We permit thousands of distressing accidents to occur every year. We permit them, for we could prevent them; we have sufficient experience of the dangers, we have sufficient scientific knowledge, and we have sufficient financial means. We could save thousands of lives without even feeling a financial pinch, and most of the lives saved would add to the financial resources of the country. But we do not stop to think; that is, we do not put our whole selves into our conduct. We submit to a multitude of unnecessary discomforts--dirt, smoke, noise, confusion, delays, undue fatigue, uncomfortable clothing, senseless customs. Our intelligence concerning the conditions of agreeable living, and our budgetary capacity for it, far outrun our plans and policies. We endure unsightly spots in cities and towns, and the despoiling of natural beauty in the country. The persons who reap financial advantage from our esthetic impoverishment do so, not by their own inherent power, but by our acquiescence. Our trouble is lack of head-work. We read inferior stuff, not because it is more enjoyable than literature, but because we wont take the trouble to enjoy ourselves. Thus, because we are “not all there,” we let slip opportunities for exciting adventures in imagination, thought, and knowledge. Our opinions are largely manufactured for us and imposed upon us, or else we merely drift into them and afterwards, perhaps, search for reasons in support of them. We permit ourselves to be treated as herds--some writers even using this term with respect to us--not because we are necessarily bovine but because we are unnecessarily absent-minded. That is, the human in us acts fragmentarily instead of integrally. We are capable of having better government and better social relations generally than we have. We could afford them without risk of impoverishment and often to the benefit of our pocketbooks. Our good precedents, our weakly professed convictions, our known capacity for fruitful experimentation, all outrun our political and social practice. Often we are pig-headed, not because there is a porcine drive in our original nature, but because we get the habit of over-fondness for our half-thoughts. We are capable of providing far better schooling for our children than we do provide. Even parental affection, which comes so near to being unqualifiedly good, is a main support for mistaken education. Moreover, education is a field in which most persons who have not paused to investigate believe, nevertheless, that they are competent to pass judgments. Thus, precisely where we think we are using our heads, we fail to use them enough.