CHAPTER III

ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE

I

The Need

Intelligence is organized experience; but intelligence itself must be organized. Consider the resources of the unused intelligence of the world; intelligence potential but undeveloped; intelligence developed but isolated; intelligence allowed to waste itself in purely personal pursuits, unasked to enter into coöperation for larger ends. Consider the Platos fretting in exile while petty politicians rule the world; consider Montaigne, and Hobbes, and Hume, and Carlyle, and the thousand other men whose genius was left to grow--or die--in solitude or starvation; consider the vast number of university-trained minds who are permitted, for lack of invitation and organized facilities, to slip into the world of profit and loss and destructively narrow intent; consider the expert ability in all lines which can be found in the faculties of the world, and which goes to training an infinitesimal fraction of the community. The thought of university graduates, of university faculties, of university-trained investigators, has had a rapidly growing influence in the last ten years in America; and because it is an influence due to enlightenment it is fundamentally an influence for “good.” It was this influence that showed when President Wilson said that the eight-hour day was demanded by the informed opinion of the time. The sources of such influence have merely been touched; they are deep; we must find a way to make informed opinion more articulate and powerful. “The most valuable knowledge consists of methods,” said Nietzsche;[302] and the most valuable methods are methods of organization, whether of data or of men. Organization’s the thing. Economic forces are organized; the forces of intelligence are not. To organize intelligence; that is surely one method of approach to the social problem; and what if, indeed, it be the very heart and substance of the social problem?

Now a very easy way of making the propounder of such an organization feel unusually modest is to ask him that little trouble-making question, How? To answer that would be to answer almost everything that can be answered. Here are _opera basilica_ again!--for what are we doing, after all, but trying to take Francis Bacon seriously? Of course the difficulty in organizing intelligence is how to know who are intelligent, and how to get enough people to agree with you that you know. If each man’s self-valuation were accepted, our organization would be rather bulky. Are there any men very widely recognized as intelligent, who could be used as the nucleus of an organization? There are individual men so recognized,--Edison, for example, and, strange to say, one or two men who by accident are holding political office. But these are stray individuals; are there any groups whose average of intelligence is highly rated by a large portion of the community? There are. Physicians are so rated; so much so that by popular usage they have won almost a monopoly on the once more widely used term _doctor_. University professors are highly rated. Let us take the physicians and the professors; here is a nucleus of recognized intelligence.

There are objections, here, of course; some one urges that many physicians are quacks, another that professors are rated as intelligent, but only in an unpractical sort of way. Perhaps we shall find some scheme for eliminating the quacks; but the professors present a difficult problem. It is true that they suffer from intellectualism, academitis, overfondness for theories, and other occupational diseases; it is true that the same people who stand in awe of the very word _professor_ would picture the article indicated by the word as a thin, round-shouldered, be-spectacled ninny, incapable of finding his way alone through city streets, and so immersed in the stars that he is sooner or later submerged in a well. But what if this quality of detachment, of professorial calm, be just one of the qualities needed for the illumination of our social problem? Perhaps we have too much emotion in these questions, and need the colder light of the man who is trained to use his “head” and not his “heart.” Perhaps the most useful thing in the world for our purpose is this terribly dispassionate, coldly scrutinizing professor. We need men as impartial and clear-eyed as men come; and whatever a professor may _say_, yet he _sees_ his field more clearly and impartially than any other group of men whatever. Let the professors stay.

And so we have our physicians and our professors,--say all physicians and professors who have taught or practised three years in institutions, or as the graduates of institutions, of recognized standing. And now let us dream our dream.

II

The Organization of Intelligence

These men, through meetings and correspondence, organize themselves into a “Society for Social Research”; they begin at once to look for an “inspired millionaire” to finance the movement for six months or so; they advertise themselves diligently in the press, and make known their intention to get together the best brains of the country to study the facts and possibilities of the social problem. And then--a difficult point--they face the task of arranging some more or less impersonal method of deciding who are the intelligent people and who not. They ask themselves just what kind of information a man should be expected to have, to fit him for competent handling of social questions; and after long discussions they conclude that such a man should be well trained in one--and acquainted with the general findings of the others--of what we may call the social disciplines: biology, psychology, sociology, history, economics, law, politics, philosophy, and perhaps more. They formulate a long and varied test for the discovery of fitness in these fields; and they arrange that every university in the country shall after plentiful advertisement and invitation to all and sundry, give these tests, and pay the expenses incurred by any needy candidate who shall emerge successful from the trial. In this way men whose studies have been private, and unadorned with academic degree, are to find entrance to the Society.

It is recognized that the danger of such a test lies in the premium which it sets on the bookish as against the practical man: on the man whose knowledge has come to him in the classroom or the study, as against the man who has won his knowledge just by living face to face with life. There are philosophers who have never heard of Kant, and psychologists who have been Freudians for decades without having ever read a book. A society recruited by such a test will be devoid of artists and poets, may finally eliminate all but fact-gathering dryasdusts, and so end deservedly in nothing. And yet some test there must be, to indicate, however crudely, one’s fitness or unfitness to take part in this work; the alternative would be the personal choice of the initial few, whose prejudices and limitations would so become the constitution and by-laws of the society. Perhaps, too, some way may appear of using the artists and poets, and the genius who knows no books.

Well: the tests are given; the original nucleus of physicians and professors submit themselves to these tests, and some, failing, are eliminated; other men come, from all fields of work, and from them a number survive the ordeal and pass into the Society. So arises a body of say 5000 men, divided into local groups but working in unison so far as geographical separateness will permit; and to them now come, impressed with their earnestness, a wealthy man, who agrees to finance the Society for such time as may be needed to test its usefulness.

Now what does our Society do?

It seeks information. That, and not a programme, is the fruitful beginning of reform. “Men are willing to investigate only the small things of life,” says Samuel Butler; this Society for Social Research is prepared and resolved to investigate anything that has vital bearing on the social problem; it stands ready to make enemies, ready to soil its hands. It appoints committees to gather and formulate all that biologists can tell of human origin and the innate impulses of men; all that psychology in its varied branches can tell of human behavior; all that sociology knows of how and why human societies and institutions rise and fall; all that medicine can tell of social ills and health; it appoints committees to go through all science with the loadstone of the social purpose, picking up this fact here and that one there; committees to study actual and proposed forms of government, administrative and electoral methods; committees to investigate marriage, eugenics, prostitution, poverty, and the thousand other aspects and items of the social problem; committees to call for and listen to responsible expressions of every kind of opinion; committees to examine and analyze social experiments, profit-sharing plans, Oneida communities; even a committee on Utopia, before which persons with schemes and _’isms_ and perfect cities in their heads may freely preach their gospel. In short this Society becomes the organized eye and ear of the community, ready and eager to seek out all the facts of human life and business that may enlighten human will.

And having found the facts it publishes them. Its operations show real earnestness, sincerity, and ability; and in consequence it wins such prestige that its reports find much heralding, synopsis, and comment in the press. But in addition to that it buys, for the first day of every month, a half-page of space in several of the more widely circulated periodicals and journals of the country, and publishes its findings succinctly and intelligibly. It gives full references for all its statements of fact; it makes verification possible for all doubters and deniers. It includes in each month’s report a reliable statement of the year’s advances in some one of the social disciplines, so that its twelve reports in any year constitute a record of the socially vital scientific findings of the year. It limits itself strictly to verifiable information, and challenges demonstration of humanly avoidable partiality. And it takes great care that its reports are couched not in learned and technical language but in such phraseology as will be intelligible to the graduates of an average grammar school. That is central.

III

Information of Panacea

Without some such means of getting and spreading information there is no hope for fundamental social advance. We have agreed, have we not, that to make men happier and more capable we must divert their socially injurious impulses into beneficent channels; that we can do this only by studying those impulses and controlling the stimuli which arouse them; that we can control those stimuli only by studying the varied factors of the environment and the means of changing them; in short, that at the bottom of the direction of impulse lies the necessity of knowledge, of information spread to all who care to receive it. Autocracy may improve the world without spreading enlightenment; but democracy cannot. _Delenda est ignorantia._[303]

This, after all, is a plan for the democratization of aristocracy; it is Plato translated into America. It utilizes superior intelligence and gives it voice, but sanctions no change that has not received the free consent of the community. It gives the aristocracy of intellect the influence and initiative which crude democracy frustrates; but it avoids the corruption that usually goes with power, by making this influence work through the channels of persuasion rather than compulsion. It counteracts the power of wealth to disseminate partisan views through news-items and editorials, and relies on fact to get the better at last of double-leaded prejudice. It rests on the faith that lies will out.

Would the mass of the people listen to such reports? Consider, first, the repute that attaches to the professorial title. Let a man write even the sorriest nonsense but sign himself as one of the faculty of some responsible institution, and he will find a hearing; the reader, perhaps, need not go far to find an example. In recent industrial and political issues the pronouncements of a few professors carried very great weight; and there are some modest purveyors of so supposedly harmless a thing as philosophy whose voice is feared by all interests that prosper in the dark. Will the combined reputation of the most enlightened men in the country mean less? A report published by this Society for Social Research will mean that a large body of intelligent men have from their number appointed three or five or ten to find the facts of a certain situation or dispute; these appointed men will, if they report hastily, or carelessly, or dishonestly, impair the repute of all their fellows in the Society; they will take care, then, and will probably find honesty as good a policy as some of us pretend it to be. With every additional report so guarded from defect the repute of the society will grow until it becomes the most powerful intellectual force in the world.

When one reflects how many pages of misrepresentation were printed in the papers of only one city in the presidential campaign of 1916, and then imagines what would have been the effect of a mere statement of facts on both sides,--the records of the candidates and the parties, their acknowledged connections, friends and enemies, their expressed principles and programmes, the facts about the tariff, the German issue, international law, the railway-brotherhood dispute, and so forth--one begins to appreciate the importance of information. After the initial and irrevocable differences of original nature nothing is so vital as the spread of enlightenment; and nothing offers itself so well to organized effort. Eugenics is weak because it has no thought-out programme; _’isms_ rise and fall because people are not informed. Let who can, improve the native qualities of men; but that aside, the most promising plan is the dissemination of fact.

Such a society for research would be a sort of social consciousness, a “mind of the race.” It would make social planning possible for the first time; it would make history conscious. It would look ahead and warn; it would point the nose of the community to unwelcome but important facts; it would examine into such statements as that of Sir William Ramsay, that England’s coal fields will be exhausted in one hundred and seventy-five years; and its warnings, backed by the prestige of its expert information, would perhaps avert the ravages of social waste and private greed. Nature, said Lester Ward, is a spendthrift, man an economizer. But economy means prevision, and social economy means organized provision. Here would be not agitation, not propaganda, not moralizing, but only clarification; these men would be “merchants of light,” simply giving information so that what men should do they might do knowingly and not in the dark.

Indeed, if one can clarify one need not agitate. Just to state facts is the most terrible thing that can be done to an injustice. Sermons and stump-speeches stampede the judgment for a moment, but the sound of their perorations still lingers in the air when reaction comes. Fact has this advantage over rhetoric, that time strengthens the one and weakens the other. Tell the truth and time will be your eloquence.

Let us suppose that our Society has existed some three years; let us suppose that on the first day of every month it has spread through the press simple reports of its investigations, simple accounts of socially significant work in science, and simple statements of fact about the economic and political issues of the day; let us suppose that by far the greater part of these reports have been conscientious and accurate and clear. Very well: in the course of these three years a large number of mentally alert people all over the country will have developed the habit of reading these monthly reports; they will look forward to them, they will attach significance to them, they will herald them as events, almost as decisions. In any question of national policy its statements will influence thousands and thousands of the more independent minds. Let us calculate the number of people who, in these United States, would be reached by such reports; let us say the reports are printed in three or four New York dailies, having a total circulation of one million; in other dailies throughout the country totalling some five million circulation; and in one or more weeklies or monthlies with a large or a select circulation. One may perhaps say that out of the seven or eight million people so reached (mostly adult males), five per cent will be so influenced by the increasing prestige of the Society that they will read the reports. Of these four hundred thousand readers it is reasonable to suppose that three hundred thousand will be voters, and not only voters but men of influence among their fellows. These men will each of them be a medium through which the facts reported will be spread; it is not too much to say that the number of American voters influenced directly or indirectly by these reports will reach to a million.[304] Now imagine the influence of this million of voters on a presidential election. Their very existence would be a challenge; candidates would have them in mind when making promises and criticisms; parties would think of them when formulating policies and drawing up platforms; editors would beware of falling into claptrap and deceit for fear of these million men armed with combustible fact. It would mean such an elevation of political discussion and political performance as democracy has never yet produced; such an elevation as democracy must produce or die.

IV

Sex, Art, and Play in Social Reconstruction

So far our imagined Society has done no more than to seek and give information. It has, it is true, listened to propagandists and Utopians, and has published extracts from their testimony; but even this has been not to agitate but to inform; that such and such opinions are held by such and such men, and by such and such a number of men, is also a point of information. Merely to state facts is the essential thing, and the extremely effective thing. But now there are certain functions which such a Society might perform beyond the giving of facts--functions that involve personal attitudes and interpretations. It may be possible for our Society to take on these functions without detracting from the trust reposed in its statements of fact. What are these functions?

First of all, the stimulation of artistic production, and the extension of artistic appreciation. Our Society, which is composed of rather staid men, themselves not peculiarly fitted to pass judgment outside the field of science, will invite, let us say, twenty of the most generally and highly valued of English and American authors to form themselves into a Committee on Literary Awards, as a branch of the Society for Social Research. Imagine Thomas Hardy and George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells and John Galsworthy and Rudyard Kipling and John Masefield and George Moore and Joseph Conrad and W. D. Howells and Theodore Dreiser and many more, telling the world every month, in individual instalments, their judgment on current fiction, drama, poetry, English literature in general; imagine the varied judgments printed with synoptic coördination of the results as a way of fixing the standing of a book in the English literary world; and judge of the stimulus that would reside in lists signed by such names. Imagine another group of men, the literary élite of France, making briefer reports on French literature; and other groups in Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia; imagine the world getting every month the judgment of Anatole France and Remain Rolland and Gerhardt Hauptmann and Anton Tchekov and Georg Brandes on the current literature of their peoples; imagine them making lists, too, of the best books in all their literatures; imagine eager young men and women poring over these conflicting lists, discussing them, making lists of their own, and getting guidance so. And to the literary lists add monthly reports, by a committee of the Society itself, on the best books in the various fields of science. Finally, let the artists speak,--painters and sculptors and all; let them say where excellence has dwelt this month in their respective fields. There are hundreds of thousands who hunger for such guidance as this plan would give. There are young people who flounder about hopelessly because they find no guidance; young people who are easily turned to fine work by the stimulus of responsible judgment, and as easily lapse into the banalities of popular fiction and popular magazines when this guiding stimulus fails to come. There are thousands of people who would be glad to pay their modest contribution to the support of any organization that would manage to get such direction for them. Half the value of a university course lies in this, that the teacher will suggest readings, judge books, and provide general guidance for individual work. Perhaps the most valuable kind of information in the world is that which guides one in the search for information. Such guidance, given to all who ask for it, would go far to save us from the mediocrity that almost stifles our national life.[305]

And more; why should not the stimulation be for the producers as well as for the consumers? Why should not some kind of award be made, say every six months, to the authors adjudged best in their lines by their qualified contemporaries? Why should such a book as _Jean Christophe_ or _The Brothers Karamazov_ go unheralded except in fragmentary individual ways? Why not reward such productions with a substantial prize?--or, if that be impossible, by some presentation of certificate? Even a “scrap of paper” would go a long way to stimulate the writer and guide the reader. But why should not a money reward be possible? If rich men will pay thousands upon thousands for the (perhaps) original works of dead artists, why should they not turn their wealth into spiritual gold by helping the often impecunious writers of the living day? It is a convenient error to believe that financial aid would detract from the independence of the creator: it would, did it come from men rewarding on the basis of their own judgment; it would not if the judgment of the world’s men of letters should be taken as criterion. And perhaps fewer Chattertons and Davidsons would mar the history of literature and art.

This direction of attention to what is best and greatest in the work of our age is a matter of deeper moment than superficial thought can grasp. If, by some such method, the meaning of “success” could be freed from monetary implication and attached rather to excellence in art and science, the change would have almost inestimably far-reaching results. Men worship money, as has often been pointed out,[306] not for its own sake, nor for the material good it brings, but for the prestige of success that goes with its “conspicuous consumption”; let the artist find more appreciation for his ability than the captain of industry finds for his, and there will be a great release of energy from economic exploitation to creative work in science, literature, and art. A large part of the stimuli that prompt men to exploit their fellows will be gone; and that richest of all incentives--social esteem--will go to produce men eager to contribute to the general power and happiness of the community.[307]

The art impulse, as is generally believed, is a diversion of sex energy. An organism is essentially not a food-getting but a reproductive mechanism; the food-getting is a contributory incident in the reproduction. As development proceeds the period of pregnancy and adolescence increases, more of the offspring survive to maturity, large broods, litters, or families become unnecessary, and more and more of the energy that was sexual slides over into originally secondary pursuits, like play and art. At the same time there is a gradual diminution in pugnacity (which was another factor in the drama of reproduction), and rivalry in games and arts encroaches more and more on the emotional field once monopolized by strife for mates and food. The game--a sort of Hegelian synthesis of hostility and sociability--takes more and more the place of war, and artistic creation increasingly replaces reproduction.

If all this is anything more than theoretic skating over thin sheets of fact, it means that one “way out” from our social perplexities lies in the provision of stronger stimulus to creation and recreation, art and games. It is a serious part of the social planner’s work to find some way of nourishing the art impulse wherever it appears, and drawing it on by arranging rewards for its productions. And again we shall have to understand that play is an important matter in a nation’s life; that one of the best signs for the future of America is the prevalence of healthy athleticism; and that an attempt to widen these sport activities to greater intersectional and international scope than they have yet attained will get at some of the roots of international pugnacity. A wise government would be almost as interested in the people’s games as in their schools, and would spend millions in making rivalry absorb the dangerous energy of pugnacity. Olympic games should not be Olympic games, occurring only with Olympiads; not a month should pass but great athletes, selected by eliminative tests from every part of every country, should meet, now here, now there, to match brawn and wits in the friendly enmity of games. Let men know one another through games, and they will not for slight reasons pass from sportsmanship to that competitive destruction and deceit which our political Barnums call “the defence of our national honor.”

V

Education

This diversion of the sexual instinct into art and games (a prophylactic which has long since been applied to individuals, and awaits application to groups) must begin in the early days of personal development; so that our Society for Social Research would, if it were to take on this task, find itself inextricably mixed up with the vast problem of educational method and aim.

Here more than anywhere one hears the call for enlightenment and sees the need for clarification. Here is an abundance of _’isms_ and a dearth of knowledge. Most teachers use methods which they themselves consider antiquated, and teach subjects which they will admit not one in a hundred of their pupils will ever need to know. Curious lessons in ethics are administered, which are seldom practised in the classroom, and make initiative children come to believe that commandment-breaking is heroic. Boys and girls bursting with vitality and the splendid exuberance of youth are cramped for hours into set positions, while by a sort of water-cure process knowledge is pumped into them from books duller than a doctor’s dissertation in philosophy. And so forth: the indictment against our schools has been drawn up a thousand times and in a thousand ways, and needs no reënforcement here. But though we have indicted we have not made any systematic attempt to find just what is wrong, and how, and where; and what may be done to remedy the evil. Experiments have been made, but their bearings and results have been very imperfectly recorded.

Suppose now that our Society for Social Research should appoint a great Committee on Education to hire expert investigators and make a thorough attempt to clarify the issues in education. Here the function of philosophy should be clear; for the educator touches at almost every point those problems of values, individual and social, which are the special hunting-ground of the philosopher. The importance of psychology here is recognized, but the importance of biology and pathology has not been seen in fit perspective. Why should not a special group of men be set aside for years, if necessary, to study the applicability of the several sciences to education? Why should not all scientific knowledge, so far as it touches human nature, be focused on the semi-darkness in which the educator works?

Two special problems in this field invite research. One concerns the effect, on national character and capacity, of a system of education controlled by the government. The point was made by Spinoza, as may be remembered, that a government will, if it controls the schools, aim to restrain rather than to develop the energies of men. Kant remarked the same difficulty. The function of education in the eyes of a dominant class is to make men able to do skilled work but unable to do original thinking (for all original thinking begins with destruction); the function of education in the eyes of a government is to teach men that eleventh commandment which God forgot to give to Moses: thou shalt love thy country right or wrong. All this, of course, requires some marvellous prestidigitation of the truth, as school text-books of national history show. The ignorant, it seems, are the necessary ballast in the ship of state.

The alternative to such schools seems to be a return to private education, with the rich man’s son getting even more of a start on the poor boy than he gets now. Is there a _tertium quid_ here? Perhaps this is one point which a resolute effort to get the facts would clarify. What does such governmentally-regulated education do to the forces of personal difference and initiative? Will men and women educated in such a way produce their maximum in art and thought and industry? Or will they be automata, always waiting for a push? What different results would come if the nationally-owned schools were to confine their work absolutely to statements of fact, presentations of science, and were to leave “character-moulding” and lessons in ethics to private persons or institutions? Then at least each parent might corrupt his own child in his own pet way; and there might be a greater number of children who would not be corrupted at all.

Another problem which might be advanced towards a solution by a little light is that of giving higher education to those who want it but are too poor to pay. There are certain studies, called above the social disciplines, which help a man not so much to raise himself out of his class and become a snob, as to get a better understanding of himself and his fellow-men. Since mutual understanding is a hardly exaggerable social good, why should not a way be found to provide for all who wish it evening instruction in history, sociology, economics, psychology, biology, philosophy, and similar fields of knowledge? Every added citizen who has received instruction in these matters is a new asset to the community; he will vote with more intelligence, he will work better in coöperation, he will be less subject to undulations of social mania, he will be a hint to all office-seekers to put their usual nonsense on the shelf. Perhaps by this medium too our Society would spread its reports and widen its influence. Imagine a nation of people instructed in these sciences: with such a people civilization would begin.

And then again, our busy-body Society would turn its research light on the universities, and tell them a thing or two of what the light would show. It would betray the lack of coördination among the various sciences,--the department of psychology, for example, never coming to so much as speaking terms with the department of economics; it would call for an extension, perhaps, of the now infrequent seminars and conferences between departments whose edges overlap, or which shed light on a common field. It would invite the university to give less of its time to raking over the past, and help it to orient itself toward the future; it would suggest to every university that it provide an open forum for the responsible expression of all shades of opinion; it would, in general, call for a better organization of science as part of the organization of intelligence; it would remind the universities that they are more vital even than governments; and it might perhaps succeed in getting engraved on the gates of every institution of learning the words of Thomas Hobbes: “Seeing the universities are the foundation of civil and moral doctrine, from whence the preachers and the gentry, drawing such water as they find, use to sprinkle the same upon the people, there ought certainly to be great care taken to have it pure.”