Part 5

If thinking is somewhat painful, so, I believe, is receiving a permanent wave or an application of beauty clay. But it is only necessary to have the fee to be seized upon by the beautifiers. While the educational institutions in America are usually hospitable enough, while they even attempt to seize upon the students who are sufficiently unresisting and permanently to “wave” their minds, the results are often unsatisfactory. In education the passive attitude is hopeless.

The problem of learning how to think is, then, first of all one for the learner himself to solve. Perhaps this little book may be read by some high school and college pupils who are dissatisfied with the narrowness of their teachers, disappointed that they cannot come into contact with more stimulating minds. Ah, but narrow-mindedness and stupidity have lessons to teach, too. Sometimes it is better not to be influenced unduly by the wise: there is a certain tendency to swallow their conclusions whole. Many people accept Emerson’s theory of compensations at face value because it is Emerson’s, who would grin cynically at the same idea propounded by Dr. Frank Crane.

All our heroes should be honored distinctly this side of idolatry, if we are to think for ourselves. Of course we adapt them to ourselves in any case. “Every philosopher has his own Kant,” Henri Bergson is said to have remarked once, when Kant’s authority was invoked against some teaching of his own. We know how Jesus is made to argue for both sides of every question. He turned water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana, we are told. Yet Sheldon’s clerical hero walking “In His Steps” thought it incumbent upon him to destroy the saloons.

It is not the truth which makes one free, but the self-discovered truth. Yes, it might be replied, but the important things have already been found out. We know how the strainers after novel truths are reduced to paradoxes which they display with pride in their mere contrariness.

Here there are two replies to be made. In the first place, the truth which one laboriously digs out for himself may be either old or new. Or it may be both: the ancient idea, as it is discovered by one who lives in the modern world, fits properly into his own environment. It is no longer Plato’s thought or Aristotle’s, but the new thinker’s. If it is true that there is nothing new under the sun, it is also true that there is nothing old. I am not what I was yesterday. Neither is the street which runs beside my house. Certainly there can be no exact replica of Plato or of any Platonic idea in the United States and in the twentieth century.

I would not seem to say that the truth is any more true because it contradicts old ideas. We are justified in pouncing upon every paradox to discover how many fallacies the glitter may hide. The paradoxical writers are chiefly valuable because they do make us examine their thoughts carefully. It does us little good to have the conventional ideas repeated, even when they happen to be true. We are not easily tempted to analyze them unless we are naturally of a skeptical disposition. But when the ancient idols are rudely brushed aside, we are aroused by the noise of the crash. We rush up, perhaps to punish the delinquents, perhaps to examine the gods on our own account.

Some, of course, feel that falling upon the iconoclasts is answer enough. There have always been people able to answer ideas only with blows. But the men and women who have it in them to think are likely to pick up the shattered pieces of the idol, to determine for themselves if it is worth the trouble of cementing together. If it has once been truly broken, of course it can never be the same again. Perhaps the bits of metal must be melted down to be cast into a new form.

Just at present there is a great deal of argument, mostly excited, about the question: Is war a necessary evil? This is not an “academic” matter. Upon our answer depends our attitude to the League of Nations, disarmament conferences, military training in the colleges, and various other matters. As usual, most people feel qualified to say “Yes” or “No” and to defend their opinions hotly. To answer the question intelligently, a great deal of specialized knowledge is necessary. Is there any fighting instinct in men? Do racial jealousies depend merely upon misunderstanding and ignorance--or is there some deeper basis? Does war assist in the advancement of culture and civilization? Do wars promote manliness or do they weaken the race by killing off the brave and the healthy, leaving the cowards and the defective individuals to beget the next generation?

Graham Wallas says we fight better than our ancestors knew how, for we have better weapons. Yet we are not wiser than they, since we can only let accident and inertia prevent a war from breaking out. We have no positive means of controlling it, of being sure that international peace will be kept.

But we know that many wars have by no means been accidental. For example, Bismarck carefully planned the Franco-Prussian War, making the French appear to be the aggressors. Certainly most of the diplomats of Europe expected the Great War to break out, and comparatively few of them made any attempt to avert it. As for the masses of the people, they cherished blind hatreds. They did not, of course, understand international politics.

Why did the United States join the Allies? Here is a question which our historians have not been able to answer satisfactorily. As a matter of fact, the question as stated is ambiguous. It calls either for causes or for reasons. Perhaps one of the important causes was the clever propaganda spread by the Allies, based to a great extent upon deliberate falsehoods. One reason frequently given during the war was that Germany was led by the godless philosophy of Nietzsche. This is utter nonsense, although it is still repeated occasionally by clergymen and Y. M. C. A. secretaries.

In 1812, when the young republic was faced with the same problem of aggression at the hands of both combatants, the United States declared war against Great Britain, not against France. But there was no definite alliance with the side which had also acted guiltily. Why did things turn out differently in the Great War?

The questions which I leave unanswered my readers may, if they will, take for exercises. After all, we citizens of the United States are supposed to be able to answer difficult political questions. Often we must decide between two candidates for Congress, both of whom we know to be unfit to hold such an office, on the ground of their attitude for or against the World Court or tariff reduction or some other complicated matter.

The elementary textbooks of economics show that the “full dinner pail” argument in favor of high import taxes is absolutely fallacious. Yet this is relied upon by practically all Republican campaign speakers. Again I am not trying to prove anything--except that stupidity is widespread. Certainly it would be presumptuous and foolish for me to try to settle the tariff question in a single paragraph.

Sometimes, indeed, it seems that Hume was right when he said that “reason has no original influence,” that it “is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” Of course there is room for discussion about the “ought only to be,” in any case. The passions make people do ridiculous things: if the condition is hopeless, as Hume suggests, we need not approve it. (Not that our approval or disapproval would matter, if it were so.)

But the attitude of this little book is not so pessimistic. I prefer to consider reason something more than the art of inventing poor excuses for worse conduct. At least in some few individuals and at some rare times, intelligence is supreme. The implications of such a statement are many. I do not think that it contradicts determinism, the doctrine necessary to the scientific study of psychology that the condition of the mind is fixed by anterior and exterior circumstances. But if we admit that the rule of intelligence is ever possible, we are justified in trying to learn how to think--not merely how to argue.

Wallas says that thought “may start ... without an immediate stimulus of an ‘instinctive’ impulse from the lower brain.” To discuss the matter adequately, we should need first of all to consider the various definitions of instinct. Yet it seems that there is always some sort of stimulus from without. Thought does not arise spontaneously. First there is a more or less unpleasant feeling of incompleteness. In other words, there is a difficulty, a lack of adjustment to one’s environment.

Thus, while we are wearing our gloves and see them on our hands, we do not wonder where they are. But if they are lacking and we remember having started out from home with them, we think at once: Where are my gloves? If we have entered the Order of Jesus and successfully subdued our reason according to the regular system of discipline, we never think: Is there a God? But one who has entered a monastery without fully subduing his ability to think for himself is likely enough to wonder when his sexual impulses trouble him: Is the immortality we are promised sure? Is there indeed a God?

But what shall we say of a monk who is fully convinced that he will enjoy everlasting bliss if he keeps his oath of chastity and is at the same time unable to refrain from fornication? Surely he is ruled by his instincts, not by his reason. Even where religion triumphs, the victory seems to be won by the emotions, not by the intelligence. Often we find a mystical union with God--or with Jesus or Mary, to make the picture of heterosexual relations more definite--standing definitely in the place of the ordinary manifestations of sex.

At best, we cannot rate reason very highly in any description of things as they are. Wallas, defending the originality and the power of thought, yet says that some of the most important steps in the process are unconscious or half-conscious. This means that they are largely uncontrolled, so far as the will is concerned. The Freudian doctrine tells us that complex formations actually develop as a result of emotional suppressions. This much we know, that the ideas lying below the level of consciousness are not arranged in any logical system which the conscious mind can accept. Our dreams and reveries offer proof enough of this.

Flashes of insight, brilliant guesses which we attribute to intuition, demand careful verification. It sometimes happens that a man leaps out of bed in the middle of the night with the feeling that he has made a wonderful discovery. In the morning, he may not remember what it was all about. In this case he is certain that he has missed something extraordinary by reason of his failure to have a pad and pencil at hand. If he has taken notes, however, he is very likely to be disappointed in them. Either they are valuable but yet require much laborious amplification or they are palpably worthless.

Robert Graves explains poetic inspiration thus: “When conflicting issues disturb his mind, which in its conscious state is unable to reconcile them logically, the poet acquires the art of self-hypnotism, as practiced by the witch-doctors, his ancestors in poetry.... On being interrupted, the poet experiences the disagreeable sensations of a sleepwalker disturbed and later finds it impossible to remember how the early versions of a poem ran.”

The important thing for us to consider here is that the poet, even if he considers his work inspired, nevertheless makes corrections in it. Sometimes the defects are small, sometimes they are so great that the whole work is worthless. Any interested reader may see what Robert Graves did with the later drafts--those he could remember, that is--of “Cynics and Romantics.” These he gives in his book On English Poetry in the chapter called “Surface Faults, an Illustration.”

The four stages in thinking, according to Graham Wallas, are preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. The two stages referred to by Graves are illumination (or “self-hypnotism”) and verification or correction.

Perhaps education would be a fair synonym for preparation. For one thing, “the ‘educated’ man can ‘put his mind on’ a certain subject and ‘turn his mind off’ in a way which is impossible to an uneducated man,” as Wallas tells us. In other words, he possesses volitional control. But if education, between inverted commas, means attendance at a university or at least a good school of secondary grade, the statement is only half true. Some self-educated men do lack the ability to concentrate upon an intellectual problem. Others do not. The main difficulty is to know when to stop thinking about a difficulty. When is it truly solved?

When we have found an algebraic X, we can test it, usually without any trouble. But sometimes the solutions which flash upon us are not so easily tried. For example, I may discover some important new principles of government. Yet, not being a professional politician, I have no way of introducing even a slight innovation. Shall I test my discovery by its conformity to the laws of political science? But there is no such science, in any strict use of the word. Well, I may write a book explaining my discovery. Thus I should be following the course of Plato, when he came to the conclusion that the philosophers should rule the state.

Putting one’s ideas into a writing which is published often brings about its verification by others. Einstein worked out his theory of relativity and tested it as well as he could. Yet his own tests are not considered nearly so important as those made by certain astronomers and physicists soon after his theory was made public.

Illumination is the only one of Wallas’s four stages which cannot easily be controlled. Yet many poets and thinkers have been able to use alcoholic beverages and even narcotic drugs to good advantage. If the ideas won’t come, sometimes there is nothing to do but wait.