The Forgotten Man, and Other EssaysSumner, William Graham
Science
The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays
Sumner, William Graham
Economics; Social sciences
If your education is disciplinary, it ought also to teach you how to
organize. I add this point especially because I esteem it important
and it is rarely noticed. It is really a high grade of discipline
which enables men to organize voluntarily. If men begin to study and
think, they move away from tradition and authority. The first effect
is to break up and dissolve their inherited and traditional opinions
as to religion, politics, and society. This is a necessary process of
transition from formal and traditional dogma to intelligent conviction.
It applies to all the notions of religion, as has often been noticed,
but it applies none the less to politics and to one’s notions of
life. The commonplaces of patriotism, the watchwords of parties and
tradition, the glib and well-worn phrases and terms have to be analyzed
again, and under the process much of their dignity and sanctity
evaporates. So too one’s views of life, of the meaning of social
phenomena, and of the general rules for men to pursue with each other,
undergo a recasting. Now during this process, men diverge and break
up. They do not agree. They differ by less and more, and also by the
various recombinations of the factors which they make. Pride, vanity,
and self-seeking come in to increase this divergence, it being regarded
as a sign of independence of thought.
It is not too much to say that so long as this divergence exists, it
is a sign of a low and imperfect development of science. If pride and
vanity intermingle, they show that discipline has not yet done its
perfect work. It is only on a higher stage of culture or discipline
that self is so overborne in zeal for the scientific good that opinions
converge and organization becomes possible. But you are well aware
that without organization we men can accomplish very little. It is not
the freedom of the barbarian who would rather live alone than undergo
the inevitable coercion of the neighborhood of others that we want. We
want only free and voluntary coördination, but it belongs to discipline
itself to teach us that we must have coördination in order to attain to
any high form of good.
I have now tried to show you the scope, advantages, and needs of
a disciplinary education. I have one remark more to make in this
connection. A man with a well-disciplined mind possesses a tool which
he can use for any purpose which he needs to serve. I do not consider
it an important question by the study of what sciences he shall get
this discipline, for, if he gets it, the acquisition of information in
any new department of learning will be easy for him, and he will be
strong, alert, and well equipped for any exigency of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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