Speaker 1: Chapter seven of The American Credo by H. L. Mankin
Speaker 1: and George gen Nathan. This LibriVox recording is in the
Speaker 1: public domain. No doubt we should apologize for writing even
Speaker 1: so so long a preface to so succinct a book.
Speaker 1: The one excuse we can think of is that, having
Speaker 1: read it, one need not read the book. That book,
Speaker 1: as we have said, may strike the superficial as jocular,
Speaker 1: but an actual fact, it is a very serious and
Speaker 1: even profound composition, not addressed to the casual reader, but
Speaker 1: to the scholar. Its preparation involves a great diligence, and
Speaker 1: its study is not to be undertaken lightly. What the
Speaker 1: psychologist will find to admire in it, however, is not
Speaker 1: its learning and painstaking, its laborious eredition, but its compression.
Speaker 1: It establishes, we believe, a new and clearer method for
Speaker 1: a science long run to trigidity and flatulence. Perhaps it
Speaker 1: may even be said to set up an entirely new science,
Speaker 1: to wit, that of descriptive sociological psychology. We believe that
Speaker 1: this fields will attract many men of inquiring mind hereafter
Speaker 1: and yield a valuable crop of important facts. The experimental
Speaker 1: method intrinsically so sound and useful, has been much abused
Speaker 1: by orthodox psychologists. It inevitably leads them into a trackless
Speaker 1: maze of meaningless tables and diagrams. They keep their eyes
Speaker 1: so resolutely upon the intellectual process that they pay no
Speaker 1: heed to the primary intellectual materials. Nevertheless, it must be
Speaker 1: obvious that the conclusions that a man comes to, the
Speaker 1: emotions that he and the crazes that sway him are
Speaker 1: of much less significance than the fundamental assumptions upon which
Speaker 1: they are all based. There has been, indeed, some discussion
Speaker 1: of those fundamental assumptions of late. We have heard, for example,
Speaker 1: many acute discourses upon the effects produced upon the whole
Speaker 1: thinking of the German people, peasants and professors alike by
Speaker 1: the underlying German assumption that the late Kaiser was anointed
Speaker 1: of God and hence above all ordinary human responsibility. We
Speaker 1: have heard talk too of the curious Irish axiom that
Speaker 1: there is a mysterious something in the nature of things
Speaker 1: giving the Irish people an indefeasible right to govern Ireland
Speaker 1: as they please, regardless of the safety of their next
Speaker 1: door neighbors. And we have heard many outlandish principles of
Speaker 1: the same sort from political theorists e g. Regarding the
Speaker 1: inalienable right of democracy to prevail over all other forms
Speaker 1: of government, and the inalienable right of all national groups,
Speaker 1: however small, to self determination. Well, here is an attempt
Speaker 1: to assemble, in convenient form, without comment or interpretation, some
Speaker 1: of the fundamental beliefs of the largest body of human
Speaker 1: beings now under one flag in Christendom. It is but
Speaker 1: a beginning. The field is barely platted. It must be
Speaker 1: explored to the last furlong, and all its fantastic and
Speaker 1: fascinating treasures unearthed and examined, before ever there can be
Speaker 1: any accurate understanding of the mind of the American people.
Speaker 1: George Gene Nathan, H. L. Mankin, New York, nineteen twenty.
Speaker 1: End of chapter seven read by Audriyann Prevost. End of
Speaker 1: the American Credo by H. L. Mankin and George Jean
Speaker 1: Nathan