Some of us have no means of getting good mental food, and would not know what to select and what to reject if we had. Others, and these are the overwhelming majority, have no power to discriminate between the true and the false, the rational and the irrational, between that which strengthens the powers of the mind and that which weakens or perverts them. We take in cheap or worthless mental food just as we put cheap or worthless stuff into our stomachs. We take in that which is easy and pleasant to the taste--that is, we patronize the intellectual pastry cooks and confectioners too liberally. Or, we go to the purveyors of the strong waters of passion and prejudice, and under the influence of such whiskies and brandies imagine ourselves beings of extraordinary and fine mentality.
There is as much, indeed, there is greater, cause for alarm over the gastronomic than over the mental follies. But neither kind is evidence that we are on the down grade. We are more alert and wiser all the time in matters of physical health, despite our own appetites and foolish inclinations and lazy disinclinations, despite the pretentious ignorance of the medical profession and the shrewd chicanery of the quacks. In the same manner we are more and more alive to the importance of mental health, of the well-fed, well-exercised brain; and this improvement goes steadily forward, despite the harmful effects of alleged literature and drama, despite the pretentious ignorance of our regularly constituted teachers, despite the energetic educational quackeries of false learning, false culture and false taste. Intelligence will spread; Democracy will compel.
A hundred years ago small indeed was the part of the human race that could be reached by an appeal to the reason. To-day in many parts of the civilized world advances begin to be made not alone by appeals to empty stomachs, by shouts about full and empty dinner pails, but by real intellectual force. There are even a few rare but highly significant instances of masses of men being induced to sacrifice a small immediate good to gain a remoter larger good. That is, the masses begin to show signs of that same intelligent foresight which created and maintained class rule in times past, which makes some successful far beyond their fellows. And those who are so greatly concerned by the vast concentration of machinery and capital in a few hands fail to give proper consideration to the two most important points, more important far than the evils of concentration of wealth and power: