LET us, my friends, pass over this unfortunate incident, and get on to the next thing as quickly as possible. The next thing on our program is Truth. The one who best understands Truth is undoubtedly the Philosopher.—Here he is, and we shall commence without delay. Will some one volunteer to conduct the examination? Thank you, madam. Go right ahead.

The Lady. We wish to ask you a few questions.

The Philosopher. Certainly, madam. What about?

The Lady. About Truth.

The Philosopher. Dear, dear!

The Lady. Whom are you addressing?

The Philosopher. I beg your pardon!—It was only an exclamation of surprise. It has been so long since anybody has talked to me about Truth. How quaint and refreshing!

The Lady. Please do not be frivolous.

[Pg 138]The Philosopher. I am sorry—but really, it is amusing. Tell me, to which school do you belong?

The Lady. To the Julia Richmond High School, if you must know—though I don’t see what that has to do with Truth.

The Philosopher. Oh! You mean you are a school-teacher!

The Lady. Certainly. Doesn’t that suit you?

The Philosopher. It delights me. I feared at first you might be a Hegelian, or even a Platonist. Now that I find you are a Pragmatist like myself—

The Lady. Pragmatist? Yes, I have heard of Pragmatism. William James—summer course in Philosophy. But why do you think I am a Pragmatist?

The Philosopher. A school-teacher must be a pragmatist, madam, or go mad. If you really believed the human brain to be an instrument capable of accurate thinking, your experiences with your pupils and your principal, not to speak of your boards of education, would furnish you a spectacle of human wickedness and folly too horrible to be endured. But you realize that the poor things were never intended to think.

[Pg 139]The Lady. That’s true; they’re doing the best they can, aren’t they? They just can’t believe anything they don’t want to believe!

The Philosopher. That is to say, man is not primarily a thinking animal—he is a creature of emotion and action.

The Lady. Especially action. They are always in such a hurry to get something done that they really can’t stop to think about it! But I’m afraid all this is really beside the point. What we want to know is why the school fails so miserably in its attempt to teach children to think?

The Philosopher. Perhaps it is in too much of a hurry. But are you sure you really want children to learn to think?

The Lady. Of course we do!

The Philosopher. The greatest part of life, you know, can be lived without thought. We do not think about where we put our feet as we walk along an accustomed road. We leave that to habit. We do not think about how to eat, once we have learned to do it in a mannerly way. The accountant does not think about how to add a column of figures—he has his mind trained to the task. And there is little that cannot be done by the formation of proper habits, to the complete elimination of thought. The habits[Pg 140] will even take care of the regulation of the emotions. For all practical purposes, don’t you agree with me that thinking might be dispensed with?

The Lady. I hardly know whether to take you seriously or not—

The Philosopher. Can you deny what I say?

The Lady. But—but life isn’t all habit. We must think—in order to make—decisions.

The Philosopher. It is not customary. We let our wishes fight it out, and the strongest has its way. But I once knew a man who did think in order to make his decisions. The result was that he always made them too late. And what was worse, the habit grew upon him. He got to thinking about everything he wanted to do, with the result that he couldn’t do anything. I told him that he’d have to stop thinking—that it wasn’t healthy. Finally he went to a doctor, and sure enough the doctor told him that it was a well known disease—a neurosis. Its distinguishing mark was that the patient always saw two courses open to him everywhere he turned—two alternatives, two different ways of doing something, two women between whom he must choose, two different theories of life, and so on[Pg 141] to distraction. The reason for it, the doctor said, was that the patient’s will, that is to say the functioning of his emotional wish-apparatus, had become deranged, and the burden of decision was being put upon a part of the mind incapable of bearing it—the logical faculty. He cured my friend’s neurosis, and now he thinks no more about the practical affairs of life than you or I or anybody else. So you see thinking is abnormal—even dangerous. Why do you want to teach children to think?

The Lady. Well—it is rather taken for granted that the object of education is learning to think.

The Philosopher. But is that true? If it is, why do you teach your children the multiplication table, or the rule that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides—unless in order to save them the trouble of thinking? By the way, what is the capital of Tennessee, and when did Columbus discover America?

The Lady. Nashville, 1492. Why?

The Philosopher You didn’t have to stop to think, did you? Your memory has been well trained. But if you will forgive the comparison, so has my dog’s been well trained; when I say,[Pg 142] ‘Towser, show the lady your tricks,’ he goes through an elaborate performance that would gladden your heart, for he is an apt pupil; but I don’t for a moment imagine that I have taught him to think.

The Lady. Then you don’t want children taught the multiplication table?

The Philosopher.. I? Most certainly I do. And so far as I am concerned, I would gladly see a great many other short cuts in mathematics taught, so as to save our weary human brains the trouble of thinking about such things. I am in fact one of the Honorary Vice-Presidents of the Society for the Elimination of Useless Thinking.

The Lady. I am afraid you are indulging in a jest.

The Philosopher.. I am afraid I am. But if you knew Philosophers better you would realize that it is a habit of ours to jest about serious matters. It is one of our short-cuts to wisdom. Read your Plato and William James again. Deli............