The Mind in the Making: The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform

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Harper & 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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Page 114 - 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 162 - 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 218 - 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 146 - Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men should make a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best way; but when the discovery is well taken, then to make progression.
Page 31 - ... of a coach, for the whining of a door; I talk on, in the same posture of praying, eyes lifted up, knees bowed down, as though I prayed to God; and if God or his angels should...
Page 162 - 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 38 - 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...
Page 42 - For this kind of meditation begets knowledge, and knowledge is really creative inasmuch as it makes things look different from what they seemed before and may indeed work for .their reconstruction. ' In certain moods some of us realize that we are observing things or making reflections with a seeming disregard of our personal preoccupations. We are not preening or defending ourselves ; we are not faced by the necessity of any practical decision, nor are we apologizing for believing this or that....
Page 39 - 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.
Page 31 - I throw myself down 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 fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door...

About the author (1921)

James Harvey Robinson (June 29, 1863 in Bloomington, Illinois - February 16, 1936 in New York City)[1] was an American historian, who co-founded New History, which greatly broadened the scope of historical scholarship in relation to the social sciences. Jay Green concludes: From his innovations in historical methodology and research to his revisions of secondary and undergraduate pedagogy, Robinson endeavored to reform the modern study of history, making it relevant and useful to contemporary peoples. A quintessential Progressive, he combined astute in erudite thinking with a penchant for activism in order to challenge his professional colleagues' obsolete conception of history and to demonstrate written history's potential for inspiring social improvement Robinson was born in Bloomington, Illinois, the son of a bank president. After traveling to Europe in 1882 and returning to work in his father's bank, Robinson entered Harvard University in 1884, earning his M.A. in 1888 before returning to Europe. After further study at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Freiburg, he received his Ph.D. at Freiburg in 1890, and began teaching European history at the University of Pennsylvania in 1891, moving to Columbia University in 1895-1919, becoming a full professor in 1895. He trained numerous graduate students who went on to professorships around the United States. Following a series of faculty departures from Columbia in disputes about academic freedom, including that of his friend Charles A. Beard, Robinson resigned from Columbia in May 1919[3] to become one of the founders of the New School for Social Research and serve as its first director.

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