The Mind in the Making: The Relation of Intelligence to Social ReformHarper & brothers, 1921 - 235 pages The Mind in the Making is a book to awaken every reader to a real understanding of why he thinks and acts as he does. It is the well-known historian's straightforward account of how our intelligence has evolved into the mental habits of modern life. No book for popular reading shows so graphically that our thinking remains medieval in a world that has become complex and modern. It will show you whether your thinking is ahead of the times or behind them. If some magical transformation could be produced in men's ways of looking at themselves and their fellows, no inconsiderable part of the evils which now afflict society would vanish away or remedy themselves automatically. If the majority of influential persons held the opinions and occupied the point of view that a few rather uninfluential people now do, there would, for instance, be no likelihood of another great war; the whole problem of "labor and capital" would be transformed and attenuated; national arrogance, race animosity, political corruption, and inefficiency would all be reduced below the danger point. |
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accepted ancient animal animistic Aristotle attitude Bacon become beliefs century Christian Church civilization common conduct creative thought criticism defend Descartes discoveries doubtless earth economic Eleatic escape established evil existing facts fear fundamental GRAHAM WALLAS Greek thinkers habits Havelock Ellis heretic highly honest human affairs human mind hundred ideas ignorance impulses inevitable intel intellectual intelligence invention J. A. Hobson JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON John Dewey kind of thinking knowledge League of Nations live Lucretius man's mankind matter medieval ment metaphysics Middle Ages modern moral mystic natural science never notions novel opinion origin ourselves past philosophers Plato political possible present presuppositions primitive question radical realize reasons recent regard relations religious result reverie ROBERT LYND Roman Roman Empire savage scientific seems social socialists society standards student tendency things tion tional to-day traditional truth various views whole
Popular passages
Page 116 - And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Page 122 - This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen : who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning...
Page 170 - Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens, Would all themselves laugh mortal.
Page 226 - Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no one in the heaven, or on the earth, or under the earth, was able to open the book, or to look thereon.
Page 170 - Could great men thunder As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet, For every pelting, petty officer, Would use his heaven for thunder ; nothing but thunder.
Page 177 - The burden of our civilization is not merely, as many suppose, that the product of industry is ill-distributed, or its conduct tyrannical, or its operation interrupted by embittered disagreements. It is that industry itself has come to hold a position of exclusive predominance among human interests...
Page 39 - I throw my selfe downe in my Chamber, and I call in, and invite God, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his Angels, for the noise of a Flie, for the ratling of a Coach, for the whining of a doore...
Page 46 - Epictetus," of the medicinal value of salicine, or the date of Sargon I, are subject to revision. Philosophers, scholars, and men of science exhibit a common sensitiveness in all decisions in which their amour propre is involved. Thousands of argumentative works have been written to vent a grudge. However stately their reasoning, it may be nothing but rationalizing, stimulated by the most commonplace of all motives. A history of philosophy and theology could be written in terms of grouches, wounded...
Page 47 - This conclusion may be ranked by students of a hundred years hence as one of the several great discoveries of our age. It is by no means fully worked out, and it is so opposed to nature that it will be very slowly accepted by the great mass of those who consider themselves thoughtful. As a historical student I am personally fully reconciled to this newer view. Indeed, it seems to me inevitable that just as the various sciences of nature were, before the opening of the seventeenth century, largely...
Page 46 - Diogenes the Cynic exhibited the impudence of a touchy soul. His tub was his distinction. Tennyson in beginning his "Maud" could not forget his chagrin over losing his patrimony years before as the result of an unhappy investment in the Patent Decorative Carving Company. These facts are not recalled here as a gratuitous disparagement of the truly great, but to insure a full realization of the tremendous competition which all really exacting thought has to face, even in the minds of the most highly...