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 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS
 
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 PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
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 A 
 DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN GRIER HIBBEN, Ph.D., LL.D. 
 
 Stuart Professor of Logic, Princeton University 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 NEW YORK : : : : : 1911 
 
 .5 b 'i O J
 
 Copyright, ioii.bv 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published April, igii
 
 
 tSTo 
 MOSES TAYLOR PYNE 
 
 A FRIEND FOR WHOM 
 MY PREJUDICE NEEDS NO DEFENCE
 
 
 73 
 
 O 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 ESSAY PAGE 
 
 I. A Defence of Prejudice i 
 
 11. The Philosophy of Opposition ... i8 
 
 III. The Paradox of Research .... 36 
 
 IV. On Responsibility 52 
 
 V. The Whole and the Part 68 
 
 VI. The Gospel of Might 84 
 
 VII. The Dialectic Imagination .... 103 
 
 VIII. The Art of Thinking 119 
 
 IX. The Vocation of the Scholar . . . 139 
 
 X. The Superfluous in Education . . . 154 
 
 XI. Secondary Strains 168
 
 I 
 
 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 
 
 'IIT'HAT is prejudice ? Is it always some- 
 thing unreasonable ? Is it to be re- 
 garded necessarily as an intruder among the 
 more sober activities of the mind ? Is it the 
 enemy of clear thinking ? Is it the counterfeit 
 of a true judgment? There are many who 
 would give an unqualified assent to these char- 
 acterizations of the nature of prejudice. I am 
 persuaded, however, that there is a certain 
 form of prejudice that admits of a rational de- 
 fence. In this defence, moreover, I am not 
 taking merely the part of a devil's advocate; 
 but, on the contrary, I am profoundly con- 
 vinced that there is a prejudice which has a 
 proper place in the processes of the mind, and 
 must be reckoned with as a natural factor in 
 our thinking, and is not to be regarded in any 
 sense as an abnormal and disturbing element. 
 It is very easy to insist that reason should be 
 free from all taint of prejudice; but no one
 
 2 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 
 
 actually maintains consistently and continu- 
 ously so high an ideal as this in practice. This 
 is not merely a confession of weakness that 
 prejudices will steal into the deliberations of 
 reason despite our most vigilant guard, and in 
 the face of protest and serious effort on our 
 part to drive them out; there is, on the con- 
 trary, substantial ground for the contention that 
 prejudice has a legitimate function to perform 
 amidst the varied activities of the mind. 
 
 A prejudice is not always an unreasonable 
 judgment; it may be merely a judgment which 
 is unreasoned. There is a vast difference to 
 be noted in this distinction. An unreasonable 
 judgment is, of course, contrary to reason and 
 therefore reason itself must repudiate it. But the 
 judgment which is simply unreasoned may prove 
 in the course of events to be eminently reason- 
 able, and as such even in its unreasoned form 
 may serve a most useful purpose in our thinking. 
 
 These unreasoned judgments are absolutely 
 indispensable in the economy of our mental 
 life. If we exclude all judgments which are 
 not accompanied by a satisfactory proof of 
 their validity, a tremendous waste of time and
 
 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 3 
 
 energy would inevitably result. For it is a fun- 
 damental law of our intellectual activity that 
 the processes of reason by which we arrive at 
 certain conclusions often drop out of memory: 
 but the conclusions themselves remain as a 
 permanent deposit of knowledge. The proof 
 which v^e once knew and perfectly understood 
 may be forgotten, but the truth which it served 
 to establish is lodged permanently in the mem- 
 ory. The history of its origin we can no longer 
 recall to mind. It has no recognized ances- 
 try; because much of our knowledge changes 
 form in the processes of assimilation. Its orig- 
 inal setting is forgotten. It appears, therefore, 
 as a detached judgment. It is a part of the 
 stored energy of thought. The truth has be- 
 come ours in a pecuhar sense inasmuch as it 
 has been merged into the very texture of our 
 thought. There may also be associated with it 
 the impression, indefinite and vague though it 
 be, that as a reasoned judgment it once passed 
 muster and received the endorsement of reason. 
 The proof is forgotten, the credentials are lost, 
 but the thought remains. Although for the 
 moment it cannot be justified by the law of
 
 4 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 
 
 sufficient reason, it nevertheless is allowed a 
 place in our world of knowledge. The econ- 
 omy of the thought processes not only warrants 
 such a procedure, but demands it as a neces- 
 sary method in all of our thinking. Any im- 
 pression which we vaguely recognize but cannot 
 justify rationally must certainly be regarded as 
 a form of prejudice. 
 
 We have only to examine our store of knowl- 
 edge in order to discover what a vast amount 
 of it is represented by these remote survivals of 
 past study and travail of mind. The princi- 
 ples of a science, for instance, are remembered 
 and accepted as true, and it may be at times 
 are used by us in some practical emergency; 
 and yet how mysteriously vague and elusive 
 seem the proofs upon which they rest and 
 which we long ago so carefully mastered. We 
 assent with complete confidence to the Newton- 
 ian law of universal attraction; we beheve that 
 the earth moves around the sun; we are in 
 complete accord with the proposition that the 
 square on the hypothenuse of a right-angled 
 triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on 
 the two sides. There is indeed an uncomfort-
 
 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 5 
 
 able familiarity about these utterances. But 
 when we are pressed for a justification of our 
 belief in statements such as these, then all that 
 we can say perhaps is simply that in a general 
 way there is a true ring about them. In other 
 words, they are judgments to which we give 
 assent, but which we cannot prove, — that is, 
 prejudices. And yet the fact that they partake 
 of the hospitality of our minds is not to be 
 regarded necessarily as a weak concession of 
 ignorance on our part, but rather the normal 
 manner in which the laborious processes of 
 past thinking are definitely concentrated and 
 recorded. 
 
 I think we will all recognize a similar mental 
 experience if we stop to challenge our opinions 
 concerning the character of a person or of a 
 period in history. There are a few instances, 
 perhaps, concerning which we have recently re- 
 freshed our memory or which lie, it may be, in 
 the immediate sphere of our especial study and 
 interest that lend themselves to a satisfactory 
 and adequate interpretation. Outside of an 
 exceedingly circumscribed area, however, we 
 find ourselves unable to justify certain esti-
 
 6 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 
 
 mates of character, certain impressions of a 
 sense of value and significance, which we never- 
 theless firmly maintain, and that often with 
 feeling and fervor. We have opinions, possi- 
 bly very pronounced, regarding the character 
 of the Black Prince, or of Poppaea, or of St. 
 Francis; but would it not be difficult, if not 
 altogether impossible, to justify each judgment 
 by an array of indisputable facts which we 
 could summon upon call from the remote 
 stretches of the memory ? If we cannot sup- 
 port our opinions by adequate proof, is it not 
 quite correct to regard them in the light of 
 prejudices ? And if we rid our stock of knowl- 
 edge consistently and thoroughly of all such 
 prejudices, are we not impoverishing our minds 
 for the sake of an ideal which is quixotic and 
 impossible ? The rigor of reason must be tem- 
 pered in this respect to the natural limitations 
 of our mental powers. 
 
 There is still another kind of prejudice which 
 is similar to that just considered, namely — the 
 class of judgments which are born of other 
 minds and which nevertheless we come to 
 appropriate as our own. The reasons in which
 
 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 7 
 
 such judgments are grounded we have never 
 examined ourselves, — possibly v^e could never 
 understand them even if they w^ere presented 
 to us with the most elaborate explanations; 
 and yet these second-hand judgments cannot 
 be eliminated wholly from our body of knowl- 
 edge without an incalculable loss. The pri- 
 mary sources of knowledge are not available 
 to all persons. There are many truths which 
 are supported only upon expert testimony, and 
 which nevertheless become the common prop- 
 erty of mankind. Knowledge comes by reflec- 
 tion as well as by assimilation. And the light 
 that is reflected from another's mind we should 
 never despise; for there is a community in the 
 treasures of thought. We possess far more 
 than we earn. There is a universal liberty of 
 appropriation; for the wealth of knowledge like 
 the bounty of nature is free to all. If, therefore, 
 we exclude these prejudices of reflected opinion 
 from our thinking, no harvest of thought is 
 possible save that of our own sowing and till- 
 ing. And this would signify an appreciable 
 shrinking of our world in all of its dimensions; 
 for there is no thought, however original, which
 
 8 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 
 
 does not rest to some extent at least upon a 
 credit basis. 
 
 There is another class of judgments which 
 merits the name of prejudice. It comprises 
 those judgments whose source may be traced 
 to the subconscious states of the mind. We 
 must acknowledge that much of our thinking 
 is singularly affected by the processes which 
 are connected with the more obscure activi- 
 ties of thought. There is a secret collaborator 
 within, whose contributions do not seem to bear 
 the stamp of our own creation, but which we 
 have no hesitation in claiming and using as 
 our own. They are ours and yet not ours. 
 We must not fall into the error, however, of 
 characterizing these judgments which spring 
 from the subconscious region of the mind as 
 abnormal. They, on the contrary, are the nor- 
 mal reflex of our conscious activities. They 
 may be trusted to the extent that we trust the 
 judgments which we form through the con- 
 scious procedure of reason. The intuitions of 
 a fool are not wisdom. On the other hand 
 however, if the exercise of our faculties at the 
 focal point of consciousness is uniformly true.
 
 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 9 
 
 then it follows naturally that the activities 
 which find play within the penumbral area of 
 our minds will be determined by a like habit. 
 If reason is the controlling factor in the con- 
 scious evolution of our opinions generally, then 
 reason will hold sway within the realm of the 
 subconscious operations; but if on the con- 
 trary we have formed the habit of following 
 the suggestions of fugitive feelings, of whim 
 and caprice, we may be quite sure that we will 
 discover no trace of any oracle of wisdom 
 within the hidden depths of the mind. We 
 are all aware of the activity of these under- 
 currents of reason in our thinking. We reach 
 certain conclusions without being conscious of 
 the process of reasoning connected with them. 
 They are so little a part of us that they 
 seem prepared for us rather than produced 
 by us. 
 
 We find ourselves, for instance, face to face 
 with a new situation presenting problems which 
 we have never before considered. A quick de- 
 cision must be made. There is no time for 
 mature deHberation. It is necessary to judge 
 of the trustworthiness of a man, or of the
 
 10 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 
 
 wisdom of a business venture, or of the prob- 
 able success or failure of a proposed policy. 
 The circumstances force us to make what may 
 seem to be a snap judgment. To state a defi- 
 nite reason as the ground of our decision is 
 ahogether impossible. Behind the decision is 
 a play of subtle forces producing a certain total 
 impression which cannot be expressed in words, 
 and which stubbornly resists all attempts on 
 our part to analyze it. It is not amenable to 
 the control of the reason, nor does it appear 
 in any form which enters as a familiar factor 
 in the usual processes of our thinking. It is 
 a prejudice, if you please — a judgment whose 
 force we are constrained to recognize but whose 
 truth we cannot possibly prove. It is sufficient 
 to provoke action, but it is not adequate to jus- 
 tify itself. In such a case the subconscious ac- 
 tivities seem to conserve the essential elements 
 of our conscious experiences. A man with a 
 wide knowledge of his fellows has accumulated, 
 day after day, year after year, a wealth of expe- 
 rience which becomes a part of himself — not 
 consciously formulated in maxims of wisdom, 
 but assimilated and stored in the deep recesses
 
 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE ii 
 
 of his nature. In every one of us there is a 
 high potential of this kind of unformulated ex- 
 perience. It represents the abiding mood and 
 general disposition of the man; it is a sort of 
 diflfused sagacity which eludes all attempts at 
 definition. However, when occasion offers it 
 becomes at once active and efficient. It di- 
 rects our purposes and gives a final cast to 
 our judgments. We trust it instinctively and 
 yet withal blindly; but who shall say unreason- 
 ably ? 
 
 Our subconscious activities, however, not 
 only serve to mediate a quick decision, but they 
 tend as well to precipitate a delayed decision. 
 One finds himself again and again confronted 
 with a situation wherein he is torn now in one 
 direction, and now in another. The arguments 
 pro and con are nicely balanced. Out of the 
 bewilderment of mind, or even of an agony of 
 spirit, there will come a settling of the will 
 toward one of the rival alternatives, and a de- 
 cided dip of the scales. In such an experience 
 the mind is aware of a certain compulsion which 
 seems to transcend its conscious autonomy. 
 There is a welling up of the subconscious stream
 
 12 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 
 
 from its source in the depths of that buried Hfe 
 which makes every man a mystery to himself. 
 At times the most momentous decisions of Hfe 
 are reached through the mediation of these in- 
 fluences which, while they may not be con- 
 trary to reason, nevertheless transcend it. 
 
 It is then that a man seems to be a pas- 
 sive spectator. Something within acts for him. 
 He finds himself determined by a deep-seated 
 prejudice, as he is constrained to confess, if he 
 ever pauses to reflect upon it at all. Is not 
 one's profession, or hobby, or the cause to 
 which he may give his life, or his absorbing 
 pursuits, a revelation in some degree at least 
 of his most deeply rooted prejudices .? But will 
 any one maintain, however, that he would wish 
 to be freed from all such influences .? Are they 
 not an integral part of his being .? And are not 
 the hidden powers of his nature after all the 
 measure of the man ? 
 
 There is still another function which our 
 prejudices fulfil; they serve to produce the 
 overtones of character. It is the overtone that 
 gives a distinctive quality to sound; and, in a 
 similar manner, character may be regarded as
 
 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 13 
 
 having its peculiar timbre. There is a certain 
 ring about a man's character — it is true or 
 false, pleasing or unpleasing, harmonious or 
 discordant, as the case may be. Reason may 
 determine the tone, but it is the prejudice which 
 often produces the overtone. We love a man 
 on account of his prejudices; we hate him also 
 for a like reason. Strip a man of his preju- 
 dices, and only the commonplace remains. In- 
 dividuality is the projection of our prejudices. 
 Remove the prejudices and the individual is 
 merged again with the crowd. He is only one 
 of many. He no longer appeals to our imagina- 
 tion. There is no more of interest or charm or 
 power about him. Character without a dash 
 of prejudice is insipid. A man without a fair 
 amount of prejudice in his nature always lacks 
 intensity of conviction. There may be a glow 
 of intellectual light, but there is a conspicuous 
 absence of fire and driving power. There is 
 often a certain judicial poise of mind which 
 reveals itself in a tolerance that is an indica- 
 tion of weakness rather than strength. Such a 
 man never lets himself go. He always sees 
 two sides to every question, and can never com-
 
 14 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 
 
 mit himself to the one or the other. Freedom 
 from prejudice is often indicated by a vacil- 
 lation which is pitifully weak and ineffectual. 
 What distinct and striking impression would 
 the character of Carlyle make upon us, were 
 it to be separated completely from his prej- 
 udices ? or would it be possible to read Bos- 
 well's Johnson, if the work were to be expur- 
 gated of everything which savors of a prejudice .? 
 It is also the prejudices underlying character, 
 the prejudices of good sense and of good taste, 
 which often operate as a safeguard against the 
 temptations of the reason; for reason has its 
 temptations as well as the passions — not true 
 reason, but the subtle casuistry of reason. It 
 is easy in the times of extraordinary pressure 
 to convince oneself that the worse cause is really 
 the better, that darkness is light, and light 
 darkness. Then it is that the prejudices which 
 are deeply grounded in our nature tend to 
 steady us. It is possible by plausible sophistries 
 to justify many a course of action wherein our 
 clear vision has been dimmed by the allure- 
 ments of sense, of selfish interests, of greed and 
 ambition. But at the last we shrink from
 
 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 15 
 
 doing the very thing which we had proposed, 
 and which we had rationally defended. There 
 is something within which gives us pause. We 
 are saved in spite of ourselves, even in spite 
 of reason itself. We find ourselves under the 
 restraint of some undefinable feeling, some 
 fancy, a prejudice indeed, which calls to us 
 from the mass of old-fashioned principles 
 which we had thought forever banished, but 
 which the sophistication induced by an inti- 
 mate experience with the world had not wholly 
 eradicated. No power which operates upon the 
 human mind is stronger or more permanent in 
 its control than this prejudice of honor. There 
 are certain persons who seem to be almost per- 
 versely conscientious; their native shrewdness 
 and the stirrings of the egoistic instincts are 
 constantly overbalanced by their sense of hon- 
 esty and the overpowering compulsion of their 
 altruistic impulses. 
 
 It is in the transition times, when reason is 
 obscured by interest or extinguished by pas- 
 sion, that the commanding voice of prejudice 
 enters its caveat to which it is well to give 
 heed, and instant obedience. Prejudice thus
 
 i6 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 
 
 proves in many instances to be a saving grace. 
 It is the instinctive morality after all which is 
 the supreme test of character. There is a cal- 
 culated virtue, a wisdom always seeking to be 
 justified of her children, which nevertheless 
 does not reveal the man as he really is. His 
 innate tastes and propensities, however, the 
 whole body of his unreasoned predilections 
 and impulses which are the natural soil of prej- 
 udice, serve to disclose a man to himself and 
 to others as the very mirror of reality itself. 
 If human nature were devoid of prejudice, the 
 heroics of morality would never be written. 
 That impulsive nobility which is the flower of 
 character is the kind of prejudice which at 
 times flies in the face of reason, following the 
 irresistible lead of its own nature in the scorn 
 of consequence. But is it not in turn approved 
 of reason itself, when we come to pronounce a 
 deliberate judgment upon its moral worth .? 
 The prejudice which outstrips reason may 
 nevertheless draw reason after her in her 
 flight, so that the two may eventually meet 
 in mutual recognition and harmony. The 
 prejudice, therefore, which transcends reason.
 
 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 17 
 
 or which anticipates reason, or which is in 
 secret born of reason, is not, necessarily con- 
 trary to reason, but may be rationally de- 
 fended and justified.
 
 II 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 
 
 ^TpHE University of Berlin is celebrating this 
 autumn, of the year 1910, its one hundredth 
 anniversary. The beginnings of this educational 
 enterprise were intimately associated vi^ith its 
 pioneer professor and rector — the patriot, phi- 
 losopher, and teacher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 
 who by his labors and personality gave to the 
 university the early promise of distinction which 
 through the course of its history it has so brill- 
 iantly realized. There is a phase of the philos- 
 ophy of Fichte which profoundly affected the 
 moral traditions, not only of the university, but 
 of the German people generally, and which 
 should prove exceedingly suggestive to all who 
 may be concerned with a practical philosophy of 
 Hfe. 
 
 This idea of Fichte's I would characterize as 
 the philosophy of opposition. His theory was 
 born of experience, and through bitter years of 
 adversity and deprivation he evolved the car-
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 19 
 
 dinal doctrine of his practical creed: — that, in 
 the making of a man, power is born of oppo- 
 sition; that struggle begets strength; that re- 
 sistance provokes vigor of body and of spirit; 
 and that the very obstacles to progress make 
 progress possible. This was not merely the 
 teaching of the class-room. It became the 
 dominant note of his stirring appeal to the Ger- 
 man nation. By his challenge of circumstance, 
 Fichte sought to arouse his countrymen from 
 the torpor of humiliation which had been in- 
 duced by the disasters of the Napoleonic wars. 
 In his "Addresses to the German Nation" he 
 endeavored to awaken the spirit of the people to 
 an appreciation of the fundamental truth that 
 the distress of the nation is the opportunity of 
 the patriot; and that out of the depths of adver- 
 sity it is possible for a people to arise to a new 
 life of strength and powder. In this he appeared 
 not only as a priest to the national conscience, 
 but as a prophet of the nation's destiny. 
 
 Fichte's philosophy, however, is not for the 
 past alone, nor exclusively for the German peo- 
 ple; but now, after a century, and in reference 
 to the present-day problems of life, we may
 
 20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 
 
 well pause to consider the kindly offices of op- 
 position in the evolution of human capacity 
 and character. Human nature is the same the 
 world over; and, quite irrespective of the age 
 or of the land in which one may happen to live, 
 it remains universally true that man is born to 
 struggle, not only for what he may wish to 
 possess, but also for what he is fitted to become. 
 We are in this world to fight. Under what 
 banner does one draw his sword .? That is the 
 question of chief interest and concern. 
 
 The earliest consciousness of self, the vague 
 impression of one's individuality as distinct from 
 the world about him, comes to the child, when 
 for the first time he becomes aware of the bar- 
 riers of his young life. As he puts forth his 
 hand, and feels the first shock of opposition as a 
 check upon his free activity, then and there he 
 experiences the first throb of personality. The 
 "I," the heart of his being, the inner self, is re- 
 vealed by the resistance of the things or forces 
 about him which he must encounter, and 
 which he recognizes instinctively as something 
 different from the self within, and never to be 
 confused with it. The power of self-assertion
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 21 
 
 is provoked by the very powder which opposes 
 the inner self and seeks to overcome it. 
 
 And later in life there often comes a second 
 awakening to a more profound sense of person- 
 ality, when we find ourselves amidst a storm of 
 opposition which emerges in some significant 
 crisis of our experience. Such a crisis may 
 mark not only a new birth of power, but also 
 a new order of being. It is often a moral 
 renaissance. Under the fire of opposition, in 
 the collision of opinion, a new spirit is quick- 
 ened, daring great things and capable of great 
 things. In an experience of such a nature, 
 one realizes that he is something more than 
 a human machine; that he is not a puppet 
 nor a slave; nor a being, merely to feed and 
 sleep and play; nor a creature caught in the 
 toils of circumstance, but a man and as such 
 bound to recognize the truth that man's voca- 
 tion is a call to freedom and to duty. 
 
 It is well for us if we early recognize the fact 
 that every difficulty in life is a challenge. Is 
 there something within the man to meet it, or 
 not ? That is the question which every one 
 must ask himself. Upon his response his fate
 
 22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 
 
 is fixed. Obstacles suggest opportunities, if 
 they are only regarded in their true light; they 
 put a man upon his mettle, stimulate his en- 
 ergies, strengthen his power of resistance, in- 
 crease his art of resource, and inspire a spirit of 
 courage and determination. If there is any 
 latent power, resistance discovers it. The line 
 of least resistance, on the other hand, can never 
 be the line of development and of progress; for 
 then there is nothing to call forth hidden pos- 
 sibilities. But resistance creates necessarily a 
 demand for new methods and devices, new 
 processes, new inventions, the conservation of 
 forces, and the more considerate direction of 
 effort. 
 
 Not only, however, is progress assured by 
 overcoming resistance, and in spite of it, but 
 resistance itself is an essential factor in prog- 
 ress. No leverage is possible without the re- 
 sisting medium of a fulcrum; so that without 
 resistance it would be impossible for us to get a 
 foothold upon the earth even in the ordinary act 
 of walking. We know that it is not the strength 
 of the arm only, but the stubborn stuff of the 
 bow which speeds the arrow. It is a common-
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 23 
 
 place, moreover, of electrical theory, that a cur- 
 rent of electricity, passing freely through its 
 conducting wire, gives no visible evidence of its 
 existence; but w^hen it meets the resistance of 
 the carbon points, it bursts into light. The 
 illumination results from the opposition offered 
 by the resisting medium, and this generates heat 
 of such intensity as to become incandescent and 
 the bearer of light. In the v^orld also of human 
 affairs and relations, much of the light has its 
 source in the clash of opposing forces, and the 
 struggle to overcome resistance. 
 
 Life is a game, v^e say; and from time to time 
 we urge one another to play the game fair and 
 to a finish. In this reference, we must remem- 
 ber that the zest of a game consists in one's skill 
 to overcome opposition. An opponent who 
 fails to call forth our best endeavor deadens 
 interest in the sport, whatever it may be. A 
 one-sided contest means loose playing and flag- 
 ging zeal; on the other hand, the more skilled 
 and alert an adversary, the more resourceful 
 and aggressive our game. In the contests of 
 life where there is no worthy competitor, there 
 can be but slight achievement and little glory.
 
 24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 
 
 The uphill game, however, which is won 
 through no adventitious aid of favor or fortune, 
 but solely upon its merits and by stubborn per- 
 sistence, brings a glow of satisfaction which is 
 wholly unknown in the triumph of an easy vic- 
 tory. We do not care to play with a novice, we 
 demand the rigor of the game, and free scope 
 for the display of our powers. It is possible, 
 therefore, to meet the opposition which life holds 
 for us, in the spirit of adventure, and ride forth 
 to meet the foe with high hope and the joy of 
 battle in our heart. 
 
 This idea, however, which would represent 
 life as a game, does not adequately portray the 
 true philosophy of opposition. The game con- 
 ception of life emphasizes perhaps too much the 
 idea of victory or defeat; for to overcome in 
 life is not merely to win a victory, but it is 
 rather to gain a mastery over the powers which 
 oppose us. And complete mastery is possible 
 only when we learn the secret of transforming 
 opposing powers into co-operative agencies in 
 serving our needs and ministering to our pur- 
 poses. There is a savage superstition that 
 every foe killed in battle surrenders his spirit
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 25 
 
 of valor and courage to the one who slays him. 
 In some such manner we gain in strength when 
 we can so subdue opposing forces as to make 
 them contributory to our resources of energy, 
 and thus in a sense a part of us. All conquests 
 in life come through the ability to dominate 
 circumstance. We are not passive beings, to 
 become the play of nature's forces about us, but 
 free agents, with the power of initiative and the 
 will to compel these forces to do our bidding. 
 
 The two conquests which are of supreme sig- 
 nificance for us, which we must achieve, or else 
 face inevitable failure in life, are the conquest 
 of knowledge and the conquest of character. 
 Our primal limitation throughout the various 
 phases of experience is that of ignorance. 
 When we find ourselves in any situation where 
 the nature of the forces in opposition to us is 
 unknown, such forces are not only an obstacle 
 to progress, but may prove a most serious 
 danger as well. It is not simply that all effort 
 is obviously futile under such circumstances, 
 but it is quite likely also to be disastrous, inas- 
 much as our very striving may become our 
 undoing. But when the nature of the powers
 
 26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 
 
 arrayed against us is adequately discerned, it is 
 then possible, not only to combat them suc- 
 cessfully, but also to direct them to our obvious 
 advantage. 
 
 The life of every individual may be appropri- 
 ately represented by an inner circle of knowl- 
 edge, placed within a vast outer circle of the 
 unknown. Growth, progress, attainment, all 
 are possible only when there is an ever-in- 
 creasing expansion of this inner circle, tran- 
 scending its own limits, and appropriating more 
 and more of the outlying region within the area 
 of its comprehension and appreciation. 
 
 Undiscovered countries forever lie beyond the 
 confines of our understanding, and we feel un- 
 der compulsion to push forward the frontiers 
 and possess these new lands in the name of 
 knowledge. The process of transforming the 
 unknown into the known is life, education, de- 
 velopment. It is a process essentially of assimi- 
 lation. It consists in making knowledge a part 
 of our own being; for knowledge is not pri- 
 marily a possession, it is a power; it is not a 
 stored mind, it is trained skill; it is not a mass 
 of information, but a living spirit. In this sense
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 27 
 
 we overcome the world, therefore, when we so 
 comprehend the nature of its powers as to make 
 them our own, and compel them to obey our 
 will. 
 
 We speak of "the world in which we live," 
 or of "the world which is about us." These 
 phrases, however, are quite misleading, if they 
 are taken literally. "The world in which we 
 live" is in reahty only so much of the great 
 world, after all, as lives in us; it is that which 
 we understand, and which our knowledge com- 
 mands. It would be truer to fact, therefore, if 
 we should say that the world is in us, rather 
 than we in the world. A million persons live in 
 one and the same city, and yet their various pur- 
 suits, occupations, and professions form dis- 
 tinctly separate worlds of activity and of in- 
 terest. Each one makes his own world; for 
 knowledge creates as well as discovers. Con- 
 sequently one's world is large or small, as one 
 chooses. Its boundaries are determined by that 
 area which one's intelligence controls, and which 
 one has reclaimed from the waste stretches of 
 ignorance. Our world is simply the sphere in 
 which our skill and proficiency find play, and
 
 28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 
 
 in which we speak with authority. The build- 
 ing of such a world is no light task. The pur- 
 suit of knowledge is proverbially difficult, and 
 yet in the struggle for it we are fighting for a 
 kingdom. 
 
 The progress of knowledge is illustrated not 
 only in the development of individual capacity 
 and efficiency, but as well in the history of 
 humanity as a whole. The progress of civiliza- 
 tion has been a continuous process of enlarging 
 the area of commanding knowledge generation 
 after generation. By the toil of the ages, the 
 conquests of human thought have been steadily 
 maintained. Nature, however, does not re- 
 veal her secrets gratuitously; but they must be 
 wrested from her. For nature, like the king- 
 dom of heaven, suffereth violence, and the vio- 
 lent take it by force. Man has invaded nature 
 from many sides, and has established over 
 every conquered region his sovereign control. 
 Even that which lies beyond the range of his 
 observation must sooner or later surrender to 
 the bold attack or patient siege of his subduing 
 thought. There is a whole universe of super- 
 sensible phenomena, a world of the all-per-
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 29 
 
 vading ether, a world of magnetic fields and 
 electric waves, a world of ultra-violet rays, of 
 radio-active forces, of ions and electrons, of 
 ideoplasm and entelechies, a world which eye 
 has not seen, nor ear heard, but which the 
 mind of man has penetrated, and brought under 
 its control. Man possesses the earth, and his 
 title to it is knowledge. His understanding of 
 the laws of nature is a patent of proprietary 
 right over the domain of nature. 
 
 However, mere knowledge of itself is not 
 power. To convert knowledge into power there 
 must be ceaseless activity, and a wise direction 
 of all one's energies. With every effort of will 
 which man puts forth to command and human- 
 ize his environment, there is an expansion of 
 the inner circle of personality as well as that of 
 knowledge. Wherever resistance is overcome, 
 limitations removed, or difficulties transferred 
 into advantages, there is a conquest of char- 
 acter, and the growth of a larger soul in the 
 process of appropriating to itself a larger world. 
 When the circle of life contracts, it is evident 
 that the world is encroaching upon the domain 
 of personality; but when it expands, we may
 
 30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 
 
 be sure that the power of personaHty has as- 
 serted itself, and is in the way of overcoming 
 the world. An eternal warfare is waging be- 
 tween the necessity of nature on the one hand, 
 and the manifestation of the free spirit of man 
 on the other. In this contest man has always 
 the advantage, for he wields the weapon of 
 thought, against which no foe can prevail. 
 
 In his philosophy of life, Fichte regards the 
 material world, the course of its events, its 
 routine of universal law, the every-day circum- 
 stance and commonplace of experience, as 
 merely the stage-setting of the great moral 
 drama of life. "Our world," he says, "is the 
 sensualized material of our duty. What com- 
 pels us to yield belief in the reality of the world 
 is a moral force, — the only force that is possible 
 for a free being." Every historian is bound to 
 regard the world, in a certain sense at least, 
 from this Fichtean point of view; for the end 
 of history is primarily the display of character, 
 and the office of the historian is essentially that 
 of a psychologist who deals with human docu- 
 ments. All institutions — social, political, and 
 religious — represent the objectified will of man.
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 31 
 
 They make permanent record of habits, of con- 
 troversies and conflicts, of received opinion and 
 estabHshed procedure. The events of life are 
 of sHght significance which fail to show the 
 good or evil of human nature, its weakness or 
 its strength, its noble or ignoble strain. Even 
 the work of a man's hands should give some 
 evidence of his quahty of mind, and disposi- 
 tion of heart, some intimation of his purpose 
 and desire, of his struggles, of his defeats and 
 victories. 
 
 The forces of nature with all the material 
 elements of the world subserve therefore the 
 ends of a higher order, the moral order, and 
 they possess for us a final significance only in 
 so far as they directly or indirectly fulfil this 
 function. All things have a meaning for us, 
 according to their relation to man, and man 
 has a meaning according to the position which 
 he is able to take, and maintain, amidst the 
 obligations and responsibilities of his surround- 
 ings. 
 
 For a man's life, however, to have a moral 
 significance, the inner circle of power should 
 expand in such a manner as to enclose within
 
 32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 
 
 its bounds of control other selves as well as 
 other things. The nature of man is such that 
 he does not develop normally in solitude; for it 
 is indeed true that character is formed in the 
 stream of the v^^orld. While man has to con- 
 tend against the forces of nature and subdue 
 them to his will, the supreme test comes when 
 the conflict is with human nature, with another 
 personality like himself, which stands opposed 
 to him, urging equal rights and equal privileges. 
 The gospel of self-assertion therefore must be 
 tempered by a due consideration of others. 
 
 When we urge the rights of freedom and of 
 conscience for ourselves, we are constrained in 
 consistency to recognize similar rights for others 
 whose wills may clash with ours. The rules of 
 the game are made impartially for all comers, 
 and not for any individual or for the few. The 
 rights of an individual, however particular they 
 may be in any specific instance, can be justified 
 solely by proving that they rest upon some uni- 
 versally valid ground. What I can in justice 
 claim for myself, and if necessary should fight 
 to maintain, I must in all honor allow even in 
 my thoughts to any other human being simi-
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 33 
 
 larly situated. Life is not a struggle for ex- 
 istence in which one wins necessarily at the 
 expense of another's loss, where one survives 
 while the remnant is pushed to the wall. This 
 is a poor view of life; it is the animal view of 
 Hfe; it is anti-social, and inhuman. There is 
 no relation between man and man in which 
 some reciprocity of advantage may not be se- 
 cured, and it is our paramount duty to discover 
 the means to this end, and cause it to prevail. 
 The most signal victories in life are gained, not 
 by conquering others, but conquering for them. 
 We overcome, not by excluding our fellow-men 
 from the circle of self-realization, but by en- 
 larging that circle so as to include others within 
 the area of common interests and sympathies. 
 To convert an antagonist into an ally is the 
 consummate art of diplomacy. To conclude a 
 wise treaty between two nations upon terms of 
 mutual benefit is of greater service to one's 
 country than winning a battle, or sinking an 
 enemy's fleet. The supreme victory is that 
 which can be shared. In human affairs the 
 conquests of co-operation alone are worthy. 
 Through them the individual creates for him-
 
 34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 
 
 self an empire of power whose boundaries are 
 determined solely by the number of lives which 
 are brought within the range of his care and 
 concern. One who is conscious that he holds 
 his power in trust will not be likely to use it 
 arbitrarily, or tyrannically, but with justice to 
 all, and to the one end, — that of the common 
 good. 
 
 The relations of life approach the normal as 
 individual progress is identified with some form 
 of social welfare, and the prosperity of one be- 
 comes the good fortune of the many. When 
 the conditions of society, however, tend to array 
 man against man, class against class, and life 
 becomes a veritable struggle for existence, then 
 all co-operative endeavor must cease, which 
 means always an abnormal state of human re- 
 lations, and the deterioration of social and na- 
 tional life. 
 
 In the Germany of Fichte's age, foreign in- 
 vasion and oppression had restricted the free 
 spirit of high endeavor, and had discouraged 
 all effort save that of the bare preserving of 
 one's existence. Fichte felt that under such 
 conditions progress either of the individual or
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 35 
 
 of the nation was wholly out of the question; 
 that co-operative effort would be unavaiHng, 
 and striving for individual advantage would be 
 ignoble. 
 
 These sentiments he expressed to his class at 
 the close of a lecture one memorable day in the 
 year 18 13. He spoke to them with a grim fer- 
 vor concerning the impending danger to their 
 country in the presence of an invading army, 
 and the patriot's duty to respond to the call of 
 need; then he concluded his appeal with these 
 ringing words, which proved to be his valedic- 
 tory to his students, and to the German people: 
 "This course of lectures will be suspended un- 
 til the end of this campaign. We will resume 
 them in a free country or die in the attempt to 
 recover her freedom." 
 
 Such was the spirit of one whose philosophy 
 of life is most strikingly illustrated in his pro- 
 found conviction that "a nation becomes a 
 nation through common struggle."
 
 Ill 
 
 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 
 
 "DECAUSE this is a practical age, and also 
 pre-eminently an age of extensive investi- 
 gation, it might seem that the chief incentive 
 to research should be the possibility of adding 
 to the store of practical knowledge, and thereby 
 increasing the general efficiency of human en- 
 deavor. But, as we read the history of scientific 
 discovery, from the first strivings of primitive 
 thought to the present time, we are impressed 
 with the fact that utility is not always the 
 mother of invention. 
 
 This is the paradox which confronts us 
 throughout the whole course of the develop- 
 ment of scientific thought: — If man questions 
 nature for the purpose merely of wresting those 
 secrets which shall minister directly to his 
 needs or comfort, he fails to attain his end, 
 or he attains it only in a meagre way; but if, 
 on the contrary, he goes to nature with a desire 
 to know her secrets for their own sake, the 
 
 36
 
 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 37 
 
 revelation often brings with it a wealth of 
 knowledge which, in turn, admits of untold 
 applications as regards the practical conven- 
 iences of life. If utiHty is the sole incentive 
 to research, the results will range on a lower 
 level; if, however, utility is forgotten in the 
 passion to get at the heart of things for their 
 own sake, it sometimes surprises us upon the 
 way. And the reason of this is obvious; for 
 utility, in all practical relations, results from the 
 application of certain underlying principles to 
 the concrete problems of life. The more cen- 
 tral and comprehensive the principle, the wider 
 will be its scope of practical application. The 
 principles most fertile in products of utiHty are 
 often most deeply hidden. They lie at the cen- 
 tre of things; it is only the most searching in- 
 quiry which will disclose them. With utility as 
 the sole guide to research, the mind naturally 
 ranges over the surface of things. The more 
 profound levels seem far removed from practi- 
 cal considerations and results. 
 
 The practical, however simple it may be, is 
 always the embodiment of some theory. The 
 telephone, the incandescent light, the electric 
 
 130499
 
 38 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 
 
 car — these are simply the concrete expression 
 of a great electro-magnetic theory. The bridge 
 swinging free and secure over the stream, self- 
 supported by the exact calculation of its stress 
 and strain, is merely a set of mechanical laws 
 objectified. If you start in your research with 
 the sole object of solving a specific problem of 
 practical significance merely, the result, if suc- 
 cessful, is limited in all probability to the special 
 end in view; on the other hand, if you set 
 yourself the larger problem of investigating cer- 
 tain phenomena which have peculiarly attracted 
 your interest for the purpose of discovering 
 their nature and understanding their laws, then 
 the revelation of a comprehensive principle 
 carries with it a whole world of possibilities. 
 While a principle is one, it comprehends the 
 many; for it admits of a multiplicity of appli- 
 cation which knows no limit. Nature thus sets 
 a premium upon the study of her mysteries for 
 their own sake. 
 
 There is such a thing as disinterested knowl- 
 edge as well as disinterested benevolence. There 
 is a scorn of consequence in the intellectual world 
 as well as in the moral which tends in like man-
 
 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 39 
 
 ner to provoke unhesitating approval and ad- 
 miration. There is a persistent spirit in the 
 pursuit of truth, which is dissatisfied as long as 
 there are any unexplored remainders of knowl- 
 edge. When the challenge of the unknown is 
 once heard, there is a restlessness which is im- 
 patient of ignorance, a natural impulse to seek 
 the reason of things, an instinctive curiosity 
 which is not content merely to see, but which 
 must also understand, and which is a perpetual 
 spur to perseverance through all the exactions 
 of laborious research. Whenever there is this 
 inner constraint, there is a largess of spirit 
 which has no thought of placing a patent upon 
 the output of its brain. The glow of discovery 
 is a sufficient reward, to which nothing can be 
 added save the satisfaction that others share it. 
 It has been urged, however, that the natural 
 origin of knowledge is to be traced to the effort 
 which is put forth in order to satisfy some felt 
 need. With the conscious and pressing neces- 
 sities of hunting and fishing, of warfare, of 
 cooking, of domicile and of raiment, man was 
 quick to invent the first crude tools and weap- 
 ons, — a covering for his body, a roof over his
 
 40 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 
 
 head, also utensils in which he might prepare 
 his food and which would prove indestructible 
 when exposed to fire. Later, the pursuits of 
 agriculture and the early beginnings of the arts 
 of commerce and manufacture gave rise to 
 implements and machines representing an in- 
 finite variety of inventive skill. It is, however, 
 a primitive age wherein knowledge arises solely 
 In response to the demand of utility. Truly, 
 a higher stage of civilization is reached where 
 there exists a class, however small, which is 
 able to devote its time and energies to the pur- 
 suit of truth for its own sake. Such a body of 
 men has been styled the "leisure class." It is 
 a leisure not merely from manual labor and 
 commercial pursuits, but it is above every 
 other thing a leisure from the servitude of 
 utility. Such was the class of philosophers and 
 mathematicians in the early history of Greece. 
 Such is the scholarly class in every age, provided 
 the appellation of "scholarly" is justly merited. 
 The scholar, in his devotion to his subject, in 
 his consecration to the high vocation which he 
 follows, must be one who is emancipated from 
 the domination of the utility idea. Then only
 
 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 41 
 
 is he a free man in the kingdom of knowledge. 
 Bacon has said that the end of all scientiHc 
 investigation is "the gathering of fruit" — that 
 is, the turning of all discovery to some practical 
 account. The true produce of the scholar's 
 brain, however, is of the nature of seed rather 
 than of fruit, and that of incalculable variety 
 and possibihty. The utilitarian strain which 
 was the blemish of Bacon's character was like- 
 wise the defect of his scientific method. 
 
 Although the investigator may not have 
 sought that which is useful, yet his discoveries 
 often admit of a direct practical application to 
 the e very-day needs and comforts of life; and 
 so the practical value, which, throughout the 
 whole course of his investigations was never 
 sought and never dreamed of, may become 
 realized, nevertheless, in full measure. The 
 secret of nature once discovered becomes the 
 ground of a new form of reasoning; new minds 
 busy themselves with the practical problems 
 which may be suggested by it. Thus in the 
 wake of the discoverers in pure science follow 
 the inventors. The men who were the pioneers 
 in the field of electricity and magnetism labored
 
 42 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 
 
 with a keen interest born of a constraining love 
 of nature, and with no thought of gain save in 
 the discovery of that knowledge which is its 
 own reward. And yet the work of such minds 
 as Oersted, Ampere, Faraday, and Henry opened 
 the way to the electric telegraph and the innumer- 
 able applications of their electro-magnetic dis- 
 coveries, to the benefit of the race and the 
 progress of civilization. Also, in our own day, 
 the investigations of Hertz in Germany and of 
 Thomson in England, incited and sustained by 
 an interest purely scientific, have made the sys- 
 tem of the wireless telegraphy possible. 
 
 The discoveries of the rays of Lenard, of 
 Becquerel, and of Rontgen were the result of 
 research which was conducted in a like spirit; 
 moreover, they have led to practical applica- 
 tions in the field of therapeutics and surgery 
 which are of inestimable service; nor is the pos- 
 sibility of their further utility by any means ex- 
 hausted. The practical value of a truth is often 
 a kind of by-product which direct research does 
 not reveal. The great science of modern chem- 
 istry has been built upon the foundations which 
 were laid by the genius of Lavoisier, who
 
 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 43 
 
 brought to his labors a spirit fired by a love of 
 nature for her own sake. However, the prac- 
 tical output of those labors has modified essen- 
 tially every phase of our modern industrial, 
 domestic, and commercial life. 
 
 The application of chemical truth to the 
 problems of agriculture and physiology, through 
 the brilliant work of Liebig, was possible only 
 because of the toil of the many whose eyes were 
 never upon the goal either of general utility or 
 personal reward. In a quaint old writing of 
 one of the pioneers in chemistry, Beccher, called 
 the "Physica Subterranea,'* the author speaks 
 of chemists as a "strange class of mortals, im- 
 pelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their 
 pleasure among smoke and vapor, soot and 
 flame, poisons and poverty." "My kingdom," 
 said he, "is not, however, of this world. I 
 trust that I have got hold of my pitcher by the 
 right handle, the true method of treating this 
 study; for the Pseudo-chy mists seek gold, but 
 the true philosophers, science, which is more 
 precious than gold." Such men may be nobly 
 doomed to lives of unrequited sacrifice; but 
 they leave to their fellows what they themselves
 
 44 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 
 
 never possessed, — the means of increased wealth, 
 health, comfort, and power. 
 
 If utility were the sole incentive to research, 
 that most admirable of all graces, the patience 
 of hope, would often fail; for the practical 
 value of knowledge is slow of revelation. 
 Knowledge, to be practically available, requires 
 in many cases to undergo an aging process. 
 The new wine of truth also needs the touch of 
 time. The most beneficent ends are often so 
 remote that they can be disclosed only after a 
 long series of discoveries, which lead up to 
 them by a natural sequence, but which afford 
 in the process of their unfolding no intimation 
 whatsoever of their ultimate utility. When the 
 utility is not obvious in the first stages of an 
 investigation there is need of a deeper incentive, 
 so that research may not be abandoned in a 
 moment of discouragement. And discourage- 
 ment will come very soon if no evidence of 
 practical results is forthcoming. 
 
 It is to be observed, also, that the utility of 
 any portion of knowledge depends, in many 
 instances, upon its combination with other por- 
 tions. Alone, it is barren. It has no utility in
 
 TPTE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 45 
 
 itself. But it may contribute certain elements 
 which, in collocation with others, make for util- 
 ity of singular value. Darwin, in the line of his 
 own investigations, has drawn attention to the 
 fact that utility in most cases depends upon the 
 co-ordination of various elements which are 
 separately useless. It frequently happens in 
 other fields also that the labors of many minds 
 must be brought together in order to produce 
 practical results of any real significance and 
 value. The solitary toilers may not be able to 
 discern any promise of utility in their separate 
 labors. Their particular contribution is only a 
 fraction, after all; and yet, nevertheless, it may 
 prove to be an essential part of a combined 
 whole whose resultant effects may possess prac- 
 tical value of a high order. The efficiency of 
 the methods of physical science and ultimately 
 the application of its results to practical affairs 
 have been increased incalculably through the 
 brilliant speculations in pure mathematics of 
 men who knew not the language of utility. 
 Others, however, are able to combine their re- 
 sults in such a manner as to give a practical turn 
 to considerations primarily theoretical.
 
 46 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 
 
 The inventor stands at that point of advantage 
 where many lines of discovery converge. The 
 several independent results he is able to unite 
 and embody in a new machine, a new method, 
 or a new process. Many inventions appear as 
 the outcome of collaboration; the co-workers 
 are not always contemporary; the lapse of 
 time alone may serve to efface their memory. 
 Seldom known and less often appreciated, they 
 nevertheless through their patient efforts con- 
 tribute those essential elements of knowledge 
 without which the inventor's skill would surely 
 fail of success. We are accustomed to think 
 of the inventor as commanding the forces of 
 nature to do his bidding. He, however, is not 
 dealing directly with the forces of nature, but 
 rather with the ideas which other men have 
 formed of these forces, which they have so in- 
 terpreted that they can be made plain and be put 
 into words and reduced to the expressions of law 
 and formula. The inventor is not merely engaged 
 in the task of fitting part to part of a machine; 
 he builds with rarer material. He is building an 
 idea which is a composite. The elements which 
 enter into its texture are the thoughts of men.
 
 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 47 
 
 It is to be noticed also that a mind exclusively 
 bent upon the idea of utility necessarily narrows 
 the range of the imagination. For it is the 
 imagination which pictures to the inner eye of 
 the investigator the indefinitely extending sphere 
 of the possible, — that region of hypothesis and 
 explanation, of underlying cause and controlling 
 law. The area of suggestion and experiment is 
 thus pushed beyond the actual field of vision. 
 But, if utility is the sole end of research, the 
 scope of imaginative inquiry is thereby nar- 
 rowed. There is no comprehensive sweep of 
 the thought, no power of divination, no com- 
 pelling fancy. Whatever fails to show a face 
 value of utility does not arrest and hold the 
 attention. Significant facts and relations are 
 overlooked. The by-ways of knowledge are left 
 unexplored in the hot pursuit of the immedi- 
 ately useful. But where there is absorbed and 
 sustained interest in an object of research for 
 its own sake, the imagination broods over its 
 tasks with a delight and passion which tend to 
 provoke the hidden truth. 
 
 In the prevailing tendency in certain quarters 
 to direct research accordins: to the lead of 
 
 o
 
 48 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 
 
 utility, there is a vicious theory of education 
 which is being urged to-day with all the en- 
 thusiasm of a new gospel: "Teach the child 
 that all knowledge can be disposed to some 
 useful end. Cultivate early the habit of look- 
 ing for the practical worth of everything that 
 he learns, and let the student of later years 
 bear constantly in mind that knowledge is 
 power.'* Such is the doctrine of a bread-and- 
 butter theory of pedagogy. But why push the 
 child out into the current which tends to draw 
 every one into its precipitate flow ? In this age 
 of materialistic drift, the idea of practical values 
 and utility considerations need not be taught, 
 nor even mentioned. The fact is, it cannot be 
 escaped; its influence is all-pervading, inevi- 
 table. While it is undoubtedly true that the 
 student should be interested in the subject which 
 he is pursuing, let us not, however, confuse as 
 some have done the two radically distinct ideas, 
 of an interest in a subject for its own sake, and 
 an interest in the practical utility which it may 
 possess. It is possible, and indeed absolutely 
 essential in my opinion, that the student's 
 interest should be stimulated directly by the
 
 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 49 
 
 rich material which certain subjects present; 
 and so the thought be withdrawn, to some ex- 
 tent at least, from the exclusive consideration 
 of present or future apphcation of the knowl- 
 edge which he seeks to the practical affairs 
 of life. 
 
 It is true that knowledge is power; but this 
 should not be held out continually to the student 
 as an alluring bait. Knowledge can compel 
 homage and devotion without stooping to offer 
 a bribe, or to cry her wares in the street. There 
 are, moreover, certain indirect uses of knowledge 
 which can never be consciously in the thought 
 of student or teacher during the actual process 
 of instruction. They are too subtle, too far- 
 reaching in their effects, too complex, too cu- 
 mulative for any one to define and name, and put 
 into the form of a maxim or rule. They can- 
 not be specified and pointed to as the obvious 
 rewards of industry in the pursuit of truth. 
 They constitute not so much the results which 
 knowledge can attain as the atmosphere which 
 knowledge permanently creates — the finer flavor 
 of thought, the sound reason, the true judg- 
 ment, and the sane appreciation, which are the
 
 50 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 
 
 marks of a richly stored and accurately trained 
 mind. He who lacks in these particulars fails 
 to realize the full measure of his possibilities. 
 And yet it often happens, strangely enough, 
 that this added power in a man's life is missed 
 simply on account of his restricted inter- 
 ests, and his impatient haste to acquire only 
 that kind of knowledge which may seem to 
 him at the time to be of some obvious use 
 and advantage in the efficient direction of his 
 energies. 
 
 This, then, is the paradox of knowledge that 
 he who regards knowledge as his servant is 
 never completely master of it; but whoever re- 
 gards himself as the servant of knowledge, he 
 alone is master in the world of thought. There 
 can be no higher standard of intellectual attain- 
 ment, or a more alluring reward of research 
 than that which is expressed by the old Greek 
 author, Isocrates, in his appreciation of Athens 
 and the part which she has played in the his- 
 tory of thought: "So far hath our city passed 
 beyond the rest of men, both in thought and 
 speech, that her disciples are become their teach- 
 ers; and she hath made the name of the Greeks
 
 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 51 
 
 seem no longer to be the name of a race, but 
 of knowledge. They rather are to be called 
 Greeks who share our training than they who 
 share our descent."
 
 IV 
 ON RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 ^T^HERE is much loose and confused thinking 
 about the nature of responsibility. Not 
 only are there innumerable instances of persons 
 holding positions of trust who are evading evi- 
 dent responsibilities, but also more particularly, 
 of those who would seek to justify themselves in 
 such a course. The latter are like the figures in 
 Nast's famous cartoon of the Tweed Ring, who 
 are all standing in a circle, and each one point- 
 ing aside with his thumb to his neighbor as the 
 responsible person. It is the old story of the 
 other man. There are many circumstances in 
 life where it is convenient to shift the respon- 
 sibility upon some one else; and whenever one 
 sets himself to defend a convenient course of 
 action, he does not always see straight and think 
 clear. Even though he may succeed in con- 
 vincing himself, nevertheless if in this process 
 there is any element of self-deception, he is 
 perilously near the danger line. 
 
 52
 
 ON RESPONSIBILITY 53 
 
 There are no fallacies so subtle as those 
 which insinuate themselves into our reasoning 
 at a time when our interests are involved. To 
 play the role of judge and of special pleader at 
 one and the same time is an impossible task. 
 Therefore when we seek to free ourselves from 
 the burden of responsibility in any situation, we 
 must be peculiarly on guard, that we do not 
 allow ourselves to become ensnared in the toils 
 of those artificial distinctions and plausible ex- 
 planations which when stripped of their verbal 
 dress appear in their nakedness as contemptible 
 subterfuges. 
 
 One of these convenient ideas which serve as 
 a kind of natural anaesthetic to conscience is the 
 belief that any responsibility which is divided is 
 thereby lessened. Responsibility, however, can 
 never be dissipated by diffusion. The director 
 of a corporation may content himself with the 
 comforting thought that where many are jointly 
 responsible, his share of the common obligation 
 after all cannot be regarded as very serious. 
 And in this idea there lies a very fundamental 
 error. For responsibility is by its nature some- 
 thing intensive and not extensive. It can be
 
 54 ON RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 divided among many, but it is not thereby di- 
 minished in degree. When by the ordinary proc- 
 esses of arithmetical division, however, one 
 number is divided by another, the result is only 
 a small part of the original amount. It is al- 
 ways a lessening process. But the idea of re- 
 sponsibility cannot be expressed in any such 
 quantitative terms. Dividends can be divided 
 into separate parts, but not responsibility. Re- 
 sponsibility can never be conceived in the light 
 of a magnitude. It belongs to the class of things 
 which, when divided, each part is equal to the 
 whole. 
 
 Responsibility in this respect is like pleasure 
 which, when shared, is not lessened, but the 
 rather increased, as Bacon long ago pointed out. 
 The same quality, also, we find in the rewards of 
 honor, or of fame it may be, which come to the 
 many who have served in a common cause and 
 rejoice in a common victory. Thus the glory of 
 the whole is each one's share. It can be divided 
 among many without loss. So, also, the appre- 
 ciation of beauty in nature or in art shows no 
 diminishing returns, although the number who 
 experience the joy of it may be increased with-
 
 ON RESPONSIBILITY 55 
 
 out limit. This, also, is the characteristic feature 
 of responsibiHty. Parents share the respon- 
 sibihty of their children, but the complete re- 
 sponsibiHty and no half measure of it rests upon 
 each. The director of a bank or an insurance 
 company shares the responsibility of his position 
 with his colleagues on the same board; but the 
 shared responsibility is not a per capitum por- 
 tion, but the whole. 
 
 This is not a new doctrine; it comes to us 
 with an immemorial sanction. But it seems 
 to have been forgotten in recent years. "My 
 share of the responsibility is but slight," is a 
 common phrase which may be heard on all 
 sides at the present day. If one would thus 
 seek to minimize his sense of obligation as re- 
 gards that which may be placed in his keeping 
 as a trust, he should not forget that his share 
 of responsibility is not a part, but the whole, 
 undiminished and untransferable. He may 
 have others associated with him, it is true, but 
 his individual responsibility cannot be shifted 
 upon them. He must meet it in the full rigor 
 of its demands, and regard himself as though 
 alone in the discharge of his duties.
 
 56 ON RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 There is also the fallacy of the delegated 
 responsibility. It is impossible for one at the 
 head of large business interests, for instance, 
 to give his personal attention to every minute 
 detail. He finds himself naturally compelled 
 to delegate much of the work of supervision 
 and of administration to others who act in the 
 capacity of his deputies. Otherwise the busi- 
 ness of Hfe would be impossible. This is in- 
 deed a commonplace of every-day business 
 routine. But because some one else may as- 
 sume the responsibility, he who deputizes it is 
 not wholly relieved of it. He passes on the 
 duty of actually performing some specific work, 
 and yet the obligation still rests with him not 
 to do the task, it is true, but at least to see that 
 it is done. We cannot afford to ignore the 
 common-law judgment hat the act of the agent 
 is the act of the principal. We cannot take it 
 for granted that the mere transfer of respon- 
 sibility to another assures a satisfactory dis- 
 charge of all the duties which it involves. We 
 do not dare to shut our eyes to the fact as to 
 whether such duties are fulfilled or not, on the 
 ground that the responsibility now rests upon
 
 ON RESPONSIBILITY 57 
 
 another and not upon ourselves. It is his 
 responsibiHty, but it is also ours. A person 
 who is at the head of a large business enterprise 
 cannot be omnipresent or omniscient; but he 
 is responsible for the kind of men who are his 
 partners in responsibiHty, and also for the 
 atmosphere which pervades his business, for 
 the general morale of the service, for the dis- 
 cipline that is enforced, for the prevailing 
 policy and method pursued, and for the spirit 
 and tone which characterize all departments, 
 however various they may be. Division of 
 labor is not a dissipation of responsibility. He 
 who is responsible for a particular task is re- 
 lieved of that responsibility only when there is 
 evidence that the given work has been done. 
 The head of a corporation should devise cer- 
 tain methods by which such evidence can be 
 regularly forthcoming, so that when any cog in 
 any wheel may chance to slip, the fact may be 
 at once apparent at the central seat of respon- 
 sibility. 
 
 There is, of course, such a thing as a serial 
 responsibility, as I would style it, that is, where 
 a number of persons in turn assume the re-
 
 58 ON RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 sponsibility for a certain task, each contributing 
 his share to its accomplishment, and then pass 
 on the full responsibility to some other. This 
 is illustrated in the sending of a registered 
 package. Each one in the series does his part 
 in the process of forwarding it, and receives a 
 signed acknowledgment that another has re- 
 lieved him of his particular duty and of all 
 responsibility connected with it. The ordinary 
 business of life, however, cannot always be so 
 nicely adjusted. Responsibility appears more 
 often in an indefinite and diffused form, in 
 which many persons are involved, and no one 
 at any time carries the full burden alone. 
 There is no way of escaping responsibility of 
 this kind as long as we remain within the area 
 of its pervading power. We dare not hang 
 about the outer edge of this region, hoping to 
 reap the possible rewards, and yet think to 
 evade all blame or loss in the event of untoward 
 results. There are many who thus endeavor 
 to hold their course along some such imaginary 
 line, so that they may shrewdly keep within it 
 to share the honor or dividends which may 
 accrue, and yet be able to swerve to the outer
 
 ON RESPONSIBILITY 59 
 
 side of it whenever the area within may become 
 the storm-centre of indignant protest and re- 
 crimination. 
 
 Again it is often urged that we are in a 
 measure relieved of the responsibility of an act, 
 when such an act is a customary procedure in 
 the business, professional, or social circles in 
 which we may happen to move. " Everybody 
 does it,'* it is said, "it is the usual practice; 
 then why should I be overscrupulous concerning 
 that which general usage has sanctioned as per- 
 missible ? " Such is the argument. And yet 
 responsibility at the last analysis must be rec- 
 ognized as an individual matter. No man's 
 responsibility can be judged in the light of 
 another's. Custom does not make right. The 
 low level which the morale of a guild or of a 
 profession sometimes reaches is due to this very 
 fact, that no individual sees his peculiar re- 
 sponsibility in such a light that he is willing to 
 break the bond of custom by protest or by 
 practice. It is not easy to be independent 
 under such circumstances, but that does not 
 make it any the less imperative. Responsi- 
 bility is not lessened merely because it may
 
 6o ON RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 entail extraordinary courage and sacrifice. We 
 do not justify ourselves in the failure to meet 
 evident obligations by the plea that circum- 
 stances and conditions are too much for us to 
 cope with. The convenient, the comfortable, 
 and the easy-going are not the symptoms which 
 usually form the diagnosis of responsibility. 
 
 There is another fallacy which many fall into 
 of securing freedom from responsibility by the 
 assumption of a convenient ignorance. A can- 
 didate, for instance, may not choose to know 
 the detail of method and of policy pursued by a 
 campaign committee in charge of his interests. 
 The members of the committee in turn deem it 
 wise to have him kept in ignorance. It is gen- 
 erally understood that whatever happens, he 
 is to know nothing about it. The comforting 
 theory is that no responsibility can attach to a 
 person concerning an act of which he is igno- 
 rant. This is doubtless true, provided he is not 
 purposely ignorant. A person may not be held 
 responsible for failure to see some obvious cir- 
 cumstance when his eyes are shut; but he is 
 responsible for his eyes being shut when they 
 ought to be open.
 
 ON RESPONSIBILITY 6i 
 
 There are men who know that certain results 
 cannot possibly be accompHshed without cer- 
 tain definite means being used, and yet con- 
 sent weakly to profit by these results on the 
 ground that they do not know explicitly the 
 character of the means used to attain them. It 
 is a lame excuse. We are responsible not only 
 for that which we see and hear, but also for 
 that which may be implied in the things seen 
 and heard, and which we are compelled to 
 recognize as the necessary consequence of them. 
 It is not merely the actual situation in which we 
 find ourselves, but also the logic of such situa- 
 tions that must be interpreted and judged by us 
 as to the measure of our responsibility for them. 
 It must be remembered that the very ground of 
 our responsibility is the presupposition that we 
 are in complete possession of our reason. How 
 absurd therefore to narrow the range of respon- 
 sibility by excluding the obvious inferences 
 which the reason of any man of ordinary intel- 
 ligence must surely recognize. If a campaign 
 committee, for instance, expends large sums of 
 money, it stands to reason that the one in whose 
 interests it has been raised must know that
 
 62 ON RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 revenues are not created by magic. Merely to 
 choose not to know is to ignore a definite re- 
 sponsibility and thereby assume an indefinite 
 one. It is like signing a blank check to an 
 unknown order and for an unknown amount. 
 The man who would rather not know what his 
 friends are doing in his behalf should be held 
 to strict account for his voluntary ignorance. 
 No one can afford to have things done for him 
 which he would scorn to do or be afraid to do 
 himself. 
 
 There is also a very common feeling that any 
 one may repudiate all responsibility in a given 
 situation, if he will only declare forcibly and 
 loudly enough that he does not regard himself 
 as in the least responsible for the same. He 
 may insist that he will wash his hands of the 
 whole matter; but there are certain stains that 
 cannot be thus removed. The hands may be 
 washed; but they may not be made clean by 
 the process. There is a ceremonial purity 
 which does not penetrate beneath the surface. 
 How often men justify themselves, when 
 feebly yielding to the prevailing opinion of the 
 many associated with them in some position of
 
 ON RESPONSIBILITY 63 
 
 trust, by the ready excuse that after all the 
 majority must rule. It is true that the major- 
 ity must rule; but it is equally true that the mi- 
 nority often must fight. A mere verbal protest 
 followed by a quiet acquiescence is not sufficient 
 when honor or honesty is the issue. An un- 
 compromising attitude of opposition may have 
 to be maintained until the court of last appeal 
 is reached; that court may be a board of di- 
 rectors, or the stockholders, or public opinion, 
 or in the regular course of legal procedure even 
 the Supreme Court of the United States itself. 
 Responsibility often demands a fight to the fin- 
 ish. In that case, compromise is cowardly. 
 
 We are responsible for our silence, for our 
 inertia, for our ignorance, for our indifference — ■ 
 in short, for all those negative qualities which 
 commonly constitute the "dummy" directors — 
 those inconsequent personages who would enjoy 
 the honor and the perquisites of their office with- 
 out allowing themselves to be unduly burdened 
 with its duties and cares. The president of a 
 corporation or a superintendent does not assume 
 the responsibility vested in its board of directors; 
 he merely represents that responsibility. And
 
 64 ON RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 when they would implicitly assign all sense of 
 their personal obligations to his keeping, they 
 not only put themselves in a position to be easily 
 fooled, but actually offer a ready temptation to 
 him to fool them. They are thus doubly rep- 
 rehensible; for the neglect of duty on the one 
 hand, and on the other for extending a virtual 
 invitation for some one to use them as tools for 
 unlawful ends. Not only the wreck of a busi- 
 ness, but the wreck of a human being must be 
 laid at their door, who by a splendid capacity 
 for negligence do thus expose another to the 
 play of the most subtle temptations which can 
 be conceived. 
 
 There is also the mistaken notion that we 
 may escape certain responsibilities simply by not 
 assuming them. There are some obligations, 
 however, which we do not dare to refuse, and 
 which indeed it is not possible to refuse. We 
 have no choice in the matter. We cannot say 
 In truth that we have no responsibility, for in- 
 stance, for the general decency and good order 
 of the community in which we live merely be- 
 cause we have chosen to keep out of the village 
 politics, and therefore, not being on the bor-
 
 ON RESPONSIBILITY 65 
 
 ough council or the board of health, it is none 
 of our business if the laws of nature, of man, or 
 of God are violated. It must be remembered 
 that responsibilities of such a kind are not 
 assumed by definite choice, but belong to us 
 whether we will or not. Certain responsibili- 
 ties we do not choose; they choose us. If at 
 times they seem to us vague and indefinite, it 
 becomes our duty to make them definite through 
 some effort on our part. We are held to ac- 
 count not merely for doing the obvious duty 
 that circumstance may urge upon us, but also 
 for creating the circumstance which may give 
 rise to a wholly new set of duties. We are not 
 only responsible for lending our service to the 
 cause which has a rightful claim upon us, but 
 also we may be responsible for the establishment 
 of a cause to serve. We are responsible for 
 the very fact, if indeed it be a fact, that our re- 
 sponsibilities in life are so few and so slight. 
 If we choose to carry the lighter burden, it is 
 not a matter of felicitation, but one for our most 
 serious personal concern; for an irresponsible 
 person is always defective in some respect, either 
 in body, mind or character.
 
 66 ON RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 There are those moreover who imagine that 
 in certain relations of Hfe there can be devised 
 some natural substitute for the sense of respon- 
 sibihty. It is possible, of course, to estabhsh a 
 set of automatic checks upon an employee's 
 activities of such a nature as to reduce his per- 
 sonal responsibility to a minimum. Any fail- 
 ure in the performance of his duties is at once 
 mechanically discovered by the various systems 
 of time-clocks, bell-punches, cash registers, and 
 the like. This is very well in all cases where 
 the labor is that of simple routine. Mechanical 
 activity can be checked by a mechanical device. 
 Not so, however, as regards those duties which 
 demand a higher order of capacity — such as 
 that of sound judgment, a fine sense of dis- 
 crimination, and the power of resourceful initia- 
 tive. In all such matters there can be no sub- 
 stitute for the responsible personality. Man 
 is a responsible being because of this very ele- 
 ment of free activity in his nature which no 
 mechanical contrivance, however ingenious, can 
 ever gauge. We are all so completely depend- 
 ent upon the integrity, fidelity, and efficiency of 
 our fellow-men in the more complex relations of
 
 ON RESPONSIBILITY 67 
 
 life that we must at times, and often the most 
 critical, trust them implicitly. We do not pro- 
 ceed far in any undertaking without being 
 aware that we are holding another responsible, 
 or that some one is holding us responsible for 
 those inevitable duties which arise out of the 
 relations of man to man the world over. If a 
 man would escape all responsibility he must 
 place himself wholly outside of the relations of 
 life, for life is responsibility. As we have seen, 
 responsibility remains with us even though we 
 may ask others to assume it; we share it with 
 others, but our portion is the same; when we 
 turn our backs upon it, we find it still facing us; 
 we flee from it, and however far it may be, we 
 behold it waiting for us at the journey's end.
 
 V 
 
 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 
 
 ^T^HERE is a common fallacy which is due 
 to a misapprehension of that familiar 
 axiom, "the whole equals the sum of its parts." 
 We imagine that this is true in every sphere 
 of experience, but it is not. If our thought is 
 concerned with magnitude, lines, or surfaces, 
 and if it is a matter of indifference as to the 
 order in which one relates the separate parts, 
 then the simple axiom holds; but otherwise 
 we run into all kinds of error and absurdities. 
 A watch ceases to be a watch when you have 
 merely the separate parts before you. The 
 sum of them will not mark the minutes and 
 hours. The collection of parts is not the watch. 
 For no chance arrangement of parts can pro- 
 duce a mechanism; it is not the sum, but the 
 ordered connection of the parts which makes 
 the watch, the engine, or the machine. And, 
 in the case of an organism whose parts are 
 held together and co-ordinated by the mysteri- 
 ous bond of life, can we say the whole is equal 
 
 68
 
 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 69 
 
 to the sum of its parts ? Try the experiment; 
 analyze the plant, dissect the animal, and then 
 essay a summation of the parts. We soon dis- 
 cover that it is an irreversible process. Either 
 dissection kills that which it investigates, or 
 that which it investigates is dead already. A 
 living whole is never discovered by a mere put- 
 ting together of its parts. Goethe long ago 
 exposed this folly: 
 
 " Wer will was Lebendigs erkennen und beschreiben 
 Sucht erst den Geist heraus zu treiben, 
 Dann hat er die Theile in seiner Hand, 
 Fehlt, leider! nur das geistige Band." 
 
 The end of all knowledge is the discovery 
 of this "vital bond," the grasping in a multi- 
 plicity of details the one idea which is the living 
 principle of their connection. The discovery 
 of facts which are not yet put together to form 
 a whole is not knowledge. It is preliminary to 
 knowledge; but to know means to interpret 
 the accumulated facts, and to interpret them 
 is to relate them to some significant whole. 
 There are many to-day who insist that the 
 investigator in the natural sciences, in political
 
 70 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 
 
 economy, in psychology, should be solely a com- 
 piler of facts, and that the man of theory should 
 give way before the man of facts; for the fact 
 is certain, the theory is uncertain, the fact is 
 born of reality, the theory is spun out of mind. 
 But every fact, it must be remembered, illus- 
 trates some theory, of w^hich it is a particular 
 instance. To understand a fact, there must be 
 an appreciation of its relation to the universal 
 truth which it reveals, and with which it is 
 united by its unseen but "vital bond." The 
 isolated fact, indeed, apart from its setting, has 
 no meaning. The hand severed from the body 
 is no longer a hand. The brain in the jar of 
 alcohol is not a brain; it was once the centre 
 of thought and feeling; it is now only a speci- 
 men; as a part of the organism it was every- 
 thing, as a whole in itself it is nothing. Much 
 1 exact scholarship gains the letter but loses the 
 I spirit of knowledge, because, while collecting 
 I the facts, it fails to comprehend how they hang 
 I together, or what they mean in the light of a 
 larger whole. 
 
 On the other hand, if one part, however in- 
 significant, be rightly interpreted, it will dis-
 
 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 71 
 
 cover the whole. One drop in the test-tube, a 
 single act of disloyalty in a friend, a glance of 
 the eye, a gesture, a word too much or a word 
 too little, and the whole story is told. The 
 astronomer only needs to see how the arc 
 begins to round in order to construct the com- 
 plete orbit. The theory of reasoning rests 
 upon this simple principle, that things are so 
 bound together that a part may disclose the 
 whole, as, when one picks up a single link, the 
 entire chain comes with it. The prophet, for 
 instance, is not one who in some mysterious 
 manner sees into the future. It is the present 
 into which the eyes of the seer must penetrate. 
 He predicts the future only so far as it is 
 wrapped up in the present. As Leibniz once 
 said, "Every present is big with the future and 
 laden with the past." The veil is not between 
 us and the future; it is between us and the 
 present. We, dull of vision, fail to read the 
 signs of the times. The parts we see, but we 
 are not able to divine the whole. 
 
 So also in any group of men, in a clan, a 
 tribe, a society, in church or in state, the whole 
 is more than the sum of its parts. The parts
 
 72 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 
 
 may be seen, they may be counted. We find 
 them in registers, in rosters, in tables of census 
 statistics, and yet the communal spirit which 
 makes for unity and solidarity is unseen. It is 
 the esprit de corps, without which the body dies 
 and returns to its elemental parts. And, even 
 within the still larger range which embraces 
 the circle of mankind in general, the several 
 parts are bound together as members one of 
 another, because they are united in a common 
 ancestry and a common destiny, a common weal 
 or woe. The spirit of humanity makes all one. 
 It has often been said that the great man, 
 the genius or the hero, lifts himself above the 
 ordinary level of mankind, and that he in no 
 sense belongs to the mass, but is as one dwell- 
 ing apart, self-sufficient, fulfilling the law of 
 his own being. But the great man, if truly 
 great, belongs in a peculiar manner to his day 
 and generation; if not, there is no arena 
 wherein his powers may find a natural man- 
 ifestation. No man attains a place in the 
 world's history save through the part which he 
 plays among his contemporaries and in his own 
 setting. He must have the great heart and the
 
 THE WHOLE AND THE PART yj 
 
 great mind himself, and yet his following must, 
 in some measure at least, possess the elements 
 of greatness. No general could ever prove his 
 greatness with a battalion of cowards. The 
 great prophet must gather about him those who 
 have not bowed the knee to Baal; or who 
 would hear his message .? Luther had the Prot- 
 estants, Cromwell the Puritans, Napoleon his 
 Imperial Guard, Washington the American 
 patriots. The scholar writes for scholars; the 
 man of letters for those who possess the respon- 
 sive mind and taste. Behind the great masters 
 of English there has ever been that great body 
 of their fellows who 
 
 " Speak the tongue 
 That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold 
 Which Milton held." 
 
 There is still another fallacy which may be 
 called the genetic fallacy — the mistaken idea 
 that, if we can only trace a thing back to the 
 part which forms its origin, we shall there, in 
 that initial stage, find its complete explanation. 
 This is the day in which the method of evolu- 
 tion prevails throughout every field of serious
 
 74 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 
 
 investigation. Back to beginnings! This is the 
 cry on all sides, whether the investigation be 
 that of an animal, of a religion, or of a form 
 of government. The original part, it is urged, 
 is the key to all subsequent processes of de- 
 velopment. But the original part by itself is 
 never self-illuminating. Even though in our 
 researches we have succeeded in discovering it, 
 we are at a loss to interpret its significance. 
 For much appears in any initial stage which, 
 in the process of development, completely dis- 
 appears; and much lies concealed which, nev- 
 ertheless, contains the promise and potency 
 of all that is to be. It is of the nature of 
 a cause to hide itself. In this respect it re- 
 sembles the Deity — because it too is creative. 
 The complete nature of a cause can be re- 
 vealed only through the whole course of the proc- 
 ess of development which proceeds from it. If 
 every cause manifested itself fully in its earlier 
 stages, then all knowledge would be attained 
 by simple observation, and it would be super- 
 ficial at that; but it is not. You may ask, what 
 is the nature of the seed which I chance to 
 hold in my hand ? I do not know; but I can
 
 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 75 
 
 discover it readily enough. Sow the seed in 
 the earth, let it be warmed by the sun and wet 
 by the rain, let it grow in the light and in the 
 night, then will come a revelation of its nature 
 in fruit and flower. The seed does not explain 
 the plant; rather the plant explains the seed. 
 
 No more is man satisfied with that account 
 of his nature which refers him to his mere 
 beginnings, and traces his line of descent to 
 certain "Simian ancestors of arboreal habit"; 
 or, to go a stage further in this regress, to the 
 primal elements to which his organism may be 
 reduced, the oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, car- 
 bon, and what not, of his ultimate origin. Is 
 man, as we know him, as we know ourselves, 
 satisfactorily explained by such beginnings ^ 
 It must not be overlooked that, in that ele- 
 mental stage, there must have been a potential 
 factor which is not in any one of the original 
 parts but pervades them all, which elevates the 
 dust whence man comes and hallows it, which 
 transforms the beast into the savage and the 
 savage into the civilized man. Call it reason, 
 or spirit, or soul, what you will; it will never be 
 revealed at the beginnings of the process of evo-
 
 76 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 
 
 lution, but at its consummation. Explanation 
 does not look backward to origins, but forward 
 to the final results of the unfolding process. 
 The process of development is a process of rev- 
 elation, but its beginnings always conceal more 
 than they reveal. We must all concede what 
 Darwin pointedly calls to our attention, as 
 though in our pride we needed constantly to 
 be reminded of it, that "man still bears in his 
 bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly 
 origin." Although we may have come from a 
 stock which we share in common with the ape, 
 nevertheless we have come a long way; and 
 although we have risen from the dust of the 
 earth, and to that dust we return, yet the signifi- 
 cant fact remains, that we have riseuy and that 
 for the brief space at least while thought holds 
 sway over our lives we decline to be confused 
 with this dust under our feet, or with the animal 
 which follows to heel, or which mimics our bod- 
 ily movements and gestures as he chatters to us 
 from his cage. 
 
 Mr. Spencer finds the origin of religion in the 
 early superstition of primitive man, the belief in 
 ghosts, the disembodied spirits of heroes, feared.
 
 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 77 
 
 reverenced, and finally worshipped, appeased by 
 sacrifice, praised in song, in dance, and prayer. 
 But, here again, religion also is to be judged 
 not by what it once was, but by what it has 
 become and by what it promises to be. The 
 early superstition does not explain the evolution 
 of the religious idea in its long course of de- 
 velopment through the ages, but the evolution 
 of religion is rather the development of purer 
 forms out of earlier perverted forms; it is the 
 dying of superstition as the seed dies in the 
 earth, generating that which is potentially in 
 it, separating the essential from the unessential, 
 the true from the false, a revelation of the inner 
 significance behind the symbols of religion, of 
 the inner spirit behind its external forms. 
 
 When we trace the course of any series of 
 events backward to their starting-point, we un- 
 consciously interpret the initial stage in the 
 light of all we have gathered by the way in our 
 return to it, and thus we are apt to attribute 
 to the first term of a series a significance which 
 is not its own. As in a mathematical series, so 
 in any series of events, the first term has no 
 meaning whatsoever unless we know also the
 
 78 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 
 
 law of the series, how the subsequent terms are 
 related to the first and to each other in the 
 manner of their formation. For this reason, 
 we say that no history can be written by a con- 
 temporary. The current events show their sur- 
 face significance only. That which is wrapped 
 up in them will be revealed in time, and he 
 alone who can read the course of their subse- 
 quent development is qualified to judge them 
 critically. 
 
 There is another error of judgment to which 
 we are all liable; it is the fallacy of the half 
 truth. This is a substitution of a part for the 
 whole, and resting satisfied with it because it is 
 thought to be the whole. Such a satisfaction 
 proceeds usually from self-deception. It sig- 
 nifies a false mental attitude; and the disas- 
 trous consequence of such a deception is this, 
 that one is content with a fancied attainment 
 when he should be restless with the fever of 
 the chase. The disaster imminent in such a 
 situation is not merely that the half truth is 
 substituted for the whole, but that further in- 
 quiry is suspended, and that which should be 
 a transition stage on the way of knowledge is
 
 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 79 
 
 complacently regarded as the journey's end. 
 Thus we have partisanship in poHtics, bigotry 
 in rehgion, the orthodoxy which regards every 
 differing opinion as heterodoxy, the idealism 
 that is unreal, and the realism which discovers 
 no ideal, the egoism which recognizes no other, 
 and the altruism which dissipates itself in ser- 
 vice of others at the expense of the obligation 
 owing to self. How easily we overlook that 
 fundamental law both of knowledge and of life, 
 the law of complementary adjustment, the fit- 
 ting of the half truth to its other half, so that a 
 balanced whole is the result. We gaze so obsti- 
 nately at the one side of the shield that a shift- 
 ing of the point of view never suggests itself. 
 "The tragedy of thought," says Hegel, "is not 
 the conflict of truth with error, but of truth 
 with truth." 
 
 How, then, is one to know that the whole 
 truth which he thinks he possesses is but the 
 half truth and not really the whole .? Such a 
 discovery comes only to him who has an open 
 mind and a spirit of tolerance. The open mind 
 is ever seeking a new point of view; the tolerant 
 spirit is ever striving to put itsef in a sympa-
 
 8o THE WHOLE AND THE PART 
 
 thetic attitude to opposing opinions, and this not 
 after the manner of a weak concession, but in the 
 interests of a critical inquiry after truth. For 
 suppose, upon a candid examination of an opin- 
 ion which is opposed to the one we hold, we find 
 something which we are constrained to ac- 
 knowledge as true, then are we not warranted in 
 concluding that it is the very portion of truth 
 which our opinion lacks and which is its natural 
 complement ? The adjustment of the one to 
 the other must surely lead us to a deeper appre- 
 ciation of the truth in its entirety. All progress 
 in knowledge has been brought about by some 
 such process as this — a series of successive ad- 
 justments arising out of conflicting opinions. 
 How many controversies in religion, in politics, 
 or in philosophy have resulted in the revela- 
 tion of a larger truth than either side alone had 
 maintained. The moment any controversy ap- 
 pears to be so one-sided that the truth is wholly 
 with the one and error is wholly with the other, 
 our interest in it immediately ceases. It is in 
 clash of opinion that truth is provoked; audit 
 may well happen that the one who traverses 
 our convictions may be not so much an an-
 
 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 8i 
 
 tagonist as a collaborator in the field of 
 research. 
 
 Moreover in a philosophy of Hfe which is cal- 
 culated to produce any deep and permanent sat- 
 isfaction, one must learn to see things as a 
 whole, and not in the isolation of their detached 
 parts. Life has many compensations which 
 the whole story reveals, but which the sepa- 
 rate incidents here and there not only tend to 
 conceal but actually to contradict. It is only 
 when the case is all in that a true verdict is 
 possible. Then it is that we come to see that 
 things which are different need not be neces- 
 sarily opposed. When immediate observation 
 fails to disclose the complementary part, we 
 grow impatient, and although resolute in action 
 we nevertheless become cynical in spirit. It is 
 well to remember, however, that it is only in 
 the long run that events begin to shape them- 
 selves into a connected whole, and the experi- 
 ences of life show an emerging harmony and 
 unity. But in the processes of the long run 
 our staying powers are put to a sore test. We 
 demand an immediate demonstration of the end 
 in the beginning, of the whole in the part. In
 
 82 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 
 
 developing the full round of truth, however, 
 the time element must be reckoned with, and 
 we dare not overlook its supreme significance. 
 Weary with waiting, we often magnify a partial 
 truth out of all proportion, and seek to build 
 upon its foundations in fancied security and 
 confidence; or else the same partial truth we 
 repudiate altogether as wholly false merely be- 
 cause without the maturing and tempering of 
 time it seems inadequate, unsatisfying, impos- 
 sible. The laws of logic as well as the natural 
 dictates of common-sense demand a delibera- 
 tion of judgment which will refuse to accept a 
 plausible truth too readily, or to discard too 
 summarily that which may appear at the first 
 glance false and unprofitable. There is a bal- 
 ance of mind which wisely avoids these extremes, 
 seeking the truth in patience, testing the old 
 and tolerant of the new. 
 
 It was Spinoza who insisted that life must be 
 viewed as regards its deeper problems suh specie 
 cBterjiitatis. And what Spinoza had in mind 
 was simply this, that the missing part which 
 serves to make whole the scattered fragments 
 can never be adequately supplied in the mere
 
 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 83 
 
 course of human events and the round of years; 
 but that something which transcends the hap- 
 penings of time must find a place in our phi- 
 losophy of life. The transitory is not self-ex- 
 planatory, nor indeed can be. Its significance 
 is disclosed only in the eternal complement 
 which completes the broken parts. In this 
 sense every truth concerning human affairs and 
 human destiny is partial, and awaits the great 
 revelation.
 
 VI 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 
 
 ^ I ^HE philosophy of Nietzsche is the procla- 
 mation of a new gospel — not the redemp- 
 tion of man, but his extinction. Man as a 
 species is to be displaced by a new order of 
 creature, the superman which is to be. Niet- 
 zsche's philosophy is a diatribe against all exist- 
 ing social conditions and conventions which 
 tend to perpetuate the race of mankind. Man 
 as we find him to-day is a conspicuous failure. 
 He can develop nothing better along the old 
 lines. There must be a new type. And this 
 new type of man is to be characterized by com- 
 plete freedom from the limitations of duty 
 either to his race or to his God. This superior 
 representative of humanity is to be made pos- 
 sible by removing this greatest of all obstacles 
 to human progress, namely, the ordinary con- 
 siderations of morality. Morality paralyzes the 
 spontaneity of nature; therefore man's impul- 
 sive powers should not be restrained by any 
 
 84
 
 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 85 
 
 uncomfortable burden of obligation and re- 
 sponsibility. The activity of the superman 
 must find its free and natural scope in a sphere 
 which lies far " beyond good and evil." 
 
 Nietzsche recognizes but one virtue, that of 
 strength; but one vice, that of weakness. Hap- 
 piness he defines as the feeling that power is 
 increasing, that resistance is being overcome. 
 The sole pleasure in life is the ecstasy of an 
 overcharged and surging will. The compel- 
 ling motive to activity is not the will to live, as 
 Schopenhauer so persistently urged, but rather 
 the will for power, the will to prevail and to 
 dominate. Nietzsche declares, moreover, that 
 life gives no such thing as true contentment; 
 for power is insatiate and always reaches forth 
 to secure more power. Man's spirit is restless 
 if it is not consciously growing in strength and 
 progressing in power. Therefore, it is of the 
 very nature of man to surpass himself. Instead 
 of the gospel of love there is the gospel of might; 
 instead of the spirit of obedience there is the 
 cry of protest; instead of the grace of humility 
 there is the arrogance of pride; instead of self- 
 sacrifice, self-assertion; instead of the kindly
 
 86 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 
 
 offices of sympathy, the grim struggle for pre- 
 eminence; instead of the recognition of man as 
 a brother there is the determination to treat him 
 either as a foe or a tool to further selfish ends. 
 
 Of all the virtues to fall under Nietzsche's 
 condemnation, that of sympathy receives his 
 most stinging scorn. He insists that this weak 
 sentiment of sympathy has always been and 
 always will be an obstructive force in the nor- 
 mal development of humanity; for sympathy, 
 he declares, is not only a waste of strength, but 
 it serves at the same time to divert the natural 
 energies of human effort into channels which 
 are economically unproductive and socially dis- 
 organizing. According to this prophet of the 
 "new dawn," it is exceedingly significant that 
 "vigorous eras, noble civilizations, see some- 
 thing contemptible in sympathy, in 'brotherly 
 love,* in the lack of self-assertion and of self- 
 reliance." 
 
 Moreover, in the new era which he heralds 
 Nietzsche maintains that the natural law of sur- 
 vival must be given full and unobstructed play. 
 Instead of the complex machinery of hospitals 
 and asylums whose particular offices are the
 
 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 87 
 
 arrest of the forces of nature in cases of impaired 
 constitutions and chronic maladies, there should 
 be given to these forces free course in sifting the 
 strong from the weak. The skill of the physi- 
 cian should be devoted to the conservation of 
 the superior types of humanity on the one hand, 
 and on the other to the art of relieving society 
 of its hampering burdens through the stern but 
 eminently humane processes of euthanasia. The 
 limits of the development of the race have been 
 reached for the very reason that the fundamental 
 law of development, the struggle for existence 
 and the survival of the fittest, has been neu- 
 tralized by the weak affections of pity and of 
 kindness. 
 
 The distances which separate men from their 
 fellows must be emphasized. To make men 
 equal is to reduce them all to the dead level 
 of mediocrity. The pious effort to elevate the 
 masses is as contrary to nature as it is futile, 
 and futile for the very reason that it is con- 
 trary to nature. Develop a few strong types; 
 let all else be sacrificed to that end. 
 
 In Nietzsche's code the morality of duty, of 
 self-sacrifice, of sympathetic consideration is
 
 88 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 
 
 the morality for slaves; for the man of noble 
 breed and noble destiny there must be a com- 
 plete emancipation from the trammels of 
 moral compulsion. His impulses should be 
 unrestrained, his purposes unconfined. He 
 must be free, free as the beast that ranges the 
 forest for his prey, as unconcerned, as undis- 
 turbed by any sentiment of pity or of fear, as 
 disdainfully indifferent to the cry of pain and 
 the impulse of mercy. Thus the great man, 
 great in power and in possibility, competent 
 and self-sufficient, worthy to be the progenitor 
 of the race of superman, or to become the 
 superman himself, shall know no law, but shall 
 be a law unto himself. He shall be under no 
 compulsion save to strive for the pre-eminence 
 to which nature has ordained him. For him 
 other men, other lives are means to develop 
 his powers and manifest his glory. Such a 
 being is a "transition and a destruction." 
 "There is ice in his laughter." "He is hungry, 
 violent, lonely, godless; thus the lion's will 
 willeth itself. His is the courage of hermits 
 and eagles. He seeth the abyss, but with pride. 
 He seeth the abyss, but with eagle's eyes; he
 
 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 89 
 
 graspeth the abyss with eagle's claws; such is 
 his courage." 
 
 Thus Nietzsche describes the lion and the 
 eagle in man, that wild instinct of power 
 which morality has tamed and the conventions 
 of life have degraded to the ineffectual modes 
 of propriety and custom. According to his 
 creed it is better to be a brute than an ordi- 
 nary man, doomed to dulness. It is better to 
 cherish and develop our brute inheritance than 
 to be steeped in the dreary commonplaces of 
 morality. 
 
 Who is my neighbor ? Nietzsche answers, 
 *'Your work is your neighbor." And he adds 
 that the man who loves his neighbor as him- 
 self must have an exceedingly poor opinion of 
 himself. The most imperative need of the age, 
 therefore, is a "transvaluation of all values"; 
 that is, the kind of conduct and of character to 
 which mankind has mistakenly attached value 
 and indeed supreme value, must be superseded 
 by new standards, by new customs and tra- 
 ditions. The value emphasis must be placed 
 upon those very qualities of temperament and 
 disposition which the teaching and practice of
 
 90 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 
 
 the centuries have summoned man to suppress 
 and to beat down under foot. It is not merely 
 that "time makes ancient good uncouth," but 
 that the very idea of w^hat is good has been and 
 is fundamentally abnormal and grotesque — con- 
 trary to the entire economy of the universe, 
 wherever that economy has not been perverted 
 by the artificial conditions created by man. Hu- 
 man nature has been corroded by"moralic acid,'* 
 as this iconoclast of virtue strikingly puts it. 
 
 In this code of new values, power alone is 
 virtue; the will to win, and to win at all costs, 
 the only disposition worthy of praise and 
 emulation. The measure of success will then 
 be the sole standard of conduct. Whatever 
 prospers will be proved right; whatever fails, 
 wrong. What one can do will be the only limit 
 of what he may do. The supreme obligation 
 of life will be the duty to forget that there is 
 any such thing as obligation. 
 
 The Dionysian view of life which Nietzsche 
 so eloquently advocates — the free play of fancy 
 and feeling, delight in the joy of living, follow- 
 ing the lead of the impulsive will — this appeals 
 to many in our day particularly who crave an
 
 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 91 
 
 unrestrained freedom to be and to do and to 
 get whatever the wild impulse of nature may 
 suggest. They would not express their phi- 
 losophy of life quite as crudely and as nakedly 
 as this prophet of the superman. They would 
 shrink possibly from acknowledging even to 
 themselves their repudiation of the customary 
 morality of their day; nevertheless they order 
 their lives after the manner of privileged char- 
 acters who have done with the old-fashioned 
 idea of duty and its claims upon them. They 
 are not of the herd, and they do not propose 
 to be handicapped by the petty obligations 
 which the common run of mankind must as- 
 sume. They believe that somehow success 
 carries with it a charter of freedom, if not of 
 license; and that a moral code can be made 
 to order, peculiarly adapted to the needs and 
 purposes of the individual after^ the manner of 
 all his other possessions. 
 
 It is indeed a very common opinion that the 
 man of genius is exempt from the criticism 
 naturally attaching to the moral delinquencies 
 of the ordinary person. He is not like other 
 men, and therefore his extraordinary powers
 
 92 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 
 
 entitle him to extraordinary consideration. If a 
 man*s public life merit praise and fame, his 
 private life, which may deserve in itself public 
 censure, should nevertheless be relegated to the 
 shadows of silence. The greatness of the per- 
 son sanctions the cha acter of his pursuits and 
 pleasures. From such a point of view, attain- 
 ment covers a multitude of sins. It is of course 
 very convenient at times to defend in the rubrics 
 of a philosophical cult certain actions which an 
 old-fashioned view of things would unhesitat- 
 ingly pronounce wrong and unworthy. 
 
 The fundamental fallacy in the gospel of 
 Nietzsche and the fallacy in the creed of his 
 following, whether called by his name or not, 
 is this, that, while willing to sacrifice everything 
 for the sake of power, they overlook the sig- 
 nificant fact that the stability of power may 
 depend upon those very elements which are 
 sacrificed in order to secure it. Power may be 
 bought at too dear a price, particularly if we 
 rob ourselves to pay for it. The power which 
 man merely acquires externally, and which he 
 may use as an instrument or as a weapon, may 
 leave the man himself all the weaker for its
 
 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 93 
 
 possession. The power which is detached from 
 the strength of personaHty and in no sense rep- 
 resents the man is the kind of power which 
 will be used irresponsibly and in all probability 
 disastrously. Whenever there is power which 
 is gained in defiance of the clear distinctions of 
 right and wrong, power breeding power without 
 let, the character is left defenceless under the 
 stress of storm, when the strength of the person 
 rather than the power of his possessions is tested. 
 Of what avail is it if one is strong merely in 
 what he has, but weak in what he is .? The cru- 
 cial tests of life measure the man himself — and 
 not that which merely pertains to him. 
 
 Power shines in its glory only when it is tem- 
 pered by wisdom and reverence. Stript of its 
 moral setting and support, it begets the lust of 
 power, and the lust of power develops the 
 brute in man. We admire the brute in the 
 brute, but not the brute in man; for then the 
 man dies that the brute may live. Man may 
 possess the light of reason, but how often, as 
 Mephistopheles says: 
 
 " Er braucht's allein 
 Nur Ihierischer als jedes Thier zu seyn."
 
 94 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 
 
 I do not believe that there can ever be evolved 
 a higher type of being, that myth of the fancy 
 — the superman, by fostering the lowest that is 
 in our present race and ignoring the highest. 
 Nor do I believe that the line of human prog- 
 ress is to return upon itself and draw back 
 to the elemental instincts and appetites of the 
 wild beast whose right is his might, whose de- 
 sire is its own sanction. The power that is 
 bred of impulse, that is developed without the 
 labor of sacrifice and discipline, that knows no 
 law of justice or of honor, that is faithless to 
 friend and cruel to foe, such power creates in 
 itself the forces which make for its own dis- 
 integration and destruction. 
 
 When one is overpowered with the conscious- 
 ness that he belongs to a superior order of 
 being, superior by virtue of his mental endow- 
 ment, his possessions or his position, that per- 
 son is doomed. No enemy without is so great 
 a menace as this foe within. He may fear no 
 foe; but his danger lies in the fact that he does 
 not fear himself. There is always a subtle 
 undermining of power in the idea which one 
 may cherish that fate has elevated him above
 
 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 95 
 
 his fellows in order that they may serve his 
 purposes, enhance his fame, and minister to 
 his vanity. For while he may look down upon 
 them in arrogant pride, sensitive to their ap- 
 plause, but disdaining thejr touch, and while he 
 may hold his head high above the level of the 
 crowd, nevertheless that man stands upon feet 
 of clay. Nietzsche expresses the desire that he 
 may be a light to men, not to lead them but to 
 blind them. Such a light burns inward as a 
 fire, consuming its own sources. It is charac- 
 teristic of the small man to make others aware 
 of their insignificance. But it is the glory of 
 the great man to render others conscious of the 
 possibility at least of their own greatness. In 
 contact with his personality power is imparted 
 by a subtle process of moral induction. 
 
 Put to the only test which could possibly 
 have any significance whatsoever for Nietzsche 
 himself, namely, the test of survival and per- 
 manency, the power which he extols is seen to 
 fall of its own weight. It is self-destructive. 
 It overreaches itself and cannot hold what it 
 would grasp, nor can it sustain itself in the 
 heights to which it fain would rise. The power
 
 96 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 
 
 which is subversive of the moral order of the 
 world, which operates in disregard of the com- 
 mon rights of man and in defiance of the laws 
 of God, which erupts in tyranny and oppres- 
 sion, such power does not tend to produce a 
 new order of being, representing a more perfect 
 type of humanity, or shall we say superhu- 
 manity. 
 
 If the superman is to live his life "beyond 
 good and evil," he will surely not live long. His 
 fellow-supermen will claim a like immunity from 
 moral restraint; they too will be driven by the 
 greed of gain and the lust of power; they too 
 will be without bowels of mercy, implacable, re- 
 lentless, knowing how to hate and to destroy. 
 The possibility of the goodly company of super- 
 men, of the Nietzschean breed, is one which the 
 imagination may well dwell upon with reward- 
 ing amusement, if not with profit. 
 
 I do not believe that it is possible to develop 
 a race in the lines of progress, or to evolve a 
 wholly new race by creating conditions of ex- 
 treme individualism, and causing them to pre- 
 vail. If the individual is to be improved through 
 the sacrifice of the many, the deterioration of the
 
 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 97 
 
 many will inevitably react upon the individ- 
 ual, menacing his attainment and Hmiting his 
 progress. The Burbank blackberry or plum 
 may be propagated by a process of destroying 
 thousands of plants that one may flourish and 
 become the progenitor of a new species. Man, 
 however, is bound to man by different ties. 
 The human species is not represented by the 
 individual as such, regarded solely in the light 
 of his individuality. For the mere individual is 
 not wholly a man. The man is essentially a 
 being whom to know aright and to appreciate 
 at his full significance is to know in the light 
 of the relations which he sustains to his fellows. 
 The real man is the man in his human setting. 
 The detached person whether isolated volun- 
 tarily as the hermit, or involuntarily as the 
 exile, is so far forth less a man. And the same 
 is true in the case where the isolation is effected 
 through the pride of that superior power which 
 delights in emphasizing the distance between 
 man and man. Nietzsche hates above all things 
 the spirit of democracy. He abhors the masses, 
 their murmurings and complaints, their cheap 
 pleasures, their vulgar ills and needs. Let the
 
 98 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 
 
 great man, he would insist, free himself from 
 the crowd, proving his superiority and pro- 
 claiming his disdain. 
 
 It might be well to ask, however, who are 
 the great men of the world, as the world counts 
 greatness ? 
 
 They are the men who in their greatness 
 are in some measure representative. They are 
 not a spectacle for others to admire or to fear. 
 They are in one way and another the champions 
 of the cause of humanity. Their power be- 
 comes a part of the vigor of the social group 
 of which they are members. They are the 
 mind to think, the voice to speak, and the 
 strong arm to act for their moral constituency. 
 
 Throughout the records of history the su- 
 preme manifestations of power have been the 
 instances of concerted action where the indi- 
 vidual feels himself one with his comrades, 
 where shoulder touches shoulder in the fight, 
 and the distinction of the leader is merged 
 in the glory and the claims of his cause. The 
 great man always and everywhere is he who 
 is consecrated to a cause which is greater than 
 himself. The spirit of loyalty tempers his
 
 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 99 
 
 power; makes him wise, just, self-governed. 
 But the spirit of loyalty cannot exist and flour- 
 ish in a nature which has no reverence for any- 
 thing higher than itself. The old mythology 
 had a solid basis of truth in its belief that 
 Zeus fearing that the entire race of mankind 
 should be exterminated came to their rescue, 
 bringing with him reverence and justice, to be 
 the law of conduct, the bond of friendship, and 
 the stability of the communal life. 
 
 The doctrines of Nietzsche have a wholly 
 opposite trend, creating a caste spirit of the 
 extreme sort, driving the wedge between master 
 and man everywhere. In the midst of the 
 democratic institutions of our modern life, he 
 would constitute a mediaeval feudaHsm wherein 
 the mere good pleasure of the over-lord is law 
 to the serf. He would start centrifugal forces 
 at work in society which separate man from 
 man, and destroy the organic centres of sta- 
 bility, — the home, the church, and the state. 
 He would concentrate power and wealth in an 
 oligarchy of superior creatures who know no 
 law but that of their own convenience and se- 
 curity. Nietzsche overlooks the fact, or else
 
 100 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 
 
 in his irresponsible vagaries he ignores it, that 
 human power is of sHght avail if the only ma- 
 chinery to which it can be applied is hopelessly 
 out of gear. 
 
 Nietzsche's message to his age he puts into 
 the mouth of the mythical personage, Zara- 
 thustra, who moves among men but is not of 
 them, who speaks as an oracle, herald of the 
 superman, "strong as the morning sun com- 
 ing from dark mountains," prophet of the new 
 day and the "great noon." His is a mirthless 
 laughter, a cynical joy, a wild wisdom. His 
 happiness is in the terror of the spirit. " Free 
 from the happiness of slaves, saved from God 
 and adorations, fearless and fear-inspiring, great 
 and lonely," such is Zarathustra, Nietzsche's 
 ideal of the hope of mankind, the ideal which he 
 felt that he himself had in some measure real- 
 ized. Zarathustra comes into the market-place 
 from the wilderness and mountains; his mes- 
 sage is delivered and to the mountains and wil- 
 derness he returns. He judges the life of man as 
 one having no part in it. His judgment is con- 
 demnation. He passes through the world as a 
 storm moves over fair fields; in its wake, dis-
 
 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT loi 
 
 may and destruction. For the world's joy, 
 Zarathustra has only a sneer; for its sorrows, 
 scorn; for its frailty, ridicule; for its achieve- 
 ment, contempt; for its hope, a curse. If this 
 is the prophet of the new era, what will its 
 messiah be? Who will restore when all is 
 destroyed ^ 
 
 I do not believe in a new world which is 
 essentially of such a nature that it can be 
 evolved only out of the ashes of the old. If 
 the continuity of the past is to be wholly broken, 
 if all history is to be wiped out, if the old order 
 is to be completely destroyed, what pledge have 
 we of the new ? "One must have chaos within 
 to enable him to give birth to a dancing star." 
 "Thus spake Zarathustra." Beneath all fig- 
 ure and epigram, however, there is this funda- 
 mental idea of Nietzsche's philosophy of life^ 
 that in the old order there is nothing worthy of 
 conservation to form the beginnings of the new. 
 **0 my brethren," says Zarathustra, "not 
 backwards shall your nobility gaze, but forward! 
 Expelled ye shall be from all fathers' and fore- 
 fathers' lands! Your children's land ye shall 
 love (be this love your new nobility) the land
 
 102 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 
 
 undiscovered, in the remotest sea! For it I bid 
 your sails seek and seek! In your children ye 
 shall make amends for being your father's chil- 
 dren. Thus ye shall redeem all that is past!" 
 I must confess that I do not see how the expec- 
 tation of a new world can be rationally justified 
 if the past must be acknowledged a complete 
 and dismal failure. He who despises the past 
 should be naturally sceptical of the future. 
 Any philosophy of life is under suspicion which 
 seeks to destroy and not fulfil the promise of the 
 years that are gone, and which does not build 
 upon the foundation of human nature as it has 
 proved itself to be, but rather upon that which 
 with wild fatuity we may wish it to become. 
 
 If we are to look forward to a new heaven and 
 a new earth — a universe without God and with- 
 out man, where the Zarathustrian race shall 
 flourish, then as this great cosmic drama is 
 being enacted, set to the wild strains of the 
 Dionysian chorus, an inevitable question will 
 arise. Is this a comedy or a tragedy .?
 
 VII 
 
 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 
 
 TT Is no doubt natural, to associate the play 
 of the imagination exclusively with the 
 artistic temperament, and to think that it 
 has no place in the experience of one who is 
 immersed in the busy affairs of hfe and is 
 brought into daily contact with plain facts and 
 prosaic situations. On the contrary, however, 
 there Is a very important function which the 
 Imagination performs in the more sober proc- 
 esses of reason as well as In the flights of fancy. 
 In matters of sentiment, of feeling, of taste, 
 the Imagination appears at play. In the offices 
 of reason it serves quite a different function. 
 It is there the imagination at work. It is the 
 efficient imagination. The phrase, the dialectic 
 Imagination, will express this pecuHar function 
 — that of facilitating the work of the reason in 
 the effort to solve the matter-of-fact problems 
 of life. It is a function which is essentially 
 
 logical. 
 
 103
 
 104 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 
 
 This is the kind of imagination which builds 
 upon fact. It is not merely the plaything of 
 the fancy; it is an instrument of the reason. 
 The business of interpreting the every-day ex- 
 periences of life, and compelling them to serve 
 ends of the greatest efficiency, is an art which 
 in an especial sense is dependent upon the col- 
 laboration of the imagination. The imagina- 
 tion thus acts as the conceiving function of 
 thought. It is the eye of the mind. A fact, as 
 a brute fact merely, is a matter of simple obser- 
 vation. The imagination is the mind's contri- 
 bution to the given fact. No fact by itself is 
 self-illuminating. It is like a diamond which 
 is placed in a dark room. The light of a well- 
 furnished mind must illumine the fact before it 
 will flash back its radiance. It is the inner 
 vision alone which is capable of interpreting 
 what the outer vision merely reports. We some- 
 times have to shut our eyes in order to see. 
 The hidden significance which any fact may 
 possess, its relation to other facts, what it may 
 suggest, its value in terms of the uses to which 
 it may be put, all arise from the activity of the 
 imagination. Every fact — that is, every signif-
 
 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 105 
 
 icant fact — is to the mind so much raw mate- 
 rial, suggestive of indefinite possibihties. It has 
 to be fashioned by the thought. It is to the 
 mind what the block of marble is to the fancy 
 of the sculptor. It must be dominated by an 
 idea — that is, by the imagination. 
 
 A resourceful man in dealing with the every- 
 day facts of experience must be able to picture 
 them in a variety of possible settings and rela- 
 tions. He should possess what I would call 
 the hypothetical instinct — that is, the art of 
 suggesting certain suppositions and of premis- 
 ing their necessary consequences. It is the 
 ability to see the effect in the cause and the cause 
 in the effect. The one who may have this gift 
 is able to perform a series of ideal experiments 
 with the facts in his possession. It is not 
 necessary to put them to any actual test; in 
 all probability it will be impossible or at least 
 impracticable to do so. His imagination, how- 
 ever, can sketch in fancy various probable re- 
 sults, which he will therefore accept or discard 
 as a reasonable working hypothesis according 
 to their promise of rewarding realization. A 
 skill in supposition is merely a phase of the art
 
 io6 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 
 
 of imagination. It is an exercise in applied 
 logic. 
 
 Our body of knowledge is nothing more than 
 an amorphous mass of unrelated facts unless it 
 is touched by the imagination. The fancy gives 
 form to knowledge, relating part to part and 
 part to the whole. It exercises the art of gen- 
 eralship in massing facts in proper order and 
 sequence, and in directing their movement ac- 
 cording to a comprehensive plan. Knowledge 
 must have life also as well as form. Fact with- 
 out fancy is dead. The imagination, therefore, 
 must be summoned in order to give to the body 
 of knowledge the spirit of life. 
 
 In all reasoning the mind puts together its 
 material in some new combination possessing a 
 significance which the various parts taken sep- 
 arately could not in the remotest manner reveal. 
 The ingenious power to work out new combina- 
 tions of old material is the peculiar function of 
 the imagination, which in this manner gives a 
 touch of originality even to the most common- 
 place tasks of life. By the constructive proc- 
 esses of the imagination every form of activity 
 is widened in scope and deepened in efficiency
 
 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 107 
 
 by the brooding thought which sees things in 
 the hght of what they may become. It is the 
 imagination which sees the need and is capable 
 also of devising the means to meet it. 
 
 This provokes necessarily a critical spirit, a 
 spirit of restlessness which chafes under the 
 imperfections of the present because a vision 
 of a better future sways before it. The discon- 
 tent which is resourceful always acts as a spur 
 to the imagination. It is essentially the spirit 
 of progress which discovers the possibility of im- 
 provement and presses toward its realization. 
 An unimaginative people are proverbially un- 
 progressive. They are satisfied with the present 
 because they see no future. "Where there is no 
 vision the people perish." However, the vision 
 which comes to the prophet or to the far-seeing 
 statesman is not merely the chance creation of 
 the fancy. It is not the poet's vision. It is not 
 the outcome of a fugitive thought or a chance 
 suggestion. The imagination which discerns 
 the future is the imagination which sees and is 
 able to interpret the necessary implications of 
 the present. The seer's vision must be founded 
 upon insight; otherwise his foresight can have
 
 io8 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 
 
 no substantial basis in reality. The imagina- 
 tion pictures the future significantly only when 
 the future appears as a necessary consequence 
 of present conditions. It does not merely come 
 after the present; it grows out of it. To see 
 what underlies the present, is to see beyond it. 
 How can we know what is possible unless at the 
 same time we are able to penetrate beneath the 
 surface of what is actual ? Penetration, indeed, 
 is the root of prophecy. The imagination, 
 therefore, cannot swing clear of the reason. 
 Although in a certain sense the imagination is 
 free, yet nevertheless it is conditioned. Its de- 
 pendence in this phase of its activity is upon 
 the guidance of the reason, and that in no sense 
 is a limitation of its real freedom. That is a 
 poor freedom indeed which scorns the lead of 
 the reason, for the fancy which waits upon wis- 
 dom has by no means lost its spontaneity or the 
 spirit of originality. The imagination in its 
 aesthetic ven ures may enter a region where the 
 prosaic circumstances of life and the actual 
 conditions of existence are consciously left be- 
 hind; but throughout this sphere it is the im- 
 agination at play rather than the imagination
 
 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 109 
 
 at work. Even here it might be shown that the 
 play of the fancy must indirectly at least obey 
 those rules of the game which reality prescribes 
 and reason formulates. The unreal world of 
 adventure, romance, or poetry must neverthe- 
 less present a show of verisimilitude. 
 
 My contention is simply that the work of life, 
 however prosaic it may seem to be, calls for an 
 imaginative mind — a mind of vision and yet 
 not visionary, fertile in device and yet withal 
 essentially reasonable, grounded in common- 
 sense and yet not a slave to the obvious, emi- 
 nently capable of meeting the possibilities of 
 the future because appreciative of the signifi- 
 cance of present condition and circumstance. 
 Reason without the imagination is impotent. 
 It may be able to deal with the commonplace 
 and the routine, but it is feebly inadequate to 
 cope with hidden possibilities. It is quite con- 
 tent to follow with the crowd, and to do the or- 
 dinary and the usual. It sees the actual, but 
 overlooks those elements of a potential nature 
 in which the secret of success may be discovered. 
 It moves in the round of habit, but blazes before 
 it no path of progress or way of reform. Its
 
 no THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 
 
 conservatism is a concession to inertia rather 
 than adherencefto principle. 
 
 Custom is the natural anaesthetic both of the 
 mind and of the will. And if a man's imagina- 
 tion is deadened by disuse, he can never think 
 vigorously or see keenly. He yields to the cir- 
 cumstances which confront him, and is not 
 able to overcome the inevitable obstacles or 
 compel them to serve his purposes. He is blind 
 to opportunity and has never heard the challenge 
 of circumstance. He has no desire to invade 
 the regions of the possible. The unimagina- 
 tive mind is the dull mind, plodding and per- 
 severing, it may be, but with no vital touch. 
 It is so dominated by the usual and the or- 
 dinary that it is inhospitable to those larger 
 ideas which tend to provoke its hidden powers. 
 
 The mind not only deals with facts and 
 things, but it has to do with persons as well. 
 To live with men, to work with them, to control 
 and direct them, to understand them, to bear 
 with them, to accommodate oneself to their 
 ideas, requires a special gift which is very inti- 
 mately dependent upon the imagination. It is 
 the art of picturing to ourselves the point of view
 
 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION in 
 
 of the other man and of leading him also to see 
 our point of view. It is an appreciation which 
 is born of sympathy; and sympathy is only 
 a special phase of the imagination. To know 
 the possibilities of men is a higher art than to 
 know the possibilities of things. There is no 
 gift of such incalculable value to one in admin- 
 istrative control as the ability to recognize the 
 coming man, and discount his future efficiency 
 and usefulness. To understand what men think, 
 and especially what they feel, to appreciate 
 their needs and desires, their weaknesses and 
 limitations as well as their strength, requires 
 a power of divination in a consummate degree. 
 To provoke the possibilities of others, there 
 must be some range of fancy within oneself. 
 
 The imagination, however, is not only the 
 instrument of the reason, providing its premises, 
 massing its argument, discovering its proof, and 
 revealing the various possibilities of its appli- 
 cation. It is more than this. It is the mind's 
 support in those long stretches of patient expec- 
 tation, when the predictions of reason have not 
 yet been verified in fact. Imagination is the 
 ally of patience. The intellect has its need of
 
 112 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 
 
 faith as well as man's religious nature. The 
 power to see the thing that must be and to 
 believe in its ultimate fulfilment, 
 
 " To hope till hope creates 
 From its own wreck the thing it contemplates," 
 
 this is the high office of the imagination. 
 
 If, therefore, the imagination plays this im- 
 portant role throughout the whole range of our 
 thinking, the question of its cultivation becomes 
 a matter for serious consideration. It is a prob- 
 lem which concerns not merely the pleasures of 
 appreciation and the delights of the mind, but 
 has a direct and intimate bearing upon the 
 efficiency and success of one's work itself. For 
 this reason, then, there is a far greater need to 
 exercise the powers of the imagination as a 
 preparation for the practical pursuits of life 
 than for the artistic. The artistic temperament 
 is endowed by nature with the imaginative strain 
 and its development will care for itself. But 
 with a mind which is absorbed in affairs, it is 
 far more imperative that the imagination should 
 be quickened and its activity fashioned into 
 habit. It is rather a futile task to attempt the
 
 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 113 
 
 training of one's power of imagination in any 
 direct manner; it is quite possible, on the other 
 hand, to produce and foster an imaginative 
 habit of mind by cultivating certain other habits 
 vi^hich in turn will prove tributary to the end 
 desired. Imagination is a spirit which must 
 be wooed indirectly. 
 
 There is, for instance, the possibility of 
 quickening our powers of observation, not so 
 much as regards the extent and accuracy of the 
 external sense of sight, but rather in respect to 
 the inner sense of interpretation and discern- 
 ment. For it is the peculiar function of the 
 mind's eye to correct the first impressions medi- 
 ated by the senses, to amplify them, and, above 
 all, to apprehend their deeper significance. 
 The vision of thought always transcends the 
 vision of sense. It was no flight of the fancy, 
 but one of the more serious offices of imagina- 
 tive reason which was capable of seeing behind 
 the daily rising and setting of the sun, the com- 
 plete Copernican programme of our solar sys- 
 tem. It is not the genius alone who possesses 
 this gift. The art of seeing beneath the surface 
 and uncovering buried meanings is one in which
 
 114 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 
 
 we all can acquire a skill if we will only take the 
 pains persistently to exercise it. It is the result 
 of habit and discipline. It is no easy task, but 
 the effort, arduous though it may be, is abun- 
 dantly repaid by the result. 
 
 There is still another habit which tends to 
 stimulate our imaginative faculty, namely, the 
 endeavor in the exercise of our memory to re- 
 construct the original elements of an experience 
 rather than merely restate them. The ability 
 to recall facts literally in the same order and 
 relations as one originally observed them illus- 
 trates the lowest order of memory. The man 
 who is a bore usually has a good memory, but 
 he has no imagination. The art of conversa- 
 tion consists in a certain skill of omission as well 
 as that of emphasis. What not to say and what 
 to lay stress upon, the imagination with its se- 
 lective Instinct alone can determine. There is 
 an art of forgetting as well as of remembering. 
 
 There is all the difference in the world be- 
 tween learning a lesson which we can repeat 
 upon occasion and mastering a truth so that it 
 becomes the ready servant of our thought. To 
 assimilate knowledge rather than receive it whole
 
 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 115 
 
 requires some functioning of our imagination, for 
 we must in our thoughts so transform the orig- 
 inal elements of an experience that we can free 
 them from local and temporal color and from 
 the setting of particular circumstance, thus ren- 
 dering them available for our purposes in other 
 situations of a wholly different character. What 
 we learn in one setting we usually wish to use 
 in another, for experience rarely repeats itself 
 in precisely the same manner or in the same 
 order of events. It is, therefore, necessary in 
 the acquisition of knowledge that we should 
 endeavor to grasp the salient features of every 
 situation, determining their true significance by 
 a sifting process which will separate the essen- 
 tial from the non-essential. 
 
 This art of giving a universal significance to 
 a particular incident is due to a subtle alchemy 
 of the mind by means of which the elements of 
 knowledge are transmuted into forms admitting 
 of significant application throughout the whole 
 range of thinking and of action. To acquire 
 this art one should endeavor to cultivate the 
 habit of mastering a principle rather than learn- 
 ing a rule. A principle differs from a rule in this
 
 ii6 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 
 
 respect that the principle can deal adequately 
 with the special case. The exception never proves 
 the rule; it may, however, disclose some funda- 
 mental principle which is capable of explaining 
 the exceptional case. That time-honored say- 
 ing that the exception proves the rule is merely 
 a mistranslation of the Latin proverb, exceptio 
 regulam probat, which should read, — the excep- 
 tion tests the rule. No rule is sufficiently for- 
 tified to withstand such a test unless there is 
 a recognized principle behind it. A rule is a 
 mere order of procedure, and one who has 
 learned the rule is utterly at a loss whenever a 
 strange situation suddenly confronts him to 
 which the rule is not obviously applicable. It 
 is necessary for him to penetrate the disguise of 
 the exceptional case and to discover the funda- 
 mental principle behind it; and this is itself 
 an act of the imagination. 
 
 Also much may be gained in increasing our 
 powers of imagination by acquiring the habit 
 of presenting to ourselves the problem which 
 every significant experience in life suggests, 
 namely, that of economy in adjusting means to 
 ends. How may larger and more valuable ends
 
 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 117 
 
 be secured by a wiser choice of means ? How 
 may present conditions be improved ? How may 
 the traditional mistakes be avoided ? How 
 may we escape from the sway of the common- 
 place ? These are some of the queries which 
 tend to keep the mind alert and open to the 
 possibility of a new order of things. The habit 
 of contriving devices of improvement, or re- 
 sourceful suggestion and progressive endeavor, 
 is a constant spur to the imagination, whose 
 power is increased with every new demand made 
 upon it. Whatever the end of one's activity 
 may be, it must appear first of all in the form 
 of an idea in the mind, an idea which sees the 
 thing that ought to be and compels its realiza- 
 tion. Reason may plan, but imagination holds 
 the torch to light the way, and if a life is to have 
 intelligent direction and successful issue it dare 
 not scorn the lead of the fancy which is born of 
 reason. 
 
 The imagination, therefore, in the especial 
 utility function which we have considered of in- 
 creasing the sum total of life's efficiency, is at 
 the same time not wholly devoid of a certain 
 aesthetical significance. For any labor which
 
 ii8 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 
 
 thought expands and directs according to a 
 dominant idea is, in a sense, a work of art. 
 There is always some one method which is 
 superior in the completeness of its results to 
 any other; there is always a way which is the 
 most direct and most efficacious; there is always 
 a process which gives the most valuable product; 
 there is, in short, about everything, however 
 prosaic and commonplace, an excellence which 
 is ideal; and in whatever sense it is ideal it 
 possesses an artistic value and significance. 
 The craftsman who by the creative power of an 
 idea discovers a hidden possibility in his craft 
 and realizes it in actual form or deed is in that 
 single respect at least an artist. It is the im- 
 agination which suggests these possibilities of 
 excellence, a better for every good, and beyond 
 that a best whose shadow falls across attain- 
 ment as a challenge and an inspiration.
 
 VIII 
 
 THE ART OF THINKING 
 
 'T^HINKING is not an automatic function of 
 the brain as breathing is of the lungs. 
 For there are many persons who do not think at 
 all, and yet manage to exist. Their lives are 
 merely a series of sense-impressions which serve 
 to stimulate certain habitual activities within a 
 confined range of daily routine. And in the 
 case of those whose minds do aspire to the dig- 
 nity of thought, there is an unlimited variety in 
 the method and the manner of the process em- 
 ployed; for thinking has no common programme 
 or procedure. It is an accomplishment which 
 must be attained, each in his own way, and 
 which assumes always a pronounced individual 
 quality. To obtain a mastery of the process of 
 thought and direct it to efficient ends is an art. 
 The very fact that we regard it as such, is itself 
 a decided advantage in our endeavor to attain 
 
 proficiency in its exercise. 
 
 119
 
 120 THE ART OF THINKING 
 
 As a science, thinking has its fundamental 
 laws, its logic; as an art, however, it has no 
 body of set rules which we may learn once for 
 all, and ever after. slavishly and blindly follow. 
 There is no formula for wisdom. The art of 
 thinking requires a command of all the resources 
 of skill and inventive device of which our nat- 
 ures are capable. The true aim of education 
 is to disclose the secret of the art. For educa- 
 tion is not, as many mistakenly believe, a process 
 of furnishing grist for the mill to grind; it is 
 rather the work of constructing and perfecting 
 the machinery of the mind itself, and of impart- 
 ing the art of operating it intelligently as a mas- 
 ter-workman. 
 
 The peculiar task of the teacher is that of 
 informing the mind rather than that of giving 
 it information. The one process prepares the 
 mind for the free exercise of its own activities; 
 the other merely furnishes it with so much to 
 learn and so much to remember. The training 
 of the mind should always be regarded as an 
 end in itself, and never as a means to some other 
 end, however important such an end may be. 
 
 The function of the school is not primarily
 
 THE ART OF THINKING 121 
 
 to prepare its students for college; nor is it the 
 function of the college to prepare its students 
 for business or professional careers. This idea 
 of preparation as the sole end of education is 
 a fallacy which entails most disastrous conse- 
 quences. It tends to induce that lamentable 
 attitude of mind which is always seeking some- 
 thing for the sake of something else. Educa- 
 tion is far more than a preparatory discipline, 
 vague and indefinite in its reach. It must be 
 capable of showing by immediate results some 
 obvious progress in the art of thinking. Noth- 
 ing is so common to-day as this false concep- 
 tion concerning the chief business of school or 
 college life. 
 
 If a boy in one of our so-called preparatory 
 schools should be asked, "What is your object 
 in the work which you are doing day after day 
 at school.?" in all probability he would reply 
 without any hesitation whatsoever — "To get 
 into college." Also if a similar question should 
 be put to any freshman in college, his reply 
 would probably be along the same line — "To 
 finish my freshman year so as to become a full- 
 fledged sophomore." The senior's answer would
 
 122 THE ART OF THINKING 
 
 be no doubt in a like vein — "To finish my col- 
 lege course and get out into the world." The 
 school-boy's aim is to get into college, and the 
 aim of the college undergraduate is to get out. 
 This is most surely a strange anomaly. It is 
 the fundamental error of being willing to put 
 forth effort in daily toil year by year without 
 the remotest conception of what result is desired 
 or is desirable. The eagerness to advance over 
 so much ground merely for the purpose of 
 leaving it behind, and with a complete incapac- 
 ity to appreciate the real test of progress and 
 the true end to be attained, is one of the most 
 common and insidious errors of the day among 
 our students. Education prepares for one thing 
 and for one thing only — the ability to think. It 
 is a pitiable situation when a student is wholly 
 unconscious of the main thing which he is sup- 
 posed to be pursuing. Does his mind work ? 
 Does he know how to use it .? Is there unnec- 
 essary friction here or there .? Does the machin- 
 ery at times seem out of gear .? These are the 
 questions of chief concern. 
 
 Moreover, anything which is so dignified as to 
 be regarded as an end in itself, as the training
 
 THE ARl' OF THINKING 123 
 
 of the mind always should be, is for this very 
 reason of distinctly greater value whenever it 
 eventually comes to be used as a means to 
 attain some other end. The student whose en- 
 deavor is not merely to amass sufficient knowl- 
 edge to pass the entrance examinations for col- 
 lege, but primarily to acquire the art of using 
 his mind so as to produce the greatest possible 
 effect with the least expenditure of effort, he is 
 the one above all others who in my judgment is 
 best prepared to realize to the full the possi- 
 bilities of a college career. The one whom we 
 count illy prepared for college is not as a rule 
 the young man who lacks a book or two of his 
 Virgil or Caesar, but the one who fails to grasp 
 the point of what he studies, and does not know 
 how to go about his tasks in an efficient and 
 masterly manner. The deficiency which can- 
 not be made good is after all the qualitative and 
 not the quantitative one. A method of work 
 counts far more than the knowledge of a mul- 
 tiplicity of facts. A student once made the fol- 
 lowing comment upon a question in an exam- 
 ination paper: "I do not regard this a fair 
 question, because it requires thinking in order
 
 124 THE ART OF THINKING 
 
 to answer it properly." Such a statement be- 
 trays not only a lack of intelligence, but also of 
 a sense of humor as well. 
 
 The problem which usually presents itself in 
 the education of a young boy is this — an un- 
 trained mind, approaching an unknown subject 
 without interest and without curiosity. A prob- 
 lem such as this, wherein all quantities are 
 unknown and all negative, might very naturally 
 be regarded as wholly indeterminate. And yet 
 this is the teacher's problem, and it is one 
 which he dare not regard as insoluble. Ob- 
 viously the beginnings of a solution will lie in 
 the direction of stimulating an interest in the 
 work which must be undertaken. And it is 
 just at this point that a very serious error of 
 judgment is often committed; for in attempting 
 to create such an interest, one's effort may be 
 entirely misdirected. It is not wise to depend 
 solely upon the subject-matter of their studies 
 to arouse and sustain the interest of students. 
 The "Arabian Nights," if written in Greek, 
 could hardly suffice to hold the attention through 
 all the drudgery of the Greek grammar and syn- 
 tax. There is one interest which, above all
 
 THE ART OF THINKING 125 
 
 others, it is of paramount importance to awaken 
 — the student must become interested at the 
 very start in the working of his own mind. In 
 the process of mastering the difficulties of a new 
 subject he must be led to see at once that there 
 are certain mental processes which he can soon 
 learn to perform with facility and also with 
 efficiency. No act is so absorbing in interest 
 as that which we are conscious of doing well. 
 And the art of thinking is no exception. To 
 feel that we can work with skill gives a relish to 
 every task, however difficult it may be. The 
 initial consciousness of power is the beginning 
 and promise of progress. 
 
 A boy's play is often a form of work, and yet 
 he throws himself into it with untiring enthu- 
 siasm and earnestness, because he knows the 
 game and its art. Indeed his pleasure in it is 
 in proportion to his ability to play the game 
 with ease and skill. How long would any one's 
 interest continue in his efforts to learn the art of 
 skating, if his ankles never recovered from the 
 early tendency to wobble, and if progress never 
 passed beyond the first experiences of catas- 
 trophes and bruises ? The pleasure of any
 
 126 THE ART OF THINKING 
 
 sport is evidently in knowing how. We enjoy 
 what we do well. The person who gives up 
 the game of golf in disgust after futile attempts 
 to learn the art of the game has obviously found 
 no interest in the pursuit, for the very reason 
 that his attempts have proved of no avail, and 
 because he has failed to acquire any facility 
 in drive, approach, or put. There is always 
 a satisfaction in the free exercise of any faculty, 
 whether of body or of mind, and therefore it is 
 altogether important that every student should 
 come to regard the art of thinking in much the 
 same way as he has been accustomed to regard 
 skating as an art, or swimming, or golf, or any 
 other game which requires skill and resource. 
 He should be impressed with the fact, more- 
 over, that every pursuit has its own peculiar art, 
 which must be discovered if proficiency in that 
 pursuit is to be attained. There is a method 
 of approach, a point of attack, a correct pro- 
 cedure, which is designated by the phrase, 
 "proper form," and which constitutes in any 
 activity the essential conditions of most efficient 
 and satisfactory results. Correct or proper 
 form in this sense always represents the method
 
 THE ART OF THINKING 127 
 
 of maximum efficiency combined with mini- 
 mum effort, and is attained only through the 
 evolution of a common experience. Thinking 
 also has its peculiar and appropriate form, and 
 the art of thinking consists in acquiring this 
 form of procedure, call it the form of play, or 
 the form of work, as you please. One must 
 understand the technique of his craft. It is fool- 
 ish and short-sighted to give one's time and 
 attention wholly to the matter of that which 
 one learns, and little or none to any inquiry 
 concerning the method which is employed in 
 the process. To know the various devices by" 
 which a mass of bewildering facts may be re- 
 duced to order and system, to discover the trail 
 and follow it to the heart of an unknown region, 
 to command a situation by understanding it, 
 to see the point, to interpret aright what is only 
 implied or suggested, to know where to place the 
 emphasis, to discriminate between what is essen- 
 tial and what is accidental, — this is the art of 
 thinking. 
 
 Much of our thinking is similar to the proc- 
 esses which we employ in solving a difficult puz- 
 zle. There is a universal interest in all forms
 
 128 THE ART OF THINKING 
 
 of puzzles, an interest' which is not confined by 
 any means to the days of our childhood. To 
 solve a problem, to translate a sentence whose 
 interpretation is not obvious, or to perform an 
 experiment in the laboratory, — these are tasks 
 which create the same kind of interest as that 
 which we feel when we find ourselves poring 
 over an absorbing puzzle. The Latin sentence, 
 for instance, is a puzzle, and there are certain 
 well-known devices for disentangling its many 
 knots and twists. No one need feel hopelessly 
 lost in the intricate mazes of the Latin syntax, 
 if only he has learned the art, or shall I say, 
 the trick, which is necessary. When the trick 
 is once mastered, and it is not a diflScult one 
 to learn, then there is a pleasure in the act- 
 ual performance itself of construing sentence 
 after sentence, because of the quiet satisfaction 
 which we all feel in recognizing that what we 
 are attempting is turning out successfully. We 
 will always find sufficient variety in detail to 
 stimulate our interest and not to deaden it. To 
 make such an experience possible, it is abso- 
 lutely necessary to guard against crowding a 
 student's mind, and burdening his memory with
 
 THE ART OF THINKING 129 
 
 a load of unessential material to which he can 
 see no point or bearing. It is foolish and a 
 waste of time and energy to teach him the com- 
 plete Latin grammar at the initial stages of his 
 study. He should have at first only a working 
 knowledge of so much of the grammar as he 
 will need in construing simple sentences. Let 
 him be taught the art of using knowledge as 
 rapidly as he acquires it. The mere process of 
 storing information is not in itself desirable. 
 Bonded knowledge is so much unavailable 
 energy. As one learns the art of using the 
 material at his command progress is assured. 
 On the other hand, to crowd the memory with- 
 out the active exercise of the intellect to accom- 
 pany it, dulls the mind and destroys all interest 
 in any subject whatsoever. The mind, like the 
 body, weakens when it loses the power of as- 
 similating its food. If the student is constantly 
 given something to do, and if he is started in 
 an unknown field with a series of successes, he 
 will gain that confidence which is necessary to 
 sustained interest and persistent effort. 
 
 This does not mean, however, that only 
 those tasks are to be attempted which can be
 
 130 THE ART OF THINKING 
 
 easily accomplished. One must learn also how 
 to overcome obstinate difficulties and to perse- 
 vere through all the tedium and drudgery which 
 attend the early stages of every subject. But 
 the mind must be prepared for the more exact- 
 ing demands by acquiring a facility in dealing 
 with the complete round of elementary methods 
 and processes peculiar to the nature of the sub- 
 ject itself. No one can fight without weapons, 
 nor work without tools. To overcome the 
 difficulties which the labors of the mind must 
 inevitably meet, one must have mastered all the 
 preliminary difficulties of method and proced- 
 ure. He is best prepared to endure the strain 
 of the severer tasks who has already gained j 
 some consciousness of power in commanding 
 the simpler conditions which the beginnings of 
 an inquiry naturally offer. Perseverance in 
 itself is not necessarily a virtue; it certainly is 
 not if we are on the wrong road or if we are 
 going about our work in the wrong way, and in 
 total ignorance of what is necessary for success. 
 It is a great mistake to urge any one to keep 
 pushing ahead in an undertaking when the 
 most valuable service that could possibly be
 
 THE ART OF THINKING 131 
 
 rendered to him would be to lead him back 
 to the very beginning. The conscientious and 
 plodding worker who keeps doggedly at his 
 tasks with little or no results to show save a 
 dulling of the mind and a breaking of his 
 spirit should never be commended for his dili- 
 gence. He is the rather to be regarded as a 
 pathological subject. He needs some expert 
 treatment. The diligence which is ineffectual 
 is like the energy which is expended in a tread- 
 mill detached from any working machinery. 
 There is no output to it — only weariness and 
 disgust. There is no merit in unavailing virtue. 
 There is an error and a most prevalent one 
 that mathematical studies require some pecul- 
 iar and especial talent which if not possessed 
 by native endowment can never be acquired. 
 Here again there is an art which can be ac- 
 quired as readly, I believe, as that of any other 
 subject. The point which should be particu- 
 larly noted is, that, without possessing the secret 
 of this art, less progress can be made in the study 
 of mathematics than in any other subject, and 
 also the region of hopeless confusion is sooner 
 reached. There is no subject, therefore, in
 
 132 THE ART OF THINKING 
 
 which so much depends upon making a proper 
 start, and learning the proper trick and form. 
 If the approaches are securely possessed, other 
 difficulties can be overcome, and that without a 
 loss of interest in the subject. It is impossible ' 
 to discover the art of mathematical thinking by 
 attempting to memorize complete demonstra- 
 tions so that one can reproduce them word for 
 word in a wholly mechanical manner. It is 
 absolutely necessary to understand the signifi- 
 cance of every process which is employed so 
 as to be aware of the mathematical device in 
 attacking the point to be proved, or the prob- 
 lem to be solved; and it must be possible for 
 us also to recognize a similar method when we 
 again see it. As a matter of fact the devices 
 which are ordinarily used in mathematical 
 thinking are not many, nor are they difficult 
 to master. They may all be grouped under sev- 
 eral distinct types, a dozen or more, which occur 
 again and again. When familiar with them, a 
 facility in their use follows readily, and the bug- 
 bear of mathematical studies may be once for 
 all removed. The subject can then be pursued 
 with pleasure and satisfaction; for there is a con-
 
 THE ART OF THINKING 133 
 
 tinual challenge of one's inventive powers, whose 
 exercise, when attended by a fair measure of 
 success, always creates an absorbing interest, 
 and it may be at times a certain fascination as 
 well. 
 
 In a certain class in mathematics there was 
 a student who was most conscientious and plod- 
 ding and yet with it all completely discouraged 
 in his work. One day his instructor asked him 
 concerning his difficulties, and added: "This 
 subject cannot possibly be as difficult as you are 
 bent upon making it; in fact no subject is so 
 hard as you evidently think this to be. You are 
 simply wasting your time, because you are going 
 about your work in the wrong way." This in- 
 cident represents a very common experience. 
 There is a pitiable waste of effort in the most 
 painstaking tasks of some of our students. They 
 have never learned the art of study. This want 
 tends to create difficulties which are not inher- 
 ent in the subject itself, and to magnify those 
 that necessarily pertain to it. 
 
 The greatest possible obstacle to progress of 
 any kind is lack of method. Where, however, 
 the student has learned the secret of making all
 
 134 THE ART OF THINKING 
 
 effort tell, so that there is no unrequited toil, 
 then the question of interest in his work, or 
 of the results that may be naturally expected, 
 or of the progress that he may be making, will 
 take care of itself. Kant has put the art of 
 r- teaching in a sentence: "I do not attempt to 
 
 2 teach my students philosophy, but merely to 
 
 7 think philosophically." 
 
 The consciousness of the ability to use one's 
 I own mind is not of course the sole interest in 
 ^ the life of a student. But it is the initial and 
 central interest nevertheless; and other inter- 
 ests will be found to range themselves about it 
 as a nucleus. It is essential that such an inter- 
 est should be created and maintained at all 
 hazards. Start the beginner on the right road, 
 
 , point him straight and give him his direction, 
 and all else will follow. A curiosity to know 
 the reason of things, a critical discernment im- 
 patient of the irrelevant and the non-essential, 
 an appreciation of the best thought of others 
 and the power to assimilate it, a dehght in the 
 rigor of reason and the conquests of the mind, — 
 all these come to one who has made the most 
 important of all discoveries, that his mind is
 
 THE ART OF THINKING 135 
 
 an excellent working organ which he has 
 learned to guide and control, and whose pro- 
 ductive energy is a continual interest and pleas- 
 ure. The consciousness of intellectual power 
 opens all ways before him and speeds him 
 forward. Many a prospect lures him. He 
 embarks upon many a voyage of discovery. 
 Studies are regarded no longer as a discipline, 
 but as an accomplishment. A restless spirit of 
 curiosity possesses him. The fever of knowl- 
 edge is in his blood. 
 
 On the other hand, no one can become seri- 
 ously or permanently interested in the products 
 of another's mind who experiences no pleasure 
 or satisfaction in the processes of his own. The 
 power of appreciation must have its sources 
 within. A young man in college who was heir 
 to a large fortune was asked by one of his pro- 
 fessors who had been watching his college 
 career with some misgivings: "Why are you 
 neglecting your work as you have been doing 
 ever since you entered college .? You are aware 
 that you are to occupy a most responsible posi- 
 tion in the conduct of your father's estate to 
 which you are the sole heir. Do you not care
 
 136 THE ART OF THINKING 
 
 to have brains enough to enable you to dis- 
 charge your duties in life with ability and pos- 
 sibly with distinction?" This evidently did 
 not appeal very forcibly to the young man, for 
 he rather naively replied: "I can always hire 
 brains whenever I need them." It is difficult 
 to say whether one is the more indignant at the 
 hopeless lack of any concern for the develop- 
 ment of his own mind, or at the complete igno- 
 rance and disdain concerning the true value and 
 dignity of the minds of others which this re- 
 mark implies. 
 
 Of course no art can be learned where there 
 is no earnest purpose to master it. The art of 
 thinking is no light undertaking. There must 
 be some inner compulsion of such a permanent 
 nature that it will prove capable of sustaining 
 interest and energy in the arduous discipline 
 which this art demands. It is not the teacher's 
 function to supply a constant interest, and to 
 be forever vigilant in removing difficulties and 
 overcoming obstacles. His peculiar gift is to 
 free the mind so that it can acquire an inde- 
 pendence of judgment and a fertility of mental 
 resource which are the essential features of a
 
 THE ART OF THINKING 137 
 
 liberal education. While the teacher should 
 not have the full burden of the task of stimu- 
 lating the student's interest and sense of re- 
 sponsibility, nevertheless his is a serious duty in 
 this respect and at the same time an excep- 
 tional privilege. A conspicuous illustration of 
 the power of a teacher to awaken a mind wholly 
 unconscious of itself is given in the life of Glad- 
 stone. As a boy, Gladstone was at Eton for 
 three years; during all this time he gave no 
 evidence whatsoever of talent or of taste for 
 the things of the mind. The following is the 
 account which he himself gives of the intellectual 
 crisis of his life which he experienced in his 
 Eton days: 
 
 **At this time there was not in me any desire 
 to know or to excel. There was a barrister 
 named Henry Hall Joy, a man who had taken 
 a first at Oxford. He was very kind to me, and 
 had made some efforts to inspire me with a love 
 of books, if not of knowledge. Joy had a taste 
 for classics, and made visions for me of honors 
 at Oxford. But the subject only danced before 
 my eyes as a will-o'-the-wisp, and without 
 attracting me. I remained stagnant, without
 
 138 THE ART OF THINKING 
 
 heart or hope. A change, however, arrived 
 about Easter, 1822. My 'remove' was then 
 under Hawtrey (afterward head-master and pro- 
 vost), who was always on the lookout for any 
 bud which he could warm with a little sunshine. 
 It was entirely due to him that I first owed the 
 reception of a spark, the divines parti culum 
 aurcB^ and conceived a dim idea that in some 
 time, manner, and degree I might come to 
 know." (Morley, " Life of Gladstone," Vol I, 
 pp. 29 f.) 
 
 Every school-boy, it is true, is not a Gladstone 
 in the making; nor is every master a Hawtrey. 
 Nevertheless there is always the possibility that j 
 a chance spark may kindle some inflammable | 
 material. To quicken the first flickering flame | 
 of knowledge and thereby enable a student to | 
 possess his own mind — this is the highest at- | 
 tainment and reward of one who would teach I 
 others the art of thinking.
 
 IX 
 
 THE VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 '' I ^HE life of a scholar is something more than 
 a means of livelihood. It is a vocation; and 
 where this is not recognized, the true scholar 
 is w^anting. The scholar is the link between 
 the past and the present; the conservation of 
 knowledge is in his keeping. His office is pri- 
 marily that of an interpreter of truth; at times, 
 however, he may become its priest and prophet 
 as well. He springs from an ancient and hon- 
 orable lineage. He is in line with that illustri- 
 ous company of seekers after truth who have 
 given in every generation an impetus to the 
 thought and progress of the race. 
 
 The scholar not only inherits the traditions 
 established in the learning of the past, but by 
 the very nature of his labors he is brought into 
 intimate association with the scholars of his own 
 day. This contemporary contact is by no means 
 the least of his privileges. Of course not all 
 139
 
 140 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 scholars are teachers and therefore of one body 
 by virtue of their common interests and pur- 
 suits. However, no one, I imagine, will deny 
 that the natural habitat of the scholar is the 
 school. The great universities of the Middle 
 Ages and of modern times have been the homes 
 of scholars. Without such a home the scholar 
 would have been indeed an exile. 
 
 There is an exceedingly significant saying 
 which has been handed down to us from the 
 old Greek astronomer and poet, Ptolemy: *'He 
 is not dead who giveth life to knowledge." This 
 profound observation applies in an especial 
 sense to those who have founded out educa- 
 tional institutions and secured them upon a 
 permanent basis of efficiency, and who have 
 fostered them in wisdom, faith, and persever- 
 ance. There are many ways in which one may 
 give life to knowledge, — by the spoken or writ- 
 ten word, by a new thought, or through skill in 
 putting an old thought in a new form, by dis- 
 covery, by invention; but no contribution of this 
 kind is so self-multiplying and so far-reaching in 
 its results as that of establishing and maintain- 
 ing a permanent centre for the diffusion and ex-
 
 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 141 
 
 tension of knowledge; and at the same time to 
 this end creating a community of scholars with 
 a body of scholarly traditions and a high stan- 
 dard of scholarly excellence and ambition. 
 
 Whenever we find such an institution, we are 
 at the sources of life. For it represents some- 
 thing more than the mere machinery of educa- 
 tion. The school, the university, is never to be 
 regarded as a machine; it is an organism. As an 
 organism it is not only instinct with life as a 
 whole, but the various parts also of which it is 
 composed are themselves living beings. The 
 forces which are active in such an organism are 
 the powers of personality. The living spirit of 
 the teacher must quicken the living spirit of his 
 student. It is the play of life upon life. Con- 
 sequently they who organize these living forces 
 of knowledge and permanently institutionalize 
 them do not die. They live again in all the 
 sources of life which they create. They live 
 again in every trained mind and in every tem- 
 pered spirit which is the product of such influ- 
 ences. They live again in every truth that is 
 possessed, in every task that is performed, in 
 every problem that is mastered, in every kindling
 
 142 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 flame of thought, in every advance of knowl- 
 edge, in every comprehension of the past, and in 
 every vision of the future; they Hve again, not 
 only in the more serious labors of the scholar, 
 but also in the joy of knowledge, in the simple 
 pleasures of appreciation, and in the intimate 
 comradeship of the scholar's craft; for the Hfe 
 which they impart to the things of the mind 
 shows itself in the flower as well as the fruit 
 of knowledge. 
 
 The debt, therefore, which the scholar owes to 
 those who initiate the great constructive forces 
 in education is something more than a passing 
 sentiment of gratitude. His is a more serious 
 obligation. He is bound in honor to preserve 
 these forces in the continuity of their develop- 
 ment along lines of a widening and deepening 
 progress. And to this end he needs to remind 
 himself from time to time of his high vocation 
 as a scholar. In relation to the pioneers of 
 education and his predecessors in the field of his 
 labors, he is in a peculiar sense the trustee of 
 knowledge. The sacred funds of truth are in 
 his keeping, and he is responsible not only for 
 their security, but also for their transmission
 
 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 143 
 
 enlarged and enriched to the coming generations. 
 Progress in knowledge is constantly interrupted, 
 because time puts a limit upon all effort and 
 attainment. With years cometh wisdom, also 
 cometh the end. Another generation must 
 begin the task of knowledge anew. And yet 
 such a beginning may always be undertaken 
 from a point of decided advantage, provided 
 the teacher and scholar fulfil their obligations 
 in any adequate manner. There is a growing 
 body of truth which is the possession of the race, 
 and which is the free heritage of every one who 
 would walk in the way of knowledge. It is the 
 inalienable right of all to share this common 
 bounty of truth. To conserve this racial inheri- 
 tance, to make it available for the new genera- 
 tion, to place their feet in the way of progress, 
 to put in their hands the lamp of knowledge, 
 to bid them seek the truth and pursue it, — this is 
 the scholar's vocation. 
 
 There is, moreover, an additional obligation 
 which every scholar owes to his distinguished 
 ancestry. The truth of yesterday must be 
 adapted to the needs of to-day. The scholar's 
 function is not merely to transmit knowledge
 
 144 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 of one generation to another; he must be pre- 
 pared also to interpret the knowledge which he 
 possesses, and the process of interpretation is 
 always a transmuting rather than a merely trans- 
 mitting process. As knowledge is a hving and 
 a growing thing, it must possess the power of 
 new adaptations. We are disloyal to one who 
 utters a truth if we seek to stereotype it in fixed 
 formula or final dogma. It is not the sole 
 function of the scholar to mass facts and illus- 
 trate them, nor of the teacher to hear recitations, 
 to correct themes, and check the errors of mem- 
 ory. Whether the scholar is writing a book or 
 conducting a class exercise, it is his business 
 above everything else to give life to knowledge. 
 This is the chief office of the interpreter of truth. 
 It is well also to remember that the living truth 
 does not always appear full formed. It, too, has 
 its stages of growth which it must pass through 
 in order to come to the complete revelation of 
 its nature. It is possible, therefore, and indeed 
 it is quite natural to expect, that in the trans- 
 mission of knowledge the scholar through the 
 patient toil of research and the brooding of 
 thought may also contribute to the truth already
 
 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 145 
 
 possessed a deeper meaning, a wider applica- 
 tion, a more vigorous life. 
 
 In the age in which we now live knowledge is 
 changing with marvellous rapidity. The schol- 
 ar's task, therefore, has never been so interesting, 
 never so difficult. The notable discoveries dur- 
 ing the last decade alone, in physics, chemistry, 
 biology, bacteriology, and other sciences, have 
 necessitated a distinctly more profound if not 
 a new interpretation of nature. Not only the 
 material content of knowledge, but its methods 
 also reflect the spirit of progress which char- 
 acterizes the activities and achievements of the 
 present age. The new instruments of accuracy 
 in research, the new processes of discovery and 
 invention, and the more intimate knowledge of 
 the sources in every field of inquiry certainly en- 
 tail an obligation for larger results in scholar- 
 ship than ever before. Unless the scholar has 
 a discriminating appreciation of recently ac- 
 quired truth he cannot interpret aright the truth 
 of the past; and if he fails in this particular, 
 he is recreant to his trust as the teacher and 
 lover of knowledge. The work of restoration 
 which the scholar must undertake in reference
 
 146 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 to the treasures of the past must be prosecuted 
 with a wise consideration of its relation to the 
 knowledge and the needs of the present. 
 
 However, it should not be forgotten that 
 amidst much that changes in the world of 
 scholarly research, there is much also that re- 
 mains constant. And it is to this constant ele- 
 ment in truth that the scholar must preserve an 
 unswerving loyalty. The popular philosophy 
 of the day repudiates altogether the existence 
 of any such constant element, and maintains 
 that all truth whatsoever is variable, relative, 
 shifting. Professor James, the most brilliant 
 apostle of this creed of change, insists that "we 
 must be prepared to find false to-morrow what 
 is true to-day," This is a statement which in a 
 restricted sense is true, and which admits of an 
 exceedingly wide range of illustration. We are 
 constrained to confess that we live throughout 
 our days under bondage to the contingent, and 
 that the hazard of uncertainty must be reckoned 
 with in all our plans and undertakings. And 
 yet while conceding all this, it nevertheless re- 
 mains true that there are certain ideas which in 
 the history of the race experience have become
 
 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 147 
 
 established for all time, for all places, and for all 
 persons and things. These ideas rest upon a 
 secure foundation. Amidst all that is fleeting 
 and variable in thought and experience, there 
 must be some background of truth which is un- 
 changing. Otherwise the equation of hfe would 
 consist solely of variables, and would be there- 
 fore indeterminate and wholly devoid of any 
 significance whatsoever. The variable must 
 have the constant to give it meaning. We 
 naturally incline to the belief that there are 
 certain fundamental ideas and sentiments which 
 are independent of time and circumstance, of 
 the changing opinion and fashion of the day. 
 Once true, they are always true. They are the 
 fixed stars by which we take our reckoning and 
 lay our course. 
 
 The scholar particularly dare not ignore that 
 consensus of thought which ages of reflection 
 and experience have estabhshed. He must have 
 some part in the commerce of truth. How- 
 ever original he may be, he cannot wholly free 
 himself from the past. Among its stores he is 
 bound to find something fundamental and con- 
 stitutive, which is both true to the reason and
 
 148 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 law to the will. I am not in sympathy with the 
 declaration of Professor James, in his "Pragma- 
 tism," that we must "cultivate the attitude of 
 looking away from first things, principles, catego- 
 ries, supposed necessities, and of looking towards 
 last things, fruits, consequences, facts." On 
 the contrary I believe most profoundly that the 
 most significant quest of the scholar is the en- 
 deavor to discover the "first things" which 
 constitute the ultimate ground of our experi- 
 ence. The mind which has not formed the 
 habit of regarding "first things" will hardly be 
 capable of commanding the "last things." To 
 comprehend the beginnings, to understand the 
 essential nature and ground of any group of 
 phenomena under investigation, as well as the 
 implications which they necessitate, is indis- 
 pensable to the clear appreciation of their worth, 
 or to the possibility of further discovery in the 
 line of their development. To discern the 
 truth that is fundamental, to appreciate its 
 significance, to emphasize and proclaim it, to 
 cause it to prevail by making it intelligible, — 
 this is the scholar's vocation. And in this 
 high ofl&ce he is the priest of truth. As such he
 
 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 149 
 
 must guard its sacred oracles, maintain its tra- 
 ditions, follow the lead of its light, and cherish 
 the spirit of devotion to its cause. 
 
 The scholar who is worthy the name cannot 
 be sceptical concerning everything. He must 
 believe in something, and believe it profoundly 
 and bear witness to its truth. Complete scep- 
 ticism is the reductio ad ahsurdum of scholarship. 
 Doubt may be the beginning of inquiry; it is 
 surely not the goal. To doubt is merely the 
 determination to see deeper and understand 
 more clearly. Doubt always marks a transition 
 stage in the processes of investigation. It does 
 not produce satisfaction, only restlessness. In 
 its normal function it points to something be- 
 yond itself, to a more comprehensive knowl- 
 edge, to a more securely grounded conviction. 
 Doubt leads to the truth which lies in the past 
 as well as that which beckons us from the fut- 
 ure. To allow the sceptical attitude therefore 
 to become a permanent disposition breeds a 
 cynical spirit; and nothing is so inimical to the 
 vigor of scholarship as a cynical mood which 
 is ever petulantly asking: "What is truth .?" 
 
 Our fathers believed in a body of truth that
 
 150 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 changeth not from generation to generation, 
 that is like the word of God which abideth for- 
 ever. They would have repudiated with scorn 
 of indignation the modern pragmatical doctrine 
 that "the true is only the expedient in the way 
 of our thinking, just as the right is only the ex- 
 pedient in the way of our behaving." A false 
 theory of knowledge based upon a perverted 
 theory of ethics such as this would never have 
 won their allegiance. They built upon a more 
 stable foundation. They believed in the sover- 
 eignty of reason and the compulsion of logical 
 implication — that compulsion which recognizes 
 uniformity in science and demands consistency 
 in morals. They beheved that man is born 
 under an uncompromising law of righteousness 
 which is above expediency and the suggestions 
 of policy and convenience. They believed that 
 man is a person and not a thing, that he is or- 
 dained to progress, that he is an end in himself 
 and never merely a means to some other end. 
 They believed that the law of mutual co-opera- 
 tion should prevail throughout the family of 
 human beings, and that in the violation of that 
 law the integrity of society is permanently im-
 
 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 151 
 
 paired. They believed that all knowledge must 
 minister to righteousness. They believed in 
 the cause of honor, in the cause of justice, in 
 the cause of freedom, in the cause of the Eternal 
 God. This creed is our inheritance. Our 
 highest obligation as scholars is to preserve 
 inviolate the ancestral continuity of conviction 
 and certitude. The scholarship of the present 
 will doubtless carry us far beyond certain tradi- 
 tions of the past. We will leave much behind 
 that possesses only an antiquarian value. But 
 with all that must be forgotten and with all that 
 is new, we dare not repudiate those fundamental 
 principles — old-fashioned they maybe but never 
 obsolete — in which reason is justified, character 
 is grounded, and moral vigor is maintained. 
 
 All scholarship must make eventually for the 
 broadening and deepening of life, the life of the 
 mind and the life of the spirit. The results of 
 scholarship are not In the interests of a favored 
 class, but of humanity in general. The body 
 of scholars is not a fraternity whose order Is to 
 be developed and enriched for Its own sake. 
 Within its borders there are no occult mysteries 
 nor exclusive privileges. The word which a
 
 152 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 scholar utters may be understood in the first 
 instance only by those who speak the same lan- 
 guage and are conversant with the same sym- 
 bols. And yet the periods of the most produc- 
 tive scholarship have usually called forth their 
 interpreter, their prophet, some peculiarly gifted 
 genius who possesses the faculty of making the 
 results of scholarship intelligible to the masses, 
 at least so far as these results have a bearing 
 upon the life and character of a people. The 
 old Greek philosophy had its Socrates, Chris- 
 tian theology its Augustine, the Reformation its 
 Luther, the philosophy of the French Revolu- 
 tion its Rousseau, and German philosophy its 
 poet interpreters Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and 
 Herder, and in another land and tongue its 
 prophets, Coleridge and Carlyle. 
 
 Every scholar cannot be a prophet to the 
 world, but he can contribute something to the 
 message which one day the chosen prophet will 
 bring in the name of scholarship to the heart 
 and mind of a people. The individual may 
 always remain a toiler in secret. The service 
 that is indirect, however, is none the less im- 
 portant although it may be less conspicuous.
 
 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 153 
 
 A single thought is often born of many minds. 
 In the progress of the truth, the individual 
 scholar here and there who has contributed to 
 it may be forgotten, and he may never enjoy the 
 recognition and the praise w^hich is his due. 
 Nevertheless he has a deep satisfaction in the 
 consciousness that the results of his labors 
 though lost to sight have become in a small 
 measure at least a part of the thought of the 
 w^orld. 
 
 Upon the stone which marks the grave of 
 Fichte by the Oranienburg gate in Bedin, there 
 is this inscription, which adequately expresses 
 the scholar's vocation and the scholar's reward: 
 "The teachers shall shine as the brightness of 
 the firmament, and they that turn many to 
 righteousness as the stars that shine forever and 
 ever.'*
 
 X 
 
 THE SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 
 
 ** I ^O-DAY our schools and colleges are under 
 fire of criticism from many quarters; and 
 the burden of the indictment against present- 
 day methods in education seems to be that many 
 if not most of the subjects which are taught are 
 superfluous. In reference to this charge, how- 
 ever, I am inclined to apply Voltaire's whimsical 
 paradox — Le superfiii, chose trees necessaire. 
 The zeal to eradicate the superfluous may pluck 
 by the roots many a plant of whose flower and 
 fruit we may not be deprived without incalcula- 
 ble loss. What standard is available, according 
 to which one can discriminate between that 
 which is superfluous and that which is not ^ 
 The answer to this question is not far to seek; 
 for it is heard above the many voices of our age 
 with insistent reiteration — "whatever does not 
 contribute directly to efficiency in life, that is 
 superfluous." This is the voice of pragmatism 
 in philosophy, of utilitarianism in morals; in 
 154
 
 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 155 
 
 political circles this same idea is expressed in the 
 creed of "practical politics"; in the world of 
 industrial enterprise it lurks in the phrase, 
 "business is business," whose tautology is a 
 flimsy disguise of irresponsible practices; in 
 religion even a similar disposition is shown in 
 the desire to convert the church into a working 
 club instead of a house of worship. 
 
 With many this idea of efficiency, as the end 
 of all education and the standard of all values, 
 is still further particularized by limiting effi- 
 ciency to the sphere of one's professional or 
 business activities. To make a man efficient in 
 his special calling, — that, it is insisted, should be 
 the sole task of education. And consequently 
 there is a general marking down of all values 
 to that level. This tendency is seen in the em- 
 phasis which some of our educational institu- 
 tions are placing upon technical and profes- 
 sional courses which even in the undergraduate 
 years are pursued to the exclusion of all the 
 more humanistic interests. Fit the boy for the 
 special work he has to do. Let everything be 
 sacrificed to that end. Here, it is alleged, is a 
 principle which will enable one to devise not
 
 156 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 
 
 only a satisfactory curriculum but also a pro- 
 gramme of life. If the young man, is expecting 
 to be a doctor, let him confine his attention 
 solely to the studies which will contribute valu- 
 able material to the store of knowledge needed 
 in this profession — such as the general knowl- 
 edge of plant and animal life, of human anat- 
 omy and physiology, of chemistry and kindred 
 subjects. Let him begin to narrow into pro- 
 fessional grooves before his entrance into the 
 professional school. He will thus save time, 
 and prevent an enormous waste of energy. 
 When we come, however, to examine this posi- 
 tion more particularly, even upon the footing 
 of efficiency, it is evident that the adherents of 
 such a theory are in grave danger of defeating 
 their own purposes. The man most efficient in 
 his business or profession is the one who pos- 
 sesses some reserve power over and above 
 that which he may ever be called upon to ex- 
 pend upon the actual labors of his specialty. 
 A man always needs more than he uses. He 
 who can do but one thing, never does it su- 
 premely well. An excess of power is an essen- 
 tial and significant factor in efficiency.
 
 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 157 
 
 In determining the strength of materials, the 
 mechanical engineer never thinks of attempting 
 to calculate stress and strain forces so precisely 
 as to adjust a given beam or girder to the exact 
 load it is required to bear. On the contrary he 
 recognizes the necessity of allowing for a sub- 
 stantial factor of safety, so that the strength of 
 the material will exceed the limit of any possible 
 exigency. It is the surplus strength that makes 
 all construction solid and secure. In a similar 
 manner a man's strength must exceed the exac- 
 tions of his tasks by a reassuring margin of 
 efficiency; otherwise his work is but poorly done. 
 Every man of force should possess some power 
 in his nature which can be felt even when it is 
 not actually operative; and when it is operative, 
 it should give the impression that its resources 
 are inexhaustible. 
 
 It is in the reserve power which we insensibly 
 discern back of a man's personality that our 
 confidence in the lawyer, the doctor, the minister, 
 or the engineer is grounded. The difference 
 between the ordinary and the extraordinary 
 man in professional or business life, Hes in just 
 this surplus of power which in the daily routine
 
 158 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 
 
 of life is never required. When one possesses 
 such a power, his efficiency is increased in a 
 marvellous degree; for he brings to his work 
 a mind larger than his tasks, and a nature 
 stronger than the pressure which it must sus- 
 tain. On the other hand that man is doomed 
 to mediocrity who has in his possession no super- 
 fluous knowledge beyond the ordinary demands 
 of his craft, and who finds himself a stranger in 
 any company beyond the bounds of his own 
 guild. 
 
 Therefore if in the studies which we select as 
 the best preparation of a young man for his fut- 
 ure work in life, we have constantly in mind only 
 their direct bearing upon the special field of his 
 activity in later years, then we are doing that 
 young man a very serious and distinct injury. 
 If the range of his knowledge is merely coexten- 
 sive with the programme of his prospective duties 
 in the limited field of his profession, we may ex- 
 pect from him only very meagre attainment. 
 Liberal knowledge means precisely this, that it 
 serves to emancipate a man from the bondage 
 of his specialty. He is at home in other fields, 
 and when from his various excursions into their
 
 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 159 
 
 regions he returns to his own work, he moves in 
 the sphere of his labors more boldly and there- 
 fore more efficiently because he need not live 
 always under the limitations of its boundaries. 
 Our college courses should not attempt to pre- 
 pare a man primarily for any particular set of 
 tasks, but for a far more significant and myste- 
 rious event, — the coming into possession of a 
 mind. A man's mind is the instrument of his 
 productive power. The measure of his future 
 efficiency is his mental capability. Therefore 
 it should be the end of all education to develop 
 every possibility of the growing mind to the 
 full extent of its capacity and strength. Every 
 stream of knowledge which has its source in 
 the hidden springs of the mind sooner or later 
 finds its way into the central current of life, 
 adding velocity and volume to its flow. The 
 very thing which may be regarded as superflu- 
 ous often proves a revelation of concealed pos- 
 sibility and of potential power. The college 
 course is a period when the student and teacher 
 together should be engaged in prospecting ad- 
 ventures for the very purpose of discovering the 
 veins worthy to mine. Certainly nothing can
 
 i6o SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 
 
 be deemed superfluous where everything is pos- 
 sible. 
 
 It is the glory of the industrial world in the 
 last generation that its inventive minds have 
 solved the problem of its waste material. They 
 have acquired the art of transforming the super- 
 fluous into valuable products. The residual 
 phenomena have disclosed sources of unim- 
 agined possibilities which have made for the 
 comfort, convenience, and efficiency of our 
 modern life. In the acquisition of knowledge 
 likewise, the by-products are not to be despised 
 nor lightly overlooked. In them there may lurk 
 the germs of power which in the years of an 
 active life may pass through many transforma- 
 tions, appearing now and again in a force whose 
 source is unrecognizable, but which neverthe- 
 less may give to the mental energies of the man 
 an added momentum and impact. 
 
 It is well, therefore, in the early years of 
 training to strive to develop as many and as 
 diverse interests as possible. It is the period 
 of discovery as well as of drudgery and routine. 
 That mind is richly furnished which has estab- 
 lished for itself a widely ramifying net-work of
 
 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION i6i 
 
 associations. The more complex this mesh of 
 associated material, the greater is the possibility 
 of suggestion, leading to new points of view, to 
 invention, or to discovery; the greater also the 
 possibility of forming the habits of critical and 
 mature judgment. Professor Ernst Mach of the 
 university of Vienna, in an essay entitled "Acci- 
 dent in Invention and Discovery,'* draws atten- 
 tion to many interesting cases wherein accident 
 has been a conspicuous factor in the field of 
 scientific research. It is very significant, how- 
 ever, that in every instance which he mentions 
 and in every instance which suggests itself to 
 memory, is one in which the chance suggestion 
 occurs to a mind already possessing a wealth 
 of profound and varied knowledge. 
 
 Judged, therefore, even from the point of view 
 of eflRciency alone, the superfluous plays a part 
 in our training of which we are never fully con- 
 scious and which we never adequately appreciate. 
 Nevertheless this by no means exhausts the sum 
 total of its good offices. It serves to minister 
 also to the making of that margin of the man 
 which has a value over and above his profes- 
 sional activities and attainments. To some
 
 i62 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 
 
 practical minds it seems wholly unnecessary 
 that any man should be more than a good work- 
 ing machine. However, the plus element, which 
 may be superfluous as regards the mere machine 
 idea of human activity, nevertheless marks the 
 essential quality of man as man. 
 
 This human being so variously endowed, 
 with his wide range of interests and sympathies, 
 sustaining manifold relations with the great 
 world about him, rejoicing in his varied pleasures 
 and pursuits, this centre from which so many 
 lines of actual and of potential power radiate, 
 surely this creature is something more than a 
 machine for producing briefs and prescriptions, 
 contracts and inventories, investments, balance- 
 sheets, and tariff" bills. The man must be big- 
 ger than his business or his profession. He is 
 not only a lawyer, a doctor, a legislator, but 
 he is a citizen, a companion, husband, father, 
 friend. He has innumerable points of contact 
 with his fellows. The responsibilities of life 
 press upon him from all sides. If there is no 
 surplus of mind and heart to meet them, the 
 man is poor indeed. It is the overflow of a large 
 nature, the superfluous if you wish so to charac-
 
 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 163 
 
 terize it, which lends tone and color to a man's 
 life, which gives him a place in his community, 
 and which makes him a significant part of his 
 day and generation. Back of his spoken word, 
 back of his deed, back of his silent presence in 
 the company of his own kind there is an im- 
 mediate recognition of the warmth and wealth 
 of his personality. It is the superfluous that 
 marks the difference between justice and gen- 
 erosity, between bare decency and magnanim- 
 ity, between the full measure and the over- 
 flowing. It is the superfluous quahty of a man's 
 nature which provokes love, and not merely 
 admiration and respect. 
 
 Asking one of my colleagues recently concern- 
 ing his estimate of a certain eminent scholar, 
 he replied: "He is a great scholar but a small 
 man.'* Now there is certainly very little satis- 
 faction in the consciousness that one is ranked 
 as a brilliant lawyer or a skilful surgeon, if at 
 the same time he has the common reputation of 
 being a miserable specimen of a man. At the 
 last count a man is judged according to the ex- 
 tent and depth of the vein of humanity which 
 may be discernible in his nature. By that test
 
 1 64 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 
 
 he stands or falls. The moment a hollow ring 
 is detected in his word or deed, that man is lost. 
 No amount of skill or proficiency can compen- 
 sate for the want of that solid basis of manliness 
 which from the strictly practical view of utility 
 may be regarded by many as altogether super- 
 fluous. 
 
 There is a certain type of provincialism which 
 is temporal rather than spatial, which holds a 
 man fast within the boundaries of his own age. 
 No one is truly cosmopolitan who knows noth- 
 ing of the world beyond the confines of his own 
 generation. To live the life of to-day in its 
 fulness one must know the life of yesterday. 
 To be a citizen of the world, one must have some 
 appreciation of the world's thought, its efforts 
 and achievements, its faith and its hope in the 
 ages which are past. To one who does not find 
 himself a stranger in a distant century there 
 comes an expansion of mind and of sympathies 
 which enables him to bring to his own day and 
 to his own life the deep satisfactions of super- 
 fluous knowledge and power. The foundations 
 for this interest in the far-off" lands of time must 
 be laid during the college years. And it should
 
 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 165 
 
 be regarded as an essential function of this 
 man-making enterprise to which our colleges are 
 pledged, to stimulate and foster such an interest 
 by every conceivable means. 
 
 The philistine is usually efficient. There is 
 no charge against him on that score. Indeed 
 it is just because he is so practically efficient 
 and nothing more that he is the philistine. His 
 values are all standardized. He has no appre- 
 ciations, only appraisals and inventories. He 
 is in the world but not of it, because his tastes 
 and interests command so small a corner of it. 
 Several years ago, while spending a few weeks 
 in Rome, I chanced to meet one of these hope- 
 less individuals who was completely stript of all 
 superfluous interests and knowledge. He had 
 possessed the native wit sufficient to accumu- 
 late a large fortune. As regards the treasures 
 of Rome, however, he was the veriest pauper. 
 He did not know enough to conceal his igno- 
 rance. Seated opposite to me at dinner one 
 evening, I overheard him asking his neighbor, a 
 young Scotchwoman who was a student of arch- 
 aeology in Rome: "What is there worth seeing 
 in the Palace of the Caesars ? There is nothing
 
 i66 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 
 
 there but ruins, is there ?" The reply was elo- 
 quent in its simplicity, and penetrating in its 
 complete understanding of the man. "No,*' she 
 said, ** nothing but ruins." Her questioner was 
 beyond both instruction and rebuke. In his 
 nature there was nothing superfluous, and con- 
 sequently everything that was not reflected in 
 his shallow and limited capacity was regarded 
 by him as itself superfluous. For him the ruins 
 of Rome could better be replaced by modern 
 office buildings, and its forum become indeed 
 an actual market-place. To a limited nature 
 most things will naturally seem superfluous, just 
 as to a great nature nothing is superfluous. 
 
 The crucial tests of life usually prove the man 
 rather than his professional ability and skill. 
 The emergencies which call for instant decision 
 and prompt action tap the hidden sources which 
 never can be discerned by surface observation. 
 What the world may never have discovered, 
 what the man himself may have been wholly 
 unconscious of possessing, — far-off" dreams and 
 fancies, records of forgotten interests and studies 
 indelibly stamped upon his nature, experiences 
 which in their time may have served to discip-
 
 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 167 
 
 line the mind and temper the spirit, — these su- 
 perfluous elements of his being burst into power, 
 and become efficient to heal, to strengthen and 
 to save. 
 
 It is the superfluous which forms the unseen 
 foundations of character and unconsciously 
 fortifies our will and purposes. It is the super- 
 fluous also which gives zest to simple pleasures, 
 which makes a tramp through the woods a 
 delight and not a bore, which provides an avo- 
 cation for us as well as a vocation, so that when 
 the office or work-room is closed the doors of 
 the world swing open to us. It is the superflu- 
 ous which puts a book into our hand and crowds 
 the mind with new thoughts and quickens the 
 heart with a fresh impulse. 
 
 Without something superfluous, nothing is 
 complete. The teacher must possess superflu- 
 ous knowledge, a superfluous interest also in the 
 young life about him; the man of aff'airs must 
 possess superfluous power; our companions, su- 
 perfluous wit and good-humor; our friends, su- 
 perfluous aff"ection and sympathy; and he who 
 would advance the world's progress, superfluous 
 enthusiasm and hope.
 
 XI 
 
 SECONDARY STRAINS 
 
 TN the late afternoon of August 29, 1907, the 
 great cantilever bridge across the St. Law- 
 rence River at Quebec gave way of its own weight, 
 and some seventy workmen engaged upon this 
 massive structure were carried down to death 
 amidst a tangled mass of twisted rods and beams. 
 The bridge was carrying at the time no unusual 
 load; indeed it was carrying no load whatsoever 
 save the weight of its own structure; for it was 
 still in the process of building, and even before 
 it could be put to any actual test of its calcu- 
 lated strength it collapsed and crashed into the 
 river beneath. 
 
 The whistle of the construction company had 
 just sounded the end of the day's work, the last 
 day's work for the bridge builders save the four 
 or five who alone were rescued from the falling 
 mass. This tragedy of engineering skill and of 
 constructive enterprise, this tragedy also of 
 168
 
 SECONDARY STRAINS 169 
 
 human life completely bewildered the scientific 
 world. There is a mystery about an event 
 which in the light of mechanical theory is im- 
 possible. This structure according to the cal- 
 culation of the most expert and skilful engineers 
 was capable of supporting over twice the load 
 it was carrying at the time of its fall. Subse- 
 quently the most painstaking investigation of 
 the wreckage disclosed the fact that no defec- 
 tive material had been used in the construc- 
 tion; moreover, no dynamic shock nor unusual 
 wind pressure had occurred in connection with 
 the disaster. What, then, was the structural 
 weakness which caused this bridge to fall un- 
 der its own weight ? Was there some colossal 
 blunder in the strain calculations ? Was there 
 some egregious error in the plans of construc- 
 tion ? Was it the carelessness of foreman or 
 workmen ? 
 
 For some time no one could give a satisfactory 
 answer, although many were essayed. Finally, 
 however, when the official report of the engineer- 
 ing experts was made public, the mystery was 
 cleared. It seems that the beginnings of this 
 stupendous collapse were traced to one of the
 
 170 SECONDARY STRAINS 
 
 great bottom chords of the bridge, designed to 
 support the main structure resting upon it. 
 This chord was a latticed beam fifty-seven feet 
 in length, composed of four ribs or webs braced 
 together. The bridge fell because there was a 
 buckling of this supporting beam. And this 
 buckling of the beam occurred because its sev- 
 eral parts were not sufficiently braced together 
 so as to enable them to act as a whole. Instead 
 of forming a single compact piece, they were 
 merely so many separate pieces, and therefore 
 incapable of offering adequate resisting power. 
 No part was at all defective; each was equal to 
 the load it was calculated to bear, with a con- 
 siderable factor of safety provided for. Strong 
 in themselves, their combined strength was 
 wanting merely because the parts did not hold 
 tightly together. 
 
 What are known as the secondary strains, to 
 which a structure such as this bridge is exposed, 
 had so loosened the several parts of this im- 
 mense central chord that it gave way under the 
 pressure of the primary strains — that is, those 
 strains due to the actual load which a structure 
 must support.
 
 SECONDARY STRAINS 171 
 
 It seems that in the work upon the Quebec 
 bridge rivets had been used which were slightly 
 small for the eyes which they were supposed to 
 fill completely and tightly; consequently the 
 parts were not held compactly together, and so 
 the ordinary vibrations and changes in the 
 pressure tension of this huge structure would 
 tend naturally to loosen them more and more. 
 With the loosening of the parts the long beam 
 would necessarily begin to sag somewhat; and 
 for every fraction of an inch which such a sup- 
 porting member bends out of the straight line 
 there is a rapidly increasing ratio of weakness 
 until finally the elastic limit is reached and the 
 crash comes. The secondary strains cannot 
 break but they can loosen and bend; they thus 
 weaken a structure so that it is no longer ca- 
 pable of resisting the primary strains. 
 
 It is perhaps not too forced an appHcation to 
 discover in this disaster certain suggestions as 
 to the significance of the secondary strains of 
 life in their bearing upon character and conduct. 
 From time immemorial, human activity has 
 been regarded as a process of building. Each 
 individual erects some kind of a structure into
 
 172 SECONDARY STRAINS 
 
 which he builds his deeds, his thoughts, and his 
 purposes. Like a bridge his Hfe must carry its 
 load. Other Hves must pass and repass upon it. 
 There are many who come to depend impHcitly 
 upon its stabihty and to feel an instinctive secu- 
 rity in its power to resist the daily tests of stress 
 and strain. While it stands, the commerce of 
 man is promoted, and life is safeguarded from 
 peril of accident and calamity. But if it falls, 
 others go down with it into the flood. 
 
 The human disaster, when the collapse comes, 
 causes the same kind of bewilderment as that 
 which was occasioned by the fall of the Quebec 
 bridge. It is the fall of the strong man that is 
 so difficult to understand. Of the weak man 
 we naturally expect disaster; and there is no 
 shock of surprise when it comes. But when the 
 strong man sinks under his load, then all of our 
 calculations seem to have wofully miscarried. 
 We look at the wreckage in amazement and ex- 
 claim: "How is it possible that such weakness 
 should come out of such strength.'*" Here is 
 one whose life has been a long discipline of en- 
 durance. He has accustomed himself to carry 
 heavier and heavier burdens as the years have
 
 SECONDARY STRAINS 173 
 
 gone on, and to resist greater and greater press- 
 ure. His powers of perseverance and resource 
 have been taxed to the uttermost and have never 
 failed. His name in the community is synony- 
 mous with stabiHty and integrity. Of a sudden, 
 however, this structure gives way of its own 
 weight, and crashes into the depths which mark 
 and yet hide its shame. 
 
 What is the reason ? The answer to this 
 question may be suggested by the Quebec 
 bridge. May it not be possible that this man 
 has been capable of resisting the primary strains 
 of life, but not the secondary ? His life has 
 been strong to bear its load, even to endure the 
 storm pressure which it has been called upon to 
 meet from time to time, but possibly it has not 
 been able to withstand the shaking and loosen- 
 ing of its parts, the friction of their wearing one 
 upon the other day after day, the consequent 
 sagging of the whole and the final point of 
 breaking. 
 
 Character is composite. Its supporting mem- 
 bers which are variously related must be com- 
 pactly braced together. A very insignificant 
 element may serve to hold more important parts
 
 174 SECONDARY STRAINS 
 
 in place. Of what avail the strong massive 
 plates if there is a shearing off of the rivets 
 which bind them together ? The first traces 
 of inconsistency, the breaking down of princi- 
 ple in small and seemingly immaterial particu- 
 lars, some policy of indirection, some concealed 
 methods, some disingenuous explanation, these 
 symptoms, slight in importance though they 
 may seem to be, nevertheless mark the begin- 
 nings of possible disaster. The man's char- 
 acter is no longer whole. And this is precisely 
 equivalent to saying that he is no longer a man 
 of integrity. The loosening of the elements of 
 character, the elements of honor, of honesty, of 
 self-respect, of self-reverence, throw the man's 
 whole nature out of the straight line. With this 
 sagging of character both its supporting and 
 resisting power are immeasurably lessened; and 
 one day it gives way under the pressure of a 
 load no greater than those we have been accus- 
 tomed to see it bear year after year. 
 
 Then we ask how it is possible that a man 
 with such tested character should come to dis- 
 appoint every expectation and promise of his 
 nature. According to our calculations this
 
 SECONDARY STRAINS 175 
 
 programme of disaster was impossible. In our 
 reckonings, however, we never for a moment 
 suspected, possibly the man himself never sus- 
 pected, the steady pressure of the secondary 
 strains in his life. The world sees only the 
 disaster; it does not see how the man himself 
 by slow but sure processes of deterioration day 
 after day has been preparing for it. 
 
 The very consciousness that one has overcome 
 successfully, perhaps easily, the primary strains 
 of life may in itself tend to put a man off guard 
 as regards the secondary strains to which his 
 nature is exposed. He ignores them; they may 
 pass unnoticed until seen by their effects upon 
 him, and these effects may have created already 
 centres of weakness which it is too late to re- 
 inforce. Some supporting chord may have 
 reached its elastic limit, and the breaking-point 
 is inevitable. 
 
 How often this happens. We observe it 
 again and again. A young man proves himself 
 strong to resist the temptations of his early 
 youth. He passes through them all unscathed, 
 he shows himself diligent, self-restrained, obedi- 
 ent. He keeps his head cool and his feet on the
 
 176 SECONDARY STRAINS 
 
 ground. Later he comes to the years of strug- 
 gle, when all efforts are bent upon establishing 
 himself securely in the business or professional 
 world. He is not afraid of work. He eagerly 
 seeks it, and seeks, too, the hours of extra ser- 
 vice. He toils early and late. He is industrious, 
 thrifty, capable. His courage and enthusiasm 
 are never for a moment abated. The burdens 
 which he bears only serve tc increase his strength 
 and develop his powers. His career is one of 
 steady progress. The primary strains of life 
 he has withstood conspicuously and nobly. 
 
 He now meets the temptations of middle-age, 
 subtle, strong, and undermining — temptations 
 which for their testing and searching power are 
 incomparably more formidable than any of the 
 trials of youth. The secondary strains begin 
 to operate. They are with him the strains of 
 success. For with success comes leisure, added 
 sources of power, the means of gratifying every 
 chance desire, and the call of ambition. The 
 simple setting of his life has been replaced by 
 an increasing complexity of interests and activ- 
 ities. The old delights begin to pall, and he 
 craves the stimulation of more highly spiced
 
 SECONDARY STRAINS 177 
 
 pleasures. The intoxication of success may in- 
 duce a recklessness of enterprise which puts in 
 jeopardy the fortunes of himself and of others. 
 Their happiness, and possibly their lives, is in 
 his keeping. The individual temperament will 
 in most cases determine the direction and extent 
 of the lines of strain. Whatever the weak point 
 of his nature may be, it is bound to feel the 
 pressure due to the extra burden of weight which 
 success always entails. In the calculations of 
 strains for a bridge or building, a storm factor 
 is reckoned with in order to provide for the ex- 
 ceptional pressure of high winds or even of a 
 hurricane upon the structure. For man, how- 
 ever, it would be far more important and to the 
 point, to compute a prosperity factor, and allow 
 it, moreover, to fall well within a wide margin 
 of safety. 
 
 The strains of struggle seem often to steady 
 a man; the pressure, however, of success proves 
 too strong for him to withstand. In the fight 
 he is noble, but in the victory ignoble. Caesar 
 once said this of Pompey: that he knew how to 
 win a victory but he did not know how to use 
 it. This is in a measure illustrated also by our
 
 178 SECONDARY STRAINS 
 
 late civil war. As a people we withstood the 
 shock of battle and the strain of the long years 
 of national trial. The secondary strains came 
 with the tests of reconstruction. These strains, 
 unhappily, were not so nobly resisted. They 
 created a loosening and separating'of the strong 
 elements of our national character to such an 
 extent that when we turn our thoughts to this 
 period of our history, it provokes just condem- 
 nation and shame. And in the progress of our 
 national life during the last generation also, we 
 have been strong enough and wise enough to re- 
 sist the primary strains. It is in the secondary 
 strains that our dangers obviously lie. There 
 are many forces now at work which are un- 
 settling and disorganizing, and which tend 
 to unfit us for the supreme test when it 
 comes. 
 
 The testing strains, however, are by no means 
 confined to the years or to the experiences of 
 success. There are many who have never 
 known success in any full or overflowing meas- 
 ure, whose natures, nevertheless, are under the 
 constant pressure of certain secondary strains 
 quite as serious and quite as menacing. There
 
 SECONDARY STRAINS 179 
 
 is a man who has passed that period of his Ufa 
 when all things seem possible, when hope runs 
 high and the dreams of the future bring joy and 
 the eager haste to realize their alluring proph- 
 ecies. For this man, life has become a routine 
 and a discipline. Opportunities have come and 
 gone; the actual in all its grim reality has re- 
 placed the possible. His habits have set into 
 hard and fast lines. He no longer looks for the 
 surprise of the unexpected or for the glorious 
 chance of an untried career. The unknown 
 has now no charm of mystery about it — only 
 dread and fear. Courage begins to falter, the 
 spirit loses its spring, and hope dies. Human 
 strength, hke steel supports under constant 
 tension, without change and without rest, loses 
 its elasticity and consequently its live power of 
 resistance. 
 
 When one yields to the pressure of discourage- 
 ment, and supinely submits to the fate of cir- 
 cumstance, when he resigns himself to ineffect- 
 ual moods and to the cynical sufferance of the 
 inevitable, then it is that the dead weight of the 
 load long carried crushes and kills him. When 
 the secondary strains of life weaken and wreck
 
 i8o SECONDARY STRAINS 
 
 a man's spirit, he falls long before the breaking- 
 point is reached. 
 
 The strains of monotony and of dulness, of 
 work without reward, of responsibilities with- 
 out accompanying authority and the liberty of 
 initiative, of the grind of life without its pleas- 
 ures, of patience without hope, of duty which 
 has become mechanical, and of purposes whose 
 realization is merely the regular antecedent of 
 their repetition, these are the strains from which 
 some lives, indeed many lives, are never free, 
 but which they must resist until the end. No 
 wonder that many a stout heart and brave spirit 
 grows faint and fails. 
 
 There are some natures, however, which are 
 never affected in the least by any of these sec- 
 ondary strains of life, simply because from the 
 beginning they have yielded constantly to the 
 pressure of the primary. They need no subtle 
 weakening process to prepare them for failure. 
 They have by nature no moral force, and there- 
 fore they instinctively adapt themselves to the 
 pressure of native propensity without so much 
 as offering a show of resistance. The charac- 
 ters of Shylock and lago are determined by the
 
 SECONDARY STRAINS i8i 
 
 primary strains of their own natures; Macbeth 
 and Hamlet, on the other hand, are the victims 
 of the complex secondary strains which served 
 to bring naturally great natures to a miserable 
 end. Cardinal Woolsey yielded to the second- 
 ary strains of his ambition, and hence his fall; 
 Richard III, however, was by nature inhumanly 
 cruel, and therefore the primary strains of his 
 own evil spirit determined his character, his ca- 
 reer, and his destiny. The tragedy of the second- 
 ary strains is that they destroy noble lives, turn- 
 ing strength to weakness and glory to shame. 
 The primary strains are usually obvious. 
 They appear within the sphere of ordinary 
 observation. We can reckon with them and 
 within certain limits we can predict the results 
 to which they may give rise. The secondary 
 strains, however, are concealed. We are not 
 apt to notice them until they stand revealed in 
 the disasters which they cause. They work in- 
 directly, slowly, and surprise us in our weakness. 
 For the reason, therefore, that these secondary 
 strains are so difficult to recognize and to pro- 
 vide against, we should regard with a keen sus- 
 picion any tendency on our part to temper the
 
 i82 SECONDARY STRAINS 
 
 rigor of our moral convictions or practices. 
 Our manners may be flexible but not our morals. 
 A slight relaxing of moral tension here or there 
 in our conduct may throw the whole structure of 
 our lives out of line, and that always means a 
 decreased power of resistance in the hour of 
 trial which must inevitably come. 
 
 There was never a time in the busy affairs 
 of man when straight conduct was so much 
 needed as now. The very complexity of our 
 modern life gives scope to the play of these sec- 
 ondary strains. The fever of excitement, the 
 intensity of competition, the struggle for place 
 and prominence, the haste and rush of the daily 
 round, all tend to increase the strain and to 
 apply the pressure variously and constantly to 
 the weak parts of our nature. The mystery is 
 that all do not give way sooner or later. The 
 integrity of the man, the whole man, — that alone 
 can withstand the strain. 
 
 In one of Kipling's sketches, "The Bridge 
 Builder," he describes a young engineer who 
 is engaged upon the construction of a bridge 
 across the river Ganges. In the midst of the 
 work the floods from the mountain freshets
 
 SECONDARY STRAINS 183 
 
 swell the river beyond its banks and to the very 
 floor of the bridge. The w^ork is in imminent 
 peril of being swept away with the rising waters. 
 It is the day of judgment for the bridge builder. 
 "For himself the crash meant everything — • 
 everything that made a hard life worth living. 
 They would say, the men of his own profession 
 — ^he remembered the half-pitying things that he 
 himself had said when Lockhart's new water- 
 works burst and broke down in brick-heaps and 
 sludge, and Lockhart's spirit broke in him and 
 he died. He remembered what he himself had 
 said when the Sumao Bridge went out in the big 
 cyclone by the sea; and most he remembered 
 poor Hartropp's face three weeks later when the 
 shame had marked it. . . . There were no ex- 
 cuses in his service. Government might Hsten, 
 perhaps, but his own kind would judge him by 
 his bridge, as that stood or fell."
 
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