. . . {169} The justification of all persons who have freed themselves
from toil is now founded on experimental, positive science. The
scientific theory is as follows:--
"For the study of the laws of life of human societies, there exists but
one indubitable method,--the positive, experimental, critical method
"Only sociology, founded on biology, founded on all the positive
sciences, can give us the laws of humanity. Humanity, or human
communities, are the organisms already prepared, or still in process of
formation, and which are subservient to all the laws of the evolution of
organisms.
"One of the chief of these laws is the variation of destination among the
portions of the organs. Some people command, others obey. If some have
in superabundance, and others in want, this arises not from the will of
God, not because the empire is a form of manifestation of personality,
but because in societies, as in organisms, division of labor becomes
indispensable for life as a whole. Some people perform the muscular
labor in societies; others, the mental labor."
Upon this doctrine is founded the prevailing justification of our time.
Not long ago, their reigned in the learned, cultivated world, a moral
philosophy, according to which it appeared that every thing which exists
is reasonable; that there is no such thing as evil or good; and that it
is unnecessary for man to war against evil, but that it is only necessary
for him to display intelligence,--one man in the military service,
another in the judicial, another on the violin. There have been many and
varied expressions of human wisdom, and these phenomena were known to the
men of the nineteenth century. The wisdom of Rousseau and of Lessing,
and Spinoza and Bruno, and all the wisdom of antiquity; but no one man's
wisdom overrode the crowd. It was impossible to say even this,--that
Hegel's success was the result of the symmetry of this theory. There
were other equally symmetrical theories,--those of Descartes, Leibnitz,
Fichte, Schopenhauer. There was but one reason why this doctrine won for
itself, for a season, the belief of the whole world; and this reason was,
that the deductions of that philosophy winked at people's weaknesses.
These deductions were summed up in this,--that every thing was
reasonable, every thing good; and that no one was to blame.
When I began my career, Hegelianism was the foundation of every thing. It
was floating in the air; it was expressed in newspaper and periodical
articles, in historical and judicial lectures, in novels, in treatises,
in art, in sermons, in conversation. The man who was not acquainted with
Hegal had no right to speak. Any one who desired to understand the truth
studied Hegel. Every thing rested on him. And all at once the forties
passed, and there was nothing left of him. There was not even a hint of
him, any more than if he had never existed. And the most amazing thing
of all was, that Hegelianism did not fall because some one overthrew it
or destroyed it. No! It was the same then as now, but all at once it
appeared that it was of no use whatever to the learned and cultivated
world.
There was a time when the Hegelian wise men triumphantly instructed the
masses; and the crowd, understanding nothing, blindly believed in every
thing, finding confirmation in the fact that it was on hand; and they
believed that what seemed to them muddy and contradictory there on the
heights of philosophy was all as clear as the day. But that time has
gone by. That theory is worn out: a new theory has presented itself in
its stead. The old one has become useless; and the crowd has looked into
the secret sanctuaries of the high priests, and has seen that there is
nothing there, and that there has been nothing there, save very obscure
and senseless words. This has taken place within my memory.
"But this arises," people of the present science will say, "from the fact
that all that was the raving of the theological and metaphysical period;
but now there exists positive, critical science, which does not deceive,
since it is all founded on induction and experiment. Now our erections
are not shaky, as they formerly were, and only in our path lies the
solution of all the problems of humanity."
But the old teachers said precisely the same, and they were no fools; and
we know that there were people of great intelligence among them. And
precisely thus, within my memory, and with no less confidence, with no
less recognition on the part of the crowd of so-called cultivated people,
spoke the Hegelians. And neither were our Herzens, our Stankevitches, or
our Byelinskys fools. But whence arose that marvellous manifestation,
that sensible people should preach with the greatest assurance, and that
the crowd should accept with devotion, such unfounded and unsupportable
teachings? There is but one reason,--that the teachings thus inculcated
justified people in their evil life.
A very poor English writer, whose works are all forgotten, and recognized
as the most insignificant of the insignificant, writes a treatise on
population, in which he devises a fictitious law concerning the increase
of population disproportionate to the means of subsistence. This
fictitious law, this writer encompasses with mathematical formulae
founded on nothing whatever; and then he launches it on the world. From
the frivolity and the stupidity of this hypothesis, one would suppose
that it would not attract the attention of any one, and that it would
sink into oblivion, like all the works of the same author which followed
it; but it turned out quite otherwise. The hack-writer who penned this
treatise instantly becomes a scientific authority, and maintains himself
upon that height for nearly half a century. Malthus! The Malthusian
theory,--the law of the increase of the population in geometrical, and of
the means of subsistence in arithmetical proportion, and the wise and
natural means of restricting the population,--all these have become
scientific, indubitable truths, which have not been confirmed, but which
have been employed as axioms, for the erection of false theories. In
this manner have learned and cultivated people proceeded; and among the
herd of idle persons, there sprung up a pious trust in the great laws
expounded by Malthus. How did this come to pass? It would seem as
though they were scientific deductions, which had nothing in common with
the instincts of the masses. But this can only appear so for the man who
believes that science, like the Church, is something self-contained,
liable to no errors, and not simply the imaginings of weak and erring
folk, who merely substitute the imposing word "science," in place of the
thoughts and words of the people, for the sake of impressiveness.
All that was necessary was to make practical deductions from the theory
of Malthus, in order to perceive that this theory was of the most human
sort, with the best defined of objects. The deductions directly arising
from this theory were the following: The wretched condition of the
laboring classes was such in accordance with an unalterable law, which
does not depend upon men; and, if any one is to blame in this matter, it
is the hungry laboring classes themselves. Why are they such fools as to
give birth to children, when they know that there will be nothing for the
children to eat? And so this deduction, which is valuable for the herd
of idle people, has had this result: that all learned men overlooked the
incorrectness, the utter arbitrariness of these deductions, and their
insusceptibility to proof; and the throng of cultivated, i.e., of idle
people, knowing instinctively to what these deductions lead, saluted this
theory with enthusiasm, conferred upon it the stamp of truth, i.e., of
science, and dragged it about with them for half a century.
Is not this same thing the cause of the confidence of men in positive
critical-experimental science, and of the devout attitude of the crowd
towards that which it preaches? At first it seems strange, that the
theory of evolution can in any manner justify people in their evil ways;
and it seems as though the scientific theory of evolution has to deal
only with facts, and that it does nothing else but observe facts.
But this only appears to be the case.
Exactly the same thing appeared to be the case with the Hegelian
doctrine, in a greater degree, and also in the special instance of the
Malthusian doctrine. Hegelianism was, apparently, occupied only with its
logical constructions, and bore no relation to the life of mankind.
Precisely this seemed to be the case with the Malthusian theory. It
appeared to be busy itself only with statistical data. But this was only
in appearance.
Contemporary science is also occupied with facts alone: it investigates
facts. But what facts? Why precisely these facts, and no others?
The men of contemporary science are very fond of saying, triumphantly and
confidently, "We investigate only facts," imagining that these words
contain some meaning. It is impossible to investigate facts alone,
because the facts which are subject to our investigation are
_innumerable_ (in the definite sense of that word),--innumerable. Before
we proceed to investigate facts, we must have a theory on the foundation
of which these or those facts can be inquired into, i.e., selected from
the incalculable quantity.
And this theory exists, and is even very definitely expressed, although
many of the workers in contemporary science do not know it, or often
pretend that they do not know it. Exactly thus has it always been with
all prevailing and guiding doctrines. The foundations of every doctrine
are always stated in a theory, and the so-called learned men merely
invent further deductions from the foundations once stated. Thus
contemporary science is selecting its facts on the foundation of a very
definite theory, which it sometimes knows, sometimes refuses to know, and
sometimes really does not know; but the theory exists.
The theory is as follows: All mankind is an undying organism; men are the
particles of that organism, and each one of them has his own special task
for the service of others. In the same manner, the cells united in an
organism share among them the labor of fight for existence of the whole
organism; they magnify the power of one capacity, and weaken another, and
unite in one organ, in order the better to supply the requirements of the
whole organism. And exactly in the same manner as with gregarious
animals,--ants or bees,--the separate individuals divide the labor among
them. The queen lays the egg, the drone fructifies it; the bee works his
whole life long. And precisely this thing takes place in mankind and in
human societies. And therefore, in order to find the law of life for
man, it is necessary to study the laws of the life and the development of
organisms.
In the life and development of organisms, we find the following laws: the
law of differentiation and integration, the law that every phenomenon is
accompanied not by direct consequences alone, another law regarding the
instability of type, and so on. All this seems very innocent; but it is
only necessary to draw the deductions from all these laws, in order to
immediately perceive that these laws incline in the same direction as the
law of Malthus. These laws all point to one thing; namely, to the
recognition of that division of labor which exists in human communities,
as organic, that is to say, as indispensable. And therefore, the unjust
position in which we, the people who have freed ourselves from labor,
find ourselves, must be regarded not from the point of view of common-
sense and justice, but merely as an undoubted fact, confirming the
universal law.
Moral philosophy also justified every sort of cruelty and harshness; but
this resulted in a philosophical manner, and therefore wrongly. But with
science, all this results scientifically, and therefore in a manner not
to be doubted.
How can we fail to accept so very beautiful a theory? It is merely
necessary to look upon human society as an object of contemplation; and I
can console myself with the thought that my activity, whatever may be its
nature, is a functional activity of the organism of humanity, and that
therefore there cannot arise any question as to whether it is just that
I, in employing the labor of others, am doing only that which is
agreeable to me, as there can arise no question as to the division of
labor between the brain cells and the muscular cells. How is it possible
not to admit so very beautiful a theory, in order that one may be able,
ever after, to pocket one's conscience, and have a perfectly unbridled
animal existence, feeling beneath one's self that support of science
which is not to be shaken nowadays!
And it is on this new doctrine that the justification for men's idleness
and cruelty is now founded.