Chapter II: Part 2

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”