And more; why should not the stimulation be for the producers as well as for the consumers? Why should not some kind of award be made, say every six months, to the authors adjudged best in their lines by their qualified contemporaries? Why should such a book asJean ChristopheorThe Brothers Karamazovgo unheralded except in fragmentary individual ways? Why not reward such productions with a substantial prize?—or, if that be impossible, by some presentation of certificate? Even a “scrap of paper” would go a long way to stimulate the writer and guide the reader. But why should not a money reward be possible? If rich men will pay thousands upon thousands for the (perhaps) original works of dead artists, why should they not turn their wealth into spiritual gold by helping the often impecunious writers of the living day? It is a convenient error to believe that financial aid would detract from the independence of the creator: it would, did it come from men rewarding on the basis of their own judgment; it would not if the judgment of the world’s men of letters should be taken as criterion. And perhaps fewer Chattertons and Davidsons would mar the history of literature and art.
This direction of attention to what is best and greatest in the work of our age is a matter of deeper moment than superficial thought can grasp. If, by some such method, the meaning of “success” could be freed from monetary implication and attached rather to excellence in art and science, the change would have almost inestimably far-reaching results. Men worship money, as has often been pointed out,[306]not for its own sake, nor for the material good it brings,but for the prestige of success that goes with its “conspicuous consumption”; let the artist find more appreciation for his ability than the captain of industry finds for his, and there will be a great release of energy from economic exploitation to creative work in science, literature, and art. A large part of the stimuli that prompt men to exploit their fellows will be gone; and that richest of all incentives—social esteem—will go to produce men eager to contribute to the general power and happiness of the community.[307]
The art impulse, as is generally believed, is a diversion of sex energy. An organism is essentially not a food-getting but a reproductive mechanism; the food-getting is a contributory incident in the reproduction. As development proceeds the period of pregnancy and adolescence increases, more of the offspring survive to maturity, large broods, litters, or families become unnecessary, and more and more of the energy that was sexual slides over into originally secondary pursuits, like play and art. At the same time there is a gradual diminution in pugnacity (which was another factor in the drama of reproduction), and rivalry in games and arts encroaches more and more on the emotional field once monopolized by strife for mates and food.The game—a sort of Hegelian synthesis of hostility and sociability—takes more and more the place of war, and artistic creation increasingly replaces reproduction.
If all this is anything more than theoretic skating over thin sheets of fact, it means that one “way out” from our social perplexities lies in the provision of stronger stimulus to creation and recreation, art and games. It is a serious part of the social planner’s work to find some way of nourishing the art impulse wherever it appears, and drawing it on by arranging rewards for its productions. And again we shall have to understand that play is an important matter in a nation’s life; that one of the best signs for the future of America is the prevalence of healthy athleticism; and that an attempt to widen these sport activities to greater intersectional and international scope than they have yet attained will get at some of the roots of international pugnacity. A wise government would be almost as interested in the people’s games as in their schools, and would spend millions in making rivalry absorb the dangerous energy of pugnacity. Olympic games should not be Olympic games, occurring only with Olympiads; not a month should pass but great athletes, selected by eliminative tests from every part of every country, should meet, now here, now there, to match brawn and wits in the friendly enmity of games. Let men know one another through games, and they will not forslight reasons pass from sportsmanship to that competitive destruction and deceit which our political Barnums call “the defence of our national honor.”
THISdiversion of the sexual instinct into art and games (a prophylactic which has long since been applied to individuals, and awaits application to groups) must begin in the early days of personal development; so that our Society for Social Research would, if it were to take on this task, find itself inextricably mixed up with the vast problem of educational method and aim.
Here more than anywhere one hears the call for enlightenment and sees the need for clarification. Here is an abundance of’ismsand a dearth of knowledge. Most teachers use methods which they themselves consider antiquated, and teach subjects which they will admit not one in a hundred of their pupils will ever need to know. Curious lessons in ethics are administered, which are seldom practised in the classroom, and make initiative children come to believe that commandment-breaking is heroic. Boys and girls bursting with vitality and the splendid exuberance of youth are cramped for hours into set positions, while by a sort of water-cure process knowledge is pumped into them from books duller than a doctor’s dissertation in philosophy.And so forth: the indictment against our schools has been drawn up a thousand times and in a thousand ways, and needs no reënforcement here. But though we have indicted we have not made any systematic attempt to find just what is wrong, and how, and where; and what may be done to remedy the evil. Experiments have been made, but their bearings and results have been very imperfectly recorded.
Suppose now that our Society for Social Research should appoint a great Committee on Education to hire expert investigators and make a thorough attempt to clarify the issues in education. Here the function of philosophy should be clear; for the educator touches at almost every point those problems of values, individual and social, which are the special hunting-ground of the philosopher. The importance of psychology here is recognized, but the importance of biology and pathology has not been seen in fit perspective. Why should not a special group of men be set aside for years, if necessary, to study the applicability of the several sciences to education? Why should not all scientific knowledge, so far as it touches human nature, be focused on the semi-darkness in which the educator works?
Two special problems in this field invite research. One concerns the effect, on national character and capacity, of a system of education controlled by the government. The point was made by Spinoza, as may be remembered, that agovernment will, if it controls the schools, aim to restrain rather than to develop the energies of men. Kant remarked the same difficulty. The function of education in the eyes of a dominant class is to make men able to do skilled work but unable to do original thinking (for all original thinking begins with destruction); the function of education in the eyes of a government is to teach men that eleventh commandment which God forgot to give to Moses: thou shalt love thy country right or wrong. All this, of course, requires some marvellous prestidigitation of the truth, as school text-books of national history show. The ignorant, it seems, are the necessary ballast in the ship of state.
The alternative to such schools seems to be a return to private education, with the rich man’s son getting even more of a start on the poor boy than he gets now. Is there atertium quidhere? Perhaps this is one point which a resolute effort to get the facts would clarify. What does such governmentally-regulated education do to the forces of personal difference and initiative? Will men and women educated in such a way produce their maximum in art and thought and industry? Or will they be automata, always waiting for a push? What different results would come if the nationally-owned schools were to confine their work absolutely to statements of fact, presentations of science, and were to leave “character-moulding” and lessons in ethics to private personsor institutions? Then at least each parent might corrupt his own child in his own pet way; and there might be a greater number of children who would not be corrupted at all.
Another problem which might be advanced towards a solution by a little light is that of giving higher education to those who want it but are too poor to pay. There are certain studies, called above the social disciplines, which help a man not so much to raise himself out of his class and become a snob, as to get a better understanding of himself and his fellow-men. Since mutual understanding is a hardly exaggerable social good, why should not a way be found to provide for all who wish it evening instruction in history, sociology, economics, psychology, biology, philosophy, and similar fields of knowledge? Every added citizen who has received instruction in these matters is a new asset to the community; he will vote with more intelligence, he will work better in coöperation, he will be less subject to undulations of social mania, he will be a hint to all office-seekers to put their usual nonsense on the shelf. Perhaps by this medium too our Society would spread its reports and widen its influence. Imagine a nation of people instructed in these sciences: with such a people civilization would begin.
And then again, our busy-body Society would turn its research light on the universities, and tell them a thing or two of what the light wouldshow. It would betray the lack of coördination among the various sciences,—the department of psychology, for example, never coming to so much as speaking terms with the department of economics; it would call for an extension, perhaps, of the now infrequent seminars and conferences between departments whose edges overlap, or which shed light on a common field. It would invite the university to give less of its time to raking over the past, and help it to orient itself toward the future; it would suggest to every university that it provide an open forum for the responsible expression of all shades of opinion; it would, in general, call for a better organization of science as part of the organization of intelligence; it would remind the universities that they are more vital even than governments; and it might perhaps succeed in getting engraved on the gates of every institution of learning the words of Thomas Hobbes: “Seeing the universities are the foundation of civil and moral doctrine, from whence the preachers and the gentry, drawing such water as they find, use to sprinkle the same upon the people, there ought certainly to be great care taken to have it pure.”
ANDnow we stop for objections.
“This plan is a hare-brained scheme for a new priesthood and a new aristocracy. It would put a group of college professors and graduates into a position where they could do almost as they please. You think you avoid this by telling the gentlemen that they must limit themselves to the statement of fact; but if you knew the arts of journalism you would not make so naïve a distinction between airing opinions and stating facts. When a man buys up a newspaper what he wants to do is not so much to control the editorials as to ‘edit’ the news,—that is, to select the facts which shall get into print. It’s wonderful what lies you can spread without telling lies. For example, if you want to hurt a public man, you quote all his foolish speeches and ignore his wise ones; you put his mistakes into head-lines and hide his achievements in a corner. I will guarantee to prove anything I like, or anything I don’tlike, just by stating facts. So with your Society for Social Research; it would become a great political, rather than an educational, organization; it would almost unconsciously select its information to suit its hobbies. Why, the thing is psychologically impossible. If you want something to be true you will be half blind and half deaf to anything that obstructs your desire; that is the way we’re made. And even if nature did not attend to this, money would: as soon as your society exercised real power on public opinion it would be bought up, in a gentle, sleight-o’hand way, by some economic group; a few of the more influential members of the Society would be ‘approached,’ some ‘present’ would be made, and justice would have another force to contend with. No; your Society won’t do.”
Well, let us see. Here you have a body of 5000 men; rather a goodly number for even an American millionaire to purchase. They wish to investigate, say, the problem of birth-control; what do they do? They vote, without nominations, for six of their number to manage the investigation; the six men receiving the highest vote investigate and write out a report. Now if any report were published which misstated facts, or omitted important items, the fault would at once diminish the repute and influence of the Society. Let merely the suspicion get about that these reports are unfair, and theSociety would begin to decay. That is, the power of the Society would grow with its fairness and fall with its unfairness,—a very happy arrangement. The fear of this fall in influence would be the best incentive to impartial reports. Every committee would feel that the future of the Society depended on the fairness of its own report; and every man on every committee would hesitate before making himself responsible for the disrepute of the Society; he would feel himself on trial before his fellow-members, and would halt himself in the natural slide into partiality.
Not that he would always succeed; men are men. But it is reasonable to expect that men working under these conditions would be considerably more impartial than the average newspaper. Again, who is as impartial as the scientist? One cannot do much in science without a stern control of the personal equation; to describe protozoa, for example, as one would like them to be, is no very clever way of attaining repute in protozoölogy. This is not so true in the social as in the physical sciences, though even in this new field scientific fairness and accuracy are rapidly increasing. One can get more reliable and impartial reports of an industrial situation,—e.g., of the Colorado troubles,—from the scientific investigators than from either side to the controversy. The very deficiencies of the student type—incapacity for decisions or for effectivemethods in action—involve a compensatory grasp of understanding and impartiality of attitude. Our best guarantee against dishonesty is not virtue but intelligence, and our Society is supposed to be a sort of distilled intelligence.
That the scheme savors of aristocracy is not to its discredit. We need aristocracy, in the sense of better methods for giving weight to superior brains; we need a touch of Plato in our democracy. After all, the essence of the plan, as we have said, is the democratization of Plato and Nietzsche and Carlyle; the intelligent man gets more political power, but only through the mechanism of democracy. His greater power comes not by his greater freedom to do what he pleases despite the majority, but by improved facilities for enlightening and converting the majority. Democracy, ideally, means only that the aristocracy is periodically elected and renewed; and this is a plan whereby the aristocrats—the really best—shall be more clearly seen to be so. Furthermore, the plan avoids the great defect of Plato’s scheme,—that philosophers are not fitted for executive and administrative work, that those skilled to see are very seldom also able to do. Here the philosopher, the man who gets at the truth, rules, but only indirectly, and without the burdens of office and execution. And indeed it is not the philosopher who rules, but truth. The liberator is made king.
“You have anticipated my objection, and cleverly twisted it into an argument. But that would be too facile an escape; you must face more squarely the fact that your professors are mere intellectualist highbrows, incapable of understanding the real issues involved in our social war, and even more incapable of suggesting practical ways out. The more you look the more you see; the more you see, the less you do. You think that reflection leaves you peace of mind; it doesn’t, it leaves your mind in pieces. The intellectual is like Dr. Buridan’s ass: he is so careful to stand in the middle that he never gives a word of practical advice, for fear that he will compromise himself and fracture a syllogism. The trouble is that we think too much, not too little; we make thinking a substitute for action. Really, as Rousseau argued, thinking is unnatural; what the world needs is men who can make up their minds and then march on, almost in blinders, to a goal. We know enough, we know too much; and surely we have a plethora of investigating committees. A committee is just a scientific way of doing nothing. Your plan would flood the country with committees and leave courage buried under facts. You should call your organization a Society for Talky-talk.”
The only flaw in this argument is that it does not touch the proposal. What is suggested is not that the Society take action or make programmes, much less execute them; we ask our professors merely to do for a larger public, and more thoroughly and systematically, what we are glad to have them do for a small number of us in college and university. Action isex hypothesileft to others; the function of the researcher is quite simply to look and tell us what he sees. That he is a highbrow, an intellectual, and even a Buridan’s ass, does not interfere with his seeing; nobody ever argued that Buridan’s ass was blind.
We forget that seeing is itself an art. Some of us have specialized in the art, and have naturally failed to develop cleverness in practical affairs. But that does not mean that our special talent cannot be used by the community, any more than Sir Oliver Lodge’s fondness for celestial exploration makes us reject his work on electricity. Thinking is itself a form of action, and not the easiest nor the least effective. It is true that “if you reflect too much you will never accomplish anything,” but if you reflect too little you will accomplish about as much. We make headway only by the head way. Action without forethought tends to follow a straight line; but in life the straight line is often the longest distance between two points, because, as Leonardo said, the straightest line offers the greatest resistance.Thought is roundabout, and loves flank attacks. The man of action rushes into play courageously, succeeds now, fails then; and sooner or later wishes—if he lives to wish—that he could think more. The increasing dependence of industry on scientific research, and of politics on expert investigators, shows how the world is coming to value the man whose specialty is seeing. Faith in intellect, as Santayana says, “is the only faith yet sanctioned by its fruit.”[308]The two most important men in America just now are, or have been, college professors. To speak still more boldly: the greatest single human source of good in our generation is the “intellectual” researcher and professor. The man to be feared above all others is the man who can see.
“But your whole scheme shows a very amateur knowledge of human nature. You seem to think you can get people interested in fact. You can’t; fact is too much against their interest. If the facts favor their wish, they are interested; if not, they forget them. The hardest thing in the world is to listen to truth that threatens to frustrate desire. That is why people won’t listen to your reports, unless you tell them what they want to hear. They will—and perhapsexcusably—prefer the bioscope to your embalmed statistics; just as they will prefer to readThe Family Heraldrather than the subtleties recommended by the Mutual Admiration Society which you would make out of our men of letters. You can investigate till you are blue in the face, and all you will get out of it won’t be worth the postage stamps you use. Public opinion doesn’t follow fact, it follows desire; people don’t vote for a man because he is supported by ‘truth’ but because he promises to do something they like. And the man who makes the biggest promises to the biggest men will get office ninety-nine times out of a hundred, no matter what the facts are. What counts is not truth but money.”
This is the basic difficulty. Is it worth while to spread information? Think how much information is spread every week in Europe and America;—the world remaining the while as “wicked” as it probably ever was. Public opinion is still, it seems, as Sir Robert Peel described it to be: “a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs,”[309]—particularly the paragraphs. Once we thought that the printing-press was the beginning of democracy, that Gutenberg had enfranchised the world. Now it appears that print and plutocracy get along very well together. Nevertheless the hope of the weaklies in numbers and in information; in democracy and in print. “The remedy for the abuses of public opinion is not to discredit it but to instruct it.”[310]The cure for misstatements is better statements. If the newspapers are used to spread falsehood that is no reason why newspapers should not be used to spread truth. After all, the spread of information has done many things,—killed dogma, sterilized many marriages, and even prevented wars; and there is no reason why a further spread may not do more valuable things than any yet done. It has been said, so often that we are apt to admit it just to avoid its repetition, that discussion effects nothing. But indeed nothing else effects anything. Whatever is done without information and discussion is soon undone, must be soon undone; all that bears time is that which survives the test of thought. All problems are at last problems in information: to find out just how things stand is the only finally effective way of getting at anything.
As to the limited number of persons who would be reached by the reports, let us not ask too much. There is no pretence here that the great mass of the people would be reached; no doubt these would go on living what Wells calls the “normal social life.” But these people do not count for constructive purposes; they divide about evenly in every election. The men whodo count—the local leaders, the clergymen, the lecturers, the teachers, the union officials, the newspaper men, the “agitators,” the arch-rebels and the arch-Tories,—all these men will be reached; and the information given will strengthen some and weaken others, and so play its effective part in the drama of social change. Each one of these men will be a center for the further distribution of information. Imagine a new monthly with a country-wide circulation of one millionvoters(that is, a general circulation of five million); would such a periodical have power?—would not millions be given to control it? Well, here we have more power, because not so concentrated in a few editorial hands, not so easily purchaseable, and based on better intellect and repute. The money that would be paid at any time for the control of a periodical of such influence would finance our Society for many years.
It is impossible to believe that such a spread of knowledge as is here suggested would do nothing to elevate the moral and political life of the country. Consider the increased scrupulousness with which a Congressman would vote if he knew that at the next election his record would be published in cold print in a hundred newspapers, over the name of the Society for Social Research. Consider the effect, on Congressional appropriations for public buildings, of a plain statement of the population and size of the towns which require such colossal edifices for their mail. Publicity,it has been said, is the only cure for bad motives. Consider the stimulus which such reports would give to political discussion everywhere. Hardly a dispute occurs which is not based upon insufficient acquaintance with the facts; here would be information up to date, ready to give the light which dispels the heat. Men would turn to these reports all the more willingly because the reports were pledged to confine themselves to fact. Men would find here no attacks, no argument, no theory or creed; it would be refreshing, in some ways, to bathe the mind, hot with contention, in these cool streams of fact, and to emerge cleansed of error and filled with the vitality of truth. We have spent so much time attacking what we hate that we have not stopped to tell people what we like; if we would only affirm more and deny less there would be less of cross-purpose in the world. And information is affirmation. It would not open the wounds of controversy so much as offer points of contact; and in the light of fact, enemies might see that their good lay for the most part on a common road. If you want to change a foe into a friend (or, some cynic will say, a friend into a foe), give him information.
“Well; suppose you are right. Suppose information, as you say, is king. How are you goingto do it? Do you really think you will get some benevolent millionaire to finance you? And will you, like Fourier, wait in your room every day at noon for the man who will turn your dream into a fact?”
What we tend to forget about rich men is that besides being rich they are men. There are a surprising number of them—particularly those who have inherited money—who are eager to return to the community the larger part of their wealth, if only they could be shown a way of doing it which would mean more than a change of pockets. Merely to give to charity is, in Aristotle’s phrase, to pour water into a leaking cask. What such men want is a way of increasing intelligence; they know from hard experience that in the end intelligence is the quality to be desired and produced. They have spent millions, perhaps billions, on education; and this plan of ours is a plan for education. If it is what it purports to be, some one of these men will offer to finance it.
And not only one. Let the beginnings of our Society be sober and efficient, let its first investigations be thorough and intelligent, let its initial reports be impartial, succinct, illuminating and simple, and further help will come almost unasked. After a year of honest and capable work our Society would find itself supported by rather a group of men than by one man; it might conceivablyfind itself helped by the state, at the behest of the citizens. What would prevent a candidate for governor from declaring his intention that should he be elected he would secure an annual appropriation for our Society?—and why should not the voters be attracted by such a declaration? Why should not the voters demand such a declaration?
Nor need we fear that a Society so helped by the rich man and the state would turn into but one more instrumentality of obstructionism. Not that such an organization of intelligence would be “radical”: the words “radical” and “conservative” have become but instruments of calumny, and truth slips between them. But in the basic sense of the word our Society would be extremely radical; for there is nothing so radical, so revolutionary, as just to tell the truth, to say what it is you see. That surely is to go to the radix of the thing. And truth has this advantage, that it is discriminately revolutionary: there are some things old to which truth is no enemy, just as there are some things new which will melt in the glare of fact. Let the fact say.
This is the final faith: that truth will make us free, so far as we can ever be free. Let the truth be published to the world, and men separated in the dark will see one another, and one another’s purposes, more clearly, and with saner understanding than before. The most disastrous thing you can do to an evil is to describe it. Lettruth be told, and the parasite will lose his strength through shame, and meanness will hide its face. Only let information be given to all and freely, and it will be a cleansing of our national blood; enmity will yield to open and honest opposition, where it will not indeed become coöperation. All we need is to see better. Let there be light.
“One more objection before you take the money. And that is: What on earth has all this to do with philosophy? I can understand that to have economists on your investigating committees, and biologists, and psychologists, and historians, would be sensible; but what could a philosopher do? These are matters for social science, not for metaphysics. Leave the philosophers out and some of us may take your scheme seriously.”
It is a good objection, if only because it shows again the necessity for a new kind of philosopher. Merely to make such an objection is to reënforce the indictment brought above against the philosopher as he is. But what of the philosopher as he might be?
What might the philosopher be?
Well, first of all, he would be a living man, and not an annotator of the past. He would have grown freely, his initial spark of divine fire unquenchedby scholastic inflexibilities of discipline and study. He would have imbibed no sermons, but his splendid curiosity would have found food and encouragement from his teachers. He would have lived in and learned to love the country and the city; he would be at home in the ploughed fields as well as in the centres of learning; he would like the cleansing solitude of the woods and yet too the invigorating bustle of the city streets. He would be brought up on Plato and Thucydides, Leonardo and Michelangelo, Bacon and Montaigne; he would study the civilization of Greece and that of the Renaissance on all sides, joining the history of politics, economics, and institutions with that of science, literature, and philosophy; and yet he would find time to study his own age thoroughly. He would be interested in life, and full of it; he would jump into campaigns, add his influence carefully to movements he thought good, and help make the times live up more nearly to their possibilities. He would not shut himself up forever in laboratories, libraries, and lecture rooms; he would live more widely than that. He would be of the earth earthly, of the world worldly. He would not talk of ideals in the abstract and do nothing for them in the concrete; above all else in the world he would abhor the kind of talk that is a refuge from the venture and responsibility of action. He would not only love wisdom, he would live it.
But we must not make our ideal philosopher too repulsively perfect. Let us agree at least to this, that a man who should know the social disciplines, and not merely one science, would be of help in some such business as we have been proposing; and if we suppose that he has not only knowledge but wisdom, that his acquaintance with the facts of science is matched by his knowledge of life, that through fellowship with genius in Greece and Florence he has acquired a fund of wisdom which needs but the nourishment of living to grow richer from day to day,—then we are on the way to seeing that this is the sort of man our Society would need above all other sorts of men. Such philosophers would be worthy to guide research and direct the enlightenment of the world; such philosophers might be to their generation what Socrates and Plato were to their generations and Francis Bacon to his; such a philosophy, in Nietzsche’s words, might rule!
This is the chance of philosophy. It may linger further in that calm death of social ineffectiveness in which we see it sinking; or it may catch the hands of the few philosophers who insist on focusing thought on life, and so regain the position which it alone is fitted to fill. Unless that position is filled, and properly, all the life of the world is zigzag and fruitless,—what we have called the logic-chopping life; and unless that position is filled philosophy too is logic-chopping,zigzag, and fruitless, and turns away from life men whom life most sorely needs. There are some among us, even some philosophers among us, who are eager to lead the way out of bickering into discussion, out of criticism into construction, out of books into life. We must keep a keen eye for such men, and their beginnings; and we must strengthen them with our little help. Philosophy is too divinely splendid a thing to be kept from the most divine of things,—creation. Some of us love it as the very breath of our lives; it is our vital medium, without which life would be less than vegetation; and we will not rest so long as the namephilosophermeans anything less aspiring and inspiring than it did with Plato. Science flourishes and philosophy languishes, because science is honest and philosophy sycophantic, because science touches life and helps it, while philosophy shrinks fearfully and helplessly away. If philosophy is to live again, it must rediscover life, it must come back into the cave, it must come down from the “real” and transcendental world and play its venturesome part in the hard and happy world of efforts and events.
It is the chance of philosophy.
SEEnow, in summary, how modest a suggestion it is, grandiloquent though it may have seemed. We propose no’ism, we make no programme; we suggest, tentatively, a method. We propose a new start, a new tack, a new approach,—not to the exclusion of other approaches, but to their assistance. If this thing should be done, it would not mean that other gropers toward a better world would have to stand idle; it would but give light to them that walk in darkness. And it would make possible a more generous coöperation among the different currents in the stream of reconstructive thought.
We are a little discouraged to-day; we lovers of the new have become doubtful of the object of our love. Perhaps—we sometimes feel—all this effort is a vain circling in the mist; perhaps we do not advance, but only move. Our faith in progress is dimmed. We even tire of the “social problem”; we have tried so many ways, knocked at so many doors, and found so little of that which we sought. Sometimes, in the lassitude of mistaken effort and drear defeat, we almost think that the social problem is never to find even partial solution, that it is not a problembut a limitation, a limitation forever. We need a new beginning, a new impetus,—perhaps a new delusion?
See, too, how the thought of our five teachers lies concentrated and connected in this new approach: what have we done but renew concretely the Socratic plea for intelligence, the Platonic hope for philosopher-kings, Bacon’s dream of knowledge organized and ruling the world, Spinoza’s gentle insistence on democracy as the avenue of development, and Nietzsche’s passionate defence of aristocracy and power? There was something in us that thrilled at Plato’s conception of a philosophy that could guide as well as dissect our social life; but there was another something in us that hesitated before his plan of slavery as the basis of it all. We felt that we would rather be free and miserable than bound and filled. Why should a man feed himself if his feet are chained, and he must never move? And we were inspired, too, by the demand that the best should rule, that they should have power fitted to their worth; we should be glad to find some way whereby the best could have power, could rule, and yet with the consent of all,—we wanted an aristocracy sanctioned by democracy, a social order standing on the broad base of free citizenship and wide coöperation. Socrates shows us how to use Bacon to reconcile Plato and Nietzsche with Spinoza: intelligence will organize intelligence so that superior worth may havesuperior influence and yet work with and through the will of all.
And here at the end comes a thought that some of us perhaps have had more than once as this discussion advanced: What could the Church do for the organization of intelligence?
It could do wonderful things. It has power, organization, facilities, through which the gospel of “the moral obligation to be intelligent” could be preached to a wider audience than any newspaper could reach. And among the clergy are hundreds of young men who have found new inspiration in the figure of Jesus seen through the aspirations of democracy; hundreds eager to do their part in any work that will lessen the misery of men. What if they were to find in this organization of intelligence a focus for their labor?—what if they should not only themselves undertake the studies which would fit them for membership in the Society, but should also make it their business to stir up in all who might come to them the spirit of the seeker, to incite them to read religiously the reports of the Society, to call on them to spread abroad the good news of truth to be had for the asking? What if these men should make their churches extension centers for the educational work of the Society,—giving freely the use of their halls and even contributing to the expense of organizing classes and paying for skilled instruction? What if they should seein the spread of intelligence the best avenue to that wide friendship which Jesus so passionately preached? What better way is there to make men love one another than to make men understand one another? True charity comes only with clarity,—just as “mercy” is but justice that understands. Surely the root of all evil is the inability to see clearly that which is; how better can religion combat evil than to preach clarity as the beginning of social redemption?
One of the many burdens that drag on the soul is a knowledge of the past. It is a strong man who can know history and keep his courage; a great dream that can face the fact and live. We look at those flitting experiments called civilizations: we see them rise one after another, we see them produce and produce and produce, we feel the weight of their accumulating wealth; still visionable to us the busyness of geniuses and slaves piling stone upon stone and making pyramids to greet the stars, still audible the voices of Socrates in the agora and of old Plato passing quietly among the students in the grove, still haunting us the white faces of martyrs in the amphitheatres of Rome: and then the pyramids stand bare and lonely, the voices of Greek genius are hushed, the Colosseum is a ruin and a memory; one after another these peoples pass, these wonderful peoples, greater perhaps, wiser and nobler perhaps, than the peoples of our time; and wealmost choke with the heavy sense of a vast futility encompassing the world. Some of us turn away then from the din of effort, and seek in resignation the comfort of a living death; some others find in the doubt and difficulty the zest and reward of the work. After all, the past is not dead, it has not failed; only the vileness of it is dead, gone with the winnowing of time; that which was great and worthy lives and works and is real. Plato speaks to us still, speaks to millions and millions of us; and the blood of martyrs is the seed of saints. We speak and pass, but the word remains. Effort is not lost. Not to have tried is the only failure, the only misery; all effort is happiness, all effort is success. And so again we write ourselves in books and stone and color, and smile in the face of time; again we hear the call of the work, that it be done:
Edens that wait the wizardry of thought,Beauty that craves the touch of artist hands,Truth that but hungers to be felt or seen;
Edens that wait the wizardry of thought,Beauty that craves the touch of artist hands,Truth that but hungers to be felt or seen;
and again we are hot with the passion for perfection. We will remake. We will wonder and desire and dream and plan and try. We are such beings as dream and plan and try; and the glory of our defeats dims the splendor of the sun. We will take thought and add a cubit to our stature; we will bring intelligence to the test and call it together from all corners of the earth; we will harness the genius of the race and renew creation.
We will remake.
Printed in the United States of America.
THEfollowing pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects.
THEfollowing pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects.
Poverty and Social Progress
By MAURICE PARMELEE, Ph.D.
Cloth, crown 8vo, 477 pp., $1.90
“Suitable for college classes as well as for the general reader, and contains a great mass of material of value to the citizen who really wants to know.”—Independent.
“A very competent presentation of the various social factors that go to make up the problem of poverty.”—Churchman.
“A most useful and educative book. It would be well if every serious-minded person interested in social welfare would read this calm, impartial survey of the problems of poverty, and learn from it that poverty is not a spontaneous phenomenon, and that it could be practically wiped out by the reorganization of society. The book is offered for use as a text for college courses on charities, poverty, pauperism, dependency, and the like, but its most useful place is in the hands of the worker, the producer, the business man and woman, the serious shapers and makers of the present economic state of society.”—American Review of Reviews.
“Promoters of the democratic and humanitarian movement of our time will find this volume replete with valuable data and stimulating to close and careful thinking. Dr. Parmelee defines social progress as advancement toward realization of a normal human life for all mankind. He shows this obstructed by poverty in so many ways that there is no panacea for it, and a variety of remedies are requisite. The chief obstructions being in the production and distribution of wealth, his discussion centers mainly in the problems of these.”—Outlook.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANYPublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
The Great Society
A Psychological AnalysisByGRAHAM WALLASAuthor of “Human Nature in Politics”
Cloth, crown 8vo, 383 pp., $2.00
Graham Wallas’s new book, “The Great Society,” will be equally interesting to the psychologists, students of sociology, politics and the general reader. Mr. Wallas is a man of wide connections in England, a man whose experience has well fitted him for the task which he has essayed. He has been for many years a university extension lecturer; he was at one time a member of the school-board of London, chairman of the School Management Committee, a member of the Technical Education Board, of the London County Council and of the Education Committee of that council. He has been, since 1896, a lecturer at the London School of Economics. He has served on the Senate of London University, as university reader in political science and on the Royal Commission on Civil Service. He has written more or less widely, his most popular publication being, perhaps, “Human Nature in Politics.”
The present work, a portion of which was delivered last winter as the Lowell Lecture in Boston, begins with an exposition of what the author means by the term “The Great Society.” It then proceeds to a consideration of the following topics: Disposition, Social Psychology, Instinct and Intelligence, Disposition and Environment, Habit, Fear, Pleasure, Pain, Happiness, The Psychology of the Crowd, Love and Hatred, Thought, The Organization of Thought, The Organization of Will, and the Organization of Happiness.
“His deft and almost subtle grasp of the viewpoints of the philosophic factors in history; his focusing of a theory into the tiny sunspot of an illuminant sentence, and adopting a style that is as inviting and penetrating as Havelock Ellis, make the book one of sustained interest”—Galveston Daily News.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANYPublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
The Social Problem
A CONSTRUCTIVE ANALYSISBy CHARLES A. ELLWOOD, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology in the University of Missouri, Author of “Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects,” “Sociology and Modern Social Problems,” etc.
Cloth, 12mo, 255 pp., $1.25
This work is a brief analysis of the social problem in Western civilization. It outlines a scientific social philosophy which can serve as a basis for a well-balanced progress. The author points out that the present crisis in our civilization calls for a reconstruction of our social philosophy; for we cannot build anew the structure of Western society upon the inadequate bases of eighteenth and nineteenth century thought. The book indicates the direction which our social thinking must take if we are to avoid revolution, on the one hand, and reaction, on the other. It aims to furnish a scientific basis for the progressive social movement; and it is commended to progressives in whatever class, party, or sect they may happen to find themselves. The attitude of the book is thoroughly positive and constructive toward all the essential values of our civilization.
“‘The Social Problem’ by Professor Charles A. Ellwood is one of the best books of the kind I have ever seen. The subject is handled in a masterful way. The best books I read in my field ordinarily do not gain more than eighty-five or ninety per cent of my assent. This book, however, I would endorse to ninety-eight or ninety-nine per cent.
“It is not only sound in its general positions, but sound in details. Every statement is guarded and weighty. There is a fine sense of the value of words, there is no duplication, and the author reaches his goal with the fewest possible sentences. I know of no book upon the social problem, which can command so completely the endorsement of social thinkers everywhere.”—Professor Edward A. Ross of the University of Wisconsin, Author of “The Changing Chinese,” “Social Psychology,” etc.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANYPublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
AMERICAN SOCIAL PROGRESS SERIES
The City Worker’s World in America
ByMARY KINGSBURY SIMKHOVITCH
Director of Greenwich House
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25