Has the intellect a function? : a lecture given at the institute of pathology, St. Mary's Hospital, on June 20 / by Wilfred Trotter.

  • Wilfred Trotter
Date:
[1939]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Has the intellect a function? : a lecture given at the institute of pathology, St. Mary's Hospital, on June 20 / by Wilfred Trotter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    for direct application in daily life than is the scientific. Its rationalism and its confident faith in abstraction would in themselves disqualify it as a guide in the real world. In judging its capacity for this part however we are in a stronger position than we are with regard to science. The scientific method has never been tried in public affairs; the philosophic method has been tried with a persistence and self- devotion worthy of the higherinsects. Utilitarianism, Hegelianism, dialectical materialism, totalitarianism are all characteristic products of the philosophic method ; however rational and self-consistent they may be, they do not seem very helpful in causing people to think for themselves. Our search for a method that shall assist the useful contemplation of daily experience has thus had a totally negative result. The common tendency to regard destructive criticism as always easy and generally reprehensible is one that I do not share ; indeed I doubt if it could be acquiesced in by any sensible person making a frank survey of the intellectual world of today. We cannot but be struck by the remarkable prevalence of systems of doctrine, by their loudness, their confusion, and their deleterious effect on conduct. In all these systems the most indulgent examination will find little evidence of really enterprising thought, but it will find a great deal of reconditioned lumber, at its best of a low order of reality and now used to justify the lazier, the uglier and the baser inclinations of the human spirit. At no time in the history of the intellect has the sanitary work of destructive criticism been more needful. CORRECTION OF THOUGHT Although one might be reluctant to accept the orthodox view that destruction is justified only as a preliminary to rebuilding, we can all agree that the one is an excellent preparation for the other. If we have learnt to distrust the validity of the opera- tions of the intellect, we at least have gained the advantage of looking at its proceedings with a new objectivity. If we have been expelled from our rationalistic paradise, at least the world is all before us where to choose. To throw the helve after the hatchet is proverbially the temptation to which disappointment exposes us. It is not surprising therefore that we are some- times advised, by what seems to be a growing body of opinion, actually to abandon the use of reason.
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