The book contains the following works of John Erskine, Ph.D: The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, The Call to Service, The Mind of Shakespeare and Magic and Wonder in Literature.
The title essay, originally read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Amherst College, is reprinted with the editor's courteous permission from the Hibbert Journal. The last essay also was read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Amherst College, and before the Phi Beta Kappa Alumni of New York City.
In different ways the four essays set forth one theme — the moral use to which intelligence might be put, in rendering our admirations and our loyalties at once more sensible and more noble.
