gay religious festival. Every labor process
and every station in society was brought to the service of the common
ideal, and from it gained added significance. For it the peasant tilled
the ground, its themes were the inspiration of the sculptor, the
painter, the musician, the builder. In the service of this valuation of
the experiences of life the King ruled, the soldier fought, the monk
said his prayers, the philosopher meditated.
The cultural ideal of an age is revealed in the type of man for whom
the people have greatest reverence. Such a man is the meaning of
living for the men of that age. Inquire of the thirteenth century in
whom is its ideal realized, and the answer is clear. It is realized in
the saints. I do not mean to suggest that everybody in those days was
saintly. But there was common agreement that human life existed for
the achievement of sainthood. People achieved it in varying degrees
and by methods which appear strange to us of the twentieth century.
But all men hoped to achieve it in the next world if not in this. The
existence of the saints in Heaven was a storehouse of merit upon which
all could draw. And one living saint was held to be enough to justify
the existence of an entire age.
I trust it is not necessary for me to add that the saint is
not my ideal of the meaning of life. Ideals of asceticism and
other-worldliness have no interest for me. But I wonder what would
happen if people should “go in” for education with the unanimity
of agreement as to its value that they once showed with regard to
religion. I hesitate to make the suggestion lest I appear to suggest
something solemn, sanctimonious, pious and official. We have enough of
that sort of thing now among professional educators.
If instead of the attainment of sainthood the attainment of wisdom
could be made the commonly accepted goal and meaning of the activities
of modern men, we should again have a culture in which industry would
take its proper place. We have for it now no other goal than the
making of money, and hence industry runs amuck while the spirit of
commercialism crushes out all our values. We keep the wheels going
round, but the quality of living and the meaning of our work decline.
Cooperation in the service of the ideal gives way to a competitive
struggle for material possession and power and our lives are used up in
making a living. Only the peoples that have achieved a culture have a
goal for which to labor.
CHAPTER X
EDUCATION AND MORALS
The source of much of our interest in public education is concern for
our neighbors’ morals. This is doubtless why in America we commonly
think of adult education as something which should exist for other
people rather than for ourselves. We are a nation of moral reformers.
Education is often proposed as an alternative to moral legislation.
There is an increasing demand for more effective moral education in the
public schools.
When the educator becomes an “uplifter” the moral interest is always
a little forced and education suffers. Moral enthusiasm, when it is
enthusiasm for the good of others, tends to make of education a species
of organized charity. Seek education for yourself and it is the search
for the good life. From ancient times men have sought knowledge that
they might become better judges of good and evil. To one who is seeking
to know what is good, all popular moral conventions, taboos, and
alleged divine commandments become proper subjects of study, criticism
and possible revaluation. Moral education is not mere drill in the ways
of the herd. The good man’s first duty, as Professor Erskine says, is
to be intelligent. Good intentions alone do not enable a man to judge
wisely or behave well. The prevailing idea that one can be at the same
time good and stupid has strongly influenced our education. Moral
education becomes moralizing. The phrase “ethical culture” is either
tautological or it is a contradiction in terms.
If we were each more genuinely interested in our education there would
be much less talk about morality and less occasion for such talk. The
moralist is as a rule the person with a lower middle-class mind, who
insists upon calling general attention to his own dilemmas. Mediocrity
makes parade of virtue a claim to superiority, presenting a picture of
itself as the likeness of the good man. Goodness is defined in negative
terms. The good man is he who observes the “thou shalt not,” not he
who can do the rare and difficult thing. It is in the localities where
there is least artistic appreciation or intellectual curiosity or
cosmopolitan spirit, the places where people have nothing with which to
occupy their minds, that we find the strongholds of “morality.” Where
education prevails, people learn to behave themselves as a matter of
wisdom and good taste. Those who are sufficiently practiced in the art
of living to be able to observe the common decencies without always
“watching their step,” may sometimes look up from the ground and take a
broader view.
Much of the ethical instruction which is given in school is both
bad education and bad morals. Those colleges in which there is most
talk about “education for character” are as a rule those which most
patently fail as educational institutions. The instructor tends to
“protest too much.” The attitude of authority discourages the spirit of
search and criticism. Popular prejudice is intrenched. Non-essentials
are over-emphasized. Crowd-mindedness, rather than independence of
judgment, prevails. Every crowd persuades itself that it is vindicating
the right and justifies its behavior with fine moral sentiments. The
student in school is made susceptible to catchwords and is prepared
to become the typical crowd man of the future. To this end he is
given “ideals,” that is, he is taught to worship certain words such as
“justice,” “purity,” “brotherly love.” Instead of learning to enquire
what such words mean when applied to concrete situations, he is led
to believe that he possesses the realities for which they stand when
he has an attitude of adoration for the words. Henceforth, he can,
without using his brains, be always right even in matters where he
knows nothing, by the trick of seeing in each practical problem a moral
issue. It is in this manner that the majority is always right in a
democracy. If you question its wisdom, you are put in the position of
one who attacks its moral ideals. From the first day in school on, the
child is drilled in cant and in deference to prevailing public opinion.
He is brought up in an atmosphere of sex morality by a stupid and
shame-faced policy of expurgation and censorship, the assumption being
that apparent ignorance is “purity.” A student in a woman’s college
preparing to become a teacher of English literature, elected a course
in the eighteenth century novel, and after listening to the lectures,
she felt it her duty to look over some of the books. Unable to find
the works of Fielding in the library, she inquired of the instructor
where she could secure a copy of “Tom Jones.” The instructor replied,
“Heavens, child, you are not going to _read_ it!” This is perhaps an
extreme case, but it illustrates much of the influence of morals upon
the education of the young.
Is the student to acquire the virtue of patriotism? Then he is not
to be shown the full force of the example of those who have resisted
tyranny, but must have his head filled with a glorified version of
his country’s history. Is he to learn respect for law? He is not
equipped with principles which enable him to discriminate between
wise and foolish legislation. His teachers and preachers tell him that
law is divine and must be obeyed because it is the law. After three
generations and more of such education, we have a population in which
moral independence is decidedly on the wane. The statute book, not
private judgment, becomes the guide to conduct, and the Federal courts
the safeguard to morals. Open protest against official invasion of
individual rights gives way to furtiveness and evasion. Moral training
which does not encourage critical examination of popular ideas of what
is right and good, does not tend to make men better, but only of one
mind.
Popular suspicion of intelligence and the belief that one may be good
and do right without it, is carried over into the field of education.
Moral education becomes a special kind of education. It is thought that
there is a “moral knowledge” which is different from other knowledge.
The attempt is made to train character as if character did not include
intelligence. Education, then, intent upon character, distrusts
intelligence. The moral interest results in routine drill in current
precepts and values, not in the awakening of moral responsibility.
Professor Dewey says,
“Morals are often thought to be an affair with which ordinary
knowledge has nothing to do. Moral knowledge is thought to be a
thing apart, and conscience is thought of as something radically
different from consciousness. This separation, if valid, is of
special significance for education. Moral education in school is
practically hopeless when we set up the development of character as
a supreme end, and at the same time treat the acquiring of knowledge
and the development of understanding, which of necessity occupy the
chief part of school time, as having nothing to do with character. On
such a basis, moral education is inevitably reduced to some kind of
catechetical instruction, or lessons about morals. Lessons ‘about
morals’ signify as a matter of course lessons in what other people
think about virtues and duties. It amounts to something only in the
degree in which pupils happen to be already animated by a sympathetic
and dignified regard for the sentiments of others. Without such a
regard, it has no more influence on character than information about
the mountains of Asia: with a servile regard, it increases dependence
upon others, and throws upon those in authority the responsibility
for conduct. As a matter of fact, direct instruction in morals has
been effective only in social groups where it was a part of the
authoritative control of the many by the few. Not the teaching as
such but the reënforcement of it by the whole régime of which it was
an incident made it effective. To attempt to get similar results
from lessons about morals in a democratic society is to rely upon
sentimental magic.”
I do not see how it is possible to isolate moral education as a special
discipline and have either a liberal education or a sound sense of
moral values.
In institutions of higher learning, “Moral Philosophy” or the “Science
of Ethics” is sometimes thought to be training in morals. It is so
only to the extent that such study is itself good education. I find
that many students have the same experience that I had with my college
course in Ethics. I took up the study believing that at last I should
learn what is right and how to do it. I soon discovered that I had
entered upon the driest and least practical course of study offered in
the college. Insofar as I could see there was nothing in Ethics that I
could turn to for advice about any of the problems of my own conduct.
I understand that in some institutions the students’ demand for advice
has resulted in courses of ethics which consist of case studies. No
doubt the opinions of the students and the instructor concerning
certain hypothetical dilemmas of conduct are very interesting. But as
Plato would say, such study is made up of “opinion,” not “knowledge.”
It is doubtful if such discourse ever results in modifying behavior.
“Pure” ethics consists of _a priori_ arguments about the teachings of
philosophy concerning such abstract concepts as the moral judgment, the
nature of the Good, the idea of Duty in general, not of my particular
duties. Such study may be good training in logic, but it has no more to
do with conduct than has formal logic, and not as much as mathematics,
for one may apply the principles of mathematics to concrete problems.
Perhaps the greatest gain for the student from such study is the
discovery that philosophers do not agree upon any one system of morals,
and that in strict logic we do not know what we mean by our moral
generalizations. The more universal an ethical concept is, the more
it exists wholly within and for reason, the less is it a deduction
from experience and the less use is it as a guide to behavior. Ethics,
as moral philosophy, is not a descriptive study of the customs and
practices of people, or of what things men in diverse times and places
have held to be good or evil, right or wrong; this is anthropology.
It is not the study of the mental processes of judging or of forming
habits or of that quality of actual experience which men call good;
this is psychology. Ethics, moreover, is not a scientific study of the
means of accomplishing any good whatsoever; for this at once leads out
of pure ethics into economics, mechanics, medicine, etc. Pure ethics is
pure logic applied to ultimate concepts _about_ morality in general.
It is the “formulation of the Good as it would hold for all possible
worlds,” a kind of speculation or contemplation. Its good does not
exist in experience anywhere; it is metaphysical and exists only for
philosophizing. Hence ethic, strictly speaking, is concerned with ends
not with means, and the ends are not experienced, they are only thought
about. As an example of such an approach to morals, there is Kant’s
Categorical Imperative, from the consideration of which everything
concrete, empirical, personal is removed.
I quote some typical passages from the discussion of the teaching of
ethics in a contemporary Journal of Philosophy,
“The task of moral philosophy is, by analysis of the moral judgments
men actually make, to arrive at clear notions about obligation,
rights, good, punishment and the like. And the point of honor, the
chastity of the philosopher’s mind, should be never to suffer his
genuine moral judgments to be warped in deference to his theory. For
that is to poison the wells of truth. All that is valuable in ethics
is formal....
“Finally, it may be asked, has then moral philosophy no practical
value? I think its prime value is purely speculative,--the supreme
interest of the topic for thoughtful minds and its importance for
metaphysics. But, like everything else, it has its effects. I think
it is, when studied in its purity, an unrivalled mental training.
I believe that the more (apart from casuistry) we reflect on the
nature of the moral law the more we are likely to reverence it.
And lastly I think that nearly every human being does and must to
some extent philosophize. We are all apt to form crude principles,
as that morality consists in keeping the law, or obeying the ten
commandments, or realizing our selves, or seeking the common
good. And then we are apt pendantically and priggishly to distort
our genuine moral judgments in accordance with these inadequate
generalizations. Moral philosophy criticizes such formulas and shows
that they are either untrue or circular. Either self-realization
means realizing the _right_ part of the self or it is not always
right. Promoting the “common good” either means bringing about those
satisfactions which moral reason judges _ought_ to be brought about
(e. g., those which are _just_ or of a _higher_ value) or it is not
always right. And so a truer moral philosophy releases us from the
false dogmatisms which may, though usually they do not, corrupt our
practise....
“On the other hand, members of my class actually approached me, as if
I were a father-confessor, for the solution of special problems in
conduct!”
In the following quotation from the same Journal, a different view is
expressed. The author believes that ethics is sometimes concerned with
the practical problems of conduct, but admits that this inclusion of
practical interests results in some ambiguity and confusion.
“Conceding that there is a science of ethics that does not teach us
either to be good or that we ought to be good any more than logic
teaches us how to think or that we ought to think, or esthetics
teaches us how to appreciate beauty and that we ought to love it,
there yet remains the question, is there a legitimate place in
philosophical education for a science of ethics which frankly does
not disclaim a “practical” interest? Is there a science of ethics
that is “practical” in something more than the Protagorean sense of
supplying instruction in “how to manage our homes in the best way,
and to be able to speak and act the best in public life?” (Such
instruction might well encourage sophistry and the casuistry of which
Professor Carritt speaks.) Is there, in other words, a science of
ethics which is “practical,” not in the sense of telling the pupil
what moral decisions to make, but in cultivating the ἔρως φιλοσοφίας
which would render possible well-considered choices? If there is not
a place for such a science, it seems hardly forthright or consistent
to perpetuate the ambiguity. If there is a legitimate place for
it, it is the duty of moral philosophers to terminate the present
ambiguity by explaining it. We can scarcely afford to laugh at or
deny it.”
The relation of morals to education is to be found neither in special
discipline and habit formation in the effort for character apart from
intelligence, nor in drill in the logic of an _a priori_ science. When
moral training is made a special interest set off from other aims of
education, it defeats itself. There is no such thing as a moral good
separate from other goods. A moral good is simply the best choice among
the conflicting goods of experience, actual or possible. As James said,
the good is that which satisfies a desire. _A priori_, every desire
should be satisfied, since considered in itself it is a demand for a
satisfaction. But since desires are in conflict, choice is necessary.
The good deed is the right thing to do, or the right way of doing it.
All education if it is really education is moral education. It is
because people do not grasp this fact that futile efforts at special
moral training are made in which the connections with education are
artificial and extraneous. Thus the pursuit of knowledge is shorn of
its significance for conduct, and morals is divorced from intelligence.
As Professor Dewey says,
“A narrow and moralistic view of morals is responsible for the
failure to recognize that all the aims and values which are desirable
in education are themselves moral. Discipline, natural development,
culture, social efficiency, are moral traits--marks of a person
who is a worthy member of that society which it is the business of
education to further. There is an old saying to the effect that it
is not enough for a man to be good; he must be good for something.
The something for which a man must be good is capacity to live
as a social member so that what he gets from living with others
balances with what he contributes. What he gets and gives as a human
being, a being with desires, emotions, and ideas, is not external
possessions, but a widening and deepening of conscious life--a more
intense, disciplined, and expanding realization of meanings. What
he _materially_ receives and gives is at most opportunities and
means for the evolution of conscious life. Otherwise, it is neither
giving nor taking, but a shifting about of the position of things in
space, like the stirring of water and sand with a stick. Discipline,
culture, social efficiency, personal refinement, improvement of
character are but phases of the growth of capacity nobly to share
in such a balanced experience. And education is not a mere means to
such a life. Education is such a life. To maintain capacity for such
education is the essence of morals.”
Moral behavior is not only social. It is also _intelligent_ behavior.
An act has moral significance when the performance shows _insight_ into
the situation. An action done under compulsion or without understanding
has no moral value. A machine may behave very correctly but it is not
a moral being. An act has moral meaning to just the extent that its
author grasps the implications of the situation in which he must act
and is guided by consideration of the results. An act is judged, not as
moralists would have it, merely by the intention, but by its results.
It is the aim of education to develop the insight and foresight and
breadth of vision which make it possible for an individual to take
responsibility for the results of his behavior. The greater the
intelligence, the more nearly does the consideration of an act approach
the estimate of the total result. Thus _the aims of education and
morals are the same_;--the good life in so far as it may be attained by
intelligent choice and behavior.
Men have long sought to reconcile the true and the good. But what they
have sought to reconcile were as a rule mere _ideas_ about the true
and the good. It is not as logical abstractions that the true and the
good are one, but in the recognition that the really wise act is the
good deed. It is in this sense that wisdom is virtue--in the sense
that virtue is wisdom. But the objection will be made that educated
men are sometimes clever rascals who are only the more evil for all
their knowledge. I do not think I beg the question when I say that such
men are not wise but merely clever. Nor do I mean that good conduct
is merely a matter of reasoning and calculating. No one denies that
desire and instinct and purpose are involved. But if I am not mistaken
it is generally recognized that education and morals alike have
something to do with training and controlling these aspects of human
nature. Intelligence is not mere intellect. It is the whole man wisely
directing himself with respect to his environment and its alternatives.
From one age or locality to another fashions in behavior patterns
change. These fashions seem to be important at the time they hold
sway. People confuse them with morals. Efforts are sometimes made by
reformers to introduce innovations similar to those which designers
of clothing each season create in haberdashery. A liberal journal in
New York recently published a series of articles dealing with “The New
Morality.” But morality is neither new nor old. Rules of conduct which
can be made mere matters of style are applicable chiefly to actions the
results of which are unimportant. Such rules have really very little
moral value. They constitute, however, the customs or folkways which
prevail at a given time. Conformity in such matters is required by the
herd. Often this requirement is the only reason for observing certain
rules; the opposite course would be just as good. It is with respect to
such matters that education has the effect of liberating the individual
and improving morals. It breaks the hold of the taboo, makes it
possible to discriminate between the important and the unimportant and
leads to the formation of principles based upon consideration of the
results of behavior. The differences in conduct that count are those
between stupid deeds and well-considered deeds. Intelligence takes into
account the fact that no action of man can be isolated and judged apart
from its place in the social environment, and its effects both for the
author and for his human relationships. Long ago Aristotle showed that
each of our virtues unless intelligently exercised tends to extreme and
to become a vice. A virtue is what it does, not what it feels like to
its possessor. Much is said today about the necessity of loyalty. There
can be no social stability without it; but there is probably no more
serious social menace than unintelligent loyalty.
Men persist in ascribing to their moral principles a sanctity,
a sublimity, which makes them appear to have an independent and
eternal existence and to be ends in themselves. I believe this to
be a superstition. In what respect is a moral principle more to be
reverenced than a principle of mechanics? To worship Duty in general
is simply to make a god out of a human generalization. The “rightness”
about which men grow eloquent exists simply as the implications of the
concrete situation in which an act is performed. As the ability to
grasp such implications improves, principles of conduct are employed
which are relevant to the situation. I spoke of insight into the
situation toward which action is taken as being alike essential to
education and to the moral judgment. He whose conduct is regulated by
his own insight and by principles which are relevant to the situation
at hand is a morally responsible being, and to the degree that a man
assumes responsibility for his conduct, he reveals the quality of his
education. Those who seek to avoid responsibility substitute for their
own insight rules of behavior which have as their basis something that
lies outside the demands of the situation where the behavior takes
place. Judge your conduct by this other, outside something and ignore
the lessons written in the results of your deed, and you cease to learn
anything from your behavior; your education in this direction has come
to a stop.
Education frequently comes to such a halt when moral teaching is
carried on as part of religious instruction. There is a common belief
that religion is the real basis of morals. I think this belief has
its source in the fact that religious institutions in the past, being
by nature conservative, have sought to perpetuate the folkways. The
church is a form of social organization and has its own interest in
maintaining among its members certain standards of behavior. Often
it has been the only existing agency for the instruction of the
young. Most religious systems carry with them certain commandments
and precepts the keeping of which they secure by means of promises of
future reward or threats of punishment. Since both the precepts and the
religious beliefs and ceremonies have evolved together out of primitive
man’s ideas of divine authorship and authority, men do not see that
the basis of morals lies in social necessity--the need for mutual
adjustment among men. The church’s preëmption of the field of morals is
allowed to stand long after its squatter rights in other fields--art
industry, science, etc.--have been challenged. We forget that religion
was once thought to be the basis of all the interests of civilization,
so that naturally the moral interest came under its sway.
It is obvious that every society, whatever be its religion, must
develop its moral codes as men learn to live together. In the community
everyone is part of the environment of everyone else, and each must
adjust himself to such a human environment. Adjustment is impossible
if there is no order in the environment. Hence from the beginning
certain habits and customs have existed which make it possible for men
to predict to some extent what their neighbors will do. These habits
and customs are the primitive morals which it is the task of wisdom
to inquire into and revalue and gradually improve or discard, and
substitute intelligently considered means and ends.
When moral precepts are presented in the form of divine commandments,
morality is merely obedience; it consists in keeping the commandments,
not in acting according to the demands of the situation. The problems
of the control of behavior are solved in advance, and the solutions
learned by repetition and memory drill. If I act in strict obedience
to a divine command, the results of my deed are not my affair. The
responsibility for the result is upon the deity. I can ignore, in
fact, should ignore, the lessons of experience and of conduct. The
commandment does not require of me any insight into the situations in
which I act. I have no moral responsibility. People whose conduct is
guided by such morality have committed many outrageous deeds and have
with good conscience closed their eyes to the terrible consequences
of their behavior. From the standpoint of their education, they are
children; they have never yet attained the age of moral responsibility.
It is in matters of moral education that the infantile attitude of
mind which religion preserves in the adult life of the race becomes a
serious obstacle to a liberal education.
Again there is a tendency to disregard the consequences of my acts if
I seek, as many moderns do, to make a religion of morality itself. It
is often said, religion is a life, the religious man is the good man.
“My religion is the Golden Rule,” or some other rule. It all depends on
what you mean. If you mean that in a vague sort of way you try to be
good and that a certain moral earnestness is religion enough for you,
very well, but you have not said much. Thomas Paine said, “To do good
is my religion.” But I am not sure he added much to his good will by
styling it a religion. He might as well have said, “I desire very much
to do good.” So do all right-minded people, the difficulty comes when
we try to find out what specifically we mean by doing good.
Again it is said there is “salvation by character,” but one does not
possess a character. One either is or is not a character. One does
not become a character as a result of routine moralizing or of mere
conformity to conventional standards. President Wilson is quoted as
saying, “There is no more priggish business in the world than the
development of one’s character.” Run away from the man who would be
good to you in order to develop his character. Do the thing that in
your best judgment is the thing to do under the existing circumstances,
do it as well as you can, watch what happens and learn your lesson from
it, and if you _are_ a character you will not go far wrong.
In all behavior, he who takes responsibility takes chances. There
are those who demand moral certainty. They imagine an absolute good,
a universal principle of right and duty, to be the elemental law of
the universe. Duty is sublime, the Moral Law is God. People persuade
themselves that their adoration of this impersonal god develops in them
the “moral will,” when in fact its function is to provide them with a
fictitious sense of security. I think the ethical philosophy of Kant
is motivated by this wish for security, rather than by an interest
in morals as such. He seeks a good which is to be possessed merely by
thinking it, a maxim which is universally valid. But if I have such a
maxim, assuming that it can be made applicable to any concrete problem
of conduct, then all I need consider is whether I have acted according
to the rule. Here again I need not be concerned about the results of my
behavior. It is not the consequences of my act that show it to be right
or wrong. My deed is right if it is the act of the moral will.
Another method of escaping moral responsibility is to run with the
crowd. The crowd never considers consequences; it is bent upon
vindicating its principles at any cost. It is anonymous; in it the
individual may not be held to account. The crowd is not the same as
the multitude; it is a distinct phenomena of social psychology. We
all have in our natures certain anti-social impulses. The crowd is
a sort of pseudo-social environment in which these impulses are not
inhibited but are indulged with mutual moral approval. All crowds
profess to be devoted to some moral ideal. Their moral idealism is
mere self-justification and pretext for letting oneself go. It is
a weapon useful in partisan strife; it puts the opposition in the
wrong and justifies hostility. Hence public questions tend to become
moral issues, and the attempt to understand the situation gives way
to righteous indignation toward anyone who witholds approval of the
crowd’s aims and methods.
And the crowd strives to hold its members in line. Conformity to its
ways and standards is required of all, and becomes an end in itself.
One does things because others do them. The crowd man is shocked by
the unconventional because it is unusual. His ideas of right and
wrong, which he thinks he has by _a priori_ intuition or moral sense,
are merely those which prevail in his set or parish. The average
man’s conscience, which seems to him to be an infallible moral guide
and which he holds to be sacred and personal, is little more than a
reflection of herd opinion. And as men become marshalled in the mass
movements of present-day society, they tend more and more to submit the
control of conduct to the “public conscience” and to leave less and
less to private judgment. _There is no judgment but private judgment._
The public conscience is a creature of emotional instability. It is
characterized by periodic obsessions similar to those of mania. It will
remain utterly indifferent to glaring evil and every appeal to it is
unheeded; then all of a sudden perhaps over a trifle, or an unconfirmed
rumor, it is stirred to the highest pitch of excitement. It has a
“cause” and for a time is occupied with nothing else. All realities
are thrown out of perspective. The cause is vindicated regardless of
consequences; it is carried triumphant at the head of a procession
of human wreckage, bitterness and folly. As soon as the mischief is
complete, the cause is abandoned. Men begin to “come to,” and public
conscience sleeps until the next episodic attack.
It is precisely in regard to matters which most deeply stir the public
conscience that the educated man will be on his guard. He will not
be easily bullied into surrendering his private judgment to public
opinion. He will not permit the big words of herd morality to scare him
away from the consideration of cold facts. Before a man can think for
himself, he must have learned to think at all. There is only one sound
method of moral education. It is in teaching people to think.
CHAPTER XI
THE CLASSICAL TRADITION--PLATO AND ARISTOTLE
The classical tradition in education is one of the ironies of history.
That pedants should have succeeded in making this tradition into a mere
convention is almost incredible. In the poetry, drama and philosophy
which we have inherited from ancient Athens there is a spirit of youth,
of freedom, of inquiry, of adventure. In the estimation of Egypt or of
India, the culture of Greece was _parvenu_. The striking thing about
the Greek spirit is its humanism, its lack of priestly tradition, its
independence of religious authority. The men of the fifth century
before Christianity were creators, not imitators. They were following
many lines of inquiry for the first time, unhampered by the prestige
of orthodoxy. A noisy populace could condemn the philosopher but could
not secure his deference to its beliefs. No idea, no institution was so
venerable or sacred as to escape critical examination. The practice of
examining all things was the method of education; its aim was the life
of Reason. There was no official instruction, no established truth,
no traditionally recognized knowledge. Student and teacher together
pursued wisdom not as scribes and custodians of ancient and hallowed
doctrine, but rather in the spirit of those who enter upon a voyage of
new discovery. Such is the spirit of the classical tradition and no
education is liberal which loses that spirit.
If we wish to know the meaning of a liberal education, we should turn
to those in whose lives and thoughts it was a living reality. I do
not believe that the student who grasps the significance of Plato’s
Apology, or the Phædo, or the Republic, can ever after be quite the
same. I once overheard a group of sophomores discussing the relative
greatness of various historical characters. Each had his favorite hero,
a conqueror, a statesman, an orator. One of the boys, who I afterwards
learned had discovered Plato’s dialogues for himself, said, “You
fellows are just repeating what you have heard people say or have read
in your history books. You’ll never know what a great man is till you
know Socrates. I think he was the greatest man who ever lived.” I saw
in his face a look of quiet earnestness which I have never forgotten.
Something was happening in that boy’s thinking. He was living through
an educational experience.
To the question what is an educated person like, one answer is, he
is like Socrates, or like Plato. Whitman said, “I and my kind do not
convince by argument; we convince by our presence.” In the Dialogues
there is a presence. Here the personality of a great genius stands
revealed. You really come to know Socrates. In his company you cannot
fail to delight in his humor, his brilliant flashes of insight, the
subtlety and tenacity and wide sweep of his thought, his daring, his
unfailing reasonableness, his candor and freedom of spirit. Whether
this personality is the Socrates of history or a creation of Plato’s
genius or a mixture of both is a matter that need not concern us
at present. Our aim is to “find” the educated man. Here by common
agreement is the supreme type.
Outside the Dialogues and a few such sources of information as the
writing of Xenophon, we know little that is authentic about Socrates.
Before Socrates there had been much speculation about natural phenomena
and the laws which govern the universe. Philosophers had begun to seek
naturalistic rather than mythological explanations of the world of
objects. This scientific interest was genuine, but the Greeks lacked a
logic of scientific method. Before man may think correctly, understand
his world or live wisely he must develop habits of exact thinking;
he must know what he means by what he says. He must examine his own
sentiments and beliefs, and presuppositions.
As an educator Socrates was positively revolutionary, subversive,
disconcerting. He stands out in sharp contrast to the other great
teachers of antiquity, and to most of those who have lived after him.
He gives mankind an entirely different idea of what education is. He
pursues knowledge; the others proclaim it. Unlike the philosophers of
India and Egypt or the prophets of Judea, _Socrates has no gospel_, no
creed, no made-in-advance message, no “thus saith the Lord,” no system
of “truth.” Others indoctrinate; Socrates proclaims his ignorance. He
is not a sceptic, for he believes that knowledge is not only possible,
but that men possess it, though they seldom make use of that which they
possess. Although not a sceptic, Socrates is decidedly an agnostic. He
shows popular ideas to be ignorance, mere opinion. Living at a time
when even the intelligent few had hardly begun to question traditional
illusions, he did not seek to lure his students back to acquiescence to
authority, but to develop a technique for testing all things. To use a
modern colloquialism, Socrates simply strove to “debunk” the minds of
his students. He tried to aid Athenian youths to understand themselves,
to think their way to some degree of freedom and mastery, to ground
their ideas of virtue, justice, government, in well-considered reason,
to gain temperance of judgment, to re-examine what they thought they
knew and see if it were knowledge or only opinion. And his was no mere
idle curiosity, but a serious and courageous facing of the elemental
problems of human living. He set the precedent for all subsequent
liberal education.
The herd loves nothing so little as the Socratic dealing with its
opinions. Such questioning is a challenge to popular faiths; it demands
that men reorient their minds to the values of experience. It arouses
in the opinionated the unwelcome suspicion that possibly they may be
deceiving themselves. It carries with it the suggestion that those
who uncritically accept dogma and custom are possibly intellectually
less alert than the critically minded few. It gives the hint that
conformity and moral earnestness are not enough for the good life and
that those who lay claim to ideas they have not thought out are a
little ridiculous. Every man who rises out of crowd-mindedness into
independent thinking weakens to that extent the faith of the crowd in
itself, and puts it on the defensive. Aristophanes gained popularity in
Athenian democracy by holding up the figure of Socrates to ridicule.
And when Socrates’ challenge could no longer be met with laughter, the
Fundamentalists of his day condemned the old philosopher to death on
the charge that he was corrupting the youth. As Woodrow Wilson once
said, “The human race has inexhaustible resources for resisting the
introduction of knowledge.”
How the influence of Socrates survives in the work of his pupil Plato
every school boy knows. It is also a matter of common knowledge that in
the beautiful dialogues which Plato wrote many years after his master’s
death, the figure of Socrates becomes little more at times than a
vehicle of the author’s own thought. But not every one thinks of the
dialogues as primarily a record of a great work of adult education.
The Socratic method of education is retained by Plato, but he modifies
the objectives. Plato has something to “teach.” Knowledge is still
found by the method of clarifying men’s thinking. But if men are to
live the life of reason, their knowledge must give them a definite
outlook on life. Plato seeks something to tie to. He is occupied with
the search for reality, “pure being.” His interest in mathematics
leads him to attempt to construe the world according to principles
of abstract thought. The world of _ideas_ is seen to be the ultimate
reality, the world of objects is but a manifestation,--as James put
it, but a “stereotyped copy of the deluxe edition” which exists in the
eternal. Hence knowledge is not only clear thinking; to know is to
possess reality. The real world consists of form, of idea, of universal
and abstract principle. Education becomes philosophic contemplation
of the ideas of the good, the true, the beautiful. A Francis Bacon or
an Isaac Newton in Plato’s situation would doubtless have developed a
logic of science. Plato elaborates a metaphysic. But it would be an
error to suppose that Plato is occupied merely with meditation upon
the transcendental. All knowledge is one. The truth, of which the mind
bears witness to itself, must ultimately prevail in the affairs of men.
The idea of the good must take the place of the old mythology. Wisdom
is virtue. The people are enemies of the truth and hate philosophy
largely because they have never known “a human being who in word
and work is perfectly moulded as far as he can be into the likeness
of virtue--such a man ruling a city which bears the same image.” Of
existing states, “not one of them is worthy of the philosophic nature.”
“But no one is satisfied with the appearance of good,--the reality
is what they seek; in the case of good, appearance is despised by
everyone.”
“Of this then, which every soul of man pursues and makes the end of
all his actions, having a presentiment that there is such an end and
yet hesitating because neither knowing the nature nor having the same
assurance of this as of other things, and therefore losing whatever
good there is in other things--of a principle such and so great as this
ought the best men in our State, to whom everything is entrusted, to be
in the darkness of ignorance?”
Thus Plato’s greatest dialogue, “The Republic,” interweaves the
speculative with the practical; it is at once a treatise on reality
and appearance, an inquiry into the nature of the good, an elaboration
of the abstract principle of justice into the constitution of an ideal
aristocratic republic, and a philosophy of education.
Jowett, in his introduction to the third edition to the English
translation of this dialogue, says,
“The Republic of Plato is also the first treatise upon education,
of which the writings of Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and
Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante or Bunyan, he has
a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is profoundly impressed
with the unity of knowledge; in the early Church he exercised a real
influence on theology, and at the Revival of Literature on politics.
Even the fragments of his words when ‘repeated at secondhand’ (Symp.
215 D) have in all ages ravished the hearts of men, who have seen
reflected in them their own higher nature. He is the father of
idealism in philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many of the
latest conceptions of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the
unity of knowledge, the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes,
have been anticipated in a dream by him.”
“The Republic” begins with a discussion of justice. It is agreed that
justice is virtue and wisdom, and injustice is vice and ignorance.
Justice is the virtue both of an individual and of a state. In order
to discover the nature of this virtue, the author proceeds to “create
in idea a State.” The state must be protected from evil, it must
have guardians. The guardians need to have both natural gifts and
the qualities of a philosopher. The good watchdog must be able to
distinguish between the face of the friend and that of the foe. “And
must not an animal be a lover of learning who distinguishes what he
likes and dislikes by the test of knowledge and ignorance?”
“When we have found the desired natures, and now that we have found
them, how are they to be educated? Is not this an inquiry which may
be expected to throw light on the greater inquiry which is our final
end--How do justice and injustice grow up in States?”
Justice, he says, is each man doing his own business and not being a
busybody. One should practice the thing to which his nature is best
adapted. Justice is harmony, and harmony in the State is like harmony
in the nature of the individual. Intelligence must direct and control
the emotions, and the movements of the body. Hence in the just State,
men are to be divided into classes according to their degree of native
superiority.
This is not an easy task, for men will not easily be persuaded to
accept such distinctions of worth among themselves.
“How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods ... just one
royal lie which may deceive the rulers if that be possible, and at any
rate the rest of the city?”
“Well then, I will speak, although I really know not how to look you
in the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction, which
I propose to communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the
soldiers, and lastly to the people. They are to be told that their
youth was a dream, and the education and training which they received
from us, an appearance only; in reality during all that time they were
being formed and fed in the womb of the earth, where they themselves
and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured; when they were
completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up; and so, their country
being their mother and also their nurse, they are bound to advise for
her good, and to defend her against attacks, and her citizens they are
to regard as children of the earth and their own brothers....
“‘Citizens,’ we shall say to them in our tale, ‘you are brothers, yet
God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command,
and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also
they have the greatest honour; others he has made of silver, to be
auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has
composed of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved
in the children. But as all are of the same original stock, a golden
parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden
son. And God proclaims as a first principle to the rulers, and above
all else, that there is nothing which they should so anxiously guard,
or of which they are to be such good guardians, as of the purity of the
race. They should observe what elements mingle in their offspring; for
if the son of a golden or silver parent has an admixture of brass and
iron, then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of the
ruler must not be pitiful towards the child because he has to descend
in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan, just as there may be
sons of artisans who having an admixture of gold or silver in them are
raised to honour, and become guardians or auxiliaries. For an oracle
says that when a man of brass or iron guards the State, it will be
destroyed.’”
Plato’s ideal state is thus an aristocracy of intelligence and of
virtue. There must be selection of those who are to rule. A series of
tests is proposed. Those selected must have shown greatest eagerness
to do what is good for their country. The youth are to be subjected
to various trials, toils, pains, conflicts, to determine whether they
can be forced to change their opinions by suffering pain, or by the
influence of enchantments, or the lure of pleasure, or as a result of
fear. Only those who come out of the trials victorious are to be made
rulers.
Their education is to be a rigid discipline, and it is to continue as
long as they live. Along with the tests which they must endure, the
young are to grow up in a healthy environment, and in an atmosphere of
simplicity. First a censorship is established to guard them against
evil influences. Only authorized tales are to be told them. Erroneous
representation of the gods is forbidden. As the young cannot judge
what is allegorical and what is literal, the state is to determine the
general forms in which the poets may cast their tales. Mothers may not
frighten children with myths. The Gods must never be represented as
the authors of evil. Nor may one be allowed to say that wicked men are
often happy and the good miserable. Elsewhere Plato says that no one
shall be permitted to travel abroad until he reaches the age of forty.
When he comes home he must tell the youth that the institutions of
other states are inferior to their own. If any man blasphemes, he is
to be put in the reformatory for five years. If in the end he remains
unrepentant he is to be put to death.
Plato requires that the young receive training in gymnastics and music
before entering upon the study of philosophy. Certain kinds of music
they may not be allowed to hear. Flute players are not to be admitted
to Plato’s state. Those who are clever at pantomime are to be exiled.
The theater is frowned upon, for the guardians must not be trained
to be imitators. Certainly they may not learn to imitate any kind of
illiberalism or baseness. In their acting they may not imitate slaves,
nor bad men, nor madmen, nor the neighing of horses, the bellowing
of bulls, nor the roll of thunder; nor may they represent smiths,
boatswains, or other artificers. And they may not play the part of a
woman old or young quarreling with her husband, or in conceit of her
happiness or when she is in affliction or sorrow or weeping--“and
certainly not one who is in sickness, love, or labor.”
There must be temperance and order and not too much laughter. There
must be no sensuality and coarseness. There will be no need of lawyers
and physicians. “There can be no more disgraceful state of education
than this; that not only artisans and the meaner sort of people need
the skill of first-rate physicians and judges, but also those who
profess to have had a liberal education.”
Thus would Plato direct the early education of the guardians of the
state. He has much more to say about protecting them from what he
regards as dangerous influences than about the subject matter in which
they are to be trained. His guardians are to become noble men; they are
not to be imitators or trained animals or exploiters or traders. It
is often said by those who believe in the materialist conception of
history that education is an instrument for exploitation by the ruling
class. In Plato’s state education is a mark of privilege, but his ideal
nobleman is a communist. He must not touch silver or gold; he must live
like a Spartan. He may call nothing his own, neither house nor wife nor
child. The rulers are to be philosophers, and philosophers, kings.
Hence the education of later life is the pursuit of philosophy. It is
knowledge of the idea of the good. True knowledge is drawn from within,
it is the turning of the eyes toward the light shed by the world of the
Idea, the spiritual world. It is the awakening of memories of ideas
seen by the soul of an earlier existence. Our world of concrete objects
and of sense experience cannot give this knowledge. Education deals
almost wholly with abstractions and with universals, and its method is
dialectic.
I think that much of the illiberalism of Plato grows out of his theory
of knowledge. To him as to Socrates, knowledge is of universals. Mere
awareness of concrete objects we will agree is not knowledge. If we
only knew unrelated things--just one thing and then another, as we have
them in sense experience, we could have knowledge _of_ them but not
_about_ them. It is the knowledge about things that gives the world
its meanings. Much of the significance of things depends upon how we
conceive their relations. Every concept is an abstraction; it signifies
not some concrete fact, but a class or a common quality which inheres
in a number of objects. So the Greeks sought to find concepts which
would not be self-contradictory and would hold for all of the class
to which they were applied, and for nothing else. The Greeks did not
seek accurate information concerning facts. They believed they had
exact knowledge when they had discovered just what they meant by any
concept. They had almost no experimental science. They had begun to
be deeply interested in the phenomena of nature but their interest
was largely speculative as yet. If they had possessed the modern
scientific laboratory their knowledge could still have been abstract
but it would have remained knowledge about nature. Knowledge would
have increased as men carefully observed objects, classified them,
studied their relations and made note of the changes which take place
under fixed conditions. By the method of forming hypotheses and then
trying to verify them by fact, knowledge could have been at once both
of the universal and of the concrete. It would have been recognized
all along that universals are merely descriptive terms signifying
common properties and that they do not stand for realities which are
independent of or outside the several individual objects in which these
properties are found. With Socrates, I believe, knowledge is about
universals, but he is primarily concerned with attaining clear and
workable abstractions, that is, he is interested chiefly in sharpening
the _instruments_ of thinking.
With Plato the interest in ideas is very different. He is a
mathematician. He is fascinated with ideas of number and of geometrical
form. Mathematics to many minds seems to consist of a world of pure
reason which is more permanent than the world of things. Philosophers
before Plato had wrestled with the problem of change. Existence was
seen to be a stream in which everything is carried along toward
its inevitable destruction. Every object at any moment is but the
cross-section of the process of its becoming something different. Our
bodies grow and perish, so also does all pass away. The rivers run to
the sea, the plants die, the temples of the gods crumble. Even the
mountains are but waves on the surface of a sea of time into which all
things sink and are lost forever. How can the temporary objects which
whirl past in the course of their transformation be said really to
exist? Existence surely must be endurance.
I think that Plato, like many thinkers since, saw the terrifying
significance of the flow of things and sought security and “reality”
in something permanent outside the process of change. What was more
natural than that he should turn to the realm of abstract thought? The
objects we perceive change, but a concept always means the same. The
world may pass away, things may each turn into other things, as water
into vapor and fire to smoke and the body to dust, but two and two are
still four, and the sum of the angles of a triangle remains constant.
Hence above and behind the world of objects there is a world of ideas
into which the teeth of time cannot gnaw.
You have only to believe that ideas have an existence independent of
the minds which think them and all is transformed. Instantly you step
out of Time into Eternity; form without content; number without things
to be counted; common properties of objects stripped of the objects in
which such properties inhere; the forms of logical discourse, minus
the things talked about and the talkers as well; goodness, without
anything in particular to be good; beauty in general, independent
of any concrete beautiful thing, truth universal and absolute and
outside experience. All this is now the _real_ world, and the world
of troublesome, fleeting objects becomes a shadow and a delusion.
Knowledge is knowledge of the “real.” In other words, knowledge is
about itself. The more abstract and universal an idea is the more
reality it has. The mind persuades itself that it possesses Being,
Motion, the Good and the Beautiful merely by the magic of thinking
about them in abstract terms. The universe is transformed into an
ordered system of postulates and verbal exercises. Education now is
something more than the clarification of concepts; it is initiation
into the superworld of eternal verities.
It is not my purpose to attempt a discussion of Platonic Idealism.
It has fascinated many of the most subtle minds of the race down to
our own times. It is the foundation of much Christian theology. Its
re-affirmation at the time of the Renaissance has brought with it the
restatement of many problems which must be considered in the course of
one’s education. My point is that Plato with all his genius contributed
to the tradition of liberal education a system of values very different
from the humanism and agnosticism of Socrates. His influence has often
tended to make the aim of education mere intellectuality, rather than
intelligent grappling with the problems of living, and to transform the
search for the good life into a flight from the realities of experience.
Go one step further and you land in ascetic mysticism. The Soul,
the Knower, is no more at home in the world of objects than is the
philosopher in the market place. It belongs to the spiritual world, the
higher realms of Being, in which ideas are forever pure and free of
distortion by matter. In the Phædo, Plato says that if we are to have
pure knowledge, the soul must be quit of the body which ever thwarts
it. Body and soul belong to different worlds. Plato thus prepares the
way for St. Paul and his doctrine that the spirit lusteth against the
flesh and the flesh against the spirit, and that to be present in the
body is to be absent from the Lord.
If matter is corruption and mankind is during life chained to the
material body, human nature ceases to be trustworthy. Plato’s distrust
of human nature bears fruit some centuries later in the statement that
the natural man is sin and death, and in the doctrine of regeneration.
And unregenerate man is prone to error. Knowledge of the truth comes
by divine revelation and is to be sustained by infallible authority.
Dissent is heresy; assent may be required in the interest of salvation.
We have not yet reached the position of Tertullian, “I believe that
which is absurd,” but Platonism is headed in that direction. Knowledge
which feeds on itself in the end eats itself up.
But there is in Plato something of far greater educational importance
than any metaphysic or theory of knowledge. When James said that in
the study of the classics one learns to recognize human excellence,
I wonder if he had Plato in mind. I have no doubt that Nietzsche was
thinking of him when he turned to philosophy for an answer to his
question, “what is noble?” One who deliberately strives to imitate
the manners and acquire the virtues of noble spirits, is a prig and
a clown. But unless education ennobles the mind, one becomes only a
well-informed cad. Nietzsche’s catalogue of noble traits is a little
absurd. We learn what is noble only when we see it. And efforts at
education “for character” are little more than cheap conventional
substitutes for such excellence. But there is a loftiness and sweep in
Plato’s thought which are more than genius; a graciousness which is
more than skill; a sincerity which is more than moral earnestness. He
has wrestled with the most searching problems that existence presents
to the mind of man, problems which each must face and to which he must
give his answer if ever he is to become a master spirit. Would you know
what nobility of mind is? Study Plato.
The tradition of liberal education is a golden thread woven into the
fabric of civilization. Viewed in the perspective of history, the
thread is often broken. It is worked into various patterns according to
the divergent interests of successive ages, each pattern expressive of
the values and meanings which men once held important. The patterns,
whether lovely or grotesque, whether they are woven in or are merely
_appliqué_, are the creations of the time. The thread belongs to all
times, and whether for this tradition we are more indebted to Plato
than to Aristotle is a question we leave to those who are interested in
the history of education. We are seeking to know what the tradition is.
I recently heard a teacher of philosophy say, “Aristotle is dead.” His
influence has died many times since the early death of his pupil, the
Macedonian conqueror, left the philosopher to the tender mercies of a
suspicious Athens. It would seem that the interest in Aristotle dies,
only to reappear subsequently in new configurations. He has something
that we always come back to when sanity returns after an epoch of
exaggeration and over-emphasis. If Socrates is critical intelligence,
and Plato nobility of spirit, Aristotle is sanity. All three are
essentials of liberal education.
One can hardly over-rate the extent of Aristotle’s influence upon the
education of western Europe. For many centuries men spoke of him as
“The Philosopher,” drilled their minds in his logic, added little to
his metaphysics, his natural philosophy, his principles of ethics and
politics. Three periods of intellectual awakening may be attributed
largely to the revival of interest in his writings--that of Rome at
the time of Cicero, whose education and philosophy was essentially
Aristotelian; that of the brilliant Arabic culture which preceded the
Crusades; and that of the scholastic education of western Europe,
at the close of the Middle Ages. In the last, Aristotle’s teaching
was very much distorted as a result of theological interest and of
ignorance of the Greek language; and his hold upon education had with
much difficulty to be broken before men could turn their attention to
the study of nature or develop a logic of science. Aristotle could not
have anticipated that his authority would one day become an obstacle to
the study of nature. He himself was the great naturalist of his age.
His extensive work of research and classification of natural phenomena
remained unequalled until modern times. Had the Greeks not despised
mechanics, Aristotle might have possessed the necessary instruments
for scientific experiment, and our knowledge of nature might have been
centuries ahead of where it is today.
Unlike Plato, his former master, Aristotle did not displace the world
of objects by a world of abstract thought. He seems to have held that
universals are real, but only as an account of the order which prevails
in the world. His logic is primarily instrumental. His whole philosophy
is an attempt at well-ordered common sense.
The “Politics” and “Ethics” contain Aristotle’s philosophy of
education. It is the task of the legislator to consider how his
citizens may be good men. This is also the task of the educator.
Goodness is not represented as obedience to divine commands. Neither
is its aim that of securing reward in a future life. The aim of
goodness is the good life, and the good life is the happy life, the
life that is lived well. Such a life requires certain material goods,
also friendships, health, good looks, leisure and _aretè_. There is no
word in English which is the exact equivalent of _aretè_. It is often
translated virtue, or excellence. But Aristotle has in mind a definite
quality of excellence, which includes distinction, good breeding,
self-command, wisdom, balance and poise, and equanimity in all things.
_Aretè_ is the art of living.
Nothing could be farther from Aristotle’s thought than that education
should become a separate interest or pursuit of a knowledge that
has nothing to do with the kind of life a man leads. To his mind
the central question for education is, what sort of man is it most
desirable that one should become. Moderns may justly criticise him
because he omits any reference to work, other than to say that it is
debasing. His philosophy of education is that of a leisure class. And
since work makes up the greater portion of most men’s experience in
life, it may be said that Aristotle would train men to possess the
subjective qualities of virtue only, and without reference to their
tasks and duties. It cannot be denied that his theory of education
has often been so employed. I have already discussed at some length
the relation of education to work. While Aristotle, like others of
his time, looks down upon labor, it does not follow that a man is
necessarily shut off from the good life as Aristotle depicts it merely
because he earns his own bread. Let us say that Aristotle is in error
when he says that work is debasing. We may still hold that if his “good
life” is good at all, it is good for the man who works for his living.
My point is that this philosophy of education is not unrelated to the
ordinary affairs of life, but that it points out those habits which
best enable one to turn such affairs to value and to happy use.
Aristotle has set forth his idea of the good man in no uncertain terms.
The good is not Plato’s absolute or ideal good--good in general; it
is _happiness_. It is to be attained not merely by philosophical
speculation, but by “an energy of the soul according to reason,”
by well-considered habits of choosing. Happiness is the aim of all
knowledge and of every act. But the educated do not agree with the
vulgar as to what it is. The latter believe it to be the accident of
good fortune. The former hold that it is the result of virtue. Virtues
are praiseworthy habits. “Virtue” therefore is a habit accompanied
with deliberate preference, in the relative mean defined by reason,
and as the prudent man would define it, “It is the mean state between
two vices, one in excess, the other in defect. Temperance and courage
are destroyed both by the excess and the defect, but are preserved by
the mean. Virtues are neither passions nor capacities.” They are not
mere moral enthusiasms nor any subjective state of mind. Wisdom and
deliberation are required for virtue. _The good man is the educated
man._
Education is not merely the teaching of morals, or the laying down
rules for behavior. The virtuous habits are not acquired by rote nor
exercised automatically. The habit of virtue is that of _appropriate
response_ to the situation, the response which is right because
“nothing may be” taken away from it nor added to it without causing it
to tend toward vicious excess or defect. There must be discrimination
or one will go to extreme. Courage is not mere bravery; it is that
well-considered “mean state” between fear and over-confidence.
Aristotle quotes Socrates to the effect that courage is a “kind of
science.”
The temperate man does not feel desire “except in moderation, nor more
than he ought, nor in any case improperly.” He does not desire things
which are dishonorable or beyond his means. He is in the mean in all
things, his desires are “according to the suggestions of right reason.”
Liberality is the mean between prodigality and stinginess. It is not
virtuous to give unless one gives wisely. “The liberal man therefore
will give for the sake of the honorable, and he will give properly for
he will give to proper objects, in proper quantities, at proper times,
and his giving will have all the other qualities of right giving, and
he will do this pleasantly and without pain; for that which is done
according to virtue is pleasant.”... “But if it should happen to a
liberal man to spend in a manner inconsistent with propriety and what
is honorable, he will feel pain, but only moderately and as he ought,
for it is characteristic of virtue to feel pleasure and pain at proper
objects, and in a proper manner.”
Magnanimity is a virtue if accompanied by intelligence. The magnanimous
are concerned with honor. He who being really worthy, estimates his own
worth highly, is magnanimous. He whose worth is low and who estimates
it lowly is not magnanimous, but modest. He who estimates his worth
lightly when he is really unworthy is vain. He who estimates it less
highly than it deserves is “little-minded.” In good or bad fortune,
the magnanimous will behave with moderation, he will not be too much
delighted with success nor too much grieved at failure. He must take
more care for truth than for the good opinion of men. He will not be
servile, for all flatterers are mercenary and low-minded. He will
not be given to the habit of too much admiring the great, nor will he
be fond of talking about himself or about other people; he will not
recollect injuries, nor be over-anxious, nor disposed to praise or
blame. “The step of the magnanimous man is slow, his voice deep and
his language steady: for he who only feels anxiety about a few things
is not apt to be in a hurry: and he who thinks highly of nothing is
not vehement and shrillness and quickness of speaking arise from these
things.... But vain men are foolish and ignorant of themselves ...
little-mindedness is more opposed to magnanimity than vanity, for it
is oftener found and is worse.” Hence a just appreciation of one’s
worth--knowledge of self, as Socrates would have said--is essential to
Aristotle’s ideal man.
Furthermore, meekness is a virtue only when it is a sign of
intelligence. “He who feels anger on proper occasions, at proper
persons, and besides in a proper manner, at proper times, and for a
proper length of time is an object of praise.” The meek man is not
carried away by passion. He who is excessively sensitive to anger is
irascible. He who is unsensitive is a fool.
Even the virtue of truthfulness must be exercised in moderation and
with good judgment. The excess of it is arrogance, the defect is
cunning or false modesty. Wit is also a virtue; the excess, Aristotle
says, is buffoonery or sarcasm, the defect is clownishness.
Justice is discussed in a manner quite different from that of Plato.
The problem of universal justice is dismissed, and justice is
considered in relation to various transactions between man and man.
Hence the necessity of defining “right reason.” Aristotle turns to a
discussion of Prudence, Intelligence, Deliberation, Wisdom. He says,
“It is not sufficient to know the theory of virtue,”--the end is
in “practical matters.” Aristotle holds the relation of morals to
education is much the same as that which we found it to be in the
preceding chapter. Mere precept and example are not enough; there must
be general culture, and education should extend throughout a lifetime.
“But reasoning and teaching, it is to be feared, will not avail in
every case, but the mind of the hearer must be previously cultivated
by habits to feel pleasure and aversion properly just as the soil
must be which nourishes the seed. For he who lives in obedience to
passion would not listen to reasoning which turns him away from it:
nay more, he would not understand it. And how is it possible to change
the convictions of such a man as this? On the whole, it appears that
passion does not submit to reasoning, but to force....
“Perhaps it is not sufficient that we should meet with good education
when young: but since when we arrive at manhood we ought also study
and practice what we have learnt we should require laws also for this
purpose.”
Aristotle discusses the desirability of public education. He thinks
that first men must become fitted for the duties of the legislator.
And since, he says, all previous writers have discussed the subject of
politics without scientific examination of the subject, he proposes to
undertake such an examination for himself.
Let us note that neither Plato nor Aristotle when considering the good
life, thinks that the individual may attain it in isolation. It is not
merely a quality of the soul, but has to do with all of one’s human
relationships. Aristotle says that it is very difficult for the young
to receive a good education under a bad government. He would seem to
make the state and the laws a means to education. And it is the aim
of both the state and education to enable the citizen to live happily.
Education is training in wisdom and virtue, and the exercise of these
is freedom. Those who are incapable of education are slaves by nature;
those who obey only passion and abstain from vicious things not because
they are disgraceful but for fear of punishment, cannot be reasoned
with; they must be restrained by force. Education is liberal in that it
enables a man to govern himself.
In comparison with Plato, Aristotle appears prosaic, worldly,
and lacking in charm and humor. Much that he says appears to us
platitudinous, for the same reason that the woman found Shakespeare’s
dramas full of familiar quotations. We forget how subversive of
convention and dogma it is to found the good life in the life of
reason. Aristotle has passed by mythology and tradition and the
sanctions of religion and has achieved a purely secular guide to
conduct. He has made freedom and happiness the goal of virtue and
education, and has done this without descending to utilitarianism. He
has made right reason the standard of life and has at the same time
given to the standard an æsthetic valuation. He has linked education
with conduct, and suggested a moral training which gives human nature
credit for some degree of intelligence. Aristotle is no longer “the
Philosopher.” Education in the modern world is necessarily set to tasks
very different from those of ancient Greece. But the good life is still
the goal, and Aristotle’s good man has remained one of the ideals of
liberal education.
CHAPTER XII
HUMANISM: ERASMUS AND MONTAIGNE
Each man’s education is a unique achievement. There are as many kinds
of education as there are kinds of men. In every educated mind there
is a mixture of temperament and learning, a selection and emphasis, an
elusive quality like that which haunts a work of art. We may recognize
this elusive something but we cannot define it or describe it. Such
words as wisdom, virtue, independence of judgment, freedom, cannot give
us the meaning of education. We must know the educated man. If you
read and understand Erasmus of Rotterdam, you will see what education
is better than if you read all the books written about theories of
education. A liberally educated person is like Erasmus.
I do not mean that Erasmus is the only type of educated mind, or that
the educated man is like him in all respects. Certainly I would not
suggest that one living in the twentieth century should strive to
imitate a scholar who lived in the fifteenth. Change of environment
calls for a different response. But there are certain constant factors.
New modes of response may be necessary in order to recreate the
values which men of other times discovered, values the loss of which
in our times would cheapen our whole existence. If this were not so
there would be no point in trying to learn anything from men of other
times. There are those who have such faith in the infallibility of
contemporary opinion that they are convinced the past has nothing to
teach us. The ways of the present are “progress,” and progress is its
own criterion of the good and needs no other guide than the interests
of the hour. Such persons are usually to be found cheering for “the
latest thing.” As a rule they are people without background or reserve.
We live in the present, to be sure. But if we are really to live in it
and are not content merely to act a part in the passing show, we must
consider the values which are at issue in the responses we make. To
that end there is enlightenment in knowing the values for which other
men of other times struggled. The kind of living we are to achieve with
our environment is not determined by the environment itself, but by the
kind of men and women we are--by what we bring to our environment from
the widest possible knowledge of what is worth doing. Men like Erasmus
and Montaigne lived better lives than most of their contemporaries
because of the wisdom of the ages that was in them. It may be said that
other men in their times also shared this ancient knowledge, for was
not The Revival of Learning at its height? Many did and were better
men for it. Many were fascinated by the Renaissance who merely shared
its externalities but did not thereby become wiser men; they remained
creatures of their own times. It became “the latest thing” to ape the
ancients without understanding them. Among obscurantists, and fanatics
and corruptionists, Erasmus and Montaigne lived like educated men.
At the close of the fifteenth century, it was said, “Whatever is
artistic, finished, learned and wise is called Erasmian.” It is
difficult to speak of Erasmus except in terms of the superlative.
The most broadly educated man of his times, he was not only the
representative scholar of his generation; he remains an example to
us all of the truly civilized man. His polished wit, his humanity,
his gentle irony, his unfailing reasonableness, his ability to see
through cant and superstition, his philosophic calm in the midst of
intense partisan strife, his good taste and sense of proportion: these
qualities of mind belong to no one age, they are the constants of which
I spoke a moment ago; they are the essentials of a civilized attitude
toward life in any age. Without them man is a barbarian.
The Great Humanist saw as no one else did the spiritual significance
of the revival of learning, and he came to represent all that was best
in it. Scholarship to him was more than erudition and pedantry and
literary style. He found in classic literature a window opening upon a
new vision of the meaning and possibilities of living. He became the
champion of a new way of life and thought. Past and present met and
mingled in his thought and became a new life of reason. “He quietly
stepped out of medievalism,” the first modern man, the forerunner of
Descartes and Voltaire.
In a time when all human interests were submerged in religion, Erasmus
sought to humanize the Church, and leave it an international fellowship
of culture, free of dogma and superstition. He turns from knowledge of
divine things to human letters as the guide to living, and from blind
faith to reason. The Gospel becomes for him the “philosophy of Christ.”
With equal impartiality he could translate the mocking dialogues of
Lucian and provide the coming Reformation with its first standard Greek
text of the New Testament. His boldness in omitting passages from this
latter work, which he found not to be authentic, and his occasional
unconventional commentary on the text brought him under the suspicion
of being at heart a sceptic and a heretic.
With bigotry and persecution almost universal all around him, Erasmus
taught tolerance, moderation, respect for truth. In a splendid
biographical study, Professor Preserved Smith says that Erasmus’s
“Colloquies” did more for the spread of liberal ideas than any book
of the sixteenth century. Another historian says, “Almost all the
liberating ideas on which the international culture of the present
rests, are present in germ in his thought.”
The continent of Europe in the year fifteen hundred was culturally far
inferior to Asia. Compared to the civilization of Greece and Rome, all
Christendom was barbarian. The wave of interest in education which in
the thirteenth century had caused the universities to become crowded,
while it had not passed, had subsided into a dull scholastic dialectic.
Education had little effect upon the life of the masses or their
rulers. In Italy art and letters were breaking away from religious
tradition, but the new spirit which prevailed at Florence, Padua, and
Rome had little sway north of the Alps. Mediæval Christianity had
reached its culmination and was in a period of moral and intellectual
decline. Thoughtful men everywhere were dissatisfied. The time was soon
to come when this dissatisfaction could no longer be held in restraint,
when throughout a century of bloodshed, civil war, and violence and
hatred such as Europe had never known, the Church would be torn asunder
and anarchy and terror reign until modern nationalism and industrialism
could painfully emerge from the smouldering ruins.
It is said that when Leo X ascended the Papal throne, there was placed
above his head in Latin the inscription, “_Nunc tempora Pallas
habet_,”--Now Athene reigns. Not many years were to pass before the
sacred walls, which had under the Pontificate of his predecessor been
decorated by Michelangelo and Raphael, were to echo the sound of church
bells ringing out the tidings of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day.
Soon all over Europe the floodgates would be open and Christendom would
be inundated by torrents of fury. Soon in defense of the sacred Gospel,
Christians would tear at Christians’ throats. With instruments of iron,
tongues would be wrenched from the mouths of men and women, eyes gouged
from their sockets, limbs broken on the rack. The bed of torture and
the heap of burning faggots would become commonplace spectacles for
the public to gaze upon. For a hundred years and more Europe was to
be ablaze with war on every hand, until it should sink exhausted by
the mutual destruction of Christian armies into almost unimaginable
misery and poverty. And this struggle which was destined to breed
hatreds and sectarian divisions lasting even till today, might have
been avoided, probably could have been averted, could the spirit of
Erasmus have prevailed. Protestants hold the Catholics responsible for
the horrors of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Catholics
hold the Protestants responsible. Both were equally guilty, for they
were equally ignorant and barbarous and deluded with superstition. This
is the kind of thing that happens and always will happen when ignorance
breaks loose in the world. Then in the general madness even learned men
like Melanchthon and Œcolampadius and the Medicis lose their poise and
become partisans.
Erasmus during the most trying time kept his sanity. And both sides
denounced him bitterly. He was accused of taking a cowardly middle of
the road position. What neither group of militant partisans could
see was that Erasmus, far from being in the middle of the road, was
not on their wretched highway at all. He remained true to the issue
for which he had struggled from the first. Erasmus saw that what was
wrong with Europe, indeed what really gave rise to the abuses of
mediæval society, was barbarism sanctioned by religious superstition.
He knew that vice and folly and brutality and hypocrisy were not to
be removed by religious warfare, but rather deepened. He saw the same
spirit of doctrinaire scholasticism, the same intolerance and cruelty
and pious ignorance on both sides of the coming controversy. He knew
that conditions could be improved only when the leading minds of
contemporary Europe could acquire the decencies which characterize the
liberally educated of all times. Whether history has vindicated Erasmus
in this conviction of his is a matter concerning which opinions differ.
I think it has. Such liberty and cultural progress as the modern world
enjoys it would seem to have derived from the Erasmian tradition, not
that of Luther, Calvin or Wesley. Protestantism without the humanism
of Erasmus is Fundamentalism. And conversely, Paris and Vienna and
Munich are nominally Catholic, but they have known the influence of
Erasmus and Voltaire to a degree that many Protestant communities have
not known such influence, and so far as the advance of civilization is
concerned, I think that life in such localities will compare rather
favorably with that of certain strictly Protestant communities. I
believe that those movements of the present day which have greatest
spiritual significance and value--modernism in religion, liberalism in
education, the dawning recognition of the necessity of intelligence and
of individual responsibility in matters of belief and conduct, efforts
for the humanization of industry and the state--are but the belated
resumption of the humanizing work begun in northern Europe by Erasmus
and others and broken off by the Reformation. From this point of view
the Reformation is not the continuation of the Renaissance, but would
appear to have been something of a bourgeois reaction against it.
Long before the storm broke, Erasmus was carrying on a brave work
against ignorance and obscurantism. In our times, we have seen
something of the conflict of science with theology. This issue is
tame in comparison with the conflict of theology with Humanism which
occupied scholars at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is
difficult for us now to imagine that there could be bitter opposition
to the teaching of the Latin and Greek literatures. The issue is
blurred for us. Theologians are less acrimonious than they once
were, and Scholasticism has long been on the decline. The classics
moreover, are taught in such a manner that few students see the deep
spiritual chasm which separates the Christian approach to life from
that of the Latin and Greek poets and philosophers. It was pretty well
recognized on both sides of the dispute that the ancients were pagans,
rank heathen. Those who opposed these unchristian writers did so for
much the same reason that early Christians in the second century had
assailed “the present evil world” and all its works.
In Italy the Renaissance tended for a time to take on a definitely
pagan aspect. Imitation of the ancients became a rather ridiculous
gesture, and the fad was often carried to extremes which were little
less than childish. Cardinals assumed the speech and manners of ancient
Roman senators. Sermons were preached in sonorous Ciceronian style. In
certain quarters Christ was identified with Apollo, and God the Father
with Jupiter. Nuns were spoken of as “vestal virgins,” and painters and
sculptors created figures of Mars and Venus and mingled these and other
heathen idols with the images of the saints.
The apparent sympathy of high ecclesiastical personages with such
goings on was one of the causes of the hostility to the Papacy which
later swept over northern Europe.
The sanity of Erasmus saved him and helped save the revival of learning
from such superficiality. He found in Humanism a balanced and serious
wisdom which he strove to combine with the Christian philosophy of
life. The synthesis he achieved was not a new system of theology;
it was the gradual merging of an older outlook upon life into a new
outlook, a transformation of intellectual interests. Professor Smith
quotes a passage which indicates something of Erasmus’s position
regarding the classics. That this literature was pagan he well knew,
but its paganism did not to his mind exclude it from the spiritual life
of mankind. He says of an essay of Cicero’s, “A heathen wrote this to
heathen and yet his moral principles have justice, sincerity, truth,
fidelity to nature; nothing false or careless is in them.” “When I read
certain passages of these great men, ... I can hardly refrain from
saying, ‘St. Socrates, pray for me.’”
Erasmus found himself the leader of Humanism as an educational
movement. He stated the issue in precisely the terms that gave sincere
and intelligent men a new vision of the spiritual life. And he did it
with such a wealth of learning, such reasonableness, such unanswerable
irony and wit that his name became the symbol of the new scholarship.
His books had a larger circulation than those of any other writer of
his generation. And as for many years he travelled about Europe,
moving from one center of learning to another, his coming was hailed
with triumph. Scholars everywhere attended him, sat at his feet, took
up the cause he championed. The Humanists were winning victory after
victory and could look forward to the triumph of their movement in the
education of western Europe. How rapidly the spread and advance of
culture might have proceeded or what directions it might have taken if
men’s thoughts had not been turned again to theological controversy
and to bitter warfare, no one can say. Perhaps the masses were not
prepared to accept or tolerate so sudden a change as that for which
Erasmus strove, for Humanism was a much more radical departure from
the mental habits and standards of value of the Middle Ages than was
Protestantism. The leaders of the Renaissance did not accept the
Reformation because they regarded it as a backward step. Perhaps they
had themselves gone too far ahead. Perhaps the representation of the
good man as the intelligent man, an ancient Greek idea which the
Humanists revived, will always be offensive to the masses. Erasmus
seemed--he still seems to many--to have lacked moral earnestness. He
generated light and what mankind wants is heat. At any rate, the masses
in the nations where the new scholarship was being carried, showed
that they did not want the pagan wisdom. Instead they suddenly became
possessed with a longing for the primitive faith of the first Christian
century, or what they thought was that faith. They followed the leader
who gave them not insight, but a moral issue.
Both Luther and Erasmus had visited Rome. Each was impressed by the
“sight of antique monuments.” Each saw evidence of the corruption and
veniality which along with luxury surrounded the gay Papal court.
Luther later spoke of Rome as the “sink of every abomination,” a
conviction which doubtless had much to do with determining the course
of events which led to his break with Papal authority.
Of the effect of all this on the mind of Erasmus, we have the record in
a book, one of the great classics of literature, “In Praise of Folly.”
In the letter of dedication to his friend Sir Thomas More, Erasmus says
that in his late travels from Italy, that he might not trifle away his
time in the rehearsal of old wives’ fables, he began reflecting upon his
past studies, and thought it good to divert himself by drawing up a
“panegyrick upon Folly.” He suggests that this trifling may be a whet
to more serious thought and that “comical matters may be so treated
of, as that a reader of ordinary sense may possibly thence reap more
advantage than from some more big and stately argument.” He hints that
he does not wish to be so carping that he will fail to instruct, and
says that he who points indifferently at all, can hardly be accused of
being angry with any one man or one vice. And he wonders at the “tender
humor” of an age in which some are so “preposterously devout that they
would sooner wink at the greatest affront against our Saviour, than be
content that a prince or a pope should be nettled with the least joke
or gird, especially in what relates to their ordinary customs.”
Here we have the characteristic reactions of two contrasting types
of men who probably can never understand each other. To Luther the
vices of Rome are sin; to Erasmus they are folly. The one is filled
with moral indignation at the iniquity of the world, and rushes into
the fray to stamp it out, puts it on the defensive, attacks it in its
stronghold. The other makes iniquity ridiculous, renders it defenseless
by laughing away its pretexts at justification, showing it to itself
as folly and reminding all men that their foolishness may be removed
only by wisdom. No doubt without more moral indignation in the world
than Erasmus seems to have shown there would be too easy tolerance of
abuse. On the other hand, without his insight and scepticism and irony,
indignation turns to malice, men lose their perspective, and their
power of self-criticism; they become so intent upon the struggle for
righteousness that they forget what they are struggling for, and when
the great cause finally triumphs, it carries to victory the same old
iniquities in new dress.
It is evident from a reading of “In Praise of Folly” that Erasmus’
thought made deeper inroads into the very spirit of Mediæval thought
and religion than did Luther’s moral indignation. It undermined many
things that the Reformer left standing. “In Praise of Folly” was
written eight years before Luther’s break with the Pope, and it reveals
a mind emancipated from much more than the Papacy. The man who could
write this satire must have regarded the Reformation as a quarrel which
dealt with only the surface of the problem. I do not wonder that later
both Catholics and Protestants considered him a sceptic. It is my
belief that he was too sceptical to become greatly excited about the
Reformation. He is impressed with the whole stupid comedy of the life
about him.
Knowledge of this book should be part of every man’s education. It has
much more than a historical interest for the modern student. In form
it is an oration which Folly delivers in praise of herself. She makes
a good case; perhaps too good a case. Folly says that however slightly
she is esteemed in the common vogue of the world--being often decried
even by those who are themselves the greatest fools--yet she is _the
deity who really rules the world_ and is the source of most men’s
happiness. “At first sight of me you all unmask and appear in more
lively colors.”
Without Folly society would go to pieces. Indeed no one would ever be
born, for would women ever have children or marry except for Folly? And
except for Folly marriages would be few and divorces many. How could
the government exist without Folly? Have not wise legislators in all
times recognized the necessity of fooling the people? After showing
how Folly reigns in the arts and the professions, and how each nation
has its pet folly and self-conceit, the speaker sums up, “I am so
communicative and bountiful as to let no particular person pass without
some token of my favor, whereas other deities bestow gifts sparingly
and to their elects only.”
Let us note this reference to Folly as “deity.” Does Erasmus mean to
imply that Folly is the deity that mankind really worships and has been
worshipping all the while? He makes Folly say,
“Well, but there are none (say you) build any altars, or dedicate
any temple to Folly. I admire (as I have before intimated) that the
world should be so wretchedly ungrateful. But I am so good natured
as to pass by and pardon this seeming affront, though indeed the
charge thereof, as unnecessary, may well be saved; for to what
purpose should I demand the sacrifice of frankincense, cakes,
goats, and swine, since all persons everywhere pay me that more
acceptable service, which all divines agree to be more effectual and
meritorious, namely, an imitation of my communicable attributes?...
Farther, why should I desire a temple, since the whole world is but
one ample continued choir, entirely dedicated to my use and service?
Nor do I want worshippers at any place where the earth wants not
inhabitants. And as to the manner of my worship, I am not yet so
irrecoverably foolish, as to be prayed to by proxy, and to have my
honour intermediately bestowed upon images and pictures, which quite
subvert the true end of religion....”
But Folly has not time to recount all the foolishness of the ignorant,
neither is it necessary. She confines herself to the follies of those
who make pretense of wisdom. Of these the theologians doubtless “least
like to be reminded of their dependence upon Folly,” but in evidence of
this fact,
“They will cut asunder the toughest argument with as much ease
as Alexander did the Gordian knot; they will thunder out so many
rattling terms as shall fright an adversary into conviction. They
are exquisitely dexterous in unfolding the most intricate mysteries;
they will tell you to a tittle all the successive proceedings of
omnipotence in the creation of the universe; they will explain
the precise manner of original sin being derived from our first
parents; they will satisfy you in what manner, by what degrees, and
in how long a time our Saviour was conceived in the Virgin’s womb,
and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer how accidents may subsist
without a subject. Nay, these are accounted trivial, easy questions;
they have yet far greater difficulties behind, which nothwithstanding
they solve with as much expedition as the former; ... whether Christ,
as a son, bears a double specifically distinct relation to God the
Father, and his virgin mother? whether this proposition is possible
to be true, the first person of the Trinity hated the second? whether
God, who took our nature upon him in the form of a man, could as
well have become a woman, a devil, a beast, an herb, or a stone? and
were it so possible that the Godhead had appeared in any shape of an
inanimate substance, how he should then have preached his gospel?
or how have been nailed to the cross? whether if St. Peter had
celebrated the eucharist at the same time our Saviour was hanging on
the cross, the consecrated bread would have been transsubstantiated
into the same body that remained on the tree?”
“Further, does any one appear a candidate for any ecclesiastical
dignity, why an ass or a plough jobber shall sooner gain it than a
wise man.”...
“All their preaching is mere stage-playing, and their delivery the
very transports of ridicule and drollery. Good Lord! how mimical are
these gestures? What heights and falls in their voice? What toning,
what bawling, what singing, what squeaking, what grimaces, making
of mouths, and apes’ faces, and distorting of their countenance;
and this art of oratory as a choice mystery, they convey down by
tradition to one another. The manner of it I may adventure thus
farther to enlarge upon. First, in a kind of mockery they implore the
divine assistance, which they borrowed from the solemn custom of the
poets....
“Now as to the popes of Rome, who pretend themselves Christ’s vicars,
if they would but imitate his exemplary life, in the being employed
in an unintermitted course of preaching; in the being attended with
poverty, nakedness, hunger, and a contempt of this world; if they did
but consider the import of the word pope, which signifies a father;
or if they did but practice their surname of most holy, what order or
degrees of men would be in a worse condition? There would be then no
such vigorous making of parties, and buying of votes, in the conclave
upon a vacancy of that see: and those who by bribery, or other
indirect courses, should get themselves elected, would never secure
their sitting firm in the chair by pistol, poison, force of violence.
How much of their pleasure would be abated if they were but endowed
with one dram of wisdom? Wisdom, did I say? Nay, with one grain of
that salt which our Saviour bid them not lose the savour of. All
their riches, all their honour, their jurisdictions, their Peter’s
patrimony, their offices, their dispensations, their licences, their
indulgences, their long train and attendants, (see in how short a
compass I have abbreviated all their marketing of religion;) in a
word, all their perquisities would be forfeited and lost.”...
Finally, after quoting many passages in praise of Folly and of foolish
actions and foolish persons which occur in his precious classic
literature, Erasmus does a surprising thing. At the time this book
was written those who later were to become the Reformers were already
disposed to appeal to the Bible as an infallible authority equal to, if
not above, that of the Church. That Erasmus placed the Holy Scriptures
in the same category as other ancient literature is indicated by his
free and easy treatment of it. He humorously quotes many passages to
prove that the Bible actually enjoins men to practice folly and eschew
wisdom. Were not our first parents expelled from Eden in punishment for
the sin of eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge? He does not
even spare the New Testament.
“Now therefore I return to St. Paul, who uses these expressions ‘Ye
suffer fools gladly,’ applying it to himself; and again, ‘As a fool
receive me,’ and ‘That which I speak, I speak not after the Lord,
but as it were foolishly’; and in another place, ‘We are fools for
Christ’s sake.’ See how these commendations of Folly are equal to the
author of them, both great and sacred. The same holy person does yet
enjoin and command the being a fool, as a virtue of all others most
requisite and necessary: for, says he, ‘If any man seem to be wise in
this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.’...
“Nor may this seem strange in comparison to what is yet farther
delivered by St. Paul, who adventures to attribute something of Folly
even to the all-wise God himself, ‘The foolishness of God (says he)
is wiser than men’ ... wherein is to be understood that other passage
of St. Paul, ‘The preaching of the cross to them that perish, is
foolishness.’ But why do I put myself to the trouble of citing so
many proofs, since this one may suffice for all, namely, that in
those mystical psalms wherein David represents the type of Christ,
it is there acknowledged by our Saviour, in way of confession, that
even he himself was guilty of Folly; ‘thou (says he) O God knowest
my foolishness?’ Nor is it without some reason that fools for their
plainness and sincerity of heart have always been most acceptable to
God Almighty.... So our Saviour in like manner dislikes and condemns
the wise and crafty, as St. Paul does expressly declare in these
words, ‘God hath chosen the foolish things of the world’; and again,
‘it pleased God by foolishness to save the world’; implying that by
wisdom it could never have been saved. Nay, God himself testifies
as much when he speaks by the mouth of his prophet, ‘I will destroy
the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nought the understanding of the
learned.’ Again, our Saviour does solemnly return his Father thanks
for that he had ‘hidden the mysteries of salvation from the wise, and
revealed them to babes,’ i. e. to fools.”
The book ends with these words, “I hate a pot-companion with a good
memory: so indeed I hate a hearer that will carry anything away with
him. Wherefore in short, farewell: be jolly, live long, drink deep, ye
most illustrious votaries of Folly.”
It is said that Luther was repelled by this book. I do not wonder.
Erasmus would seem to be as far removed from the spirit of
Protestantism as from that of mediæval Catholicism. Has Erasmus,
perhaps without wholly realizing the fact himself, stepped quite
outside the traditional Christian system of beliefs and values into
a world-view which is partly that of the ancient philosophies and
partly that of the eighteenth century Rationalist? I do not know. He is
certainly a liberal in matters of religion, but unlike our contemporary
liberals, he shows little interest in natural science.
He was severely criticised for refusing to participate in the
Reformation on the side of the Reformers. The following bits of
correspondence which I quote from Professor Smith’s biography indicate
the esteem in which he and Luther finally held each other. Luther wrote
about the year 1524:
“Since we see that the Lord has not given you courage and sense to
assail those monsters openly and confidently with us, we are not the
men to expect what is beyond your power and measure.... We only fear
that you may be induced by our enemies to fall upon our doctrine with
some publication, in which case we should be obliged to resist you to
your face.... Hitherto I have controlled my pen as often as you prick
me, and have written in letters to friends, which you have seen, that
I would control it until you publish something openly. For although
you will not side with us, and although you injure and make skeptical
many pious men by your impiety and hypocrisy, yet I cannot and do
not accuse you of willful obstinancy.... We have fought long enough;
we must take care not to eat each other up. This would be a terrible
catastrophe, as neither of us wishes to harm religion, and without
judging each other both may do good.”
Erasmus wrote to his friend, Everard,
“With what odium Luther burdens the cause of learning and that of
Christianity! As far as he can he involves all men in his business.
Everyone confessed that the Church suffered under the tyranny of
certain men, and many were taking counsel to remedy this state of
affairs. Now this man has arisen to treat the matter in such a way
that he fastens the yoke on us more firmly, and that no one dares to
defend even what he has said well. Six months ago I warned him to
beware of hatred. ‘The Babylonian Captivity’ (a bitter treatise which
Luther wrote) has alienated many from him, and he daily puts forth
more atrocious things.”
And again to Luther, in reply to a very unkind letter,
“Your letter was delivered to me late and had it come on time it
would not have moved me.... The whole world knows your nature,
according to which you have guided your pen against no one more
bitterly and, what is more detestable, more maliciously than against
me.... The same admirable ferocity which you formerly used against
Cochlaeus and against Fisher, who provoked you to it by reviling,
you now use against my book in spite of its courtesy. How do your
scurrilous charges that I am an atheist, an Epicurean, and a skeptic
help the argument?... It terribly pains me, as it must all good men,
that your arrogant, insolent, rebellious nature has set the world in
arms.... You treat the Evangelic cause so as to confound together all
things sacred and profane as if it were your chief aim to prevent the
tempest from ever becoming calm, while it is my greatest desire that
it should die down.... I should wish you a better disposition were
you not so marvelously satisfied with the one you have. Wish me any
curse you will except your temper, unless the Lord change it for you.”
Much has been made of the following “damning” admission:
“Would that some ‘deus ex machina’ might make a happy ending for this
drama so inauspiciously begun by Luther! He himself gives his enemies
the dart by which they transfix him, and acts as if he did not wish
to be saved, though frequently warned by me and by his friends to
tone down the sharpness of his style.... I cannot sufficiently wonder
at the spirit in which he has written. Certainly he has loaded the
cultivators of literature with heavy odium. Many of his teachings and
admonitions were splendid, but would that he had not vitiated these
good things by mixing intolerable evils! If he had written all things
piously, yet I should not have courage to risk my life for the truth.
All men have not strength for martyrdom. I fear least, if any tumult
should arise, I should imitate Peter (in denying the Lord).”
It is doubtful if Erasmus meant this confession of weakness to be taken
literally. Cowards are not often so honest with themselves, nor do
they make such candid revelations of their fears, but rather affect a
show of bravery so long as it is possible to disguise their weakness
of character. Had Erasmus been less strong, he would have yielded to
pressure, joined the reformers and sought refuge among them. Instead,
he stood against the crowd, knowing well that although he might decline
to join the ranks of Luther, there was no refuge for him amongst the
churchmen whom he had been attacking for many years. He did not betray
his own cause, the Renaissance, but remained true to it in opposition
to bigotry and ignorance on both sides of the controversy. In support
of the revival of learning he was courageous enough. Surrounded as he
was by madness, he conceived it to be the task of the wise man to keep
his balance and work for peace and sanity.
I believe this to be the first social task of the educated. Could
a Socrates, or a Seneca, or Cicero have returned to life in the
year 1525, it is difficult to imagine that he would have pursued a
course very different from that Erasmus pursued. A man’s intellectual
integrity does not require that he take sides when he believes that
neither side has the truth. I believe Erasmus took the longer view, for
today we find Humanism gradually supplanting orthodoxy among educated
Protestants, and I have no doubt that something similar is taking place
in Catholic centers of culture. The liberal Catholic and the liberal
Protestant are more nearly of one mind than is either of them with the
Fundamentalist in his own sect. And they are each nearer to Erasmus.
Erasmus did not suffer martyrdom, neither did he make martyrs of those
who opposed him. Persecution and martyrdom are the first things that
the uneducated think of in any social crisis. The masses are prepared
to make any conflict the occasion of both, and with only the vaguest
idea of what the killing is all about. If there were more men like
Erasmus there would be less occasion for such practices. His is the
cause which will never triumph by force.
Humanism, which in the Italian Renaissance was something of a _parvenu_
effort at culture, comes to its maturity with Montaigne. It is an
educational experience lived through, a wisdom grown into, as Montaigne
says, with everything in its season. Montaigne’s mind is stored with
the fruits of the wisdom of all historic times. He quotes the ancients
as only Erasmus could, yet he is never an imitator or copier. His is
one of the most original minds in literature, and his originality
increases as he grows older and has time to think. It is very different
from the rebelliousness of certain contemporary radicals, whose
liberalism might be characterized as retarded adolescence.
A contemporary critic says of him, “Montaigne ... was one of the most
civilized men of whom we have any record: his intellectual curiosity
was matched by his magnanimity. He hated cruelty, prejudice, violence
and stupidity: his love of life was so great that it illumined every
object in the world of sense and in the world of thought. His style was
so original that his remarks on little things have outlived thousands
of works dealing soberly with portentous ideas. He could write on
trivial themes without becoming trivial.”
Like Erasmus, he has a delicious sense of humor in which there is no
bitterness. He is so accustomed to ideas that he can play with them.
He can smile at his own weaknesses, and discuss every question with
open mind and with that “kindly irony which is perhaps the ripest of
all moods in which poor humanity can look at itself.” But Erasmus
was the professional scholar, and we think of him always moving in
circles where learning is of special interest. One does not think of
educational institutions when one reads Montaigne’s essays, but of the
educated man himself. He is the learned layman, the _amateur_ whose
learning is assimilated with all the interests of the daily routine of
living. He is not “taken in” by his culture so as to make it an end in
itself. He says,
“I labor not to be beloved more and esteemed better being dead than
alive.... If I were one of those to whom the world may be indebted
for praise, I would quit it for one moytie, on condition it would
pay me before hand.... I make no account of goods which I could
not employ to the use of my life. Such as I am, so I would not be
elsewhere than on paper. Mine art and industry have been employed
to make myself of some worth; my study and endeavor to doe, and not
to write. I have applied all my skill and devoire to frame my life.
Lo--heere mine occupation and my work. I am a less maker of books
than of anything else.... Whosoever hath any worth in him, let him
shew it in his behaviour, manners and ordinary discourses; be it
to treat of love or of quarrels; of sport and play or bed-matters,
at board or elsewhere; or be it in the conduct of his own affairs
or private household matters.... Demand a Spartan whether he would
rather be a cunning Rhethorician, then an excellent souldier;
nay, were I asked, I wuld say a good Cooke, had I not some one to
serve me. Good Lord--how I would hate such a commendation, to be a
sufficient man in writing and a foolish, shallow-headed braine or
coxcombe in all things else.”
He ridicules those who strive to make a show of learning and “alledge
Plato and Saint Thomas for things which the first man they meete would
decide as well.... Such learning as could not enter into their middle
hath staid on their tongues.”
“Being young I studied for ostentation; then a little to enoble
myselfe and become wiser; now for delight and recreation, never for
gaine. A vaine conceit and lavish humour I had after this kinde of
stuffe; not only to provide for my need, but some what further to
adorne and embellish my selfe withall; I have since partlie left it.”
He loves Letters but does not worship them. He remains a little
surprised and amused at his own bits of wisdom and does not quite know
how he came into the company of the philosophers.
“Nothing may be spoken so absurdly but that it is spoken by some of
the philosophers. And therefore do I suffer my humors or caprices
more freely to pass in publike. For as much as though they are borne
with, and of me, and without any patterne; well I wot, they will
be found to have relation to some ancient humour, and some shall
be found, that will both know and tell whence, and of whom I have
borrowed them. My customes are naturall; when I contrived them, I
called not for the help of any discipline: And weake and faint as
they were, when I have had a desire to expresse them, and to make
them appeare to the world a little more comely and decent, I have
somewhat endevoured to aide them with discourse, and assist them with
examples. I have wondred at my selfe, that by mere chance I have
met with them, agreeing and sutable to so many ancient examples and
Philosophicall discourses. What regiment my life was of, I never knew
nor learned but after it was much worne and spent. A new figure: An
unpremeditated Philosopher and a casuall.”
It is this unostentatious, unpremeditated, casual and chatty quality
of Montaigne’s writing that reveals the genuineness of his education.
A present-day critic would lead us to believe that he kept a note
book and patiently copied out of his classics the passages which he
might use as illustrations. In a characteristic bit of humor at his
own expense, Montaigne seems to justify this idea that he was a mere
compiler of other men’s thoughts.
“We labor and toyle and plod to fill the memorie and leave both
understanding and conscience empty. Even as birds flutter and skip
from field to field to peck up corn or any grain and without tasting
the same carrie it in their bills therewith to feed their little
ones: so doe our pedants glean and pick learning from books and
never lodge it further than their lips only to disgorge and cast
it to the wind. It is strange how filthy sottishness takes hold of
mine example. Is not that which I do in the greatest part of this
composition all one and self same thing? I am forever here and there
picking and culling from this and that book the sentences that please
me, not to keepe them (for I have no store house to reserve them in)
but to transport them into this: where to say truth, they are no more
mine than in their first place.”
But it is obvious that these essays were not the product of a mind
which worked in such a sophomoric manner as this. Montaigne’s mind
is saturated with “ancient humor.” There is no pretense or conscious
effort to appear erudite. While many other Renaissance scholars were
writing in Latin and affecting a Ciceronian style, Montaigne wrote
in French. He is, I believe, the creator of the essay as a form of
literary expression, a style which is more free and informal than the
conventional forms of his day.
A man who spent his days in seclusion in his library in the tower
of his castle, he writes not of books but of every conceivable
human interest and commonplace reality. His wisdom turns to such
considerations as, “By diverse means men come to a like end.” “How
the soul dischargeth her passions upon false objects.” “Whether the
captaine of a place besieged ought to sally forth to parley.” He writes
of “Idleness,” of “Liars,” or “Virtue,” of “Drunkenness,” of “Exercise
or Practice,” of “Profit and Honesty,” of “Repenting,” of “Coaches,”
of “The Verses of Virgil,” of “Vanity,” of “The affection of fathers to
their Children,” of “Seneca” and “Plutarch” and “Julius Caesar.” Always
his interest is in human experience. Shrewd personal observations are
mingled with stories from antiquity and quaint philosophic maxims in a
mind which is at once mature and inquisitive, loquacious and sceptical,
candidly self-revealing, without pretention, equally at home among
books and things. Let those who object to the teaching of the classics
on the ground that they tend to a “separation of education from life”
go back and re-read Montaigne.
Although the two were by temperament very different, Montaigne would
have pleased Erasmus. His education and philosophy of life were very
much the type that Erasmus strove to encourage. When Montaigne was
born, in 1533, the influence of the Renaissance had already made
itself felt in France. He was three years old when Erasmus died. But
his casual mention of “The Adages” and “Colloquies” of Erasmus would
indicate that sometime in his youth these books formed part of his
education. His knowledge of Greek and Latin began at a very early
period in his life. It is said that when he was a mere infant his
father placed him in the home of a neighboring scholar so that he would
grow up with the same familiarity with these languages as with his
mother tongue. He entered what was called a “college” at the age of
six. It was, I suppose, a preparatory school. It must have come under
the influence of the revival of learning for it had on its faculty some
of the ablest scholars in France at that time. At the age of thirteen
he entered a university to study Law, took his degree at twenty, and at
twenty-one was appointed councilor for the Parliament of Bordeaux. He
seems to have had some military experience also, and to have spent some
gay years at court.
When he was thirty-nine years old he inherited the estate and castle
of Montaigne near Bordeaux. He married, and except for the few years,
when against his inclination he served as Mayor of Bordeaux, he spent
the remainder of his days in private life, looking after his estate and
enjoying hours of unbroken meditation in his tower library, reading his
Horace and Plutarch and the ancient poets and philosophers generally.
He says he was not a great reader, but that he liked to have his
books about him. He especially enjoyed the privacy of his library,
from which, he gives us to understand, his wife and the rest of the
household were excluded.
Montaigne began writing brief essays when he was forty-five years old,
not at first for publication but rather so that he might present a true
picture of himself to his family and friends. The writing evidently
amused him for as the years passed the essays grew longer and their
content more serious.
If we are to see the full significance of the essays as the revelation
of an achievement in education--and that is our present interest in
them--we must remember what was happening in the world at the time
they were written. The struggle of the Reformation was in full swing.
Montaigne’s lifetime coincides with what was doubtless the most bitter
and acrimonious period of that religious conflict. Everywhere there
was persecution, riot, intrigue, retaliation; men seemed to have lost
utterly the liberal spirit of the Renaissance and to have forgotten
that there was such a virtue as tolerance.
Montaigne was an exception. It is said that during the years of
bloodshed in France, his castle was never fortified, nor closed, and
that both Catholics and Protestants were welcome there. The battle does
not disturb Montaigne’s equanimity, nor warp his judgment; it remains
to him a little more than a fight in the street. I should like to call
attention to this indifference to the great mass movement of the times,
for there are those who contend that philosophy, art and letters are
but the by-products of such movements. At a time when nearly every
one is eaten up with partisan zeal, Montaigne hardly mentions the
Reformation. He says, “I perswade you, in your opinions and discourses,
as much as in your custom, and in every other thing, to use moderation
and temperance, and avoid all newfangled inventions and strangenesses.
All extravagant wais displease me.”
While others are resorting to torture and massacre for the sake of a
faith which they do not question, Montaigne quietly retires and has
time to see when he is making himself ridiculous.
“It is not long since I retired my selfe unto mine owne house, with
full purpose, as much as lay in me, not to trouble myselfe with any
businesse, but solitarily and quietly to weare out the remainder
of my wellnigh spent life: when me thought I could doe my spirit
no greater favor than to give him the full scope of idlenesse, and
entertaine him as best he pleased, and withall to settle himselfe as
best he liked: which I hoped he might, now being by time become more
settled and ripe, accomplish very easily: but I finde
‘... evermore idlenesse
Doth wavering mindes addresse.’
That contrariwise, playing the skittish and loose broken jade, he
takes a hundred times more cariere and libertie unto himselfe than
he did for others: and begets in me so many extravagant chimeraes
and fantastical monsters, so orderless, and without any reason, one
huddled upon the other, that at leisure to view the foolishnesse and
monstrous strangeness of them, I have begun to keep a register of
them, hoping, if I live, one day to make him ashamed and blush at
himselfe.”
Toward the multitude and its judgments of value he is indifferent,
“Our soule must play her part, but inwardly, within our selves,
where no eyes shine but ours: ... not for any advantage but for the
gracefulness of honestie itselfe. This benefit is much greater, and
more worthie to be wished and hoped, then honor and glory, which is
naught but a favorable judgment that is made of us.... Is it reason
to make the life of a wise man depend on the judgment of fooles?
Nothing is so incomprehensible to be just waied as the mindes of the
multitude....
“... In this breathie confusion of brutes and frothy chaos of reports
and of vulgar opinions which still push us on, no good can be
established. Let us not propose so fleeting and so wavering an end
unto ourselves. Let us constantly follow reason: And let the vulgar
approbation follow us that way, if it please. Of the many thousands
of worthie, valiant men which fifteen hundred years since [the day of
Juvenal] have died in France with their weapons in their hands, not
one in a hundred have come to our knowledge.... It shall be much, if
a hundred years hence the civil warres which lately we have had in
France be but remembered in grosse.”
Yes, the multitude may follow if it pleases; Montaigne will not urge
it. He may remind it that in a few years its cause may be forgotten.
But how free he is from the righteous indignation and vindictiveness
and factiousness which everywhere storm about him. He has that urbanity
of which I spoke, and the serenity of one who has learned to laugh at
his own prejudices.
“Surely, man is a wonderful, vaine, divers and wavering subject: it
is very hard to ground any directly constant and uniforme judgment
upon him.”
His wisdom leads him to see not only the folly of mankind, but also
his own folly and weakness, which he does not strive to conceal, but
relates with amusing candor.
“I have, a kind of raving, fanciful behavior that retireth well into
myselfe: and on the other side a grosse and childish ignorance of
many ordinary things: by means of which two qualities I have in my
daies committed five or six as sottish trickes as any one whatsoever:
which to my derogration may be reported....
“For my part, I may in generall wish to be other than I am: I may
condenme and mislike my universall forme: I may beseech God to
grant me an undefiled reformation and excuse my natural weaknesse:
but me seemeth I ought to tearme this repentance, no more than the
displeasure of being neither an Angell nor Cato....
“When I consult with my age of my youthe’s proceedings, I finde that
commonly (according to my opinion) I managed them in order. This
is all my resistance is able to perform. I flatter not myselfe: in
like circumstances I should be ever the same. It is not a spot, but
a whole dye that staynes mee. I acknowledge no repentence (that) is
superficiall, meane, and ceremonious.
“Crosses and afflictions (works of penance) make me doe nothing but
curse them. They are for people that cannot be arroused but by the
whip.... The happy life (in my opinion, not as said Antisthenes, the
happy death,) is it that makes man’s happinesse in this world.
“I have not preposterously busied myselfe to tie the taile of a
Philosopher unto the head and bodie of a varlet: nor that this
paultrie end, should disavow and belie the fairest soundest and
longest part of my life. I will present myselfe and make a generall
muster of my whole, everywhere uniformally. Were I to live againe, it
should be as I have already lived. I neither deplore the past, nor
dread what is to come.”
The man who can speak so of himself is not likely to hold up any
universal standard of faith or practice. He is not the man with the
message for humanity, as were the Reformers and their enemies in the
church. He is not a partisan because he has gone beyond such dilemmas.
His knowledge of many books and of many and diverse explantations of
the riddle of life and many kinds of goods and evils has made him
see that there is no “one right way.” Reason has often been opposed
to faith. Montaigne sees that reason too is faith, and faith all too
human. There can be no finality.
I suspect that his tolerance and aloofness during the Reformation in
France were the result of a point of view somewhat similar to that of
Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise,” and his story of the three rings. No one
possessed the original, which was supposed to entitle the owner to
the ancestral blessing and inheritance. All, like all religions, were
counterfeits of the lost article.
Montaigne gives his ideas of religion and philosophy in the longest of
his essays, “An Apologie of Raymond Sebond.” He says that his father
once requested him to translate a book on natural Theology by an
unknown Spanish writer of this name. His remarks reveal the extent to
which his mind is freed from both rationalism and religious dogmatism.
“We should accompany our faith with all the reason we possess: yet
always with this proviso, that we think it does not depend on us,
and that all our strength and arguments can never attain to so
supernaturall and divine a knowledge.”
His remarkable detachment is seen in the following. He says that the
best test of Verity is the practice of virtue.
“And therefore was our good Saint Lewis in the right, when that
Tartan King who was to become a Christian intended to come to Lions
to kisse the Pope’s feet, and there to view the sanctitie he hoped
to find in our lives and manners, instantly to divert him from it
fearing lest our dissolute manners and licentious kind of life might
scandalize him and so alter his opinion foreconceived of so sacred a
religion. How be it the contrary happened to another who for the same
effect being come to Rome, and there viewing the dissoluteness of the
prelates and people of those days, was so much more confirmed in our
religion, considering with himselfe what force and divinity it must
of consequence have since it was able, amidst so many corruptions and
so viciously poluted hands to maintain her dignitie and splendor....
“Our zeale worketh wonders when ever it secondeth our inclination
toward hatred, cruelitie, ambition, avarice, detraction or
rebellion.... Among other discommodities of our nature this is
one, there is darkness in our minds, and in us not only necessity
of erring but love of errors.... Presumption is our naturall and
originall infirmitie. Of all creatures, man is the most miserable
and fraile, and therewithall the proudest and disdainfullest ...
he ascribeth divine conditions unto himselfe that he selecteth and
separateth himselfe from out the ranke of other creatures.... By
what comparison from them to us doth he conclude the brutishness he
ascribeth unto them? When I am playing with my cat who knows whether
she have more sport in dallying with me than I in gaming with her? We
entertain one another with mutuall apish tricks.”
“We understand them (the beasts) no more than they us. By the same
reason may they as well esteem us Beasts, as we them. It is no great
marvell if we understand them not: no more doe we understand the
Cornish, the Welch, or Irish.”
He is persuaded he says, that if anyone who has pursued knowledge will
“speak in conscience, he will confess that all the benefit he hath
gotten by so tedious a pursuit, hath been that he hath learned to know
his own weaknesse.”
“My profession is not to know the truth nor to attaine it. I rather
open than discover things. The wisest that ever was, being demanded
what he knew, answered that he knew nothing.”
He speaks with approval of the doubters, the Phyrronians who “but
desire to be contradicted, thereby to engender doubt and suspense of
judgment which is their end and drift.” Thus these men have attained
the condition of a quiet and contented life, exempted from the
agitations which beset ourselves because we imagine we have a certainty
and a knowledge that we do not possess.
After all “that ignorance which knoweth and condemneth itselfe,” is
not absolute ignorance. Montaigne seems to hold that it is the best
we may attain and that in knowing and condemning our ignorance we may
avoid much of the misery and mischief we inflict upon ourselves and one
another. The fears and revenge and jealousies and partisan strife and
rebellion and envy and immoderate desires which everywhere he finds
about him all proceed, he thinks, from presumptuous ignorance which
does not know itself to be ignorance. In the midst of theological
disputation he smilingly reminds his neighbors that as,
“Xenophanes said pleasantly that if beastes frame any gods unto
themselves (as likely it is they doe) they surely frame them like
unto themselves and glorifie themselves as we do. For what may not a
Goose say this? All parts of the world behold me, the earth serveth
me to tread upon, the sunne to give me light, the starres to inspire
me with influence: this commodity I have of the winds, and this
benefit of the waters: there is nothing that this world’s vault doth
so favorably looke upon as me selfe: I am the favorite of nature. Is
it not man that careth for me, that keepeth me, and serveth me? For
me it is he soweth and reapeth and grindeth. If he eat me, so doth
man feede on his fellow, and so doe I on the wormes that consume and
eat him.”
“I commend the Milesian wench who seeing Thales the Philosoper
continually amusing hemselfe in the contemplation of heaven’s wide
bounding vault and ever holding his eyes aloft, laid something in
his way to make him stumble, thereby to warne and put him in minde
that he should not amuse his thoughts about matters above the clouds
before he had provided for and well considered those at his feet.
Verily she advised him well, and it better became him rather to looke
to himselfe than to gaze on heaven.”
“_The wisest judging of heaven is not to judge of it at all._” His own
modest answer to the riddle of existence in contrast to those who would
“turne and winde God Almighty according to their own measure,” is “Que
scay-je?”--What do I know?
Montaigne is not a hard and soulless sceptic. He is a well poised,
modest thinker and an honest man. He is not a denier, but one whose
mind is free from cant, humbug, pretentiousness. Historically he is one
of the links between the best in modern education and the questioning
Socrates whom he knew and loved. I trust that in presenting the
Humanist tradition in this concrete manner, I have been able to suggest
something of its spirit. It has a necessary place in liberal education
because it helps liberate the mind from the clutches of opinionated
ignorance, from the follies which prevail as truth in our own age, and
from conceit and vanity to which our human nature is ever prone.
CHAPTER XIII
SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION--HUXLEY
When the ancient Humanist, Protagoras, said, “Man is the measure of
all things,” he probably did not mean that all things may be measured
by man, for in his following sentence he is sceptical of our knowledge
of many things. He meant rather that all our measurements are human.
This independence of supernaturalism was not always characteristic
of educated minds of antiquity, but it is one of the distinguishing
features of the educational tradition which we have derived from Greece
and Rome. Thus Aristotle would establish ethics in the life of reason.
This same naturalistic bias also inspires those early attempts at
science which were broken off under the influence of Christianity.
The Renaissance was accompanied by a re-awakened interest in nature,
and in human nature as part of nature as a whole. The trend toward
naturalism is seen in art, in the resumption of scientific research and
experimentation, and in the effort to supplant scholastic theology by
the study of human letters. To Da Vinci, for instance, science, art,
and letters were but the varied aspects of the same cultural awakening.
But for the greater number of those who felt the influence of the
Renaissance, science and letters became quite separate interests.
The new learning of the Humanists was almost exclusively a literary
scholarship. Erasmus and his followers had very little interest in
natural science. They found in classic literature a body of mature
wisdom ready to hand. Science on the contrary, was obliged to begin
_de novo_, and slowly construct its instruments of thought, building,
gradually a new system of knowledge. The brunt of the conflict with
scholastic education fell upon the humanists. The real renaissance of
science did not take place until the seventeenth century.
Meanwhile the Reformation had caused a revival of religious interest,
and in Protestant countries like England, and later America, the
influence of religion upon higher learning remained powerful. It
permitted the classical tradition to survive in letter rather than in
spirit. The naturalistic implications of the classics were ignored;
commentators whenever possible read into the texts the conventional
beliefs and sentiments of Protestantism. Humanism became “traditional
education,” a new scholasticism, formal and innocuous, a mark of
intellectual respectability, a “refining” influence, an embroidery of
familiar quotation in the speech of parsons and country squires.
Successive generations of grown-up schoolboys in Gothic halls,
laboriously translated, over and over again, hackneyed passages from a
literature that in the fifteenth century had been carried about like
the fire of Prometheus, kindling defiance to Heaven all over Europe.
Often men could think of no better reason for the study of the ancient
classics than that in the tedium and monotony of language drill there
was a “discipline” which was good for the soul. The student’s attention
was centered upon the niceties of construction and upon the task of
memorizing rules of grammar and a vocabulary, all stuffed into his head
in the most artificial manner conceivable. He was not likely to be
puzzled over the discovery that there might be something spiritually
irreconcilable between Lucretius and the Thirty Nine Articles, or
between the dialectic of Socrates and the Westminster confession of
faith.
There is a world of difference between this _denatured_ Humanism and
that of Erasmus or Montaigne. That this traditional education made
for polish and good breeding cannot be denied. Neither, I think,
can it be denied that there was something sterile and illiberal in
Protestant-classical education. It is significant that both the
Enlightenment of the eighteenth century and the progress of science in
the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries took place chiefly outside the
established universities and sometimes in spite of their opposition.
I do not see how the situation could well have been otherwise. In the
first place the older Humanists themselves dealt the naturalism of
the ancients and such of it as was again coming to life a severe blow
when they championed letters and remained indifferent to science.
In the second place, the Reformation quite side-tracked the revival
of learning, superseded it, and took over into its own service only
so much of it as it found congenial to its religious interests. It
was a mass movement, an attempt at a restatement of Christianity in
terms of the philosophy of the common man, a philosophy to which
the questioning, enlightened common sense and worldly wisdom of a
Montaigne, a Voltaire or a Hume is never very congenial. Santayana
says, “The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him
no pleasure, yet he cannot do without her, and resents any aspersions
that strangers may cast on her character.
“Of this homely philosophy the tender cuticle is religious belief;
really the least vital and most arbitrary part of human opinion, the
outer ring, as it were, of the fortifications of prejudice, but for
that very reason the most jealously defended; since it is on being
attacked there, at the least defensible point, that rage and alarm at
being attacked at all are first aroused in the citadel. People are not
naturally sceptics, wondering if a single one of their intellectual
habits can be reasonably preserved; they are dogmatists angrily
confident of maintaining them all. Integral minds, pupils of a single
coherent tradition, regard their religion, whatever it may be, as
certain, as sublime, and as the only rational basis of morality and
policy. Yet in fact religious belief is terribly precarious, partly
because it is arbitrary, so that in the next tribe or in the next
century it will wear quite a different form; and partly because,
when genuine, it is spontaneous and continually remodelled, like
poetry, in the heart that gives it birth. A man of the world soon
learns to discredit established religions on account of their variety
and absurdity, although he may good-naturedly continue to conform
to his own; and a mystic before long begins fervently to condemn
current dogmas, on account of his own different inspiration. Without
philosophical criticism, therefore, mere experience and good sense
suggest that all positive religions are false, or at least (which
is enough for my present purpose) that they are all fantastic and
insecure.”
Speaking of the Reformation and its relation to science, Whitehead
says, “We cannot look upon it as introducing a new principle into human
life.” Perhaps he is inclined to over-emphasize the assertions of
the Reformers that they were only restoring what had been forgotten.
But he says, “It is quite otherwise with the rise of modern science.
In every way it contrasts with the contemporary religious movement.
The Reformation was a popular uprising and for a century and a half
drenched Europe in blood. The beginnings of the scientific movement
were confined to a minority among the intellectual élite.”
It is doubtless because the Humanists remained relatively indifferent
to science, that its early struggles with theology were comparatively
mild. It was permitted to make remarkable progress in the seventeenth
century without raising an issue too great for its strength. It is
interesting to note that when in the nineteenth century the conflict
of natural science with theology became acute, science was at the same
time engaged in a struggle for recognition by the official educational
system in which the classical tradition held sway.
The outstanding public champion of science in this conflict was Thomas
H. Huxley. He could say of university education in England in the year
1868, that the colleges no longer promoted research in science, and
were hardly more than “boarding schools for bigger boys.” Once they
had been homes for the life study of the most abstruse and important
branches of knowledge.
“I believe there can be no doubt that the foreigner who should wish
to become acquainted with the scientific, or the literary, activity
of modern England, would simply lose his time and his pains if he
visited our universities with that object.
“The countrymen of Grote and of Mill, of Faraday, of Robert Brown, of
Lyell, and Darwin, to go no further back than the contemporaries of
men of middle age, can afford to smile at such a suggestion. England
can show now, and she has been able to show in every generation
since civilization spread over the West, individual men who hold
their own against the world, and keep alive the old tradition of her
intellectual eminence.
“But in the majority of cases, these men are what they are in virtue
of their native intellectual force, and of a strength of character
which will not recognise impediments. They are not trained in the
courts of the Temple of Science, but storm the walls of that edifice
in all sorts of irregular ways, and with much loss of time and power,
in order to obtain their legitimate positions.
“Our universities not only do not encourage such men; do not offer
them positions, in which it should be their highest duty to do,
thoroughly, that which they are most capable of doing; but, as far as
possible, university training shuts out of the minds of those among
them, who are subjected to it, the prospect that there is anything in
the world for which they are specially fitted.--Imagine the success
of the attempt to still the intellectual hunger of any of the men I
have mentioned, by putting before him, as the object of existence,
the successful mimicry of the measure of a Greek song, or the roll of
Ciceronian prose!”
Twelve years later Huxley was still waging his contest for the
admission of science to the curricula of school and college against an
opposition the obstinacy of which is a little difficult for us today to
understand.
“For I hold very strongly by two convictions--The first is, that
neither the discipline nor the subject-matter of classical education
is of such direct value to the student of physical science as to
justify the expenditure of valuable time upon either; and the second
is, that for the purpose of attaining real culture, an exclusively
scientific education is at least as effectual as an exclusively
literary education.
“I need hardly point out to you that these opinions, especially the
latter, are diametrically opposed to those of the great majority of
educated Englishmen, influenced as they are by school and university
traditions. In their belief, culture is obtainable only by a liberal
education; and a liberal education is synonymous, not merely with
education and instruction in literature, but in one particular form
of literature, namely, that of Greek and Roman antiquity. They hold
that the man who has learned Latin and Greek, however little, is
educated; while he who is versed in other branches of knowledge,
however deeply, is a more or less respectable specialist, not
admissable into the cultured caste. The stamp of the educated man,
the University degree, is not for him.”
“The representatives of the Humanists, in the nineteenth century,
take their stand upon classical education as the sole avenue to
culture, as firmly as if we were still in the age of Renascence. Yet,
surely, the present intellectual relations of the modern and the
ancient worlds are profoundly different from those which obtained
three centuries ago. Leaving aside the existence of a great and
characteristic modern literature, of modern painting, and, especially
of modern music, there is one feature of the present state of the
civilized world which separates it more widely from the Renascence,
than the Renascence was separated from the middle ages.
“This distinctive character of our own times lies in the vast and
constantly increasing part which is played by natural knowledge. Not
only is our daily life shaped by it, not only does the prosperity
of millions of men depend upon it, but our whole theory of life has
long been influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the general
conceptions of the universe, which have been forced upon us by
physical science.”
“The scientist, no longer disposed to remain on the defensive with
the usual apology for science, carries the battle into the opposing
camp and indicts the opposition, with some justice I think, for
its failure even when judged by its own traditional standards of
education.
“There is no great force in the _tu quoque_ argument, or else the
advocates of scientific education might fairly enough retort upon
the modern Humanists that they may be learned specialists, but that
they possess no such sound foundation for a criticism of life as
deserves the name of culture. And, indeed, if we were disposed to be
cruel, we might urge that the Humanists have brought this reproach
upon themselves, not because they are too full of the spirit of the
ancient Greek, but because they lack it.
“The period of the Renascence is commonly called that of the “Revival
of Letters,” as if the influences then brought to bear upon the
mind of Western Europe had been wholly exhausted in the field of
literature. I think it is very commonly forgotten that the revival of
science, effected by the same agency, although less conspicuous, was
not less momentous....
“We cannot know all the best thoughts and sayings of the Greeks
unless we know what they thought about natural phenomena. We cannot
fully apprehend their criticism of life unless we understand
the extent to which that criticism was affected by scientific
conceptions. We falsely pretend to be the inheritors of their
culture, unless we are penetrated, as the best minds among them were,
with an unhesitating faith that the free employment of reason, in
accordance with scientific method, is the sole method of reaching
truth.
“Thus I venture to think that the pretensions of our modern Humanists
to the possession of the monopoly of culture and to the exclusive
inheritance of the spirit of antiquity must be abated, if not
abandoned.”
Huxley was one of the few educators of his time who ought to have seen
clearly that in the education of the ancients there was no conflict
of interest between science and letters; the two were one in the
naturalistic minds of the Greeks. He is aware of the fact that both
science and letters were revived by the Renaissance, but it would seem
that he permits his zeal in the cause of scientific training to force
him at times into a rather one-sided and partisan position.
“But for those who mean to make science their serious occupation;
or who intend to follow the profession of medicine; or who have to
enter early upon the business of life; for all these, in my opinion,
classical education is a mistake; and it is for this reason that I
am glad to see ‘mere literary education and instruction’ shut out
from the curriculum of Sir Josiah Mason’s College, seeing that its
inclusion would probably lead to the introduction of the ordinary
smattering of Latin and Greek....”
“The great peculiarity of scientific training, that in virtue of
which it cannot be replaced by any other discipline whatsoever,
is this bringing of the mind directly into contact with fact, and
practising the intellect in the completest form of induction; that is
to say, in drawing conclusions from particular facts made known by
immediate observation of nature.”
The struggle for recognition of the liberalizing educational value of
science was carried to successful issue in the nineteenth century.
In backward communities, Fundamentalism still sets its face against
certain of the anti-supernaturalist implications of science, and it is
always possible that if at any time the populace now dazzled by the
“wonders” of science, should suspect the full meaning of the world-view
which science would substitute for the older anthropomorphic ideas
about the universe, there may be a wide-spread popular reaction against
it in the name of religion. But at present in educational institutions
generally, scientific courses tend to predominate over the classical.
Most of the struggles for “academic freedom” and most of the live
problems in education revolve about the teaching of the sciences.
A vastly greater number of minds are today set free from dogma and
superstition and childish deference to authority by methods of
scientific research than by the study of the classics. The latter is on
the decline and I suppose must continue to be so until Humanism again
possesses that vitality and naturalism, and independence of judgment
which men had when the Greeks set out to discover the Good Life.
Dewey says that without initiation into the scientific spirit one is
not in possession of the best tools which humanity has so far devised
for effectively directed reflection. In it may be realized that desire
for exact knowledge as different from mere opinion which the ancients
sought. It tests all things in the light of experiment and by appeal
to cold objective fact. It is often said that science is Reason in
contrast with Faith. Certainly the scientist cannot in his research
permit himself to be swayed by religious belief and remain scientific.
He must accept no conclusion on authority or because he wishes to
believe it. But the scientific mind is not, as a matter of fact, as
strictly rationalistic as was the scholastic mind. The logic of the
latter is a formal vindication of The Truth conceived in advance of
knowledge of fact. The reasoning of the former proceeds by a succession
of shrewd guesses which are held to be mere hypothesis until verified
by the facts. This necessity of holding judgment in abeyance, and
of being willing to discard any belief or postulate that may not be
confirmed by objective reality, has the greatest educational value. In
spite of the everlasting deceitfulness and conceit of human nature and
notwithstanding the fact that pompous ignorance and fraud are often
palmed off upon the public as scientific knowledge, I should say,
precisely because of these things, training in scientific methods is
the best device available to the educator for instilling into the human
mind some measure of respect for truth.
To this end Huxley would introduce scientific experimentation into the
elementary school and would establish “scientific Sunday schools,”
“Would there really be anything wrong in using part of Sunday for
the purpose of instructing those who have no other leisure, in a
knowledge of the phenomena of Nature, and of man’s relation to
Nature?
“I should like to see a scientific Sunday-school in every parish,
not for the purpose of superseding any existing means of teaching
the people the things that are for their good, but side by side with
them. I cannot but think that there is room for all of us to work in
helping to bridge over the great abyss of ignorance which lies at our
feet.
“And if any of the ecclesiastical persons to whom I have referred
object that they find it derogatory to the honour of the God whom
they worship, to awaken the minds of the young to the infinite wonder
and majesty of the works which they proclaim His, and to teach them
those laws which must needs be His laws, and therefore of all things
needful for man to know--I can only recommend them to be let blood
and put on low diet. There must be something very wrong going on in
the instrument of logic if it turns out such conclusions from such
premises.”
There is an intellectual cleanness, something downright and honest
about the scientific pursuit of knowledge, and this uncompromising
mental integrity characterizes everything that Huxley said and did.
There is nothing shifty in a mind trained as his was. His is like a
cool north breeze on one of those clear summer days that sometimes
follow a period of sultriness, fog and rain. If things are a little too
sharply outlined, they are at least recognized for what they are. No
evasive mistiness obscures the landscape. To Huxley the foundation of
morality is to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no
evidence. He held that the lowest depths to which the human race could
fall--after knowing what science now reveals of nature--would be to go
back and deceive itself with comforting fictions. You will remember
his correspondence with Kingsley when death had entered his home. The
grief-stricken Huxley refused the consolations of a faith in which he
could not whole-heartedly believe. Like Socrates and Montaigne and
many educated men today, Huxley was candidly agnostic with respect to
matters which lie beyond the radius of human knowledge.
Huxley was a determinist, but it is doubtful if he was a materialist.
At least he held to a materialism which in one sense might be
reconciled with a form of idealism. In the address in honor of Joseph
Priestley he said,
“Without containing much that will be new to the readers or Hobbs,
Spinoza, Collins, Hume, and Hartley, and indeed, while making no
pretensions to originality, Priestley’s ‘Disquisitions relating to
Matter and Spirit,’ and his ‘Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity
Illustrated,’ are among the most powerful, clear, and unflinching
expositions of materialism and necessarianism which exist in the
English language, and are still well worth reading.
“Priestley denied the freedom of the will in the sense of its
self-determination; he denied the existence of a soul distinct
from the body; and as a natural consequence, he denied the natural
immortality of man.
“In relation to these matters English opinion a century ago was very
much what it is now.
“A man may be a necessarian without incurring graver reproach than
that implied in being called a gloomy fanatic, necessarianism,
though very shocking, having a note of Calvinistic orthodoxy; but,
if a man is a materialist; or, if good authorities say he is and
must be so, in spite of his assertion to the contrary; or, if he
acknowledge himself unable to see good reasons for believing in the
natural immortality of man, respectable folks look upon him as an
unsafe neighbour of a cashbox, as an actual or potential sensualist,
the more virtuous in outward seeming, the more certainly loaded with
secret ‘grave personal sins.’
“... I must confess that what interests me most about Priestley’s
materialism, is the evidence that he saw dimly the seed of
destruction which such materialism carries within its own bosom. In
the course of his reading for his ‘History of Discoveries relating
to Vision, Light, and Colours,’ he had come upon the speculations of
Boscovich and Michell, and had been led to admit the sufficiently
obvious truth that our knowledge of matter is a knowledge of its
properties; and that of its substance--if it have a substance--we
know nothing. And this led to the further admission that, so far
as we can know, there may be no difference between the substance
of matter and the substance of spirit (‘Disquisitions, p. 16’).
A step farther would have shown Priestley that his materialism
was, essentially, very little different from the Idealism of his
contemporary, the Bishop of Cloyne.”
Perhaps William James may have had Huxley or his type in mind when
he wrote his famous passage about learning “to stand this universe.”
Yet I suspect that Huxley’s universe was more simple and benevolent,
more naïvely conceived than was that of James. Huxley was to the end a
rationalist, and lived and worked in a period when Nature was thought
to be essentially reasonable. Man need only learn the laws of nature
and obey them to become wise and happy and good. The aim of education
was to acquaint the student with the laws of nature.
“Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty
game. In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect
in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things
and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the
affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move
in harmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor
less than this....
“Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every
one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing
a game of chess. Don’t you think that we should all consider it to
be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the
pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the
means of giving and getting out of check?
“Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the
fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of
those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something
of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than
chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man
and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or
her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena
of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws
of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know
that his play is always fair, just and patient. But we also know, to
our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest
allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest
stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which
the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is
checkmated--without haste, but without remorse.
“My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which
Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul.
Substitute for the mocking friend in that picture a calm, strong
angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than
win--and I should accept it as an image of human life....
“That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so
trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and
does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it
is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with
all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready,
like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the
gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is
stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature
and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is
full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to
heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has
learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all
vileness, and to respect others as himself.
“Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education;
for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with Nature. He
will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together
rarely; she as his ever beneficent mother; he as her mouthpiece, her
conscious self, her minister and interpreter.”
But surely liberal education is more than becoming the mouthpiece
of a benevolent nature. It seems to me that Huxley omits one of the
essentials. Just as the nineteenth century Humanists, because of
their neglect of science, possessed only a distorted and one-sided
view of Humanist education, so it would seem to me that nineteenth
century science in its opposition to traditional education, failed to
see that science is itself a part of Humanism. It is not merely the
discovery of given “Laws” which exist independently in a benevolent
and rational universe. It is the observation of certain relationships
and recurrences and the statement of these things in general terms
that will give them significance for _human beings_. What nature is
aside from the fact that we are interested spectators does not concern
us. Science grows out of the fact that we are more interested in
some things than in others. It is a human achievement; it is one of
the answers that mankind gives to the riddle of existence. It is not
existence which gives that answer, it is man. And education must not
only seek knowledge of the facts of nature, but having obtained such
knowledge, _must try to understand what to do about it_. Now that we
understand our natural environment, what kind of life can we best
achieve with it? What valuations have men put upon deeds and things?
What values is it possible to achieve? Our education is not done when
we have learned Nature’s _yes_ and _no_; we have our own _yes_ and _no_
to give.
Scientists quietly observing certain aspects of reality--those which
lend themselves to knowing as a specialized undertaking--are happy
to find that their abstract conceptions mutually imply and support
one another in an ordered system of knowledge. Their own reason which
they are thus able to impose upon nature, they believe they have
discovered in nature itself. Hence nature appears to be more ordered
than it really is, and to be essentially reasonable and beneficent.
Compare Huxley’s picture of nature as a beneficent mother of whom the
educated mind “makes the best, and she of him,” he “her conscious
self, her minister and interpreter,” with William James’ statement
about “this partially hospitable and ‘stepmotherly’ world of ours.”
The latter is surely the more profound and correct view. Water is not
only H₂O, it may drown you or quench your thirst. Fire is not merely
a process of oxidation, it is hot. It may be your willing servant, or
your relentless enemy. The modification of species which nineteenth
century scientists held to be the outcome of natural selection is not
what natural selection means to the organisms which experienced it.
To them it is a relentless struggle for a precarious and fleeting
existence in which satisfactions and victories are mingled with terror
and starvation and agony. And man placed in the midst of such a world
seeks education not only that he may interpret its happenings to an
intelligence which is part of the natural process, but that he may
select wisely among the alternatives which Nature presents to him, lift
himself above chaos and the slime, and achieve an existence that, at
least while it lasts, has some significance and quality of decency and
worth.
It is to this end that science is education; a true Humanism is
impossible without it. Such a Humanism is as anti-supernaturalistic as
determinism. But it is naturalism with mankind, however, not merely
pictured as a passive resultant of natural forces, but actively
selecting and creating value. As Huxley himself says, its aim is to
provide criteria for a “criticism of life.”
“Moreover this scientific ‘criticism of life’ presents itself to
us with different credentials from any other. It appeals not to
authority, nor to what anybody may have thought or said, but to
nature. It admits that all our interpretations of natural fact are
more or less imperfect and symbolic, and bids the learner seek for
the truth not among words but among things. It warns us that the
assertion which outstrips evidence is not only a blunder but a crime.”
He saw a new culture in process of development, one which would enlist
the whole spiritual life of mankind,
“The scenes are shifting the great theatre of the world. The act
which commenced with the Protestant Reformation is nearly played out,
and a wider and deeper change than that effected three centuries
ago--a reformation, or rather a revolution of thought, the extremes
of which are represented by the intellectual heirs of John of Leyden
and of Ignatius Loyola, rather than by those of Luther and of
Leo--is waiting to come on, nay, visible behind the scenes to those
who have good eyes. Men are beginning, once more, to awake to the
fact that matters of belief and of speculation are of absolutely
infinite practical importance; and are drawing off from that sunny
country ‘where it is always afternoon’--the sleepy hollow of broad
indifferentism--to range themselves under their natural banners.
Change is in the air. It is whirling feather-heads into all sorts
of eccentric orbits, and filling the steadiest with a sense of
insecurity. It insists on reopening all questions and asking all
institutions, however venerable, by what right they exist, and
whether they are, or are not, in harmony with the real or supposed
wants of mankind.”
Huxley’s services to education were more than his struggle for the
recognition of the educational value of science. His own contributions
to the science of biology and his able championing of the case which
Darwin had made in favor of the hypotheses of evolution did much to
place the biological sciences in their present position of preëminence
and to aid in placing both education and modern thought upon the basis
of a philosophy of evolution.
After receiving his degree in medicine, Huxley was appointed to the
position of assistant surgeon in the British navy. As he cruised about
on the war-ship ‘Rattlesnake,’ he began his studies of marine animals.
Darwin, you will remember, had also spent long months on southern seas
as government naturalist assigned to the Beagle. During the years that
followed each had risen to a high position as a British scientist,
conducting research, publishing papers, making new discoveries, all of
which contributed to make the nineteenth century, as John Fiske said,
“the century of science.”
During the years when Darwin was patiently elaborating the theory of
“descent with modification” which was destined within his own lifetime
to bring about a revolutionary transformation in the philosophy of
nature, Huxley did much to organize the science of Biology as a
definite branch of natural history. His great energy and industry, his
passion for exact knowledge and his genius for clear and comprehensive
statement made him one of the outstanding scientists of England. As
professor of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines, and later in
the Royal College of Surgeons, and as publicist and member of numerous
commissions on science and education, he was in a position to throw
a tremendous weight of influence to the support of his convictions,
should he be drawn into a scientific controversy.
When in 1859 Darwin published the “Origin of Species,” Huxley was one
of the small group of eminent scientists whose favorable judgment
Darwin felt would be necessary if the theory of natural selection were
to command the attention of the scientific world. Darwin did not invent
the doctrine of evolution. This idea had from time to time suggested
itself to men’s minds whenever a naturalistic account of creation was
attempted. The increase of knowledge of comparative anatomy, of geology
and of zoölogy, and the discovery of certain structural likenesses
and differences among both living organisms and the fossil remains
which were found in the several layers of the earth’s surface, could
not fail to suggest to many minds the thought that perhaps all forms
of life might be related in one comprehensive evolutionary process.
Although the evidence against the dogma of special creation was rapidly
accumulating, no valid explanation had been found. Lamarcks’ theory
that the structural modifications which characterize the various
species of organisms were the result of effort and use and of special
energizing and development of various organs, was under discussion.
The theory did not, however, interest Huxley, because it implied that
modifications which occurred as a result of effort and use could be
inherited, a belief for which there was not sufficient evidence.
Darwin’s book put the whole problem in a new light, and stated the
hypotheses of organic evolution as an alternative to “special creation”
in terms which were comprehensible to a mind trained in natural
science. Heretofore a mysterious principle of development had been
substituted for a miracle of creation. Darwin did not invoke any such
principle but with good scientific logic sought his explanation of the
origin of species in the casual connections among observable facts.
It is not my purpose now to enter upon a discussion of Darwinism, or
its present status in biology, a general understanding of which I think
should be part of the education of a modern man. I suspect that many
moderns who “believe in evolution” merely cherish a popular faith in
some mystical law of unusual progress, such as is expressed in the
verse, “Some call it evolution and some God.”
Huxley was uncompromisingly opposed to all such romantic theologizing
in science. He was moreover, aware, as Darwin himself was, of the
difficulties of Darwin’s theory. But he grasped the significance of
what Darwin had done and saw the ground upon which he had placed the
discussion of the problem, and he held that in the main Darwin was
correct. Gracefully and courageously he took his stand at Darwin’s
side. In various addresses, essays, books, he drew upon his extensive
knowledge for evidence in support of the theory. In “Man’s Place in
Nature” he uncompromisingly placed the origin and development of the
human race within the process of the evolution of animal organisms. He
did not remain indifferent to the storm of ecclesiastical indignation
and popular abuse and ridicule with which a grateful humanity greeted
the most important scientific discovery of the century. He accepted
the challenge, and during the decades that followed 1860 he was
probably the outstanding champion in England, not only of evolution,
but of science itself. In 1925, upon the centennial of his birth, his
grandson, Julian Huxley wrote,
“Of the general truth of the evolutionary hypothesis, its enormous
value to biology, and the necessary reorientation which it would give
to the general current of thought, he had no doubts; nor did he spare
himself in the cause. It is sometimes as well, in these easier-going
and theologically more tolerant days, when we are reaping what he
and others like him sowed, and may sometimes be tempted to think of
his criticism as essentially destructive, to remember what power of
inertia, what violence of the odium theologicum there was in the
opposition. ‘Professor Huxley’ became a sort of bogy in orthodox
lower middle-class families, almost as ‘Boney’ had done for the
nation in earlier days. He was attacked as irreligious, immoral,
unscrupulous, on the platform, in the press, by letter. That sort of
opposition cannot be persuaded; it must die out or be destroyed.”
The scholar confronted by the fury and stupidity of the mob, and
counted a fool for his pains when he strives to induce it to listen to
reason, has often turned aside in disgust. Henceforth he will write and
speak for the learned few. Let the masses, who think that a scientific
demonstration may be satisfactorily refuted with derision and slander,
consume themselves in their own ignorance. They have made it clear
that learning is not for such as they. In the Theatetus Plato tells
us of the discomfiture of the philosopher in the marketplace. As “the
rabble” is in all times heedless or hostile to reason, there has often
developed the idea that any belief that is popular is thereby shown
to be untrue and vulgar. Cato at once became suspicious of himself
when any utterance of his met with applause. Among would-be educated
minds this suspicion becomes a cult. Anything is “refined” and true
to the extent that it is unpopular--and for the reason that it is not
shared by the many. Today this attitude--which is really intellectual
snobbishness--gains plausibility from the fact that much of the
popularization of science is base caricature and misrepresentation.
It is obvious that the wider the circulation of pseudo-science, the
greater is the need of genuine instruction in the elements of science
and of general culture. I can see no other way by which modern learning
or modern civilization may be sustained. The man on the street has
power to determine which values shall survive in our common life, and
which shall perish, to a degree that he never had before. He exercises
this influence upon our culture in many ways both direct and indirect,
and his sway is not likely to be diminished in an industrial society
which increasingly tends to give social power to the various groups
which compose it in direct proportion to their numerical strength.
Moreover, it is not likely that a strictly esoteric intellectualism can
survive at all, much less attain that leadership which is the proper
function of intelligence in human affairs in a world organized as ours
is. As I have said before, our intellectual hold upon reality, even
for the best trained minds, is more precarious than we think. A slight
general shifting of emotional interest or of perspective--the spread,
let us suppose, of Fundamentalism through lower middle class minds
generally,--a sudden spasm of popular disillusionment regarding the
“wonders” of science or of hostility toward scientific methods which
are ever upsetting the consolations of faith,--might conceivably occur
at any time, and bring the beginning of the end of all that scholars
have struggled for since the Renaissance. If as Huxley said, the epoch
which began with the Reformation is about played out, it is not by
any means a foregone conclusion what the sequel is to be. If science
and letters are to join forces in the achievement of a truly Humanist
culture, this culture must be rooted in the life and thought of the
community. It will not likely be again a fifteenth century Italian
mimicry of the age of Cicero; neither can it support itself like a
bridge over an illiterate and enslaved populace, after the fashion of
ancient Athenian Humanism. This modern public can read, it is very
vociferous, it has votes and purchasing power and it pays to flatter
it. But there is in the modern public a small and growing minority,
scattered throughout all classes in the community, who honestly desire
knowledge of science and the humanities.
Professional scholarship has in the example of Huxley a splendid
precedent for any attempts it may care to make to ally itself with
this teachable minority. I once invited a neighboring biologist to
participate with other research scholars, in a course of lectures at
Cooper Union on scientific methods. He declined, because he believed
that a scientist who lectured to popular audiences cheapened his
reputation. I wondered if he had forgotten the great service to science
rendered by Huxley, who did not think it beneath the dignity of one
who was perhaps the leading biologist of England to wage the struggle
for scientific advance in the presence of a public which was much
less trained in the principles of natural science than the people who
regularly attend the lectures at Cooper Union.
Huxley seemed to believe that the outcome of the struggle of evolution
against popular ignorance and superstition was inseparable from the
fate of science itself. He set himself to make knowledge of the
principles of science universal. He did a work of adult education
that has not been surpassed in modern times. If today there is greater
freedom for scientific research and teaching, and in general a more
liberal and tolerant attitude on the part of official and popular
religion toward scientific discovery, our generation is in no small
measure indebted to Huxley.
In reply to the commonly expressed fear that liberal education may give
us a type of mind which is sceptical and ineffective, I offer Huxley.
The educated man may not perhaps take sides on the ever recurrent
question who is to profit at another’s expense, nor easily give his
devotion to the particular Utopian scheme of social reorganization
which happens to be the fashion of the reformers of his day. But if he
is like Huxley, he will be alert enough when he finds that intellectual
integrity and cultural progress are at stake. Like Erasmus, Huxley
survives in the philosophy of modern education as a symbol of
enlightenment in its struggle against obscurantism. Both insist upon
the recognition of the value of one aspect of a developing educational
tradition which has its origin in ancient Greece, and is in sharp
contrast both with popular opinion and with mediæval scholasticism.
As I have indicated, it was unfortunate that these two educational
interests did not develop out of the Renaissance, as one, for a
well-rounded Humanism is an integration of both. Erasmus champions the
cause of “human letters” and in the end classical education degenerates
into a species of Protestant scholasticism. Huxley champions science,
but is unable to liberate science itself from a mechanistic philosophy
which became associated with it two centuries earlier. The struggle
of science with theology was but a continuation of the spirit of the
Renaissance. The struggle of science against an entrenched classical
tradition meant that _the Renaissance had become divided against
itself_. This dualism is reflected in science down to the present time.
It is revealed in Huxley’s type of agnosticism, which is really naïve
in comparison with the sophisticated, mellow scepticism of Montaigne or
Hume, or in our own day with that of Mr. Santayana, who sees that all
knowledge is faith.
It was not so with Huxley; about the finality of the knowledge that
can be brought within the scope of scientific method he had no doubt
whatever. Of other knowledge he is sceptical because of want of
evidence. This is courageous and honest, and, from the standpoint
of the struggle in which science was then engaged with theological
rationalism, the issue cannot be compromised without the surrender of
science to superstition. Although Huxley is an evolutionist and clearly
sees that human intelligence is part of the behavior of an organism
which is itself a cross-section as it were of a process of nature,
he seems to hold that morality and truth are absolute and eternal
principles which exist outside the process and constitute the very
basis of existence. Reason which knows these eternal principles and
in which they inhere, must then also exist outside the process. But
we have seen that reason is a function of the behavior of an animal.
Huxley is thus a Rationalist; as much so as any Scholastic. The body
of scientific knowledge which we possess is the revelation of the
true nature of the facts which we experienced. It is the intellectual
equivalent of reality.
But is scientific knowledge knowledge of facts taken in their
wholeness, or is it in each instance knowledge of some special _aspect_
of the facts--fact reduced to abstract quality, to number and point in
space and to a multiple of smaller and “more real” units all conceived
in logical relationship rather than as experienced? Suppose we should
say that scientific ideas do not exist independent of the minds that
think them, are not equivalents of independent truths which reason
discovers, but are the devices which an unusually intelligent animal
constructs out of the many kinds of relationships it is able to notice
amongst the objects which interest it.
From this point of view, the one most consistent, I believe, with
a biology and a psychology which must take evolution into account,
scientific ideas are seen to be humanly created symbols, not cerebral
photographs of the ultimate nature of things. Why should the ultimate
nature of a lobster be the fact that a morphologist discovers it to be
an “articulate,” anymore than that I discover that it turns red when
put in boiling water? Scientific ideas are instruments. Abstraction and
classification are in a sense labor-saving devices, according to which
we may hold that what is true for one object or event is true for all
of its kind.
But the success of our thinking depends upon which of these many
aspects and relationships we observe and hence how we classify them.
All aspects and relationships are equally true, as James said, if true
at all. Correct thinking is the thinking which seizes upon those which
are relevant to our interest and purpose. And the interest and purpose
are human, not inherent in the world of things. Hence the order science
finds in nature is not _given_; it is the order of human thought
itself. Thus science also is “human letters.”
The humanist, or organic, view of the world of science differentiates
the twentieth century philosophy of nature from the mechanistic
philosophy of earlier science. Mechanism, which is faith that the
universe is reducible to Reason is, I hold, a survival from the old
religious dualism, according to which matter and spirit were separate
entities each belonging to its own world of phenomenon. The existence
of Reason as an entity in itself could be taken for granted, because
Reason belonged to the realm of spirit or mind, which though it existed
outside the material order of being, had yet established this order in
conformity to Reason.
Huxley’s agnosticism properly denies that man can have knowledge of
this world of spirit, yet retains from that realm the principle of
reason which it re-discovers in the world of material phenomena. Hence
Huxley was more religious than he knew. It is not the agnostic who is
the non-religious man, but the naïve realist who sees every fact and
situation uncolored by fancy or theory or illusion. For such a mind,
spiritual values do not exist. This kind of materialism is a different
thing from philosophical materialism, which is very theoretical and
fanciful. There are persons who approach this naïve realism, but I
doubt if anyone is wholly lacking in poetry and fancy. Certainly Huxley
was not.
Ordinarily we see our environment in a perspective of wish-fancy and
traditional myth and magic. To more logical minds the world of objects
is colored by the “sentiment of Rationality.” The universe appears to
them to be governed, not by an indulgent or harsh imaginary Father, but
by a principle of Reason. In each case, the fiction of security gives
the feeling of salvation. In a wholly rational universe salvation is
explanation. Everything is reasonable, hence right, if only we could
explain it and show its place in the whole. Nineteenth century science
could conceive of the world order as a mechanism and believe that it
had passed from faith to knowledge in its agnosticism of the things of
the spirit, but as Whitehead says, “the faith in the possibility of
science generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific
theory is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.”
The conflict in the nineteenth century on behalf of science has
effected education in various ways. It has not emptied the churches,
but it has had a marked liberalizing influence, causing various groups
of believers to seek to modify the public expressions of their faith
in the light of modern knowledge. It has given the average educated
person of today a very different conception of his world from that
commonly held a century ago. It has to some extent revived the Socratic
insistence upon clear and accurate thinking as the first requirement
of an educated mind. It has brought a greater degree of objectivity
and wholesomeness of outlook to bear upon the formation of the mental
habits of students. It is by its insistence upon the biological point
of view, causing marked changes in men’s ideas of human nature and
society, gradually turning their thought away from the political dogma
of the eighteenth century to a less doctrinaire social philosophy.
On the other side, it may be said to be in part responsible for the
over-specialization common in our educational institutions. It has
left on the mind of the public the impression that science is a new
kind of magic, sometimes actually augmenting the general credulity and
gullibility. Almost any sort of nonsense may now find space in the
columns of the Sunday papers and pass current with the assertion that
it is “scientific.” Minds stuffed with a smattering of science may be
just as opinionated as minds stuffed with a smattering of theology.
A result which could perhaps not have been foreseen in 1875--and
which I believe twentieth century science is destined to remedy--grew
out of the one-sidedness of the Humanism of Huxley and others of his
day which I have discussed. The scientific interest tended to have
a mechanizing influence upon all life and culture, to ignore and
sometimes deny all values which resisted laboratory methods. And having
reduced all possible phenomena of life to a statement of the movements
of particles of matter which were said to underlie and cause all else,
this purposeless correlation of matter, space and movement expressed in
mathematical formulae was frequently given out as the true picture of
the nature of all existence--human life included.
Biologists and psychologists often have resorted to rather amusing
gestures and have deliberately ignored possible lines of inquiry
in order to imitate as closely as possible the physicists and the
astronomers. Just as matter was thought to consist of combinations
of atoms, so living organisms consisted of cells, and complex acts
of behavior were seen to consist of combinations of simple reflexes.
The cell and the reflex, being the irreducible minimum of physiology
and of psychology, were said to be the realities which constituted
the nature of the organism and its acts. All phenomena of life were
but combinations of these elemental realities. Find the smallest
particles in the combination, show how by a mechanical principle
they are inevitably placed in certain temporal and spacial and
other quantitative relationships, and behold, science has led you
to _Reality_. All this seemed to be very certain in the nineteenth
century; it alone was _knowledge_, all else was mere opinion and error.
Professor Whitehead says, “But the progress of biology and psychology
has probably been checked by the uncritical assumption of half-truths.
If science is not to degenerate into a medley of _ad hoc_ hypotheses,
it must become philosophical and must enter upon a thorough criticism
of its own foundations....
“There persists, however, throughout the whole period the fixed
scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an
irreducible brute matter, or material, spread throughout space in
a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless,
valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a
fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from
the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call ‘scientific
materialism.’”
“The progress of science has now reached a turning point. The stable
foundations of physics have broken up: also for the first time
physiology is asserting itself as an effective body of knowledge, as
distinct from a scrap-heap. The old foundations of scientific thought
are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether,
electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern,
function, all require reinterpretation. What is the sense of talking
about a mechanical explanation when you do not know what you mean by
mechanics?”
It is this disposition to find the real nature of the facts in the
smallest homogeneous particles, in other words, “atomism,” which
science in the twentieth century modifies. The parts themselves,
considered without regard to their position in the whole event, are
nothing. The reality is the organism, the situation as a whole. The
unity of a tree is very different from that of a machine, and even
physicists are beginning to suspect that they also deal with the
former kind of unity. The effect of this change of view upon education
is difficult to predict. I believe there are indications of a better
synthesis of science with general culture than that which obtained in
Huxley’s time. And as science modifies its mechanistic presuppositions,
there will doubtless be an increase of the importance of philosophy
in education, less pretense at finality, greater intellectual modesty
and more general appreciation of human worth than is possible when
educational philosophy is under the sway of a scientific dogma which
dehumanizes the individual, reduces him to atoms, and regards him as a
machine.
The recognition of the probability that much even of our established
scientific knowledge is a human convention, should have a liberalizing
effect upon the education of the present generation. Compare the
assurance of Huxley with the following passages which I quote from the
writings of Bertrand Russell, the first from his book on “Relativity,”
and the second from the closing words of “The ABC of Atoms.”
“What we know about the physical world, I repeat, is much more
abstract than was formerly supposed. Between bodies there are
occurrences, such as light waves; of the _laws_ of these occurrences,
we know something--just as much as can be expressed in mathematical
formulae--but of their _nature_ we know nothing. Of the bodies
themselves, as we saw in the preceding chapter, we know so little
that we cannot even be sure that they are anything: they _may_ be
merely groups of events in other places, those events which we should
naturally regard as their effects.... Perhaps an illustration may make
the matter clear. Between a piece of orchestral music as played, and
the same piece of music as printed in the score, there is a certain
resemblance, which may be described as a resemblance in structure.
The resemblance is of such a sort that, when you know the rules,
you can infer the music from the score or the score from the music.
But suppose you had been stone deaf from birth, but had lived among
musical people. You could understand, if you had learned to speak
and to do lip-reading, that the musical scores represented something
quite different from themselves in intrinsic quality, though similar
in structure. The value of music would be completely unimaginable to
you, but you could infer all its mathematical characteristics, since
they are the same as those of the score. Now our knowledge of nature is
something like this. We can read the scores, and infer just so much as
our stone-deaf person could have inferred about music. But we have not
the advantages which he derived from association with musical people.
We cannot know whether the music represented by the scores is beautiful
or hideous; perhaps, in the last analysis, we cannot be quite sure that
the scores represent anything but themselves.”
“The theory of relativity has shown that most of traditional dynamics,
which was supposed to contain scientific laws, really consisted of
conventions as to measurement, and was strictly analogous to the
‘great law’ that there are always three feet to a yard. In particular,
this applies to the conservation of energy. This makes it plausible
to suppose that every apparent law of nature which strikes us as
reasonable is not really a law of nature, but a concealed convention,
plastered on to nature by our love of what we, in our arrogance, choose
to consider rational. Eddington hints that a real law of nature is
likely to stand out by the fact that it appears to us irrational,
since in that case it is less likely that we have invented it to
satisfy our intellectual taste. And from this point of view he inclines
to the belief that the quantum-principle is the first real law of
nature that has been discovered in physics.
“This raises a somewhat important question: Is the world ‘rational,’
i. e., such as to conform to our intellectual habits? Or is it
‘irrational,’ i. e., not such as we should have made it if we had been
in the position of the Creator? I do not propose to suggest an answer
to this question.”
No, we do not know whether the world is such as we would have made
it if we had been in the position of the Creator. But it is possible
for us to gain some intelligent idea of what we can and should make
of our world so far as lies within our human power and understanding.
Throughout all historic times men have striven to attain that insight,
discrimination and foreknowledge which would enable them to become
“legislators of values”--to give their existence quality and their
experiences an order of preference that would lend beauty and harmony
and some permanence to the half-chaotic stream of events and objects
which swept through their lives. This is the aim of the pursuit of
knowledge. It is to give to existence an “order of rank.” What if the
order be a human one? General coöperation in its development is what we
mean by culture. And education is not mere perpetuation of the order of
the past. The hierarchy of values must be constantly recreated if it is
to survive. Knowledge of the past is the inspiration to such creative
effort and knowledge of nature is a guide to it. A generation ago
William James, whose philosophy of science was thoroughly Humanistic,
suggested that the fascination of the pursuit of knowledge was that
we might thus be in at the places where truth is actually in the
making, and that we should never know what sort of world this would be
“till the last man’s vote is in and counted.” What we are to make of
this unfinished world depends largely upon the power and wisdom and
appreciation of value which we may attain through our education.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
Finally, with what appraisement may the seeker for knowledge view
education itself? In the course of our study we have cast aside
numerous idols and comforting fictions. We have seen that in the
process of a liberal education old dilemmas are outgrown; that the
habit is formed of questioning all things; that the educated mind
becomes capable of amused self-criticism, attains urbanity of spirit
and tolerant scepticism of the crowd and its partisan controversies,
and with civilized resignation learns that it may not possess finality
in matters of truth and right, but that a man must order his life
according to the wisest discrimination of value of which he is capable.
Now, I believe, the wise man will pursue his education always viewing
it with a certain light-heartedness and detachment. Wisdom itself will
not be taken too seriously by one who sees that in the best of it there
is an entertaining amount of human folly. Like Falstaff’s confession,
“I am not much better than one of the wicked,” Socrates, the wisest,
knows he is not much better than one of the foolish. People who
solemnly try to improve their minds, with groanings of the spirit that
cannot be uttered, determined to reach some cultural “Pike’s peak or
bust,” do not often become educated; they become intellectual bores.
Education is a way of living, but it is never a substitute for life.
Rational living does not mean that interest, feeling, love, respect,
practical achievement, do not count, or that in the end education
should make of life a mere _knowledge affair_. One does not pursue
scholarship merely for the sake of philosophical contemplation, or as
an intellectual trick. And there is no magic about education, but plain
common sense. I think we may safely say that a life guided by reason
and good taste is better than one enslaved to tradition, tabu, narrow
utilitarianism, conventionalism and passion. But surely education is
not a hair shirt to be worn in order to discipline the spirit and
achieve the modern idea of salvation. Neither is it something to be
attained by practicing before the mirror. It is nothing ostentatious.
Nor is it to be made a cult of. It does not work miracles, nor can it
create out of airy nothingness an intelligence that does not exist.
I think much of the criticism of education that one frequently hears
these days grows out of an exaggerated notion of the transformation
which some people expect a few years of education to work. I know a
number of college graduates who are very bitter in their criticism of
college education, protesting that they did not learn anything that did
them any good. Perhaps they expected too much for the amount of effort
put forth and tried to do too great a business on a small intellectual
capital. Or perhaps such criticism is in part a pose; in certain
circles it is now “the thing.”
An article which recently appeared in a student’s journal is typical
of this attitude toward College education. The writer asks, “Are the
American colleges worth their keep?” They have not, he says, given to
the nation the trained leadership which we had the right to expect of
them. Enter any University Club and you will find yourself far removed
from that intellectual atmosphere which should be characteristic of
education in a great democracy. Few college men may be found fighting
on the side of social justice. Few have the courage to deviate in any
way from the totums and tabus of a plutocratic, materialistic society.
Few have any very different ideas from those of their chauffeurs of
what constitutes success in life. Men’s colleges are no different
from girl’s finishing schools; they are not educational institutions,
but exist merely to impart information of the ways and manners of
upper-class society. Instructors are devitalized, for none but a
devitalized person could endure the system. Trustees have the habit
of judging colleges by the same standards they apply to business, yet
judged even by such standards, the author thinks higher education is a
failure. If Mr. Henry Ford turned out motor cars as bad as the products
the colleges turn out, he would soon be bankrupt!
In so far as such sweeping indictments are inspired by a feeling of
antipathy toward the so-called upper classes, it is not necessary for
us to discuss them. But I think that criticisms of this sort also
reveal a tendency to expect too much of education. We become more
charitable when we pause to consider how small a part, even at best,
intelligence plays in the control of human behavior. We have seen what
Erasmus thought about this subject. Most of those who call attention to
the general lack of intelligence, draw a distinction between the amount
of it in existence and the amount in common use. This is a democratic
view of the matter. It flatters the average man if you tell him that he
possesses more intelligence than he is using. A more correct view is
perhaps that of Freud, who says that most of us in modern civilization
are living “psychologically beyond our means.”
A good example of this democratic view may be found in a discussion
of “Intelligence in Our Time,” by a very able professor in one of
the Eastern colleges. “The general state of intelligence in our time
is of the strangest. It is richly and splendidly equipped and it is
tragically unsuccessful,--unsuccessful, that is, in the conduct of
life, both personal and social.” You may test it, broadly speaking,
by the troubles of the world. “One of the foremost failures of human
intelligence is not to remember its own importance.” In other words,
I suppose we haven’t enough intelligence to use our intelligence. We
live in “a sea of loose and floating ideas, more of them produced
daily, and no clearly recognized way of deciding, to the coercion of
all trained minds, which is right.... When people go wrong in reasoning
they usually do so in obvious ways, by violating obvious rules.”
Intelligence has its standards, but does not enforce them; it “lacks
confidence in itself.... On most important subjects opinions differ. In
each case something else appears as more important than intelligence,
something else has the right of way.”
In other words, we know better than to believe and behave as we do
most of the time. But I doubt if this unfortunate state of man is a
peculiarity of our times. I suspect that there has long been more
knowledge than intelligence in the world. The difficulty is that we
frequently do not know how to use the knowledge we possess, for to
use knowledge well requires wisdom, and no one can give us wisdom.
I can see no gain in condemning the human race for not using its
intelligence. I suspect that the beliefs we entertain and the deeds
we perform or leave undone are the best measure of the intelligence
we possess. Let us each own up to a certain native stupidity and
deceitfulness of heart which no amount of education can wholly cure or
even successfully disguise. The admission will to some extent save us
from that childish pride of intellect which is a common affliction of
those who “go in” for education.
Sometimes pride of intellect disguises itself with a holy tone and
reverential mien, as if education were a very solemn affair. When I
was a school boy, there was in our town a woman librarian who presided
over our little public library with deadly seriousness. She filled the
place with a crushing and awesome silence, as with reverential whispers
she quietly moved on tiptoe among the books like one ministering in the
house of the dead. I have known people to behave in this spirit toward
literature. I have seen school teachers and professors take such an
attitude toward education. It characterizes the average baccalaureate
address and is discernible in much that is said and written about
education. I know several “prophets” of adult education who succeed in
giving a similar impression. Their very souls creak under the weight of
the world-mending “spiritual values” of adult education. If people will
take their education as hard as the Kantians take morality, they are
welcome to their “sublimities.” There are minds which seem to have been
formed only for the service of the sublime and do not work well except
when closeted in its presence. But I would rather dwell in the tents of
the wicked than be a door-keeper in such a house of serious thinkers.
Extravagant claims for education lead to pretense, to painful efforts
at keeping up appearances, to exposure and ultimate disillusionment.
Several times in history there has occurred a wide-spread reaction
against education, followed by a long period of decline of interest
in it. Usually such reactions have taken the form of a revival of
religion and have followed upon a period of general intellectual
awakening. The Augustan age is followed by primitive Christianity, the
Renaissance by the Reformation, the eighteenth century, the age of “the
Enlightenment,” by those distinctly anti-intellectualist movements, the
Revival, the Revolution and Romanticism. May not one of the causes of
such reactions be the fact that people have been led to expect too much
of the prevailing education? Men for a time believe that education will
disclose some wonderful secret which is about to transform the world,
and when they find that the learned doctors do not reveal the secret
because they have none to reveal, and that the world does not at once
proceed to transform itself, they turn from learning to religion where
the secret is kept from the wise and revealed unto babes. No one is
more concerned than I that the interest in education be as wide-spread
and as genuine as possible. But I would not force its growth lest we
get all foliage and no fruit. It is better that in its due season the
tree be known by the fruit it bears.
Just as some believe that education is a sort of gospel, there are
others who contend that knowledge makes for unhappiness. One evening
at an informal dinner in New York a small group of thoughtful people,
all of middle age, were discussing in a rather desultory manner the
education of the younger generation. Suddenly the conversation became
serious. One of the women said, “They are hard, disillusioned young
realists. What else could we expect? It is the result of the education
we are giving them. They know too much.” She continued, “I wish, though
I do not see how it could have been done, that we could have retained
the simple beliefs of our parents. It was very comforting to believe
those things. It seems to me that everything I learn robs me of some
consoling ideal and makes the world appear cruel and terrible.”
To the question, what shall we put in the place of the old faiths which
education leads us to doubt, there is perhaps no other answer than
that we shall _exchange an infantile mentality for a mature one_. Most
people will agree that it is better to grow up, but as to whether we
are happier without our childish illusions, opinions differ.
Much of the tenderness which people show for small children is a
mixture of pity and envy. The other day I saw a business man about
fifty years old gaze long and wistfully at an infant playing with his
toys. He said as he turned away, “I wish I could remember what it feels
like to be his age. Can you imagine what this world must look like to
him?” There is my own small son who is now just learning to stand on
his feet and speak a word or two. How trusting and sweet he is. He is
not afraid of any one or any thing. No one would of course wish him to
live always surrounded only by pretty pictures and parental kindness.
But it is easy to understand how one in moments of weariness and doubt
might envy him his brief day of blessed ignorance. Think of it, he does
not even know that people have to work, and that it is the common lot
of mankind both to endure and inflict suffering. He does not suspect
the existence of such things as hospitals, slaughter houses, war,
slums, jails, policemen or Congress. He does not know that he is not
immortal, or that he must ever part with those he loves. He must know
these things since they exist, and must learn about many other facts
equally hard to endure. And as he grows up I want him to learn to cut
his way through the fictions with which men strive to disguise the
significance of many painful realities from which there is no escape.
Such is knowledge, and such is the price we pay for it. One reason
why mankind persistently resists the introduction of knowledge is the
disinclination to pay the price. It is not altogether easy, as James
said, to “stand this universe.” The longing for the irresponsibility
of childhood is very common among mankind, and it gives rise to many
comforting fictions which yield reluctantly to knowledge of fact. The
general attitude toward wisdom has in it always a touch of the dread
of the unknown. There is a very old legend that our first parents
were expelled from paradise after eating of the fruit of the tree of
knowledge.
Even our boasted practical knowledge of nature and of mechanics can
hardly be said to be an unmixed blessing. We are not quite so utopian
in our enthusiasm over applied science as we were twenty years ago. I
once burst into eloquence with an entertaining peroration something
like the following: “Everywhere as science displaces the hallowed
survivals of primitive magic and superstition, man emerges from
darkness with dignity and freedom in his bearing and titanic power in
his hands. The great friend for whom humanity has waited is the quiet
man in the laboratory amongst his test tubes and apparatus. What kings
could not command, nor priests call down from an unanswering heaven, he
can command and bring into being to enrich the heritage of happiness
for all. The earth blossoms for science. Where the medicine man in the
desert once vainly prayed for rain, science digs an irrigation ditch
and waste lands turn into fields of grain. Since the beginning of time
men have cringed in the shadow of death as the specter of plague
walked in their midst heedless of the prayers of faith. Science offers
no sacrifice to propitiate revengeful gods: it drains the swamps: it
resorts to such mundane devices as screens, vaccine and the quarantine,
and for the first time in all history the human race is freed of its
most terrifying scourge. Science has drawn the nations together as
its lines of mechanical communication have annihilated the spacial
distances which have hitherto isolated man from man. It has lightened
the burden of toil and has multiplied the productive force of labor a
hundredfold. It has lengthened the span of the average human life by
nearly a decade.
“And with what a wealth of unforeseen goods it has supplied us, motor
cars, and aëroplanes, and talking machines, and a countless variety of
new chemical products. What indeed can we not achieve with its aid; we
can send our messages around the world, dig the Panama Canal, throw a
dam across the Mississippi and turn the wheels and light the homes of
distant cities. We can make the lightning our household servant, we
can fly through the clouds, we can weigh distant suns, and by throwing
their light waves through a spectroscope, analyze them chemically and
tell whether they are composed of gas or solid matter and whether they
are moving towards us or receding. As science is giving us mastery
over nature, why should it not likewise give man control over his own
nature? The existence in a scientific age of poverty and crime and
injustice and corruption is an anachronism. Human reason has at last
decided to make itself at home and put the house of life in order, and
all nature smilingly welcomes it. It is flushed with success and well
it may be, for in it is the promise of the final triumph of man on the
earth.”
We are not so sanguine now. We have seen the destructive uses to which
scientific knowledge may be put in warfare. We are not so hopeful about
the easy control of human nature by means of it. It cannot be said that
there has been a general gain in intelligence, corresponding to the
increase of specialized scientific knowledge. The disturbing thought
has been expressed that the tremendous power of the engines created
by applied science for our generation is something like dangerous
explosives in the hands of young children. We are like passengers on a
steamship speeding through fog with an empty pilot house.
We move swiftly from one place to another, but it is doubtful if we
find more happiness or good when we reach our destination, or if we
behave more wisely than do men who know nothing of the fruits of
science. Those who are acquainted with China, a country in which a vast
population has maintained the oldest civilization extant without any
science at all, say that the cultural level of that nation has not been
raised by the occasional importation of western methods of sanitation,
military science, electric lights and chewing gum.
Medical research has saved the lives of countless numbers of children,
so that infant mortality is negligible now as compared with that of the
ages that had no science. I am sure no one would wish to give up such
a splendid application of modern knowledge to human welfare. Yet even
this has its price. There are biologists who doubt if the amount of
human suffering has been so greatly reduced as we at first supposed.
They say that many physically unfit persons are thus preserved, only to
suffer in later life, and that the survival to maturity, of such poorly
equipped organisms and their reproduction lowers the quality of the
racial stock of the nation. This is an extreme position and is perhaps
a premature conclusion, but it illustrates my point that at best our
modern knowledge may not be had without paying some price for it.
Theoretical knowledge of nature may be said to be no less costly than
applied science. In the sixteenth century man could without fear of
contradiction proclaim the earth to be the center of the Universe and
his own welfare and salvation the purpose of creation. Every step in
the progress of science from Newton to Einstein has tended to rebuke
the egotism of man--unless perchance he could find compensation in
the fact that he is a creature who has the intellectual courage to
saw off the bough of sustaining belief that he is sitting on. Early
astronomy revealed to man that his earth, far from being “the Center”
was but a perishable and relatively very small kind of moon whirling
about a slowing cooling sun, by no means the best of a galaxy of bigger
and brighter suns all moving by necessity through freezing space in
utter indifference to the inhabitants of this little planet. Chemistry
showed man that his glowing life was a molecular process. Physics
taught him that all change and movement were but the redistribution of
a meaningless and purposeless energy the quantity of which remained
forever constant. Geology reminded him that he was but a newcomer among
the forms of life which had lived and left their remains in the crust
of the earth. Biology revealed to him his kinship with other animals
and his lowly origin. Psychology sought to find his soul, and gave up
the search, finding it easier to account for his behavior in terms
of animal impulse and reflex action. Anthropology discovered for him
the origin of his cherished beliefs in the customs of primitive man.
Sociology reduced his individual existence to that of a statistical
unit in the mass.
It now appears probable that science may abandon in time its
traditional mechanistic conceptions of the cosmos and of life, but
there is little likelihood that such a change of outlook will restore
man to the place in nature which he once thought he occupied. Nor may
we expect it to envisage for him a world more conducive to his wishes
than that pictured by the science of the nineteenth century. Indeed,
it is possible that he may have to learn to live without even those
fictions of security which were features of the older rationalism of
science.
Now I have tried to state the situation in its bold harshness, for the
educated mind today must know all this and must wrestle with it. The
knowledge cannot of itself lead to happiness, nor do I think that it
necessarily leads to unhappiness. All depends upon what we are able to
make of our existence in such a world. Although we possess different
and more precise instruments of knowledge, I do not think this is the
first time that thoughtful minds have seen through popular fancy and
the shows of things. I believe wise men of all times have suspected
that existence is different from what people naïvely imagine it to be.
And it is precisely because they wrestled with such suspicions, asked,
“what then?”, and have sought to give their existence some meaning and
worth, that their words are precious. Now that education is general,
and vast numbers seek it, it is well to remind ourselves that no one of
us can really find wisdom until he has alone struggled for value with
destiny and naked fact.
The fear that most men cannot do this, and that they will turn aside
with some substitute for knowledge or with that “little learning
which is a dangerous thing” has led some writers, wrongly I think, to
question that any good may come of universal education. This esoteric
point of view is dramatically stated by Dostoevsky in “The Brothers
Karamazov,” in the person of the Grand Inquisitor who rebukes the
Christ on the occasion of his return to Seville to comfort the victims
of the Inquisition. The Inquisitor tells the Christ that he has
demanded too much of mankind. What the masses need is not freedom of
the spirit, but mystery, miracle, and authority; someone to take their
bread from their hands, bless it and give it back to them; someone who
will permit them to sin, and take the responsibility on his own soul,
someone who will _guard the secret_ and deceive mankind every step of
the way as he leads it down to death. The old Inquisitor says to the
Christ, “If at the last day you condemn me, I will defy you to your
face, for I too have eaten bitter roots in the wilderness.”
Nietzsche in his lectures on “The Future of our Educational
Institutions” at Bâle, takes a similar position. Nietzsche believed
that to the degree that education is extended it is weakened and
minimized. The masses think they can reach at a single bound what the
wise man has had to win for himself only after long and determined
struggles to live like a philosopher.
“And do you not fear that solitude will wreak its vengeance upon you?
Just try living the life of a hermit of culture. One must be blessed
with overflowing wealth in order to live for the good of all on one’s
own resources! Extraordinary youngsters! They felt it incumbent upon
them to imitate what is precisely most difficult and most high,--what
is possible only to the master, when they, above all, should know
how difficult and dangerous this is, and how many excellent gifts
may be ruined by attempting it!... No one would strive to attain to
culture if he knew how incredibly small the number of really cultured
people actually is, and can ever be.”
“... those blatant heralds of educational needs, when examined at
close quarters, are suddenly seen to be transformed into zealous,
yea, fanatical opponents of true culture, i. e., all those who
hold fast to the aristocratic nature of the mind; for, at bottom,
they regard as their goal the emancipation of the masses from the
mastery of the great few; they seek to overthrow the most sacred
hierarchy in the kingdom of the intellect--the servitude of the
masses, their submissive obedience, their instinct of loyalty to the
rule of genius.... The education of the masses cannot, therefore,
be our aim; but rather the education of a few picked men for great
and lasting works. We well know that a just posterity judges the
collective intellectual state of a time only by those few great and
lonely figures of the period.... What is called the ‘education of the
masses’ cannot be accomplished except with difficulty; and even if a
system of universal compulsory education be applied, they can only be
reached outwardly....
“We know, however, what the aspiration is of those who would disturb
the healthy slumber of the people, and continually call out to them:
‘Keep your eyes open! Be sensible! Be wise!’ we know the aim of those
who profess to satisfy excessive educational requirements by means of
an extraordinary increase in the number of educational institutions
and the conceited tribe of teachers originated thereby. These very
people, using these very means, are fighting against the natural
hierarchy in the realm of the intellect, and destroying the roots of
all those noble and sublime plastic forces which have their material
origin in the unconsciousness of the people.”
“This eternal hierarchy, towards which all things naturally tend, is
always threatened by that pseudo-culture which now sits on the throne
of the present. It endeavors either to bring the leaders down to the
level of its own servitude or else to cast them out altogether.”
Whether Nietzsche’s theories of education were derived from his
political philosophy, or the reverse, I do not know. We are not,
however, interested in discussing political and sociological theories.
The point is that Nietzsche held that education is difficult and
dangerous, and that only the rare, strong, courageous spirits may
attain it. The many really do not want education at all, he thinks, but
only that cheaper knowledge which will give them success and enable
them to take their places in the rank and file; seeking such education
the herd tramples culture under foot, like cattle in growing corn when
the fences are down. Difficult and dangerous as knowledge is, it is
to Nietzsche the most precious possession of man. All his writing on
this subject is a warning cry that the cultural values of civilization
are in danger of being lost in an education for democracy. I think he
had a real issue, although I wish he had possessed more self-control
in arguing his case; he had always something of the intemperance and
over-excited gestures of a religious evangelist or soap-box orator.
A much more sane statement of the true aims of education in conflict
with Philistinism is that of Matthew Arnold. I hesitate to mention
Arnold because those who are still guilty of the errors he exposed will
say he was a Victorian, and how could his ideas of education have any
value for a progressive twentieth century population? I doubt if many
men of today, advocates of advanced theories of education included, are
as far removed from the vulgarities and pseudo-culture of the Victorian
age as Arnold was. Like Nietzsche, he holds that the multitude gives
evidence that it does not really want education. Unlike Nietzsche, he
does not think that knowledge is some grim secret which only a few
heroic supermen may attain. The fruits of knowledge are not merely
ideas about life and reality which men may or may not believe in, but
are to be known in the quality of life and thought which characterize
the educated mind.
Arnold’s phrase “sweetness and light” is a little suggestive of a
Unitarian sermon, or of some cult of the “higher life.” It is obvious
that if a man deliberately set out to drill his soul in the ways of
sweetness and light he might become a very lady-like individual; he
would not necessarily become an educated person. All such deliberate
efforts at self-improvement, if they are not characterized by a
sentimental insincerity which is content with imitation and appearance,
are at least a little like the effort of Benjamin Franklin to school
himself in the moral virtues, who, finding the task too great, decided
that he could best gain proficiency by practicing his desired virtues
one at a time.
You may rest assured that Arnold had nothing of this sort in mind,
much as he seems at one time to have admired the wisdom of Franklin.
He meant that certain mental traits are sufficiently characteristic
of educated minds generally to be the distinguishing marks which
differentiate them from the uneducated. To be sure, it is a thankless
task to call attention to such traits, and no one who does it may
expect to be very popular, but sometimes, when the culture of a
nation is in danger, it has to be done. Arnold has in mind characters
like Socrates, Erasmus, Montaigne--no muddle-headed, opinionated or
narrow-minded men, but men who had attained clarity of thought and the
insight which pierces the glamour of things and the follies of men, and
yet could speak and write without bitterness or rancor or malice.
“Here culture goes beyond religion, as religion is generally
conceived by us.
“If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of harmonious
perfection, general perfection, and perfection which consists
in becoming something rather than in having something, in an
inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of
circumstances,--it is clear that culture, instead of being the
frivolous and useless thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr. Frederic
Harrison, and many other Liberals are apt to call it, has a very
important function to fulfill for mankind. And this function is
particularly important in our modern world, of which the whole
civilisation is, to a much greater degree than the civilisation
of Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends constantly
to become more so. But above all in our own country has culture a
weighty part to perform, because here that mechanical character,
which civilization tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most
eminent degree. Indeed nearly all the characters of perfection,
as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in this country with some
powerful tendency which thwarts them and sets them at defiance.... So
culture has a rough task to achieve in this country. Its preachers
have, and are likely to long have, a hard time of it, and they will
much oftener be regarded, for a great while to come, as elegant or
spurious Jeremiahs than as friends and benefactors....
“Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger; often in
machinery most absurdly disproportioned to the end which this
machinery, if it is to do any good at all, is to serve; but always in
machinery, as if it had a value in and for itself. What is freedom
but machinery? what is population but machinery? what is coal but
machinery? what are railroads but machinery? what is wealth but
machinery? what are, even, religious organisations but machinery? Now
almost every voice in England is accustomed to speak of these things
as if they were precious ends in themselves, and therefore had some
of the characters of perfection indisputably joined to them.... But
culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may
like the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer
to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and
to get the raw person to like that....
“The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are
proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and
thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call
Philistines. Culture says, ‘Consider these people, then, their way of
life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voices;
look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the
things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of
their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds;
would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that
one was to become just like these people by having it?’”
As Nietzsche sees that education must struggle for its values if it is
to survive in a democracy, Arnold is equally aware of its conflict with
middle-class English Puritanism. He will give the Puritan credit for
his moral earnestness, but--
“the Puritan’s ideal of perfection remains narrow and inadequate,
although for what he did well he has been richly rewarded.
Notwithstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim Fathers’ voyage,
they and their standard of perfection are rightly judged when
we figure to ourselves Shakespeare or Virgil,--souls in whom
sweetness and light, and all that in human nature is most humane,
were eminent,--accompanying them on their voyage, and think what
intolerable company Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them! In
the same way let us judge the religious organizations which we see
all around us. Do not let us deny the good and the happiness which
they have accomplished; but do not let us fail to see clearly that
their idea of human perfection is narrow and inadequate, and that
the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant
religion will never bring humanity to its true goal.”
Of the relation of education to the growing power of nineteenth century
democracy, Arnold says,
“Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for leading it,
not in the old ruts of middle-class Philistinism, but in ways which
are naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though in this
country they are novel and untried ways. I may call them the ways of
Jacobinism. Violent indignation with the past, abstract systems of
renovation applied wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and
white for elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational
society for the future.... Culture is the eternal opponent of the two
things which are the signal marks of Jacobinism,--its fierceness,
and its addiction to an abstract system. Culture is always assigning
to system-makers and systems a smaller share in the bent of human
destiny than their friends like.”
The following is as truly the problem of education today as it was on
the day it was written, and the answer that our generation gives to the
problem will determine the whole quality of the fruit of knowledge for
our lives.
“... Plenty of people will try to give the masses, as they call them,
an intellectual food prepared and adapted in the way they think
proper for the actual condition of the masses. The ordinary popular
literature is an example of this way of working on the masses.
Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate the masses with the set of
ideas and judgments constituting the creed of their own profession
or party. Our religious and political organisations give an example
of this way of working on the masses. I condemn neither way; but
culture works differently. It does not try to teach down to the level
of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that
sect of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. It seeks
to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and
known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an
atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it
uses them itself, freely,--nourished, and not bound by them.
“The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for
diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society
to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; who
have laboured to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth,
difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanise it, to
make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned,
yet still remaining the _best_ knowledge and thought of the time,
and a true source, therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a man was
Abelard in the Middle Ages, in spite of all his imperfections; and
thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited.
Such were Lessing and Herder in Germany, at the end of the last
century; and their services to Germany were in this way inestimably
precious.... And why? Because they _humanized_ knowledge; because
they broadened the basis of life and intelligence.”
The human race has demonstrated how it can get along without knowledge;
it has not on any general scale demonstrated how it can get along with
knowledge. Ignorance and vulgarity have amazing survival value in human
society. Knowledge has its dangers. One may lose one’s faith in the
pursuit of it or expend much effort, and never attain it; and, what is
worse, never know that one has not attained it. Or having gained some
bit of knowledge, one may not store it up as final truth and abide with
it, but having seen must pass on to other knowledge. The pursuit of
knowledge is an open road.
All, or nearly all, who have pursued knowledge will say that such a
pursuit is a great adventure. It is an adventure which never goes
stale, nor loses its lure, nor grows old, and there are indirect
results of such an adventure which cannot be measured. Just as he who
has traveled in many lands returns and views his home with new eyes
never really having seen it before, so he who follows knowledge in time
sees the things about him in new light. They have a richer meaning and
better perspective for they have a wider reference.
What might happen if a considerable portion of the population should,
or could, become devoted to education in the way that men have engaged
themselves in religion, war, and commerce, we perhaps can never know.
Men have been converted to religion and have “back-slid” or have
outgrown their faith. Men have gaily marched off to war and before
the conflict ended have grown sick of it. Men have given up commerce,
finding that it does not satisfy some deep longing in their natures.
Most of those who begin their education leave off before they learn
what it is about. But the few who have remained to taste the fruit of
knowledge as a rule become addicted to it, and never leave off, being
never satisfied with what they have yet attained. If for eating this
fruit they find themselves outside the paradise of childish innocence
and popular belief, they do by their bearing give us the impression
that the experience is worth its cost. It is only the half-educated,
those who would follow wisdom and at the same time look back over their
shoulders casting longing glances at comforting ignorance, unable to
say farewell, who dwell upon the painfulness of knowledge. I have the
suspicion that those who wear a long face as if they knew some dreadful
secret that would break the heart of the world if the rest of mankind
knew it, are men who find in the Byronic attitude a convenient way of
convincing themselves that they are intellectual heroes. Or they are
romanticists who enjoy the sorrows of Werther.
For the encouragement of those who might wish to continue their
education or assist in the education of another, I have tried to
present certain historical examples of men who have attained wisdom.
They are brave men and true; they do not make us ashamed of our race.
It is a pleasure to try to understand such minds, and I trust that in
these times when every fence is down and there are in the field of
education many strange animals and much shouting and confusion, we
may have been able to gain something, from turning our attention to
Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Erasmus and Montaigne and Huxley
and Nietzsche and Arnold, that will help us to see the meaning of
education. But we can never be sure whether we like its fruits until we
taste them.
CHAPTER XV--POSTSCRIPT
ADULT EDUCATION IN AMERICA
When the European universities were established in the late
Middle Ages, they were not, like our modern American colleges,
super-high-schools. It was not their primary purpose to give to
undergraduates and aspiring professional students a maximum fund
of information during a brief period of residence. There were many
thousands of such students, but the college or university was in a real
sense an institution for adult education. It was a place of residence
for mature scholars, a center where such men could pursue their
studies and live the life of education, just as in the monasteries men
could live the “religious” life. The teaching which went on in these
universities was in a sense a secondary activity.
Among the many changes which have occurred in life and education
since the thirteenth century, that represented by Goethe’s “Faust”
has special interest for us. The modern man attempts to live the life
of the spirit outside the cloister. In this respect we are, as I have
said, more like the ancient Athenians who formed themselves into little
groups and attached themselves as disciples to their teacher for an
indefinite period of time. We may easily imagine the students and
friends of Socrates continuing with him for years their philosophical
inquiries, while at the same time engaged in the conduct of their
duties as citizens and householders. Both Plato and Aristotle, as we
have seen, thought of education in this way. It was an interest which
as a matter of course extended into adult life. This continued emphasis
upon the education of the mature mind is important, for it is in
contrast with much modern thought on the subject. Modern educators are
chiefly interested in the problems of teaching children.
But there is a still more significant fact about such adult education
as we may have today which necessarily differentiates it from both the
thirteenth century and the ancients. The average mature individual,
is not like the ancient Greek student, a member of the leisure class,
nor may he like the mediæval scholar retreat to a cloister. He must
earn his living and seek education during his leisure time. To be
sure, the formal and professional education of our time has still the
advantages of a certain privilege and seclusion. Adult education must
necessarily proceed without these valuable aids to learning. In earlier
ages it was generally believed that education could not be achieved
without these advantages. Modern men insist that the spiritual values
of life be realized not in contemplative aloofness but in the life of
activity. They also demand a satisfactory existence for as many people
as possible; hence all are to have opportunity to share in the cultural
goods of civilization. Education is made universal and, below a certain
age, compulsory. But it is obvious that unless education is to remain
the privilege of a few professionally trained scholars, large numbers
of people must be given the facilities for continued study after school
or college days are passed.
In other words, the aim of adult education is the cultivated amateur.
I have tried to show that this is precisely the aim of all liberal
education. Learning which is discontinued when one leaves school has
been for the most part wasted effort. Education is not culture unless
outside college halls it is a permanent and wide-spread interest
which makes a difference in the tastes and habits of thought of the
community. We have seen that Huxley deplored the fact that much of the
intellectual leadership of Victorian England was found outside the
university faculties. While this may have been a just criticism of
the universities, it was a sign of intellectual vigor in the nation.
Education may be said to be achieving its purposes in a nation to the
extent that quiet reflection supplants superficial cleverness, and that
minds with patience and grace and breadth of outlook, with indifference
to fads and catchwords and with respect for excellence, supplant the
“go-getter,” the “movie-fan,” the worshipper of Mammon, the sensation
monger and the narrow sectarian.
The extent to which our education is a reality in the life of this
Republic is almost daily brought to our attention. A very small
percentage of the population spends four years at college, during which
time most of it retains very much the same general habit patterns
and beliefs and outlook on life that it had when it entered. After
graduation, students bring home little cultural interest or added civic
virtue. They for the most part vote the regular party ticket, support a
church in which they happen to have been brought up, play golf, dance
to jazz music, talk prohibition and drink synthetic gin, repeat the
shibboleths of the group in which they grew to maturity, and make money.
A small minority of students attend post-graduate schools, become
research scholars, and within the radius of their special branch of
study often reach high proficiency and unequalled scholarship. In the
universities of New York City are gathered many of the most eminent
scholars in America. But it must be said that very little educational
influence passes over the chasm which separates our professionalized
education from the man in the street. Today a mob is moved to tears of
a patriotic fervor and to murderous indignation at the sight of a woman
removing from the front of her property some faded red, white and blue
bunting which had been hung up by a tenant for the occasion of a street
festival some days previous; tomorrow an empty-pated multitude tries to
break into an undertaker’s establishment and tramples hysterical women
under foot in the effort to view the body of a deceased motion picture
actor; and anon half the city runs oggling and open-mouthed after a
young woman who can swim across the English Channel.
Without background or tradition other than folkway and a perishing
ancient dogma, and with quantity production methods devised to pamper
to its fancy, this multitude tends to cheapen the quality of everything
it comes near, while it parades its material prosperity before the
world as evidence of superior American virtue. Education has not
yet taken root in our soil. It is a potted plant, like those little
evergreen trees which may be seen growing in painted tubs on the stoops
of New York houses. Such ancestral systems for valuing experience and
controlling behavior as people brought to this country were mostly
cast aside in the process of Americanization; the swift tempo of
industrialism supplanted the slow process of spiritual maturing, and a
newspaper-fashioned public opinion became the dominant cultural force
for the country at large.
We do not know at present whether the alleged general interest in
adult education is evidence of a spontaneous and growing desire for
knowledge, or is something promoted, worked up by interests which
would “educate the masses” in order to attain certain economic ends,
individual or social. Nearly three million persons are said to be
annually enrolled for various courses of study outside the resident
classes of established institutions of learning. Undoubtedly a great
variety of motives prompts these hundreds of thousands of people
to take up the task of study. But wide-spread as this interest is,
popularization of knowledge is not the same as the humanization of
knowledge. We have seen how the values of religion may decline into
empty caricatures of the spiritual life amongst certain popular sects.
Those engaged in the work of adult education, often fear that the
movement may become standardized after the fashion of the public school
system. Is it possible to keep up the standards without resorting to
the mechanical uniformity we commonly call standardization? I think
this is possible only if we are guided by a philosophy of liberal
education. Lose sight of such a philosophy and adult education
becomes a confusion of tongues. In such confusion there is of course
freedom from uniformity, yet there may be much standardization; each
educational cult may easily degenerate into a doctrinaire, misguided
sect. If I am correct in holding that the aim of liberal education
is to produce the cultivated amateur, who possesses in general the
mental traits which in the preceding chapters of this book we have
seen to characterize the liberally educated mind, we have in the
pursuit of such a goal the very thing that will save adult education
from degenerating, like Protestantism, into a conflict of narrow
orthodoxies. Without such a goal, any passing fancy or popular
prejudice, however ungrounded in philosophy, may come to serve as a
dominant ideal of education. Adult education then becomes the means to
every sort of propaganda and personal ambition.
One educator of adults conducts short-time “institutes” for farmers
in which during a period of two or three weeks instruction is given
in such subjects as the fertilization of the soil, rotation of crops,
marketing, and the elements of bookkeeping. Others offer instruction to
industrial workers which will improve their efficiency and deepen their
loyalty to the company. Others teach various trades and professions.
Much of the Americanization propaganda which gave employment to
uplifters during the years following the war is now called adult
education. There is a group of very serious idealists who believe that
by means of adult education they may initiate working people into the
“proletarian culture of the future,” and arm the working class with
the necessary weapons for a social revolution. Others would conduct
schools in which young people may be trained to become professional
labor leaders. To still others the task of adult education is very
clear and simple: it is nothing else than the transformation of our
entire civilization by the method of leading people back to nature
and enabling them to express their emotions, to which end classes in
appreciation and self-expression are organized, and students are sent
out after two or three months of such training prepared to teach the
emotional awakening to others.
Adult education thus becomes a matter of slogans. Each educator is sure
he has it and can give the formula. It is that “every man be given
opportunity to think for himself,” or it is to give people “a new and
modern world view,” or to help people “get out of the ruts in which
they find themselves,” or to enable one to “evaluate his experience,”
or it is “an adventure in independence.”
Many of these things may be very desirable, but are they education?
Taken together, they reveal something of the confusion which always
results when men try to find their standards of value in the passing
interests of the hour. Adult education is a democratic movement and
hence tends to make the desires and ideals of the uneducated rather
than those of the educated its standards and aims. The idea sometimes
prevails in education, just as it has prevailed in religion and in
politics, that if only the masses may emancipate themselves from the
past and start all over again, setting up their own values, there will
necessarily be great improvement. Hence Labor, for instance, is to have
“its own education,” whatever that is. To be sure, every person, be he
a laborer or anyone else, must in the end educate himself, and perhaps
the masses in insisting upon their own values and ideals can make
no worse business of their education than when they are “given” the
education which someone equally uneducated and materialistic thinks is
good for them.
It is obvious that the _methods_ of adult education must be different
from those in common use in teaching children. The instructor cannot
compel attendance; he cannot require submission to his authority; he
must realize that he is among people who, though they have not his
special knowledge, have yet each his own experience, and he must see
the relations of his knowledge to such experience; and in fact he must
make himself a student with the others. Now because the methods differ
from those of formal education, people frequently infer that the _aim_
also is different. There are many things which would seem to lead to
such an inference.
In the first place, in all education, attention is focused almost
exclusively upon methods of teaching rather than upon the question,
“what is an educated person?” Again many of those who are interested in
adult education both as instructors or as students have grown up in an
environment of traditional education, they have seen the futility and
meaninglessness of much that passes for education in the schools and
colleges, and are often moved to protest against the system and all its
works. I have tried to show that the failure of formal education is the
result of the fact that educators frequently do not know what liberal
education is. But many people who are irritated with the school system
seem never to have raised the question whether what is taught in school
is liberal education. They assume that it is what it appears to be, and
hence, instead of seeking the meaning of liberal education, they turn
away and strive to set up a hastily considered educational aim of their
own.
Finally, adult students are sometimes very opinionated--especially
when they first come to class. Often they have violent prejudices and
are extremely “advanced.” Such minds are very much creatures of the
popular movement of the hour. The educator, if he is to keep his hold
upon these persons, must gain their favor and sustain their interest.
The easiest way to gain and keep a following is to make concession to
popular prejudice. Classes in adult education, like the reading public,
wish to be told what they would like to regard as true. One of the
great “truths” for which they often seek support is the belief that
the increasing or anticipated supremacy of the mass is “progress.”
Men wish adult education to be modern, to reflect current thought and
present-day tendencies. In an earlier chapter I tried to show how
much of the popular thought that men believe very advanced is really
unrecognized Rousseauism. Often the idea of a new start in education
is only a survival of Rousseau’s revolt against civilization. Since
the influence of Rousseau serves always to rationalize any plebeian
wish-fancy whatsoever, it is not surprising that it should sometimes
appear to set the goal of adult education. To the degree that the
desire for education is genuine and spontaneous, the demand will
naturally be for what people think, is education.
But in spite of all the chaos and confusion as to aims, adult
education, when the initiative comes from people who are hungry for
knowledge, even though they do not know what education is, shows more
promise than when the initiative comes from the professional school
teacher. In the former case, there is some likelihood that someone will
stumble upon the meaning of a liberal education. As a form of protest
against the established educational system, I think adult education
is a wholesome movement. The school authorities frequently show an
interest in this new thirst for knowledge which is met with suspicion.
I do not wonder. They have not shown themselves so uniformly successful
in the training of youth that they are justified in seeking to extend
their machinery over adult efforts for knowledge. Much that school
superintendents regard as adult education is really only elementary
education, primary instruction offered to adults. _The surest way to
defeat learning is to place it in charge of those whose own education
has stopped._ Their influence is everywhere to divert this mature
interest in learning to the only ends such professional educators know;
service to the state, conformity and routine, material advancement and
industrial efficiency, the uplift of the masses.
In the words of a great educator of the nineteenth century, we should
“inquire whether it is the masses alone who need a reformed and
improved education.” Adult education is not something to be “given”
to the masses, while college education may be kept for the sons of
privilege. There is no such thing as “mass education.” Throughout
the mass of mankind, college graduates included, there are scattered
here and there persons who can learn something and have the desire
to continue learning. It is as important for us to consider for whom
adult educational opportunities should exist as it is to consider what
education is. Such opportunities are for people who are worth educating.
Adult education is selective. Its aim is not to provide a slight
increase of information and a few noble sentiments for the rank and
file, but to select out of the undifferentiated mass those who are
naturally capable of becoming something more than automatons. These
need no credits or examinations or promise of diplomas to spur them
to intellectual effort. They would gain wisdom if there were no
educational institutions, or classes, or lectures. But they need advice
and the fellowship of other studious minds, for they are often lonely.
Very few even professional students can easily carry on their studies
when isolated from their kind. Hence the existence of universities.
The rush and racket of our industrial civilization are so great that
there is need to establish for those whose minds can rise above it, an
environment where thought is leisurely and where people may be found
who have had learning long enough to be at home with it. The isolated
student, like the person learning to swim, makes much needless effort.
He tries to stuff his head with learning. He needs time to meditate
upon what he learns, talk about it, assimilate it, see its relations to
his knowledge and experience as a whole. I believe this to be the value
of group discussion, where there is a real meeting of minds. I do
not, however, as some seem to do, believe that a company of uninformed
people talking nonsense are necessarily engaged in a work of mutual
education. It is not as groups that men may attain wisdom. With all
the aid possible from others, education is necessarily an individual
achievement.
We need adult education not because it is a path to some Utopia,
or imaginary triumph of the masses, or because it will add to the
contentment of the poor, or improve their morals and their industrial
efficiency, or raise the tone of politics. We need adult education for
the same reason that we need any education at all. From the beginning
of time men of a certain type have sought such knowledge of the riddle
of existence as would make some measure of excellence possible to
man. The result of all their striving is a vast body of knowledge
which is the heritage of the men and women of our time. To share in
the possession of this knowledge and to work for its improvement and
increase is to men and women of a certain type simply to attain to
their true human estate. They desire education because that is the kind
of animal they happen to be. Such persons are different from the common
lot. It is not that they may possess some secret information which the
others may not have. They have a different _goal_.
Such decency and tolerance and good sense and genuine idealism as exist
in the midst of general human folly are largely the indirect results of
the efforts of these men and women for knowledge and wisdom. Society as
a whole is the gainer for their education. To the end that such minds
may find themselves, together with the work and the adventure which
are their destiny, the widest possible efforts at general education
should be made. It is because of what people are in themselves and may
become, not because of something they may get, that liberal education
is the duty of man. What Huxley said of England in 1868 is true for
America today:
“a few voices are lifted up in favour of the doctrine that the masses
should be educated because they are men and women with unlimited
capacities of being, doing, and suffering, and that it is as true
now, as it ever was, that the people perish for lack of knowledge.”
THE END
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Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Spelling
was standardized except for quotes. Hyphenation was standardized where
appropriate.
The following changes were made:
Page 37: “Pavlow. A hungry dog” “Pavlov. A hungry dog”
Page 54: “information that anyone” “information than anyone”
Page 76: “in the early nineteeth” “in the early nineteenth”
Page 88: “Nietsche said that” “Nietzsche said that”
Page 123: “it not the social problem” “is not the social problem”
Page 130: “Max Sterner’s “Ego”” “Max Stirner’s “Ego””
Page 137: “it hestitated to carry” “it hesitated to carry”
Page 141: “organized soicalist locals” “organized socialist locals”
Page 142: “sort of convenant among” “sort of covenant among”
Page 176: “its value it not” “its value is not”
Page 176: “a philosophy it true” “a philosophy is true”
Page 198: “creation of Plato’s genuis” “creation of Plato’s genius”
Page 199: “to aquiescence to authority” “to acquiescence to authority”
Page 224: “Michaelangelo and Raphael” “Michelangelo and Raphael”
Page 224: “Melanchthon and Œcolampadus” “Melanchthon and Œcolampadius”
Page 239: “matched by his magnaminity” “matched by his magnanimity”
Page 253: “fire of Promethus” “fire of Prometheus”
Page 256: “believe there an be” “believe there can be”
Page 304: “system-makers and sytems” “system-makers and systems”
Page 304: “destiny then their friends” “destiny than their friends”
Page 306: “a covenient way” “a convenient way”
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