A.A. Milne is best-known today as the author of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, but he also had his moments are a serious essayist. In a 1940 essay, he offered this comment on the first-rate, second-rate, and third-rate mind. It seemed useful to me to pass along during the present climate of intense partisanship, where comments are often judged by what side you seem to be on, rather than on what you have actually said. Milne wrote:
I wrote somewhere once that the third-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking. With equal truth it may be said that a first-rate mind is not one which does not remember the past, nor is it one which cannot forget the past; it is a mind which will use the past but not be ordered by it. It is a mind independent of everybody and everything but the facts in front of it. It is as little perturbed to find itself sharing a thought with the simple as it is elated to find itself sharing a thought with the subtle. It will fight for what it has discovered to be right …
(In the comforting shadow of these parentheses, I will say that I aspire to be a first-rate mind in Milne’s sense, but with only partial success. As a friend of mine used to say, whenever you pick a side on a given issue, it’s disturbing to notice that some of your co-believers are on your side for very different and sometimes disturbing reasons.)
The broader context for Milne’s comment may be of interest. It appears in a short essay called “War with Honour,” from the McMillan War Pamphlets in 1940. Milne referred to himself as a “practical Pacifist.” He wrote: “I am still a Pacifist, but I hope a practical Pacifist. I still want to abolish war.” But in 1940, he argued that, paradoxically, improving the practical chances for the abolition of war required fighting against Nazi Germany. Here’s an unindented slice from Milne’s essay about “Crying ‘Wolf’”:
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The fable of the boy who amused himself by crying “Wolf!” so often that the villagers no longer believed him when the wolf came is used, like all fables, to point a moral. The moral is directed against the boy. “Silly boy! See what happened to him!” But the moral might equally be directed against the villagers. Silly villagers! See what happened to them! For, though the boy may have been no great loss, they also lost their flocks. Did they deserve to lose them? Let us consider the reasoning which went on in a villager’s mind.
1. This boy said “Wolf!” three times when there was no wolf.
2. It is therefore certain that there is no wolf this time.
Could any reasoning be sillier? What he should have thought was:
1. The boy is only there because it is extremely likely that a wolf will come one day.
2. It is certain that, when the wolf does come, the boy will call out.
3. It is not certain, after the thrashing I gave him yesterday, that he will call out again if the wolf doesn’t come.
4. Therefore the chances are that the wolf is here.
And even if it turned out to be another false alarm, the reasoning would be just as true at the next alarm. Stupid, stupid villagers!
To many Pacifists (indeed, to all who write to me) the great stumbling-block in the way is the fact that “Wolf!” has been cried before.
“A war to end war?” they say derisively. “You said that of the last war!”
“Hitler is the devil?” they jeer. “You said that of the Kaiser!”
“This war is different from any other war? Why, you yourself pointed out that militarists said that of every war!”
“We are fighting for Freedom? How you derided these fights for Freedom!”
“We are fighting for God? How fiercely you attacked the Churches for identifying God with their country!”
It is a very good retort; it would carry the house in any school debating society; but it doesn’t prove that there is no wolf.
I wrote somewhere once that the third-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking. With equal truth it may be said that a first-rate mind is not one which does not remember the past, nor is it one which cannot forget the past; it is a mind which will use the past but not be ordered by it. It is a mind independent of everybody and everything but the facts in front of it. It is as little perturbed to find itself sharing a thought with the simple as it is elated to find itself sharing a thought with the subtle. It will fight for what it has discovered to be right, as happily in the serried ranks of the Blimps as in the lonely company of the Shaws.
Even though all the stupid militarists cried “Wolf!” when there was no wolf, yet the wolf is at our door now. Even though all the clever Pacifists said that there was no wolf, when there was no wolf, yet the wolf is at our door now. If we cling to the theory that wolves are delightful creatures when treated kindly as cubs, then perhaps this one wasn’t treated kindly as a cub. If we proved conclusively six years ago that wolves never came as far west as England, then perhaps this one has escaped from a zoo, or is some foul hybrid unknown to zoology. What does it matter how right or wrong we were in the past? There is death, and worse than death, waiting for ourselves and our children. What do we do?
