Intellect Versus Emotion in Political Co-operation

Abstract

A NY views we may hold as to the future social progress of mankind will in all probability be influenced by what we think about the power and scope of human intelligence. How much confidence do we have in the future of representative democracy? This will depend in large measure upon whether we can agree with earlier exponents of democracy that it is possible for the citizens of a great nation to think collectively and effectively on matters of common concern and to reach conclusions thereby on main lines of national policy. There is little doubt that the decline during the last half-century of political liberalism, with its faith in the efficacy of intellectual enlightenment as a means to the improvement and reform of governmental machinery, was due in large part to a growing conviction in scientific circles that man's intellect is strictly limited, if not fatally handicapped, in dealing with social and political problems. During this epoch the view gained wide currency among psychologists and sociologists that the human intellect moves freely and attains true knowledge only when applied to the observable facts and processes of the natural world, while in dealing with questions of man's personal experience and social behavior it is inevitably deflected and distorted by the emotions and desires of the thinker. Impressive confirmation of this belief appears to be found in the contrast between the spectacular achievements of modern natural science and the failure of man's intellect during the same period to cope successfully with the growing complexities of his social life. In addressing psychologists recently, Professor Gardner Murphy' has stressed this contrast between the efficiency of human intelligence in the one field and its comparative futility in the other. When dealing with the structural properties of the objective world, man's intellect has, he says, moved freely and effectively-has,* in fact, remade the order of his world. But when man applies his reason to questions concerning his own nature in relation to that of his fellows, his impulses becloud the clarity of his thinking. This difference finds striking illustration, he further points out, in results obtained by pure and applied psychology, respectively.2 The former, when studying the human capacity to think, has fixed its attention upon the order and organization of ideas and has adopted explanatory principles which, like the laws of association and Gestalt, are distinctively and solidly intellectualistic. But applied psychology, on the other hand, has been confronted with the thinking that actually goes on in business and industry, in clinic and courtroom, in school and public opinion. It has found these forms of thinking to be governed by personal needs, which furnish the main clue to their organization; and it has discovered that the human individual, in the give and take of everyday life, thinks in accordance with his motivating drives and the emotions they generate and that his thinking is steered in the direction of need-satisfaction. Hence the opinions he forms and the beliefs he holds are