HERMIONE SHANTZ 1969

©

 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ii

ABSTRACT

THE SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL THEORY OF
ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN

BY

Hermione Shantz

Alexander Meiklejohn is one of the most significant
educators of the twentieth century. No major study has been
completed, however, on either his historical role in educa—
tion or his philosophical position. The focus of the disser-
tation concerns the latter as it relates to education.

This statement of Meiklejohn's social and educational
theory is undertaken from two perspectives. The first deals
with Meiklejohn's involvement in higher education. The
primary purpose of this section is to attempt to illustrate
the process of deve10pment of his educational theory. This
part of the study considers his approach to the problems of
higher education under the changing conditions of the present
century and the relation of his approach to his general
theoretical outlook. Of particular concern is an introduction
to that conception of liberal education which he argued was
relevant to the sustenance of a democratic social order.
Meiklejohn's evolving liberal education programs deserve the

attention of scholars interested in the education of free men.

Hermione Shantz

Considerable attention is given, therefore, to the point that
his conception of liberal education was central to concep-
tions of teaching, administration, curricular development,
and continuing education. Meiklejohn's role in deve10ping
experimental innovations should be of particular interest to
members of universities who currently are engaged in develop-
ing residential colleges and who, concomitantly, are con-
cerned with deve10ping adequate conceptions of, and programs
appropriate to, liberal education.

Meiklejohn's conception of liberal education included a
concern for the apprOpriate processes of thought (for logical
principles, particularly that of consistency) and the proper
use of thought. The use of thought, Meiklejohn held, is to
achieve a grasp of the issues of human life in-the—large.

The ultimate aim of liberal education, that of deve10ping men
with a creative will to overcome the devisiveness which
Meiklejohn saw existed between democratic belief and on—going
social action, is thoroughly discussed in this perspective

of the study.

The second perspective of the dissertation primarily
concerns a philosophical analysis of Meiklejohn's social and
educational theory. Meiklejohn's quest for a democratic
response to the question of what constitutes a truly human
existence is considered in relation to his discussion of the
meaning of "freedom" and the relationship of this concept to

the structure of society and to man's social obligations.

Hermione Shantz

Emphasis is given to the point that Meiklejohn's position on
education is irrevocably tied to his position on freedom.

Meiklejohn held that the problem of understanding
"freedom" was bound to the problem of determining the prOper
form of the state. The latter must be evaluated in terms of
the question of whether human living possesses a dominant
purpose. Meiklejohn's arguments that "fraternity" is not
only the fundamental human idea in terms of which such evalu-
ations are to be made, but, also, that "fraternity" provides
for the prOper form of the state are scrutinized in this
study.

The rationale for Meiklejohn's contention that educa-
tion is basically a political concern forms the second major
aspect of this portion of the dissertation. In this regard
it was necessary to clarify premises involved in his judgment
that man is a creator of self, culture, and reason; and that
man is striving to interpret his own intentions as causes in
the formation of man's objective, cultural condition.

Particular attention is given to Meiklejohn's theory of
intelligence as the key to his theory of liberal education.
He stipulated that intelligence is the reasonableness of
brotherhood and a process of enacting kindness as the quali-
tative characteristic of institutions and as a learned
disposition of men. The proposition that men are brothers
meant for Meiklejohn that all of those activities which are

summarized under the term "intelligence" must be expressions

Hermione Shantz

of that kinship. It was from this premise that Meiklejohn's
general theory of education was derived.

The concluding discussion of this study concentrates on
the tOpic of the education of the sovereign, the citizen,
in a free society. Meiklejohn urged the necessity of re—
thinking current conceptions of sovereignty if society is to
be democratic. Meiklejohn's conclusion as to what character-
izes the genuine sovereign is an extremely important aspect
of this discussion. In this context the relation of
Meiklejohn's theories of intelligence, freedom, and the
fraternal form of the state and his premises concerning the
education of the sovereign are joined. This section of the
dissertation ends with a statement of the implications of
Meiklejohn's theory of education for the function of teaching
and for the establishment of specific objectives for liberal
education.

The study concludes with a summary commentary on

Meiklejohn's social and educational theory.

THE SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL THEORY OF

ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN

BY

Hermione Shantz

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Secondary Education and Curriculum

1969

COpyright by

HERMIONE SHANTZ
1968

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writer highly values the constant encouragement of
and effort made on her behalf by her major professor,

Dr. Carl Gross, throughout the process of her academic pro-
gram and specifically in terms of this dissertation.

Dr. George Barnett, Dr. Louise Sause, and Dr. Harold
Walsh, members of the writer's guidance committee, have been
positive factors in her academic pursuits and similar appreci-
ation is expressed to them for their assistance.

The writer is deeply grateful to Dr. William B. Lauder-
dale, Miss Ruth E. Renaud, and Mrs. Marshall B. Shantz for

their invaluable support and advice.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER Page
I. THE RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY . . . . . . . . . 1
Organization of the Dissertation . . . . . 10
II. ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN: EDUCATOR . . . . . . . 14
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Amherst College: EXperiment in Liberal

Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

The Experimental College: The Community
Idea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Expanding Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . 56
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
III. MEIKLEJOHN'S SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL THEORY. . 68
Introduction'. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
The Concepts of Liberty. . . . . . . . . . 75
The Bill of Rights. . . . . . . . . . . 78
"Clear and Present Danger". . . . . . . 81
Freedom and Public Obligation . . . . . 85
"Due Process" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

Fraternity and Equality. . . . . . . . . . 111
The Form of the State. . . . . . . . . . . 126
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

IV. THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE: THE KEY TO LIBERAL
EDUCATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Corporate Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . 149
Intelligence as Obligation . . . . . . . . 155
Knowledge and Intelligence . . . . . . . . 160
An Example of Relevance. . . . . . . . . . 165

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS - Continued

CHAPTER Page
V. .EDUCATION OF THE SOVEREIGN . . . . . . . . . 172
The Ruler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Freedom and the Sovereign. . . . . . . 191
The Agency of the Teacher . . . . . . . . 198

Questions as the Organizing Objectives
of Education. . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

CHAPTER I
THE RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY

The primary purpose of this study is to effect a compre-
hensive statement of the social and educational theory of
Alexander Meiklejohn. While Meiklejohn is a well-known
thinker and educator of the twentieth century, no major study
to date has been completed on either his historical role in
education or his phi1050phical position. The focus of this
dissertation is the latter as it relates to the study of
education.

It is significant to point out that it would be reason-
able to pursue a historical study of Meiklejohn because of
the significant contributions he made to educational move-
ments in America. He initiated and carried out an experi-
mental program of liberal education at Amherst College. He
developed and headed an eXperimental college at the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin. He founded the School of Social Studies,
an adult education program, in San Francisco. But even
though his administration of these three programs encompassed
approximately two and one-half decades, beginning in 1912,
such activities did not constitute the whole of his contribu-

tion in education. However significant as these programs

were, it seems appropriate that any initial study of Meikle-
john focus on the philosophical rationale which he developed
and from which these programs grew.
Meiklejohn was a humanist. Although his humanism repre-
sents a departure from other modern humanistic positions,
its continuity with the whole of western thought is undeni-
able. Like Plato, he saw educational concerns as containing
the most basic questions through which investigations about
the good life had to be made. He viewed the good education
as crucial to the good society and the good man. He possessed
the ability to utilize the best of western tradition to gener—
ate new perceptions about his time and his society.
Meiklejohn's preeminence as a historical figure was a
result of his engagement in a continuing analysis of philo-
SOphic concepts and his ability to meaningfully relate them
to current social issues and conditions. His fundamental
ability to make his conceptual framework relevant to the
existing cultural situation offers contemporary educators
an exemplar of significance in their persisting struggles to
develop responsible social and educational theories. In ad-
dition his work as an educator, particularly his role in
developing experimental innovations in liberal arts educa-
tion, should be of particular interest to those universities
which currently are engaged in developing residential colleges.
Meiklejohn's efforts to conceptualize "liberal arts" in terms

that would be constantly relevant to the social situation

might aid university personnel who have embarked, comparative-
ly recently, on a similar quest.

Meiklejohn's long career was bound to higher education.
He was concerned with the critical question of the function
of higher education in a democratic society. He increasingly
became involved with the problem of the meaning of democracy
and viewed its clarification as thg problem crucial to the
task of rightly directing society's improvement and, conse-
quently, as crucial to the task of giving legitimate direction
to the role of the institution of education.

The question of the meaning of democracy had become
urgent in a century which had seen virtually the total restruc-
turing of society's institutions. It is not necessary to
review those economic factors of the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries which have yielded the description of

ours as the "new industrial state."1

Necessary changes in
basic institutions have emerged with the development of this
technological society. If one were to characterize the
general nature of these changes, one might begin by noting

the quality of interdependence which has come to undergrid all

significant human activity. Existing institutional forms to

 

1John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967). Galbraith gives
serious attention to defining contemporary aspects of an in-
dustrial state and deals at length with the quality of inter-
dependence which characterizes that state.

an extent exemplify the fact that men have organized their
lives in terms of corporate ends.

The increasingly corporate character of American
society has affected not only the organizational nature of
the educational institution but has raised fundamental, and
continuing, questions concerning the purposes of education
in a democratic state. Of critical significance is what
Dewey has called "the tendency to combination in all phases
of life."2 As he pointed out in The Public and Its Problems,
this tendency is manifest as diverse and competing publics.3
The growth of a strong democracy depends on the correction
of chaotic social conditions which have accrued from divisive
publics. This necessitates the realization of a legitimate
unification of purpose among publics. In this endeavor the
school must play a role. It was essentially in terms of this
context that Meiklejohn faced the problem of the purposes of
higher education.

Historically the broad issue regarding higher education
in the United States revolved around concepts of liberal edu-
cation versus utilitarian education. Various advocates have
not argued merely for one perspective or the other nor have

arguments been confined to discussions between those holding

 

2John Dewey, Individualism Old and New (New York: Capri-
corn Books, 1962), p. 56. Dewey's chapter entitled "United
States, Incorporated" offers a cogent discussion of the
changed nature of society.

3Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Denver: Allan
Swallow, 1954TT

these two opposing concepts. But the lines of argument were
never clearly drawn as advocates of a liberal education pro-
claimed its utility and proponents of a utilitarian curricu-
lum laid claim to its liberating functions. Beyond this
there were diverse meanings attached to conceptions of liberal
education, as there, also, were diverse meanings attached to
conceptions of utilitarian education. Obviously, then,
substantial controversy existed regarding such concepts as
the nature of school curricula. In fact, several liberal
educational points of view gave rise to perplexing questions.
Does a liberal curriculum mean study of the classics for
mental or intellectual discipline? Does a liberal curriculum
aim at the development and discipline of men's faculties?
Does it mean education for culture, understanding "culture"
as that which signifies something like the acquiring of taste
and good character?

Traditional arguments regarding liberal education and
utilitarian education have never completely dissipated. But
in the nineteenth century they did begin to fuse into a new
approach. This new direction of thought was referred to as
"new humanism."4 Insight into this position was reported by
Veysey in his discussion of the controversies surrounding

higher education during the post-Civil War decades.

 

4Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American Uni-
versity (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago
Press, 1965), pp. 180-261.

Of the many attacks upon scientific specialization
which were uttered by the friends of culture during
this period, only one appears to have contained a
truly practical suggestion for carrying on the strug-
gle. Josiah Royce, addressing the graduate students
at Harvard and pleading with them not to become slaves
of their specialities, raised a suggestion that

offered important consequences. He advised: "Become
conscious of the methods of work pursued in your
technical branch of learning." Such awareness, Royce

contended, would liberate the observer from routine
subservience to his science, hence make "of your
technicality a humanity." Study "...the philos0phy of
your own subject," he urged. The implications of this
line of thought were gradually to gain importance dur-
ing the twentieth century.5
Although the strength of the commitments to liberal edu-
cation has wavered frequently during this century, as when
particularly tense social situations have lured us toward
educational programs for immediate solution, the problems
posed by those continuing to advocate a liberal education as
necessary for a democratic society have maintained the atten—
tion of scholars interested in the education of free men.
Meiklejohn surely was such a scholar and was representative,
in fact, of the "new humanism." This is not to say that he
stOpped with Royce's plea to make each technicality a human—
ity. It is to say that Meiklejohn extended this line of
thought considerably in developing his concept of liberal
education. Certainly he viewed liberal education as provid-
ing a fundamental condition for the achievement of a required

creative response on the part of individuals if we were to

move toward effecting more genuinely democratic institutions.

 

51bid., p. 205.

In Education Between Two Worlds, published in 1942, Meiklejohn
wrote this:
A society which takes the democratic mode of life as its
dominant aim is not living without pattern, without
general will. It is attempting to create the most dif-
ficult, the most complicated, as well as the most sublime,
of all social compositions. It can succeed only insofar
as the authority of that purpose is accepted by every
member of the group. Unless the citizens of a democracy
are intelligently, sensitively eager, in every passing
situation, to play their proper parts, to serve the com-
mon cause of freedom, the theme simply cannot be deve10ped.
It breaks down-—as today in America it has at so many
points broken down--into a welter of clashing meaningless
acts. Without cultural authority, there is no social
order. Without it, men are not human beings. And to
talk of education without it is to use words that have
no meaning.8
It was Meiklejohn's aim not only to construct a concept
of liberal education relevant to a democratic state and the
education of free men, but to find the means of actualizing
the concept. Ultimately, then, the most persistent concern of
Meiklejohn's teaching, whether in classroom, lecture hall,
article, book or president's chair, was the development of a
definition of freedom. And, although other concepts were
recognized as decisive, he spent approximately three decades
after "retirement" probing the meaning of freedom as the con-
struct we were in most immediate need of comprehending ade-
quately. For Meiklejohn the clarification of this construct
was basic to a sound theory of democracy and, he held, it is

only when the latter is attained that an adequate definition

of education is possible.

 

RAlexander Meiklejohn, Education Between Two Worlds (New
York and London: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1942), p. 92.

Relevant to the above is the fact that Meiklejohn was
in the vanguard in clarifying on the national scene salient
issues facing education and the democratic society. Much of
his attention after World War II, for example, was focused
on the problem of academic freedom, assuredly a crucial
aspect of the total problem of freedom. This concern was
typified in his December 15, 1957 petition for redress of
grievance which was addressed to Mr. Rayburn, then Speaker of

7 In it Meiklejohn questioned

the House of Representatives.
the constitutional and moral authority of the Committee on
UneAmerican Activities to compel a witness to testify about
his beliefs or associations against his will. This activity
was only one in a series of many which were intensely centered
on clarifying the meaning of freedom. The importance of such
activities for education cannot be maximized.
Further, the achievement of a reliable understanding of
a principle was, for Meiklejohn, vitally necessary but not
sufficient. This was only part of the urgent task.
...Every principle, before its work is done, its meaning
realized, must find its way into the field of practice,
must be a principle of action.8

Involved in his constant search for the meaning of concepts

was a basic concern about the social significance of the

 

7Meiklejohn, Political Freedom (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1965), pp. 156-158.

8Meiklejohn, Freedom and the College (New York and London:
The Century Co., 1925), p. 55.

cleavage between belief or principle and action. Along with
other observers of the American scene, Meiklejohn viewed the
separation between our ideals and social realities with in-
tense concern. Certainly Meiklejohn viewed his obligation
as centered on overcoming this dualism, since its continua-
tion is fatal to the realization of democracy.

In light of the above, the sc0pe of Meiklejohn's contri-
bution went beyond truth-seeking to the problem of the legit-
imate application of truth to institutional arrangements.
Herein lies, to some extent, the strength of Meiklejohn as a
scholar. He gave as serious attention to the prudential
matters which are relevant to actualizing a principle as he
did to the seeking of the principle itself. A serious in-
vestigation of Meiklejohn, therefore, demands emphasis on
both of these aspects of scholarship.

It seems appropriate to this rationale to indicate that
the writer first encountered Meiklejohn when engaged in re-
search on Rousseau. The discussion in Education Between Two
Worlds develops those insights Meiklejohn gained from Rousseau
in constructing his own social and educational theory.
Further, since the writer found the kinds of concerns Meikle-
john dealt with in that book relevant to her own attempts to
deve10p a theory of education within a general humanistic out-
look, and since the cogency of Meiklejohn's approach was most
congenial to the author, she decided to pursue his other

writings. This program divulged, as indicated, that no

10

doctoral study as yet has been completed on Meiklejohn's

philosophic position.

Organization of the Dissertation

To this point the writer has attempted to portray the
kinds of concerns that Meiklejohn found most pertinent. It
is obvious that the sc0pe of these considerations is quite
large. For this writer to create a lucid statement from such
diversity of thinking required that attention be given to the
organization of ideas to be handled.

Note might be made here of the evolutionary nature of
Meiklejohn's writings. Although Education Between Two Worlds
is undoubtedly his major work, no single work is totally
representative of his social and educational theory. However,
there is a pattern of develOpment in his work. His writings
conform to what might be described as the two major periods
of his public career. That is, those written between 1905
and 1955 essentially parallel his formal involvement in higher
education and are addressed most specifically to questions
of educational theory and practice. These are the works that
arose out of his particular educational experiences. His
later works deviate from this approach only in that his con-
siderations are put in a broader framework. These works
center on questions having to do with problems of the nature
of society and the meanings of concepts fundamental to the

democratic state.

11

The present study takes both of the approaches indicated
above seriously in developing a synthesis of Meiklejohn's
social and educational theory. Thus, Chapter II of the
dissertation deals briefly with some of the major periods of
educational activity in Meiklejohn's life. A sensitivity to
his theoretical contribution can be enhanced by viewing it in
light of some of his significant activities as a public
servant. This chapter illustrates his approach to the prob-
lems of education and the relation of the latter to his gener-
al philOSOphical position.

Chapter III is a basic statement of his social and edu-
cational theory. Chapter IV aims at the construction of his
theory of intelligence as the key to liberal education and
hence the development of the democratic man. The task of
Chapter V is a clarification of Meiklejohn's position that a
theory of society is a theory of education. Although Chapters
III, IV and V can be viewed as somewhat particular, they are
to be regarded basically in concert. These chapters include
a description and analysis of his general philOSOphy of man,
society and education.

This author has alluded to the fact that much of the im-
pact of Meiklejohn's thinking is lost because no synthesis of
his position is available. Meiklejohn had that relatively
rare ability of seeing specific problems in terms of a basic
philOSOphic framework. The kind of writing he did, however,

was of such a nature as to often inhibit the reader's

12

recognition of its underlying assumptions. The unaware
reader loses the continuity that makes Meiklejohn a signifi-
cant thinker. The endeavor of this dissertation is to
establish the reference for viewing his specific concerns
relative to his general commitments.

Examination of the writings of Alexander Meiklejohn pro-
vided the major source of the material for this dissertation.
The task of rendering an intelligible synthesis of Meikle-
john's social and educational theory, as well as that of
carrying out the intent of other portions of the study,
depended upon a method of reasonableness. Meiklejohn's posi-
tion is part of the western tradition which regards the logi-
cal meaning of "reasonable" as being "consistent with."

That is, internal consistency of thought provides the logical
basis for assessing the validity of any proposition within a
general theoretical framework. In synthesizing his theory
and in regarding its relation to application what the writer
intends by a method of reasonableness is in harmony. Since
the logic of consistency is basic to Meiklejohn's philosophy,
it seemed an apprOpriate method for this study.

Development of the study in its various aspects involved
the mechanical problem of documentation; the logical problem
of the selection, sc0pe and arrangement of tOpics and concepts;
and the phiIOSOphical problem of interpretation. To substan-
tively address the content areas of this dissertation is was

necessary to establish and clarify certain concepts, premises

15

and definitions which were selected as necessary and appro-
priate to the study's problems. Analyses of concepts and

the relational or identical nature of the major aspects of
Meiklejohn's theory resulted from a rational appraisal of

the literature and, hopefully, meet the requirements of
intelligibility and logical consistency. It may be maintained
that apprOpriate and meaningful selection of topics and con—
cepts, correct interpretation, and logical consistency are

the sources of validation for the content of this discourse.

CHAPTER II

ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN: EDUCATOR

Introduction

It has been indicated that the various pursuits to which
Meiklejohn devoted his life ultimately had as their overarch-
ing concern a quest for the nature and actualization of prin-
ciples fundamental to a free society. Early in Meiklejohn's
public service his attention turned to the question of the
nature of the free man. Obviously it is impossible to sepa-
rate these quests in Meiklejohn's thought. For Meiklejohn
the domain of action finally made these pursuits inseparable.
Fundamentally, the free man was one who acts upon certain
apprOpriate social principles. The complementary quest was,
of course, that of determining the education appropriate for
the free man.

Historically one first most cogently encounters Meikle-
john's commitment to the education of the free man during
his presidency of Amherst College. Prior to his service at
Amherst he had studied at Brown and at Cornell, pursuing his

graduate studies in philos0phy at the latter university. He

returned to Brown University in 1897 as an instructor in

14

15

philosophy and in 1901 became Dean of that institution.

This office was newly invented and consequently held no
precedents. Meiklejohn apparently saw his office as possess-
ing concern for the total quality of student life. Here,
also, as in each other educational context, his capacity as

a teacher was exemplary. His method was Socratic in nature
and his use of the dialectical eXploration was persistent.

He evidently lectured little but questioned with the hope of
carving away common-sense definitions and conventional under-
standings.

During this time, also, he formulated a definition of
education. His approach was Kantian in nature, utilizing the
distinction between form and content.1 His exposition was
not novel, but his skill at eXpressing it was persuasive.
Broadly, he held, the content of life is found in each indi-
vidual's nature, desires, needs, opportunities, and circum-
stance. Out of such content the individual must make a life,
an order, a form. Now, for Meiklejohn, since all institutions,
church, home, education, provided to human experience both
form and content, the process of education was as wide as
living itself. What, then, was the meaning of education in
its narrower sense?

...I think we may say that, as it is the primary busi-

ness of the church as an educational force to teach
the forms of life, the so-called moral laws, as it is

 

J'Meiklejohn, "College Education and the Moral Ideal,"
Education, xxvii, 9 (May, 1908), pp. 552-67.

16

the primary function of the home and the social group
to give training and practice in the application of
those laws within familiar fields and under careful
guidance, so it is primarily the work of the school

and college to Open up to the student the content of
life. It is the task of the teacher to lead his pupil
out of the narrower affairs of self, of home, of
friends, of city, of country, to make him acquainted
with the world and its values, to widen his horizon, to
reveal to him the content of human experience, to show
him the possible content of his own living. ...It is
not primarily to teach the forms of living, not primar-
ily to give practice in the art of living, but rather
to broaden and deepen insight into life itself, to open
up the riches of human experience, of literature, of
nature, of art, of religion, of philosophy, of human
relations, social, economic, political, to arouse an
understanding and appreciation of these, so that life
may be fuller and richer in content; in a word, the
primary function of the American college is the arous—
ing of interests.2

The reason for employing this quotation is not to lay claim

to its uniqueness as a definition nor to argue whether or not

Meiklejohn actually was claiming in his principle of interests
that part of the definition of education, indeed, does include

3 For

the art of living according to apprOpriate forms.
"interests" are always to be understood as "worthwhile inter-
ests." Such a quote does serve, it seems to this writer, as

a worthwhile point of comparative departure. Meiklejohn, in

subsequent contexts, not only broadened his definition, he

 

21bid.. pp. 557-558.

3In this same article Meiklejohn notes the Kantian form
of "generosity" to be observed in the ordering of our lives.
"If there be any good thing to be had, it is quite as well for
me that another have it as that I take it myself. For this
principle the distinction between myself and another is unim-
portant." (p. 555.) It becomes increasingly clear that this
form, for one, i§_part of the definition of education. Ulti-
mately it became, in amended form, crucial to Meiklejohn's
concept of intelligence.

17

confined it and sharpened it. He broadened it by acknowl-
edging as part of his definition that not only was education
to be concerned with the quest for apprOpriate forms of

human experience but, indeed, that there were forms that the
process of education ought to stress as significant for posi-
tive human living.

It was at Amherst that one first sees significant sharp-
ening of his definition of education and more readily
encounters the intense commitment to the objective of self-
examination. We find that the latter now possessed a more
inclusive intention. Self-examination had come to mean exam-
ination of the nature of the free man and society and of the
obligation the former properly owed to the latter. The
ancient debate concerning what constitutes the "educated man"
became translated in Meiklejohn's thought and practice to the

question of what constitutes the "free man."

Amherst College: EXperiment in Liberal Education

Meiklejohn was called to the presidency of Amherst in the
fall of 1912. His charge was to reform Amherst, to make its
education commensurate with the dimensions and demands of
modern life. Between that time and his forced resignation on
June 19, 1925, that haven for the leisurely pursuit of a
traditional liberal education was to take on qualities result-
ing from a new notion about liberal education from which
Amherst may have "recovered" but which, nonetheless, signalled

the initiation of several significant movements in higher

18

education which were not to disappear from the general scene
with Meiklejohn's removal from office. To say, further,
that in his efforts to reform Amherst he stirred up some
lively questions that have been destined to persist would
not be amiss.

The struggle over the purpose of higher education,
particularly the function of liberal education, was brought
to a focus during Meiklejohn's tenure at Amherst. National
and world conditions at that time had convinced him of the
essential unreality of the usual institution of higher edu-
cation. In particular, those institutions predicated on
some of the variations of classical conceptions of liberal
education seemed variously irrelevant in view of the increas-
ingly complex deve10pment of national and international
problems and institutional forces.

At Amherst, and later at the Experimental College of the
University of Wisconsin, Meiklejohn undertook the reformation
of the college into a community. He attempted to weld its
individual members into a group with common purpose, that of
involving the student in an intellectual adventure which
would relate his, the student's, education to the issues of
his life and his society. From a contemporary perspective
the general ideas expressed above are hardly new. At the
time such a perspective within a historically conservative

institution was so.

19

Meiklejohn set the tone for the next eleven years,
approximately enough, in his "Inaugural Address" on October
15, 1912.4 rAlthough his basic message had to do with the
mission of the teacher, that of dealing with the life of the
mind ("The college is primarily not a place of the body, nor
of the feelings, nor even of the will; it is, first of all,

a place of the mind."5), he gave some attention to a defense
against other views of the function of the college, something
he was to continue to do particularly between the end of his
Amherst career and the termination of the EXperimental College
at Wisconsin. He considered, in his text, the hostility of
those who demanded of the college "practical results" for the
commercial and industrial scene. He declared that the liberal
college was not to engage in teaching for a variety of pur-
poses, in particular that the special training for the trades
and professions appropriately ought to be located in other
institutions. Certainly, the professional person has to deal
with the realm of ideas and principles, but these have as
their dominating aim an immediate practical interest which
cuts such ideas and principles off from the intellectual view
of the scholar. The function of the liberal college was not

to furnish applied knowledge in this sense. Further, in

 

4Meiklejohn, "Inaugural Address," Essays for College Men:
Education, Science, and Art, chosen by Norman Foerster,
Frederick A. Manchester, and Karl Young (New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 1915), pp. 28-59.

51bid., p. 50.

20

speaking of the technician, Meiklejohn noted that:

His primary function as a tradesman is not to under-

stand but to do, and in doing what is needed he is

following directions which have first been thought

out by others and are now practiced by him.6
Lest it be misunderstood, Meiklejohn was not arguing against
these kinds of teachings and certainly not arguing that
individuals experiencing these teachings should not be.
liberally educated: to the contrary, liberal education was
requisite for each man.

Meiklejohn spoke also of internal misunderstandings
about the mission of the liberal college. Friends of the
college, students, graduates, trustees, colleagues, misunder—
stood and in doing so minimized its intellectual ideals or
falsified them.

I have often been struck by the inner contradictoriness

of the demand that we have faith in intelligence. It

seems to mean, as it is so commonly made to mean, that
we must unintelligently follow intelligence, that we
must ignorantly pursue knowledge, that we must question
everything except the business of asking questions,

that we think about everything except the use of think-

ing itself. As Mr. F. H. Bradley would say, the dictum,

"Have faith in intelligence," is so true that it con—

stantly threatens to become false. Our very conviction

of its truth compels us to scrutinize and test it to
the end.7

The "use of thinking," in Meiklejohn's conception, was a

Conjunction of the apprOpriate processes of thinking. Neither

the prOper use nor the proper processes of thinking were a

6Ibid., p. 52.

71bid., p. 35.

21

result of the study of any of the presumed "disciplinary"
studies; studies, it was held by some, whose inherent nature
would yield the student certain capacities of thought.
Meiklejohn conceived of the apprOpriate processes of thought
as being the employment of principles (forms) of logic, the
most fundamental of which was the principle of consistency.

It is a statement of fact that you and I, as our daily
life goes on, are thinking multitudes of thoughts which,
upon examination, turn out to be contradictory of each
other, and which, therefore, must be so modified that
they may dwell together in the same thought—system.

It is an expression of the principle that our various
judgments and descriptions are so related and inter-
related that no one of them can be regarded as finally
true until it has shown to be consistent with every
other judgment of fact made by the same mind about the
same world. From this point of View, then, the one
fundamental form of mental activity, the one "common
element" in all mental procedure is the making of judg-
ments consistent with one another, the construction of
a system of judgments within which each of them may
find a prOper place. In a word, it is...the establish—

ing of order.8

It was such distinctive modes of thinking which would allow
the individual to systematize his world. In this sense, a
distinctive aim of the college was to train minds in the
prOper processes or forms of thought. But what, then, of the
Pr0per use of thought? Broadly, as Meiklejohn conceived the
aim of the liberal college, the use of thought was to achieve
a grasp of the issues of human life in—the-large, rather than

facility in life's special interests and occupations.

. 8Meiklejohn, "Is Mental Training a Myth?" Educational
m, xxxvii, 2 (February, 1909), pp. 154-155.

22

How does this aim differ from the eXpressed intentions
of other conceptions of liberal education? In viewing what
the student should study and how he should approach his
study we gain some insight into how Meiklejohn viewed the
current intention of the college, as well as how Meiklejohn
responded to the prudential requirements of this aim.

And what shall he study? Those things which give unity
to human life: the ideas which have, whether we know

it or not, made us what we are--philosophy, the history
of human thought; then the institutions which express

us and mold us-—pr0perty, the courts, the family, the
church, the mill; then the stage on which this drama is
played--earth and heavens--geology, astronomy, physics,
chemistry, biology; next, the history of the past, the
pit from which we were dragged or the hills from which
we are descended-—history; and with these, those bur-
geonings of the artist mind which thinks in pictures,
which sets forth its unified conceptions of all this
multiform life in literature, painting, sculpture, music,
and architecture. Finally, these studies are to be
welded together into an interpretation of the student's
own experience and clearly related to the world in which
he lives....9

What has been stated here has some overtones compatible with
those educators who were advocates of "liberal culture." But,
not only was the basic tone different, different consequences
flowed into innovations in the curriculum and concomitant
expectations about student behavior. Not only did Meiklejohn
initiate survey courses, but he and his faculty built into

these and other innovations certain requirements concerning

 

9Lucien Price, Pr0phets Unawares: The Romance of an Idea
(New York and London: The Century Co., 1924), p. 26. Price's
eXposition of the Amherst experiment is not only one of the
most lively and engaging books that this writer has read but
informative in terms of the current educational issues and
Meiklejohn's role.

25

the appr0priate uses of thought.

A curricular innovation instituted in 1914 perhaps will
specify what has been claimed. At that time a course on
Social and Economic Institutions was placed into the heart of
the freshmen curriculum. The difference between this course
and other economic and government courses held by other
colleges can be expressed briefly. Amherst's course on
Social and Economic Institutions consisted in critical exami—
nation of the objectives and merits of our institutions, the
inconsistencies between ends and means that any institution
might express, as well as evaluations about the compatibility
of the ends sought throughout our system of institutions with
democratic forms of human association. Those courses held
by other colleges were essentially descriptive in character.
We encounter here, therefore, an instance of Meiklejohn's
intention of overcoming the divisive dualism present in
society, and within men, by the creation of a curricular
structure which forced students toward a recognition and
understanding of our contradictory belief systems and action
patterns.

Amherst's survey courses, as expressed in the course on
Social and Economic Institutions, were not generalized
descriptions of isolated institutional deve10pments as was
most often the case in other institutions, but were critical
studies designed to focus the student's own experience on

his world. The student was persuaded, by this means of

24

instruction, to examine not only the "reasonableness," in
the sense expressed previously, of his social milieu, but
concomitantly the dualism between those moral forms expressed
in democratic conceptions and actually existent moral forms.
In effect, the student, at the start of his college experi-
ence, was not only allowed but required to question the
foundations of his society, the institutions of property, of
church, of mill, and so forth. As Price indicated:

One of the awkward results of the...years of liberal

thought in Amherst College was that it frequently

made the sons of upper— and middle-class families

zealous to liberate those whom their fathers exploited.lo
Not only was freedom of inquiry into the institutions of
property and the processes of industry tolerated, it was pro—
vided for andldemanded.11 The most persistent methodology
provided for the achievement of this objective was that of
guided discussion, in tutorial as well as in class situations.

The intent of Meiklejohn's conception of liberal educa-
tion was expressed, also, on the stand he took at Amherst
regarding the issue of elective versus required subject-
matter areas. It is not surprising that he held that, since

the educational institution possessed certain intentions,

prescribed subjects indicated that conception of education

 

10Ibid., pp. 55-56.

11Needless to say, this situation does provide a basis
for the reasonable suggestion that Meiklejohn's dismissal was
based, at least in part, upon the conflict inherent in the
fact that financial support for the college came from men of
prOperty and industry. Some of the "loudest" complaints re-
corded asserted that Amherst was teaching students "how to
think rather than what to think."

25

for which the institution aimed. It is analytic, given this,
that an educational institution would become miseducative if
the means supplied for the realization of intentions in
actuality circumvent or were contrary to them. The elective
system might result in the student's attainment of a liberal
education, but it would do so accidently. If a liberal edu-
cation was the intention of the college, the elective system
would offer an opportunity for it provided the student were
wise enough to make proper choices and if all courses were
prOperly taught. So ran part of Meiklejohn's argument against
student election of subjects. Prescribed subjects, as instru-
ments, were indicative of the fact, according to Meiklejohn,
that some educational conception was actually aimed for

rather than merely hoped for.

Further, Meiklejohn articulated an additional position,
familiar today, on the issue of means-ends relationships.
The splitting up of human knowledge into a multitude of
departments, each with its own specialized provinces, not
only called the elective system into further question but
afforded little chance for the realization of the essential
unity of knowledge. Lacking this understanding, Meiklejohn
argued, meant the defeat of the aim of the liberally edu-
cated man. Once more, education dominated by special points
of view failed in realizing what men needed to know in order
to live intelligently. The order men gave to their lives

on the basis of the former was actually no order, lacking in

26

the appropriate requisites of the uses and content of
thought.

Meiklejohn's conception of education, as evidenced in
the Amherst eXperiment, possessed the notion that intelli-
gence is a process. That is, not only did "intelligence"
include an impartial scrutiny over any given problem, an
attitude of Openness, questioning, and receptivity, it grew
to include a dimension that is expressed in the phrase
"a will to create." The idea of intelligence as a liberat-
ing and/or creating force, again, was not novel in the
abstract, but how it was eXpressed in the life of the com—
munity certainly was so. To View an exciting manifestation
of this, one has only to record that in spite of war and a
post-war conservatism this idea appeared in the establish—
ment, on the part of the members of Amherst, of workers'
classes in the mills and industrial cities of Holyoke and
Springfield, Massachusetts. These classes, in economics,
history, municipal government, even in writing and reading,
were managed in collaboration with the Central Labor-Unions.
It would be beside the present point of discussion to more
than note the reasonable supposition that this sort of thing
ultimately was not to Meiklejohn's credit in the matter of
his continuation in the presidency of the college and possi-
bly represents one of the origins of those eXpletives,
"socialist," “communist," that were to be charged against

him.

27

What is to the point is to stress the fact that not only
was Meiklejohn's conception of intelligence sharpened by
the growing inclusion of "a will to create," but how this was
evidenced in the practical domain. What this writer has come
to term Meiklejohn's commitment to "expanding intelligence"
was exemplified in the establishment of the workers' classes.
That is, not only does this illustrate Meiklejohn's concern
for the freeing of the individual's mind from the limitations
of his experiences, but it expressed something significant
about "institutional intent." The assumed obligation of
Amherst was bound to Meiklejohn's growing articulation of a
concept of intelligence basic to the education of the free man.
But, such an institutional intent, according to Meiklejohn,
obviously could not be merely confined to the individuals at
Amherst but must find apprOpriate eXpression in the wider
society.

In such a manner this aspect of the Amherst experiment
expressed an additional, but different, dimension of Meikle—
john's growing answer to the question of what obligation free
men owe to society and, further, how this might well be ex—
pressed through institutional means. The community of common
purpose, previously referred to, was being conceptually and
operationally enlarged. In a word, the perspective on the
boundaries of the community to which the institutional in-
tent of eXpanding intelligence was applicable was being

broadened considerably. Certainly part of the effect of this

28

expansion was to contribute to that "awkward result" we
found Price commenting on. More to the intent of this dis-
sertation, however, it illustrates Meiklejohn's deve10ping
articulation of not only what constitutes the education of
the free man and the nature of the free man, as eXpressed in
the concept of intelligence under discussion, but the kind
of obligation to society incumbent upon the free man.
Insofar as one might be asked to eXpress in a single
proposition what the Amherst eXperiment was all about, this
writer would say that it was about that conception of intel—
ligence as a process and what that process must effect.
In commenting on Meiklejohn's baccalaureate address of June
17, 1925, Meiklejohn's last at Amherst, Price noted, in
reference to his own query as to what slew the liberal idea
at Amherst, the following point made by Meiklejohn.
He said that the conflict was between two conceptions
of intelligence: one, that intelligence is a thing
you can have, get, and keep, handed down out of the
past by a teacher or by a book; the other, that intel-
ligence is a process--something that you must d93l2
It is evident that, while the idea may have been "slain" at
Amherst, it was to be deve10ped and refined further prior
to and, of course, during the Wisconsin experiment. Not only
did Meiklejohn's conception of liberal education receive a

hearing before the creation of Wisconsin's Experimental

College, but there it found further expression in curricular

 

12Price, Prophets Unawares, op, cit., p. 168.

29

innovations and in like commitments referred to in this
present discussion. Also, the expression of intelligence as
"something that you must do" was found in Meiklejohn's theory
of administration, his concept Of experimentalism and his
additional emphasis on the community idea. Although each of
these, some of which have been considered briefly, were
relevant to the Amherst experiment, it seems more apprOpriate
to consider them in the context where they acquired more
thorough actualization and deve10pment.

The following comment by Meiklejohn serves as a transi-
tional statement for our discussion of the Wisconsin experi-

ment.

It has sometimes been suggested that our man of intel-
lectual culture may be found like Nero fiddling with
words while all the world about him is aflame. And the
point of the suggestion is not that fiddling is a bad
and worthless pasttime, but rather that it is inOppor-
tune on such an occasion, that the man who does it is
out Of touch with his situation, that his fiddling does
not fit his facts. In a word, men know with regard to
thinking, as with regard to every other context of human
eXperience, that it could not be valued merely in terms
of itself. It must be measured in terms of its rela-
tion to other contexts and to human experience as a

whole.13

It appears true that it was in terms Of this perspective that
.Meiklejohn formulated his plan for the Experimental College
and in terms of which he and his faculty made decisions in
the Operational domain. The Wisconsin eXperiment represented

.Meiklejohn's most intensive efforts to refine, sharpen, and

 

13Foerster, "Inaugural Address," Essays for College Men:
92.. Cit 0’ pp. 38-59.

5O

institutionalize that conception of education which consti-
tutes the education of the free man. In persistently
addressing this problem he continuously addressed the problem
Of the nature of the free man. As noted, the latter was of
necessity ever present with the former. It is in Chapter III,
however, that Meiklejohn's conception of the latter is

directly considered.

The Experimental College: The Community Idea
The controversy surrounding Meiklejohn's dismissal from
Amherst received tremendous public attention. The stance of
one editorial is clear and representative. In speaking of

the trustees of the college, The Nation said this:

 

To put the matter more accurately, they did not want a
liberal college enough to pay for it. They might have
been willing and able to raise the money, but they could
not raise the courage and intelligence necessary. To
make an Amherst such as they might have had, they found
they must shock that great mass of the alumni which, as
with all colleges, hangs like a sentimental millstone
around the neck of the institution. To make an Amherst
such as they might have had, they found they must shock
that considerable portion of the faculty which, as with
all faculties, sits tight in its safe chair.... The
trustees found they must pay for a liberal college by
choosing teachers who now and then might get themselves
talked about in the world as the holders of novel doc-
trine; they found they must pay for it by making it easy
for the students to become questioners of the established
order.... Had these men been anything but timid, short-
sighted trustees, they must have seen that no price is
too high to pay for what they had in 1925 gone a long way
toward deve10ping. You cannot pay too much for liberty,
for the free exercise of the intelligence, for the untram—
meled quest for truth and beauty.14

 

1‘"A Chapter Ends at Amherst," The Nation. cxvii. 3025
(July 4, 1923), p. 5.

51

John Merriman Gaus perhaps gave a more charitable and perhaps
a more reasonable assessment in his elucidation Of the con-
flict between the new "Meiklejohn men" and older members of
the faculty: in his consideration of the lack of fusion of
Older educational traditions with new approaches which Gaus,
at least, saw as potentially possible; in his discussion of
the criticisms of Amherst's relinquishment Of faculty responsi-
bility for student conduct to the students themselves. In
effect, Gaus reviewed those issues which resulted from the
overall necessity of integrating new courses, new men, and
new relationships with what was "best" in the Old.15

In any event, the issues raised from the heart of the
Amherst controversy became critical points of discussion in
the public domain and held consequences which struck beyond
this particular college into the broader field of education.
What i§_the liberal college? ‘What shall be its kind of
teaching? What shall be the nature of its curriculum? What
shall be its government? What shall be the Office of the
president? These kinds Of questions became publicly explicit
and, in so doing, yielded a dialogue in which Meiklejohn
played a critical role. As a matter of fact, Meiklejohn led
the discussion of the idea of the liberal college through

the 1920's and much of the 1950's.

 

15John Merriman Gaus, "The Issues at Amherst,"
The Nation, Vol. 117, 5026 (July 4, 1925), p. 12.

52

Meiklejohn's plans for a "new college'I originally were
based on the creation of a separate institution where the
primary conditions of freedom to teach and freedom to learn
were to be protected by a minimum of administrative machinery
and no trustee control. In January of 1925, Meiklejohn's
article, "A New College: Notes on a Next Step in Higher
Education," appeared in The Century Magazine.16 This article
was somewhat in the nature Of a report on what Meiklejohn and
some of his associates, in planning for a new college, felt
might be done. Meiklejohn argued for a small college, of a
two hundred fifty or three hundred student body membership,
in order that its faculty would be small in number.

The besetting difficulty of the colleges just now is

confusion. They are acquiring many millions of dollars

and are doing many hundreds of things. But in the midst
of it all there is a conviction of relative futility,

Of scattering of effort. From this futility only one

body can save us, and that is the faculty. It seems to

us the first essential, then, that the attempt be made

so to form and place a faculty that it will become a

coherent, self-determining body, definitely committed

to a well formulated purpose, and directing all its

efforts, individual and corporate, to the realization

Of that purpose. It is for the sake of this coherence,

this unity, that we chiefly need smallness.17
Meiklejohn pursued this argument within the context of consid-
ering the dual function of the teacher--that of scholarship,

the making Of abstract knowledge, and that of instruction.

The stress resultant from this dualism, the separation Of

 

16Meiklejohn, "A New College: Notes on a Next Step in
Higher Education," The Centureragazine, cix, 5 (January,
1925). pp. 512-520.

17Ibid., p. 312.

55

these roles or functions, was the reason, so ran the argu-
ment, for the loss of coherence and unity of purpose within

our colleges.18

The proliferation of knowledge, the sc0pe,
methods, and content Of research, had yielded separate
fields, each with its special presuppositions and techniques.
The increasing conglomeration Of knowledge had thrown the
aim Of instruction to the area of specialities.
We no longer have, if we ever had, instruction in
intelligence. We now have instruction in a number of
subjects.19
The problem of the dualism of functions and the problem
of instructional content was joined to a final argument,
the inevitable transformation in the modes Of living deter-
mined by knowledge and the uses of knowledge, substantiating
the need for a new educational institution. Meiklejohn was
a progenitor of those educators today who are arguing for a
more pertinent conception of education based on the recogni-
tion that what men will need to deal with in the future, due
to the rapid transformation of modes of living, will be very
different from the present. How are men to be educated in
order to COpe adequately with a changing future? For Meikle-

john the question was how are men to be educated for freedom

in order to COpe adequately with the changing future?

 

18Once more, we are faced with a familiar concern. But
historically Meiklejohn was one Of the first to articulate
it and, on the basis of the strain imposed on higher educa-
tion, prOposed the small college. Certainly roots of the
current residential-college movement are found here.

19Meiklejohn, "A New College: Notes on a Next Step in
Higher Education," 9p, cit., p. 515.

54

The above concerns formed the essential basis for sub-
stantiating the necessity for an experimental college. The
overall Objective Of the enterprise, as stated, was to
"start the student toward intelligence in his living...."20
The prudential conditions of the experiment, then, were to
attempt to correct the problems referred to by serving as
the means to this end.

The rationale having been established for the new college,
Meiklejohn then proposed a new starting point for instruction.
That point was conceived to be the study of two civilizations
rather than a collection of subjects. Freshmen were to
attempt to become acquainted with an ancient civilization as
a whole and sophomores with a modern one. In speaking of the
study of these two civilizations, Meiklejohn remarked that:

...Our principle is fairly clear. The college is trying

to get the student to make for himself an understanding

Of himself and of the society in which he is living.

We wish him to know this not simply in some of its

aspects, but as a total human undertaking. ...If we

could get him to engage in the attempt to know each Of
these in itself as a unity and also by similarity and
contrast with the other and with the present, we think
we should have him on the road to liberal education.21

The ancient civilization was to be Greek, especially
study of the fifth century Athenians, although the claim was
made that other civilizations could have been chosen to

achieve the same purpose. Study was to be "analytic" and

“appreciative." The philOSOphers were to be studied in order

 

2°Ibid., p. 314.

211bid.. pp. 515-516.

55

to share with them the problems Of philOSOphy; the orators
were to be studied in order to share with them the political,
economic, and social situations with which they dealt. In
effect, the student was not only to share, insofar as possible,
the choices for living that men made but to understand how
these men made one Of the great attempts to understand the
human situation. The modern civilization to be studied as yet
was undetermined, although Meiklejohn thought some episode of
the nineteenth century would be appropriate. As a matter of
fact, modern industrial America was subsequently chosen.
...We think that out Of these two views Of western
civilization, first at its beginnings and then at its
next to latest point, the student would get a sense of
the human process as a whole. He would see that life
had determining conditions and that their effects are
definite and continuous. And also he would get a notion
of what our future is likely to be and how it can be
shaped and molded by human folly and human wisdom.22
What then, of the actual experiment itself? The above
plan had been written when Glenn Frank was editor of
The Century Magazine. In 1926, Frank, as President of the
University of Wisconsin, provided the Opportunity to put the
plan into action. Although the "new college" originally was
discussed as a separate institution, it, obviously, was felt
that it could be incorporated into a university structure.
Indeed, conditions at Wisconsin were receptive. A university

committee-report, written in 1925, cited concern for the

quality of teaching and for the rapid growth of the university

q

221bid., p. 317.

56

which had resulted in disarticulations of purpose and func-
tion; it lodged Special criticisms against large classes;
it stressed the need for closer adviser-student relations;
and so on. The report, in essence, called for a reconsider—
ation Of teaching and Of social arrangements with particular

23 It apparently was

reference to SOphomores and freshmen.
Frank's conviction that the eXperimental situation proposed
by Meiklejohn set up within one of the great universities
would provide new effective leadership for higher education.

Meiklejohn became professor of philOSOphy and Chairman
Of the ExPerimental College in 1926. In 1927 the eXperiment
began. The discussion that follows singles out those
aspects Of educational practice which this writer judges
significant in terms of Meiklejohn's concern for the actuali-
zation Of ideas. In this instance, therefore, some of the
major conceptions about and means utilized to meet the
deve10ped concept of the liberally educated man will be dis-
cussed.

The unique Opportunity afforded to Meiklejohn was a more
exact interpretation of and establishment of the conditions
for the community idea that was referred to in the discussion

of the program at Amherst. The aim of the Experimental

College was to effect the conditions wherein its members

 

2alt should be noted that reference to the "Annual Report
of the University Of Wisconsin," University of Wisconsin,
1925, is based upon remarks made by Meiklejohn in his book
The Experimental College. This Report was not published.

57

could share intellectual experiences completely. The key
to achieving the principles of a liberal education was con-
ceived as being intellectual compactness; simply, a structure

that demanded the cross-fertilization of ideas. The problem

 

which the University of Wisconsin was trying to assess
through its EXperimental College was how young Americans
could be made more intelligent. The core of the eXperiment
was the supposition that a social unit defined along intel-
lectual lines was worth investigating as a potential answer
to the problem.

What were the means utilized to achieve the community
idea? Certainly residential isolation was considered neces-
sary as was voluntary membership in the experimental commun-
ity. The overall primary necessity was to focus the members
of the college on the unifying idea itself. The liberal
college idea, for Meiklejohn, contained two essential princi-
ples, the first being shared, in his conception, with
technical and professional teaching, the second being applied
to liberal education alone.

The principles are these: (1) that activity guided by

ideas is on the whole more successful than the same

activity without the control of ideas, and (2) that in
the activities common to all men the guidance by ideas
is quite as essential as in the case of those which

different groups Of men carry on in differentiation
from one another.24

 

24Meiklejohn, The Liberal College (Boston: Marshall
Jones Company, 1920), p. 25.

58
The actualization of these principles demanded freedom to
teach.

It must be understood, then, that the community idea
characterizing the EXperimental College cannot be understood
except as a conception Of freedom. Perhaps this can be
clarified best by referring to a discussion in Meiklejohn's

25 In a chapter entitled

book Freedom and the College.
"TO Whom Are We Responsible?“ Meiklejohn noted that the "we"
referred to those persons in charge of the college, meaning
the faculty and the president.26 He argued that the faculty
and the president were responsible neither to students nor
£g_parents nor tg_the public nor £9_financial benefactors
nor £2_the alumni nor 32 the trustees nor £g_the state. The
making and working out of teaching plans were held to be the
responsibility Of a particular side Of the process of edu—
cation, that Of the faculty and president. In this case
"we" were considered responsible "for" students, not "to"
them. In like manner, Meiklejohn argued against the idea of
education as being responsible to any specified group. For
instance, he maintained that "we" were responsible in the
interest of the public but not submissive to the public's
judgments concerning its own interests; donors, if they

would keep control of their gifts, would deny the competency

 

25Meiklejohn, Freedom and the College (New York and
London: The Century Co., 1925).

26Ibid., pp. 2-25. This discussion also appeared in

The Century Magazine, September, 1925.

59

to those to whom the gift was made by paying to have their
work done, not the work Of teachers; alumni were held
responsible to "us" since:

We have spent ourselves in trying to reveal to them

the way Of high-minded, intelligent living. Through us,

in some measure, they have had the best of life's Oppor-

tunities. We have a right to an accounting of what

they have done with it. 7

But what of the trustees and the state? Meiklejohn
acknowledged their legal relationship but argued that this
was an essentially superficial one since the rights and duties
of scholarship essentially were granted to those in actual
charge of scholarship.

There are, I think, two relationships in which the

scholar feels and acknowledges responsibility. The

first and lesser Of these is the relation to other

teachers and scholars, to other seekers after the truth.

The second and greater responsibility is that which we

feel and acknowledge toward the truth itself.28
In terms of the former relationship Meiklejohn talked about
the fellowship of learning and in terms of the latter the
Objective existence Of meaning in the world. These relation-
ships were what he conceived teachers, faculty and president,
were responsible "to."

The collegial relationship expressed in the fellowship
Of learning and seeking after truth was the heart of the

community's freedom. This small group of teachers and pupils

had the authority to exercise together complete freedom in

 

27Ibid., p. 13.

231bid., p. 19.

4O

judging methods, content, and conditions of study. In some
further sense, however, the collegial relationship was exer-
cised for the students by the teachers.
But the essential point is that the collective intel-
ligence of the faculty shall find eXpression in a con-
certed plan of action, which, in his own way, every
teacher shall accept and every student follow. In a
very real sense the course of study lays down the
conditions of membership in the college community.29
Surely the structure of the community itself was the condi-
tion for teaching; in fact, was "teaching." Specific responses
to the questions of how teaching ought to be done and what
constitutes apprOpriate teaching acts found their source in
the total conception Of the community as a "living for teach-
ing." Meiklejohn's plan of teaching was the fusion of content
and method as this inhered in the community structure.
A college...is a group of teachers and pupils, all of
whom are reading the same books, trying to solve the
same problems.30
But surely that definition cannot be comprehended adequately
without the view of the broad contextual situation.
It has been noted that the major question the University
Of Wisconsin was bent on assessing was how young Americans
could be made more intelligent. Certainly this question in-

volved the question of how they must be taught.

How can it be brought about that the teachers in our
colleges and universities shall see themselves, not

 

29Meiklejohn, Theygxperimental College (New York and
London: Harper & Brothers, 1952), p. 40.

3°Ibid., p. 119.

41

only as the servants Of scholarship, but also, in a
far deeper sense, as the creators Of the national
intelligence. If they lose courage in that endeavor,
in whom may we expect to find it? Intelligence,
wisdom, sensitiveness, generosity--these cannot be
set aside from our planning, to be, as it were, by-
products Of scholarly pursuits. They are the ends
which all our scholarship and our teaching serve.
If, then, one is set to inquire how American teaching
can be better done, the most fundamental phases Of
inquiry must concern themselves with the forces which
create and fashion the attitude, the life, Of the

1 American teacher. The primary question concerning our

' academic system is not, "What is its effect upon the
student?" but rather, "What is its effect upon our
teachers?" If we can get them rightly placed in rela-
tion to their work, nothing in the world can prevail
against them.31

This Was certainly one of the crucial questions upon which
the experiment was focused. How can teachers be "rightly
placed" in relation to their work? One of the major factors
it was hOped that the eXperiment would mitigate was that Of
teachers viewing academic activities as potentially possessed
of either equal value or exclusive value in terms of preferred
subject-matter areas. Paradoxically, the very forces which
had led to the expanded role of higher education, the growth
of knowledge and its eXpanded use in the world, had caused
confusion in terms Of the need for persistent consideration
of the role of knowledge in the life of a peOple. The growth
of knowledge had made it necessary to reshape the content

and method of instruction, but such growth itself had pre-
cluded the prOper reexamination necessary to a sound reshap-

ing. It became critical to eXperiment with teaching in

I

 

31;bid., p. 518.

42

order to discover the right relationship referred to.

The plan of teaching Meiklejohn held now was conceived
as having to do with the will and the mind. Teaching must
result in the deve10pment of the student's will to read and
his capacity to read well. Success or failure in teaching
could be determined, it was argued, by assessment of the
student's capacity for and interest in learning and his
active interest in using such capacity. Failure to achieve
one or the other or both of these teaching aims meant failure
in the plan of teaching itself. But the plan of teaching
must be predicated on a new relationship between teacher
and teaching. Without this, there would be no constructive
plan but, rather, Old plans.

What kinds Of teaching acts were considered apprOpriate
experimental material? The "personal conference," while not
the whole of the teaching scheme, was the basis of the scheme.
This method gave best expression, it was experimentally held,
to the purposes of the liberal college. The essential qual-
ity of the relationship between adviser (teacher) and student
was collegial and anti-dualistic both in the sense Of method
and content being inseparable as well as in the sense of
mind being joined to mind.

Young peOple must find themselves in the company of,

in close and personal association with, scholars who

are doing the thinking on which our life as a people

depends. It is by contact with such thinkers in their
work, that the art of right thinking is best acquired.32

 

32Meiklejohn, "A New College," The New Republic, xlvi,
593 (April 14, 1926), p. 216.

 

45

The personal conference represented a radical departure
from then current procedures. Lectures were largely elimi-
nated and teaching depended upon work done by the student
himself, within the community framework. The personal
conference was augmented by group discussions encompassing
both students and teachers.

Further, Meiklejohn stated:

Throughout the history of mankind the experience Of
every democratic enterprise reveals the fact that the
attempt to deal with men and women, not by compulsion,
but by regarding them as free and equal with their
fellows is an amazingly difficult and complicated under-
taking. Far from saying that during the two years of
the lower college the teacher has nothing to do for his
pupil, this suggestion implies that at no other point

in the educational scheme is the influence of the
teacher so vitally important, so tragically decisive of
the future character and destiny of the student.
Teachers in the lower college are commissioned by
society to convey a message to young men between the
ages of eighteen and twenty. They are not saying,

"DO as you please." Rather, they are saying, "The time
has come for your freedom; no one else can give it to
you: you must therefore, make it for yourself." And

the question Of teaching method is, How can that message
be delivered effectively?33

The Experimental College was an attempt to answer that ques-
tion. Insofar as the aim of acquiring intelligence was
subverted by secondary forces as pressures to learn, motives
Of self-seeking, the confusion Of scholarship with intelli-
gence, and so forth, then genuine education could not take
place nor concomitantly, in Meiklejohn's conception, could

the deve10pment Of the free man.

 

33Meiklejohn, The Experimental College, 92. cit., pp.
121-122.

 

44

The plan of teaching which formed the eXperimental basis
Of the new college was predicated, further, on the position
that the lower college was an episode in the educational
process, but a kind of culminating episode for its students.
That is, it was considered the highest institution of general
training, the formal intention of educating for intelligence.
In this sense it became essential to consider the process of
teaching as running from the primary school through the
college, and, hence, as something to be planned as a single
piece of work. It was one of the eXpectations of the experi-
mental college plan that this idea would diffuse into a
dialogue for evaluation, centered on the prOpOsition that
education must be COOperatively planned if the essential
purposes of schools in a free society were to be realized.

If the special contribution of the lower college was
that of general intelligence, what was its relation to the
aims Of the upper college? What was to follow in the educa-
tional scheme? Simply, that the culmination of liberal edu-
cation laid the foundation for the individual's special
activity; that it gave him better apprehension of the human
spirit as its prOper work in the creative modes of law, art,
medicine, and so on.

The focal point Of instruction of the new college was
as indicated in the discussion of the plans for the college.
Now, however, study was regarded as the study of a single

topic, the study of two episodes in human civilization.

45

TO understand a civilization is nothing else than to
face and to solve, so far as one can, the questions
with which its intelligence is dealing.34

Meiklejohn's concern for the unity of knowledge as well
as for the community idea was reflected here in his demand
that throughout the process of instruction there should run
a single dominating scheme of reference. All fields of study
were to be covered by this scheme of reference, wherein each
field could find its proper place. This conception Of an
integrated curriculum included the recognition that the qual—
ity Of intelligence depended upon its capability of being
applied in any field.

...What do you do in each field as you work within it,
what kind of mental operations do you and your students
carry on? And here the answer of the typical advocate

of integration involves him at once in difficulties

with his colleagues, if not also with his own principles.
He says, to put it very bluntly, that you will never
establish relations either within a field or between
fields so long as you are merely seeking specific infor—
mation. It is only in terms of general problems and
general ideas that different fields and different situ-
ations are to be understood. What then shall we do with
our students as we send them in search of intelligence?
By some means or other we must arouse in them an activity
in general ideas, must get them possessed of a store of
general questions, must teach them to universalize, to
infer, to deduce, to connect. In a word, they must think,
in each field, about things which are logically signifi-
cant in that field. They must attempt to understand it
as a whole and as in relation to a larger whole.35

We are returned again to considerations of the prOper forms
and uses of thought. The writer now turns to some illustra-

tions of how this principle of integration was pursued.

 

34Ibid.. p. 72.

35Ibid., pp. 49-49.

46

It is clear that the information that students were to
gather in relationship to any problem was secondary to the
prOper posing Of the problem or the prOper setting of ques-
tions relevant to the problem. The purpose Of study was met
as it contributed to the student's scheme of reference. For
example, it was held that any attempt at an organized under-
standing Of contemporary life must include a distinction
between poverty and riches. Understanding this cleavage with-
in human societies and, indeed, between them, was a vital
element in the scheme of reference of any intelligent man.
How could studies in Athenian civilization teach freshmen
about this distinction? The answer to that question, it was
maintained, depended upon the answer to a prior question:
What does the ordinary youth need done to his mind with re-
gard to the problem? The perspective embedded in the con-
ception of the "scheme of reference" held that what he needed
to begin with was not more information about the problem but
a more active response to the information he in fact already
had. The arousing Of response was based upon the immediate
eXperience of each student. It certainly was true, for
example, that within the college distinctions between pupils
concerning wealth, and consequences stemming from these
distinctions, could be Observed. The teaching question was,
Does each student in fact understand, in a comparative sense,
such distinctions? Are they regarded as something to under-

stand or are they simply accepted as a matter of fact?

47

If an affirmative response was given to the latter, students
were failing to achieve in liberal understanding, were fail-
ing to become educated. At this point the experience of
Athens was raised for teaching purposes. Students studied
the record of concern about the distinction between rich and
poor. They studied the serious social conditions that re-
sulted in the reforms of Solon. But, coming to know these
reforms was not the end of teaching itself.

In general, the whole process was conceived as a device
for stirring the student to "see" that with which he already
had some acquaintance, to think about what he already knew
in relation to the divisiveness within a society based upon
distinctions in wealth.

The chief task of the teacher as he deals with...stu-

dents is to get their minds active, to give them a sense

of the urgency of human need, to establish in them the
activity Of seeing and solving problems. It is true
that they are sadly in need Of information, but it is
far more true that they need the desire for information.

We must set them to work at a task in relation to which

information is the material to be used. If they will

attempt tO build up a "scheme of reference," then for

them every new fact will take on significance, every
new situation will become an Object of active inquiry.3

6
Similar to the arousing of interests previously referred to
is this notion Of the arousing of activity. The current
social values of American life, Meiklejohn maintained, were

not inclusive of the educational aim of understanding those

social forms which in fact were conducive to the society's

 

351bid., p. 57.

general welfare. Hence,

48

a primary task was the arousing of

activity about social conditions in order to become intel—

ligently grounded in a concern for the general welfare.

A further illustration of the principle of integration:

A special assignment for
episodes already studied.
of an American community
to the point of the last
study Of the attempts of
and conduct a successful
produce and share goods,

institutions, their arts

SOphomores was added to the two

This was a regional study, a study
of the student's choice. The effort
part of the SOphomore year had been
two widely differing groups to order
social life. Their endeavors to
their modes of government, their

and sciences; in total, their social

conditions and their efforts to create forms of human living

had been studied and compared. Adding a regional study, as

a third episode in human

civilization, held the qualities of

producing a liveliness of interest and of confronting imme-

diate and concrete experience in depth of today's society.

This teaching problem, it was held, would add significantly

in contributing to the making of the student's scheme of

reference for the interpretation of human living.

In addition to the above, a final paper was required of

all students. For several years this had dealt with

The Education of Henry Adams; one year it dealt with Dewey's

 

Human Nature and Conduct.

In introducing the paper to the

sophomores one of the college teachers, Carl M. BOghOlt,

wrote:

49

The study of fifth—century Athens...revealed the pres-
ence in the society of men who criticized existing
social arrangements and deplored their effects upon
the welfare of the group. The most important of these
critics of Greek society was, of course, Plato, whose
reflections upon man and society resulted in a view of
human nature and conduct which has influenced thought
about these matters ever since.

Likewise, as we have found, modern industrial America
has its critics, and the literature devoted to the
criticisms of existing institutions is increasing in
volume. Many of the views expressed, however, leave
unexamined the View of human nature, intelligence, its
nature and function, which serves as their basis. It
will be our purpose during the remaining weeks of the
year to make as careful and critical study as possible
of one View with respect to these matters that has had
wide acceptance. The book that will be used in this
study is John Dewey's Human Nature and Conduct.
...Additional books suggested for use in group discus-
sions: Lippman, Walter, Preface to Morals; Krutch,

J. W., The Modern Temper; Fite, Warner, Moral Philosophy;
Otto, M. C., Things and Ideas and Natural Laws and Human
Hopes; Plato, Gorgias, Republic; Tawney, The Acquisitive
Society; Zimmion, Alfred, Learning and Leadership.3T

These illustrations of the nature of the curriculum seem
to clearly support that the principle of integration was
dominant. Any study was evaluated for its proper quality on
the basis of the persistent development of the student's
scheme of reference. It, also, seems relevant here to revert
to a point previously made, that of the antidualistic nature
of the experiment. These identifying examples of the nature
Of the curriculum give specific illustration of the insepara-
bility of teaching method and study content.

Further, in previous discussion reference was made to

the roles of teachers and students in the educational

 

37Ibid., p. 421.

50

enterprise. The point that these roles cannot be understood
apart from the community idea has been supported. Involved
in the particular characteristics which identified the nature
Of the collegial relationship among members of the community
was Meiklejohn's theory of administration. He had long held
that through its corporate thinking, not its departmental
thinking, the faculty should decide what the college should
be and do. Control of the process of education must reside,
he argued, with the scholars who have become clear as to what
society needs to have taught. He further argued that the
officers of the college should be determined by the faculty.
Although the latter was not done, it is clear from both the
Amherst and Wisconsin experiments that Meiklejohn considered
the Office Of the president or the office of the chairman

as being a faculty Office. It may be worth noting here that
at the time Of the creation of the American Association of
University Professors his was one of the first voices raised
in protest regarding the exclusion of college presidents.

The only legitimate separation between functions, he argued,
was that between those legally responsible for administering
funds and those in actual charge of creating education. TO
deny that the president was an officer of the faculty was not
only tO essentially misrepresent his function but concomitant-
ly tended to throw his role in the direction of carrying out
the wishes of the trustees rather than the needs of education.

Certainly as Chairman of the Experimental College he conceived

51

his role as a participant in the corporate voice of the com-
munity.

In one sense the aim of the EXperimental College can be
stated as that of getting liberal thinking done, not excel-
lently, but at all. Meiklejohn and his associates based this
modest aim upon their assessment Of a society which did not
actively seek or value liberal understanding. It is clear
that the concept of experimentalism involved in the under-
taking rested upon the assumption that the foundations of
education were those means that aimed at the creation of
intelligence. The encompassing value of the community idea,
that which has been referred to as a "living teaching,"
was aimed at a conception of intelligence that, at large,
would serve to reduce the conflicts in society by actively
seeking for the institutionalization Of democratic forms.

It was evident that, for Meiklejohn, the free man was the
intelligent man and that the concept Of intelligence included
a notion of the individual's attainment of the power of self-
direction in the affairs Of life° At the center of this
proposition was the belief that that power could be judged
appropriate if the individual was able to see, in any given
set Of circumstances, the best response which a human being
could make to it. In a sense, Meiklejohn was urging some—
thing close to wisdom in characterizing intelligence as the
power to judge circumstances in terms of their possibility

for realizing human values. And he urged wisdom in terms of

52

the common man who was reSponsible for making decisions in

a democracy.

Meiklejohn was convinced that the most urgent educational
question in a democracy was recognizing that while men must
be masters of special fields (scholars), it also must be
asked whether they could be servants of the whole. This writer
believes it is worth renoting how this question permeated the
entire concept of the community idea.

In the contriving of...efficient devices for the destruc-
tion of human life the chemist uses all the refinements
of skill, of precision, of comprehensive information of
which his mind is capable. He does beautiful scholarly
work. If, however, we ask, "Should such devices be

used, should the nations engage in brutal, mutual self-
destruction?" the chemist, as such, replies, "My studies
give no answer to that question; it is not in my field."
In whose field, then, does the question lie; shall it

go by default? ...NO scholar, as such, not even the stu-
dent of politics or of ethics, will take the responsibil—
ity for that decision. In the last resort we are drawn
back to the makers and enforcers of laws-~in a democracy
to the legislators and citizens of a community. But in
that case we face exactly the dilemma we are trying to
illustrate. The mental processes of the ordinary voter,
even those of the comic-paper United States Senator, are
not highly approved by men of scholarly training. The
discussions of a legislature seem to them ill-informed,
inaccurate, superficial, unscientific. The decisions of
the "average voter" are intellectually quite disreput—
able. And so there arise the strain between the "expert"
and the "common man." The latter must, in the making of
practical decisions, have regard for all the results of
scholarship. But he cannot possibly know them. ...He
cannot be a master of law and politics and economics and
art and religion and all the rest. And especially he
must be very inept in the face of the task of bringing
together into some sort of intellectual order such frag-
ments of these as he is able to gather and interpret.
What a sorry mess his thinking is, when compared with
the investigations of the scholars! But why is it so
bad? Is it because the mind of the common man is inferior
in quality, his purpose less keen than that of the
scholar? The evidence available gives no support for

55

that Opinion. So far as one can see, the sufficient
explanation is that "practical" questions are much more
difficult than those of the scholars. The latter group
limits its field.... But in the world of human affairs
men cannot be so dainty in their choices; they must
meet urgent problems as they come; they deal with prob—
lems, not because they can, but because they must.

The lower college uses scholarship, its methods and re-
sults, for the developing of young Americans in intelli—
gence. But its primary task is not the education of
scholars; it is the education of common men. And if we
wish to estimate the results of college training, we
must, primarily, measure it, not in terms of the kind of
thinking scholars do, but in terms of that thinking
which all men are called upon to do in the ordinary rela-
tions of life.‘38
Once more, assuming one were asked to identify in a
single prOpOsition what the Wisconsin experiment was all
about, this writer would submit this: The EXperimental
College was concerned with a scheme of teaching whose dominant
aim was the deve10pment of that intelligence demanded of the
common man in a free society. Hopefully, elements of that
scheme of teaching touched on in the previous discussion
have indicated the radical nature of the community idea upon
which the EXperimental College was based° Certainly it is
important to note that the population of the college was not
"special" in any academic sense, but rather a "general" and
a volunteer one. It is worth noting that no grades were
given, except for the regional study, nor were any tests,

and that the movement of students into upper level work

primarily depended upon the recommendations of the faculty.

 

381bid., pp. 166-168.

54

These methods were considered necessary to do away with
those secondary forces for learning previously mentioned.
While these details are to be considered relative to their
importance as means for achieving the aims of the college,
it is clear that comprehending the radical nature of the
experiment depends upon understanding that the nature of the
corporate freedom characterizing the community was itself
considered of the primary signifcance in the education of
the free man.

It is hOped, also, that during the course of this dis-
cussion some sense Of what Meiklejohn conceived as the quali-
ties of intelligence apprOpriate for the free man has been
achieved, as well as some understanding of the prudential
means organized toward this end. Although Meiklejohn's
theory of intelligence is the tOpic of a later chapter of
this dissertation, it is hoped that the major point of this
entire discussion, Meiklejohn's concern for the relationship
between theory and practice, has been amply borne out.

No attempt has been made by this writer to evaluate the
success of the Wisconsin experiment since this goes beyond
the aim of this study. Certainly the fact that the univer-
sity failed to establish a permanent conference committee to
assess the experimental conditions that were being tested
seems relevant. Meiklejohn himself proposed in 1951 that no
new class he admitted in the fall until a committee had

assessed the experiment. NO such committee was appointed.

55

Criticisms about the college were wide-ranging and no adequate
method of assessing their validity was available. There were
certainly misunderstandings internal to the university and
external cries from the larger community. Most criticisms
bore a similarity to those encountered in the Amherst experi-
ment. There seems little doubt, however, that Meiklejohn's
attempt to structure a plan of teaching relevant to society's
needs and readily adaptable to the university situation in
general was an extremely important predecessor to the current
and increasing interest in residential colleges. Meiklejohn's
commitment to the proper uses and forms of thought would seem
to possess considerable comparative significance for those
premises about liberal understanding which are being institu-
tionalized in current experimental situations.

Meiklejohn continued to develOp his concept of intelli-
gence, already heavily involved in the problem of overcoming
our conflicts between democratic forms and our actual action
systems. Brief consideration, apprOpriate to the intent of
this chapter, will be given to this in relation to his fur-
ther activities as an educator. It is well to keep in mind,
during the ensuing comments, that what is exemplified here
is his concern for expanding (or diffusing) intelligence in
the wider population as a condition for securing and main—

taining a free society.

56

Exgandingplntelligence

Meiklejohn continued as a half-yearly professor of
PhilOSOphy and Education at the University of Wisconsin,
although he moved, in 1952, to Berkeley, California, with
the apparent intent of turning his full attention to writing.
He immediately became involved, however, in the planning of
a new adult center for learning in San Francisco. The School
of Social Studies, sometimes referred to as the Adult Insti-
tute of Social Studies, was the first center and, at that
time, the only center Of group study and discussion of sig-
nificant books under full-time academic leadership. Although
work on a fifty-year curriculum was in progress, the school
functioned only until 1958, melting away with World War II.

Broadly, Meiklejohn's effort was aimed at translating
his ideas about education to a wide segment of the pOpulation.
The rationale for adult public education was bound to Meikle-
john's conviction that the deepest question about American
life was not to be found in the political and economic do-
mains but was educational in essence. As we have seen, the
educational question had to do with the thinking power of a
free society. This experience also supplied support for
Meillejohn's premise that all education must be bound to-
gether by a dominating idea or purpose. Thus, his concept of
continuing education was basically tied to the judgment that
our efforts to sustain and revise democratic forms were
dependent upon the ability of each citizen to continually

and comprehensively study relevant facets of our common life.

57

The end to be served by this new teaching will not be
vocational. We Americans are already able to train our-
selves for jobs. There is no need for a fresh start
along that line. On the other hand, the purpose is very
badly described as that Of "fitting people for the new
leisure." That notion has in it too much of individual
irresponsibility, too much Of mere escape from obliga-
tions--from significant loyalties and endeavors--to serve
as a basis for a national movement in popular teaching.
The primary aim of adult education goes far deeper than
any Of these relatively superficial glimpses of its mean-
ing. That aim is the creation of an active and enlight-
ened public mind.39
The position expressed above obviously was not, for the
most part, different from the intent of the EXperimental
College. Education for "free inquiry" was now being sought,
however, in a new situation. In this situation Meiklejohn
was concerned to expose the question of how an entire peOple
not valuing study could best learn how to value that self—
critical study the maintenance Of a free society demands.
The teaching question, once more, was what methods could best
secure that creative intelligence upon which the entire scheme
of democratic living depended. Although Meiklejohn well
recognized other efforts at adult education, he, not surpris—
ingly, criticized them not because they served special needs
and interests, but because they did not serve an overarching
purpose in terms Of what we, the people, have in common to
think about.
The teaching method that was utilized in the School of

Social Studies was familiar to those who knew Of the Wisconsin

 

39Meiklejohn, "Adult Education: A Fresh Start," The New
Republic, lxxx, 1028 (August 15, 1954), p. 14.

58

experiment.

It seems to me to be the soundest idea that we can find
for use in the field of Adult Education in America, viz.,
that the best external help in learning to think about
problems is to get into living contact with the ablest
men who have thought about these problems. One learns
to play well by playing with the best players. Ameri-
cans would learn to study if they would read prOperly
the great books.40

The organizing principle for the selection of books was
familiar, also, to those who knew Meiklejohn's work. Those
books which represented, in the judgment of the teachers,
the eXpression of the best minds at work on the human problems
facing civilization and possessing particular significance
for American society were selected. There were no restric-
tions on the "field" of study. Neither poet nor philosopher
was excluded unless he did not meet the criterion indicated.
Plato, the Bible, Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Brandeis, Marx,
Dewey, Veblen, Dreiser, Jeffers, and Dos Passos were only a
few of those minds encountered in the school. To understand
American life, ran the principle, was to understand the prob-
lems with which its intelligence was dealing.

Equally important was the position, held as part of the
teaching plan, that nothing was studied in isolation. That
is, teachers did their work within the perspective that each
element Of endeavor was but a part of the broader aim of
understanding community life as a whole.

What we would like to develop in the city is the sense

that there are certain central problems with which every
mind should be dealing, certain leaders of intellectual

 

‘OIbid., p. 16.

59

activity with whom every intelligent American should
have acquaintance. We need, in our American cities,
what might be called a common culture of ideas, of
interests, of problems, Of values. We need to be
brought together into unity of interest and under-
standing so that we might have the materials, the
methods, the acquaintance with ideas that would make
possible for us the experience of genuine thinking to-
gether. We are at the present time a curiously multi-
farious, unrelated collection of individuals who do
not know each other. And we are rendered ineffectual
in our common living by the lack of any common think-
ing.41
Thus, in terms of its teaching plan some of what was
relevant to Wisconsin was similarly expressed in the San
Francisco School of Social Studies. There is little point,
therefore, in more than mentioning that active discussion
groups rather than lectures on "meaning“ were central, based
on the premise that the former kind of involvement would
develop the student's power of understanding and judgment
where the latter, because of its encouragement Of passivity,
would not. But, once more, thought was ill-served if the
discussion process merely led to the confirmation Of Opinions
already uncritically held or the deepening of prejudices or
the like. The proper uses Of thought demanded, initially,
that the student understand what in fact an idea meant to
the mind which had prOposed it.
It is worth noting that one of the ways discussion groups

were formed was merely to invite organizations, such as

Women's groups, labor unions, churches, and political groups,

 

‘1Ibid., p. 16.

60

within the city to do so from their own membership. Not only
did discussion groups, composed of approximately five to
sixteen members, vary in terms of homogeneity, but also varied
with respect to political and social attitudes as well as
occupationally. Further, no restriction was made in terms of
student educational background.

It was Meiklejohn's hOpe that such a teaching organiza—
tion might not only be extended to other cities but ulti-
mately result in central organizations on the state, and
finally, national levels. He hOped to stimulate the creation
of a national system of adult education. His concern not
only for the COOperative and continuous planning of education
but for the making of an American mind was illustrated in
this vision. His emphasis on adult education was surely an
emphasis on expanding intelligence.

In the above respect a growing concern for international
education, during and after World War II, likewise expressed
Meiklejohn's conviction that we must have a teaching plan
that would release intelligence ig_the world. Just as he
viewed the tremendous necessity of deve10ping a national move-
ment in pOpular teaching, so he extended his position to a
consideration of the overwhelming need for an international
movement in popular teaching. In both cases, "pOpular teach—
ing" bore reference to all_of the peOple.

Although the following statements may appear to be some-

what outside of the limits established for Chapter II, it

61

does seem worthwhile to comment briefly on his prOposals for
international education. It was clear that he viewed as the
ultimate goal that humanity should become an intellectually
self-governing community. He argued that while international
peace and justice rest upon the administration of a unified
political world-order, they also rest on a unified economic
world-order. Indeed, that without the former the latter
(particularly that the production and distribution of wealth
should be under public control) would not be possible. He
further argued that political institutions could only be sus—
tained and controlled on the basis of a prOper and pOpular
education.

Meiklejohn carried his position on the relation between
"eXpert" and citizen, the decision-maker, into his consider—
ations Of the nature of the international society. Inter-
national problems must be studied by experts, but as problems
they must be dealt with on the popular level. The people of
the world, therefore, must learn to think together.

Political and economic institutions can succeed only as

they grow out of and give eXpression to fundamental

agreements of purpose which, without such mutual ac-
quaintance and understanding, are impossible. And from
this it follows that the citizens of nations which are
trying to create and administer an international society
must engage in wideSpread, well—organized, and continued
study both of the end to be realized and of the condi-

tions which are favorable and unfavorable to its real-
ization.42

 

42Meiklejohn, "For International Citizenship," Adult
Education Journal, Vol. 2, 1 (January, 1945), pp. 44-45.

62

In the same article from which the above statement was
taken, Meiklejohn proposed that an Institute of Education
should be placed at the center of the international organi-
zation. The teaching which the world needs could be acted
upon by separate nations but must express what was essential
to the international community. In effect, Meiklejohn's
arguments about or for a national system of adult education
were extended into the international domain. It must be
noted that Meiklejohn sought for "free" education in the
democratic sense as much for this level as for the national
level. The Institute of Education must present problems to
be solved and common studies for inquiry.

Meiklejohn later saw in Unesco a legitimate source for
the cultivation of that intelligence he conceived that the
world needed. He noted that its, Unesco's, meaning could
only be found as it gave to the United Nations its intel-

3 Certainly, he maintained,

lectual and moral foundations.4
the purposes Of the United Nations required an education for
self-government as well as an education predicated on the
prOposition that no plan of world government can succeed
without the consent of the governed.

Meiklejohn's conviction that the possessiveness and

insulation Of the scholar and his work or the possessiveness

and insulation of a group of scholars about its work was

 

43Meiklejohn, "To Teach the World How to Be Free,"
The New York Times Magazine (August 11, 1946), pp. 5f.

65

destructive of pOpular intelligence was at least as well
expressed, and perhaps more crucially, in the context of
his proposals concerning international education as else-
where. The totally instrumental view he eXpressed in 1946
had to do with the practical responsibility of knowing, that
Of working for humanity. It was because the membership of
Unesco, so well-supplied with scholars, shared this convic-
tion that Meiklejohn expressed the View that a revolution,
in terms of the redefinition of the purpose of scholarship,
was underway.44

At this point, Meiklejohn prOposed an International
Institute of Study and Teaching. Such an institute would
define its task not only as an explicit obligation to con-
tribute to the success Of the United Nations, but its identi-
fying function would be to bring the force of relevant intel-
ligence to bear upon the transformation of the world into a
cooperative community. The faculty Of the institute were
to be both scholars and teachers. It would seek for both
accurate and relevant knowledge in all fields as well as
ways to communicate that knowledge to the peOple. It would
be both "theoretically'I and "practically" oriented, both
having an identity of purpose.

This identity of purpose between the man of action and

the man of theory is the basic postulate of all educa-

tion. As men seek to live intelligently, theory and
action are bound together in holy wedlock. If either

 

44Ibid., p. 48.

64

deserts the other, intelligence is destroyed. Theory
which does not guide action is idle and worthless.
Action which is not guided by theory is stupid and
self-defeating. Unesco's institute will, then, be
theoretically practical.45
One final word: Meiklejohn assumed that the faculty
Of the institute would function as a fellowship for the inter-
national community. He maintained, consistent with his prin-
ciples and with that perspective illustrated at Wisconsin,
that, Of course, the heart of this fellowship should be the
search for truth. But he also eXpressed the judgment that
the faculty itself must be a model community for the world by
expressing in action the fact that men of diverse cultures
could work together. The scholar—teachers of the world, it
seemed Obvious to Meiklejohn, must have effective intellectual
communication if we are to achieve the necessary effective
unity in human action the world demands. Varied and non-
related activities will not enlighten the world, but distract
its intelligence from the urgency of building a world commun-
ity. In this context Meiklejohn argued for the unqualified
freedom Of the faculty to do its work if it was to create
the necessary fusion of scholarship and morality inherent in
the Unesco plan and vital to the realization of a United
Nations.
The United Nations is an expression--an external,
political expression--of the human purpose that we shall
cease killing what we care for, cease from building up
what we abhor. That purpose requires of all men the

fullest possible cultivation and use of their intelli-
gence. To lead the way in that cultivation and that

451bid., p. 49.

65

use is the "specialized“ task of Unesco. To explore
and mark out that way is the task of Unesco's institute.46

The previous points do not exhaust the content of
Meiklejohn's proposal. As with previous educational enter-
prises he was concerned to point out those practical details
that give particular relevance to plans. Indeed, he expressed,
in the writer's judgment, that relationship between theory and
action for which he argued. His position on international
education appears, in the writer's View, to be a logical
extension of those principles and prudential Operations en-
countered at first most expressively in the Amherst eXperi-
ment and later more completely at Wisconsin's Experimental
College. It certainly was an extension consistent with what
was expressed in the adult center for learning in San Francisco
and in terms of his vision of a national scheme of pOpular

teaching.

Conclusion

 

What has comprised Chapter II does not exhaust the topic
of Meiklejohn's role as an educator. The aim of this chapter
will have been well-served if light has been thrown on the
nature Of his activities as a public servant, particularly
his approaches to the problems of education in relation to
relevant aspects Of his philOSOphical position.

It seems clear that Meiklejohn's concern for the appro-

priate forms and uses of thought was persistently translated

 

461bid., p. 50.

66

in relevant decisions about the nature of teaching methods,
including the apprOpriate selection of curricular materials
as teaching instruments. It, also, appears clear that in
his theory of intelligence, to be considered more thoroughly
elsewhere, one can discern the heart of his position on what
constituted the mark of the liberally educated man. In brief,
the deve10pment Of those educational enterprises considered
in this chapter illustrate the conclusion that Meiklejohn
considered the mark of the liberally educated man as one
whose intelligence was in touch with our common life, inclu-
sive of the common issues of the day. Further, it seems
apparent that the deve10pment of this sort Of intelligence,
because Of its use-value, designated the basis of the relation-
ship between man and society that Meiklejohn held as valid
and, indeed, moral. To be "in touch" meant, for Meiklejohn,
to express a creative will to overcome the divisiveness
inherent in our social system, not only between the dualism
Of democratic belief and action but between man and man.
Certainly the previous discussion has illustrated
Meiklejohn's commitment to the education of the free man and
his search to establish conditions which would actualize that
education. Meiklejohn's position on education and its insti-
tutional forms cannot be understood without recognizing that
it is a position on freedom. His quest for responses to the
question Of what constitutes the free man led him, from about

1955 to his death, to seek an understanding of freedom and

t.
.u

-v

’1

67

its relation to society and human obligation. This forms a
crucial aspect Of his theoretical position which is the
basis for the discussion of the remainder of this disserta-

tion.

CHAPTER III
MEIKLEJOHN'S SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL THEORY

Introduction

It is clear that Meiklejohn viewed conceptions of man,
education and the state as inseparable.l He shared not only
the Platonic conviction that the state is the great peda-
gogue, but the Aristotelian conception that our evaluation
of the state depends upon our understanding of its proper
form; what it ought to be. In essence Meiklejohn, too, main-
tained that the polis exists for the sake of life but grows
for the sake of the good life. In the Aristotelian manner
he considered that the form of the state could not be judged
as good, just, or wise until a prior question had been
formulated.

Has human living at large a dominant purpose which runs

through it from end to end, from limit to limit? Can

the life of man be known as having a dominant ideal?2

Thus, Meiklejohn maintained that the questions that Aristotle

asked continued to hold the same viability for us. What is

 

1See page 1_Of this study. The quotation employed there
is a typically strong example of Meiklejohn's view.

2Meiklejohn, What Does America Mean? (New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1955), p. 181.

68

69

the right human condition? What are the rightful or appro-
priate activities of the human being? He insisted that
responses must be deve10ped in human terms. That is, that
we must attempt to understand what it means to be human

a such.

 

Meiklejohn further maintained that if the answer to the
questions posed in the above quotation was "no," then our
study Of democracy and its intents was fruitless. If, how-
ever, "yes" could be answered, then, according to Meiklejohn,
we would be in possession of a human principle in terms of
which democracy could be defined and judged. And having
this meant for Meiklejohn that we were then in concbmitant
possession of both the broad and narrow meanings Of education.

.It has been maintained throughout this writing that
Meiklejohn held that a sound definition of education depended
upon a sound understanding of democracy, especially the
principle of freedom. What, then, was his answer to the
question which is prior to that of seeking the meaning of
democracy?

It is necessary to point out here, and for the sake of
subsequent clarity, that Meiklejohn conceived of human nature
in "inner" and "outer" terms. He claimed, although not per-
sistently clearly, that in establishing such designations
he was not adhering to a traditional dualism, mind and body
or spirit and matter, but merely employing these terms as

vehicles for certain arguments. It is clear, nonetheless,

70

that while he may not have been arguing for a dualistic
conception of the nature of man, he did maintain a dis—
tinction in terms Of man's "essence." That is, man's nature
is essentially Spiritual in character. Such spirituality is
made manifest in man's creation of his outer or Objective
condition. As man, according to Meiklejohn, is capable of
interpreting his inner self in various ways, as he does so

he establishes a transactive process whereby self and environ-
ment are made mutually healthy or mutally corrupt.

How did Meiklejohn endeavor to lead us to an understand-
ing of what man-as-spirit is if rightly understood? He sug-
gested that a historical comprehension of man would lead us
to a knowledge of what the minds and wills of men have been
driving at. It is quite clear that Meiklejohn was deeply
concerned to support the argument that man is a creator,
of self, Of culture, Of reason, and that human intent is
persistently toward bettering his creations. It, obviously,
may be maintained critically that man's creations are as
capable of being evil as they are of being good. It was in
View of this argument that Meiklejohn urged that men must
become capable of a continuing assessment of the question
as to whether man's created objective conditions indeed do
express man's intent.

Human life, as Meiklejohn viewed it, can be seen as a
record of men struggling toward something "better.'' Man has

invented agriculture, science, philOSOphy, education, law,

71

customs, the state, to this end. Man has created human
society and continues to create human society and, in so
doing, has interpreted and continues to interpret himself.
We have interpreted ourselves, have given expression in
various forms to meanings which we find within us. Man
has invented ways of saying to himself and to his
fellows what he has found his world, including himself,
to be.3
It would seem that Meiklejohn argued on two grounds for
a conception of human nature. He seemed to argue that the
"natural man," reminiscent of Rousseau, expresses the will
to create and that the intention of creation is toward the
good. On the other hand, there is no clear telos in the
human situation if, as Meiklejohn also argued, man not only
creates his own intentions but also, in a significant sense,
his own spirituality. In speaking of the invention of
language, for example, Meiklejohn stated that language
...is, in the truest sense, man's remaking of his own
nature. As words come into use, another self-created
creature comes into being. The human animal becomes a
mind,-a spirit, a will. Through words the human being
has invented his second self.4
Perhaps there is no more frustrating question for the
educator than the question of what it means to be human.
That dilemma we share with Meiklejohn. Although he did not

fully answer the question, Meiklejohn surely aided in formu-

lating the ramifications of the problem for us. With an

 

31bid., p. 183.

4Ibid., p. 184.

72

impetus similar to that given by Rousseau, Meiklejohn forced
us to the question of what is the nature of society, and
hence education, that fosters humanness? If the development
of some of Meiklejohn's arguments leaves the reader confused,
it was explicit in his position that the Spirit of man is
creativity and that man becomes not what he is, but what he
wants (interprets himself) to be. Man, if he would be man
at all, is not striving toward some ultimate and irrevocable
self-actualization, but he is striving to interpret his own
intentions as causes in the formation of his Objective con-
ditions. To understand Meiklejohn it is absolutely vital to
grasp this point.

In all fairness, it should be pointed out that the in—
tent of Meiklejohn's work was to result in our recognition
Of the human dilemma rather than to give a ready solution to
it. Although Meiklejohn concluded that man's striving does
have purpose or direction, he was sincere in leaving the
final nature of such striving an Open question. On his Own
grounds he could do no less. One of the basic illustrations
of this was Meiklejohn's conviction that man tends toward
"reasonableness," but, since man creates reason, there was,
for Meiklejohn, no ultimate teleological sense in which
"reasonableness" should be understood.

It was because of the dilemmas illustrated by the previ-
ous discussion that Meiklejohn insisted that we must look at

particular and current Situations in order to make questions

75

concerning the qualitative nature of society, man, and edu-
cation meaningful. That is, since we know that man intends
and interprets we must examine the immediate cultural context
in order to evaluate whether or not man's inner life is ade-
quately manifested in his outer condition. It was for this
reason (essentially, that men are known not only for what
they do but what they fail to do) that Meiklejohn directed
us to the study Of democracy.

The constant tragedy in human life is that we..., by

our actions, defeat ourselves. We block our own pur-
poses as well as further them.5

This principle, which I have applied to individuals,
holds also for nations. They, too, have plans. They,
too, defeat them. The two statements, "Americans love
liberty" and "Americans practice slavery," are not, in
fact, contradictory. Taken together they eXpress the
common human tragedy. The second statement does not
deny the first. It tells us only that our devotion to
freedom has been blind and inconstant. At some essen-
tial points our minds have Slipped. Error has crept
into our calculations. We have not known what we were
doing. The evil that we would not, that we have done.6

Although Meiklejohn's faith in terms of what men in this
society really intend may not be shared, he was surely correct
in insisting that democracy, if that is man's intent, expresses
purposes and, indeed, is a plan for the human condition, a plan
capable of being evaluated in terms of human actions. Meikle-
john held that democracy as plan and as action must be evalu-

ated in terms of two essential dimensions. Does it eXpress

 

51bid., p. 72.

”Ibid., p. 73.

74

and provide for human ideals? Is it rightly apprehended by
men in terms of the nature and meaning Of those principles
that identify it? These concerns were never separate in
Meiklejohn's thought, although he, as manifested in his con-
stant concern for the present develOpment of man and society,
investigated the former in terms of the latter. It does not
seem to be contradictory to consider what Meiklejohn held to
be the prior question, that Of human direction, within the
context Of the search for the meaning of democratic princi-
ples (purposes). Although it might be argued that a systema-
tic statement of one's philOSOphy ought to begin with what
is considered most basic, or prior, this would be to ignore,
in Meiklejohn's case, the direction inherent in his judgment
that the present state of the world does not allow us time
for beginning with what is logically prior nor is it neces—
ary. It is not reasonable, Meiklejohn argued, to step out
Of the world to "do" philOSOphy when the intent of philOSOphy
is to put us, or keep us, in touch with the world. With this
in mind and because it is reasonable that judgments about
lruman purpose can be considered concomitant with the search
fibr the meaning of present social principles or purposes, we
tIJrn to that principle Meiklejohn believed to be fundamental
t<3 understanding the intent or plan of democracy.

There is merit, at this point, in recalling in Meikle-
Iahn's words what he meant by man's double nature, the inner

and.the outer, as expressive of a Single human process, since

75

this is relevant to a discussion of freedom.

The men, who, through the ages, have been making the
modern social order have, in the same process, been
making themselves. They have been making modern man.
If the supply Of food is to be increased by a develop-
ing agriculture and commerce, men themselves must be
transformed. They must learn to keep for seed posses-
sions which they might have used at once for food.

They must learn to plow,..., to buy and sell, to make
and keep agreements. But this learning has inner mean-
ing as well as outer. It means that men themselves are
changing; they are becoming provident; they are getting
control over their immediate desires; they are studying
problems; they are becoming socially-minded; their in-
telligence is taking charge Of what they are and do.
...AS seen from the outside the growth of civilization
is Simply a series of external responses to external
situations. But, as seen from within, it is the story
Of the making of the human Spirit. ...Grappling with
problems, with perplexities far too great for him, he
has yet made of himself a person who grapples with
problems, who studies perplexities. And in the process
he has, in some measure, created intelligence, sensi-
tiveness, generosity, high-mindedness as the qualities
of his own being. He has made, and is still making,
himself. That is his spiritual enterprise. The making
of a man is the other Side of what, in outer terms, we
see as the making Of his world. These are two "sides"
of the same process.

The Concepts of Liberty8

 

Meiklejohn was convinced that liberty is at once both

our deepest commitment and that principle which men in our

7Ibid., pp. 60-61.

8Meiklejohn's concern for “freedom“ is basic, in the
Wliiter's View, to understanding all of his works. There are,
hcrwever, three primary sources to which the reader must be
rEiferred which rehearse similar arguments on this tOpic and
which, therefore, provide the bases for much of the following
discussion. See What Does America Mean? (New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1955), Education Between
SE19 Worlds (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers,
1942): and POlitical Freedom: The Constitutional Powers of
the PeOple (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).

76

society most widely misunderstand. Without justifiable
comprehension of this principle, he claimed, neither democracy
nor education can be understood. Without these understandings,
it is nonsensical to debate the problem Of that education
apprOpriate for the free man.

In a sense much, if not most, of Meiklejohn's work can
be viewed, not as an expression of novel ideas, but as an
attempt to get us to take our beliefs seriously. "Taking our
beliefs seriously" meant, for Meiklejohn, that what a belief
means abstractly and evaluative considerations of its forms
of action are a single process. To dissociate the process
into presumed elements of meaning and acting, to sever their
association, was to cut ourselves off from potentially the
deepest source of coming to terms with the meaning of democ-
racy as a plan of human association.

The insight that Meiklejohn continued to promote was
that resultant from his premise that man's interpretations
of his own intentions, in this case liberty, are causally
related to existent, and objective, conditions of culture.
What principles do we seek to enact, do we intend to make
manifest? What meanings do we intend to create ig_the
world? In the pursuit of such questions Meiklejohn sought
not only for ways in which to overcome the dualism between
belief and action, but to determine what it is we, as a

people, really intend to enact. It is about the latter area,

with its obvious implications for the former, that critical

77

questions can be raised, for it seems possible that for each
"intent" identified someone can argue its converse. Meikle-
john's endeavors, however, seem particularly significant,
Since he turned his analysis to that document which should
tell us most about the form of the state, the Constitution.
Where, indeed, is a more apprOpriate place to become knowl-
edgeable about the intents of this society? Where is there
a more apprOpriate basis for seeking for the proper interpre-
tation of the national plan of democracy? Meiklejohn
buttressed his discussion concerning the meaning of the
principle of liberty as revealed in the Constitution through
historical considerations of the manner in which we have
succeeded or failed in enacting democratic purposes.

It may not appear logical to this writing to insert here
that Meiklejohn has been criticized for failing in his in-
terpretation of democratic purposes and, in fact, of ulti-
mately adhering to their opposites, to totalitarian forms
of association.9 Sidney Hook objected to points of the
following kind:

Only a strong state can maintain freedom and equality

in any nation, or in the world as a whole. No colloca-

tion of individuals, in which each individual assumes
reSponsibility for the guarding of his own freedom and
equality, can succeed in the attempt at democracy. As

Rousseau tells us, the "whole common force" of our

human association must be brought to bear wherever the

issue of freedom arises. Whenever the general welfare
and some individual good are incompatible with each

 

9See Sidney Hook's Education for Modern Man (New York:
Alfred A. KnOpf, 1965), Chapter 4, ”Society and Education,"
pp. 80-98.

78

other, the former must prevail. So far as the ques-
tion of authority alone is concerned, a democracy must
be a totality in action. The state which is the guar-
dian of our liberties must be exalted.lo
Hook criticized MeiklejOhn for, among other things, failing
to conceive of liberty for the individual and for a dangerous
ambiguity in his interpretations or use Of such terms as
“the state," "society," and "the general welfare." We Shall
certainly return to Hook's criticisms, for these are obviously
serious charges. The point of emphasis here, and the reason
for raising the issue before the deve10pment of Meiklejohn's
arguments, is to suggest that while Meiklejohn left us with
unresolved problems, the validity of Hook's comments can be
judged more properly in view of a more thorough acquaintance
with Meiklejohn's works and position than that expressed in
Education Between Two Worlds, the source of Hook's judgments.
In light of the following discussion did Hook misinterpret
or did Meiklejohn's mind "slip" at that writing? Is Meikle-
john's position in Education Between Two Worlds 3 contradic—

tion of his thinking before and after the issuing of that

text?

The Bill of Rights
It was Meiklejohn's judgment that we are faced with two
problems concerning liberty: To find out what it is and to

see how, under actual and changing conditions, it may be

 

10Meiklejohn, Education Between Two Worlds, pp, cit.,
p. 266.

79

realized. To search for the former Meiklejohn turned his
attention to the Constitution. The Bill of Rights, he main—
tained, identifies two sets of "liberties" but deals with
them in Opposite ways.

This is, if I am not mistaken, the division of human
interests upon which a proper understanding of liberty
in America rests. In the field of Religion, Speech,
Press, Assemblage, Protest, a government finds itself
facing activities which are beyond, above, the level
of its authority. It is their servant. It owes them
allegiance. In relation to them its one legitimate
activity is to see that they are kept free from inter—
ference, that no agency, public or private, shall estab—
lish control over them. Here the law reads, "Congress
shall make no law, prohibiting...or abridging." ...

But in the other field, that of external possessions

and actions, a radically different dictum is enacted.
Here our government says, in effect, "Men desire life:
they crave liberty of action: they fight and strive for
prOperty. No state can allow them to pursue without
hindrance or controls these multifarious and conflicting
desires. It is, however, essential that any government'
which exercises such control shall do so with justice,
with due regard for all men, in ways which will deserve
the confidence and respect of all who are affected by ‘
the decisions made." Over against the "Congress shall
make no law" of the first field, stands the "not without
due process of law" of the second field. And these two
phrases mark Off for us, on the one hand, the field of
spiritual activities in which our institutions provide
that men shall be free and, on the other hand, the field
of external activities, in which men must be regulated
and restrained.ll

The significance of the First Amendment in relation to
the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment, then, lies
in the clearness of the difference they establish between two
kinds of human liberties. The public welfare, Meiklejohn

argued, depends not only upon our understanding of their

 

11Meiklejohn, What Does America Mean? pp, cit., pp.
106-107.

 

80

differences in principle but also in terms of the differences
in actions which they imply. It is clear, according to
Meiklejohn, that the public welfare is the enactment of the
purposes that the involved principles express, and that, in
both cases, these purposes §£g_public rather than private.

Meiklejohn wrote the above in the pre-McCarthy era. It
is hardly surprising that he persisted in his attempt to
understand the form of the state as affairs during and after
World War II increasingly convinced him that the United States
was in need of political and social renewal. We are familiar
with those agencies and activities which have been established
under the assumption that certain forms of political Opinion
and advocacy should be, and legitimately may be, suppressed.
Meiklejohn was surely correct in asking whether federal and
state legislative committees established to investigate
"uneAmerican activities" and engaged in distinguishing
"dangerous" expressions of belief were proper forms of consti-
tutional principles, proper enactments of our intent.
Meiklejohn argued, in this context, that we must make the
meaning of the First Amendment clear. What i§_the valid
meaning of freedom of speech?

Meiklejohn consistently noted that the meaning of the
First Amendment implied no private right to speak as one
pleases; that no such unalienable right, whether considered
given by God or nature Q£_reason, existed. To the contrary,

reasonableness, Meiklejohn contended, in a self-governed

81

society means that such a society must prohibit such speech
that is clearly self-seeking and corruptive of the general
human good. Slander, libel, incitement to murder and the

like come under the rubric of self—seeking advocacy.

"Clear and Present Danger"

If some forms of Speech are abridgeable while others are

non-abridgeable, then we are inescapably faced by the

task Of defining the difference between these two kinds

of utterance.12

In view of this it must be noted that a major source of
the concern that Meiklejohn eXpressed can be traced to the
Supreme Court of 1919 when Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
enunciated the position that some speech that is permissible
in times of peace cannot be allowed in war time and, hence,
may be constitutionally abridged by legislative action.
Meiklejohn has not been alone in his scrutiny of such a prem-
ise, particularly in view of a world at war for much of this
century. Meiklejohn argued that not only did the "clear and
present danger" formula deny the principle of freedom for
which we ought to seek, but exemplified, in view of our
present concern for freedom ip_the world, the depth of un-
reasonableness. We have, Meiklejohn stated, accused our

enemies, in hot and cold war, of suppressing the communication

of ideas and have indicated that:

 

laMeiklejohn, "Everything Worth Saying Must Be Said,"
The New York Times Magazine (July 18, 1948), p. 8.

82

We are determined that, with the respect to the freedom
of its communications, the human world shall be a single
community.13

Meiklejohn recognized that, although our intentions might
well be reinterpreted, the meaning we assigned to human free-
dom at-large and a£_present was denied by the "clear and
present danger" formula.
The Clear and Present Danger formula represents the
Constitution as saying to Congress, "When the public
safety for which you are responsible is clearly and im—
mediately threatened by the words of a speaker, you may
make laws to suppress such words and to punish such
speakers." But, as against this, I am sure that the
Constitution is saying to Congress, "When the public
safety for which you are responsible is clearly and
immediately threatened by words, you will be tempted to
suppress those words. But you are forbidden to do so.14
Not only did Meiklejohn express the judgment that the
Constitution, rightly interpreted, declares that some of the
acts we undertake to save us from evil are more evil than that
which they are intended to overcome, but, most Significantly,
that the "clear and present danger" proposition as enacted
denies that principle upon which the entire structure of
government rests. Meiklejohn did not argue merely that the
fear of any idea makes us unfit for self-government, but, in

fact, that the enacted proposition that legislative bodies

can destroy freedom when they find it "advisable" in turn

 

13Meiklejohn, Political Freedom, 99. cit., p. 6.

l4Meiklejohn, "Everything Worth Saying Must Be Said,"
9p, cit., p. 8.

85

destroys the intellectual basis of our national plan of self-

government, of human association.

It is of some Significance to point out that the criti-
cism which is our concern here was lodged, according to
Meiklejohn, from the perspective of a teacher. His position

is familiar: All social institutions teach; certainly the

Supreme Court teaches.

...TO us who labor at the task of educating Americans

it becomes, year by year, more evident that the Supreme
Court has a large part to play in our national teaching.
That court is commissioned to interpret to us our own
purposes, our own meanings. To a self-governing com-
munity it must make clear what, in actual practice,
self-governing is. And its teaching has peculiar im-
portance because it interprets principles of fact and
Of value, not merely in the abstract, but also in their
bearing upon the concrete, immediate problems which are,
at any given moment, puzzling and dividing us. But it
is just those problems with which any vital system of
education is concerned. And for this reason, the court
holds a unique place in the cultivating of our national
intelligence. Other institutions may be more direct in
their teaching influence. But no other institution is
more deeply decisive in its effect upon our understanding
of ourselves and our government.15

It must be pointed out, also, that Meiklejohn's conception
of the function of the Supreme Court rested on the premise
that "the law is what the court ought to say."16 This, perhaps,
yields some insight into the nature of Hook's criticism, if
one is tempted to read into that assertion that "£h§_law" is
something that stands "above" man. This does not seem to be
Meiklejohn's position. He is to be understood as acknowledg-

I

ing that in a current and temporary sense the Constitution is

 

15Meiklejohn, Political Freedom, 9p, cit., p. 52.

 

161bid., p. 33.

84

what the court says, but matters cannot be left at that.

The court is “after" the law, e.g., what we intend in fact
and in purpose. Further, no people can be considered self-
governing if, while they Obey the rulings of the court, they
do not reflect upon them. This does not seem to be a totali—
tarian position, since it is based upon evolutionary and
non-teleological premises. In case it has not been made clear
to this point, Meiklejohn certainly shared with Dewey an
evolutionary conception of society and, indeed, of mind and
intelligence, that was open-ended rather than closed in
nature.

Further question Of the "clear and present danger"
formula was raised as Meiklejohn reminded us that the Consti-
tution prohibits the abridgment of debate in Congress and
suggested that, in spite of the occasions when that body fails
to enact the common good, our system of representation would
break down if this were not the case. The Supreme Court it-
self contradicts the formula, since there is no question of
the place of dissent in that institution. In neither case
is abridgment legal. In the case of the former, Meiklejohn
pushed his argument a meaningful step further. Since members
of Congress are our agents (as representatives), it is manda-
tory that public discussions by citizens have the same
immunity.

...It is essential that when we speak in the Open forum,

we "shall not be questioned in any other place." It is

not enough for us, as self-governing men, that we be
governed wisely and justly, by someone else. We insist

85

on doing our own governing. The freedom which we grant

to our representatives is merely a derivative of the

prior freedom which belongs to us as voters. In spite

of all the dangers which it involves, Article I,

section 6, suggests that the First Amendment means what

it says: In the field of common action, of public

discussion, the freedom of speech shall not be abridged.l7
Freedom and Public Obligation

Meiklejohn maintained, as indicated, that the principle
of liberty involved prohibits us from viewing speech as a
private right. Meiklejohn's premise was that freedom of
speech is related to inquiry and that inquiry in a democracy
is public in nature. Further, while inquiry in democracy
must always be free, action must always be subject to restraint.
Such points were argued in terms of their relevance for the
common or general good and gave rise to the perplexing ques-
tion of the place, if any, of private rights in a free society.
Meiklejohn was convinced that the question of private rights
was bound to the "due process" intention Of the Constitution,

a subject to be taken up in another section of this chapter.

It is abundantly evident that in the conceptions involved
here Meiklejohn rejected both laissez—faire premises Of free-
dom as well as, ultimately, those conceived in the modern
liberal tradition. In the case of the former his arguments
to the effect that we have confused "liberty" by misinterpret-

ing it as "independence" are interesting and telling. He

reviewed, for example, certain historical circumstances which

 

1711618., p. 36.

86

have resulted in this confusion. Meiklejohn cited not only
the paradox, and tragedy, of our social and political
beginnings--that our people sought for certain "freedoms to"
(worship, secure property, rule, and the like) while denying
them to men outside the community-—but the bewilderment that
the external independence exemplified by the frontiersman
has engendered. In the making Of the minds and culture of
our people Meiklejohn urged, we have taken in the frontiers—
man an imprOper model. The frontiersman did not engage in
the attempt to form society, he withdrew from it.
In any organized society the issues of worship, of
wealth, of government—-of freedom in relation to all of
these-~are inescapable. The attempt of a society to
make and keep its people free goes on forever. The
pioneer, however, seeks refuge in his isolation. He
gives up trying to make his freedom and hOpes instead
to find it ready-made. ...In a word, external condi-
tions will provide what inner Spiritual struggle has
failed to give. Men put their trust in happy, favorable
circumstances rather than in long and arduous agony
through which the Spirit of Man has fashioned his insti—
tutions and himself. In this sense it must, I think,
be grankly acknowledged that we Americans, for three
long centuries, have been running away from human
responsibilities.18
Meiklejohn's serious argument against an "external"
conception Of freedom as being "independent from," was that
such a misunderstanding of liberty threatens to enslave men.
It appeared evident to him that to conceive Of liberty in

terms of fate, the "invisible hand," or favorable circumstance

meant that men have nothing to do for liberty and, in fact,

 

18Meiklejohn, What Does America Mean? gp, cit., pp. 144-

 

145.

87

cease even to be independent. The historical tragedy result-
ing from a confusion of independence and liberty as promoted
by the laissez-faire theory of human association, Meiklejohn
asserted, is that the ethical premise of free competition is
a deliberate denial of the principle of the general welfare.
The identification of the general welfare with self-interest,
albeit “enlightened," is a denial of the intentions of the
former, as a human purpose.

The writer agrees with Meiklejohn on this point:
Institutionalization Of "self-interest," whether in national
state, business corporation, or education, is a denial of
responsibility for a systematic concern for human welfare.
Indeed, what chance does the human cause Of peace have in a
world in which nation-states, having no conscience for human
beings as such, find their "human" motives in self-seeking,
whether that is overtly identified as national aggrandizement
or covertly identified as a matter of prudence or survival
Of "our way of life?“

It does not seem necessary to assert Meiklejohn's ob-
vious criticisms of the institution of education based upon
such an interpretation of human motives. Broadly or narrowly
conceived the institution of such intent is miseducative.

The method of self-interest, of free competition, calls for
a "state Of war" among men and surely is fatal to intelli-
gence. Meiklejohn rightly argued, in this writer's judgment,

that our interpretation of the inevitability of self—interest,

88

which ultimately yielded the ethical principle that free
competition is right, is a systematic denial of the role of
intelligence in the ordering Of human affairs. It was
Meiklejohn's contention, with regard to democratic political
responsibility, that what has been fatal to the realization
of the intelligence that political Obligation demands is our
translation of the external right Of free competition among
men to the "inner" assumption that, with regard to ideas,
they, too, Should meet the "test of the marketplace." Our
tendency to perceive truth as determined through the competi-
tion of ideas has resulted in the fact that men in this
society have absolved themselves Of adhering to that quality
Of deliberation essential to the form of democracy. It has
resulted in the fact that there are few men in society who
are capable Of that deliberative intelligence demanded by
democracy. If ideas are a matter of self-interest, then,

as Meiklejohn maintained, our concern for the quality of
life is merely private and ignores the quality of the general
welfare. In a sense, cunning is substituted for wisdom, if
one understands the latter as being concerned with the qual-
ity of human life as a whole.

Meiklejohn Obviously did not argue against the laissez-
faire position because it is not workable, but because it is.
That is, asserting that the modern business enterprise is
"frontier" in character because it views its goals in terms
of new worlds of wealth to conquer, Meiklejohn made the

following comment:

89

I am afraid that the scheme may work, that it may pro-

duce wealth so richly and distribute it so widely

that we shall be satisfied with it and keep it as our

mode of life. My terror is that laissez-faire may meet

the external test of happiness, of material success,

and may at the Same time lead us to such inner madness

that the excellence of the Spirit will be lost, that

men, as human beings will be destroyed. What does free

competition do to human beings? How does it form and

shape their characters? What sort of social relation-

ships does it set up among them?19
Meiklejohn contended that the laissez-faire view of human
nature severs the roots of morality, including that morality
expressed in democratic purposes rightly understood. In the
long run, to apprehend obligation in terms of self-interest
is destructive of human freedom. To interpret freedom in
terms of desire rather than in terms of commitment is ethical-
ly reprehensible. The former, because it is a self-centered
craving for uninhibited action, results, according to Meikle-
john, in a social condition whose primary quality is the moral
Opposite Of "caring." It is, in a word, a prizing on the part
Of one man for other men insofar as they are instruments for
his use. To consider, then, the laissez-faire view Of human
associations and the human condition as an appropriate eXpres-
sion of man's "dominant ideal" was madness to Meiklejohn,
since it is thoroughly evident that it is destructive, in its
ultimate indifference to man's fate, to the quality of human
life as such.

One of the basic issues inherent in the previous dis-

cussion is addressed to the problem of the nature of political

 

19:516., p. 154.

9O

authority in its relation to the individual. Meiklejohn,
in an argument similar to Erich Fromm's, maintained that
the result of our historical struggle to escape from the
power of external control was to "escape from freedom."
Fighting to escape from hated external controls, be they
religious, economic, or political, which was legitimate, we
reciprocally corrupted, by the nature of our flight, the
inner or spiritual nature of man as well as the nature of
culture. In our efforts to become free, Meiklejohn claimed,
we lost the inner Obligation of "taking thought." Or, rather,
we confused the principle that man—thinking must be free
from outside interference with "each man has a right to think
as he pleases." The outer manifestation of this interpre-
tation Of human intent resulted in the institutionalization
of the persuasion of power and, hence, the reinstituting Of
external forces of compulsion. This is, as Meiklejohn held,
the irony, the tragedy, of our human Situation.

To maintain that ''obligation" is to be free from compul-
sion was to miss, in Meiklejohn's conception, the moral

O The issue in part is that

point in the idea of democracy.2
of resolving the potential conflict between individual desires

and the public role of the individual in a free polity.

 

20See Joseph Tussman, Obligation and the Body_POlitig_
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1960). The writer
recommends Tussman, a student of Meiklejohn's and a contempor-
ary political theorist, as a worthwhile source Of understand-
ing of some of the relevant aSpects of Meiklejohn's political
thought.

91

Meiklejohn asserted that for the citizen, man in his public
role, to determine Obligation on the basis Of desire or self—
interest is destructive of culture and the spirit of man.
To be free is to have obligations; the highest of which is
tO labor for intelligence in the world.

In view Of the considerations advanced thus far it is
perhaps unnecessary to mark again Meiklejohn's conclusion
that the state conceived in laissez-faire terms Of human
association cannot teach or is totally miseducative. It seems
apparent that concern for the nature of democratic freedom,
and hence the question of how the state teaches, involves
coming to terms with several potentially explosive notions:
that between "public" and "private" rights, between "Obligation"
and "interest," between "authority" as the legitimate basis
for making public decisions and "power" as the capability of
enacting decisions without regard for moral questions.
Meiklejohn's concern to advance the deve10pment of a theory
of political Obligation, rather than a theory of political
behavior, as providing most relevant criteria for a theory of
teaching, resulted in his rejection Of the laissez-faire
position because of the latter's rejection of genuine demo-
cratic forms; because it exalts anarchy (independence, private
rights and the power of self-interest) and, thus, is destruc-
tive of democratic culture. Nor did he find in the modern

liberal theory Of the state and theory Of democracy, as

92

expressed by Dewey, a satisfactory response to the problems
posed.21

It seems evident that the mode of analysis prescribed
by Dewey did not offer, for Meiklejohn, adequate grounds for
interpreting the forms Of freedom and, therefore, for respond-
ing to the above problems or, essentially, for establishing
the apprOpriate relation of freedom and political Obligation.
Meiklejohn's contention that freedom implies political Obli-
gation does not find a ready parallel in kind in Dewey's posi-
tion. .Meiklejohn surely agreed with Dewey as to the identity
of freedom and intelligence. However, mutual acceptance of
the proposition that freedom is intelligence is an incomplete
consideration of their respective positions, since grounds
for such a conclusion were incompatible.

Meiklejohn basically argued that Dewey's theory of the
state and theory of democracy were developed in the "subjec-
tive mood," in spite of Dewey's claims of objective grounds
for establishing the value of democratic forms of human
association. Meiklejohn did not deny, to the contrary, that
the use or misuse Of intelligence makes a difference in the
objective features Of the world as well as in the meanings

we assign to those features. Nor did he deny that Dewey was

 

21See Meiklejohn, Education Between Two Worlds, gp, gg£,,
Book III, "The Pragmatic Episode--A Study Of John Dewey," pp.
125-195. Since it is beyond the scope of this study to criti-
que Meiklejohn's criticisms of Dewey's position, except where
specifically relevant, the writer is content to suggest that
a comprehensive study of their positions specifically compara-
tive in nature would be worthwhile.

 

95

a democrat. Nonetheless, Meiklejohn affirmed that Dewey's
concept of intelligence confirmed no sufficient grounds for
making judgments because it offered no rational way of judg-
ing the worth of the consequences of those judgments. Nor,
according to Meiklejohn, did Dewey offer any rational way
of choosing between democratic and totalitarian forms of
association. It is obvious that Meiklejohn had to conclude
that Dewey offered a theory of teaching that, since it arose
from subjective sources, could not be justified.

What, more directly, was the nature Of Meiklejohn's
criticism? It iS desirable, in responding to this question,
to make Specific note Of a theme which, up to this point, may
not have been established eXplicitly enough. It certainly
must be remarked that, while freedom might be our most mis-
understood democratic purpose, for Meiklejohn the "general
welfare" was one of our most ignored. Ignored because we
had assumed it to be the automatic outcome of pursuits made
in the name of subjective principles of freedom; ignored
because we historically had failed to learn that as a people
we have something actively to do jg; establishing the general
welfare as a cultural theme. The negative or protectionist
theories of state meant, Meiklejohn maintained, that we were
content to conceive of the common good as a resultant of
prior strivings rather than as a democratic form to be pur-
sued, tO be regarded as a cultural object in its own right.

To this writer, indeed, it appears that Meiklejohn's stress

94

on the interpretation of man's intention of the common good

or general welfare as a purpose in the making of the external
world, for the shaping of our institutions, is a source of

the accusation of totalitarianism leveled against him. It

is an accusation that conveniently seems to ignore Meiklejohn's
commitment to freedom as well as his attempts to make the
latter principle relevant to the purpose of the general wel-
fare.

It seemed clear to Meiklejohn that Dewey's conception of
the state was negative and protectionist in nature and that
it was bound to man-as-subjective. It does not seem necessary
to review Dewey's argument as to the origin of the state.

It is sufficient to say that the growth of "a public," an
interest group whose activities result in consequences which
must be systematically cared for, makes the state derivative
and secondary in nature. While no claim was made that

"a public," an interest group, represents "the public," it
must be acknowledged that for Dewey th§_public interest was
held as being somehow generated out of "publics." Meiklejohn,
correctly in the writer's judgment, saw little less subjec-
tivity, albeit quantified, in this position than that repre-
sented in the laissez-faire position, although the former
did Offer a recognition that "self-interests" had become
"corporate self-interests" in essence. The general welfare
here seemed to rest on some sort of quantification of

"publics." Was Meiklejohn correct in concluding that Dewey.

95

assessing the source and nature of the state as resulting
from pressure groups, gave us no grounds for appraising the
worth of "consequences“ as the product of intelligence?

This writer concludes that ig_this context he was and that
the conception of the general welfare as that which arises
out Of the self-interested pursuits of grOUpS leaves the
state, and its intelligence, as a mere arbiter of conflict.
And a poor one at that since no grounds are given for judg-
ing the worth Of interests (the fact that interests are held
is apparently justification enough) nor the direction in
which the state ought to proceed in the handling of conse-
quences in order that the "true public will" may be made
manifest. The state itself, in the long run, evolves into

a pressure group, having no guide but the temporary intelli-
gence of its temporary membership, and whatever is conceived
as intelligent arbitration is so. For Meiklejohn the logical
extension of Dewey's analysis of the origin and nature of the
state resulted in the exaltation of the private interests of
groups as the assumed principle of political obligation.

It is urged, countering Meiklejohn's arguments, that
there is no way to judge human welfare except in terms of the
peOple involved. That to judge otherwise means that a
"higher and external" authority has to be invoked, as Meikle-
john does with a doctrine of "the general will." Once more,
this charge has to be considered at a more relevant point in

this study. The questions Meiklejohn raised in terms of

96

Dewey's theory are at issue here. Included in these observ-
ations is a question that is implied from a consideration of
Meiklejohn's entire thought: Is it not tyrannical to predi—
cate freedom, and therefore political obligation, on the
transitory interests of publics? Further, does it not mean
that to proceed on such a basis democratic forms are gener-
ated "per accidens?" Meiklejohn was correct in his concern
for the theory of teaching that is implied in terms of that
particular aspect of Dewey's position that is now under re-
view and, also, in suggesting to us that the nature Of the
state is better sought in that document which presumes to
give it form than in Dewey's assessment of the nature of
"public will." Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that
while Meiklejohn discerned an essential problem in Dewey's
position if we are to look to the state as the source of
political Obligation, the latter's philOSOphic stance is,
overall, pervasively "Objective." There surely is no question
that Dewey's commitment to the value of the scientific method
is a commitment to both objective processes Of inquiry as
well as to Objective standards of what is constitutive
knowledge. Also, there surely is no question that the prag-
matic perspective on "consequences" refers to effects which
actions have ip_the world.

Further, it may be asked whether Meiklejohn has given
.Dewey his objective due in terms of the latter's theory of
democracy. It is clear that Dewey distinguished the state

from "the community" while Meiklejohn did not. It is in

97

terms of "community“ that Dewey's theory of democracy may

be considered. It is within this frame Of reference that
Dewey argued that intelligence (hence, freedom) is coming to
judgments based upon Observation of current cultural condi-
tions and in terms of intrinsically worthwhile purposes.

It is in these terms and in view of the "continuity of ex-
perience" that men, according to Dewey, are in charge of

the existential situation in which their choices are, or
ought to be, predictors of democratic consequences for the
community. In this sense Meiklejohn and Dewey were remark-
ably close in their conceptions of obligation arising from
the identification of freedom with intelligence. That is,
that intelligence is having an obligation for expanding and
deve10ping democratic forms of human association. In such

a view Meiklejohn shared with Dewey a conviction of the
humaneness Of democracy. There are, then, two points at
immediate issue here: First, was Meiklejohn correct in main-
taining that Dewey Offered no rational method of choosing
between democracy and aristocracy? This writer must conclude
that he was incorrect in his own terms since both men
"tested" the consequences of the patterns for living Of both
of these modes of organization in terms of their significance
for the quality of human living as such. Second, is such an
Objective test of consequences as they contribute to the
quality of life Of the community reconcilable with Dewey's

theory of state? It seems to the writer that Meiklejohn found

98

his most telling criticism here. That, in fact, there is
no reconciliation between Dewey in his "objective mood" and
Dewey in his "subjective mood."

There is an additional remark to be made that is perti-
nent to the last comment. There can be little doubt that
Dewey aimed at "freeing intelligence" from the limitations
of its eXperience. On the objective Side implications Of
this tenet of eXperimentalism for the development of the
individual,.and for a theory Of pedagogy, has been important.
As Meiklejohn pointed out, however, Dewey advocated a con-
ception of thinking that is subjective in nature; hence,
contradictory of the characteristics of "critical intelli-
gence" as Objective. The reference here is to Dewey's theory
of "homeostasis" or "adjustment." Learning begins, Dewey
held, with a state of disequilibrium, e.g., a problematic
situation which the individual seeks to overcome. The indi—
vidual does so in view of his own interests and needs and in
terms Of the results of examining alternative means for the
restoration of equilibrium. Education so conceived is the
seeking of homeostasis. But there is certainly no require—
ment in such a conception that homeostasis be sought with
regard for democratic values. It may well be that the
“reconstruction Of eXperience," to increase the democratic
quality Of human association, Of necessity might have to seek
to produce maladjusted persons. It is worth noting, as

Meiklejohn pointed out, that problems giving rise to the

99

necessity Of inquiry are not only within individuals but

"in the situation" for Dewey.22 That is, that they are
Objective and social. The point of difficulty here is that,
while individuals have no "reason" for solving problems
democratically, they also may solve problems to achieve inner
equilibrium while leaving the objective condition unchanged.

The issues raised in the previous discussion, it must be
understood, do not constitute an evaluation of the whole of
Dewey's thought, but the writer would agree that Meiklejohn
discerned an essential weakness in Dewey's position. That
weakness, for present purposes, has to do with the relation
-Of freedom and political obligation.

It might be argued that since Dewey conceived Of teach-
ing in terms of the community, then the principles of the
former are to be constituted on the basis of that community
democratically viewed. In this case Dewey's theory of state
would have to be considered irrelevant. This is, as Meikle-
john implied, absurd. In the realm Of political obligation
the state is the source Of the quality of that obligation.
.Dewey, therefore, in his subjective mood, gave no reliable
grounds for establishing the relationship between freedom and
political Obligation—-for reasons Similar to those Meiklejohn
advanced in this critique of laissez—faire premises. Grounds

are inadequate in that, once more, to represent obligation

 

221bid., pp. 128-129.

100

in terms Of self-interest is destructive of human freedom
and human intelligence.

Dewey, I am saying, chooses one of two alternative
eXplanations of the origin of the state, in terms of
its motivation. -Political action, as he sees it, is not
disinterested. It is selfish. The conscious political
institutions of men do not continue that drive toward
social integration which marks the unconscious life of
an instinctive fellowship. On the contrary, it arises
from the accidental coincidence of separate desires.
The members of any one of Dewey's "publics" have no
primary interest in each other. For the moment they
find their separate needs and desires running in the
same direction. SO long as this is true they plan and
work together. But they are equally ready to separate
into hostile factions whenever their interests divide
and clash. They have no identity of interest, no in-
terest in each other. Their marriage is one "of con-
venience." Each is looking out for himself. Each is
using the others to that end so long as he finds them
useful.23

Meiklejohn noted that Dewey's "attitude" was toward giving
us "an intellectual basis for such public action as that of
teaching,"24 but that his thinking about the state drove
Dewey in an Opposing direction.

He strongly demands public co-Operation for the common
good. But The Public and Its Problems is significant
because it shows that Dewey's thinking does not express
his own attitude. The pragmatic account Of intelligence,
as here given, robs it of all objectivity, all disin—
terestedness. What it offers us is not a state. It is
a shifting, whirling collocation of pressure groups, of
factions, of parties, in the baser sense of that term.
Government becomes not a unified attempt at freedom and
justice, but a miscellaneous collection of "interested"
activities, each of which is directed toward the welfare
of some individual or private group. In Spite of all
his brave attempts to establish and use an Objective

 

 

231bid., p. 176.

24Ibid., p. 178.

101

criterion, Dewey, when put to the test of a concrete
Situation, drifts back into his subjective mood. The
thinking which men do as they carry on the work of
governing may put on the "garb" of reason. But, at the
bottom, it is nothing else than rationalizing. The
motives of government are not such "disinterested" emo-
tions as the love Of justice, of equality, of freedom.
They are merely individual passions, each of which, as
it strives to prevail over others, "would exhibit it-
self as a reasonable persuasion."25
It would seem that Meiklejohn was correct in maintaining
that a state, finding its power in private rights, is cor-
ruptive of democracy. Social programs established in terms
of a morality of self—interest are, as Meiklejohn argued,
different in character from a social program which takes
seriously a commitment to the collective intentions Of "We,
the PeOple." In urging us to study the Constitution as our
basic source of coming to an understanding of the question
of what principles we intend and must enact, Meiklejohn con-
comitantly led us away from traditional interpretations of
freedom and obligation. His argument that the latter cut
us Off from and denied the moral purpose of democracy was
significant and pertinent. It cannot be denied that the form
Of the state, as constitutionally eXpressed, commits us to
the public obligation of morally caring for the general good.
We are not obliged, as Meiklejohn so strongly stressed, "in
Spite of ourselves," but because of our intentions of enact-

ing certain purposes in the world as Objects of culture.

Meiklejohn maintained that the form of the state meant that

 

251bid., pp. 178-179.

102

social good was not achieved by withdrawing from society,
withdrawing from a commitment to actively engage in creating
forms of human association on the assumption that good forms
would automatically develop, but by recognizing that we

indeed do intend the public good and, hence, must actively

seek it. In the resource of the Constitution Meiklejohn

found that we do have a fundamental community Of purpose, a
theory of COOperation, based upon, not a collocation Of
externally related human atoms, but upon a society Of internal-
ly related human beings.

It is evident that differing intentions about liberty,
about the meanings we intend to create 13 the world, shape our
institutions, the existent conditions Of culture. Finding
our source of authority in the Constitution does not seem
strange. What does seem strange to this writer is the reac-
tion of Meiklejohn's critics to those very terms which eXpress
the fact that as a peOple we do have corporate intentions.

TO maintain, as Meiklejohn did, that freedom is to act for
the public good and that our plan of human association there-
fore calls for a "national intelligence" is not to deny the
worth of individuals but to affirm that under our plan Of
government individuals have public Obligations. If this is
tyranny, then the Constitution is expressive of a form of
tyranny.

In brief summary we can conclude that in terms of the

question of the meaning of freedom in relation to public

105

obligation, Meiklejohn held that the Operative concerns are
bound to the notions of "disinterest," "obligation," and
the "general welfare." It seems analytic to state that to
understand Obligation, authority as Opposed to power, is to
understand the foundation of the political behavior that the
Constitution demands. That is, that as a people we do, as
Meiklejohn stressed, have a field Of common action, the
general welfare, which takes precedence over an individual
good. Further, "disinterest" is to be understood in this
context. Freedom is to have public, rather than self-
interested, Obligations. Recalling the discussion of the
First Amendment is relevant at this juncture. Was Meikle-
john not correct in asserting that for self-governing to be
reasonable the freedom of ideas (Speech) cannot be conceived
as the power of any self-seeking idea to get accepted in the
"marketplace," but must be conceived as a necessary requisite
for our democratic, e.g., public, commitment of advancing
the quality Of human life as such? It is thoroughly evident
that the plans of teaching, or the theories of education,
implied by these alternative interpretations of the First
Amendment are different in kind. The resultant nature of
morality, Of society, of individual deve10pment are different
in kind. The nature of intelligence sought is different in
kind.

It will be asked whether Meiklejohn, in his preoccupa-

tion with the individual as citizen, as man in his public

104

role, gave any legitimacy at all to private rights. He did
and he did so consistent with his concern for a theory of
political Obligation as revealed through a comprehension of
this area as constitutionally expressed. Meiklejohn's posi-
tion on private rights is found in his consideration of the

meaning of "due process."

"Due Process"

On November 14, 1955, Meiklejohn testified before the
Hennings Senate Sub-Committee on Constitutional Rights.
He Said, in part, the following of the principle of freedom
Of the First Amendment in relation to men's other civil
liberties.

The First Amendment seems to me to be a very uncompro-
mising statement. It admits of no exceptions. It tells
us that Congress and, by implication, all other agencies
of the government are denied any authority whatever to
limit the political freedom of the citizens of the
United States. It declares that with respect to politi-
cal belief, political discussion, political advocacy,
political planning, our citizens are sovereign, and the
Congress is their subordinate agent. That agent is
authorized, under strong safeguards against the abuse of
its power, to limit the freedom of men as they go about
the management of their private, their non-political
affairs. But the same men, as they endeavor to meet the
public responsibilities of citizens in a free society,
are in a vital sense, which is not easy to define, beyond
the reach of legislative control.26

Thus, Meiklejohn distinguished "public authority" and "private
liberty" or, in other contexts, the "freedom" of the First
Amendment as being distinct in kind from the "liberty" of the

Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The freedom of the former,

 

26Meiklejohn, Political Freedom, gp, cit., pp. 107—108.

 

105

Meiklejohn held, has to do with that authority by which we,
the people, govern; the latter with those non-political
liberties which citizens grant, by corporate action, to them—
selves and others.
Men speak of the freedom of belief and the freedom of
prOperty as if, in the Constitution, the word "freedom,"
as used in these two cases, had the same meaning. Be-
cause of that confusion we are in constant danger of
giving to a man's possession the same dignity, the same
status, as we give to the man himself. From that
confusion our national life has suffered disasterous
effects in all its phases.27
In effect, Meiklejohn argued that, as we easily confuse
our two, but radically different, kinds of civil liberties,
we perpetuate a disasterous misunderstanding of the relations
between an individual and the state. Freedom, as formerly
expressed, gives an unlimited right to the individual as a
citizen. Liberty, as in the holding of prOperty, has no such
guarantee, Meiklejohn contended, but must be limited under
the "due process" clauses of the Constitution. Such limi—
tations are justified by public need or in consideration of
the general welfare. The latter point obviously is under-
standable in terms of, and must be comprehended as being
consistent with, the nature of political Obligation previously
considered. Uninhibited liberty of "free enterprise" is
destructive of the freedom, hence the intelligence and obli-
gation, of the members of a self-governing society.

The Fifth Amendment, and subsequently the Fourteenth,

does express, constitutionally, our intent to accommodate

 

2711616., p. 9.

106

private rights under our plan of government. But within that
plan, as Meiklejohn maintained, man pursuing such rights is
one Of the governed and, as such, there is every reason why,
in terms of our corporate intention of the general good, his
activity Should be regulated. It is clear, therefore, that
while life, liberty, and prOperty may be regulated, restrained,
or taken away under the "due process" directives Of these
two amendments as the public welfare may require, such re-
straint, regulation, or denial must be done justly. Those
activities which may be prOperly hindered, Meiklejohn argued,
are accommodated under the principle of justice which is
concerned with particular external activities as these sus-
tain or deny our inner, or Spiritual, intentions.
In an effort to substantiate the above point it is well
to return to Meiklejohn's position on man's double nature
as expressive of a single human process. In the text of
What Does America Mean? the following statement is found.
...When external interests interfere with inner activi—
ties it is reasonable that the latter should have the
right of way. However we phrase it, there is essential
truth in the Old, traditional statement that the body
of a man must be made to serve rather than to block the
purposes Of his spirit. Every one of us knows how his
own plans are hindered by laziness, by desire for im-
mediate enjoyment, by dullness and distraction of mind.
And in the same way the community at large suffers from
its own vagaries of impulse, of prejudice, of passion.
Throughout our social structure human beings are need-
lessly held back by external circumstances from being
what men and women and children should be. In our
American civilization, children, on the city streets, are
in daily process of being destroyed as human beings.
.Men and women, harassed by poverty and dread of greater

poverty, are being robbed Of sanity and spontaneity Of
living. Owners and managers, who must use other human

107

beings as if they were not human, are not thereby be-
coming fine and intelligent persons. ...The sober
judgment of our civilization is that, if a man or woman
becomes a person of taste, of eager, powerful intelli-
gence, his life is, on the whole, a good one. ...On the
other hand, to make a fortune, to acquire power, to get
comfort and convenience--all these are...compatible with
wretched and despicable failure in the business of living.
One may be very rich, very powerful, very comfortable,
.and yet be "a poor thing." The making of men has wholly
different standards from those of the making of fortunes.
And, this being true, it is reasonable that we demand
that fortunes shall serve man rather than vice versa.

We cannot allow whims and caprices and ambitions to run
riot. These have no right to freedom. And we, who care
for Spiritual values, must bring them under control. We
must take the social order into our hands and set it
right. ...And it is for the doing Of this task that we
demand, and must have, spiritual freedom. Liberty with-
out limit belongs to, and only to, those of our activi-
ties which are enlisted in the cause of sensitiveness
and intelligence. Desires have a right to justice.

But they have no reasonable claim to freedom. That
claim belongs to us only as we are striving to measure
up to our obligations.2

Meiklejohn maintained that not only is the principle of
justice partially eXpressed by the "due process" requirements
of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, not only is the
corporate aim of "due process" expressive of our Spiritual
intentions that justice under law shall be universally acces-
sible as well as compensatory where the state of the human
condition demands, but that, at large, the principle of
justice is a human one. Therefore the quality of human
association, now marred by the divisiveness of institutional
processes which have, in creating wealth, created poverty

and which sanction our praising of one group while reviling

 

 

28Meiklejohn, What Does America Mean? 9p, cit., pp.
221-225.

108

another, can be advanced only by enacting justice based upon
our recognition of the qualitative dimensions such a princi-
ple embodies.

Justice is reason in the affairs of men. Justice is

friendship of man for man, of group for group. NO man

can treat another man with justice, unless he knows

him as a human like himself....29
Meiklejohn was convinced, like Plato, that to do injustice
is worse than to suffer it, to put a man to death unjustly
worse than to die. Meiklejohn advocated the institutional—
ization of justice conceived as moral regard for one's
fellow man and, consequently, as the basis upon which the
community of men can render impartial judgments concerning
the acts of the community. Justice as human regard, Meikle-
john held, is reasonable since it is consistent in yielding
impartial judgments and, hence, in strengthening the human
community.30

It seems apparent that "due process," concerned with

the non-political and private affairs of men, is only

 

29Meiklejohn, "In Memoriam," The New Republic, lvi,
718 (September 5, 1928), pp. 70-71.

 

30Meiklejohn pointed out that Plato, in the "Apology,"
sought to understand the ways in which the mind of the com-
munity had made itself unfit to do justice; e.g., to render
impartial judgments. Certainly Meiklejohn shared this con-
cern and persistently concluded that the only reasonable
meaning Of impartiality was, in essence, fraternal regard.
In Meiklejohn's thought the term "impartial" is equated with
"disinterested." In neither case did Meiklejohn mean that
men, to be disinterested, have no interest in human values,
to the contrary. Men's judgments are unreasonable, unfit,
and unjust when based Upon self-interested valuations.

109

partially expressive of the human motive of justice, although
assuredly, in Meiklejohn's View, a significant and necessary
aspect. The constitutional provisions of "due process"
acknowledge both our concern for private rights in our
national plan of government as well as, most importantly, the
recognition that the realms Of freedom and justice must not
be confused. Although Meiklejohn claimed that there is a
necessary relationship between the two, he also claimed that
they are not identical. Surely he was correct in believing
that in order for men to be politically free, methods for
the just adjudication of men's desires and ambitions must be
present in the social structure.
...There can be no doubt that desires do Oppose, do
interfere with, one another. If, for example, two men
want the same piece of land, it is clear that both can-
not have it. ...In this realm, interests are constantly
and inevitably at war. ...If one man gains, another
man is deprived. And this means that control does not
create interferences. Rather it finds and adjusts and
lessens them. The laws which we impose upon property
and possessions and enjoyments codify, and so regulate,
conflicts of interest which already existed before the
laws were made. ...Single desires, it is true, cry out
against control as arbitrary and unreasonable. But.that
is because no single desire as such knows what "reason-
able" means.31
In the realm of the external affairs of men, therefore,
reason or justice is "due process." For instance, while men's
unqualified freedom to speak on public matters is not sub-

ject to "due process," their liberty to speak on private

matters is subject to due process of law. As Meiklejohn

 

31Meiklejohn, What Does America Mean? gp. cit., pp.
211-212.

110

pointed out, in concern for a currently vexing problem, the
private policies of communications media (e.g., to ggll_
newspapers) raises the question of their constitutional
validity and suggests, for the general welfare, the neces-
sity of just control.

It is equally apparent, nonetheless, that to state the
principle of justice in external terms only, in terms of
giving men justice, was not, according to Meiklejohn, to be
in possession of a sufficient understanding of the principle.
The actualization of justice must be found not only within
cultural conditions but within the characters of men.
Meiklejohn expressed himself as strongly as Aristotle on
this point. Justice cannot be simply given to men, but men
must love it and live it. They must be just. Without
fraternal regard, the essence Of the just character, outer
arrangements for justice ("due process") prove futile.
Meiklejohn was correct in asserting the significance of this
point in regard to the teaching requirements such character
development imposes upon us. Although justice is a human
motive, and so reasonable, it is not a "given" in the struc-
ture Of the human personality and, therefore, must be an
acquired diSposition.

At this point it is apprOpriate for the writer to turn
to a consideration of fraternity, as well as of equality,

and their relation to freedom in Meiklejohn's view.

111

Fraternity and Equality

Meiklejohn affirmed that democratic principles are not
cxnly mutually supportive but in a relationship of mutual
rmecessity if the intent of a democratic social order is to
Ime realized. It is now redundant to assert that Meiklejohn
Imeld that the form of freedom demanded by the First Amendment
naust be the center of American political thought and of the
Emmerican social structure. It furthermore is evident that
Ire confirmed that freedom is not the total meaning of
democracy.

It was the liberty of equals and brothers which we es-

tablished as the guiding formula of our society.

...I would protest that except as men are regarded as

"equals," except as they are treated as "brothers," the

attempt to make them free, even to think of them as

free, is a hOpeless and futile one.32

It was, of course, at the foot of the unprincipled con-
cxeption of liberty as espoused in atomistic views of human
ruature and human association that Meiklejohn placed our con-
filsion about the values of fraternity and equality. A society
curdered on the basis of self-seeking individuals surely
ruegates the moral values eXpressed in a fraternity concept
and nullifies the meaning of equality.

If in an Open market men are free to compete with one

another, each being free to get and keep what he can,

and if these competitors are different in the capacity

for getting and keeping, it follows, by a logic which

one cannot deny, that liberty will and must destroy

equality. If unequals strive in conflict, the stronger

must win, the weaker must lose. And so-—ngd erat
demonstrandum--if men are free they are not equal.

 

32Ibid., p. 117.

112

A social order must choose between the two. And we

Americans, the argument says, have chosen liberty.

Therefore we have abandoned equality.33
haeiklejohn, as is evident by now, was convinced that the
Ciemocratic form of human association which men in this society
iJntend allows for no such interpretation of liberty; that the
nmeanings we intend to create in the world do not allow us to
eurgue for the institutionalization of liberty at the expense
c>f both political freedom and equality.

It is clear that for Meiklejohn, taking his cue from
tflne doctrine of the general welfare, the equality demanded
lqy’the form of the state is the equality of brothers. It is
Stimilarly apparent that in relation to political freedom, in
rwelation to man's obligation in a self-governing society to
deliberate about public affairs, Meiklejohn sustained the
Aaristotelian prOposition that genuine conversation (e.g.,
deliberation) can occur only among equals.

Meiklejohn pointed out that, although we have argued
éxzuality "away" by misconstruing liberty, the concept of
ififaternity has yielded to no such argumentation but has merely
tirifted out of our comprehension. That is, Meiklejohn main-
'tained that we have ceased to take fraternity as a spiritual
'value seriously and, in fact, that our adherence to atomistic

views of liberty have tended to make fraternity meaningless.

It was, however, through the concept of fraternity, the idea

 

331bid., pp. 119—120.

115

cyf human fellowship, that Meiklejohn derived what he con-
sidered to be the reasonable form Of the state."34
At this juncture it is critical to state that in

ZEhflucation Between Two Worlds Meiklejohn rehearsed the trans-

 

fer of the institution of education from church to state and
addressed himself to the crucial question of whether the
srtate in fact can teach. He noted that the processes of the
secularization of our civilization meant that we have given
13;; those theological premises and principles upon which the
‘vnorks of man, including his education, can be judged.

In law, in medicine, in art, in literature, in politics,
in science, in morals, in social theory, in education,
men have assumed the existence and validity Of cosmic
principles on the basis of which their work could be,
and would be, judged. Though men have striven for
human ends, they have done so as servants of God. And
now that presupposition is being abandoned. We know of
no "divine" standards or ends. And that fundamental
change in belief confronts us with the desperate issue
which, at every significant point in our experience,
staggers the modern mind. If we can no longer believe
in God can we maintain, can we carry on, the civiliza—
tion which was founded on that belief? Is not civili-
zation itself a veneer, a pretense? The despair which
underlies that query has been cutting deep into the
foundations of all our institutions. And it still remains
to be seen whether that deSpair can be dispelled,...,
whether, within its own eXperience, mankind can find a
solid basis on which to continue, to enlarge, to enrich
its culture. --It is that question which we must answer
if we are to have a theory of modern education.35

 

34See Chapter 15, "The Doctrine of Human Brotherhood," in
ggducation Between Two Worlds (New York and London: Harper and
IBrothers Publishers, 1942), pp. 199-209. Note that the doc-
trine of human fellowship is a basic tenet of Book IV, "The
Social Contract as Basis Of Education," of the text and of
xvhich Chapter 15 is the introductory statement. Meiklejohn's
conception Of the social contract will be considered at a
later point in this study.

351518.. pp. 200-201.

114

It is significant to notice that Meiklejohn Spoke of brother-
hood as a human fellowship. He was convinced that the
abandonment of our theology was to abandon only one kind of
man-created sanction for human values and human actions.
While for some peOple religious belief continues to form the
basis from which democratic institutions may be derived, for
others no extra-human support is found tO exist. Surely it
is historically evident that institutions, including public
education, do not now in the main derive their sanctions from
religious beliefs.

AS Meiklejohn suggested the relevant issue at this stage
is whether there is any evidence that warrants believing that
there is a dominant ideal for the life of man which is basic
to the structuring of his institutions. If so, the questions
with which this chapter began, and concomitant problems
regarding a theory of education in a democratic society, are
satisfactorily answered. The specific question of whether
there is evidence that warrants our believing in fraternity
was primary for Meiklejohn. Since he saw in the idea of
human fellowship not only the basis for adducing the quality
of human life as such but the root for ordering political
and social behavior, warrantability was assured for Meiklejohn.

It is well to reiterate the point that Meiklejohn,

‘while denying theological sanctions for fraternity and other
values, did not assign any cause to them other than human

intentions. He held that values and the principles they

115

embody are man-created rather than man-discovered. Values
are neither pre-existent in the structure of the universe nor
in the structure of human nature qua human nature. It is,
as has been argued, within the nature of man to possess in-
tentions which can be and, according to Meiklejohn, must be
assessed as being or not being value-worthy. The validity of
a concept like fraternity ought to be held only hypothetic-
ally. We choose to express the value of the human association
demanded by such a concept, the principles of behavior which
the idea of brotherhood involves and beliefs about the good-
ness Of such behavior--or we choose not to. By what test can
we be assured that such choosing is valid or invalid, worthy
of approval or disapproval? What kind of evidence warrants
our institutionalizing the human intent of the morality of
brotherhood rather than the human intent of moral anarchy?
It is one thing to agree with Meiklejohn as he says this:
When we say that men are brothers we are saying that,
both morally and intellectually, they are engaged in a
common enterprise. That enterprise determines what are,
and what Should be, their relations to one another.
It prescribes both their modes Of conduct and their
modes of thought.36
It also is one thing to agree with him that such a perspec-
tive yields prescriptions for structuring institutions,
including the conduct of education. The perplexing problem

with which to deal is that Of the warrantability of saying

men are brothers or that men ought to be brothers. In both

 

361bid., p. 204.

116

cases the problem is an epistemological one. In the latter
case it is also axiological in nature.

It is impossible for the reader's imagination not to be
captured by Meiklejohn's rhetoric or not to respond to the
mood invoked by his argumentation. In Speaking of the idea
Of human fellowship, for salient illustrations in this
writer's judgment, the core of Meiklejohn's concern is ex-
pressed in these passages.

IS the brotherhood of man a fact? Can we justify its
assertion by Objective, impartial, secular evidence?
The answer to that question is decisive to all educa-
tional theory. What we shall teach depends upon our
view of the relations of men to one another. And
especially are the relations between intelligence and
brotherhood significant for any study of education.
What kind of intelligence do we wish to inclucate?

Is it the friendly wisdom of persons who are cooperating
in a common cause? Or is it the cleverness and calcu-
lating selfeinterest of individuals, each of whom is,
in the last resort, seeking his own advantage?37

...The idea of human fellowship, as it passes over from
divine to human status, is, of necessity, changed in
meaning. At one essential point, this change is very
important for education. The religious belief which
thought of the human community as established by God,
regarded it as already existing, as having existed from
the foundation of the world. It was, of course, recog-
nized that men had, in many respects, failed in their
responsibility for the fulfilling Of Divine purpose.

As in Locke's State of Nature, though men had "rights,"
they did not always get them. And yet the cosmic fact
could still be asserted. God had made men brothers.

He had created the human community. Men might ignore
the fact, but they could not deny it. It was there,

in the nature of things, setting up eternal standards
by which the conduct of men would be judged. But the
community which human beings themselves are making has
no such "prior" existence as this. It exists only in

 

37Ibid., pp. 204—205.

117

SO far as men bring it into being. Men are brothers
only as they become so by their own moral and intel-
lectual achievements. The life of fellowship is an
ideal, a goal, toward which men may strive. It is an
end which, through human wisdom and virtue, may be
attained but which also, through human ignorance or
wickedness, may, in greater or lesser degree, be lost.

And, in the same way, the intelligence of man, when seen

as participating in this enterprise, is not the perfect

wisdom of God. It is the growing, and not-growing,
insight which, by countless ages Of searching and striv-
ing, men have won for the enriching of their lives, the
guiding of their actions.38

What men ought to do, as Meiklejohn viewed the human
Situation, is not only to be understood as being in contrast
with an individual's immediate desires and ambitions but,
most meaningfully, consists in Obligations which have been
authorized by man himself. Man, Meiklejohn declared, creates
values, creates culture. In the immediate context what indeed
warrants our intention of fraternity and the Objects of cul-
ture it implies? This question is raised not in terms of the
'warrantability of fraternity for a democratic social order,
but in terms of the prior question on which Meiklejohn
insisted-~Does the life of man have a dominant ideal?

The empistemological problem, that of determining how we
know whether or not men are brothers, is mitigated by Meikle-
john's insistence that we treat the prOposition, e.g., "Men
are brothers," hypothetically. We are not faced, then, with
the dilemma that J. S. Mill, for example, set for us by assert-

ing that the goodness of ultimate ends is not amenable to

direct proof. We are, in agreement with Meiklejohn's thought,

 

381b18., pp. 205-206.

118

"simply" faced with the necessity of assessing the conse-
quences of Objectifying the idea of human fellowship or Of
some other mode of human relationship. It might be argued,
however, that in the final analysis Mill is correct and that
at the end of the regression the axiological choice as to
whether each individual life must be enhanced, as in caring
for each man as a well-loved brother it would be, or some
lives may be diminished in quality is arbitrary and subjective.

For Meiklejohn the values which inhere in ordering men's
relations to one another on the basis Of fellowship were
neither arbitrary nor subjective as these terms usually may
be understood. Certainly, as argued, ethical judgments which
equate "goodness" with individual "desire" were held as in-
valid in Meiklejohn's thought. To assert that something is
good is to make an assertion about a fact, element, or qual-
ity Of, or in, the world. A statement affirming "goodness"
is not, Meiklejohn maintained, a prOposition about a state of
mind. Rather, such a statement has as its referent an exist-
ent in the world and, on such a basis, therefore may be judged
true or false. Although it may be argued that the whole tenor
of Meiklejohn's position is subjectivistic since he expressed
concern for understanding men's intentions, this would be to
ignore the totality of his perspective-—that of understanding
and assessing men's intentions as the latter are made manifest
in culture, hence as they are Objectified.

In a sense Meiklejohn echoed a common sense perspective

on the question of values, although he expressed his position

119

more persuasively than ordinary men tend to do. Certainly

if men hold the identity of valuing and feeling then question
about the approval or disapproval of an act does not arise.
In the usual Situation, nonetheless, men not only express
their feelings about an act but, in fact, make a judgmental
commitment about the quality of the act itself. It seems
indisputable that in a significant sense men can judge the
consequences Of an act, both immediately and broadly, in
terms of its qualitative effect on the conditions Of life.

Further, Meiklejohn's deontology characterizes his posi-
tion as objective. ”It would be hard to disagree with the
point that common men, for the most part, feel that there
are occasions when they are "obliged" to act in a manner
contrary to what they might "like" to do. It is hard to see
how such judgments would arise if moral judgments are entirely
reducible to subjective terms.

While in general the above holds true for Meiklejohn's
position, we ought to review more precisely relevant grounds,
in terms of his argumentation, of his theory Of valuation.
How, according to Meiklejohn, can we appraise, rather than
merely prize, the values encompassed in the idea of human
fellowship? For this author Meiklejohn's weakest point lies
in his claim that historically human life can be viewed as
striving toward something "better" and that, from this per-
spective, it is an analytic judgment that it is universally

better for mankind to live, indeed to live at all, on the

120

basis of a human fellowship rather than on the bases of other
modes Of human association that, to a greater or lesser
degree, result in a "state of war" among men.

It is clear that Meiklejohn's ethical premises were
formulated on non-naturalistic and non-emotivistic grounds.

It is on the basis of Meiklejohn's judgment that man is the
creator of culture, values, and self that the writer finds

the most telling grounds for concluding that Meiklejohn found
Objective warrantability for the idea Of human brotherhood.
Essentially two points are deve10ped in substantiation Of

the last comment. Men create reason. And men crated the idea
Of human fellowship. Meiklejohn agreed with Rousseau, and
disagreed with Locke, that the rights of men are not "natural"
in the sense that they are considered to originate in some
presocial condition. Nor did Meiklejohn hold that moral

laws are natural existents. In both cases rights and morality
are created by men in organizing society. More specifically
both are political inventions.

In a specifically revealing distinction Meiklejohn con-
trasts, or separates, the "laws of nature" from the "laws Of
society." In the case of the former he was acknowledging
what the scientific endeavor is after; e.g., to determine
factual prOpositions of the kind that assert that under
specified conditions such-and-such a thing will occur uni-
versally. The latter case, the laws of society, although
universal, grants the probability of infraction while the

former does not.

121

When we say, "Men should not lie," we do not mean they
never "do" lie. We mean that they never "should" lie.

As matter of fact the prohibition assumes the existence
of the offense. It tells us to stop doing what we are
doing. And, as we all know, such prohibitions are only
partially effective. So long as men are men the law will
be needed because, presumably, so long as men are men,
lying will go on. But, nevertheless, the law, if valid,
does reveal a fact. It tells us, at one point, about the
society in which the law holds good. It is a society
which prescribes that the truth shall be told.39

In the same manner then a society which prescribes brotherhood
is not claiming that all men are acting like brothers but that
they are brothers and, therefore, should be acting apprOpriately.

And from this it follows that we can think of men as
belonging to the same brotherhood, even though they hate
each other, provided that we can also say that their
hatred is wrong, that they are not dealing with one
another as members of the same community should deal with
one another. In a word, the essential feature Of the
life Of fellowship is the presence of principles in accord-
ance with which judgments of approval and disapproval can
be made. Ignorance of one's fellows does not disprove
the fellowship relation, if that ignorance can be judged
to be a misfortune. War does not constitute a denial Of
human brotherhood if we can say that war is a crime.

It is taken for granted when the principles of community
life are formulated that specific human actions will both
conform and fail to conform to their authority. ‘But the
basic "fellowship" fact is the presence of that authority.
Men cannot fail, unless there is a goal which they fail
to reach. They cannot violate principles unless there
are principles to violate. And it is those value princi-
ples which constitute community life. To belong to a
brotherhood is to have one's conduct Open to censure and
approval.40

It seems plain, given the above, that Meiklejohn held that
the guiding goals for teaching are bound to our understanding
of the fact that while men in society set principles of con-

duct, they often break them. Once more we encounter

 

39Ibid., p. 209.

4°1bid., p. 208.

122

Meiklejohn's concern for overcoming the dualism involved in
man's contradicting his beliefs through his actions, for it
is the former rather than the latter which are the founda—
tions Of educational practice.

It can still be argued that the above gives us no warrant
for assuming that we should choose as the guiding law Of
society the idea of fellowship. It is the point that "men
create reason" that now must be addressed. It is, in effect,
through the creation of "reasonableness" that men have
"civilized" themselves. Meiklejohn referred to that strong
western tradition which has revealed us as being persistent
in our attempt to meaningfully distinguish the difference
between settling problems by resorting to violence and settl-
ing them by "reasonable" means.

For the purposes of business, men had devised a phrase
which for sheer deceptive deviltry surpasses all other
devises by which the human mind has ever led itself
astray-—the idea of "intelligent self-interest." That
phrase can justify any crime. It can sanctify any Sin.
It can make respectable any disregard for the general
welfare. The phrase is fruitful in all the bargaining
tricks of self-deception and hypocrisy. A culture which
prizes honesty because "honesty is the best policy" is
not honest. It is shrewd. And shrewdness is violence
become crafty. If we say that men "seeking their own
advantage" are "led by an invisible hand" to promote

the welfare of others which, however, "was no part of
their intention," we are explaining human helpfulness

in terms of human selfishness. Virtues are thus deduced
from vices. Fairness has become a weapon which contend-
ing passions may use as they seek "to exhibit themselves
as reasonable persuasions." And the distinction between
reason and violence is gone. The civilizing of man is
now seen to have been simply the taking on of a veneer.
Laws, principles, rights, obligations-—these are merely
covers for the brutal fact of individual aggression.

One need only scratch the skin of a saint to find beneath

125

it the avid, craving flesh of what Huxley has called

"the ape and the tiger" in mankind.4l
Modern society thus repeats the kinds of problems that Plato
attempted to solve. This writer, as asserted previously,
judges Meiklejohn to be in the Platonic tradition since the
former was concerned that linguistic distinctions (that be-
tween "violence" and "reason") reflect gggl distinctions in
terms of "unprincipled" or "principled" behavior. As Meikle-
john rightly argued the "self—interested" basis for human
behavior, if allowed to stand, equates violence and reason.
Those Orwellian prohecies about beliefs, the results of the
process of "doublethink" (War is peace), become the center Of
our thought. The outcome of denying that there is a be-
havioral distinction (principled) between violence and reason
creates or perpetuates a social structure in which "justice,"
"obligation," "freedom," are meaningless phrases, perhaps
piously verbalized but signifying nothing. It is analytic,
in total agreement with Meiklejohn, that a social order
which accepts conflict as the basis for the resolution Of
problems among groups or between individuals, possesses no
rational basis, as western man has been endeavoring to create
and secure it, for the adjudication of such conflicts. It
'was Meiklejohn's solution, as it was Plato's, that the
dilemmas of which we have Spoken to this point (whether they

involve the problem of the adjudication of external acts,

 

41Ibid., p. 227.

124

desires, or the issue of the worth of an idea) be submitted
to the jurisdiction of reason. Meiklejohn saw in laissez-
faire and other premises previously criticized no reasonable
standards for evaluating behavior or ideas. The ethical
relativism involved has not only yielded chaos in human
affairs but has tended toward the eventual destruction of
mankind. Like Plato he sought for the establishment of an
Objective standard for the determination Of value issues, a
standard that would allow men to distinguish between princi-
pled and unprincipled modes of conduct and thought.

Thus Meiklejohn selected the idea of brotherhood because
its principles of behavior and thought "stand to reason."
He hypothesized the idea of fraternity because it is reason-
able. The reasonableness Of the idea, its warrantability,
lies in what responding according to its principles produces
for the quality of human life as a whole. Reasonableness
itself is that "special effort which men are making to trans-
form themselves and their world."42 It is that effort which
men make to make sense out of an existence which by nature
has no prevailing reasonableness to it and which, in much
Of human experience, in nature is nonreasonable. It is then
that effort men make to become "civil."

Meiklejohn saw in the community of scientists a model

for the fraternity of mankind. Scientists, brothers in intent,

421bid., p. 237.

125

pool interests, pool information and COOperate in terms of
the establishment and maintenance Of common procedures for
solving problems. They are " in relation" to one another not
only in terms of a COOperative enterprise bent on achieving
publicly verifiable knowledge but "over" or "through" time,
to their "posterity" as it were. Their efforts are quali-
fied by being disinterested rather than prejudiced by self—
interest. All of these characteristics exhibit the quality
of reasonable COOperation. This author agrees with Meikle-
john that in the matter of seeking for that wisdom needed
for the conduct of human living fraternal regard is reason-
able. The statement that one man cannot "have" the "same"
experiences as another, value experiences, experiences of
pain, the whole gamut of experiential possibilities, does not
disqualify such a perSpective. The fact that the former
statement has become for us so assured, through psycho-
logical data as well as philosophical assumption, has become
so strongly and SO simplisticly "true“ for us, identifies
that we are in persistent danger of the consequences of sub-
merging ourselves within it. Such a belief ignores the
fact that we do have the reasonable potential for having
regard for the interests Of the other, that human interests
in fact can be pooled and problematic human situations con-
fronted in fraternal terms. In speaking Of what it means
to be reasonable in social situations Meiklejohn said this:
...That peOple, having common values to measure, can

engage together in the solution of a common problem of
measurement. It means that men are friends. And, on

126

the other hand, it means that, if men are not friends,

to Speak Of reasonableness between them is to speak

nonsense.43

To the above point, the writer feels compelled to point
out, Hook's best judgment of Meiklejohn's position, that the
latter's position unwittingly develOps into totalitarianism,
seems misplaced thus far, to put the mildest light on it,
and that the former might have been on stronger, but in con-
sequence not too meaningful, grounds to question Meiklejohn's
tautologies. In fairness to Hook, however, it was Specifical-
ly with Meiklejohn's conception of "the state," particularly
in relation to the premise that teaching should eXpress the

"cultural authority" by and for which teaching is done, that

the former took issue.

The Form of the State

It has been stated that Hook indicated Meiklejohn for
"dangerous ambiguity" in the employment of such terms as
"community" and "state." This writer recognizes no such
ambiguity and points out the possibility that because it
appears to the pragmatic view that essential distinctions
must be made between them, while for Meiklejohn such dis—
tinctions did not apply, that Hook apparently failed to grasp
their identity in Meiklejohn's theory. Meiklejohn surely
was cognizant of the fact that his conceptions were not en-
tirely free from vagueness or the liability of misinterpre-

tation. Let it be emphasized once more that he was attempting

 

43Ibid., p. 255.

127

to structure a direction for social and educational theoriz—
ing that expressed more meaningfully the nature of men's
intentions regarding democracy, and their intentions for
education, at this time and under current social conditions,
than that found in theories based on some variation of "self-
interest."

For Meiklejohn the concomitant point to regarding the
hypothesis that all men are brothers as the dominant ideal
of human living was that this provided a human principle in
terms of which democracy could be defined and judged. In
essence he argued that it is from the principle Of brother-
hood that the form of the state derives. The state is a
people, a potential fellowship or a community, seeking to
become reasonable; e.g., seeking to develOp and evaluate
modes Of conduct and thought based on the human principle of
fraternity. It has become commonplace, when people talk
about "the state," to assume that that to which reference is
made is some sort of supra-human organism. Although Meikle-
john termed his theory of state "organic," he clearly meant
this to be understood as referring to a peOple internally
related in acting for the common welfare. The constitutional
expression of the latter, that which refers to the inten-
tions of men in this society, is bound to those phrases which
in fact give evidence of our corporate and, in Meiklejohn's
thought, fraternal political Obligations.

For Meiklejohn, therefore, the state is primary. It is

the basis for human fellowship and, as such, the source of

128

morality and intelligence. The state, Meiklejohn argued,

is not a human accident, no part of human reasonableness;

it is not secondary in nature, arising out of the need to
arbitrate conflicts of interest; it is not an artifice
created "in spite of ourselves." Although Meiklejohn's
concept Of "the fourth branch Of government" is dealt with
more extensively in a later chapter of this study, it must

be mentioned in this context. The fourth branch Of govern-
ment, as Meiklejohn conceived it, is the people in a demo-
cratic society. In effect the concept refers to that part

of the state which is all of those persons who are partici-
pants in the processes of self-governing. .There are three
points to be mentioned here. First, what Meiklejohn is
talking about has to do with the proposition that it is
"government" which is derived from and is the agent of the
state. Second, that government is composed of various pro-
cesses necessary to the representation of the will of the
state (fraternally understood) and, therefore, is separated
into legislative, judicial, executive, gpg_sovereign branches.
Third, it is the latter, the function of the sovereign, which
we have failed to take seriously in the enacting of and the
education for our democratic, corporate intentions and in
terms of which freedom and political Obligation currently
have most relevant reference. Nonetheless, the fgg£_branches
of government, it must be clearly apprehended, are representa-

tives of and agencies for the state. Government then is not

129

"the enemy" of the people but the community's (the state's,
the fellowship's) Special agent for "civilizing" its members.

Surely if Meiklejohn's particular conceptions are mis-
apprehended, it is analytic that such a phrase as "the state"
can be interpreted in ways that are contrary to the direction
of Meiklejohn's theory. The nature of "the state" as Meikle-
john affirmed it must be comprehended as deriving its form
from the principles Of fraternity. The separation Of state
and government, and the agencyship of the latter, must be
acknowledged. And the function of the sovereign thoroughly
identified. Without these understandings statements to the
effect that the state exists through and for the people and
they for it certainly can be misapplied. Perhaps, however,
it is Meiklejohn's doctrine of the general will that leads
most to the conclusion that his position results in totali-
tarianism.

TO talk of Meiklejohn's doctrine of the general will is
equivalent to speaking of "the democratic will." In the
writer's judgment the definition Of the democratic will has
been indicated throughout the content of this chapter and
needs only to be brought together in context to consider
the problem of the potentiality of totalitarianism. Perhaps
it is too simplistic to assert that when we say that men in
this society "intend" a democratic mode of human association
we are indicating that they "will" it. To intend is to will.

As the writer interprets Meiklejohn "to will" expresses what

150

must be the nature Of men's intentions actively Objectified
in culture. In effect, the democratic will i§_when men have
achieved the intellectual recognition and enacted it that the
nature of democratic intentions are not expressed in terms of
Egg rules, in terms of the unqualified powers of persons in
decision—making acts, but Egg; rules in terms of principles
and how relevant principles are enacted. Certainly if "will"
is thought to be superior and external to persons, working
through them as a more or less uncontrollable force, then
some sort of totalitarianism is conceded. Meiklejohn's
"democratic will" is not extra-human, it has no pre-human
metaphysical status, but eXpresses that men are creating a
society ordered on the basis of the principles of fraternity,
on the basis of reasonableness. As such, that will is dis-
interested, as the latter term has been identified. And,
again, we have constitutionally expressed the nature of the
democratic will as fraternal in our acknowledgment Of the
collective and unified Obligations Of "we, the people."

It may be worthwhile to discuss this aspect of Meikle-
john's theory by referring to Rousseau from whom, as Meikle—
john acknowledged, the latter took his “cue.” Meiklejohn
agreed with Rousseau that it is within the domain of civil
society that moral principles are to be found. For Rousseau
such principles were defined or circumscribed by the princi-
ple of the "general will." According to Rousseau man

achieves freedom because, since he literally becomes part Of

151

the sovereign power, he obeys that which he participates in
prescribing for himself. Meiklejohn certainly agreed.
What are individual rights, in the case Of both men rights
of citizens, become "transferred to the whole community" in
a manner which results not in the loss of individual freedom
but in which freedom is found by being socially centered on
the common good. Now this writer would suggest that the con-
cept of the general will is perplexing in a manner in which
Meiklejohn's concept of the democratic will is not.
In Rousseau's case the general will, the "volonté generale,"
seems in some instances to be the "volonté de tous"--a quanti-
fication of individual wills. Meiklejohn's strenuous objec-
tion to this has been discussed in relation to Dewey's
analysis of the relation Of "publics" to "the public will."
Yet, for Rousseau, for the most part, the general will appar-
ently was not conceived as a mere aggregation of wills but
"the will Of all when all will rationally.% Somehow the
general will compels the conformity of individual wills on
public matters and results in acts for the common good. This
writer does not see in Meiklejohn's conception of the demo-
cratic will the perplexing "somehowness" that Rousseau's
position arouses. What is the common good, the democratic
will, centers on fraternal regard, morally caring for each man.
In addition, while the metaphysical status of Rousseau's
general will remains a problem, as does the concomitant ques-

tion of how one knows that the legitimate eXpression of the

152

general will has been attained, Meiklejohn, in the former
case, offers no such problem and, in the latter,-a legitimate
and on—going concern. It is surely clear that Meiklejohn
viewed fraternity, the essence of the democratic will, as a
goal to be realized, to be made a real Object of culture,

and not as something given prior to human intentions. To con-
sider the problem of how one knows when and if the democratic
will has been achieved as a legitimately on-going one is
certainly consistent with Meiklejohn's perspective that our
political, hence moral, obligation necessitates our persistent
attentiveness to the demands of currently changing social
situations in order to continually minimize the cleavage be-
tween principle and action.

Thus far it is concluded that if Meiklejohn is right
about the state, then rights and Obligations Spring from the
same source. What morality is, and indeed what education is,
rests on the organization of the state. Meiklejohn's con-
ception of the democratic will led him to this conclusion as
to what authorizes teaching.

The purpose of all teaching is to eXpress the cultural
authority of the grogp_by_which the teaching is given.44

Hook seriously questions this.

Test this proposition by concrete reference to the actual
teaching which goes on in a democratic community. Where
or i§_whom does the "cultural authority" repose? Is it
one group or many groups? The most Obvious fact about a
democratic community is the plurality of groups of which
it is composed, and these are not in agreement. What,
then, is the character of the "cultural authority"? Is it

44Ibid., p. 91.

155

the values which gll_groups in the community hold in
common, or is it the values of the dominant group? H93.
do teachers "eXpress" the cultural authority of the
group? By transmitting it as antecedent truth that can—
not be rejected, or by critically appraising this
authority as one proposal among others? Are the teachers
hired by a community to teach the truth as they see it or
as the community sees it? All of these questions can be
clearly answered when we examine the actual role of teach-
ing in'totalitarian societies, for no one is in doubt as
to who is master there. None of them can be clearly
answered independently of the specific educational situ—
ation, when we turn to societies which we recognize as
democratic. The answers will be different in Winnetka
and Boston, Dayton and New York.

When Mr. Meiklejohn goes on to assert the prOposition

not merely as a description of what we might actually

Observe but as a judgment of what teaching should be,

its moral inadequacy becomes palpable. It is just because

teaching in a totalitarian community transmits the author—

ity of the group that we condemn it. Nor do we hesitate

to condemn the teaching in a politically democratic com-

munity whose cultural authority decrees that the content

of instruction be fixed--whether in aStronomy,'biology,

or social thought—-irre§pective of the weight of scien-

tific evidence. A teacher is not disloyal who teaches

the theory of evolution in a fundamentalist community.45
Given this understanding of Meiklejohn it is no wonder that
Hook was indignant at Meiklejohn's identification of freedom
with the state. But Hook must be judged faulty in his inter-
pretation. He surely does not understand Meiklejohn's concep-
tion of the state nor his conception of the democratic will.
Hook certainly disagrees with Meiklejohn's identification of
3 community of purpose.

Although Hook's critique involves misinformation, even

if it were corrected it is Obvious that he would not be

sympathetic Since he posits different premises about man and

 

45Hook, Education for Modern Man, gp, cit., pp. 95-94.

154

society. The kind of controversy involved here lends weight
to the conclusion that this kind of confrontation between
concerned men simply must be resolved to achieve a more ade-
quate (to the times) educational theory. There does not
appear, it seems to the writer, any way for minds of the
pragmatic and minds of the humanistic persuasions to meet.
This writer would argue that our enactment of democratic pur-
poses must be based on a continuing analysis of the form of
the state as expressed constitutionally in persistently
assessed interpretations of the Constitution. It does appear
that Hook is ultimately wrong in attributing a totalitarian
outcome to Meiklejohn's position given those concepts of
state, political freedom, public Obligation, fraternity, and
the democratic will discussed to this point and given the
latter's effort to interpret the national document. Surely,
perhaps, Hook could raise more relevant questions as to what
kind of collective intention it is that we, as a peOple,

have expressed or is he to be allowed to abandon that issue
for a sheer insistence on pluralism?

It might be true, as Hook suggested, that the educational
problems that are present in Dayton are different than those
present in New York, although the writer confesses to some
puzzlement as to whether even in 1946, at the time of the first
publication of Education for Modern Man, this actually was so.
For Meiklejohn, nonetheless, such problems would not be dif-

ferent in kind, although degree or instance or Specificity

155

well might vary. .What is to be taught, what is authorized
by that "cultural authority" to which Hook took exception,
is tied to the realization of democratic purposes and the
deve10pment of that intelligence necessary to objectify them
in culture.

Meiklejohn, in equating "will" with a "pattern" or
"theme" of culture, was consistent. There is, in the author's
judgment, nothing supra-human or totalitarian involved in the
efforts of men to actualize, institutionalize, what they will.
The democratic will, the cultural authority, must be inter-
preted as principles, most particularly those involved in
the idea of human fellowship, which are binding and non-
arbitrary, and which are adhered to by a necessity which is
freely recognized by men in this society.

The idea of fraternity provides the basis for social
relations, the basis for moral actions. The idea of authority
lying in the community, the state, as a whole and the idea of
human association (as Opposed to either mere aggregation or
a totalitarian relationship) are related under the idea of
fraternity. What fraternity expresses, in principle, what
Meiklejohn interpreted as the proper expression of the demo-
cratic will, is the ethical ideal of the state, inclusive of
what the act of citizenship or sovereignty means.

Meiklejohn, in summary, showed to the twentieth century
what has been western man's historical failure, in the writer's

opinion, to learn from Platonic teachings—-the need for

156

complete agreement between our institutions and our human
goals. Institutions express intentions and to the degree
that they are really expressive of what men intend as reason-
able (ethical) ends, they are to that degree educative. The
basic intention which Meiklejohn maintained should be ob-
jectified in culture is bound to the idea of human fellowship
which grounds reasonableness and morality. It is this domi-
nant human ideal, g£_this time, in terms of which both
democracy and education must be defined. Further, since the
state prOperly understood is fraternal in character, there
was, for Meiklejohn, no Single group of persons to whom the
fellowship should be confined. The theoretical source of
Meiklejohn's prOposals for international education, as dis-
cussed in Chapter II, and his assertion that education be-
longs to the world state lies in the universality of the
principles of fraternity and the reasonableness of the point
that only brothers can reason together.

It may be suggested that in this relatively lengthy
discussion of the idea of fellowship one of the primary aims
of this chapter, that of addressing the meaning of freedom,
has been obliterated. The writer trusts that this is not so
in suggesting that a context has been provided for the state-
ment that "freedom is to act for the general welfare."46
"To act for the general welfare" signifies that no confine-

ment can be placed on the political obligation of men to

 

4eMeiklejohn, Education Between Two Worlds, 9p, cit.,
p. 274.

 

157

deliberate about and participate in the formation of public
policy. For this, absolute freedom of minds and ideas is

mandatory.

Conclusion

 

For those who see in Meiklejohn's judgment that social
plans and actions must be evaluated in terms of whether they
provide for human ideas and that the principles of democracy
in particular must be rightly apprehended by men, a question
in the fact that he was vitally concerned with the problem of
men's intentions but not 3 man's intentions, the point must
be reinforced that his concern was to develOp a public
philOSOphy and, in consequence, to provide a basis for the
authority of the public activity of teaching. While one
might have liked Meiklejohn to more fully account for the
individual in his existential situation, it can hardly be
denied that it is necessary to account for mankind in its
existential situation. Meiklejohn's attempts to develOp
grounds for those principles of thought and conduct upon
which a social order should be based does not deny the value
of individuality but can be viewed as a regard for provid-
ing right conditions for the individual's Optimal devel0pment.
It was, of course, with the Optimal deve10pment of the free
individual with which Meiklejohn was most concerned in his
theorizing.

The nature of the education that the free man needs is

bound to the deve10ped definition of freedom (to act for the

158

general welfare) and is plainly political in essence. It is
significant that the liberal idea advocated by Meiklejohn
is represented in his writings in the persons of Socrates
and Christ. The former, in asserting that the "unexamined
life is not worth living," called for men to be critical
about themselves and their social situation. The latter
impelled men to be brothers, to be kind. Meiklejohn found
these to be united--to be intelligent is to be kind. The
relevance which Meiklejohn saw in this for humankind was
particularized in its relevance for the form of a democratic
society rightly ordered. The liberal idea, seen in Socrates
and Christ as representatives of the crucial elements of
the good man and the good state, Meiklejohn saw as universal
as well as at.the heart of democracy's educational obligation.
There have been many references in this study to the
concept and the purpose of intelligence, to the necessity
for intelligence. The point has been emphasized that Meikle-
john sought for the nature of intelligence required by the
free man and for the freeing of men. It, also, has been
stated that Meiklejohn's deepest concern was the deve10pment
of the thinking power of a free society. This author con—
cluded, therefore, that particular attention should be given
to his theory of intelligence, since it is the key to Meikle-
john's position on liberal education. It is with Meiklejohn's

theory of intelligence that Chapter IV is concerned.

CHAPTER IV
THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE: THE KEY TO LIBERAL EDUCATION

Meiklejohn's perspective was that genuine education must
be concerned with the clarification of the conditions in
which human welfare can be most fruitfully realized, the
human community most positively enhanced, and, of necessity
with the concomitant tools (means) required for its enhance-
ment. There is no question that intelligence is the primary
requisite for achieving that quality of living that Meikle—
john sought as the goal of humankind.

Meiklejohn, supported by such analyses as that of the
reasonableness of brotherhood, that of the difference between
principled (reasonable) and unprincipled (violent) acts, and
that of the concept of the scheme of reference, concluded
the following.

We have now defined, in principle, the road which human
intelligence seeks to travel. It leads from the state
of nature toward the state of civilization. Its Sign-
posts say, "The Appeal to Reason." The direction of
that road gives direction to education. Our schools
and colleges are successful according as their pupils
escape from confusion and violence and equip themselves
for reasonable living in peace and order.

If it be true that the task of human intelligence is
to bring order out of disorder, then at every step in

159

140

that process there must be full and detailed recogni-
tion of the disorder with which we are dealing. To
ignore it would be worse than madness. It would be
idiocy. And yet it would be equally idiotic, for a
"reasonable" person, to deny that there is, in human
experience, a striving for fellowship, for understand-
ing, for reasonableness. It is no longer possible for
us to personalize those two sets of facts. We can no
longer attribute them to the universe by calling them
God and the Devil. But the stubborn facts still remain.
The life of man, so far as it has value at all is, at
every point, a struggle of wisdom against folly, of
generosity against selfishness, of objectivity against
prejudice, of civilization against barbarism. The
struggle may be a losing one. Chaos may be too in-
tractable for our vagrant and fitful attempts at think-
ing. And yet that struggle is the only thing which gives
dignity and worth to human living. Our task is to create
a fellowship in which all reasonable beings may live on
equal terms, with equal status, with mutual regard, one
for another. NO one who really faces the agony, the
meanness, the misunderstandings, the self-righteous
brutalities of the modern world, will think that task

an easy one, will fail to see the desperate difficulties
that stand in its way.1

Meiklejohn argued that the intelligence demanded by a
democratic social group reflected the requirements of mankind
at large. He stipulated, as others have, that democracy is
a social order in which all of its members have a genuine
share and that that which is fundamentally shared is the
decision-making obligation in the public domain. The point
that decisions must be made in terms of a dominant purpose,
the idea of human fellowship, has been substantively addressed.
Without such a principle nothing, neither action nor thought,
justice nor education, can be judged worthy or unworthy, good

or bad. Reasonableness demands, Meiklejohn held, that all

 

lIbid., pp. 262-263.

141

facets of human living be critically addressed in terms of
an adequate reSponse to the question of what we are trying
to do. The educational necessity of creating an active and
enlightened public mind is deduced from the foregoing com-
ments. Citizens, those obligated to make decisions on
public policy, surely do not do so in enlightenment if they
cannot determine whether any particular decision "stands to
reason."

It must be clear that Meiklejohn held that the "intelli-
gence" promulgated by a competitive social order was unreason-
able, unprincipled, and undemocratic. On genuine intellectual
grounds a competitive social order is unsuited to the pur-
poses of democracy. The common people, all of us, must make
decisions of a certain nature, qualitatively speaking, but
such an obligation is lost, as are the identifying principles
of democracy itself, if competitive relations among men and
among ideas are perpetuated. Under such an order, Meiklejohn
pointed out and with which the author strongly agrees, sheer
power prevails and, thus, men do not share in the making of
common decisions for the very obvious reason that no such
decisions are really made.

The writer cautions against a tendency to render the
judgment of "totalitarian" to Meiklejohn's educational commit-
ment to "an" active and enlightened public mind. He was
endeavoring to eXpress the point that as a people we intend

a mode of human association and that each individual mind

142

has work to do in relationship to the whole, in relationship
to that intention. Although he often Spoke of humanity in
the abstract, the limitations of language must be acknowl—
edged and Meiklejohn given his due. He was concerned with
mgg, with individuals, and, as has been discussed, envisioned
a state in terms of the completeness and self-sufficiency of
its members which could not be achieved by coercion. To
speak of "a national intelligence" or "a public mind" was to
Speak of that thinking men in a democracy have to do in
common. To Speak of education "in the service of the whole,"
as Meiklejohn did, was to Speak of education's obligation

for the deve10pment of the thinking powers of men in a free
society, of that kind of intelligence which needs to be the
possession of each man. The educational issue has to do with
what contributes to the freedom of the human mind so that
intelligence may act as a guide to behavior. AS the exist-
entialist seeks individually to bring reason into hi§_world,
to make sense out of it, Meiklejohn, viewing the existential
Situation of mankind in general and of our society in particu-
lar, viewed the task of common men as that of seeking to bring
reason into £h§_world.

Meiklejohn supported grave implications for education,
in regard to intelligence, when he called to our attention
what he termed in many contexts "the drift in pOpular think-
ing." He meant that men, Upon whom public decision-making

is incumbent, had neither an understanding of their social

145

conditions nor standards of judgment. The moral dilemma
involved is that the judgments we make, the choices we make,
are either confused or irrelevant. In either case the ques-
tion of coming to right and good judgments loses its potency
and life becomes unmanaged, then unmanageable. Teachers who
share in such inadequate understandings and who have no
theory of action contribute to the drift in pOpular thinking
and, finally, to the resort to violence as the basis for
making decisions.

The consequences of such unintelligent thinking, as
Meiklejohn affirmed, are not confined to our nation but, in
view of the obligations we have assumed, are diffused through-
out the world. Peace, no less than war, has found our
decisions based on the method of violence, the method of
self-seeking. Meiklejohn may be accused of maintaining that
acts which do not meet the test of reasonableness are, ergo,
violent. Though this may be true the writer would argue
that in the world of Meiklejohn's concern, the world of the
twentieth century, the possibility of deve10ping an appro-
priate theory of intelligence based upon some sort of con-
tinuum is null. Meiklejohn is consistent in his view that
any act can be evaluated as violent that is not fully reason-
able, that does not fully express a genuine meeting of minds.
His concern for the ability of teachers and scholars to Stop
the drift of pOpular thinking, to turn men's minds from

judgments of violence to those of reason, was a no less viable

144

one for the international situation than for our national
condition. It is certainly true that we have predicated
our international relations on the same notions of self-
interest as individuals and groups have done nationally.
What, then, in terms of our assumed obligation for the peace
Of the world have we historically taught? The appeal to '
violence rather than the appeal to reason. Was Meiklejohn
correct in his interpretation of history? That our judgments
concerning tariffs, the desirability of "returning to normal"
after World War I, our prOpagandizing about American "virtues,"
are illustrative of our teaching of violence rather than
reason? The writer affirms that he was. Regarding our
general intent in this century, to teach the world how to be
free, the paradox lies in that we have repudiated that princi-
ple of freedom which is "to be reasonable." In 1945, in
Speaking of our intent to reeducate Germany, Meiklejohn asked
this:
Is it not clear that, if we are planning to teach our
manner of life to other nations, the time has come when
we must frankly acknowledge what that manner of life is?
We are...a pressure-group people. We believe in strife
and conflict for the goods of life. In a world so con-
ceived men do not appeal to Reason, except for the pur-
poses of salesmanship, of strategy, of subterfuge, Of
self-interest. They appeal to Violence. They fight--
with their wits.

What is outlined above goes beyond irony, to teach Germany

what we have not taught ourselves, to contradiction. .What,

 

2Meiklejohn, “Teacher, Teach Thyselfl" Adult Education
Journal, Vol. 2, 5(July, 1945), p. 125.

145

asked Meiklejohn, does the teacher now intend in a world
whose nations desire individual sovereignty but some of whom,
as nations, claim at the same time that nations shall live
together in terms of equality and justice?

Do Russia and the United States, Great Britain and
India, China, France, Mexico, Poland, and the rest--do
they intend, after the war is over, to discard the
methods of Violence, to establish law and order, justice
and freedom for all mankind? If so, they will proceed
to create and sustain a world-state which shall have
authority and power to make and enforce laws which shall
be equally binding on every one of them. It is the
function of a state to make Reasonableness prevail
throughout its domain. Under actual human conditions,
there is no other institutional method by which that

end can be accomplished. ...Are we willing to submit
our wills, our lives, our fortunes to the common will Of
an organized humanity? Are we wise enough to create an
organization by which the ends of reasonableness would
be served? If so, it may be that the nations of the
earth can together engage in the task of a common re-
education. If not, then humanity will again have chosen,
or will have fallen into, the ways of Violence. One
would hOpe that, if that disaster must again come upon
us, there might at least be an end of self-deception
about it. Let us, at least, recognize that, if we are
living one manner of life, we can not teach another.3

The task of teaching is to understand the complex and
overarching requirements that will result in the substitution
of intelligence for the drift in pOpular thinking. Intelli-
gence is understood here to refer to the point that common
men have something to actively do for the instituting of
reasonableness in the world. As was pointed out in Chapter II,
Meiklejohn, in his preoccupation with the thinking power of

the common man, was not denying that there should be eXperts

 

31bid., p. 127.

146

and leaders in a democracy. He was affirming that the
common man needs an intelligence apprOpriate to making cor-
rect interpretations and judgments about the acts and
decisions of the former. What concerned Meiklejohn most in
terms of the democratic plan of human living was
...that of the intellectual difficulties which are in-
herent in the making and administering of this political
program of ours. We do not see how baffling, even to
the point of deSperation, is the task of using our
minds, to which we are summoned by our plan of govern—
ment. That plan is not intellectually simple. Its
victories are chiefly won, not by the carnage of battle,
but by the sweat and agony of the mind.4
In review of the dimensions of Meiklejohn's theory of
intelligence considered to this point the writer notes that
"intelligence“ essentially has been defined as "being kind,"
as the reasonableness of brotherhood, and as a process of
enacting kindness as the qualitative characteristic of insti-
tutions and as a learned disposition of men. The processes
of intelligence include the will to create order out of
disorder, in the external as well as in the internal human
realms, and an interpretation of life based on a method of
accepting or rejecting men's Opinions and ideas about human
living. Intelligence-as-a-process analytically denotes
that intelligence is not a "thing" but something that men
must do; e.g., enact reasonable (moral) relations among men

and within culture. The function of intelligence is to

criticize the world. Meiklejohn cited as a relevant analogue

 

4Meiklejohn, Political Freedom, 9p, cit., p. 10.

147

to this point that Christianity stands as a criticism Of the
world, certainly not as a theory by which it lives. The
function of intelligence then is to deal with the problems
civilization faces and is revealed in the man who is in touch
with our common life, inclusive of the common issues of the
day. As stated in the conclusion of Chapter II, its function
is eXpressed in a creative will to overcome the divisiveness
contained in our social systems, that inherent not only in
the dualism between belief and action but between man and man.
It must be recalled that Meiklejohn's theory of intelli-
gence, as discussed to this juncture, is concerned with a
conceptualization of "form." Form has a logical as well as
a moral dimension. In the former case, form is basically
understood as the principle of consistency. It was discussed
under the topic of the processes of thought and illustrated
by the "scheme of reference" idea. The latter was Meikle-
john's generalized way of establishing the premise that the
forms of life (how and whether we create order out of dis-
order) are moral in content. His persistence in identifying
sensitiveness and generosity as elements of or equivalent
to intelligence is to be understood by seeing that, in
either case, they are related under the idea of form. They
are not only moral in content, demanding that the individual
criticize and systematize his relations to and understandings
of the social situation in terms of them, but logical in terms

of being consistent with the idea of human fellowship.

148

Once more to recall the discussion of the processes and uses
of thought within Chapter II is pertinent.

In sum, the proposition that men are brothers meant for
Meiklejohn that all of those activities which are summed up
under the term "intelligence" are eXpressions of that kinship.
It was on this basis that Meiklejohn held that a general
theory of education should be made. Our program of education
or teaching must be designed to free intelligence, as a
recognition of kinship, for increasing control by men over
the future development of culture.

The permanent and recurring problems of a social order
must be, for each member of society, objects of lively
and vital study. The life of the community must be shot
through with the activities Of inquiry, Of taste, of
creation, of interpretation. The sharing of the most
Significant human eXperiences must bring us all together
into spiritual unity. We must become a genuine frater-
nity of learning, afraid of nothing, eager to understand
everything. I am not saying that the task will be easily
or completely done. But I do believe that, by prOper
teaching in a prOper social order, every normal and
mature person in America can be so deve10ped that he
will interpret and fashion his life on the basis of

his participation in a society so conceived. In a word,
if we try, we can make a democracy—-a society in which
every member is in process of education for the highest
forms of behavior of which he is capable.5

While we may conclude here that the fundamental task of intel-
ligence is to make human institutions serve human purposes,
there are aspects of Meiklejohn's theory of intelligence

which must be addressed more particularly before thorough

understanding as to why or how it can be considered the key

 

5Meiklejohn, What Does American Mean? gp, cit., pp. 255-

 

254.

149

to liberal education is achieved. Certainly the idea of a

national or corporate intelligence bears further attention.

Corporate Intelligence

 

Corporate intelligence refers to that which, as has
been stated, the people of this society have to do in the way
of common thinking. Corporate or common thinking is thereby
rendered distinct from individualistic thinking. The latter
is represented by those variations on the theme by Voltaire--
"I detest your opinions, but I will fight to the death your
right to utter them." This position surely renders attempts
at common living ineffective, in fact is utterly destruc-
tive of them. Such a sentiment despairs of, if not denies,
reasonable COOperation between men. Such a View sanctifies
the belief that beliefs themselves are private possessions
which do not require, or wish for, a validating basis. Since
such beliefs have a private, separate purpose there is no
need for "truth-testing." Teaching, for one, therefore, is
in charge of whim or caprice. Meiklejohn's judgment about
the tyranny of the transitory interests of publics is met
again in terms of the tyranny of private beliefs and the
tyranny of the individualistic nature of ideas. To predicate
the public activity of teaching on the basis of caprice,
whether this is present in an individual, a village, or a
nation is, as Meiklejohn concluded, unreasonable. It is

"insanity."

150

The one real question as to the success of a democracy
centers on whether the polity can learn to think. The
success of a democracy rests, as Meiklejohn maintained, on
our intellectualizing, in recognition of our collective
intentions, our acceptance that the form of the state, as
expressed in "we, the peOple," demands reasoning together.
To secure the general welfare indicates that we are in pur—
suit of a single inquiry and our achievements for the general
welfare depend on education's recognition of its responsi-
bility for the deve10pment of deliberative, as Opposed to
compromising, intellects. The "making of an American mind"
is to make each mind deliberative in quality.

The success of education itself depends on that insti-
tution's being manned by deliberative minds. Certainly,
for example, in terms of the quantities of materials and
influences that are available for employment by educators in
their teaching activities selection and censorship must be
exercised by those to whom teaching is entrusted. Such
activities are despotic when, as is often the case, they re-
sult from the utterances of that power which has won the war
of conflicting interests. The deliberative process, that of
reasoning together, results in the issuing of standards of
selectivity and censorship which assures that the best
materials and influences are chosen to secure educational
ends.

What is it "to deliberate?" It is to reason together

on the bases of standards of judgment. Tussman suggests

151

that compromise is better than warfare. Meiklejohn urged,
Of course, that compromise is but a degree of warfare. In
speaking of our prOpensity for compromise, Tussman noted
that:

It does not follow from the recognition of our falli-

bility and partiality that our salvation lies in the

compromise or the bargain. Where has it saved us or
created what we value? Scientists disagree, but does
science move by compromise? Is great art the product
of compromise? Has compromise given Socrates or Jesus
to the world-~Crito and the Compromise on the Mount?
Whom shall we advise to bargain? Is it for lovers or
for friends, for families or colleagues, for priests
or teachers? Bargaining is the death of any fellow-
ship.6
He goes on to mention that there are hOpeful examples of
thinking that are in contradiction to that of compromising.
Any situation or idea which fig can describe as an improve-
ment over another is not the result of compromise.

Surely deliberation is cooperative and objective in
character. It is the Opposite of prOpagandizing. One of
our pOpular and debilitating educational myths is that "both
sides" of an issue must be encountered by a student. Such a
dictum is mythical and debilitating because we actually
assume that, with reSpect to the correct belief about an
issue, only one "side" in fact is correct. To prejudge is
surely not to deliberate. In the security of the "right

belief" issues are not deliberated; one "side" is slain for

the "correctness" of the other.

 

8Tussman, Obligation and the Body Politic, gp, cit.,
pp. 116-117.

 

152

Thus, whether one is talking about compromise or the
individual's assumption that he has a Sheer right to any
belief or a group's similar assumption or prOpagandizing,
Meiklejohn's concluSion that such attitudes, Since they posit
no intellectual obligations, issue into a denial of freedom
has been joined. Insofar as institutions perpetuate the
same lack of intellectual obligation, from a logical point
of view, Meiklejohn argued, a systematic denial Of freedom
results. For example, two churches may hold opposing views
of man, but, according to the laws of logic, two contradic-
tory Opinions cannot be true. These churches, then, are
"at war." But freedom in regard to this issue lies in the
intellectual obligation to deliberate about it; in Meikle-
john's words, lies in the "method of peace," the method of
mutually helpful inquiry.

When men are thinking together in peace each says,

"I cannot hold as true beyond a question any opinion

which my friend finds reason to question." Facing a

common problem, men think together, as well aS inde-

pendently. In such an inquiry evidence is not "mine";
it is "ours."7
Deliberation is what characterizes corporate intelligence
and indeed corporate freedom. In it we meet once more the
quality of disinterestedness. Without disinterest we can
neither come to know (to understand) our human undertakings
nor deliberate them. We cannot submit ourselves or our

culture to that critical intelligence, that reasonableness,

our plan of human living intends.

 

7Meiklejohn, What Does American Mean? 9p, cit., p. 171.

 

155

In Speaking of the problem of freedom and social con-
trol, of our tendency to judge the latter as inherently
Opposed to the former, Meiklejohn testified to one of the
educationally crucial results of our inability to conceive
of both freedom and intelligence in corporate terms.

If we wish to graSp the politics of freedom we must

go far deeper than the method of external controversy
(that of governmental control versus intellectual free-
dom). We just seek for a theory of political structure
and function in which freedom and control are not in
conflict with each other, in which they do not strive
for reconciliation by making compromises and conces-
sions and "exceptions" to each other, but are seen to
be two mutually complementary aspects of the same self-
governing process. But this kind of thinking is not
easy for present-day Americans.

We encounter here what is, I think, the most discourage-
ing and terrifying feature of our current attitude and
behavior. We are prOpagandists rather than reasoners,
salesmen rather than teachers. Two centuries ago our
forefathers...were thinking into being a tentative
unification of the claims of freedom and control which
gave form to our plan of government. ...SO far as
conflicts of ideas were concerned, it (thinking) was
ready and eager for a fair fight on any open field.

But two centuries of frenzied and successful preoccu—
pation with the acquisition of power and wealth have
transformed our attitude toward free inquiry. It has
now come about that the "free men" of the United States
are not called upon to think through their political
institutions, to understand and criticize them. On the
contrary, we are forbidden to do so.

Our duty as citizens, therefore, is not to understand
but to believe. Loyalty requires of us that we defend
our principles against the attacks of "alien" ideas,
not by reasoning about these ideas, but by bringing to
bear upon our ”opponents" or "enemies" the pressures of
military force, or economic advantage or the trickeries
of prOpaganda. And the effect of that corrupting of
our minds has been to transform our intellectual heri-
tage, from an exploring and fearless idea which led the
world forward, into a timid, defensive, hysterical dogma
which holds the world back. That is why, like Athens,
we hunt our teachers down as "corrupters of the youth."

154

That is why, to make sure of their "loyalty," we demand
of them a conformity and submissiveness of mind which
makes them utterly unfit for the work we gave them to
do.8
Our corporate intelligence must be bent on criticizing our
institutions, our culture, in relation to its task of the
interpretation of our collective intentions. The institu-
tions and forces of society must be studied in terms of their
effect on human growth and freedom. Have we established a
freedom of the whole so individual freedom may be deve10ped?
Do our political, economic, and family institutions serve
men's well-being or are men sundered into the masters and
the slaves, the ruler and the ruled, the wealthy and the
poverty-stricken, the confident and the fearful? One perman-
ent aspect of liberal study, for Meiklejohn, was concerned
with critical inquiry into all social institutions to de-
termine our success or failure in achieving the growth and
freedom of men. The growth of culture is compatible with
providing for human and democratic purposes for the growth
of men and must be studied and interpreted in relation to
that end.

Meiklejohn's arguments to this point can be viewed as
the statement of his conviction that there is a common and
rational basis for men's thinking. This Opposes the con-~
temporary belief that irrationality ("My opinion is as good

as yours") is at the base of all thinking. Meiklejohn's

 

8Meiklejohn, "Sedition Circa 400 B.C.," The Nation,
Vol. 180, 17 (April 25, 1955), pp. 551—552. Parentheses the
author's.

 

155

substantively argued premise about "collective intelligence"
issues into the prOposition that such intelligence is not
only rational but finds its expression in interpreting and
evaluating human living as well as in concerted plans of
action to ensure the humane enhancement of social systems.
The last idea brings us to the point of discussing as rele-
vantly as possible the proposition that to be intelligent is

to be obligated to act.

Intelligence as Obligation
The theme consistently is encountered in Meiklejohn's
writings that freedom has no meaning unless the individual
recognizes that he has Obligations which have authority over
him. And that such obligations are authorized by men. In
several writings he utilized the following from the Discourses
of Epictetus.

...Well then it was fitting for you to take care how you
should be like the rest of men, just as the thread has
no design to be anything superior to other threads. But
I wish to be purple, that small part which is bright,
and makes all the rest appear graceful and beautiful.
Why then do you tell me to be like the many? And, if I
do, how shall I still be purple?

Priscus Helvidius also saw this, and acted conformably.
For when Vespasian sent and commanded him not to go into
the senate, he replied, "It is in your power not to

allow me to be a member of the senate, but so long as I
am, I must go in." "Well, go in then," says the emperor,
"but say nothing." "Do not ask my opinion, and I will

be silent." "But I must ask your Opinion." "And I must
say what I think is right." "But if you do I Shall put
you to death." "When then did I tell you I was immortal?
You will do your part, and I will do mine: It is your

156

part to kill; it is mine to die, but not in fear:

yours to banish me; mine to depart without sorrow."9
It is persons who are committed, who are obligated. They are
committed to enterprises and the latter have valid claims
upon them. The non-intelligent View of Obligation, Meikle-
john argued, is that which holds that it is external in mean-
ing. In essence this means that either people conform un-
thinking to situations or that when a man is told that he
"must," the response is, "Who says I must; who has the right
to tell me I must?" The dilemma is not that external author-
ity is denied claim over the individual but that inner
authority is taken to be meaningless.

...The citizen who obeys the law in order to keep him—

self out of jail does not thereby express his respect,

his regard for the law: He is merely revealing his

preference for the out-of-doors.lo

To regard obligation then as the result of outer forces,
as an external requirement, is altogether to deny its meaning
and apprOpriately renders the description of unintelligent
or nonintelligent to an act undertaken in these terms. To
describe men as intelligent is not to describe them as either
forced into duties by or as passive recipients of the social
order, but as those whose commitments are internal and, hence,

as those who are actively creating the social order in accord

with such commitments. A society ordered on the basis of

 

9The Discourses of Epictetus, Book One. EncyCIOpaedia
Britannica, Inc., University of Chicago, 1952, p. 107.

loMeiklejohn, What Does American Mean? 9p, cit.,
p. 262.

 

157

democratic intentions can only be accomplished as persons
freely recognize that such intentions are Obligatory. It is
not their desires which seek satisfaction and in terms of
which persons should conceive duty for, as Meiklejohn af-
firmed, that in fact denies the enactment of obligation.
Meiklejohn's separation of human nature into the inner
realm of spirit and the outer realm of the Objective exist-
ence of that spirit in culture is remet here in his prOpo-
sition that intentions dominate acts. In the case of the
latter reference is to either maintaining or changing an
external situation. In the case of the former it is the
commitment, or lack of commitment, that grounds the act of
change or maintenance. In this sense the purpose of educa-
tion, however external its methods, is inner, is spiritual
in nature. Its concern is with developing intelligence.
This means, in the present context, with the deve10pment of
the principle that principles themselves have authority over
acts. If education views its purpose as the study of external
conditions only, if life comes to be seen solely in terms
of its outer pluralities, persons will come to view human
living for what is revealed in the multiplicity of external
conditions--purposeless. The justification of such studies
actually lies in what is revealed about the quality of human
living. To find something "revealed" about the quality of
culture means that persons are evaluating and interpreting

it according to ideas and principles. Thus, thinking is

158

inner if human action, if culture, is seen in reference to
ideals and principles. What education is prOperly seeking
is not a person who possesses a cauldron of random thoughts,
but one who is capable of giving order to those thoughts,
of making sense out of them. It is that quality of reason-
ableness that is attained by viewing the multifarious activi-
ties of our outer condition in terms of responding to the
inner question of whether or not they conduce to human pur-
poses. It is those principles and those processes of judging
the relation of the inner and outer aspects of the human
process which contribute to the quality of intelligence that
is education's purpose. It is here, in the inner dimension,
that life can be seen as a single enterprise, as unified and
purposeful.

This is not, however, "intelligence" fully realized.
From the statement that "intentions dominate acts" and from
the foregoing comments it is Obvious that to merely "think
about" things is an incomplete act of thought. It is neces-
sary for but not sufficient to the requirements of intel-
ligence. Thinking, to be a complete act of intelligence,
must result in action. Persons, then, must take thought,
they must learn the mental processes for individually making
thoughts rational. But the justification for doing so lies
in the quality of life to which thought gives direction.

In our "psychOlogized" age we have learned readily that

desires, satisfactions, and motivations "exist," that they

159

are "real." We have made desires as "real” as our scientific
descriptions of the outer world. We have learned readily
and, in agreement with Meiklejohn, erroneously, since we

have not learned that obligations are as "real" as desires.
What we have failed in enacting is that obligations exist as
truly as do desires and scientific facts. What Meiklejohn
urged us to consider in reflecting with Epictetus is that
what is admirable or despicable are men, are persons, and
that our judgments of admiration or destestation are made in
relation to the obligations persons enact. To understand

the difference between Jesus and Pilate and to determine
qualitative distinctions in terms of their behavior is to be
rational. To distinguish, and judge, the kind of obligations
each intended and enacted is to be intelligent, partially.

To judge one to be possessed of Obligations worthy of emula—
tion and to act in their terms is to be fully intelligent.
Meiklejohn's theory of action asserts that every principle
which has a valid claim on men must be a principle of action,
or it is unprincipled. To be ethical is to have obligations
and to enact them. To be intelligent is to be ethical.

The materials from which men give form, give order, to
their lives are external in content. It is well to re-
emphasize that the intelligent man gives form to content;
that what is at issue is not entirely what a man's situation
does to him but what he is enabled to do to the situation.

A man who is starving in the midst of plenty is in an evil

160

situation, in a situation in which he is not enabled, in

which he cannot act, cannot be obligated, cannot be intel-
ligent. The man who enjoys plenty in the midst of starvation
has given no rational order to life but has created an un-
ethical form of human behavior. The experiences of both men,
the former because he is not enabled to have obligations and
the latter because he chooses to have no obligation, are
destructive--of men and culture. Both kinds of experience
destroy the quality of human welfare and both kinds of experi—
ence destroy intelligence.

Unlike Socrates who held the identity of knowledge and
virtue, Meiklejohn proclaimed the identify of intelligence
and virtue. How then, did Meiklejohn View the relation be-
tween intelligence and knowledge? Although Meiklejohn's tot-
ally instrumental view Of knowledge has been mentioned, it
seems appropriate to further consider the relationship be-

tween knowledge and intelligence as he viewed it.

Knowledge and Intelligence

 

Just as Meiklejohn's theory of intelligence is part of
the classical tradition so his position on knowledge has a
classical history. The humanistic judgments on knowledge,
however, have gained new importance, in the writer's Opinion,
in this post-Freudian world. Because of what is presumed to
take precedence over rationality, the emotional and intuitive
aspects of men, there seems to be considerable doubt as to

the efficacy of knowledge in influencing action. It seems

161

reasonable to suggest that such doubt has become reflected

in those attitudes toward empirical studies which have fixed
on the conclusion that "empirical facts must be." The writer
would agree with two statements relevant to Meiklejohn's
position. That the need to translate the realms of the in-
tuitive and the emotional to rationally ordered forms of
understanding increases in importance to the degree that men
continue to settle their disputes by increasingly violent
means. That what is intuitive and emotional about men simply
must be brought under men's control. Second, that when men
assume that what has been designated an empirical fact "must
be," they are confusing a statement of fact drawn from the
sciences with an immutable aspect of existence. Social
science, for instance, cannot proclaim the unalterable exist-
ence of any form or process of individual or group behavior.
And should not be construed as doing so. Nor, on the other
hand, Meiklejohn held, should those statements of fact now
drawn from science be confused with constituting recommenda-
tions. Knowledge, no matter what its source, does not ex-
press purposes. Only men do, in relation to other men.

It has been suggested by Hook that Meiklejohn disavowed
the importance of scientific studies and the experimental
method. Such a conclusion is false. Certainly an intel-
lectual activity which attempts to describe the world, any
process of knowledge which aids individuals and groups to

determine what is their nature as well as the nature of the

162

surrounding environment with which they have to deal, any
study which contributes to the realization of ends relevant
to the quality of human eXperience was part of Meiklejohn's
concern. Scientific studies surely are instrumental in
revealing to men those events, forces, movements, which are
enabling of or disabling to the quality of human life, the
realization of human purposes.

Further, Meiklejohn saw in the scientific method hope
that additional modes of thought could be deve10ped which
had equally valid ordering power over thought. The experi—
mental attitude finds "events" and "things" to be varied,
to be multiple. In so doing it asserts commitment to the
authority of a Single unifying mode of thought. Its intel-
lectual demand is that we hold knowledge of the external
world tentatively, that "must be" is not relevant in that
domain. Yet, in the inner domain, the realm of its thought,
such an .assertion is part of the method's principle of
authority, of order. There is little that is tentative about
the scientific method itself. This is surely a basic
example of our ability to create inner unity in our own
thinking. It is a philOSOphic principle which has been pro-
claimed with most vigorous authority. What is proclaimed in
fact is an obligation as to how to think. Its Object is
clear and dominating--to enable humans to think capably about
their world. To say that "I will not believe beyond the

warrant of the evidence which bears upon the question at

165

hand" is to have a principle to whose authority one submits
one's thinking. This is a human principle which conduces

to human purposes. Such a principle makes all human investi-
gation at all times and in all places into a single process.
The rationality of the principle is undeniable. It gives

not only a method of study but standards of judgment as to
what is relevant study, what is relevant knowledge.

The kind of order that the application of the scientific
method gives to understanding life cannot be held to meet
the totality of our need for rationality. Although in dis-
pute between naturalists and non—naturalists, Meiklejohn,
being of the latter group, believed that the use of knowledge
must be submitted to other and non-scientific standards of
rationality. And, further, that there are other sources of
knowledge in addition to scientific knowledge.

Other knowledge can be expressed, in Meiklejohn's words,
as that possessed by "men who live as minds." These are not
only imaginative men, eager to grasp and savor ideas and
experiences but men who consequently weave their understand-
ings and the conclusions of their imaginative probings into
systems of ideas and who give to human eXperience new possi-
bilities of interpreting the meaning of that experience.
These minds are the Opposite of those sluggish minds which
blindly accept given patterns of meaning.

It is true that knowledge in this field, primarily of

the inner life, is harder to make than is scientific knowledge.

164

Knowledge which is sought concerning ideas, concerning our
imaginative searchings, gives, as Meiklejohn upheld, a
promise of deeper human meaning, a promise of a deeper
resource for intelligence than the discoveries of political
scientists or physicists or psychologists. At the same time,
such knowledge, since it has less certainty, presents intel-
ligence with a greater sense of inadequacy. The challenge
to intelligence is evident in the irony of the human condi-
tion--that knowledge needed to respond to the question,
“What Should men be and do?" while more important than the
knowledge needed to reSpond to the question, "What are men
doing?" is less certain. While it may be agreed that men
have no right to certainty except as impartial and disin-
terested evidence produces it, it also must be acknowledged
that it is at—large the challenge of intelligence to seek
for knowledge in that realm which, thus far, has been our
least certain source of it.

Somewhat less clearly, therefore, what is "done" with
new systems of ideas, new alternatives of meaning, new
knowledge in this sense, is the task of intelligence. To
answer the question of what such knowledge reveals about or
how it is relevant to genuine human purposes is the function
of intelligence. The man who reveals to us what the possi-
bilities of human living are, whether he be artist or
theorist, gives to men's intelligence knowledge for possible

use. Intelligence then uses knowledge and uses it well

165

insofar as it aids mankind in constructing a rational human-
ity. Meiklejohn did not judge, therefore, that knowledge
could be or ought to be promulgated for the sake of knowledge.
To conceive Of knowledge for its own sake is an inhuman, or
unhumane, conception.

This section closes on the note that men in a democratic
society need essentiaIly two educations, two sets of teaching.
This, too, has been discussed in Chapter II and its relevance
to this chapter can be stated Simply. For their vocations
men need that technical knowledge which will provide intel-
ligence those resources for doing the work of the world. The
additional task of intelligence, the liberal task, however,
is to consider knowledge about the work of the world in
relationship to the endeavor to understand what it is done
f9; and to distinguish what is worth doing from what is not
worth doing.

The final consideration of this chapter will be addressed
to a brief discussion of the relation between intelligence and
the fourth branch of government. Although the topic of the
education of the sovereign is dealt with in Chapter V, it is
appropriate to the present chapter to indicate the relevance
of Meiklejohn's theory of intelligence to the activity of

sovereignty.

An Example of Relevance
It will be recalled that the "fourth branch of govern-

ment" refers to that group of citizens in a democratic state

166

who are participants in effecting public decisions. »A citizen
is a participant in a plan of human living, a plan whose
principles have authority over him. These principles,
principles of fraternity, freedom, justice, of necessity must
be freely acknowledged by the sovereign or citizen as binding
upon him. Such obligations must be intended by the citizen
not only because they eXpress human purposes but because

their enactment ensures a democratic political organization.

The citizen, therefore, the individual in his public
role, is one whose intellectual obligations are based upon
or grounded within the enactment of principle. His intellect
must center on the intent of aiding in the institutionaliza-
tion of democratic intentions as well as in critically evalu-
ating his own living based on the question of whether it, too,
reflects modes of behavior which can be proclaimed character-
istically compatible with these same intentions. In the case
of the former he must exhibit that deliberative intellect
which he has every right to expect to be similarly reflected
in his fellow citizens. In either case he must be disinter-
ested in order to qualify as intelligent.

It is obvious that those decisions which the citizen is
called upon to make are public in nature. Surely the quali-
ties of intelligence referred to, particularly of disinter-
ested deliberation, are those that assure that man in his
public function will not be swayed to erroneous public—

affecting decisions by mistakingly basing his judgments on

167

self-seeking motives. The intelligent sovereign is certain-
ly one who can distinguish private from public questions

and discussions. The art of deciding has a double—sided
nature. The individual must learn to think independently
but he also must learn to think with others. In the first
instance two well-intentioned citizens may come to Opposing
conclusions. It is in the second area, that of seeking
together, that Meiklejohn's point concerning holding open to
question anything one's friend questions is relevant and
related to the concept of corporate intelligence. In both
kinds of thought, it must be remembered, the citizen must

be disinterested and capable Of making judgments in recogni-
tion of the requirements of the general welfare. _It is
clear that the possibility of legitimately differing judg-
ments must be handled in the larger context of "reasoning
together." It is this common Situation which leads one to
understand Meiklejohn's point that citizens create intel-
ligence.

The problem of maintaining a distinction between one's
private judgments and one's public decisions, between de-
sires or self-interests and the public requirements of situ-
ations is continuous and resulted in part in Meiklejohn's
position on continuing and adult education. rLearning
rationality means learning to nullify "I wish to do so—and-
so" in favor of, "For the common welfare we must do so-and-

so." It is easy to illustrate this in a minor key.

168

If citizens are asked to pay greater taxes for public edu-
cation, the relevant public question is, "Does the function
of public education now in fact require greater financial
resources?" The irrelevant, non-deliberative question, the
one that denies sovereignty altogether is, "Do I yi§h_to pay
more taxes?" The kind of distinction illustrated here is
difficult enough, as Meiklejohn pointed out, for Americans.
To broaden the quest for genuinely public-serving questions
is even more perplexing to intelligence. The sovereign must
recognize as legitimate, and adequately frame, questions
concerning the total function of an institution in the life
of a peOple. "Does capitalism meet our intentions? IS it
reflective of the dominating intentions of humankind? Is it
apprOpriate to a democratic social order? If not, can it

be reconstituted to serve human ends?" These sorts of
questions are those that must be addressed by the collective
intelligence of "we, the peOple." To do so, to ask if cul-
ture reflects Objective intelligence and to seek for its
correction if not, is part of the citizen's function, cer-
tainly difficult to understand in view of some current habits
of mind, and assuredly challenging to intelligence.

It is patently apparent that the government, understood
as the sovereign and his representatives, is the primary
institution of intelligence. The form of government demands
intelligence, and consequently teaching, of a certain kind.
The qualities of a democratic social order demand that intel-

ligence be conceived as something which all men share,

169

something which must record itself in certain action, some-
thing which results in the universal recognition that think-
ing has moral consequences, and something which, thereby,
says "no" to the kind of non-intelligent thought which is
compromise. The central hypothesis of self-government is
that intelligence must be in control.

Our American venture in self—government is not based on

"assurance" that we are intelligent enough to be free,

but only on the "hOpe" that our minds can carry the

responsibilities which the Constitution assigns to

them. ...Our self-governing is not...based on assur-

ance of success. It is, as Mr. Justice Holmes has told

us, an "experiment." We have only a chance, but one

which is worth fighting for--with our minds.11
Meiklejohn, in his entire philOSOphic stance, did not con-
fine the "use of our minds" to this society alone, but, in
the judgment that human life is a single enterprise, con—
ceived Of a single COOperative human intelligence conducing
to the benefit of humankind.

Why, then, can we conclude that Meiklejohn's theory of
intelligence is the key to liberal education? It is certainly
sensible to say that such a conception of intelligence is
what liberal education is "about." According to Meiklejohn
what liberal education is after, the end it seeks, is that
quality of intelligence which has been the concern of this
chapter. .The relation can be summed up in Meiklejohn's words

as he addressed the meaning of the term "liberalism."

...The processes of education reveal with peculiar
clarity and urgency, not only the aims of a peOple but

 

11Meiklejohn, Political Freedom, 9p, cit., pp. xiv-xv.

 

170

also the difficulties, the perplexities by which the
mind of that peOple is beset. It may be worthwhile,
therefore, to try to see the teaching problem with
which we are dealing as one aspect of a wider problem
which torments all our contemporary Western culture.
We commonly speak Of it as the dilemma of liberalism.

The term liberalism, as used in our tradition, indicates
a pattern of culture which criticizes itself, which
challenges its own validity. Such a culture has a
double pattern. It has customs and standards of be-
havior. But it also has the habit, the attitude, of
free and active questioning of its own dominant beliefs
and standards. And this means that in a liberal social
order both customs and intelligence hold sway. It has

a "way of life" which is authoritative. But it has also
activities of criticism by which the way is tested.

Neither of these can replace the other. It is by a combi-
nation of the two that liberalism is created and sus-
tained.

It need hardly be said that the "liberal“ state of mind,
as thus defined, is an uneasy one. It is easy merely
to believe-—if you do not doubt. It is easy to doubt--
if you find no basis for belief. But the liberal is not
content with either of these "easinesses." He will both
believe and doubt. He doubts what he believes and be-
lieves what he doubts. To give Up either of these is
to abandon the way of intelligence, to cease to be a
liberal. If a man or a society stOps doubting its con-
victions, it is dogmatic and despotic. If a man or a
society stops believing, it has nothing to live for,
nothing to do, nothing to teach. This is the way of
futility and loss of nerve. But the mind and the will
of the liberal are made of sterner stuff than either of
these. He is determined to establish and maintain an
active, forward-moving, but self—criticizing culture.

It is an amazing combination of the demands of the
authority of custom and the authority of intelligence.
The liberal reSponds to the claims of customary,
authority but--apparently on the basis Of some other
"higher" authority-—he questions and even Opposes the
action of the society to which he gives his allegiance.
He is a critic of his own way of life. He makes
criticism of customs one of his established customs.12

In view of the foregoing it seems permissible to claim

the identification of the "liberal" and the "democratic

 

l2Meiklejohn, Education Between Two Worlds, gp, cit.,
pp. 112-115.

 

171

sovereign." This study's concluding chapter concentrates

on the education of the sovereign for two reasons. First,
such a chapter is justified as a conclusion because within
its confines the writer can bring to bear the major outlines
of Meiklejohn's philOSOphy considered to this point. Its
second justification rests on the fact that an adequate
theory of public education is the writer's primary professional
concern and surely was Meiklejohn's. It is obvious that the
writer has found Meiklejohn's position congenial and, in the
crucial question of the education of men for self-rule, con-
tinues to do so. The immediacy of Meiklejohn's concern for
the education of the citizen is apparent, in the writer's

judgment, and hence warrants particular attention.

CHAPTER V

EDUCATION OF THE SOVEREIGN

It seems undeniable that contemporary society is organ-
ized in ways which can be described as abusive to the quality
of the human condition. The institutions of law, economics,
and education exhibit functions which are systematically and
negatively discriminatory but which in fact are contrary to
their purposes in a free society. The temptation is to at-
tribute a morally negative nature to purposes when such a
judgment Often Should be rendered in terms of functions. In
either case, nonetheless, the qualitative outcomes of insti-
tutions for human welfare at-large are judgments about our
political capacities. The nature of our institutions is a
direct consequence of the exercise of political decision-
making. In a society which is attempting to "be free," to
institutionalize activities that deserve the designation of
"free," the question of hgy education for decision-making in
the political domain should be conceived is that society's
most crucial challenge. It appears, however, that education
has not only had difficulty in adequately conceptualizing

the role of the citizen and what education's responsibility

172

175

is in terms of that role but in adequately perpetuating a
working recognition of who in fact the sovereign is.

Meiklejohn's aim in deve10ping the proposition that
government is the primary instrument of intelligence in a
free society was to persuade us to the necessity of re-
thinking our conception of sovereignty. Or, if not precisely
that, to persuade us to "make sense out of" a concept of
"government by the peOple." Again, to get us to take our
beliefs, in this case belief in the sovereignty of the people,
seriously. When Meiklejohn talked about the sovereign it must
be understood that that reference involves man in his role as
one of the governors seeking to promote the kinship of the
state.

The identification of kinship or fraternity and intel-
ligence has been discussed. It also has been remarked in
effect that the state (actually government as the agency of
the state) in replacing the church in taking charge of the
teaching of the peOple denotes that education is not only
secular, it is political. Although questions may be raised
about the success of the church in its teaching task, the
fact that it had the possibility of teaching men how to live
because it knew what life should be, based upon its author-
ity to interpret values and mark apprOpriate dimensions of
behavior, is undeniable. Its conceptions of the educated
man, the intelligent man, were deve10ped from given purposes

and standards and, in Meiklejohn's judgment, theoretically

174

suited to the teaching enterprise. The beliefs and values
held by the church gave concrete guidance, concrete authority,
for developing education as the vehicle for the control of
behavior. However, to transfer the educational function to
the state raised the overwhelming question of how or if in
reality we know that governments can teach. The question
obviously is addressed to the problem of whether the state has
anything to replace the standards of authority of the church.
How do we know, Meiklejohn in effect asked, that the state
can assume the task of shaping the minds and behaviors of

the people? Can the state which is now in charge actually
cultivate that intelligence demanded by men for the enhance—
ment of the human condition?

What the above discussion has done in essence is to re-
turn us to the question basic to deve10ping an adequate theory
of education. Does the state, upon which the cultivation of
intelligence now depends, believe in anything that serves as
the legitimizing authority for the making and directing of
education? What are the beliefs and values which government
represents?

Although a considerable portion of this study has been
addressed to the above question, there are two interrelated
problems that need to be brought to focus here. One involves
the statement that "levels of government represent levels of
reasonableness." The other involves the problem of belief.

In asking what beliefs governments represent Meiklejohn

was asking whether the city of Dayton and the City of

175

New York, each of which sponsors schools, believe anything
about living, about desirable qualities of human behavior
and existence. Do cities possess values out of which a
scheme of teaching may be made? Do counties? Townships?
Villages? If we are uncertain what cities, towns, and even
the nation, believe, if they believe anything, then it is
analytic in Meiklejohn's View, that teaching likewise lacks
convictions and standards of procedure.

It is worth noting a particular dilemma that comes to
light here. In Meiklejohn's Opinion we are in the dangerous
situation of having come to the Operational judgment that
governments believe nothing, except perhaps ip_power. It
was the view of his critics, on the other hand, that Meikle-
john judged "the state" to believe "too much." Each accuses
the other of denying freedom, vision, morality. It is the
writer's judgment that Meiklejohn was concerned to develop
a conception of the state that revealed its qualities as the
Opposite of "brutishness," "immorality," "short-sightedness,"
and "absoluteness." It likewise has been made clear that he
was concerned to develop a conception of the state that was
Opposed to the negative and merely regulatory function of
hindering hindrances to the social welfare (of, for example,
viewing the state as that which merely punishes wrong-doing
rather than endorsing right—doing). And finally to not only
question that "cities" per se had convictions, had particular

purposes in Hook's sense (although, as noted, they might

176

have specific intents or needs relevant to an all—encompass-
ing social purpose), but to affirm that under our plan of
human association units of government are in fact in relation
one to the other. The irony of our Situation, as Meiklejohn
confirmed, is that our attitudes are going in several di-
rections at once, directions that are not compatible by
nature. "The state is too much government" but the "city"

or the "town" or "the community" ought to be all-directing--
but the function of any government is to "regulate“ affairs
for the security of individual rights. In this Situation
Meiklejohn was correct and justified indeed in asking what
kind of teaching plan could be deve10ped. The irony of the
situation iS that our society has deve10ped and extended

its corporate interests and intents which our political mood
denies insofar as it restricts its view of government to the
notion that the latter is a necessary evil whose function is
merely that of setting certain, but changing, limits to activi-
ties. The further irony is that the latter conflicts with
our corporate democratic intentions constitutionally ex-
pressed.

Meiklejohn attempted to answer the crucial question-—the
decisive problem of our culture as expressed above--of the
nature and power of the political state in his judgment re-
garding the fraternal form of the state, and, in part,
through his position on the function of the sovereign. To

comprehend the nature of government as that whose units

177

variously represent levels of reasonableness is to comprehend
the point that such units are increasingly reasonable as they
represent, on the basis of the fraternity principle, larger
segments of mankind. The smallest political unit, perhaps
the village, is therefore the least reasonable level of
government because its concern is with the smallest unit of
pOpulation. To be reasonable, to be intelligent and moral,
however, the decisions that village government represents
must be based on the idea of fellowship. As governments
encompass larger pOpulations their judgments are moral and
intelligent to the extent that they reflect commitment to the
principle of fraternity as applicable to all members of the
unit. Thus, for Meiklejohn the government which represents
the world-state, which represents the fellowship of man, is
the most reasonable human agency. It was in terms of this
deve10pment of thought that Meiklejohn advocated pOpular edu-
cation, not ultimately for the democratic nation-state but
for a world-state whose intent ought to be to fashion a
universal and rational society of men.

It is evident that Meiklejohn's conception of representa-
tion is in conflict with some conceptions of government based
upon a principle of "participatory" democracy. This principle
obviously implies a locus of reasonableness that is opposed
to Meiklejohn's premise. That is, for those committed to
participatory democracy the implication is that the lower the

governmental level (in some positions, then, the individual),

178

the more reasonable it is. There certainly has been continu-
ing conflict between advocates of "direct" and advocates of
"representative" democracies. There surely is question, in
the writer's judgment, about the adequacy of current con-
ceptions of "participation" and "representation" for the
realization of democratic purposes. The premises on partici-
pation of the so-called radical left, for example, seem to

be about what Should be destroyed institutionally, but a lack
of attention to "a“ theory of society leaves the Observer
somewhat confused as to what "pheonix" is to issue out of

the ashes. Further, in agreement with Meiklejohn, current
processes of representation have proved inadequate insofar as
what has resulted is decision-making on the basis of power
rather than authority, as these have been discussed. The
writer is suggesting that Meiklejohn offers hope that men
might prove capable of establishing a morally valid theory of
representation, wherever this is to be applied, whether in
the university or in the nation. Moral validity lies in the
distinction that what is being "represented" is a set of
principles in relation to the quality of life of a people;
that it is principles, rather than power, that become cultural
objects. At the same time Meiklejohn offers hope that men
can incorporate into their concepts of representation, rightly
understood as referring to principles, a viable theory of
participation. In general the sovereign is a participant in

making public policy. What distinguishes the genuine

179

sovereign is that he bases his judgments on principles and
in terms of the widest consideration Of the effect of his
judgments on humanity of which he is capable. What also
distinguishes him is that he is enabled to do so.

There can be no doubt that Meiklejohn was correct in
concluding that to say that we intend a democratic social
order is to say that we believe in something that obliterates
any line that is seriously assumed to separate New York City
from Dayton. To say that we "intend" is to say that we
"believe in" or that we "plan to enact." It is this perspec—
tive that allowed Meiklejohn to oppose his organic theory Of
state (by which he meant that as a peOple we are striving
after a certain kind of order and that we do have common
purposes) to those disorganic theories which explain societies
in pluralistic terms. This perspective also Offers justifi-
cation to the statement that the intelligence of individuals
and of the institution of education, or any institution, has
work to do "in the service of the whole."

In relation to the above and illustrative of implica-
tions of the previous comments for education Meiklejohn asked:
Does belief just happen to a man, like measles or a
pleasant morning? Is it a mere drift Of Opinion that
brings to a group of men the conviction that immersion
is better than sprinkling, that freedom is better than

despotism...?l

Meiklejohn's criticism of the drift in pOpular thinking has

been noted. It surely is the task of the teacher and the

 

lMeiklejohn, "The Devil's Revenge," The Century Magazine,
cvii, 5 (March, 1924), p. 719.

180

scholar to provide the potential sovereign with those tools
that will promote his understanding of and enable him to
assume the legitimate responsibility for his participtory
role. The overall intention of education is clear——that of
initiating the student into many social groups but finally
into one social group. That which gives credence to the
function of education is not, nonetheless, a mere introduc-
tion into social groups but that of giving to the student
principles of belief and action for criticizing and enhancing
the quality of those bodies through his membership within
them. The primary principle, of course, is that of fraternity
which enables the student to freely Share in reasonable
decisions about the common welfare. It, also, must be under-
stood that insofar as the individual develOps an understanding
of the authority of the fraternal principle, and enacts it,

he is enabling not only his own freedom but the freedom of
other members of the fellowship.

While to some it may appear utterly naive under the
current conditions which characterize our social systems to
believe that human beings can now choose to interpret such
an intention as freedom fraternally, Meiklejohn's point that
men who man institutions continue to decide, either with
reason or without it, what shall be Objectified in culture
cannot be ignored. Surely the educator makes recommenda-
tions about human behavior and does so, with or without

recognition, on a variety of grounds. Educators who are

181

commissioned to provide for the advancement of learning for
all the people are not involved in an institution that is
preventing something from being done or that is passive,

but one that is creating a social order. It is actively
civilizing men-—or the Opposite. What is morally culpable
is to conceive that education's efforts at developing intel-
ligence are dependent upon the "force of events." Certainly
Meiklejohn was correct in arguing that, if this is so,
having no theory of Obligation, having no theory about what
they are doing as educators means that education is manned
by unreasonable, thus immoral, men. If this is so, then it
follows that the institution of education will be imprOperly
structured and therefore disabled in its obligation for the
fulfillment of democratic theory. In no sense can such a
structure be conceived as Objectifying intelligence.

It is familiar, but accurate, to note that however other
other political orders may View education, the success of a
polity democratically intended depends Upon its success in
educating its members. We have noted that such a plan of
government demands teaching of a certain form, of a certain
intent. How then did Meiklejohn view "the sovereign" who,
in a democracy, must be the focus of education's responsibil-

ity?

The Ruler

 

Meiklejohn remarked that men in this society have two

roles to play. One is the role of the sovereign, the ruler,

182

who has a genuine part in effecting political decisions;

the other is the role of the ruled, he who obeys the de—
cisions of the sovereign. There is, of course, a third role
for some men in a democratic political order, that of the
agent or representative of the sovereign. Such agents,
mayors, city councilmen, members of legislatures, represent
the sovereign in terms of making decisions which objectify
principled intentions.

Meiklejohn, in 1955, described social conditions that
are the Opposite of that genuine social order which ought to
result from an adequate understanding of the role or function
of sovereignty. He said in part:

I have Spoken of disillusionment as growing out Of our
war experiences. But those of the following "time of
peace" have been quite as disconcerting. At almost
every point in our common life there has come upon us
the dreadful sense of disloyalty to ourselves. The
battle over the Eighteenth Amendment, for example, was
a sordid and disheartening controversy. We saw the
great mass of the "better peOple" of the nation banded
together in the name of liberty in a conspiracy of
subterfuge and evasion. The "crime wave" too has
shocked us. From one end of the country to the other,
criminals have attacked us in Open defiance of the law,
,and we have been largely helpless in the face of their
depredations. But deeper than the external harm they
have done uS has been the dread that, in some very real
way, these bands of outlaws are our own creations, are
representatives of ourselves, that they express our own
attitude of lawlessness. The gangster and the boot-
legger have been, we know, in close touch with the
politician whom we have elected. And politics, too,
has had very intimate connections with the management
of business. And business, through the ever wider hold-
ing of securities, has brought very many pf us into the
network of its presuppositions and implications. By
such associations as these all the integrities of our
public life has been brought into question. Is it true
that, in the last resort, freedom means that every man
is playing to his own hand? Is that what we mean by
"free institutions?" Is there no genuine difference

185

between the criminal who deSperately breaks the law

and the smug man of affairs whose lawyer keeps him

safe within it?2
It is apparent that for Meiklejohn there was no real differ-
ence between the criminal and the "smug man of affairs," that
they similarly misconstrued freedom as well as, concomitantly,
the intent of democratic institutions. For our present con-
cerns certainly no sense can be made out of terming any of
the decisions which have yielded a social order as described
above acts of sovereignty. Those who fail to see in the
above that while we, the peOple, consented, such consent was
immoral, have failed utterly to grasp the requirements of
sovereignty. The primary requirement radiates from Meikle-
john's premise that just as government is the agent of the
peOple in its responsibility for actualizing principles so
the genuine sovereign is to be regarded as an agent for
those same principles.

It is relevant here to mention those political positions
which, following Locke, have separated "morality" and

"prudence."3

In effect what is argued for in these perspec-
tives is the "reasonableness" of separating human conduct
into distinct fields. That of virtue, on the one hand,

where behavior is based upon some conception of "individual

conscience," and, on the other hand, that conduct which has

 

2Meiklejohn, What Does America Mean? gp, cit., pp. 79-
80.

3See Education Between Two Worlds, Chapter 5, "The
Forces of Disintegration," pp. 56-58. See also p. 71f.

184

to do with the "practical affairs of the day." In the latter
case reference is to those behaviors which are legitimized

by a civil authority whose function is conceived as hindering
obstacles to the social welfare as this is achieved, it is
assumed, by persons engaged in the self-interested pursuit

of "life, liberty, and prOperty." In that realm virtue, if
considered at all, is individualistically determined. Meikle-
john was consistent, of course, in his arguments against
those conceptions which saw government as merely prudential,
rather than moral, in nature. And he certainly was consis-
tent in objecting to "sovereignty," whether of individuals or
majorities, as lying in the regulated activities of self-
interest. To see the function of the ruler in a legalistic
sense was to deny in actuality, Meiklejohn urged, genuine
sovereignty.

The sovereign, the citizen in Meiklejohn's theory, is a
number of the "fourth branch of government." IS is within
this context that the individual in a democratic Society
finds himself in the role of statesmen, in a context for
behaving reasonably and morally for the general welfare.

The sovereign is the bearer of responsibility for the common
good and as such must be equipped to freely participate in
a body whose corporate intelligence is bent upon a common
aim. The corporate nature of the "fourth branch of govern—
ment" is not additive in nature, is not to be construed to

be a mere majority, but is rightly apprehended as men

185

"joining together" intellectually in a decision-enacting

process based upon deliberative procedures and in terms of

common standards for judging the public adequacy of deci—

sions. The sovereign is a member of the body politic--of

course. But we have been unable to get ourselves or the

agency of education to take the meaning of this seriously—-

to recognize, and develop,
enactment of decisions in the political domain, decisions
in terms of principles intended by the democratic form of

the state, intended by the collective.

the behaviors required for the T15

 

.IRZ’JQ B J"-

Unless the general

"scheme of action," to employ a phrase of Meiklejohn's,

required by a democratic social order is made intelligible

to the peOple, unless education fulfills the Obligation of

making it intelligible, it follows that to speak of that

order as democratic is Sheer nonsense. Unless education

clarifies what marks public behavior from private, what

distinguishes the deliberative from the compromising intel-

lect, it is sheer nonsense to talk of education for freedom

or education of the sovereign. Democratic principles and

motives must be made intelligible to the common man in order
for him to distinguish reasonable from unreasonable institu-

tions, reasonable from unreasonable decisions made by those

he has chosen to represent him, indeed to be able to con-

tinually mark the line that distinguishes those public

powers he possesses, those powers by which citizens govern

themselves, from those private liberties which citizen by

corporate action grant to themselves as members of "the ruled."

 

186

II: maintaining that the sovereign is one who has a
genuine share in the decisions that affect him, Meiklejohn

concomitantly upheld the Platonic notion that "the state is

ourselves seeking to become reasonable." Freedom is for

truase vflub are acting as rulers and to act as a ruler is to

seek for reasonable relationsamong men and to seek for their

objectification in institutions. Inherent here is Meikle-

jcflui's premise that the quality of the state which men ought

to seek.rests upon the social agreement that life shall be

"made reasonable" and that such "reasonableness" can be

created only by individuals who freely recognize the frater-

nal form of the state. In speaking of men like Churchill,

Tawney and Keynes, Meiklejohn made his point in this manner:

These men and women have dignity because they are think-
ing and acting "for the state," identifying themselves
with it. They plan for the wars and for the peace of
their peOple.

They analyze the financial and industrial
and social influences of their peOple.

They grapple
with the intellectual and moral problems of their
people. They are rulers. They are disinterested.
Insofar as that is true,

the state is not their enemy.
It is themselves.4

The sovereign therefore must be viewed, and understand him—
self to be, as a disinterested agent for the community.

Incorporated in that View is the recognition that he is a

partuflpant in a corporate body, which, in order to be free,
canlxaprOperly controlled only by itself. In sum, Meikle-

johnzugued for that self-control, for individuals as well

4Alexander Meiklejohn and Others, Religion and Education ,
(Cmmnidge: Harvard University Press, 1945), pp. 25-26.

 

 

 

187

that can be guaranteed only by the

as the corporate body,
Other—

cultivation of disinterested and deliberative minds.

vdsermflther will the peOple exercise control over govern-

nents,pmrticularly understood, nor will the individuals who

partufipate in governments enact those principles which

represent the intentions of "we, the peOple."

Meiklejohn made it perfectly clear that our endeavors
to create a free society have broken down due to the method

of violence that governing "agencies" have utilized for the

securing of decisions. Genuine representation, which we do

not have, met the test of reasonableness for Meiklejohn.

We have noted essentially that with respect to legislation
the peOple are subject to it, but it was Meiklejohn's con—
viction that a free society called for the Operationalizing

of the premise that with reSpect to legislators they are
subject to the political authority of the peOple. In a

further sense, but consistently, Meiklejohn maintained that

what legislatures are to represent, if the representative

1
function is prOperly understood, is the democratic will.

It is in the Congress of the United States that the democratic

‘wilJ.<)f the society must find its fullest representation

or so, Meiklejohn argued, we Should reasonably expect. It

caruxyt but be obvious to even the most casual observer that

thjms is rupt so and that we have been engaged for decades in

what Meiklejohn called "a crisis of representation." Not

only have citizens failed in being sovereign because they

 

- .1
. L...

 

188

dormm expect Congress to be representative of anything

Cuber than self-seeking individuals or to act in terms of

reasonableness, as this concept is understood in both its

logical and moral forms, but, according to Meiklejohn, and

perhaps he is right, Congress does not even "represent its

own members. By this he meant that although he believed

that men of good will, ability, and devotion to the common

good outweighed those members of Congress who were individ-

ually corrupt, that our political processes themselves were

corruptive, making good men helpless and bad men effective.

The entire machinery by which men are nominated, elected,

discarded, by which they do their work on the floor of

Congress and in the state with their constituents, gives

representation not to principles, not to the democratic will

and deliberated purposes but to self-interests, prejudices

and the like. The peOple, then, corrupt their political

authority, their sovereignty, by their eXpectations and

insistence upon the validity of every interest in the market-

place Of the halls of Congress, and Congress corrupts its

agency of representation. One must wonder why, however, if

men of good will outweigh those of bad this has to be the

case. The fOllowing quote, too, seems to deny Significantly

Meiklejohn's usual insistence on the representation of prin-

cipled intentions. Nonetheless, it does offer some direction

for'EIImore moral theory of representation under current

political processes than what has been our procedure.

12.!

 

l 5:."

”TL.

 

189

Amy agency which undertakes to act for the peOple has
Um>tasks facing it. First, it must find out what the
people want. It must discover and take account of the
“mole range of private interests which are at stake
throughout the country. In this sense, every individual,
every grOUp, every region has a right to representation
in the councils of government. And that representation
nmst be equal, must be enjoyed without prejudice and
without special privilege. But, second, since the huge
conglomeration of a nation's desires and needs and
intentions is riddled with conflict and contradiction,
since interests are at war with one another, any repre-
sentative body has‘another job to do. It must choose.
It must think. It must discover the common good in all
separate goods. It must deny as well as affirm. In
every case it must make sure that the greater good pre-
vails over the lesser. As it does so, no genuine human
interest of any individual or group may be ignored.

But it is equally imperative that no private or public
interest be allowed to have its way if it denies other
interests which are found by impartial judgment to be

more important.5

Whatever questions one might have about the above, Meiklejohn
surely confronted us with a relevant dilemma and surely con-
tributed to our recognition of the need for an adequate theory

of representation. Further, he reinforced judgments about

the qualitative necessity for adequately conceptualizing
"critical intelligence" that it is mandatory for education

to cultivate in a society which intends to be democratic.

(Once more, if we continue to misconstrue freedom, both the

functirni<3f sovereignty and the function of representation

are rendered if not destructive, meaningless. Meiklejohn

rdtflrtly pointed out that our beliefs about "localism" are
illinstrative of our incapacities to adequately conceptualize
the deliberative purposes of the sovereign and the repre-

sentative. It would be superfluous to repeat how our belief

 

5Meiklejohn, "Congress and the PeOple," The Nation,
Vol. 155, 19 (November 7, 1942), p. 470.

190

in "local right" has appeared in the institution of educa-
tion. It assuredly has rendered us either unable to,
apathetic about, or opposed to perceiving "sovereignty"
and "representation" as relevant to gll_of the people as

a legitimate educational concern. In this situation what
sense can be made out of "government by the consent of the
governed" when we do not take the meaning of "political b.
authority" seriously? In what sense can it be held that

genuine citizens "make law" if representation is confined

 

’A-A.‘ “I!

to self-interested groups?

It is significant to note that one can make sense out
of Meiklejohn's theory of social compact only if the notion
of sovereignty as the self-controlling and self-controlled
agency of the body politic is clearly apprehended. To speak
of self-governing is to speak of the people enabled to make
their will effective. If, then, the people are in control,
they are in agreement to make their life reasonable, to
establish reasonable relations among men. Such an agreement,
such a compact, connotes therefore that decisions will be
equally binding on all citizens, in their role as the ruled.
A minority of one or more cannot refuse consent. A man who
rejects the results of genuine sovereignty, genuine deliber-
ation, is not thereby proclaiming he is self—governed. He
is, according to the deve10pment of Meiklejohn's argument,
denying political freedom for anarchy. It is, of course, our

inability to either come to genuine decisions or, perhaps,

191

to recognize one when we have achieved it, that marks out
implications for education. The importance of Meiklejohn's
consideration for education is the impetus he gives for
developing methods to achieve deliberative minds. Such an
impetus cannot be maximized. The social compact means that
no man is called upon to obey a law unless he has shared
equally in its making, but obedience to the law is required
if that condition is met. Men, sovereigns, share equally,
they consent, insofar as processes of deliberation have been
rightly invoked. It must be pointed out in addition that
Meiklejohn advocated not only the right but the duty of
citizens to rebel if our basic agreement has collapsed or if
the government, as a particular institution, has entirely
failed in its agency. The meaning of the comment that edu-
cation in particular must make our scheme of government, our
plan of human association, our democratic intentions, clear
is heightened in view of Meiklejohn's social compact theory.
Education must not only make the question of what do we, the
people, mean when we provide for freedom of belief and its
eXpression and the question of what it is in fact that we
have agreed to in believing in decisions based on consent
relevant to its purposes. It must recognize that only by
addressing such questions can the objective of "education for

citizenship" be rendered sensible.

Freedom and the Sovereign
Political freedom is self-control. Insofar as the body

politic has had an effective voice in decision-making, it is

192

self-controlled. Insofar as the body politic has been un-
able to make its will effective, it is not self-controlled,
not free; it is manipulated. Realization of the will of
the body politic is essentially what is meant by "government
by consent." Within the context of this meaning it is
clear, according to Meiklejohn, that we have not achieved
"consent" and thus are subjugated to a will other than our
own. In those cases, too, where we attempt to govern others
without their consent, we are the subjugators. If we are

to conclude that, lacking consent, governments have no just
powers, we may do so only on the grounds of an increasingly
adequate and comprehensive understanding of the intellectual
requirements involved in "consenting."

The distinctions that Meiklejohn made regarding the
relationship of "freedom" and "consent" as the basis for
understanding the intellectual obligations required by sov-
ereignty can be reviewed by turning to two examples that are
encountered in his writings. He urged us to review the
Socratic arguments in the Crito and in the Apology in order
to understand that to conclude a contradiction exists in
respect to Socrates' advocations is invalid. In the Crito
Socrates argues that even though the state is mistaken in
putting him to death, and thus is unjust, it is imperative
for him to obey the legal authority which the state exercises.
It is imperative because Socrates has "consented" to "the

law" for seventy years. He has made a compact with the state

195

and.tflnas concludes that it now would be unworthy to withdraw

Iris consent to the law. The writer finds a dilemma here

because, although the basic agreement between Socrates and

the state apparently has not collapsed, has not the state

failed in its agency? Again Meiklejohn confronts us with a

peculiar but persistent human dilemma, one with which a

"democratic intelligence" has not adequately coped. The law,

if it expresses principles in its external operations is one

thing to relate to in continuing consent, but in what reason-

able manner, in Meiklejohn's sense, can the sovereign consent

to the law that is unjust? If justice is misconceived by

gpvernment must a man, who may have "stayed" and failed in

persuading government to correct its misconceptions, allow

the judgments of an agency which itself has failed to prevail

over him? In what sense can Meiklejohn reconcile belief in

the apprOpriateness of the consequences of Socrates' consent,

to maintain his covenant with the state and thus not to be

a lawbreaker, and "due process" rightly interpreted? Does

Socrates' assertion that it is not "law" which has wronged

him but the peOple fit what Meiklejohn is claiming about

freedom and consent? In the constitutional context with

which Meiklejohn was trying to deal, the author judges that

it does. There is a general proposition which is relevant

and supportive of Meiklejohn's concern with the matter of

consent and freedom. That is, with the respect to the

freammiof ideas Socrates' declaration that his teaching

194

cannot be abridged by government is unequivocal and entirely

right:&n:the sustenance of a free society. A proper rela-

thmutetween freedom and consent is established insofar as

the Apglogy affirms Obedience to freedom of thought while the

Crito affirms obedience to regulation in the conduct of ex-

ternal affairs for the human welfare. The issue, at least,

can be understood as that of enabling intelligence, through

freedom of thought, to enact appropriate objects of culture

and to sustain them.
The model of the town meeting perhaps finds a clearer

expression of the relationship. Freedom of speech, ideas,

advocacy, is guaranteed ip_terms gf_the conditions of the

meeting. In consenting to the form of the meeting, includ-

ing its procedures and aims, that speech which is free is

that which is relevant and offered under the "due process"

requirements of the situation. The moderator not only

"recognizes" speakers but he "abridges" inapprOpriate speech.
The town meeting is not a speech "free for all," but a self-
governing process whose procedures (laws) are freely consented
to by its members and whose aim is not solely to achieve some

deliberated result on a public question but to lead to the

actjxni that such a result suggests. The trouble with much

of our education, Meiklejohn noted, is not that it doesn't

promote thinking but that the latter, since it is not self-

controlled, is too often irrelevant to "the issue." In

speaking of the town meeting form Meiklejohn said that what

is to be discussed are public questions.

195

The community has agreed that such questions as these
shall be freely discussed and that, when the discussion
is ended, decisions upon them will be made by the vote
of the citizens. Now in that method of political self-
government, the point of ultimate interest is not the
words of the speakers, but the minds of the hearers.
The final aim of the meeting is the voting of wise de-
cisions. The voters, therefore, must be made as wise
as possible. The welfare of the community requires
that those who decide issues shall understand them.
...Both facts and interests must be given in such a way
that all alternative lines of action can be wisely
measured in relation to one another. AS the self—govern-
ing community seeks, by the method of voting, to gain
wisdom in action, it can find it only in the minds of
its individual citizens. If they fail, it fails. That
is why freedom of discussion for those minds may not be

abridged.6
Persons may be barred from Speaking on the basis of "due
process," to which men have consented, but no individual may
be denied because his Opinions are thought to be dangerous
or unwise or un-American. The overwhelming requirement for

the intelligence of the citizen, for the purpose of the

sovereign's taking thought, in seeking for the advancement of

the general welfare is complete and thorough access to that
information and to those ideas which are relevant to that
end. The right of the sovereign to heap is a deduction from
our agreement that issues shall be resolved by consent.
.Plato may not be removed from school shelves, Marx banned
-from courses in economic and political thought, Salinger
censored.in.literature classes. Intellectual fitness for
:aovereignty demands that what can be said in favor of or in
cxnmtradiction to the character of our culture, our institu-

tional life, must be not only accessible to but required of

 

SMeiklejohn, Political Freedom, 93. cit., p. 26.

196

the citizen's understanding. Free minds must direct behavior.
This is why our legislative behavior must be reconstructed,
the institution of education more adequately manned, the
institutions of public media required to play their prOper
role in a free society. To recognize that free minds must
direct behavior is to recognize the intellectual basis of
self-government and the identifying obligations of educa-
tion. The potential enactment of men's intentions into the
creating of a democratic culture is rendered meaningless,

in fact is destructive of culture, if this principle of
freedom goes unattended. There is no basis for consent and
no meaning applicable to "the just powers of the government"
without it.

Education which is adequate to the task of cultivating
the free intelligence which men need in order to enact
democratic purposes is that education which is adequate to
the pOpular teaching which the world-community needs.

Men know their minds in terms of admiration and contempt.

They recognize the human obligation to think clearly and

persistently. It is not fitting that a man be stupid

if he might be wise. No man who fails to know his world,

to master it with his mind, so far as he is capable, is

living as a man should live. Intelligence is admirable;
stupidity is abhorrent. If, when he has before him the
chance for clearness, coherence, understanding, accuracy,

a man sinks back to dull, insensitive, and slipshod lack

of thought, so far he fails to be a man at all. He fails

to play his part in an essential human enterprise.

A social order, too, which keeps men ignorant when they

might be wise, which makes them dull when they are capable

of insight--that social order, destroying the human Spirit,
is worthy of human contempt and condemnation. Men, both
as individuals and as groups, are bound to labor for

intelligence. And it is in relation to that high obli-
gation that there arises the human demand for freedom of

 

' “7'
r,

.1; FL;

 

A

197

thought. Thinking, like worship, cannot be done by
compulsion. To say that liberty of mind is good be-
cause it gives us better food or better shoes is
topsy-turvy thinking. Our passion for freedom finds
its power in the demand that we be better men. It

summons us not to be contemptible in the use of our
minds.7

Meiklejohn found freedom not only a reasonable principle for
the democratic state but for the community of humankind. It
is that freedom which is possessed by men who recognize that
on account of it they have obligations. Men are sovereign,
they are to be free, as they attempt to advance the common
welfare. Only as rulers, therefore, do men have a right to
freedom, as that principle has been discussed throughout this
study. To deal with matters of public policy requires that

intelligence be kept free. Such freedom is always expedient

since the public welfare persistently requires it.

It was, once more, in view of these kinds of considera-
tions that Meiklejohn reiterated the classical point that
man's education for meeting universal needs must be a common
education. An education which joins men together in a common
search for common truths and a common welfare. It was on this
basis that he indicated that in a democracy the liberal arts
college is to be regarded as the college of the common man.

To achieve a "genuine consent" of free men demands universal

and common education. No man can give his consent, can share

validly in the requirements of sovereignty, unless he knows.

 

7Meiklejohn, What Does America Mean? pp, cit., p. 94.

 

' its...

198

In tflxis sense "consent" defines the purpose of the college

(If liberal arts. To consent is in effect, and if rightly

understood, to be intelligent about the qualities of active

participation in the common enterprise.

The Agenpy of the Teacher

Human government is human understanding in action. To
know, then, what a state is we must know what intel-
ligence is. And vice versa, to know what intelligence
is, we must understand what political agencies are and
do. What, then, is the state? Does it Speak for reason?
Or is it primarily an agency of force, of violence?8

As we have seen Meiklejohn develOped the assumption that

fraternity, the idea of human fellowship, is the dominating

human purpose, that principle which gives the most genuine

and reasonable direction to the advancement of the human con-

dition. As such it offers a basis upon which the democratic

state can be created and in terms of which its institutional

life can be evaluated. In a simple manner the function of

teaching can be expressed as that of leading pupils into an

active membership in the fraternity. In essence this intends

that ultimately teaching is for the deve10pment of citizens

for the world-state, since this level of government is the

most reasonable.

The teacher is called upon, in Meiklejohn's theory, to
form and fashion an immediate community (as in the EXperi-
mental College) which in no way restricts the vision of his

students to the "limits" of that community. Within the com—

nmnity context, a "living for teaching," individuals are to

 

8Meiklejohn, Religion and Education, pp, cit., pp. 12-15.

 

199

learn that intelligence which is identical to the form of
the good state. The teacher then acts "for the state,"

and, therefore, ultimately is obligated for developing that
self-criticizing intelligence which is COOperative, disin—
terested and, in turn, obligated. It is only through teach—

ing, through putting students into active relation with the

issues of the day, that members of a free society can come h_x

to value that self-critical study such a society demands.
Meiklejohn concluded that democratic governments are
equipped to teach because they possess purposes and values
which are humane and, as such, give morally valid grounds
for constructing a plan of teaching. That intelligence
which a democratic plan of government demands in fact has
authority over the institution of education, hence provides
standards of judgment regarding teaching methodologies and
procedures. The task of intelligence is to interpret
democratic intentions and to appraise their manifestation
in culture. The mark of intelligence for which teaching is
responsible is that which is expressed by the man who is
capable of at once interpreting intentions correctly, identi-
fying and understanding democratic purposes, and enacting
principled intentions as the quality of our objective cul-
tural condition. Man must be reasonable in order for culture
to be reasonable.
The teacher is an agent for the state, but not the state

as negatively understood. When it is asked, "In what sense

 

200

<1rzmanner'can the government protect us mentally?" the re-
sponse of the teacher in a democratic state must be in
contradiction to the response of a teacher in a despotic
state. In the latter case the answer will be, "In any way
it please." In the former the answer must be, "In no way
can the government protect the people mentally; in no way
ought it to." If government is rightly serving as an agency
of the peOple its "protective" function is to see that teach-
ing and learning shall be completely free.
It must be urged that the chief source of our blunder-
ing and ineptness in dealing with moral and political
problems is that we do not know how to think about them
except by quantitative methods which are borrowed from
non-moral, non-political, non-social sciences. In
this sense we need to be, not more scientific, but less
scientific, not more quantitative, but other than
quantitative. We must create and use methods of in-
quiry which are suitable to the study of men as self—
governing persons but not suitable to the study of
forces or of machines. In the understanding of a free
society, scientific thinking has an essential part to
play. But it is a secondary part.9
In effect Meiklejohn maintained that our skills, our tech-
niques were threatening the development of our wisdom. Edu-
cation for wisdom was for Meiklejohn equivalent to political
teaching in general. To be a skilled empiricist alone is
surely, he affirmed, not to be the kind of human being that
can be defined as "politically wise." In substituting
political for religious teaching we have changed our prOr

cedures for determining what human beings shall be. TO con-

fine our determination to "science" or to "technique" is to

 

9Meiklejohn, Political Freedom, pp, cit., pp. 12-15.

201

mistake the role of consequent learnings--which are to be
used in the service of our efforts to secure political
wisdom. "To be merely Skilled“ defines the negative func-
tion of liberal teaching, that of abolishing mechanistic
thinking in all areas of living. It must be remembered that
Meiklejohn had regard for the knowledge yielded by science
and surely regard for it as a model of thought, but, also,
that he was convinced that neither did such knowledge pro-
claim its use nor was the method complete for the rational
ordering of man's life. He certainly recognized that in our
search for political wisdom we as yet do not know how to
think. This is the challenge to teaching.

We do know that thinking must be concerned with our
common enterprises and, therefore, that teaching methodolo-
gies which in any way encourage the belief that not only may
a man "do" what he please, he also may "think" as he pleases
are disasterous to that enterprise. It is finally the death
of a free society. The First Amendment which declares the
necessary freedom of the human mind does not mean either
that man may think as he pleases or that he may not think at
all. Thinking in common about our common intentions is a
requirement of democracy which must be rightly directed.

Our plan of teaching must protect freedom of mind by assur-
ing that individuals are introduced to, and by requiring that
they comprehend insofar as capable, all issues, ideas, infor-

mation, necessary to augmenting the morality of the state.

202

Liberal teaching, therefore, deals mainly with ideas and

abstractions. Conceptions of liberal education which en—

visitni "freeing" minds through teaching procedures based upon

each.jJuiividual's vocation are fated to fail, Meiklejohn

declared, since for most men "genuine living" means that

their vocations are but a part of their life concerns.

.Assuredly Meiklejohn's contention that teaching is finally

for the joining of all nations, for the joining of men into

the processes of a corporate intelligence, means that, while

the "lessons" for all men must be the Same, to assume that

they could be liberated through intellectualizing in some

sense about their vocations was an in complete notion of what

men must study in common.

It is indispensible to restate in the present context a

point that has been touched upon previously. Since to be

"self-governed" means that the peOple are assigned an intel-
lectual task which cannot be done unless the doing of it is

free (in the sense that incorporates the concept of obliga-

tion), this means that teaching must be free. It will be
recalled, however, that the relation of the educational Ob—
jective of deve10ping free minds and the freedom of the

academic or "teaching mind" is particular. That is, academic

freedom is a form of, but not greater than, pOpular freedom.

The teacher, as well as the researcher, is an agent of the

government. Government in turn is an agent of the peOple.

The hxfic of the situation leads to the conclusion that

teadnns and researchers are the agents of the peOple. What

205

teachers are "reSponsible to" is to the peOple who need the
truth. Teaching is to be done not in the interests of the
teacher but in the interests Of the people. Justification
for academic freedom lies in the purposes of "we, the people."
This is not to say, quite the opposite, that the teacher can
be coerced into "proper thought," "proper teachings, "prOper
loyalties," he is not, in a word, "for hire." The tragic
failure of much of our teaching, as Meiklejohn rightly con-
cluded, is that teachers have surrendered that very intelli-
gence which they need to exemplify and use in teaching men
to be intellectually free. Teachers thus have misconstrued
their agency.

Teaching is in the service of the common life. Efforts
to sustain and revise democratic forms are dependent upon
the ability of each citizen to continually and comprehensively
study relevant facets of our common life. The expertise Of
teacher and scholar, the new knowledge, new systems of thought,
new interpretations of meaning which they formulate as well
as the "old," must be handled from the vieWpoint of what the
sovereign needs to have "in mind" in order to deal with
problems on the popular level. The purposes of teaching and
research must be understood as being entirely instrumental--
instrumental for the people, for the life of the community.
Teachers and researchers, while masters of special fields,
must'be servants of the whole. Varied and unsystematically

related activities of teachers and scholars will not enlighten

204

HRH), the state, or the world, but serve to distract intel-

ligence from the urgency of building both a national and
xmxrld community. For this purpose, teaching must be free

in order to free those whom teaching serves.

The direct purpose of education in a free society is to

teach its members how to think. Not to think in terms of

self-seeking whose aim is a cunningness of thought and the
degradation of democracy, but to think for the common good.
Such thinking is a moral undertaking in that the intelligence

displayed by persons is that which uses knowledge to promote

the universal good.

The very nature of a mind is that it recognizes obli—
gations, it serves a cause. The True is better than the
False and must be chosen by every man, whatever his
private inclinations. Facts must be recognized. The
man who forms beliefs by whim, by mere caprice, by
laziness or sloth, by social pressure, by private
interest—-that man is traitor to the cause of Truth.
That cause makes heavy and savage demands on all of us.
It has authority. Failure to give obedience to that

authority does not mean that we are free. It means only
that we have ceased thinking.10

The "true" is what is rational. It is the result of utiliz-

ing rational methods of thought in the service of judging

the relation between intentions and actualities. It is what

is revealed to us, as we meet the demands of the deliberative
life, about ourselves and our attempts to create culture.

As man is striving to interpret his intentions as causes in
the formation of culture, he makes of himself, Meiklejohn

declared, a man who is grappling with the problem of truth;

 

loMeiklejohn,.What Does America Mean? pp, cit., p. 167.

 

205

he is seeking for the truth as to the nature and quality of
both "intentions" and "enactments." He is seeking to under-
stand by rational means the human dilemma involved in secur-
ing institutions for human purposes. Overall it is this
endeavor which must be the concern of teaching. The sovereign,
in order to be really free, to be genuinely intelligent, not
only must possess actually effective authority to act, he

must kppp_what he is about. Teaching must enable men to

become deliberative and active.

 

Mn-

It is analytic to say that teaching methods "follow,"
in some reasonable sense, from purposes. It is not necessary
to review those methodologies which Meiklejohn developed as
apprOpriate to liberal teaching, and which have been discussed
in Chapter II. It does seem important to develOp an additional
point about liberal education in relation to the task of

creating reasonable methodologies.

Questions as the Organizing_0bjectives of Education

It has been established that intelligence can be judged
"qualified" that is capable of being applied in any field.
With particular pertinency for the tasks of sovereignty such
quality is manifested by that individual who is in thorough
possession of general concepts and ideas which actively can
be brought to bear on an issue. He also is in possession
of general questions relevant to the situation. The infor-
mation that persons are to gather in connection with any

human problem is, according to Meiklejohn, secondary to the

 

 

 

 

 

206

prOper posing of the problem or the proper setting of ques—

tions germane to the problem. The latter is what arouses

and directs a student's interest. The combination of accur-

ate questions in relation to a genuine social or human issue

vdJJI the prOper forms of thought, plus the accessibility of

luumnledge and ideas, ultimately is what conduces to the

 

student's learning to infer, connect, deduce, universalize-- hi
R
to think. 5
Thus, it was mandatory for Meiklejohn that teachers T
'1».

understand that basic to meeting the requjrements of creating V

a fellowship of learning as well as basic to the overarching
aim of leading pupils to an apprehension of the objective

existence of meaning in the world was the ability to pose

questions. In a very significant way the formulation of

questions is not only at the heart of a teacher's methodologi-
cal process but questions themselves become the Objectives

around which or in terms of which methods of education in

general ought to be organized. The teacher's duty for lib—

eral education is not to give authoritative answers but
rather to clarify questions by challenging not only the

assumptions involved in them but all possible alternative

responses.

The manner in which questions might be set is readily

illustrated. Let us assume with Meiklejohn that a primary

task of education is to cultivate in all members of the

Indygmlitic a desire to understand what our national plan

207

of government is. To suggest that the Objective is met by

stnpx1§r forming the question, "What ip_our plan of government?"

:is, crf course, absurd. Meiklejohn had, however, relevant,

but more discrete and demanding questions, although it must

be acknowledged that it would not be sensible to hold them

"atrfiissue" all at once, nor did he intend this.

‘Under the actual conditions of life in the United States
does the Constitution work well? Does it provide wise
and efficient guidance for our dealing with the desperate
issues which are now, in ever new forms, rushing upon

the nation? If not, Should it be amended or even
abandoned? What alternative lines of Constitutional
planning, if any, give promise of providing better care
for the national welfare? Or, as against all these sug-

gestions, may we decide that the source of our political

difficulties lies not in the Constitution,

but in our-
selves?

Have we unwittingly fallen into a way of life
which is inherently hostile both to the Constitution and
to the human values it seeks to enhance and preserve?

If so, how shall we change that way of life to make it
promote, rather than prevent, the creation of freedom...?11

Irt is obvious that such questions demand the recognition that

rust only must alternative responses be examined but the

zassumptions grounding the questions must be identified and

assessed. Teaching that conceives of its objectives in terms

(3f posing questions that are made as profound as possible may
guide humanity toward productive thought, while it is certain

that teaching which contributes only one-sided answers will

‘not, as Ulich once noted. It seems justifiable to conclude

thatthe latter conception of teaching must be judged il—
liberal.

11Meiklejohn, Political Freedom, pp, cit., p. 159.

;V

 

 

208

Surely it is freeing to the intelligence of the sov-

erebmn in recognition of his obligations, to pose questions

vfluch Specifically reveal what is at-issue in understanding

our democratic intentions. Meiklejohn suggested that in

our continuing study of the First Amendment a constant ques-

tion is needed. In view of current conditions of culture,

where forms of belief and communication are in a state of
rapid change, reconsideration of the meaning and intent of

the amendment may occur within the framework of a constant

query--Is the First Amendment just and wise?

It has been stated that Meiklejohn's aim throughout his
social, political and educational writings was not so much
to express novel ideas but to get us to take our beliefs

seriously by attempting to lead us to new insights about

them in relation to current social situations. His endeavor

has been summarized by stating that he attempted to abolish

the dualism between our beliefs or principles and action

systems. It seems to the writer that Meiklejohn's major

theme, no matter what the particular context of concern, was

centered on overcoming this two-fold distinction in the life

of man. His analyses are not totally novel, yet what appears

to the author as Meiklejohn's special importance is the
;persistently present sense in which he identified our prob-

lems and asked us to "take them seriously." He consistently

pressed us to take the domain of action as soberly as the

domaixl<3f theory. He persistently cautioned against the

 

209

result, the disintegration of culture, that occurs when men

are "doutde-minded"; that is, when they view efforts to give

order toilife as "theory versus practice." He consequently

argued that we must have regard for the identify of purpose
which binds theory and action together. He persisted in

pressing us to accept the domain of action as an urgent con-
cern whether we are arguing about whether "communists ought F:
to teach" or whether we are investigating the meanings of

the First Amendment. The major dualism his theory of action

 

intended to resolve encompassed additional concern for dual—

AL'TMYI
4

isms in kind. That between business and democracy, for example,
which results in the not unusual conclusion that the social
and educational programs built in terms of either are very
different in character. 'His insistence that we must recog-
nize the urgency of our human dilemmas was expressed in the
question, "What are the principles we must enact?" The
quest for answers is significant on both the theoretical and
action levels.

Such quests as Meiklejohn required of us do tend to
generate new perceptions. For example, "everyone knows"
that democratic citizenship demands universal education.
But, what about? Meiklejohn demanded that we evaluate this
nominal agreement about citizenship and argued that whatever
“universal education for citizenship" means, it must at least

cause us to face such teaching questions as, "Who are 'we,

the people?'" and “What constitutes the general welfare?"

v .1‘.‘ l

..l I
I'll-
JIIIIIIIIII
lill.

 

210

In terms of the first he deve10ped his concept of "we" as
public persons acting in a corporate capacity under the
denmunis of a continuously-tO-be-created corporate intelli-
gence. The issue of "private, self-interested rights" as
luostile to "public, disinterested Obligations" assumed,

‘under his hand, intensity and cogency. The education of the

ruler, ourselves as the common man, becomes clearer. He did

not, however, consider the question closed. Under changing

social circumstances the question continues

objective.

The second question in fact reemphasizes our particular

need for education for the form Of the state and the demo-

cratic man, the ruler. We need education in order to know

the general welfare (which must change with situations) in

order, in our capacity as agents, to enact the principle of

the common good. In this sense the question that becomes

the organizing objective of teaching is, "How may we promote

the general welfare?" Thus it is that the question, not
answers, becomes the Objective or the purpose of the educa-

tional process. Answers may destroy good questions. ,Answers

may develOp illiberal minds rather than those liberal intel-

lects that the capacity of sovereignty needs, that the form

of the state demands. "How may we promote the common good?"

To answer, "By each man's pursuing his own self-interest,"
destroys educational purpose and, as a "principle" to be en-

acted, the free state itself. Meiklejohn's capacity to make

as an educational

 

211

(fisthmmions of this sort are typical of his way of examin-
ingvflmt appear to be insoluble dilemmas of democracy, yet,
in Unapresent context, make the perplexing question of
temflfing methodologies appropriate for the education of the
sovereign somewhat and significantly less perplexing.

In fairness a further point ought to be considered in
terms of the question of "questions" and the agency of the
It cannot be denied that Meiklejohn was accurate

teacher.
in judging that teaching in a free society which ignores the

controversial questions facing that society is at best ir-

All questions must be addressed and all points
Not

relevant.
in-conflict considered by those who would be rulers.

only, Meiklejohn maintained, must "communism be taught" but

"communists must teach." If we accept Meiklejohn's resolu-

tion of one dilemma, all ideas and recommendations about

human association must be taught, he faces us with another.

Meiklejohn claimed that the teacher cannot be neutral. If

he is doing what he requires of his students that they
properly do in regard for the deve10pment of their intel-

lects, if he requires a "scheme of reference" from them,

too, must be "going somewhere," he must be an

the teacher,
In acting upon the

advocate of some plan of human living.

judgment that we must provide for the criticism as well as

for the advocacy of our institutions, communists must teach.

Where, it will be asked, is that impartial, disinterested

intelligence, which we expect of citizens, to be found in

212

teaching which provides "advocates" whether they be commun-

istscu'democrats? It lies in the process of teaching; in

the flux that this must not be conceptualized by any one

teadnu'as "salesmanship" or "prOpagandizing," as giving

tO'fimastudent Opinions which someone other than himself

MdSheSIfiflltO have. If Meiklejohn's perspective that teach-

ing is a process that must be the art of creating and using

intelligence for improving the human condition seems naive

 

the writer would venture to suggest that

in this situation,
the attempt to institutionalize such a prOposition, as well

as to accommodate all genuine expressions concerning what
is at issue, gives more promise of freeing minds for the

task of sovereignty than those positions which deny students

access to responsible advocacy. The teaching dilemma is to

create and secure that process which indeed does have

authority over us and which is compatible with those authori-

zations which democracy makes about the capabilities the

.ruler needs to develOp. This surely is an issue which we

currenrtly are tending to solve in ways that are unsatis-

factory for meeting the requirements of intelligence in a

free society.
Conclusion
bMaiklejohn's assertion that the obligation of education
is to make society's scheme of action intelligible to the

common man in a sense serves as a focal point for under-

standing his conceptions of liberal teaching, particularly

215

if Unaterm "society" is understood as referring not to a

damxxatic state alone but also to the society of humankind.
(Ranmke something "intelligible" to a man is to free him for
the moral obligation of judging situations and responding to
‘Umarequirements of situations in terms of principled inten-
tions; to make of him, then, a sovereign. It is to free him

to aid in the task of creating a culture which conduces to . _;

the human welfare. Education based upon such a conception

r “f. "

 

is in moral and intellectual contradiction to those educa—
tional procedures based upon some variation involving the
"selling" of ideas or the mechanistic inculcation of knowledge

and values. It was Meiklejohn's evaluation that current

educational plans were predicated on the latter and hence

miseducative for and totally abortive of the deve10pment of

free men.

We are destroying mutual confidence and respect. When
this process reaches its end, SO far as it goes toward
its end, human life has lost its quality as human; it
no longer has virtues; it has no scruples; there are
not "things that may not be done"; necessity has taken
the place of principle; compulsion has taken the place
of Obligation; human living is becoming unscrupulous;
it is becoming, for human beings, not worth living.1

Iflxr Meiklejohn education for free men, liberalizing education,

depended upon our ability to satisfactorily answer the ques-
ti1n1<of whether we can enrich our culture, whether men as
the creators of values, reasonableness, and culture, in

faefl: could recognize the strenuous obligations involved in

 

12Meiklejohn, What Does America Mean? pp. cit., p. 85.

214

"taking thought" about that endeavor. Whatever theories of

education are developed may well be considered alternative
responses to that question, but for Meiklejohn without a

satisfactory response no meaningful theory of education

 

could be developed. An essential aspect of the maturity of
liberal teaching is the recognition that man, in the process
of making himself, makes culture. Both can be brutish or F‘\
wise. A vital part of liberal understanding is the recog-
nition that man's interpretations of his own intentions

 

yields a plan for the human condition which men must be en-
abled to judge worthy or despicable. Has man, in the process
of making himself, created objective conditions of culture

which are worthy eXpressions of human values? Are we or

liberal teaching inquires of its students,

are we not,
Are we or are we not indifferent

indifferent to man's fate?
to what strengthens the human community?
These questions are not the only kind that demand the

attention of free men, but in essence define the nature or

That man is free, in other words,

function of the free man.
who recognizes the validity of the intellectual demands such

queries command, the intellectual requisite for addressing

himself to the issue of what meanings men intend to create

in the world. _A man who does not recognize the moral and

logical validity of such questions is not free and the
liberal content of his education is questionable. It surely

it must be acknowledged, that understanding

is evident by now,

215

Meiklejohn's conception of human nature is fundamental to
understanding his conceptions of the free man, the free

state, and liberal education.

For Meiklejohn that intelligence which identifies the

free man was summed up by the equation of intelligence with

he maintained,

brotherhood. Liberal teaching involves,

coming to the understanding that any act or judgment which

is evaluated as wise or intelligent is at-large a judgment

 

that both men and institutions are expressing what we have

discussed as fraternal regard, as morally caring for the
welfare of one's fellow man. Meiklejohn, in his concern

for the relation of principle and action, saw in the current

strivings of the world for social justice, although be-
wildered as to how justice can be accomplished, evidence of

the intelligence, the kinship, that is apprOpriate for free

men to possess. Education which does not take account of
"note of" the demand for

such movements, which does not make

social justice in its present teaching plans, is not fulfill-

ing obligations appropriate to the aims of liberal education.

Although that intelligence which characterizes the free

man and which is the primary purpose of liberal teaching can

be generalized in terms of its identity to fraternity, the

discrete dimensions of Meiklejohn's conception must be per-

ceived in order to more meaningfully comprehend the aim of

liberal instruction. Certainly the premise that men are

intelligent as they seek to establish reasonable relations

216

wiUIOther men ("reasonable“ in both its logical and moral

flnmm) has to be stressed. The human task, the liberal

task, is to extend man's SCOpe of COOperation to a world-

sfiete where violence will be replaced by reason in the rela—

tions of all men. To be intelligent, to be free, is to

understand that men are engaged in a common enterprise.
The reasonableness of this view for the creation of a world-

state Meiklejohn found reflected in the essential character

of the democratic state. Education is liberal insofar as

 

,Im‘.‘ a ..-

its acts are predicated on this understanding.
It is clear that Meiklejohn was diligent in his attempts
to express in action his theoretical claims that mankind is

a community and that the guiding directive for liberal teach-

ing is found here. His premises about human principles and

human values not only served to justify his premises about a

democratic social order but the search for the meaning,

requirements, and intentions of such principles and values

‘were crucial to his conceptions of liberal education. His

conviction that the free man is one who recognizes that

;principles have authority over him, that he is obligated to
participate both in the process of understanding and in the
rnnacess of enacting them as well as in the process of making
theml (in the sense of creating) relevant to current social

issues, gave critical direction to Meiklejohn's beliefs

almnxt and practices of liberal teaching. For a democratic

socfixaty it is required that finding out what a principle

 

217
neans is prior, though not alternative, to judging its truth

amitmefulness in general as well as in particular circum-

stances.

Meiklejohn maintained that at-large the purpose of the

liberal teacher is to furnish the ideas by means of which

the people as a whole may do their thinking. However, he did

claim that scholars and teachers tend to misconstrue their kn

function, insofar as the schemes of thought they make or

advocate are isolated from unifying democratic intentions, E

 

primarily because teachers and scholars do not tend to see the
question of how or whether they "fit" as a relevant responsi-
bility. The "drift in popular thinking" that is a consequence
of this situation means that what men in a free society ought

to think about, enhancing the common enterprise for the

common good, is compromised or denied. The result is that

men may hold beliefs, may hold ideas, but may not "think"

about them; i.e., may not see the necessity of "making sense"

out of them. The student who has gained ideas or beliefs,

'but who holds them chaotically "in mind" has not been liberal-

ly educated. A society which aSpires to a democratic plan of
human association fails in that aspiration insofar as "minds
drift." Insofar as minds drift they are not free; they

cannot consent as sovereigns must be able to do.

Hopefully it has been made clear that Meiklejohn saw in
tflua form of the state as constitutionally expressed a direc-

tiAna for liberal education. Particularly in view of his

218

analyses of the First Amendment is this comment applicable.

Freakmlof the mind, which he argued that amendment was

about, hardly means freedom to drift.
Assuming with Meiklejohn that the place to discover the

nature of a society is in its schools, the writer tends to

agree with him that what they tend to exemplify is a convic-
tion that there is no common basis for men's reasoning; that
either irrationality tends to be conceived as the basis for
all thinking or authoritarian thoughts are simply issued.
Our systems of social relations and eXpectations about man's

behavior reflect, in the writer's Opinion, what has been

developed in the schools. Our institutional life paradoxi-

cally tends to express a laissez-faire view about ideas and
acts, but it eXpresses as well authoritarian modes of thought

in the persons or processes which are in control of institu-

tional systems. We have "permissive" and "authoritarian"

teachers. We have exhortations to act as reasonable citizens

by being "loyal" and exhortations to be "an individual in

spite of the system." The function of liberal education is

to criticize and challenge these paradoxical manifestations

<of beliefs and values, to understand and to question and to

shiterpret them in View of apprOpriate standards and processes

(If judgment. To make the society rational and moral is "all"

that Meiklejohn asked of liberal instruction. For him,

however, liberal teachers are not to be found just in the

institution formally charged with education. He was con-

vinced of something which is simple to the understanding but

219

\flurm.we have been unable to enact. That is, that within the
intenthons of the Constitution we find principles and purposes
handing upon pll_social institutions. Thus, all institutions
share in the obligation of serving as processes of enlighten-
ment in order for the sovereign to responsibly enact his
obligations. It is too apparent that we have failed thus far
a.

in so constituting our institutions that each serves to en-

hance the intelligence, hence freedom, of the members of

 

1 ~ If A...) .

society.

It is surely clear that the perspective that "freedom is
intelligence" has been central to many conceptions of liberal
education. Meiklejohn's endeavor to equate "acts of sov-
ereignty" with freedom and intelligence was, in the writer's
judgment, exemplary and certainly worth the consideration of
those who are concerned to develOp a significant theory of
education. Those who may find themselves in agreement with
Hook, who conclude that Meiklejohn's collective-kind of con-
ceptions (the democratic will, cultural authority, corporate
freedom and corporate intelligence) are actually totalitarian
in nature obviously will find the understanding expressed in
this dissertation at variance.

This is not to say that the writer does not have ques-
'tLons about aspects of Meiklejohn's position. His judgment
'that history reveals man as striving toward "the better" has

been questioned. This, Of course, raises a companion concern

atxnxt his Rousseau-like account of human nature, for it seems

220

undeniable that while there may be no clear telos in the
human situation, Meiklejohn's "natural man" is good. His
persistently Optimistic View of history perhaps can be
understood in terms of the point that men do have the tools
for structuring "the good life," conceptions of law and
justice, principles of reason and intelligence, and so forth,
but that they in some sense "allow" other, and corrupting,
ideas and processes to deter them from their "natural"
inclinations. This, it must be emphasized, is not to deny
the significance, in the author's view, of Meiklejohn's
premise that the intentions of men are made manifest in cul-
ture. But it does lead to a problem with which Meiklejohn
failed to adequately COpe. That is, in Spite of Meiklejohn's
view of history, the tenor of much of his assessment about
current conditions of culture leads to the conclusion that
the natural goodness of man has been corrupted by the insti-
tutions which man himself has develOped. Meiklejohn's com-
ments about the good men in Congress is a case in point.

It is difficult to state the dilemma, but it involves a bee
lief that Meiklejohn has given inadequate treatment to the
question as to why, when men do know "the good," they fail
to enact it. It is true that he maintains a general response
to this query: That institutions are not enabling. A note
here may be pertinent. It was suggested that some persons
may judge it naive under current conditions of culture to

believe that human beings can choose now to interpret an

221

intention such as freedom fraternally. Meiklejohn was con-

sistent in one sense in holding that it is not naive, since
men do continue to make choices. In another sense his

perspective was not consistent if one can judge that condi-

tions are not presently enabling of the actualization of

such an interpretation. Such a dilemma concomitantly casts

doubt on the degree of the adequacy of Meiklejohn's argument

that men must be reasonable in order for culture to be

reasonable. While it appears reasonable to agree that men

 

must make social change on the basis of intellectual commit-
ments, a more complete accounting of the relation of such

commitments to the on-going social realities or processes of

culture would strengthen Meiklejohn's stance. Meiklejohn

seems to have left us with the problematic conclusion that

men must do what they cannot do.

Perhaps a major concern has to do with Meiklejohn's

conception of the democratic will. It will be recalled that

such a concpetion includes the important point that the

democratic will, fraternal in essence, is something to be

"realized," a goal to be sought, and not a "given" outside

of human experience. There are several considerations which

should be raised. Briefly, it seems probable that it is

easier to determine when a cultural situation does not ex-
press the qualities of fraternity as this has been discussed,

than when a cultural situation possesses the complete quali-

ties of brotherhood. A similar question is raised as we

222

recall the proposition that mankind's goal is to establish

complete agreement between institutions and human inten-

tixnns. The obvious problem is how we know when completeness

has been achieved. To give Meiklejohn his due in terms of

tflmis paradox, that the-absence of a quality appears to be
nmnna readily assessable than the completeness of its presence,
the point Should be reemphasized that a major impetus of

Meiklejohn's endeavor was to foster a recognition of what

happens to the quality of the human condition when it is

 

structured in terms of the "sum of particular wills." The

prOposition that particular wills obscure our realization

of democracy (the democratic will) is, of course, fundamental

to Meiklejohn's thought. Nonetheless, the significance of

that point does not resolve the problem of how we in fact

know when the general, or democratic, will has been made

fully manifest. Although it is true that Meiklejohn insisted

that when thoughtful individuals come to Opposing conclusions

on an issue, in this case the issue of how we know or if we

can know what the democratic will ip_in a particular context,

then they must reason together, the fact that men create

interpretations together does not necessarily yield the

anuflusion that the "true" will has been achieved. This prob—

Ikmtsurely is one that Hook raised. Perhaps the strenuous-

nesscflfthis comment is softened as we remember that Meikle—

yflufls Objective, in part, was to convince men in this

mxflety of the necessity of not only the constant process of

225

evaluating on-going cultural conditions, but of seraching
for increasingly adequate meanings and methods of evalua-
tion Of the democratic will.

Similar concerns can be raised in regard to the con-
cept of the "common good" or the "general welfare." Here,
too, it seems probable that Meiklejohn was in some sort of
quandry, which the author nowhere found resolved, concerning
the relation of particular goods to the common good. This
issue develOps, as we recall, from the discussion of his
theory of representation in which he asserted that any agency
which intends to represent the peOple must give equal con-
sideration to the private interests of every individual and
every group. This, as maintained, is not a consistent point.
The author trusts that She is not reading too much into this
inconsistency when she suggests that perhaps what is at
stake is a concern about particular goods and how they affect
the common good itself. ‘If so, one wishes that Meiklejohn
had discussed it in these terms rather than appearing to
deny, however momentarily, the distinctions he had made
between "public" and "private" persons.

An additional consideration should be noted. In the
context of Meiklejohn's claim that teachers cannot be, and
ought not be, neutral, it must be acknowledged that his en-
deavors to persuade us that it is within the process of
teaching that Objectivity is found are more adequate in the

descriptions of pedagogical techniques encountered in his

224

accounts of the Amherst and Wisconsin eXperiments than in
his brief theoretical considerations. The writer wishes to
stress the point that a thorough eXpression of a theory of
process, given the condition of advocacy, would be valuable.

Finally, although the writer finds that some of her own
existential inclinations go against her own essentially
humanistic thinking, that surely is not Meiklejohn's fault
and, of course, represents a different, if not genuine,
dilemma than Hook expressed. The issue of totalitarianism
at base seems to be an issue regarding the essentially
pluralistic nature of human living versus a viewpoint which
sees human living as essentially unitary in nature. These
dissimilar perceptions, Of course, give different "reasons
for" directing educational aims and processes. Although it
seems as if it ought to be theoretically possible in a
democratic state to develOp a common theory of education,
especially if we agree to look to that instrument, the Consti-
tution, which should Offer common grounds for authorizing a
public theory of education, the author sees no resolution
to the problem.

The writer must conclude by acknowledging that this study
has exhausted neither the tOpic of Meiklejohn's practicing
contributions to education in the twentieth century nor of
his theoretical contributions, particularly as the latter
was addressed to the increasingly discrete problem of the

education of the sovereign. However, it is hOped that this

225

view of his work in the service of public education as well
as-an attempt to develOp a synthesis of the major aspects
of his social and educational theory will contribute to an
understanding of Meiklejohn's important contributions to

liberal educational deve10pments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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. Philospphy. Reading with a Purpose Series, 14.
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229

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