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Title: How to conquer stupidity
Author: Leo Markun
Editor: E. Haldeman-Julius
Release date: June 21, 2026 [eBook #78906]
Language: English
Original publication: Girard: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1927
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78906
Credits: Tim Miller, Paul Fatula and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO CONQUER STUPIDITY ***
LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 759
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
How to Conquer
Stupidity
Leo Markun
HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1927,
Haldeman-Julius Company
CONTENTS
Page
Introduction 3
Learning How to Think 17
Some Common Forms of Stupidity 47
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
HOW TO CONQUER STUPIDITY
INTRODUCTION
Perhaps _stupidity_ is a somewhat vague term. In general, we know what
it is. Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines it as the “Quality
or state of being foolish; extreme dullness of understanding; crass
foolishness.” Dr. L. Loewenfeld, in his thorough German treatise _On
Stupidity_, points out that the word may be applied with regard to
an individual or with regard to single acts of persons who are not
considered stupid. The wisest person is capable of occasional foolish
deeds.
I shall speak here of stupidity not only as weakness of understanding
but also as improper response of any sort. I shall not, however,
particularly concern myself with awkwardness of body. Moreover, I have
considered certain aspects of mental inefficiency in _How to Think
Logically_ (No. 1063), _Insanity and Other Mental Disorders_ (No.
1094), and several other Little Blue Books. I shall try not to repeat
myself except where this appears necessary.
When we speak of a man as being stupid, we mean usually that he has
less than average intelligence. But here we are again employing words
which are without exactness. Intelligence cannot be measured as though
it were a matter of weight or specific gravity. There are so-called
Mentimeter tests, somewhat similar to the army intelligence tests with
which some of my readers may be familiar; but they do not entirely
live up to their name. They do afford a rough index to the possession
of certain qualities. They should not be used without considerable
caution, however. There have been a number of unwarranted attempts made
to draw deductions from these tests as though their value had been
conclusively demonstrated.
Dr. George A. Dorsey truly says, “I can test your capacity or
intelligence or your will only as I can pick a winner at a horse race.
I know at the end of the race.” The whole idea of testing and grading
seems to be based upon an academic fallacy. Who was more intelligent,
Socrates or Napoleon? Pasteur or Alexander the Great? Shakespeare or
Goethe? If these men had been given Alpha or Mentimeter tests, should
we be able better to answer these questions now? I think not.
Stupidity is a relative matter, just as intelligence is. In a primitive
tribe, the man who has good muscles, good vision, and good hearing,
with a certain amount of what we call savage cunning, is amply able to
take care of himself. He may become chief and he is almost certain to
be well supplied with food and wives. In a civilized community, if he
is extraordinarily well supplied with the endowments mentioned, he may
perhaps make a fortune as an athlete. In this case he will not lack
for wives, either. But if he is intellectually of low grade, he may
not be able to retain his large earnings. He is likely to spend them
quickly for foolish luxuries and to dissipate them by gambling. Then,
when middle age weakens his muscles, he is forced to adjust himself to
inferior living conditions. Then he is called a fool--a term seldom
applied to one actually in possession of considerable wealth.
What is stupidity in a college town may be ordinary intelligence in
a mine or a sculptor’s studio or on the baseball field. It may even
be genius. People who are extraordinarily developed in one direction
may be underdeveloped in others. A man may be a great general or an
industrial leader without having an ear for music. We are not justified
in calling a scientist stupid because he absent-mindedly hands the
conductor a button instead of his ticket. His act is one of stupidity,
however, as I use the term here. If his absent-mindedness should
manifest itself frequently while he is conducting important scientific
experiments, it would be indicative of great stupidity, of unfitness
for his work.
What we call folly or stupidity may amount to a lack of will power, an
inability to concentrate upon the problems of life. Or it may be due
to improper habit formations. Usually, but perhaps not always, it is
connected with a lack of intellectual capacity in the narrow sense.
The idea of stupidity is after all subjective. The martyr-masochist
(we may take Jesus and Socrates as examples, although their lives as
we have them seem to be masses of legends) is a hero to his follower,
a “damned idiot” to the unsympathetic. But, from the point of view of
their own development, they are not stupid. They do what it is within
them to perform and to suffer. Here I pay no heed to the verdict of
history, and rank the unsuccessful with the successful Christs. When
Nathan Hale was hanged, he did not know that the Revolution was going
to succeed. He did not know that the school books of his country would
some day set him up as a patriotic example. If these states were still
British colonies, we should probably think of Hale--if we thought of
him at all--as a fool. We should probably think of George Washington
and all the other rebel leaders in the same way.
John Brown’s scheme was absurd. The chance that his expedition should
succeed was not one in a thousand. It failed, and yet his failure
helped finally to bring about the abolition of slavery. Edmund Clarence
Stedman was right when he wrote in 1859:
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
May trouble you more than ever when you’ve nailed his coffin down!
Would Brown have been more of a fool if the United States had been
destined to retain Negro slavery? In other words, is failure positive
proof of stupidity?
I suppose the answer depends in the final analysis upon our definition
of failure. The man who has given up his life to disinterested service
can hardly be blamed for not having earned a large fortune. Even if we
are unable to sympathize with his motives, we must understand that he
probably succeeded in realizing most of his own ambitions. Sometimes,
indeed, people work hard in one direction to forget failure where
success was most desired. The laurel wreath may then fall to ashes amid
the applause of the unseeing crowd.
But in general we rate a man according to his seeming ability to adjust
himself to his environment. We soon forget his petty stupidities if he
is able to do some one thing better than his neighbors, provided only
that his accomplishment is highly rated. At present the preacher who
can send his hearers into convulsions of religious ecstasy is almost
sure to get his name into _Who’s Who in America_ and is fairly certain,
if he possesses a certain flair for business, to amass a comfortable
fortune. But the same man, born in an irreligious age might be simply
a lazy good-for-nothing or even a patient in an insane asylum. What
became of all the potential scientists who were born in the Middle Ages
and accomplished nothing? Poor stupid fellows, most of them must have
been called by their neighbors.
As a matter of fact, we know few people well enough to be justified in
calling them stupid. Of course not all the feebleminded and demented
men and women are removed from the world’s work. But it is better
to keep the definitely diseased mentally out of our conception of
stupidity. Since we are concerned with the conquest of folly and
since the mental disorders are either incurable at present or curable
only by medical treatment of one sort or another, we shall leave them
out of account. What interests us primarily is the correction by the
individual himself of his own minor stupidity.
We should understand, though, that mental capacity cannot be enlarged
by any effort of the will. After an individual has reached his full
growth, his mental capacity may be decreased by an accident or disease,
but there is no known way by which he or others can increase it.
Still, mental attainment can be raised, for the reason that it is never
equal to mental capacity. To elevate the level of mental attainment
means (in the widest sense of the word) to educate. What we call
stupidity may really be ignorance or lack of order. Moreover, lack of
order, that is, an imperfect scientific method or logical system, is
the most common cause of ignorance. The man who has learned how to
study, not the one who has acquired a few random scraps of information,
is on the way to becoming educated. The slow apprentice is sometimes
undervalued when he is actually laying the proper foundations for his
work.
Teachers often fail to appreciate the merits of the boys and girls in
their care. If they are intelligent, they can see that certain bright
children are properly acquiring their Latin and their English, and may
some day be teachers themselves. But that the boy who simply cannot
learn his literary history may have it in him to be a poet--that they
are ordinarily unable to understand, unless the boy is already writing
verses for the school magazine.
A high school teacher once asked me why I didn’t think of taking up
the profession of chemist. I was too amazed to reply. And yet, from
the ordinary academic viewpoint of grades, he was justified in his
question. I stood somewhere near the head of his class, relatively
higher than I did in my English section. The new science was of
considerable interest to me, even if the mechanics of laboratory work
proved somewhat irksome. But a professional chemist must attain a
certain amount of manual dexterity and a considerable interest in the
mechanics of his work. It is probable enough that some of the boys
whose work in the high school class was mediocre are now on the way to
becoming successful chemists.
On the other hand, I feel that I appreciate literature more
intelligently than the classmates of mine who were better prepared in
high school to explain the allusions in “Comus” or to tell what Wyatt
and Surrey wrote. For me, at that time, the subjects were dull because
they were still unclothed with flesh.
This bit of autobiography is set down here for the light it may shed
upon problems of development as they are presented to the teacher and
the parent. It is not always easy to tell the true trend of a child’s
abilities. Sometimes, indeed, the boy or the girl knows, even if the
teacher does not. When there is a question of genius, perhaps genius is
necessary to recognize it. To the world it may be the living image of
stupidity.
It is true that genius in the restricted sense is such a rare
phenomenon that most of us need not concern ourselves about the ability
to recognize it. But the products of genius, especially when they are
of a novel sort, are likely to prove puzzling. No less a critic than
Henry James wrote about one of Walt Whitman’s books of verse: “It has
been a melancholy one to write about it.... It exhibits the effort of
an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular
strain, into poetry.” Despite all Whitman’s tricks of false poetizing,
this verdict is decidedly unjust. The fact is that James was not
himself poet enough to recognize poetry except in traditional garb.
To stigmatize difference as inferiority is an egregious form of
egotism. It indicates a lack of the ability of self-criticism,
too. Hard-headed business men are wont to look down upon poets and
philosophers, and these are accustomed to retaliate in kind.
The qualities which enable a man to succeed in business are of course
different in part--although by no means entirely--from those which make
an artist. The musician and the sculptor must not be judged too harshly
for deficiencies in their ability to carry on commercial transactions.
Many artists find it advisable to leave all matters of business to
agents or managers.
We must be careful, then, not to consider people stupid simply because
their experiences and their ways of life do not coincide with our own.
If they do not possess that particular wisdom which is ours, they may
be amply compensated in some other way. The man who has lived all
his life on a farm does not know the city ways: but neither does the
town-bred man know how to manage cows and chickens.
When the scientist goes into a remote region and finds that the
inhabitants believe in all sorts of queer superstitions, he should not
consider them all stupid on this account. They have had no opportunity
to learn the methods or the conclusions of modern science. They should
be judged no more harshly than Socrates would be for knowing nothing of
the geometry of Minkowski and the equations of Lorentz. Living in his
time, the philosopher could not be familiar with modern mathematics.
Living where they do, the Arkansas “hill billies” naturally cling fast
to the superstitions of their fathers.
But the educated man (so called) who believes that breaking a mirror
will bring him seven years of bad luck is, so far as this belief is
concerned, stupid. The authors of Genesis are not to be reproached
for thinking that all the species of men and animals were brought
simultaneously into being by a fiat of God. Considering the state of
knowledge in their time, their idea was natural enough. But it is a
disgrace when men calling themselves scientists now shut their eyes to
the abundance of testimony for organic evolution. I think we can call
them stupid without any priggishness.
However, stupidity of one sort does not altogether damn any individual.
A man with very foolish prejudices and without any particular
understanding of history may nevertheless be able efficiently to manage
a great industrial establishment. He may or may not be a good collector
of antiques. His ability to tell good music from bad must be judged
without reference to his other elements of mental and physical strength
and weakness.
The only criterion we have for stupidity is lack of success in one or
another respect. And yet, as we are all aware, the chance factors play
a great part in determining success or failure. The successful general
is not necessarily cleverer than the commander he defeats, even when
their forces appear to be evenly matched. The millionaire may differ
from the pauper simply in that he has had better opportunities.
This and other considerations have brought about various attempts to
measure mental ability directly. We have already considered briefly the
intelligence tests now being used by various psychologists. Of still
lower value, by far, is phrenology, the pseudoscience which examines
the skull to find there an index to the mental faculties and traits of
character. So far as the mind has any one single organ, this is the
brain. But it does not seem that the shape of the head or the existence
of certain “bumps” on it bears any definite relationship to mental
capacity.
Even the weighing of the brains of the dead does not seem to give
any absolute conclusions. Pearson and Pearl, examining thousands of
individual brains, found that the mean average brain weight of the
adult Englishman was 27 grams less than that of the Bavarians, 57 grams
less than that of the Hessians, 65 grams less than that of the Swedes,
and 120 grams less than that of the Bohemians. Are we to conclude that
the average Bohemian is proportionately more intelligent than the
average Englishman? Certainly not without additional evidence.
A man who died in an asylum in Vienna was found to have brains weighing
2028 grams and without any pathological alterations which microscopic
examination could reveal. Gambetta, the famous French statesman, had
brains weighing only 1241 grams, or 150 grams less than the average.
Aside from weighing the brains, all sorts of measurements and
examinations have been made, but these _post mortem_ intelligence
tests remain of indefinite value. Nevertheless it appears that the
structure of the brain is responsible for the difference, or for
part of the difference, between a highly intelligent and a stupid
individual. But the physiologists and the anatomists have not
altogether solved the problem.
We do know that certain diseases sometimes reduce intellectual
capacity. A serious attack of typhus fever, for instance, may leave the
patient feebleminded or at least comparatively stupid. Injuries to the
head or tumors of the brain may do serious injury to the mind. Or the
gray matter of the brain may be injured by various drugs, leading to
more or less definite mental changes.
Probably a great many fools are such simply because they have never
had any chance to develop those qualities in which they might
have excelled. In them we could not find any physical basis for
their stupidity, I suppose, even if brains gave up their secrets
in the dissecting room. Of course education is not identical with
intelligence, but it affords means of arrangement and order. Perhaps
it is necessary to add that by education I mean more than the formal
teaching of the schools and colleges. As we have seen, we do not lay
undue weight upon the minor eccentricities and deficiencies of the man
who can write a great poem or compose important symphonies. But let
us suppose that the potential genius never learns his alphabet or his
musical scales. All that remains to him in life is his stupidity.
It is sometimes said that the man who has genius in him will not be
stopped by difficulties of this sort. He will somehow educate himself.
Actually we have seen men with none of the usual advantages display
sufficient power of will to reach their goal. But we know little of
those who have been discouraged. Here we have a certain justification
for the democratic idea of education for all, even if this seems to
lead to some unfortunate results.
The educated fool, the man whose head is crammed full of facts and who
may possess a certain fluency in argument but who is yet unmistakably
stupid, exists among us in large numbers. At least in part, though, the
fault belongs with the system of education. Specifically, the teacher
thinks of the multiplication table or the college entrance examination
as an end in itself, without regard to the individual pupil, his
capabilities and his needs.
Even in our best educational institutions, little progress has been
made in the synthesizing of knowledge. The student working at his
psychology seldom has it borne in upon him that if the science has any
meaning at all, it is an instrument for criticizing literature and
for understanding life. Knowledge is not bound up in little packages
labeled English A and Social Ethics 4 and Biology 9a, as university
catalogues seem to indicate.
The more we learn, the more specialization becomes necessary. And
thus it happens that we have admiralty lawyers, physicians who have
forgotten all that they ever knew except that which pertains to the
genito-urinal system, specialists in the calculus of tensors or in
plant histology. This tendency to specialization, which can hardly
be escaped or regarded as an unmitigated evil, yet stimulates the
production of wise fools.
If the university professorships are many, there is still room for
instruction in the art of thinking, which means really the art of
living. But here, I greatly fear, the qualified experts are pretty
conspicuous by reason of their absence. It is, after all, a somewhat
optimistic definition which makes man the thinking animal. Most of our
reactions are instinctive or habitual or inspired by our emotions.
In fact, constituted as we at present are, the attempt to do nothing
except as the result of formal thought would be fatal.
But perhaps the attitude of thinking for oneself might be profitably
encouraged. The ordinary teacher is literally frightened when a pupil
discovers something for himself beyond the text and the commentary.
This is as much as to reproach the teacher for not having done any
original teaching!
It is a human trait to follow the lines of least resistance. Therefore
the intelligent pupil reasons out matters for himself only when
he has failed to prepare the set lesson. Then he calls his act one
of “bluffing.” If his recitation or his examination paper is found
satisfactory, he feels that he has outwitted the teacher. Unfortunately
there is a considerable amount of truth in this assumption. But it is a
truth which does no credit to our educational methods.
If we are to learn how to think at all, we must learn it by ourselves,
and largely through many trials and by rejecting a great many errors.
(In the final analysis, all education is self-education. We cannot
successfully be crammed full of knowledge by any outsider. A good
teacher can do no more than stimulate and point out certain pitfalls.)
Some people never learn to think for themselves--and no thinking which
is copied from another deserves the name of thought at all. Originality
is the leading, the differentiating, ingredient.
LEARNING HOW TO THINK
“A being who could not think without training,” says John Dewey, “could
never be trained to think; one may have to learn to think _well_, but
not to _think_.” The lower animals cannot be taught to think at all,
because they do not possess the power to generalize. It seems that the
same thing might be said, with some qualifications, of the less complex
or “lower” races of mankind. Among us, too, we find a great many
people of more or less vegetative character. Their thinking is of the
simplest, and it occurs comparatively rarely.
The elements necessary to thought are, according to Dewey in _How We
Think_, classifiable under three heads. First of all there must be an
accumulation of experiences and facts from which suggestions arise. As
I have tried to show in _How to Think Logically_, all our knowledge
comes eventually from our sense impressions. The material used in
thought does not arise mysteriously, out of nothing, in the mind. But
with the store of experiences and facts are inferences and ideas built
up out of the data afforded by the sense. Every individual selects and
combines for himself.
The second element necessary for thought consists of the “promptness,
flexibility, and fertility of suggestions.” That is, the experiences
must be available. They must not be too deeply forgotten, but must be
within easy reach when they are needed.
The third element is the “orderliness, consecutiveness,
appropriateness, in what is suggested.” The images and ideas may come
up in large number and yet may not assist efficient thinking. They must
first of all be relevant. Also they must be available in an orderly
chain. The principle of order in thinking is of the utmost importance.
Furthermore, it can be acquired much more easily than the ability to
gather a great many experiences and to keep them within easy reach.
Merely to hear and see much is of little avail. We know the people who
travel all around the world and come home to prove themselves as stupid
and as ignorant as before. It is the principle of order, indeed, which
gives the ability to accumulate experiences and facts and to make use
of them at will.
What causes us to look about us, to listen, to taste, to smell and
to touch? Instincts and habits of various sorts. Some psychologists
speak of a special instinct of curiosity, which is at the basis of all
science. But I suppose the accumulation of knowledge is in general
strictly utilitarian. Primitive man studied the habits of various
animals not because he was trying to establish the science of zoölogy,
not because he had any abstract curiosity, but because he wanted to eat
certain creatures and to escape being eaten by others, and then because
he had accidentally stumbled upon the fact that some animals might be
partially tamed and so rendered of use to the human race.
We learn first of all by doing. Of all the proofs that the earth is
approximately spherical in shape, the best one to the man without
special training is the fact that it has been circumnavigated.
Incidentally, this proof is not of much value until the earth has been
circumnavigated from north to south and from south to north through the
poles.
Physics and chemistry did not originate in a disinterested will to
learn, but in the attempt to solve certain problems of practical
importance. Even, now, the students of the pure sciences justify
themselves with the apologetic statement that any scientific discovery
may prove of important usefulness.
The “Why?” of the child or of the philosopher is at bottom an attempt
to learn that which may be put to use. At present, indeed, there is
some tendency to make a parlor game of philosophy, to divorce it from
real life. But wisdom is not desired as an ornament alone, and the
true love of wisdom cannot exist in a vacuum. No valid distinction is
to be made between the wisdom of life and wisdom in the abstract. The
abstract is, in general, merely a representation in shorthand of the
concrete. Such words as _fear_ and _valor_ and _justice_ have very
definite reference to behavior. They are not mere counters to be played
with by learned professors.
Abstractions are to thought what levers and pulleys and inclined planes
are in the handling of unwieldy masses. They assist greatly in the
ease, the range, and the depth of suggestions which come up for the
solution of a problem.
Thinking is problem solving. But if this word makes us think of
arithmetic and algebra, we should note at once that we must not
depend too much upon the answers found in official keys. Teachers
and preachers and writers are wont to state with all the flourishes
of authority what nobody knows or what, at any rate, they are not
intelligent enough to discover.
To turn from thought to unreasoning faith is obviously to confess
failure. Sometimes this confession covers only a small field, sometimes
it extends over the whole field of knowledge. The Fundamentalist wants
to find all his science in the Bible, the Modernist perhaps only part
of his psychology and philosophy.
Loewenfeld tells of an ignorant old woman who lived with a tubercular
man. The health authorities warned her against using the same glass
from which he drank and exposing herself in various other ways. “That’s
foolishness,” she said. “If God doesn’t want me to get sick, I’ll stay
well; and if he wants me to get consumption, it won’t do me any good to
use a separate glass.”
Of course many religious people proceed on the more sensible assumption
that “God helps those who help themselves.” Even the piety which is
sure that miracles occurred in olden days does not depend upon their
recurrence in our time. Yet there is a Christian sect, most of whose
members belong to the “upper classes” and consider themselves educated,
which teaches that only faith can cure disease.
There is not room here to discuss the utility of religion or the
possible existence of a deity. The Little Blue Book reader can find
ample material dealing with these subjects in a number of the
booklets, notably the series by Joseph McCabe. But here we may notice
what a large variety of miscellaneous follies have been upheld in
the name of religion. For instance, it was formerly declared that
the building of railroads was inspired by Satan. At times during the
Middle Ages, all men who were indiscreet enough to show themselves
more learned than the multitude were denounced as followers of the
same fallen angel. Mohammed declared that faithful Mussulmans might
have more than one wife apiece, but that they should drink no wine. Or
rather he asserted that tasting the first drop is the dangerous thing.
Some of his followers employed great ingenuity in not tasting the first
drop but in getting the full advantage of all the rest. When Protestant
American Christianity borrowed this prohibitory tenet from Islam, some
of its leaders made mental reservations to find similar evasions for
themselves. Perhaps some of them have also believed that the enactment
of Prohibition carried with it the legalization of polygamy. But, of
course, the scandals which have circulated about certain ministers are
not enough in themselves to damn religion. They simply prove that human
nature is human, even within temples, tabernacles, and manses.
Much has been said and written about the stupidity of asceticism.
If, however, poverty and chastity are really pleasing in the sight
of God, and if they lead certainly to ineffable eternal bliss, then
they are amply justified. Many a burglar has gone cheerfully to a term
of ten years in the penitentiary, his heart gladdened by the thought
of the little fortune which he has safely hidden away to enjoy after
his release. Should not all good Catholics hie them to nunneries if
a little temporary self-denial can assure them of so much hereafter?
But the priestly leaders see that the consistent application of this
doctrine would drive a great many into apostasy and would leave no
Catholics of legitimate birth for the next generation.
In theory, the Catholics have the Bible interpreted for them by the
Church, but the Protestants read it and decipher its mysteries for
themselves. As we know, however, each sect has its own creed. Only in a
few of the Unitarian congregations are the individual members free to
decide if Jehovah is a man or a sun-myth or a force found in nature.
Even here I suppose nobody goes to church where he cannot agree with
most of the minister’s teachings.
It is a common tendency to hear and read only those arguments which
confirm one’s own beliefs. The organs of orthodox religion circulate
among the orthodox, the liberal religious papers go to the liberals,
the anticlerical magazines go chiefly to atheists and agnostics and
deists. Very few Republicans read the Socialist papers and books,
unless it be to find ammunition for anti-Socialistic arguments.
In the United States, the party system is such that no particular
thought is required on the part of the voter. It is much easier to
follow in one’s father’s footsteps than to attempt to differentiate the
principles of one party from those of another or to find out which
candidate for Keeper of the Dog Pound is best qualified for the office.
In a municipal election, the Republicans always stand for economy
and needed improvements, the Democrats for needed improvements and
economy. Whichever party has its principles approved, taxes go up and
the improvements are postponed. Perhaps I am needlessly cynical: I have
only lived in two or three of the cities and read about some of the
others.
The citizen who is not a politician by profession can only give
part of his time and thoughts to government. On the other hand,
the political leaders make it their business to have the control
of things--especially of the treasury--in their own hands. This is
understandable enough. But the civics teachers in the schools teach
their pupils that the government of the United States is perfect, or at
least that it would be perfect if all the qualified voters went to the
polls. Despite the evidence afforded by their senses, some good people
continue to cherish this naïve belief.
But it appears that comparatively few minds are capable of probing to
the root of a matter. Most are contented with shallow suggestions,
with some easy appeal to authority. It is so easy to answer a complex
problem with a name; to say, for instance, that a lecturer for world
peace is a Bolshevist, and with that word to shut off further debate.
This fault is not confined to drug store philosophers and American
Legion leaders. Professor Graham Wallas--in a book on _The Art of
Thought_, too--turns upon McDougall and the other psychologists who
deny the mysterious energies hypothesized by the vitalists with the
assertion that they are furnishing a system which the Bolsheviks turn
to account for their propaganda.
Bolshevism is dangerous, many Italians and Spaniards have argued;
therefore a dictator is necessary. But there is no true question of
_either_ ... _or_. The fear of Lenin’s ideas has contributed much
to the decline--temporary, let us hope--of the love of liberty in
America. The French Revolution had the same effect in England in the
time of Burke and Godwin. Hazlitt wrote that “waking from the trance
of theory we hear the words Truth, Reason, Virtue, Liberty, with the
same indifference or contempt that a cynic who has married a jilt or a
termagant listens to the rhapsodies of lovers.”
The reason is that these capitalized abstractions had been nothing
more than words. If liberty is once associated with a reign of terror,
immediately it seems corrupted to the thoughtless. The abuse, for them,
reflects upon the proper use. Temporary associations must never be
confounded with necessary accompaniments.
The rough and ready thinking of the multitude jumps from the frying-pan
into the fire, from Lenin to Mussolini, from tyranny in the name
of liberty to tyranny in the names of security and glory. If the
licensed saloon-keepers were friendly with the police authorities, so
are the unlicensed bootleggers. Regular medicine is imperfect, but
chiropractic and Christian Science are absurd.
When business is poor or wheat sells for a low price, then it is time
to send out the Republicans and to elect Democrats, many people seem
to think. Meanwhile the attempt to find real correctives is neglected.
This is as bad as sending for the priest instead of the doctor when a
child is dying of diphtheria.
Such conduct is surely indicative of disordered thinking, of a
sightless groping for associations. People accustom themselves to
living on the instinctive and habitual level, and in times of emergency
their apparatus for thought is as if rusted by disuse.
Thinking is not simply a discharge. It must be directed against some
obstacle. Must we then wait for some great difficulty to present itself
before we employ our intelligence? No, for in that case we should
invariably find ourselves unprepared. Thinking requires practice at
least as much as piano-playing does.
But to talk of practice is perhaps to lead astray. For our instinctive
and habitual and emotional responses are not sufficient in civilized
life. We must regulate them with thought. Intelligence is always
useful, provided only that it is worthy of its name. Sometimes it is
imperatively demanded, but we can use it every day, almost every waking
moment. This is not to imply that the mind must be in a constant state
of strain or that we should strive to rid ourselves of our instincts
and our habits without regard for their demonstrated value.
“Let me take the liberty further to observe,” writes Richardson’s
Clarissa Harlowe to her hot-tempered brother, “that the principal end
of a young man’s education is to teach him to reason justly and to
subdue the violence of his passions.” Is there indeed some connection
between just reasoning and the control of one’s passions? Or, in any
case, was either very well taught at Oxford and Cambridge in the
eighteenth century? Or, for that matter, are the ability to reason and
the power to control one’s temper communicated to the students in the
American colleges of the present day?
Self-control is hardly inculcated in our schools above the primary
grades. Indeed it is largely a matter for parents to attend to
while their children are young. Moreover, many good reasoners have
exceedingly violent tempers. In the moment of passion they do what they
may afterward greatly regret.
Of course it is stupid to act with unnecessary haste and violence. But
a bad temper is seldom to be mended in adult life. Few persons possess
sufficient strength of will to correct a tendency which should have
been checked during their formative years. The hot-tempered are forced
to patch up with what diplomacy they may possess the consequences of
their thoughtless actions. Sometimes, indeed, a perverted sense of
honor causes them to defend in cold blood the wrongs they have done
while excited. Thus they add stupidity of a gross kind to their former
folly. To confess that one has been in the wrong is no disgrace.
The egotism which fails to understand this is a common cause of foolish
actions. Obviously it is difficult to judge oneself in the same way
that one judges another. We all know that human beings in general are
fallible. Even the most intelligent of our friends and neighbors make
mistakes. Why not we? If we truly grant the principle, we may find
instances in plenty. Then we have an opportunity to correct many of our
errors. But if we refuse to admit their existence, our hands are bound
from the very start.
A good sense of humor is a distinct aid here. He who laughs healthily
laughs sometimes at himself. Thus, consciously or unconsciously, he
admits his lack of perfection. This confession does not automatically
open the door to improvement, of course. It seems there are some
good-natured people who carefully preserve their minor foibles in order
that they may joke about them. But, if they are at all ingenious,
surely they may be merry without holding fast to their faults.
The objective conception of self is absolutely prerequisite to the
attainment of an exact or scientific system of thinking. In the mind
which overvalues self, immortality is an uncontradictable postulate.
The sun goes around the earth, and the solar system is the center
and most important part of the universe. God is like man--like the
egocentric “thinker,” that is. The white race--or, if it is a Chinese
speaking, the yellow race--is superior to the rest. The United States
is the greatest country in the world, Indiana is the fairest state in
it, and Kokomo should be “boosted” everywhere for the fine city of
home-loving citizens it is. When civic pride lends to improvement, it
is thoroughly justified. But when it is a mere expression of vainglory,
it is no better than any individual’s blatant self-glorification.
The first and most important intellectual task of man is the control
of his own body. The work of self-control starts early in infancy. The
child must learn to put its food and drink into the proper place, to
walk, to speak, and so on. This is not thinking, but it is work for
the nervous system as well as for the muscles. Perhaps the beginning
of generalized thought came when the child starts to mark out the
boundaries between itself and the outside world. This leg can be made
to move at will, that leg (which belongs to Mother Dear) will move at
Baby’s command only by special favor. Previously, when Baby’s limbs
had been under a less exact control and when Mother had run to obey
the child’s slightest desire, if this could but be understood, the
distinction between the I and the She had not been so clear.
Definitely to understand the self and its limitations is at once to
rule out all magic. I cannot destroy an enemy by means of the evil
eye because there is no ray of malicious animal magnetism proceeding
from me. There are all sorts of forces in the universe, and my special
powers conform to the usual order. If I should lean far out of the
window without in some way being held back, there is no doubt that I
should fall. Like an apple or a bar of iron or a cat, I am acted upon
by gravitational forces. Like all living organisms, I feed and excrete
for a brief period, and presently my body will decompose. If I think
and the milkweed does not, this does not mean that I, as a man, am
subject to any special laws of nature. It simply indicates that my
ancestors have been acted upon in definite ways--not all thoroughly
understood at the present moment, we must concede.
I have certain senses, and objects exist for me as I see and hear and
smell and taste them, or as they feel hot or cold or painful to the
touch. In this way I am revealed to myself, too. If I had been deaf
from birth but had nevertheless been taught to speak, my voice would be
little more to me than the sensations in my throat.
Perceptions are important as they are apperceived, that is, interpreted
in terms of what is already known. Proper observation involves orderly
arrangement, as has already been said. In training the powers of
observation, the essential thing to watch for is proper selection.
As a matter of fact, we learn this pretty well without any formal
teaching. The educational critics who said that people do not observe
well, because they are unable to tell offhand if the numerals on their
watch dials are Roman or Arabic, was misadvised. Dewey rightfully
observes that we pull out our timepieces to find the time, not to see
if the fourth number is represented by IV or 4. Most of us can make the
latter investigation without any difficulty when it is necessary to do
so.
Every act of observation leads to a general intellectual conclusion.
This thesis, like some others which are stated here, is developed in
my booklet entitled _How to Think Logically_. At this point we may
consider it sufficient argument against the educators who would develop
the art of observation as a thing in itself. Actually no one of the
mental “faculties” is independent or is capable of its own intellectual
development. Even the stupid teachers who conceive of education as mere
memorizing assist to some extent in their pupils’ learning how to think
and do.
All taught subjects must bear a relation to personal problems. This
thought is important enough to bear repetition. Without such a unifying
conception, all attempts at education are certain to be fruitless.
One learns in terms of what one already knows. The child who has seen
a brook can readily imagine the greater brook which is a river. The
boy in the city slums who has seen no greater body of running water
than that contained in the gutter after a rain must begin his study of
hydrography here.
This sort of learning prevents the formation of two different worlds,
one of what is contained in books and lectures, the other of the
experiences of life. No man is a pedant who assimilates his learning to
actual problems.
Yet Cowper’s words in _The Task_ are frequently justified:
Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,
The mere materials with which wisdom builds,
Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place,
Does but encumber what it seems to enrich.
The possession of considerable intelligence does not protect one from
occasional lapses into folly. Certainly those who possess a great deal
of formal education are not on this account free from stupid thoughts
and actions. Their great danger is that of failing to see their
specialties, those subjects in which they are most interested and best
informed, in their proper relation to the rest of reality. Sometimes
they imagine that all the world is interested in certain theories which
they or their teachers have developed.
Men sometimes become interested in a certain reform movement to such
an extent that nothing else matters. The universe is but a place from
which alcohol or tobacco is to be driven. Or some form of recreation
occupies all their thoughts. Life is worthwhile to them because it
affords a certain amount of time for bowling or playing pinochle or
cheering on the local baseball team.
Of course the development of the human being must be true to itself.
We are not justified in quarreling with a man or calling him stupid
because his interests differ from our own. But the hobby-horse must
not ride unchecked when it comes into society. The ship-builder, for
example, need not bore us to death about ships: he may do it quite as
well talking about his score at golf. But if he would have people call
him clever, he had better either remain silent and listen to others’
discussions of their vocations and avocations or else diversify his own
remarks.
In conversation and in letter-writing, much is merely conventional.
We could save a good deal of time, no doubt, by never saying “Hello”
or writing “Dear Sir.” In fact a great many of the things we do are,
from a certain point of view, rather stupid. But actually we find it
more troublesome and annoying to revolt against the minor conventions
of life than to follow them. Taken all in all, etiquette does help much
to avoid social friction of an unpleasant sort. Yet it is foolish to be
too slavishly bound by the formal rules of polite society.
A famous heroine in French fiction preferred to be drowned rather than
to remove her skirts so she could swim. Many people have this same
attitude toward the conventions. But of course the power of thought is
of little avail except if it can be applied to a practical criticism
of fixed habits and rules. Nothing is too sacred for the thinker.
Everything is to be tested not by the standards of sterile authority
but by its value in the thinker’s own world.
It is true, though, that we are leaning more than ever upon
intellectual authority. Who has knowledge enough to consider and
weigh for himself the evidence against and for the theory of organic
evolution, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the theory that the
works attributed to Homer were written by various men and molded into
something like their present form by ancient minstrels? Surely no one
man can judge all three theories with reference to the full evidence.
If we are to have opinions, we must base them upon the conclusions of
the experts.
Very well, but what are we to do when the experts disagree? Or when we
are unable to tell who is qualified to pass an opinion? Very often the
difficulty may be evaded. If we know little of mathematics and physics
and astronomy, it is by no means necessary that we should hold any
definite opinion about relativity. The attitude of suspended judgment
serves well enough.
Let us suppose, though, that we cannot escape in this manner. We are
serving on a jury. The defendant has killed the woman he loves. The
state calls a number of experienced alienists who declare the man
perfectly sane. The defense calls upon a number of equally eminent
experts who explain his psychosis, dwelling upon his inability to
distinguish right from wrong. We scratch our heads to indicate that
we should like to begin thinking but do not know just how to start.
Probably we should never have been summoned to solve such a problem.
The long hypothetical questions are too intricate for us to understand.
How do we actually come to a conclusion? Perhaps we watch the defendant
to see if he looks like the maniacs we have seen on the screen in
short comedies. Or we say to one another in the jury room, “There’s
too much of this murdering. If we let this guy off because he’s nuts,
there’ll be plenty more doing the same thing.” Actually we should give
the benefit of any doubt to the defendant. There are infinitely more
lunatics executed than sane men who escape on the plea of insanity. But
the ordinary man cannot recognize a malingerer. Sometimes the experts
require weeks of observation. Yet, after a hurried and necessarily
perfunctory examination, they are ready to give their solemn opinions
in court.
Often we are confronted with insufficient evidence and yet are required
to make up our minds in one way or another. For the manufacturer the
question may appear in this form: Shall I dismiss my workingmen, whom I
may not be able to get back when the busy season comes, or shall I have
them make up stock, which I may be unable to dispose of? Such a problem
is usually solved with reference to past experiences. But the year to
come may be unlike those just preceding. There are all sorts of guesses
about the future. Certain experts draw intricate graphs purporting to
indicate the trend of business. They speak wisely about cycles and
counteracting tendencies. Sometimes they are right--no doubt more often
than the mere guesser. And so the modern manufacturer leans a little,
not too heavily, upon their wisdom.
Any forecaster able to predict the approximate course of the real
estate boom in Florida might quickly have earned enough to retire
from the forecasting profession forever. Here, apparently, was a case
unexplainable by the thinker: very small causes led to very great
results. A few legal measures of interest to the wealthy class seemed
to make gold mines of swamps and deserts. The chief causes of the boom
were of course psychological. Those speculators who understood this
took their quick profits and went away. Sometimes they were in too
great a hurry, and the fools to whom they sold their properties made
more than they.
But we must not conclude that the stupid people have all the luck.
Intelligence makes opportunities and employs them to good purpose.
Folly stumbles and is very conspicuous when it stumbles upon gold. At
the same time, we must remember that wisdom is not the only factor
making for success. A beautiful woman or even a handsome man with no
brains may have the thorns removed from the roses of life just because
of her or his physical attractiveness.
A matter of luck, obviously. But so is it a matter of luck that one
should be more intelligent than one’s neighbors. Wisdom can be improved
upon--but so can beauty. Both are controllable only to a limited
extent. Perhaps the advantages of clear thinking are not so obvious
as those of a clear complexion, however. There seems to be a greater
demand for the latter.
If thinking is somewhat painful, so, I believe, is receiving a
permanent wave or an application of beauty clay. But it is only
necessary to have the fee to be seized upon by the beautifiers. While
the educational institutions in America are usually hospitable enough,
while they even attempt to seize upon the students who are sufficiently
unresisting and permanently to “wave” their minds, the results are
often unsatisfactory. In education the passive attitude is hopeless.
The problem of learning how to think is, then, first of all one for the
learner himself to solve. Perhaps this little book may be read by some
high school and college pupils who are dissatisfied with the narrowness
of their teachers, disappointed that they cannot come into contact with
more stimulating minds. Ah, but narrow-mindedness and stupidity have
lessons to teach, too. Sometimes it is better not to be influenced
unduly by the wise: there is a certain tendency to swallow their
conclusions whole. Many people accept Emerson’s theory of compensations
at face value because it is Emerson’s, who would grin cynically at the
same idea propounded by Dr. Frank Crane.
All our heroes should be honored distinctly this side of idolatry, if
we are to think for ourselves. Of course we adapt them to ourselves in
any case. “Every philosopher has his own Kant,” Henri Bergson is said
to have remarked once, when Kant’s authority was invoked against some
teaching of his own. We know how Jesus is made to argue for both sides
of every question. He turned water into wine at the wedding feast in
Cana, we are told. Yet Sheldon’s clerical hero walking “In His Steps”
thought it incumbent upon him to destroy the saloons.
It is not the truth which makes one free, but the self-discovered
truth. Yes, it might be replied, but the important things have already
been found out. We know how the strainers after novel truths are
reduced to paradoxes which they display with pride in their mere
contrariness.
Here there are two replies to be made. In the first place, the truth
which one laboriously digs out for himself may be either old or new.
Or it may be both: the ancient idea, as it is discovered by one who
lives in the modern world, fits properly into his own environment. It
is no longer Plato’s thought or Aristotle’s, but the new thinker’s. If
it is true that there is nothing new under the sun, it is also true
that there is nothing old. I am not what I was yesterday. Neither is
the street which runs beside my house. Certainly there can be no exact
replica of Plato or of any Platonic idea in the United States and in
the twentieth century.
I would not seem to say that the truth is any more true because it
contradicts old ideas. We are justified in pouncing upon every paradox
to discover how many fallacies the glitter may hide. The paradoxical
writers are chiefly valuable because they do make us examine their
thoughts carefully. It does us little good to have the conventional
ideas repeated, even when they happen to be true. We are not easily
tempted to analyze them unless we are naturally of a skeptical
disposition. But when the ancient idols are rudely brushed aside, we
are aroused by the noise of the crash. We rush up, perhaps to punish
the delinquents, perhaps to examine the gods on our own account.
Some, of course, feel that falling upon the iconoclasts is answer
enough. There have always been people able to answer ideas only with
blows. But the men and women who have it in them to think are likely to
pick up the shattered pieces of the idol, to determine for themselves
if it is worth the trouble of cementing together. If it has once been
truly broken, of course it can never be the same again. Perhaps the
bits of metal must be melted down to be cast into a new form.
Just at present there is a great deal of argument, mostly excited,
about the question: Is war a necessary evil? This is not an “academic”
matter. Upon our answer depends our attitude to the League of Nations,
disarmament conferences, military training in the colleges, and various
other matters. As usual, most people feel qualified to say “Yes”
or “No” and to defend their opinions hotly. To answer the question
intelligently, a great deal of specialized knowledge is necessary. Is
there any fighting instinct in men? Do racial jealousies depend merely
upon misunderstanding and ignorance--or is there some deeper basis?
Does war assist in the advancement of culture and civilization? Do wars
promote manliness or do they weaken the race by killing off the brave
and the healthy, leaving the cowards and the defective individuals to
beget the next generation?
Graham Wallas says we fight better than our ancestors knew how, for
we have better weapons. Yet we are not wiser than they, since we can
only let accident and inertia prevent a war from breaking out. We have
no positive means of controlling it, of being sure that international
peace will be kept.
But we know that many wars have by no means been accidental. For
example, Bismarck carefully planned the Franco-Prussian War, making
the French appear to be the aggressors. Certainly most of the diplomats
of Europe expected the Great War to break out, and comparatively few
of them made any attempt to avert it. As for the masses of the people,
they cherished blind hatreds. They did not, of course, understand
international politics.
Why did the United States join the Allies? Here is a question which
our historians have not been able to answer satisfactorily. As a
matter of fact, the question as stated is ambiguous. It calls either
for causes or for reasons. Perhaps one of the important causes was the
clever propaganda spread by the Allies, based to a great extent upon
deliberate falsehoods. One reason frequently given during the war was
that Germany was led by the godless philosophy of Nietzsche. This is
utter nonsense, although it is still repeated occasionally by clergymen
and Y. M. C. A. secretaries.
In 1812, when the young republic was faced with the same problem of
aggression at the hands of both combatants, the United States declared
war against Great Britain, not against France. But there was no
definite alliance with the side which had also acted guiltily. Why did
things turn out differently in the Great War?
The questions which I leave unanswered my readers may, if they will,
take for exercises. After all, we citizens of the United States are
supposed to be able to answer difficult political questions. Often we
must decide between two candidates for Congress, both of whom we know
to be unfit to hold such an office, on the ground of their attitude
for or against the World Court or tariff reduction or some other
complicated matter.
The elementary textbooks of economics show that the “full dinner pail”
argument in favor of high import taxes is absolutely fallacious. Yet
this is relied upon by practically all Republican campaign speakers.
Again I am not trying to prove anything--except that stupidity is
widespread. Certainly it would be presumptuous and foolish for me to
try to settle the tariff question in a single paragraph.
Sometimes, indeed, it seems that Hume was right when he said that
“reason has no original influence,” that it “is, and ought only to be,
the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office
than to serve and obey them.” Of course there is room for discussion
about the “ought only to be,” in any case. The passions make people
do ridiculous things: if the condition is hopeless, as Hume suggests,
we need not approve it. (Not that our approval or disapproval would
matter, if it were so.)
But the attitude of this little book is not so pessimistic. I prefer to
consider reason something more than the art of inventing poor excuses
for worse conduct. At least in some few individuals and at some rare
times, intelligence is supreme. The implications of such a statement
are many. I do not think that it contradicts determinism, the doctrine
necessary to the scientific study of psychology that the condition of
the mind is fixed by anterior and exterior circumstances. But if we
admit that the rule of intelligence is ever possible, we are justified
in trying to learn how to think--not merely how to argue.
Wallas says that thought “may start ... without an immediate stimulus
of an ‘instinctive’ impulse from the lower brain.” To discuss the
matter adequately, we should need first of all to consider the various
definitions of instinct. Yet it seems that there is always some sort
of stimulus from without. Thought does not arise spontaneously. First
there is a more or less unpleasant feeling of incompleteness. In other
words, there is a difficulty, a lack of adjustment to one’s environment.
Thus, while we are wearing our gloves and see them on our hands, we
do not wonder where they are. But if they are lacking and we remember
having started out from home with them, we think at once: Where are my
gloves? If we have entered the Order of Jesus and successfully subdued
our reason according to the regular system of discipline, we never
think: Is there a God? But one who has entered a monastery without
fully subduing his ability to think for himself is likely enough to
wonder when his sexual impulses trouble him: Is the immortality we are
promised sure? Is there indeed a God?
But what shall we say of a monk who is fully convinced that he will
enjoy everlasting bliss if he keeps his oath of chastity and is at the
same time unable to refrain from fornication? Surely he is ruled by
his instincts, not by his reason. Even where religion triumphs, the
victory seems to be won by the emotions, not by the intelligence. Often
we find a mystical union with God--or with Jesus or Mary, to make the
picture of heterosexual relations more definite--standing definitely in
the place of the ordinary manifestations of sex.
At best, we cannot rate reason very highly in any description of
things as they are. Wallas, defending the originality and the power of
thought, yet says that some of the most important steps in the process
are unconscious or half-conscious. This means that they are largely
uncontrolled, so far as the will is concerned. The Freudian doctrine
tells us that complex formations actually develop as a result of
emotional suppressions. This much we know, that the ideas lying below
the level of consciousness are not arranged in any logical system which
the conscious mind can accept. Our dreams and reveries offer proof
enough of this.
Flashes of insight, brilliant guesses which we attribute to intuition,
demand careful verification. It sometimes happens that a man leaps
out of bed in the middle of the night with the feeling that he has
made a wonderful discovery. In the morning, he may not remember what
it was all about. In this case he is certain that he has missed
something extraordinary by reason of his failure to have a pad and
pencil at hand. If he has taken notes, however, he is very likely to be
disappointed in them. Either they are valuable but yet require much
laborious amplification or they are palpably worthless.
Robert Graves explains poetic inspiration thus: “When conflicting
issues disturb his mind, which in its conscious state is unable to
reconcile them logically, the poet acquires the art of self-hypnotism,
as practiced by the witch-doctors, his ancestors in poetry.... On being
interrupted, the poet experiences the disagreeable sensations of a
sleepwalker disturbed and later finds it impossible to remember how the
early versions of a poem ran.”
The important thing for us to consider here is that the poet, even if
he considers his work inspired, nevertheless makes corrections in it.
Sometimes the defects are small, sometimes they are so great that the
whole work is worthless. Any interested reader may see what Robert
Graves did with the later drafts--those he could remember, that is--of
“Cynics and Romantics.” These he gives in his book _On English Poetry_
in the chapter called “Surface Faults, an Illustration.”
The four stages in thinking, according to Graham Wallas, are
preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. The two stages
referred to by Graves are illumination (or “self-hypnotism”) and
verification or correction.
Perhaps _education_ would be a fair synonym for _preparation_. For one
thing, “the ‘educated’ man can ‘put his mind on’ a certain subject
and ‘turn his mind off’ in a way which is impossible to an uneducated
man,” as Wallas tells us. In other words, he possesses volitional
control. But if education, between inverted commas, means attendance
at a university or at least a good school of secondary grade, the
statement is only half true. Some self-educated men do lack the ability
to concentrate upon an intellectual problem. Others do not. The main
difficulty is to know when to stop thinking about a difficulty. When is
it truly solved?
When we have found an algebraic X, we can test it, usually without any
trouble. But sometimes the solutions which flash upon us are not so
easily tried. For example, I may discover some important new principles
of government. Yet, not being a professional politician, I have no way
of introducing even a slight innovation. Shall I test my discovery
by its conformity to the laws of political science? But there is no
such science, in any strict use of the word. Well, I may write a book
explaining my discovery. Thus I should be following the course of
Plato, when he came to the conclusion that the philosophers should rule
the state.
Putting one’s ideas into a writing which is published often brings
about its verification by others. Einstein worked out his theory of
relativity and tested it as well as he could. Yet his own tests are not
considered nearly so important as those made by certain astronomers and
physicists soon after his theory was made public.
Illumination is the only one of Wallas’s four stages which cannot
easily be controlled. Yet many poets and thinkers have been able to
use alcoholic beverages and even narcotic drugs to good advantage. If
the ideas won’t come, sometimes there is nothing to do but wait.
But illumination may fail because the incubation is defective. “We can
often get more result in the same time,” says Wallas, “by beginning
several problems in succession, and voluntarily leaving them unfinished
while we turn to others, than by finishing our work on each problem at
one sitting.” The associations come up, as it seems, of themselves,
although voluntary effort fails. If waiting is necessary, perhaps
another difficulty may meanwhile be attacked.
Or some exercise, like walking, which involves no exceedingly complex
mental demands of its own, may arouse the fugitive ideas. Idleness as
well has its uses in the incubation of thought. There is such a state
as that of being too busy to think. But performing some simple task
all day, for instance, operating a sewing machine, need not prevent
constructive thinking. The ordinary workingman of today, doing over and
over again the same piece of work, is in this respect better off than
the medieval laborer who made the whole pair of shoes or the whole cart
by himself. If it is in him to think, his thoughts can incubate during
his working hours. Moreover, he has a great deal of leisure in which to
verify his conclusions or to gather material for thought.
He can read books and magazines and newspapers after he is through
with his work. Yet the man who reads much does not necessarily think
efficiently. He must leave time for his thoughts to develop and he must
acquire the art of reading critically: else his reading probably does
him more harm than good.
SOME COMMON FORMS OF STUPIDITY
There is, says H. G. Wells, an “empty gulf in quality between the
superb and richly fruitful scientific investigations that are going on,
and the general thought of other educated sections of the community.”
Graham Wallas points specifically to the lack of perfection in
politics, jurisprudence, and economics, as well as to deficiencies in
the coördination of biology, physics, politics, and sociology.
That which is truly scientific is precise. Some of the attempts to make
the social sciences exact have failed because of undue simplifications.
Human behavior is a very complex matter, and it cannot accurately be
set forth with any short formula--or with any long formula that is at
present available.
The science of psychology, although it is now worthy of the name, is
yet loosely established. We must remember that all the sciences are
subject to revision. Einstein appears pretty much to have upset the
laws of Newton, which have been looked upon with almost religious
reverence for tens of decades. When we wish to find the truth, we do
not hesitate to attack the errors to which the names of old authorities
are attached. Moreover, the man who has the scientific spirit in him
recognizes that the truth he discovers is very likely relative, that it
may be overturned by another truth-seeker.
Darwin was a great man. Yet the scientists of today, who accept his
theory of organic evolution, do not hesitate to criticize his account
of the machinery bringing about evolution--that is, natural selection.
So it happens that the ignorant can declare Darwinism discredited, with
the implication that organic evolution is denied.
Truth which is relative, which is constantly in a state of flux, is
hard for the lazy-minded to accept. But scientific truth (which is,
of course, erroneous to an indeterminable extent, which probably will
never be entirely accurate) is yet infinitely more truthful than any
fixed dogmas like those of the theologians. So long as scientific
method remains in use and there are eager workers in the field, we can
be certain that the truth of the scientists will approach closer and
closer to absolute truth.
The warfare of science with theology is not yet ended. Where once the
battleground was in the fields of physics and astronomy, now it is in
the fields of biology and psychology. When the soul finally goes, what
will be left for the ministers? Probably a thin residue of ethical
teachings.
At present the clergy are all more or less afraid of the new biological
and psychological doctrines. Either they deny them or they attempt
to adjust their opinions to them, but they cannot help suspecting
attacks upon their vested interests. Worse still, perhaps, would be the
uncovering of their own ignorance--an ignorance of great profundity, in
some instances.
A great many agnostics dislike to see Christianity attacked because
they believe that religion keeps the masses out of mischief. No matter
how thoroughly the doctrine of “Whatever is, is right” has been
spread, however, there have always been criminals and rebels. There
is no evidence available showing that unbelievers are more ready than
Christians or Jews or Mohammedans to murder and rob and forge checks.
To set up two standards of truth--one for the “upper” or the more
intelligent classes, one for those who are regarded as inferior--is
stupid and dangerous. Absolute truth is supposed to be important
according to the religious teachings as well as the principles of
science. When the members of a congregation suspect the minister’s
agnosticism, their own faith is likely to be troubled. When there is a
slave morality as well as a separate morality for masters, it must be
based upon something more tangible than rewards and punishments after
death. It has usually been maintained with the whip.
But in our civilized communities it seems to be necessary to maintain
masters and servants without too frequently bloodying backs. I do not
wish to set forth the Marxian doctrine that there is a great gulf
between the capitalists and the proletarians. Yet it is obvious that
some people have power and unlimited luxuries while others go hungry
on occasion. It is not mere perversity or stupid ignorance, then--as
James Harvey Robinson and others of his school sometimes appear to
imply--which causes all sorts of obstacles to be laid in the way of
the frank teaching of the social sciences. It is the fear that valuable
privileges will be lost.
It does not seem to me that there is any likelihood in the near future
of a Bolshevistic revolution in the United States. Those who possess
intelligence and the qualities of leadership feel that they cannot
be the gainers by any such overthrow. But a feeling that something
is being suppressed, that a censorship of ideas exists, if it once
gains ground, may cause certain individuals to join the revolutionary
movement.
The present capitalistic system, although it is in many ways palpably
defective, yet has the merit of working. It is certain that the sudden
change to a socialistic, syndicalistic, or anarchistic state would,
at least for several generations, bring about famine and a general
breakdown in various complex organizations which we consider essential
for our civilization and culture. Perhaps we may gradually pass into
socialism. A number of paternalistic tendencies (which I, personally,
regret) suggest that we are on the way. The importance or lack of
importance of the Socialistic Party makes no difference. Just now,
when the Unitarian Church is diminishing in importance, all the old
doctrines of the Unitarians are being taken over by the religious
leaders who call themselves modernists.
But if we are in a transition stage, it is well that we should
know what we are doing. Our fears for vested interests and special
privileges must not hold us back. All attempts (conscious or
unconscious) to make ignorance into a Chinese wall are bound to be
futile. That sort of wall is undermined with dynamite before it is
erected.
At present, indeed, the free study of sociology seems to mean no more
than the liberty to exhibit that reason which justifies the actions
brought about by passion. That is, very little intelligence has been
brought to bear on the problem of the relations between men. Those who
argue have opinions which seem to arise out of their own temperaments,
not out of any objective study of the problem. Thus they would justify
Hume’s view of reason.
James Harvey Robinson (_The Mind in the Making_) says: “I mean by
social science our feeble efforts to study man, his natural equipment
and impulses, and his relations to his fellows in the light of his
origin and the history of the race.... Human affairs are in themselves
far more intricate and perplexing than molecules and the chromosomes.
But this is only the more reason for bringing to bear on human
affairs that critical type of thought and calculation for which the
remunerative thought about molecules and chromosomes has prepared the
way.” He goes on to say in the next paragraph that exact scientific
results, like those formulated in mechanics, are “of course” out of the
question.
But we have seen that there is no absoluteness about the laws of
mechanics. The accepted doctrines of chemistry have been and still
are being overthrown to a considerable extent. It may be that two or
three centuries from now the laws of sociology will be as exact as
those of physics. That is to say, they will be respected until further
investigation makes it plain that they must be revised.
Precisely as psychology must be founded upon physiology and
biochemistry, sociology must depend upon psychology. Just at present
the study of human behavior is in an interesting but somewhat uncertain
state. The psychoanalysts, Freud especially, have brought in about as
much new matter as was previously contained in the science. Much of it
is immediately useful, some of it is worthless or even harmful, a great
deal will be found useful when it is digested. In a somewhat different
direction, the experimental behaviorists (not all of whom have
called themselves by this name) have contributed much to psychology.
They, too, have made some assumptions which at present seem to be
unwarranted, but they appear to be working in the right direction.
The new contributions came just when psychology seemed to be in a
hopeless state. The teachers had nothing to offer but definitions, and
originality meant either the invention of new words or the use of the
old ones in new senses.
Right now we perhaps stand too close to the recent developments
to understand their full purport. Yet we are justified in feeling
a certain amount of optimism about the future of psychology and
consequently about the formation of a genuine science of sociology.
Only we must take an open-minded attitude, we must not try to draw
conclusions which will justify our prejudices. That amounts to the
stupid destruction of unborn knowledge, perhaps also of unborn wisdom.
Intellectual abortion is never justified and--at least one would like
to suppose so--never permanently successful. It is healthier to think
freely, to pursue truth without fear.
After all, we need make no special effort to woo stupidity. It will
be only too much with us, despite our best efforts to be intelligent.
Those four “idols” or types of error of which Bacon wrote long ago in
the _Novum Organum_ still beset the human mind.
The “idols of the tribe” arise out of sensory deficiencies common to
all men and women. “The human mind,” according to Bacon, “resembles
those uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different
objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.”
We may notice in passing that Bacon here takes up definitely the
scientific point of view. According to some philosophers, objects have
no existence except as the senses bring them to the minds of men. If we
were to agree with them, we might not speak of “uneven mirrors” except
in the case of those individuals who have sensory deficiencies peculiar
to themselves.
These are, to use Bacon’s fanciful term, “idols of the den.” More
particularly he applies the term of predilections and prejudices caused
by the special trend of an individual’s education or by the emotions
under whose sway he at the moment stands. These warping influences are
such that we may with Bacon approve the thought of Heraclitus: “that
men search for knowledge in lesser worlds, and not in the greater or
common world.”
The “idols of the market” are the errors arising in social intercourse,
largely through failure to use words in the same precise sense. Even
in spite of the careful definitions set up by men of science, this
condition exists. Sometimes, in fact, the scientific definitions
aggravate the idols of the market; as in those cases where a word used
in ordinary language is also employed for a somewhat different meaning
in a field of science.
The “idols of the theater” depend upon the peculiarities of various
systems of philosophy. It seems to me that these are largely “idols of
the market,” although the errors described by Bacon under the first two
heads are also among them.
Of course not all differences in opinion are based upon the varying
uses of words. If, in a group of one hundred intelligent men, fifty men
say that they believe in God and fifty that they do not, there may be
five in each group who really do not disagree. These ten people may all
believe in some sort of life force which can be called either a vital
impulse or God. Of course the necessity to answer either “Yes” or “No”
deprives some of the chance to say, “What way have I of telling?”
In our imaginary gathering, we may suppose that there are Catholics,
believing in the Holy Trinity and certain that the details of dogma
are definitely settled by the Church. There are also Protestants of
various denominations, differing somewhat as to the conception of the
deity. There are Unitarians, with a still different notion. There is
a Mussulman, who has no doubt that Allah revealed himself to an Arab
named Mohammed. There are deists and pantheists and spiritualists and
agnostics and atheists. Also there are people who seldom think about
religion, but who call themselves “Baptists” or “Jews” or “Unitarians”
when an inquiry is made.
Certainly it is not possible to grade people’s intelligence by the
answers they make in a religious census. There is some evidence that
the average believer in revealed religion is more stupid than the
average doubter or unbeliever. Yet the most enthusiastic atheist must
admit that some who share his opinions are decidedly less wise than
some who subscribe to, let us say, the tenets of the Roman Catholic
Church.
Whence arise the differences in belief? The beginning of the answer is
easy, the rest difficult. Most people belong to a certain religious
denomination because of the place where they were born and the
confession of their parents. John Smith is a Methodist because he was
begotten by James Smith upon Adeline Smith, who was then and who had
always lived in Atlanta, Georgia. Samuel Cohen is an orthodox Jew
because he was begotten by Saul ben Isaac Cohen upon Deborah Cohen
in Cracow. And so with the Buddhist, the Hindu, the American Indian
believing in a Great Spirit and various little spirits, or the
Catholic born in Dublin and going faithfully to mass.
Do the countries which are predominatingly Mohammedan have other
religious needs than those of the predominatingly Christian countries?
Or is there a peculiar religious instinct inherited among the Turks
other than that which is inherited among the Irish? Lessing’s wise
Nathan expresses the view that since we can learn little about God
through direct experience, we should believe our parents and our
ancestors. Yet this is but a form of egotism, and a dangerous form,
too. Why should we consider our ancestors wiser than the ancestors of
our neighbors who belong to other ecclesiastical organizations?
Robinson’s _The Mind in the Making_ is little more than an attack upon
this sort of ancestor-worship, although it does not particularly deal
with religion. But we can hardly help returning again and again to the
theologians when we discuss the stupidities which are honored chiefly
because of their antiquity.
Of course, a change in faith, although it represents a revolt
against meaningless stereotypy, does not always indicate any special
intelligence. People sometimes change their religions merely as a
matter of convenience. (Here, of course, we are dealing with words
more than with genuine beliefs.) Samuel Cohen of Cracow may become
a convert to the Roman Catholic Church because it will admit him to
certain political or social advantages or because he cannot marry
Michalina Riboczech, whom he much loves, on any other terms. Or he
may come to America and find that he is unable to earn his living
except by becoming a Methodist minister. Perhaps he does not possess
enough knowledge of the Talmud to be acceptable as a rabbi, but finds
ignorance no barrier in a church where he can serve as a living example
of conversion to the true faith.
What shall we say of the thousands of Japanese and Chinese who
become Christians without any ulterior motive? They find some sort
of emotional satisfaction in the new faith which they have not been
able to find in their ancestral religions. Why? I do not think the
question can be answered satisfactorily with our present knowledge of
psychology. Nor can we tell why one brother is a bishop and the other a
skeptic, except when there is an element of hypocrisy in one case.
The religious attitude is one of belief based upon little or no
evidence. Beyond the field which we consider religious, we regard such
an attitude as stupid. As a matter of fact, though, we are influenced
everywhere by “such factors of belief as fear and hope, prejudice and
passion, imitation and partisanship, the circumpressure of our caste
and set.” William James, whose words I have thus employed, argues that
because these elements are universal, they are therefore justifiable.
Because we have been considering absolute truth and because the
argument is ingenious, I will here quote some sentences from James’s
_The Will to Believe_:
Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth,
and that our minds and it are made for each other--what is it
but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social
system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe
that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us
in a continually better and better position towards it; and on
this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives. But if a
pyrrhonistic skeptic asks us _how we know_ all this, can our logic
find a reply? No! certainly it cannot. It is just one volition
against another--we are willing to go in for life upon a trust or
assumption which he, for his part, does not care to make.
But if this be unanswerable, then it destroys the system which James
is trying to erect. If _truth_ has any meaning at all, it must not be
applied to that which is unproved and seemingly unprovable. If we are
to think with any accuracy, of course we must recognize that _truth_
and _proof_ are not absolutes. This recognition gives us no cause for
returning to the physiology and astrology of the Middle Ages or for
postulating God and immortality and free will, when these conceptions
seem to be unnecessary for modern scientific thought.
James wrote _The Will to Believe_ as an attack upon the attitude
represented in _The Ethics of Belief_ by William Kingdon Clifford. Of
Clifford’s viewpoint there is a brief summary in his own words:
We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is
inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not
know is like what we know.
We may believe the statement of another person when there is
reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which
he speaks and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.
It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and
where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, then it is
worse than presumption to believe.
These seem to be principles which we can apply. Certainly there
exists no general need to believe whenever intellectual options
present themselves. Often, as we have seen, we are expected to act
on insufficient information. Thus, the man who declares that he does
not know whether there is or is not a God who wishes to be worshipped
must either attend church--as though he believed in this sort of
divinity--or stay away--as though he did not. Or, though he conceives
the possibility that Jehovah wishes to be praised, he may refrain from
church attendance and prayer because he has no way of knowing what may
be the proper manner in which to go about the matter.
It is not what one believes that matters, except as this is shown in
what one does. Therefore a deficiency in will power is at the bottom of
much stupidity. Our worldly hells are paved with good intentions. “It
is in human nature,” according to Anatole France, “to think wisely and
to act in an absurd fashion.”
The shrewdest of business men are caught unaware and imposed upon
by swindlers. Many of the tricks commonly employed depend upon the
victim’s readiness to share in a doubtful deal. He is made to feel a
great joy at the thought of his own acuteness, which joy occupies him
to such an extent that his intellectual powers are impaired. Moreover,
the victim is given to suppose that great haste is required. At last,
when he discovers that he has been beswindled, his vanity usually makes
him keep silent. He would be loath to have people know that he is
neither as honest nor as wise as he is reputed. Egotism is one of the
chief causes of folly, as we have already had occasion to notice.
Some people who are not conspicuous for direct vanity yet show the vice
indirectly, through their blind preferences for their own families,
their own parties, their own causes. “Wrong or right, my country,” is
no wiser a saying than “Right or wrong, my prejudices.” The recent
attempts to make out a case for Germanic or Nordic supremacy are
entirely ridiculous. As a matter of fact, most Englishmen are racially
about the same as most Frenchmen.
It is by no means so evident as it once seemed that the white race is
far superior to those of a darker hue. There are even Europeans and
Americans who declare the Chinese and the Japanese are wiser than we.
As to the negro race, there is but little evidence that it stands on a
low intellectual level because of organic limitations. A few colored
people of pure blood have performed outstanding achievements. We have
reason to believe that their accomplishments are exceptional only
because the negroes have had few educational opportunities. The colored
people living in the north seem to be more alert and less stupid than
those working in the fields of Mississippi and Florida.
Woltmann declares that the negroes are inferior because they attain
the age of puberty sooner. At this time, according to some students of
the matter, brain development ceases. If this were the case, and if the
rate of brain development while it lasts were the same in all races,
then we should be able to grade intelligence among races according to
climate. We should expect the Eskimos, to whom nubility comes late, to
be far more intelligent than the Spanish and Italians, to whom it comes
early. But we have no reason to come to any such conclusion.
Otto Ammon, after studying the people of Baden, came to the conclusion
that the Nordics (with long heads, blue eyes, and blond hair) are
superior to those of Alpine derivation (with short heads and dark
hair). But he and the writers in Germany and other countries who
agree with him have assumed rather than proved their conclusions. By
way of rebuttal, Loewenfeld declares that the two greatest German
philosophers, Kant and Schopenhauer, were both short-headed. Goethe,
whatever shape his skull may have had, certainly possessed dark hair
and eyes. The assumption of Nordic superiority is based upon prejudice
rather than upon scientific evidence.
Is stupidity more common among the poor than among the rich? Of course
we are unable to answer such questions accurately because of the lack
of dependable criteria. But we know that most persons want to become
wealthy and we may reasonably infer that those who acquire fortunes
do excel in certain intellectual characteristics. That these traits
or general mental superiority is transmitted to rich men’s children
is sometimes asserted. Of course they are likely to have special
educational facilities. Besides this, they have unusual opportunities
to show what they can do in positions of responsibility.
And yet they often prove to be inferior in business or in the
professions to the children of the poor. Often they have failed to
acquire habits of industry. Or else they are anxious to do no work
which might seem menial or undignified.
There can be no question that most dynasties have been founded by
men of unusual ability. Nevertheless, the kings and queens of Europe
are in most cases persons of merely average intellect. Psychoses and
neuroses are not rare among them. Perhaps a partial explanation of
royal degeneration is to be found in their inbreeding. The mixed fruit
of royalty and the common people is almost always declared illegitimate.
Very few great men have had children gifted with genius. So far,
the laws of heredity explain comparatively little about the sudden
appearance of remarkable traits. But the children of intelligent people
are likely to be less stupid than those whose parents are fools. The
factors of original nature and of education are both in favor of the
former class.
Forms of stupidity vary much with time and place. The tendency to do
as one’s fellows do is a strong one. Especially in a mob, it sometimes
appears that the prevailing level of intelligence is that of the most
stupid members. But mob psychology deals in general with states of
excitement. Sometimes actions are attributed to mere numbers which are
due to emotional stress felt by all the individuals in the crowd.
For intelligence is no guarantee against impulsive action. Love and
hate and fear and jealousy and sympathy make normally wise people do
exceedingly foolish things. The mob is capable of killing innocent
persons. So is almost any man, when his hate is aroused.
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
These verses of Oscar Wilde’s are justified. The passions do not exert
themselves in a definite and controlled direction. Therefore love can
slay about as well as hate. Probably better, for the opportunities are
greater.
Physical ill health is at the bottom of much stupidity. Although the
direct influence upon the higher nervous centers may be little, there
are all sorts of indirect effects caused by illness. Frequently the
patient is in a constant state of suppressed anger. Any trifle makes
him find fault with his physician and his attendants.
Sometimes, indeed, the patient does not become angry with his
nurse. He may fall into an attitude of dependence upon her. This
occasionally--especially in the case of men just entering the first
stage of senile dementia--leads to foolish marriages.
Old age, like childhood, is more or less the scene of folly.
Comparatively few individuals are as intelligent in the 70’s and 80’s
as they were in the 30’s and 40’s. Most men are physically strongest at
about the age of 25. The height of mental power comes later, perhaps
at about 45. After that the memory tends to decline. The other mental
traits become impaired usually in the 60’s.
The folly peculiar to youth depends largely upon lack of experience.
Deficiency in self-control is also an important element--one, to be
sure, that frequently lasts through life. Child prodigies usually show
a one-sided development. Though they may be quick thinkers, they seldom
probe deeply.
The thinker is immature until he has a supply of experiences and
ideas at his service. These will come, if he only learns to apply the
principle of order. This is the instrument with which we make the most
of our minds. When we learn how to use order, we become as gods. For
then we can take the chaos about us and build it into a universe.
Transcriber’s Notes
In the .txt version, surrounding characters have been used to indicate
_Italics_
Minor typographical and spelling errors have been corrected
p. 29 retained unchanged the sentence beginning “The educational
critics”
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