{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_42880/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_42880","id":"gutenberg_42880","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42880","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Sociology","Philosophy","Social problems"],"text":"PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM\n\n                        [Illustration: colophon]\n\n                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n\n                  NEW YORK \u00b7 BOSTON \u00b7 CHICAGO \u00b7 DALLAS\n                        ATLANTA \u00b7 SAN FRANCISCO\n\n                        MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED\n\n                       LONDON \u00b7 BOMBAY \u00b7 CALCUTTA\n                               MELBOURNE\n\n                   THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.\n                                TORONTO\n\n\n\n\n                               PHILOSOPHY\n\n                                  AND\n\n                           THE SOCIAL PROBLEM\n\n                                   BY\n\n                           WILL DURANT, PH.D.\n\n              INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY, EXTENSION TEACHING\n                          COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY\n\n                                    \u03c4\u1f41\u03bd \u03bc\u1f11\u03bd \u03b2\u1f31\u03bf\u03bd\n                \u1f21 \u03c6\u1f51\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 \u1f11\u03b4\u03c9\u03ba\u03b5, \u03c4\u03bf \u03b4\u1f11 \u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u1f61\u03c2 \u03b6\u1f21\u03bd \u1f21 \u03c4\u1f11\u03c7\u03bd\u03b7.\n                             --UNKNOWN DRAMATIC POET.\n\n                                NEW YORK\n\n                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n\n                                  1917\n\n                         _All rights reserved_\n\n                            COPYRIGHT, 1917,\n                       BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.\n\n          Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1917.\n\n                             Norwood Press\n                 J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.\n                         Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.\n\n\n                                   TO\n\n                             ALDEN FREEMAN\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                                    PAGE\n\nINTRODUCTION                                                           1\n\nPART I\n\nHISTORICAL APPROACH\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE PRESENT SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC\n\nI.    History as rebarbarization                                       5\n\nII.   Philosophy as disintegrator                                      6\n\nIII.  Individualism in Athens                                          7\n\nIV.   The Sophists                                                     9\n\nV.    Intelligence as virtue                                          12\n\nVI.   The meaning of virtue                                           15\n\nVII.  \u201cInstinct\u201d and \u201creason\u201d                                         23\n\nVIII. The secularization of morals                                    27\n\nIX.   \u201cHappiness\u201d and \u201cvirtue\u201d                                        31\n\nX.    The Socratic challenge                                          33\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nPLATO: PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS\n\nI.    The man and the artist                                          36\n\nII.   How to solve the social problem                                 40\n\nIII.  On making philosopher-kings                                     44\n\nIV.   Dishonest democracy                                             52\n\nV.    Culture and slavery                                             55\n\nVI.   Plasticity and order                                            60\n\nVII.  The meaning of justice                                          62\n\nVIII. The future of Plato                                             64\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nFRANCIS BACON AND THE SOCIAL POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE\n\nI. From Plato to Bacon                                                67\n\nII. Character                                                         69\n\nIII. The expurgation of the intellect                                 70\n\nIV. Knowledge is power                                                74\n\nV. The socialization of science                                       76\n\nVI. Science and Utopia                                                79\n\nVII. Scholasticism in science                                         81\n\nVIII. The Asiatics of Europe                                          85\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nSPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM\n\nI. Hobbes                                                             90\n\nII. The spirit of Spinoza                                             91\n\nIII. Political ethics                                                 93\n\nIV. Is man a political animal?                                        95\n\nV. What the social problem is                                         98\n\nVI. Free speech                                                      101\n\nVII. Virtue as power                                                 105\n\nVIII. Freedom and order                                              108\n\nIX. Democracy and intelligence                                       112\n\nX. The legacy of Spinoza                                             115\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nNIETZSCHE\n\nI. From Spinoza to Nietzsche                                         117\n\nII. Biographical                                                     120\n\nIII. Exposition                                                      126\n\n   1. Morality as impotence                                          126\n   2. Democracy                                                      128\n   3. Feminism                                                       131\n   4. Socialism and anarchism                                        133\n   5. Degeneration                                                   138\n   6. Nihilism                                                       141\n   7. The will to power                                              143\n   8. The superman                                                   150\n   9. How to make supermen                                           155\n  10. On the necessity of exploitation                               159\n  11. Aristocracy                                                    162\n  12. Signs of ascent                                                165\n\nIV. Criticism                                                        172\n\nV. Nietzsche replies                                                 177\n\nVI. Conclusion                                                       178\n\nPART II\n\nSUGGESTIONS\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nSOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS\n\nI. The problem                                                       185\n\nII. \u201cSolutions\u201d                                                      190\n\n   1. Feminism                                                       190\n   2. Socialism                                                      194\n   3. Eugenics                                                       198\n   4. Anarchism                                                      200\n   5. Individualism                                                  202\n   6. Individualism again                                            202\n\nIII. Dissolutions                                                    205\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE RECONSTRUCTIVE FUNCTION OF PHILOSOPHY\n\nI. Epistemologs                                                      214\n\nII. Philosophy as control                                            218\n\nIII. Philosophy as mediator between science and statesmanship        222\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE\n\nI. The need                                                          227\n\nII. The organization of intelligence                                 230\n\nIII. Information as panacea                                          234\n\nIV. Sex, art, and play in social reconstruction                      240\n\nV. Education                                                         246\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE READER SPEAKS\n\nI. The democratization of aristocracy                                251\n\nII. The professor as Buridan\u2019s ass                                   255\n\nIII. Is information wanted?                                          257\n\nIV. Finding M\u00e6cenas                                                  261\n\nV. The chance of philosophy                                          264\n\nCONCLUSION                                                           268\n\n\n\n\nPART I\n\nHISTORICAL APPROACH\n\n\n\n\nPHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nThe purpose of this essay is to show: first, that the social problem has\nbeen the basic concern of many of the greater philosophers; second, that\nan approach to the social problem through philosophy is the first\ncondition of even a moderately successful treatment of this problem; and\nthird, that an approach to philosophy through the social problem is\nindispensable to the revitalization of philosophy.\n\nBy \u201cphilosophy\u201d we shall understand a study of experience as a whole, or\nof a portion of experience in relation to the whole.\n\nBy the \u201csocial problem\u201d we shall understand, simply and very broadly,\nthe problem of reducing human misery by modifying social institutions.\nIt is a problem that, ever reshaping itself, eludes sharper definition;\nfor misery is related to desire, and desire is personal and in perpetual\nflux: each of us sees the problem unsteadily in terms of his own\nchanging aspirations. It is an uncomfortably complicated problem, of\ncourse; and we must bear in mind that the limit of our intention here is\nto consider philosophy as an approach to the problem, and the problem\nitself as an approach to philosophy. We are proposing no solutions.\n\nLet us, as a wholesome measure of orientation, touch some of the\nmountain-peaks in philosophical history, with an eye for the social\ninterest that lurks in every metaphysical maze. \u201cAristotle,\u201d says\nProfessor Woodbridge, \u201cset treatise-writers the fashion of beginning\neach treatise by reviewing previous opinions on their subject, and\nproving them all wrong.\u201d[1] The purpose of the next five chapters will\nbe rather the opposite: we shall see if some supposedly dead\nphilosophies do not admit of considerable resuscitation. Instead of\ntrying to show that Socrates, Plato, Bacon, Spinoza, and Nietzsche were\nquite mistaken in their views on the social problem, we shall try to see\nwhat there is in these views that can help us to understand our own\nsituation to-day. We shall not make a collection of systems of social\nphilosophy; we shall not lose ourselves in the past in a scholarly\neffort to relate each philosophy to its social and political\nenvironment; we shall try to relate these philosophies rather to our own\nenvironment, to look at our own problems successively through the eyes\nof these philosophers. Other interpretations of these men we shall not\nso much contradict as seek to supplement.\n\nEach of our historical chapters, then, will be not so much a review as a\npreface and a progression. The aim will be neither history nor\ncriticism, but a kind of construction by proxy. It is a method that has\nits defects: it will, for example, sacrifice thoroughness of scholarship\nto present applicability, and will necessitate some repetitious\ngathering of the threads when we come later to our more personal\npurpose. But as part requital for this, we shall save ourselves from\nconsidering the past except as it is really present, except as it is\nalive and nourishingly significant to-day. And from each study we shall\nperhaps make some advance towards our final endeavor,--the mutual\nelucidation of the social problem and philosophy.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE PRESENT SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC\n\n\nI\n\nHistory as Rebarbarization\n\nHistory is a process of rebarbarization. A people made vigorous by\narduous physical conditions of life, and driven by the increasing\nexigencies of survival, leaves its native habitat, moves down upon a\nless vigorous people, conquers, displaces, or absorbs it. Habits of\nresolution and activity developed in a less merciful environment now\nrapidly produce an economic surplus; and part of the resources so\naccumulated serve as capital in a campaign of imperialist conquest. The\ngrowing surplus generates a leisure class, scornful of physical activity\nand adept in the arts of luxury. Leisure begets speculation; speculation\ndissolves dogma and corrodes custom, develops sensitivity of perception\nand destroys decision of action. Thought, adventuring in a labyrinth of\nanalysis, discovers behind society the individual; divested of its\nnormal social function it turns inward and discovers the self. The\nsense of common interest, of commonwealth, wanes; there are no citizens\nnow, there are only individuals.\n\nFrom afar another people, struggling against the forces of an obdurate\nenvironment, sees here the cleared forests, the liberating roads, the\nharvest of plenty, the luxury of leisure. It dreams, aspires, dares,\nunites, invades. The rest is as before.\n\nRebarbarization is rejuvenation. The great problem of any civilization\nis how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization.\n\n\nII\n\nPhilosophy as Disintegrator\n\nThe rise of philosophy, then, often heralds the decay of a civilization.\nSpeculation begins with nature and begets naturalism; it passes to\nman--first as a psychological mystery and then as a member of\nsociety--and begets individualism. Philosophers do not always desire\nthese results; but they achieve them. They feel themselves the unwilling\nenemies of the state: they think of men in terms of personality while\nthe state thinks of men in terms of social mechanism. Some philosophers\nwould gladly hold their peace, but there is that in them which will out;\nand when philosophers speak, gods and dynasties fall. Most states have\nhad their roots in heaven, and have paid the penalty for it: the\ntwilight of the gods is the afternoon of states.\n\nEvery civilization comes at last to the point where the individual, made\nby speculation conscious of himself as an end _per se_, demands of the\nstate, as the price of its continuance, that it shall henceforth enhance\nrather than exploit his capacities. Philosophers sympathize with this\ndemand, the state almost always rejects it: therefore civilizations come\nand civilizations go. The history of philosophy is essentially an\naccount of the efforts great men have made to avert social\ndisintegration by building up natural moral sanctions to take the place\nof the supernatural sanctions which they themselves have destroyed. To\nfind--without resorting to celestial machinery--some way of winning for\ntheir people social coherence and permanence without sacrificing\nplasticity and individual uniqueness to regimentation,--that has been\nthe task of philosophers, that is the task of philosophers.\n\nWe should be thankful that it is. Who knows but that within our own time\nmay come at last the forging of an effective _natural_ ethic?--an\nachievement which might be the most momentous event in the history of\nour world.\n\n\nIII\n\nIndividualism in Athens\n\nThe great ages in the history of European thought have been for the most\npart periods of individualistic effervescence: the age of Socrates, the\nage of C\u00e6sar and Augustus, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment;--and\nshall we add the age which is now coming to a close? These ages have\nusually been preceded by periods of imperialist expansion: imperialism\nrequires a tightening of the bonds whereby individual allegiance to the\nstate is made secure; and this tightening, given a satiety of\nimperialism, involves an individualistic reaction. And again, the\ndissolution of the political or economic frontier by conquest or\ncommerce breaks down cultural barriers between peoples, develops a sense\nof the relativity of customs, and issues in the opposition of individual\n\u201creason\u201d to social tradition.\n\nA political treatise attributed to the fourth-century B.C. reflects the\nattitude that had developed in Athens in the later fifth century. \u201cIf\nall men were to gather in a heap the customs which they hold to be good\nand noble, and if they were next to select from it the customs which\nthey hold to be base and vile, nothing would be left over.\u201d[2] Once such\na view has found capable defenders, the custom-basis of social\norganization begins to give way, and institutions venerable with age are\nruthlessly subp\u0153naed to appear before the bar of reason. Men begin to\ncontrast \u201cNature\u201d with custom, somewhat to the disadvantage of the\nlatter. Even the most basic of Greek institutions is questioned: \u201cThe\nDeity,\u201d says a fourth-century Athenian Rousseau, \u201cmade all men free;\nNature has enslaved no man.\u201d[3] Botsford speaks of \u201cthe powerful\ninfluence of fourth-century socialism on the intellectual class.\u201d[4]\nEuripides and Aristophanes are full of talk about a movement for the\nemancipation of women.[5] Law and government are examined: Anarcharsis\u2019\ncomparison of the law to a spider\u2019s web, which catches small flies and\nlets the big ones escape, now finds sympathetic comprehension; and men\narise, like Callicles and Thrasymachus, who frankly consider government\nas a convenient instrument of mass-exploitation.\n\n\nIV\n\nThe Sophists\n\nThe cultural representatives of this individualistic development were\nthe Sophists. These men were university professors without a university\nand without the professorial title. They appeared in response to a\ndemand for higher instruction on the part of the young men of the\nleisure class; and within a generation they became the most powerful\nintellectual force in Greece. There had been philosophers, questioners,\nbefore them; but these early philosophers had questioned nature rather\nthan man or the state. The Sophists were the first group of men in\nGreece to overcome the natural tendency to acquiesce in the given order\nof things. They were proud men,--humility is a vice that never found\nroot in Greece,--and they had a buoyant confidence in the newly\ndiscovered power of human intelligence. They assumed, in harmony with\nthe spirit of all Greek achievement, that in the development and\nextension of knowledge lay the road to a sane and significant life,\nindividual and communal; and in the quest for knowledge they were\nresolved to scrutinize unawed all institutions, prejudices, customs,\nmorals. Protagoras professed to respect conventions,[6] and pronounced\nconventions and institutions the source of man\u2019s superiority to the\nbeast; but his famous principle, that \u201cman is the measure of all\nthings,\u201d was a quiet hint that morals are a matter of taste, that we\ncall a man \u201cgood\u201d when his conduct is advantageous to us, and \u201cbad\u201d when\nhis conduct threatens to make for our own loss. To the Sophists virtue\nconsisted, not in obedience to unjudged rules and customs, but in the\nefficient performance of whatever one set out to do. They would have\ncondemned the bungler and let the \u201csinner\u201d go. That they were flippant\nsceptics, putting no distinction of worth between any belief and its\nopposite, and willing to prove anything for a price, is an old\naccusation which later students of Greek philosophy are almost unanimous\nin rejecting.[7]\n\nThe great discovery of the Sophists was the individual; it was an\nachievement for which Plato and his oligarchical friends could not\nforgive them, and because of which they incurred the contumely which it\nis now so hard to dissociate from their name. The purpose of laws, said\nthe Sophists, was to widen the possibilities of individual development;\nif laws did not do that, they had better be forgotten. There was a\nhigher law than the laws of men,--a natural law, engraved in every\nheart, and judge of every other law. The conscience of the individual\nwas above the dictates of any state. All radicalisms lay compact in that\npronouncement. Plato, prolific of innovations though he was, yet shrank\nfrom such a leap into the new. But the Sophists pressed their point, men\nlistened to them, and the Greek world changed. When Socrates appeared,\nhe found that world all out of joint, a war of all against all, a\nstridency of unco\u00f6rdinated personalities rushing into chaos. And when he\nwas asked, What should men do to be saved, he answered, simply, Let us\nthink.\n\n\nV\n\nIntelligence as Virtue\n\nIntelligence as virtue: it was not a new doctrine; it was merely a new\nemphasis placed on an already important element in the Greek--or rather\nthe Athenian--view of life. But it was a needed emphasis. The Sophists\n(not Socrates, _pace_ Cicero) had brought philosophy down from heaven to\nearth, but they had left it grovelling at the feet of business\nefficiency and success, a sort of _ancilla pecuni\u00e6_, a broker knowing\nwhere one\u2019s soul could be invested at ten per cent. Socrates agreed with\nthe Sophists in condemning any but a very temporary devotion to\nmetaphysical abstractions,--the one and the many, motion and rest, the\nindivisibility of space, the puzzles of predication, and so forth; he\njoined them in ridiculing the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, and\nin demanding that all thinking should be focussed finally on the real\nconcerns of life; but his spirit was as different from theirs as the\nspirit of Spinoza was different from that of a medi\u00e6val money-lender.\nWith the Sophists philosophy was a profession; they were \u201clovers of\nwisdom\u201d--for a consideration. With Socrates philosophy was a quest of\nthe permanently good, of the lastingly satisfying attitude to life. To\nfind out just what are justice, temperance, courage, piety,--\u201cthat is an\ninquiry which I shall never be weary of pursuing so far as in me lies.\u201d\nIt was not an easy quest; and the results were not startlingly\ndefinite: \u201cI wander to and fro when I attempt these problems, and do not\nremain consistent with myself.\u201d His interlocutors went from him\napparently empty; but he had left in them seed which developed in the\nafter-calm of thought. He could clarify men\u2019s notions, he could reveal\nto them their assumptions and prejudices; but he could not and would not\nmanufacture opinions for them. He left no written philosophy because he\nhad only the most general advice to give, and knew that no other advice\nis ever taken. He trusted his friends to pass on the good word.\n\nNow what was the good word? It was, first of all, the identity of virtue\nand wisdom, morals and intelligence; but more than that, it was the\nbasic identity, in the light of intelligence, of communal and individual\ninterests. Here at the Sophist\u2019s feet lay the d\u00e9bris of the old\nmorality. What was to replace it? The young Athenians of a generation\ndenuded of supernatural belief would not listen to counsels of \u201cvirtue,\u201d\nof self-sacrifice to the community. What was to be done? Should social\nand political pressure be brought to bear upon the Sophists to compel\nthem to modify the individualistic tenor of their teachings? Analysis\ndestroys morals. What is the moral--destroy analysis?\n\nThe moral, answered Socrates, is to get better morals, to find an\nethic immune to the attack of the most ruthless sceptic. The Sophists\nwere right, said Socrates; morality means more than social obedience.\nBut the Sophists were wrong in opposing the good of the individual to\nthat of the community; Socrates proposed to prove that if a man were\nintelligent, he would see that those same qualities which make a man a\ngood citizen--justice, wisdom, temperance, courage--are also the best\nmeans to individual advantage and development. All these \u201cvirtues\u201d\nare simply the supreme and only virtue--wisdom--differentiated by\nthe context of circumstance. No action is virtuous unless it is an\nintelligent adaptation of means to a criticised end. \u201cSin\u201d is failure\nto use energy to the best account; it is an unintelligent waste of\nstrength. A man does not knowingly pursue anything but the Good; let him\nbut see his advantage, and he will be attracted towards it irresistibly;\nlet him pursue it, and he will be happy, and the state safe. The trouble\nis that men lack perspective, and cannot see their true Good; they need\nnot \u201cvirtue\u201d but intelligence, not sermons but training in perspective.\nThe man who has \u1f11\u03bd\u03ba\u03c1\u1f01\u03c4\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1, _who rules within_, who is strong enough to\nstop and think, the man who has achieved \u03c3\u03c9\u03c6\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u1f51\u03bd\u03b7,--the self-knowledge\nthat brings self-command,--such a man will not be deceived by the\ntragedy of distance, by the apparent smallness of the future good\nalongside of the more easily appreciable good that lies invitingly at\nhand. Hence the moral importance of dialectic, of cross-examination, of\nconcept and definition: we must learn \u201chow to make our ideas clear\u201d;\nwe must ask ourselves just what it is that we want, just how real\nthis seeming good is. Dialectic is the handmaiden of virtue; and all\nclarification is morality.\n\n\nVI\n\nThe Meaning of Virtue\n\nThis is frank intellectualism, of course; and the best-refuted doctrine\nin philosophy. It is amusing to observe the ease with which critics and\nhistorians despatch the Socratic ethic. It is \u201can extravagant paradox,\u201d\nsays Sidgwick,[8] \u201cincompatible with moral freedom.\u201d \u201cNothing is\neasier,\u201d says Gomperz,[9] \u201cthan to detect the one-sidedness of this\npoint of view.\u201d \u201cThis doctrine,\u201d says Grote,[10] \u201comits to notice, what\nis not less essential, the proper conditions of the emotions, desires,\netc.\u201d \u201cIt tended to make all conduct a matter of the intellect and not\nof the character, and so in a sense to destroy moral responsibility,\u201d\nsays Hobhouse.[11] \u201cHimself blessed with a will so powerful that it\nmoved almost without friction,\u201d says Henry Jackson,[12] \u201cSocrates fell\ninto the error of ignoring its operations, and was thus led to regard\nknowledge as the sole condition of well-doing.\u201d \u201cSocrates was a\nmisunderstanding,\u201d says Nietzsche;[13] \u201creason at any price, life made\nclear, cold, cautious, conscious, without instincts, opposed to the\ninstincts, was in itself only a disease, ... and by no means a return to\n\u2018virtue,\u2019 to \u2018health,\u2019 and to happiness.\u201d And the worn-out dictum about\nseeing the better and approving it, yet following the worse, is quoted\nas the deliverance of a profound psychologist, whose verdict should be\naccepted as a final solution of the problem.\n\nBefore refuting a doctrine it is useful to try to understand it. What\ncould Socrates have meant by saying that all real virtue is\nintelligence? What is virtue?\n\nA civilization may be characterized in terms of its conception of\nvirtue. There is hardly anything more distinctive of the Greek attitude,\nas compared with our own, than the Greek notion of virtue as\nintelligence. Consider the present connotations of the word _virtue_:\nmen shrink at having the term applied to them; and \u201cnothing makes one so\nvain,\u201d says Oscar Wilde, \u201cas being told that one is a sinner.\u201d During\nthe Middle Ages the official conception of virtue was couched in terms\nof womanly excellence; and the sternly masculine God of the Hebrews\nsuffered considerably from the inroads of Mariolatry. Protestantism was\nin part a rebellion of the ethically subjugated male; in Luther the man\nemerges riotously from the monk. But as people cling to the ethical\nimplications of a creed long after the creed itself has been abandoned,\nso our modern notion of virtue is still essentially medi\u00e6val and\nfeminine. Virginity, chastity, conjugal fidelity, gentility, obedience,\nloyalty, kindness, self-sacrifice, are the stock-in-trade of all\nrespectable moralists; to be \u201cgood\u201d is to be harmless, to be not \u201cbad,\u201d\nto be a sort of sterilized citizen, guaranteed not to injure. This\nsheepish innocuousness comes easily to the natively uninitiative, to\nthose who are readily amenable to fear and prohibitions. It is a static\nvirtue; it contracts rather than expands the soul; it offers no handle\nfor development, no incentive to social stimulation and productivity. It\nis time we stopped calling this insipidly negative attitude by the once\nmighty name of virtue. Virtue must be defined in terms of that which is\nvitally significant in our lives.\n\nAnd therefore, too, virtue cannot be defined in terms of individual\nsubordination to the group. The vitally significant thing in a man\u2019s\nlife is not the community, but himself. To ask him to consider the\ninterests of the community above his own is again to put up for his\nworship an external, transcendent god; and the trouble with a\ntranscendent god is that he is sure to be dethroned. To call \u201cimmoral\u201d\nthe refusal of the individual to meet such demands is the depth of\nindecency; it is itself immoral,--that is, it is nonsense. The notion of\n\u201cduty\u201d as involving self-sacrifice, as essentially duty to others, is a\nsoul-cramping, funereal notion, and deserves all that Ibsen and his\nprogeny have said of it.[14] Ask the individual to sacrifice himself to\nthe community, and it will not be long before he sacrifices the\ncommunity to himself. Granted that, in the language of Heraclitus, there\nis always a majority of fools, and that self-sacrifice can be procured\nby the simple hypnotic suggestion of _post-mortem_ remuneration: sooner\nor later come doubt and disillusionment, and the society whose\npermanence was so easily secured becomes driftwood on the tides of time.\nHistory means that if it means anything.\n\nNo; the intelligent individual will give allegiance to the group of\nwhich he happens to find himself a member, only so far as the policies\nof the group accord with his own criticised desires. Whatever\nallegiance he offers will be to those forces, wherever they may be,\nwhich in his judgment move in the line of these desires. Even for such\nforces he will not sacrifice himself,--though there may be times when\nmartyrdom is a luxury for which life itself is not too great a price.\nSince these forces have been defined in terms of his own judgment and\ndesire, conflict between them and himself can come only when his\nbehavior diverges from the purposes defined and resumed in times of\nconscious thought,--_i.e._, only when he ceases to adapt means to his\nends, ceases, that is, to be intelligent. The prime moral conflict is\nnot between the individual and his group, but between the partial self\nof fragmentary impulse and the co\u00f6rdinated self of conscious purpose.\nThere is a group within each man as well as without: a group of partial\nselves is the reality behind the figment of the unitary self. Every\nindividual is a society, every person is a crowd. And the tragedies of\nthe moral life lie not in the war of each against all, but in the\nrestless interplay of these partial selves behind the stage of action.\nAs a man\u2019s intelligence grows this conflict diminishes, for both means\nand ends, both behavior and purposes, are being continually revised and\nredirected in accordance with intelligence, and therefore in convergence\ntowards it. Progressively the individual achieves unity, and through\nunity, personality. Faith in himself has made him whole. The ethical\nproblem, so far as it is the purely individual problem of attaining to\nco\u00f6rdinated personality, is solved.\n\nMoral responsibility, then,--whatever social responsibility may be,--is\nthe responsibility of the individual to himself. The social is not\nnecessarily the moral--let the sociological fact be what it will. The\nunthinking conformity of the \u201cnormal social life\u201d is, just because it is\nunthinking, below the level of morality: let us call it sociality, and\nmake morality the prerogative of the really thinking animal. In any\nsociety so constituted as to give to the individual an increase in\npowers as recompense for the pruning of his liberties, the unsocial will\nbe immoral,--that is, self-destructively unreasonable and unintelligent;\nbut even in such a society the moral would overflow the margins of the\nsocial, and would take definition ultimately from the congruity of the\naction with the criticised purposes of the individual self. This does\nnot mean that all ethics lies compact in the shibboleth, \u201cBe yourself.\u201d\nThose who make the least sparing use of this phrase are too apt to\nconsider it an excuse for lives that reek with the heat of passion and\nsmack of insufficient evolution. These people need to be reminded--all\nthe more forcibly since the most palatable and up-to-date philosophies\nexalt instinct and deride thought--that one cannot be thoroughly one\u2019s\nself except by deliberation and intelligence. To act indeliberately is\nnot to be, but in great part to cancel, one\u2019s self. For example, the\nvast play of direct emotional expression is almost entirely\nindeliberate: if you are greatly surprised, your lips part, your eyes\nopen a trifle wider, your pulse quickens, your respiration is affected;\nand if I am surprised, though you be as different from me as Hyperion\nfrom a satyr, my respiration will be affected, my pulse will quicken, my\neyes will open a trifle wider, and my lips will part;--my direct\nreaction will be essentially the same as yours. The direct expression of\nsurprise is practically the same in all the higher animals. Darwin\u2019s\nclassical description of the expression of fear is another example; it\nholds for every normal human being; not to speak of lower species. So\nwith egotism, jealousy, anger, and a thousand other instinctive\nreaction-complexes; they are common to the species, and when we so\nreact, we are expressing not our individual selves so much as the\nspecies to which we happen to belong. When you hit a man because he has\n\u201cinsulted\u201d you, when you swagger a little after delivering a successful\nspeech, when you push aside women and children in order to take their\nplace in the rescue boat, when you do any one of a million indeliberate\nthings like these, it is not you that act, it is your species, it is\nyour ancestors, acting through you; your acquired individual difference\nis lost in the whirlwind of inherited impulse. Your act, as the\nScholastics phrased it, is not a \u201chuman\u201d act; you yourself are not\nreally acting in any full measure of yourself, you are but playing\nslave and mouth-piece to the dead. But subject the inherited tendencies\nto the scrutiny of your individual experience, _think_, and your action\nwill then express yourself, not in any abbreviated sense, but up to the\nhilt. There is no merit, no \u201cvirtue,\u201d no development in playing the game\nof fragmentary impulses, in living up to the past; to be moral, to grow,\nis to be not part but all of one\u2019s self, to call into operation the\nacquired as well as the inherited elements of one\u2019s character, to be\n_whole_. So many of us invite ruin by actions which do not really\nexpress us, but are the voice of the merest fragment of ourselves,--the\nremainder of us being meanwhile asleep.[15] To be whole, to be your\ndeliberate self, to do what you please but only after considering what\nyou really please, to follow your own ideals (but to follow them!), to\nchoose your own means and not to have them forced upon you by your\nancestors, to act consciously, to see the part _sub specie totius_, to\nsee the present act in its relation to your vital purposes, to think, to\nbe intelligent,--all these are definitions of virtue and morality.\n\nThere is, then, in the old sense of the word, no such thing as morality,\nthere is only intelligence or stupidity. Yes, virtue is calculus,\nhorrible as that may sound to long and timid ears: to calculate\nproperly just what you must do to attain your real ends, to see just\nwhat and where your good is, and to make for it,--that is all that can\nwithout indecency be asked of any man, that is all that is ever\nvouchsafed by any man who is intelligent.\n\nPerhaps you think it is an easy virtue,--this cleaving to\nintelligence,--easier than being harmless. Try it.\n\n\nVII\n\n\u201cInstinct\u201d and \u201cReason\u201d\n\nAnd now to go back to the refutations.\n\nThe strongest objection to the Socratic doctrine is that intelligence is\nnot a creator, but only a servant, of ends. What we shall consider to be\nour good appears to be determined not by reason, but by desire. Reason\nitself seems but the valet of desire, ready to do for it every manner of\nmenial service. Desire is an adept at marshalling before intelligence\nsuch facts as favor the wish, and turns the mind\u2019s eye resolutely away\nfrom other truth, as a magician distracts the attention of his audience\nwhile his hands perform their wonders. If morality is entirely a matter\nof intelligence, it is entirely a question of means, it is excluded\nirrevocably from the realm of ends.\n\nThe conclusion may be allowed in substance, though it passes beyond the\nwarrant of the facts. It is true that basic ends are never suggested by\nintelligence, reason, knowledge; but it is also true that many ends\nsuggested by desire are vetoed by intelligence. Why are the desires of a\nman more modest than those of a boy or a child, if not because the blows\nof repeated failure have dulled the edge of desire? Desires lapse, or\nlose in stature, as knowledge grows and man takes lessons from reality.\nThere is an adaptation of ends to means as well as of means to ends; and\ndesire comes at last to take counsel of its slave.\n\nBe it granted, none the less, that ends are dictated by desire, and that\nif morality is intelligence, there can be no question of the morality of\nany end _per se_. That, strangely, is not a refutation of the Socratic\nethic so much as an essential element of it and its starting-point.\nEvery desire has its own initial right; morality means not the\nsuppression of desires, but their co\u00f6rdination. What that implies for\nsociety we shall see presently; for the individual it implies that he is\nimmoral, not when he seeks his own advantage, but when he does not\nreally behave for his own advantage, when some narrow temporary purpose\nupsets perspective and overrides a larger end.[16] What we call\n\u201cself-control\u201d is the permanent predominance of the larger end; what we\ncall weakness of will is instability of perspective. Self-control means\nan intelligent judgment of values, an intelligent co\u00f6rdination of\nmotives, an intelligent forecasting of effects. It is far-sight,\nfar-hearing, an enlargement of the sense; it hears the weakened voice of\nthe admonishing past, it sees results far down the vista of the future;\nit annihilates space and time for the sake of light. Self-control is\nco\u00f6rdinated energy,--which is the first and last word in ethics and\npolitics, and perhaps in logic and metaphysics too. Weak will means that\ndesires fall out of focus, and taking advantage of the dark steal into\naction: it is a derangement of the light, a failure of intelligence. In\nthis sense a \u201cgood will\u201d means co\u00f6rdination of desires by the ultimate\ndesire, end, ideal; it means health and wholeness of will; it means,\nliterally, integrity. In the old sense \u201cgood will\u201d meant, too often,\nmere fear either of the prohibitions of present law or of the\nprohibitions stored up in conscience. Such conscience, we all know, is a\npurely negative and static thing, a convenient substitute for policemen,\na degenerate descendant of that _conscientia_, or _knowing-together_,\nwhich meant to the Romans a discriminating awareness in\naction,--discriminating awareness of the whole that lurks round the\ncorner of every part. This is one instance of a sort of pathology of\nwords,--words coming to function in a sense alien to their normal\nintent. _Right_ and _wrong_, for example, once carried no ethical\nconnotation, but merely denoted a direct or tortuous route to a goal;\nand significantly the Hebrew word for sin meant, in the days of its\nhealth, an arrow that had missed its mark.\n\nBut, it is urged, there is no such thing as intelligence in the sense of\na control of passion by reason, desire by thought. Granted; it is so\nmuch easier to admit objections than to refute them! Let intelligence be\ninterpreted as you will, so be it you recognize in it a delayed\nresponse, a moment of reprieve before execution, giving time for the\nappearance of new impulses, motives, tendencies, and allowing each\nelement in the situation to fall into its place in a co\u00f6rdinated whole.\nLet intelligence be a struggle of impulses, a survival of the fittest\ndesire; let us contrast not reason with passion, but response delayed by\nthe rich interplay of motive forces, with response immediately following\nupon the first-appearing impulse. Let impulse mean for us fruit that\nfalls unripe from the tree, because too weak to hang till it is mature.\nLet us understand intelligence as not a faculty superadded to impulse,\nbut rather that co\u00f6rdination of impulses which is wrought out by the\nblows of hard experience. The Socratic ethic fits quite comfortably into\nthis scheme; intelligence is delayed response and morality means, Take\nyour time.\n\nIt is charged that the Socratic view involves determinism; and this\ncharge, too, is best met with open-armed admission. We need not raise\nthe question of the pragmatic value of the problem. But to suppose that\ndeterminism destroys moral responsibility is to betray the mid-Victorian\norigin of one\u2019s philosophy. Men of insight like Socrates, Plato, and\nSpinoza, saw without the necessity of argument that moral responsibility\nis not a matter of freedom of will, but a relation of means to ends, a\nresponsibility of the agent to himself, an intelligent co\u00f6rdination of\nimpulses by one\u2019s ultimate purposes. Any other morality, whatever pretty\nname it may display, is the emasculated morality of slaves.\n\n\nVIII\n\nThe Secularization of Morals\n\nThe great problem involved in the Socratic ethic lies, apparently, in\nthe bearings of the doctrine on social unity and stability. Apparently;\nfor it is wholesome to remember that social organization, like the\nSabbath, was made for man, and not the other way about. If social\norganization demands of the individual more sacrifices than its\nadvantages are worth to him, then the stability of that organization is\nnot a problem, it is a misfortune. But if the state does not demand such\nsacrifices, the advantage of the individual will be in social behavior;\nand the question whether he will behave socially becomes a question of\nhow much intelligence he has, how clear-eyed he is in ferreting out his\nown advantage. In a state that does not ask more from its members than\nit gives, morality and intelligence and social behavior will not\nquarrel. The social problem appears here as the twofold problem of,\nfirst, making men intelligent, and, second, making social organization\nso great an advantage to the individual as to insure social behavior in\nall intelligent men.\n\nWhich has the better chance of survival:--a society of \u201cgood\u201d men or a\nsociety of intelligent men? So far as a man is \u201cgood\u201d he merely obeys,\nhe does not initiate. A society of \u201cgood\u201d men is necessarily stagnant;\nfor in such a society the virtue most in demand, as Emerson puts it, is\nconformity. If great men emerge through the icy crust of this\nconformity, they are called criminals and sinners; the lives of great\nmen all remind us that we cannot make our lives sublime and yet be\n\u201cgood.\u201d But intelligence as an ethical ideal is a progressive norm; for\nit implies the progressive co\u00f6rdination of one\u2019s life in reference to\none\u2019s ultimate ideals. The god of the \u201cgood\u201d man is the _status quo_;\nthe intelligent man obeys rather the call of the _status ad quem_.\n\nObserve how the problem of man _versus_ the group is clarified by thus\nrelating the individual to a larger whole determined not by geographical\nfrontiers, but by purposes born of his own needs and moulded by his own\nintelligence. For as the individual\u2019s intelligence grows, his purposes\nare brought more and more within the limits of personal capacity and\nsocial possibility: he is ever less inclined to make unreasonable\ndemands upon himself, or men in general, or the group in which he lives.\nHis ever broadening vision makes apparent the inherent self-destructiveness\nof anti-social aims; and though he chooses his ends without reference\nto any external moral code, those ends are increasingly social.\nEnlightenment saves his social dispositions from grovelling conformity,\nand his \u201cself-regarding sentiments\u201d from suicidal narrowness. And now\nthe conflict between himself and his group continues for the most part\nonly in so far as the group makes unreasonable demands upon him. But\nthis, too, diminishes as the individuals constituting or dominating\nthe group become themselves more intelligent, more keenly cognizant\nof the limits within which the demands of the group upon its members\nmust be restricted if individual allegiance is to be retained. Since\nthe reduction of the conflict between the individual and the community\nwithout detriment to the interests of either is the central problem of\npolitical ethics, it is obvious that the practical task of ethics is\nnot to formulate a specific moral code, but to bring about a spread\nof intelligence. And since the reduction of this conflict brings with\nit a better co\u00f6rdination of the members of the group, through their\ngreater ability to perceive the advantages of communal action in an\nintelligently administered group, the problem of social coherence and\npermanence itself falls into the same larger problem of intellectual\ndevelopment.\n\n\u201cHow to make our ideas clear\u201d;--what if that be the social problem? What\na wealth of import in that little phrase of Socrates,--\u03c4\u1f41 \u03c4\u1f31--\u201cwhat\nis it?\u201d What is my good, my interest? What do I really want?--To find\nthe answer to that, said Robert Louis Stevenson, is to achieve wisdom\nand old age. What is my country? What is patriotism? \u201cIf you wish to\nconverse with me,\u201d said Voltaire, \u201cyou must define your terms.\u201d If you\nwish to be moral, you must define your terms. If our civilization is to\nkeep its head above the flux of time, we must define our terms.\n\nFor these are the critical days of the secularization of moral\nsanctions; the theological navel-string binding men to \u201cgood behavior\u201d\nhas snapped. What are the leaders of men going to do about it? Will they\ntry again the old gospel of self-sacrifice? But a world fed on\nself-sacrifice is a world of lies, a world choking with the stench of\nhypocrisy. To preach self-sacrifice is not to solve, it is precisely to\nshirk, the problem of ethics,--the problem of eliminating individual\nself-sacrifice while preserving social stability: the problem of\nreconciling the individual as such with the individual as citizen. Or\nwill our leaders try to replace superstition with an extended physical\ncompulsion, making the policeman and the prison do all the work of\nsocial co\u00f6rdination? But surely compulsion is a last resort; not because\nit is \u201cwrong,\u201d but because it is inexpedient, because it rather cuts\nthan unties the knot, because it produces too much friction to allow of\nmovement. Compulsion is warranted when there is question of preventing\nthe interference of one individual or group with another; but it is a\npoor instrument for the establishment or maintenance of ideals. Suppose\nwe stop moralizing, suppose we reduce regimentation, suppose we begin to\ndefine our terms. Suppose we let people know quite simply (and not in\nAcademese) that moral codes are born not in heaven but in social needs;\nand suppose we set about finding a way of spreading intelligence so that\nindividual treachery to real communal interest, and communal\nexploitation of individual allegiance, may both appear on the surface,\nas they are at bottom, unintelligently suicidal. Is that too much to\nhope for? Perhaps. But then again, it may be, the worth and meaning of\nlife lie precisely in this, that there is still a possibility of\norganizing that experiment.\n\n\nIX\n\n\u201cHappiness\u201d and \u201cVirtue\u201d\n\nA word now about the last part of the Socratic formula: intelligence =\nvirtue = happiness. And this a word of warning: remember that the\n\u201cvirtue\u201d here spoken of is not the medi\u00e6val virtue taught in Sunday\nschools. Surely our children must wonder are we fools or liars when we\ntell them, \u201cBe good and you will be happy.\u201d Better forget \u201cvirtue\u201d and\nread simply: intelligence=happiness. That appears more closely akin to\nthe rough realities of life: intelligence means ability to adapt means\nto ends, and happiness means success in adapting means to ends;\nhappiness, then, varies with ability. Happiness is intelligence on the\nmove; a pervasive physiological tonus accompanying the forward movement\nof achievement. It is not the consciousness of virtue: that is not\nhappiness, but snobbery. And similarly, remorse is, in the intelligent\nman, not the consciousness of \u201csin,\u201d but the consciousness of a past\nstupidity. So far as you fail to win your real ends you are\nunhappy,--and have proved unintelligent. But the Preacher says, \u201cHe that\nincreaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.\u201d True enough if the increment of\nknowledge is the correction of a past error; the sorrow is a penalty\npaid for the error, not for the increase of knowledge. True, too, that\nintelligence does not consistently lessen conflicts, and that it\ndiscloses a new want for every want it helps to meet. But the joy of\nlife lies not so much in the disappearance of difficulties as in the\novercoming of them; not so much in the diminution of conflict as in the\ngrowth of achievement. Surely it is time we had an ethic that stressed\nachievement rather than quiescence. And further, intelligence must not\nbe thought of as the resignation of disillusionment, the consciousness\nof impotence; intelligence is to be conceived of in terms of adaptive\nactivity, of movement towards an end, of co\u00f6rdinated self-expression\nand behavior. Finally, it is but fair to interpret the formula as making\nhappiness and intelligence coincide only so far as the individual\u2019s\nhappiness depends on his own conduct. The causes of unhappiness may be\nan inherited deformity, or an accident not admitting of provision; such\ncases do not so much contradict as lie outside the formula. So far as\nyour happiness depends on your activities, it will vary with the degree\nof intelligence you show. Act intelligently, and you will not know\nregret; feel that you are moving on toward your larger ends, and you\nwill be happy.\n\n\nX\n\nThe Socratic Challenge\n\nBut if individual and social health and happiness depend on intelligence\nrather than on \u201cvirtue,\u201d and if the exaltation of intelligence was a\ncardinal element in the Athenian view of life, why did the Socratic\nethic fail to save Athens from decay? And why did the supposedly\nintelligent Athenians hail this generous old Dr. Johnson of philosophy\ninto court and sentence him to death?\n\nThe answer is, Because the Athenians refused to make the Socratic\nexperiment. They were intelligent, but not intelligent enough. They\ncould diagnose the social malady, could trace it to the decay of\nsupernatural moral norms; but they could not find a cure, they had not\nthe vision to see that salvation lay not in the compulsory retention of\nold norms, but in the forging of new and better ones, capable of\nwithstanding the shock of questioning and trial. What they saw was\nchaos; and like most statesmen they longed above all things for order.\nThey were not impressed by Socrates\u2019 allegiance to law, his cordial\nadmission of the individual\u2019s obligations to the community for the\nadvantages of social organization. They listened to the disciples: to\nAntisthenes, who laughed at patriotism; to Aristippus, who denounced all\ngovernment; to Plato, scorner of democracy; and they attacked the master\nbecause (not to speak of pettier political reasons) it was he, they\nthought, who was the root of the evil. They could not see that this man\nwas their ally and not their foe; that rescue for Athens lay in helping\nhim rather than in sentencing him to die. And how well they could have\nhelped him! For to preach intelligence is not enough; there remains to\nprovide for every one the instrumentalities of intelligence. What men\nneeded, what Athenian statesmanship might have provided, was an\norganization of intelligence for intelligence, an organization of all\nthe forces of intelligence in the state in a persistent intellectual\ncampaign. If that could not save Athens, Athens could not be saved. But\nthe myopic leaders of the Athenian state could not see salvation in\nintelligence, they could only see it in hemlock. And Socrates had to\ndie.\n\nIt will take a wise courage to accept the Socratic challenge,--such\ncourage as battle-fields and senate-chambers are not wont to show. But\nunless that wise courage comes to us our civilization will go as other\ncivilizations have come and gone, \u201ckindled and put out like a flame in\nthe night.\u201d\n\n     NOTE.--From a book whose interesting defence of the Socratic ethic\n     from the standpoint of psychoanalysis was brought to the writer\u2019s\n     attention after the completion of the foregoing essay: \u201cThe\n     Freudian ethics is a literal and concrete justification of the\n     Socratic teaching. Truth is the sole moral sanction, and\n     discrimination of hitherto unrealized facts is the one way out of\n     every moral dilemma.... Virtue is wisdom.\u201d Practical morality is\n     \u201cthe establishment, through discrimination, of consistent, and not\n     contradictory (mutually suppressive), courses of action toward\n     phenomena. The moral sanction lies always in facts presented by the\n     phenomena; morality in the discrimination of those facts.\u201d Moral\n     development is \u201cthe progressive, lifelong integration of\n     experience.\u201d--_The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics_, by Edwin\n     B. Holt, New York, 1915, pp. 141, 145, 148.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nPLATO: PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS\n\n\nI\n\nThe Man and the Artist\n\nWhy do we love Plato? Perhaps because Plato himself was a lover: lover\nof comrades, lover of the sweet intoxication of dialectical revelry,\nfull of passion for the elusive reality behind thoughts and things. We\nlove him for his unstinted energy, for the wildly nomadic play of his\nfancy, for the joy which he found in life in all its unredeemed and\nadventurous complexity. We love him because he was alive every minute of\nhis life, and never ceased to grow; such a man can be loved even for the\nerrors he has made. But above all we love him because of his high\npassion for social reconstruction through intelligent control; because\nhe retained throughout his eighty years that zeal for human improvement\nwhich is for most of us the passing luxury of youth; because he\nconceived philosophy as an instrument not merely for the interpretation,\nbut for the remoulding, of the world. He speaks of himself, through\nSocrates, as \u201calmost the only Athenian living who sets his hand to the\ntrue art of politics; I am the only politician of my time.\u201d[17]\nPhilosophy was for him a study of human possibilities in the light of\nhuman realities and limitations; his daily food consisted of the\nproblems of human relations and endeavors: problems of liberty _versus_\norder; of sex relations and the family; of ideals of character and\ncitizenship, and the educational approaches to those ideals; problems of\nthe control of population, of heredity and environment, of art and\nmorals. With all his liking for the poetry of mysticism, philosophy none\nthe less was to him pre\u00ebminently an adventure in this world; and unlike\nourselves, who follow one or another of his many leads, he sailed\nvirginal seas. Every reader in every age has called him modern; but what\nage can there be to which Plato will not still be modern?\n\nPlato was twenty-eight when Socrates died;[18] and though he was not\npresent at the drinking of the hemlock, yet the passing of the master\nmust have been a tragic blow to him. It brought him face to face with\ndeath, the mother of metaphysics. Proudest of all philosophers, he did\nnot hide his sense of debt to Socrates: \u201cI thank the gods,\u201d he said,\n\u201cthat I was born freeman, not slave; Greek, not barbarian; man, not\nwoman; but above all that I was born in the time of Socrates.\u201d The old\nphilosopher gone, Athens became for a time intolerable to Plato (some\nsay, Plato to Athens); and the young philosopher sailed off to see\nforeign shores and take nourishment of other cultures. He liked the\npeaceful orderliness and aged dignity with which a long dominant\npriesthood had invested Egypt; beside this mellow civilization, he was\nwilling to be told, the culture of his native Athens was but a\nprecarious ethnological sport. He liked the Pythagoreans of southern\nItaly, with their aristocratic approach to the problem of social\nconstruction and their communal devotion to plain living and high\nthinking; above all he liked their emphasis on harmony as the\nfundamental pervasive relation of all things and as the ideal in which\nour human discords might be made to resolve themselves had men artistry\nenough. Other lands he saw and learnt from: stories tell how he risked\nhis handsome head to build an ideal state in Syracuse; how he was sold\ninto slavery and redeemed by a friend; and how he passed down through\nPalestine even to India, absorbing the culture of their peoples with a\nkind of osmotic genius. And at last, after twelve years of wandering, he\nheard again the call of Athens, and went home, stored with experience\nand ripe with thought.\n\nArrived now at the mid-point of his life, he turned to the task of\nself-expression. Should he join one of the political parties and try to\nmake the government of Athens a picture of his thought? Perhaps he felt\nthat his thought was not yet definite enough for that; politics requires\nanswers in Yes or No, and philosophy deals only in Yes-_and_-No. He\nhesitated to join a party or pledge himself to a dogma; and was prepared\nto be hated by all parties alike for this hesitation.[19] Aristocracy\nwas in his blood, and he would not stoop to conquer by a plebiscite. He\nthought of turning to the stage, as Euripides had done, and teaching\nthrough the mask; in his youth he had written plays, and smiled now to\nthink how he had hoped to rival Aristophanes. But there were too many\nlimitations here, of religious subject and dramatic form; Plato\u2019s\nphilosophy was a thing of ever broadening borders, and could not be\ncramped into a ceremony. But neither was his philosophy an arid academic\naffair, to be written down as one places in order the bones of a\nskeleton; it was vibrantly alive, it was itself a drama and a religion.\nWhy should there not be a drama of idea as well as of action?--Had not\nthe play of thought its tragedies and comedies?--Was not philosophy,\nafter all, a matter of life and death?\n\nIn such a juncture of desires came that fusion of drama and philosophy\nwhich we know as Plato\u2019s dialogues,--assuredly the finest production in\nall the history of philosophy. Here was just the instrument for a man\nwhose thought had not congealed into dogmas and a system. All genius is\nheterogeneous; a great man is a sum of many men;--let the soul give its\n_selves_ a voice, and it will speak in dialogue.[20] Just instrument,\ntoo, for a man who wished to play with the varied possibilities of\nspeculation, who cared to clarify his own mind rather than to give forth\nfinalities where life itself was so blind and inconclusive. A conclusion\nis too often but the point at which thought has lost its wind; being not\nso much a solution of the problem as a dissolution of thought. Hence the\nriotous play of the imagination in Plato; lively game of trial and\nerror, merry-go-round of thought; here is imagery squandered with lordly\nabandon; here is humor such as one misses in our ponderous modern\nphilosophers; here is no system but all systems;[21] here is one\nabounding fountain-head of European thought; here is prose strong and\nbeautiful as the great temples where Greek joy disported itself in\nmarble; here literary prose is born,--and born adult.\n\n\nII\n\nHow to Solve the Social Problem\n\nTo understand Plato one must remember the Pythagorean _motif_: _harmony_\nis the heart of Plato\u2019s metaphysics, of his psychological and\neducational theory, of his ethics and his politics. To feel such harmony\nas there is, and to make such harmony as may be,--that to Plato is the\nmeaning of philosophy.\n\nWe observe this at the outset in the more-mystified-than mystifying\ntheory of ideas. Obviously, the theory of ideas belongs to Socrates; the\nPlatonic element is a theory not of ideas so much as of ideals. Socrates\nwants truth, but Plato wants beauty, harmony. Socrates is bent on\nargument, and points you to a concept; Plato is a poet with a vision,\nand points you to the picture that he sees. Understanding, says Plato,\nis of the earth earthly; but poetic vision is divine.[22] Hence the maze\nof quibbling in the dialogues; it is Plato and not Socrates who is\nculprit here. Reasoning was an alien art to Plato; try as he might to\nbecome a mathematician he remained always a poet,--and perhaps most so\nwhen he dealt with numbers. Dialectic was in Plato\u2019s day a recent\ninvention; he plays with it like a youth in the breakers, letting it now\nraise him to heights of ecstatic vision and now bury him in the\ndeadliest logic-chopping. But--let us not doubt it--he knows when he is\nlogic-chopping; he goes on, partly that he may paint his picture, partly\nfor the mere joy of parrying pros and cons; this new game, he feels, is\na sport for the gods.\n\nLet us smile at the heavy seriousness of those who suppose that this\nman meant everything he said. No one does, but least of all men Plato,\nwho hardly taught except in parables. What is the \u201cheaven\u201d of the ideas\nbut a poet\u2019s way of saying that the constancies observable in the\nrelations among things are not identical with the things themselves, but\nhave a reality and permanence of their own? So we phrase it in our own\ndistinguished verbiage; but Plato prefers, as ever, to draw a picture.\nAnd notice, in this picture, the ever present reference to social needs.\nWhat is a concept, after all, but a scheme for the conservation of\nmental resources, an instrument of prediction, a method of control?\nWithout the power to form concepts we could never turn experience to\nuse, it would slip between our fingers; we should be like the maidens\ncondemned to carry water in a sieve. The _idea_ of anything is the sum\nof its observed constancies of behavior; hence the medium of our\nadaptation and control. To have _ideas_ of things is to know the map or\nplan of things; it is to see tendencies, directions, and results; it is\nto know how to _use_ things. That is why knowledge is power; every idea\nis a tool with which to bend the world to serve our will. And that too\nis why the Ideas are real: they have power, and \u201canything which\npossesses any sort of power is real.\u201d[23]\n\nAll this, as was said, is but an embellishment of the Socratic doctrine\nthat salvation lies in brains. But Plato rushes on. Not only may\neverything be brought under a concept, an Idea, but it may be brought\nunder a perfect Form, an Ideal. Things are not what they might be. Men\nare not such as men might be, states are often sorry states, beds might\nbe more ideal beds, even dirt could be more perfectly dirt. To all\nthings that are, there correspond perfect Ideals of what they might be,\nin a thoroughly harmonious world. To say that these Ideals are real,\nthat they exist, is only to claim for them that they are operative, and\nget results. Whether his supernaturalism was only part of his political\ntheory, others may dispute; let it suffice us at present that Plato\nbelieved that the Ideals could and did operate through human agency. The\ndistinctive thing about man is that perceiving the thing that is, he can\nconceive the thing that might be. He is the forward-looking,\nideal-making animal; through him, if he but will it, proceeds creation.\nThe brute may be a thinker, but man may be also an artist. Out of the\nabundance of the sexual instinct (as Plato implies in the _Symposium_)\nemerges this ideal-seeking and -making quality; from which come art and\nethics and religion. William Morris looks at a slum and conceives\nUtopia; and forthwith begins to make for Utopia even though the road\nlead him through a jail. Is it that William Morris loves \u201chumanity\u201d? Not\nat all; he loves beauty and his dream; he is uncomfortable with all this\ndirt and despair before him; it is his fortune or misfortune that he\ncannot see these slums without falling thrall to a vision of better\nthings. So with most of us \u201creformers\u201d: we wish to change things, not\nbecause we love our fellows much more than \u201cconservatives\u201d do, nor\nbecause we believe that happiness varies with income; but because we\nhear the call of the beautiful, and see in the mind\u2019s eye another form\nwherein the world might come more pleasingly to sight.\n\nWhat we have to do, says Plato, is to make people conceive a better\nworld, so that they may see this world as ugly, and may strive to\nreshape it. We must conceive the perfect Forms of things, and batter\nthis poor world till it reform itself and take these perfect shapes. To\nlearn to see--and seeing learn to make--these perfect Forms: that is the\ntask of philosophers. To make philosophers: that is the social problem.\n\n\nIII\n\nOn Making Philosopher-Kings\n\nIt is simple, isn\u2019t it? Give us enough philosophers, and the beautiful\ncity will walk out of the picture into the fact. But how make\nphilosophers? And perhaps there is a perfect Form for philosophers, too?\nHow shall we \u201csee--and seeing learn to make\u201d--the perfect philosopher?\n\nLet us not worry about this little matter of dialectics, says Plato; we\nknow quite well some of the things we must do in order that we may have\nmore and greater philosophers. It is quite clear that one thing we must\ndo is to give our best brains to education.\n\nIs that trite? Not at all. Do we give our best brains to education? Do\nwe offer more to our ministers or commissioners of education than to our\npresidents, or governors, or mayors, or bank presidents, or pugilists?\nOr do we honor them more? When Plato says that the office of minister of\neducation is \u201cof all the great offices of state the greatest,\u201d and that\nthe citizens should elect their very best man to this office,[24] he is\nnot pronouncing a platitude, he is making a radical, a revolutionary\nproposition. It has never been done, and it will not soon be done; for\nmen, naturally enough, are more interested in making money than in\nmaking philosophers. And yet, says Plato, gently but resolutely, we may\nas well understand that until we give our best brains to the problem of\nmaking philosophers our much-ado about social ills will amount to noise\nand wind, and nothing more. \u201cHow charming people are!\u201d he writes,\ndrawing an analogy between the individual and the body politic; \u201cthey\nare always doctoring--and thereby increasing and complicating--their\ndisorders, fancying they will be cured by some nostrum which somebody\nadvises them to try,--never getting better but always growing worse....\nAre they not as good as a play, trying their hand at legislation, and\nimagining that by reforms they will make an end to the dishonesties and\nrascalities of mankind, not knowing that they are in reality cutting\naway at the heads of a hydra?\u201d[25]\n\nNotice that the aim of the educational process is, for Plato, not so\nmuch the general spread of intelligence as the discovery and development\nof the superior man. (This conception of the task of the educator\nappears again and again in later thought: we hear it in the nineteenth\ncentury, for example, in Carlyle\u2019s \u201chero,\u201d Schopenhauer\u2019s \u201cgenius,\u201d and\nNietzsche\u2019s \u201csuperman.\u201d) It is very na\u00efve, thinks Plato, to look to the\nmasses as the source and hope of social improvement; the proper function\nof the masses is to toil as cheerfully as may be for the development and\nsupport of the genius who will make them happy--so far as they are\ncapable of happiness. To aim directly at the elevation of all is to open\nthe door to mediocrity and futility; to find and nurse the potential\ngenius,--that is an end worthy the educator\u2019s subtle art.\n\nNow if you are going to discover genius in the bud you must above all\nthings handle your material, at the outset at least, with tender care.\nYou must not overflow with prohibitions, or indulge yourself too much in\nthe luxury of punishments. \u201cMother and father and nurse and tutor set to\nquarrelling about the improvement of the child as soon as ever he is\nable to understand them: he cannot say or do anything without their\nsetting forth to him that this is just and that unjust, this honorable\nand that dishonorable, this holy and that unholy, do this and don\u2019t do\nthat. And if he obeys, well and good; if not he is straightened by\nthreats and blows, like a piece of warped wood.\u201d[26] Suppress here, and\nyou get expression there;--often enough, abnormal expression. Better\nhave no hard mould of uniformity and conformity wherein to crush and\ndeform each differently aspiring soul. Think twice before forcing your\n_\u2019isms_ and _\u2019ologies_ upon the child; his own desires will be your best\ncurriculum. \u201cThe elements of instruction,\u201d writes Plato, in a\ntoo-little-noticed passage, \u201cshould be presented to the mind in\nchildhood, but without any notion of forcing them. For a freeman ought\nto be a freeman in the acquisition of knowledge. Bodily exercise, when\ncompulsory, does no harm; but knowledge which is acquired under\ncompulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but\nlet early education be a sort of amusement; that will better enable you\nto find out the natural bent.\u201d[27] There is a stroke of Plato\u2019s genius\nhere: it is a point which we laggards are coming to after some two\nthousand three hundred years. \u201cTo find out the natural bent,\u201d to catch\nthe spark of divine fire before conformity can put it out; that is the\nbeginning and yet the summit of the educator\u2019s task,--the _initium\ndimidium facti_.\n\nIn this search for genius all souls shall be tried. Education must be\nuniversal and compulsory; children belong not to parents but to the\nstate and to the future.[28] And education cannot begin too early.\nCleinias, asking whether education should begin at birth, is astonished\nto be answered, \u201cNo, before\u201d; and if Plato could have his way, no doubt\nthere would be a realization of Dr. Holmes\u2019 suggestion that a man\u2019s\neducation should begin two thousand years before he is born. The chief\nconcern at the outset will be to develop the body, and not to fill the\nsoul with letters; let the child be taught his letters at ten, but not\nbefore.[29] Music will share with gymnastics the task of rounded\ndevelopment. The boy who tells his teacher that the athletic field is as\nimportant and necessary a part of education as the lecture-room is\nright. \u201cHow shall we find a gentle nature which has also great\ncourage?\u201d[30] Music mixed with athletics will do it. \u201cI am quite aware\nthat your mere athlete becomes too much of a savage, and that the\nmusician is melted and softened beyond what is good for him.\u201d[31] There\nis a determination here that even the genius shall be healthy; Plato\nwill not tolerate the notion that to be a genius one needs to be sick:\nlet the genius have his say, but let him, too, be reminded that he is no\ndisembodied spirit. And let art take care lest its vaunted purgation be\na purgation of our strength and manhood; poetry and soft music may make\nmen slaves. No man shall bother with music after the age of sixteen.[32]\n\nAt twenty a general test will weed out those who give indication that\nfurther educative labor will be wasted on them; the others will go on\nfor another decade, and a second test will eliminate those who will in\nthe meantime have reached the limit of their capacities for development.\nThe final survivors will then--and not before--be introduced to\nphilosophy. \u201cThey must not be allowed to taste the dear delight too\nearly; that is a thing especially to be avoided; for young men, as you\nmay have observed, when they first get the taste in their mouths, argue\nfor amusement, and are always contradicting and refuting, like\npuppy-dogs that delight to tear and pull at all who come near them....\nAnd when they have made many conquests and received defeats at the hands\nof many, they violently and speedily get into a way of not believing\nanything that they believed before, and hence not only they, but\nphilosophy generally, have a bad name with the rest of the world.\u201d[33]\n\nFive happy years are given to the study of philosophy. Gradually, the\nstudent learns to see the universal behind the particular, to judge the\npart by relating it to the whole; the fragments of his experience fall\ninto a harmonious philosophy of life. The sciences which he has learned\nare now united as a consistent application of intelligence to life;\nindeed, the faculty of uniting the sciences and focussing them on the\ncentral problems of life, is precisely the criterion of the true\nphilosopher.[34] But involved in this is a certain practical quality, a\nsense for realities and limitations. One must study books--and men; one\nshould read much, but live more. So Plato legislates that his new\nphilosophers shall spend the years from thirty-five to fifty in the busy\ndin of practical life; they must, in his immortal image, go back into\nthe cave. The purpose of higher education is to detach us for a time\nfrom the life of action, but only so that we may later return to it with\na better perspective. To be put for a goodly time upon one\u2019s own\nresources, to butter one\u2019s own bread for a while,--that is an almost\nindispensable prerequisite to greatness. Out of such a test men come\nwith the scars of many wounds; but to those who are not fools every scar\nis the mark of a lesson learned.\n\nAnd now here are our philosophers, ripe and fifty, hardened by the tests\nof learning and of life. What shall we do with them? Put them away in a\nlecture-room and pay no further attention to them? Give them, as their\nlife-work, the problem of finding how Spinoza deduces, or fails to\ndeduce, the Many from the One? Have them fill learned esoteric journals\nwith unintelligible jargon about the finite and the infinite, or space\nand time, or the immateriality of roast beef? No, says Plato; let them\ngovern the state.\n\nDid Plato mean it? Was he so enraged at the state-murder of the most\nbeloved of philosophers that he forearmed himself against such a\n_contretemps_ in his Utopia by making the philosophers supreme?--Was it\nonly his magnificent journalistic revenge? Was it merely his reaction to\nthe observed cramping and mediocritization of superior intellects in a\ndemocracy? Was it but Plato\u2019s dramatic way of emphasizing the Socratic\nplea for intelligence as the basis of morals and social life? Perhaps\nall this; but much more. It was his sober judgment; it was the influence\nof the Egyptian priesthood and the Pythagorean brotherhood coming to the\nsurface in him; it was the long-accumulated deposit of the stream of his\npersonal experience.\n\nWe have to remember here that by _philosopher_ Plato does not mean\nImmanuel Kant. He means a living being, a man like Seneca or Francis\nBacon, a man in whom knowledge is fused with action, and keen perception\njoins with steady hand; a man who has had not only the teaching of books\nbut the discipline of hard experience; a man who has learned with equal\nreadiness to obey and to command; a man whose thought is co\u00f6rdinated by\napplication to the vital problems of human society. \u201cInasmuch as\nphilosophers alone are able to grasp the eternal and unchangeable, and\nthose who wander in the region of the many and variable are not\nphilosophers, I must ask you which of the two kinds should be rulers of\nour state?\u201d[35] Well, then, \u201cUntil philosophers are kings, or the kings\nand princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, ...\ncities will never cease from ill, nor the human race.\u201d[36]\n\nThat, of course, is the heart and soul of Plato.\n\n\nIV\n\nDishonest Democracy\n\nLet us get back to the circumference and approach this same point by\nanother route.\n\nI grant you, says Plato, that to have rulers at all is very\ndisagreeable. And indeed we should not need to have them were it not for\na regrettable but real porcine element in us. My own Utopia is not an\naristocracy nor a democracy, nor any kind of an _\u2019ocracy_; it is what\nsome of you would call an anarchist communism. I have described it very\nclearly in the second book of my _Republic_, but nobody cares to notice\nit, except to repeat my brother\u2019s gibe about it.[37] But instead of\nthis Utopia of mine being a \u201cCity of Pigs,\u201d it is just because we are\npigs that I had to give up painting this picture and turn to describing\n\u201cnot only a state, but a luxurious state.\u201d I am still \u201cof opinion that\nthe true state, which may be said to be a healthy constitution, is the\none which I have described,\u201d and not the \u201cinflamed constitution\u201d to\nwhich I devoted the rest of my book, and which in my opinion is much\nmore a \u201cCity of Pigs\u201d than the other. It is because people want \u201cto lie\non sofas, and dine off tables, and have dainties and dessert in the\nmodern fashion, ... and perfumes, and incense, and courtesans, and\ncakes, and gold, and ivory, ... hunters and actors, ... musicians,\nplayers, dancers, ... tutors, ... servants ... nurses wet and dry, ...\nbarbers, confectioners and cooks, ... and hosts of animals (if people\nare to eat animals), ... and physicians; ... then a slice of neighbor\u2019s\nland ... and then war,\u201d[38]--in short, it is because people are pigs\nthat you must have soldiers and rulers and laws.\n\nBut if you must have them, why not train your best men for the work,\njust as you train some to be doctors, and others to be lawyers, and\nothers to be engineers? Think of taking a man\u2019s pills just because he\ncan show a count of noses in his favor! Think of letting a man build the\nworld\u2019s greatest bridge because he is popular! You accuse me of\nplagiarizing from Pythagoras, but in truth, you who believe in democracy\nare the Pythagoreans of politics,--you believe in number as your god.\nYour equality is the equality of the unequal, and is all a matter of\nwords and never of reality; your liberty is anarchy, it is the\ncongenital sickness wherein your democracy was conceived and delivered,\nand whereof it inevitably dies; your freedom of speech is a license to\nlie; your elections are a contest in flattery and prevarication. Your\ndemocracy is a theatrocracy; and woe to the genius who falls into your\nhands. Perhaps you like democracy because you are like democracy: all\nyour desires are on a level; that you should respect some of them and\ndiscipline others is an idea that never enters your heads. It has never\noccurred to you that it takes more time and training to make a statesman\nthan it does to make a bootblack. But statesmanship is something that\ncan never be conferred by plebiscite; it must be pursued through the\nyears, and must find the privilege of office without submitting to a\nvote. Wisdom is too subtle a thing to be felt by the coarsened senses of\nthe mob. Your industry is wonderful because it is shot through with\nspecialization and training; but because you reject specialization and\ntraining in filling the offices of your government the word _politics_\nhas become dishonored in your mouths. And just because you will let any\none be your leader no real man ever submits himself to your choice.\n\n\nV\n\nCulture and Slavery\n\nThere is much exaggeration here, of course, as might be expected of one\nwhose material and social concerns were bound up with the oligarchical\nparty at Athens, whose friends and relatives had died in battle against\nthe armies of the democracy; whose early years had seen the democratic\nmismanagement of the Peloponnesian war and the growth of a disorderly\nindividualism in Athens. But there are also lessons here for those who\nare strong enough to learn even from their enemies.[39] To press home\nthese lessons at this point would take us too far afield; our plan for\nthe moment is to follow Plato\u2019s guidance until he has led us out into a\nclear view of his position.\n\nWe shall suppose such a scheme of education as Plato desires; we shall\nsuppose that a moderate number of those who entered the lists at birth\nhave survived test after test, have \u201ctasted the dear delight\u201d of\nphilosophy for five years, and have passed safely through the ordeal of\npractical affairs; these men (and women, as we shall see) now\nautomatically become the rulers of the Platonic state: let us observe\nthem in their work and in their lives.\n\nTo the guardians it is a matter of first principles that the function of\nthe state--and therefore their function--is a positive function; they\nare to lead the people, and not merely to serve as an umpire of\ndisputes. They are the protagonists of a social evolution that has at\nlast become conscious; they are resolved that henceforth social\norganization shall be a far-seeing plan and not a haphazard flux of\nexpediencies of control. They know that they are asked to be experts in\nforesight and co\u00f6rdination; they will legislate accordingly, and will\nno more think of asking the people what laws should be passed than a\nphysician would ask the people what measures should be taken to preserve\nthe public health.\n\nAnd first of all they will control population; they will consider this\nto be the indispensable prerequisite to a planned development. The state\nmust not be larger than is consistent with unity and with the efficacy\nof central control. People may mate as they will,--that is their own\nconcern; but they must understand quite clearly that procreation is an\naffair of the state. Children must be born not of love but of science;\nmarriage will be a temporary relation, allowing frequent remating for\nthe sake of beautiful offspring. Men shall not have children before\nthirty, nor after forty. Deformed or incurably diseased children will be\nexposed to die. Children must leave their mothers at birth, and be\nbrought up by the state. Women must be freed from bondage to their\nchildren, if women are to be real citizens, interested in the public\nweal, and loving not a narrow family but the great community.\n\nFor women are to be citizens; it would be foolish to let half the people\nbe withdrawn from interest in and service to the state. Women will\nreceive all the educational advantages offered to men; they will even\nwrestle with them, naked, in the games. If any of them--and surely some\nof them will--pass all the tests, they shall be guardians, too. People\nare to be divided, for political purposes, not by difference of sex,\nbut by difference of capacity. Some women may be fit not for\nhousekeeping but for ruling,--let them rule; some men may be fit not for\nruling but for housekeeping,--let them keep house.\n\nWithout family, and without clearly ascertainable relationship between\nany man and any child, there can be no individual inheritance of\nproperty; the guardians will have all things in common, and without\nTertullian\u2019s exception.[40] Shut off from the possibility of personal\nbequests or of \u201cfounding a family,\u201d the guardians will have no stimulus\nto laying up a hoard of material goods; nay, they will not be moved to\nsuch hoarding by fear of the morrow, for a modest but sufficient\nmaintenance will be supplied them by the working classes. There will be\nno money in use among them; they will live a hard simple life, devoted\nto the problems of communal defence and development. Freed from family\nties, from private property and luxury, from violence and litigation,\nand all distinctions of Mine and Thine, they will have no reason to\noppress the workers in order to lay up stores for themselves; they will\nbe happy in the exercise of their high responsibilities and powers. They\nwill not be tempted to legislate for the good of their own class rather\nthan for the good of the community; their joy will lie in the creation\nof a prosperous and harmonious state.\n\nUnder their direction will be the soldiers, also specially selected and\ntrained, and supported by the workers. But these workers?\n\nThey will be those who have been eliminated in the tests. The demands of\nspecialization will have condemned them to labor for those who have the\ngift of guidance. They shall have no voice in the direction of the\nstate; that, as said, is a reward for demonstrated capacity, and not a\n\u201cnatural right.\u201d[41] Frankly, there are some people who are not fit to\nbe other than slaves; and to varnish that fact with oratory about \u201cthe\ndignity of labor\u201d is merely to give an instance of the indignities to\nwhich a democratic politician will descend. These workers are incapable\nof a subtler happiness than that of knowing that they are doing what\nthey are fit to do, and are contributing to the maintenance of communal\nprosperity. Such as they are, these workers, like the other members of\nthe state, will find their highest possibilities of development in such\nan organized society. And to make sure that they will not rebel, they\nwill have been taught by \u201croyal lies\u201d that their position and function\nin the state have been ordained by the gods. There is no sense in\nshivering at this quite judicious juggling with the facts; there are\ntimes when truth is a barrier to content, and must be set aside.\nPhysicians have been known to cure ailments with a timely lie. Labor\nstimulated by such deception may be slavery, if you wish to call it so;\nbut it is the inevitable condition of order, and order is the inevitable\ncondition of culture and communal success.\n\n\nVI\n\nPlasticity and Order\n\nBut is it just?--some one asks. Perhaps there are other things than\norder to be considered. Perhaps this hunger for order is a disease, like\nthe monistic hunger for unity; perhaps it is a corollary to the _\u00e0\npriori_ type of mind; perhaps it is part of the philosopher\u2019s general\ninability to face a possibly irrational reality. Here for order\u2019s sake\nthe greater part of the people must work in silence: they shall not\nutter their desires. Here for order\u2019s sake are sacrificed that communal\nplasticity, that freedom of variety, that happy looseness and\nchangeability of structure, in which lie all the suggestion and potency\nof social reconstruction. If there is any lesson which shines out\nthrough all the kaleidoscope of history, it is that a political system\nis doomed to early death if its charter offer no provision and facility\nfor its own reform. Plasticity is king. Human ideals change, and leave\nnations, institutions, even gods, in their wake. \u201cLaw and order in a\nstate are\u201d _not_ \u201cthe cause of every good\u201d;[42] they are the security of\ngoods attained, but they may be also the hindrance of goods conceived. A\nstate without freedom of criticism and variation is like a sail-boat in\na calm; it stands but it cannot move. Such a state is a geometrical\ndiagram, a perfect syllogism evolved out of impossible premises; and its\nown perfection is its refutation. In such a state there could be no\nPlato, with a penchant for conceiving Utopias; much less a Socrates,\nholding that a life uncriticised is unworthy of a man. It would be a\nstate not for philosophers but for priests: very truly its basis would\nnot be dialectical clarity but royal lies. Here is the supreme\npessimism, the ultimate atheism, of the aristocrat, that he does not\nbelieve in the final wholesomeness of truth. And surely something can be\nsaid for democracy. Granted that democracy is not a problem solved but a\nproblem added; it is at least a problem that time may help to clarify.\nGranted that men used to slavery cannot turn and wisely rule themselves;\nwhat is better than that they should, by inevitable trial and error,\nlearn? _Errando discimus._ Granted that physicians do not consult us in\ntheir prescriptions; but neither do they come to us before they are\nchosen and called. \u201cThat the guardian should require another guardian to\nguard him is ridiculous indeed.\u201d[43] But he would! Power corrupts\nunless it is shared by all. \u201cCities cannot exist, if a few only share in\nthe virtues, as in the arts.\u201d[44] To build your culture on the backs of\nslaves is to found your city on Vesuvius. Men will not be lied to\nforever,--at least with the same lies! And to end with such a\nUtopia,--what is it but to yield to Thrasymachus, to arrange all things\nat last in the interest of the stronger? Is it just?\n\n\nVII\n\nThe Meaning of Justice\n\nBut what is justice?--asks Plato. Don\u2019t you see that our notion of\njustice is the very crux of the whole business? Is justice merely a\nmatter of telling the truth? Nonsense; it may be well to have our\nchildren believe that; but those who are not children know that if a lie\nis a better instrument of achievement than the truth in some given\njuncture of events, then a lie is justified. Truth is a social value,\nand has its justification only in that; if untruth prove here and there\nof social value, then untruth is just.[45] The confusion of justice with\nsome absolute eternal law comes of a separation of ethics from politics,\nand an attempt to arrive at a definition of justice from the study of\nindividuals. But morals grow out of politics; justice is essentially a\npolitical relation. And taking the state as a whole, it is clear that\nnothing is \u201cgood\u201d unless it works; that it would be absurd to say that\njustice demands of a state that it should be ordered in such a way as to\nmake for its own decay. Social organization must be effective, and lies\nand class-divisions are justified if they make for the effectiveness of\na political order. Surely social effectiveness forbids that men fit to\nlegislate should live out their lives as cobblers, or that men should\nrule whose natural aptitude is for digging ditches. Justice means, for\npolitics at least, that each member of society is minding his natural\nbusiness, is doing that for which he is fitted by his own natural\ncapacity. Injustice is the encroachment of one part on another; justice\nis the efficient functioning of each part. Justice, then, is social\nco\u00f6rdination and harmony. It is not \u201cthe interest of the stronger,\u201d it\nis the harmony of the whole. So in the individual, justice is the\nharmonious operation of a unified personality; each element in one\u2019s\nnature doing that which it is fitted to do; again it is not mere\nstrength or forcefulness, but harmonious, organized strength; it is\neffective order. And effective order demands a class division. You may\nmouth as you please the delusive delicacies of democracy; but classes\nyou will have, for men will always be some of gold and some of silver\nand some of brass. And the brass must not pass itself off as silver,\nnor the silver as gold. Give the brass all the time and opportunity in\nthe world, and it will still be brass. Of course brass will not believe\nthat it is brass, but we had better make it understand once for all that\nit is so, even if we have to tell a thousand lies to get the truth\nbelieved.\n\nAnd as for variation and plasticity, remember that these too are\nvalueless except as they make for a better society. They assuredly make\nfor change; but change is not betterment. History is a chaos of\nvariations; without some organ for their control they cancel one another\nand terminate inevitably in futility. Our problem is not how to change,\nbut how to set our best brains to controlling change for the sake of a\nfiner life.\n\n\nVIII\n\nThe Future of Plato\n\nThere are _aper\u00e7us_ here, and a bewildering wealth of suggestions, which\none is tempted to pursue to their ultimate present significance. But to\ndo that would be to encroach too much on the subjects of later chapters.\nThe vital thing here is not to accept or refute any special element in\nPlato\u2019s political philosophy; it is rather to see how inextricably\npolitics and philosophy were bound together in his mind as two sides of\nfundamentally one endeavor. Here is the passion to remould things; here\nis the seeing of perfection and the will to make perfection; here\nspeaks out for the first time in European history the courage of the\nintellect that not only will perceive but will remake. Here is a man; no\ndead academic cobweb-weaver, but a masterful, kingly soul, mixed up in\nwarm intimacy with the complex flow of the life about him. He paints\nUtopia; but at the same time he takes his own counsel anent the\nimportance of an educational approach to the social problem, and founds\nthe most famous and influential university the world has ever seen.\nPicture him in the gardens and lecture-halls of his Academy, arranging\nand supervising and co\u00f6rdinating, and turning out men to whom nations\nlooked--and not in vain--for statesmen. Not merely to lift men up to the\nbeatific vision of unities and perfections, but to teach them the art of\ncreation, to fire them with the ardor of a new artistry; this he aimed\nto do, and did. \u201cThe greatest works grow in importance, as trees do\nafter the death of the mortal men who planted them.\u201d[46] So grew the\n_Republic_, and the Academy.\n\nTo catch in a chapter the deep yet subtle spirit and meaning of this\n\u201cfinest product of antiquity,\u201d[47]--it is not easy. In Plato\u2019s Utopia\nthere would no doubt have been a law against writing so briefly on so\nvast a phenomenon,--with, in this case, the inevitably consequent\nderangement of the Platonic perspective, and the impossibility, within\nsuch compass, of focussing Plato in the political and philosophical\nmeaning of his time. One\u2019s feeling here is of having desecrated with\nsmall talk the Parthenon of philosophy. Perhaps as we go on we shall be\nable to see more clearly the still-living value of Plato\u2019s thought: in\nalmost everything that we shall hereinafter discuss his voice will be\nheard, even though unnamed. To-day, at last, he comes again into his\nown--as in Renaissance days--after centuries dominated by the influence\nof his first misinterpreter; and generations bred on the throned\nlukewarmness of the _Nicomachean Ethics_ yield to a generation that is\nlearning to feel the hot constructive passion of the _Republic_. Dead\nthese two thousand and some hundred years, Plato belongs to the future.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nFRANCIS BACON AND THE SOCIAL POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE\n\n\nI\n\nFrom Plato to Bacon\n\n\u201cAs I read Plato,\u201d writes Professor Dewey, \u201cphilosophy began with some\nsense of its essentially political basis and mission--a recognition that\nits problems were those of the organization of a just social order. But\nit soon got lost in dreams of another world.\u201d[48] Plato and Aristotle\nare the _crura cerebri_ of Europe. But in Aristotle, along with a wealth\nof acute observation of men and institutions, we find a diminishing\ninterest in reconstruction; the Stagirite spent too much of his time in\ncard-cataloguing Plato, and allowed his imagination to become suffocated\nwith logic. With the Stoics and Epicureans begin that alienation of\nethics from politics, and that subordination of philosophy to religious\nneeds, which it is part of the task of present thinking to undo.\nAlexander had conquered the Orient, only to have Orientalism conquer\nGreece. Under Scholasticism it was the fate of great minds to retrace\nworn paths in the cage of a system of conclusions determined by external\nauthority; and the obligation to uphold the established precluded any\npractical recognition of the reconstructive function of thought. With\nthe Renaissance--that Indian summer of Greek culture--the dream of a\nremoulded world found voice again. Campanella, through the darkness of\nhis prison cell, achieved the vision of a communist utopia; and other\nstudents of the rediscovered Plato painted similar pictures. Indeed this\nreawakening of Plato\u2019s influence gave to the men of the Renaissance an\ninspiriting sense of the wonders that lay potential in organized\nintelligence. Again men faced the task of replacing with a natural ethic\nthe falling authoritarian sanctions of supernatural religion; and for a\ntime one might have hoped that the thought of Socrates was to find at\nlast its due fruition. But again men lost themselves in the notion of a\ncultured class moving leisurely over the backs of slaves; and perhaps it\nwas well that the whole movement was halted by the more Puritan but also\nmore democratic outburst of the Reformation. What the world needed was a\nmethod which offered hope for the redemption not of a class, but of all.\nGalileo and Roger Bacon opened the way to meeting this need by their\nemphasis on the value of hypothesis and experiment, and the necessity of\ncombining induction with deduction; it remained for Francis Bacon to\nlay out the road for the organized employment of these new methods, and\nto inspire all Europe with his warm vision of their social\npossibilities.\n\n\nII\n\nCharacter\n\nIf you would understand Bacon, you must see him as not so much a\nphilosopher as an administrator. You find him a man of great practical\nability: he remoulds philosophy with one hand and rules part of England\nwith the other; not to speak of writing Shakespeare\u2019s plays between\ntimes! He rises brilliantly from youthful penury to the political\npinnacle; and meanwhile he runs over the whole realm of human knowledge,\nscattering praise and censure with lordly hand. Did we not know the fact\nas part of the history of England we should never suspect that the\ndetailed and varied learning of this man was the incidental\naccomplishment of a life busied with political intrigue. _Bene vixit qui\nbene latuit_: surely here is a man who has lived widely, and in no\nmerely physical sense has made the world his home. Life is no \u201cbrief\ncandle\u201d to him, nor men \u201csuch stuff as dreams are made of\u201d; life is a\nglorious gift, big with blessing for him who will but assist at the\ndelivery. There is nothing of the timid ascetic about him; like\nSocrates, he knows that there is a sort of cowardice in shunning\npleasure;[49] best of all, there is so much work to be done, so many\nopportunities for the man of unnarrowed soul. He feels the exhilaration\nof one who has burst free from the shackles of intellectual authority:\nhe sees before him an uncharted future, raw material for hands that dare\nto mould it; and he dares. All his life long he is mixed up with the\nheart of things; every day is an adventure. Exiled from politics he\nplunges gladly into the field of scientific reconstruction; he does not\nforget that he is an administrator, any more than Plato could forget\nthat he was a dramatist; he finds the world of thought a chaos, and\nbequeaths it a planful process for the co\u00f6rdination of human life; all\nEurope responds to his call for the \u201cenlarging of the bounds of human\nempire.\u201d He works joyfully and buoyantly to the very last, and dies as\nhe has wished, \u201cin an earnest pursuit, which is like one that is wounded\nin hot blood, who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt.\u201d\n\n\nIII\n\nThe Expurgation of the Intellect\n\nConsider the reaction of an experienced statesman who leaves the service\nof a king to enter the service of truth. He has left a field wherein all\nworkers moved in subordination to one head and one focal purpose; he\nenters a field in which each worker is working by himself, with no\ndivision of labor, no organization of endeavor, no correlation of ends.\nThere he has found administration, here he finds a na\u00efve\n_laissez-faire_; there order, here anarchy; there some sense of common\nend and effort, here none. He understands at once the low repute of\nphilosophy among men of affairs. \u201cFor the people are very apt to contemn\ntruth, upon account of the controversies raised about it; and so think\nthose all in a wrong way, who never meet.\u201d[50] He understands at once\nwhy it is that the world has been so little changed by speculation and\nresearch. He is a man whose consciousness of pervasive human misery is\ntoo sharp for comfort;[51] and he sees no hope of remedy for this in\nisolated guerilla attacks waged upon the merest outposts of truth, each\nattack with its jealously peculiar strategy, its own dislocated, almost\nirrelevant end. And yet if there is no remedy for men\u2019s ills in this\nnascent science and renascent philosophy, in what other quarter, then,\nshall men look for hope and cure?\n\nThere is no other, Bacon feels; unless victory is first won in the\nlaboratory and the study it will never be won in political assemblies;\nno plebiscite or royal edict, but only truth, can make men free. Man\u2019s\nhope lies in the reorganization of the processes of discovery and\ninterpretation. Unless philosophy and science be born again of social\naims and social needs they cannot have life in them. A new spirit must\nenter.\n\nBut first old spirits must be exorcised. Speculation and research must\nbring out a declaration of independence against theology. \u201cThe\ncorruption of philosophy by superstition and an admixture of theology is\n... widely spread, and does the greatest harm.\u201d[52] The search for final\ncauses, for design in nature, must be left to theologians; the function\nof science is not to interpret the purposes of nature, but to discover\nthe connections of cause and effect in nature. Dogma must be set aside:\n\u201cif a man will begin with certainties he shall end in doubts; but if he\nwill be content to begin in doubts he shall end in certainties.\u201d[53]\nDogma must be set aside, too, because it necessitates deduction as a\nbasic method; and deduction as a basic method is disastrous.\n\nBut that is not all; there is much more in the way of preliminaries:\nthere must be a general \u201cexpurgation of the intellect.\u201d The mind is full\n(some would say made up) of prejudices, wild fancies, \u201cidols,\u201d or\nimaginings of things that are not so: if you are to think correctly,\nusefully, all these must go. Try, then, to get as little of yourself as\npossible in the way of the thing you wish to see. Beware of the very\ngeneral tendency to put order and regularity in the world and then to\nsuppose that they are native to the structure of things; or to force all\nfacts into the unyielding mould of a preconceived opinion, carefully\nneglecting all contrary instances; or to give too credulous an ear to\nthat which flatters the wish. Look into yourself and see the forest of\nprejudices that has grown up within you: through your temperamental\nattitudes; through your education; through your friends (friendship is\nso often an agreement in prejudices); through your favorite authors and\nauthorities. If you find yourself seizing and dwelling on anything with\nparticular satisfaction, hold it in suspicion. Beware of words, for they\nare imposed according to the apprehension of the crowd; make sure that\nyou do not take abstractions for things. And remind yourself\noccasionally that you are not the measure of all things, but their\ndistorting mirror.\n\nSo much by way of clearing the forest. Comes then induction as the fount\nand origin of all truth: patient induction, obedient to the call of\nfact, and with watchful eye for, above all things, the little unwelcome\ninstance that contradicts. Not that induction is everything; it includes\nexperiment, of course, and is punctuated by hypothesis.[54] (More, it is\nclearly but the servant of deduction, since the aim of all science is to\npredict by deduction from generalizations formed by induction; but just\nas clear is it that the efficacy of the whole business lies grounded in\nthe faithfulness of the induction: induction is servant, but it has all\nmen at its mercy.) And to formulate methods of induction, to surround\nthe process by mechanical guards, to protect it from the premature\nflights of young generalizations,--that is a matter of life and death to\nscience.\n\n\nIV\n\nKnowledge is Power\n\nAnd now, armed with these methods of procedure, we stand face to face\nwith nature. What shall we ask her? _Prudens questio dimidium scienti\u00e6_:\nto know what to ask is half of every science.\n\nYou must ask for laws,--or, to use a Platonic term, forms. In every\nprocess there is matter and there is form: the matter being the seat of\nthe process or operation, and the form its method or law. \u201cThough in\nnature nothing really exists besides individual bodies, performing pure\nindividual acts, according to a fixed law, yet in philosophy the very\nlaw, and the investigation, discovery, and explanation of it, is the\nfoundation as well of knowledge as of operation. And it is this law,\nwith its clauses, that I mean when I speak of Forms.\u201d[55] Not so much\nwhat a \u201cthing\u201d is, but how it behaves;--that is the question. And what\nis more, if you will examine your conception of a \u201cthing,\u201d you will see\nthat it is really a conception of how the \u201cthing\u201d behaves; every _What_\nis at last a _How_. Every \u201cthing\u201d is a machine, whose essence or meaning\nis to be found not by a mere description of its parts, but by an account\nof how it operates. \u201cHow does it work?\u201d asks the boy before a machine;\nsee to it that you ask the same question of nature.\n\nFor observe, if you know how a thing works, you are on the way to\nmanaging and controlling it. Indeed, a Form can be defined as those\nelements in a process which must be known before the process can be\ncontrolled. Here we see the meaning of science; it is an effort to\ndiscover the laws which must be known in order \u201cthat the mind may\nexercise her power over the nature of things.\u201d[56] Science is the\nformulation of control; knowledge is power. The object of science is not\nmerely to know, but to rebuild; every science longs to be an art. The\nquest for knowledge, then, is not a matter of curiosity, it is a fight\nfor power. We \u201cput nature on the rack and compel her to bear witness\u201d\nagainst herself. Where this conception reigns, logic-chopping is out of\ncourt. \u201cThe end of our new logic is to find not arguments but arts; ...\nnot probable reasons but plans and designs of works; ... to overcome not\nan adversary in argument but nature in action.\u201d[57]\n\nBut there is logic-chopping in other things than logic. All strife of\nmen with men, of group with group, if it leaves no result beyond the\nvictory and passing supremacy of the individual or group, is\nlogic-chopping. Such victories pass from side to side, and cancel\nthemselves into final nullity. Real achievement is victory, not over\nother men but with them. \u201cIt will not be amiss to distinguish the three\nkinds, and as it were grades, of ambition in mankind. The first is of\nthose who desire to extend their own power in their native country;\nwhich kind is vulgar and degenerate. The second is of those who labor to\nextend the power of their country and its dominion among men. This\ncertainly has more dignity, though not less covetousness. But if a man\nendeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human\nrace over the universe, his ambition is without doubt both a more\nwholesome thing and a more noble than the other two. The empire of man\nover things depends wholly on the arts and sciences. For we cannot\ncommand nature except by obeying her.\u201d[58]\n\n\nV\n\nThe Socialization of Science\n\n_Natura non vincitur nisi parendo._ \u201cI accept the universe,\u201d says\nMargaret Fuller. \u201cGad! you\u2019d better!\u201d says Carlyle. I accept it, says\nBacon, but only as raw material. We will listen to nature, but only that\nwe may learn what language she understands. We stoop to conquer.\n\nThere is nothing impossible but thinking makes it so. \u201cBy far the\ngreatest obstacle to the progress of science and the undertaking of new\ntasks ... is found in this, that men despair and think things\nimpossible.... If therefore any one believes or promises more, they\nthink this comes of an ungoverned and unripened mind.\u201d[59] There is\nnothing that we may not do, if we _will_, but we must will; and must\nwill the means as well as the end. Would we have an empire of man over\nnature? Very well: organize the arts and sciences.\n\n\u201cConsider what may be expected from men abounding in leisure, and from\nassociation of labors, and from successions of ages; the rather because\nit is not a way over which only one man can pass at a time (as is the\ncase with that of reasoning), but within which the labors and industries\nof men (especially as regards the collecting of experience) may with the\nbest effort be distributed and then combined. For then only will men\nbegin to know their strength when instead of great numbers doing all the\nsame things, one shall take charge of one thing and another of\nanother.\u201d[60] There should be more co\u00f6peration, less chaotic rivalry, in\nresearch. And the co\u00f6peration should be international; the various\nuniversities of the world, so far as they engage in research, should be\nlike the different buildings of a great manufacturing plant, each with\nits own particular specialty and quest. Is it not remarkable how \u201clittle\nsympathy and correspondence exists between colleges and universities, as\nwell throughout Europe as in the same state and kingdom?\u201d[61] Why cannot\nall the research in the world be co\u00f6rdinated into one unified advance?\nPerhaps the truth-seekers would be unwilling; but has that been shown?\nAnd is the number of willing co\u00f6perators too small to warrant further\neffort? How can we know without the trial? Grant that the genius would\nbalk at some external central direction; but research after all is\nseldom a matter of genius. \u201cThe course I propose ... is such as leaves\nbut little to the acuteness and strength of wits, but places all wits\nand understandings nearly on the level.\u201d[62] Let scope and freedom be\namply provided for the genius; it is the work of following up the\n_aper\u00e7us_ of genius that most sorely needs co\u00f6rdination. Organization of\nresearch means really the liberation of genius: liberation from the\nhalting necessities of mechanical repetition in experiment. Nor is\nco\u00f6rdination regimentation; let each man follow his hobby to whatever\nuniversity has been assigned to the investigation of that particular\nitem. Liberty is futility unless it is organized.\n\nIt is a plan, you see, for the socialization of science. It is a large\nand royal vision; to make it real involves \u201cindeed _opera basilica_,\u201d it\nis the business of a king, \u201ctowards which the endeavors of one man can\nbe but as the sign on a cross-road, which points out the way but cannot\ntread it.\u201d[63] It will need such legislative appropriations as are now\ngranted only to the business of competitive destruction on land and sea.\n\u201cAs the secretaries and spies of princes and states bring in bills for\nintelligence, so you must allow the spies and intelligencers of nature\nto bring in their bills if you would not be ignorant of many things\nworthy to be known. And if Alexander placed so large a treasure at\nAristotle\u2019s command for the support of hunters, fowlers, fishers and the\nlike, in much more need do they stand of this beneficence who unfold the\nlabyrinths of nature.\u201d[64]\n\n\nVI\n\nScience and Utopia\n\nSuch an organization of science is Bacon\u2019s notion of Utopia. He gives us\nin _The New Atlantis_, in plain strong prose, a picture of a state in\nwhich this organization has reached the national stage. It is a state\nnominally ruled by a king (Bacon never forgets that he is a loyal\nsubject and counsellor of James I); but \u201cpre\u00ebminent amongst the\nexcellent acts of the king ... was the erection and institution of an\nOrder or Society which we call Solomon\u2019s House; the noblest foundation,\nas we think, that ever was upon the earth, and the lantern of this\nkingdom. It is dedicated to the study of the nature of all things.\u201d[65]\nEvery twelve years this Order sends out to all parts of the world\n\u201cmerchants of light\u201d; men who remain abroad for twelve years, gather\ninformation and suggestions in every field of art and science, and then\n(the next expedition having brought men to replace them) return home\nladen with books, instruments, inventions, and ideas. \u201cThus, you see, we\nmaintain a trade not for gold, silver or jewels; nor for silk; nor for\nspices; nor for any other commodity or matter; but only for God\u2019s first\ncreation, which was Light.\u201d[66] Meanwhile at home there is a busy army\nfilling many laboratories, experimenting in zo\u00f6logy, medicine,\ndietetics, chemistry, botany, physics, and other fields; there are, in\naddition to these men, \u201cthree that collect the experiments in all the\nbooks; ... three that try new experiments\u201d; three that tabulate the\nresults of the experimenters; \u201cthree that look into the experiments of\ntheir fellows, and cast about how to draw out of them things of use ...\nfor man\u2019s life; ... three that direct new experiments\u201d; three that from\nthe results draw up \u201cobservations, axioms, and aphorisms.\u201d[67] \u201cWe\nimitate also the flights of birds; we have some degree of flying in the\nair; we have ships and boats for going under water.\u201d[68] And the purpose\nof it all, he says, with fine Baconian ring, is \u201cthe enlarging of the\nbounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.\u201d[69]\n\n\nVII\n\nScholasticism in Science\n\nThis is the voice of the Renaissance, speaking with some method to its\nmusic. It is the voice of Erasmus rather than that of Luther; but it is\nthe voice of a larger and less class-bound vision than that which moved\nthe polite encomiast of folly. Such minds as were not lost in the\nreligious turmoil of the time responded to Bacon\u2019s call for a new\nbeginning; a \u201csense of liberation, ... of new destinies, pulsates in\nthat generation at Bacon\u2019s touch.\u201d[70] Bacon says, and with justice,\nthat he \u201crang the bell which called the wits together.\u201d[71] When, in\n1660, a group of London savants formed the Royal Society, it was from\nBacon that they took their inspiration, and from the \u201cHouse of Solomon\u201d\npart of their plan of organization. Diderot and D\u2019Alembert acknowledged\nthe impetus given by their reading of Bacon to the adventurous\nenterprise which completed and distributed the _Encyclop\u00e9die_ despite\nthe prohibition of the king. To-day, after two hundred years of\nCartesian futility about mind and body and the problem of knowledge, the\nBaconian emphasis on the socially-reconstructive function of thought\nrenews its power and appeal. The world returns to Socrates, to Plato,\nand to Bacon.\n\nBut with some measure of wholesome disillusionment. These last two\ncenturies have told us that science, unaided, cannot solve our social\nproblem. We have invented, invented, invented, invented; and with what\nresult? The gap between class and class has so widened during these\ninventive years that there are now not classes but castes. Social\nharmony is a matter of brief interludes in a drama more violent than any\never mimicked on the stage. Men trained and accomplished in science,\nlike Prince Kropotkin, abandon it on the score that it has turned its\nback on the purpose that gave it vitality and worth.[72]\n\nWhat is the purpose of science? What do scientists consider to be the\npurpose of science? The laboratories are crowded with men who have no\ninkling of any other than a purely material reconstruction as the\nfunction of their growing knowledge. Specialization has so divided\nscience that hardly any sense of the whole survives. The ghosts of\nscholasticism--of a pursuit of knowledge divorced from its social\nend--hover about the microscopes and test-tubes of the scientific world;\nand the upshot of it all is that to them who have, more is given. Let\nBacon speak here: \u201cThere is another great and powerful cause why the\nsciences have made but little progress, which is this. It is not\npossible to run a course aright, when the goal itself has not been\nrightly placed.\u201d[73] Sciences with obvious social functions have\nlanguished through lapse of all sense of direction, all feeling of\nfocus; psychology, for example, is but now reviving under the stimulus\nof men who dared to \u201cstir the earth a little about the roots of this\nscience,\u201d[74] because they had perceived its purpose and meaning in the\ndrama of reconstruction. The blunt truth is that unless a scientist is\nalso a philosopher, with some capacity to see things _sub specie\ntotius_,--unless he can come out of his hole into the open,--he is not\nfit to direct his own research. \u201cAs no perfect discovery can be made\nupon a flat or level, neither is it possible to discover the more remote\nand deeper parts of any science, if you stand but upon the level of the\nsame science, and ascend not to a higher science.\u201d[75] Before it can be\nof real service to life, science must be enlightened by some\ndiscrimination of values, some consideration and fitting together of\nhuman ends: without philosophy as its eye piece, science is but the\ntraditional child who has taken apart the traditional watch, with none\nbut the traditional results.\n\nThere is more to this indictment. Science has been organized, though\nvery imperfectly, for research; it has been organized hardly at all for\nsocial application and control. The notion that science can be used in\nconserving the vital elements of order and at the same time facilitating\nexperimental and progressive change, is but beginning to walk about.\nIndeed, the employment and direction of scientific ability in the\nbusiness of government is still looked upon as a doubtful procedure; to\nsay that the administration of municipal affairs, for example, is to be\ngiven over to men trained in the social sciences rather than to men\nartful in trapping votes with oratorical molasses, is still a venture\ninto the loneliness of heresy. Again let Bacon speak, who was\nadministrator and philosopher in one. \u201cIt is wrong to trust the natural\nbody to empirics who commonly have a few receipts whereon they rely, but\nwho know neither the causes of the disease, nor the constitution of\npatients, nor the danger of accidents, nor the true methods of cure. And\nso it must needs be dangerous to have the civil body of states managed\nby empirical statesmen, unless well mixed with others who are grounded\nin learning. On the contrary it is almost without instance that any\ngovernment was unprosperous under learned governors.\u201d[76]\n\nPlato over again, you say. Yes; just as \u201cGreek philosophy is the dough\nwith which modern philosophers have baked their bread, kneading it over\nand over again,\u201d[77] so this vital doctrine of the application of the\nbest available intelligence to the problem of social order and\ndevelopment must be restated in every generation until at last the world\nmay see its truth and merit exemption from its repetition.\n\n\nVIII\n\nThe Asiatics of Europe\n\nBut the place of Bacon in the continuum of history is hardly stated by\nconnecting him with Plato. Conceive of him rather as a new protagonist\nin the long epic of intelligence; another blow struck in the seemingly\nendless war between magic and science, between supernaturalism and\nnaturalism, between the spirit of worship and the spirit of control.\nPrimitive man--and he lives everywhere under the name of legion--looks\nout upon nature as something to be feared and obeyed, something to be\ncajoled by ritual and sacrifice and prayer. In ages of great social\ndisorder, such as the millennium inaugurated in Western Europe by the\nbarbarian invasions, the primitive elements in the mental make-up of men\nemerge through the falling cultural surface; and cults rich in ritual\nand steeped in emotional luxury grow in rank abundance. It is in the\ncharacter of man to worship power: if he feels the power without him\nmore intensely than the power within, he worships nature with a humble\nfear, and leans on magic and supernatural rewards; if he feels the power\nwithin him more intensely than the power without, he sees divinity in\nhimself and other centres of remoulding activity, and thinks not of\nworshipping and obeying nature, but of controlling and commanding her.\nThe second attitude comes, of course, with knowledge, and action that\nexpresses knowledge; it is quite human that nature should not be\nworshipped once she has been known. A man is primitive, then, when he\nworships nature and makes no effort to control her; he is mature when he\nstops worshipping and begins to control,--when he understands that\n\u201cNature is not a temple but a workshop,\u201d[78] not a barrier to divinity,\nbut the raw material of Utopia.\n\nNow the essence of Bacon is not the replacement of deduction by\ninduction, but the change of emphasis from worship to control. This\nemphasis, once vivid in Plato but soon obscured by Oriental influence,\nis one of the two dominant elements in modern thought (the other being\nthe puzzling over an artificial problem of knowledge); and unless the\nBaconian element finally subordinates the Cartesian, the word _modern_\nmust no longer arrogate to itself a eulogistic connotation. Hence Bacon,\nand not Descartes, is the initiator of modern philosophy; part\ninitiator, at least, of that current of thought which finds rebellious\nexpression in the enlightenment of the eighteenth-century, and comes to\nsupremacy in the scientific victories of the nineteenth. The vital\nsequence in modern philosophy is not Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel,\nand Bergson (for these are the Asiatics of Europe), but Bacon, Hobbes,\nCondorcet, Comte, Darwin, and James.[79]\n\nThe hope of the world is in this resolute spirit of control,--control of\nthe material without us, and of the passions within. Bit by bit, one is\nnot afraid to say, we shall make for ourselves a better world. Shall we\nnot find a way to eliminate disease, to control the increase of\npopulation, to find in plastic organization a substitute for revolution?\nShall we perhaps even succeed in transmuting the lust for power over man\ninto ambition to conquer the forces that impede man? Shall we make men\nunderstand that there is more potency of joy in the sense of having\ncontributed to the power of men over nature than in any personal triumph\nof one over another man?--more glory in a conquest of bacteria than in\nall the martial victories that have ever spilled human blood? Here is\nthe beginning of real civilization, and the mark of man. \u201cThe\nenvironment transforms the animal; man transforms the environment.\u201d[80]\n\u201cLooking at the history of the world as a whole, the tendency has been\nin Europe to subordinate nature to man; out of Europe, to subordinate\nman to nature. Formerly the richest countries were those in which nature\nwas most bountiful; now the richest countries are those in which man is\nmost active.\u201d[81] Control is the sign of maturity, the achievement of\nEurope, the future of America. It is, one argues again, the drama of\nhistory, this war between Asia and Europe, between nature and man,\nbetween worship and control. Fundamentally it is the upward struggle of\nintelligence: Plato is its voice, Zeno its passing exhaustion, Bacon its\nresurrection. It was not an unopposed rebirth: there is still no telling\nwhether East or West will win. Surrounded by the backwash of Oriental\ncurrents everywhere, the lover of the Baconian spirit needs constantly\nto refresh himself at the fount of Bacon\u2019s inexhaustible inspiration and\nconfidence. \u201cI stake all,\u201d he says, \u201con the victory of art over nature\nin the race.\u201d And one needs to hold ever before oneself Bacon\u2019s favorite\ndevice: A ship passing through the Pillars of Hercules out into the\nunknown sea, and over it the words, PLUS ULTRA.\n\nMore beyond!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nSPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM[82]\n\n\nI\n\nHobbes\n\nPassing from Bacon to Spinoza we meet with Thomas Hobbes, a man from\nwhom Spinoza drew many of his ideas, though very little of his\ninspiration. The social incidence of the greater part of Hobbes\u2019s\nthinking has long been recognized; he is not a figure over whom the\nbiographer of social thought finds much cause to quarrel. He is at once\nthe materialist _par excellence_ of modern philosophy, and the most\nuncompromising protagonist of the absolutist theory of the state. The\nindividual, all compact of pugnacity, was to Hobbes the bogey which the\nstate, voracious of all liberties, became two centuries later to Herbert\nSpencer. He had in acute degree the philosopher\u2019s natural appetite for\norder; and trembled at the thought of initiatives not foreseen by his\npolitical geometry. He lived in the midst of alarms: war stepped on the\nheels of war in what was very nearly a real _bellum omnium contra\nomnes_. He lived in the midst of political reaction: men were weary of\nRenaissance exuberance and Reformation strife, and sank gladly into the\nopen arms of the past. There could be no end, thought Hobbes, to this\nturmoil of conflicting egos, individual and national, until all groups\nand individuals knelt in absolute obedience to one sovereign power.\n\nBut all this has been said before; we need but remind ourselves of it\nhere so that we may the better appreciate the vibrant sympathy for the\nindividual man, the generous defence of popular liberties, that fill\nwith the glow of subdued passion the pages of the gentle Spinoza.\n\n\nII\n\nThe Spirit of Spinoza\n\nYet Spinoza was not wanting in that timidity and that fear of unbridled\ninstinct which stood dictator over the social philosophy of Hobbes. He\nknew as well as Hobbes the dangers of a democracy that could not\ndiscipline itself. \u201cThose who have had experience of how changeful the\ntemper of the people is, are almost in despair. For the populace is\ngoverned not by reason but by emotion; it is headlong in everything, and\neasily corrupted by avarice and luxury.\u201d[83] And even more than Hobbes\nhe withdrew from the affairs of men and sought in the protection of a\nsuburban attic the peace and solitude which were the vital medium of his\nthought. He found that sometimes at least, \u201ctruth hath a quiet breast.\u201d\n\u201c_Se tu sarai solo_,\u201d wrote Leonardo, \u201c_tu sarai tutto tuo_.\u201d And surely\nGoethe thought of Spinoza when he said: \u201cNo one can produce anything\nimportant unless he isolate himself.\u201d\n\nBut this dread of the crowd was only a part of Spinoza\u2019s nature, and not\nthe dominant part. His fear of men was lost in his boundless capacity\nfor affection; he tried so hard to understand men that he could not help\nbut love them. \u201cI have labored carefully not to mock, lament, or\nexecrate, but to understand, human actions; and to this end I have\nlooked upon passions ... not as vices of human nature, but as properties\njust as pertinent to it as are heat, cold, storm, thunder, and the like\nto the nature of the atmosphere.\u201d[84] Even the accidents of time and\nspace were sinless to his view, and all the world found room in the\nabundance of his heart. \u201cSpinoza deified the All in order to find peace\nin the face of it,\u201d says Nietzsche:[85] but perhaps, too, because all\nlove is deification.\n\nAll in all, history shows no man more honest and independent; and the\nhistory of philosophy shows no man so sincere, so far above quibbling\nand dispute and the picking of petty flaws, so eager to receive the\ntruth even when brought by the enemy, so ready to forgive even\npersecution in the depth and breadth of his tolerance. No man who\nsuffered so much injustice made so few complaints. He became great\nbecause he could merge his own suffering in the suffering of all,--a\nmark of all deep men. \u201cThey who have not suffered,\u201d says Ibsen,--and,\none might add, suffered with those they saw suffer,--\u201cnever create; they\nonly write books.\u201d\n\nSpinoza did not write much; the long-suffering are seldom long-winded. A\nfragment _On the Improvement of the Understanding_; a brief volume on\nreligion and the state; the _Ethics_; and as he began to write the\nchapter on democracy in the _Political Treatise_ consumption conquered\nhim. Bacteria take no bribes.\n\n\nIII\n\nPolitical Ethics\n\nHad he lived longer it would have dawned perhaps even on the German\nhistorians that Spinoza\u2019s basic interest was not in metaphysics so much\nas in political ethics. The _Ethics_, because it is the most sustained\nflight of reasoning in philosophy, has gathered round it all the\nassociations that throng about the name of Spinoza, so that one is apt\nto think of him in terms of a mystical \u201cpantheism\u201d rather than of\nco\u00f6rdinative intelligence, democracy, and free thought.[86] H\u00f6ffding\nconsiders it a defect in Spinoza\u2019s philosophy that it takes so little\nnotice of epistemology: but should we not be grateful for that? Here are\nmen suffering, said Spinoza, here are men enslaved by passions and\nprelates and kings; surely till these things are dealt with we have no\ntime for epistemological delicacies. Instead of increasing the world\u2019s\nstore of learned ignorance by writing tomes on the possibility of a\nsubject knowing an object, Spinoza thought it better to give himself to\nthe task of helping to keep alive in an age of tyrannical reaction the\nRenaissance doctrine of popular sovereignty. Instead of puzzling himself\nand others about epistemology he pondered the problem of stimulating the\ngrowth of intelligence and evolving a rational ethic. He thought that\nphilosophy was something more than a chess-game for professors.\n\nThere is no need to spend time and space here on what for Spinoza, as\nfor Socrates and Plato, was the problem of problems,--how human reason\ncould be developed to a point where it might replace supernatural\nsanctions for social conduct and provide the medium of social\nreconstruction. One point, however, may be profitably emphasized.\n\nA careless reading of the _Ethics_ may lead to the belief that Spinoza\nbases his philosophy on a na\u00efve opposition of reason to passion. It is\nnot so. \u201cA desire cannot be restrained or removed,\u201d says Spinoza,\n\u201cexcept by an opposite and stronger desire.\u201d[87] Reason is not dictator\nto desire, it is a relation among desires,--that relation which arises\nwhen experience has hammered impulses into co\u00f6rdination. An impulse,\npassion or emotion is by itself \u201ca confused idea,\u201d a blurred picture of\nthe thing that is indeed desired. Thought and impulse are not two kinds\nof mental process: thought is impulse clarified by experience, impulse\nis thought in chaos.\n\n\nIV\n\nIs Man a Political Animal?\n\nWhy is there a social problem? Is it because men are \u201cbad\u201d? Nonsense,\nanswers Spinoza: the terms \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad,\u201d as conveying moral approval\nand disapproval, are philosophically out of court; they mean nothing\nexcept that \u201ceach of us wishes all men to live according to _his_\ndesire,\u201d and consoles himself for their non-complaisance by making moral\nphrases. There is a social problem, says Spinoza, because men are not\nnaturally social. This does not mean that there are no social tendencies\nin the native human constitution; it does mean that these tendencies are\nbut a sorry fraction of man\u2019s original nature, and do not avail to chain\nthe \u201cape and tiger\u201d hiding under his extremely civilized shirt. Man is a\n\u201cpolitical animal\u201d; but he is also an animal. We must approach the\nsocial problem through a very respectful consideration of the ape and\ntiger; we must follow Hobbes and inquire into \u201cthe natural condition of\nman.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the state of nature every man lives as he wishes,\u201d[88]--he is not\npestered with police regulations and aldermanic ordinances. He \u201c_may_ do\nwhatever he _can_: his rights extend to the utmost limits of his\npowers.\u201d[89] He may fight, hate, deceive, exploit, to his heart\u2019s\ndesire; and he does. We moderns smile at the \u201cnatural man\u201d as a myth,\nand think our forbears were social _ab initio_. But be it remembered\nthat by \u201csocial\u201d Spinoza implies no mere preference of society to\nsolitude, but a subordination of individual caprice to more or less\ntacit communal regulation. And Spinoza considers it useful, if we are\ngoing to talk about \u201chuman nature in politics,\u201d to ask whether man\n_naturally_ submits to regulation or naturally rebels against it. When\nhe wrote of a primitive non-social human condition he wrote as a\npsychologist inferring the past rather than as an historian revealing\nit. He observed man, kindly yet keenly; he saw that \u201ceveryone desires to\nkeep down his fellow-men by all possible means, and when he prevails,\nboasts more of the injuries he has done to others than of the advantage\nhe has won for himself\u201d;[90] and he concluded that if we could trace\nhuman history to its sources we should find a creature--call him human\nor pre-human--willing, perhaps glad, to have the company of his like,\nbut still unattracted and unhampered by social organization.\n\nWe like to laugh at the simple anthropology of Spinoza and Rousseau; but\nthe laugh should be turned upon us when we suppose that the historical\n_motif_ played any but a very minor part in the discussion of the\nnatural state of man. History was not the point at all: these men were\nnot interested in the past so much as in the possibilities of the\nfuture. That is why the eighteenth century was so largely their\ncreation. When a man is interested in the past he writes history; when\nhe is interested in the future he makes it.\n\nThe point to be borne in mind, Spinoza urges, is that we are still\nessentially unsocialized; the instinct to acquire possession and power,\nif necessary by oppression and exploitation, is still stronger than the\ndisposition to share, to be tolerant of disagreement, and to work in\nmutual aid. The \u201cnatural man\u201d is not a myth, he is the solid reality\nthat struts about dressed in a little brief civilization. \u201cReligion\nteaches that each man should love his neighbor as himself, and defend\nthe rights of others as earnestly as he would his own. Yet this\nconviction has very little influence over man\u2019s emotions. It is no doubt\nof some account in the hour of death, for then disease has weakened the\nemotions, and the man lies helpless. And the principle is assented to in\nchurch, for there men have no dealings with one another. But in the mart\nor the court it has little or no effect, though that is just where the\nneed for it is greatest.\u201d[91] He still \u201cdoes everything for the sake of\nhis own profit\u201d;[92] nor will even the unlimited future change him in\nthat, for it is his very essence. His happiness is in the pursuit of his\nprofit, his supreme joy is in the increase of his power. And a social\norder built upon any other basis than this exuberant egoism of man will\nbe as lasting, in the eye of history, as a name that is writ in water.\n\n\nV\n\nWhat the Social Problem Is\n\nBut what if it is a good basis? What if \u201cthe foundation of virtue is the\nendeavor to preserve one\u2019s own being\u201d to the uttermost?[93] What if\nthere is a way in which, without any hypocritical mystification, this\nself-seeking, while still remaining self-seeking, may become\nco\u00f6peration?\n\nSpinoza\u2019s answer is not startling: it is the Socratic answer, issuing\nfrom a profound psychological analysis. Given the liberation and\ndevelopment of intelligence, and the discordant strife of egos will\nyield undreamed-of harmonies. Men are so made, they are so compact of\npassion and obscurity, that they will not let one another be free; how\ncan that be changed? Deception has been tried, and has succeeded only\ntemporarily if at all. Compulsion has been tried; but compulsion is a\nnegative force, it makes for inhibition rather than inspiration. It is a\nnecessary evil; but hardly the last word of constructive social\nthinking. There is something more in a man than his capacity for fear,\nthere is some other way of appealing to him than the way of threats;\nthere is his hunger and thirst to know and understand and develop. Think\nof the untouched resources of this human desire for mental enlargement;\nthink of the millions who almost starve that they may learn. Is that the\nforce that is to build the future and fashion the city of our dreams?\nHere are men torn with impulses, shaken by mutual interference; is it\nconceivable that they would be so deeply torn and shaken if that hunger\nof theirs for knowledge--knowledge of themselves, too,--were met with\ngenerous opportunity? Men long to be reasonable; they know, even the\nleast of them, that under the tyranny of impulse there is no ultimately\nfruitful life; what is there that they would not give for the power to\nsee things clearly and be captains of their souls? Here if anywhere is\nan opportunity for such statesmanship as does not often grace the courts\nof emperors and kings!\n\nHow we can come to know ourselves, our inmost nature, how we can through\nthis knowledge achieve co\u00f6rdination and our real desires,--that is for\nSpinoza the heart of the social problem. The source of man\u2019s strength is\nthat he can know his weakness. If he can but find himself out, then he\ncan change himself. \u201cA passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form\na clear and distinct idea of it.\u201d[94] When a passion is tracked to its\nlair and confronted with its futile partiality, its sting is drawn, it\ncan hurt us no more; it may co\u00f6perate but it may no longer rule. It is\nseen to be \u201cinadequate,\u201d to express but a fragment of us, and so seen it\nsinks into its place in the hierarchy of desires. \u201cAnd in proportion as\nwe know our emotions better, the more are they susceptible to\ncontrol.\u201d[95] Passion is passivity; control is power. Knowledge brings\ncontrol, and control brings freedom; freedom is not a gift, it is a\nvictory. Knowledge, control, freedom, power, virtue: these are all one\nthing. Before the \u201cempire of man over nature\u201d must come the empire of\nman over himself, must come co\u00f6rdination. Achievement is born of clear\nvision and unified intent, not of actions that are but bubbles on the\nmuddy rapids of desire.\n\n\nVI\n\nFree Speech\n\n\u201cBefore all things, a means must be devised for improving and clarifying\nthe understanding.\u201d[96] \u201cSince there is no single thing we know which is\nmore excellent than a man who is guided by reason, it follows that there\nis nothing by which a person can better show how much skill and talent\nhe possesses than by so educating men that at last they will live under\nthe direct authority of reason.\u201d[97] But how?\n\nFirst of all, says Spinoza, thought must be absolutely free: we must\nhave the possible profit of even the most dangerous heresies. If that\nproposition appear a trifle trite, let it be remembered that Spinoza\nwrote at a time when Galileo\u2019s broken-hearted retraction was still fresh\nin men\u2019s memories, and when Descartes was modifying his philosophy to\nsoothe the Jesuits. The chapter on freedom of thought is really the\npivotal point and _raison d\u2019\u00eatre_ of the _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_;\nand it is still rich in encouragement and inspiration. Perhaps there is\nnothing else in Spinoza\u2019s writings that is so typical at once of his\ngentleness and of his strength.\n\nFree speech should be granted, Spinoza argues, because it must be\ngranted. Men may conceal real beliefs, but these same beliefs will\ninevitably influence their behavior; a belief is not that which is\nspoken, it is that which is done. A law against free speech is\nsubversive of law itself, for it invites derision from the\nconscientious. \u201cAll laws which can be broken without any injury to\nanother are counted but a laughing-stock.\u201d[98] It is useless for the\nstate to command \u201csuch things as are abhorrent to human nature.\u201d \u201cMen in\ngeneral are so constituted that there is nothing they will endure with\nso little patience as that views which they believe to be true should be\ncounted crimes against the law.... Under such circumstances men do not\nthink it disgraceful, but most honorable, to hold the laws in\nabhorrence, and to refrain from no action against the government.\u201d[99]\nWhere men are not permitted to criticise their rulers in public, they\nwill plot against them in private. There is no religious enthusiasm\nstronger than that with which laws are broken by those whose liberty has\nbeen suppressed.\n\nSpinoza goes further. Thought must be liberated not only from legal\nrestrictions but from indirect and even unintentional compulsion as\nwell. Spinoza feels very strongly the danger to freedom, that is\ninvolved in the organization of education by the state. \u201cAcademies that\nare founded at the public expense are instituted not so much to\ncultivate men\u2019s natural abilities as to restrain them. But in a free\ncommonwealth arts and sciences will be best cultivated to the full if\neveryone that asks leave is allowed to teach in public, at his own cost\nand risk.\u201d[100] He would have preferred such \u201cfree lances\u201d as the\nSophists to the state universities of the American Middle West. He did\nnot suggest means of avoiding the apparent alternative of universities\nsubsidized by the rich. It is a problem that has still to be solved.\n\nIn demanding absolute freedom of speech Spinoza touches the bases of\nstate organization. Nothing is so dangerous and yet so necessary; for\nignorance is the mother of authority. The defenders of free speech have\nnever yet met the contention of such men as Hobbes, that freedom of\nthought is subversive of established government. The reason is only\nthis, that the contention is probably true, so far as most established\ngovernments go. Absolute liberty of speech is assuredly destructive of\ndespotism, no matter how constitutional the despotism may be; and those\nwho have at heart the interests of any such government may be forgiven\nfor hesitating to applaud Spinoza. Freedom of speech makes for social\nvitality, certainly; without it, indeed, the avenues of mental and\nsocial development would be blocked, and life hardly worth living. But\nfreedom of speech cannot be said to make for social stability and\npermanence, unless the social organization in question invites criticism\nand includes some mechanism for profiting by it. Where democracy is\nreal, or is on the way to becoming real, free speech will help, not\nharm, the state; for there is no man so loyal as the man who knows that\nhe may criticise his government freely and to some account. But where\nthere is the autocracy of a person or a class, freedom of speech makes\nfor dissolution,--dissolution, however, not of the society so much as of\nthe government. The Bourbons are gone, but France remains. Nay, if the\nBourbons had remained, France might be gone.\n\nBut to argue to-day for freedom of speech is to invite the charge of\nemphasizing the obvious. It may be wholesome to remind ourselves, by a\nfew examples, that however universal the theory of free speech may be,\nthe practice is still rather sporadic. An American professor is\ndismissed because he thinks there is a plethora of unearned income in\nhis country; an English publicist is reported to have been refused\n\u201cpermission\u201d to fill lecture engagements in America because he had not\nbeen sufficiently patriotic; and one of the most prominent of living\nphilosophers loses his chair because he supposes that conscience has\nrights against cabinets. But indeed our governing bodies are harmless\noffenders here in comparison with the people themselves. The last lesson\nwhich men and women will learn is the lesson of free thought and free\nspeech. The most famous of living dramatists finds himself unsafe in\nLondon streets, because he has dared to criticise his government; the\nmost able of living novelists finds it convenient to leave Paris because\nthere are still some Germans whom he does not hate; and an American\ncommunity full of constitutional lawyers shows its love of \u201claw and\norder\u201d by stoning a group of boys bent on expounding the desirability of\nsyndicalism.\n\nPerhaps the world has need of many Spinozas still.\n\n\nVII\n\nVirtue as Power\n\nFreedom of expression is the corner-stone of Spinoza\u2019s politics; the\npostulate without which he refuses to proceed. But Spinoza does not have\nto be told that this question of free speech precipitates him into the\nlarger problems of \u201cthe individual _vs._ the state\u201d; he knows that that\nproblem is the very _raison d\u2019\u00eatre_ of political philosophy; he knows\nthat indeed the problem goes to the core of philosophy, and finds its\nsource and crux in the complex socio-egoistical make-up of the\nindividual man.\n\nThe \u201cGod-intoxicated\u201d Spinoza is quite sober and disillusioned about the\nsocial possibilities of altruism. \u201cIt is a universal law of human\nnature that no one ever neglects anything which he judges to be good,\nexcept with the hope of gaining a greater good.\u201d[101] \u201cThis is as\nnecessarily true as that the whole is greater than its part.\u201d[102] This\nconfident reduction of human conduct to self-reference does not for\nSpinoza involve any condemnation: \u201creason, since it asks for nothing\nthat is opposed to nature, demands that every person should ... seek his\nown profit.\u201d[103] Observe, reason _demands_ this; this same self-seeking\nis the most valuable and necessary item in the composition of man.\nSpinoza, as said, goes so far as to identify this self-seeking with\nvirtue: \u201cto act absolutely in conformity with virtue is, in us, nothing\nbut to act, live, and preserve our being (these three have the same\nmeaning) as reason directs, from the ground of seeking our own\nprofit.\u201d[104] This is a brave rejection of self-renunciation and\nasceticism by one whose nature, so far as we can judge it now, inclined\nhim very strongly in the direction of these \u201cvirtues.\u201d What we have to\ndo, says Spinoza, is not to deny the self, but to broaden it; here\nagain, of course, intelligence is the mother of morals. Progress lies\nnot in self-reduction but in self-expansion. Progress is increase in\nvirtue, but \u201cby virtue and power I understand the same thing\u201d;[105]\nprogress is an increase in the ability of men to achieve their ends. It\nis part of our mental confectionery to define progress in terms of our\nown ends; a nation is \u201cbackward\u201d or \u201cforward\u201d according as it moves\ntowards or away from our own ideals. But that, says Spinoza, is na\u00efve\nnonsense; a nation is progressive or backward according as its citizens\nare or are not developing greater power to realize _their own_ purposes.\nThat is a doctrine that may have \u201cdangerous\u201d implications, but\nintelligence will face the implications and the facts, ready not to\nsuppress them but to turn them to account.\n\nIt was the passion for power that led to the first social groupings and\ndeveloped the social instincts. Our varied sympathies, our parental and\nfilial impulses, our heroisms and generosities, all go back to social\nhabits born of individual needs. \u201cSince fear of solitude exists in all\nmen, because no one in solitude is strong enough to defend himself and\nprocure the necessaries of life, it follows that men by nature tend\ntowards social organization.\u201d[106] \u201cLet satirists scoff at human affairs\nas much as they please, let theologians denounce them, and let the\nmelancholy, despising men and admiring brutes, praise as much as they\ncan a life rude and without refinement,--men will nevertheless find out\nthat by mutual help they can much more easily procure the things they\nneed, and that it is only by their united strength that they can avoid\nthe dangers which everywhere threaten them.\u201d[107] _Nihil homine homini\nutilius._ Men discover that they are useful to one another, and that\nmutual profit from social organization increases as intelligence grows.\nIn a \u201cstate of nature\u201d--that is, before social organization--each man\nhas a \u201cnatural right\u201d to do all that he is strong enough to do; in\nsociety he yields part of this sovereignty to the communal organization,\nbecause he finds that this concession, universalized, increases his\nstrength. The fear of solitude, and not any positive love of fellowship,\nis the prime force in the origin of society. Man does not join in social\norganization because he has social instincts; he develops such instincts\nas the result of joining in such organization.\n\n\nVIII\n\nFreedom and Order\n\nEven to-day the social instincts are not strong enough to prevent\nunsocial behavior. \u201cMen are not born fit for citizenship, but must be\nmade so.\u201d[108] Hence custom and law. Each man, in his sober moments,\ndesires such social arrangements as will protect him from aggression and\ninterference. \u201cThere is no one who does not wish to live, so far as\npossible, in security and without fear; and this cannot possibly happen\nso long as each man is allowed to do as he pleases.\u201d[109] \u201cThat men who\nare necessarily subject to passions, and are inconstant and changeable,\nmay be able to live together in security, and to trust one another\u2019s\nfidelity,\u201d--that is the purpose of law.[110] Ideally, the state is to\nthe individual what reason is to passion.[111] Law protects a man not\nonly from the passions of others, but from his own; it is a help to\ndelayed response. How to frame laws so that the greatest possible number\nof men may find their own security and fulfilment in allegiance to the\nlaw,--that is the problem of the statesman. Law implies force, but so\ndoes life, so does nature; indeed, the punishments decreed by \u201cman-made\u201d\nstates are usually milder than those which in a \u201cstate of nature\u201d would\nbe the natural consequents of most interferences; not seldom the law--as\nwhen it prevents lynching--protects an aggressor from the natural\nresults of his act. Force is the essence of law; hence international law\nwill not really be law until nations are co\u00f6rdinated into a larger group\npossessed of the instrumentalities of compulsion.[112]\n\nIt is clear that Spinoza has the philosophic love of order. \u201cWhatever\nconduces to human harmony and fellowship is good; whatever brings\ndiscord into the state is evil.\u201d[113] But discord, one must repeat, is\noften the prelude to a greater harmony; development implies variation,\nand all variation is a discord except to ears that hear the future. The\nsocial sanction of liberty lies of course in the potential value of\nvariations; without that vision of new social possibilities which is\nsuggested by variations from the norm a people perishes. Spinoza does\nnot see this; but there is a fine passage in the _Tractatus\nPoliticus_[114] which shows him responsive to the ideal of liberty as\nwell as to that of order: \u201cThe last end of the state is not to dominate\nmen, nor to restrain them by fear; rather it is so to free each man from\nfear that he may live and act with full security and without injury to\nhimself or his neighbor. The end of the state is, I repeat, not to make\nrational beings into brute beasts or machines. It is to enable their\nbodies and their minds to function safely. It is to lead men to live by,\nand to exercise, a free reason, that they may not waste their strength\nin hatred, anger, and guile, not act unfairly toward one another. Thus\nthe end of the state is really liberty.\u201d\n\nSo it is that Spinoza takes sharp issue with Hobbes and exalts freedom,\ndecentralization, and democracy, where Hobbes, starting with almost\nidentical premises, concludes to a centralized despotism of body and\nsoul. This does not mean that Spinoza had no eye for the defects of\ndemocracy. \u201cExperience is supposed to teach that it makes for peace and\nconcord when all authority is conferred upon one man. For no political\norder has stood so long without notable change as that of the Turks,\nwhile none have been so short-lived, nay, so vexed by seditions, as\npopular or democratic states. But if slavery, barbarism, and desolation\nare to be called peace, then peace is the worst misfortune that can\nbefall a state. It is true that quarrels are wont to be sharper and more\nfrequent between parents and children than between masters and slaves;\nyet it advances not the art of home life to change a father\u2019s right into\na right of property, and count his children as only his slaves. Slavery,\nthen, and not peace, comes from the giving of all power to one man. For\npeace consists not in the absence of war, but in a union and harmony of\nmen\u2019s souls.\u201d[115]\n\nNo; better the insecurity of freedom than the security of bondage.\nBetter the dangers that come of the ignorance of majorities than those\nthat flow from the concentration of power in the hands of an inevitably\nself-seeking minority. Even secret diplomacy is worse than the risks of\npublicity. \u201cIt has been the one song of those who thirst after absolute\npower that the interest of the state requires that its affairs be\nconducted in secret.... But the more such arguments disguise themselves\nunder the mask of public welfare the more oppressive is the slavery to\nwhich they will lead.... Better that right counsels be known to enemies,\nthan that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the\ncitizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it\nabsolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in\ntime of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.... It is\nfolly to choose to avoid a small loss by means of the greatest of\nevils.\u201d[116]\n\nThis is but one of many passages in Spinoza that startle the reader with\ntheir present applicability and value. There is in the same treatise a\nplan for an unpaid citizen soldiery, much like the scheme adopted in\nSwitzerland; there is a plea against centralization and for the\ndevelopment of municipal pride by home rule and responsibility; there is\na warning against the danger to democracy involved in the territorial\nexpansion of states; and there is a plan for the state ownership of all\nland, the rental from this to supply all revenue in time of peace. But\nlet us pass to a more characteristic feature of Spinoza\u2019s political\ntheory, and consider with him the function of intelligence in the state.\n\n\nIX\n\nDemocracy and Intelligence\n\n\u201cThere is no single thing in nature which is more profitable to man than\na man who lives according to the guidance of reason.\u201d[117] Such a man,\nto begin with, has made his peace with the inevitable, and accepts with\ngood cheer the necessary limitations of social life. He has a genial\nsense of human imperfections, and does not cushion himself upon Utopia.\nHe pursues his own ends but with some perspective of their social\nbearings; and he is confident that \u201cwhen each man seeks that which is\n[really] profitable to himself, then are men most profitable to one\nanother.\u201d[118] He knows that the ends of other men will often conflict\nwith his; but he will not for that cause make moral phrases at them. He\nfeels the tragedy of isolated purposes, and knows the worth of\nco\u00f6peration. As he comes to understand the intricate bonds between\nhimself and his fellows he finds ever more satisfaction in purposes that\noverflow the narrow margins of his own material advantage; until at last\nhe learns to desire nothing for himself without desiring an equivalent\nfor others.[119]\n\nGiven such men, democracy follows; such democracy, too, as will be a\nfulfilment and not a snare. Given such men, penal codes will interest\nonly the antiquarian. Given such men, a society will know the full\nmeasure of civic allegiance and communal stability and development. How\nmake such men? By revivals? By the gentle an\u00e6sthesia of heaven and the\ncheap penology of hell? By memorizing catechisms and commandments? By\nappealing like Comte, to the heart, and trusting to the eternal feminine\nto lead us ever onward? (Onward whither?) Or by spreading the means of\nintelligence?\n\nIt is at this point that the social philosophy of Spinoza, like that of\nSocrates, betrays its weaker side. How is intelligence to be spread?\nPerhaps it is too much to ask the philosopher this question; he may feel\nthat he has done enough if he has made clear what it is which will most\nhelp us to achieve our ends. Spinoza, after all, was not the kind of man\nwho could be expected to enter into practical problems; his soul was\nfilled with the vision of the eternal laws and had no room for the\npassing expediencies of action. His devotional geometry was a typical\nJewish performance; there is something in the emotional make-up of the\nJew which makes him slide very easily into the attitude of worship, as\ncontrasted with the Gr\u00e6co-Roman emphasis on intellect and control. All\npantheism tends to quietism; to see things _sub specie eternitatis_ may\nvery well pass from the attitude of the scientist to the attitude of the\nmystic who has no interest in temporal affairs. It is the task of\nphilosophy to study the eternal and universal not for its own sake but\nfor its worth in directing us through the maze of temporal particulars;\nthe philosopher must be like the mariner who guides himself through\nspace and time by gazing at the everlasting stars. It is wholesome that\nthe history of philosophy should begin with Thales; so that all who\ncome to the history of philosophy may learn, at the door of their\nsubject, that though stars are beautiful, wells are deep.\n\n\nX\n\nThe Legacy of Spinoza\n\nBut to leave the matter thus would be to lose a part of the truth in the\nglare of one\u2019s brilliance. We have to recognize that though Spinoza\nstopped short (or rather was cut short) at merely a statement of the\nprime need of all democracies,--intelligence,--he was nevertheless the\ninspiration of men who carried his beginning more nearly to a practical\nissue. To Spinoza, through Voltaire and the English deists, one may\ntrace not a few of the thought-currents which carried away the\nfoundations of ecclesiastical power, civil and intellectual, in\neighteenth-century France, and left the middle class conscience-free to\nengineer a revolution. It was from Spinoza chiefly that Rousseau derived\nhis ideas of popular sovereignty, of the general will, of the right of\nrevolution, of the legitimacy of the force that makes men free, and of\nthe ideal state as that in which all the citizens form an assembly with\nfinal power.[120] The French Declaration of Rights and the American\nDeclaration of Independence go back in part to the forgotten treatises\nof the quiet philosopher of Amsterdam. To have initiated or accelerated\nsuch currents of thought--theoretical in their origin but extremely\npractical in their issue--is thereby once for all to have put one\u2019s self\nabove the reach of mere fault-finding. One wonders again, as so many\nhave wondered, what would have been the extent of this man\u2019s achievement\nhad he not died at the age of forty-four. When Spinoza\u2019s pious landlady\nreturned from church on the morning of February 21, 1677, and found her\ngentle philosopher dead, she stood in the presence of one of the great\nsilent tragedies of human history.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nNIETZSCHE\n\n\nI\n\nFrom Spinoza to Nietzsche\n\nLet us dare to compress within a page or two the social aspect of\nphilosophical thought from Spinoza to Nietzsche. Without forgetting that\nour purpose is to show the social problem as the dominant interest of\nonly _many_, not all, of the greater philosophers, we may yet risk the\nassertion that the majority of the men who formed the epistemological\ntradition from Descartes to Kant were at heart concerned less with the\nproblem of knowledge than with that of social relations. Descartes slips\nthrough this generalization; he is a man of leisure lost in the maze of\na puzzle which he has not discovered so much as he has unconsciously\nconstructed it. In Locke\u2019s hands the puzzle is distorted into the\nquestion of \u201cinnate ideas,\u201d in order that under cover of an innocent\nepistemological excursion a blow may be struck at hereditary prejudices\nand authoritarian teaching, and the way made straight for the advance of\npopular sovereignty (as against the absolutism of Hobbes), free speech,\nreasonable religion, and social amelioration. The dominance of the\nsocial interest is not so easily shown in the case of Leibniz; but let\nit be remembered none the less that epistemology was but an aside in the\nvaried drama of Leibniz\u2019 life, and that his head was dizzy with schemes\nfor the betterment of this \u201cbest of all possible worlds.\u201d Bishop\nBerkeley begins with _esse est percipi_ and ends with tar-water as the\n_solution_ of all problems. David Hume, in the midst of a life busied\nwith politics and the discussion of social, political, and economic\nproblems, spares a year or two for epistemology, only to use it as a\nhandle whereby to deal a blow to dogma; he \u201cwas more damaging to\nreligion than Voltaire, but was ingenious enough not to get the credit\nfor it.\u201d[121] The social incidence of philosophy in eighteenth-century\nFrance was so decided that one might describe that philosophy as part of\nthe explosive with which the middle class undermined the _status quo_.\nThis social emphasis continues in Comte, who cannot forget that he was\nonce the secretary of St. Simon, and will not let us forget that the\nfunction of the philosopher is to co\u00f6rdinate experience with a view to\nthe remoulding of human life. John Stuart Mill is radical first and\nlogician afterward; and the more lasting as well as the more interesting\nelement in Spencer is the sociological, educational, and political\ntheory. In Kant the basic social interest is buried under\nepistemological cobwebs; yet not so choked but that it finds very\nresolute voice at last. The essence of the matter here is the return of\nthe prodigal, the relapse of a once adventurous soul into the comfort of\nreligious and political absolutes, categorical--and Potsdam--imperatives.\nHere is \u201cdogmatic slumber\u201d overcome only to yield to the torpor and\n_ab\u00eatisement_ of \u201cpractical reason\u201d; here is no \u201cCopernican revolution\u201d\nbut a stealthy attempt to recover an anthropocentricism lost in the\nglare of the Enlightenment. It dawns on us that the importance of German\nphilosophy is not metaphysical, nor epistemological, but political;\nthe vital remnant of Kant to-day is to be found not in our overflowing\nMississippi of Kantiana, but in the German notion of obedience.[122]\nFichte re\u00ebnforces this notion of unquestioning obedience with the\ndoctrine of state socialism: he begins by tending geese, and ends by\nwriting philosophy for them. So with Hegel: he starts out buoyantly with\nthe proposition that revolution is the heart of history, and ends by\ndiscovering that the King of Prussia is God in disguise. In Schopenhauer\nthe bubble bursts; a millennium of self-deception ends at last in\nexhaustion and despair. Every Hildebrand has his Voltaire, and every\nVoltaire his Schopenhauer.\n\n\nII\n\nBiographical\n\n\u201cIn future,\u201d Nietzsche once wrote, \u201clet no one concern himself about me,\nbut only about the things for which I lived.\u201d We must make this\nbiographical note brief.\n\nNietzsche was born in R\u00f6cken, Germany, 1844, the son of a \u201cnoble young\nparson.\u201d He was brought up in strict piety, and prepared himself to\nenter the ministry; even at boarding-school he was called \u201cthe little\nminister,\u201d and made people cry by his recitations from the Bible. We\nhave pictures of him which show him in all his boyish seriousness; it is\nevident that he is of a deeply religious nature, and therefore doomed to\nheresy. At eighteen he discovers that he has begun to doubt the\ntraditional creed. \u201cWhen I examine my own thoughts,\u201d he writes, \u201cand\nhearken into my own soul, I often feel as if I heard the buzzing and\nroaring of wild-contending parties.\u201d[123] At twenty-one, while studying\nin the University of Leipzig, he discovers the philosophy of\nSchopenhauer; he reads all hungrily, feeling here a kindred youth; \u201cthe\nneed of knowing myself, even of gnawing at myself, forcibly seized upon\nme.\u201d[124] He is ripe for pessimism, having both religion and a bad\nstomach. Because of his defective eyesight he is barred from military\nservice; in 1870 he burns with patriotic fever, and at last is allowed\nto join the army as a nurse; but he is almost overcome at sight of the\nsick and wounded, and himself falls ill with dysentery and dyspepsia. In\nthis same year he sees a troop of cavalry pass through a town in stately\ngallop and array; his weakened frame thrills with the sight of this\nstrength: \u201cI felt for the first time that the strongest and highest Will\nto Life does not find expression in a miserable struggle for existence,\nbut in a Will to War, a Will to Power, a Will to Overpower!\u201d[125]\nNevertheless, he settles down to a quietly ascetic life as professor of\nphilology at the University of Basle. But there is adventure in him; and\nin his first book[126] he slips from the prose of philology into an\nalmost lyrical philosophy. Illness finds voice here in the eulogy of\nhealth; weakness in the deification of strength; melancholy in the\npraise of \u201cDionysian joy\u201d; loneliness in the exaltation of friendship.\nHe has a friend--Wagner--the once romantic rebel of revolution\u2019s\nbarricades; but this friend too is taken from him, with slowly painful\nbreaking of bond after bond. For Wagner, the strong, the overbearing,\nthe ruthless, is coming to a philosophy of Christian sympathy and\ngentleness; qualities that cannot seem divine to Nietzsche, because they\nare long-familiar elements in his own character. \u201cWhat I am not,\u201d he\nsays, most truthfully, \u201cthat for me is God and virtue.\u201d[127] And so he\nstands at last alone, borne up solely by the exhilaration of creative\nthought. He has acquaintances, but he puts up with them \u201csimply, like a\npatient animal\u201d; \u201cnot one has the faintest inkling of my task.\u201d And he\nsuffers terribly \u201cthrough this absence of sympathy and\nunderstanding.\u201d[128]\n\nHe leaves even these acquaintances, and abandons his work at Basle;\nbroken in health he finds his way hopefully to the kindlier climate of\nItaly. Doctor after doctor prescribes for him, one prescription reading,\n\u201ca nice Italian sweetheart.\u201d He longs for the comradeship, but dreads\nthe friction, of marriage. \u201cIt seems to me absurd,\u201d he writes, \u201cthat one\nwho has chosen for his sphere ... the assessment of existence as a\nwhole, should burden himself with the cares of a family, with winning\nbread, security, and social position for wife and children.\u201d He does not\nhesitate to conclude that \u201cwhere the highest philosophical thinking is\nconcerned all married men are suspect.\u201d[129] Nevertheless he wanders\nhumanly into something very like a love-affair; he is almost shattered\nwith rapid disillusionment, and takes refuge in philosophy. \u201cEvery\nmisunderstanding,\u201d he tells himself, \u201chas made me freer. I want less and\nless from humanity, and can give it more and more. The severance of\nevery individual tie is hard to bear; but in each case a wing grows in\nits place.\u201d[130] And yet the need of comradeship is still there, like a\ngnawing hunger: many years later he catches a passing smile from a\nbeautiful young woman, whom he has never seen before; and \u201csuddenly my\nlonely philosopher\u2019s heart grew warm within me.\u201d[131] But she walks off\nwithout seeing him, and they never meet again.\n\nThe simple Italians who rent him his attic room in Genoa understand him\nbetter perhaps than he can be understood by more pretentious folk. They\nknow his greatness, though they cannot classify it. The children of his\nlandlady call him \u201cIl Santo\u201d; and the market-women keep their choicest\ngrapes for the bent philosopher who, it is whispered, writes bitterly\nabout women and \u201cthe superfluous.\u201d But what they know for certain is\nthat he is a man of exceeding gentleness and purity, that he is the very\nsoul of chivalry; \u201cstories are still told of his politeness towards\nwomen to whom no one else showed any kindness.\u201d[132] Let him write what\nhe pleases, so long as he is what he is.\n\nHe lives simply, almost in poverty. \u201cHis little room,\u201d writes a visitor,\n\u201cis bare and cheerless. It has evidently been selected for cheapness\nrather than for comfort. No carpet, not even a stove. I found it\nfearfully cold.\u201d[133] His publisher has made no profit on his books;\nthey are too sharply opposed to the \u201cspirit of the age\u201d; hence\nthe title he gives to two of his volumes: _Unzeitgem\u00e4sse\nBetrachtungen_,--_Thoughts Out of Season_. There is no money, he is now\ninformed, in such untimely volumes; hereafter he must publish his books\nat his own cost. He does, stinting himself severely to meet the new\nexpense; his greatest books see the light in this way.[134]\n\nHe works hard, knowing that his shaken frame has but short lease of\nlife; and he comes to love his painful solitude as a gift. \u201cI can\u2019t help\nseeing an enemy in any one who breaks in upon my working summer.... The\nidea that any person should intrude upon the web of thought which I am\nspinning around me, is simply appalling. I have no more time to\nlose--unless I am stingy with my precious _half-hours_ I shall have a\nbad conscience.\u201d[135] Half-hours; his eyes will not work for more than\nthirty minutes at a time. He feels that only to him to whom time is holy\ndoes time bring reward. \u201cHe is fully convinced,\u201d an acquaintance writes\nof him, \u201cabout his mission and his permanent importance. In this belief\nhe is strong and great; it elevates him above all misfortune.\u201d[136] He\nspeaks of his _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ in terms of almost conscious\nexaggeration: \u201cIt is a book,\u201d he says, \u201cthat stands alone. Do not let us\nmention the poets in the same breath; nothing perhaps has ever been\nproduced out of such a superabundance of strength.\u201d[137] He does not\nknow that it is his illness and his hunger for appreciation that have\ndemanded this self-laudation as restorative and nourishment. He\npredicts, rightly enough, that he will not begin to get his due meed of\nappreciation till 1901.[138] His \u201cunmasking of Christian morality,\u201d he\nsays, \u201cis an event unequalled in history.\u201d[139]\n\nAll this man\u2019s energy is in his brain; he oozes ideas at every pore. He\ncrowds into a sentence the material of a chapter; and every aphorism is\na mountain-peak. He dares to say that which others dare only to think:\nand we call him witty because truth tabooed is the soul of wit. Every\npage bears the imprint of the passion and the pain that gave it birth.\n\u201cI am not a man,\u201d he says, \u201cI am dynamite\u201d; he writes like a man who\nfeels error after error exploding at his touch; and he defines a\nphilosopher as \u201ca terrible explosive in the presence of which everything\nis in danger.\u201d[140] \u201cThere are more idols than realities in the world;\nand I have an \u2018evil eye\u2019 for idols.\u201d[141]\n\nWhat is this philosophy which seemed to its creator more important than\neven the mightiest events of the past? How shall we compress it without\ndistorting it, as it has been distorted by so many of its lovers and its\nhaters? Let us ask the man himself to speak to us; let us see if we\ncannot put the matter in his own words, ourselves but supplying, so to\nspeak, connective tissue. That done, we shall understand the man better,\nand ourselves, and perhaps our social problem.\n\n\nIII\n\nExposition\n\n\n1\n\n_Morality as Impotence_\n\nFrom a biological standpoint the phenomenon morality is of a highly\nsuspicious nature.[142] _Cui bono?_--Whom shall we suspect of profiting\nby this institution? Is it a mode of enhancing life?--Does it make men\nstronger and more perfect?--or does it make for deterioration and decay?\nIt is obvious that up to the present, morality has not been a problem at\nall; it has rather been the very ground on which people have met after\nall distrust, dissension, and contradiction, the hallowed place of\npeace, where thinkers could obtain rest even from themselves.[143] But\nwhat if morality be the greatest of all the stumbling-blocks in the way\nof human self-betterment? Is it possible that morality itself is the\nsocial problem, and that the solution of that problem lies in the\njudicious abolition of morality? It is a view for which something can be\nsaid.\n\nYou have heard that morality is a means used by the strong to control\nthe weak. And it is true: just consider the conversion of Constantine.\nBut to stop here is to let half the truth be passed off on you as the\nwhole; and half a truth is half a lie. Much more true is it that\nmorality is a means used by the weak to control the strong, the chain\nwhich weakness softly lays upon the feet of strength. The whole of the\nmorality of Europe is based upon the values which are useful to the\nherd.[144] Every one\u2019s desire is that there should be no other teaching\nand valuation of things than those by means of which he himself\nsucceeds. Thus the fundamental tendency of the weak and mediocre of all\ntimes has been to enfeeble the strong and to reduce them to the level of\nthe weak; their chief weapon in this process was the moral\nprinciple.[145] Good is every one who does not oppress, who hurts no\none, attacks no one, does not take vengeance but hands over vengeance to\nGod; who goes out of the way of evil, and demands little from life; like\nourselves, patient, meek, just. Good is to do nothing for which we are\nnot strong enough.[146] Zarathustra laughed many times over the\nweaklings who thought themselves good because they had lame paws![147]\nObedience, subordination, submission, devotion, love, the pride of duty;\nfatalism, resignation, objectivity, stoicism, asceticism, self-denial;\nin short, anemia: these are the virtues which the herd would have all\nmen cultivate,--particularly the strong men.[148] And the deification of\nJesus,--that is to say of meekness,--what was it but another attempt to\nlull the strong to sleep?\n\n\n2\n\n_Democracy_\n\nSee, now, how nearly that attempt has succeeded. For is not democracy,\nif not victorious, at least on the road to victory to-day? And what is\nthe democratic movement but the inheritor of Christianity?[149] Not the\nChristianity of the great popes; they knew better, and were building a\nsplendid aristocracy when Luther spoiled it all by letting loose the\nlevelling instincts of the herd.[150] The instinct of the herd is in\nfavor of the leveller (Christ).[151] I very much fear that the first\nChristian is in his deepest instincts a rebel against everything\nprivileged; he lives and struggles unremittingly for \u201cequal\nrights.\u201d[152] It is by Christianity, more than by anything else, that\nthe poison of this doctrine of \u201cequal rights\u201d has been spread abroad.\nAnd do not let us underestimate the fatal influence! Nowadays no one has\nthe courage of special rights, of rights of dominion. The aristocratic\nattitude of mind has been most thoroughly undermined by the lie of the\nequality of souls.[153]\n\nBut is not this the greatest of all lies--the \u201cequality of men\u201d? That is\nto say, the dominion of the inferior. Is it not the most threadbare and\ndiscredited of ideas? Democracy represents the disbelief in all great\nmen and select classes; everybody equals everybody else; \u201cat bottom we\nare all herd.\u201d There is no welcome for the genius here; the more\npromising for the future the modern individual happens to be, the more\nsuffering falls to his lot.[154] If the rise of great and rare men had\nbeen made dependent upon the voices of the multitude, there never would\nhave been any such thing as a great man. The herd regards the exception,\nwhether it be above or beneath its general level, as something\nantagonistic and dangerous. Their trick in dealing with the exceptions\nabove them--the strong, the mighty, the wise, the fruitful--is to\npersuade them to become their head-servants.[155]\n\nBut the torture of the exceptional soul is only part of the villainy of\ndemocracies. The other part is chaos. Voltaire was right: \u201c_Quand la\npopulace se m\u00eale de raisonner, tout est perdu_.\u201d Democracy is an\naristocracy of orators, a competition in headlines, a maelstrom of ever\nnew majorities, a torrent of petty factions sweeping on to ruin. Under\ndemocracy the state will decay, for the instability of legislation will\nleave little respect for law, until finally even the policeman will have\nto be replaced by private enterprise.[156] Democracy has always been the\ndeath-agony of the power of organization:[157] remember Athens, and look\nat England. Within fifty years these Babel governments will clash in a\ngigantic war for the control of the markets of the world; and when that\nwar comes, England will pay the penalty for the democratic inefficiency\nof its dominant muddle-class.[158]\n\nThis wave of democracy will recede, and recede quickly, if men of\nability will only oppose it openly. It is necessary for higher men to\ndeclare war on the masses. In all directions mediocre people are joining\nhands in order to make themselves master. The middle classes must be\ndissolved, and their influence decreased;[159] there must be no more\nintermarrying of aristocracy with plutocracy; this democratic folly\nwould never have come at all had not the master-classes allowed their\nblood to be mingled with that of slaves.[160] Let us fight parliamentary\ngovernment and the power of the press; they are the means whereby\ncattle become rulers.[161] Finally, it is senseless and dangerous to let\nthe counting-mania (the custom of universal suffrage)--which is still\nbut a short time under cultivation, and could easily be uprooted--take\ndeeper root; its introduction was merely an expedient to steer clear of\ntemporary difficulties; the time is ripe for a demonstration of\ndemocratic incompetence and a restoration of power to men who are born\nto rule.[162]\n\n\n3\n\n_Feminism_\n\nDemocracy, after all, is a disease; an attempt on the part of the\nbotched to lay down for all the laws of social health. You may observe\nthe disease in its growth-process by studying the woman movement.\nWoman\u2019s first and last function is that of bearing robust children.[163]\nThe emancipated ones are the abortions among women, those who lack the\nwherewithal to have children (I go no farther, lest I should become\nmedicynical).[164] All intellect in women is a pretension; when a woman\nhas scholarly inclinations there is generally something wrong with her\nsex. These women think to make themselves charming to free spirits by\nwearing advanced views; as though a woman without piety would not be\nsomething perfectly obnoxious and ludicrous to a profound and godless\nman![165] If there is anything worthy of laughter it is the man who\ntakes part in this feminist agitation. Let it be understood clearly that\nthe relations between men and women make equality impossible. It is in\nthe nature of woman to take color and commandment from a man,--unless\nshe happens to be a man. Man\u2019s happiness is \u201cI will,\u201d woman\u2019s happiness\nis \u201cHe will.\u201d[166] Woman gives herself, man takes her: I do not think\none will get over this natural contrast by any social contract.[167]\nIndeed, women will lose power with every step towards emancipation.\nSince the French Revolution the influence of woman has declined in\nproportion as she has increased her rights and claims. Let her first do\nher proper work properly (consider how much man has suffered from\nstupidity in the kitchen), and then it may be time to consider an\nextension of her activities. To be mistaken in this fundamental problem\nof \u201cman and woman,\u201d to deny here the profoundest antagonism, and the\nnecessity for an eternally hostile tension, to dream here of equal\nrights, equal training, equal claims and obligations: that is a typical\nsign of shallow-mindedness. On the other hand, a man who has depth of\nspirit as well as of desires, and has also the depth of benevolence\nwhich is capable of severity and harshness, and easily confounded with\nthem, can only think of woman as Orientals do: he must conceive of her\nas a possession, as confinable property, as a being predestined for\nservice and accomplishing her mission therein--he must take his stand in\nthis matter upon the immense rationality of Asia, upon the superiority\nof the instincts of Asia.[168]\n\n\n4\n\n_Socialism and Anarchism_\n\nAll this uprising of housekeepers is, of course, part of the general\nsickness with which Christianity has inoculated and weakened the strong\nraces of Europe. Consider now the more virulent forms of the disease:\nsocialism and anarchism. The coming of the \u201ckingdom of God\u201d has here\nbeen placed in the future, and been given an earthly, a human, meaning;\nbut on the whole the faith in the old ideal is still maintained. There\nis still the comforting delusion about equal rights, with all the envy\nthat lurks in that delusion. One speaks of \u201cequal rights\u201d: that is to\nsay, so long as one is not a dominant personality, one wishes to prevent\none\u2019s competitors from growing in power.[169] It is a pleasure for all\npoor devils to grumble--it gives them a little intoxicating sensation of\npower. There is a small dose of revenge in every lamentation.[170] When\nyou hear one of those reformers talk of humanity, you must not take him\nseriously; it is only his way of getting fools to believe that he is an\naltruist; beneath the cover of this buncombe a man strong in the\ngregarious instincts makes his bid for fame and followers and power.\nThis pretense to altruism is only a roundabout way of asking for\naltruism, it is the result of a consciousness of the fact that one is\nbotched and bungled.[171] In short, socialism is not justice but\ncovetousness.[172] No doubt we should look upon its exponents and\nfollowers with ironic compassion: they want something which we\nhave.[173]\n\nFrom the standpoint of natural science the highest conception of society\naccording to socialists is the lowest in the order of rank among\nsocieties. A socialist community would be another China, a vast and\nstifling mediocracy; it would be the tyranny of the lowest and most\nbrainless brought to its zenith.[174] A nation in which there would be\nno exploitation would be dead. Life itself is essentially appropriation,\nconquest of the strange and weak; to put it at its mildest,\nexploitation.[175] The absence of exploitation would mean the end of\norganic functioning. Surely it is as legitimate and valuable for\nsuperior men to command and use inferior men as it is for superior\nspecies to command and use inferior species, as man commands and uses\nanimals.[176] It is not surprising that the lamb should bear a grudge\nagainst the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the\ngreat birds of prey.[177] What should be done with muscle except to\nsupply it with directive brains? How, otherwise, can anything worthy\never be built by men? In fact, man has value and significance only in so\nfar as he is a stone in a great building; for which purpose he has first\nof all to be solid; he has to be a \u201cstone.\u201d[178]\n\nNow the common people understand this quite well, and are as happy as\nany of the well-to-do, so long as a silly propaganda does not disturb\nthem with dreams that can never be fulfilled.[179] Poverty,\ncheerfulness, and independence--it is possible to find these three\nqualities combined in one individual; poverty, cheerfulness, and\nslavery--this is likewise a possible combination: and I can say nothing\nbetter to the workmen who serve as factory-slaves.[180]\n\nAs for the upper classes, they need be at no loss for weapons with which\nto fight this pestilence. An occasional opening of the trap-door between\nthe Haves and the Have-nots, increasing the number of property-owners,\nwill serve best of all. If this policy is pursued, there will always be\ntoo many people of property for socialism ever to signify anything more\nthan an attack of illness.[181] A little patience with inheritance and\nincome taxes, and the noise of the cattle will subside.[182]\n\nNotice, meanwhile, that socialism and despotism are bedfellows. Give the\nsocialist his way, and he will put everything into the hands of the\nstate,--that is to say, into the hands of demagogue politicians.[183]\nAnd then, all in the twinkling of an eye, socialism begets its opposite\nin good Hegelian fashion, and the dogs of anarchism are let loose to\nfill the world with their howling. And not without excuse or benefit;\nfor politicians must be kept in their place, and the state rigidly\nrestricted to its necessary functions, even if anarchist agitation helps\none to do it.[184] And the anarchists are right: the state is the\ncoldest of all monsters, and this lie creeps out of its mouth, \u201cI, the\nState, am the people.\u201d[185] So the wise man will turn anarchism, as well\nas socialism, to account; and he will not fret even when a king or two\nis hurried into heaven with nitroglycerine. Only since they have been\nshot at have princes once more sat securely on their thrones.[186]\n\nAnarchism justifies itself in the aristocrat, who feels law as his\ninstrument, not as his master; but the rebellion against law as such is\nbut one more outburst of physiological misfits bent on levelling and\nrevenge.[187] It is childish to desire a society in which every\nindividual would have as much freedom as another.[188] Decadence speaks\nin the democratic idiosyncrasy against everything which rules and\nwishes to rule, the modern _misarchism_ (to coin a bad word for a bad\nthing).[189] When all men are strong enough to command, then law will be\nsuperfluous; weakness needs the vertebr\u00e6 of law. He is commanded who\ncannot obey his own self. Let the anarchist be thankful that he has laws\nto obey. To command is more difficult; whenever living things command\nthey risk themselves; they take the hard responsibilities for the\nresult.[190] Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves;[191]\nwhen the mob is capable of that, it will be time to think of dispensing\nwith law. The truth is, of course, that the anarchist is lulled into\nnonsense by Rousseau\u2019s notion of the naturally good man. He does not\nunderstand that revolution merely unlashes the dogs in man, till they\nonce more cry for the whip.[192] Cast out the Bourbons, and in ten years\nyou will welcome Napoleon.\n\nThat is the end of anarchism; and it is the end of democracy, too.\n\nThe truth is that men are willing and anxious to be ruled by rulers\nworthy of the name. But the corrupted ruling classes have brought ruling\ninto evil odor. The degeneration of the ruler and of the ruling classes\nhas been the cause of all the disorders in history. Democracy is not\nruling, but drifting; it is a political relaxation, as if an organism\nwere to allow each of its parts to do just as it pleased. Precisely\nthese disorganizing principles give our age its specific character. Our\nsociety has lost the power to function properly; it no longer rids\nitself naturally of its rotten elements; it no longer has the strength\neven to excrete.[193]\n\n\n5\n\n_Degeneration_\n\nWhat kind of men is to be found in such a society? Mediocre men; men\nstupid to the point of sanctity; fragile, useless souls-de-luxe; men\nsuffering from a sort of hemiplegia of virtue,--that is to say,\nparalyzed in the self-assertive instincts; men tamed, almost emasculated\nby a morality whose essence is the abdication of the will.[194] Now, as\na rule, the taming of a beast is achieved only by deteriorating it; so\ntoo the moral man is not a better man, he is rather a weaker member of\nhis species. He is altruistic, of course; that is, he feels that he\nneeds help. There is no place for really great men in this march towards\nnonentity; if a great man appears he is called a criminal.[195] A\nPericlean Greek, a Renaissance Florentine, would breathe like one\nasphyxiated in this moralic acid atmosphere; the first condition of life\nfor such a man is that he free himself from this Chinadom of the\nspirit.[196] But the number of those who are capable of rising into the\npure air of unmoralism is very small; and those who have made timid\nsallies into theological heresy are the most addicted to the comfort and\nsecurity of ethical orthodoxy. In short, men are coming to look upon\nlowered vitality as the heart of virtue; and morality will be saddled\nwith the guilt if the maximum potentiality of the power and splendor of\nthe human species should never be attained.[197]\n\nMen of this stamp require a good deal of religious pepsin to overcome\nthe indigestibility of life; if they leave one faith in the passing\nbravery of their youth they soon sink back into another.[198] God,\npreviously diluted from tribal deity into _substantia_ and\n_ding-an-sich_,[199] now recovers a respectable degree of reality; the\nimaginary pillar on which men lean is made stronger and more concrete as\ntheir weakness increases. How much faith a person requires in order to\nflourish, how much fixed opinion he needs which he does not wish to have\nshaken, because he holds himself thereby,--is a measure of his power (or\nmore plainly speaking, of his weakness).[200]\n\nThe same criterion classifies our friends the metaphysicians,--those\nalbinos of thought,--who are, of course, priests in disguise.[201] The\ndegree of a man\u2019s will-power may be measured by the extent to which he\ncan dispense with the meaning in things; by the extent to which he is\nable to endure a world without meaning; because he himself arranges a\nsmall portion of it.[202] The world has no meaning: all the better; put\nsome meaning into it, says the man with a man\u2019s heart. The world has no\nmeaning: but it is only a world of appearance, says the weak-kneed\nphilosopher; behind this phenomenal world is the real world, which has\nmeaning, and means good. Of the real world \u201cthere is no knowledge;\nconsequently there is a God\u201d--what novel elegance of syllogism![203]\nThis belief that the world which ought to be is real is a belief proper\nto the unfruitful who do not wish to create a world. The \u201cwill to truth\u201d\nis the impotence of the \u201cwill to create.\u201d[204] Even monism is being\nturned into medicine for sick souls; clearly these lovers of wisdom seek\nnot truth, but remedies for their illnesses.[205] There is too much beer\nand midnight oil in modern philosophy, and not enough fresh air.[206]\nPhilosophers condemn this world because they have avoided it; those who\nare contemplative naturally belittle activity.[207] In truth, the\nhistory of philosophy is the story of a secret and mad hatred of the\nprerequisites of life, of the feelings which make for the real values of\nlife.[208] No wonder that philosophy is fallen to such low estate.\nScience flourishes nowadays, and has the good conscience clearly\nvisible on its countenance; while the remnant to which modern philosophy\nhas gradually sunk excites distrust and displeasure, if not scorn and\npity. Philosophy reduced to a \u201ctheory of knowledge,\u201d a philosophy that\nnever gets beyond the threshold, and rigorously denies itself the right\nto enter--that is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony;\nsomething that awakens pity. How could such a philosophy rule![209]\n\n\n6\n\n_Nihilism_\n\nAll these things, democracy, feminism, socialism, anarchism, and modern\nphilosophy, are heads of the Christian hydra, each a sore in the total\ndisease. Given such illness, affecting all parts of the social body, and\nwhat result shall we expect and find? Pessimism, despair,\nnihilism,--that is, disbelief in all values of life.[210] Confidence in\nlife is gone; life itself has become a problem. Love of life is still\npossible,--only it is the love of a woman of whom one is doubtful.[211]\nThe \u201cgood man\u201d sees himself surrounded by evil, discovers traces of evil\nin every one of his acts. And thus he ultimately arrives at the\nconclusion, which to him is quite logical, that nature is evil, that man\nis corrupted, and that being good is an act of grace (that is to say, it\nis impossible to man when he stands alone). In short, _he denies\nlife_.[212] The man who frees himself from the theology of the Church\nbut adheres to Christian ethics necessarily falls into pessimism. He\nperceives that man is no longer an assistant in, let alone the\nculmination of, the evolutionary process; he perceives that Becoming has\nbeen aiming at Nothing, and has achieved it; and that is something which\nhe cannot bear.[213] Suffering, which was, before, a trial with promised\nreward, is now an intolerable mystery; if he is materially comfortable\nhimself, he finds source for sentiment and tears in the pain and misery\nof others; he concocts a \u201csocial problem,\u201d and never dreams that the\nsocial problem is itself a result of decadence.[214] He does not feel at\nhome in this world in which the Christian God is dead, and to which,\nnevertheless, he brings nothing more appreciative than the old Christian\nmoral attitude. He despairs because he is a chaos, and knows it; \u201cI do\nnot know where I am, or what I am to do; I am everything that knows not\nwhere it is or what to do,\u201d he sighs.[215] Life, he says at last, is not\nworth living.\n\nLet us not try to answer such a man; he needs not logic but a\nsanitarium. But see, through him, and in him, the destructiveness of\nChristian morals. This despicable civilization, says Rousseau, is to\nblame for our bad morality. What if our good morality is to blame for\nthis despicable civilization?[216] See how the old ethic depreciates\nthe joy of living, and the gratitude felt towards life; how it checks\nthe knowledge and unfolding of life; how it chokes the impulse to\nbeautify and ennoble life.[217] And at what a time! Think what a race\nwith masculine will could accomplish now! Precisely now, when will in\nits fullest strength were necessary, it is in the weakest and most\npusillanimous condition. Absolute mistrust concerning the organizing\npower of the will: to that we have come.[218] The world is dark with\ndespair at the moment of greatest light.\n\nWhat if man could be made to love the light and use it?\n\n\n7\n\n_The Will to Power_\n\nIs it possible that this despair is not the final state in the\nexhaustion of a race, but only a transition from belief in a perfect and\nethical world to an attitude of transvaluation and control?[219] Perhaps\nwe are at the bottom of our spiritual toboggan, and an ascending\nmovement is around the corner of the years. Now that our Christian\nbubble has burst into Schopenhauer, we are left free to recover some\npart of the joyous strength of the ancients. Let us become again as\nlittle children, unspoiled by religion and morality; let us forget what\nit is to feel sinful; let the thousandfold laughter of children clear\nthe air of the odor of decay. Let us begin anew; and the soul will rise\nand overflow all its margins with the joy of rediscovered life.[220]\nLife has not deceived us! On the contrary, from year to year it appears\nricher, more desirable, and more mysterious; the old fetters are broken\nby the thought that life may be an experiment and not a duty, not a\nfatality, not a deceit![221] Life--that means for us to transform\nconstantly into light and flame all that we are, and also all that we\nmeet with; we cannot possibly do otherwise.[222] To be natural again, to\ndare to be as immoral as nature is; to be such pagans as were the Greeks\nof the Homeric age, to say Yea to life, even to its suffering; to win\nback some of that mountain-air Dionysian spirit which took pleasure in\nthe tragic, nay, which invented tragedy as the expression of its\nsuper-abundant vitality, as the expression of its welcome of even the\ncruelest and most terrible elements of life![223] To be healthy once\nmore!\n\nFor there is no other virtue than health, vigor, energy. All virtues\nshould be looked upon as physiological conditions, and moral judgments\nare symptoms of physiological prosperity or the reverse. Indeed, it\nmight be worth while to try to see whether a scientific order of values\nmight not be constructed according to a scale of numbers and measures\nrepresenting energy. All other values are matters of prejudice,\nsimplicity, and misunderstanding.[224] Instead of moral values let us\nuse naturalistic values, physiological values; let us say frankly with\nSpinoza that virtue and power are one and the same. What is good? All\nthat enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, and power itself,\nin man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness?\nThe feeling that power is increasing, that resistance is being\novercome.[225] This is not orthodox ethics; and perhaps it will not do\nfor long ears,--though an unspoiled youth would understand it. A healthy\nand vigorous boy will look up sarcastically if you ask him, \u201cDo you wish\nto become virtuous?\u201d--but ask him, \u201cDo you wish to become stronger than\nyour comrades?\u201d and he is all eagerness at once.[226] Youth knows that\nability is virtue; watch the athletic field. Youth is not at home in the\nclass room, because there knowledge is estranged from action; and youth\nmeasures the height of what a man knows by the depth of his power to\ndo.[227] There is a better gospel in the boy on the field than in the\nman in the pulpit.\n\nWhich of the boys whom we know do we love best in our secret hearts--the\nprayerful Aloysius, or the masterful leader of the urchins in the\nstreet? We moralize and sermonize in mean efforts to bring the young\ntyrant down to our virtuous an\u00e6mia; but we know that we are wrong, and\nrespect him most when he stands his ground most firmly. To require of\nstrength that it should express itself as weakness is just as absurd as\nto require of weakness that it should express itself as strength.[228]\nLet us go to school to our children, and we shall understand that all\nnative propensities are beneficent, that the evil impulses are to a far\nview as necessary and preservative as the good.[229] In truth we worship\nyouth because at its finest it is a free discharge of instinctive\nstrength; and we know that happiness is nothing else than that. To\nabandon instinct, to deliberate, to clog action with conscious\nthought,--that is to achieve old age. After all, nothing can be done\nperfectly so long as it is done consciously; consciousness is a defect\nto be overcome.[230] Instinct is the most intelligent of all kinds of\nintelligence which have hitherto been discovered.[231] Genius lies in\nthe instincts; goodness too; all consciousness is theatricality.[232]\nWhen a people begins to worship reason, it begins to die.[233] Youth\nknows better: it follows instinct trustfully, and worships power.\n\nAnd we worship power too, and should say so were we as honest as our\nchildren. Our gentlest virtues are but forms of power: out of the\nabundance of the power of sex come kindness and pity; out of revenge,\njustice; out of the love of resistance, bravery. Love is a secret path\nto the heart of the powerful, in order to become his master; gratitude\nis revenge of a lofty kind; self-sacrifice is an attempt to share in the\npower of him to whom the sacrifice is made. Honor is the acknowledgment\nof an equal power; praise is the pride of the judge; all conferring of\nbenefits is an exercise of power.[234] Behold a man in distress:\nstraightway the compassionate ones come to him, depict his misfortune to\nhim, at last go away, satisfied and elevated; they have gloated over the\nunhappy man\u2019s misfortune and their own; they have spent a pleasant\nSunday afternoon.[235] So with the scientist and the philosopher: in\ntheir thirst for knowledge lurks the lust of gain and conquest. And the\ncry of the oppressed for freedom is again a cry for power.[236]\n\nYou cannot understand man, you cannot understand society, until you\nlearn to see in all things this will to power. Physiologists should\nbethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation\nas the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above\nall to discharge its strength: self-preservation is only one of the\nresults of this. And psychologists should think twice before saying that\nhappiness or pleasure is the motive of all action. Pleasure is but an\nincident of the restless search for power; happiness is an accompanying,\nnot an actuating, factor. The feeling of happiness lies precisely in the\ndiscontentedness of the will, in the fact that without opponents and\nobstacles it is never satisfied. Man is now master of the forces of\nnature, and master too of his own wild and unbridled feelings; in\ncomparison with primitive man the man of to-day represents an enormous\nquantum of power, but not an increase of happiness. How can one\nmaintain, then, that man has striven after happiness? No; not happiness,\nbut more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but\ncapacity; that is the secret of man\u2019s longing and man\u2019s seeking.[237]\n\nLet biologists, too, re\u00ebxamine the stock-in-trade of their theory. Life\nis not the continuous adjustment of internal to external relations, but\nwill to power, which, proceeding from within, subjugates and\nincorporates an ever-increasing quantity of \u201cexternal phenomena.\u201d All\nmotive force, all \u201ccausation\u201d whatever, is this will to power; there is\nno other force, physical, dynamical, or psychical.[238] As to the famous\n\u201cstruggle for existence,\u201d it seems at present to be more of an\nassumption than a fact. It does occur, but as an exception; and it is\ndue not to a desire for food but _\u00e0 tergo_ to a surcharge of energy\ndemanding discharge. The general condition of life is not one of want\nor famine, but rather of riches, of lavish luxuriance, and even of\nabsurd prodigality; where there is a struggle it is a struggle for\npower. We must not confound Malthus with Nature.[239] One does indeed\nfind the \u201ccruelty of Nature\u201d which is so often referred to, but in a\ndifferent place: Nature is cruel, but against her lucky and\nwell-constituted children; she protects and shelters and loves the\nlowly. Darwin sees selection in favor of the stronger, the\nbetter-constituted. Precisely the reverse stares one in the face: the\nsuppression of the lucky cases, the reversion to average, the\nuselessness of the more highly constituted types, the inevitable mastery\nof the mediocre. If we drew our morals from reality, they would read\nthus: the mediocre are more valuable than the exceptional creatures; the\nwill to nonentity prevails over the will to life. We have to beware of\nthis formulation of reality into a moral.[240]\n\nNo; morality is not mediocrity, it is superiority; it does not mean\nbeing like most people, but being better, stronger, more capable than\nmost people. It does not mean timidity: if anything is virtue it is to\nstand unafraid in the presence of any prohibition.[241] It does not mean\nthe pursuit of ends sanctified by society; it means the will to your own\nends, and to the means to them. It means behaving as states\nbehave,--with frank abandonment of all altruistic pretence. Corporate\nbodies are intended to do that which individuals have not the courage to\ndo: for this reason all communities are vastly more upright and\ninstructive as regards the nature of man than individuals, who are too\ncowardly to have the courage of their desires. All altruism is the\nprudence of the private man; societies are not mutually altruistic.\nAltruism and life are incompatible: all the forces and instincts which\nare the source of life lie stagnant beneath the ban of the old morality.\nBut real morality is certainty of instinct, effectiveness of action; it\nis any action which increases the power of a man or of men; it is an\nexpression of ascendent and expanding life; it is achievement; it is\npower.[242]\n\n\n8\n\n_The Superman_\n\nWith such a morality you breed men who are men; and to breed men who are\nmen is all that your \u201csocial problem\u201d comes to. This does not mean that\nthe whole race is to be improved: the very last thing a sensible man\nwould promise to accomplish would be to improve mankind. Mankind does\nnot improve, it does not even exist. The aspect of the whole is much\nmore like that of a huge experimenting workshop where some things in all\nages succeed, while an incalculable number of things fail. To say that\nthe social problem consists in a general raising of the average standard\nof comfort and ability amounts to abandoning the problem; there is as\nlittle prospect of mankind\u2019s attaining to a higher order as there is for\nthe ant and the ear-wig to enter into kinship with God and eternity. The\nmost fundamental of all errors here lies in regarding the many, the\nherd, as an aim instead of the individual: the herd is only a means. The\nroad to perfection lies in the bringing forth of the most powerful\nindividuals, for whose use the great masses would be converted into mere\ntools, into the most intelligent and flexible tools possible. Every\nhuman being, with his total activity, has dignity and significance only\nso far as he is, consciously or unconsciously, a tool in the service of\na superior individual. All that can be done is to produce here and\nthere, now and then, such a superior individual, _l\u2019uomo singulare_, the\nhigher man, the superman. The problem does not concern what humanity as\na whole or as a species is to accomplish, but what kind of man is to be\ndesired as highest in value, what kind of man is to be worked for and\nbred. To produce the superman: that is the social problem. If this is\nnot understood, nothing is understood.[243]\n\nNow what would such a man be like? Shall we try to picture him?\n\nWe see him as above all a lover of life: strong enough, too, to love\nlife without deceiving himself about it. There is no _memento mori_\nhere; rather a _memento vivere_; rich instincts call for much living. A\nhard man, loving danger and difficulty: what does not kill him, he\nfeels, leaves him stronger. Pleasure--pleasure as it is understood by\nthe rich--is repugnant to him: he seeks not pleasure but work, not\nhappiness but responsibility and achievement. He does not make\nphilosophy an excuse for living prudently and apart, an artifice for\nwithdrawing successfully from the game of life; he does not stand aside\nand merely look on; he puts his shoulder to the wheel; for him it is the\nessence of philosophy to feel the obligation and burden of a hundred\nattempts and temptations, the joy of a hundred adventures; he risks\nhimself constantly; he plays out to the end this bad game.[244]\n\nTo risk and to create, this is the meaning of life to the superman. He\ncould not bear to be a man, if man could not be a poet, a maker. To\nchange every \u201cIt was\u201d into a \u201cThus I would have it!\u201d--in this he finds\nthat life may redeem itself. He is moved not by ambition but by a mighty\noverflowing spendthrift spirit that drives him on; he must remake; for\nthis he compels all things to come to him and into him, in order that\nthey may flow back from him as gifts of his love and his abundance; in\nthis refashioning of things by thought he sees the holiness of life; the\ngreatest events, he knows, are these still creative hours.[245]\n\nHe is a man of contrasts, or contradictions; he does not desire to be\nalways the same man; he is a multitude of elements and of men; his value\nlies precisely in his comprehensiveness and multifariousness, in the\nvariety of burdens which he can bear, in the extent to which he can\nstretch his responsibility; in him the antagonistic character of\nexistence is represented and justified. He loves instinct, knows that it\nis the fountain of all his energies; but he knows, too, the natural\ndelight of \u00e6sthetic natures in measure, the pleasure of self-restraint,\nthe exhilaration of the rider on a fiery steed. He is a selective\nprinciple, he rejects much; he reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli,\nwith that tardiness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in\nhim; he tests the approaching stimulus. He decides slowly; but he holds\nfirmly to a decision made.[246]\n\nHe loves and has the qualities which the folk call virtues, but he loves\ntoo and shows the qualities which the folk call vices; it is again in\nthis union of opposites that he rises above mediocrity; he is a broad\narch that spans two banks lying far apart. The folk on either side fear\nhim; for they cannot calculate on him, or classify him. He is a free\nspirit, an enemy of all fetters and labels; he belongs to no party,\nknowing that the man who belongs to a party perforce becomes a liar. He\nis a sceptic (not that he must appear to be one); freedom from any kind\nof conviction is a necessary factor in his strength of will. He does not\nmake propaganda or proselytes; he keeps his ideals to himself as\ndistinctions; his opinion is his opinion: another person has not easily\na right to it; he has renounced the bad taste of wishing to agree with\nmany people. He knows that he cannot reveal himself to anybody; like\neverything profound, he loves the mask; he does not descend to\nfamiliarity; and is not familiar when people think he is. If he cannot\nlead, he walks alone.[247]\n\nHe has not only intellect; if that were all it would not be enough; he\nhas blood. Behind him is a lineage of culture and ability; lives of\ndanger and distinction; his ancestors have paid the price for what he\nis, just as most men pay the price for what their ancestors have been.\nNaturally, then, he has a strong feeling of distance; he sees inequality\nand gradation, order and rank, everywhere among men. He has the most\naristocratic of virtues: intellectual honesty. He does not readily\nbecome a friend or an enemy; he honors only his equals, and therefore\ncannot be the enemy of many; where one despises one cannot wage war. He\nlacks the power of easy reconciliation; but \u201cretaliation\u201d is as\nincomprehensible to him as \u201cequal rights.\u201d He remains just even as\nregards his injurer; despite the strong provocation of personal insult\nthe clear and lofty objectivity of the just and judging eye (whose\nglance is as profound as it is gentle) is untroubled. He recognizes\nduties only to his equals; to others he does what he thinks best; he\nknows that justice is found only among equals. He has that distinctively\naristocratic trait, the ability to command and with equal readiness to\nobey; that is indispensable to his pride. He will not permit himself to\nbe praised; he does what serves his purpose. The essence of him is that\nhe has a purpose, for which he will not hesitate to run all risks, even\nto sacrifice men, to bend their backs to the worst. That something may\nexist which is a hundred times more important than the question whether\nhe feels well or unwell, and therefore too whether the others feel well\nor unwell: this is a fundamental instinct of his nature. To have a\npurpose, and to cleave to it through all dangers till it be\nachieved,--that is his great passion, that is himself.[248]\n\n\n9\n\n_How to Make Supermen_\n\nIt is our task, then, to procreate this synthetic man, who embodies\neverything and justifies it, and for whom the rest of mankind is but\nsoil; to bring the philosopher, the artist, and the saint, within and\nwithout us, to the light, and to strive thereby for the completion of\nnature. In this cultivation lies the meaning of culture: the direction\nof all life to the end of producing the finest possible individuals.\nWhat is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; his very\nessence is to create a being higher than himself; that is the instinct\nof procreation, the instinct of action and of work. Even the higher man\nhimself feels this need of begetting; and for lesser men all virtue and\nmorals lie in preparing the way that the superman may come. There is no\ngreater horror than the degenerating soul which says, \u201cAll for myself.\u201d\nIn this great purpose, too, is the essence of a better religion, and a\nsurpassing of the bounds of narrow individualism; with this purpose\nthere come moments, sparks from the clear fire of love, in whose light\nwe understand the word \u201cI\u201d no longer; we feel that we are creating, and\ntherefore in a sense becoming, something greater than ourselves.[249]\n\nHow to make straight the way for the superman?\n\nFirst by reforming marriage. Let it be understood at once that love is a\nhindrance rather than a help to such marriages as are calculated to\nbreed higher men. To regard a thing as beautiful is necessarily to\nregard it falsely; that is why love-marriages are from the social point\nof view the most unreasonable form of matrimony. Were there a\nbenevolent God, the marriages of men would cause him more displeasure\nthan anything else; he would observe that all buyers are careful, but\nthat even the most cunning one buys his wife in a sack; and surely he\nwould cause the earth to tremble in convulsions when a saint and a goose\ncouple. When a man is in love, he should not be allowed to come to a\ndecision about his life, and to determine once for all the character of\nhis lifelong society on account of a whim. If we treated marriage\nseriously, we would publicly declare invalid the vows of lovers, and\nrefuse them permission to marry. We would remake public opinion, so that\nit would encourage trial marriage; we would exact certificates of health\nand good ancestry; we would punish bachelorhood by longer military\nservice, and would reward with all sorts of privileges those fathers who\nshould lavish sons upon the world. And above all we would make people\nunderstand that the purpose of marriage is not that they should\nduplicate, but that they should surpass, themselves. Perhaps we would\nread to them from _Zarathustra_, with fitting ceremonies and\nsolemnities: \u201cThou art young, and wishest for child and marriage. But I\nask thee, art thou a man who dareth to wish for a child? Art thou the\nvictorious one, the self-subduer, the commander of thy senses, the\nmaster of thy virtues?--or in thy wish doth there speak the animal, or\nnecessity? Or solitude? Or discord with thyself? I would that thy\nvictory and freedom were longing for a child. Thou shalt build living\nmonuments unto thy victory and thy liberation. Thou shalt build beyond\nthyself. But first thou must build thyself square in body and soul. Thou\nshalt not only propagate thyself, but propagate thyself upward!\nMarriage: thus I call the will of two to create that one which is more\nthan they who created it. I call marriage reverence unto each other as\nunto those who will such a will.\u201d[250]\n\nIn a word, eugenic marriage; and after eugenic marriage, rigorous\neducation. But interest in education will become powerful only when\nbelief in a God and his care have been abandoned, just as medicine began\nto flourish only when the belief in miraculous cures had lapsed. When\nmen begin at last to _believe_ in education, they will endure much\nrather than have their sons miss going to a good and hard school at the\nproper time. What is it that one learns in a hard school? To obey and to\ncommand. For this is what distinguishes hard schooling, as good\nschooling, from every other schooling, namely that a good deal is\ndemanded, severely exacted; that excellence is required as if it were\nnormal; that praise is scanty, that leniency is non-existent; that blame\nis sharp, practical, and without reprieve, and has no regard to talent\nand antecedents. To prefer danger to comfort; not to weigh in a\ntradesman\u2019s balance what is permitted and what is forbidden; to be more\nhostile to pettiness, slyness, and parasitism than to wickedness;--we\nare in every need of a school where these things would be taught. Such a\nschool would allow its pupils to learn productively, by living and\ndoing; it would not subject them to the tyranny of books and the weight\nof the past; it would teach them less about the past and more about the\nfuture; it would teach them the future of humanity as depending on human\nwill, on _their_ will; it would prepare the way for and be a part of a\nvast enterprise in breeding and education.[251] But even such a school\nwould not provide all that is necessary in education. Not all should\nreceive the same training and the same care; select groups must be\nchosen, and special instruction lavished on them; the greatest success,\nhowever, will remain for the man who does not seek to educate either\neverybody or certain limited circles, but only one single individual.\nThe last century was superior to ours precisely because it possessed so\nmany individually educated men.\n\n\n10\n\n_On the Necessity of Exploitation_\n\nAnd next slavery.\n\nThis is one of those ugly words which are the _verba non grata_ of\nmodern discussion, because they jar us so ruthlessly out of the grooves\nof our thinking. Nevertheless it is clear to all but those to whom\nself-deception is the staff of life, that as the honest Greeks had it,\nsome are born to be slaves. Try to educate all men equally, and you\nbecome the laughing-stock of your own maturity. The masses seem to be\nworth notice in three aspects only: first as the copies of great men,\nprinted on bad paper from worn-out plates; next as a contrast to the\ngreat men; and lastly as their tools. Living consists in living at the\ncost of others: the man who has not grasped this fact has not taken the\nfirst step towards truth to himself. And to consider distress of all\nkinds as an objection, as something which must be done away with, is the\ngreatest nonsense on earth; almost as mad as the will to abolish bad\nweather, out of pity to the poor, so to speak. The masses must be used,\nwhether that means or does not mean that they must suffer;--it requires\ngreat strength to live and forget how far life and injustice are one.\nWhat is the suffering of whole peoples compared to the creative agonies\nof great individuals?[252]\n\nThere are many who threw away everything they were worth when they threw\naway their slavery. In all respects slaves live more securely and more\nhappily than modern laborers; the laborer chooses his harder lot to\nsatisfy the vanity of telling himself that he is not a slave. These men\nare dangerous; not because they are strong, but because they are sick;\nit is the sick who are the greatest danger to the healthy; it is the\nweak ones, they who mouth so much about their sickness, who vomit bile\nand call it newspaper,--it is they who instil the most dangerous venom\nand scepticism into our trust in life, in man, and in ourselves; it is\nthey who most undermine the life beneath our feet. It is for such as\nthese that Christianity may serve a good purpose (so serving our purpose\ntoo). Those qualities which are within the grasp only of the strongest\nand most terrible natures, and which make their existence\npossible--leisure, adventure, disbelief, and even dissipation--would\nnecessarily ruin mediocre natures--and does do so when they possess\nthem. In the case of the latter, industry, regularity, moderation, and\nstrong \u201cconviction\u201d are in their proper place--in short, all \u201cgregarious\nvirtues\u201d; under their influence these mediocre men become perfect. We\ngood Europeans, then, though atheists and immoralists, will take care to\nsupport the religions and the morality which are associated with the\ngregarious instinct; for by means of them an order of men is, so to\nspeak, prepared, which must at some time or other fall into our hands,\nwhich must actually crave for our hands.[253]\n\nSlavery, let us understand it well, is the necessary price of culture;\nthe free work, or art, of some involves the compulsory labor of others.\nAs in the organism so in society: the higher function is possible only\nthrough the subjection of the lower functions. A high civilization is a\npyramid; it can stand only on a broad base, its first prerequisite is a\nstrongly and soundly consolidated mediocrity. In order that there may be\na broad, deep, and fruitful soil for the development of art, the\nenormous majority must, in the service of a minority, be slavishly\nsubjected. At their cost, through the surplus of their labor, that\nprivileged class is to be relieved from the struggle for existence, in\norder to create and to satisfy a new world of want. The misery of the\ntoilers must still increase in order to make the production of a world\nof art possible to a small number of Olympian men.[254]\n\n\n11\n\n_Aristocracy_\n\nThe greatest folly of the strong is to let the weak make them ashamed to\nexploit, to let the weak suggest to them, \u201cIt is a shame to be\nhappy--there is too much misery!\u201d Let us therefore reaffirm the right of\nthe happy to existence, the right of bells with a full tone over bells\nthat are cracked and discordant. Not that exploitation as such is\ndesirable; it is good only where it supports and develops an aristocracy\nof higher men who are themselves developing still higher men. This\nphilosophy aims not at an individualistic morality but at a new order of\nrank. In this age of universal suffrage, in this age in which everybody\nis allowed to sit in judgment upon everything and everybody, one feels\ncompelled to re\u00ebstablish the order of rank. The higher men must be\nprotected from contamination and suffocation by the lower. The richest\nand most complex forms perish so easily! Only the lowest succeed in\nmaintaining their apparent imperishableness.[255]\n\nThe first question as to the order of rank: how far is a man disposed to\nbe solitary or gregarious? If he is disposed to be gregarious, his value\nconsists in those qualities which secure the survival of his tribe or\ntype; if he is disposed to be solitary, his qualities are those which\ndistinguish him from others; hence the important consequence: the\nsolitary type should not be valued from the standpoint of the gregarious\ntype, or _vice versa_. Viewed from above, both types are necessary; and\nso is their antagonism. Degeneration lies in the approximation of the\nqualities of the herd to those of the solitary creature, and _vice\nversa_; in short, in their beginning to resemble each other. Hence the\ndifference in their virtues, their rights and their obligations; in the\nlight of this difference one comes to abhor the vulgarity of Stuart Mill\nwhen he says, \u201cWhat is right for one man is right for another.\u201d It is\nnot; what is right for the herd is precisely what is wrong for their\nleaders; and what is right for the leaders is wrong for the herd. The\nleaders use, the herd is used; the virtues of either lie in the\nefficiency here of leadership, there of service. Slave-morality is one\nthing, and master-morality another.[256]\n\nAnd leadership of course requires an aristocracy. Let us repeat it:\ndemocracy has always been the death-agony of the power of organization\nand direction; these require great aristocratic families, with long\ntraditions of administration and leadership; old ancestral lines that\nguarantee for many generations the duration of the necessary will and\nthe necessary instincts. Not only aristocracy, then, but caste; for if a\nman have plebeian ancestors, his soul will be a plebeian soul;\neducation, discipline, culture will be wasted on him, merely enabling\nhim to become a great liar. Therefore intermarriage, even social\nintercourse of leaders with herd, is to be avoided with all precaution\nand intolerance; too much intercourse with barbarians ruined the Romans,\nand will ruin any noble race.[257]\n\nIn what direction may one turn with any hope of finding even the\naspiration for such an aristocracy? Only there where a _noble_ attitude\nof mind prevails, an attitude of mind which believes in slavery and in\nmanifold orders of rank, as the prerequisites of any higher degree of\nculture. Men with this attitude of mind will insistently call for, and\nwill at last produce, philosophical men of power, artist-tyrants,--a\nhigher kind of men which, thanks to their preponderance of will,\nknowledge, riches, and influence, will avail themselves of democratic\nEurope as the most suitable and subtle instrument for taking the fate of\nEurope into their hands, and working as artists upon man himself. The\nfundamental belief of these great desirers will be that society must not\nbe allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as the foundation and\nscaffolding by means of which a select class of beings may be able to\nelevate themselves to their highest duties, and in general to a higher\nexistence: like those sun-climbing plants in Java which encircle an oak\nso long and so often with their arms that at last, high above it, but\nsupported by it, they can unfold their tops in the open light, and\nexhibit their happiness.[258]\n\n\n12\n\n_Signs of Ascent_\n\nAre we moving toward such a consummation? Can we detect about us any\nsigns of this ascending movement of life? Not signs of \u201cprogress\u201d; that\nis another narcotic, like Christianity,--good for slaves, but to be\navoided by those who rule. Man as a species is not progressing; the\ngeneral level of the species is not raised. But humanity as mass\nsacrificed to the prosperity of the one stronger type of Man,--that\n_would be_ a progress.[259]\n\nProgress of this kind, to some degree, there has always been. The ruling\nclass in Greece, as seen in Homer and even in Thucydides (though with\nSocrates degeneration begins), is an example of this kind of progress or\nattainment. Imagine this culture, which has its poet in Sophocles, its\nstatesman in Pericles, its physician in Hippocrates, its natural\nphilosopher in Democritus; here is a yea-saying, a gratitude, to life in\nall its manifestations; here life is understood, and covered with art\nthat it may be borne; here men are frivolous so that they may forget for\na moment the arduousness and perilousness of their task; they are\nsuperficial, but from profundity; they exalt philosophers who preach\nmoderation, because they themselves are so immoderate, so instinctive,\nso hilariously wild; they are great, they are elevated above any ruling\nclass before or after them because here the morals of the governing\ncaste have grown up among the governing caste, and not among the\nherd.[260]\n\nWe catch some of the glory of these Greeks in the men of the\nRenaissance: men perfect in their immorality, terrible in their demands;\nwe should not dare to stand amid the conditions which produced these\nmen and which these men produced; we should not even dare to imagine\nourselves in those conditions: our nerves would not endure that\nreality,--not to speak of our muscles. One man of their type,\ncontinuator and development of their type, brother (as Taine most\nrightly says) of Dante and Michelangelo,--one such man we have known\nwith less of the protection of distance; and he was too hard to bear.\nThat _Ens Realissimum_, synthesis of monster and superman, surnamed\nNapoleon! The first man, and the man of greatest initiative and\ndeveloped views, of modern times; a man of tolerance, not out of\nweakness, but out of strength, able to risk the full enjoyment of\nnaturalness and be strong enough for this freedom. In such a man we see\nsomething in the nature of \u201cdisinterestedness\u201d in his work on his\nmarble, whatever be the number of men that are sacrificed in the\nprocess. Men were glad to serve him; as most normal men are glad to\nserve the great man; the crowd was tired of \u201cequal rights,\u201d tired of\nbeing masterless; it longed to worship genius again. What was the excuse\nfor that terrible farce, the French Revolution? It made men ready for\nNapoleon.[261]\n\nWhen shall we produce another superman? Let us go back to our question:\nCan we detect about us any signs of strength?\n\nYes. We are learning to get along without God. We are recovering from\nthe noble sentiments of Rousseau. We are giving the body its due;\nphysiology is overcoming theology. We are less hungry for lies,--we are\nfacing squarely some of the ugliness of life,--prostitution, for\nexample. We speak less of \u201cduty\u201d and \u201cprinciples\u201d; we are not so\nenamored of bourgeois conventions. We are less ashamed of our instincts;\nwe no longer believe in a right which proceeds from a power that is\nunable to uphold it. There is an advance towards \u201cnaturalness\u201d: in all\npolitical questions, even in the relations between parties, even in\nmerchants\u2019, workmen\u2019s circles only questions of power come into play;\nwhat one can do is the first question, what one ought to do is a\nsecondary consideration. There is a certain degree of liberal-mindedness\nregarding morality; where this is most distinctly wanting we regard its\nabsence as a sign of a morbid condition (Carlyle, Ibsen, Schopenhauer);\nif there is anything which can reconcile us to our age it is precisely\nthe amount of immorality which it allows itself without falling in its\nown estimation.[262]\n\nModern science, despite its narrowing specialization, is a sign of\nascent. Here is strictness in service, inexorability in small matters as\nwell as great, rapidity in weighing, judging, and condemning; the\nhardest is demanded here, the best is done without reward of praise or\ndistinction; it is rather as among soldiers,--almost nothing but blame\nand sharp reprimand is _heard_; for doing well prevails here as the\nrule, and the rule has, as everywhere, a silent tongue. It is the same\nwith this \u201cseverity of science\u201d as with the manners and politeness of\nthe best society: it frightens the uninitiated. He, however, who is\naccustomed to it, does not like to live anywhere but in this clear,\ntransparent, powerful, and highly electrified atmosphere, this _manly_\natmosphere.[263]\n\nIn this achievement of science lies such an opportunity as philosophy\nhas never had before. Science traces the course of things but points to\nno goal: what it does give consists of the fundamental facts upon which\nthe new goal must be based. All the sciences have now to pave the way\nfor the future task of the philosopher; this task being understood to\nmean that he must solve the problem of _value_, that he has to fix the\nhierarchy of values. He must become lawgiver, commander; he must\ndetermine the \u201cwhither\u201d and \u201cwhy\u201d for mankind. All knowledge must be at\nhis disposal, and must serve him as a tool for creation.[264]\n\nMost certain of the signs of a reascending movement of life is the\ndevelopment of militarism. The military development of Europe is a\ndelightful surprise. This fine discipline is teaching us to do our duty\nwithout expecting praise. Universal military service is the curious\nantidote which we possess for the effeminacy of democratic ideas. Men\nare learning again the joy of living in danger. Some of them are even\nlearning the old truth that war is good in itself, aside from any gain\nin land or other wealth; instead of saying \u201cA good cause will hallow\nevery war,\u201d they learn to say \u201cA good war hallows every cause.\u201d When the\ninstincts of a society ultimately make it give up war and conquest, it\nis decadent: it is ripe for democracy and the rule of shopkeepers. A\nstate which should prevent war would not only be committing suicide (for\nwar is just as necessary to the state as the slave is to society); it\nwould be hostile to life, it would be an outrage on the future of man.\nThe maintenance of the military state is the last means of adhering to\nthe great traditions of the past; or where it has been lost, of reviving\nit. Only in this can the superior or strong type of man be\npreserved.[265]\n\nA nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great men, and\nthen to get around them. The state is the organization of immorality for\nthe attainment of this purpose. But as existing to-day the state is a\nvery imperfect instrument, subject at any moment to democratic\nfoundering. What concerns the thinker here is the slow and hesitant\nformation of a united Europe. This was the thought, and the sole real\nwork and impulse, of the only broad-minded and deep-thinking men of this\ncentury,--the tentative effort to anticipate the future of \u201cthe\nEuropean.\u201d Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew old, did they\nfall back again into the national narrowness of the \u201cFatherlanders\u201d--then\nthey were once more \u201cpatriots.\u201d One thinks here of men like Napoleon,\nHeine, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Schopenhauer. And after all, is\nthere a single idea behind this bovine nationalism? What possible value\ncan there be in encouraging this arrogant self-conceit when everything\nto-day points to greater and more common interests?--at a moment when\nthe spiritual dependence and denationalization which are obvious to all\nare paving the way for the _rapprochements_ and fertilizations which\nmake up the real value and sense of present-day culture?[266]\n\nWhat an instrument such a united Europe would be for the development and\nprotection and expression of superior individuals! What a buoyant ascent\nof life after this long descent into democracy! See now, in review, the\ntwo movements which we have studied and on which we have strung our\nphilosophy: on the one hand Christian mythology and morality, the cult\nof weakness, the fear of life, the deterioration of the species, ever\nincreasing suppression of the privileged and the strong, the lapse into\ndemocracy, feminism, socialism, and at last into anarchy,--all\nterminating in pessimism, despair, total loss of the love of life; on\nthe other hand the reaffirmation of the worth of life, the resolute\ndistinction between slave-morality and master-morality, the recognition\nof the aristocratic valuation of health, vigor, energy, as moral in all\ntheir forms, and of the will to power as the source and significance of\nall action and all living; the conception of the higher man, of the\nexceptional individual, as the goal of human endeavor; the redirection\nof marriage, of education, of social structure, to the fostering and\ncherishing of these higher types;--culminating in the supernational\norganization of Europe as the instrumentality and artistic expression of\nthe superior man.[267]\n\nIs this philosophy too hard to bear? Very well. But those races that\ncannot bear it are doomed; and those which regard it as the greatest\nblessing are destined to be masters of the world.[268]\n\n\nIV\n\nCriticism\n\nWhat shall one say to this? What would a democrat say,--such a democrat\nas would be a friend to socialism and feminism, and even to\nanarchism,--and a lover of Jesus? One pictures such a man listening with\nirritated patience to the foregoing, and responding very readily to an\ninvitation to take the floor.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere are lessons here, he begins, as if brushing away an initial\nencumbrance. There is something of Nietzsche in all of us, just as there\nis something of Jesus (almost as there is something of man and of woman\nin all of us, as Weininger argued); and part of that crowd called\n_myself_ is flattered by this doctrine of ruthless power. Nietzsche\nstood outside our social and moral structure, he was a sort of hermit in\nthe world of thought; and so he could see things in that structure which\nare too near to our noses for easy vision. And as you listen to him you\nsee history anew as a long succession of masterings and enslavings and\ndeceivings, and you become almost reconciled to the future being nothing\nbut a further succession of the same. And then you begin to see that if\nthe future is to be different, one of the things we must do is to pinch\nourselves out of this Nietzschean dream.\n\nAnd a good way to begin is with Nietzsche\u2019s own principle, that every\nphilosophy is a physiology.[269] He asks us to believe that there is no\nsuch thing as a morbid trait in him,[270] but we must not take him at\nhis word. The most important point about this philosophy is that it was\nwritten by a sick man, a man sick to the very roots--if you will let me\nsay it, abnormal in sexual constitution; a man not sufficiently\nattracted to the other sex, because he has so much of the other sex in\nhim. \u201cShe is a woman,\u201d he writes in _Zarathustra_, \u201cand never loves\nanyone but a warrior\u201d; that is, if Nietzsche but knew it, the diagnosis\nof his own disease. This hatred of women, this longing for power, this\nadmiration for strength, for successful lying,[271] this inability to\nsee a _tertium quid_ between tyranny and slavery,[272]--all these are\nfeminine traits. A stronger man would not have been so shrewishly shrill\nabout woman and Christianity; a stronger man would have needed less\nrepetition, less emphasis and underlining, less of italics and\nexclamation points; a stronger man would have been more gentle, and\nwould have smiled where Nietzsche scolds. It is the philosophy, you see,\nof a man abnormally weak in the social instincts, and at the same time\nlacking in proper outlet for such social instincts as nature has left\nhim.\n\nConsequently, he never gets beyond the individual. He thinks society is\nmade up of individuals, when it is really made up of groups. He supposes\nthat the only virtues a man can have are those which help him as an\nisolated unit; the idea that a man may find self-expression in social\nexpression, in co\u00f6peration, that there are virtues which are virtues\nbecause they enable one to work with others against a common evil,--this\nnotion never occurs to him. He does not see that sympathy and mutual\naid, for example, though they preserve some inferior individuals, yet\nsecure that group-solidarity, and therefore group-survival, without\nwhich even the strong ones would perish.[273] He does not imagine that\nperhaps the barbarians who invaded Rome needed the gospel of a \u201cgentle\nJesus meek and mild\u201d if anything at all was to remain of that same\nclassical culture which he paints so lovingly.[274] He laughs at\nself-denial; and then invites you to devote yourself forever to some\nself-elected superman.\n\nThis philosophy of aristocracy, of the necessity of slavery, of the\nabsurdity of democracy,--of course it is exciting to all weak people who\nwould like to have power,--and who have not read it all before in Plato.\nIn this particular case the humor of the situation lies in the very\npowerful attack which Nietzsche makes on the irreligious religious\nhumbug which has proved one of the chief instruments of mastery in the\nhands of the class whose power he is trying to strengthen. \u201cI hope to be\nforgiven,\u201d says Nietzsche, \u201cfor discovering that all moral philosophy\nhitherto has belonged to the soporific appliances.\u201d[275]\n\u201cDiscovering\u201d--as if the aristocracy had not known that all along!\n\u201cHere is a na\u00efve bookworm,\u201d these \u201cstrong men\u201d will say among\nthemselves, \u201cwho has discovered what every one of us knows. He presumes\nto tell us how to increase our power, and he can find no better way of\nhelping us than to expose in print the best secrets of our trade.\u201d\n\nJust in this lies the value of Nietzsche, as Rousseau said of\nMachiavelli: he lets us in behind the scenes of the drama of\nexploitation. We know better now the men with whom democracy must deal.\nWe see the greed for power that hides behind the contention that culture\ncannot exist without slavery. Grant that contention: so much the worse\nfor culture! If culture means the increasing concentration of the\nsatisfactions of life in the hands of a few \u201csuperior\u201d pigs, their\nculture may be dispensed with; if it is to stay, it will have to mean\nthe direction of knowledge and ability to the spread of the\nsatisfactions of life. Which is finer,--the relationship of master and\nslave, or that of friend and friend? Surely a world of people liking and\nhelping one another is a finer world to live in than one in which the\ninstincts of aggression are supreme. And such a co\u00f6perative civilization\nneed not fear the tests of survival; selection puts an ever higher\npremium on solidarity, an ever lower value on pugnacity. Intelligence,\nnot ready anger, will win the great contests of the future. Friendship\nwill pay.\n\nThe history of the world is a record of the patient and planful attempt\nto replace hatred by understanding, narrowness by large vision,\nopposition by co\u00f6peration, slavery by friendship. Friendship: a word to\nbe avoided by those who would appear _blas\u00e9_. But let us repeat it;\nwords have been known to nourish deeds which without them might never\nhave grown into reality. Some find heaven in making as many men as\npossible their slaves; others find heaven in making as many men as\npossible their friends. Which type of man will we have? Which type of\nman, if abundant, would make this world a splendor and a delight?\n\nThe hope for which Jesus lived was that _man_ might some day come to\nmean _friend_. It is the only hope worth living for.\n\n\nV\n\nNietzsche Replies\n\n\u201cIt is certainly not the least charm of a theory,\u201d says Nietzsche, \u201cthat\nit is refutable.\u201d[276] But \u201cwhat have I to do with mere\nrefutations?\u201d[277] \u201cA prelude I am of better players.\u201d[278] \u201cVerily, I\ncounsel you,\u201d said Zarathustra, \u201cdepart from me and defend yourselves\nagainst Zarathustra! And better still, be ashamed of him. Perhaps he\nhath deceived you. The man of perception must not only be able to love\nhis enemies, but also to hate his friends. One ill requiteth one\u2019s\nteacher by always remaining only his scholar. Why will ye not pluck at\nmy wreath? Ye revere me; but how if your reverence one day falleth down?\nBeware of being crushed to death with a statue! Ye say ye believe in\nZarathustra? But what is Zarathustra worth? Ye are my faithful ones; but\nwhat are all faithful ones worth? When ye had not yet sought yourselves\nye found me. Thus do all faithful ones; hence all belief is worth so\nlittle. Now I ask you to lose me and find yourselves; not until all of\nyou have disowned me shall I return unto you.\u201d[279]\n\n\nVI\n\nConclusion\n\n\u201cLook,\u201d says Rudin, in Turgenev\u2019s story, \u201cyou see that apple tree? It\nhas broken down with the weight and multitude of its own fruit. It is\nthe emblem of genius.\u201d \u201cTo perish beneath a load one can neither bear\nnor throw off,\u201d wrote Nietzsche,--\u201cthat is a philosopher.\u201d[280] I shall\nannounce the song of the lightning, said Zarathustra, and perish in the\nannouncing.[281]\n\nInsanity with such a man is but a matter of time; he feels it coming\nupon him; he values his hours like a man condemned to execution. In\ntwenty days he writes the _Genealogy of Morals_; in one year (1888) he\nproduces _The Twilight of the Idols_, _Antichrist_, _The Case of\nWagner_, _Ecce Homo_, and his longest and greatest book, _The Will to\nPower_. He not only writes these books; he reads the proof-sheets,\nstraining his eyes beyond repair. He is almost blind now; he is\ndeceived, taken advantage of, because he can hardly see farther than his\ntouch. \u201cIf I were blind,\u201d he writes pitifully, \u201cI should be\nhealthy.\u201d[282] Yet his body is racked with pain: \u201con 118 days this year\nI have had severe attacks.\u201d[283] \u201cI have given a name to my pain, and\ncall it \u2018a dog\u2019--it is just as pitiful, just as importunate and\nshameless; and I can domineer over it, vent my bad humor on it, as\nothers do with their dogs, servants, and wives.\u201d[284]\n\nMeanwhile the world lives on unnoticing, or noticing only to\nmisunderstand. \u201cMy foes have become mighty, and have so distorted my\nteaching, that my best beloved must be ashamed of the gifts that I gave\nthem.\u201d[285] He learns that the libertines of Europe are using his\nphilosophy as a cloak for their sins: \u201cI can read in their faces that\nthey totally misunderstand me, and that it is only the animal in them\nwhich rejoices at being able to cast off its fetters.\u201d[286] He finds one\nwhom he thinks to make his disciple; he is buoyed up for a few days by\nthe hope; the hope is shattered, and loneliness closes in once more upon\nhim. \u201cA kingdom for a kind word!\u201d he cries out in the depth of his\nlonging; and again he writes, \u201cFor years no milk of human kindness, no\nbreath of love.\u201d[287]\n\nIn December, 1888, one whom he has thought friendly writes that his\nbrother-in-law is sending to a magazine an attack on him. It is the last\nblow; it means that his sister has joined the others in deserting him.\n\u201cI take one sleeping-draught after another to deaden the pain, but for\nall that I cannot sleep. To-day I will take such a dose that I will lose\nmy wits.\u201d[288] He has been taking chloral, and worse drugs, to pay for\nthe boon of sleep; the poison tips the scale already made heavy by his\nblindness and eye-strain, by his loneliness, by the treachery of his\nfriends, by his general bodily ailments; he wakes up from this final\ndraught in a stupor from which he never recovers; he writes to Brandes\nand signs himself \u201cThe Crucified\u201d; he wanders into the street, is\ntormented by children, falls in a fit; his good landlord helps him back\nto his room, sends for the simple, ignorant doctor of the neighborhood;\nbut it is too late; the man is insane. Age, forty-four; another--the\nonly name greater than his among modern philosophers--had died at that\npitifully early age.\n\nThe body lingered eleven years behind the mind. Death came in 1900. He\nwas buried as he had wished: \u201cPromise me,\u201d he had asked his sister, many\nyears before, \u201cthat when I die only my friends shall stand about my\ncoffin, and no inquisitive crowd. See that no priest or anyone else\nutters falsehoods at my graveside, when I can no longer defend myself;\nand let me descend into my tomb as an honest pagan.\u201d[289]\n\nAfter his death the world began to read him. As in so many cases the\nlife had to be given that the doctrine might be heard. \u201cOnly where there\nare graves,\u201d he had written in _Zarathustra_, \u201care there\nresurrections.\u201d[290]\n\n\n\n\nPART II\n\nSUGGESTIONS\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nSOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS\n\n\nI\n\nThe Problem\n\nAnd so we come through our five episodes in the history of the\nreconstructive mind, and find ourselves in the bewildering present,\ncomfortably seated, let us say, in the great reading room of our\nColumbia Library. An attendant liberates us from the maze of\n\u201cNietzsche\u2019s Works\u201d lying about us, and returns presently with a stack\nof thirty books purporting to give the latest developments in the field\nof social study and research. We are soon lost in their graphs and\nstatistics, their records and results; gradually we come to feel beneath\nthese dead facts the lives they would reveal; and as we read we see a\npicture.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is the picture of one life. We see it beginning helplessly in the\narms of the factory physician; it is only after some violence that it\nconsents to breathe,--as if it hesitates to enter upon its adventure. It\nhas a touch of consumption but is otherwise a fair enough baby, says the\nfactory physician. It will do,--not saying for what or whom. Luckily,\nit is a boy, and will be able to work soon. He does; at the age of nine\nhe becomes a newsboy; he is up at five in the morning and peddles news\ntill eight; at nine he gets to school, fagged out but restless; he gives\ntrouble; cannot memorize quickly enough, nor sit still long enough;\nplays truant, loving the hard lessons of the street; school over, he has\na half-hour of play, but must then travel his news route till six; after\nsupper he has no taste for study; if he cannot go down into the street,\nhe will go to bed. At fourteen, hating the school where he is beaten or\nscolded daily, he connives with his parents at certain falsehoods which\nsecure his premature entrance into the factory. He works hard, and for a\ntime happily enough; there is more freedom here than in the school. He\ndiscovers sex, passes through the usual chapter of accidents, and\nfinally achieves manhood in the form of a sexual disease. He falls in\nlove several times, and out as many times but one; he marries, shares\nhis disease with his wife, and begets ten children,--nearly all of them\nfeeble, and two of them blind; he does not want so many children, but\nthe priest has told him that religion commands it. He works harder to\nsupport them, but his health is giving way, and life becomes a heavy\nburden to him. The factory installs scientific management, and he finds\nhimself performing the same operation every ten seconds from seven to\ntwelve and from one to six;--some three thousand times a day; he\nprotests, but is told that science commands it. He joins a union, and\ngoes out on strike; his family suffer severely, one of the children\ndying of malnutrition; he wins a wage-increase of five per cent; his\nlandlord raises his rent, and a month later his wife informs him that\nthe prices of food and clothing have gone up six per cent. His country\ngoes to war about a piece of territory he has never heard of; his one\nfairly strong boy rushes off to the defence of the colors, returns (age\ntwenty) with one leg and almost an arm, and sits in the house smoking,\ndrinking, and dribbling in repetitious semi-torpor his memories of\nbattle. Then comes street-corner talk of socialism, capitalism, and\nother things new and therefore hard to understand; a glimmer of hope, a\ncloud of doubt, then resignation. Four of the children die before they\nare twenty; two others become consumptive weaklings. The father is sent\naway from the factory because he is too old and feeble; he finds work in\na saloon; drink helps him to slip down; he steals a bracelet from the\nfactory-owner\u2019s kept woman, is arrested, tries to hang himself, but is\ndiscovered when half dead, and is restored to life against his will. He\nserves his sentence, returns to his family, and becomes a beggar. He\ndies of exposure and disease, and his widow is supported by two of his\ndaughters, who have become successful prostitutes.\n\nIt is the picture of one life. And as you look at it you see beyond it\nthe hundred thousand lives of which it is one; you see this suffering\nand meaninglessness as but one hundredth part of a thousandth part of\nthe meaningless suffering of men; you hear the angry cries of the\nrebellious young, the drunken laughter of the older ones who have no\nmore rebellion in them, the quiet weeping of the mothers of many\nchildren. Around you here you see the happy faces of young students,\neloquent of comfortable homes; at your elbow a gentleman of family is\nwriting a book on the optimism of Robert Browning. And then suddenly,\nbeneath this world of leisure and learning, you feel the supporting\nbrawn of the wearied workers; you vision the very pillars of this vast\nedifice held up painfully, hour after hour, on the backs of a million\nsweating men; your leisure is their labor, your learning is paid for by\ntheir ignorance, your luxury is their toil.\n\nFor a moment the great building seems to tremble, as if rebellion\nstirred beneath and upheaval was upon the world. Then it is still once\nmore, and you and I are here with our thirty books.\n\nOne feels guilty of sentiment here (after reading Nietzsche!), and\nhurries back to the sober features of those crowded volumes. Here, in\ncold scientific statement, is our social problem: here are volumes\nbiological on heredity, eugenics, dietetics, and disease; volumes\nsociological on marriage, prostitution, the family, the position of\nwoman, contraception and the control of population; volumes\npsychological on education, criminology, and the replacement of\nsupernatural by social religion; volumes economic on private property,\npoverty, child labor, industrial methods, arbitration, minimum wage,\ntrusts, free trade, immigration, prohibition, war; volumes political on\nindividualism and communism, anarchism and socialism, single tax,\nDarwinism and politics, democracy and aristocracy, patriotism,\nimperialism, electoral and administrative methods; methodological\nvolumes on trade-unions and craft-unions, \u201cdirect action\u201d and \u201cpolitical\naction,\u201d violence and non-resistance, revolution and reform. It is a\ndiscouraging maze; we plunge into it almost hopelessly. Several of these\nauthors have schemes for taking the social machine apart, and a few even\nhave schemes for putting it together again; hardly one of them remembers\nthe old warning that this machine must be kept going while it is being\nrepaired. And each of these solutions, as its author never suspects, is\nbut an added problem.\n\nLet us listen to these men for a while, let us follow them for a space,\nand see where they bring us out. They may not bring us out at all; but\nperhaps that is just what we need to see.\n\n\nII\n\n\u201cSolutions\u201d\n\n\n1\n\n_Feminism_\n\nAnd first, with due propriety, let us listen to the case of woman _vs._\nthe _status quo_. We imagine the argument as put by a studious and\napparently harmless young lady. She begins gently and proceeds\n_crescendo_.\n\n\u201cThe case for woman is quite simple; as simple as the case for\ndemocracy. We are human beings, we are governed, we are taxed; and we\nbelieve that just government implies the consent of the governed.\n\n\u201cWe might have been content with the old life, had you masters of the\nworld been content to leave us the old life. But you would not. Your\nsystem of industry has made the position of most young men so hopeless\nand insecure that they are year by year putting back the age of\nmarriage. You have forced us out of our homes into your factories; and\nyou have used us as a means of making still harder the competition for\nemployment among the men. Your advocates speak of the sacredness of the\nhome; and meanwhile you have dragged 5,000,000 English women out of\ntheir homes to be the slaves of your deadening machines.[291] You exalt\nmarriage; and in this country one woman out of every ten is unmarried,\nand one out of every twenty married women works in your unclean shops.\nThe vile cities born of your factory-system have made life so hard for\nus, temptations so frequent, vice so attractive and convenient, that we\ncannot grow up among you without suffering some indelible taint.\n\n\u201cSome of us go into your factories because we dread marriage, and some\nof us marry because we dread your factories. But there is not much to\nchoose between them. If we marry we become machines for supplying\nanother generation of workers and soldiers; and if we talk of\nbirth-control you arrest us. As if we had no right to all that science\nhas discovered! And the horror of it is that while you forbid us to\nlearn how to protect ourselves and our children from the evils of large\nfamilies, you yourselves buy this knowledge from your physicians and use\nit; and one of your societies for the prevention of birth-control has\nbeen shown to consist of members with an average of 1.5 children per\nfamily.[292] Your physicians meet in learned assemblies and vote in\nfavor of maintaining the law which forbids the spread of this\ninformation; and then we find that physicians have the smallest average\nfamily in the community.[293] One must be a liar and a thief to fit\ncomfortably into this civilization which you ask us to defend.\n\n\u201cBut we are resolved to get this information; and all your laws to\nprevent us will only lessen our respect for law. We will not any longer\nbring children into the world unless we have some reasonable hope of\ngiving them a decent life. And not only that. We shall end, too, the\nhypocrisies of marriage. If you will have monogamy you may have it; but\nif you continue merely to pretend monogamy we shall find a way of\nregaining our independence. We shall not rest until we have freed\nourselves from the sting of your generosity; until our bread comes not\nfrom your hand in kindness but from the state or our employers in\nrecognition of our work. Then we shall be free to leave you, and you\nfree to leave us, as we were free to take one another at the\nbeginning,--so far, alas! as the categorical imperative of love left us\nfree. And our children will not suffer; better for them that they see us\npart than that they live with us in the midst of hypocrisy and secret\nwar.\n\n\u201cBecause we want this freedom--to stay or to go--this freedom to know\nand control the vital factors of our lives, therefore we demand equal\nsuffrage. It is but a little thing, a mere beginning; and beware how you\nbetray your secrets in your efforts to bar us from this beginning. Are\nyou afraid to share with us the power of the ballot? Do you confess so\nopenly that you wish to command us without our consent, that you wish to\nuse us for your secret ends? You dare not fight fair and in the open? Is\nthe ballot a weapon which you use on us and will not let us use on you?\nIt is so you conceive citizenship! Or will you ask us to believe that\nyou are thinking not of your own interests but of posterity?\n\n\u201cBut we shall get this from you, just as we get other things from\nyou,--by repetition. And then we shall go on to make the world more fit\nfor women to live in: we shall force open all the avenues of life that\nhave been closed to us before, making us narrow and petty and dull. We\nshall compel your universities to admit us to their classes; we shall\nenter your professions, we shall compete with you for office, we shall\nwin the experiences and dare the adventures which we need to make us\nyour rivals in literature and philosophy and art. You say we cannot be\nyour comrades, your friends; that we can be only tyrants or slaves; but\nwhat else can we be, with all the instructive wealth of life kept from\nus? You hide from us the great books that are being written to-day, and\nthen you are surprised at our gossip, our silly scandal-mongering, our\ninability to converse with you on business and politics, on science and\nreligion and philosophy; you will not let us grow, and then you complain\nbecause we are so small. But we want to grow now, we want to grow! We\ncannot longer be mothers only. The world does not need so many children;\nand even to bring up better children we must have a wider and healthier\nlife. We must have our intellects stimulated more and our feelings less.\nWe have burst the bonds of our old narrow world; we must explore\neverything now. It is too late to stop us; and if you try you will only\nmake life a mess of hatred and conflict for us both. And after all, do\nyou know why we want to grow? It is because we long for the day when we\nshall be no longer merely your mistresses, but also your friends.\u201d\n\n\n2\n\n_Socialism_\n\nAnother complainant: a young Socialist: such a man as works far into\nalmost every night in the dingy office of his party branch, and devotes\nhis Sundays to _Das Kapital_; bright-eyed, untouched by disillusionment;\nfired by the vision of a land of happy comrades.\n\n\u201cI agree with the young lady,\u201d he says; \u201cthe source of all our ills is\nthe capitalist system. It was born of steam-driven machinery and\nconceived in _laissez-faire_. It saw the light in Adam Smith\u2019s England,\nruined the health of the men of that country, and then came to America,\nwhere it grew fat on \u2018liberty\u2019 and \u2018the right to do as one pleases with\none\u2019s own.\u2019 It believed in competition--that is to say war--as its God,\nin whom all things lived and moved and sweated dividends; it made the\nacquisition of money, by no matter what means, the test of virtue and\nsuccess, so that honest men became ashamed of themselves if they did not\nfail; it made all life a matter of \u2018push\u2019 and \u2018pull,\u2019 like the two sides\nof a door in one of those business palaces which make its cities great\nmazes of brick and stone rising like new Babels in the face of heaven.\nIts motto was, Beware of small profits; its aim was the greatest\npossible happiness of the smallest possible number. Out of competition\nit begot the trust, the rebate, and the \u2018gentleman\u2019s agreement\u2019; out of\n\u2018freedom of contract\u2019 it begot wage-slavery; out of \u2018liberty, equality\nand fraternity\u2019 it begot an industrial feudalism worse than the old\nfeudalism, based on the inheritance not of land, but of the living\nbodies and souls of thousands of men, women and children. When it came\n(in 1770) the annual income of England was $600,000,000; in 1901 the\nannual income of England was $8,000,000,000; the system has made a\nthousand millionaires, but it has left the people starving as\nbefore.[294] It has increased wages, and has increased prices a trifle\nmore. It has improved the condition of the upper tenth of the workers,\nand has thrown the great remaining mass of the workers into a hell of\ntorpor and despair. It has crowned all by inventing the myopic science\nof scientific management, whereby men are made to work at such speed,\nand with such rigid uniformity, that the mind is crazed, and the body is\nworn out twenty years before its time. It has made the world reek with\npoverty, and ugliness, and meanness, and the vulgarity of conspicuous\nwealth. It has made life intolerable and disgraceful to all but sheep\nand pigs.\n\n\u201cThere is only one way of saving our civilization--such as there is of\nit--from wasting away through the parasitic degeneration of a few of its\nparts and the malnutrition of the rest; and that is by frankly\nabandoning this _laissez-faire_ madness, and changing the state into a\nmechanism for the management of the nation\u2019s business. We workers must\nget hold of the offices, and turn government into administration.\nWithout that our strikes and boycotts, our \u2018direct action\u2019 and economic\norganization, arrive at little result; every strike we \u2018win\u2019 means that\nprices will go up, and our time and energy--and dues--have gone to\nnothing but self-discipline in solidarity. We can control prices only by\ncontrolling monopolies; and we can control monopolies only by\ncontrolling government. That means politics, and it\u2019s a scheme that\nwon\u2019t work until the proletariat get brains enough to elect honest and\nsensible men to office; but if they haven\u2019t the brains to do that they\nwon\u2019t have the brains to do anything effective on the economic or any\nother field. We know how hard it is to get people to think; but we\nflatter ourselves that our propaganda is an educative force that grows\nstronger every year, and has already achieved such power as to decide\nthe most important election held in this country since the Civil War.\n\n\u201cAlready a large number of people have been educated--chiefly by our\npropaganda--to understand, for example, the economic greed that lies\nbehind all wars. They perceive that so long as capital finds its highest\nrate of profit in the home market, capitalists see to it that peace\nremains secure; but that when capital has expanded to the point at which\nthe rate of interest begins to fall, or when labor has ceased to be\ndocile, because it has ceased to be unorganized and uninformed,\ncapitalists then seek foreign markets and foreign investments, and soon\nrequire the help of war--that is, the lives of the workers at home--to\nhelp them enforce their terms on foreign governments and peoples. Only\nthe national ownership of capital can change that. We thought once that\nwe were too civilized ever to go to war again; we begin to see that our\nindustrial feudalism leads inevitably to war and armaments, and the\nintellectual stagnation that comes from a militaristic mode of national\nlife. We begin to see all history as a Dark Age (with fitful intervals\nof light),--a long series of wars in which men have killed and died for\ndelusions, fighting to protect the property of their exploiters. And it\nbecomes a little clearer to us than before that this awful succession of\nkillings and robberies is no civilization at all, and that we shall\nnever have a civilization worthy of the name until we transform our\nindustrial war into the co\u00f6perative commonwealth, and all \u2018foreigners\u2019\ninto friends.\u201d\n\n\n3\n\n_Eugenics_\n\n\u201cMy dear young man,\u201d says the Eugenist at this point, \u201cyou must study\nbiology. Your plan for the improvement of mankind is all shot through\nwith childish ignorance of nature\u2019s way of doing things. Come into my\nlaboratory for a few years; and you will learn how little you can do by\nmerely changing the environment. It\u2019s nature that counts, not nurture.\nImprovement depends on the elimination of the inferior, not on their\nreformation by Socialist leaflets or settlement work. What you have to\ndo is to find some substitute for that natural selection--the automatic\nand ruthless killing off of the unfit--which we are more and more\nfrustrating with our short-sighted charity. Humanitarianism must get\ninformed. Our squeamishness about interfering with the holy \u2018liberty of\nthe individual\u2019 will have to be moderated by some sense of the right of\nsociety to protect itself from interference by the individual. Here are\nthe feeble-minded, for example; they breed more rapidly than healthy\npeople do, and they almost always transmit their defect. If you don\u2019t\ninterfere with these people, if you don\u2019t teach them or force them to be\nchildless, you will have an increase in insanity along with the\ndevelopment of humanity. Think of making a woman suffer to deliver into\nthe world a cripple or an idiot. And further, consider that the lowest\neighth of the people produce one-half of the next generation. The better\npeople, the more vigorous and healthy people, are refusing to have\nchildren; every year the situation is becoming more critical. City-life\nand factory-life make things still worse; young men coming from the\ncountry plunge into the maelstrom of the city, then into its\nfemalestrom; they emerge with broken health, marry deformities dressed\nup in the latest fashion, and produce children inferior in vigor and\nability to themselves. Given a hundred years more of this, and western\nEurope and America will be in a condition to be overcome easily by the\nfertile and vigorous races of the East. That is what you have to think\nof. The problem is larger than that of making poor people less poor; it\nis the problem of preserving our civilization. Your socialism will help,\nbut it will be the merest beginning; it will be but an introduction to\nthe socialization of selection,--which is eugenics. We will prevent\nprocreation by people who have a transmissible defect or disease; we\nwill require certificates of health and clean ancestry before permitting\nmarriage; we will encourage the mating, with or without love, of men and\nwomen possessed of energy and good physique. We will teach people, in\nMr. Marett\u2019s phrase, to marry less with their eyes and more with their\nheads. It will take us a long while to put all this into effect; but we\nwill put it. Time is on our side; every year will make our case\nstronger. Within half a century the educated world will come and beg us\nto guide them in a eugenic revolution.\u201d\n\n\n4\n\n_Anarchism_\n\nA gentle anarchist:\n\n\u201cYou do well to talk of revolution; but you do wrong to forget the\nindividual in the race. Your eugenic revolution will not stop the\nexploitation of the workers by the manufacturers through the state. Give\nmen justice and they will soon be healthy; give them the decent life\nwhich is the only just reward for their work, and you will not need\neugenics. Instead of bothering about parasitic germs you should attend\nto parasitic exploiters; it is in this social parasitism that the real\ndanger of degeneration lies. Continued injustice of employers to\nemployees is splitting every western nation into factions; class-loyalty\nwill soon be stronger than loyalty to the community; and the time will\ncome when nations in which this civil war has not been superseded by\nvoluntary mutual aid will crumble into oblivion.\n\n\u201cAnd yet men are willing to be loyal to the community, if the community\nis organized to give them justice. If exploitation were to cease there\nwould be such bonds of brotherhood among men as would make the community\npractically everlasting. All you need do is to let men co\u00f6operate in\nfreedom. They long to co\u00f6perate; all evolution shows a growth in the\nability to co\u00f6operate; man surpassed the brute just because of this. Nor\nis law or state needed; coercive government is necessary only in\nsocieties founded on injustice. The state has always been an instrument\nof exploitation; and law is merely the organized violence of the ruling\nclass. It is a subtle scheme; it enables industrial lords to do without\nany pangs of conscience what but for their statute-books might give them\na qualm or two. Notice, for example, how perfectly Christian such\nslaughters as those in Colorado or Virginia can be made to appear--even\nto the slaughterers--by the delightful expedient of the statute-book.\nThey kill and call it law, so that they may sleep.\n\n\u201cAnd then we are told that one must never use violence in labor\ndisputes. But obviously it is precisely violence that is used against\nlabor, and against the free spirit. As a matter of history, rebels did\nnot begin to use violence on the authorities until the authorities had\nused violence on them. We feel ourselves quite justified in using any\nmeans of attack on a system so founded in coercion. The whole question\nwith us is one not of morals but of expediency. We have been moral a\nlittle too long.\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n_Individualism_\n\n\u201cPrecisely,\u201d says the Stirnerite anarchist; \u201cit is all a question of\nmight, not of right; and we exploited ones may be as right as rectitude\nand never get anywhere unless we can rhyme a little might to our right.\nEach of us has a right to do whatever he is strong enough to do. \u2018One\ngets farther with a handful of might than with a bagful of right.\u2019 He\nwho wants much, and knows how to get it, has in all times taken it, as\nNapoleon did the continent, and the French Algeria. Therefore the only\npoint is that the respectful \u2018lower classes\u2019 should at length learn to\ntake for themselves what they want.\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n_Individualism Again_\n\nAnd lastly, _Advocatus Diaboli_, Mr. Status Quo:\n\n\u201cI agree with you right heartily, Sir Stirnerite anarchist; it is time\nyou children came to understand that everything is a question of power.\nLet the fittest survive and let us all use whatever means we find\nexpedient. I am frank with you now; but you must not be surprised if\nto-morrow I write out a few checks for the salaries of the liars whom I\nhave in my employ. Why should we tell the truth and go under? Surely you\nwill understand that not all knowledge is good for all men. If it gives\nyou satisfaction, for example, to spread information about\nbirth-control, you will not feel hurt if it gives us satisfaction to\noppose you, for the sake of the future armies of unemployed without\nwhich our great scheme of industry would be seriously hampered.\n\n\u201cAnd I agree with your fellow-anarchist, that the state is often a\nnuisance. I can make use of a little government; but when the state\nbegins to tell me how to run my business then I feel as if your\ncriticism of the state is very just--and convenient. I am an\nindividualist,--a good old American individualist,--like Jefferson and\nEmerson. The state can\u2019t manage industry half as well as we can. You\nknow--as our Socialists do not--that government ownership is only\nownership by politicians, by Hinky-Dinks and Bath-house Johns; and I can\ntell you from intimate knowledge of these people that they will do\nanything for money except efficient administrative work.\n\n\u201cYour scheme of having the workers take over the industries is a good\nscheme--for the millennium. Where would you get men to direct you? They\ncome to us because we pay them well; if your syndicalist shops would pay\nthem as well as we do, they would be the beginning of a new aristocracy;\nif you think these clever men will work for \u2018honor\u2019 you are leaning on\nan airy dream. Destroy private property and you will have a nation of\nhoboes and Hindus.\n\n\u201cAs to exploitation, what would you have? We are strong, and you are\nweak; it is the law of nature that we should use you, just as it is the\nlaw of nature that one species should use the weaker species as its\nprey. The weaker will always suffer, with or without law. Even if all\nbellies are full, the majority will envy the intellectual power of their\nbetters, and will suffer just as keenly on the intellectual plane as\nthey do now on the physical. The alternative of the under-dog is to get\nintelligence and power, or \u2018stay put.\u2019\n\n\u201cMy advice, then, is to let things be. You can change the superficial\nconditions of the struggle for existence and for power, but the\nfundamental facts of it will remain. Monarchy, aristocracy,\ndemocracy,--it\u2019s all the same. The most powerful will rule, whether by\narmies or by newspapers; it makes no difference if God is on the side of\nthe biggest battalions, or the side of the biggest type. We bought the\nbattalions; we buy the type.\n\n\u201cCome, let us get back to our business.\u201d\n\n\nIII\n\nDissolutions\n\nHere is a _reductio ad absurdum_ of our social _\u2019isms_; and here is the\nhistory of many a social rebel. From dissatisfaction to socialism, from\nsocialism to anarchism, from anarchism to Stirnerism, from Stirnerism\nand the cult of the ego to Nietzsche and the right to exploit;--so has\nmany a man made the merry-go-round of thought and come back wearily at\nlast to the _terra firma_ of the thing that is. We sail into the sea of\nsocial controversy without chart or compass or rudder; and though we\nencounter much wind, we never make the port of our desire. We need maps,\nand instruments, and knowledge; we need to make inquiries, to face our\ndoubts, to define our purposes; we shall have to examine more ruthlessly\nour preconceptions and hidden premises, to force into the light the\nwishes that secretly father our illegitimate thoughts. We must ask\nourselves questions that will reach down to the tenderest roots of our\nphilosophies.\n\nYou are a feminist, let us say. Very well. Have you ever considered the\nsociological consequences of that very real disintegration of the \u201chome\u201d\nwhich an advancing feminism implies? Granted that this disintegration\nhas been begun by the industrial revolution. Do you want it to go on\nmore rapidly? Do you want women to become more like men? Do you think\nthat the \u201cnew woman\u201d will care to have children? It is surely better for\nthe present comfort of our society that there should be a considerable\nfall in the birth rate; but will that expose the people of Europe and\nAmerica to absorption by the races of the East? You argue that the case\nfor feminism is as simple as the case for democracy; but is the case for\ndemocracy simple? Is democracy competent? Is it bringing us where we\nwant to go? Or is it a sort of collective determination to drift with\nthe tide,--a sort of magnified _laissez-faire_? And as to \u201crights\u201d and\n\u201cjustice,\u201d how do you answer Nietzsche\u2019s contention that the more highly\norganized species, sex, or class, must by its very nature use, command,\nand exploit the less highly organized species, sex, or class?\n\nYou are a Socialist; and you yearn for a Utopia of friends and equals;\nbut will you, to make men equal, be compelled to chain the strength of\nthe strong with many laws and omnipresent force?--will you sacrifice the\nsuperiority of the chosen few to the mediocrity of the many? Will you,\nto control the exploiter, be obliged to control all men, even in\ndetail?--will your socialism really bring the slavery and servile state\nthat Spencer and Chesterton and Belloc fear? Is further centralization\nof government desirable? Have you considered sufficiently the old\ndifficulty about the stimulus to endeavor in a society that should\nrestrict private property to a minimum and prohibit inheritance? Have\nyou arranged to protect your co\u00f6perative commonwealth by limiting\nimmigration--from Europe and from heaven?[295] Are you not, in general,\nexaggerating the force of the aggregative as against the segregative\ntendencies in human nature? And do you think that a change of laws can\nmake the weak elude the exploiting arm of the strong? Will not the\nstrongest men always make whatever laws are made, and rule wherever men\nare ruled? Can any government stand that is not the expression of the\nstrongest forces in the community? And if the strongest force be\norganized labor, are you sure that organized labor will not exploit and\ntyrannize? Will the better organized and skilled workers be \u201cjust\u201d to\nthe unskilled and imperfectly organized workers? And what do you mean by\n\u201cjustice\u201d?\n\nAnd as to the eugenist, surely it is unnecessary to expose his\nunpreparedness to meet the questions which his programme raises.\nQuestions, for example, as to what \u201cunits\u201d of character to breed for, if\nthere are such \u201cunits\u201d; whether definite breeding for certain results\nwould forfeit adaptive plasticity; whether compulsory sterilization is\nwarranted by our knowledge of heredity; whether serious disease is not\noften associated with genius; whether the native mental endowments of\nrich and poor are appreciably different, and whether the \u201ccomparative\ninfertility of the upper classes\u201d is really making for the deterioration\nof the race; whether progress depends on racial changes so much as on\nchanges in social institutions and traditions. And so on.\n\nAnd the anarchist, whom one loves if only for the fervor of his hope and\nthe beauty of his dream,--the anarchist falters miserably in the face of\ninterrogation. If all laws were to be suspended to-morrow, all coercion\nof citizen by state, how long would it be before new laws would arise?\nWould the aforementioned strong cease to be strong and the weak cease to\nbe weak? Would people be willing to forego private property? Are not\nbelief and disbelief in private property determined less by logic and\n\u201cjustice\u201d than by one\u2019s own success or failure in the acquisition of\nprivate property? Do only the weak and uncontrolled advocate absolute\nlack of restraint? Do most men want liberty so much that they will\ntolerate chaos and a devil-take-the-hind-most individualism for the sake\nof it? Can it be, after all, that freedom is a negative thing,--that\nwhat men want is, for some, achievement, for others, peace,--and that\nfor these they will give even freedom? What if a great number of people\ndread liberty, and are not at all so sensitive to restraint and\ncommandment as the anarchist? Perhaps only children and geniuses can be\ntruly anarchistic? Perhaps freedom itself is a problem and not a\nsolution? Does the mechanization, through law and custom, of certain\nelements in our social behavior, like the mechanization, through habit\nand instinct, of certain elements in individual behavior, result in\ngreater freedom for the higher powers and functions? Again, to have\nfreedom for all, all must be equal; but does not development make for\ndifferentiation and inequality? Consider the America of three hundred\nyears ago; a nation of adventurous settlers, hardly any of them better\noff than any other,--all of a class, all on a level; and see what\ninequalities and castes a few generations have produced! Is there a\nnecessary antithesis between liberty and order, freedom and control?--or\nare order and control the first condition of freedom? Does not law serve\nmany splendid purposes,--could it not serve more? Is the state necessary\nso long as there are long-eared and long-fingered gentry?\n\nAs for your revolutions, who profits by them? The people who have\nsuffered, or the people who have thought? Is a revolution, so far as the\npoor are concerned, merely the dethronement of one set of rulers or\nexploiters so that another set may have a turn? Do not most\nrevolutions, like that which wished to storm heaven by a tower, end in\na confusion of tongues? And after each outbreak do not the workers\nreadapt themselves to their new slavery with that ease and torpid\npatience which are the despair of every leader, until they are awakened\nby another quarrel among their masters?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOne could fling about such questions almost endlessly, till every _\u2019ism_\nshould disappear under interrogation points. Every such _\u2019ism_, clearly,\nis but a half-truth, an arrested development, suffering from\nmalinformation. One is reminded of the experiment in which a\npsychologist gave a ring-puzzle to a monkey, and--in another room--a\nlike puzzle to a university professor: the monkey fell upon the puzzle\nat once with teeth and feet and every manner of hasty and haphazard\nreaction,--until at last the puzzle, dropped upon the floor, came apart\nby chance; the professor sat silent and motionless before the puzzle,\nworking out in thought the issue of many suggested solutions, and\nfinally, after forty minutes, touched it to undo it at a stroke. Our\n_\u2019isms_ are simian reactions to the social puzzle. We jump at\nconclusions, we are impinged upon extremes, we bound from opposite to\nopposite, we move with blinders to a passion-colored goal. Some of us\nare idealists, and see only the beautiful desire; some of us are\nrealists, and see only the dun and dreary fact; hardly any of us can\nlook fact in the face and see through it to that which it might be. We\n\u201cbandy half-truths\u201d for a decade and then relapse into the peaceful\ninsignificance of conformity.[296]\n\nIt dawns on students of social problems, as it dawned long since on\nphilosophers, that the beginning of their wisdom is a confession of\ntheir ignorance. We know now that the thing we need, and for lack of\nwhich we blunder valiantly into futility, is not good intentions but\ninformed intelligence. All problems are problems of education; all the\nmore so in a democracy. Not because education can change the original\nnature of man, but because intelligent co\u00f6peration can control the\nstimuli which determine the injuriousness or beneficence of original\ndispositions. Impulse is not the enemy of intelligence; it is its raw\nmaterial. We desire knowledge--and particularly knowledge of\nourselves--so that we may know what external conditions evoke\ndestructive, and what conditions evoke constructive, responses. We do\nnot, for example, expect intelligence to eradicate pugnacity; we do not\nwant it to do so; but we want to eradicate the environmental conditions\nwhich turn this impulse to wholesale suicide. Men should fight; it is\nthe essence of their value that they are willing to fight; the problem\nof intelligence is to discuss and to create means for the diversion of\npugnacity to socially helpful ends. Character is _per se_ neither good\nnor bad, but becomes one or the other according to the nature of the\nstimuli presented. What we call moral reform, then, waits on information\nand consequent remoulding of the factors determining the direction of\nour original dispositions. We become \u201cbetter\u201d men and women only so far\nas we become more intelligent. Just as psychoanalysis can, in some\nmeasure, reconstruct the personal life, so social analysis can\nreconstruct social life and turn into productive channels the innocent\nbut too often destructive forces of original nature.[297]\n\nOur problem, then, to repeat once more our central theme, is to\nfacilitate the growth and spread of intelligence. With this definition\nof the issue we come closer to our thesis,--that the social problem must\nbe approached through philosophy, and philosophy through the social\nproblem.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE RECONSTRUCTIVE FUNCTION OF PHILOSOPHY\n\n\nI\n\nEpistemologs\n\nNow there are a great many people who will feel no thrill at all at the\nmention of philosophy,--who will rather consider themselves excused by\nthe very occurrence of the word from continuing on the road which this\ndiscussion proposes to travel. No man dares to talk of philosophy in\nthese busy days except after an apologetic preface; philosophers\nthemselves have come to feel that their thinking is so remote from\npractical endeavor that they have for the most part abandoned the effort\nto relate their work to the concrete issues of life. In the eyes of the\nman who does things philosophy is but an a\u00ebrial voyaging among the mists\nof transcendental dialectic, or an ineffective moralizing substitute for\nsupernatural religion. Philosophy was once mistress of all the\ndisciplines of thought and search; now none so poor to do her reverence.\n\nThere is no way of meeting this indictment other than to concede it. It\nis true. It is mild. Only a lover of philosophy can know--with the\nintimacy of a _particeps criminis_--how deeply philosophy has fallen\nfrom her ancient heights. Looking back to Greece we find that philosophy\nthere was a real pursuit of wisdom, a very earnest effort to arrive by\ndiscussion and self-criticism at a way of life, a _philosophia vit\u00e6\nmagistra_, a knowledge of the individual and social good and of the\nmeans thereto, a conscious direction of social institutions to ethical\nends; philosophy and life in those days were bound up with one another\nas mechanics is now bound up with efficient construction. Even in the\nMiddle Ages philosophy meant co\u00f6rdinate living, synthetic behavior; with\nall their reputation for cobweb-spinning, the Scholastics were much\ncloser to life in their thinking than most modern philosophers have been\nin theirs.\n\nThe lapse of philosophy from her former significance and vitality is the\nresult of the exaggerated emphasis placed on the epistemological problem\nby modern thinkers; and this in turn is in great part due to the\ndifficulties on which Descartes stumbled in his effort to reconcile his\nbelief in mechanism with his desire to placate the Jesuits. How minor a\nr\u00f4le is played by the problems of the relation between subject and\nobject, the validity of knowledge, epistemological realism and idealism,\nin a frankly mechanist philosophy, appears in Bacon, Hobbes, and\nSpinoza;[298] these men--deducting Bacon\u2019s astute obeisance to\ntheology--know what they want and say what they mean; they presume, with\na maturity so natural as to be mistaken for _na\u00efvet\u00e9_, that the validity\nof thought is a matter to be decided by action rather than by theory;\nthey take it for granted that the supreme and ultimate purpose of\nphilosophy is not analysis but synthesis, not the intellectual\ncategorizing of experience but the intelligent reconstruction of life.\nIndeed, as one pursues this clew through the devious--almost\nstealthy--course of modern speculation it appears that no small part of\nthe epistemological development has been made up of the oscillations,\ncompromises, and obscurities natural in men who were the exponents and\nthe victims of a painful transition. Civilization was passing from one\nintellectual basis to another; and in these weird epistemologs the vast\nprocess came uncomfortably to semiconsciousness. They were old bottles\nbursting with new wine; and their tragedy was that they knew it. They\nclung to the old world even while the new one was swimming perilously\ninto their ken; they found a pitiful solace in the old phrases, the old\nparaphernalia of a dead philosophy; and in the suffering of their\nreadjustment there was, quite inevitably, some measure of\nself-deception.\n\nAnd that is why they are so hard to understand. Even so subtle a\nthinker as Santayana finds them too difficult, and abandons them in\nrighteous indignation. There is no worse confounding of confusion than\nself-deception: let a man be honest with himself, and he may lie with\ntolerable intelligibility and success; but let him be his own dupe and\nhe may write a thousand critiques and never get himself understood.\nIndeed, some of them do not want to be understood, they only want to be\nbelieved. Hegel, for example, was not at all surprised to find that no\none understood him; he would have been surprised and chagrined to find\nthat some one had. Obscurity can cover a multitude of sins.\n\nAdd to this self-befoggery the appalling _historismus_ (as Eucken calls\nit), the strange lifeless interest in the past for its own sake, the\npetty poring over problems of text and minuti\u00e6 of theory in the classics\nof speculation;--and the indictment of philosophy as a useless appanage\nof the idle rich gains further ground. We do not seem to understand how\nmuch of the past is dead, how much of it is but a drag on the\nimaginative courage that dares to think of a future different from the\npast, and better. Philosophy is too much a study of the details of\nsuperseded systems; it is too little the study of the miraculous living\nmoment in which the past melts into the present and the future finds\ncreation. Most people have an invincible habit of turning their backs to\nthe future; they like the past because the future is an adventure. So\nwith most philosophers to-day; they like to write analyses of Kant,\ncommentaries on Berkeley, discussions of Plato\u2019s myths; they are\nstudents remembering, they have not yet become men thinking. They do not\nknow that the work of philosophy is in the street as well as in the\nlibrary, they do not feel and understand that the final problem of\nphilosophy is not the relation of subject and object but the misery of\nmen.\n\nAnd so it is well that philosophy, such as it chiefly is in these days,\nshould be scorned as a busy idler in a world where so much work is\nasking to be done.\n\nPhilosophy was vital in Plato\u2019s day; so vital that some philosophers\nwere exiled and others put to death. No one would think of putting a\nphilosopher to death to-day. Not because men are more delicate about\nkilling; but because there is no need to kill that which is already\ndead.[299]\n\n\nII\n\nPhilosophy as Control\n\nBut after all, this is not a subject for rhetoric so much as for\nresolution. Here we are again in our splendid library; here we sit,\nfinancially secure, released from the material necessities of life, to\nstand apart and study, to report and help and state and solve; under us\nthose millions holding us aloft so that we may see for them, dying by\nthe thousand so that we may find the truth that will make the others\nfree; and what do we do? We make phrases like \u201c_esse est percipi_,\u201d\n\u201csynthetic judgments _\u00e0 priori_,\u201d and \u201cbeing is nothing\u201d; we fill the\nphilosophic world with great Saharas of Kantiana; we write epistemology\nfor two hundred years. Surely there is but one decent thing for us to\ndo: either philosophy is of vital use to the community, or it is not. If\nit is not, we will abandon it; if it is, then we must seek that vital\nuse and show it. We have been privileged to study and think and travel\nand learn the world; and now we stand gaping before it as if there were\nnothing wrong, as if nothing could be done, as if nothing should be\ndone. We are expert eyes, asked to point the way; and all that we report\nis that there is nothing to see, and nowhere to go. We are without even\na partial sense of the awful responsibility of intelligence.\n\nIt is time we put this problem of knowledge, even the problem of the\nvalidity of knowledge, into the hands of science. How we come to know,\nwhat the process of knowledge is, what \u201ctruth\u201d is,--all these are\nquestions of fact; they are problems for the science of psychology,\nthey are not problems for philosophy. This continual sharpening of the\nknife, as Lotze put it, becomes tiresome--almost pathetic--if, after\nall, there is no cutting done. Like Faust, who found himself when,\nblinded by the sun, he turned his face to the earth, so we shall have to\nforget our epistemological heaven and remember mother earth; we shall\nhave to give up our delightful German puzzles and play our living part\nin the flow of social purpose. Philosophers must once more learn to\nlive.\n\nTo make such a demand for a new direction of philosophy to life is after\nall only a development of pragmatism, turning that doctrine of action as\nthe test and significance of thought to uses not so individual as those\nin which William James found its readiest application. If philosophy has\nmeaning, it must be as life become aware of its purposes and\npossibilities, it must be as life cross-examining life for the sake of\nlife; it must be as specialized foresight for the direction of social\nmovement, as reconstructive intelligence in conscious evolution. Man\nfinds himself caught in a flux of change; he studies the laws operating\nin the flux; studying, he comes to understand; understanding, he comes\nto control; controlling, he comes face to face with the question of all\nquestions, For what? Where does he wish to go, what does he want to be?\nIt is then that man puts his whole experience before him in synthetic\ntest; then that he gropes for meanings, searches for values, struggles\nto see and define his course and goal; then that he becomes philosopher.\nConsider these questions of goal and course as questions asked by a\nsociety, and the social function of philosophy appears. Science\nenlightens means, philosophy must enlighten ends. Science informs,\nphilosophy must form. A philosopher is a man who remakes himself; the\nsocial function of philosophy is to remake society.\n\nHave we yet felt the full zest of that brave discovery of the last\ncentury,--that purpose is not in things but in us? What a declaration of\nindependence there is in that simple phrase, what liberation of a\nfettered thought to dare all ventures of creative endeavor! Here at last\nis man\u2019s coming-of-age! Well: now that we have won this freedom, what\nshall we do with it? That is the question which freedom begets, often as\nits Frankenstein; for unless freedom makes for life, freedom dies. Once\nour sloth and cowardice might have pleaded the uselessness of effort in\na world where omnipotent purpose lay outside of us, superimposed and\nunchangeable; now that we can believe that divinity is in ourselves,\nthat purpose and guidance are through us, we can no longer shirk the\nquestion of reconstruction. The world is ours to do with what we can and\nwill. Once we believed in the unchangeable environment--that new ogre\nthat succeeded to the Absolute--and (as became an age of\n_laissez-faire_) we thought that wisdom lay in meeting all its demands;\nnow we know that environments can be remade; and we face the question,\nHow shall we remake ours?\n\nThis is pre\u00ebminently a problem in philosophy; it is a question of\nvalues. If the world is to be remade, it will have to be under the\nguidance of philosophy.\n\n\nIII\n\nPhilosophy as Mediator between Science and Statesmanship\n\nBut why philosophy?--some one asks. Why will not science do? Philosophy\ndreams, while one by one the sciences which she nursed steal away from\nher and go down into the world of fact and achievement. Why should not\nscience be called upon to guide us into a better world?\n\nBecause science becomes more and more a fragmentated thing, with ever\nless co\u00f6rdination, ever less sense of the whole. Our industrial system\nhas forced division of labor here, as in the manual trades, almost to\nthe point of idiocy: let a man seek to know everything about something,\nand he will soon know nothing about anything else; efficiency will\nswallow up the man. Because of this shredded science we have great\nzo\u00f6logists talking infantile patriotism about the war, and great\nelectricians who fill sensational sheets with details of their trips to\nheaven. We live in a world where thought breaks into pieces, and\nco\u00f6rdination ebbs; we flounder into a chaos of hatred and destruction\nbecause synthetic thinking is not in fashion.\n\nConsider, for example, the problem of monopoly: we ask science what we\nare to do here; why is it that after we have listened to the economist,\nand the historian, and the lawyer, and the psychologist, we are hardly\nbetter off than before? Because each of these men speaks in ignorance of\nwhat the others have discovered. We must find some way of making these\nmen acquainted with one another before they can become really useful to\nlarge social purposes; we must knock their heads together. We want more\nuniters and co\u00f6rdinators, less analyzers and accumulators.\nSpecialization is making the philosopher a social necessity of the very\nfirst importance.\n\nThis does not mean that we must put the state into the hands of the\nepistemologists. Hardly. The type of philosopher who must be produced\nwill be a man too close to life to spend much time on merely analytical\nproblems. He will feel the call of action, and will automatically reject\nall knowledge that does not point to deeds. The essential feature of him\nwill be grasp: he will have his net fixed for the findings of those\nsciences which have to do, not with material reconstructions, but with\nthe discovery of the secrets of human nature. He will know the\nessentials of biology and psychology, of sociology and history, of\neconomics and politics; in him these long-divorced sciences will meet\nagain and make one another fertile once more. He will busy himself with\nMendel and Freud, Sumner and Veblen, and will scandalously neglect the\nAbsolute. He will study the needs and exigencies of his time, he will\nconsider the Utopias men make, he will see in them the suggestive\npseudopodia of political theory, and will learn from them what men at\nlast desire. He will sober the vision with fact, and find a focus for\nimmediate striving. With this focus he will be able to co\u00f6rdinate his\nown thinking, to point the nose of science to a goal; science becoming\nthereby no longer inventive and instructive merely, but preventive and\nconstructive. And so fortified and unified he will preach his gospel,\ntalking not to students about God, but to statesmen about men.\n\nFor we come again--ever and ever again--to Plato: unless wisdom and\npractical ability, philosophy and statesmanship, can be more closely\nbound together than they are, there will be no lessening of human\nmisery. Think of the learning of scientists and the ignorance of\npoliticians! You see all these agitated, pompous men, making laws at the\nrate of some ten thousand a year; you see those quiet, unheard of,\nunderpaid seekers in the laboratories of the world; unless you can bring\nthese two groups together through co\u00f6rdination and direction, your\nsociety will stand still forever, however much it moves. Philosophy\nmust take hold; it must become the social direction of science, it must\nbecome, strange to say, applied science.\n\nWe stand to-day in social science where Bacon stood in natural science:\nwe seek a method first for the elucidation of causes, and second for the\ntransformation, in the light of this knowledge, of man\u2019s environment and\nman. \u201cWe live in the stone age of political science,\u201d says Lester Ward;\n\u201cin politics we are still savages.\u201d[300] Our political movements are\nconceived in impulse and developed in emotion; they end in fission and\nfragmentation because there is no thought behind them. Who will supply\nthinking to these instincts, direction to this energy, light to this\nwasted heat? Our young men talk only of ideals, our politicians only of\nfact; who will interpret to the one the language of the other? What is\nit, too, that statesmen need if not that saving sense of the whole which\nmakes philosophy, and which philosophy makes? Just as philosophy without\nstatesmanship is--let us say--epistemology, so statesmanship without\nphilosophy is--American politics. The function of the philosopher, then,\nis to do the listening to to-day\u2019s science, and then to do the thinking\nfor to-morrow\u2019s statesmanship. The philosophy of an age should be the\norganized foresight of that age, the interpreter of the future to the\npresent. \u201cSelection adapts man to yesterday\u2019s conditions, not to\nto-day\u2019s\u201d;[301] the organized foresight of conscious evolution will\nadapt man to the conditions of to-morrow. And an ounce of foresight is\nworth a ton of morals.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE\n\n\nI\n\nThe Need\n\nIntelligence is organized experience; but intelligence itself must be\norganized. Consider the resources of the unused intelligence of the\nworld; intelligence potential but undeveloped; intelligence developed\nbut isolated; intelligence allowed to waste itself in purely personal\npursuits, unasked to enter into co\u00f6peration for larger ends. Consider\nthe Platos fretting in exile while petty politicians rule the world;\nconsider Montaigne, and Hobbes, and Hume, and Carlyle, and the thousand\nother men whose genius was left to grow--or die--in solitude or\nstarvation; consider the vast number of university-trained minds who are\npermitted, for lack of invitation and organized facilities, to slip into\nthe world of profit and loss and destructively narrow intent; consider\nthe expert ability in all lines which can be found in the faculties of\nthe world, and which goes to training an infinitesimal fraction of the\ncommunity. The thought of university graduates, of university\nfaculties, of university-trained investigators, has had a rapidly\ngrowing influence in the last ten years in America; and because it is an\ninfluence due to enlightenment it is fundamentally an influence for\n\u201cgood.\u201d It was this influence that showed when President Wilson said\nthat the eight-hour day was demanded by the informed opinion of the\ntime. The sources of such influence have merely been touched; they are\ndeep; we must find a way to make informed opinion more articulate and\npowerful. \u201cThe most valuable knowledge consists of methods,\u201d said\nNietzsche;[302] and the most valuable methods are methods of\norganization, whether of data or of men. Organization\u2019s the thing.\nEconomic forces are organized; the forces of intelligence are not. To\norganize intelligence; that is surely one method of approach to the\nsocial problem; and what if, indeed, it be the very heart and substance\nof the social problem?\n\nNow a very easy way of making the propounder of such an organization\nfeel unusually modest is to ask him that little trouble-making question,\nHow? To answer that would be to answer almost everything that can be\nanswered. Here are _opera basilica_ again!--for what are we doing, after\nall, but trying to take Francis Bacon seriously? Of course the\ndifficulty in organizing intelligence is how to know who are\nintelligent, and how to get enough people to agree with you that you\nknow. If each man\u2019s self-valuation were accepted, our organization would\nbe rather bulky. Are there any men very widely recognized as\nintelligent, who could be used as the nucleus of an organization? There\nare individual men so recognized,--Edison, for example, and, strange to\nsay, one or two men who by accident are holding political office. But\nthese are stray individuals; are there any groups whose average of\nintelligence is highly rated by a large portion of the community? There\nare. Physicians are so rated; so much so that by popular usage they have\nwon almost a monopoly on the once more widely used term _doctor_.\nUniversity professors are highly rated. Let us take the physicians and\nthe professors; here is a nucleus of recognized intelligence.\n\nThere are objections, here, of course; some one urges that many\nphysicians are quacks, another that professors are rated as intelligent,\nbut only in an unpractical sort of way. Perhaps we shall find some\nscheme for eliminating the quacks; but the professors present a\ndifficult problem. It is true that they suffer from intellectualism,\nacademitis, overfondness for theories, and other occupational diseases;\nit is true that the same people who stand in awe of the very word\n_professor_ would picture the article indicated by the word as a thin,\nround-shouldered, be-spectacled ninny, incapable of finding his way\nalone through city streets, and so immersed in the stars that he is\nsooner or later submerged in a well. But what if this quality of\ndetachment, of professorial calm, be just one of the qualities needed\nfor the illumination of our social problem? Perhaps we have too much\nemotion in these questions, and need the colder light of the man who is\ntrained to use his \u201chead\u201d and not his \u201cheart.\u201d Perhaps the most useful\nthing in the world for our purpose is this terribly dispassionate,\ncoldly scrutinizing professor. We need men as impartial and clear-eyed\nas men come; and whatever a professor may _say_, yet he _sees_ his field\nmore clearly and impartially than any other group of men whatever. Let\nthe professors stay.\n\nAnd so we have our physicians and our professors,--say all physicians\nand professors who have taught or practised three years in institutions,\nor as the graduates of institutions, of recognized standing. And now let\nus dream our dream.\n\n\nII\n\nThe Organization of Intelligence\n\nThese men, through meetings and correspondence, organize themselves into\na \u201cSociety for Social Research\u201d; they begin at once to look for an\n\u201cinspired millionaire\u201d to finance the movement for six months or so;\nthey advertise themselves diligently in the press, and make known their\nintention to get together the best brains of the country to study the\nfacts and possibilities of the social problem. And then--a difficult\npoint--they face the task of arranging some more or less impersonal\nmethod of deciding who are the intelligent people and who not. They ask\nthemselves just what kind of information a man should be expected to\nhave, to fit him for competent handling of social questions; and after\nlong discussions they conclude that such a man should be well trained in\none--and acquainted with the general findings of the others--of what we\nmay call the social disciplines: biology, psychology, sociology,\nhistory, economics, law, politics, philosophy, and perhaps more. They\nformulate a long and varied test for the discovery of fitness in these\nfields; and they arrange that every university in the country shall\nafter plentiful advertisement and invitation to all and sundry, give\nthese tests, and pay the expenses incurred by any needy candidate who\nshall emerge successful from the trial. In this way men whose studies\nhave been private, and unadorned with academic degree, are to find\nentrance to the Society.\n\nIt is recognized that the danger of such a test lies in the premium\nwhich it sets on the bookish as against the practical man: on the man\nwhose knowledge has come to him in the classroom or the study, as\nagainst the man who has won his knowledge just by living face to face\nwith life. There are philosophers who have never heard of Kant, and\npsychologists who have been Freudians for decades without having ever\nread a book. A society recruited by such a test will be devoid of\nartists and poets, may finally eliminate all but fact-gathering\ndryasdusts, and so end deservedly in nothing. And yet some test there\nmust be, to indicate, however crudely, one\u2019s fitness or unfitness to\ntake part in this work; the alternative would be the personal choice of\nthe initial few, whose prejudices and limitations would so become the\nconstitution and by-laws of the society. Perhaps, too, some way may\nappear of using the artists and poets, and the genius who knows no\nbooks.\n\nWell: the tests are given; the original nucleus of physicians and\nprofessors submit themselves to these tests, and some, failing, are\neliminated; other men come, from all fields of work, and from them a\nnumber survive the ordeal and pass into the Society. So arises a body of\nsay 5000 men, divided into local groups but working in unison so far as\ngeographical separateness will permit; and to them now come, impressed\nwith their earnestness, a wealthy man, who agrees to finance the Society\nfor such time as may be needed to test its usefulness.\n\nNow what does our Society do?\n\nIt seeks information. That, and not a programme, is the fruitful\nbeginning of reform. \u201cMen are willing to investigate only the small\nthings of life,\u201d says Samuel Butler; this Society for Social Research is\nprepared and resolved to investigate anything that has vital bearing on\nthe social problem; it stands ready to make enemies, ready to soil its\nhands. It appoints committees to gather and formulate all that\nbiologists can tell of human origin and the innate impulses of men; all\nthat psychology in its varied branches can tell of human behavior; all\nthat sociology knows of how and why human societies and institutions\nrise and fall; all that medicine can tell of social ills and health; it\nappoints committees to go through all science with the loadstone of the\nsocial purpose, picking up this fact here and that one there; committees\nto study actual and proposed forms of government, administrative and\nelectoral methods; committees to investigate marriage, eugenics,\nprostitution, poverty, and the thousand other aspects and items of the\nsocial problem; committees to call for and listen to responsible\nexpressions of every kind of opinion; committees to examine and analyze\nsocial experiments, profit-sharing plans, Oneida communities; even a\ncommittee on Utopia, before which persons with schemes and _\u2019isms_ and\nperfect cities in their heads may freely preach their gospel. In short\nthis Society becomes the organized eye and ear of the community, ready\nand eager to seek out all the facts of human life and business that may\nenlighten human will.\n\nAnd having found the facts it publishes them. Its operations show real\nearnestness, sincerity, and ability; and in consequence it wins such\nprestige that its reports find much heralding, synopsis, and comment in\nthe press. But in addition to that it buys, for the first day of every\nmonth, a half-page of space in several of the more widely circulated\nperiodicals and journals of the country, and publishes its findings\nsuccinctly and intelligibly. It gives full references for all its\nstatements of fact; it makes verification possible for all doubters and\ndeniers. It includes in each month\u2019s report a reliable statement of the\nyear\u2019s advances in some one of the social disciplines, so that its\ntwelve reports in any year constitute a record of the socially vital\nscientific findings of the year. It limits itself strictly to verifiable\ninformation, and challenges demonstration of humanly avoidable\npartiality. And it takes great care that its reports are couched not in\nlearned and technical language but in such phraseology as will be\nintelligible to the graduates of an average grammar school. That is\ncentral.\n\n\nIII\n\nInformation of Panacea\n\nWithout some such means of getting and spreading information there is no\nhope for fundamental social advance. We have agreed, have we not, that\nto make men happier and more capable we must divert their socially\ninjurious impulses into beneficent channels; that we can do this only by\nstudying those impulses and controlling the stimuli which arouse them;\nthat we can control those stimuli only by studying the varied factors\nof the environment and the means of changing them; in short, that at the\nbottom of the direction of impulse lies the necessity of knowledge, of\ninformation spread to all who care to receive it. Autocracy may improve\nthe world without spreading enlightenment; but democracy cannot.\n_Delenda est ignorantia._[303]\n\nThis, after all, is a plan for the democratization of aristocracy; it is\nPlato translated into America. It utilizes superior intelligence and\ngives it voice, but sanctions no change that has not received the free\nconsent of the community. It gives the aristocracy of intellect the\ninfluence and initiative which crude democracy frustrates; but it avoids\nthe corruption that usually goes with power, by making this influence\nwork through the channels of persuasion rather than compulsion. It\ncounteracts the power of wealth to disseminate partisan views through\nnews-items and editorials, and relies on fact to get the better at last\nof double-leaded prejudice. It rests on the faith that lies will out.\n\nWould the mass of the people listen to such reports? Consider, first,\nthe repute that attaches to the professorial title. Let a man write even\nthe sorriest nonsense but sign himself as one of the faculty of some\nresponsible institution, and he will find a hearing; the reader,\nperhaps, need not go far to find an example. In recent industrial and\npolitical issues the pronouncements of a few professors carried very\ngreat weight; and there are some modest purveyors of so supposedly\nharmless a thing as philosophy whose voice is feared by all interests\nthat prosper in the dark. Will the combined reputation of the most\nenlightened men in the country mean less? A report published by this\nSociety for Social Research will mean that a large body of intelligent\nmen have from their number appointed three or five or ten to find the\nfacts of a certain situation or dispute; these appointed men will, if\nthey report hastily, or carelessly, or dishonestly, impair the repute of\nall their fellows in the Society; they will take care, then, and will\nprobably find honesty as good a policy as some of us pretend it to be.\nWith every additional report so guarded from defect the repute of the\nsociety will grow until it becomes the most powerful intellectual force\nin the world.\n\nWhen one reflects how many pages of misrepresentation were printed in\nthe papers of only one city in the presidential campaign of 1916, and\nthen imagines what would have been the effect of a mere statement of\nfacts on both sides,--the records of the candidates and the parties,\ntheir acknowledged connections, friends and enemies, their expressed\nprinciples and programmes, the facts about the tariff, the German issue,\ninternational law, the railway-brotherhood dispute, and so forth--one\nbegins to appreciate the importance of information. After the initial\nand irrevocable differences of original nature nothing is so vital as\nthe spread of enlightenment; and nothing offers itself so well to\norganized effort. Eugenics is weak because it has no thought-out\nprogramme; _\u2019isms_ rise and fall because people are not informed. Let\nwho can, improve the native qualities of men; but that aside, the most\npromising plan is the dissemination of fact.\n\nSuch a society for research would be a sort of social consciousness, a\n\u201cmind of the race.\u201d It would make social planning possible for the first\ntime; it would make history conscious. It would look ahead and warn; it\nwould point the nose of the community to unwelcome but important facts;\nit would examine into such statements as that of Sir William Ramsay,\nthat England\u2019s coal fields will be exhausted in one hundred and\nseventy-five years; and its warnings, backed by the prestige of its\nexpert information, would perhaps avert the ravages of social waste and\nprivate greed. Nature, said Lester Ward, is a spendthrift, man an\neconomizer. But economy means prevision, and social economy means\norganized provision. Here would be not agitation, not propaganda, not\nmoralizing, but only clarification; these men would be \u201cmerchants of\nlight,\u201d simply giving information so that what men should do they might\ndo knowingly and not in the dark.\n\nIndeed, if one can clarify one need not agitate. Just to state facts is\nthe most terrible thing that can be done to an injustice. Sermons and\nstump-speeches stampede the judgment for a moment, but the sound of\ntheir perorations still lingers in the air when reaction comes. Fact has\nthis advantage over rhetoric, that time strengthens the one and weakens\nthe other. Tell the truth and time will be your eloquence.\n\nLet us suppose that our Society has existed some three years; let us\nsuppose that on the first day of every month it has spread through the\npress simple reports of its investigations, simple accounts of socially\nsignificant work in science, and simple statements of fact about the\neconomic and political issues of the day; let us suppose that by far the\ngreater part of these reports have been conscientious and accurate and\nclear. Very well: in the course of these three years a large number of\nmentally alert people all over the country will have developed the habit\nof reading these monthly reports; they will look forward to them, they\nwill attach significance to them, they will herald them as events,\nalmost as decisions. In any question of national policy its statements\nwill influence thousands and thousands of the more independent minds.\nLet us calculate the number of people who, in these United States, would\nbe reached by such reports; let us say the reports are printed in three\nor four New York dailies, having a total circulation of one million; in\nother dailies throughout the country totalling some five million\ncirculation; and in one or more weeklies or monthlies with a large or a\nselect circulation. One may perhaps say that out of the seven or eight\nmillion people so reached (mostly adult males), five per cent will be so\ninfluenced by the increasing prestige of the Society that they will read\nthe reports. Of these four hundred thousand readers it is reasonable to\nsuppose that three hundred thousand will be voters, and not only voters\nbut men of influence among their fellows. These men will each of them be\na medium through which the facts reported will be spread; it is not too\nmuch to say that the number of American voters influenced directly or\nindirectly by these reports will reach to a million.[304] Now imagine\nthe influence of this million of voters on a presidential election.\nTheir very existence would be a challenge; candidates would have them in\nmind when making promises and criticisms; parties would think of them\nwhen formulating policies and drawing up platforms; editors would beware\nof falling into claptrap and deceit for fear of these million men armed\nwith combustible fact. It would mean such an elevation of political\ndiscussion and political performance as democracy has never yet\nproduced; such an elevation as democracy must produce or die.\n\n\nIV\n\nSex, Art, and Play in Social Reconstruction\n\nSo far our imagined Society has done no more than to seek and give\ninformation. It has, it is true, listened to propagandists and Utopians,\nand has published extracts from their testimony; but even this has been\nnot to agitate but to inform; that such and such opinions are held by\nsuch and such men, and by such and such a number of men, is also a point\nof information. Merely to state facts is the essential thing, and the\nextremely effective thing. But now there are certain functions which\nsuch a Society might perform beyond the giving of facts--functions that\ninvolve personal attitudes and interpretations. It may be possible for\nour Society to take on these functions without detracting from the trust\nreposed in its statements of fact. What are these functions?\n\nFirst of all, the stimulation of artistic production, and the extension\nof artistic appreciation. Our Society, which is composed of rather staid\nmen, themselves not peculiarly fitted to pass judgment outside the field\nof science, will invite, let us say, twenty of the most generally and\nhighly valued of English and American authors to form themselves into a\nCommittee on Literary Awards, as a branch of the Society for Social\nResearch. Imagine Thomas Hardy and George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells\nand John Galsworthy and Rudyard Kipling and John Masefield and George\nMoore and Joseph Conrad and W. D. Howells and Theodore Dreiser and many\nmore, telling the world every month, in individual instalments, their\njudgment on current fiction, drama, poetry, English literature in\ngeneral; imagine the varied judgments printed with synoptic co\u00f6rdination\nof the results as a way of fixing the standing of a book in the English\nliterary world; and judge of the stimulus that would reside in lists\nsigned by such names. Imagine another group of men, the literary \u00e9lite\nof France, making briefer reports on French literature; and other groups\nin Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia; imagine the world getting\nevery month the judgment of Anatole France and Remain Rolland and\nGerhardt Hauptmann and Anton Tchekov and Georg Brandes on the current\nliterature of their peoples; imagine them making lists, too, of the best\nbooks in all their literatures; imagine eager young men and women poring\nover these conflicting lists, discussing them, making lists of their\nown, and getting guidance so. And to the literary lists add monthly\nreports, by a committee of the Society itself, on the best books in the\nvarious fields of science. Finally, let the artists speak,--painters and\nsculptors and all; let them say where excellence has dwelt this month in\ntheir respective fields. There are hundreds of thousands who hunger for\nsuch guidance as this plan would give. There are young people who\nflounder about hopelessly because they find no guidance; young people\nwho are easily turned to fine work by the stimulus of responsible\njudgment, and as easily lapse into the banalities of popular fiction and\npopular magazines when this guiding stimulus fails to come. There are\nthousands of people who would be glad to pay their modest contribution\nto the support of any organization that would manage to get such\ndirection for them. Half the value of a university course lies in this,\nthat the teacher will suggest readings, judge books, and provide general\nguidance for individual work. Perhaps the most valuable kind of\ninformation in the world is that which guides one in the search for\ninformation. Such guidance, given to all who ask for it, would go far to\nsave us from the mediocrity that almost stifles our national life.[305]\n\nAnd more; why should not the stimulation be for the producers as well as\nfor the consumers? Why should not some kind of award be made, say every\nsix months, to the authors adjudged best in their lines by their\nqualified contemporaries? Why should such a book as _Jean Christophe_\nor _The Brothers Karamazov_ go unheralded except in fragmentary\nindividual ways? Why not reward such productions with a substantial\nprize?--or, if that be impossible, by some presentation of certificate?\nEven a \u201cscrap of paper\u201d would go a long way to stimulate the writer and\nguide the reader. But why should not a money reward be possible? If rich\nmen will pay thousands upon thousands for the (perhaps) original works\nof dead artists, why should they not turn their wealth into spiritual\ngold by helping the often impecunious writers of the living day? It is a\nconvenient error to believe that financial aid would detract from the\nindependence of the creator: it would, did it come from men rewarding on\nthe basis of their own judgment; it would not if the judgment of the\nworld\u2019s men of letters should be taken as criterion. And perhaps fewer\nChattertons and Davidsons would mar the history of literature and art.\n\nThis direction of attention to what is best and greatest in the work of\nour age is a matter of deeper moment than superficial thought can grasp.\nIf, by some such method, the meaning of \u201csuccess\u201d could be freed from\nmonetary implication and attached rather to excellence in art and\nscience, the change would have almost inestimably far-reaching results.\nMen worship money, as has often been pointed out,[306] not for its own\nsake, nor for the material good it brings, but for the prestige of\nsuccess that goes with its \u201cconspicuous consumption\u201d; let the artist\nfind more appreciation for his ability than the captain of industry\nfinds for his, and there will be a great release of energy from economic\nexploitation to creative work in science, literature, and art. A large\npart of the stimuli that prompt men to exploit their fellows will be\ngone; and that richest of all incentives--social esteem--will go to\nproduce men eager to contribute to the general power and happiness of\nthe community.[307]\n\nThe art impulse, as is generally believed, is a diversion of sex energy.\nAn organism is essentially not a food-getting but a reproductive\nmechanism; the food-getting is a contributory incident in the\nreproduction. As development proceeds the period of pregnancy and\nadolescence increases, more of the offspring survive to maturity, large\nbroods, litters, or families become unnecessary, and more and more of\nthe energy that was sexual slides over into originally secondary\npursuits, like play and art. At the same time there is a gradual\ndiminution in pugnacity (which was another factor in the drama of\nreproduction), and rivalry in games and arts encroaches more and more on\nthe emotional field once monopolized by strife for mates and food. The\ngame--a sort of Hegelian synthesis of hostility and sociability--takes\nmore and more the place of war, and artistic creation increasingly\nreplaces reproduction.\n\nIf all this is anything more than theoretic skating over thin sheets of\nfact, it means that one \u201cway out\u201d from our social perplexities lies in\nthe provision of stronger stimulus to creation and recreation, art and\ngames. It is a serious part of the social planner\u2019s work to find some\nway of nourishing the art impulse wherever it appears, and drawing it on\nby arranging rewards for its productions. And again we shall have to\nunderstand that play is an important matter in a nation\u2019s life; that one\nof the best signs for the future of America is the prevalence of healthy\nathleticism; and that an attempt to widen these sport activities to\ngreater intersectional and international scope than they have yet\nattained will get at some of the roots of international pugnacity. A\nwise government would be almost as interested in the people\u2019s games as\nin their schools, and would spend millions in making rivalry absorb the\ndangerous energy of pugnacity. Olympic games should not be Olympic\ngames, occurring only with Olympiads; not a month should pass but great\nathletes, selected by eliminative tests from every part of every\ncountry, should meet, now here, now there, to match brawn and wits in\nthe friendly enmity of games. Let men know one another through games,\nand they will not for slight reasons pass from sportsmanship to that\ncompetitive destruction and deceit which our political Barnums call \u201cthe\ndefence of our national honor.\u201d\n\n\nV\n\nEducation\n\nThis diversion of the sexual instinct into art and games (a prophylactic\nwhich has long since been applied to individuals, and awaits application\nto groups) must begin in the early days of personal development; so that\nour Society for Social Research would, if it were to take on this task,\nfind itself inextricably mixed up with the vast problem of educational\nmethod and aim.\n\nHere more than anywhere one hears the call for enlightenment and sees\nthe need for clarification. Here is an abundance of _\u2019isms_ and a dearth\nof knowledge. Most teachers use methods which they themselves consider\nantiquated, and teach subjects which they will admit not one in a\nhundred of their pupils will ever need to know. Curious lessons in\nethics are administered, which are seldom practised in the classroom,\nand make initiative children come to believe that commandment-breaking\nis heroic. Boys and girls bursting with vitality and the splendid\nexuberance of youth are cramped for hours into set positions, while by a\nsort of water-cure process knowledge is pumped into them from books\nduller than a doctor\u2019s dissertation in philosophy. And so forth: the\nindictment against our schools has been drawn up a thousand times and in\na thousand ways, and needs no re\u00ebnforcement here. But though we have\nindicted we have not made any systematic attempt to find just what is\nwrong, and how, and where; and what may be done to remedy the evil.\nExperiments have been made, but their bearings and results have been\nvery imperfectly recorded.\n\nSuppose now that our Society for Social Research should appoint a great\nCommittee on Education to hire expert investigators and make a thorough\nattempt to clarify the issues in education. Here the function of\nphilosophy should be clear; for the educator touches at almost every\npoint those problems of values, individual and social, which are the\nspecial hunting-ground of the philosopher. The importance of psychology\nhere is recognized, but the importance of biology and pathology has not\nbeen seen in fit perspective. Why should not a special group of men be\nset aside for years, if necessary, to study the applicability of the\nseveral sciences to education? Why should not all scientific knowledge,\nso far as it touches human nature, be focused on the semi-darkness in\nwhich the educator works?\n\nTwo special problems in this field invite research. One concerns the\neffect, on national character and capacity, of a system of education\ncontrolled by the government. The point was made by Spinoza, as may be\nremembered, that a government will, if it controls the schools, aim to\nrestrain rather than to develop the energies of men. Kant remarked the\nsame difficulty. The function of education in the eyes of a dominant\nclass is to make men able to do skilled work but unable to do original\nthinking (for all original thinking begins with destruction); the\nfunction of education in the eyes of a government is to teach men that\neleventh commandment which God forgot to give to Moses: thou shalt love\nthy country right or wrong. All this, of course, requires some\nmarvellous prestidigitation of the truth, as school text-books of\nnational history show. The ignorant, it seems, are the necessary ballast\nin the ship of state.\n\nThe alternative to such schools seems to be a return to private\neducation, with the rich man\u2019s son getting even more of a start on the\npoor boy than he gets now. Is there a _tertium quid_ here? Perhaps this\nis one point which a resolute effort to get the facts would clarify.\nWhat does such governmentally-regulated education do to the forces of\npersonal difference and initiative? Will men and women educated in such\na way produce their maximum in art and thought and industry? Or will\nthey be automata, always waiting for a push? What different results\nwould come if the nationally-owned schools were to confine their work\nabsolutely to statements of fact, presentations of science, and were to\nleave \u201ccharacter-moulding\u201d and lessons in ethics to private persons or\ninstitutions? Then at least each parent might corrupt his own child in\nhis own pet way; and there might be a greater number of children who\nwould not be corrupted at all.\n\nAnother problem which might be advanced towards a solution by a little\nlight is that of giving higher education to those who want it but are\ntoo poor to pay. There are certain studies, called above the social\ndisciplines, which help a man not so much to raise himself out of his\nclass and become a snob, as to get a better understanding of himself and\nhis fellow-men. Since mutual understanding is a hardly exaggerable\nsocial good, why should not a way be found to provide for all who wish\nit evening instruction in history, sociology, economics, psychology,\nbiology, philosophy, and similar fields of knowledge? Every added\ncitizen who has received instruction in these matters is a new asset to\nthe community; he will vote with more intelligence, he will work better\nin co\u00f6peration, he will be less subject to undulations of social mania,\nhe will be a hint to all office-seekers to put their usual nonsense on\nthe shelf. Perhaps by this medium too our Society would spread its\nreports and widen its influence. Imagine a nation of people instructed\nin these sciences: with such a people civilization would begin.\n\nAnd then again, our busy-body Society would turn its research light on\nthe universities, and tell them a thing or two of what the light would\nshow. It would betray the lack of co\u00f6rdination among the various\nsciences,--the department of psychology, for example, never coming to so\nmuch as speaking terms with the department of economics; it would call\nfor an extension, perhaps, of the now infrequent seminars and\nconferences between departments whose edges overlap, or which shed light\non a common field. It would invite the university to give less of its\ntime to raking over the past, and help it to orient itself toward the\nfuture; it would suggest to every university that it provide an open\nforum for the responsible expression of all shades of opinion; it would,\nin general, call for a better organization of science as part of the\norganization of intelligence; it would remind the universities that they\nare more vital even than governments; and it might perhaps succeed in\ngetting engraved on the gates of every institution of learning the words\nof Thomas Hobbes: \u201cSeeing the universities are the foundation of civil\nand moral doctrine, from whence the preachers and the gentry, drawing\nsuch water as they find, use to sprinkle the same upon the people, there\nought certainly to be great care taken to have it pure.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE READER SPEAKS\n\n\nI\n\nThe Democratization of Aristocracy\n\nAnd now we stop for objections.\n\n\u201cThis plan is a hare-brained scheme for a new priesthood and a new\naristocracy. It would put a group of college professors and graduates\ninto a position where they could do almost as they please. You think you\navoid this by telling the gentlemen that they must limit themselves to\nthe statement of fact; but if you knew the arts of journalism you would\nnot make so na\u00efve a distinction between airing opinions and stating\nfacts. When a man buys up a newspaper what he wants to do is not so much\nto control the editorials as to \u2018edit\u2019 the news,--that is, to select the\nfacts which shall get into print. It\u2019s wonderful what lies you can\nspread without telling lies. For example, if you want to hurt a public\nman, you quote all his foolish speeches and ignore his wise ones; you\nput his mistakes into head-lines and hide his achievements in a corner.\nI will guarantee to prove anything I like, or anything I don\u2019t like,\njust by stating facts. So with your Society for Social Research; it\nwould become a great political, rather than an educational,\norganization; it would almost unconsciously select its information to\nsuit its hobbies. Why, the thing is psychologically impossible. If you\nwant something to be true you will be half blind and half deaf to\nanything that obstructs your desire; that is the way we\u2019re made. And\neven if nature did not attend to this, money would: as soon as your\nsociety exercised real power on public opinion it would be bought up, in\na gentle, sleight-o\u2019hand way, by some economic group; a few of the more\ninfluential members of the Society would be \u2018approached,\u2019 some \u2018present\u2019\nwould be made, and justice would have another force to contend with. No;\nyour Society won\u2019t do.\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWell, let us see. Here you have a body of 5000 men; rather a goodly\nnumber for even an American millionaire to purchase. They wish to\ninvestigate, say, the problem of birth-control; what do they do? They\nvote, without nominations, for six of their number to manage the\ninvestigation; the six men receiving the highest vote investigate and\nwrite out a report. Now if any report were published which misstated\nfacts, or omitted important items, the fault would at once diminish the\nrepute and influence of the Society. Let merely the suspicion get about\nthat these reports are unfair, and the Society would begin to decay.\nThat is, the power of the Society would grow with its fairness and fall\nwith its unfairness,--a very happy arrangement. The fear of this fall in\ninfluence would be the best incentive to impartial reports. Every\ncommittee would feel that the future of the Society depended on the\nfairness of its own report; and every man on every committee would\nhesitate before making himself responsible for the disrepute of the\nSociety; he would feel himself on trial before his fellow-members, and\nwould halt himself in the natural slide into partiality.\n\nNot that he would always succeed; men are men. But it is reasonable to\nexpect that men working under these conditions would be considerably\nmore impartial than the average newspaper. Again, who is as impartial as\nthe scientist? One cannot do much in science without a stern control of\nthe personal equation; to describe protozoa, for example, as one would\nlike them to be, is no very clever way of attaining repute in\nprotozo\u00f6logy. This is not so true in the social as in the physical\nsciences, though even in this new field scientific fairness and accuracy\nare rapidly increasing. One can get more reliable and impartial reports\nof an industrial situation,--_e.g._, of the Colorado troubles,--from the\nscientific investigators than from either side to the controversy. The\nvery deficiencies of the student type--incapacity for decisions or for\neffective methods in action--involve a compensatory grasp of\nunderstanding and impartiality of attitude. Our best guarantee against\ndishonesty is not virtue but intelligence, and our Society is supposed\nto be a sort of distilled intelligence.\n\nThat the scheme savors of aristocracy is not to its discredit. We need\naristocracy, in the sense of better methods for giving weight to\nsuperior brains; we need a touch of Plato in our democracy. After all,\nthe essence of the plan, as we have said, is the democratization of\nPlato and Nietzsche and Carlyle; the intelligent man gets more political\npower, but only through the mechanism of democracy. His greater power\ncomes not by his greater freedom to do what he pleases despite the\nmajority, but by improved facilities for enlightening and converting the\nmajority. Democracy, ideally, means only that the aristocracy is\nperiodically elected and renewed; and this is a plan whereby the\naristocrats--the really best--shall be more clearly seen to be so.\nFurthermore, the plan avoids the great defect of Plato\u2019s scheme,--that\nphilosophers are not fitted for executive and administrative work, that\nthose skilled to see are very seldom also able to do. Here the\nphilosopher, the man who gets at the truth, rules, but only indirectly,\nand without the burdens of office and execution. And indeed it is not\nthe philosopher who rules, but truth. The liberator is made king.\n\n\nII\n\nThe Professor as Buridan\u2019s Ass\n\n\u201cYou have anticipated my objection, and cleverly twisted it into an\nargument. But that would be too facile an escape; you must face more\nsquarely the fact that your professors are mere intellectualist\nhighbrows, incapable of understanding the real issues involved in our\nsocial war, and even more incapable of suggesting practical ways out.\nThe more you look the more you see; the more you see, the less you do.\nYou think that reflection leaves you peace of mind; it doesn\u2019t, it\nleaves your mind in pieces. The intellectual is like Dr. Buridan\u2019s ass:\nhe is so careful to stand in the middle that he never gives a word of\npractical advice, for fear that he will compromise himself and fracture\na syllogism. The trouble is that we think too much, not too little; we\nmake thinking a substitute for action. Really, as Rousseau argued,\nthinking is unnatural; what the world needs is men who can make up their\nminds and then march on, almost in blinders, to a goal. We know enough,\nwe know too much; and surely we have a plethora of investigating\ncommittees. A committee is just a scientific way of doing nothing. Your\nplan would flood the country with committees and leave courage buried\nunder facts. You should call your organization a Society for\nTalky-talk.\u201d\n\nThe only flaw in this argument is that it does not touch the proposal.\nWhat is suggested is not that the Society take action or make\nprogrammes, much less execute them; we ask our professors merely to do\nfor a larger public, and more thoroughly and systematically, what we are\nglad to have them do for a small number of us in college and university.\nAction is _ex hypothesi_ left to others; the function of the researcher\nis quite simply to look and tell us what he sees. That he is a highbrow,\nan intellectual, and even a Buridan\u2019s ass, does not interfere with his\nseeing; nobody ever argued that Buridan\u2019s ass was blind.\n\nWe forget that seeing is itself an art. Some of us have specialized in\nthe art, and have naturally failed to develop cleverness in practical\naffairs. But that does not mean that our special talent cannot be used\nby the community, any more than Sir Oliver Lodge\u2019s fondness for\ncelestial exploration makes us reject his work on electricity. Thinking\nis itself a form of action, and not the easiest nor the least effective.\nIt is true that \u201cif you reflect too much you will never accomplish\nanything,\u201d but if you reflect too little you will accomplish about as\nmuch. We make headway only by the head way. Action without forethought\ntends to follow a straight line; but in life the straight line is often\nthe longest distance between two points, because, as Leonardo said, the\nstraightest line offers the greatest resistance. Thought is roundabout,\nand loves flank attacks. The man of action rushes into play\ncourageously, succeeds now, fails then; and sooner or later wishes--if\nhe lives to wish--that he could think more. The increasing dependence of\nindustry on scientific research, and of politics on expert\ninvestigators, shows how the world is coming to value the man whose\nspecialty is seeing. Faith in intellect, as Santayana says, \u201cis the only\nfaith yet sanctioned by its fruit.\u201d[308] The two most important men in\nAmerica just now are, or have been, college professors. To speak still\nmore boldly: the greatest single human source of good in our generation\nis the \u201cintellectual\u201d researcher and professor. The man to be feared\nabove all others is the man who can see.\n\n\nIII\n\nIs Information Wanted?\n\n\u201cBut your whole scheme shows a very amateur knowledge of human nature.\nYou seem to think you can get people interested in fact. You can\u2019t; fact\nis too much against their interest. If the facts favor their wish, they\nare interested; if not, they forget them. The hardest thing in the world\nis to listen to truth that threatens to frustrate desire. That is why\npeople won\u2019t listen to your reports, unless you tell them what they want\nto hear. They will--and perhaps excusably--prefer the bioscope to your\nembalmed statistics; just as they will prefer to read _The Family\nHerald_ rather than the subtleties recommended by the Mutual Admiration\nSociety which you would make out of our men of letters. You can\ninvestigate till you are blue in the face, and all you will get out of\nit won\u2019t be worth the postage stamps you use. Public opinion doesn\u2019t\nfollow fact, it follows desire; people don\u2019t vote for a man because he\nis supported by \u2018truth\u2019 but because he promises to do something they\nlike. And the man who makes the biggest promises to the biggest men will\nget office ninety-nine times out of a hundred, no matter what the facts\nare. What counts is not truth but money.\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis is the basic difficulty. Is it worth while to spread information?\nThink how much information is spread every week in Europe and\nAmerica;--the world remaining the while as \u201cwicked\u201d as it probably ever\nwas. Public opinion is still, it seems, as Sir Robert Peel described it\nto be: \u201ca compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right\nfeeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs,\u201d[309]--particularly the\nparagraphs. Once we thought that the printing-press was the beginning of\ndemocracy, that Gutenberg had enfranchised the world. Now it appears\nthat print and plutocracy get along very well together. Nevertheless the\nhope of the weak lies in numbers and in information; in democracy and\nin print. \u201cThe remedy for the abuses of public opinion is not to\ndiscredit it but to instruct it.\u201d[310] The cure for misstatements is\nbetter statements. If the newspapers are used to spread falsehood that\nis no reason why newspapers should not be used to spread truth. After\nall, the spread of information has done many things,--killed dogma,\nsterilized many marriages, and even prevented wars; and there is no\nreason why a further spread may not do more valuable things than any yet\ndone. It has been said, so often that we are apt to admit it just to\navoid its repetition, that discussion effects nothing. But indeed\nnothing else effects anything. Whatever is done without information and\ndiscussion is soon undone, must be soon undone; all that bears time is\nthat which survives the test of thought. All problems are at last\nproblems in information: to find out just how things stand is the only\nfinally effective way of getting at anything.\n\nAs to the limited number of persons who would be reached by the reports,\nlet us not ask too much. There is no pretence here that the great mass\nof the people would be reached; no doubt these would go on living what\nWells calls the \u201cnormal social life.\u201d But these people do not count for\nconstructive purposes; they divide about evenly in every election. The\nmen who do count--the local leaders, the clergymen, the lecturers, the\nteachers, the union officials, the newspaper men, the \u201cagitators,\u201d the\narch-rebels and the arch-Tories,--all these men will be reached; and the\ninformation given will strengthen some and weaken others, and so play\nits effective part in the drama of social change. Each one of these men\nwill be a center for the further distribution of information. Imagine a\nnew monthly with a country-wide circulation of one million _voters_\n(that is, a general circulation of five million); would such a\nperiodical have power?--would not millions be given to control it? Well,\nhere we have more power, because not so concentrated in a few editorial\nhands, not so easily purchaseable, and based on better intellect and\nrepute. The money that would be paid at any time for the control of a\nperiodical of such influence would finance our Society for many years.\n\nIt is impossible to believe that such a spread of knowledge as is here\nsuggested would do nothing to elevate the moral and political life of\nthe country. Consider the increased scrupulousness with which a\nCongressman would vote if he knew that at the next election his record\nwould be published in cold print in a hundred newspapers, over the name\nof the Society for Social Research. Consider the effect, on\nCongressional appropriations for public buildings, of a plain statement\nof the population and size of the towns which require such colossal\nedifices for their mail. Publicity, it has been said, is the only cure\nfor bad motives. Consider the stimulus which such reports would give to\npolitical discussion everywhere. Hardly a dispute occurs which is not\nbased upon insufficient acquaintance with the facts; here would be\ninformation up to date, ready to give the light which dispels the heat.\nMen would turn to these reports all the more willingly because the\nreports were pledged to confine themselves to fact. Men would find here\nno attacks, no argument, no theory or creed; it would be refreshing, in\nsome ways, to bathe the mind, hot with contention, in these cool streams\nof fact, and to emerge cleansed of error and filled with the vitality of\ntruth. We have spent so much time attacking what we hate that we have\nnot stopped to tell people what we like; if we would only affirm more\nand deny less there would be less of cross-purpose in the world. And\ninformation is affirmation. It would not open the wounds of controversy\nso much as offer points of contact; and in the light of fact, enemies\nmight see that their good lay for the most part on a common road. If you\nwant to change a foe into a friend (or, some cynic will say, a friend\ninto a foe), give him information.\n\n\nIV\n\nFinding M\u00e6cenas\n\n\u201cWell; suppose you are right. Suppose information, as you say, is king.\nHow are you going to do it? Do you really think you will get some\nbenevolent millionaire to finance you? And will you, like Fourier, wait\nin your room every day at noon for the man who will turn your dream into\na fact?\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhat we tend to forget about rich men is that besides being rich they\nare men. There are a surprising number of them--particularly those who\nhave inherited money--who are eager to return to the community the\nlarger part of their wealth, if only they could be shown a way of doing\nit which would mean more than a change of pockets. Merely to give to\ncharity is, in Aristotle\u2019s phrase, to pour water into a leaking cask.\nWhat such men want is a way of increasing intelligence; they know from\nhard experience that in the end intelligence is the quality to be\ndesired and produced. They have spent millions, perhaps billions, on\neducation; and this plan of ours is a plan for education. If it is what\nit purports to be, some one of these men will offer to finance it.\n\nAnd not only one. Let the beginnings of our Society be sober and\nefficient, let its first investigations be thorough and intelligent, let\nits initial reports be impartial, succinct, illuminating and simple, and\nfurther help will come almost unasked. After a year of honest and\ncapable work our Society would find itself supported by rather a group\nof men than by one man; it might conceivably find itself helped by the\nstate, at the behest of the citizens. What would prevent a candidate for\ngovernor from declaring his intention that should he be elected he would\nsecure an annual appropriation for our Society?--and why should not the\nvoters be attracted by such a declaration? Why should not the voters\ndemand such a declaration?\n\nNor need we fear that a Society so helped by the rich man and the state\nwould turn into but one more instrumentality of obstructionism. Not that\nsuch an organization of intelligence would be \u201cradical\u201d: the words\n\u201cradical\u201d and \u201cconservative\u201d have become but instruments of calumny, and\ntruth slips between them. But in the basic sense of the word our Society\nwould be extremely radical; for there is nothing so radical, so\nrevolutionary, as just to tell the truth, to say what it is you see.\nThat surely is to go to the radix of the thing. And truth has this\nadvantage, that it is discriminately revolutionary: there are some\nthings old to which truth is no enemy, just as there are some things new\nwhich will melt in the glare of fact. Let the fact say.\n\nThis is the final faith: that truth will make us free, so far as we can\never be free. Let the truth be published to the world, and men separated\nin the dark will see one another, and one another\u2019s purposes, more\nclearly, and with saner understanding than before. The most disastrous\nthing you can do to an evil is to describe it. Let truth be told, and\nthe parasite will lose his strength through shame, and meanness will\nhide its face. Only let information be given to all and freely, and it\nwill be a cleansing of our national blood; enmity will yield to open and\nhonest opposition, where it will not indeed become co\u00f6peration. All we\nneed is to see better. Let there be light.\n\n\nV\n\nThe Chance of Philosophy\n\n\u201cOne more objection before you take the money. And that is: What on\nearth has all this to do with philosophy? I can understand that to have\neconomists on your investigating committees, and biologists, and\npsychologists, and historians, would be sensible; but what could a\nphilosopher do? These are matters for social science, not for\nmetaphysics. Leave the philosophers out and some of us may take your\nscheme seriously.\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is a good objection, if only because it shows again the necessity for\na new kind of philosopher. Merely to make such an objection is to\nre\u00ebnforce the indictment brought above against the philosopher as he is.\nBut what of the philosopher as he might be?\n\nWhat might the philosopher be?\n\nWell, first of all, he would be a living man, and not an annotator of\nthe past. He would have grown freely, his initial spark of divine fire\nunquenched by scholastic inflexibilities of discipline and study. He\nwould have imbibed no sermons, but his splendid curiosity would have\nfound food and encouragement from his teachers. He would have lived in\nand learned to love the country and the city; he would be at home in the\nploughed fields as well as in the centres of learning; he would like the\ncleansing solitude of the woods and yet too the invigorating bustle of\nthe city streets. He would be brought up on Plato and Thucydides,\nLeonardo and Michelangelo, Bacon and Montaigne; he would study the\ncivilization of Greece and that of the Renaissance on all sides, joining\nthe history of politics, economics, and institutions with that of\nscience, literature, and philosophy; and yet he would find time to study\nhis own age thoroughly. He would be interested in life, and full of it;\nhe would jump into campaigns, add his influence carefully to movements\nhe thought good, and help make the times live up more nearly to their\npossibilities. He would not shut himself up forever in laboratories,\nlibraries, and lecture rooms; he would live more widely than that. He\nwould be of the earth earthly, of the world worldly. He would not talk\nof ideals in the abstract and do nothing for them in the concrete; above\nall else in the world he would abhor the kind of talk that is a refuge\nfrom the venture and responsibility of action. He would not only love\nwisdom, he would live it.\n\nBut we must not make our ideal philosopher too repulsively perfect. Let\nus agree at least to this, that a man who should know the social\ndisciplines, and not merely one science, would be of help in some such\nbusiness as we have been proposing; and if we suppose that he has not\nonly knowledge but wisdom, that his acquaintance with the facts of\nscience is matched by his knowledge of life, that through fellowship\nwith genius in Greece and Florence he has acquired a fund of wisdom\nwhich needs but the nourishment of living to grow richer from day to\nday,--then we are on the way to seeing that this is the sort of man our\nSociety would need above all other sorts of men. Such philosophers would\nbe worthy to guide research and direct the enlightenment of the world;\nsuch philosophers might be to their generation what Socrates and Plato\nwere to their generations and Francis Bacon to his; such a philosophy,\nin Nietzsche\u2019s words, might rule!\n\nThis is the chance of philosophy. It may linger further in that calm\ndeath of social ineffectiveness in which we see it sinking; or it may\ncatch the hands of the few philosophers who insist on focusing thought\non life, and so regain the position which it alone is fitted to fill.\nUnless that position is filled, and properly, all the life of the world\nis zigzag and fruitless,--what we have called the logic-chopping life;\nand unless that position is filled philosophy too is logic-chopping,\nzigzag, and fruitless, and turns away from life men whom life most\nsorely needs. There are some among us, even some philosophers among us,\nwho are eager to lead the way out of bickering into discussion, out of\ncriticism into construction, out of books into life. We must keep a keen\neye for such men, and their beginnings; and we must strengthen them with\nour little help. Philosophy is too divinely splendid a thing to be kept\nfrom the most divine of things,--creation. Some of us love it as the\nvery breath of our lives; it is our vital medium, without which life\nwould be less than vegetation; and we will not rest so long as the name\n_philosopher_ means anything less aspiring and inspiring than it did\nwith Plato. Science flourishes and philosophy languishes, because\nscience is honest and philosophy sycophantic, because science touches\nlife and helps it, while philosophy shrinks fearfully and helplessly\naway. If philosophy is to live again, it must rediscover life, it must\ncome back into the cave, it must come down from the \u201creal\u201d and\ntranscendental world and play its venturesome part in the hard and happy\nworld of efforts and events.\n\nIt is the chance of philosophy.\n\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n\nSee now, in summary, how modest a suggestion it is, grandiloquent though\nit may have seemed. We propose no _\u2019ism_, we make no programme; we\nsuggest, tentatively, a method. We propose a new start, a new tack, a\nnew approach,--not to the exclusion of other approaches, but to their\nassistance. If this thing should be done, it would not mean that other\ngropers toward a better world would have to stand idle; it would but\ngive light to them that walk in darkness. And it would make possible a\nmore generous co\u00f6peration among the different currents in the stream of\nreconstructive thought.\n\nWe are a little discouraged to-day; we lovers of the new have become\ndoubtful of the object of our love. Perhaps--we sometimes feel--all this\neffort is a vain circling in the mist; perhaps we do not advance, but\nonly move. Our faith in progress is dimmed. We even tire of the \u201csocial\nproblem\u201d; we have tried so many ways, knocked at so many doors, and\nfound so little of that which we sought. Sometimes, in the lassitude of\nmistaken effort and drear defeat, we almost think that the social\nproblem is never to find even partial solution, that it is not a\nproblem but a limitation, a limitation forever. We need a new\nbeginning, a new impetus,--perhaps a new delusion?\n\nSee, too, how the thought of our five teachers lies concentrated and\nconnected in this new approach: what have we done but renew concretely\nthe Socratic plea for intelligence, the Platonic hope for\nphilosopher-kings, Bacon\u2019s dream of knowledge organized and ruling the\nworld, Spinoza\u2019s gentle insistence on democracy as the avenue of\ndevelopment, and Nietzsche\u2019s passionate defence of aristocracy and\npower? There was something in us that thrilled at Plato\u2019s conception of\na philosophy that could guide as well as dissect our social life; but\nthere was another something in us that hesitated before his plan of\nslavery as the basis of it all. We felt that we would rather be free and\nmiserable than bound and filled. Why should a man feed himself if his\nfeet are chained, and he must never move? And we were inspired, too, by\nthe demand that the best should rule, that they should have power fitted\nto their worth; we should be glad to find some way whereby the best\ncould have power, could rule, and yet with the consent of all,--we\nwanted an aristocracy sanctioned by democracy, a social order standing\non the broad base of free citizenship and wide co\u00f6peration. Socrates\nshows us how to use Bacon to reconcile Plato and Nietzsche with Spinoza:\nintelligence will organize intelligence so that superior worth may have\nsuperior influence and yet work with and through the will of all.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd here at the end comes a thought that some of us perhaps have had\nmore than once as this discussion advanced: What could the Church do for\nthe organization of intelligence?\n\nIt could do wonderful things. It has power, organization, facilities,\nthrough which the gospel of \u201cthe moral obligation to be intelligent\u201d\ncould be preached to a wider audience than any newspaper could reach.\nAnd among the clergy are hundreds of young men who have found new\ninspiration in the figure of Jesus seen through the aspirations of\ndemocracy; hundreds eager to do their part in any work that will lessen\nthe misery of men. What if they were to find in this organization of\nintelligence a focus for their labor?--what if they should not only\nthemselves undertake the studies which would fit them for membership in\nthe Society, but should also make it their business to stir up in all\nwho might come to them the spirit of the seeker, to incite them to read\nreligiously the reports of the Society, to call on them to spread abroad\nthe good news of truth to be had for the asking? What if these men\nshould make their churches extension centers for the educational work of\nthe Society,--giving freely the use of their halls and even contributing\nto the expense of organizing classes and paying for skilled instruction?\nWhat if they should see in the spread of intelligence the best avenue\nto that wide friendship which Jesus so passionately preached? What\nbetter way is there to make men love one another than to make men\nunderstand one another? True charity comes only with clarity,--just as\n\u201cmercy\u201d is but justice that understands. Surely the root of all evil is\nthe inability to see clearly that which is; how better can religion\ncombat evil than to preach clarity as the beginning of social\nredemption?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOne of the many burdens that drag on the soul is a knowledge of the\npast. It is a strong man who can know history and keep his courage; a\ngreat dream that can face the fact and live. We look at those flitting\nexperiments called civilizations: we see them rise one after another, we\nsee them produce and produce and produce, we feel the weight of their\naccumulating wealth; still visionable to us the busyness of geniuses and\nslaves piling stone upon stone and making pyramids to greet the stars,\nstill audible the voices of Socrates in the agora and of old Plato\npassing quietly among the students in the grove, still haunting us the\nwhite faces of martyrs in the amphitheatres of Rome: and then the\npyramids stand bare and lonely, the voices of Greek genius are hushed,\nthe Colosseum is a ruin and a memory; one after another these peoples\npass, these wonderful peoples, greater perhaps, wiser and nobler\nperhaps, than the peoples of our time; and we almost choke with the\nheavy sense of a vast futility encompassing the world. Some of us turn\naway then from the din of effort, and seek in resignation the comfort of\na living death; some others find in the doubt and difficulty the zest\nand reward of the work. After all, the past is not dead, it has not\nfailed; only the vileness of it is dead, gone with the winnowing of\ntime; that which was great and worthy lives and works and is real. Plato\nspeaks to us still, speaks to millions and millions of us; and the blood\nof martyrs is the seed of saints. We speak and pass, but the word\nremains. Effort is not lost. Not to have tried is the only failure, the\nonly misery; all effort is happiness, all effort is success. And so\nagain we write ourselves in books and stone and color, and smile in the\nface of time; again we hear the call of the work, that it be done:\n\n    Edens that wait the wizardry of thought,\n    Beauty that craves the touch of artist hands,\n    Truth that but hungers to be felt or seen;\n\nand again we are hot with the passion for perfection. We will remake. We\nwill wonder and desire and dream and plan and try. We are such beings as\ndream and plan and try; and the glory of our defeats dims the splendor\nof the sun. We will take thought and add a cubit to our stature; we will\nbring intelligence to the test and call it together from all corners of\nthe earth; we will harness the genius of the race and renew creation.\n\nWe will remake.\n\nPrinted in the United States of America.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan\nbooks on kindred subjects.\n\n\nPoverty and Social Progress\n\nBY MAURICE PARMELEE, PH.D.\n\n_Cloth, crown 8vo, 477 pp., $1.90_\n\n\u201cSuitable for college classes as well as for the general reader, and\ncontains a great mass of material of value to the citizen who really\nwants to know.\u201d--_Independent._\n\n\u201cA very competent presentation of the various social factors that go to\nmake up the problem of poverty.\u201d--_Churchman._\n\n\u201cA most useful and educative book. It would be well if every\nserious-minded person interested in social welfare would read this calm,\nimpartial survey of the problems of poverty, and learn from it that\npoverty is not a spontaneous phenomenon, and that it could be\npractically wiped out by the reorganization of society. The book is\noffered for use as a text for college courses on charities, poverty,\npauperism, dependency, and the like, but its most useful place is in the\nhands of the worker, the producer, the business man and woman, the\nserious shapers and makers of the present economic state of\nsociety.\u201d--_American Review of Reviews._\n\n\u201cPromoters of the democratic and humanitarian movement of our time will\nfind this volume replete with valuable data and stimulating to close and\ncareful thinking. Dr. Parmelee defines social progress as advancement\ntoward realization of a normal human life for all mankind. He shows this\nobstructed by poverty in so many ways that there is no panacea for it,\nand a variety of remedies are requisite. The chief obstructions being in\nthe production and distribution of wealth, his discussion centers mainly\nin the problems of these.\u201d--_Outlook._\n\nTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n\nPublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York\n\n\nThe Great Society\n\nA Psychological Analysis\n\nBY GRAHAM WALLAS\n\nAuthor of \u201cHuman Nature in Politics\u201d\n\n_Cloth, crown 8vo, 383 pp., $2.00_\n\nGraham Wallas\u2019s new book, \u201cThe Great Society,\u201d will be equally\ninteresting to the psychologists, students of sociology, politics and\nthe general reader. Mr. Wallas is a man of wide connections in England,\na man whose experience has well fitted him for the task which he has\nessayed. He has been for many years a university extension lecturer; he\nwas at one time a member of the school-board of London, chairman of the\nSchool Management Committee, a member of the Technical Education Board,\nof the London County Council and of the Education Committee of that\ncouncil. He has been, since 1896, a lecturer at the London School of\nEconomics. He has served on the Senate of London University, as\nuniversity reader in political science and on the Royal Commission on\nCivil Service. He has written more or less widely, his most popular\npublication being, perhaps, \u201cHuman Nature in Politics.\u201d\n\nThe present work, a portion of which was delivered last winter as the\nLowell Lecture in Boston, begins with an exposition of what the author\nmeans by the term \u201cThe Great Society.\u201d It then proceeds to a\nconsideration of the following topics: Disposition, Social Psychology,\nInstinct and Intelligence, Disposition and Environment, Habit, Fear,\nPleasure, Pain, Happiness, The Psychology of the Crowd, Love and Hatred,\nThought, The Organization of Thought, The Organization of Will, and the\nOrganization of Happiness.\n\n\u201cHis deft and almost subtle grasp of the viewpoints of the philosophic\nfactors in history; his focusing of a theory into the tiny sunspot of an\nilluminant sentence, and adopting a style that is as inviting and\npenetrating as Havelock Ellis, make the book one of sustained\ninterest\u201d--_Galveston Daily News._\n\nTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n\nPublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York\n\n\nThe Social Problem\n\n_A CONSTRUCTIVE ANALYSIS_\n\nBY CHARLES A. ELLWOOD, PH.D.\n\nProfessor of Sociology in the University of Missouri, Author of\n\u201cSociology in Its Psychological Aspects,\u201d \u201cSociology and Modern Social\nProblems,\u201d etc.\n\n_Cloth, 12mo, 255 pp., $1.25_\n\nThis work is a brief analysis of the social problem in Western\ncivilization. It outlines a scientific social philosophy which can serve\nas a basis for a well-balanced progress. The author points out that the\npresent crisis in our civilization calls for a reconstruction of our\nsocial philosophy; for we cannot build anew the structure of Western\nsociety upon the inadequate bases of eighteenth and nineteenth century\nthought. The book indicates the direction which our social thinking must\ntake if we are to avoid revolution, on the one hand, and reaction, on\nthe other. It aims to furnish a scientific basis for the progressive\nsocial movement; and it is commended to progressives in whatever class,\nparty, or sect they may happen to find themselves. The attitude of the\nbook is thoroughly positive and constructive toward all the essential\nvalues of our civilization.\n\n\u201c\u2018The Social Problem\u2019 by Professor Charles A. Ellwood is one of the best\nbooks of the kind I have ever seen. The subject is handled in a\nmasterful way. The best books I read in my field ordinarily do not gain\nmore than eighty-five or ninety per cent of my assent. This book,\nhowever, I would endorse to ninety-eight or ninety-nine per cent.\n\n\u201cIt is not only sound in its general positions, but sound in details.\nEvery statement is guarded and weighty. There is a fine sense of the\nvalue of words, there is no duplication, and the author reaches his goal\nwith the fewest possible sentences. I know of no book upon the social\nproblem, which can command so completely the endorsement of social\nthinkers everywhere.\u201d--_Professor Edward A. Ross of the University of\nWisconsin, Author of \u201cThe Changing Chinese,\u201d \u201cSocial Psychology,\u201d etc._\n\nTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n\nPublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York\n\n\n_AMERICAN SOCIAL PROGRESS SERIES_\n\n\nThe City Worker\u2019s World in America\n\nBY MARY KINGSBURY SIMKHOVITCH\n\n_Director of Greenwich House_\n\n_Cloth, 12mo, $1.25_\n\n     A new volume in the American Social Progress Series edited by\n     SAMUEL MCCUNE LINDSAY. LL. D.\n\n     A plain description of the facts of the city dweller\u2019s life, with\n     some indications of the evolutionary process going on at the city\u2019s\n     heart.\n\n\nSocial Reform and the Constitution\n\nBY FRANK J. GOODNOW\n\n_12mo, $1.50_\n\n     \u201cThe work is well worth not only reading but study and is a decided\n     contribution to the literature of the subject.\u201d--_Boston\n     Transcript._\n\n\nThe New Basis of Civilization\n\nBY SIMON N. PATTEN\n\n_12mo, $1.00_\n\n     \u201cThe book is valuable and inspiring in its general conception and\n     guiding principles. Social workers will welcome it, and moralists\n     should greatly profit by its teachings.\u201d\n\n--_Chicago Evening Post._\n\n\nStandards of Public Morality\n\n\nBY ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY\n\n_12mo, $1.00_\n\n     \u201cThe book is worth reading not only once, but twice.\u201d--_New York\n     Times._\n\n\nMisery and Its Causes\n\nBY EDWARD T. DEVINE\n\n_12mo. $1.25_\n\n     \u201cOne of the most vital and helpful books on social problems ever\n     published.\u201d\n\n--_Congregationalist and Christian World._\n\n\nGovernmental Action for Social Welfare\n\nBY JEREMIAH W. JENKS\n\n_12mo, $1.00_\n\n     \u201cProfessor Jenks\u2019 little book ought to be in the hands of every\n     member of every legislature in the country.\u201d--_Review of Reviews._\n\n\nThe Social Basis of Religion\n\nBY SIMON N. PATTEN\n\n_12mo, $1.25_\n\n     \u201cIt is a work of deep thought and abundant research. Those who read\n     it will find their ideas and thoughts quickened and will be sure\n     that their time has been profitably spent.\u201d\n\n--_Salt Lake Tribune._\n\n\nThe Church and Society\n\nBY R. FULTON CUTTING\n\n_12mo, $1.25_\n\n     \u201cA stimulating and informing little book.\u201d--_Boston Herald._\n\n\nThe Juvenile Court\n\nBY THOMAS D. ELIOT\n\n_12mo, $1.25_\n\n     \u201cAnother volume which will repay careful reading--the most useful\n     treatise on youthful criminology.\u201d--_Providence Journal._\n\n\nSocial Insurance: A Program for Social Reform\n\nBY HENRY ROGERS SEAGER\n\n_12mo, $1.00_\n\n\nTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n\nPublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] Class-lectures. As Bacon has it, Aristotle, after the Ottoman\nmanner, did not believe that he could rule securely unless he first put\nall his brothers to death.\n\n[2] The _Dialexeis_; cf. Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, New York, 1901, vol.\ni, p. 404.\n\n[3] Gompers, vol. i, p. 403.\n\n[4] Botsford and Sihler, _Hellenic Civilization_, New York, 1915, p. 430.\n\n[5] _Ibid._, p. 340, etc.\n\n[6] And sincerely, says Burnet, because he had gone through radicalism\nto scepticism, and felt that one convention was as good as another.\n\n[7] Cf. Henry Jackson, article \u201cSophists,\u201d _Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica_,\neleventh edition.\n\n[8] _History of Ethics_, London, 1892, p. 24.\n\n[9] _Op. cit._, vol. ii, 1905, p. 67.\n\n[10] _History of Greece_, vol. viii, p. 134.\n\n[11] _Morals in Evolution_, New York, 1915, p. 556.\n\n[12] Henry Jackson, article \u201cSocrates,\u201d _Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica_,\neleventh edition.\n\n[13] _Twilight of the Idols_, London, 1915, p. 15. For Nietzsche\u2019s\nanswer to Nietzsche, cf. _ibid._, p. 57: \u201cTo accustom the eye to\ncalmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer\njudgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an\nindividual case from all sides,--this is the first preparatory schooling\nof intellectuality,\u201d this is one of \u201cthe three objects for which we need\neducators.... One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must\nacquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts. To learn\nto see, as I understand this matter, amounts almost to that which in\npopular language is called \u2018strength of will\u2019: its essential feature\nis precisely ... to be able to postpone one\u2019s decision.... All lack of\nintellectuality, all vulgarity, arises out of the inability to resist a\nstimulus.\u201d\n\n[14] \u201cWhy art thou sad? Assuredly thou hast performed some sacred\nduty?\u201d--Bazarov in Turgenev\u2019s _Fathers and Children_, 1903, p. 185.\n\n[15] \u201cMorality is the effort to throw off sleep.... I have never yet\nmet a man who was wide awake. How could I have looked him in the\nface?\u201d--Thoreau, _Walden_, New York, 1899, p. 92.\n\n[16] What happens when I \u201csee the better and approve it, but follow the\nworse,\u201d is that an end later approved as \u201cbetter\u201d--_i.e._, better for\nme--is at the time obscured by the persistent or recurrent suggestion of\nan end temporarily more satisfying, but eventually disappointing. Most\nself-reproach is the use of knowledge won _post factum_ to criticise\na self that had to adventure into action unarmed with this hindsight\nwisdom.\n\n[17] _Gorgias_, p. 521.\n\n[18] 399 B.C.\n\n[19] _Epistles_, viii, 325.\n\n[20] \u201cWhen the soul does not speak in dialogue it is not in\ndifficulty.\u201d--Professor Wood bridge, in class.\n\n[21] \u201cIf we look for a system of philosophy in Plato, we shall\nprobably not find it; but if we look for none we may find most of the\nphilosophies ever written.\u201d--Professor Woodbridge.\n\n[22] _Ph\u00e6drus_, 244.\n\n[23] _Sophist_, 247.\n\n[24] _Laws_, 765-6.\n\n[25] _Republic_, 425.\n\n[26] _Protagoras_, 325.\n\n[27] _Republic_, 536.\n\n[28] _Laws_, 804.\n\n[29] _Ibid._, 810.\n\n[30] _Republic_, 375.\n\n[31] _Ibid._, 410.\n\n[32] _Laws_, 810.\n\n[33] _Republic_, 539.\n\n[34] _Republic_, 537.\n\n[35] _Republic_, 184.\n\n[36] _Ibid._, 473.\n\n[37] The passage, abbreviated, follows: \u201cFirst, then, let us consider\nwhat will be their way of life, now that we have thus established them.\nWill they not produce corn, and wine, and clothes, and shoes, and\nbuild houses for themselves? And when they are housed, they will work\nin summer commonly stripped and barefoot, but in winter substantially\nclothed and shod. They will feed on barley and wheat, baking the wheat\nand kneading the flour, making noble puddings and loaves; these they\nwill serve up on a mat of reeds or clean leaves, themselves reclining\nthe while upon beds of yew or myrtle boughs. And they and their children\nwill feast, drinking of the wine which they have made, wearing garlands\non their heads, and having the praises of the gods on their lips, living\nin sweet society, and having a care that their families do not exceed\ntheir means; for they will have an eye to poverty or war.... Of course\nthey will have a relish,--salt, and olives, and cheese, and onions, and\ncabbages or other country herbs which are fit for boiling; and we shall\ngive them a dessert of figs, and pulse, and beans, and myrtle-berries,\nand beech-nuts, which they will roast at the fire, drinking in\nmoderation. And with such a diet they may be expected to live in peace\nto a good old age, and bequeath a similar life to their children after\nthem.\u201d--_Republic_, 372. Cf. The Rousseauian anthropology of _Laws_, 679.\n\n[38] _Republic_, 372-3.\n\n[39] Much of modern criticism of democracy finds its inspiration in\nPlato. Cf. Bernard Shaw: \u201cThe democratic politician remains exactly\nas Plato described him.\u201d Cf. also the _Modern Utopia_ and _Research\nMagnificent_ of H. G. Wells. Nietzsche\u2019s debt to Plato will appear in a\nlater chapter.\n\n[40] \u201cOmnia communia inter nos habemus, praeter mulieres.\u201d\n\n[41] Let us remember that a property-qualification for the vote remained\nin our own political system till the time of Jefferson, and has in our\nown day been resuscitated in some of the Southern states.\n\n[42] _Laws_, 783.\n\n[43] _Republic_, 403\n\n[44] _Protagoras_, 322.\n\n[45] Plato, says Cleanthes, \u201ccursed as impious him who first sundered\nthe just from the useful.\u201d--Gomperz, ii, 73. Cf. _Republic_, 331.\n\n[46] Edmund Gosse, _Life of Henrik Ibsen_, p. 100, note.\n\n[47] Nietzsche, _Beyond Good and Evil_, pref.\n\n[48] _Influence of Darwin on Philosophy_, New York, 1910, p. 21.\n\n[49] Cf. _De Augmentis_, bk. viii, ch. 2.\n\n[50] _Advancement of Learning_, Boston, 1863, bk. i.\n\n[51] _Philosophical Works_, ed. J. M. Robertson, London, 1805, p. 33.\n\n[52] _Novum Organum_, i, 65.\n\n[53] _Advancement of Learning_, p. 133.\n\n[54] Called by Bacon the \u201cfirst vintage.\u201d\n\n[55] _Novum Organum_, ii, 2.\n\n[56] Preface to _Magna Instauratio_.\n\n[57] _Novum Organum_, pref.\n\n[58] _Novum Organum_, i, 129.\n\n[59] _Ibid._, i, 92.\n\n[60] _Ibid._, i, 113.\n\n[61] _Advancement of Learning_, bk. ii, ch. 1.\n\n[62] _Novum Organum_, i, 61.\n\n[63] _Advancement of Learning_, bk. i, ch. 1.\n\n[64] _Ibid._, bk. ii, ch. 1.\n\n[65] _New Atlantis_, Cambridge University Press, 1900, p. 22.\n\n[66] _Ibid._, p. 24.\n\n[67] Pp. 44, 45.\n\n[68] P. 43.\n\n[69] P. 34.\n\n[70] J. M. Robertson, preface to _Philosophical Works_.\n\n[71] Robert Adamson, article \u201cBacon,\u201d _Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica_.\n\n[72] Cf. preface to _Memoirs of a Revolutionist_.\n\n[73] _Novum Organum_, i, 81.\n\n[74] _Advancement of Learning_, p. 207.\n\n[75] _Ibid._, p. 131.\n\n[76] _Advancement of Learning._, bk. i.\n\n[77] Professor Woodbridge, class-lectures.\n\n[78] Turgenev, in _Fathers and Children_.\n\n[79] This division into saints and sinners must be taken with\nreservations, of course. In many respects Descartes belongs to the\nsecond group, and in some respects James and Comte belong to the first.\nBut the dichotomy clarifies, if only by exaggeration.\n\n[80] L. Ward, _Pure Sociology_, p. 16.\n\n[81] Buckle, _History of Civilization_, i, 138.\n\n[82] Special acknowledgment for some of the material of this chapter\nis due to R. A. Duff, _Spinoza\u2019s Political and Ethical Philosophy_,\nGlasgow, 1903.\n\n[83] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 17.\n\n[84] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 1.\n\n[85] _Will to Power_, vol. i, \u00a7 95.\n\n[86] Cf. Duff, _op. cit._, pref.: \u201cIt can be shown that Spinoza had no\ninterest in metaphysics for its own sake, while he was passionately\ninterested in moral and political problems. He was a metaphysician at\nall only in the sense that he was resolute in thinking out the ideas,\nprinciples, and categories which are interwoven with all our practical\nendeavor, and the proper understanding of which is the condition of\nhuman welfare.\u201d\n\n[87] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 7.\n\n[88] _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, v, 2.\n\n[89] _Ibid._, ch. 16.\n\n[90] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 58, schol.\n\n[91] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, i, 5.\n\n[92] _Ethics_, bk. i, appendix.\n\n[93] _Ibid._, bk. iv, prop. 18, schol.\n\n[94] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 3.\n\n[95] _Ibid._, cor.\n\n[96] _De Intellectus Emendatione._\n\n[97] _Ethics_, bk. iv, appendix, \u00a7 9.\n\n[98] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 10.\n\n[99] _Ibid._, ch. 19.\n\n[100] _Ibid._, ch. 8.\n\n[101] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 16.\n\n[102] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 18, schol.\n\n[103] _Ibid._\n\n[104] _Ibid._, bk. iv, prop. 24.\n\n[105] Bk. iv, def. 8.\n\n[106] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 6, \u00a7 1.\n\n[107] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 35, schol.\n\n[108] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 5, \u00a7 2.\n\n[109] _Ibid._, ch. 16.\n\n[110] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 37, schol. 2.\n\n[111] Contrast Plato: the state (_i.e._, the governing classes) is to\nthe lower classes as reason is to passion.\n\n[112] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 3, \u00a7 14.\n\n[113] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 40.\n\n[114] Ch. 20.\n\n[115] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 6, \u00a7 4.\n\n[116] _Tractatus Theologico-politicus_, ch. 6, \u00a7 4, ch. 7, \u00a7 29.\n\n[117] _Ethics_, bk. iv, prop. 35, cor. 1.\n\n[118] _Ibid._, cor. 2.\n\n[119] _Ibid._, prop. 18, schol.; also prop. 37. _Cf._ Whitman: \u201cBy God!\nI will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the\nsame terms.\u201d\n\n[120] Not that these ideas were original with Spinoza; they were the\ngeneral legacy of Renaissance political thought. But it was through the\nwritings of Spinoza that this legacy was transmitted to Rousseau. Cf.\nDuff, p. 319.\n\n[121] Professor Woodbridge: class-lectures.\n\n[122] Cf. Professor Dewey\u2019s _German Philosophy and Politics_, New York,\n1915.\n\n[123] F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche, _The Young Nietzsche_, London, 1912, p. 98.\n\n[124] _Ibid._, p. 152.\n\n[125] _Ibid._, p. 235.\n\n[126] _The Birth of Tragedy_, 1872.\n\n[127] _Thus Spake Zarathustra_, p. 129.\n\n[128] F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche, _The Lonely Nietzsche_, London, 1915, pp. 291,\n212, 77.\n\n[129] _Ibid._, p. 313.\n\n[130] _Ibid._, p. 181.\n\n[131] _Ibid._, p. 424.\n\n[132] _Ibid._, p. 297.\n\n[133] _Ibid._, p. 195.\n\n[134] Chronology of Nietzsche\u2019s chief works, with initials used in\nsubsequent references: _Thoughts Out of Season_ (\u201c_T. O. S._\u201d) (1873-6);\n_Human All Too Human_ (\u201c_H. H._\u201d) (1876-80); _Dawn of Day_ (\u201c_D. D._\u201d)\n(1881); _Joyful Wisdom_ (\u201c_J. W._\u201d) (1882); _Thus Spake Zarathustra_\n(\u201c_Z._\u201d) (1883-4); _Beyond Good and Evil_ (\u201c_B. G. E._\u201d) (1886);\n_Genealogy of Morals_ (\u201c_G. M._\u201d) (1887); _Twilight of the Idols_\n(\u201c_T.I._\u201d) (1888); _Antichrist_ (\u201c_Antich._\u201d); _Ecce Homo_ (\u201c_E. H._\u201d),\nand _Will to Power_ (\u201c_W. P._\u201d) (1889).\n\n[135] _Lonely N._, p. 104.\n\n[136] _Ibid._, p. 195.\n\n[137] _E. H._, p. 106.\n\n[138] _J. W._, \u00a7 371.\n\n[139] _E. H._, p. 141.\n\n[140] _Ibid._, pp. 131, 81.\n\n[141] _T. I._, pref.\n\n[142] _W. P._, \u00a7 400 (all references to _W. P._ will be by sections).\n\n[143] _J. W._, \u00a7 345 (all references to _J. W._ by section unless\notherwise stated).\n\n[144] _W. P._, 276.\n\n[145] _Ibid._, 345.\n\n[146] _G. M._, p. 46.\n\n[147] _Z._, p. 166.\n\n[148] _W. P._, 721; _T. I._, p. 89.\n\n[149] _B. G. E._, \u00a7 202.\n\n[150] _J. W._, 358; _Antich._, \u00a7 361.\n\n[151] _W. P._, 284.\n\n[152] _Antich._, \u00a7 46.\n\n[153] _Ibid._, \u00a7 43.\n\n[154] _W. P._, 464, 861, 748, 752, 686.\n\n[155] _Ibid._, 885, 281.\n\n[156] _H. H._, \u00a7\u00a7 428, 472.\n\n[157] _T. I._, p. 96.\n\n[158] _G. M._, p. 225; written in 1887.\n\n[159] _W. P._, 861, 891.\n\n[160] _B. G. E._, p. 233.\n\n[161] _W. P._, 753.\n\n[162] _G. M._, p. 223.\n\n[163] _B. G. E._, p. 189.\n\n[164] _E. H._, p. 65.\n\n[165] _B. G. E._, pp. 96, 189.\n\n[166] _Z._, p. 89.\n\n[167] _J. W._, 363.\n\n[168] _B. G. E._, pp. 188, 184, 189.\n\n[169] _W. P._, 339, 86.\n\n[170] _T. I._, p. 86.\n\n[171] _J. W._, 377; _W. P._, 350, 315, 373.\n\n[172] _H. H._, \u00a7 451.\n\n[173] _W. P._, 761.\n\n[174] _Ibid._, 51, 125.\n\n[175] _B. G. E._, p. 226.\n\n[176] _W. P._, 856.\n\n[177] _G. M._, p. 44.\n\n[178] _J. W._, 356.\n\n[179] _Lonely N._, p. 83.\n\n[180] _D. D._, \u00a7 206.\n\n[181] _W. P._, 125.\n\n[182] _Wanderer and His Shadow_, \u00a7 292 (_H. H._, ii, p. 343).\n\n[183] _H. H._, i, \u00a7 473.\n\n[184] _D. D._, \u00a7 179.\n\n[185] _Z._, p. 62.\n\n[186] _W. P._, 329.\n\n[187] _T. I._, p. 86; _E. H._, p. 66; _Antich._, \u00a7 57.\n\n[188] _W. P._, 859.\n\n[189] _G. M._, p. 91.\n\n[190] _Z._, p. 159.\n\n[191] _T. I._, p. 94.\n\n[192] _H. H._, \u00a7 463.\n\n[193] _W. P._, 750, 874, 65, 50.\n\n[194] _B. G. E._, p. 173; _W. P._, 823, 851, 871, 11.\n\n[195] _W. P._, 397, 12, 736.\n\n[196] _E. H._, p. 136.\n\n[197] _G. M._, p. 10.\n\n[198] _T. O. S._, i, p. 78.\n\n[199] _Antich._, \u00a7 17.\n\n[200] _J. W._, 347.\n\n[201] _Antich._, \u00a7 17; _D. D._, \u00a7 542.\n\n[202] _W. P._, 585.\n\n[203] _G. M._, p. 202.\n\n[204] _W. P._, 585.\n\n[205] _Ibid._, 600; _D. D._, \u00a7 424.\n\n[206] _J. W._, 366.\n\n[207] _D. D._, \u00a7 41.\n\n[208] _W. P._, 461.\n\n[209] _B. G. E._, p. 136.\n\n[210] _W. P._, \u00a7 8.\n\n[211] _J. W._, p. 7.\n\n[212] _W. P._, \u00a7 351.\n\n[213] _Ibid._, \u00a7 12.\n\n[214] _Ibid._, \u00a7 43.\n\n[215] _Antich._, \u00a7 1.\n\n[216] _D. D._, \u00a7 163.\n\n[217] _W. P._, 266.\n\n[218] _Ibid._, 20.\n\n[219] _Ibid._, 585.\n\n[220] _Z._, pp. 193, 315; _E. H._, pp. 71, 28.\n\n[221] _J. W._, \u00a7 324.\n\n[222] _Ibid._, p. 6.\n\n[223] _W. P._, 120, 1029; _Antich._, \u00a7 55; _E. H._, pp. 72, 70; _Birth\nof Tragedy_, _passim_.\n\n[224] _W. P._, 255, 258, 710, 462, 392, 305.\n\n[225] _Antich._, \u00a7 2.\n\n[226] _W. P._, 918.\n\n[227] _T. O. S._, p. 76.\n\n[228] _G. M._, p. 45.\n\n[229] _J. W._, \u00a7 4.\n\n[230] _Antich._, \u00a7 14.\n\n[231] _B. G. E._, p. 162.\n\n[232] _W. P._, 440, 289.\n\n[233] _E. H._, p. 10.\n\n[234] _W. P._, 255, 774, 775; _D. D._, \u00a7 215; _J. W._, 13.\n\n[235] _D. D._, \u00a7 224.\n\n[236] _W. P._, 376, 776.\n\n[237] _W. P._, 650, 657, 685, 696, 704; _Antich._, \u00a7 2.\n\n[238] _Ibid._, 681, 688, 689.\n\n[239] _T. I._, p. 71; _W. P._, 649.\n\n[240] _W. P._, 685.\n\n[241] _Z._, p. 398.\n\n[242] _W. P._, 880, 716, 343, 423, 291.\n\n[243] _E. H._, p. 2; _D. D._, \u00a7 49; _Lonely N._, p. 17; _W. P._, 269,\n90, 766, 660.\n\n[244] _E. H._, p. 138; _T. O. S._, ii, p. 66; _Z._, p. 222; _W. P._,\n934, 944; _J. W._, p. 8; _T. I._, \u00a7 40; _B. G. E._, p. 138.\n\n[245] _Z._, pp. 199, 103, 186; _W. P._, 792.\n\n[246] _W. P._, 881, 870, 918; _B. G. E._, p. 154; _E. H._, p. 13; _D.\nD._, \u00a7 552.\n\n[247] _W. P._, 967, 366-7, 349; _Z._, p. 141; _Antich._, \u00a7 55; _B. G.\nE._, pp. 54, 57.\n\n[248] _W. P._, 969, 371, 356, 926, 946, 26; _Z._, p. 430; _E. H._, pp.\n23, 19, 128; _G. M._, p. 85; _D. D._, \u00a7 60.\n\n[249] _W. P._, 866; _T. O. S._, ii, p. 154; _Z._, pp. 8, 104; _T. I._,\np. 269.\n\n[250] _W. P._, 804, 732-3; _Z._, pp. 94-6; _D. D._, \u00a7 150-1.\n\n[251] _H. H._, \u00a7 242; _W. P._, 912; _B. G. E._, p. 129; _D. D._, \u00a7 194;\n\u201cSchopenhauer as Educator\u201d (in _T. O. S._), _passim_.\n\n[252] _T. O. S._, ii, pp. 84, 28; _W. P._, 369, 965; _E. H._, p. 135.\n\n[253] _Z._, pp. 84, 64; _H. H._, \u00a7 457; _G. M._, 156-7; _B. G. E._, \u00a7\u00a7\n61-2; _W. P._, 373, 901, 132.\n\n[254] _H. H._, \u00a7 439; _W. P._, 660; _Antich._, \u00a7 57; _Lonely N._, p. 7.\n\n[255] _G. M._, pp. 160-1; _W. P._, 287, 854, 864.\n\n[256] _W. P._, 886, 926.\n\n[257] _T. I._, p. 96; _W. P._, 957; _B. G. E._, p. 239; _T. O. S._, ii,\np. 39.\n\n[258] _W. P._, 464, 960; _B. G. E._, p. 225.\n\n[259] _W. P._, 44, 684, 909; _G. M._, p. 91.\n\n[260] _D. D._, \u00a7\u00a7 165, 168; _W. P._, 1052; _B. G. E._, p. 69; _J. W._,\np. 10.\n\n[261] _T. I._, pp. 91, 110; _J. W._, \u00a7 362; _G. M._, pp. 56, 226; _W.\nP._, 975, 877; _B. G. E._, pp. 201, 53.\n\n[262] _W. P._, 109-34, 747.\n\n[263] _J. W._, 293.\n\n[264] _T. I._, p. 260; _G. M._, p. 58; _B. G. E._, p. 151; _Lonely N._,\np. 221.\n\n[265] _W. P._, 127, 728-9; _G. M._, pp. 88, 226; _J. W._, 283; _Z._, p.\n60; _Lonely N._, p. 15.\n\n[266] _B. G. E._, p. 94; _W. P._, 717, 748; _G. M._, pp. 223-4.\n\n[267] _W. P._, 712.\n\n[268] _Ibid._, 1053.\n\n[269] _J. W._, p. 5.\n\n[270] _E. H._, p. 53.\n\n[271] _W. P._, 544, with footnote quoting Napoleon: \u201cAn almost\ninstinctive belief with me is that all strong men lie when they speak,\nand much more so when they write.\u201d\n\n[272] \u201cFar too long a slave and a tyrant have been hidden in woman: ...\nshe is not yet capable of friendship.\u201d--_Z._, p. 75.\n\n[273] Hobhouse, _Social Evolution and Political Theory_, New York, 1911,\np. 25.\n\n[274] There is something verging on a recognition of this in _W. P._,\n403-4.\n\n[275] _B. G. E._, p. 173.\n\n[276] _B. G. E._, p. 25.\n\n[277] _G. M._, p. 6.\n\n[278] _Z._, p. 303.\n\n[279] _Z._, p. 107.\n\n[280] _T. I._, p. 2.\n\n[281] _Z._, p. 10.\n\n[282] _J. W._, 312.\n\n[283] _Ibid._, p. 69; referring to 1879.\n\n[284] _Ibid._, 312.\n\n[285] _Lonely N._, p. 206.\n\n[286] _Ibid._, p. 218.\n\n[287] _Lonely N._, p. 289.\n\n[288] _Ibid._, p. 391.\n\n[289] _Ibid._, p. 65.\n\n[290] _Ibid._, p. 157.\n\n[291] Mrs. Gallichan, _The Truth about Woman_, New York, 1914, p. 281.\n\n[292] Jos. McCabe, _Tyranny of Shams_, London, 1916, p. 171.\n\n[293] Dr. Drysdale, _The Small Family System_, London, 1915.\n\n[294] Winston Churchill in Parliament, quoted by Schoonmaker, The\n_World-War and Beyond_, New York, 1915, p. 95.\n\n[295] Carver, _Essays in Social Justice_, New York, 1915, p. 261.\n\n[296] The \u201cexperimental attitude ... substitutes detailed analyses for\nwholesale assertions, specific inquiries for temperamental convictions,\nsmall facts for opinions whose size is in precise ratio to their\nvagueness. It is within the social sciences, in morals, politics,\nand education, that thinking still goes on by large antitheses, by\ntheoretical oppositions of order and freedom, individualism and\nsocialism, culture and utility, spontaneity and discipline, actuality\nand tradition. The field of the physical sciences was once occupied\nby similar \u2018total\u2019 views, whose emotional appeal was inversely as\ntheir intellectual clarity. But with the advance of the experimental\nmethod, the question has ceased to be which one of two rival claimants\nhas a right to the field. It has become a question of clearing up a\nconfused subject matter by attacking it bit by bit. I do not know\na case where the final result was anything like victory for one or\nanother among the pre\u00ebxperimental notions. All of them disappeared\nbecause they became increasingly irrelevant to the situation discovered,\nand with their detected irrelevance they became unmeaning and\nuninteresting.\u201d--Professor John Dewey, _New Republic_, Feb. 3, 1917.\n\n[297] All this has been indicated--with, however, too little emphasis\non the reconstructive function of intelligence--by Bertrand Russell in\n_Principles of Social Reconstruction_ (London, 1916); and more popularly\nby Max Eastman in _Understanding Germany_ (New York, 1916); it has been\nput very briefly again and again by Professor Dewey,--_e.g._, in an\nessay on \u201cProgress\u201d in the _International Journal of Ethics_, April,\n1916.\n\n[298] This is not a defence of mechanism or materialism; it is a plea\nfor a better perspective in philosophy.\n\n[299] It would be invidious to name the exceptions which one is\nglad to remember here; but it is in place to say that the practical\narrest of Bertrand Russell is a sign of resuscitation on the part\nof philosophy,--a sign for which all lovers of philosophy should be\ngrateful. When philosophers are once more feared, philosophy will once\nmore be respected.\n\n[300] _American Journal of Sociology_, March, 1905, p. 645.\n\n[301] Ross, _Social Control_, New York, 1906, p. 9.\n\n[302] _Will to Power_, \u00a7 469.\n\n[303] Barker, _Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle_, p. 80.\n\n[304] Perhaps this million could be reached more surely and economically\nthrough direct pamphlet-publication by the Society.\n\n[305] Some students--_e.g._, Joseph McCabe, _The Tyranny of Shams_,\nLondon, 1916, p. 248--are so impressed with the dangers lying in our\nvast production of written trash that they favor restricting the\ncirculation of cheap fiction in our public libraries. But what we\nhave to do is not to prohibit the evil but to encourage the good, to\ngive positive stimulus rather than negative prohibition. People hate\ncompulsion, but they grope for guidance.\n\n[306] _E.g._, by G. Lowes Dickinson, _Justice and Liberty_, p. 133.\n\n[307] Cf. Russell, _Principles of Social Reconstruction_, p. 236: \u201cThe\nsupreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be\nto promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and\ndesires that center round possession.\u201d\n\n[308] _Reason in Common Sense_, New York, 1911, p. 96.\n\n[309] Quoted by Walter Weyl, _The New Democracy_, p. 136.\n\n[310] Ross, _Social Control_, New York, 1906, p. 103.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTypographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:\n\nseee things clearly=> see things clearly {pg 100}\n\nwhosesale assertions=> wholesale assertions {footnote pg 211}","title":"Philosophy and the Social Problem","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":64973}