I do think people of our age are too much devoted to causes and not enough to their own education. Perhaps I should say that people’s devotion to causes is too narrow, too impatient, too uncritical. Doubtless we should serve our cause better if we stopped to look before we leap. I am not sure that ignorance, however devoted and active, ever accomplishes much good for mankind. I might ask in turn, do our propagandas often get the results expected? Look at pacifist propaganda, or the slogan about the war to end war, look at socialist propaganda today after a half century and more of it, consider prohibition. The intellectuals of our generation have exhausted themselves running after this and that new sociological magic. And there is a general feeling of frustration and futility. Where progress has been made in our times, it has been in matters that do not lend themselves easily to propaganda; success had been achieved in the arts and sciences. Intellect has failed when playing at leadership of social movements. The ends sought by propaganda may be and often are good. But education is also an end. We are not required to occupy ourselves with any cause to the extent that we fail to educate ourselves. The first social obligation of any man is his own education. I am a mere muddler and a nuisance if I act on the principle that I have any obligations to society that go beyond my knowledge of means and ends and of good and evil. Social service should be a by-product of education. I do not imagine that Socrates or Erasmus sought education in order that they could be more useful to society. Social obligation or no social obligation, you and I have the right to such education as we have the native intelligence to acquire. We have that right because we are the kind of animals we are. No cause is more important than this. Let us serve where and when we can, but let us not surrender our mental integrity for any man’s sake. CHAPTER IV LIBERAL EDUCATION VS. BOOK LEARNING