CHAPTER IX THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT § 31. Intelligence and the serpent. § 32. The moral fault and the intellectual. § 33. The clever rogue and the simple honest man. § 34. The critical life and the question of intelligence. § 35. Intelligence vs. intellect, mathematical and logical. § 36. Intelligence personal and critical. 66 8 31 OW the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." This announcement marks the opening of that brief but portentous drama, representing the conflict between authority and intelligence, which comprises the third chapter of Genesis. And the selection of the serpent to play the part of intelligence expresses an ancient and deeply-rooted human prejudice; a prejudice further illustrated by the choice of Mephistopheles or Iago for the villain of the play. Authoritarian moralists, it goes without saying, are committed to a discouragement of intelligence; since it can never be predicted that an exercise of intelligence will confirm authority. And probably many a parent with a son at college is consoled when the lad learns little by the thought that he might learn too much. Related to these is that considerable class of slow-minded but sentimentally "sensitive" persons whose intercourse with others, ever uneasy, seems to be dominated by the fear of exposing their private thinking to the test of criti cism. They have indeed the practical justification that the test may serve only to worst them in an argument without proving anything; and one need not be a sentimentalist to realize that a finally satisfying conviction, if there is to be one, will not be a matter of argument. Yet aside from all this, it seems to be a part of the natural man to be irritated by the presence of critical and imaginative persons who, though they refrain from comment and inquiry, may not be trusted to take what we tell them at its face value, but may rather be counted upon to form their own opinions and to entertain further questions. As a protection against such persons we erect an inner sanctum in which our motives may be stored safe from outer criticism-and also from our own. And in this attitude we have the support of all "sane and practical" men, whose point of view is well expressed by Shakespeare's Caesar when he says: Let me have men about me that are fat, He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. Remembering Caesar's ambitions we may sympathize with his desire to have men about him who sleep at night while he remains awake. But this may lead us to look more tolerantly upon the lean and hungry Cassius. And we may then acquire a certain respect for the serpent if, divesting ourselves of the tradition in which most of us have been bred, we read the story as an episode in mythology. As such it will take its place beside the many heathen myths in which the all-powerful gods are unaccountably baffled by the activities of their own creatures. And read in this light it will appear, I think, that of the four characters in the play, the Lord God, the man, the woman, and the serpent, the serpent is the clearest representative of critical intelligence; for he is able seemingly to perplex the Lord God himself. Nor is his intelligence a mere vulgar cunning. For, strangely, his most insidious suggestion embodies what may be regarded as the deepest truth of moral philosophy: "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." It will be interesting to compare this with the words of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel: "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." The moral aspect of the situation seems likewise altered when we transfer the conflict of motives to a more modern setting. Reading the story in the spirit of the ancient conceptions of property, regarding the man and the woman as the Lord God's creatures-and remembering perhaps that knowledge hardly adds to contentment-the serpent appears to be only a mischievous intruder upon the peace and harmony of the garden. But if we substitute for the Lord God a Russian landed-proprietor before the Emancipation, or a southern planter before the Civil War, or a capitalistic employer of today claiming by virtue of his position the right of master; and for the serpent one of those who would awaken the subjects to a consciousness of their power and a sense of their manhood; it may then be difficult to see how the part of the serpent differs from the part played by those whom today we honor as deliverers from ignorance and superstition, or how a communication of the wisdom of the serpent is other than a communication of moral responsibility. And it will strengthen the suggestion if we remember that in conservative eyes the critic of social institutions wears invariably the aspect of a serpent, whose wisdom is merely specious and "subtle". 8 32 The opposition of morality and intelligence belongs to that departmental conception of the soul to which I have referred above, and according to which all of the knowing, or the intelligence, is done in one room of the soul, all of the willing, or the morality, in another, while a third is occupied exclusively by feeling, or taste. On this theory it becomes possible for the abstract "moral self" to charge some of his errors to the account of the abstract "knowing self", who may then be treated as morally suspicious and "dangerous". When, however, we examine concrete cases of error, on the part of ourselves or of others, it seems that we are hardly able to effect a complete separation between the moral fault and the intellectual. Jones has wrecked his automobile in an "unavoidable" accident. Knowing that some persons are more liable than others to unavoidable accidents our first inquiry may be directed upon the personality of Jones. From our human standpoint there are doubtless accidents truly unavoidable, due to contingencies which, as we say, only a divine wisdom could have anticipated. But even this is not to say that they could have been anticipated by no wisdom whatever. And the dividing line between human and divine wisdom, between what could be expected of Jones and what could be expected only of a higher order of being, remains always uncertain. Meanwhile we do know that one's vision of danger, even if limited ultimately, may be broadened indefinitely by a more intensive sense of responsibility. And if Jones is a morally sensitive person, and the accident has resulted in death, especially the death of one near to him, it is doubtful whether, though he has used ordinary foresight, he will ever rest comfortably in the conviction that the contingencies bringing about the accident were beyond the limits of any possible foresight. In the light of later reflection he is likely to go through life tormented by the thought, "I might have known, and therefore I ought to have known." In this he will be stating the most essential proposition of moral responsibility and free will. This doctrine rests, I should say, upon a fact; at least upon an experience: upon the experience, namely, that retrospectively it is never possible to see why-whatever range of imagination might be implied-you or I could not know what it was possible for some other intelligence to know. It is the old story of Columbus and the egg, illustrated in the solution of any problem you please. In the light of the solution you and I can never see why we had to miss it, and the fact that we did miss it is now more or less humiliating. Physical powers, it seems, have their well-defined limits, but mental powers appear to have essentially none. Hence that A can lift a heavier weight than I can lift, I am content to accept as a fact; but to say that another intelligence has seen what I did not see is always in some degree to say that I also ought to have seen. Suppose, again, that Brown has been betrayed by an agent whom he has trusted. It is worth noting that errors of this kind are peculiarly humiliating. And if Brown were a morally sensitive person his reflections might easily |