with startling rapidity, and the most irresistible force moving toward consolidation in the business world is the inability of small concerns to keep up with the newest applications of chemistry or electro-magnetism to industry. Nothing is more essential in our attempt to escape from the bondage of consecrated ideas than to get a vivid notion of human achievement in its proper historical perspective. In order to do this let us imagine the whole gradual and laborious attainments of mankind compressed into the compass of a single lifetime. Let us assume that a single generation of men have in fifty years managed to accumulate all that now passes for civilization. They would have to start, as all individuals do, absolutely uncivilized, and their task would be to recapitulate what has occupied the race for, let us guess, at least five hundred thousand years. Each year in the life of a generation would therefore correspond to ten thousand years in the progress of the race. On this scale it would require forty-nine years to reach a point of intelligence which would enable our self-taught generation to give up their ancient and inveterate habits of wandering hunters and settle down here and there to till the ground, harvest their crops, domesticate animals, and weave their rough garments. Six months later, or half through the fiftieth year, some of them, in a particularly favorable situation, would have invented writing, and thus established a new and wonderful means of spreading and perpetuating civilization. Three months later another group would have carried literature, art, and philosophy to a high degree of refinement and set standards for the succeeding weeks. For two months our generation would have been living under the blessings of Christianity; the printing press would be but a fortnight old and they would not have had the steam engine for quite a week. For two or three days they would have been hastening about the globe in steamships and railroad trains, and only yesterday would they have come upon the magical possibilities of electricity. Within the last few hours they would have learned to sail in the air and beneath the waters, and have forthwith applied their newest discoveries to the prosecution of a magnificent war on a scale befitting their high ideals and new resources. This is not so strange, for only a week ago they were burning and burying alive those who differed from the ruling party in regard to salvation, eviscerating in public those who had new ideas of government, and hanging old women who were accused of traffic with the devil. All of them had been no better than vagrant savages a year before. Their fuller knowledge was altogether too recent to have gone very deep, and they had many institutions and many leaders dedicated to the perpetuation of outworn notions which would otherwise have disappeared. Until recently changes had taken place so slowly and so insensibly that only a very few persons could be expected to realize that not a few of the beliefs that How far does it justify opti mism? were accepted as eternal verities were due to the inevitable misunderstandings of a savage.1 According to Genesis, Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years by the sun, but it is safe to say that there was not as much doing of live human interest in the course of his lifetime as there is in the ordinary man's threescore years and ten today. And in spite of such massive and ominous tragedies as the Great War, there is much ground for intelligent optimism in this acceleration of progress. Our ideals are laid forth on a grander scale than ever before, but if they are rational enough to respect the realities on which they must be grounded, it is likely that they will be realized far sooner than we should dare to expect, and enable men of earnest energy to move on in the guidance of still more brilliant dreams. Consider, as a single striking example, the difference between Nansen's long, hazardous, and ineffective Arctic wanderings a generation ago, or even the story of Peary's exploit in 1909, and what modern aëronautics, together with such inventions as the wireless and the radio, have since made possible. Captain Amundsen himself, in describing his transpolar flight, dwelt again and again on precisely this contrast. "Now, sitting here in Nome, looking back on the different expeditions I have taken part in, the last one seems to me unbelievable. When I started exploring in the polar regions we had to utilize the same means that had been used for generations. And now, thirty years afterward, science and technic have made it possible in days to explore regions bigger than could have been explored in the same number of years before. The risk of flying over ten thousand square miles in a few hours today is not greater than before to go in the ice with a ship. "Due to the wireless, the explorer today can fix the best moment for starting through the air, and due to the wireless he can during the flight choose the route where the weather conditions are best. Even in fog he can continue his flight by radio bearings. Before, the world did not get news from him after he had passed the frontier between the known and the 1J. H. Robinson, The Mind in the Making, pp. 82-85. unknown; now he is enabled to tell the world how his expedition goes on from hour to hour. And after his return, due to modern photography and moving pictures, he can give much richer impressions of what he has seen than ever before." Then Amundsen concludes with a recognition of the continuity of scientific growth and the dependence of every later achievement on the earlier fumblings of self-sacrificing men who gave life and toil and suffering to make the greater success of others possible. "But the modern explorer who utilizes all the inventions of his own time does not forget that before him for centuries cthers have gone into the unknown and returned with observations and knowledge he builds upon. The difference between exploring in the Arctic and the Antarctic before and in our time is therefore only an apparent one. The methods have changed. But today, as before, the results of the different expeditions are based upon the results of previous ones. If the modern explorer succeeds in making new discoveries he only pays the debt of modern times to the generations which have disap-. peared.” 1 achieve-. ments in those in social science Yet hopeful prophecies must not forget one sobering fact. It Sobering is clear that the achievements of reflection have so far been contrast of most marked in increasing man's control of material things, transforming physical nature into his servant, and giving him a degree of comfort, leisure, and prosperity that a few genera- natural tions ago would have seemed incredible. Even these blessings, with however, have not been democratically apportioned, and it is distressingly evident, with the Great War still vivid in memory, that these tremendous powers can be used for evil ends as well as good. Shall reflection be able to achieve results comparable to these in the realm of human relations? Shall human engineers arise to vie with Galileo and Newton in brilliance, by discovering laws which can be dependably used to assure that everything good discovered by one shall promote the highest happiness of all? Such is the supreme need of our day, if civilization is to advance without an appalling setback. Reflective thinkers have the opportunity to perform a kind of service and Chicago Daily News, June 3, 1926. 1 RIGHT THINKING gain a kind of renown that is both far more difficult to achieve and deserve than any other, but also more contributory to the greatest ends of human life. It is largely with the hope that earnest students will find a study of the principles of right thinking serviceable in equipping them for such vital tasks as this challenge implies, that the present volume is written. BIBLIOGRAPHY DEWEY, J., How We Think, chaps. II. III. Dewey analyses the main factors in human nature and in the environment which make easy the acceptance of superstitious beliefs. He then considers how the tendency to believe needs to be controlled, with special reference to the motive of curiosity and the way in which suggested ideas are entertained. DORSEY, G. A., Why We Behave Like Human Beings. An analysis of the fundamental factors influencing human conduct, so interestingly done that the book has become a best seller. Physiological and environmental factors are especially stressed. RILEY, W., From Myth to Reason. A historico-critical description of the principles which have guided attempts to interpret the world, from the nature-myth to the conception of evolution. ROBINSON, J. H., The Mind in the Making, chaps. III, IV, V, VI. A sketch of the intellectual history of the western world, showing the influence on our present ways of thinking of our heritage from animal ancestry, from savagery, and from childhood, as well as from the Greek and mediaeval civilizations which preceded ours. LEVY-BRUHL, L., Primitive Mentality (Clare trans.). A systematic study of the modes of thinking about themselves and their world characteristic of certain primitive peoples. |