Philosophy and the Social Problem
CHAPTER IV
THE READER SPEAKS
I
The Democratization of Aristocracy
And now we stop for objections.
“This plan is a hare-brained scheme for a new priesthood and a new aristocracy. It would put a group of college professors and graduates into a position where they could do almost as they please. You think you avoid this by telling the gentlemen that they must limit themselves to the statement of fact; but if you knew the arts of journalism you would not make so naïve a distinction between airing opinions and stating facts. When a man buys up a newspaper what he wants to do is not so much to control the editorials as to ‘edit’ the news,--that is, to select the facts which shall get into print. It’s wonderful what lies you can spread without telling lies. For example, if you want to hurt a public man, you quote all his foolish speeches and ignore his wise ones; you put his mistakes into head-lines and hide his achievements in a corner. I will guarantee to prove anything I like, or anything I don’t like, just by stating facts. So with your Society for Social Research; it would become a great political, rather than an educational, organization; it would almost unconsciously select its information to suit its hobbies. Why, the thing is psychologically impossible. If you want something to be true you will be half blind and half deaf to anything that obstructs your desire; that is the way we’re made. And even if nature did not attend to this, money would: as soon as your society exercised real power on public opinion it would be bought up, in a gentle, sleight-o’hand way, by some economic group; a few of the more influential members of the Society would be ‘approached,’ some ‘present’ would be made, and justice would have another force to contend with. No; your Society won’t do.”
* * * * *
Well, let us see. Here you have a body of 5000 men; rather a goodly number for even an American millionaire to purchase. They wish to investigate, say, the problem of birth-control; what do they do? They vote, without nominations, for six of their number to manage the investigation; the six men receiving the highest vote investigate and write out a report. Now if any report were published which misstated facts, or omitted important items, the fault would at once diminish the repute and influence of the Society. Let merely the suspicion get about that these reports are unfair, and the Society would begin to decay. That is, the power of the Society would grow with its fairness and fall with its unfairness,--a very happy arrangement. The fear of this fall in influence would be the best incentive to impartial reports. Every committee would feel that the future of the Society depended on the fairness of its own report; and every man on every committee would hesitate before making himself responsible for the disrepute of the Society; he would feel himself on trial before his fellow-members, and would halt himself in the natural slide into partiality.
Not that he would always succeed; men are men. But it is reasonable to expect that men working under these conditions would be considerably more impartial than the average newspaper. Again, who is as impartial as the scientist? One cannot do much in science without a stern control of the personal equation; to describe protozoa, for example, as one would like them to be, is no very clever way of attaining repute in protozoölogy. This is not so true in the social as in the physical sciences, though even in this new field scientific fairness and accuracy are rapidly increasing. One can get more reliable and impartial reports of an industrial situation,--_e.g._, of the Colorado troubles,--from the scientific investigators than from either side to the controversy. The very deficiencies of the student type--incapacity for decisions or for effective methods in action--involve a compensatory grasp of understanding and impartiality of attitude. Our best guarantee against dishonesty is not virtue but intelligence, and our Society is supposed to be a sort of distilled intelligence.
That the scheme savors of aristocracy is not to its discredit. We need aristocracy, in the sense of better methods for giving weight to superior brains; we need a touch of Plato in our democracy. After all, the essence of the plan, as we have said, is the democratization of Plato and Nietzsche and Carlyle; the intelligent man gets more political power, but only through the mechanism of democracy. His greater power comes not by his greater freedom to do what he pleases despite the majority, but by improved facilities for enlightening and converting the majority. Democracy, ideally, means only that the aristocracy is periodically elected and renewed; and this is a plan whereby the aristocrats--the really best--shall be more clearly seen to be so. Furthermore, the plan avoids the great defect of Plato’s scheme,--that philosophers are not fitted for executive and administrative work, that those skilled to see are very seldom also able to do. Here the philosopher, the man who gets at the truth, rules, but only indirectly, and without the burdens of office and execution. And indeed it is not the philosopher who rules, but truth. The liberator is made king.
II
The Professor as Buridan’s Ass
“You have anticipated my objection, and cleverly twisted it into an argument. But that would be too facile an escape; you must face more squarely the fact that your professors are mere intellectualist highbrows, incapable of understanding the real issues involved in our social war, and even more incapable of suggesting practical ways out. The more you look the more you see; the more you see, the less you do. You think that reflection leaves you peace of mind; it doesn’t, it leaves your mind in pieces. The intellectual is like Dr. Buridan’s ass: he is so careful to stand in the middle that he never gives a word of practical advice, for fear that he will compromise himself and fracture a syllogism. The trouble is that we think too much, not too little; we make thinking a substitute for action. Really, as Rousseau argued, thinking is unnatural; what the world needs is men who can make up their minds and then march on, almost in blinders, to a goal. We know enough, we know too much; and surely we have a plethora of investigating committees. A committee is just a scientific way of doing nothing. Your plan would flood the country with committees and leave courage buried under facts. You should call your organization a Society for Talky-talk.”
The only flaw in this argument is that it does not touch the proposal. What is suggested is not that the Society take action or make programmes, much less execute them; we ask our professors merely to do for a larger public, and more thoroughly and systematically, what we are glad to have them do for a small number of us in college and university. Action is _ex hypothesi_ left to others; the function of the researcher is quite simply to look and tell us what he sees. That he is a highbrow, an intellectual, and even a Buridan’s ass, does not interfere with his seeing; nobody ever argued that Buridan’s ass was blind.
We forget that seeing is itself an art. Some of us have specialized in the art, and have naturally failed to develop cleverness in practical affairs. But that does not mean that our special talent cannot be used by the community, any more than Sir Oliver Lodge’s fondness for celestial exploration makes us reject his work on electricity. Thinking is itself a form of action, and not the easiest nor the least effective. It is true that “if you reflect too much you will never accomplish anything,” but if you reflect too little you will accomplish about as much. We make headway only by the head way. Action without forethought tends to follow a straight line; but in life the straight line is often the longest distance between two points, because, as Leonardo said, the straightest line offers the greatest resistance. Thought is roundabout, and loves flank attacks. The man of action rushes into play courageously, succeeds now, fails then; and sooner or later wishes--if he lives to wish--that he could think more. The increasing dependence of industry on scientific research, and of politics on expert investigators, shows how the world is coming to value the man whose specialty is seeing. Faith in intellect, as Santayana says, “is the only faith yet sanctioned by its fruit.”[308] The two most important men in America just now are, or have been, college professors. To speak still more boldly: the greatest single human source of good in our generation is the “intellectual” researcher and professor. The man to be feared above all others is the man who can see.
III
Is Information Wanted?
“But your whole scheme shows a very amateur knowledge of human nature. You seem to think you can get people interested in fact. You can’t; fact is too much against their interest. If the facts favor their wish, they are interested; if not, they forget them. The hardest thing in the world is to listen to truth that threatens to frustrate desire. That is why people won’t listen to your reports, unless you tell them what they want to hear. They will--and perhaps excusably--prefer the bioscope to your embalmed statistics; just as they will prefer to read _The Family Herald_ rather than the subtleties recommended by the Mutual Admiration Society which you would make out of our men of letters. You can investigate till you are blue in the face, and all you will get out of it won’t be worth the postage stamps you use. Public opinion doesn’t follow fact, it follows desire; people don’t vote for a man because he is supported by ‘truth’ but because he promises to do something they like. And the man who makes the biggest promises to the biggest men will get office ninety-nine times out of a hundred, no matter what the facts are. What counts is not truth but money.”
* * * * *
This is the basic difficulty. Is it worth while to spread information? Think how much information is spread every week in Europe and America;--the world remaining the while as “wicked” as it probably ever was. Public opinion is still, it seems, as Sir Robert Peel described it to be: “a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs,”[309]--particularly the paragraphs. Once we thought that the printing-press was the beginning of democracy, that Gutenberg had enfranchised the world. Now it appears that print and plutocracy get along very well together. Nevertheless the hope of the weak lies in numbers and in information; in democracy and in print. “The remedy for the abuses of public opinion is not to discredit it but to instruct it.”[310] The cure for misstatements is better statements. If the newspapers are used to spread falsehood that is no reason why newspapers should not be used to spread truth. After all, the spread of information has done many things,--killed dogma, sterilized many marriages, and even prevented wars; and there is no reason why a further spread may not do more valuable things than any yet done. It has been said, so often that we are apt to admit it just to avoid its repetition, that discussion effects nothing. But indeed nothing else effects anything. Whatever is done without information and discussion is soon undone, must be soon undone; all that bears time is that which survives the test of thought. All problems are at last problems in information: to find out just how things stand is the only finally effective way of getting at anything.
As to the limited number of persons who would be reached by the reports, let us not ask too much. There is no pretence here that the great mass of the people would be reached; no doubt these would go on living what Wells calls the “normal social life.” But these people do not count for constructive purposes; they divide about evenly in every election. The men who do count--the local leaders, the clergymen, the lecturers, the teachers, the union officials, the newspaper men, the “agitators,” the arch-rebels and the arch-Tories,--all these men will be reached; and the information given will strengthen some and weaken others, and so play its effective part in the drama of social change. Each one of these men will be a center for the further distribution of information. Imagine a new monthly with a country-wide circulation of one million _voters_ (that is, a general circulation of five million); would such a periodical have power?--would not millions be given to control it? Well, here we have more power, because not so concentrated in a few editorial hands, not so easily purchaseable, and based on better intellect and repute. The money that would be paid at any time for the control of a periodical of such influence would finance our Society for many years.
It is impossible to believe that such a spread of knowledge as is here suggested would do nothing to elevate the moral and political life of the country. Consider the increased scrupulousness with which a Congressman would vote if he knew that at the next election his record would be published in cold print in a hundred newspapers, over the name of the Society for Social Research. Consider the effect, on Congressional appropriations for public buildings, of a plain statement of the population and size of the towns which require such colossal edifices for their mail. Publicity, it has been said, is the only cure for bad motives. Consider the stimulus which such reports would give to political discussion everywhere. Hardly a dispute occurs which is not based upon insufficient acquaintance with the facts; here would be information up to date, ready to give the light which dispels the heat. Men would turn to these reports all the more willingly because the reports were pledged to confine themselves to fact. Men would find here no attacks, no argument, no theory or creed; it would be refreshing, in some ways, to bathe the mind, hot with contention, in these cool streams of fact, and to emerge cleansed of error and filled with the vitality of truth. We have spent so much time attacking what we hate that we have not stopped to tell people what we like; if we would only affirm more and deny less there would be less of cross-purpose in the world. And information is affirmation. It would not open the wounds of controversy so much as offer points of contact; and in the light of fact, enemies might see that their good lay for the most part on a common road. If you want to change a foe into a friend (or, some cynic will say, a friend into a foe), give him information.
IV
Finding Mæcenas
“Well; suppose you are right. Suppose information, as you say, is king. How are you going to do it? Do you really think you will get some benevolent millionaire to finance you? And will you, like Fourier, wait in your room every day at noon for the man who will turn your dream into a fact?”
* * * * *
What we tend to forget about rich men is that besides being rich they are men. There are a surprising number of them--particularly those who have inherited money--who are eager to return to the community the larger part of their wealth, if only they could be shown a way of doing it which would mean more than a change of pockets. Merely to give to charity is, in Aristotle’s phrase, to pour water into a leaking cask. What such men want is a way of increasing intelligence; they know from hard experience that in the end intelligence is the quality to be desired and produced. They have spent millions, perhaps billions, on education; and this plan of ours is a plan for education. If it is what it purports to be, some one of these men will offer to finance it.
And not only one. Let the beginnings of our Society be sober and efficient, let its first investigations be thorough and intelligent, let its initial reports be impartial, succinct, illuminating and simple, and further help will come almost unasked. After a year of honest and capable work our Society would find itself supported by rather a group of men than by one man; it might conceivably find itself helped by the state, at the behest of the citizens. What would prevent a candidate for governor from declaring his intention that should he be elected he would secure an annual appropriation for our Society?--and why should not the voters be attracted by such a declaration? Why should not the voters demand such a declaration?
Nor need we fear that a Society so helped by the rich man and the state would turn into but one more instrumentality of obstructionism. Not that such an organization of intelligence would be “radical”: the words “radical” and “conservative” have become but instruments of calumny, and truth slips between them. But in the basic sense of the word our Society would be extremely radical; for there is nothing so radical, so revolutionary, as just to tell the truth, to say what it is you see. That surely is to go to the radix of the thing. And truth has this advantage, that it is discriminately revolutionary: there are some things old to which truth is no enemy, just as there are some things new which will melt in the glare of fact. Let the fact say.
This is the final faith: that truth will make us free, so far as we can ever be free. Let the truth be published to the world, and men separated in the dark will see one another, and one another’s purposes, more clearly, and with saner understanding than before. The most disastrous thing you can do to an evil is to describe it. Let truth be told, and the parasite will lose his strength through shame, and meanness will hide its face. Only let information be given to all and freely, and it will be a cleansing of our national blood; enmity will yield to open and honest opposition, where it will not indeed become coöperation. All we need is to see better. Let there be light.
V
The Chance of Philosophy
“One more objection before you take the money. And that is: What on earth has all this to do with philosophy? I can understand that to have economists on your investigating committees, and biologists, and psychologists, and historians, would be sensible; but what could a philosopher do? These are matters for social science, not for metaphysics. Leave the philosophers out and some of us may take your scheme seriously.”
* * * * *
It is a good objection, if only because it shows again the necessity for a new kind of philosopher. Merely to make such an objection is to reënforce the indictment brought above against the philosopher as he is. But what of the philosopher as he might be?
What might the philosopher be?
Well, first of all, he would be a living man, and not an annotator of the past. He would have grown freely, his initial spark of divine fire unquenched by scholastic inflexibilities of discipline and study. He would have imbibed no sermons, but his splendid curiosity would have found food and encouragement from his teachers. He would have lived in and learned to love the country and the city; he would be at home in the ploughed fields as well as in the centres of learning; he would like the cleansing solitude of the woods and yet too the invigorating bustle of the city streets. He would be brought up on Plato and Thucydides, Leonardo and Michelangelo, Bacon and Montaigne; he would study the civilization of Greece and that of the Renaissance on all sides, joining the history of politics, economics, and institutions with that of science, literature, and philosophy; and yet he would find time to study his own age thoroughly. He would be interested in life, and full of it; he would jump into campaigns, add his influence carefully to movements he thought good, and help make the times live up more nearly to their possibilities. He would not shut himself up forever in laboratories, libraries, and lecture rooms; he would live more widely than that. He would be of the earth earthly, of the world worldly. He would not talk of ideals in the abstract and do nothing for them in the concrete; above all else in the world he would abhor the kind of talk that is a refuge from the venture and responsibility of action. He would not only love wisdom, he would live it.
But we must not make our ideal philosopher too repulsively perfect. Let us agree at least to this, that a man who should know the social disciplines, and not merely one science, would be of help in some such business as we have been proposing; and if we suppose that he has not only knowledge but wisdom, that his acquaintance with the facts of science is matched by his knowledge of life, that through fellowship with genius in Greece and Florence he has acquired a fund of wisdom which needs but the nourishment of living to grow richer from day to day,--then we are on the way to seeing that this is the sort of man our Society would need above all other sorts of men. Such philosophers would be worthy to guide research and direct the enlightenment of the world; such philosophers might be to their generation what Socrates and Plato were to their generations and Francis Bacon to his; such a philosophy, in Nietzsche’s words, might rule!
This is the chance of philosophy. It may linger further in that calm death of social ineffectiveness in which we see it sinking; or it may catch the hands of the few philosophers who insist on focusing thought on life, and so regain the position which it alone is fitted to fill. Unless that position is filled, and properly, all the life of the world is zigzag and fruitless,--what we have called the logic-chopping life; and unless that position is filled philosophy too is logic-chopping, zigzag, and fruitless, and turns away from life men whom life most sorely needs. There are some among us, even some philosophers among us, who are eager to lead the way out of bickering into discussion, out of criticism into construction, out of books into life. We must keep a keen eye for such men, and their beginnings; and we must strengthen them with our little help. Philosophy is too divinely splendid a thing to be kept from the most divine of things,--creation. Some of us love it as the very breath of our lives; it is our vital medium, without which life would be less than vegetation; and we will not rest so long as the name _philosopher_ means anything less aspiring and inspiring than it did with Plato. Science flourishes and philosophy languishes, because science is honest and philosophy sycophantic, because science touches life and helps it, while philosophy shrinks fearfully and helplessly away. If philosophy is to live again, it must rediscover life, it must come back into the cave, it must come down from the “real” and transcendental world and play its venturesome part in the hard and happy world of efforts and events.
It is the chance of philosophy.
CONCLUSION
See now, in summary, how modest a suggestion it is, grandiloquent though it may have seemed. We propose no _’ism_, we make no programme; we suggest, tentatively, a method. We propose a new start, a new tack, a new approach,--not to the exclusion of other approaches, but to their assistance. If this thing should be done, it would not mean that other gropers toward a better world would have to stand idle; it would but give light to them that walk in darkness. And it would make possible a more generous coöperation among the different currents in the stream of reconstructive thought.
We are a little discouraged to-day; we lovers of the new have become doubtful of the object of our love. Perhaps--we sometimes feel--all this effort is a vain circling in the mist; perhaps we do not advance, but only move. Our faith in progress is dimmed. We even tire of the “social problem”; we have tried so many ways, knocked at so many doors, and found so little of that which we sought. Sometimes, in the lassitude of mistaken effort and drear defeat, we almost think that the social problem is never to find even partial solution, that it is not a problem but a limitation, a limitation forever. We need a new beginning, a new impetus,--perhaps a new delusion?
See, too, how the thought of our five teachers lies concentrated and connected in this new approach: what have we done but renew concretely the Socratic plea for intelligence, the Platonic hope for philosopher-kings, Bacon’s dream of knowledge organized and ruling the world, Spinoza’s gentle insistence on democracy as the avenue of development, and Nietzsche’s passionate defence of aristocracy and power? There was something in us that thrilled at Plato’s conception of a philosophy that could guide as well as dissect our social life; but there was another something in us that hesitated before his plan of slavery as the basis of it all. We felt that we would rather be free and miserable than bound and filled. Why should a man feed himself if his feet are chained, and he must never move? And we were inspired, too, by the demand that the best should rule, that they should have power fitted to their worth; we should be glad to find some way whereby the best could have power, could rule, and yet with the consent of all,--we wanted an aristocracy sanctioned by democracy, a social order standing on the broad base of free citizenship and wide coöperation. Socrates shows us how to use Bacon to reconcile Plato and Nietzsche with Spinoza: intelligence will organize intelligence so that superior worth may have superior influence and yet work with and through the will of all.
* * * * *
And here at the end comes a thought that some of us perhaps have had more than once as this discussion advanced: What could the Church do for the organization of intelligence?
It could do wonderful things. It has power, organization, facilities, through which the gospel of “the moral obligation to be intelligent” could be preached to a wider audience than any newspaper could reach. And among the clergy are hundreds of young men who have found new inspiration in the figure of Jesus seen through the aspirations of democracy; hundreds eager to do their part in any work that will lessen the misery of men. What if they were to find in this organization of intelligence a focus for their labor?--what if they should not only themselves undertake the studies which would fit them for membership in the Society, but should also make it their business to stir up in all who might come to them the spirit of the seeker, to incite them to read religiously the reports of the Society, to call on them to spread abroad the good news of truth to be had for the asking? What if these men should make their churches extension centers for the educational work of the Society,--giving freely the use of their halls and even contributing to the expense of organizing classes and paying for skilled instruction? What if they should see in the spread of intelligence the best avenue to that wide friendship which Jesus so passionately preached? What better way is there to make men love one another than to make men understand one another? True charity comes only with clarity,--just as “mercy” is but justice that understands. Surely the root of all evil is the inability to see clearly that which is; how better can religion combat evil than to preach clarity as the beginning of social redemption?
* * * * *
One of the many burdens that drag on the soul is a knowledge of the past. It is a strong man who can know history and keep his courage; a great dream that can face the fact and live. We look at those flitting experiments called civilizations: we see them rise one after another, we see them produce and produce and produce, we feel the weight of their accumulating wealth; still visionable to us the busyness of geniuses and slaves piling stone upon stone and making pyramids to greet the stars, still audible the voices of Socrates in the agora and of old Plato passing quietly among the students in the grove, still haunting us the white faces of martyrs in the amphitheatres of Rome: and then the pyramids stand bare and lonely, the voices of Greek genius are hushed, the Colosseum is a ruin and a memory; one after another these peoples pass, these wonderful peoples, greater perhaps, wiser and nobler perhaps, than the peoples of our time; and we almost choke with the heavy sense of a vast futility encompassing the world. Some of us turn away then from the din of effort, and seek in resignation the comfort of a living death; some others find in the doubt and difficulty the zest and reward of the work. After all, the past is not dead, it has not failed; only the vileness of it is dead, gone with the winnowing of time; that which was great and worthy lives and works and is real. Plato speaks to us still, speaks to millions and millions of us; and the blood of martyrs is the seed of saints. We speak and pass, but the word remains. Effort is not lost. Not to have tried is the only failure, the only misery; all effort is happiness, all effort is success. And so again we write ourselves in books and stone and color, and smile in the face of time; again we hear the call of the work, that it be done:
Edens that wait the wizardry of thought, Beauty that craves the touch of artist hands, Truth that but hungers to be felt or seen;
and again we are hot with the passion for perfection. We will remake. We will wonder and desire and dream and plan and try. We are such beings as dream and plan and try; and the glory of our defeats dims the splendor of the sun. We will take thought and add a cubit to our stature; we will bring intelligence to the test and call it together from all corners of the earth; we will harness the genius of the race and renew creation.
We will remake.
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* * * * *
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Class-lectures. As Bacon has it, Aristotle, after the Ottoman manner, did not believe that he could rule securely unless he first put all his brothers to death.
[2] The _Dialexeis_; cf. Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, New York, 1901, vol. i, p. 404.
[3] Gompers, vol. i, p. 403.
[4] Botsford and Sihler, _Hellenic Civilization_, New York, 1915, p. 430.
[5] _Ibid._, p. 340, etc.
[6] And sincerely, says Burnet, because he had gone through radicalism to scepticism, and felt that one convention was as good as another.
[7] Cf. Henry Jackson, article “Sophists,” _Encyclopædia Britannica_, eleventh edition.
[8] _History of Ethics_, London, 1892, p. 24.
[9] _Op. cit._, vol. ii, 1905, p. 67.
[10] _History of Greece_, vol. viii, p. 134.
[11] _Morals in Evolution_, New York, 1915, p. 556.
[12] Henry Jackson, article “Socrates,” _Encyclopædia Britannica_, eleventh edition.
[13] _Twilight of the Idols_, London, 1915, p. 15. For Nietzsche’s answer to Nietzsche, cf. _ibid._, p. 57: “To accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides,--this is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality,” this is one of “the three objects for which we need educators.... One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts. To learn to see, as I understand this matter, amounts almost to that which in popular language is called ‘strength of will’: its essential feature is precisely ... to be able to postpone one’s decision.... All lack of intellectuality, all vulgarity, arises out of the inability to resist a stimulus.”
[14] “Why art thou sad? Assuredly thou hast performed some sacred duty?”--Bazarov in Turgenev’s _Fathers and Children_, 1903, p. 185.
[15] “Morality is the effort to throw off sleep.... I have never yet met a man who was wide awake. How could I have looked him in the face?”--Thoreau, _Walden_, New York, 1899, p. 92.
[16] What happens when I “see the better and approve it, but follow the worse,” is that an end later approved as “better”--_i.e._, better for me--is at the time obscured by the persistent or recurrent suggestion of an end temporarily more satisfying, but eventually disappointing. Most self-reproach is the use of knowledge won _post factum_ to criticise a self that had to adventure into action unarmed with this hindsight wisdom.
[17] _Gorgias_, p. 521.
[18] 399 B.C.
[19] _Epistles_, viii, 325.
[20] “When the soul does not speak in dialogue it is not in difficulty.”--Professor Wood bridge, in class.
[21] “If we look for a system of philosophy in Plato, we shall probably not find it; but if we look for none we may find most of the philosophies ever written.”--Professor Woodbridge.
[22] _Phædrus_, 244.
[23] _Sophist_, 247.
[24] _Laws_, 765-6.
[25] _Republic_, 425.
[26] _Protagoras_, 325.
[27] _Republic_, 536.
[28] _Laws_, 804.
[29] _Ibid._, 810.
[30] _Republic_, 375.
[31] _Ibid._, 410.
[32] _Laws_, 810.
[33] _Republic_, 539.
[34] _Republic_, 537.
[35] _Republic_, 184.
[36] _Ibid._, 473.
[37] The passage, abbreviated, follows: “First, then, let us consider what will be their way of life, now that we have thus established them. Will they not produce corn, and wine, and clothes, and shoes, and build houses for themselves? And when they are housed, they will work in summer commonly stripped and barefoot, but in winter substantially clothed and shod. They will feed on barley and wheat, baking the wheat and kneading the flour, making noble puddings and loaves; these they will serve up on a mat of reeds or clean leaves, themselves reclining the while upon beds of yew or myrtle boughs. And they and their children will feast, drinking of the wine which they have made, wearing garlands on their heads, and having the praises of the gods on their lips, living in sweet society, and having a care that their families do not exceed their means; for they will have an eye to poverty or war.... Of course they will have a relish,--salt, and olives, and cheese, and onions, and cabbages or other country herbs which are fit for boiling; and we shall give them a dessert of figs, and pulse, and beans, and myrtle-berries, and beech-nuts, which they will roast at the fire, drinking in moderation. And with such a diet they may be expected to live in peace to a good old age, and bequeath a similar life to their children after them.”--_Republic_, 372. Cf. The Rousseauian anthropology of _Laws_, 679.
[38] _Republic_, 372-3.
[39] Much of modern criticism of democracy finds its inspiration in Plato. Cf. Bernard Shaw: “The democratic politician remains exactly as Plato described him.” Cf. also the _Modern Utopia_ and _Research Magnificent_ of H. G. Wells. Nietzsche’s debt to Plato will appear in a later chapter.
[40] “Omnia communia inter nos habemus, praeter mulieres.”
[41] Let us remember that a property-qualification for the vote remained in our own political system till the time of Jefferson, and has in our own day been resuscitated in some of the Southern states.
[42] _Laws_, 783.
[43] _Republic_, 403
[44] _Protagoras_, 322.
[45] Plato, says Cleanthes, “cursed as impious him who first sundered the just from the useful.”--Gomperz, ii, 73. Cf. _Republic_, 331.
[46] Edmund Gosse, _Life of Henrik Ibsen_, p. 100, note.
[47] Nietzsche, _Beyond Good and Evil_, pref.
[48] _Influence of Darwin on Philosophy_, New York, 1910, p. 21.
[49] Cf. _De Augmentis_, bk. viii, ch. 2.
[50] _Advancement of Learning_, Boston, 1863, bk. i.
[51] _Philosophical Works_, ed. J. M. Robertson, London, 1805, p. 33.
[52] _Novum Organum_, i, 65.
[53] _Advancement of Learning_, p. 133.
[54] Called by Bacon the “first vintage.”
[55] _Novum Organum_, ii, 2.
[56] Preface to _Magna Instauratio_.
[57] _Novum Organum_, pref.
[58] _Novum Organum_, i, 129.
[59] _Ibid._, i, 92.
[60] _Ibid._, i, 113.
[61] _Advancement of Learning_, bk. ii, ch. 1.
[62] _Novum Organum_, i, 61.
[63] _Advancement of Learning_, bk. i, ch. 1.
[64] _Ibid._, bk. ii, ch. 1.
[65] _New Atlantis_, Cambridge University Press, 1900, p. 22.
[66] _Ibid._, p. 24.
[67] Pp. 44, 45.
[68] P. 43.
[69] P. 34.
[70] J. M. Robertson, preface to _Philosophical Works_.
[71] Robert Adamson, article “Bacon,” _Encyclopædia Britannica_.
[72] Cf. preface to _Memoirs of a Revolutionist_.
[73] _Novum Organum_, i, 81.
[74] _Advancement of Learning_, p. 207.
[75] _Ibid._, p. 131.
[76] _Advancement of Learning._, bk. i.
[77] Professor Woodbridge, class-lectures.
[78] Turgenev, in _Fathers and Children_.
[79] This division into saints and sinners must be taken with reservations, of course. In many respects Descartes belongs to the second group, and in some respects James and Comte belong to the first. But the dichotomy clarifies, if only by exaggeration.
[80] L. Ward, _Pure Sociology_, p. 16.
[81] Buckle, _History of Civilization_, i, 138.
[82] Special acknowledgment for some of the material of this chapter is due to R. A. Duff, _Spinoza’s Political and Ethical Philosophy_, Glasgow, 1903.
[83] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 17.
[84] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 1.
[85] _Will to Power_, vol. i, § 95.
[86] Cf. Duff, _op. cit._, pref.: “It can be shown that Spinoza had no interest in metaphysics for its own sake, while he was passionately interested in moral and political problems. He was a metaphysician at all only in the sense that he was resolute in thinking out the ideas, principles, and categories which are interwoven with all our practical endeavor, and the proper understanding of which is the condition of human welfare.”
[87] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 7.
[88] _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, v, 2.
[89] _Ibid._, ch. 16.
[90] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 58, schol.
[91] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, i, 5.
[92] _Ethics_, bk. i, appendix.
[93] _Ibid._, bk. iv, prop. 18, schol.
[94] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 3.
[95] _Ibid._, cor.
[96] _De Intellectus Emendatione._
[97] _Ethics_, bk. iv, appendix, § 9.
[98] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 10.
[99] _Ibid._, ch. 19.
[100] _Ibid._, ch. 8.
[101] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 16.
[102] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 18, schol.
[103] _Ibid._
[104] _Ibid._, bk. iv, prop. 24.
[105] Bk. iv, def. 8.
[106] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 6, § 1.
[107] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 35, schol.
[108] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 5, § 2.
[109] _Ibid._, ch. 16.
[110] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 37, schol. 2.
[111] Contrast Plato: the state (_i.e._, the governing classes) is to the lower classes as reason is to passion.
[112] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 3, § 14.
[113] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 40.
[114] Ch. 20.
[115] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 6, § 4.
[116] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 6, § 4, ch. 7, § 29.
[117] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 35, cor. 1.
[118] _Ibid._, cor. 2.
[119] _Ibid._, prop. 18, schol.; also prop. 37. _Cf._ Whitman: “By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.”
[120] Not that these ideas were original with Spinoza; they were the general legacy of Renaissance political thought. But it was through the writings of Spinoza that this legacy was transmitted to Rousseau. Cf. Duff, p. 319.
[121] Professor Woodbridge: class-lectures.
[122] Cf. Professor Dewey’s _German Philosophy and Politics_, New York, 1915.
[123] Förster-Nietzsche, _The Young Nietzsche_, London, 1912, p. 98.
[124] _Ibid._, p. 152.
[125] _Ibid._, p. 235.
[126] _The Birth of Tragedy_, 1872.
[127] _Thus Spake Zarathustra_, p. 129.
[128] Förster-Nietzsche, _The Lonely Nietzsche_, London, 1915, pp. 291, 212, 77.
[129] _Ibid._, p. 313.
[130] _Ibid._, p. 181.
[131] _Ibid._, p. 424.
[132] _Ibid._, p. 297.
[133] _Ibid._, p. 195.
[134] Chronology of Nietzsche’s chief works, with initials used in subsequent references: _Thoughts Out of Season_ (“_T. O. S._”) (1873-6); _Human All Too Human_ (“_H. H._”) (1876-80); _Dawn of Day_ (“_D. D._”) (1881); _Joyful Wisdom_ (“_J. W._”) (1882); _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ (“_Z._”) (1883-4); _Beyond Good and Evil_ (“_B. G. E._”) (1886); _Genealogy of Morals_ (“_G. M._”) (1887); _Twilight of the Idols_ (“_T.I._”) (1888); _Antichrist_ (“_Antich._”); _Ecce Homo_ (“_E. H._”), and _Will to Power_ (“_W. P._”) (1889).
[135] _Lonely N._, p. 104.
[136] _Ibid._, p. 195.
[137] _E. H._, p. 106.
[138] _J. W._, § 371.
[139] _E. H._, p. 141.
[140] _Ibid._, pp. 131, 81.
[141] _T. I._, pref.
[142] _W. P._, § 400 (all references to _W. P._ will be by sections).
[143] _J. W._, § 345 (all references to _J. W._ by section unless otherwise stated).
[144] _W. P._, 276.
[145] _Ibid._, 345.
[146] _G. M._, p. 46.
[147] _Z._, p. 166.
[148] _W. P._, 721; _T. I._, p. 89.
[149] _B. G. E._, § 202.
[150] _J. W._, 358; _Antich._, § 361.
[151] _W. P._, 284.
[152] _Antich._, § 46.
[153] _Ibid._, § 43.
[154] _W. P._, 464, 861, 748, 752, 686.
[155] _Ibid._, 885, 281.
[156] _H. H._, §§ 428, 472.
[157] _T. I._, p. 96.
[158] _G. M._, p. 225; written in 1887.
[159] _W. P._, 861, 891.
[160] _B. G. E._, p. 233.
[161] _W. P._, 753.
[162] _G. M._, p. 223.
[163] _B. G. E._, p. 189.
[164] _E. H._, p. 65.
[165] _B. G. E._, pp. 96, 189.
[166] _Z._, p. 89.
[167] _J. W._, 363.
[168] _B. G. E._, pp. 188, 184, 189.
[169] _W. P._, 339, 86.
[170] _T. I._, p. 86.
[171] _J. W._, 377; _W. P._, 350, 315, 373.
[172] _H. H._, § 451.
[173] _W. P._, 761.
[174] _Ibid._, 51, 125.
[175] _B. G. E._, p. 226.
[176] _W. P._, 856.
[177] _G. M._, p. 44.
[178] _J. W._, 356.
[179] _Lonely N._, p. 83.
[180] _D. D._, § 206.
[181] _W. P._, 125.
[182] _Wanderer and His Shadow_, § 292 (_H. H._, ii, p. 343).
[183] _H. H._, i, § 473.
[184] _D. D._, § 179.
[185] _Z._, p. 62.
[186] _W. P._, 329.
[187] _T. I._, p. 86; _E. H._, p. 66; _Antich._, § 57.
[188] _W. P._, 859.
[189] _G. M._, p. 91.
[190] _Z._, p. 159.
[191] _T. I._, p. 94.
[192] _H. H._, § 463.
[193] _W. P._, 750, 874, 65, 50.
[194] _B. G. E._, p. 173; _W. P._, 823, 851, 871, 11.
[195] _W. P._, 397, 12, 736.
[196] _E. H._, p. 136.
[197] _G. M._, p. 10.
[198] _T. O. S._, i, p. 78.
[199] _Antich._, § 17.
[200] _J. W._, 347.
[201] _Antich._, § 17; _D. D._, § 542.
[202] _W. P._, 585.
[203] _G. M._, p. 202.
[204] _W. P._, 585.
[205] _Ibid._, 600; _D. D._, § 424.
[206] _J. W._, 366.
[207] _D. D._, § 41.
[208] _W. P._, 461.
[209] _B. G. E._, p. 136.
[210] _W. P._, § 8.
[211] _J. W._, p. 7.
[212] _W. P._, § 351.
[213] _Ibid._, § 12.
[214] _Ibid._, § 43.
[215] _Antich._, § 1.
[216] _D. D._, § 163.
[217] _W. P._, 266.
[218] _Ibid._, 20.
[219] _Ibid._, 585.
[220] _Z._, pp. 193, 315; _E. H._, pp. 71, 28.
[221] _J. W._, § 324.
[222] _Ibid._, p. 6.
[223] _W. P._, 120, 1029; _Antich._, § 55; _E. H._, pp. 72, 70; _Birth of Tragedy_, _passim_.
[224] _W. P._, 255, 258, 710, 462, 392, 305.
[225] _Antich._, § 2.
[226] _W. P._, 918.
[227] _T. O. S._, p. 76.
[228] _G. M._, p. 45.
[229] _J. W._, § 4.
[230] _Antich._, § 14.
[231] _B. G. E._, p. 162.
[232] _W. P._, 440, 289.
[233] _E. H._, p. 10.
[234] _W. P._, 255, 774, 775; _D. D._, § 215; _J. W._, 13.
[235] _D. D._, § 224.
[236] _W. P._, 376, 776.
[237] _W. P._, 650, 657, 685, 696, 704; _Antich._, § 2.
[238] _Ibid._, 681, 688, 689.
[239] _T. I._, p. 71; _W. P._, 649.
[240] _W. P._, 685.
[241] _Z._, p. 398.
[242] _W. P._, 880, 716, 343, 423, 291.
[243] _E. H._, p. 2; _D. D._, § 49; _Lonely N._, p. 17; _W. P._, 269, 90, 766, 660.
[244] _E. H._, p. 138; _T. O. S._, ii, p. 66; _Z._, p. 222; _W. P._, 934, 944; _J. W._, p. 8; _T. I._, § 40; _B. G. E._, p. 138.
[245] _Z._, pp. 199, 103, 186; _W. P._, 792.
[246] _W. P._, 881, 870, 918; _B. G. E._, p. 154; _E. H._, p. 13; _D. D._, § 552.
[247] _W. P._, 967, 366-7, 349; _Z._, p. 141; _Antich._, § 55; _B. G. E._, pp. 54, 57.
[248] _W. P._, 969, 371, 356, 926, 946, 26; _Z._, p. 430; _E. H._, pp. 23, 19, 128; _G. M._, p. 85; _D. D._, § 60.
[249] _W. P._, 866; _T. O. S._, ii, p. 154; _Z._, pp. 8, 104; _T. I._, p. 269.
[250] _W. P._, 804, 732-3; _Z._, pp. 94-6; _D. D._, § 150-1.
[251] _H. H._, § 242; _W. P._, 912; _B. G. E._, p. 129; _D. D._, § 194; “Schopenhauer as Educator” (in _T. O. S._), _passim_.
[252] _T. O. S._, ii, pp. 84, 28; _W. P._, 369, 965; _E. H._, p. 135.
[253] _Z._, pp. 84, 64; _H. H._, § 457; _G. M._, 156-7; _B. G. E._, §§ 61-2; _W. P._, 373, 901, 132.
[254] _H. H._, § 439; _W. P._, 660; _Antich._, § 57; _Lonely N._, p. 7.
[255] _G. M._, pp. 160-1; _W. P._, 287, 854, 864.
[256] _W. P._, 886, 926.
[257] _T. I._, p. 96; _W. P._, 957; _B. G. E._, p. 239; _T. O. S._, ii, p. 39.
[258] _W. P._, 464, 960; _B. G. E._, p. 225.
[259] _W. P._, 44, 684, 909; _G. M._, p. 91.
[260] _D. D._, §§ 165, 168; _W. P._, 1052; _B. G. E._, p. 69; _J. W._, p. 10.
[261] _T. I._, pp. 91, 110; _J. W._, § 362; _G. M._, pp. 56, 226; _W. P._, 975, 877; _B. G. E._, pp. 201, 53.
[262] _W. P._, 109-34, 747.
[263] _J. W._, 293.
[264] _T. I._, p. 260; _G. M._, p. 58; _B. G. E._, p. 151; _Lonely N._, p. 221.
[265] _W. P._, 127, 728-9; _G. M._, pp. 88, 226; _J. W._, 283; _Z._, p. 60; _Lonely N._, p. 15.
[266] _B. G. E._, p. 94; _W. P._, 717, 748; _G. M._, pp. 223-4.
[267] _W. P._, 712.
[268] _Ibid._, 1053.
[269] _J. W._, p. 5.
[270] _E. H._, p. 53.
[271] _W. P._, 544, with footnote quoting Napoleon: “An almost instinctive belief with me is that all strong men lie when they speak, and much more so when they write.”
[272] “Far too long a slave and a tyrant have been hidden in woman: ... she is not yet capable of friendship.”--_Z._, p. 75.
[273] Hobhouse, _Social Evolution and Political Theory_, New York, 1911, p. 25.
[274] There is something verging on a recognition of this in _W. P._, 403-4.
[275] _B. G. E._, p. 173.
[276] _B. G. E._, p. 25.
[277] _G. M._, p. 6.
[278] _Z._, p. 303.
[279] _Z._, p. 107.
[280] _T. I._, p. 2.
[281] _Z._, p. 10.
[282] _J. W._, 312.
[283] _Ibid._, p. 69; referring to 1879.
[284] _Ibid._, 312.
[285] _Lonely N._, p. 206.
[286] _Ibid._, p. 218.
[287] _Lonely N._, p. 289.
[288] _Ibid._, p. 391.
[289] _Ibid._, p. 65.
[290] _Ibid._, p. 157.
[291] Mrs. Gallichan, _The Truth about Woman_, New York, 1914, p. 281.
[292] Jos. McCabe, _Tyranny of Shams_, London, 1916, p. 171.
[293] Dr. Drysdale, _The Small Family System_, London, 1915.
[294] Winston Churchill in Parliament, quoted by Schoonmaker, The _World-War and Beyond_, New York, 1915, p. 95.
[295] Carver, _Essays in Social Justice_, New York, 1915, p. 261.
[296] The “experimental attitude ... substitutes detailed analyses for wholesale assertions, specific inquiries for temperamental convictions, small facts for opinions whose size is in precise ratio to their vagueness. It is within the social sciences, in morals, politics, and education, that thinking still goes on by large antitheses, by theoretical oppositions of order and freedom, individualism and socialism, culture and utility, spontaneity and discipline, actuality and tradition. The field of the physical sciences was once occupied by similar ‘total’ views, whose emotional appeal was inversely as their intellectual clarity. But with the advance of the experimental method, the question has ceased to be which one of two rival claimants has a right to the field. It has become a question of clearing up a confused subject matter by attacking it bit by bit. I do not know a case where the final result was anything like victory for one or another among the preëxperimental notions. All of them disappeared because they became increasingly irrelevant to the situation discovered, and with their detected irrelevance they became unmeaning and uninteresting.”--Professor John Dewey, _New Republic_, Feb. 3, 1917.
[297] All this has been indicated--with, however, too little emphasis on the reconstructive function of intelligence--by Bertrand Russell in _Principles of Social Reconstruction_ (London, 1916); and more popularly by Max Eastman in _Understanding Germany_ (New York, 1916); it has been put very briefly again and again by Professor Dewey,--_e.g._, in an essay on “Progress” in the _International Journal of Ethics_, April, 1916.
[298] This is not a defence of mechanism or materialism; it is a plea for a better perspective in philosophy.
[299] It would be invidious to name the exceptions which one is glad to remember here; but it is in place to say that the practical arrest of Bertrand Russell is a sign of resuscitation on the part of philosophy,--a sign for which all lovers of philosophy should be grateful. When philosophers are once more feared, philosophy will once more be respected.
[300] _American Journal of Sociology_, March, 1905, p. 645.
[301] Ross, _Social Control_, New York, 1906, p. 9.
[302] _Will to Power_, § 469.
[303] Barker, _Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle_, p. 80.
[304] Perhaps this million could be reached more surely and economically through direct pamphlet-publication by the Society.
[305] Some students--_e.g._, Joseph McCabe, _The Tyranny of Shams_, London, 1916, p. 248--are so impressed with the dangers lying in our vast production of written trash that they favor restricting the circulation of cheap fiction in our public libraries. But what we have to do is not to prohibit the evil but to encourage the good, to give positive stimulus rather than negative prohibition. People hate compulsion, but they grope for guidance.
[306] _E.g._, by G. Lowes Dickinson, _Justice and Liberty_, p. 133.
[307] Cf. Russell, _Principles of Social Reconstruction_, p. 236: “The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that center round possession.”
[308] _Reason in Common Sense_, New York, 1911, p. 96.
[309] Quoted by Walter Weyl, _The New Democracy_, p. 136.
[310] Ross, _Social Control_, New York, 1906, p. 103.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
seee things clearly=> see things clearly {pg 100}
whosesale assertions=> wholesale assertions {footnote pg 211}
End of Project Gutenberg's Philosophy and The Social Problem, by Will Durant