CHAPTER XXIV THE ORGANIZATION OF THOUGHT N idea tower like Mohammedan theology, Roman law, or the Temple or the Panama Canal. No pyramid or cathedral embodies the labors of so many generations of artificers as the science, let us say, of astronomy. The Common Law, the Yogi philosophy of India, or a matured branch of knowledge like physics constitutes a well-knit system, and yet no one head, or even score of heads, can claim the credit of so much logic. The thinking of many men has resulted in a whole composed of congruous elements fitted together as steel beams are fitted together into a bridge span. The process of thus articulating ideas from different minds may be termed "the organization of thought." Nor does system-building exhaust mental cooperation. Common opinion class, group, or public opinion-is usually the resultant of many individual contributions, the residue left after the offerings of each have been winnowed in the minds of the rest. Behind the eighteenth-century liberal movement, the romantic movement, the Oxford movement, behind impressionism, realism, symbolism, or anarchism, lies a complex of ideas which no one man propounded. A "school" of thought, of literature, or of art starts not always with master and disciples, founder and followers; often it begins with a band of like-minded rebels against the conventional, who stimulate and influence one another until they work out a creed, a style, or a manner which can make its way. The child in us demands a hero for every great achievement; and so the public clamors to be shown the "father" of the labor movement, of industrial unionism, of scientific charity, of the new penology, or of the public-recreation movement. As likely as not, the "parent turns out to be a group of seminal minds coming gradually into touch and finding their way to a common doctrine or program. There is intellectual team work, too, on much smaller problems CHAP. Group than those of the great society. In each group-church, college, trade union, or co-operative society-there goes on a joint Opinion Is working out of opinion as to the special problems and policies of that group; and, while opinion may reflect the counsel of some sage member, it is usually the outcome of discussion and consensus, i.e., of cooperative thinking. Generally the Result of Consensus The Development of Society Is Away from the Common Participa in the Organi zation of Ideas Absorbing the product of others is not the same as producing. As society develops, the proportion of us who bear a hand in organizing its thought become less. More and more our headaches come from the effort to appropriate the fruits of other tion of All men's thinking. The primitive tribesman had more influence on current ideas of right and wrong than has the common man after theologian and philosopher take part in fixing moral distinctions. Early law springs from the customs of the folk, but the time comes when specialists, such as judges, jurisconsults, and lawgivers, have most to do with its fashioning. Poetry improvised, sung and danced to, stanza by stanza, in the primitive festal crowd, ends as the handiwork of a few gifted word-smiths. About the time of Socrates we see fruitful philosophic thinking quit street corner and market-place to hide with a circle of choice spirits in some secluded garden. In Athens, says Zimmern, "the first people to make a regular use of private gardens and to look upon them as indispensable were the philosophers." This Is a Consequence of Our Intellectual Specialization The reason for this concentration is near at hand. Teamthinking goes on only among persons well matched in equipment. Hence, as soon as there appear in any field men of special knowledge or training, with exceptional facilities in the way of collections, laboratories, travel, mutual access, and stimulating association, the rest of us content ourselves with walking henceforth in trails other men have blazed. The rise of scientific medicine makes it impossible for "wise" women with their herb gardens to contribute to the art of healing. With the spread of agricultural experiment stations, the intelligent farmer with only his own. experience to go on makes no further contribution to agriculture. As the tasks of government become more technical -e.g., sanitation, conservation, and regulation—the political talk of pothouse and corner grocery is paralyzed with a sense of futility. In a word, just as we become parasites on the experts who wire. our houses and test our food, so our minds become parasites on 1"The Greek Commonwealth," p. 56. the specialized minds engaged in rearing law, morality, religion, UNCONSCIOUS ORGANIZATION OF THOUGHT Worn path and made road are collective products, but the makers of the former knew not what they did. Until writing or printing made it possible to fix and identify the product of the individual artist or thinker, the organizing of thought into stable forms must have gone on mainly in an unconscious way. That greatest storehouse of thought, language, came into being by a process which scholars describe as growth, rather than production. Tarde gives all the credit of language to word inventors, forgetting that every word or phrase they coined had to run the gauntlet of the tribe. Only those which struck their fellows as pat or fit survived, and these were trimmed or twisted to suit better the tongues or minds of the users. So was it with the making of popular proverbs, saws, and riddles. Some, no doubt, were struck off perfect in an inspired mo CHAP. Proverbs and Biddles, Myths, Fairy Tales, Legends and Ballads Even Folk-songs Mind ment; but others reached their terse and telling form only after many wits had helped to file and point and barb them. No end of sayings failed to "make a hit " and were forgotten; so that the ones treasured and handed down were just those which "rang a bell" in the average mind. Nor are early myth, fairy tale, legend, folk-song, or ballad to be looked upon as the handiwork of the individual artist, like the modern poem or drama. Scholars now assure us that they were "communal " in origin, meaning, not that the "people" was their author, but that so many had a hand in fashioning them and that, being transmitted only by oral tradition, they were so easily molded to the general taste, that each embodies and expresses not an individual mind, but the soul of the tribe or the folk. The author of the ballad, insists Professor Gummere, is "the singing, dancing, improvising crowd." Among primitives, as among oldstyle European peasants, nearly every one can improvise. Says Grosse, “Every native in Australia himself provides the songs of his house." Among the Eskimos" nearly everybody has his own songs." In the festal dance songs are built up bit by bit, one after another contributing a short improvisation in the intervals of a chorus. Winnowed, handed down in tradition, and gradually perfected, these become ballad and folk-song. One reason the verses of Negro folk-songs are so broken and fragmentary is that they originated in the communal excitement of the religious assembly. "A happy phrase, a striking bit of imagery, flung out by some individual was taken up and repeated Communal by the whole congregation. Naturally the most expressive phrases, the lines that most adequately voiced the deep, unconscious desires of the whole people, were remembered longest and repeated most frequently. There was, therefore, a process of natural section by which the best, the most representative verses, those which most adequately expressed the profounder and more permanent moods and sentiments of the Negro, were preserved and became part of the permanent tradition of the race." 2 The Epic Poem Is Rarely an Individual Product Thanks to literary research, we no longer look upon the folkepic, Iliad or Mahabarata, as the creation of a single genius, but as a unified collection of song-stuffs which have long been accumulating. The epic poet is the heir to great treasures. For ar 2 Park, " Publications of the American Sociological Society," Vol. XIII, P. 55. ranging and harmonizing the traditional materials, filling the gaps, Has The Folk Barren; Only the Individual Early morals and custom were a snug fit because the outcome of an unconscious process. Rules arose, not from reflection upon the requisites of social order, but from the clash of egoisms. The conflicting desires of interfering individuals ground against one another until, in conceding that one must not "remove the land- Produces mark" nor “make the ephah small" nor "withhold the pledge after the debtor had repaid the loan, they ceased to chafe. Thus folk molded law as hand molds glove. Then came the individual thinker-prophet, lawgiver, religious teacher, schoolman, canonist, moral philosopher-correcting or completing folk custom and law. Finally, in working out national codes and framing great pieces of constructive legislation, our own time has discovered how to procure the collaboration of many picked minds. Once written down or printed, a man's work is tagged and stays as he left it. As such works accumulate, the communal fount dries up. Specialists and schools arise, so that the people at large have no part in advancing thought or art. The folk being out of it, why does not the individual take the bit in his teeth and bolt? Surely there will be confusion, a riot of temperament and caprice! No, the thought of an age shows much consistency and dovetails fairly well into the past. If agreement is wanting in its metaphysics or ethics or philosophy, it is because rival systems divide the field, each of them, however, a logical structure. Most of the literary masterpieces of a period show certain common characteristics, as if the writers had been taking account of one another. One reason is the dependence of the creative genius on other geniuses, living and dead. Few minds become pregnant with literature until they have been fructified by close acquaintance with |