Februabt 23, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



175 



the European war Israel Zangwill wrote to 

 the late Mr. Stead : 



I take the opportunity of reminding Mr. Stead 

 that more good will be done by facing the brutal 

 facts of life and the European situation than by 

 allowing the wish that war shall cease to be father 

 to the thought that it is ceasing. 



Indeed such a thought as Mr. Zangwill 

 sought to oppose merely reflects the fa- 

 natic's contemptuous disregard for the ne- 

 cessity of keeping open the approaches to 

 truth even when we ourselves have not the 

 strength to do more. 



The same spirit of weakness and disincli- 

 nation to face life as it is is shown in the 

 intelleetualist 's eiforts to impress us with 

 his ability to live in the world and not be 

 of it. Those who recognize this particular 

 form of complex can easily detect the signs 

 of disappointed ambitions and dissociated 

 personality rather than a lofty and com- 

 mendable purpose. 



A truly high purpose should culminate 

 in a decision to go as straight as we can, 

 without further temporizing, to the root of 

 most of the troubles to which the flesh is 

 heir, and to substitute for an astonishing 

 amount of ignorance as accurate a store of 

 knowledge as can be gathered together. In 

 a reasonably short time the result of work- 

 ing with this object in view would so im- 

 press us with the magnitude of our task as 

 to make us reject promptly all promises of 

 salvation bearing the trade-mark of any 

 "ism." 



Conez'ete information of this kind would 

 not only prevent the occurrence of many 

 unpleasant surprises regarding some of the 

 basic qualities of human nature, but would 

 enable us to remove a good many of the 

 causes that lead at critical moments to ex- 

 plosive reactions of great violence, disturb- 

 ing alike to the development of a well-bal- 

 anced personality, the cause of democracy, 

 and the progress of civilization. Moreover, 

 we know that if the forces giving shape to 



personality are not focused, dissociation is 

 the result, with the subsequent development 

 of peculiar mental qualities that possess 

 high explosive potentiality. An excellent 

 illustration of this is wishful thinking, 

 which may become a habit; and when this 

 occurs it forms a menace to orderly thought 

 processes, and results in blocking the peace- 

 ful settlement of any questions either per- 

 sonal or national. 



These are some of the conditions we fail 

 to recognize because we have become so ac- 

 customed to measure the value of brain ac- 

 tivity merely by the content of conscious- 

 ness without considering the character of 

 the processes concerned in the operation. 

 The autocthonous thoughts that are the 

 products of a split-up personality often 

 supply an emotional spark to explode the 

 powder, and on this account we should 

 learn to recognize in the apparently harm- 

 less dreamer, to whose reveries we often 

 give encouragement, a source of danger to 

 the community not infrequently exceeding 

 that of the victim of systemized delusions. 



For similar reasons there are excellent 

 grounds for not placing too much confi- 

 dence in the intellectual judgments of any 

 person who disregards logical conclusions 

 and shirks the responsibility concerned in 

 the reconciliation of faith and works ; such 

 a man tries first to ignore and then to ob- 

 literate every memory of defeat, and re- 

 sorts to subterfuge to conceal the strong 

 personal disinclination to meet definite 

 issues by absorbing himself in some general 

 scheme for the regeneration of humanity. 

 In such cases it is often the half -repressed 

 memories of a personal struggle ending in 

 defeat that drives the loser to turn aside 

 from the real world and its concrete prob- 

 lems to live in an imaginary one which can 

 only be described in abstract or platitudi- 

 nous phrases. 



Although it would be superfluous to point 

 out the important bearing the analysis of 



