Our Mediæval Minds

I

CRITICISM of society in its present-day manifestations is the leading topic of conversation and literature, since within the term ‘literature’ I mean to include newspapers as well as all other printed media for the exchange of ideas, while lectures before women’s clubs and other organizations may be classed as conversation. Prohibition and the social adventure in Russia ostensibly outrank this topic in current discussion, but those two social experiments are attempts to advance criticism of society beyond the stage of mere talk, and therefore logically fall into place as subtopics of the general theme. The generalization therefore seems as nearly justified as any generalization ever is. It is not my purpose to say anything about either prohibition or Soviet Russia, but to consider the broader topic of the relation of the persistence of the mediæval mind to modern criticism of society.

Most criticism of society has an odor of antiquity, perhaps even of sanctity, about it. For thousands of years people have been intellectually disturbed, and therefore felt warranted in disturbing their fellow men, over the way women dress and comport themselves, how young people fail to comport themselves, how married couples behave, how gangsters and racketeers misbehave (for, though those two nouns are new, the misbehavior is old), and by various other social phenomena. It is not too much to say that a mental wailing wall stretches back through the centuries as far as we have any record of what people thought of the results of their attempts to live together in groups. Nearly three thousand years ago Hesiod, in his Works and Days, considered the general state of affairs and concluded that things had been steadily getting worse since his imagined golden age.

It is clearly evident that social criticism has at least one modern phase; indeed, it must inevitably have a modern phase, since no one could criticize a new thing before it had come into existence. Human experience also indicates that when anything new comes into existence abundant criticism of it will immediately be forthcoming. Thomas Jefferson denounced the enervating and demoralizing practice of riding in carriages instead of on horseback, sermons were preached against bathtubs, and in general all changes in our way of living have come about under the influence of a sort of drumfire of vigorous, usually mistaken, opposition.

The outstanding new factor in modern life is the amazing substitution of mechanical energy for human effort in the performance of necessary work. Half the work performed in the entire world is done in the United States, and over 90 per cent of our work is done for us by mechanical means. Without getting into an argument as to whether heat may be considered as truly equivalent to work by anyone except a physicist, most people can agree that about two thirds of our mechanical work is done by coal and one third by petroleum and natural gas, the word ‘about’ serving to preserve space to squeeze in the one-twentieth part that is done by water power. The mediæval mind regarded work as a curse, therefore any means of escaping it should logically be a boon. But to do work in a mechanical way involves the use of machines, and the word ‘machine’ is enough to make many critics see red, especially if the persisting streak of mediævalism in their minds is well developed.

Readers of modern literature of social criticism might infer from it that the verb ‘to criticize’ means to misrepresent and vilify. Actually it originally meant to judge; and to be a good critic it was necessary to be capable of forming a sound judgment. Any sound judgment must arise from the intelligent consideration of good evidence. Someone, undoubtedly a Chicagoan, has said that New York has the best judges money can buy, and modern criticism seems not to be free from the sordid type of practitioner. Human nature being what it is, as exemplified by the million-dollar ‘gates’ at prize fights (which there is every reason to believe are often merely barefaced fakes), obviously the easiest way to reap a rich harvest from literary output is to ‘hippodrome’ it — put on a good pummeling of someone or something, whether it be the character of George Washington or the sincere if somewhat ingenuous activities of Rotary clubs. If one starts with a natural liking and aptitude for belligerent literary assault, a pleasurable activity becomes a profitable one, and if the critic can put on a sufficiently good show in walloping small-town society, business men, doctors, and clergymen, he may even get prizes as well as the commercial returns he ostensibly scorns.

It is not the crude love for a fight but a more subtle characteristic that seems to evidence the mediæval mind, if this should be dignified as mind at all. Much later in time came the puzzled mind of the mystic, who, seeing in the world about him many things he could not understand, proceeded to invent explanations for them. Ernest Dimnet says the mediæval mind was free of ‘phantasms,’ but he uses that word in a special sense, and even after accepting his definition of it I can scarcely accept his conclusion. H. O. Taylor’s more than a thousand pages on the mediæval mind characterize it as chiefly concerned with metaphysical construction and spiritual passion, but quite clearly he is interested in the exceptional rather than the average mind of the time.

Max Radin in his brilliant Weinstock Foundation lectures on ‘The Lawful Pursuit of Gain’ says that ‘in Mediæval Europe . . . the position of the Church in the matter [merchandising] was an amalgam of a philosophical contempt for wealth and Christian repugnance to the vanities of a transitory existence.’ Throughout his discourse he indicates the view that the mediæval mind fell into much confusion in wrestling with problems of morality and economics. The most marked characteristic of the mediæval mind, to my way of thinking, was that although it had come to know a good deal about the nature of the physical world, it still believed in magic and therefore attributed to physical things qualities and powers we now know they cannot possibly possess. Some of the clearest modern instances of the mediæval way of thinking appear in the flood of current comment on the general topic of the ‘brutalizing effect of machines on men.’

Believing that by grasping a magic sword one could be turned into an invincible warrior was a pleasing and harmless bit of self-deception, because no one ever saw or touched the sword, but believing that machines can turn men into brutes is quite another matter, for we see and touch them daily. To a modern mind the fact that machines, by themselves, can do nothing to men is self-evident. The only effect of the machine is that it enables men to do things to themselves. The distinction is all-important, because if there is valid objection to the results of the man-plus-machine combination one should direct attention to the man, not the machine. To do otherwise is to act as irrationally as a dog who bites a stone thrown at it instead of the person who threw it.

A domestic example of this very common current confusion of thought has occurred as I write. My older son delivered a diatribe against the radio, to which I replied that it could not possibly annoy him, since it is so easily turned off. His rejoinder was that his younger brother insists on turning it on to listen to things which the older brother does not want to hear. The existence of the mechanism enabled the younger to create a situation unsatisfactory to the older son (though highly satisfactory to himself), but the mechanism itself is, by its nature, entirely inoffensive, and this is true of all machines. To attack the machine rather than the person necessarily involved is to use the approach of the mediæval mind.

Since no rational person would seriously propose to do away with all machines, to prevent the possibility of people ever doing objectionable things with them, — to do away with knives because little boys sometimes carve the furniture with them, abolish railroads because their whistles and clamor annoy, and scrap all automobiles because they sometimes kill people, — the discussion narrows down to whether some machines sometimes, in the control of some people, are not productive of more that is objectionable than is of benefit. This can only be decided by arguing a specific case, and, like Burke in his defense of the colonies, I am not arguing specific cases, but only pointing out the impossibility of bringing a blanket indictment. Even in the specific case, if proved, the objection is not to the machine, but to the use which is made of it. The practical results of our current attempt to abolish beverage alcohol as a method of preventing the misuse of it have served to convince many of the futility of that way of solving a social problem.

Another manifestation of the workings of the mediæval mind is in attributing to things or processes the quality of the purpose for which they are used. A curious example appears in Dimnet’s Art of Thinking, where that otherwise modern writer indicates clearly that he regards the thinking which leads to a decision as to whether to buy one painting or another for the living room as lofty and admirable, while that leading one to decide whether to buy lamb or beef for dinner is mean and ignoble. The quality of the process is independent of the quality of the purpose. An airplane identical with the one used by Lindbergh in his historic flight might be used by a racketeer to make his get-away, and neither mechanism would be in the least affected by, or responsible for, its use. The mechanic who tuned up Lindbergh’s plane would undoubtedly feel proud of himself, while the one who performed exactly the same operation for the racketeer’s plane would perhaps feel rather debased. Their acts were identical, and only through a feeling of participation in the use made of the object on which the acts were performed could any distinction be made; to borrow the terminology of mathematics, the distinction is an imaginary quantity.

An interesting example of the persistence of mediæval thinking in the consideration of modern problems can be found in Dr. Abraham Flexner’s provocative book discussing universities. First defining a university as a place where knowledge and ideas are conserved and developed and young people are trained to carry on in the same way, Dr. Flexner proceeds to consider the activities of various universities, American, British, and German, from that point of view. It seems to me characteristically mediæval to set up such a definition without admitting any possibility that it may be in error.

What is supposed to bridge the gap between a university so conceived and life as it is actually lived, or how knowledge and ideas are to be transmitted into effective action,¹ need not, however, concern us here, for the mediæval approach to the problem is even more evident in the author’s discussion of curricular activities.

Dr. Flexner seems quite certain that knowledge and ideas can be divided into classes that are as sharply distinctive as the social distinctions between the workers and the upper classes in Germany, and that universities should only concern themselves with the upper (as he sees them) classes of knowledge and ideas. A three-year study of the sanitary facilities of an ancient Greek house, as revealed by excavations at Herculaneum, would appear to him as a piece of sound scholarship; an equally meticulous study of the sanitary facilities of modern high schools he dismisses as ‘nonsense.’ This ascribing of qualities to knowledge and ideas is not the less mediæval because it is still widely practised by many who might reasonably be expected to exhibit a higher level of intelligence.

II

A striking quality of the mediæval mind was that when it had come to believe in anything it neither looked for nor was much affected by the visible or ascertainable fads. The schoolmen who watched Galileo drop the weights from the top of the Tower of Pisa, so often described of late that they have become almost familiar figures, exactly illustrate my point, since, although they saw the weights fall at the same rate, they still believed Aristotle was right when he said they would fall at different rates. A present-day instance of this attitude of mind is the constant reiteration of the statement that modern production methods, involving the repetition of operations that can be performed without much attention to them, dull the mind and degrade man. Every biologist knows, on the contrary, that it is through developing such repetitive activities that sentient beings have advanced to where they have developed minds and the ability to use them for something beyond the mere maintaining of an animal existence.

Rhythmic and ceaselessly lashing cilia sweep food into the digestive system of a rotifer; the rhythmic and ceaseless throbbing of our hearts keeps us alive. The basal complex of all human lives is a somewhat monotonous routine — sleep at night, get up in the morning, wash, dress, eat, and so on till at night we sleep again. People of limited intellectual resources often find deciding what clothes to wear or what food to eat a somewhat trying intellectual task and they shrink from attempting anything more important. The usual way of treating a neurasthenic patient is to schedule his activities so that he never has to decide what to do. Anyone who has had charge of a working force knows what a relief it is to the average worker not to have to expend his often slender store of mental energy in coping with situations that can be acceptably met in a standard way. It is not uncommon for a workman, promoted to be foreman, to decide that he would rather have less pay with less responsibility than to essay the larger task.

A reviewer of the recently published second volume of the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences quotes (apparently with approval) the article ‘Art’ as saying that, with the introduction of the machine, ‘craftsmen had to turn from creative work to tending the machine which performed their labor. This divorced the crafts from the fine arts and debased first the skill of the craftsmen and still further public taste.’ As with Galileo and the weights, it is easy to ascertain from observation that such a belief has no basis of fact to support it. Craftsmen capable of creative work are not now reduced to tending machines; modem industry eagerly seeks for craftsmanship and rewards it highly when found. The general experience of those in responsible charge of industry is that the people they have to employ to tend machines possess too little rather than too much craftsmanship for their most efficient use, while machines open new fields for craftsmanship of a high order. Not only is there no valid evidence that the machine in industry has ‘ debased public taste,’but it is doubtful whether those who make the statement have any clear idea of what they mean.

There is also no good evidence that repetitive work injures any man. To be sure, it sometimes permits him to make himself unhappy, because when he does not need to fix his attention on his work his mind sometimes slips into pessimistic reveries; but no one can control the man’s mind except himself — least of all the machine. I have often wondered why the Chamber of Commerce of some manufacturing town does not offer a prize of, say, $100,000 for the production of an authentic specimen of a workman who has been degraded and brutalized by the performance of repetitive work. There would be no danger that the prize would ever have to be awarded, and it would be a very effective publicity stunt.

The mediæval mind, when it observed results, was frequently undiscriminating in its attribution of sources. There are still people who believe that thunder sours milk because in periods of frequent thunderstorms the milk is sometimes found to have turned sour. The rather general belief that the increasing complexity of modern life, with its necessary corollary of a considerable degree of order and regularity if chaos is to be avoided, hampers the exercise of creative originality reveals a similar quality of mind.

To prove mathematically how many more combinations can be made with ten things than with five is an easy matter, hence it cannot be the multiplication of diverse things that is objected to, and one finds difficulty in ascertaining what, if any, meaning lies embedded in such a belief. Certainly it cannot be lack of public approval or of financial reward that hampers creative originality, for never before in history have rewards been so munificent, or have facilities existed for such instant and widespread recognition of achievement. Where artists once had to seek a patron, there now exist hundreds of overlords of the drama, literature, and of every other field in which excellence can be exhibited, seeking eagerly for unusual talent that may be exploited.

One clue to what may be meant appears in the word ‘regimented,’ which, sometimes applied to modern society, carries the implication that just as the soldier must march and not dance, so in modern life we must follow a set pace. So far as this is true, it is no modern condition, but one that has always characterized communal living; less friction now develops within a group than in earlier ages, other things being equal. The pace of the camel caravans of five thousand years ago was even more regimented than the Sunday traffic on the Boston Post Road. To be sure, there were no ‘traffic cops’ on the desert, but that was because there was no necessity for them; if any need had existed they would have been there, and the penalties for disregard of their authority would have been more severe than they are now. Living among many people rather than among a few introduces difficult problems, but there are still immense areas of the earth’s surface where one can live miles from the nearest neighbor, and it is much easier to get to these places now than it used to be. If there is anything except personal unwillingness which restrains from living the simple life those who really prefer that sort of life, where is it to be found?

The real clue seems to be that a rich and complex existence too severely taxes creative individuality. A child with a few simple toys plays happily with them, though another surrounded by a myriad mechanical contrivances soon complains of nothing to do. The reason, of course, is that with a few simple things it is easy to think of pleasing combinations, but to be confronted with many complex things that are better than one can make for one’s self is discouraging rather than stimulating. It seems fair to suggest that the real modern problem is not lack of opportunity for creative originality but the difficulty of rising to the level of the demand upon that quality. Certainly this is true of manual skill. There is a general impression that a modern manufacturing plant offers little opportunity for the exercise of manual skill, but every executive knows that, on the contrary, it is difficult to secure a sufficient supply of skilled workers equal to the tasks of modern pattern, jig, and die making. Modern society, instead of being characterized by mediocrity, is a pattern into which mediocrity finds it increasingly difficult to fit.

III

So far we have been concerned with the impact of modern life upon the mediæval mind, but that, after all, is of but little social importance. What is of more vital significance is the effect of the persistence of the mediæval mind upon modern progress. Criticism of modern society may, somewhat tritely, be called the back-seat driving of progressing civilization. Sound criticism is helpful; that which is merely captious faultfinding is annoying, but not otherwise harmful; but that which is unsound is positively detrimental, for if it is heeded it leads to following a wrong course, and to rebut it is a needless drain on mental energy that is fully taxed by the task in hand. Criticism that finds its origin in the mediæval mind must inevitably fall into this last class. Those who find such criticism most trying are the scientists and applied scientists who devote their energies to increasing our knowledge of and control over the physical world. Their objective is first to find the facts and then to face them squarely, while the mediæval mind ignores or evades the facts, especially if they seem to involve relinquishing anything already accepted.

Thus the mediæval mind is still, as it was in the Middle Ages, an obstructing force to rational inquiry, and is therefore to be deplored.

Criticism that confuses mechanisms with the uses made of them retards progress in another way, because it is an unwarranted derogation of those workers who have made noteworthy progress in what they were called upon to do. People have desired quicker and more comfortable transportation, and the engineers have provided smooth concrete roads and swift-moving automobiles at a reasonable cost. People have desired more and cheaper light; the engineer has provided tungsten, copper, and other metals and combined them into an efficient, cheap, and reliable means to that end. People have desired quicker transmission of messages, and the scientists and engineers have provided the telegraph, telephone, and radio.

Now the use to which people put these devices is no concern of the scientist and engineer. They have made it possible for all the people in a circle of fifty miles radius to assemble at one point, if they so desire, but what the people do after they get there is no concern of those who made it possible. The night can be rendered as bright as day, but whether the end served is a helpful one is not the engineer’s problem or responsibility. A youth in Portland, Maine, can converse with a maiden in Portland, Oregon, but whether or not what he says to her is worthy of the dignity of the physical achievement cannot logically be imputed to the group of workers who made it possible. Scientists and engineers naturally resent, as irrational and unintelligent, the implication in much current criticism of society that the use of improved facilities for ends that are unworthy or perhaps even harmful is in some vague way their fault. This inference is detrimental in that it annoys workers who have been doing their task well, but it is chiefly harmful in that it deflects attention from the real deficiency, that those who should be finding worthier things for human beings to do have not been equal to their responsibility.

It seems self-evident that an address which can be heard by millions of people over the radio ought to be more worth listening to than one which can be heard by only a few. One does not need to asperse the high quality of many radio addresses to prove that the quality has not been improved in anything like the degree the audibility has increased. Photography and modern reproductive processes make it possible for millions to see a painting with all the artistic values of the original preserved, but are modern paintings any more worth looking at than those painted centuries ago and visible to only a few at a time? The question answers itself, and the assertion may safely be made that the quality of the things done has not improved in proportion to the improvement in the facilities for doing them. The world to-day seems in somewhat the situation of a household in which there is a superb grand piano but hardly anyone capable of utilizing it to evoke anything better than ‘blues’ and jazz.

Since rhetoric was one of the principal subjects in the mediæval curriculum, it is not surprising to find that the mediæval mind in its modern manifestations is commonly associated with rhetorical facility. Rhetoric has always been more effective than logic in awakening the emotions and directing the activities of human beings, especially the younger generation. There is so much for youth to learn that it is a great pity to have to unlearn anything; moreover, nothing is ever quite unlearned, any more than a rumpled sheet of paper can be made perfectly smooth again. Very few people can completely forget the statement that a black cat crossing your path will bring you bad luck, or can completely disbelieve that there is any element of truth in it. If this is true of a statement so obviously based on a belief in magic, it is not surprising that scores of apparently intelligent people change their names to bring them into harmony with their personality. Thousands of other people believe they can judge a person’s character by his appearance or handwriting, and millions listen nightly to astrologers (hired for the purpose by otherwise reputable manufacturers) forecasting the future from the stars. There can be no need to argue that the mediæval mind is still with us, for these grosser evidences of it are plainly visible.² The subtler aspects of it that I have discussed should be recognized as well. The statements that machines degrade men and that their use has debased public taste in art should be put in the same category with that regarding the black cat and bad luck.

IV

Having concluded that the persistence of mediæval thinking in a modern world is detrimental to sound progress, we naturally ask what, if anything, should be done about it? This involves, first, raising the question whether anything effective can be done about it, and, if so, what would be the best course to follow. To cover the field with meticulous thoroughness would require too much space, but some suggestive paths of inquiry may be indicated. Of the 120,000,000 people who inhabit the country, half have an intelligence quotient that ranges between zero (an idiot) and 100 as the upper limit of the group. The other half all have an intelligence quotient above 100, but half of them are between 100 and 110, while only one half of one per cent of them exceed 140. So far as we know, nothing can be done to increase an individual’s I. Q., as it is so generally called. Since the I. Q. is the best index available of ability to do sound creative thinking, we may as well accept the fact that there will always be a good deal of thinking of mediæval quality to be reckoned with. It is possible to help people, through education, to make a more effective use of as much intelligence as they have, but no way is yet known of endowing them with a larger quotient.

Learning to make the most effective use of intelligence is like any other process of learning — you observe those who can do better than yourself and endeavor to equal or even excel them. Acquiring the ability to act with high intelligence is not an easy matter, because it involves judgments as to the display of intelligence in action that are not easily made. I can readily tell who plays golf better than I, because there are definite and accepted criteria of judgment, but it is quite difficult to decide whether a person is more or less intelligent than I am in his reaction to other situations. Some quotient measurers might claim this to be easy: measure the I. Q. of both of us, and if the other man has a higher I. Q. he would usually act more intelligently than I. Permission to doubt the validity of such a statement must be asked. Human experience and observation seem to indicate that people may be quite intelligent in some fields of activity and markedly deficient in others; even in the same field they seem to exhibit more intelligence at one time than another. Comparative tests are yet impossible in large areas of human life. Who can say how much intelligence John exhibits in his relations with his wife and children? Would James do better under the same circumstances? No one can surely say.

Lacking positive criteria on which to base judgments, people grasp at whatever offers. Of recent years the ability to write and speak forcefully and entertainingly in a critical way on a subject has been accepted by many as an indication of high intelligence concerning it. Actually this often has what the statisticians call a negative correlation, for it is frequently much easier to be forceful and entertaining when discussing a subject unintclligently than intelligently.

Recognition of criteria by which to measure the exhibition of high intelligence thus appears as one of the fields of human activity in which we have made too little progress. When people forcefully urge, for example, that the State should own and operate power plants, it is hard to be sure whether they are wise counselors whose plans should be adopted or misguided theorists who would create a worse situation that could only be remedied with much difficulty. Is it too much to hope that we can learn to distinguish better between the inept presentation of good evidence and the skillful presentation of unsound and misleading evidence? Unless we can, we may as well be reconciled to the persistence of mediæval thinking.

On this basis all that needs to be done about the persistence of mediæval thinking in a modern world is to recognize it for what it is; above all, to strip away the rhetorical garb in which it so often appears. It would be foolish to expect that a state of perfection in this endeavor can soon be reached; it would be equally foolish to be greatly disturbed because we have not made more progress toward its attainment.