Published by Funk & Wagnalls Company (Adam W. Wagnalls, Pres., Benj. F. Funk, Vice-Pres., Robert J. Cuddihy, Treas., W. J. Funk, Sec'y) 354-360 Fourth Avenue, New York. VOL. LXVII JANUARY, 1914 Editorial Comment No. 1 PRINCIPAL LINDSAY, of the United Free Church College, Glasgow, in an appreciation of his colleague, the late Professor Orr, uses these significant words: "I have always felt that logical argument is a good shield, but a bad Logical vs. sword, that while syllogisms may silence, they seldom convince, that persuasion arises from a subtle sympathy of mind with mind which is as little to be Intuitional defined as the personalities that exhale it." Processes Principal Lindsay is not here disparaging the methodical, logical processes so much as suggesting their limitation. It has often happened in scholarly as well as more popular circles that much greater results have been expected from elaborate intellectual presentation of truth than have, in fact, been realized. The polemical writings of all ages and the contemporary history that preceded and followed them make us distrust the efficacy of the logical reason. In fact, if one were inclined to be cynical, he might find ample evidence for the conclusion that man nowhere reveals his unreason so much as in his attempts to be methodically reasonable. The difficulty with the ultra-logical of all ages has been that they have not penetrated deeply enough into the very mental processes they employed in their moments of heightened consciousness called rational. More modern views of and are giving us a tlue in the origin and development of intellect. It is beginning to be seen that intellect originated in the species, as it does in the individual, in instrmet-activities and the feelings correlated with them. Long before man was a logical thinker he was a creature of instinct, feeling, and action. Out of these mstinct activities and instinct-feelings have developed his consciousness, his powers of thought, and his ability to elaborate his complex logical arguments. The genesis of the logical intellect being thus so intimately bound up with feeling, instinct, and conduct, it is not strange that logical mental processes always must keep step with the more fundamental processes that underlie them. That is to say, logical thinking makes an indifferent appeal to men unless it runs parallel with their instincts, feelings, and conduct. Hence it is that the man of lively imagination, of sensitive feelings, of quick intuition, of active temperament, if he does not actually discern truth more clearly than the logical reasoner, at any rate reveals such truth as he has more readily to the minds of his fellows. Hence it is that the poet, the prophet, the seer, have always outstript the logician in their command of men's attention. In some of the more recent scientific and philosophic thought the question has indeed been raised as to whether the logical intellect is not fundamentally handicapped not only in the communication of truth, but even in the attainment of it. The French philosopher, Bergson, for example, is convinced that the intellect perceives truth only in fragments, and never can perceive it in any other way. It is in instinct, feeling, intuition that truth is perceived in its wholeness. Probably the truth of the matter lies midway between the extremes. The older exaggeration of the priority of the logical intellect in discerning and establishing truth, and the current disparagement of the logical intellect are alike misleading. The mind probably perceives truth and communicates it by processes much more complex and subtle than those of pure intellect, but intellect must analyze, evaluate, and confirm intuitional judgments before they may safely be incorporated into the conscious life. + It must go, some good men in their zeal to hurry up reforms have lately been saying. An eminent leader of the campaign against sexual vice is reported to have said, "This idea of home rule is a thing we have Must Home to kill." The National Council of Congregational Churches Rule Go? has declared by an immense majority vote for exterminating intoxicating beverages by an amendment to the National Constitution. This in the face of Governor Baldwin's protest against it as repudiating the American principle of home rule, the principle whose application has already outlawed the liquor traffic throughout half of our territory. To outlaw it from the remaining half, it is now proposed to take a short cut as better than the long road thus far traveled. One who approves the results reached by the long road may reasonably ask, Why quit it now? Tho long, it reaches its end by a way both safe and sure, the natural way of self-governing communities. By educational agitation and discussion it rouses and shapes the public opinion that registers itself in the wished-for law. True, indeed, this is a process of toil and struggle through many discouragements, but it succeeds. What better hope in the way of quick dispatch by external pressure on backward States? That home rule has its limits was proved on a gigantic scale by the Civil War; again by treaties that empower the United States to enforce sanitation, if needed, on Cuba and Panama. Home rule authorizes none of our States or cities to be a Mexico, a Sodom, if it. On the other hand, all efficiency in law bases on home rule. Home rule is simply an expressive term for effective public opinion proclaimed in law. This can.otke:genrated by edict, but only in the forum of free discussion. This worries and wearies the souls of reformers, but it results at last in reforms that stay because based on the rock of intelligent conscience. None other can stay. Undesirable is the statutory or constitutional law not thus founded. It only fosters contempt for all law by the impunity with which it is defied. Short-sighted is the well-meaning zeal for needful reforms which forgets that danger. The stability of democracy depends on patiently developing the capacity of the people for enlightened self-government. Of this the motive force is intelligent conviction, and home rule the synonym. + CERTAIN spokesmen for the interests of wealth have censured the new Federal income tax (which is a part of the tariff bill signed by President Wilson on October 3) on ethical grounds. They impugn it as shifting The Ethics from the many upon the few more than their just share of the of Taxation national expenditure. Why exempt, they say, the multitude of incomes less than $3,000 or $4,000 and load the remainder with taxes running up to 7 per cent.? But heretofore the load had been shifted on the small incomes. "Federal taxation," said Professor Dewey, of Columbia, in 1908, "bears more heavily on the poor. . . . A million dollars owned by a thousand pays more than a million owned by one." Consider three fundamental propositions: (1) Social burdens must be apportioned to the varying abilities of the social partners. This is fairly done in war-time. The stronger are put to service at the risk of life; the weaker share the cost of their maintenance. In time of peace it is not done at all. The wage-earner who never sees a tax-bill bears indirectly an exorbitant tax; first, in high rent, for poor housing; next, in extra toll for car-fares and gas to those who charge. high under franchises given them for little; next, in tariff percentages on sundry articles of necessity and comfort. (2) Were there no taxes, direct or indirect, every one could save what he now pays. All taxes, therefore, subtract from possible savings. Thirty years ago a statistician, himself well-to-do, showed that out of every dollar of possible savings the laborer was paying 83 cents in taxes, the average rich 30 cents, the richest 3 cents. Social injustice this!clear justification of an income tax. (3) Some exemption from this tax is just. The lowest sum on which a family of five in New York City can live decently is stated as $800, and many earn less. All such, and many more, whose possible savings barely secure a meager hoard for hard times and old age should justly be exempt. Could the line of exemption now fixt be justly lowered, it could only be by a nicely calculated gradation of diminishing percentages, the collection of which would scarcely pay the cost. The imperfection of the new law is more evident of its upper limit. Seven per cent. on incomes of $100,000 is too low for incomes of $1,000,000. We can only touch the edge of a great subject. For instance, one mutual life-insurance company has this year paid $1,333,535 in taxes on its refund to policy-holders of their payments in excess of the actual cost-i.e., taxing the coin given back in change for the dollar bill. Blind lawmaking! We must not forget that a vast amount of property in safe-deposit vaults-four billions in Massachusetts alone has hitherto evaded the taxation borne by property in sight of assessors. An income tax is an ethical necessity. + WITH the death of Alfred Russel Wallace there passes from earth the last of those intellectual giants who were the prime factors in the scientific epoch of the nineteenth century. Born in 1823 his youth was spent in an environment whose atmosphere was beginning to be affected by Lyell's Principles of Geology; his early manhood was occupied in travel and scientific studies A Scientist's much resembling those of Darwm, fifting him to become the coFaith and discoverer with the latter of the law of natural selection; while his Optimism later life, prolonged to an unusual age, was given over to a va riety of pursuits in scientific research, authorship, and practical activities that have made him not only one of the greatest Englishmen in profound scholarship, but also one of the most versatile and popular thinkers of the whole English-speaking world. Perhaps it was because Wallace lived to see, as Darwin and others of his great scientific contemporaries did not, the effects of the philosophy of evolution upon the larger aspects of the world's thought, that so much of his later work concerned itself, directly and indirectly, with religious and ethical subjects. Thus among his books, published during the decades of life when most men are accounted old, we find the following titles: Land Naturalization, Bad Times, Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, Man's Place in the Universe, The World of Life, and Social Environment and Moral Progress. Every one of these books touches intimately the greatest themes of modern thought; and, while there may be exprest views that seem heretical and even bizarre, both to religion and to science, every one of them reveals a spirit whose home is the universe. wholeness. Probably the truth of the matter lies midway between the extremes. The older exaggeration of the priority of the logical intellect in discerning and establishing truth, and the current disparagement of the logical intellect are alike misleading. The mind probably perceives truth and communicates it by processes much more complex and subtle than those of pure intellect, but. intellect must analyze, evaluate, and confirm intuitional judgments before they may safely be incorporated into the conscious life. + It must go, some good men in their zeal to hurry up reforms have lately been saying. An eminent leader of the campaign against sexual vice is reported to have said, "This idea of home rule is a thing we have Must Home to kill." The National Council of Congregational Churches Rule Go? has declared by an immense majority vote for exterminating intoxicating beverages by an amendment to the National Constitution. This in the face of Governor Baldwin's protest against it as repudiating the American principle of home rule, the principle whose application has already outlawed the liquor traffic throughout half of our territory. To outlaw it from the remaining half, it is now proposed to take a short cut as better than the long road thus far traveled. One who approves the results reached by the long road may reasonably ask, Why quit it now? Tho long, it reaches its end by a way both safe and sure, the natural way of self-governing communities. By educational agitation and discussion it rouses and shapes the public opinion that registers itself in the wished-for law. True, indeed, this is a process of toil and struggle through many discouragements, but it succeeds. What better hope in the way of quick dispatch by external pressure on backward States? That home rule has its limits was proved on a gigantic scale by the Civil War; again by treaties that empower the United States to enforce sanitation, if needed, on Cuba and Panama. Home rule authorizes none of our States or cities to be a Mexico, a Sodom, if it. On the other hand, all efficiency in law bases on home rule. Home rule is simply an expressive term for effective public opinion proclaimed in law. This can.otegerated by edict, but only in the forum of free discussion. This wermes: and wearies the souls of reformers, but it results at last in reforms that stay because based on the rock of intelligent conscience. None other can stay. Undesirable is the statutory or constitutional law not thus founded. It only fosters contempt for all law by the impunity with which it is defied. Short-sighted is the well-meaning zeal for needful reforms which forgets that danger. The stability of democracy depends on patiently developing the capacity of the people for enlightened self-government. Of this the motive force is intelligent conviction, and home rule the synonym. + CERTAIN spokesmen for the interests of wealth have censured the new Federal income tax (which is a part of the tariff bill signed by President Wilson on October 3) on ethical grounds. They impugn it as shifting The Ethics from the many upon the few more than their just share of the of Taxation national expenditure. Why exempt, they say, the multitude of incomes less than $3,000 or $4,000 and load the remainder with taxes running up to 7 per cent.? But heretofore the load had been shifted on the small incomes. "Federal taxation," said Professor Dewey, of Columbia, in 1908, "bears more heavily on the poor. . . . A million dollars owned by a thousand pays more than a million owned by one." Consider three fundamental propositions: (1) Social burdens must be apportioned to |