(Dr. Crane is back in his Monday slot this week.  With so many people doubting or being encouraged to doubt the truth of the November 3 election results, we thought it appropriate to share his thoughts on truth and his answer to a question—)

WHAT TO DO

An interesting letter comes to me from a man who says that he has had enough of my finding fault with this, that, and the other in society, in law, and in customs; that he is aweary of this aimless iconoclasm; and that he wishes that I would come out flat-footed and tell him and the world precisely what to do to remedy the injustice and folly of mankind..

I could comply with his requests. I or any other opinionated man could in a half-hour tell the world just what it ought to do.

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Why, so can I, or so can any man;

But will they come when you do call for them?”

The trouble lies here: that neither the individual man nor mankind in general becomes better by TELLING.

Didactic teaching may do some good, but only in a very roundabout way; by familiarizing the hearer with helpful principles and ideas.

If an angel from God were to appear and tell the world precisely what to do, and if every man and woman believed him, they still would not, and could not, do what he said.

The reason is a psychological one. It is that the net result of any truth you had a man is the product of that truth MIXED WITH THE STUFF ALREADY IN HIS MIND.  Your information is not ADDED to his, it is DILUTED by his.

It all depends on the kind of mind, the whole set of ideas, habits, temperament, and so on with which the imparted truth is compounded.

Hence we see that progress is a matter of growth; it is slow; it moves by waves a generation apart. Old notions and inborn prejudices die hard, and rule us a long while after they are dead.

The human mind today is haunted by a swarm of ghosts of ancient frauds. Think of how many people today still believe in the divine right of kings, in the “natural” right of inheriting property, in the supremacy of Mahomet, and that criminals can be cured by punishment!

Some day, said Victor Hugo, children will be amazed to hear that there were kings in Europe. And some day, we may say, children will look back with incredulity upon our own era, where mothers can be seen content with their happy children and not turn a hand to rescue the myriad other children from stunting toil.

Many a thinker has thought out an elaborate plan for smashing things and composing them all anew. But not so comes the Golden Age.

It is a tree growing, not a house building. Age after age things get better, as the long rising of the tide.

Truth is like a lump of leaven which a woman puts in a measure of meal “until the whole is leavened.”

All we can do is keep on declaring the truth as we see it; putting in the leaven and waiting. We are digging about the truth, watering and cultivating it.  We do not “make’ it; the gardener does not “make” apples.”

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