To make such a demand for a new direction of philosophy to life is after

all only a development of pragmatism, turning that doctrine of action as

the test and significance of thought to uses not so individual as those

in which William James found its readiest application. If philosophy has

meaning, it must be as life become aware of its purposes and

possibilities, it must be as life cross-examining life for the sake of

life; it must be as specialized foresight for the direction of social

movement, as reconstructive intelligence in conscious evolution. Man

finds himself caught in a flux of change; he studies the laws operating

in the flux; studying, he comes to understand; understanding, he comes

to control; controlling, he comes face to face with the question of all

questions, For what? Where does he wish to go, what does he want to be?

It is then that man puts his whole experience before him in synthetic

test; then that he gropes for meanings, searches for values, struggles

to see and define his course and goal; then that he becomes philosopher.

Consider these questions of goal and course as questions asked by a

society, and the social function of philosophy appears. Science

enlightens means, philosophy must enlighten ends. Science informs,

philosophy must form. A philosopher is a man who remakes himself; the

social function of philosophy is to remake society.

Have we yet felt the full zest of that brave discovery of the last

century,--that purpose is not in things but in us? What a declaration of

independence there is in that simple phrase, what liberation of a

fettered thought to dare all ventures of creative endeavor! Here at last

is man’s coming-of-age! Well: now that we have won this freedom, what

shall we do with it? That is the question which freedom begets, often as

its Frankenstein; for unless freedom makes for life, freedom dies. Once

our sloth and cowardice might have pleaded the uselessness of effort in

a world where omnipotent purpose lay outside of us, superimposed and

unchangeable; now that we can believe that divinity is in ourselves,

that purpose and guidance are through us, we can no longer shirk the

question of reconstruction. The world is ours to do with what we can and

will. Once we believed in the unchangeable environment--that new ogre

that succeeded to the Absolute--and (as became an age of

_laissez-faire_) we thought that wisdom lay in meeting all its demands;

now we know that environments can be remade; and we face the question,

How shall we remake ours?

This is preëminently a problem in philosophy; it is a question of

values. If the world is to be remade, it will have to be under the

guidance of philosophy.

III

Philosophy as Mediator between Science and Statesmanship

But why philosophy?--some one asks. Why will not science do? Philosophy

dreams, while one by one the sciences which she nursed steal away from

her and go down into the world of fact and achievement. Why should not

science be called upon to guide us into a better world?

Because science becomes more and more a fragmentated thing, with ever

less coördination, ever less sense of the whole. Our industrial system

has forced division of labor here, as in the manual trades, almost to

the point of idiocy: let a man seek to know everything about something,

and he will soon know nothing about anything else; efficiency will

swallow up the man. Because of this shredded science we have great

zoölogists talking infantile patriotism about the war, and great

electricians who fill sensational sheets with details of their trips to

heaven. We live in a world where thought breaks into pieces, and

coördination ebbs; we flounder into a chaos of hatred and destruction

because synthetic thinking is not in fashion.

Consider, for example, the problem of monopoly: we ask science what we

are to do here; why is it that after we have listened to the economist,

and the historian, and the lawyer, and the psychologist, we are hardly

better off than before? Because each of these men speaks in ignorance of

what the others have discovered. We must find some way of making these

men acquainted with one another before they can become really useful to

large social purposes; we must knock their heads together. We want more

uniters and coördinators, less analyzers and accumulators.

Specialization is making the philosopher a social necessity of the very

first importance.

This does not mean that we must put the state into the hands of the

epistemologists. Hardly. The type of philosopher who must be produced

will be a man too close to life to spend much time on merely analytical

problems. He will feel the call of action, and will automatically reject

all knowledge that does not point to deeds. The essential feature of him

will be grasp: he will have his net fixed for the findings of those

sciences which have to do, not with material reconstructions, but with

the discovery of the secrets of human nature. He will know the

essentials of biology and psychology, of sociology and history, of

economics and politics; in him these long-divorced sciences will meet

again and make one another fertile once more. He will busy himself with

Mendel and Freud, Sumner and Veblen, and will scandalously neglect the

Absolute. He will study the needs and exigencies of his time, he will

consider the Utopias men make, he will see in them the suggestive

pseudopodia of political theory, and will learn from them what men at

last desire. He will sober the vision with fact, and find a focus for

immediate striving. With this focus he will be able to coördinate his

own thinking, to point the nose of science to a goal; science becoming

thereby no longer inventive and instructive merely, but preventive and

constructive. And so fortified and unified he will preach his gospel,

talking not to students about God, but to statesmen about men.

For we come again--ever and ever again--to Plato: unless wisdom and

practical ability, philosophy and statesmanship, can be more closely

bound together than they are, there will be no lessening of human

misery. Think of the learning of scientists and the ignorance of

politicians! You see all these agitated, pompous men, making laws at the

rate of some ten thousand a year; you see those quiet, unheard of,

underpaid seekers in the laboratories of the world; unless you can bring

these two groups together through coördination and direction, your

society will stand still forever, however much it moves. Philosophy

must take hold; it must become the social direction of science, it must

become, strange to say, applied science.

We stand to-day in social science where Bacon stood in natural science:

we seek a method first for the elucidation of causes, and second for the

transformation, in the light of this knowledge, of man’s environment and

man. “We live in the stone age of political science,” says Lester Ward;

“in politics we are still savages.”[300] Our political movements are

conceived in impulse and developed in emotion; they end in fission and

fragmentation because there is no thought behind them. Who will supply

thinking to these instincts, direction to this energy, light to this

wasted heat? Our young men talk only of ideals, our politicians only of

fact; who will interpret to the one the language of the other? What is

it, too, that statesmen need if not that saving sense of the whole which

makes philosophy, and which philosophy makes? Just as philosophy without

statesmanship is--let us say--epistemology, so statesmanship without

philosophy is--American politics. The function of the philosopher, then,

is to do the listening to to-day’s science, and then to do the thinking

for to-morrow’s statesmanship. The philosophy of an age should be the

organized foresight of that age, the interpreter of the future to the

present. “Selection adapts man to yesterday’s conditions, not to

to-day’s”;[301] the organized foresight of conscious evolution will

adapt man to the conditions of to-morrow. And an ounce of foresight is

worth a ton of morals.

CHAPTER III

ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE

I

The Need

Intelligence is organized experience; but intelligence itself must be

organized. Consider the resources of the unused intelligence of the

world; intelligence potential but undeveloped; intelligence developed

but isolated; intelligence allowed to waste itself in purely personal

pursuits, unasked to enter into coöperation for larger ends. Consider

the Platos fretting in exile while petty politicians rule the world;

consider Montaigne, and Hobbes, and Hume, and Carlyle, and the thousand

other men whose genius was left to grow--or die--in solitude or

starvation; consider the vast number of university-trained minds who are

permitted, for lack of invitation and organized facilities, to slip into

the world of profit and loss and destructively narrow intent; consider

the expert ability in all lines which can be found in the faculties of

the world, and which goes to training an infinitesimal fraction of the

community. The thought of university graduates, of university

faculties, of university-trained investigators, has had a rapidly

growing influence in the last ten years in America; and because it is an

influence due to enlightenment it is fundamentally an influence for

“good.” It was this influence that showed when President Wilson said

that the eight-hour day was demanded by the informed opinion of the

time. The sources of such influence have merely been touched; they are

deep; we must find a way to make informed opinion more articulate and

powerful. “The most valuable knowledge consists of methods,” said

Nietzsche;[302] and the most valuable methods are methods of

organization, whether of data or of men. Organization’s the thing.

Economic forces are organized; the forces of intelligence are not. To

organize intelligence; that is surely one method of approach to the

social problem; and what if, indeed, it be the very heart and substance

of the social problem?

Now a very easy way of making the propounder of such an organization

feel unusually modest is to ask him that little trouble-making question,

How? To answer that would be to answer almost everything that can be

answered. Here are _opera basilica_ again!--for what are we doing, after

all, but trying to take Francis Bacon seriously? Of course the

difficulty in organizing intelligence is how to know who are

intelligent, and how to get enough people to agree with you that you

know. If each man’s self-valuation were accepted, our organization would

be rather bulky. Are there any men very widely recognized as

intelligent, who could be used as the nucleus of an organization? There

are individual men so recognized,--Edison, for example, and, strange to

say, one or two men who by accident are holding political office. But

these are stray individuals; are there any groups whose average of

intelligence is highly rated by a large portion of the community? There

are. Physicians are so rated; so much so that by popular usage they have

won almost a monopoly on the once more widely used term _doctor_.

University professors are highly rated. Let us take the physicians and

the professors; here is a nucleus of recognized intelligence.

There are objections, here, of course; some one urges that many

physicians are quacks, another that professors are rated as intelligent,

but only in an unpractical sort of way. Perhaps we shall find some

scheme for eliminating the quacks; but the professors present a

difficult problem. It is true that they suffer from intellectualism,

academitis, overfondness for theories, and other occupational diseases;

it is true that the same people who stand in awe of the very word

_professor_ would picture the article indicated by the word as a thin,

round-shouldered, be-spectacled ninny, incapable of finding his way

alone through city streets, and so immersed in the stars that he is

sooner or later submerged in a well. But what if this quality of

detachment, of professorial calm, be just one of the qualities needed

for the illumination of our social problem? Perhaps we have too much

emotion in these questions, and need the colder light of the man who is

trained to use his “head” and not his “heart.” Perhaps the most useful

thing in the world for our purpose is this terribly dispassionate,

coldly scrutinizing professor. We need men as impartial and clear-eyed

as men come; and whatever a professor may _say_, yet he _sees_ his field

more clearly and impartially than any other group of men whatever. Let

the professors stay.

And so we have our physicians and our professors,--say all physicians

and professors who have taught or practised three years in institutions,

or as the graduates of institutions, of recognized standing. And now let

us dream our dream.

II

The Organization of Intelligence

These men, through meetings and correspondence, organize themselves into

a “Society for Social Research”; they begin at once to look for an

“inspired millionaire” to finance the movement for six months or so;

they advertise themselves diligently in the press, and make known their

intention to get together the best brains of the country to study the

facts and possibilities of the social problem. And then--a difficult

point--they face the task of arranging some more or less impersonal

method of deciding who are the intelligent people and who not. They ask

themselves just what kind of information a man should be expected to

have, to fit him for competent handling of social questions; and after

long discussions they conclude that such a man should be well trained in

one--and acquainted with the general findings of the others--of what we

may call the social disciplines: biology, psychology, sociology,

history, economics, law, politics, philosophy, and perhaps more. They

formulate a long and varied test for the discovery of fitness in these

fields; and they arrange that every university in the country shall

after plentiful advertisement and invitation to all and sundry, give

these tests, and pay the expenses incurred by any needy candidate who

shall emerge successful from the trial. In this way men whose studies

have been private, and unadorned with academic degree, are to find

entrance to the Society.

It is recognized that the danger of such a test lies in the premium

which it sets on the bookish as against the practical man: on the man

whose knowledge has come to him in the classroom or the study, as

against the man who has won his knowledge just by living face to face

with life. There are philosophers who have never heard of Kant, and

psychologists who have been Freudians for decades without having ever

read a book. A society recruited by such a test will be devoid of

artists and poets, may finally eliminate all but fact-gathering

dryasdusts, and so end deservedly in nothing. And yet some test there

must be, to indicate, however crudely, one’s fitness or unfitness to

take part in this work; the alternative would be the personal choice of

the initial few, whose prejudices and limitations would so become the

constitution and by-laws of the society. Perhaps, too, some way may

appear of using the artists and poets, and the genius who knows no

books.

Well: the tests are given; the original nucleus of physicians and

professors submit themselves to these tests, and some, failing, are

eliminated; other men come, from all fields of work, and from them a

number survive the ordeal and pass into the Society. So arises a body of

say 5000 men, divided into local groups but working in unison so far as

geographical separateness will permit; and to them now come, impressed

with their earnestness, a wealthy man, who agrees to finance the Society

for such time as may be needed to test its usefulness.

Now what does our Society do?

It seeks information. That, and not a programme, is the fruitful

beginning of reform. “Men are willing to investigate only the small

things of life,” says Samuel Butler; this Society for Social Research is

prepared and resolved to investigate anything that has vital bearing on

the social problem; it stands ready to make enemies, ready to soil its

hands. It appoints committees to gather and formulate all that

biologists can tell of human origin and the innate impulses of men; all

that psychology in its varied branches can tell of human behavior; all

that sociology knows of how and why human societies and institutions

rise and fall; all that medicine can tell of social ills and health; it

appoints committees to go through all science with the loadstone of the

social purpose, picking up this fact here and that one there; committees

to study actual and proposed forms of government, administrative and

electoral methods; committees to investigate marriage, eugenics,

prostitution, poverty, and the thousand other aspects and items of the

social problem; committees to call for and listen to responsible

expressions of every kind of opinion; committees to examine and analyze

social experiments, profit-sharing plans, Oneida communities; even a

committee on Utopia, before which persons with schemes and _’isms_ and

perfect cities in their heads may freely preach their gospel. In short

this Society becomes the organized eye and ear of the community, ready

and eager to seek out all the facts of human life and business that may

enlighten human will.

And having found the facts it publishes them. Its operations show real

earnestness, sincerity, and ability; and in consequence it wins such

prestige that its reports find much heralding, synopsis, and comment in

the press. But in addition to that it buys, for the first day of every

month, a half-page of space in several of the more widely circulated

periodicals and journals of the country, and publishes its findings

succinctly and intelligibly. It gives full references for all its

statements of fact; it makes verification possible for all doubters and

deniers. It includes in each month’s report a reliable statement of the

year’s advances in some one of the social disciplines, so that its

twelve reports in any year constitute a record of the socially vital

scientific findings of the year. It limits itself strictly to verifiable

information, and challenges demonstration of humanly avoidable

partiality. And it takes great care that its reports are couched not in

learned and technical language but in such phraseology as will be

intelligible to the graduates of an average grammar school. That is

central.

III

Information of Panacea

Without some such means of getting and spreading information there is no

hope for fundamental social advance. We have agreed, have we not, that

to make men happier and more capable we must divert their socially

injurious impulses into beneficent channels; that we can do this only by

studying those impulses and controlling the stimuli which arouse them;

that we can control those stimuli only by studying the varied factors

of the environment and the means of changing them; in short, that at the

bottom of the direction of impulse lies the necessity of knowledge, of

information spread to all who care to receive it. Autocracy may improve

the world without spreading enlightenment; but democracy cannot.

_Delenda est ignorantia._[303]

This, after all, is a plan for the democratization of aristocracy; it is

Plato translated into America. It utilizes superior intelligence and

gives it voice, but sanctions no change that has not received the free

consent of the community. It gives the aristocracy of intellect the

influence and initiative which crude democracy frustrates; but it avoids

the corruption that usually goes with power, by making this influence

work through the channels of persuasion rather than compulsion. It

counteracts the power of wealth to disseminate partisan views through

news-items and editorials, and relies on fact to get the better at last

of double-leaded prejudice. It rests on the faith that lies will out.

Would the mass of the people listen to such reports? Consider, first,

the repute that attaches to the professorial title. Let a man write even

the sorriest nonsense but sign himself as one of the faculty of some

responsible institution, and he will find a hearing; the reader,

perhaps, need not go far to find an example. In recent industrial and

political issues the pronouncements of a few professors carried very

great weight; and there are some modest purveyors of so supposedly

harmless a thing as philosophy whose voice is feared by all interests

that prosper in the dark. Will the combined reputation of the most

enlightened men in the country mean less? A report published by this

Society for Social Research will mean that a large body of intelligent

men have from their number appointed three or five or ten to find the

facts of a certain situation or dispute; these appointed men will, if

they report hastily, or carelessly, or dishonestly, impair the repute of

all their fellows in the Society; they will take care, then, and will

probably find honesty as good a policy as some of us pretend it to be.

With every additional report so guarded from defect the repute of the

society will grow until it becomes the most powerful intellectual force

in the world.

When one reflects how many pages of misrepresentation were printed in

the papers of only one city in the presidential campaign of 1916, and

then imagines what would have been the effect of a mere statement of

facts on both sides,--the records of the candidates and the parties,

their acknowledged connections, friends and enemies, their expressed

principles and programmes, the facts about the tariff, the German issue,

international law, the railway-brotherhood dispute, and so forth--one

begins to appreciate the importance of information. After the initial

and irrevocable differences of original nature nothing is so vital as

the spread of enlightenment; and nothing offers itself so well to

organized effort. Eugenics is weak because it has no thought-out

programme; _’isms_ rise and fall because people are not informed. Let

who can, improve the native qualities of men; but that aside, the most

promising plan is the dissemination of fact.

Such a society for research would be a sort of social consciousness, a

“mind of the race.” It would make social planning possible for the first

time; it would make history conscious. It would look ahead and warn; it

would point the nose of the community to unwelcome but important facts;

it would examine into such statements as that of Sir William Ramsay,

that England’s coal fields will be exhausted in one hundred and

seventy-five years; and its warnings, backed by the prestige of its

expert information, would perhaps avert the ravages of social waste and

private greed. Nature, said Lester Ward, is a spendthrift, man an

economizer. But economy means prevision, and social economy means

organized provision. Here would be not agitation, not propaganda, not

moralizing, but only clarification; these men would be “merchants of

light,” simply giving information so that what men should do they might

do knowingly and not in the dark.

Indeed, if one can clarify one need not agitate. Just to state facts is

the most terrible thing that can be done to an injustice. Sermons and

stump-speeches stampede the judgment for a moment, but the sound of

their perorations still lingers in the air when reaction comes. Fact has

this advantage over rhetoric, that time strengthens the one and weakens

the other. Tell the truth and time will be your eloquence.

Let us suppose that our Society has existed some three years; let us

suppose that on the first day of every month it has spread through the

press simple reports of its investigations, simple accounts of socially

significant work in science, and simple statements of fact about the

economic and political issues of the day; let us suppose that by far the

greater part of these reports have been conscientious and accurate and

clear. Very well: in the course of these three years a large number of

mentally alert people all over the country will have developed the habit

of reading these monthly reports; they will look forward to them, they

will attach significance to them, they will herald them as events,

almost as decisions. In any question of national policy its statements

will influence thousands and thousands of the more independent minds.

Let us calculate the number of people who, in these United States, would

be reached by such reports; let us say the reports are printed in three

or four New York dailies, having a total circulation of one million; in

other dailies throughout the country totalling some five million

circulation; and in one or more weeklies or monthlies with a large or a

select circulation. One may perhaps say that out of the seven or eight

million people so reached (mostly adult males), five per cent will be so

influenced by the increasing prestige of the Society that they will read

the reports. Of these four hundred thousand readers it is reasonable to

suppose that three hundred thousand will be voters, and not only voters

but men of influence among their fellows. These men will each of them be

a medium through which the facts reported will be spread; it is not too

much to say that the number of American voters influenced directly or

indirectly by these reports will reach to a million.[304] Now imagine

the influence of this million of voters on a presidential election.

Their very existence would be a challenge; candidates would have them in

mind when making promises and criticisms; parties would think of them

when formulating policies and drawing up platforms; editors would beware

of falling into claptrap and deceit for fear of these million men armed

with combustible fact. It would mean such an elevation of political

discussion and political performance as democracy has never yet

produced; such an elevation as democracy must produce or die.

IV

Sex, Art, and Play in Social Reconstruction

So far our imagined Society has done no more than to seek and give

information. It has, it is true, listened to propagandists and Utopians,

and has published extracts from their testimony; but even this has been

not to agitate but to inform; that such and such opinions are held by

such and such men, and by such and such a number of men, is also a point

of information. Merely to state facts is the essential thing, and the

extremely effective thing. But now there are certain functions which

such a Society might perform beyond the giving of facts--functions that

involve personal attitudes and interpretations. It may be possible for

our Society to take on these functions without detracting from the trust

reposed in its statements of fact. What are these functions?

First of all, the stimulation of artistic production, and the extension

of artistic appreciation. Our Society, which is composed of rather staid

men, themselves not peculiarly fitted to pass judgment outside the field

of science, will invite, let us say, twenty of the most generally and

highly valued of English and American authors to form themselves into a

Committee on Literary Awards, as a branch of the Society for Social

Research. Imagine Thomas Hardy and George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells

and John Galsworthy and Rudyard Kipling and John Masefield and George

Moore and Joseph Conrad and W. D. Howells and Theodore Dreiser and many

more, telling the world every month, in individual instalments, their

judgment on current fiction, drama, poetry, English literature in

general; imagine the varied judgments printed with synoptic coördination

of the results as a way of fixing the standing of a book in the English

literary world; and judge of the stimulus that would reside in lists

signed by such names. Imagine another group of men, the literary élite

of France, making briefer reports on French literature; and other groups

in Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia; imagine the world getting

every month the judgment of Anatole France and Remain Rolland and

Gerhardt Hauptmann and Anton Tchekov and Georg Brandes on the current

literature of their peoples; imagine them making lists, too, of the best

books in all their literatures; imagine eager young men and women poring

over these conflicting lists, discussing them, making lists of their

own, and getting guidance so. And to the literary lists add monthly

reports, by a committee of the Society itself, on the best books in the

various fields of science. Finally, let the artists speak,--painters and

sculptors and all; let them say where excellence has dwelt this month in

their respective fields. There are hundreds of thousands who hunger for

such guidance as this plan would give. There are young people who

flounder about hopelessly because they find no guidance; young people

who are easily turned to fine work by the stimulus of responsible

judgment, and as easily lapse into the banalities of popular fiction and

popular magazines when this guiding stimulus fails to come. There are

thousands of people who would be glad to pay their modest contribution

to the support of any organization that would manage to get such

direction for them. Half the value of a university course lies in this,

that the teacher will suggest readings, judge books, and provide general

guidance for individual work. Perhaps the most valuable kind of

information in the world is that which guides one in the search for

information. Such guidance, given to all who ask for it, would go far to

save us from the mediocrity that almost stifles our national life.[305]

And more; why should not the stimulation be for the producers as well as

for the consumers? Why should not some kind of award be made, say every

six months, to the authors adjudged best in their lines by their

qualified contemporaries? Why should such a book as _Jean Christophe_

or _The Brothers Karamazov_ go unheralded except in fragmentary

individual ways? Why not reward such productions with a substantial

prize?--or, if that be impossible, by some presentation of certificate?

Even a “scrap of paper” would go a long way to stimulate the writer and

guide the reader. But why should not a money reward be possible? If rich

men will pay thousands upon thousands for the (perhaps) original works

of dead artists, why should they not turn their wealth into spiritual

gold by helping the often impecunious writers of the living day? It is a

convenient error to believe that financial aid would detract from the

independence of the creator: it would, did it come from men rewarding on

the basis of their own judgment; it would not if the judgment of the

world’s men of letters should be taken as criterion. And perhaps fewer

Chattertons and Davidsons would mar the history of literature and art.

This direction of attention to what is best and greatest in the work of

our age is a matter of deeper moment than superficial thought can grasp.

If, by some such method, the meaning of “success” could be freed from

monetary implication and attached rather to excellence in art and

science, the change would have almost inestimably far-reaching results.

Men worship money, as has often been pointed out,[306] not for its own

sake, nor for the material good it brings, but for the prestige of

success that goes with its “conspicuous consumption”; let the artist

find more appreciation for his ability than the captain of industry

finds for his, and there will be a great release of energy from economic

exploitation to creative work in science, literature, and art. A large

part of the stimuli that prompt men to exploit their fellows will be

gone; and that richest of all incentives--social esteem--will go to

produce men eager to contribute to the general power and happiness of

the community.[307]

The art impulse, as is generally believed, is a diversion of sex energy.

An organism is essentially not a food-getting but a reproductive

mechanism; the food-getting is a contributory incident in the

reproduction. As development proceeds the period of pregnancy and

adolescence increases, more of the offspring survive to maturity, large

broods, litters, or families become unnecessary, and more and more of

the energy that was sexual slides over into originally secondary

pursuits, like play and art. At the same time there is a gradual

diminution in pugnacity (which was another factor in the drama of

reproduction), and rivalry in games and arts encroaches more and more on

the emotional field once monopolized by strife for mates and food. The

game--a sort of Hegelian synthesis of hostility and sociability--takes

more and more the place of war, and artistic creation increasingly

replaces reproduction.

If all this is anything more than theoretic skating over thin sheets of

fact, it means that one “way out” from our social perplexities lies in

the provision of stronger stimulus to creation and recreation, art and

games. It is a serious part of the social planner’s work to find some

way of nourishing the art impulse wherever it appears, and drawing it on

by arranging rewards for its productions. And again we shall have to

understand that play is an important matter in a nation’s life; that one

of the best signs for the future of America is the prevalence of healthy

athleticism; and that an attempt to widen these sport activities to

greater intersectional and international scope than they have yet

attained will get at some of the roots of international pugnacity. A

wise government would be almost as interested in the people’s games as

in their schools, and would spend millions in making rivalry absorb the

dangerous energy of pugnacity. Olympic games should not be Olympic

games, occurring only with Olympiads; not a month should pass but great

athletes, selected by eliminative tests from every part of every

country, should meet, now here, now there, to match brawn and wits in

the friendly enmity of games. Let men know one another through games,

and they will not for slight reasons pass from sportsmanship to that

competitive destruction and deceit which our political Barnums call “the

defence of our national honor.”

V

Education

This diversion of the sexual instinct into art and games (a prophylactic

which has long since been applied to individuals, and awaits application

to groups) must begin in the early days of personal development; so that

our Society for Social Research would, if it were to take on this task,

find itself inextricably mixed up with the vast problem of educational

method and aim.

Here more than anywhere one hears the call for enlightenment and sees

the need for clarification. Here is an abundance of _’isms_ and a dearth

of knowledge. Most teachers use methods which they themselves consider

antiquated, and teach subjects which they will admit not one in a

hundred of their pupils will ever need to know. Curious lessons in

ethics are administered, which are seldom practised in the classroom,

and make initiative children come to believe that commandment-breaking

is heroic. Boys and girls bursting with vitality and the splendid

exuberance of youth are cramped for hours into set positions, while by a

sort of water-cure process knowledge is pumped into them from books

duller than a doctor’s dissertation in philosophy. And so forth: the

indictment against our schools has been drawn up a thousand times and in

a thousand ways, and needs no reënforcement here. But though we have

indicted we have not made any systematic attempt to find just what is

wrong, and how, and where; and what may be done to remedy the evil.

Experiments have been made, but their bearings and results have been

very imperfectly recorded.

Suppose now that our Society for Social Research should appoint a great

Committee on Education to hire expert investigators and make a thorough

attempt to clarify the issues in education. Here the function of

philosophy should be clear; for the educator touches at almost every

point those problems of values, individual and social, which are the

special hunting-ground of the philosopher. The importance of psychology

here is recognized, but the importance of biology and pathology has not

been seen in fit perspective. Why should not a special group of men be

set aside for years, if necessary, to study the applicability of the

several sciences to education? Why should not all scientific knowledge,

so far as it touches human nature, be focused on the semi-darkness in

which the educator works?

Two special problems in this field invite research. One concerns the

effect, on national character and capacity, of a system of education

controlled by the government. The point was made by Spinoza, as may be

remembered, that a government will, if it controls the schools, aim to

restrain rather than to develop the energies of men. Kant remarked the

same difficulty. The function of education in the eyes of a dominant

class is to make men able to do skilled work but unable to do original

thinking (for all original thinking begins with destruction); the

function of education in the eyes of a government is to teach men that

eleventh commandment which God forgot to give to Moses: thou shalt love

thy country right or wrong. All this, of course, requires some

marvellous prestidigitation of the truth, as school text-books of

national history show. The ignorant, it seems, are the necessary ballast

in the ship of state.

The alternative to such schools seems to be a return to private

education, with the rich man’s son getting even more of a start on the

poor boy than he gets now. Is there a _tertium quid_ here? Perhaps this

is one point which a resolute effort to get the facts would clarify.

What does such governmentally-regulated education do to the forces of

personal difference and initiative? Will men and women educated in such

a way produce their maximum in art and thought and industry? Or will

they be automata, always waiting for a push? What different results

would come if the nationally-owned schools were to confine their work

absolutely to statements of fact, presentations of science, and were to

leave “character-moulding” and lessons in ethics to private persons or

institutions? Then at least each parent might corrupt his own child in

his own pet way; and there might be a greater number of children who

would not be corrupted at all.

Another problem which might be advanced towards a solution by a little

light is that of giving higher education to those who want it but are

too poor to pay. There are certain studies, called above the social

disciplines, which help a man not so much to raise himself out of his

class and become a snob, as to get a better understanding of himself and

his fellow-men. Since mutual understanding is a hardly exaggerable

social good, why should not a way be found to provide for all who wish

it evening instruction in history, sociology, economics, psychology,

biology, philosophy, and similar fields of knowledge? Every added

citizen who has received instruction in these matters is a new asset to

the community; he will vote with more intelligence, he will work better

in coöperation, he will be less subject to undulations of social mania,

he will be a hint to all office-seekers to put their usual nonsense on

the shelf. Perhaps by this medium too our Society would spread its

reports and widen its influence. Imagine a nation of people instructed

in these sciences: with such a people civilization would begin.

And then again, our busy-body Society would turn its research light on

the universities, and tell them a thing or two of what the light would

show. It would betray the lack of coördination among the various

sciences,--the department of psychology, for example, never coming to so

much as speaking terms with the department of economics; it would call

for an extension, perhaps, of the now infrequent seminars and

conferences between departments whose edges overlap, or which shed light

on a common field. It would invite the university to give less of its

time to raking over the past, and help it to orient itself toward the

future; it would suggest to every university that it provide an open

forum for the responsible expression of all shades of opinion; it would,

in general, call for a better organization of science as part of the

organization of intelligence; it would remind the universities that they

are more vital even than governments; and it might perhaps succeed in

getting engraved on the gates of every institution of learning the words

of Thomas Hobbes: “Seeing the universities are the foundation of civil

and moral doctrine, from whence the preachers and the gentry, drawing

such water as they find, use to sprinkle the same upon the people, there

ought certainly to be great care taken to have it pure.”

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