There was a time when the _Church_ guided the intellectual life of the
men of our world. The Church promised men happiness, and, in
compensation for this she freed herself from taking part in mankind's
common struggle for life.
As soon as she did this she went away from her calling, and men turned
from her. It was not the _errors_ of the Church which originally caused
her ruin, but the fact that by the help of the secular power, in the
time of Constantine, her ministers violated the law of labour; and then
their claim to idleness and luxury gave birth to the errors.
As soon as she obtained this power she began to care for herself, and
not for humanity, whom she had taken upon herself to serve. The
ministers of the Church gave themselves up to idleness and depravity.
_The State_ took upon itself to guide men's lives. The State promised
men justice, peace, security, order, satisfaction of common intellectual
and material wants; and, in compensation, men who served the State freed
themselves from taking part in the struggle for life. And the State's
servants, as soon as they were able to utilize other men's labour, acted
in the same way as the ministers of the Church.
They had not in view the people; but, from kings down to the lowest
state functionaries, in Rome, as well as in France, England, Russia, and
America, they gave themselves over to idleness and depravity. Now men
have lost their faith in the state, and anarchy is now seriously
advocated as an ideal. The state has lost its prestige among men, only
because its ministers have claimed the right of utilizing the people's
labour for themselves.
_Science and art_ have done the same, assisted by the state power which
they took upon themselves to sustain. They also have claimed and
obtained for themselves the right of idleness and of utilizing other
men's labour, and also have been false to their calling. And their
errors, too, proceeded only from the fact that their ministers, pointing
to a falsely conceived principle of the division of labour, claimed for
themselves the right to utilize the work of the people, and so lost the
meaning of their calling, making the aim of their activity, not the
utility of the people, but some mysterious activity of science and art;
and also, like their forerunners, they have given themselves over to
idleness and depravity, though not so much to a fleshly as to an
intellectual corruption.
It is said that science and art have done much for mankind.
That is quite true.
Church and State have given much to humanity, not because they abused
their power, or because their ministers forsook the common life of men,
and the eternal duty of labour for life--but in spite of this.
The Roman Republic was powerful, not because its citizens were able to
lead a life of depravity, but because it could number among them men who
were virtuous.
This is the case with science and art.
Science and art have effected much for mankind, not because their
ministers had sometimes formerly, and have always at present, the
possibility of freeing themselves from labour, but because men of
genius, not utilizing these rights, have forwarded the progress of
mankind.
The class of learned men and artists who claim, on account of a false
division of labour, the right of utilizing other men's labour, cannot
contribute to the progress of true science and true art, because a lie
can never produce a truth.
We are so accustomed to our pampered or debilitated representatives of
intellectual labour, that it would seem very strange if a learned man or
an artist were to plough, or cart manure. We think that, were he to do
so, all would go to ruin; that all his wisdom would be shaken out of
him, and that the great artistic images he carries in his breast would
be soiled by the manure: but we are so accustomed to our present
conditions that we do not wonder at our ministers of science, that is,
ministers and teachers of truth, compelling other people to do for them
that which they could very well do themselves, passing half their time
eating, smoking, chattering in "liberal" gossip, reading newspapers,
novels, visiting theatres; we are not surprised to see our philosopher
in an inn, in a theatre, at a ball; we do not wonder when we learn that
those artists who delight and ennoble our souls, pass their lives in
drunkenness, in playing cards, in company with loose women, or do things
still worse.
Science and art are fine things: but just because they are fine things
men ought not to spoil them by associating them with depravity;--by
freeing themselves from man's duty to serve by labour his own life and
the lives of other men.
Science and art have forwarded the progress of mankind. Yes; but not
because men of science and art, under the pretext of a division of
labour, taught men by word, and chiefly by deed, to utilize by violence
the misery and sufferings of the people in order to free themselves from
the very first and unquestionable human duty of labouring with their
hands in the common struggle of mankind with nature.