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

by James Harvey Robinson

The three educational aims enumerated above have one thing in common. They are all directed toward an enhancement of the chances of personal worldly success, or to the increase of our personal culture and intellectual and literary enjoyment. Their purpose is not primarily to fit us to play a part in social or political betterment. But of late a fourth element has been added to the older ambitions, namely the hope of preparing boys and girls to become intelligent voters. This need has been forced upon us by the coming of political democracy, which makes one person's vote exactly as good as another's.

Now education for citizenship would seem to consist in gaining a knowledge of the actual workings of our social organization, with some illuminating notions of its origin, together with a full realization of its defects and their apparent sources. But here we encounter an obstacle that is unimportant in the older types of education, but which may prove altogether fatal to any good results in our efforts to make better citizens. Subjects of instruction like reading and writing, mathematics, Latin and Greek, chemistry and physics, medicine and the law are fairly well standardized and retrospective. Doubtless there is a good deal of internal change in method and content going on, but this takes place unobtrusively and does not attract the attention of outside critics. Political and social questions, on the other hand, and matters relating to prevailing business methods, race animosities, public elections, and governmental policy are, if they are vital, necessarily "controversial". School boards and superintendents, trustees and presidents of colleges and universities, are sensitive to this fact. They eagerly deprecate in their public manifestos any suspicion that pupils and students are being awakened in any way to the truth that our institutions can possibly be fundamentally defective, or that the present generation of citizens has not conducted our affairs with exemplary success, guided by the immutable principles of justice.

How indeed can a teacher be expected to explain to the sons and daughters of businessmen, politicians, doctors, lawyers, and clergymen—all pledged to the maintenance of the sources of their livelihood—the actual nature of business enterprise as now practiced, the prevailing methods of legislative bodies and courts, and the conduct of foreign affairs? Think of a teacher in the public schools recounting the more illuminating facts about the municipal government under which he lives, with due attention to graft and jobs! So, courses in government, political economy, sociology, and ethics confine themselves to inoffensive generalizations, harmless details of organization, and the commonplaces of routine morality, for only in that way can they escape being controversial. Teachers are rarely able or inclined to explain our social life and its presuppositions with sufficient insight and honesty to produce any very important results. Even if they are tempted to tell the essential facts they dare not do so, for fear of losing their places, amid the applause of all the righteously minded.

However we may feel on this important matter, we must all agree that the aim of education for citizenship as now conceived is a preparation for the same old citizenship which has so far failed to eliminate the shocking hazards and crying injustices of our social and political life. For we sedulously inculcate in the coming generation exactly the same illusions and the same ill-placed confidence in existing institutions and prevailing notions that have brought the world to the pass in which we find it. Since we do all we can to corroborate the beneficence of what we have, we can hardly hope to raise up a more intelligent generation bent on achieving what we have not. We all know this to be true; it has been forcibly impressed on our minds of late. Most of us agree that it is right and best that it should be so; some of us do not like to think about it at all, but a few will be glad to spend a little time weighing certain suggestions in this volume which may indicate a way out of this impasse.[1]

We have now considered briefly the three main hopes that have been hitherto entertained of bettering things (I) by changing the rules of the game, (II) by urging men to be good, and to love their neighbor as themselves, and (III) by education for citizenship. It may be that these hopes are not wholly unfounded, but it must be admitted that so far they have been grievously disappointed. Doubtless they will continue to be cherished on account of their assured respectability.

Mere lack of success does not discredit a method, for there are many things that determine and perpetuate our sanctified ways of doing things besides their success in reaching their proposed ends. Had this not always been so, our life to-day would be far less stupidly conducted than it is. But let us agree to assume for the moment that the approved schemes of reform enumerated above have, to say the least, shown themselves inadequate to meet the crisis in which civilized society now finds itself. Have we any other hope?

Yes, there is Intelligence. That is as yet an untested hope in its application to the regulation of human relations. It is not discredited because it has not been tried on any large scale outside the realm of natural science. There, everyone will confess, it has produced marvelous results. Employed in regard to stars, rocks, plants, and animals, and in the investigation of mechanical and chemical processes, it has completely revolutionized men's notions of the world in which they live, and of its inhabitants, with the notable exception of man himself. These discoveries have been used to change our habits and to supply us with everyday necessities which a hundred years ago were not dreamed of as luxuries accessible even to kings and millionaires.

But most of us know too little of the past to realize the penalty that had to be paid for this application of intelligence. In order that these discoveries should be made and ingeniously applied to the conveniences of life, it was necessary to discard practically all the consecrated notions of the world and its workings which had been held by the best and wisest and purest of mankind down to three hundred years ago—indeed, until much more recently. Intelligence, in a creature of routine like man and in a universe so ill understood as ours, must often break valiantly with the past in order to get ahead. It would be pleasant to assume that all we had to do was to build on well-designed foundations, firmly laid by the wisdom of the ages. But those who have studied the history of natural science would agree that Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes found no such foundation, but had to begin their construction from the ground up.

The several hopes of reform mentioned above all assume that the now generally accepted notions of righteous human conduct are not to be questioned. Our churches and universities defend this assumption. Our editors and lawyers and the more vocal of our business men adhere to it. Even those who pretend to study society and its origin seem often to believe that our present ideals and standards of property, the state, industrial organization, the relations of the sexes, and education are practically final and must necessarily be the basis of any possible betterment in detail. But if this be so Intelligence has already done its perfect work, and we can only lament that the outcome in the way of peace, decency, and fairness, judged even by existing standards, has been so disappointing.

There are, of course, a few here and there who suspect and even repudiate current ideals and standards. But at present their resentment against existing evils takes the form of more or less dogmatic plans of reconstruction, like those of the socialists and communists, or exhausts itself in the vague protest and faultfinding of the average "Intellectual". Neither the socialist nor the common run of Intellectual appears to me to be on the right track. The former is more precise in his doctrines and confident in his prophecies than a scientific examination of mankind and its ways would at all justify; the other, more indefinite than he need be.