4.
Responsibility. By responsibility as an element in intellectual
attitude is meant the disposition to consider in advance the probable
consequences of any projected step and deliberately to accept them: to
accept them in the sense of taking them into account, acknowledging them
in action, not yielding a mere verbal assent. Ideas, as we have seen,
are intrinsically standpoints and methods for bringing about a solution
of a perplexing situation; forecasts calculated to influence responses.
It is only too easy to think that one accepts a statement or believes a
suggested truth when one has not considered its implications; when one
has made but a cursory and superficial survey of what further things one
is committed to by acceptance. Observation and recognition, belief and
assent, then become names for lazy acquiescence in what is externally
presented.
It would be much better to have fewer facts and truths in
instruction—that is, fewer things supposedly accepted,—if a
smaller number of situations could be intellectually worked out to the
point where conviction meant something real—some identification of
the self with the type of conduct demanded by facts and foresight of
results. The most permanent bad results of undue complication of school
subjects and congestion of school studies and lessons are not the worry,
nervous strain, and superficial acquaintance that follow (serious as
these are), but the failure to make clear what is involved in really
knowing and believing a thing. Intellectual responsibility means severe
standards in this regard. These standards can be built up only through
practice in following up and acting upon the meaning of what is
acquired.
Intellectual thoroughness is thus another name for the attitude we
are considering. There is a kind of thoroughness which is almost purely
physical: the kind that signifies mechanical and exhausting drill upon
all the details of a subject. Intellectual thoroughness is seeing a
thing through. It depends upon a unity of purpose to which details are
subordinated, not upon presenting a multitude of disconnected details.
It is manifested in the firmness with which the full meaning of the
purpose is developed, not in attention, however "conscientious" it may
be, to the steps of action externally imposed and directed.
