The Mind in the Making: The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform

by James Harvey Robinson

These direct attempts to produce a more intelligently critical and open-minded generation are, however, likely to be far less feasible than the indirect methods. Partly because they will arouse strenuous opposition from the self-appointed defenders of society as now regulated, and partly because no immediate inspection of habits and institutions is so instructive as a study of their origin and progress and a comparison of them with other forms of social adjustment. I hope that it has already become clear that we have great, and hitherto only very superficially worked, resources in History, as it is now coming to be conceived.

We are in the midst of the greatest intellectual revolution that has ever overtaken mankind. Our whole conception of mind is undergoing a great change. We are beginning to understand its nature, and as we find out more, intelligence may be raised to a recognized dignity and effectiveness which it has never enjoyed before. An encouraging beginning has been made in the case of the natural sciences, and a similar success may await the studies which have to do with the critical estimate of man's complicated nature, his fundamental impulses and resources, the needless and fatal repressions which these have suffered through the ignorance of the past, and the discovery of untried ways of enriching our existence and improving our relations with our fellow men.

There[35] is a well-known passage in Goethe's "Faust" where he likens History to the Book with Seven Seals described in Revelation, which no one in heaven, or on the earth or under the earth, was able to open and read therein. All sorts of guesses have been hazarded as to its contents by Augustine, Orosius, Otto of Freising, Bossuet, Bolingbroke, Voltaire, Herder, Hegel, and many others, but none of them were able to break the seals, and all of them were gravely misled by their fragmentary knowledge of the book's contents. For we now see that the seven seals were seven great ignorances. No one knew much (1) of man's physical nature, or (2) the workings of his thoughts and desires, or (3) of the world in which he lives, or (4) of how he has come about as a race, or (5) of how he develops as an individual from a tiny egg, or (6) how deeply and permanently he is affected by the often forgotten impressions of infancy and childhood, or (7) how his ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands of years in the dark ignorance of savagery.

The seals are all off now. The book at last lies open before those who are capable of reading it, and few they be as yet; for most of us still cling to the guesses made in regard to its contents before anyone knew what was in it. We have become attached to the familiar old stories which now prove to be fictions, and we find it hard to reconcile ourselves to the many hard sayings which the book proves to contain—its constant stress on the stupidity of "good" people; its scorn for the respectable and normal, which it often reduces to little more than sanctimonious routine and indolence and pious resentment at being disturbed in one's complacent assurances. Indeed, much of its teaching appears downright immoral according to existing standards.

One awful thing that the Book of the Past makes plain is that with our animal heritage we are singularly oblivious to the large concerns of life. We are keenly sensitive to little discomforts, minor irritations, wounded vanity, and various danger signals; but our comprehension is inherently vague and listless when it comes to grasping intricate situations and establishing anything like a fair perspective in life's problems and possibilities. Our imagination is restrained by our own timidity, constantly reinforced by the warnings of our fellows, who are always urging us to be safe and sane, by which they mean convenient for them, predictable in our conduct and graciously amenable to the prevailing standards.

But it is obvious that it is increasingly dangerous to yield to this inveterate tendency, however comfortable and respectable it may seem for the moment.

History, as H. G. Wells has so finely expressed it, is coming more and more to be "a race between education and catastrophe. Our internal policies and our economic and social ideas are profoundly vitiated at present by wrong and fantastic ideas of the origin and historical relationship of social classes. A sense of history as the common adventure of all mankind is as necessary for peace within as it is for peace between the nations". There can be no secure peace now but a common peace of the whole world; no prosperity but a general prosperity, and this for the simple reason that we are all now brought so near together and are so pathetically and intricately interdependent, that the old notions of noble Isolation and national sovereignty are magnificently criminal.

In the bottom of their hearts, or the depths of their unconscious, do not the conservatively minded realize that their whole attitude toward the world and its betterment is based on an assumption that finds no least support in the Great Book of the Past? Does it not make plain that the "conservative", so far as he is consistent and lives up to his professions, is fatally in the wrong? The so-called "radical" is also almost always wrong, for no one can foresee the future. But he works on a right assumption—namely, that the future has so far always proved different from the past and that it will continue to do so. Some of us, indeed, see that the future is tending to become more and more rapidly and widely different from the past. The conservative himself furnishes the only illustration of his theory, and even that is highly inconclusive. His general frame of mind appears to remain constant, but he finds himself defending and rejecting very different things. The great issue may, according to the period, be a primeval taboo, the utterances of the Delphic oracle, the Athanasian creed, the Inquisition, the geocentric theory, monarchy by the grace of God, witchcraft, slavery, war, capitalism, private property, or noble isolation. All of these tend to appear to the conservative under the aspect of eternity, but all of these things have come, many of them have gone, and the remainder would seem to be subject to undreamed-of modifications as time goes on. This is the teaching of the now unsealed book.

NOTES.

[27] Mr. James Branch Cabell has in his Beyond Life defended man's romantic longings and inexorable craving to live part of the time at least in a world far more sweetly molded to his fancy than that of natural science and political economy. There is no reason why man should live by bread alone. There is a time, however, for natural science and political economy, for they should establish the conditions in which we may rejoice in our vital lies, which will then do no harm and bring much joy.