The Evils of Loose Thinking

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 92, 12 January 1929, Page 15

The Evils of Loose Thinking

“Certain present-day social and political controversialists suffer from a mama for vague generalisations, declared the Earl of Birkenhead to the students at Aberdeen University The late President Wilson was highly gifted in this respect. These ‘thinkers’ delight to embrace a continent and all its people, within the compass of single half-truth; they condemn a generation, a Government, or a philosophy in a presumptuous paragraph of ill-considered rhetoric. Ignoring the teachings of history, which alone may affor d a probable estimate of the present, or prognosis of the future, they dispose of all problems with an airy affectation of omniscience. They replace fact, by random speculation, human experience by frothy and unreasoned hypothesis. They twist evidence to found a gimcrack Utopia.

A COUNSEL each one of you to nourish ambition, to exalt it over self-indulgence, indifference, indolence, and self-complacency There are those who will deprecate my advice and remind you that by ambition Satan fell. Comfort yourselves with I the reflection that Milton, despite all his efforts, was forced to make Satan the hero of ‘Paradise Lost.’ Up to the present I think that no other revolutionary leader had found his Milton. “When I advise you to nourish ambition, be sure that I am not counselling you to choose the easier part. You will quickly discover that she is a stern mistress, intolerant of the smallest infidelity in her follow eis. She will never permit you to accept the buffets, of fortune with the resignation of the fatalist. She will force you to eschew that comforting notion—so beloved of levellers—that man is the creature of circumstances. “Circumstances are the creatures of man, and he can mould most of them who possesses the parts and the resolution. Do not rest content with merely raising bulwarks against misfortune; remember rather Gibbon’s line declaration that ‘the winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigator.’ “Ambition, alone, however, is not enough. The most soaring ambition cannot sustain your career unless it be reinforced by character. Ojuc of the wisest among the Romans, Publius Syrus, declared that ‘his own character is the arbiter of every man’s destiny’; and I would have his words engraved on the lintel of every university lecture-room to remind those who cross its threshold that character counts for more than knowledge, learning, or ingenuity. “The basis of that facet of character which I have in mind is honesty of thought. Loose, careless thinking is the antithesis of intellectual honesty. Other failings the world may condone or indulge. There aie some faults which genius may overcome; but loose thinking will inexorably corrupt the most ingenious mind. “It is infinitely harder to be honest with ourselves than with our fellows. Public opinion, no less than the sanctions of the criminal law, is a healthy deterrent against social dishonesty. But no machinery of policemen and prison menaces him who seeks to cheat his own intelligence. He who is guilty of loose thinking, and an indolent acceptance of the pleasant in place of the true, is arraigned before no tribunal, is punishable by no court of law.

“Nevertheless certain retribution pursues him. Because he is too indifferent to face the logical conclusion of the facts which life presents to his notice, preferring rather to interpret these facts in the light of precon-

ceived theories agreeable to his inclination, the loose thinker is condemned to eternal failure in all great enterprise. Intellectual disingenuousness, as I have attempted to show, is the fundamental error of unsound social conceptions. Its results will betray the fulfilment of every enterprise based upon this quicksand; and, in the same way, retribution will overwhelm each one of you who indulges in its superficial and fugitive comfoit

“Let me urge you to use your undergraduate days to the utmost of their capacity. X do not merely mean that you should apply yourselves to your studies with vigour and determination. That is understood. Reading’ certainly ‘maketh a full man,’ but overmuch reading will blunt the liveliest wits. It is not possible to learn a complete understanding of the world from books; I have known many profound scholars who were also profound simpletons.

“While, therefore, I urge you to strive after academic distinctions, I would not have you pretermit the other sides of life. Do not neglect, for example, to strive after excellence in sport; do not ignore the possibilitj of forming friendships among your fellows which will sustain and comfort you in later days.

“Above all, do not ignore the importance of acquiring a pleasing manner, so that you may feel at your ease in all circumstances and company. I have known many excellent young men, equipped with every advantage of talent and erudition, who have failed in their chosen careers because their manners were awkward. Some of you, perhaps, consider such trifles beneath your consideration, deeming the cultivation of a ready address a surrender of natural independence. This would, indeed be a superficial view.

“Good manners, in the widest sense of the words, arc the outward sign of a complete, harmonious, and disciplined personality, lhe boot stihes to hide his fear or his inferiority beneath a mask of blunt uncouthness. Charm, the honeyed tongue of manners, the exquisite expression of perfect breeding, is tin unsurpassable asset to him who can compass it. It may balance a notable deficiency of natural gifts, and carry its possessor where cleverness alone would never sponsor him. . . .

“There is every reason to believe that when jou leaie this gianite city and scatter, as is the wise habit of your folk, to the ends of the earth, you will carry W’ith you the spirit by which you have been nurtured. It is a spirit of adventure, of unquenchable ambition, of intellectual integrity and, above all, of honest opportunism.

“The whole world lies before you; you hare no chains to lose. I wish each one of you a full measure of success in your attack on the prizes of life. In your hands, too, may. they; prove to be glittering, ■