Chapter XI: Part IV: How Can They Be Released? (2)

I am not conscious, when I say this, of being under the influence of Hegel, and certainly I do not regard this process as abstractly logical. It is not the logical inconsistency of our self-assertiveness that is so troublesome, but the consequences of it in pain, injustice, sensuality, on the one hand, and on the other hand the numbing of high motives of which we are by nature capable.

This interplay of apparent opposites appears in the large in the majority-minority-majority cycle. Power in the majority gives rise from within itself to power-in-weakness in a minority; this after struggle grows into the major self-affirmation of the society in question, and then, in turn, a new minority is required.

A parallel cycle is fulfilled in the individual through the medium of cooperative thinking. Before the experience of cooperative thinking he affirms or believes or acts upon the basis of a narrow experience; cooperative thinking submits his case to a wider, more varied experience, in which he ceases to take himself as the majority; but behold, this submission frees and intensifies his own individuality, whereupon the cycle begins over again.

The point in this cycle at which the chief obstacles to the growth of persons are encountered is the second step--the denial of one’s accumulated self. The chief hindrances are emotional. They are fear of the unknown, and reaching after utter security (which in fact one never experiences until one ceases to grasp after it); pride (which does one the dishonor of identifying oneself with one’s possessions or products); sensitiveness to opposition or contradiction (which easily becomes either pugnacity, or argumentativeness, or smartness, or the habit of being on the defensive); and indolent contentment with the merely good, coupled with only languid approval of the better. In all these states the self withdraws from actuality, covering its eyes as if they could not bear the light. Consequently, a prime necessity, if we are to be released from bondage to self, is the attainment of objectivity, particularly objectivity towards our own sensitive points.

There are several trails that lead into or at least towards this fruitful mountain valley. The scientific study of man helps; learning what others think about us helps; a third trail, which is the least laborious and painful, is laughter. I mean the laughter, not of scorn or derision, but of humorous sympathy. Put yourself into some funny classification, even if it be only partly or remotely true, and lo, you are playing with yourself instead of making of your little self such a dreadfully serious matter! Humor in this sense--not the biting-dog sense--is a method of objectivity or truth-finding. It has a wondrous capacity to make small things look small, and large things large. “Just think, mother!” a humorous magazine makes a freshly graduated collegian say, as he holds up his “sheepskin,” “Now I’m an educated man!”

Genial humor, moreover, is a normal expression of confidence in the meaningfulness of life. When I laugh good-humoredly at my own foibles I as much as say, “I wasn’t all there, was I?” When Immanuel Kant, who was less than five feet tall, stumbled and fell, he rose smiling, saying that it was no matter, he wasn’t tall enough to fall far! The meaning of comedy is that we look straight at the incongruities in ourselves without being abashed or losing our self-respect--_we_ are free and happy in spite of our blunders, more free and happy because we do not dodge the fact of our blundering. The stage comedy that we enjoy most is the one that most completely hits off the characteristic foibles of humanity in the large, that is of us the spectators. Here we play with our selfhood, see deeper into it, and renew our confidence that we can be rational.

Man is like a bear in a cage, says Robert Frost--so different from a bear freely roaming, so ridiculous, yet ... But see for yourself how humor without acerbity works.

THE BEAR

By Robert Frost

The bear puts both arms round the tree above her
And draws it down as if it were a lover
And its choke-cherries lips to kiss goodby,
Then lets it snap back upright in the sky.
Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall.
(She’s making her cross-country in the fall.)
Her great weight creaks the barbed wire in the staples
As she flings over and off down through the maples,
Leaving on one wire tooth a lock of hair.
Such is the uncaged progress of the bear.
The world has room to make a bear feel free.
The universe seems cramped to you and me.
Man acts more like a poor bear in a cage
That all day fights a nervous inward rage,
His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.
He paces back and forth and never rests
The toe-nail click and shuffle of his feet,
The telescope at one end of his beat,
And at the other end the microscope,
Two instruments of nearly equal hope,
And in conjunction giving quite a spread.
Or if he rests from scientific tread,
’Tis only to sit back and sway his head
Through ninety-odd degrees of arc it seems,
Between two metaphysical extremes.
He sits back on his fundamental butt
With lifted snout and eyes (if any) shut
(He almost looks religious but he’s not),
And back and forth he sways from cheek to cheek,
At one extreme agreeing with one Greek,
At the other agreeing with another Greek,
Which may be thought but only so to speak.
A baggy figure equally pathetic
When sedentary and when peripatetic.

_The Nation_, April 18, 1928, p. 447.

Humor helps us to be objective in even the most serious and sacred matters. In the sermons of some of the most spiritually illuminated and illuminating preachers of our day laughter is continually near the surface, and often above the surface. The chuckle of the congregation is not a sign that the mind has been distracted by unspiritual influences, but that the point has got home. “I wonder,” said a distinguished theologian, “whether God has a sense of humor?”

The laughter that makes us objective towards our limitations and yet confident of our powers is not the same as the laughter of Lazarus in Eugene O’Neill’s play. The point that Lazarus strives and strives to make convincing is that selfhood is really insignificant and that lightsome laughter is the appropriate mood for dealing with this fact. As the drama was staged--magnificently staged--at the Pasadena Community Playhouse, the laughter that Lazarus evoked in others was not lightsome. Even his own “followers” did not attain to happy humor, and the masks that they wore expressed abandon without the salt of thought. _Thinking laughter_ was reserved for Lazarus alone, but his philosophy and his laugh never, in fact, blended with each other. In spite of the fact that he applied hope-bearing terms such as “life” and “God” to the lifeless and undivine dust into which we are to be resolved, he could not make laughter really natural and free in the contemplation of such a destiny; it was, instead, an irruption suggestive of a pathological condition.

The kind of lightsomeness that releases the bound self is the kind that expresses belief in the significance of selfhood. Its function is, not to solve our problems, but to take the stiffness out of the joints of our mind. The main work has still to be done by rigorous thinking and--as I have more than once hinted--by vigorous repenting.

In some situations repenting is the only way in which straight thinking can perform its functions. By repentance I mean the frank, unequivocal realization and acknowledgment (to oneself at least) that one has been in the wrong in a sense so deep that the self expressed therein must be disavowed, together with the positive espousal of a contrary selfhood.

In any such reversal of self there will be emotion, but not necessarily any standard emotion. Upon this point there is much misunderstanding and unfinished thinking. The most common view of repentance is that it is the climax of chagrin, a humiliating experience, or even a grovelling of spirit that anyone who respects himself would shun if he could. This notion arose, no doubt, through the grovelling of “subjects” before a human “sovereign” whom they had offended. Then, the qualities of a human sovereign having been ascribed to God, religion made of repentance the abject thing of our tradition.

The ability to repent is one of the noblest attributes of man. The act is a privilege, not a dour necessity. It is, or can be, free growth from within, a normal event in rational living on the part of finite beings; therefore to be expected, provided for in our life-policies, and lived through in dignity rather than abjectness.

The emotions that can occur in such a crisis cover a whole spectrum from self-loathing to gladness. The state that we most need to cultivate is gladness or joy that we are able to break through the shell of self into a larger world. What a hell our selfhood would be if one could no longer repent of anything! Repentance is not the winter’s grave of our self-respect; it is the springtime of it.

It is needless to ask what class in society is impoverishing itself most by neglecting the grace of repentance. For nearly every class and institution has built up one or another defence-mechanism whereby it employs some supposed virtue of its own as a justification for continuing on its present course. Neither in the State nor in the church; neither in education nor in business and industry; neither in the family nor in the larger social groupings, do we find the habit of facing faults in a manly and rational way; in none of them does one hear the spring-song of growth through repentance.

Nor is this note audible in the vocalizations of most of our _intelligentsia_ who occupy themselves so much with the fact of their own emancipation and the lack of it in their contemporaries. The function of the critic is both important and permanent, but the goal of criticism is neither the chagrin that depresses the powers of another, nor yet inflation of the critic’s self-esteem through applause from the irresponsible. As in games the best sort of sportsmanship encourages and helps a competitor to do his best, so the discoverer of our defects should so reveal us to ourselves that we desire to improve ourselves. Criticism at its best is a sympathetic entering into the problems of others; it is not taking “pot shots” at them. When the problem for another is to achieve repentance, the problem for the critic is to make repentance seem attractive as well as necessary.

The writer or the speaker who merely utters flings at our faults suffers in his own person the same sort of closing-up or self-involution that he produces in those whom he “lambastes” or denounces. Lacking the sympathy or the humor to enter into the human-nature situation of another, he forfeits the capacity of self-criticism also. He becomes opinionated, dogmatic, sometimes intolerant, and at last careless of fact and unable to repent of his own follies.

Some of our difficulty, as I have indicated, arises from habits and traditions generated by experience under arbitrary governments, when citizens had compelling motive for concealment and for putting the best foot forward. But in addition we must admit that our nature spontaneously shrinks from paying the cost of freedom; it longs for joy, but fears to grasp it. Self-overcoming, therefore, and self-discipline are indispensable.

Hence the peculiar service of the self-disciplined individuals who openly reverse themselves with evident happiness. We know how the young are helped to be self-critical and at the same time self-confident when a parent or a teacher makes amends for his errors, either intellectual or administrative. The late Josiah Strong told with utter simplicity how he, a Christian minister, discovered that his preaching had misconstrued the Gospel, and how through self-reversal he experienced a kind of joyful conversion (see My Religion in Everyday Life). Harry Emerson Fosdick has experienced, we may be sure, a sense of happy emancipation as he has publicly abandoned positions that he publicly took during the War. The revivalist, Gypsy Smith, having repeated in public a story that was damaging and offensive to the then Mayor Hylan, “took it all back” in public without qualification or self-excuse. One can safely guess that a few more acts like these on the part of preachers and evangelists would recommend religion more effectively than rivers of argument, denunciation, and pleading.

Is it Quixotic to hope for an ultimate reversal of the popular assumption that of course every individual and organization will be on the defensive with respect to what he or it is and is doing? May not this defensive attitude at last be seen to be what it verily is, weakness rather than strength? May not repentance become the expected thing, acquiring the dignity and the educational force that belong to any necessary aspect of our rationality? The growth of cooperative thinking is one sign that this hope is not entirely without ground. Even “rights” and “vital interests” will be safer when this day comes than they are now. Demonstrate that you are unarmed, and others will lay down their arms; then you can “talk it over.” Where wrong has been done, an unreserved acknowledgment of it has time and again smitten the hardness of men’s spirits, and streams of generosity have burst forth. Often and often what we most need is someone who will take the initiative in repentance.

The diagnosis of humanity’s sickness that was made in Part III indicated that the affected part is our intelligence, and that recovery depends upon sharpening our wits. It should now be evident that sharpening our wits is different from putting an edge upon a tool that is no part of ourselves. Our “wits” are not constituted of any impersonal intelligence, but of intelligence that quivers through and through with personality and the laws of its growth. Intellect, as such, cannot whittle itself to a point, as we see in the practical stupidities of intellectual men; the total attitude of the person towards himself and towards others is involved.

Shall we say, then, that the problem of release from our self-imposed bondage finds its solution in the Greek idea of being ourselves, or in the Christian idea of being saved from ourselves? The answer lies in the fact that when we become objective towards ourselves we come upon the requirement of repentance. We do, indeed, need to be ourselves, but not these selves that we behold in each of us! Here not only does naturalism in any of its current forms prove to be inadequate as a theory of motivation, but also all naïve confidence in ourselves whencesoever it be derived. Self-denial is not a vagary of unhealthy minds; it is a law of reason; it is fundamental in the motivation of a man. We save our lives by losing them. The solution of the problem is far more Christian than it is Greek.

A remark was made some way back that the technic of freedom will be found to be, not a pattern to be imposed upon conduct, but something more like friendship or worship. The meaning of this possibly cryptic utterance will be the subject of the next and concluding chapter.

XXX

THE REALM OF FREE SPIRITS

The spirit of man, when it is most awake, eager, and demanding, pants for the open spaces and for companionship there. But what sort of open spaces? Real emancipation is not only release from something but also release into something. How, then, shall we describe the realm into which our spirits, when they breathe freedom, struggle to press? What could really satisfy a man?

The question can be answered only in and through the act of struggling to be free. _Solvitur ambulando._ Wants become defined through the interplay of satisfactions and discomforts that awaken thought. I did not want to stop at Daggett to have the contents of my car examined by the California State Bureau of Plant Quarantine and Pest Control, but when my questioning taught me that I might inadvertently import an insect that would destroy the orange groves amid which I write these words, I acquired a desire for the examination. But this learning, mark! was not the plastering upon me of an external compulsion; rather, events guided me back to myself, making me act from within more fully than before. It is experience that teaches us what we want, but it does it by pricking us awake so that we ask questions and compare satisfaction with satisfaction, desire with desire.

Having been at this business of self-discovery for some time, there is no reason why we might not analyse the incidents and the processes of it, and thereby arrive at a general description of the attitudes that we take in our struggles to emancipate ourselves from ourselves. Attitudes are, of course, leanings “towards,” and hence pointers-out of a direction and possibly a goal. What, then, is this “life” concerning which we say:

’Tis life of which our nerves are scant;
’Tis life, and more of life, we want?

This question can be asked and answered without saying whether this which we want really exists or is ultimately attainable. I shall not enter into the metaphysical question whether we are in process of discovering an ideal world that already exists; or whether we are participating in the creation of an ideal reality that shares existence with the unideal; or whether ideals are, in last analysis, chimerical. My sole question is this: If our likes could be filled to the very brim, what kind of world should we then find ourselves living in? It is appropriate to remark, however, that unless we permit our wants to go exploring, we cannot find out what the resources of the world are. We learn where food is, and where it is not, because hunger sets us upon a quest. Nature teaches us when we, the pupils, put questions to her. If, then, we desire to know whether our world-system is a fit habitation for persons, we must make the experiment of acting as persons, and then observe what happens. We must know what we want, and then go after it.

There is a tendency, which grows naturally out of the order in which the sciences developed--first the physical, then the biological, then the psychological and sociological--to invert the order of inquiry that has just been named, asking first what the environment contains and only afterwards what our desires are. Then, under a general theory of adaptation, the assumption is made that our desires, in the nature of the case, must be adapted to the particular environment that most occupies scientific attention. If we say that we want something more than _this_ environment provides, we are assured that we have misinterpreted ourselves, and that what we “really” want is only that which the already-assumed environment is ready to supply. Love is “in reality” only “galloping gonads,” as a college student put it; and idealistic cravings are “in reality” an expression of some physiological vacuum.

This type of procedure regards itself as strictly objective, whereas it is infected with subjectivity in that a particular mental habit prevents consideration of unaccustomed questions. It is sheer self-imitation that makes us believe that the fundamental apprehension of our world is to be had by way of the physical sciences. It is a self-deceived subjectivity that restricts the description of our wants to sub-human categories instead of letting these wants speak for themselves.

The universe may make possible what we want, or it may not; the issue must be determined by observation and experiment under hypotheses adapted to testing the free flight of desire. This free flight is what now concerns us, and what we want to know is the direction in which it goes when it is most free, most completely personal and venturesomely rational. To change the figure, what is the medium that our wings must press against in order to fly? The answer is partly implied in the preceding sections.

_First_, how small or weak must a minority be in order to become totally insignificant and rationally negligible? I do not see how we can give any answer to this question that will not assume, rightly or wrongly, that there is a realm of free spirit that lives by forces resident within itself, and not by permission of anything external to itself. Whatever matter may prove to be, and whatever factor of determinism may reside in the temporal process; however irrational and self-defeating we may at times become, something that is self-nourishing appears to be capable of asserting itself in the weakest minority.

_Second_, how broad must cooperation in thinking be in order that I may become fully emancipated from myself? Who is to be included, and who is to be excluded from the fellowship of intelligence? Again, I do not see what answer can be given that will not assume that inclusive good-will is an inherent aspect of intelligence. Good-will assumes, likewise, to be a self-sustaining thing; it cannot be either purchased or compelled; rather, it creates the fellowship of minds from within mind.

_Third_, is the grace of repentance whereby we break through our shell into freedom a matter of arbitrary liking or a matter of obligation? Knowing the blunderous way that we live, and the hurts that our blunders entail, how can we possibly say that repentance may wait upon our convenience? How can we possibly maintain the rightful supremacy of rationality unless we assume that “I ought” is inherently involved in it? How could we possibly be at home and free in an a-moral universe?

_Fourth_, what reservations are made by the mind that fully emancipates itself from its self-imposed bondage? Is a taboo placed upon any subject or material of thought? Is there any area of the universe that is “posted” so that we may not hunt upon it?

Men used to assume that there are such areas. The name of God was spoken with a hush; men even forbade themselves to speak it at all. They became mute and abject in the presence of supposedly fearsome forces, whether divine or demoniac; yes, some men and institutions and old thoughts were even walled off so that eyes might not see. All this was self-imprisonment from which it is necessary to achieve self-release. We must reach the point where we realize that it is only a pseudo-sanctity, a piece of mere conventionality, that reserves any kind of actuality from the peering eyes of anyone who desires to know. We are guilty of no irreverence when we investigate the pedigrees and weigh the conduct of all the gods; we must be able with tranquillity to endure uncertainties while waiting for evidence; and, as for the sanctity of any temple built by men, what men have built that they can rebuild or replace.

At this point release from the thralldom of selfhood is equivalent to making ourselves at home in the universe. The experience takes different forms with different persons. Freedom to doubt, coming to some persons like the sun suddenly emerging from a black cloud, makes them dance and skip; occasionally it reproduces, almost point for point, the emotional phenomena of religious conversion. That some, upon realizing their release, should luxuriate in skepticisms is not strange; they are like children from the city streets let loose in the country and pulling up wildflowers by the roots. With other persons the experience of release takes the form of glad consecration to the rigorous labor and the strict methods whereby alone we can know the truth. Still others feel the fellowship side of their new world. Separated from other minds hitherto by prejudice and fear, they now discover friends on all hands, and they glow with friendliness themselves. Not a few have said, “Behold, God is here, and I knew it not.” For they feel that they are dealing with what L. P. Jacks calls “a living universe.”

Thus, underlying our motivation when we most radically claim freedom is the implicit assumption that we are living in a universe in which no mental reservations are really needed by anyone. But we cannot go as far as this without assuming likewise that no reservations on behalf of any sort of self-interest are necessary. Here is where the shoe pinches most, and here is where self-deception most enslaves us. When we get beneath the surface of our mental reservations--theological, ethical, economic, social, political--we usually find that they are servants of some form of self-interest, whether of an individual, or of an institution, or of a social class. How desperately we cling to our littleness! But our very desperation is a defence-reaction towards something dimly appreciated as greater. We are like a very small child who wanted to get out of bed all by himself, but found himself hanging to the mattress, afraid to let go because he could not feel the floor under his toes, and yet not strong enough to pull himself back. The sickness of our society is in its fear to let go what it regards as its security, though it does not really secure. We employ argument and systems of thought to protect us, but we are like some persons accused of crime who refuse to make a clean breast of their conduct even to the attorney who defends them. Our salvation must come from a cooperative thinking that is more than abstract. I have already remarked that cooperative thinking assumes that the realm of intelligence is the realm likewise of good-will or active respect for all persons. In the end, then, our struggle against our bondage is a struggle towards a cooperative intelligence that is likewise a cooperative choice and enjoyment of the good, whatever the good is.

I promised to keep as clear of metaphysics as the case permits. I have not even argued, though I am convinced, that the best clue we have to the general character of the universe consists in this, that persons exist, and are, as a matter of fact, in the process of achieving freedom, and of achieving it cooperatively. The experience of becoming free, even though it be incomplete, even though it never can be completed, surely casts a beam of light into the problem of being. An original, self-sustaining light. For the becoming of freedom is an experience, a datum, primary and underived. We do not learn it by inference from some otherwise-known system of things; we do not need to ask whether a place can be made for it in a view of nature that is derived from the pre-human world. It is here; it makes its own place, and our view of nature must be sufficiently large and objective to include it. This does not deny either the general self-consistency of nature that we call law, nor yet any specific connection of events that can be shown to be probable. Any experience whatever, the experience of becoming free not excepted, occurs under conditions that can theoretically be formulated in a general proposition. But the event need not repeat or continue the conditions under which it arises. Out of a songless egg, someone has said, emerges the song of a lark.

The realization that one is freely a member of such a realm of spirits as I have described is not only like worship, it is indistinguishable from worship. For it is just the opposite of spiritual isolation. This outward movement from self, though it be initiated within us, is not, in any complete and exclusive sense, initiated by us. It is wrought through us as much as by us! It chooses us as much as we choose it. Over and over again the experience repeats itself of being certain, just where we are most original, that then and there we are organs of something greater than our particular selves. It is as if each particular self were enveloped and suffused and already partly actuated by some self-like principle that is abroad in the universe.

INDEX

Academic freedom, 188 ff.

Accidents, preventable, 159.

Acquisitive instinct, 39.

Adolescence, see “Youth”.

Advertising, 13, 38, 52.

Affection, 231.

“American Tragedy, An”, Dreiser’s, 29.

Amusements, 52, 130, 139.

Analytical method in psychology, 40, 81, 93.

Anger, 179 ff.

“Areopagitica”, Milton’s, 185.

Argumentativeness, 243.

“Arrowsmith”, Sinclair Lewis’s, 31.

Art and artists, 78, 106, 109 f., 118, 125.

Assemblage, freedom of, 191.

Authority, 26, 176, 195.

Averages as standards of judgment, 173.

Ayres, C. E. 194 (note.)

Balance sheet as index of values, 126.

Balderston, J. L., 146 (note).

“Bear, The”, Robert Frost’s, 244.

Beauty, 109, 160, 231.

Behaviorism, 41, 52, 93.

Bible, 22.

Biography, recent, 110 ff.

Biology, Ch. IV, 39.

Bondage of our powers, Part III, Part IV.

Browning, R., 9.

Buddha, The, 146.

Business, motives of, Ch. XV;
see also “Industrialism”.

Calkins, M. W., 85, 94 (note).

Canada, 213.

Capitalism and capitalists, 39, 50, 121;
see also “Industrialism”, “Profits”, and “Labor”.

Catholic Church, see “Roman Catholic Church”.

Character, 44.

Childhood, Chs. XII, XIII.

Child-study movement, 97 f.

China, 61, 181.

Christianity, Ch. VIII, 61 ff., 162, 210 f., 214, 250.

Christians, 113.

Church, v, 57, 59 f., 138, 140, 153, 168, 174, 186 ff., 201 ff., 247;
see also “Protestantism” and “Roman Catholic Church”.

Church school, see “Religious Education”.

Class interest, 133, 139.

Colleges and universities, 138, 186, 188 ff., 193, 201, 224 ff.

Comedy, 244.

Common man, the, 119.

Competition, 23, 49.

Compromise, policy of, 173.

Conditioned reflex, 41 f., 84.

Configuration, see “Gestalt-psychology”.

Conflict between men, 50, 133, 139, 218.

Conflict, inner, 153.

Confucius, 90.

Constitution of the U. S., 185, 191 f.

Continuity in nature, 74.

Contracts, 54, 190.

Conventionality, 108, Ch. XXII.

Conversion, 59.

Coolidge, Calvin, 200.

Cooperative thinking, Ch. XXVIII, 255, 257.

Courts of law, 190.

Creation, special, 5.

Creative activity, 104, 106 ff., 210.

Criticism, function of, 248.

Crowd-action, 182, 232.

Curiosity, 41.

Cynicism, vi, 29, 32, 151 f.

Darwin, Charles, 25.

Debate, 236.

Defence mechanisms, 127, 243, 247, 257.

Democracy, 22.

Democratic Party, 217.

Depravity, 26, 56 f., 60, 70, 113, 163, Ch. XXII.

Desires, see “Wants”.

Determinism, 29.

Dignity of man, 21, 26.

Discomforts, 160.

Discussion method, 234 _et passim_.

Disillusionment, Part I, Part II.

Domiciliary privacy, 191.

Doubt, 256.

Drama, material of, 27 ff.;
see also “Comedy”, and “Tragedy”.

Dreiser, Theodore, 29 f.

Drives and pulls, psychic, 144 ff.

Dynamics of mind, vi, 43, 82, 86, _et passim_.

Dynamic view of physical nature, 82, 85.

Economic imperialism, 51.

Economic interpretation of history, 136.

Economic order, the, 136, 138, 165;
see also “Capitalism”, etc.

Economic production, Ch. XVII.

Education, 4, Ch. XIII, 176, 184, 210, 212 ff., 247;
see also “Schools”, “Colleges and universities”, and “Religious
education”.

Efficiency, 4, 8, 13, 32, 52 f., 127, 133, 201.

Ego, the, 44;
see also “Self, the personal”, etc.

Elliott, Harrison, 234 (note).

Emerson, R. W., 9, 25 f.

Environment, influence of, 104 f., 252;
see also Ch. XIII.

Ethics, problems of, 23, 54, 79, 86, 124, 138, 140, 161, 171, 173.

Evangelism, 58, 176.

Evolution, Ch. IV, 52, Ch. X, 145, 156, 163;
see also “Variations”, “Mutations”, and “Continuity”.

Experience as source of wisdom, 197.

Experimental schools, Ch. XIII.

Ezekiel the prophet, 21.

Faculty psychology, 37.

Family, the, 40, 52, 121, 126, 130, 132, 135, 138, 164 f., 175, 221,
233, 248.

Fate, 28.

Faust, Dr., 4.

Fear, 10, 243;
see also “security, desire for”.

Fellowship, see “Friendship”.

Food, desire for, 39, 41, 75 ff.

Force, belief in and use of, 18, 133, 176.

Fosdick, H. E., 249.

Francis, Saint, of Assisi, 162.

Freedom, 10, 72, 104 f., 125, 130, 162, 176, Ch. XXIV, 200, 210, 216,
Ch. XXX, 255, 258.

Friendship, 213, 231, 233, 257.

Frost, Robert, 244.

Fundamentalism, 22, 24 f.

Galileo, 189.

Gandhi, M. K., 49.

Gautama, the Buddha, 146.

Germany, 204.

Gestalt-psychology, 42, 84 ff.

Ghosts, 37, 80.

God, 25 f., 50, 58, 60, 63 f., 70, 113 f., 118, 136 f., 140, 146,
154 f., 156, 172, 205, 211, 245 ff., 256 f., 258.

Goldman, Emma, 187.

Good men, badness of, 161.

Good-will, 255.

Government, and its forms, 160, 167;
see also, “Courts of Law”, “Laws of the State”, and “U. S.
Constitution”.

Grace, divine, 57.

Great Britain, 213.

Great men, Ch. XIV.

Greed, 179;
See also, “Profits”, etc.

Greek notion of self-realization, 250.

Health, 159.

Hegel, 242.

Help, mutual, 23.

Herd-action, 182, 232.

Heredity, 104 f.;
see also, “Environment, influence of”.

Hero-worship, 116.

“Higher nature”, our, 158, 161.

History, 110 ff., 136.

Humanitarianism, 23, 32.

Human nature, the paradox of, 209.

Humor, 243 ff.

Huxley, Thomas, 23 f.

Hylan, J. F., 249.

Immanence of God, 9.

Imperialism, economic, 51.

Industry, 8, 247.

Industrialism, v, 46, 48, 56, 58 f., 61 ff., 90, Ch. XV, 139, 155.

Instincts, theory of, 28, 39, 41 f., 45, 82 f., 84, 87, 93, 97, 145.

Institutionalism, 164.

Intelligence tests, 89 ff., 93, 104.

Intelligentsia, the, 248.

Interests, 78, 235.

Invention, 8.

Irrationality of man, Ch. V.

Jacks, L. P., 257.

James, William, 80, 82, 101.

Jealousy, 39, 179.

Jesus, 63 f., 127, 140, 146, 174, 198, 201.

John, Gospel of, 4.

Kant, Immanuel, 244.

Koffka, K., 84, 94 (note).

Krutch, J. W., 30.

Labor, labor movement, 64, 121, 132;
see also, “Workingmen”.

Ladd, G. T., 82.

Land hunger, 131.

Lauder, Harry, 123.

Laws of nature, 258;
see also, “Science”, etc.

Laws of the State, 166 f., 190;
see also, “Constitution of the U. S.”

Laughter, 243 ff.

“Lazarus”, Eugene O’Neill’s play, 246.

Lewis, Sinclair, 31, 201.

Life, 125, 252.

Lincoln, Abraham, 75, 90.

Literature of disillusionment, Ch. V, 52, 56, 92 f., 210.

Louis XIV, 90.

“Lower classes, the”, 174.

“Lower nature, our”, Ch. XX, Ch. XXIII.

Lust, 179, 181 f.

Lynchings, 182.

MacCurdy, J. T., 87, 94 (note).

“Main Street”, Sinclair Lewis’s story, 79.

Majorities, 216 f., 242;
see also, “Minorities.”

Malice, 179.

Marot, Helen, 129, also note.

Mastery, motives of, 124.

Maturity, Ch. XII (esp. 99-101), Ch. XXV.

Mearns, H., 108.

Mencken, H. L., 201.

Metaphysics, 71, 81, 252, 258.

Milton, 185.

Minorities, Ch. XXVII, 238, 242, 255;
see also, “Majorities.”

Modern spirit, the, 69.

“Morality Play for the Leisured Class, A”, Balderston’s comedy, 146.

Morals, experimentation in, 224.

“Motive”, two senses of, 143.

Münsterberg, H., 82.

Musical compositions of children, 110 (note).

Mutations, biological, 74.

Mysticism, 65, 156.

Nation, The (periodical), 245.

Nationalism, 23, 51, 167.

Naturalism, 73, 113, 115, 250.

Nature, 74, 258;
see also, “Science”, etc.

Nature and nurture, 104.

Neighborhood Playhouse, The, 146.

Nero, 90.

New York Court of Appeals, 190.

Obligation, 255.

Occidental civilization, 49, 61.

Occupational introversion, 167.

O’Neill, Eugene, 30, 32, 246.

Open-mindedness, 239.

Organic view of physical nature, 82, 84 f.

“Organism, the”, 36.

Orthodoxies, various, 127, 166, 168 f., 187, 220.

Pain, 148.

Parker, Carleton, 129, also note.

Partizanship in education, 213.

Pasadena Community Playhouse, 246.

Passions, the, Ch. XXIII.

Patriotism, 213.

Paul, the Apostle, 157, 212.

Peace Treaty of Versailles, 18 f.

Penn, William, 90.

Persons, see “Self”, etc.

Pessimism, 69 f.

Pictures by children, 109 f.

Plato, 146, 156.

Play, 231.

Pleasure, devotion of youth to, 196.

Poems by the young, 108.

Political corruption, 227.

Political parties, 217.

Pope, the, 187.

Power, desire for and effects of possessing, 123, 218 ff.

Profit system and profit motive, 17, 39, 50 f., 58, 70, 121, 139, 175.

Progressive Education Association and magazine, 109 f.

Progressive Party, 217.

Propaganda, 13, 15, 117, 160.

Property, ethics of, 54 f., 62.

Prophets, 118, 239.

Protestantism, 62 f., 64 f., 211, 222.

Psychiatry, 93, 100;
see also, “Psychoanalysis”.

Psychoanalysis, 43, 52, 86 ff., 101 f., 172.

Psychology, vi, 23, 25, 35, Ch. VI, 45 f., 52, 156, Ch. XI, 85 ff.,
114.

Psychology of religion, v.

Pugnacity, 39, 51, 124, 243.

Puritanism, 62.

Quaker meetings, 234.

Race superiority, 14.

Rashness of youth, 202.

Rationality in children, 106.

Rationalization, 22 f., 43, 45, 54.

Reading matter, 160.

Reason and the irrational, 163, Ch. XXI, 170.

Recapitulation theory, the, 97.

Reflexes, conditioned, 41 f., 84.

Reform movements, 210.

Regeneration, 57, 60, 156.

Release of our capacities, Part IV.

Religion, v, 4, 123, 125, 139, 162, 184, 186 ff., 210;
see also, “Church”, “Protestantism”, “Roman Catholic Church”.

Religious education, v, 213.

Repentance, 60 f., 176, 238, 246 f., 255.

Research and researchers, 31, 118, 234.

Respectable faults, Ch. XXII.

Revenge, 179.

Revivals, see “Evangelism”.

Rivalry, 39.

Roman Catholic Church, 62, 64 f., 221.

Roosevelt, Theodore, 217.

Rotary Clubs, 52, 60, 127.

Russia, 204.

Sacco-Vanzetti case, the, 190.

Sacrament, production as a, 140.

Satan, 156.

Savagery, 3 f.

Schools, 38, 102 f., Ch. XIII, 138, 153, 161, 186, 212, 224 f.;
see also, “Colleges and universities”.

Science and scientific method, 7 f., 31, 78, 125, 193 f., 234.

Secular, the idea of the, 139.

Security, desire for, 122, 130, 132, 257.

Self, the personal, 43, 55, 86, 124, 131 f., Ch. XVII, Ch. XVIII,
158, 165 f., 170 f., 193 f., 220, 230, Ch. XXIX, 256 f.

Service, motive of, 127.

Sex impulse and conduct, 39 f., 44, 52 f., 70, 75 ff., 99, 157, 165;
see also, “Lust”.

Sin, 211.

Sinclair, Upton, 187.

Skepticism, 256.

“Smart” minds, 241, 243.

Smith, Gypsy, 249.

Social capacities of children, 106 f.

Social distance, 166 ff., 173.

Social recognition, 125, 130, 132.

Social workers, 118 f.

Society, life of, v, 143 ff., 210.

Sociology, 23.

Socrates, 146, 177.

Sophists, the, 146.

Soul, the, 37.

Sovereignty, political, 167.

Speech, freedom of, 191.

Sphinx, The, Ch. VI.

“Spiritual” affairs, 136.

Spiritual life, 137.

“Spoon River Anthology” of Masters, 29.

State, the civil, 15, 62, 167, 247.

Stoics, The, 3.

Strong, Josiah, 249.

Survival, 125.

Sympathy, 231.

Tagore, R., 49.

Tennyson, A., 9.

Tests, see “Intelligence tests”.

Thanksgiving Day, 63.

Thayer, Judge, 190.

Theological seminaries, 138.

Theology, 25 f., 46, 57, 113, 115 f., 156.

Thinking cooperatively, Ch. XXVIII.

Thorndike, E. L., 83, 94 (note).

Thrift, 63.

Times, The New York, 7.

Timidity of age, 198.

Toleration, religious, 211.

Tragedy, nature of, 71.

Transfer of training, 113 ff.

Truth, 23, 256.

Twentieth century, 7.

Unconscious, the, 43, 87 f.

United States, The, 9, 213.

United States Constitution, The, 185, 191 f.

Valentine, 199 f.

Valuation, vii, 145 f.

Vested interests, 220.

Victorian period, 29.

Wages, 121, 131 f., 139.

Wants, 3 f., Ch. VI, 38, 70, 252, _et passim_.

War, nature and causes of, 51, 62, 70, 139, 176, 182 ff.

War, The Great, Ch. III, 52, 56, 158, 249.

Washington, George, 90.

Watson, J. B., 84, 94 (note).

Wealth, 64.

Wesley, J., 187.

Whitehead, A. N., 81 f., 84 f., 94 (note).

Wilberforce, W., 24.

Williams, Whiting, 129 (also note), 142.

Wisdom from experience, 198.

Woodworth, R. S., 84, 94 (note).

Work, 148.

Workmanship, 132.

Workingmen, 39, 50, Ch. XVI;
see also, “Labor”, “Industrialism”, etc.

World-self, 258.

Worship, 141, 154 f., 175, 211, 213, 258.

Yale University, vii.

Youth and age, Ch. XXV.

[FOOTNOTES]

[1] This and several other paragraphs first appeared in the New York Times, 1926.

[2] Reprinted, with modifications, from Religious Education, January, 1928, pp. 62-65.

[3] In the present section I endeavor to show merely what psychology has contributed to this mood. In due time (Section II) I shall discuss in a direct manner the present status of the psychology of motivation, asking what really is established.

[4] For parallel evidence of musical creativeness in children see the July-August-September 1926, issue of the same magazine, Progressive Education.

[5] Carleton H. Parker, The Casual Laborer and other Essays, New York, 1920.

Helen Marot, The Creative Impulse in Industry, New York, 1918.

Whiting Williams, Mainsprings of Men, New York, 1925.

[6] _Mainsprings of Men._ New York, 1925, p. 224.

[7] By John L. Balderston (New York, 1924). I shall take the liberty of telling parts of the story of this play in my own language, not scrupling to modify the plot slightly and the dialog considerably.

[8] Ayres, C. E., Science the False Messiah.

[9] See Harrison Elliott: _The Process of Group Thinking_, Association Press, 1928.