Human Traits and their Social Significance Part 20

"What have I done for you, England, my England, What is there I would not do, England, my own?

With your glorious eyes austere, As the Lord were walking near, Whispering terrible things and dear, As the song on your bugles blown, England-- Round the world on your bugles blown!"

Words thus become powerful provocatives of emotion.

They become loaded with all the energies that are aroused by the love, the hate, the anger, the pugnacity, the sympathy, for the persons, objects, ideas, a.s.sociated with them. People may be set off to action by words (just as a bull is set off by a red rag), although the words may be as little freighted with meaning as they are deeply weighted with emotion.

Poets and literary men in general exploit these emotional values that cling to words. Indeed, in epithets suggesting illimitable vistas, inexpressible sorrows, and dim-remembered joys, lies half the charm of poetry.

"Before the beginning of years, There came to the making of man, Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a gla.s.s that ran; Pleasure with pain for a leaven, Summer with flowers that fell; Remembrance fallen from Heaven, And madness risen from h.e.l.l, Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath, Night the shadow of light, And life, the shadow of death."[1]

[Footnote 1: Swinburne: _Atalanta in Calydon_ (David Mackay edition), p. 393.]

Swinburne does not, to be sure, give us much information, and what there is is mythical, but he uses words that are fairly alive with suggested feeling.

But this emotional aura in which words are haloed, beautiful though it is in literature, and facile though it makes the communication of common feelings, is a serious impediment in the use of words as effective instruments of communication.

Language oscillates, to speak metaphorically, between algebra and music. To be useful as an instrument of thought it should keep to the prosaic terseness of a telegraphic code. One should be able to pa.s.s immediately from the word to the thing, instead of dissolving in emotions at the a.s.sociations that the mere sound or music of the epithet arouses. Words should, so to speak, tend to business, which, in their case, is the communication of ideas. But words are used in human situations.

And they acc.u.mulate during the lifetime of the individual a great ma.s.s of psychological values. Thus, to take another ill.u.s.tration, "brother" is a symbol of a certain relationship one person bears to another. "Your" is also a symbolic statement of a relation. But if a telegram contains the statement "Your brother is dead," it is less a piece of information to act on than a deep emotional stimulus to which one responds. Bacon long ago pointed out how men "worshipped words." As we shall see presently, he was thinking of errors in the intellectual manipulation of words. Perhaps as serious is the inveterate tendency of men to respond to the more or less irrelevant emotions suggested by a word, instead of to its strict intellectual content. If the emotions stirred up by an epithet were always appropriate to the word's significance, this might be an advantage. But not infrequently, as we shall see immediately, words suggest and may be used to suggest emotions that, like "the flowers that bloom in the spring,"

have nothing to do with the case.

In practice, political and social leaders, and all who have to win the loyalties and support of ma.s.ses of men have appreciated the use--and misuse--that might be made of the emotional fringes of words. Words are not always used as direct and transparent representations of ideas; they are as frequently used as stimuli to action. A familiar instance is seen in the use of words in advertis.e.m.e.nts. Even the honest advertiser is less interested in giving an a.n.a.lysis of his product that will win him the rational estimation and favor of the reader than in creating in the reader through the skillful use of words, emotions and sympathies favorable to his product.

The name of a talc.u.m powder or tobacco is the subject of mature consideration by the advertising expert, because he knows that the emotional flavor of a word is more important in securing action than its rational significance.[1] "Ask Dad!

He knows!" does not tell us much about the article it advertises, but it gives us the sense of secure trust that we had as a boy in those mysterious things in an almost completely unknown world which our fathers knew and approved.

[Footnote 1: It has been pointed out that such an expression as "cellar door," considered merely from the viewpoint of sound, is one of the most romantically suggestive words in the English language. A consideration of some of the names of biscuits and collars will show a similar exploitation of both the euphony and the emotional fringes of words.]

On a larger scale, in political and social affairs words are powerful provocatives of emotion and of actions, determining to no small degree the allegiances and loyalties of men and the satisfaction and dissatisfactions which they experience in causes and leaders. A word remains the nucleus of all the a.s.sociations that have gathered round it in the course of an individual's experience, though the object for which it stands may have utterly changed or vanished. This is ill.u.s.trated in the history of political parties, whose personnel and principles change from decade to decade, but whose names remain stable ent.i.ties that continue to secure unfaltering respect and loyalty.

In the same way, the name of country has emotional reverberations for one who has been brought up in its traditions.

Men trust old words to which they have become accustomed just as they trust old friends. To borrow an ill.u.s.tration from Graham Wallas, for many who call themselves Socialists, Socialism is something more than

a movement towards greater social equality, depending for its force upon three main factors, the growing political power of the working cla.s.ses, the growing social sympathy of many members of all cla.s.ses, and the belief, based on the growing authority of scientific method, that social arrangements can be transformed by means of conscious and deliberate contrivance.[1]

[Footnote 1: Wallas: _Human Nature in Politics._ p. 92.]

Rather

the need for something for which one may love and work has created for thousands of workingmen a personified Socialism: Socialism, a winged G.o.ddess with stern eyes and a drawn sword, to be the hope of the world, and the protector of those that suffer.[2]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 93.]

Political leaders and advertising experts, no less than poets, have recognized the importance of the suggestive power of words. Half the power of propaganda lies in its arousing of emotions through suggestion, rather than in its effectiveness as an instrument of intellectual conversion.[3]

[Footnote 3: During the recent Liberty Loan campaigns, for example, when it was of the most crucial practical importance that bonds be bought, the stimuli used were not in the form of reasoned briefs, but rather emotional admonition: "Finish the lob," "Every miser helps the Kaiser," "If you were out in No Man's Land."]

LANGUAGE AND LOGIC. Even where words are freed from irrelevant emotional a.s.sociations, they are still far from being adequate instruments of thought. To be effectively representative, words must be clean-cut and definitive; they must stand for one object, quality, or idea. Words, if they are to be genuine instruments of communication, must convey the same intent or meaning to the listener as they do to the speaker. If the significance attached to words is so vague and pulpy that they mean different things to different men, they are no more useful in inquiry and communication than the shock of random noise or the vague stir and flutter of music. Words must have their boundaries fixed, they must be terms, fixed and stable meanings, or they will remain instruments of confusion rather than communication. Francis Bacon stated succinctly the dangers involved in the use of words:

For men imagine that their reason governs words, whilst in fact words react upon the understanding; and this has rendered philosophy and the sciences sophistical and inactive. Words are generally formed in a popular sense, and define things by those broad lines which are most obvious to the vulgar mind; but when a more acute understanding or more diligent observation is anxious to vary these lines, and adapt them more accurately to nature, words oppose it. Hence the great and solemn disputes of learned men terminate frequently in mere disputes about words and names, in regard to which it would be better to proceed more advisedly in the first instance, and to bring such disputes to a regular issue by definitions.

Such definitions, however, cannot remedy the evil ... for they consist themselves of words, and these words produce others....

[Footnote 1: _Novum Organum_. bk. I, aphorism 59.]

If, to take an extreme case, a speaker said the word "chair,"

and by "chair" his listener understood what we commonly mean by the word "table," communication would be impossible.

There must be some common agreement in the words used. In the case of simple terms referring to concrete objects there are continual concrete reminders of the meaning of a word. We do not make mistakes as to the meaning of words such as chair, river, stone, stove, books, forks, knives, because we so continually meet and use them. We are continually checked up, and the meanings we attach to these cannot go far astray.

But the further terms are removed from physical objects, the more opportunity is there for ambiguity. In the realm of politics and morals, as Socrates was fond of pointing out, the chief difficulties and misunderstandings of men have come from the ambiguities of the terms they use. "Justice," "liberty,"

"democracy," "good," "true," "beautiful," these have been immemorial bones of contention among philosophers.

They are accepted, taken for granted, without any question as to their meaning by the individual, until he finds, perhaps, in discussion that his acceptation of the term is entirely different from that of his opponent. Thus many an argument ends with "if that's what you mean, I agree with you." Intellectual inquiry and discussion to be fruitful must have certain definitive terms to start with.

Discussion ... needs to have the ground or basis of its various component statements brought to consciousness in such a way as to define the exact value of each. The Socratic contention is the need compelling the common denominator, the common subject, underlying the diversity of views to exhibit itself. It alone gives a sure standard by which the claims of all a.s.sertions may be measured.

Until this need is met, discussion is a self-deceiving play with unjudged, unexamined matters, which, confused and shifting, impose themselves upon us.[1]

[Footnote 1: Dewey: _Essays in Experimental Logic_, p. 200.]

To define our terms means literally to know _what_ we are talking about and what others are talking about. One of the values of discussion is that it enables us more clearly to realize the meaning of the words with which we constantly operate.

A man may entertain for a long while a half-conscious definition of democracy as meaning political equality, and suddenly come face to face with another who means by it industrial cooperation and partic.i.p.ation on the part of all workers.

Whether he agrees with the new definition or not, at least his own becomes clearer by contrast.

"Science," wrote Condillac, "is a well-made language."

No small part of the technique of science lies in its clear definition of its terms. The chemist knows what he means by an "acid," the biologist by a "mammal." Under these names he cla.s.sifies all objects having certain determinable properties.

Social science will never attain the precision of the physical sciences until it also attains as clear and unambiguous a terminology. As we shall see in the chapter on science, however, the definitions in the physical sciences are arrived at through precise inquiries not yet possible in the field of social phenomena.

CHAPTER XI

RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY

That the history of the race is an unbroken continuum goes without saying. What this means in the way of transmission of the arts, the sciences, the religion, the ideas, the customs of one generation to the next, we shall presently see. Cultural continuity is made possible by the more fundamental fact of the actual biological continuity of the race. This biological continuity extends back, as far as we can infer from the scientific evidence, unbrokenly through the half million years since man has left traces of his presence on earth. The continuity of life itself goes back to that still more remote time when man and ape were indistinguishable, indeed to that postulated epoch when life as it existed on earth was no more complex than it is as it now appears in the one-celled animal.

Evolution has taught us that life, however it started, has been one long continuous process which has increased in complexity from the unicellular animals to man.

The continuity of the human race is a contrivance of nature rather than of man. It is, as it were, a by-product of the s.e.x instinct. Man is endowed natively with a powerful desire for s.e.x gratification, and though offspring are the chief utility of this instinct, desire for reproduction is not normally its primary stimulus. But while the production of offspring may thus be said to be an incidental result of the s.e.x instinct, human reproduction may be subjected to rational consideration and control, according as offspring are or are not considered desirable.

The sense of the desirability of offspring may, in the first place, be determined by social rather than individual considerations.

To the group or the state a large birth-rate, a steady increase of the number of births over the number of deaths, may be made desirable by the need of a large population for agriculture, herding, or war. In primitive tribes, superiority in numbers must have been, under conditions of compet.i.tive warfare, a p.r.o.nounced a.s.set. In any imperialistic regime, where military conquest is highly regarded, the maintenance and replenishment of large armies is a factor that has entered into reflection on the question of population.

In cases where a small ruling cla.s.s is benefited by the labor of a slave or serf cla.s.s, there is, at least for the ruling cla.s.ses, a marked utility in the increase in population. It means just so much opportunity for increase of wealth on the part of landowning and slaveholding or serf-controlling cla.s.ses. In any country, increase in the labor supply means just so much more human energy for the control of natural resources, so many more units of energy for the production of national wealth.

Offspring may come to be reflectively desired by the individual as a means of perpetuating property, family, or fame.

A man cannot nonchalantly face the prospect of obliteration, and the biological fact of death may be circ.u.mvented by the equally real fact of reproduction. A man's individuality, we have already had occasion to see, is enhanced by his possessions, and if his fortune or estate is handed down he shall not altogether have been obliterated from the earth. Similarly, where a family has become a great tradition, there may be a deliberate desire on the part of an individual to have the name and tradition carried on, to keep the old lineage current and conspicuous among men. A man may think through his children to keep his own fame alive in posterity. At least his name shall be known, and if, as so often happens, a son follows in his father's profession, carries on his father's business, farm, or philanthropies, the individual attains at least some measure of vicarious immortality. His own ways, habits, traditions are carried on.

A man may, moreover, come to desire offspring for the pleasures and responsibilities of domesticity and parenthood.

There is a parental instinct as such, certainly very strong in most women, and not lacking to some degree in most men.

The joys of caring for and rearing a child have too often been celebrated in literature and in life by parents both young and old to need more explicit statement here.

RESTRICTION OF POPULATION. But reproduction has been in human history promiscuous, and increase of population has been less a problem to moralists and economists than has its restriction. The danger of over-increase in population was first powerfully stated by Malthus in his _Essay on Population_.

Malthus contended in effect that population always tends to increase up to the limit of subsistence, and gives indications, unless increase is checked, of increasing beyond it. In its extreme form, as it appeared in Malthus's first edition of his _Essay_, it ran somewhat as follows:

As things are now, there is a perpetual pressure by population on the sources of food. Vice and misery cut down the number of men when they grow beyond the food. The increase of men is rapid and easy; the increase of food is in comparison, slow, and toilsome. They are to each other as a geometrical increase to an arithmetical; in North America, the population double their number in twenty years.[1]