Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/91

 of the happenings it handles, but its very fragmentation evades some of the dangers that beset the longer, formal, more scientific, and philosophical expositions which claim the seats of intellectual authority. For thinking is in itself a brief fragmentary process, and the piecing together of these fragments into a system of thought, a science, or a philosophy, is seldom (never in the sphere of human conduct) the purely objective, disinterested, reasonable process it professes to be. A completely consistent history, or still more a philosophy, is invalidated, partly because it overrates the rationality of evolutionary thinking, partly because it is hampered by deficiencies of the instrument of language invented for purely practical purposes of communication.

If, however, we agree that nearly all thinking is done in brief spurts, mostly suggested or directed by some personal experience or current event, and is accompanied by some emotional activity which helps to determine its aims and values, we shall recognize a unique position for the best kind of journalism as current commentary. When we realize life in terms of values, we shall realize how the source of value and the processes of relation differs not only in different persons but in the same person with the changes and chances of life. The philosophic demand for absolute values, in truth, beauty, and goodness, lose much of their authority and meaning when confronted with the actual concrete experiences of life. It is no idle taunt