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The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform
By JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON
Author of "PETRARCH, THE FIRST MODERN SCHOLAR" "MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN TIMES" "THE NEW HISTORY", ETC.
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This is an essay—not a treatise—on the most important of all mattersof human concern. Although it has cost its author a great deal morethought and labor than will be apparent, it falls, in his estimation,far below the demands of its implacably urgent theme. Each page couldreadily be expanded into a volume. It suggests but the beginning ofthe beginning now being made to raise men's thinking onto a plainwhich may perhaps enable them to fend off or reduce some of thedangers which lurk on every hand.
NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH, NEW YORK CITY, August, 1921.
If some magical transformation could be produced in men's ways oflooking at themselves and their fellows, no inconsiderable part of theevils which now afflict society would vanish away or remedy themselvesautomatically. If the majority of influential persons held the opinionsand occupied the point of view that a few rather uninfluential peoplenow do, there would, for instance, be no likelihood of another greatwar; the whole problem of "labor and capital" would be transformed andattenuated; national arrogance, race animosity, political corruption,and inefficiency would all be reduced below the danger point. As an oldStoic proverb has it, men are tormented by the opinions they have ofthings, rather than by the things themselves. This is eminently true ofmany of our worst problems to-day. We have available knowledge andingenuity and material resources to make a far fairer world than thatin which w