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PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL 
 PROBLEM 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
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 TORONTO 
 
PHILOSOPHY 
 
 AND 
 
 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 BY 
 WILL DTIRANT, Ph.D. 
 
 INSTBUCTOB IN PHILOSOPHY, EXTENSION TEACmNQ 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 rbv filv /3tov 
 ^ if}V(ns e8a)K£, to Sk KaXSii ^rjv ^ Ti^Qrrj. 
 
 — Unknowk Dbauatic Poet. 
 
 TStin gutfe 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1917 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
OOPTSIOHT, 1917, 
 
 bt the macmillan company. 
 
 Set up and «Iectrotyped, Published September, xgi/* 
 
 J. S, CuBhlng Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, MasB., U.S.A. 
 
TO 
 
 ALDEN FREEMAN 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 iNTBODtrCTION 
 
 rAaa 
 1 
 
 Pabt I 
 HISTORICAL APPROACH 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 
 
 THE PRESENT SIGNIFICANCE OP 
 
 
 
 THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 
 
 
 I. 
 
 History as rebarbarization 
 
 5 
 
 II. 
 
 Philosophy as disintegrator 
 
 
 6 
 
 III. 
 
 Individualism in Athens . 
 
 
 7 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Sophists . 
 
 
 9 
 
 V. 
 
 Intelligence as virtue 
 
 
 12 
 
 VI. 
 
 The meaning of virtue 
 
 
 15 
 
 VII. 
 
 "Instinct" and "reason" 
 
 
 23 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The secularization of morals 
 
 
 . 27 
 
 IX. 
 
 "Happiness" and "virtue" 
 
 
 . 31 
 
 X. 
 
 The Socratic challenge ,, . 
 
 
 . 33 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 PLATO: PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 
 
 5 
 
 L 
 
 The man and the artist . 
 
 36 
 
 II. 
 
 How to solve the social problem 
 
 40 
 
 III. 
 
 On making philosopher-kings . 
 
 44 
 
 IV. 
 
 Dishonest democracy 
 
 
 . 52 
 
 V. 
 
 Culture and slavery 
 
 
 . 55 
 
 VI. 
 
 Plasticity and order 
 
 
 60 
 
 VII. 
 
 The meaning of justice . 
 
 
 62 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The future of Plato 
 
 
 64 
 
 VTl 
 
VIU 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 FRANCIS BACON AND THE SOCIAL 
 
 
 POSSIBILITIES OP SCIENCE 
 
 
 PAOB 
 
 I. 
 
 From Plato to Bacon .... 67 
 
 II. 
 
 Character 
 
 
 69 
 
 III. 
 
 The expurgation of the intellect 
 
 
 70 
 
 IV. 
 
 Knowledge is power 
 
 
 74 
 
 V. 
 
 The socialization of science 
 
 
 76 
 
 VI. 
 
 Science and Utopia 
 
 
 79 
 
 VII. 
 
 Scholasticism in science . 
 
 
 81 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Asiatics of Europe . 
 
 
 85 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 L 
 
 Hobbes 90 
 
 II. 
 
 The spirit of Spinoza 
 
 
 
 91 
 
 III. 
 
 Political ethics 
 
 
 
 93 
 
 IV. 
 
 Is man a political animal? 
 
 
 
 . 95 
 
 V. 
 
 What the social problem is 
 
 
 
 . 98 
 
 VI. 
 
 Free speech 
 
 
 
 . 101 
 
 VIL 
 
 Virtue as power 
 
 
 
 . 105 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Freedom and order 
 
 
 
 . 108 
 
 IX. 
 
 Democracy and inteUigenoe 
 
 
 
 . 112 
 
 X. 
 
 The legacy of Spinoza 
 
 
 
 . 115 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 NIETZSCHE 
 
 I. 
 
 From Spinoza to Nietzsche . . .117 
 
 II. 
 
 Biographical . 
 
 
 
 . 120 
 
 IIL 
 
 Exposition 
 
 1. Morality as impotence 
 
 2. Democracy 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 126 
 . 126 
 . 128 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 IX 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 3. Feminism 131 
 
 4. Socialism and anarchism . . 133 
 
 5. Degeneration .... 138 
 
 6. Nihilism 141 
 
 7. The will to power . . . 143 
 
 8. The superman .... 160 
 
 9. How to make supermen . . 155 
 
 10. On the necessity of exploitation _ 159 
 
 11. Aristocracy .... "T~ 162 
 
 12. Signs of ascent .... 165 
 
 Criticism . " 172 
 
 Nietzsche replies 177 
 
 Conclusion 178 
 
 Pakt II 
 SUGGESTIONS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 
 
 I. The problem . 
 n. "Solutions" . 
 
 1. Feminism 
 
 2. Socialism 
 
 3. Eugenics 
 
 4. Anarchism 
 
 5. Individualism 
 
 6. Individualism again 
 III. Dissolutions 
 
 185 
 190 
 190 
 194 
 198 
 200 
 202 
 202 
 205 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE RECONSTRUCTIVE FUNCTION 
 OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 I. Epistemologs 214 
 
C CONTENTS 
 
 FAOB 
 
 II. Philosophy as control . . .'" . 218 
 III. Philosophy as mediator between science 
 
 and statesmanship . . . 222 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 
 
 I. The need 227 
 
 II. The organization of intelligence . . 230 
 
 III. Information as panacea .... 234 
 
 IV. Sex, art, and play in social reconstruction 240 
 V. Education 246 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 
 THE READER SPEAKS 
 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 V. 
 
 The democratization of aristocracy 
 The professor as Buridan's ass 
 Is information wanted? . 
 Finding Maecenas .... 
 The chance of philosophy 
 
 . 251 
 . 255 
 . 257 
 . 261 
 . 264 
 
 CONCLTJSION 
 
 . 268 
 
PART I 
 HISTORICAL APPROACH 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND THE 
 SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The purpose of this essay is to show: first, 
 that the social problem has been the basic con- 
 cern of many of the greater philosophers ; second, 
 that an approach to the social problem through 
 philosophy is the first condition of even a moder- 
 ately successful treatment of this problem ; and 
 third, that an approach to philosophy through 
 the social problem is indispensable to the re- 
 vitalization of philosophy. 
 
 By "philosophy" we shall understand a study 
 of experience as a whole, or of a portion of ex- 
 perience in relation to the whole. 
 
 By the "social problem" we shall understand, 
 simply and very broadly, the problem of reducing 
 human misery by modifying social institutions. 
 It is a problem that, ever reshaping itself, eludes 
 sharper definition ; for misery is related to desire, 
 and desire is personal and in perpetual flux : 
 each of us sees the problem unsteadily in terms 
 of his own changing aspirations. It is an un- 
 B 1 
 
2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 comfortably complicated problem, of course ; and 
 we must bear in mind that the limit of our in- 
 tention here is to consider philosophy as an 
 approach to the problem, and the problem itself 
 as an approach to philosophy. We are propos- 
 ing no solutions. 
 
 Let us, as a wholesome measure of orientation, 
 touch some of the mountain-peaks in philosophical 
 history, with an eye for the social interest that 
 lurks in every metaphysical maze. "Aristotle," 
 says Professor Woodbridge, "set treatise-writers 
 the fashion of beginning each treatise by review- 
 ing previous opinions on their subject, and prov- 
 ing them all wrong." ^ The purpose of the next 
 five chapters will be rather the opposite: we 
 shall see if some supposedly dead philosophies do 
 not admit of considerable resuscitation. Instead 
 of trying to show that Socrates, Plato, Bacon, 
 Spinoza, and Nietzsche were quite mistaken in 
 their views on the social problem, we shall try 
 to see what there is in these views that can help 
 us to understand our own situation to-day. We 
 shall not make a collection of systems of social 
 philosophy; we shall not lose ourselves in the 
 past in a scholarly effort to relate each philosophy 
 to its social and political environment ; we shall 
 try to relate these philosophies rather to our 
 own environment, to look at our own problems 
 
 1 Class-Ieoturea. Aa Bacon has it, Aristotle, after the Otto- 
 man manner, did not believe that he could rule securely unless 
 he first put all his brothers to death. 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 successively through the eyes of these philosophers. 
 Other interpretations of these men we shall not 
 so much contradict as seek to supplement. 
 
 Each of our historical chapters, then, will be 
 not so much a review as a preface and a progres- 
 sion. The aim will be neither history nor criti- 
 cism, but a kind of construction by proxy. It is a 
 method that has its defects : it will, for example, 
 sacrifice thoroughness of scholarship to present 
 applicability, and will necessitate some repetitious 
 gathering of the threads when we come later to 
 our more personal purpose. But as part requital 
 for this, we shall save ourselves from considering 
 the past except as it is really present, except as 
 it is alive and nourishingly significant to-day. 
 And from each study we shall perhaps make 
 some advance towards our final endeavor, — the 
 mutual elucidation of the social problem and 
 philosophy. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PKESENT SIGNIFICANCE OP THE SOCRATIC 
 ETHIC 
 
 History as Rebarbarizatlon 
 
 History is a process of rebarbarizatlon. A 
 people made vigorous by arduous physical condi- 
 tions of life, and driven by the increasing exigen- 
 cies of survival, leaves its native habitat, moves 
 down upon a less vigorous people, conquers, 
 displaces, or absorbs it. Habits of resolution 
 and activity developed in a less merciful environ- 
 ment now rapidly produce an economic surplus; 
 and part of the resources so accumulated serve 
 as capital in a campaign of imperialist conquest. 
 The growing surplus generates a leisure class, 
 scornful of physical activity and adept in the 
 arts of luxury. Leisure begets speculation; 
 speculation dissolves dogma and corrodes cus- 
 tom, develops sensitivity of perception and 
 destroys decision of action. Thought, adven- 
 turing in a labyrinth of analysis, discovers behind 
 society the individual; divested of its normal 
 social function it turns inward and discovers the 
 5 
 
6 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PKOBLEM 
 
 self. The sense of common interest, of common- 
 wealth, wanes; there are no citizens now, there 
 are only individuals. 
 
 From afar another people, struggling against the 
 forces of an obdurate environment, sees here the 
 cleared forests, the liberating roads, the harvest of 
 plenty, the luxury of leisure. It dreams, aspires, 
 dares, unites, invades. The rest is as before. 
 
 Rebarbarization is rejuvenation. The great 
 problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate 
 itself without rebarbarization. 
 
 II 
 
 Philosophy as Disintegrator 
 
 The rise of philosophy, then, often heralds 
 the decay of a civilization. Speculation begins 
 with nature and begets naturaUsm; it passes 
 to man — first as a psychological mystery and 
 then as a member of society — and begets indi- 
 mduahsm. Philosophers do not always desire 
 these results; but they achieve them. They 
 feel themselves the unwilling enemies of the state : 
 they think of men in terms of personality while 
 the state thinks of men in terms of social mechan- 
 ism. Some philosophers would gladly hold their 
 peace, but there is that in them which will out ; 
 and when philosophers speak, gods and dynasties 
 fall. Most states have had their roots in heaven, 
 and have paid the penalty for it : the twilight 
 of the gods is the afternoon of states. 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 7 
 
 Every civilization comes at last to the point 
 where the individual, made by speculation con- 
 scious of himself as an end per se, demands of 
 the state, as the price of its continuance, that 
 it shall henceforth enhance rather than exploit 
 his capacities. Philosophers sympathize with 
 this demand, the state almost always rejects 
 it : therefore civilizations come and civilizations 
 go. The history of philosophy is essentially 
 an account of the efforts great men have made 
 to avert social disintegration by building up 
 natural moral sanctions to take the place of the 
 supernatural sanctions which they themselves 
 have destroyed. To find — without resorting 
 to celestial machinery — some way of winning 
 for their people social coherence and permanence 
 without sacrificing plasticity and individual 
 uniqueness to regimentation, — that has been 
 the task of philosophers, that is the task of 
 philosophers. 
 
 We should be thankful that it is. Who knows 
 but that within our own time may come at last 
 the forging of an effective natural ethic ? — an 
 achievement which might be the most momentous 
 event in the history of our world. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Individualism in Athens 
 
 The great ages in the history of European 
 thought have been for the most part periods of 
 
8 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 individualistic effervescence : the age of Socrates, 
 the age of Caesar and Augustus, the Renais- 
 sance, the Enlightenment ; — and shall we add 
 the age which is now coming to a close? These 
 ages have usually been preceded by periods of 
 imperialist expansion : imperialism requires a 
 tightening of the bonds whereby individual 
 allegiance to the state is made secure; and this 
 tightening, given a satiety of imperiaHsm, in- 
 volves an individualistic reaction. And again, 
 the dissolution of the political or economic fron- 
 tier by conquest or commerce breaks down cul- 
 tural barriers between peoples, develops a sense 
 of the relativity of customs, and issues in the 
 opposition, of individual "reason" to social 
 tradition. 
 
 A political treatise attributed to the fourth 
 century b.c. reflects the attitude that had de- 
 veloped in Athens in the later fifth century. "If 
 all men were to gather in a heap the customs 
 which they hold to be good and noble, and if 
 they were next to select from it the customs 
 which they hold to be base and vile, nothing 
 would be left over." '■ Once such a view has 
 found capable defenders, the custom-basis of 
 social organization begins to give way, and insti- 
 tutions venerable with age are ruthlessly sub- 
 poenaed to appear before the bar of reason. Men 
 begin to contrast "Nature" with custom, some- 
 
 1 The Dialexeis; of. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, New York, 
 1901, vol. i, p. 404. 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OP THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 9 
 
 what to the disadvantage of the latter. Even 
 the most basic of Greek institutions is questioned : 
 "The Deity," says a fourth-century Athenian 
 Rousseau, "made all men free; Nature has 
 enslaved no man." ' Botsford speaks of "the 
 powerful influence of fourth-century sociaUsm 
 on the intellectual class." ^ Euripides and Aris- 
 tophanes are full of talk about a movement for 
 the emancipation of women.' Law and govern- 
 ment are examined : Anarcharsis' comparison of 
 the law to a spider's web, which catches small flies 
 and lets the big ones escape, now finds sympathetic 
 comprehension ; and men arise, like Calhcles and 
 Thrasjrmachus, who frankly consider government 
 as a convenient instrument of mass-exploitation. 
 
 IV 
 
 The Sophists 
 
 The cultural representatives of this individual- 
 istic development were the Sophists. These men 
 we!re university professors without a university 
 and without the professorial title. They ap- 
 peared in response to a demand for higher instruc- 
 tion on the part of the young men of the leisure 
 class ; and within a generation they became the 
 most powerful intellectual force in Greece. There 
 had been philosophers, questioners, before them; 
 
 1 Gomperz, vol. i, p. 403. 
 
 2 Botsford and Sihler, BeUenic Civilizalion, New York, 
 1915, p. 430. » Ibid., p. 340, etc. 
 
10 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 but these early philosophers had questioned na- 
 ture rather than man or the state. The Sophists 
 were the first group of men in Greece to overcome 
 the natural tendency to acquiesce in the given 
 order of things. They were proud men, — hu- 
 mility is a vice that never found root in Greece, — 
 and they had a buoyant confidence in the newly 
 discovered power of human intelligence. They 
 assumed, in harmony with the spirit of all Greek 
 achievement, that in the development and exten- 
 sion of knowledge lay the road to a sane and sig- 
 nificant life, individual and communal ; and in the 
 quest for knowledge they were resolved to scruti- 
 nize unawed all institutions, prejudices, customs, 
 morals. Protagoras professed to respect conven- 
 tions,^ and pronoimced conventions and in- 
 stitutions the source of man's superiority to the 
 beast; but his famous principle, that "man is 
 the measure of all things," was a quiet hint that 
 morals are a matter of taste, that we call a man 
 "good" when his conduct is advantageous to us, 
 and "bad" when his conduct threatens to make 
 for our own loss. To the Sophists virtue consisted, 
 not in obedience to unjudged rules and customs, 
 but in the efficient performance of whatever one 
 set out to do. They would have condemned the 
 bimgler and let the "sinner" go. That they were 
 flippant sceptics, putting no distinction of worth 
 
 I And sincerely, says Bumet, because he had gone through 
 radicalism to scepticism, and felt that one convention was as 
 good as another. 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 11 
 
 between any belief and its opposite, and willing 
 to prove anything for a price, is an old accusation 
 which later students of Greek philosophy are al- 
 most unanimous in rejecting.^ 
 
 The great discovery of the Sophists was the 
 individual; it was an achievement for which 
 Plato and his oligarchical friends could not for- 
 give them, and because of which they incurred the 
 contumely which it is now so hard to dissociate 
 from their name. The purpose of laws, said the 
 Sophists, was to widen the possibilities of individ- 
 ual development ; if laws did not do that, they 
 had better be forgotten. There was a higher law 
 than the laws of men, — a natural law, engraved 
 in every heart, and judge of every other law. 
 The conscience of the individual was above the 
 dictates of any state. All radicahsms lay com- 
 pact in that pronouncement. Plato, prolific of 
 innovations though he was, yet shrank from such 
 a leap into the new. But the Sophists pressed 
 their point, men hstened to them, and the 
 Greek world changed. When Socrates ap- 
 peared, he found that world all out of joint, 
 a war of all against all, a stridency of un- 
 coordinated personalities rushing into chaos. 
 And when he was asked. What should men 
 do to be saved, he answered, simply. Let us 
 think. 
 
 • Cf . Henry Jackson, article " Sophists," Encydopadia 
 Britannica, eleventh edition. 
 
12 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Intelligence as Virtue 
 
 Intelligence as virtue : it was not a new doc- 
 trine ; it was merely a new emphasis placed on 
 an already important element in the Greek — 
 or rather the Athenian — view of life. But it 
 was a needed emphasis. The Sophists (not 
 Socrates, pace Cicero) had brought philosophy 
 down from heaven to earth, but they had left it 
 grovelhng at the feet of business efficiency and suc- 
 cess, a sort of andlla pecunioe, a broker knowing 
 where one's soul could be invested at ten per cent. 
 Socrates agreed with the Sophists in condemning 
 any but a very temporary devotion to metaphysi- 
 cal abstractions, — the one and the many, motion 
 and rest, the indivisibility of space, the puzzles 
 of predication, and so forth ; he joined them in ridi- 
 culing the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, 
 and in demanding that all thinking should be fo- 
 cussed finally on the real concerns of life ; but his 
 spirit was as different from theirs as the spirit 
 of Spinoza was different from that of a mediaeval 
 money-lender. With the Sophists philosophy was 
 a profession; they were "lovers of wisdom" — 
 for a consideration. With Socrates philosophy 
 was a quest of the permanently good, of the last- 
 ingly satisfying attitudp to Hfe. To find out just 
 what are justice, temperance, courage, piety, — 
 "that is an inquiry which I shall never be weary 
 of pursuing so far as in me lies." It was not an 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 13 
 
 easy quest ; and the results were not startKngly 
 definite : "I wander to and fro when I attempt 
 these problems, and do not remain consistent with 
 myself." His interlocutors went from him ap- 
 parently empty; but he had left in them seed 
 which developed in the after-calm of thought. 
 He could clarify men's notions, he could reveal to 
 them their assumptions and prejudices; but he 
 could not and would not manufacture opinions 
 for them. He left no written philosophy because 
 he had only the most general advice to give, and 
 knew that no other advice is ever taken. He 
 trusted his friends to pass on the good word. 
 
 Now what was the good word? It was, first 
 of all, the identity of virtue and wisdom, morals 
 and intelHgence ; but more than that, it was the 
 basic identity, in the light of intelligence, of 
 communal and individual interests. Here at the 
 Sophist's feet lay the debris of the old moraUty. 
 What was to replace it? The young Athenians of 
 a generation denuded of supernatm-al belief would 
 not listen to counsels of "virtue," of self-sacrifice 
 to the community. What was to be done? 
 Should social and pohtical pressure be brought 
 to bear upon the Sophists to compel them to 
 modify the individualistic tenor of their teach- 
 ings? Analysis destroys morals. What is the 
 moral — destroy analysis ? 
 
 The moral, answered Socrates, is to get better 
 morals, to find an ethic immune to the attack of 
 the most ruthless sceptic. The Sophists were 
 
14 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 right, said Socrates ; morality means more than 
 social obedience. But the Sophists were wrong 
 in opposing the good of the individual to that of 
 the community ; Socrates proposed to prove that 
 if a man were intelhgent, he would see that those 
 same qualities which make a man a good citizen — 
 justice, wisdom, temperance, courage — are also 
 the best means to individual advantage and 
 development. All these "virtues" are simply 
 the supreme and only virtue — wisdom — dif- 
 ferentiated by the context of circumstance. No 
 action is virtuous imless it is an inteUigent adapta- 
 tion of means to a criticised end. "Sin" is fail- 
 ure to use energy to the best account ; it is an 
 unintelligent waste of strength. A man does not 
 knowingly piu-sue anything but the Good; let 
 him but see his advantage, and he will be at- 
 tracted towards it irresistibly ; let him pursue it, 
 and he will be happy, and the state safe. The 
 trouble is that men lack perspective, and cannot 
 see their true Good ; they need not "virtue" but 
 intelligence, not sermons but training in perspec- 
 tive. The man who has evK/ooTeta, who rules 
 within, who is strong enough to stop and think, 
 the man who has achieved <T<o^po<rivq, — the self- 
 knowledge that brings self-command, — such a 
 man will not be deceived by the tragedy of dis- 
 tance, by the apparent smallness of the future 
 good alongside of the more easily appreciable good 
 that lies invitingly at hand. Hence the moral 
 importance of dialectic, of cross-examination, of 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 15 
 
 concept and definition: we must learn "how to 
 make our ideas clear" ; we must ask ourselves just 
 what it is that we want, just how real this seeming 
 good is. Dialectic is the handmaiden of virtue; 
 and all clarification is morality. 
 
 VI 
 
 The Meaning of Virtue 
 
 This is frank intellectualism, of course ; and the 
 best-refuted doctrine in philosophy. It is amusing 
 to observe the ease with which critics and histo- 
 rians despatch the Socratic ethic. It is " an ex- 
 travagant paradox," says Sidgwick,' "incompat- 
 ible with moral freedom." "Nothing is easier," 
 says Gomperz,^ " than to detect the one-sided- 
 ness of this point of view." "This doctrine," 
 says Grote,' "omits to notice, what is not less 
 essential, the proper conditions of the emotions, 
 desires, etc." "It tended to make all conduct a 
 matter of the intellect and not of the character, 
 and so in a sense to destroy moral responsibility," 
 says Hobhouse.^ "HimseK blessed with a will 
 so powerful that it moved almost without friction," 
 says Henry Jackson,* "Socrates fell into the error 
 of ignoring its operations, and was thus led to 
 
 ' History of Ethics, London, 1892, p. 24. 
 ' Op. cit., vol. ii, 1905, p. 67. 
 
 • History of Greece, vol. viii, p. 134. 
 
 * Morals in Evolution, New York, 1915, p. 556. 
 
 'Henry Jackson, article "Socrates," Encycloptedia Bri- 
 tannica, eleventh edition. 
 
16 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 regard knowledge as the sole condition of well- 
 doing." "Socrates was a misunderstanding," 
 says Nietzsche ; * "reason at any price, Ufe made 
 clear, cold, cautious, conscious, without instincts, 
 opposed to the instincts, was in itself only a dis- 
 ease, . . . and by no means a return to 'virtue,' 
 to 'health,' and to happiness." And the worn- 
 out dictum about seeing the better and approving 
 it, yet following the worse, is quoted as the deUv- 
 erance of a profound psychologist, whose verdict 
 should be accepted as a final solution of the prob- 
 lem. 
 
 Before refuting a doctrine it is useful to try to 
 understand it. What could Socrates have meant 
 by saying that all real virtue is intelUgence? 
 What is virtue ? 
 
 A civihzation may be characterized in terms of 
 its conception of virtue. There is hardly any- 
 thing more distinctive of the Greek attitude, as 
 compared with our own, than the Greek notion of 
 
 • Twilight of the Idols, London, 1915, p. 15. For Nietzsche's 
 answer to Nietzsche, cf. ibid., p. 57: "To accustom the eye 
 to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to 
 it ; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching 
 and grasping an individual case from aU sides, — this is the 
 first preparatory schooling of intellectuality," this is one of 
 "the three objects for which we need educators. . . . One 
 must not respond immediately to a stimulus ; one must ac- 
 quire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts. 
 To learn to see, as I understand this matter, amounts almost 
 to that which in popular language is called 'strength of wiU' : 
 its essential feature is precisely ... to be able to postpone 
 one's decision. . . . All lack of intellectuality, all vulgarity, 
 arises out of the inability to resist a stimulus." 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 17 
 
 virtue as intelligence. Consider the present con- 
 notations of the word virtue : men shrink at hav- 
 ing the term appUed to them; and "nothing 
 makes one so vain," says Oscar Wilde, "as being 
 told that one is a sinner." During the Middle 
 Ages the official conception of virtue was couched 
 in terms of womanly excellence ; and the sternly 
 masculine God of the Hebrews suffered consider- 
 ably from the inroads of Mariolatry. Protes- 
 tantism was in part a rebellion of the ethically 
 subjugated male; in Luther the man emerges 
 riotously from the monk. But as people cling to 
 the ethical implications of a creed long after the 
 creed itself has been abandoned, so our modem 
 notion of virtue is still essentially mediaeval and 
 feminine. Virginity, chastity, conjugal fidelity, 
 gentility, obedience, loyalty, kindness, self-sacri- 
 fice, are the stock-in-trade of all respectable moral- 
 ists; to be "good" is to be harmless, to be not 
 "bad, " to be a sort of sterilized citizen, guaranteed 
 not to injure. This sheepish innocuousness comes 
 easily to the natively uninitiative, to those who are 
 readily amenable to fear and prohibitions. It is 
 a static virtue ; it contracts rather than expands 
 the soul; it offers no handle for development, 
 no incentive to social stimulation and productiv- 
 ity. It is time we stopped calling this insipidly 
 negative attitude by the once mighty name of 
 virtue. Virtue must be defined in terms of that 
 which is vitally significant in our lives. 
 And therefore, too, virtue cannot be defined in 
 
18 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 terms of individual subordination to the group. 
 The vitally significant thing in a man's life is not 
 the community, but himself. To ask him to con- 
 sider the interests of the community above his 
 own is again to put up for his worship an external, 
 transcendent god ; and the trouble with a tran- 
 scendent god is that he is sure to be dethroned. To 
 call "immoral" the refusal of the individual to 
 meet such demands is the depth of indecency ; it 
 is itself immoral, — that is, it is nonsense. The 
 notion of "duty" as involving self-sacrifice, as 
 essentially duty to others, is a soul-cramping, 
 funereal notion, and deserves all that Ibsen and his 
 progeny have said of it.^ Ask the individual to 
 sacrifice himself to the community, and it will 
 not be long before he sacrifices the commimity to 
 himself. Granted that, in the language of Heracli- 
 tus, there is always a majority of fools, and that 
 self-sacrifice can be prociu-ed by the simple hyp- 
 notic suggestion of post-mortem remuneration: 
 sooner or later come doubt and disillusionment, 
 and the society whose permanence was so easily 
 secured becomes driftwood on the tides of time. 
 History means that if it means anything. 
 
 No; the intelligent individual will give alle- 
 giance to the group of which he happens to find 
 himself a member, only so far as the policies of 
 the group accord with his own criticised desires. 
 
 '"Why art thou sad? Assuredly thou hast performed 
 some sacred duty?" — Bazarov in Turgenev's Fathers and 
 Children, 1903, p. 185. 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OP THE SOCEATIC ETHIC 19 
 
 Whatever allegiance he offers wiU be to those 
 forces, wherever they may be, which in his judg- 
 ment move in the line of these desires. Even 
 for such forces he will not sacrifice himself, — 
 though there may be times when martyrdom is a 
 luxury for which life itself is not too great a price.. 
 Since these forces have been defined in terms of 
 his own judgment and desire, conflict between 
 them and himself can come only when his behavior 
 diverges from the purposes defined and resumed in 
 times of conscious thought, — i.e., only when he 
 ceases to adapt means to his ends, ceases, that is, 
 to be intelligent. The prime moral conflict is 
 not between the individual and his group, but be- 
 tween the partial self of fragmentary impulse and 
 the coordinated self of conscious purpose. There 
 is a group within each man as well as without: 
 a group of partial selves is the reality behind the 
 figment of the unitary self. Every individual is 
 a society, every person is a crowd. And the trage- 
 dies of the moral life lie not in the war of each 
 against all, but in the restless interplay of these 
 partial selves behind the stage of action. As a 
 man's intelhgence grows this conflict diminishes, 
 for both means and ends, both behavior and pur- 
 poses, are being continually revised and redirected 
 in accordance with intelligence, and therefore in 
 convergence towards it. Progressively the in- 
 dividual achieves unity, and through unity, per- 
 sonality. Faith in himself has made him whole. 
 The ethical problem, so far as it is the purely 
 
20 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 individual problem of attaining to coordinated 
 personality, is solved. 
 
 Moral responsibility, then, — whatever social 
 responsibility may be, — is the responsibiUty of 
 the individual to himself. The social is not nec- 
 essarily the moral — let the sociological fact be 
 what it will. The unthinking conformity of the 
 "normal social life" is, just because it is unthink- 
 ing, below the level of morality: let us call it 
 sociahty, and make morality the prerogative of 
 the really thinking animal. In any society so con- 
 stituted as to give to the individual an increase 
 in powers as recompense for the pruning of his 
 liberties, the unsocial will be immoral, — that is, 
 self-destructively unreasonable and unintelUgent ; 
 but even in such a society the moral would over- 
 flow the margins of the social, and would take 
 definition ultimately from the congruity of the 
 action with the criticised purposes of the individ- 
 ual self. This does not mean that all ethics hes 
 compact in the shibboleth, "Be yourself." Those 
 who make the least sparing use of this phrase are 
 too apt to consider it an excuse for lives that reek 
 with the heat of passion and smack of insufficient 
 evolution. These people need to be reminded — 
 all the more forcibly since the most palatable and 
 up-to-date philosophies exalt instinct and deride 
 thought — that one cannot be thoroughly one's 
 self except by deliberation and intelligence. To 
 act indeliberately is not to be, but in great part to 
 cancel, one's self. For example, the vast play of 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OP THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 21 
 
 direct emotional expression is almost entirely in- 
 deliberate : if you are greatly surprised, your lips 
 part, your eyes open a trifle wider, your pulse 
 quickens, your respiration is affected; and if I 
 am surprised, though you be as different from me 
 as Hyperion from a satyr, my respiration will 
 be affected, my pulse will quicken, my eyes will 
 open a trifle wider, and my lips will part ; — my 
 direct reaction will be essentially the same as 
 yours. The direct expression of surprise is prac- 
 tically the same in all the higher animals. Dar- 
 win's classical description of the expression of 
 fear is another example ; it holds for every normal 
 human being, not to speak of lower species. So 
 with egotism, jealousy, anger, and a thousand 
 other instinctive reaction-complexes; they are 
 common to the species, and when we so react, we 
 are expressing not our individual selves so much 
 as the species to which we happen to belong. 
 When you hit a man because he has "insulted" 
 you, when you swagger a little after delivering a 
 successful speech, when you push aside women 
 and children in order to take their place in the 
 rescue boat, when you do any one of a million 
 indeliberate things like these, it is not you that 
 act, it is your species, it is your ancestors, acting 
 through you; your acquired individual differ- 
 ence is lost in the whirlwind of inherited impulse. 
 Your act, as the Scholastics phrased it, is not a 
 "human" act ; you yourself are not really acting 
 in any full measure of yourself, you are but play- 
 
22 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PBOBLEM 
 
 ing slave and mouth-piece to the dead. But sub- 
 ject the inherited tendencies to the scrutiny of 
 your individual experience, think, and your action 
 will then express yourself, not in any abbreviated 
 sense, but up to the hilt. There is no merit, no 
 "virtue," no development in playing the game of 
 fragmentary impulses, in living up to the past; 
 to be moral, to grow, is to be not part but all of 
 one's self, to call into operation the acquired as 
 well as the inherited elements of one's character, 
 to be whole. So many of us invite ruin by actions 
 which do not really express us, but are the voice 
 of the merest fragment of ourselves, — the re- 
 mainder of us being meanwhile asleep.' To be 
 whole, to be your dehberate self, to do what you 
 please but only after considering what you really 
 please, to follow your own ideals (but to follow 
 them !), to choose your own means and not to have 
 them forced upon you by your ancestors, to act 
 consciously, to see the part sub specie totius, to 
 see the present act in its relation to your vital 
 purposes, to think, to be intelligent, — all these 
 are definitions of virtue and morality. 
 
 There is, then, in the old sense of the word, no 
 such thing as morality, there is only intelligence 
 or stupidity. Yes, virtufe is calculus, horrible as 
 that may sound to long and timid ears : to calcu- 
 
 1 " Morality is the effort to throw ofE sleep. ... I have 
 never yet met a man who was wide awake. How could I 
 have looked him in the face?" — Thoreau, Walden, New 
 York, 1899, p. 92. 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 23 
 
 late properly just what you must do to attain 
 your real ends, to see just what and where your 
 good is, and to make for it, — that is all that can 
 without indecency be asked of any man, that is 
 all that is ever vouchsafed by any man who is 
 intelUgent. 
 
 Perhaps you think it is an easy virtue, — this 
 cleaving to intelligence, — easier than being harm- 
 less. Try it. 
 
 VII 
 
 " Instinct " and " Reason " 
 And now to go back to the refutations. 
 The strongest objection to the Socratic doctrine 
 is that intelligence is not a creator, but only a 
 servant, of ends. What we shall consider to be 
 our good appears to be determined not by reason, 
 but by desire. Reason itself seems but the valet 
 of desire, ready to do for it every manner of menial 
 service. Desire is an adept at marshalling before 
 intelligence such facts as favor the wish, and 
 turns the mind's eye resolutely away from other 
 truth, as a magician distracts the attention of his 
 audience while his hands perform their wonders. 
 If morahty is entirely a matter of intelligence, it is 
 entirely a question of means, it is excluded ir- 
 revocably from the realm of ends. 
 
 The conclusion may be allowed in substance, 
 though it passes beyond the warrant of the fact^. 
 It is true that basic ends are never suggested by 
 intelligence, reason, knowledge ; but it is also true 
 
24 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 that many ends suggested by desire are vetoed 
 by intelligence. Why are the desires of a man 
 more modest than those of a boy or a child, if not 
 because the blows of repeated failure have dulled 
 the edge of desire ? Desires lapse, or lose in stat- 
 ure, as knowledge grows and man takes lessons 
 from reality. There is an adaptation of ends to 
 means as well as of means to ends; and desire 
 comes at last to take counsel of its slave. 
 
 Be it granted, none the less, that ends are dic- 
 tated by desire, and that if morality is intelligence, 
 there can be no question of the morality of any 
 end per se. That, strangely, is not a refutation 
 of the Socratic ethic so much as an essential ele- 
 ment of it and its starting-point. Every desire 
 has its own initial right ; moraUty means not the 
 suppression of desires, but their coordination. 
 What that implies for society we shall see pres- 
 ently; for the individual it implies that he is 
 immoral, not when he seeks his own advantage, 
 but when he does not really behave for his own 
 advantage, when some narrow temporary pur- 
 pose upsets perspective and overrides a larger 
 end.' What we call "self-control" is the perma- 
 
 'What happens when I "see the better and approve it, 
 but follow the worse," is that an end later approved as "bet- 
 ter" — i.e., better for me — is at the time obscured by the 
 persistent or recurrent suggestion of an end temporarily more 
 satisfjdng, but eventually disappointing. Most self-reproach 
 is the use of knowledge won post factum to criticise a self that 
 had to adventure into action unarmed with this hindsight 
 wisdom. 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCKATIC ETHIC 25 
 
 nent predominance of the larger end; what we 
 call weakness of will is instability of perspective. 
 Self-control means an intelligent judgment of 
 values, an intelligent coordination of motives, 
 an intelligent forecasting of effects. It is far- 
 sight, ffar-hearing, an enlargement of the sense ; 
 it hears the weakened voice of the admonishing 
 past, it sees results far down the vista of the 
 future ; it annihilates space and time for the sake 
 of light. Self-control is coordinated energy, — 
 which is the first and last word in ethics and poH- 
 tics, and perhaps in logic and metaphysics too. 
 Weak will means that desires fall out of focus, 
 and taking advantage of the dark steal into 
 action : it is a derangement of the light, a fail- 
 ure of intelUgence. In this sense a "good wiU" 
 means coordination of desires by the ultimate 
 desire, end, ideal ; it means health and wholeness 
 of will ; it means, literally, integrity. In the old 
 sense "good will" meant, too often, mere fear 
 either of the prohibitions of present law or of the 
 prohibitions stored up in conscience. Such con- 
 science, we all know, is a purely negative and 
 static thing, a convenient substitiite for police- 
 men, a degenerate descendant of that conscientia, 
 or knowing-together, which meant to the Romans 
 a discriminating awareness in action, — discrimi- 
 nating awareness of the whole that lurks round 
 the corner of every part. This is one instance of 
 a sort of pathology of words, — words coming to 
 function in a sense alien to their normal intent. 
 
26 PHILOSOPHT AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Right and wrong, for example, once carried no ethi- 
 cal connotation, but merely denoted a direct or 
 tortuous route to a goal; and significantly the 
 Hebrew word for sin meant, in the days of its 
 health, an arrow that had missed its mark. 
 
 But, it is urged, there is no such thing as intelli- 
 gence in the sense of a control of passion by reason, 
 desire by thought. Granted ; it is so much easier 
 to admit objections than to refute them ! Let in- 
 telligence be interpreted as you will, so be it you 
 recognize in it a delayed response, a moment of 
 reprieve before execution, giving time for the ap- 
 pearance of new impulses, motives, tendencies, 
 and allowing each element in the situation to fall 
 into its place in a coordinated whole. Let intelli- 
 gence be a struggle of impulses, a survival of the 
 fittest desire ;] let us contrast not reason with pas- 
 sion, but response delayed by the rich interplay 
 of motive forces, with response immediately fol- 
 lowing upon the first-appearing impulse. Let im- 
 pulse mean for us fruit that falls unripe from the 
 tree, because too weak to hang till it is mature. 
 Let us understand intelligence, as not a faculty 
 superadded to impulse, but rather that coordina- 
 tion of impulses which is wrought out by the blows 
 of hard experience. The Socratic ethic fits quite 
 comfortably into this scheme ; intelligence is de- 
 layed response, and morality means. Take your 
 time. 
 
 It is charged that the Socratic view involves 
 determinism ; and this charge, too, is best met with 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCEATIC ETHIC 27 
 
 open-armed admission. We need not raise the 
 question of the pragmatic value of the problem. 
 But to suppose that determinism destroys moral 
 responsibiUty is to betray the mid- Victorian origin 
 of one's philosophy. Men of insight hke Socrates, 
 Plato, and Spinoza, saw without the necessity of 
 argument that moral responsibility is not a matter 
 of freedom of will, but a relation of means to ends, 
 a responsibility of the agent to himself, an intelli- 
 gent coordination of impulses by one's ultimate 
 purposes. Any other moraUty, whatever pretty 
 name it may display, is the emasculated morality 
 of slaves. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Secularization of Morals 
 
 The great problem involved in the Socratic 
 ethic lies, apparently, in the bearings of the doc- 
 trine on social unity and stability. Apparently ; 
 for it is wholesome to remember that social organ- 
 ization, like the Sabbath, was made for man, and 
 not the other way about. If social organization 
 demands of the individual more sacrifices than its 
 advantages are worth to him, then the stability of 
 that organization is not a problem, it is a misfor- 
 tune. But if the state does not demand such 
 sacrifices, the advantage of the individual will be 
 in social behavior ; and the question whether he 
 will behave socially becomes a question of how 
 much intelhgence he has, how clear-eyed he is 
 in ferreting out his own advantage. In a state 
 
28 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 that does not ask more from its members than it 
 gives, morality and intelUgence and social behavior 
 will not quarrel. The social problem appears here 
 as the twofold problem of, first, making men in- 
 telligent, and, second, making social organization 
 so great an advantage to the individual as to in- 
 sure social behavior in all intelligent men. 
 
 Which has the better chance of survival : — a 
 society of "good" men or a society of intelligent 
 men ? So far as a man is "good " he merely obeys, 
 he does not initiate. A society of "good" men is 
 necessarily stagnant ; for in such a society the vir- 
 tue most in demand, as Emerson puts it, is con- 
 formity. If great men emerge through the icy 
 crust of this conformity, they are called criminals 
 and sinners ; the lives of great men all remind us 
 that we cannot make our lives sublime and yet 
 be "good." But intelligence as an ethical ideal 
 is a progressive norm ; for it impUes the progres- 
 sive coordination of one's life in reference to one's 
 ultimate ideals. The god of the "good" man is 
 the status quo; the intelligent man obeys rather 
 the call of the stattis ad quern. 
 
 Observe how the problem of man versus the 
 group is clarified by thus relating the individual 
 to a larger whole determined not by geographical 
 frontiers, but by purposes born of his own needs 
 and moulded by his own intelligence. For as the 
 individual's intelligence grows, his purposes are 
 brought more and more within the limits of per- 
 sonal capacity and social possibility : he is ever less 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 29 
 
 inclined to make unreasonable demands upon him- 
 self, or men in general, or the group in which he 
 lives. His ever broadening vision makes appar- 
 ent the inherent self-destructiveness of anti-social 
 aims; and though he chooses his ends without 
 reference to any external moral code, those ends 
 are increasingly social. Enlightemnent saves his 
 social dispositions from grovelUng conformity, and 
 his "self-regarding sentiments" from suicidal nar- 
 rowness. And pow the conflict between himself 
 and his group continues for the most part only in 
 so far as the group makes unreasonable demands 
 upon him. But this, too, diminishes as the indi- 
 viduals constituting or dominating the group be- 
 come themselves more intelligent, more keenly 
 cognizant of the limits within which the demands 
 of the group upon its members must be restricted 
 if individual allegiance is to be retained. Since 
 the reduction of the conflict between the individ- 
 ual and the community without detriment to the 
 interests of either is the central problem of polit- 
 ical ethics, it is obvious that the practical task 
 of ethics is not to formulate a specific moral code, 
 but to bring about a spread of intelligence. And 
 since the reduction of this conflict brings with it 
 a better coordination of the members of the group, 
 through their greater ability to perceive the ad- 
 vantages of communal action in an intelligently 
 administered group, the problem of social cohe- 
 rence and permanence itself falls into the same 
 larger problem of intellectual development. 
 
30 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 "How to make our ideas clear"; — what if 
 that be the social problem? What a wealth of 
 import in that little phrase of Socrates, — t6 tC; 
 
 — "what is it ? " What is my good, my interest ? 
 What do I really want? — To find the answer to 
 that, said Robert Louis Stevenson, is to achieve 
 wisdom and old age. What is my country? 
 What is patriotism? "If you wish to converse 
 with me," said Voltaire, "you must define your 
 terms." If you wish to be moral, you must define 
 your terms. If our civilization is to keep its head 
 above the flux of time, we must define our terms. 
 
 For these are the critical days of the seculari- 
 zation of moral sanctions ; the theological navel- 
 string binding men to "good behavior" has 
 snapped. What are the leaders of men going to 
 do about it? Will they try again the old gospel 
 of self-sacrifice? But a world fed on self-sacrifice 
 is a world of lies, a world choking with the stench 
 of hypocrisy. To preach self-sacrifice is not to 
 solve, it is precisely to shirk, the problem of ethics, 
 
 — the problem of ehminating individual self-sac- 
 rifice while preserving social stability : the prob- 
 lem of reconciling the individual as such with the 
 individual as citizen. Or will our leaders try to 
 replace superstition with an extended physical 
 compulsion, making the poUceman and the prison 
 do all the work of social coordination? But 
 surely compulsion is a last resort ; not because it 
 is "wrong," but because it is inexpedient, because 
 it rather cuts than unties the knot, because it pro- 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 31 
 
 duces too much friction to allow of movement. 
 Compulsion is warranted when there is question 
 of preventing the interference of one individual or 
 group with another ; but it is a poor instrument 
 for the establishment or maintenance of ideals. 
 Suppose we stop moralizing, suppose we reduce 
 regimentation, suppose we begin to define our 
 terms. Suppose we let people know quite simply 
 (and not in Academese) that moral codes are born 
 not in heaven but in social needs ; and suppose we 
 set about finding a way of spreading intelligence 
 so that individual treachery to real communal 
 interest, and communal exploitation of individual 
 allegiance, may both appear on the surface, as 
 they are at bottom, unintelligently suicidal. Is 
 that too much to hope for? Perhaps. But then 
 again, it may be, the worth aind meaning of life 
 lie precisely in this, that there is still a possibility 
 of organizing that experiment. 
 
 IX 
 
 " Happiness " and " Virtue " 
 
 A word now about the last part of the Socratic 
 formula: intelligence = virtue = happiness. And 
 this a word of warning : remember that the "vir- 
 tue" here spoken of is not the mediaeval virtue 
 taught in Simday schools. Surely our children 
 must wonder are we fools or Uars when we tell 
 them, "Be good and you will be happy." Better 
 forget "virtue" and read simply: intelligence = 
 
32 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 happiness. That appears more closely akin to 
 the rough realities of life : intelligence means abil- 
 ity to adapt means to ends, and happiness means 
 success in adapting means to ends; happiness, 
 then, varies with abUity. Happiness is intelli- 
 gence on the move; a pervasive physiological 
 tonus accompanying the forward movement of 
 achievement. It is not the consciousness of vir- 
 tue : that is not happiness, but snobbery. And 
 similarly, remorse is, in the intelligent man, not 
 the consciousness of "sin," but the consciousness 
 of a past stupidity. So far as you fail to win 
 your real ends you are unhappy, — and have 
 proved unintelligent. But the Preacher says, "He 
 that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." 
 True enough if the increment of knowledge is the 
 correction of a past error ; the sorrow is a penalty 
 paid for the error, not for the increase of knowledge. 
 True, too, that intelligence does not consistently 
 lessen conflicts, and that it discloses a new want 
 for every want it helps to meet. But the joy of 
 life lies not so much in the disappearance of diffi- 
 culties as in the overcoming of them ; not so much 
 in the diminution of conflict as in the growth of 
 achievement. Surely it is time we had an ethic 
 that stressed achievement rather than quiescence. 
 And further, intelligence must not be thought of 
 as the resignation of disillusionment, the con- 
 sciousness of impotence ; intelligence is to be con- 
 ceived of in terms of adaptive activity, of 
 movement towards an end, of coordinated self- 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 33 
 
 expression and behavior. Finally, it is but fair to 
 interpret the formula as making happiness and in- 
 telligence coincide only so far as the individual's 
 happiness depends on his own conduct. The 
 causes of unhappiness may be an inherited de- 
 formity, or an accident not admitting of provision ; 
 such cases do not so much contradict as lie out- 
 side the formula. So far as your happiness de- 
 pends on your activities, it will vary with the de- 
 gree of intelligence you show. Act intelligently, 
 and you will not know regret ; feel that you are 
 moving on toward your larger ends, and you will 
 be happy. 
 
 The Sociatic Challenge 
 
 But if individual and social health and happi- 
 ness depend on intelligence rather than on "vir- 
 tue," and if the exaltation of intelligence was a 
 cardinal element in the Athenian view of life, 
 why did the Socratic ethic fail to save Athens 
 from decay? And why did the supposedly in- 
 telligent Athenians hail this generous old Dr. 
 Johnson of philosophy into court and sentence 
 him to death ? 
 
 The answer is. Because the Athenians refused 
 to make the Socratic experiment. They were in- 
 telligent, but not intelligent enough. They could 
 diagnose the social malady, could trace it to the 
 decay of supernatural moral norms; but they 
 
34 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 could not find a cure, they had not the vision to 
 see that salvation lay not in the compulsory 
 retention of old norms, but in the forging of new 
 and better ones, capable of withstanding the shock 
 of questioning and trial. What they saw was 
 chaos ; and hke most statesmen they longed above 
 all things for order. They were not impressed 
 by Socrates' allegiance to law, his cordial admis- 
 sion of the individual's obligations to the commu- 
 nity for the advantages of social organization. 
 They listened to the disciples : to Antisthenes, 
 who laughed at patriotism; to Aristippus, who 
 denounced all government; to Plato, scorner of 
 democracy ; and they attacked the master because 
 (not to speak of pettier political reasons) it was he, 
 they thought, who was the root of the evil. They 
 could not see that this man was their ally and not 
 their foe ; that rescue for Athens lay in helping 
 him rather than in sentencing him to die. And 
 how well they could have helped him! For to 
 preach intelligence is not enough ; there remains 
 to provide for every one the instrumentalities 
 of intelligence. What men needed, what Athe- 
 nian statesmanship might have provided, was an 
 organization of intelligence for intelligence, an 
 organization of all the forces of intelligence in the 
 state in a persistent intellectual campaign. If that 
 could not save Athens, Athens could not be saved. 
 But the myopic leaders of the Athenian state could 
 not see salvation in intelligence, they could only 
 see it in hemlock. And Socrates had to die. 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC 35 
 
 It will take a wise courage to accept the Socratic 
 challenge, — such courage as battle-fields and 
 senate-chambers are not wont to show. But un- 
 less that wise courage comes to us our civilization 
 will go as other civilizations have come and gone, 
 "kindled and put out like a flame in the night." 
 
 Note. — From a book whose interesting defence of 
 the Socratic ethic from the standpoint of psychoanalysis 
 was brought to the writer's attention after the comple- 
 tion of the foregoing essay: "The Freudian ethics is 
 a literal and concrete justification of the Socratic teach- 
 ing. Truth is the sole moral sanction, and discrimina- 
 tion of hitherto unrealized facts is the one way out of 
 every moral dilemma. . . . Virtue is wisdom." Prac- 
 tical moraUty is "the estabUshment, through discrimi- 
 nation, of consistent, and not contradictory (mutually 
 suppressive), courses of action toward phenomena. 
 The moral sanction lies always in facts presented by the 
 phenomena; morality in the discrimination of those 
 facts." Moral development is "the progressive, life- 
 long integration of experience." — The Freudian Wish 
 and Its Place in Ethics, by Edwin B. Holt, New York, 
 1915, pp. 141, 146, 148. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 
 
 11 
 
 I 
 
 The Man and the Artist 
 
 Why do we love Plato ? Perhaps because Plato 
 himself was a lover : lover of comrades, lover 
 of the sweet intoxication of dialectical revelry, 
 full of passion for the elusive reahty behind 
 thoughts and things. We love him for his un- 
 stinted energy, for the wildly nomadic play of 
 his fancy, for the joy which he found in life in all 
 its unredeemed and adventurous complexity. 
 We love him because he was alive every minute 
 of his Ufe, and never ceased to grow ; such a man 
 can be loved even for the errors he has made. 
 But above all we love him because of his high 
 passion for social reconstruction through intel- 
 ligent control; because he retained throughout 
 his eighty years that zeal for human improvement 
 which is for most of us the passing luxury of 
 youth; because he conceived philosophy as an 
 instrument not merely for the interpretation, but 
 for the remoulding, of the world. He speaks of 
 himself, through Socrates, as "almost the only 
 36 
 
PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 37 
 
 Athenian living who sets his hand to the true art 
 of poUtics ; I am the only politician of my time." * 
 Philosophy was for him a study of human possi- 
 bilities in the light of human realities and limita- 
 tions; his daily food consisted of the problems 
 of human relations and endeavors : problems of 
 liberty versiis order; of sex relations and the 
 family; of ideals of character and citizenship, 
 and the educational approaches to those ideals; 
 problems of the control of population, of heredity 
 and environment, of art and morals. With all 
 his liking for the poetry of mysticism, philosophy 
 none the less was to him preeminently an adven- 
 ture in this world; and unlike ourselves, who 
 follow one or another of his many leads, he sailed 
 virginal seas. Every reader in every age has 
 called him modern; but what age can there be 
 to which Plato will not still be modern ? 
 
 Plato was twenty-eight when Socrates died ; ^ 
 and though he was not present at the drinking 
 of the hemlock, yet the passing of the master 
 must have been a tragic blow to him. It brought 
 him face to face with death, the mother of meta- 
 physics. Proudest of all philosophers, he did not 
 hide his sense of debt to Socrates : "I thank the 
 gods," he said, "that I was born freeman, not 
 slave ; Greek, not barbarian ; man, not woman ; 
 but above all that I was born in the time of 
 Socrates." The old philosopher gone, Athens be- 
 
 > Gorgias, p. 521. * 
 
 ' 399 B.C. 
 
38 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 came for a time intolerable to Plato (some say, 
 Plato to Athens) ; and the young philosopher 
 sailed o£f to see foreign shores and take nourish- 
 ment of other cultures. He liked the peaceful 
 orderliness and aged dignity with which a long 
 dominant priesthood had invested Egypt; be- 
 side this mellow civilization, he was wUUng to 
 be told, the cultiire of his native Athens was but 
 a precarious ethnological sport. He liked the 
 Pythagoreans of southern Italy, with their aristo- 
 cratic approach to the problem of social construc- 
 tion and their communal devotion to plain Uving 
 and high thinking ; above all he Kked their em- 
 phasis on harmony as the fundamental pervasive 
 relation of all things and as the ideal in which our 
 himian discords might be made to resolve them- 
 selves had men artistry enough. Other lands he 
 saw and learnt from : stories tell how he risked 
 his handsome* head to build an ideal state in 
 Syracuse; how he was sold into slavery and re- 
 deemed by a friend; and how he passed down 
 through Palestine even to India, absorbing the 
 culture of their peoples with a kind of osmotic 
 genius. And at last, after twelve years of wan- 
 dering, he heard again the call of Athens, and 
 went home, stored with experience and ripe with 
 thought. 
 
 Arrived now at the mid-point of his life, he 
 turned to the task of self-expression. Should he 
 join one of the political parties and try to make the 
 government of Athens a picture of his thought? 
 
PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 39 
 
 Perhaps he felt that his thought was not yet 
 definite enough for that ; politics requires answers 
 in Yes or No, and philosophy deals only in Yes- 
 andr-No. He hesitated to join a party or pledge 
 himself to a dogma; and was prepared to be 
 hated by all parties aUke for this hesitation.' 
 Aristocracy was in his blood, and he would not 
 stoop to conquer by a plebiscite. He thought 
 of turning to the stage, as Euripides had done, 
 and teaching through the mask ; in his youth he 
 had written plays, and smiled now to think how 
 he had hoped to rival Aristophanes. But there 
 were too many limitations here, of religious sub- 
 ject and dramatic form ; Plato's philosophy was 
 a thing of ever broadening borders, and could not 
 be cramped into a ceremony. But neither was 
 his philosophy an arid academic affair, to be 
 written down as one places in order the bones of 
 a skeleton ; it was vibrantly alive, it was itself a 
 drama and a rehgion. Why should there not be 
 a drama of idea as well as of action? — Had not 
 the play of thought its tragedies and comedies? 
 — Was not philosophy, after all, a matter of life 
 and death? 
 
 In such a juncture of desires came that fusion 
 of drama and philosophy which we know as Plato's 
 dialogues, — assuredly the finest production in 
 all the history of philosophy. Here was just the 
 instrument for a man whose thought had not 
 congealed into dogmas and a system. All genius 
 
 ' EpisUes, viii, 325. 
 
40 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PEOBLEM 
 
 is heterogeneous ; a great man is a sum of many 
 men ; — let the soul give its selves a voice, and it 
 will speak in dialogue.' Just instrument, too, for 
 a man who wished to play with the varied possi- 
 bilities of speculation, who cared to clarify his 
 own mind rather than to give forth finalities where 
 life itself was so blind and inconclusive. A con- 
 clusion is too often but the point at which thought 
 has lost its wind ; being not so much a solution 
 of the problem as a dissolution of thought. Hence 
 the riotous play of the imagination in Plato; 
 lively game of trial and error, merry-go-round 
 of thought; here is imagery squandered with 
 lordly abandon ; here is humor such as one misses 
 in our ponderous modern philosophers ; here is 
 no system but all systems ; ^ here is one abounding 
 fountain-head of European thought ; here is prose 
 strong and beautiful as the great temples where 
 Greek joy disported itself in marble ; here literary 
 prose is born, — and born adult. 
 
 II 
 
 How to Solve the Social Problem 
 
 To understand Plato one must remember the 
 Pythagorean motif: harmony is the heart of 
 
 > "When the soul does not speak in dialogue it is not in 
 diflBculty." — Professor Woodbridge, in class. 
 
 * "If we look for a system of philosophy in Plato, we shall 
 probably not find it ; but if we look for none we may find 
 most of the philosophies ever written." — Professor Wood- 
 bridge. 
 
PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 41 
 
 Plato's metaphysics, of his psychological and edu- 
 cational theory, of his ethics and his poUtics. To 
 feel such harmony as there is, and to make such 
 harmony as may be, — that to Plato is the mean- 
 ing of philosophy. 
 
 We observe this at the outset in the more- 
 mystified-than mystifying theory of ideas. 
 Obviously, the theory of ideas belongs to Soc- 
 rates; the Platonic element is a theory not of 
 ideas so much as of ideals. Socrates wants truth, 
 but Plato wants beauty, harmony. Socrates is 
 bent on argument, and points you to a concept; 
 Plato is a poet with a vision, and points you to the 
 picture that he sees. Understanding, says Plato, 
 is of the earth earthly ; but poetic vision is divine.* 
 Hence the maze of quibbUng in the dialogues ; it 
 is Plato and not Socrates who is culprit here. 
 Reasoning was an aUen art to Plato ; try as he 
 might to become a mathematician he remained 
 always a poet, — and perhaps most so when he 
 dealt with numbers. Dialectic was in Plato's 
 day a recent invention ; he plays with it like a 
 youth in the breakers, letting it now raise him to 
 heights of ecstatic vision and now bury him in 
 the deadliest logic-chopping. But — let us not 
 doubt it — he knows when he is logic-chopping ; 
 he goes on, partly that he may paint his picture, 
 partly for the mere joy of parrying pros and cons ; 
 this new game, he feels, is a sport for the gods. 
 
 Let us smile at the heavy seriousness of those 
 
 > PhcEdrue, 244. 
 
42 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 who suppose that this man meant everything he 
 said. No one does, but least of all men Plato, 
 who hardly taught except in parables. What is 
 the "heaven" of the ideas but a poet's way of 
 saying that the constancies observable in the re- 
 lations among things are not identical with the 
 things themselves, but have a reality and per- 
 manence of their own? So we phrase it in our 
 own distinguished verbiage; but Plato prefers, 
 as ever, to "draw a picture. And notice, in this 
 picture, the ever present reference to social needs. 
 What is a concept, after all, but a scheme for the 
 conservation of mental resources, an instrument 
 of prediction, a method of control? Without the 
 power to form concepts we could never turn ex- 
 perience to use, it would slip between our fingers ; 
 we should be like the maidens condemned to carry 
 water in a sieve. The idea of anything is the 
 sum of its observed constancies of behavior; 
 hence the medium of our adaptation and control. 
 To have ideas of things is to know the map or 
 plan of things ; it is to see tendencies, directions, 
 and results; it is to know how to use things. 
 That is why knowledge is power ; every idea is a 
 tool with which to bend the world to serve our 
 will. And that too is why the Ideas are real: 
 they have power, and "anything which possesses 
 any sort of power is real." ^ 
 
 All this, as was said, is but an embellishment of 
 the Socratic doctrine that salvation hes in brains. 
 
 ' Sophist, 247. 
 
. PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 43 
 
 But Plato rushes on. Not only may everything 
 be brought under a concept, an Idea, but it may 
 be brought under a perfect Form, an Ideal. 
 Things are not what they might be. Men are 
 not such as men might be, states are often sorry 
 states, beds might be more ideal beds, even dirt 
 could be more perfectly dirt. To all things that 
 are, there correspond perfect Ideals of what they 
 might be, in a thoroughly harmonious world. 
 To say that these Ideals are real, that they exist, 
 is only to claim for them that they are operative, 
 and get results. Whether his supernaturalism 
 was only part of his poUtical theory, others may 
 dispute; let it suffice us at present that Plato 
 believed that the Ideals could and did operate 
 through hmnan , agency. The distinctive thing 
 about man is that perceiving the thing ' that 
 is, he can conceive the thing that might be. He 
 is the forward-looking, ideal-making animal; 
 through him, if he but will it, proceeds creation. 
 The brute may be a thinker, but man may be 
 also an artist. Out of the ?ibundance of the sexual 
 instinct (as Plato implies in the Symposium) 
 emerges this ideal-seeking and -making quahty; 
 from which come art and ethics and religion. 
 WiUiam Morris looks at a slum and conceives 
 Utopia ; and forthwith begins to make for Utopia 
 even though the road lead him through a jail. 
 Is it that William Morris loves "humanity"? 
 Not at all ; he loves beauty and his dream ; he 
 is uncomfortable with all this dirt and despair 
 
44 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL, PROBLEM 
 
 before him; it is his fortune or misfortune that 
 he cannot see these slums without falling thrall 
 to a vision of better things. So with most of us 
 "reformers": we wish to change things, not 
 because we love our fellows much more than 
 "conservatives" do, nor because we believe that 
 happiness varies with income; but because we 
 hear the call of the beautiful, and see in the 
 mind's eye another form wherein the world 
 might come more pleasingly to sight. 
 
 What we have to do, says Plato, is to make 
 people conceive a better world, so that they may 
 see this world as ugly, and may strive to reshape 
 it. We must conceive the perfect Forms of 
 things, and batter this poor world till it re-form 
 itself and take these perfect shapes. To learn to 
 see — and seeing learn to make — these perfect 
 Forms : that is the task of philosophers. To 
 make philosophers : that is the social problem. 
 
 Ill 
 
 On Making Philosopher-Kings 
 
 It is simple, isn't it ? Give us enough philoso- 
 phers, and the beautiful city will walk out of the 
 picture into the fact. But how make philoso- 
 phers ? And perhaps there is a perfect Form for 
 philosophers, too? How shall we "see — and 
 seeing learn to make" — the perfect philosopher? 
 
 Let us not worry about this little matter of 
 dialectics, says Plato ; we know quite well some 
 
PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 45 
 
 of the things we must do in order that we may- 
 have more and greater philosophers. It is quite 
 clear that one thing we must do is to give our 
 best brains to education. 
 
 Is that trite? Not at all. Do we give our 
 best brains to education? Do we offer more to 
 our ministers or commissioners of education than 
 to our presidents, or governors, or mayors, or 
 bank presidents, or pugilists ? Or do we honor 
 them more? When Plato says that the office of 
 minister of education is "of all the great offices 
 of state the greatest," and that the citizens should 
 elect their very best man to this office,^ he is not 
 pronouncing a platitude, he is making a radical, 
 a revolutionary proposition. It has never been 
 done, and it wiU not soon be done; for men, 
 naturally enough, are more interested in making 
 money than in making philosophers. And yet, 
 says Plato, gently but resolutely, we may as well 
 imderstand that until we give our best brains to 
 the problem of making philosophers our much-ado 
 about social ills will amount to noise and wind, 
 and nothing more. "How charming people are ! " 
 he writes, drawing an analogy between the in- 
 dividual and the body politic ; "they are always 
 doctoring — and thereby increasing and compli- 
 cating — their disorders, fancying they will be 
 cured by some nostnmi which somebody advises 
 them to try, — never getting better but always 
 growing worse. . . . Are they not as good as a 
 
 > Laws, 765-6. 
 
46 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 play, trying their hand at legislation, and imagin- 
 ing that by reforms they will make an end to the 
 dishonesties and rascalities of mankind, not know- 
 ing that they are in reaUty cutting away at the 
 heads of a hydra?" ^ 
 
 Notice that the aim of the educational process 
 is, for Plato, not so much the general spread of 
 intelligence as the discovery and development of 
 the superior man. (This conception of the task 
 of the educator appears again and again in later 
 thought: we hear it in the nineteenth century, 
 for example, in Carlyle's "hero," Schopenhauer's 
 "genius," and Nietzsche's "superman.") It is 
 very naive, thinks Plato, to look to the masses as 
 the source and hope of social improvement ; the 
 proper function of the masses is to toil as cheer- 
 fully as may be for the development and support 
 of the genius who will make them happy — so far 
 as they are capable of happiness. To aim directly 
 at the elevation of all is to open the door to 
 mediocrity and futiUty; to find and nurse the 
 potential genius, — that is an end worthy the 
 educator's subtle art. 
 
 Now if you are going to discover genius in the 
 bud you must above all things handle your ma- 
 terial, at the outset at least, with tender care. 
 You must not overflow with prohibitions, or in- 
 dulge yourself too much in the luxury of punish- 
 ments. "Mother and father and nurse and tutor 
 set to quarrelling about the improvement of the 
 
 > Republic, 425. 
 
PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 47 
 
 child as soon as ever he is able to understand 
 them : he cannot say or do anything without their 
 setting forth to him that this is just and that un- 
 just, this honorable and that dishonorable, this 
 holy and that unholy, do this and don't do that. 
 And if he obeys, well and good ; if not he is 
 straightened by threats and blows, like a piece of 
 warped wood." ^ Suppress here, and you get ex- 
 pression there ; — often enough, abnormal expres- 
 sion. Better have no hard mould of uniformity 
 and conformity wherein to crush and deform each 
 differently aspiring soul. Think twice before forc- 
 ing your 'isms and 'ologies upon the child ; his 
 own desires wiU be yovir best curriculum. "The 
 elements of instruction," writes Plato, in a too- 
 little-noticed passage, "should be presented to the 
 mind in chUdhood, but without any notion of 
 forcing them. For a freeman ought to be a free- 
 man in the acquisition of knowledge. Bodily 
 exercise, when compulsory, does no harm; but 
 knowledge which is acquired under compulsion 
 has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use 
 compulsion, but let early education be a sort of 
 amusement; that will better enable you to find 
 out the natural bent." ^ There is a stroke of 
 Plato's genius here : it is a point which we lag- 
 gards are coming to after some two thousand 
 three hundred years. "To find out the natural 
 bent," to catch the spark of divine fire before con- 
 
 ' PTotagoras, 325. 
 ' Republic, 636. 
 
48 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 formity can put it out; that is the beginning 
 and yet the summit of the educator's task, — the 
 initium dimidium facti. 
 
 In this search for genius all souls shall be tried. 
 Education must be universal and compulsory; 
 children belong not to parents but to the state 
 and to the future.' And education cannot begin 
 too early. Cleinias, asking whether education 
 should begin at birth, is astonished to be answered, 
 "No, before" ; and if Plato could have his way, 
 no doubt there would be a realization of Dr. 
 Holmes' suggestion that a man's education 
 should begin two thousand years before he is 
 born. The chief concern at the outset will be to 
 develop the body, and not to fill the soul with 
 letters ; let the child be taught his letters at ten, 
 but not before.* Music will share with gymnas- 
 tics the task of rounded development. The boy 
 who tells his teacher that the athletic field is as 
 important and necessary a part of education as 
 the lecture-room is right. "How shall we find a 
 gentle nature which has also great courage?"* 
 Music mixed with athletics will do it. "I am 
 quite aware that your mere athlete becomes too 
 much of a savage, and that the musician is melted 
 and softened beyond what is good for him." * 
 There is a determination here that even the genius 
 shall be healthy; Plato will not tolerate the 
 notion that to be a genius one needs to be sick : 
 
 ^ Laws, 804. ' Republic, 375. 
 
 ' Ibid., 810. « Ibid., 410. 
 
PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 49 
 
 let the genius have his say, but let him, too, be 
 reminded that he is no disembodied spirit. And 
 let art take care lest its vaunted purgation be a 
 purgation of our strength and manhood ; poetry 
 and soft music may make men slaves. No 
 man shall bother with music after the age of 
 sixteen.^ 
 
 At twenty a general test will weed out those 
 who give indication that further educative labor 
 will be wasted on them; the others will go on 
 for another decade, and a second test will elimi- 
 nate those who will in the meantime have reached 
 the limit of their capacities for development. 
 The final survivors will then — and not before — 
 be introduced to philosophy. "They must not 
 be allowed to taste the dear delight too early; 
 that is a thing especially to be avoided ; for 
 young men, as you may have observed, when they 
 first get the taste in their mouths, argue for 
 amusement, and are always contradicting and re- 
 futing, like puppy-dogs that delight to tear and 
 pull at all who come near them. . . . And when 
 they have made many conquests and received 
 defeats at the hands of many, they violently and 
 speedily get into a way of not believing anything 
 that they believed before, and hence not only they, 
 but philosophy generally, have a bad name with 
 the rest of the world." '' 
 
 Five happy years are given to the study of 
 
 » Laws, 810. 
 'Republic, 539. 
 
50 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 philosophy. Gradually, the student learns to 
 see the universal behind the particular, to judge 
 the part by relating it to the whole ; the fragments 
 of his experience fall into a harmonious philosophy 
 of life. The sciences which he has learned are 
 now united as a consistent application of intelli- 
 gence to life ; indeed, the faculty of uniting' the 
 sciences and focussing them on the central prob- 
 lems of hfe, is precisely the criterion of the true 
 philosopher.' But involved in this is a certain 
 practical quality, a sense for realities and limita- 
 tions. One must study books — and men ; one 
 should read much, but live more. So Plato legis- 
 lates that his new philosophers shall spend the 
 years from thirty-five to fifty in the busy din of 
 practical hfe ; they must, in his immortal image, 
 go back into the cave. The purpose of higher 
 education is to detach us for a time from the life 
 of action, but only so that we may later return 
 to it with a better perspective. To be put for a 
 goodly time upon one's own resources, to butter 
 one's own bread for a while, — that is an almost 
 indispensable prerequisite to greatness. Out of 
 such a test men come with the scars of many 
 wounds ; but to those who are not fools every 
 scar is the mark of a lesson learned. 
 
 And now here are our philosophers, ripe and 
 fifty, hardened by the tests of learning and of life. 
 What shall we do with them? Put them away 
 in a lecture-room and pay no further attention 
 
 • Republic, 537. 
 
PLATO: PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 51 
 
 to them? Give them, as their life-work, the 
 problem of finding how Spinoza deduces, or fails 
 to deduce, the Many from the One ? Have them 
 fill learned esoteric journals with unintelligible 
 jargon about the finite and the infinite, or space 
 and time, or the immateriahty of roast beef ? No, 
 says Plato ; let them govern the state. 
 
 Did Plato mean it? Was he so enraged at the 
 state-murder of the most beloved of philosophers 
 that he forearmed himself against such a contre- 
 temps in his Utopia by making the philosophers 
 supreme? — Was it only his magnificent journal- 
 istic revenge ? Was it merely his reaction to the 
 observed cramping and mediocritization of su- 
 perior intellects in a democracy? Was it but 
 Plato's dramatic way of emphasizing the Socratic 
 plea for intelligence as the basis of morals and 
 social life? Perhaps all this; but much more. 
 It was his sober judgment ; it was the influence 
 of the Egyptian priesthood and the Pythagorean 
 brotherhood coming to the surface in him ; it was 
 the long-accumulated deposit of the stream of his 
 personal experience. 
 
 We have to remember here that by philosopher 
 Plato does not mean Immanuel Kant. He means 
 a Uving being, a man like Seneca or Francis Bacon, 
 a man in whom knowledge is fused with action, 
 and keen perception joins with steady hand; a 
 man who has had not only the teaching of books 
 but the discipline of hard experience ; a man who 
 has learned with equal readiness to obey and to 
 
52 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 command ; a man whose thought is coordinated 
 by application to the vital problems of human 
 society. "Inasmuch as philosophers alone are 
 able to grasp the eternal and unchangeable, and 
 those who wander in the region of the many and 
 variable are not philosophers, I must ask you 
 which of the two kinds should be rulers of our 
 state?"' Well, then, "Until philosophers are 
 kings, or the kings and princes of this world have 
 the spirit and power of philosophy, . . . cities 
 will never cease from ill, nor the human 
 race." " 
 That, of course, is the heart and soul of Plato. 
 
 IV 
 Dishonest Democracy 
 
 Let US get back to the circumference and ap- 
 proach this same point by another route. 
 
 I grant you, says Plato, that to have rulers at 
 all is very disagreeable. And indeed we should 
 not need to have them were it not for a regrettable 
 but real porcine element in us. My own Utopia 
 is not an aristocracy nor a democracy, nor any 
 kind of an 'ocracy; it is what some of you would 
 call an anarchist communism. I have described 
 it very clearly in the second book of my Repvhlic, 
 but nobody cares to notice it, except to repeat 
 
 » Republic, 184. 
 » Ibid., 473. 
 
PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 53 
 
 my brother's gibe about it.^ But instead of this 
 Utopia of mine being a "City of Pigs," it is just 
 because we are pigs that I had to give up paint- 
 ing this picture and turn to describing "not only 
 a state, but a luxurious state." I am still "of 
 opinion that the true state, which may be said 
 to be a healthy constitution, is the one which I 
 have described," and not the "inflamed constitu- 
 tion" to which I devoted the rest of my book, 
 and which in my opinion is much more a "City 
 of Pigs" than the other. It is because people 
 want "to lie on sofas, and dine off tables, and have 
 
 'The passage, abbreviated, follows: "First, then, let us 
 consider what will be their way of life, now that we have thus 
 established them. Will they not produce corn, and wine 
 and clothes, and shoes, and build houses for themselves? 
 And when they are housed, they will work in summer com- 
 monly stripped and barefoot, but in winter substantially 
 clothed and shod. They will feed on barley and wheat, 
 baking the wheat and kneading the flour, making noble pud- 
 dings and loaves ; these they will serve up on a mat of reeds 
 or clean leaves, themselves reclining the while upon beds of 
 yew or myrtle boughs. And they and their children will 
 feast, drinking of the wine which they have made, wearing 
 garlands on their heads, and having the praises of the gods on 
 their lips, living in sweet society, and having a care that their 
 families do not exceed their means ; for they will have an eye 
 to poverty or war. ... Of course they will have a relish, — 
 salt, and olives, and cheese, and onions, and cabbages or 
 other country herbs which are fit for boiling ; and we shall 
 give them a dessert of figs, and pulse, and beans, and myrtle- 
 berries, and beech-nuts, which they will roast at the fixe, 
 drinking in moderation. And with such a diet they may be 
 expected to live in peace to a good old age, and bequeath a 
 similar life to their children after them." — Rep^lhlic, 372. 
 Cf. The Rousseauian anthropology of Laws, 679. 
 
64 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 dainties and dessert in the modern fashion, . . . 
 and perfumes, and incense, and courtesans, and 
 cakes, and gold, and ivory, . . . hunters and 
 actors, . . . musicians, players, dancers, . . . 
 tutors, . . . servants . . . nurses wet and dry, 
 . . . barbers, confectioners and cooks, . . . and 
 hosts of animals (if people are to eat animals), 
 . . . and physicians ; . . . then a slice of neigh- 
 bor's land . . . and then war," ^ — in short, it is 
 because people are pigs that you must have sol- 
 diers and rulers and laws. 
 
 But if you must have them, why not train your 
 best men for the work, just as you train some to 
 be doctors, and others to be lawyers, and others 
 to be engineers? Think of taking a man's pills 
 just because he can show a count of noses in his 
 favor ! Think of letting a man build the world's 
 greatest bridge because he is popular! You ac- 
 cuse me of plagiarizing from Pythagoras, but in 
 truth, you who believe in democracy are tlie 
 Pythagoreans of politics, — you believe in num- 
 ber as your god. Your equality is the equality of 
 the unequal, and is all a matter of words and never 
 of reaUty ; your liberty is anarchy, it is the con- 
 genital sickness wherein your democracy was con- 
 ceived and delivered, and whereof it inevitably 
 dies ; your freedom of speech is a hcense to lie ; 
 your elections are a contest in flattery and pre- 
 varication. Your democracy is a theatrocracy ; 
 and woe to the genius who falls into your hands. 
 » Republic, 372-3. 
 
PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 55 
 
 Perhaps you like democracy because you are like 
 democracy: all your desires are on a level; that 
 you should respect some of them and discipline 
 others is an idea that never enters yout heads. 
 It has never occurred to you that it takes more 
 time and training to make a statesman than it 
 does to make a bootblack. But statesmanship is 
 something that can never be conferred by plebis- 
 cite ; it must be pursued through the years, and 
 must find the privilege of office without submitting 
 to a vote. Wisdom is too subtle a thing to be 
 felt by the coarsened senses of the mob. Your 
 industry is wonderful because it is shot through 
 with specialization and training ; but because you 
 reject specialization and training in filling the 
 offices of your government the word politics has 
 become dishonored in your mouths. And just 
 because you will let any one be your leader no real 
 man ever submits himself to your choice. 
 
 Culture and Slaver; 
 
 There is much exaggeration here, of course, as 
 might be expected of one whose material and so- 
 cial concerns were bound up with the oligarchical 
 party at Athens, whose friends and relatives had 
 died in battle against the armies of the democracy ; 
 whose early years had seen the democratic mis- 
 management of the Peloponnesian war and the 
 growth of a disorderly individualism in Athens. 
 
56 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 But there are also lessons here for those who are 
 strong enough to learn even from their enemies.^ 
 To press home these lessons at this point would 
 take us too far afield ; our plan for the moment is 
 to follow Plato's guidance until he has led us 
 out into a clear view of his position. 
 
 We shall suppose such a scheme of education 
 as Plato desires ; we shall suppose that a moderate 
 number of those who entered the lists at birth 
 have survived test after test, have "tasted the 
 dear delight" of philosophy for five years, and 
 have passed safely through the ordeal of practical 
 affairs ; these men (and women, as we shall see) 
 now automatically become the rulers of the Pla- 
 tonic state : let us observe them in their work 
 and in their lives. 
 
 To the guardians it is a matter of first principles 
 that the function of the state — and therefore 
 their function — is a positive function ; they are 
 to lead the people, and not merely to serve as an 
 umpire of disputes. They are the protagonists 
 of a social evolution that has at last become 
 conscious; they are resolved that henceforth 
 social organization shall be a far-seeing plan and 
 not a haphazard flux of expediencies of control. 
 They know that they are asked to be experts in 
 foresight and coordination; they will legislate 
 
 • Much of modern criticism of democracy finds its inspira- 
 tion in Plato. Cf. Bernard Shaw: "The democratic politi- 
 cian remains exactly as Plato described him." Cf. also the 
 Modern Utopia and Research Magnificent of H. G. Wells. 
 Nietzsche's debt to Plato will appear in a later chapter. 
 
PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 57 
 
 accordingly, and will no more think of asking the 
 people what laws should be passed than a physi- 
 cian would ask the people what measures should 
 be taken to preserve the public health. 
 
 And first of all they will control population; 
 they will consider this to be the indispensable 
 prerequisite to a planned development. The 
 state must not be larger than is consistent with 
 unity and with the efficacy of central control. 
 People may mate as they will, — that is their 
 own concern; but they must understand quite 
 clearly that procreation is an affair of the state. 
 Children must be born not of love but of science ; 
 marriage will be a temporary relation, allowing 
 frequent remating for the sake of beautiful off- 
 spring. Men shall not have children before thirty, 
 nor after forty. Deformed or incurably diseased 
 children will be exposed to die. Children must 
 leave their mothers at birth, and be brought up 
 by the state. Women must be freed from bond- 
 age to their children, if women are to be real 
 citizens, interested in the public weal, and loving 
 not a narrow family but the great community. 
 
 For women are to be citizens ; it would be 
 foolish to let half the people be withdrawn from 
 interest in and service to the state. Women will 
 receive all the educational advantages offered to 
 men; they will even wrestle with them, naked, 
 in the games. If any of them — and surely some 
 of them will — pass all the tests, they shall be 
 guardians, too. People are to be divided, for 
 
58 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 political purposes, not by difference of sex, but 
 by difference of capacity. Some women may be 
 fit not for housekeeping but for ruling, — let 
 them rule ; some men may be fit not for ruling 
 but for housekeeping, — let them keep house. 
 
 Without family, and without clearly ascertain- 
 able relationship between any man and any child, 
 there can be no individual inheritance of property ; 
 the guardians will have all things in common, 
 and without TertuUian's exception.' Shut off 
 from the possibility of personal bequests or of 
 "founding a family," the guardians wiU have no 
 stimulus to laying up a hoard of material goods ; 
 nay, they will not be moved to such hoarding by 
 fear of the morrow, for a modest but sufiicient 
 maintenance will be supphed them by the work- 
 ing classes. There will be no money in use among 
 them ; they will live a hard simple life, devoted 
 to the problems of communal defence and develop- 
 ment. Freed from family ties, from private 
 property and luxury, from violence and litigation, 
 and all distinctions of Mine and Thine, they will 
 have no reason to oppress the workers in order 
 to lay up stores for themselves; they will be 
 happy in the exercise of their high responsibiUties 
 and powers. They will not be tempted to legis- 
 late for the good of their own class rather than 
 for the good of the community ; their joy will lie 
 in the creation of a prosperous and harmonious 
 state. 
 
 • "Omnia communia inter nos habemus, praeter mulieres." 
 
PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 59 
 
 Under their direction will be the soldiers, also 
 specially selected and trained, and supported by 
 the workers. But these workers ? 
 
 They will be those who have been eliminated 
 in the tests. The demands of specialization will 
 have condemned them to labor for those who 
 have the gift of guidance. They shall have no 
 voice in the direction of the state ; that, as said, 
 is a reward for demonstrated capacity, and not a 
 "natural right." ^ Frankly, there are some 
 people who are not fit to be other than slaves; 
 and to varnish that fact with oratory about "the 
 dignity of labor" is merely to give an instance of 
 the indignities to which a democratic politician 
 wUl descend. These workers are incapable of a 
 subtler happiness than that of knowing that they 
 are doing what they are fit to do, and are con- 
 tributing to the maintenance of communal pros- 
 perity. Such as they are, these workers, like the 
 other members of the state, will find their highest 
 possibiUties of development in such an organized 
 society. And to make sure that they will not 
 rebel, they will have been taught by "royal lies" 
 that their position and function in the state have 
 been ordained by the gods. There is no sense in 
 shivering at this quite judicious juggling with 
 the facts ; there are times when truth is a barrier 
 
 ' Let us remember that a property-qualification for the 
 vote remained in our own political system till the time of 
 Jefferson, and has in our own day been resuscitated in some of 
 ' the Southern states. 
 
60 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 to content, and must be set aside. Physicians 
 have been known to cure aihnents with a timely 
 lie. Labor stimulated by such deception may be 
 slavery, if you wish to call it so ; but it is the in- 
 evitable condition of order, and order is the 
 inevitable condition of culture and communal 
 success. 
 
 VI 
 
 Plasticity and Order 
 
 But is it just? — some one asks. Perhaps 
 there are other things than order to be considered. 
 Perhaps this hunger for order is a disease, like 
 the monistic hunger for unity; perhaps it is a 
 corollary to the d priori type of mind ; perhaps 
 it is part of the philosopher's general inability to 
 face a possibly irrational reality. Here for order's 
 sake the greater part of the people must work in 
 silence : they shall not utter their desires. Here 
 for order's sake are sacrificed that communal 
 plasticity, that freedom of variety, that happy 
 looseness and changeability of structure, in which 
 lie all the suggestion and potency of social recon- 
 struction. If there is any lesson which shines 
 out through all the kaleidoscope of history, it 
 is that a poUtical system is doomed to early 
 death if its charter offer no provision and facility 
 for its own reform. Plasticity is king. Human 
 ideals change, and leave nations, institutions, 
 even gods, in their wake. "Law and order in a 
 
PLATO: PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 61 
 
 state are" not "the cause of every good" ; ^ they 
 are the security of goods attained, but they may 
 be also the hindrance of goods conceived. A 
 state without freedom of criticism and variation 
 is like a sail-boat in a calm ; it stands but it can- 
 not move. Such a state is a geometrical diagram, 
 a perfect syllogism evolved out of impossible 
 premises ; and its own perfection is its refutation. 
 In such a state there could be no Plato, with a 
 penchant for conceiving Utopias; much less a 
 Socrates, holding that a life uncriticised is un- 
 worthy of a man. It would be a state not for 
 philosophers but for priests : very truly its basis 
 would not be dialectical clarity but royal Ues. 
 Here is the supreme pessimism, the ultimate 
 atheism, of the aristocrat, that he does not believe 
 in the final wholesomeness of truth. And surely 
 something can be said for democracy. Granted 
 that democracy is not a problem solved but a 
 problem added; it is at least a problem that 
 time may help to clarify. Granted that men used 
 to slavery cannot turn and wisely rule themselves ; 
 what is better than that they should, by xnevit- 
 able trial and error, learn? Errando disdmus. 
 Granted that physicians do not consult us in their 
 prescriptions; but neither do they come to us 
 before they are chosen and called.' "That the 
 guardian should require another guardian to 
 guard him is ridiculous indeed." ^ But he would ! 
 
 • Laws, 783. 
 ' Republic, 403. 
 
62 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Power corrupts unless it is shared by all. " Cities 
 cannot exist, if a few only share in the virtues, as 
 in the arts." ^ To build your culture on the backs 
 of slaves is to found your city on Vesuvius. Men 
 will not be lied to forever, — at least with the 
 same lies ! And to end with such a Utopia, — 
 what is it but to yield to Thrasymachus, to 
 arrange all things at last in the interest of the 
 stronger? Is it just? 
 
 VII 
 
 The Meaning of Justice 
 
 But what is justice? — asks Plato. Don't you 
 see that our notion of justice is the very crux of 
 the whole business? Is justice merely a matter 
 of telling the truth? Nonsense; it may be well 
 to have our children believe that ; but those who 
 are not children know that if a lie is a better in- 
 strument of achievement than the truth in some 
 given juncture of events, then a he is justified. 
 Truth is a social value, and has its justification 
 only in that ; if untruth prove here and there of 
 social value, then untruth is just.^ The confusion 
 of justice with some absolute eternal law comes of 
 a separation of ethics from politics, and an attempt 
 to arrive at a definition of justice from the study 
 
 ' Protagoras, 322. 
 
 2 Plato, says Cleanthes, "cursed as impious him who first 
 sundered the just from the useful." — Gomperz, ii, 73. Cf. 
 Republic, 331. 
 
PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 63 
 
 of individuals. But morals grow out of politics ; 
 justice is essentially a political relation. And 
 taking the state as a whole, it is clear that noth- 
 ing is "good" unless it works; that it would be 
 absurd to say that justice demands of a state that 
 it should be ordered in such a way as to make 
 for its own decay. Social organization must be 
 effective ; and Ues and class-divisions are justified 
 if they make for the effectiveness of a political 
 order. Surely social effectiveness forbids that 
 men fi.t to legislate should live out their lives as 
 cobblers, or that men should rule whose natural 
 aptitude is for digging ditches. Justice means, 
 for politics at least, that each member of society 
 is minding his natural business, is doing that for 
 which he is fitted by his own natural capacity. 
 Injustice is the encroachment of one part on an- 
 other ; justice is the efficient functioning of each 
 part. Justice, then, is social coordination and 
 harmony. It is not " the interest of the stronger," 
 it is the harmony of the whole. So in the indi- 
 vidual, justice is the harmonious operation of a 
 unified personaUty ; each element in one's nature 
 doing that which it is fitted to do; again it is 
 not mere strength or forcefulness, but harmonious, 
 organized strength; it is effective order. And 
 effective order demands a class division. You 
 may mouth as you please the delusive delicacies 
 of democracy ; but classes you will have, for men 
 will always be some of gold and some of silver 
 and some of brass. And the brass must not pass 
 
64 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 itseK off as silver, nor the silver as gold. Give 
 the brass all the time and opportunity in the 
 world, and it will still be brass. Of course brass 
 will not believe that it is brass, but we had better 
 make it understand once for all that it is so, even 
 if we have to tell a thousand lies to get the truth 
 believed. 
 
 And as for variation and plasticity, remember 
 that these too are valueless except as they make 
 for a better society. They assuredly make for 
 change ; but change is not betterment. History 
 is a chaos of variations ; without some organ for 
 their control they cancel one another and termi- 
 nate inevitably in futility. Our problem is not 
 how to change, but how to set our best brains to 
 controlling change for the sake of a finer life. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Future of Plato 
 
 There are apergus here, and a bewildering 
 wealth of suggestions, which one is tempted to 
 pursue to their ultimate present significance. But 
 to do that would be to encroach too much on 
 the subjects of later chapters. The vital thing 
 here is not to accept or refute any special element 
 in Plato's political philosophy; it is rather to 
 see how inextricably politics and philosophy were 
 bound together in his mind as two sides of funda- 
 mentally one endeavor. Here is the passion to 
 remould things; here is the seeing of perfection 
 
PLATO : PHILOSOPHY AS POLITICS 65 
 
 and the will to make perfection ; here speaks out 
 for the first time in European history the courage 
 of the intellect that not only will perceive but 
 will remake. Here is a man ; no dead academic 
 cobweb-weaver, but a masterful, kingly soul, 
 mixed up in warm intimacy with the complex 
 flow of the life about him. He paints Utopia; 
 but at the same time he takes his own counsel 
 anent the importance of an educational approach 
 to the social problem, and founds the most famous 
 and influential university the world has ever seen. 
 Picture him in the gardens and lecture-halls of 
 his Academy, arranging and supervising and co- 
 ordinating, and turning out men to whom nations 
 looked — and not in vain — for statesmen. Not 
 merely to Uft men up to the beatific vision of uni- 
 ties and perfections, but to teach them the art of 
 creation, to fire them with the ardor of a new 
 artistry; this he aimed to do, and did. "The 
 greatest works grow in importance, as trees do 
 after the death of the mortal men who planted 
 them." * So grew the Republic, and the Academy. 
 To catch in a chapter the deep yet subtle spirit 
 and meaning of this "finest product of antiq- 
 uity," ^ — it is not easy. In Plato's Utopia 
 there would no doubt have been a law against 
 writing so briefly on so vast a phenomenon, — 
 with, in this case, the inevitably consequent de- 
 rangement of the Platonic perspective, and the 
 
 I Edmund Gosse, Life of Henrik Ibsen, p. 100, note. 
 ' Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, pref . 
 F 
 
66 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 impossibility, within such compass, of focussing 
 Plato in the political and philosophical meaning 
 of his time. One's feeling here is of having dese- 
 crated with small talk the Parthenon of philos- 
 ophy. Perhaps as we go on we shall be able to 
 see more clearly the still-living value of Plato's 
 thought: in almost everything that we shall 
 hereinafter discuss his voice will be heard, even 
 though unnamed. To-day, at last, he comes 
 again into his own — as in Renaissance days — 
 after centuries dominated by the influence of his 
 first misinterpreter ; and generations bred on the 
 throned lukewarmness of the Nicomachean Ethics 
 yield to a generation that is learning to feel tlie 
 hot constructive passion of the Republic. Dead 
 these two thousand and some hundred years, 
 Plato belongs to the future. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 FRANCIS BACON AND THE SOCIAL POSSIBILITIES 
 OF SCIENCE 
 
 From Plato to Bacon 
 
 "As I read Plato," writes Professor Dewey, 
 "philosophy began with some sense of its essen- 
 tially pohtical basis and mission — a recognition 
 that its problems were those of the organization 
 of a just social order. But it soon got lost in 
 dreams of another world." ^ Plato and Aristotle 
 are the crura cerebri of Europe. But in Aristotle, 
 along with a wealth of acute observation of men 
 and institutions, we find a diminishing interest in 
 reconstruction; the Stagirite spent too much of 
 his time in card-cataloguing Plato, and allowed 
 his imagination to become suffocated with logic. 
 With the Stoics and Epicureans begin that aUen- 
 ation of ethics from politics, and that subordi- 
 nation of philosophy to religious needs, which it 
 is part of the task of present thinking to undo. 
 Alexander had conquered the Orient, only to have 
 
 • Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, New York, 1910, 
 p. 21. 
 
 67 
 
68 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Orientalism conquer Greece. Under Scholasti- 
 cism it was the fate of great minds to retrace worn 
 paths in the cage of a system of conclusions deter- 
 mined by external authority; and the obligation 
 to uphold the established precluded any practi- 
 cal recognition of the reconstructive function of 
 thought. With the Renaissance — that Indian 
 summer of Greek culture — the dream of a re- 
 moulded world found voice again. Campanella, 
 through the darkness of his prison cell, achieved 
 the vision of a communist utopia ; and other stu- 
 dents of the rediscovered Plato painted similar 
 pictures. Indeed this reawakening of Plato's in- 
 fluence gave to the men of the Renaissance an 
 inspiriting sense of the wonders that lay potential 
 in organized intelligence. Again men faced the 
 task of replacing with a natural ethic the falling 
 authoritarian sanctions of supernatural reli- 
 gion ; and for a time one might have hoped that 
 the thought of Socrates was to find at last its due 
 fruition. But again men lost themselves in the 
 notion of a cultured class moving leisurely over 
 the backs of slaves ; and perhaps it was well that 
 the whole movement was halted by the more 
 Puritan but also more democratic outburst of the 
 Reformation. What the world needed was a 
 method which offered hope for the redemption 
 not of a class, but of all. Galileo and Roger Bacon 
 opened the way to meeting this need by their 
 emphasis on the value of hypothesis and experi- 
 ment, and the necessity of combining induction 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE 69 
 
 with deduction; it remained for Francis Bacon 
 to lay out the road for the organized employment 
 of these new methods, and to inspire all Europe 
 with his warm vision of their social possibilities. 
 
 II 
 
 Character 
 
 If you would understand Bacon, you must see 
 him as not so much a philosopher as an adminis- 
 trator. You find him a man of great practical 
 abiHty: he remoulds philosophy with one hand 
 and rules part of England with the other ; not to 
 speak of writing Shakespeare's plays between 
 times ! He rises brilliantly from youthful penury 
 to the pohtical pinnacle ; and meanwhile he runs 
 over the whole realm of human knowledge, scatter- 
 ing praise and censure with lordly hand. Did we 
 not know the fact as part of the history of Eng- 
 land we should never suspect that the detailed 
 and varied learning of this man was the incidental 
 accomplishment of a hfe busied with political in- 
 trigue. Bene vixit qui bene latuit: surely here is 
 a man who has lived widely, and in no merely 
 physical sense has made the world his home. 
 Life is no "brief candle" to him, nor men "such 
 stuff as dreams are made of" ; life is a glorious 
 gift, big with blessing for him who will but assist 
 at the dehvery. There is nothing of the timid 
 ascetic about him; like Socrates, he knows that 
 
70 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 there is a sort of cowardice in shunning pleasure ; ' 
 best of all, there is so much work to be done, so 
 many opportunities for the man of unnarrowed 
 soul. He feels the exhilaration of one who has 
 burst free from the shackles of intellectual au- 
 thority : he sees before him an uncharted future, 
 raw material for hands that dare to mould it; 
 and he dares. All his life long he is mixed up 
 with the heart of things ; every day is an adven- 
 ture. Exiled from pohtics he plunges gladly into 
 the field of scientific reconstruction ; he does not 
 forget that he is an administrator, any more than 
 Plato could forget that he was a dramatist; he 
 finds the world of thought a chaos, and bequeaths 
 it a planful process for the coordination of human 
 life; all Europe responds to his call for the "en- 
 larging of the boimds of human empire." He 
 works joyfully and buoyantly to the very last, and 
 dies as he has wished, "in an earnest pursuit, 
 which is hke one that is wounded in hot blood, 
 who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt." 
 
 Ill 
 
 The EzjmTgation of the Intellect 
 
 Consider the reaction of an experienced states- 
 man who leaves the service of a king to enter the 
 service of truth. He has left a field wherein all 
 workers moved in subordination to one head and 
 one focal purpose ; he enters a field in which each 
 ' Cf, De Augmentis, bk. viii, ch. 2. 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE 71 
 
 worker is working by himself, with no division of 
 labor, no organization of endeavor, no correla- 
 tion of ends. There he has found administration, 
 here he finds a naive laissez-faire; there order, 
 here anarchy; there some sense of common end 
 and effort, here none. He understands at once the 
 low repute of philosophy among men of affairs. 
 "For the people are very apt to contemn truth, 
 upon account of the controversies raised about it ; 
 and so think those all in a wrong way, who never 
 meet." ^ He understands at once why it is that 
 the world has been so little changed by specula- 
 tion and research. He is a man whose conscious- 
 ness of pervasive human misery is too sharp for 
 comfort ; ^ and he sees no hope of remedy for 
 this in isolated guerilla attacks waged upon the 
 merest outposts of truth, each attack with its 
 jealously peculiar strategy, its own dislocated, 
 almost irrelevant end. And yet if there is no 
 remedy for men's ills in this nascent science and 
 renascent philosophy, in what other quarter, then, 
 shall men look for hope and cure? 
 
 There is no other. Bacon feels ; unless victory 
 is first won in the laboratory and the study it 
 will never be won in political assemblies; no 
 plebiscite or royal edict, but only truth, can make 
 men free. Man's hope lies in the reorganization 
 of the processes of discovery and interpretation. 
 
 • Advancement of Learning, Boston, 1863, bk. i. 
 ' PhUotaphical Works, ed. J. M. Robertson, London, 
 1805, p. 33. 
 
72 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Unless philosophy and science be born again of 
 social aims and social needs they cannot have life 
 in them. A new spirit must enter. 
 
 But first old spirits must be exorcised. Specu- 
 lation and research must bring out a declaration 
 of independence against theology. "The corrup- 
 tion of philosophy by superstition and an admix- 
 ture of theology is . . . widely spread, and does 
 the greatest harm." ' The search for final causes, 
 for design in nature, must be left to theologians ; 
 the function of science is not to interpret the pur- 
 poses of nature, but to discover the connections 
 of cause and effect in nature. Dogma must be 
 set aside : "if a man will begin with certainties 
 he shall end in doubts ; but if he will be content 
 to begin in doubts he shall end in certainties." * 
 Dogma must be set aside, too, because it necessi- 
 tates deduction as a basic method; and deduc- 
 tion as a basic method is disastrous. 
 
 But that is not all ; there is much more in the 
 way of preliminaries : there must be a general 
 "expurgation of the intellect." The mind is full 
 (some would say made up) of prejudices, wild 
 fancies, "idols," or imaginings of things that are 
 not so : if you are to think correctly, usefully, 
 all these must go. Try, then, to get as little of 
 yourself as possible in the way of the thing you 
 wish to see. Beware of the very general tendency 
 to put order and regularity in the world and then 
 
 ' Nomim Organum, i, 65. 
 
 > Advaneememl of Learning, p. 133. 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE 73 
 
 to suppose that they are native to the structure 
 of things ; or to force all facts into the unyielding 
 mould of a preconceived opinion, carefully neglect- 
 ing all contrary instances ; or to give too credu- 
 lous an ear to that which flatters the wish. Look 
 into yourself and see the forest of prejudices that 
 has grown up within you: through your tem- 
 peramental attitudes; through your education; 
 through your friends (friendship is so often an 
 agreement in prejudices) ; through your favorite 
 authors and authorities. If you find yourself 
 seizing and dwelling on anything with particular 
 satisfaction, hold it in suspicion. Beware of 
 words, for they are imposed according to the ap- 
 prehension of the crowd ; make sure that you do 
 not take abstractions for things. And remind 
 yourself occasionally that you are not the measure 
 of all things, but their distorting mirror. 
 
 So much by way of clearing the forest. Comes 
 then induction as the fount and origin of all 
 truth : patient induction, obedient to the call of 
 fact, and with watchful eye for, above all things, 
 the Uttle imwelcome instance that contradicts. 
 Not that induction is everything; it includes 
 experiment, of course, and is punctuated by hy- 
 pothesis.i (More, it is clearly but the servant of 
 deduction, since the aim of all science is to pre- 
 dict by deduction from generaUzations formed by 
 induction ; but just as clear is it that the efficacy 
 of the whole business lies grounded in the faith- 
 > Called by Bacon the "first vintage." 
 
74 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PEOBLEM 
 
 fulness of the induction : induction is servant, 
 but it has all men at its mercy.) And to formu- 
 late methods of induction, to surroimd the process 
 by mechanical guards, to protect it from the pre- 
 mature flights of young generalizations, — that is 
 a matter of life and death to science. 
 
 IV 
 Knowledge is Power 
 
 And now, armed with these methods of pro- 
 cedure, we stand face to face with nature. What 
 shall we ask her? Prudens questio dimidium 
 sdentice: to know what to ask is half of every 
 science. 
 
 You must ask for laws, — or, to use a Platonic 
 term, forms. In every process there is matter and 
 there is form : the matter being the seat of the 
 process or operation, and the form its method or 
 law. "Though in nature nothing really exists 
 besides individual bodies, performing pure indi- 
 vidual acts, according to a fixed law, yet in philoso- 
 phy the very law, and the investigation, discovery, 
 and explanation of it, is the foundation as well of 
 knowledge as of operation. And it is this law, 
 with its clauses, that I mean when I speak of 
 Forms." * Not so much what a "thing" is, but 
 how it behaves ; — that is the question. And 
 what is more, if you will examine your concep- 
 tion of a "thing," you will see that it is really a 
 
 I Novum Organum, ii, 2, 
 
, THE POSSIBILITIES OP SCIENCE 75 
 
 conception of how the "thing" behaves ; every 
 What is at last a How. Every "thing" is a ma- 
 chine, whose essence or meaning is to be found 
 not by a mere description of its parts, but by an 
 account of how it operates. " How does it work ? " 
 asks the boy before a machine ; see to it that you 
 ask the same question of nature. 
 
 For observe, if you know how a thing works, 
 you are on the way to managing and controUing 
 it. Indeed, a Form can be defined as those ele- 
 ments in a process which must be known before 
 the process can be controlled. Here we see the 
 meaning of science ; it is an effort to discover the 
 laws which must be known in order "that the 
 mind may exercise her power over the nature of 
 things."' Science is the formulation of control; 
 knowledge is power. The object of science is not 
 merely to know, but to rebuild; every science 
 longs to be an art. The quest for knowledge, 
 then, is not a matter of ciuiosity, it is a fight for 
 power. We "put nature on the rack and compel 
 her to bear witness" against herself. Where this 
 conception reigns, logic-chopping is out of court. 
 "The end of our new logic is to find not arguments 
 but arts; . . . not probable reasons but plans 
 and designs of works; ... to overcome not an 
 adversary in argument but nature in action." * 
 
 But there is logic-chopping in other things than 
 logic. All strife of men with men, of group with 
 
 ' Preface to Magna InstaureUio, 
 * Noman Organum, pref. 
 
76 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PEOBLEM 
 
 group, if it leaves no result beyond the victory 
 and passing supremacy of the individual or group, 
 is logic-chopping. Such victories pass from side 
 to side, and cancel themselves into final nullity. 
 Real achievement is victory, not over other men 
 but with them. "It will not be amiss to distin- 
 guish the three kinds, and as it were grades, of 
 ambition in mankind. The first is of those who 
 desire to extend their own power in their native 
 country; which kind is vulgar and degenerate. 
 The second is of those who labor to extend the 
 power of their country and its dominion among 
 men. This certainly has more dignity, though 
 not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to 
 establish and extend the power and dominion of 
 the human race over the universe, his ambition 
 is without doubt both a more wholesome thing 
 and a more noble than the other two. The empire 
 of man over things depends wholly on the arts 
 and sciences. For we cannot command nature 
 except by obeying her." ' 
 
 V 
 
 The Socialization of Science 
 
 Natura non vincitur nisi parendo. "I accept 
 the universe," says Margaret Fuller. "Gad! 
 you'd better!" says Carlyle. I accept it, says 
 Bacon, but only as raw material. We will 
 listen to nature, but only that we may learn 
 » Novum Organum, i, 129. 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE 77 
 
 what language she understands. We stoop to 
 conquer. 
 
 There is nothing impossible but thinking makes 
 it so. "By far the greatest obstacle to the pro- 
 gress of science and the undertaking of new 
 tasks ... is found in this, that men despair and 
 think things impossible. ... If therefore any 
 one believes or promises more, they think this 
 comes of an ungoverned and unripened mind." ^ 
 There is nothing that we may not do, if we will, 
 but we must will; and must will the means as 
 well as the end. Would we have an empire of 
 man over nature? Very well: organize the arts 
 and sciences. 
 
 "Consider what may be expected from men 
 abounding in leisure, and from association of 
 labors, and from successions of ages ; the rather 
 because it is not a way over which only one man 
 can pass at a time (as is the case with that of 
 reasoning), but within which the labors and in- 
 dustries of men (especially as regards the collecting 
 of experience) may with the best effort be distrib- 
 uted and then combined. For then only will men 
 begin to know their strength when instead of 
 great numbers doing all the same things, one 
 shall take charge of one thing and another of an- 
 other." ^ There should be more cooperation, less 
 chaotic rivalry, in research. And the cooperation 
 should be international ; the various universities 
 
 I Ibid:, i, 92. 
 ' Ibid., i, 113. 
 
78 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 of the world, so far as they engage in research, 
 should be like the different buildings of a great 
 manufacturing plant, each with its own particular 
 specialty and quest. Is it not remarkable how 
 "little sympathy and correspondence exists be- 
 tween colleges and universities, as well through- 
 out Europe as in the same state and kingdom?" ' 
 Why cannot all the research in the world be co- 
 ordinated into one unified advance? Perhaps 
 the truth-seekers would be imwilUng; but has 
 that been shown? And is the number of willing 
 coQperators too small to warrant further effort? 
 How can we know without the trial ? Grant that 
 the genius would balk at some external central 
 direction ; but research after all is seldom a matter 
 of genius. "The course I propose ... is such 
 as leaves but Uttle to the acuteness and strength 
 of wits, but places all wits and understandings 
 nearly on the level." ^ Let scope and freedom 
 be amply provided for the genius ; it is the work 
 of following up the apergus of genius that most 
 sorely needs coordination. Organization of re- 
 search means really the liberation of genius : 
 liberation from the halting necessities of mechani- 
 cal repetition in experiment. Nor is coordination 
 regimentation ; let each man follow his hobby to 
 whatever university has been assigned to the in- 
 vestigation of that particular item. Liberty is 
 futility unless it is organized. 
 
 I Advancement of Learning, bk. ii, ch. 1. 
 ' Novum Organum, i, 61. 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE 79 
 
 It is a plan, you see, for the socialization of 
 science. It is a large and royal vision ; to make 
 it real involves "indeed opera basilica," it is the 
 business of a king, "towards which the endeavors 
 of one man can be but as the sign on a cross-road, 
 which points out the way but cannot tread it." > 
 It will need such legislative appropriations as are 
 now granted only to the business of competitive 
 destruction on land and sea. "As the secretaries 
 and spies of princes and states bring in bills for 
 intelligence, so you must allow the spies and 
 intelligencers of nature to bring in their bills if 
 you would not be ignorant of many things worthy 
 to be known. And if Alexander placed so large 
 a treasure at Aristotle's command for the support 
 of hunters, fowlers, fishers and the like, in much 
 more need do they stand of this beneficence who 
 imfold the labyrinths of nature." * 
 
 VI 
 
 Science and Utopia 
 
 Such an organization of science is Bacon's 
 notion of Utopia. He gives us in The New 
 Atlantis, in plain strong prose, a picture of a 
 state in which this organization has reached the 
 national stage., It is a state nominally ruled by a 
 king (Bacon never forgets that he is a loyal sub- 
 ject and counsellor of James I) ; but "preeminent 
 
 • Advancement of Learning, bk. i, eh. 1. 
 « Ibid., bk. ii, ch. 1. 
 
80 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 amongst the excellent acts of the king . . . was 
 the erection and institution of an Order or Society 
 which we call Solomon's House; the noblest 
 foundation, as we think, that ever was upon the 
 earth, and the lantern of this kingdom. It is dedi- 
 cated to the study of the nature of all things." ^ 
 Every twelve years this Order sends out to all 
 parts of the world "merchants of light "; men 
 who remain abroad for twelve years, gather in- 
 formation and suggestions in every field of art 
 and science, and then (the next expedition having 
 brought men to replace them) return home laden 
 with books, instruments, inventions, and ideas. 
 "Thus, you see, we maintain a trade not for gold, 
 silver or jewels ; nor for silk; nor for spices; nor 
 for any other commodity or matter; but only 
 for God's first creation, which was Light." ^ 
 Meanwhile at home there is a busy army filling 
 many laboratories, experimenting in zoology, 
 medicine, dietetics, chemistry, botany, physics, 
 and other fields; there are, in addition to these 
 men, "three that collect the experiments in aU 
 the books ; . . . three that try new experiments " ; 
 three that tabulate the results of the experiment- 
 ers; "three that look into the experiments of 
 their fellows, and cast about how to draw out of 
 them things of use . . . for man's life ; . . . three 
 that direct new experiments"; three that from 
 the results draw up "observations, axioms, and 
 
 • New AUantia, Cambridge University Press, 1900, p. 22. 
 2 Ibid., p. 24. 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE 81 
 
 aphorisms." ' "We imitate also the flights of 
 birds ; we have some degree of flying in the air ; 
 we have ships and boats for going under water." " 
 And the purpose of it all, he says, with fine Ba- 
 conian ring, is "the enlarging of the bounds of 
 human empire, to the effecting of all things 
 possible." " 
 
 vn 
 
 Scholasticism in Science 
 
 This is the voice of the Renaissance, speaking 
 with some method to its music. It is the voice 
 of Erasmus rather than that of Luther ; but it is 
 the voice of a larger and less class-bound vision 
 than that which moved the pohte encomiast of 
 folly. Such minds as were not lost in the religious 
 turmoil of the time responded to Bacon's call for 
 a new beginning; a "sense of liberation, ... of 
 new destinies, pulsates in that generation at 
 Bacon's touch." * Bacon says, and with justice, 
 that he "rang the bell which called the wits to- 
 gether." ^ When, in 1660, a group of London 
 savants formed the Royal Society, it was from 
 Bacon that they took their inspiration, and from 
 the "House of Solomon" part of their plan of 
 
 ' Pp. 44, 45. 
 ' P. 43. 
 » P. 34. 
 
 * J. M. Robertson, preface to Philosophical Works. 
 •Robert Adamson, article "Bacon," Encydoprndia Britan- 
 nica. 
 
 a 
 
82 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 organization. Diderot and D'Alembert acknowl- 
 edged the impetus given by their reading of Bacon 
 to the adventurous enterprise which completed 
 and distributed the Encyclopidie despite the pro- 
 hibition of the king. To-day, after two hundred 
 years of Cartesian futility about mind and body 
 and the problem of knowledge, the Baconian 
 emphasis on the socially-reconstructive func- 
 tion of thought renews its power and appeal. 
 The world returns to Socrates, to Plato, and 
 to Bacon. 
 
 But with some measure of wholesome disillu- 
 sionment. These last two centuries have told us 
 that science, unaided, cannot solve our social 
 problem. We have invented, invented, invented, 
 invented; and with what result? The gap be- 
 tween class and class has so widened during these 
 inventive years that there are now not classes 
 but castes. Social harmony is a matter of brief 
 interludes in a drama more violent than any ever 
 mimicked on the stage. Men trained and ac- 
 comphshed in science, hke Prince Kropotkin, 
 abandon it on the score that it has turned its 
 back on the purpose that gave it vitality and 
 worth.' 
 
 What is the purpose of science? What do 
 scientists consider to be the purpose of science? 
 The laboratories are crowded with men who have 
 no inkling of any other than a purely material 
 reconstruction as the function of their growing 
 
 ' Cf . preface to Memoirs of a Revolutionist. 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE 83 
 
 knowledge. Specialization has so divided science 
 that hardly any sense of the whole survives. The 
 ghosts of scholasticism — of a pursuit of knowl- 
 edge divorced from its social end — hover about 
 the microscopes and test-tubes of the scientific 
 world ; and the upshot of it all is that to them 
 who have, more is given. Let Bacon speak here : 
 "There is another great and powerful cause why 
 the sciences have made but little progress, which 
 is this. It is not possible to run a course aright, 
 when the goal itself has not been rightly placed." ' 
 Sciences with obvious social functions have lan- 
 guished through lapse of all sense of direction, all 
 feeling of focus ; psychology, for example, is but 
 now reviving under the stimulus of men who 
 dared to "stir the earth a little about the roots 
 of this science," " because they had perceived its 
 purpose and meaning in the drama of reconstruc- 
 tion. The blunt truth is that unless a scientist 
 is also a philosopher, with some capacity to see 
 things svb specie totius, — unless he can come 
 out of his hole into the open, — he is not fit to 
 direct his own research. "As no perfect discovery 
 can be made upon a flat or level, neither is it 
 possible to discover the more remote and deeper 
 parts of any science, if you stand but upon the 
 level of the same science, and ascend not to a 
 higher science." ' Before it can be of real ser- 
 
 » Novum Organum, i, 81. 
 
 « Advancement of Learning, p. 297. 
 
 'Ibid., p. 131. 
 
84 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 vice to life, science must be enlightened by 
 some discrimination of values, some considera- 
 tion and fitting together of human ends : with- 
 out philosophy as its eye piece, science is but 
 the traditional child who has taken apart the 
 traditional watch, with none but the traditional 
 results. 
 
 There is more to this indictment. Science has 
 been organized, though very imperfectly, for re- 
 search; it has been organized hardly at all for 
 social application and control. The notion that 
 science can be used in conserving the vital ele- 
 ments of order and at the same time facihtating 
 experimental and progressive change, is but be- 
 ginning to walk about. Indeed, the emplojnment 
 and direction of scientific ability in the business of 
 government is still looked upon as a doubtful pro- 
 cedure ; to say that the administration of muni- 
 cipal affairs, for example, is to be given over to 
 men trained in the social sciences rather than to 
 men artful in trapping votes with oratorical 
 molasses, is still a ventm-e into the loneliness of 
 heresy. Again let Bacon speak, who was admin- 
 istrator and philosopher in one. "It is wrong to 
 trust the natural body to empirics who commonly 
 have a few receipts whereon they rely, but. who 
 know neither the causes of the disease, nor the 
 constitution of patients, nor the danger of acci- 
 dents, nor the true methods of cure. And so it 
 must needs be dangerous to have the civil body 
 of states managed by empirical statesmen, unless 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE 85 
 
 well mixed with others who are grounded in learn- 
 ing. On the contrary it is almost without in- 
 stance that any government was improsperous 
 under learned governors." ' 
 
 Plato over again, you say. Yes; just as 
 "Greek philosophy is the dough with which 
 modern philosophers have baked their bread, 
 kneading it over and over again," * so this vital 
 doctrine of the appUcation of the best available 
 intelligence to the problem of social order and 
 development must be restated in every genera- 
 tion imtil at last the world may see its truth and 
 merit exemption from its repetition. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Asiatics of Europe 
 
 But the place of Bacon in the continuum of 
 history is hardly stated by connecting him with 
 Plato. Conceive of him rather as a new pro- 
 tagonist in the long epic of intelUgence ; another 
 blow struck in the seemingly endless war between 
 magic and science, between supernaturalism and 
 naturalism, between the spirit of worship and the 
 spirit of control. Primitive man — and he lives 
 everywhere under the name of legion — looks out 
 upon nature as something to be feared and obeyed, 
 something to be cajoled by ritual and sacrifice and 
 prayer. In ages of great social disorder, such as 
 
 ' Advancement of Learning,, bk. i. 
 
 ' Professor Woodbridge, class-lecturea. 
 
86 PHILOSOPHY AND THE ^OCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 the millennium inaugurated in Western Europe 
 by the barbarian invasions, the primitive ele- 
 ments in the mental . make-up of men emerge 
 through the falling cultural surface; and cults 
 rich in ritual and steeped in emotional luxury 
 grow in rank abundance. It is in the character 
 of man to worship power : if he feels the power 
 without him more intensely than the power 
 within, he worships nature with a humble fear, 
 and leans on magic and supernatural rewards; 
 if he feels the power within him more intensely 
 than the power without, he sees divinity in him- 
 self and other centres of remoulding activity, and 
 thinks not of worshipping and obeying nature, 
 but of controlling and commanding her. The 
 second attitude comes, of course, with knowledge, 
 and action that expresses knowledge; it is quite 
 human that nature should not be worshipped 
 once she has been known. A man is primitive, 
 then, when he worships nature and makes no 
 effort to control her ; he is mature when he stops 
 worshipping and begins to control, — when he 
 understands that "Nature is not a temple but a 
 worlcshop," * not a barrier to divinity, but the 
 raw material of Utopia. 
 
 Now the essence of Bacon is not the replace- 
 ment of deduction by induction, but the change 
 of emphasis from worship to control. This em- 
 phasis, once vivid in Plato but soon obscured by 
 Oriental influence, is one of the two dominant 
 
 ' Turgenev, in Fathers and Children. 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE 87 
 
 elements in modern thought (the other being the 
 puzzUng over an artificial problem of knowledge) ; 
 and unless the Baconian element finally subordi- 
 nates the Cartesian, the word modem must 
 no longer arrogate to itself a eulogistic connota- 
 tion. Hence Bacon, and not Descartes, is the 
 initiator of modern' philosophy ; part initiator, at 
 least, of that current of thought which finds 
 rebellious expression in the enlightenment of the 
 eighteenth century, and comes to supremacy in 
 the scientific victories of the nineteenth. The 
 vital sequence in modem philosophy is not Des- 
 cartes, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, and Bergson 
 (for these are the Asiatics of Eiirope), but 
 Bacon, Hobbes, Condorcet, Comte, Darwin, and 
 James.* 
 
 The hope of the world is in this resolute spirit 
 of control, — control of the material without us, 
 and of the passions within. Bit by bit, one is 
 not afraid to say, we shall make for ourselves a 
 better world. Shall we not find a way to elim- 
 inate disease, to control the increase of popu- 
 lation, to find in plastic organization a substitute 
 for revolution? Shall we perhaps even succeed 
 in transmuting the lust for power over man into 
 ambition to conquer the forces that impede man? 
 Shall we make men understand that there is more 
 
 ' This division into saints and sinners must be taken with 
 Teservations, of course. In many respects Descartes belongs 
 to the second group, and in some respects James and Comte 
 belong to the first. But the dichotomy clarifies, if only by 
 exaggeration. 
 
88 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 potency of joy in the sense of having contributed 
 to the power of men over nature than in any per- 
 sonal triumph of one over another man? — more 
 glory in a conquest of bacteria than in all the 
 martial victories that have ever spilled human 
 blood? Here is the beginning of real civilization, 
 and the mark of man. "The environment trans- 
 forms the animal; man transforms the environ- 
 ment." * "Looking at the history of the world 
 as a whole, the tendency has been in Europe to 
 subordinate nature to man; out of Europe, to 
 subordinate man to nature. Formerly the richest 
 countries were those in which nature was most 
 boimtiful ; now the richest countries are those in 
 which man is most active." ^ Control is the sign 
 of maturity, the achievement of Etu-ope, the future 
 of America. It is, one argues again, the drama 
 of history, this war between Asia and Europe, 
 between nature and man, between worship and 
 control. Fimdamentally it is the upward struggle 
 of intelligence : Plato is its voice, Zeno its passing 
 exhaustion. Bacon its resurrection. It was not 
 an imopposed rebirth: there is still no telling 
 whether East or West will win. Surrounded by 
 the backwash of Oriental currents everywhere, 
 the lover of the Baconian spirit needs constantly 
 to refresh himself at the fount of Bacon's inex- 
 haustible inspiration and confidence. "I stake 
 all," he says, "on the victory of art over nature 
 
 1 L. Ward, Pure Sociology, p. 16. 
 
 « Buckle, History of Cirnlization, i, 138. 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OP SCIENCE 89 
 
 in the race." And one needs to hold ever before 
 oneself Bacon's favorite device: A ship passing 
 through the Pillars of Hercules out into the un- 
 known sea, and over it the words, Plus ultra. 
 More beyond 1 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM* 
 
 I 
 
 Eobbes 
 
 Passing from Bacon to Spinoza we meet with 
 Thomas Hobbes, a man from whom Spinoza drew 
 many of his ideas, though very little of his inspi- 
 ration. The social incidence of the greater part 
 of Hobbes's thinking has long been recognized; 
 he is not a figure over whom the biographer of 
 social thought finds much cause to quarrel. He 
 is at once the materialist -par excellence of modern 
 philosophy, and the most uncompromising protag- 
 onist of the absolutist theory of the state. The 
 individual, all compact of pugnacity, was to 
 Hobbes the bogey which the state, voracious of 
 all liberties, became two centuries later to Herbert 
 Spencer. He had in acute degree the philoso- 
 pher's natural appetite for order; and trembled 
 at the thought of initiatives not foreseen by his 
 political geometry. He lived in the midst of 
 
 ' Special acknowledgment for some of the material of this 
 chapter is due to R. A. Duff, Spinoza's Political and Ethical 
 PhUoaophy, Glasgow, 1903. 
 
 90 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 91 
 
 alarms : war stepped on the heels of war in what 
 was very nearly a real bellum omnium contra 
 omnes. He lived in the midst of political reaction : 
 men were weary of Renaissance exuberance and 
 Reformation strife, and sank gladly into the open 
 arms of the past. There could be no end, thought 
 Hobbes, to this turmoil of conflicting egos, indi- 
 vidual and national, until all groups and individ- 
 uals knelt in absolute obedience to one sovereign 
 power. 
 
 But all this has been said before ; we need but 
 remind ourselves of it here so that we may the 
 better appreciate the vibrant sympathy for the 
 individual man, the generous defence of popular 
 Uberties, that fill with the glow of subdued passion 
 the pages of the gentle Spinoza. 
 
 II 
 
 The Spirit of Spinoza 
 
 Yet Spinoza was not wanting in that timidity 
 and that fear of unbridled instinct which stood 
 dictator over the social philosophy of Hobbes. 
 He knew as well as Hobbes the dangers of a 
 democracy that could not discipline itself. " Those 
 who have had experience of how changeful the 
 temper of the people is, are almost in despair. For 
 the populace is governed not by reason but by 
 emotion ; it is headlong in everything, and easily 
 corrupted by avarice and luxury." * And even 
 
 ' Tractatua Theologico-politicua, ch. 17. 
 
92 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 more than Hobbes he withdrew from the affairs 
 of men and sought in the protection of a suburban 
 attic the peace and sohtude which were the vital 
 medium of his thought. He found that some- 
 times at least, "truth hath a quiet breast." "Se 
 tu sarai solo," wrote Leonardo, "tu sarai tutto 
 tuo." And surely Goethe thought of Spinoza 
 when he said: "No one can produce anything 
 important unless he isolate himself." 
 
 But this dread of the crowd was only a part of 
 Spinoza's nature, and not the dominant part. 
 His fear of men was lost in his boundless capacity 
 for affection ; he tried so hard to understand men 
 that he could not help but love them. "I have 
 labored carefully not to mock, lament, or exe- 
 crate, but to understand, human actions ; and to 
 this end I have looked upon passions . . . not 
 as vices of human nature, but as properties just 
 as pertinent to it as are heat, cold, storm, thunder, 
 and the like to the nature of the atmosphere." ^ 
 Even the accidents of time and space were sinless to 
 his view, and all the world found room in the abun- 
 dance of his heart. "Spinoza deified the All in 
 order to find peace in the face of it," says Nietz- 
 sche : ^ but perhaps, too, because all love is deifi- 
 cation. 
 
 All in all, history shows no man more honest and 
 independent ; and the history of philosophy shows 
 no man so sincere, so far above quibbling and 
 
 • Tractatus Theohgico-politicus, oh. 1. 
 » Will to Power, vol. i, § 95. 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 93 
 
 dispute and the picking of petty flaws, so eager 
 to receive the truth even when brought by the 
 enemy, so ready to forgive even persecution in the 
 depth and breadth of his tolerance. No man who 
 suffered so much injustice made so few com- 
 plaints. He became great because he could merge 
 his own suffering in the suffering of aU, — a mark 
 of all deep men. "They who have not suffered," 
 says Ibsen, — and, one might add, suffered with 
 those they saw suffer, — "never create; they 
 only write books." 
 
 Spinoza did not write much ; the long-suffering 
 are seldom long-winded. A fragment On the Im- 
 provement of the Understanding; a brief volume on 
 religion and the state ; the Ethics; and as he be- 
 gan to write the chapter on democracy in the 
 Political Treatise consumption conquered him. 
 Bacteria take no bribes. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Political Ethics 
 
 Had he lived longer it would have dawned per- 
 haps even on the German historians that Spinoza's 
 basic interest was not in metaphysics so much as 
 in political ethics. The Ethics, because it is the 
 most sustained flight of reasoning in philosophy, 
 has gathered round it all the associations that 
 throng about the name of Spinoza, so that one is 
 apt to think of him in terms of a mystical "pan- 
 theism" rather than of coordinative intelligence, 
 
94 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PEOBLEM 
 
 democracy, and free thought.' Hoffding considers 
 it a defect in Spinoza's philosophy that it takes 
 so Uttle notice of epistemology : but should we not 
 be grateful for that? Here are men suffering, 
 said Spinoza, here are men enslaved by passions 
 and prelates and kings ; surely tiU these things 
 are dealt with we have no time for epistemological 
 delicacies. Instead of increasing the world's 
 store of learned ignorance by writing tomes on the 
 possibility of a subject knowing an object, Spinoza 
 thought it better to give himself to the task of 
 helping to keep alive in an age of tjTrannical re- 
 action the Renaissance doctrine of popular sover- 
 eignty. Instead of puzzling himself and others 
 about epistemology he pondered the problem of 
 stimulating the growth of intelligence and evolv- 
 ing a rational ethic. He thought that philosophy 
 was something more than a chess-game for pro- 
 fessors. 
 
 There is no need to spend time and space here 
 on what for Spinoza, as for Socrates and Plato, was 
 the problem of problems, — how human reason 
 could be developed to a point where it might re- 
 place supernatural sanctions for social conduct and 
 
 • Cf . Duff, op. dt., pref . : "It can be shown that Spinoza 
 had no interest in metaphysics for its own sake, while he was 
 passionately interested in moral and political problems. 
 He was a metaphysician at all only in the sense that he was 
 resolute in thinking out the ideas, principles, and categories 
 which are interwoven with all our practical endeavor, and 
 the proper understanding of which is the condition of human 
 welfare." 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 95 
 
 provide the medium of social reconstruction. 
 One point, however, may be profitably empha- 
 sized. 
 
 A careless reading of the Ethics may lead to the 
 belief that Spinoza bases his philosophy on a 
 naive opposition of reason to passion. It is not 
 so. "A desire cannot be restrained or removed," 
 says Spinoza, "except by an opposite and stronger 
 desire." ^ Reason is not dictator to desire, it is 
 a relation among desires, — that relation which 
 arises when experience has hammered impulses 
 into coordination. An impulse, passion or emo- 
 tion is by itself "a confused idea," a blurred pic- 
 ture of the thing that is indeed desired. Thought 
 and impulse are not two kinds of mental process : 
 thought is impulse clarified by experience, impulse 
 is thought in chaos. 
 
 IV 
 
 Is Man a Political Animal? 
 
 Why is there a social problem? Is it because 
 men are "bad"? Nonsense, answers Spinoza: 
 the terms "good" and "bad," as conveying moral 
 approval and disapproval, are philosophically 
 out of court; they mean nothing except that 
 "each of us wishes all men to live according to 
 Ms desire," and consoles himself for their non- 
 complaisance by making moral phrases. There 
 is a social problem, says Spinoza, because men are 
 
 ' Ethics, bk. iv, prop. 7. 
 
96 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 not naturally social. This does not mean that 
 there are no social tendencies in the native human 
 constitution ; it does mean that these tendencies 
 are but a sorry fraction of man's original nature, 
 and do not avail to chain the "ape and tiger" 
 hiding under his extremely civilized shirt. Man 
 is a "political animal" ; but he is also an animal. 
 We must approach the social problem through a 
 very respectful consideration of the ape and tiger ; 
 we must follow Hobbes and inquire into "the 
 natural condition of man." 
 
 "In the state of nature every man lives as he 
 wishes," 1 — he is not pestered with police regula- 
 tions and aldermanic ordinances. He "may do 
 whatever he can : his rights extend to the utmost 
 limits of his powers."^ He may fight, hate, 
 deceive, exploit, to his heart's desire ; and he 
 does. We moderns smile at the "natural man" 
 as a myth, and think our forbears were social ab 
 initio. But be it remembered that by "social" 
 Spinoza implies no mere preference of society to 
 solitude, but a subordination of individual caprice 
 to more or less tacit communal regulation. And 
 Spinoza considers it useful, if we are going to talk 
 about "human nature in poUtics, " to ask whether 
 man naturally submits to regulation or naturally 
 rebels against it. When he wrote of a primitive 
 non-social human condition he wrote as a psychol- 
 ogist inferring the past rather than as an historian 
 
 ' Tractatus Theologico-Politicua, v, 2. 
 » Ibid., ch. 16. 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 97 
 
 revealing it. He observed man, kindly yet 
 keenly; he saw that "everyone desires to keep 
 down his fellow-men by all possible means, and 
 when he prevails, boasts more of the injuries he 
 has done to others than of the advantage he has 
 won for himself" ; i and he concluded that if we 
 could trace human history to its sources we should 
 find a creature — call him human or pre-hiunan — 
 willing, perhaps glad, to have the company of his 
 Uke, but still unattracted and unhampered by 
 social organization. 
 
 We like to laugh at the simple anthropology 
 of Spinoza and Rousseau ; but the laugh should 
 be turned upon us when we suppose that the 
 historical motif played any but a very minor part 
 in the discussion of the natural state of man. 
 History was not the point at all : these men were 
 not interested in the past so much as in the pos- 
 sibilities of the future. That is why the eigh- 
 teenth century was so largely their creation. 
 When a man is interested in the past he writes 
 history; when he is interested in the future he 
 makes it. 
 
 The point to be borne in mind, Spinoza urges, 
 is that we are still essentially unsocialized ; the 
 instinct to acquire possession and power, if 
 necessary by oppression and exploitation, is still 
 stronger than the disposition to share, to be toler- 
 ant of disagreement, and to work in mutual aid. 
 The "natural man" is not a myth, he is the solid 
 
 • Ethics, bk. iv, prop. 58, sehol. 
 
98 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PKOBLEM 
 
 reality that struts about dressed in a little brief 
 civilization. "Religion teaches that each man 
 should love his neighbor as himself, and defend 
 the rights of others as earnestly as he would his 
 own. Yet this conviction has very httle influence 
 over man's emotions. It is no doubt of some ac- 
 count in the hour of death, for then disease has 
 weakened the emotions, and the man Ues helpless. 
 And the principle is assented to in chiurch, for 
 there men have no dealings with one another. 
 But in the mart or the court it has little or no 
 effect, though that is just where the need for it is 
 greatest." ^ He still " does everything for the sake 
 of his own profit" ; ^ nor will even the unlimited 
 future change him in that, for it is his very es- 
 sence. His happiness is in the pursuit of his 
 profit, his supreme joy is in the increase of his 
 power. And a social order built upon any other 
 basis than this exuberant egoism of man will be 
 as lasting, in the eye of history, as a name that is 
 writ in water. 
 
 V 
 
 What the Social Problem Is 
 
 But what if it is a good basis? What if "the 
 foundation of virtue is the endeavor to preserve 
 one's own being" to the uttermost?' What if 
 
 ' Traclattis Theologico-politieus, i, 6. 
 
 ' Ethics, bk. i, appendix. 
 
 » Ibid., bk. iv, prop. 18, schol. 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PKOBLEM 99 
 
 there is a way in which, without any hypocritical 
 mystification, this self-seeking, while still remain- 
 ing self-seeking, may become cooperation? 
 
 Spinoza's answer is not startling: it is the 
 Socratic answer, issuing from a profound psycho- 
 logical analysis. Given the liberation and de- 
 velopment of intelligence, and the discordant strife 
 of egos will yield undreamed-of harmonies. Men 
 are so made, they are so compact of passion and 
 obscurity, that they will not let one another be 
 free ; how can that be changed? Deception has 
 been tried, and has succeeded only temporarily 
 if at all. Compulsion has been tried ; but com- 
 pulsion is a negative force, it makes for inhibition 
 rather than inspiration. It is a necessary evil ; 
 but hardly the last word of constructive social 
 thinking. There is something more in a man than 
 his capacity for fear, there is some other way 
 of appealing to him than the way of threats; 
 there is his hunger and thirst to know and under- 
 stand and develop. Think of the untouched 
 resources of this human desire for mental enlarge- 
 ment; think of the millions who almost starve 
 that they may learn. Is that the force that is 
 to build the future and fashion the city of our 
 dreams ? Here are men torn with impulses, shaken 
 by mutual interference ; is it conceivable that they 
 would be so deeply torn and shaken if that hunger 
 of theirs for knowledge — knowledge of them- 
 selves, too, — were met with generous oppor- 
 tunity? Men long to be reasonable ; they know, 
 
100 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 even the least of them, that under the tyranny of 
 impulse there is no ultimately fruitful life ; what 
 is there that they would not give for the power to 
 seee things clearly and be captains of their souls? 
 Here if anyivhere is an opportunity for such states- 
 manship as does not often grace the courts of em- 
 perors and kings ! 
 
 How we can come to know ourselves, our in- 
 most nature, how we can through this knowledge 
 achieve coordination and our real desires, — that 
 is for Spinoza the heart of the social problem. 
 The source of man's strength is that he can know 
 his weakness. If he can but find himself out, 
 then he can change himself. "A passion ceases 
 to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and 
 distinct idea of it." * When a passion is tracked 
 to its lair and confronted with its futile partiality, 
 its sting is drawn, it can hurt us no more ; it may 
 cooperate but it may no longer rule. It is seen 
 to be "inadequate," to express but a fragment of 
 us, and so seen it sinks into its place in the hier- 
 archy of desires. "And in proportion as we know 
 our emotions better, the more are they susceptible 
 to control." ^ Passion is passivity ; control is 
 power. Knowledge brings control, and control 
 brings freedom ; freedom is not a gift, it is a vic- 
 tory. Knowledge, control, freedom, power, vi]> 
 tue: these are all one thing. Before the "em- 
 pire of man over nature" must come the empire 
 
 • Ethics, bk. iv, prop. 3. 
 
 * Ibid,, cor. 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 101 
 
 of man over himself, must come coordination. 
 Achievement is born of clear vision and unified 
 intent, not of actions that are but bubbles on the 
 muddy rapids of desire. 
 
 VI 
 
 Free Speech 
 
 "Before all things, a means must be devised foi* 
 improving and clarifying the understanding." ' 
 "Since there is no single thing we know which is 
 more excellent than a man who is guided by 
 reason, it follows that there is nothing by which 
 a person can better show how much skill and talent 
 he possesses than by so educating men that at 
 last they will live under the direct authority of 
 reason."'' But how? 
 
 First of all, says Spinoza, thought must be ab- 
 solutely free: we must have the possible profit 
 of even the most dangerous heresies. If that 
 proposition appear a trifle trite, let it be remem- 
 bered that Spinoza wrote at a time when Galileo's 
 broken-hearted retraction was still fresh in men's 
 memories, and when Descartes was modifying 
 his philosophy to soothe the Jesuits. The chapter 
 on freedom of thought is really the pivotal point 
 and raison d'Mre of the Trcictatus Theologico- 
 poUtieus; and it is still rich in encouragement 
 and inspiration. Perhaps there is nothing else 
 
 ' De Intelleclua Emendatione. 
 ' Ethics, bk. iv, appendix, § 9. 
 
102 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 in Spinoza's writings that is so typical at once of 
 his gentleness and of his strength. 
 
 Free speech should be granted, Spinoza argues, 
 because it must be granted. Men may conceal 
 real beliefs, but these same beliefs will inevitably 
 influence their behavior ; a belief is not that which 
 is spoken, it is that which is done. A law against 
 free speech is subversive of law itself, for it invites 
 derision from the conscientious. "All laws which 
 can be broken without any injury to another 
 are counted but a laughing-stock." * It is useless 
 for the state to command "such things as are 
 abhorrent to human nature." "Men in general 
 are so constituted that there is nothing they will 
 endure with so little patience as that views which 
 they believe to be true should be counted crimes 
 against the law. . . . Under such circumstances 
 men do not think it disgraceful, but most honor- 
 able, to hold the laws in abhorrence, and to re- 
 frain from no action against the government." * 
 Where men are not permitted to criticise their 
 rulers in public, they will plot against them in 
 private. There is no religious enthusiasm stronger 
 than that with which laws are broken by those 
 whose liberty has been suppressed. 
 
 Spinoza goes further. Thought must be lib- 
 erated not only from legal restrictions but from 
 indirect and even unintentional compulsion as 
 well. Spinoza feels very strongly the danger to 
 
 ' Tractatus Theologico-politicus, ch. 10. 
 « Ibid., oh. 19. 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 103 
 
 freedom, that is involved in the organization of 
 education by the state. "Academies that are 
 founded at the pubhc expense are instituted not 
 so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to 
 restrain them. But in a free commonwealth arts 
 and sciences, will be best cultivated to the full if 
 everyone that asks leave is allowed to teach in 
 public, at his own cost and risk." * He would have 
 preferred such "free lances" as the Sophists to the 
 state universities of the American Middle West. 
 He did not suggest means of avoiding the apparent 
 alternative of universities subsidized by the rich. 
 It is a problem that has still to be solved. 
 
 In demanding absolute freedom of speech Spi- 
 noza touches the bases of state organization. 
 Nothing is so dangerous and yet so necessary; 
 for ignorance is the mother of authority. The de- 
 fenders of free speech have never yet met the con- 
 tention of such men as Hobbes, that freedom of 
 thought is subversive of established government. 
 The reason is only this, that the contention is 
 probably true, so far as most established govern- 
 ments go. Absolute hberty of speech is assuredly 
 destructive of despotism, no matter how constitu- 
 tional the despotism may be ; and those who have 
 at heart the interests of any such government 
 may be forgiven for hesitating to applaud Spinoza. 
 Freedom of speech makes for social vitality, cer- 
 tainly ; without it, indeed, the avenues of mental 
 and social development would be blocked, and 
 
 > Ibid., ch. 8. 
 
104 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 life hardly worth living. But freedom of speech 
 cannot be said to make for social stability and 
 permanence, unless the social organization in ques- 
 tion invites criticism and includes some mechanism 
 for profiting by it. Where democracy is real, 
 or is on the way to becoming real, free speech 
 will help, not harm, the state ; for there is no man 
 so loyal as the man who knows that he may criti- 
 cise his government freely and to some account. 
 But where there is the autocracy of a person or a 
 class, freedom of speech makes for dissolution, — 
 dissolution, however, not of the society so much 
 as of the government. The Bourbons are gone, 
 but France remains. Nay, if the Bourbons had 
 remained, France might be gone. 
 
 But to argue to-day for freedom of speech is to 
 invite the charge of emphasizing the obvious. 
 It may be wholesome to remind ourselves, by a 
 few examples, that however universal the theory 
 of free speech may be, the practice is still rather 
 sporadic. An American professor is dismissed 
 because he thinks there is a plethora of unearned 
 income in his country; an English publicist is 
 reported to have been refused "permission" to 
 fill lecture engagements in America because he 
 had not been suflSciently patriotic ; and one of the 
 most prominent of hving philosophers loses his 
 chair because he supposes that conscience has 
 rights a^inst cabinets. But indeed our governing 
 bodies are harmless offenders here in comparison 
 with the people themselves. The last lesson which 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 105 
 
 men and women will learn is the lesson of free 
 thought and free speech. The most famous of 
 living dramatists finds himself unsafe in London 
 streets, because he has dared to criticise his govern- 
 ment; the most able of living novelists finds it 
 convenient to leave Paris because there are still 
 some Germans whom he does not hate ; and an 
 American community full of constitutional lawyers 
 shows its love of "law and order" by stoning a 
 group of boys bent on expounding the desirability 
 of syndicalism. 
 
 Perhaps the world has need of many Spinozas 
 still. 
 
 VII 
 
 Virtue as Power 
 
 Freedom of expression is the corner-stone of 
 Spinoza's politics ; the postulate without which he 
 refuses to proceed. But Spinoza does not have 
 to be told that this question of free speech precipi- 
 tates him into the larger problems of "the indi- 
 vidual vs. the state" ; he knows that that problem 
 is the very raison d'Mre of political philosophy; 
 he knows that indeed the problem goes to the core 
 of philosophy, and finds its source and crux in the 
 complex socio-egoistical make-up of the individual 
 man. 
 
 The "God-intoxicated" Spinoza is quite sober 
 and disillusioned about the social possibilities of 
 altruism. " It is a universal law of human nature 
 
106 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 that no one ever neglects anything which he 
 judges to be good, except with the hope of gaining 
 a greater good." ' "This is as necessarily true as 
 that the whole is greater than its part." * This 
 coafident reduction of human conduct to self- 
 reference does not for Spinoza involve any con- 
 demnation : "reason, since it asks for nothing 
 that is opposed to nature, demands that every 
 person should . . . seek his own profit." ' Ob- 
 serve, reason demands this ; this same self-seeking 
 is the most valuable and necessary item in the 
 composition of man. Spinoza, as said, goes so 
 far as to identify this self-seeking with virtue: 
 "to act absolutely in conformity with virtue is, 
 in us, nothing but to act, live, and preserve our 
 being (these three have the same meaning) as 
 reason directs, from the ground of seeking our 
 own profit." * This is a brave rejection of self- 
 renunciation and asceticism by one whose nature, 
 so far as we can judge it now, inclined him very 
 strongly in the direction of these "virtues." 
 What we have to do, says Spinoza, is not to deny 
 the self, but to broaden it ; here again, of course, 
 intelligence is the mother of morals. Progress lies 
 not in self-reduction but in self-expansion. Prog- 
 ress is increase in virtue, but "by virtue and 
 power I imderstand the same thing" ; * progress 
 
 1 Tractatus Theologico-politicus, ch. 16. 
 
 ' Ethics, bk. iv, prop. 18, schol. 
 
 '/6id. 
 
 * Ibid., bk. iv, prop. 24. 
 
 » Bk. iv, def . 8. 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 107 
 
 is an increase in the ability of men to achieve their 
 ends. It is part of our mental confectionery to 
 define progress in terms of our own ends ; a nation 
 is " backward " or " forward " according as it moves 
 towards or away from our own ideals. But that, 
 says Spinoza, is naive nonsense ; a nation is pro- 
 gressive or backward according as its citizens 
 are or are not developing greater power to realize 
 their own purposes. That is a doctrine that may 
 have "dangerous" impUcations, but intelligence 
 will face the implications and the facts, ready not 
 to suppress them but to turn them to account. 
 
 It was the passion for power that led to the first 
 social groupings and developed the social instincts. 
 Our varied sjrmpathies, our parental and filial 
 impulses, our heroisms and generosities, all go 
 back to social habits born of individual needs. 
 "Since fear of solitude exists in all men, because 
 no one in solitude is strong enough to defend him- 
 self aiid procure the necessaries of life, it follows 
 that men by nature tend towards social organiza- 
 tion." ' "Let satirists scoff at human affairs as 
 much as they please, let theologians denounce 
 them, and let the melancholy, despising men and 
 admiring brutes, praise as much as they can a life 
 rude and without refinement, — men will never- 
 theless find out that by mutual help they can 
 much more easily procure the things they need, 
 and that it is only by their united strength that 
 they can avoid the dangers which everywhere 
 
 ' Tractatiis Theologico-politicut, eh. 6, { 1. 
 
108 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 threaten them." ^ Nihil homine homini utilius. 
 Men discover that they are useful to one another, 
 and that mutual profit from social organization 
 increases as intelligence grows. In a "state of 
 nature " — that is, before social organization — 
 each man has a "natural right" to do all that he 
 is strong enough to do ; in society he yields part 
 of this sovereignty to the communal organization, 
 because he finds that this concession, universalized, 
 increases his strength. The fear of solitude, and 
 not any positive love of fellowship, is the prime 
 force in the origin of society. Man does not join 
 in social organization because he has social in- 
 stincts ; he develops such instincts as the result 
 of joining in such organization. 
 
 VIII 
 Freedom and Order 
 
 Even to-day the social instincts are not strong 
 enough to prevent unsocial behavior. "Men are 
 not born fit for citizenship, but must be made 
 so." ^ Hence custom and law. Each man, in 
 his sober moments, desires such social arrange- 
 ments as will protect him from aggression and 
 interference. "There is no one who does not 
 wish to hve, so far as possible, in security and with- 
 out fear ; and this cannot possibly happen so long 
 as each man is allowed to do as he pleases." ' 
 
 • Ethics, bk. iv, prop. 35, schol. 
 
 • Tractatua Tfieologico-politicus, ch. 5, § 2. 
 
 • Ibid., oh. 16. 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 109 
 
 "That men who are necessarily subject to pas- 
 sions, and are inconstant and changeable, may be 
 able to live together in security, and to trust one 
 another's fidehty," — that is the purpose of law.' 
 Ideally, the state is to the individual what reason 
 is to passion.' Law protects a man not only from 
 the passions of others, but from his own ; it is a 
 help to delayed response. How to frame laws so 
 that the greatest possible number of men may find 
 their own security and fulfilment in allegiance to 
 the law, — that is the problem of the statesman. 
 Law implies force, but so does life, so does nature ; 
 indeed, the punishments decreed by "man-made" 
 states are usually milder than those which in a 
 "state of nature" would be the natural conse- 
 quents of most interferences; not seldom the 
 law — as when it prevents lynching — protects 
 an aggressor from the natural results of his act. 
 Force is the essence of law ; hence international 
 law will not really be law until nations are coor- 
 dinated into a larger group possessed of the in- 
 strumentalities of compulsion.' 
 
 It is clear that Spinoza has the philosophic love 
 of order. "Whatever conduces to human har- 
 mony and fellowship is good; whatever brings 
 discord into the state is evil." * But discord, one 
 must repeat, is often the prelude to a greater 
 
 • Ethics, bk. iv, prop. 37, schol. 2. 
 
 • Contrast Plato : the state (i.e., the governing classes) 
 ia to the lower classes as reason is to passion. 
 
 * Tractatus Theologico-polilicus, ch. 3, i 14. 
 
 * Ethics, bk. iv, prop. 40. 
 
110 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 harmony ; development implies variation, and all 
 variation is a discord except to ears that hear 
 the future. The social sanction of liberty lies of 
 course in the potential value of variations ; with- 
 out that vision of new social possibilities which is 
 suggested by variations from the norm a people 
 perishes. Spinoza does not see this ; but there is 
 a fine passage in the Tractatus Politicus'- which 
 shows him responsive to the ideal of liberty as well 
 as to that of order : "The last end of the state is 
 not to dominate men, nor to restrain them by fear ; 
 rather it is so to free each man from fear that he 
 may live and act with full security and without 
 injury to himself or his neighbor. The end of the 
 state is, I repeat, not to make rational beings into 
 brute beasts or machines. It is to enable their 
 bodies and their minds to fimction safely. It is 
 to lead men to live by, and to exercise, a free reason, 
 that they may not waste their strength in hatred, 
 anger, and guile, not act unfairly toward one 
 another. Thus the end of the state is really 
 hberty." 
 
 So it is that Spinoza takes sharp issue with 
 Hobbes and exalts freedom, decentralization, and 
 democracy, where Hobbes, starting with almost 
 identical premises, concludes to a centralized des- 
 potism of body and soul. This does not mean 
 that Spinoza had no eye for the defects of democ- 
 racy. "Experience is supposed to teach that it 
 makes for peace and concord when all authority 
 ' Ch. 20. 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 111 
 
 is conferred upon one man. For no political 
 order has stood so long without notable change as 
 that of the Turks, while none have been so short- 
 lived, nay, so vexed by seditions, as popular or 
 democratic states. But if slavery, barbarism, and 
 desolation are to be called peace, then peace is 
 the worst misfortune that can befall a state. 
 It is true that quarrels are wont to be sharper 
 and more frequent between parents and children 
 than between masters and slaves ; yet it advances 
 not the art of home life to change a father's right 
 into a right of property, and count his children as 
 only his slaves. Slavery, then, and not peace, 
 comes from the giving of all power to one man. 
 For peace consists not in the absence of war, 
 but in a union and harmony of men's souls." ' 
 
 No ; better the insecurity of freedom than the 
 security of bondage. Better the dangers that 
 come of the ignorance of majorities than those that 
 flow from the concentration of power in the hands 
 of an inevitably self-seeking minority. Even 
 secret diplomacy is worse than the risks of public- 
 ity. " It has been the one song of those who thirst 
 after absolute power that the interest of the state 
 requires that its affairs be conducted in secret. 
 . . . But the more such arguments disguise them- 
 selves under the mask of public welfare the more 
 oppressive is the slavery to which they will lead. 
 . . . Better that right counsels be known to 
 enemies, than that the evil secrets of tyrants 
 
 ' Tractatus Theologico-politicus, ch. 6, § 4. 
 
112 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 should be concealed from the citizens. They who 
 can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it 
 absolutely under their authority; and as they 
 plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they 
 against the citizens in time of peace. ... It is 
 folly to choose to avoid a small loss by means of 
 the greatest of evils." » 
 
 This is but one of many passages in Spinoza that 
 startle the reader with their present applicabil- 
 ity and value. There is in the same treatise a 
 plan for an unpaid citizen soldiery, much Uke the 
 scheme adopted in Switzerland ; there is a plea 
 against centraUzation and for the development of 
 municipal pride by home rule and responsibiHty ; 
 there is a warning against the danger to democ- 
 racy involved in the territorial expansion of states ; 
 and there is a plan for the state ownership of aU 
 land, the rental from this to supply all revenue 
 in time of peace. But let us pass to a more char- 
 acteristic feature of Spinoza's political theory, and 
 consider with him the fimction of intelligence in 
 the state. 
 
 IX 
 
 Democracy and Intelligence 
 
 " There is no single thing in nature which is more 
 profitable to man than a man who lives accord- 
 ing to the guidance of reason." * Such a man, to 
 
 • Tractalua Theologico-politicus, oh. 6, § 4, eh. 7, { 29. 
 » Ethics, bk. iv, prop. 35, cor. 1, 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 113 
 
 begin with, has made his peace with the inevitable, 
 and accepts with good cheer the necessary limi- 
 tations of social life. He has a genial sense of 
 human imperfections, and does not cushion him- 
 self upon Utopia. He pursues his own ends but 
 with some perspective of their social bearings ; and 
 he is confident that "when each man seeks that 
 which is [really] profitable to himself, then are 
 men most profitable to one another." ' He knows 
 that the ends of other men will often conflict with 
 his; but he wiU not for that cause make moral 
 phrases at them. He feels the tragedy of isolated 
 pmposes, and knows the worth of cooperation. 
 As he comes to understand the intricate bonds 
 between himself and his fellows he finds ever more 
 satisfaction in pm-poses that overflow the narrow 
 margins of his own material advantage; until 
 at last he learns to desire nothing for himself 
 without desiring an equivalent for others.* 
 
 Given such men, democracy follows ; such de- 
 mocracy, too, as will be a fulfilment and not a 
 snare. Given such men, penal codes will interest 
 only the antiquarian. Given such men, a society 
 will know the full measure of civic allegiance 
 and communal stability and development. How 
 make such men? By revivals? By the gentle 
 anfflsthesia of heaven and the cheap penology of 
 
 » Ibid., cor. 2. 
 
 ' Ibid., prop. 18, schol. ; also prop. 37. Cf. Whitman : 
 " By God ! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their 
 counterpart of on the same terms." 
 I 
 
114 PHILOSOPHT AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 hell ? By memorizing catechisms and command- 
 ments ? By appealing Kke Comte, to the heart, 
 and trusting to the eternal feminine to lead us 
 ever onward ? (Onward whither ?) Or by spread- 
 ing the means of intelligence ? 
 
 It is at this point that the social philosophy of 
 Spinoza, like that of Socrates, betrays its weaker 
 side. How is intelligence to be spread ? Perhaps 
 it is too much to ask the philosopher this question ; 
 he may feel that he has done enough if he has made 
 clear what it is which will most help us to achieve 
 our ends. Spinoza, after all, was not the kind 
 of man who could be expected to enter into prac- 
 tical problems ; his soul was filled with the vision 
 of the eternal laws and had no room for the passing 
 expediencies of action. His devotional geometry 
 was a typical Jewish performance ; there is some- 
 thing in the emotional make-up of the Jew which 
 makes him slide very easily into the attitude of 
 worship, as contrasted with the Grseco-Roman 
 emphasis on intellect and control. All pantheism 
 tends to quietism ; to see things sub specie eternir 
 talis may very well pass from the attitude of the 
 scientist to the attitude of the mystic who has no 
 interest in temporal affairs. It is the task of phi- 
 losophy to study the eternal and imiversal not for 
 its own sake but for its worth in directing us 
 through the maze of temporal particulars; the 
 philosopher must be like the mariner who guides 
 himself through space and time by gazing at the 
 everlasting stars. It is wholesome that the his- 
 
SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 115 
 
 tory of philosophy should begin with Thales ; so 
 that all who come to the history of philosophy 
 may learn, at the door of their subject, that 
 though stars are beautiful, wells are deep. 
 
 X 
 
 The Legacy of Spinoza 
 
 But to leave the matter thiis would be to lose 
 a part of the truth in the glare of one's brilliance. 
 We have to recognize that though Spinoza stopped 
 short (or rather was cut short) at merely a state- 
 ment of the prime need of all democracies, — 
 intelligence, — he was nevertheless the inspira- 
 tion of men who carried his beginning more nearly 
 to a practical issue. To Spinoza, through Vol- 
 taire and the English deists, one may trace not a 
 few of the thought-currents which carried away 
 the foundations of ecclesiastical power, civil and 
 intellectual, in eighteenth-century France, and left 
 the middle class conscience-free to engineer a 
 revolution. It was from Spinoza chiefly that 
 Rousseau derived his ideas of popular sovereignty, 
 of the general wUl, of the right of revolution, of 
 the legitimacy of the force that makes men free, 
 and of the ideal state as that in which all the citi- 
 zens form an assembly with final power.^ The 
 
 ' Not that these ideas were original with Spinoza ; they 
 were the general legacy of Renaissance political thought. 
 But it was through the writings of Spinoza that this legacy 
 was transmitted to Rousseau. Cf. Duff, p. 319. 
 
116 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 French Declaration of Rights and the American 
 Declaration of Independence go back in part to 
 the forgotten treatises of the quiet philosopher of 
 Amsterdam. To have initiated or accelerated 
 such currents of thought — theoretical in their 
 origin but extremely practical in their issue — is 
 thereby once for all to have put one's self above the 
 reach of mere fault-finding. One wonders again, 
 as so many have wondered, what would have been 
 the extent of this man's achievenaent had he not 
 died at the age of forty-four. When Spinoza's 
 pious landlady returned from church on the morn- 
 ing of February 21, 1677, and found her gentle 
 philosopher dead, she stood in the presence of 
 one of the great silent tragedies of human history. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 NIETZSCHE 
 
 From Spinoza to Nietzsche 
 
 Let us dare to compress within a page or two the 
 social aspect of philosophical thought from Spi- 
 noza to Nietzsche. Without forgetting that our 
 purpose is to show the social problem as the 
 dominant interest of only many, not all, of the 
 greater philosophers, we may yet risk the asser- 
 tion that the majority of the men who formed the 
 epistemological tradition from Descartes to Kant 
 were at heart concerned less with the problem 
 of knowle'dge than with that of social relations. 
 Descartes slips through this generalization; he 
 is a man of leisure lost in the maze of a puzzle 
 which he has not discovered so much as he has 
 unconsciously constructed it. In Locke's hands 
 the puzzle is distorted into the question of "in- 
 nate ideas," in order that under cover of an inno- 
 cent epistemological excursion a blow may be 
 struck at hereditary prejudices and authoritarian 
 teaching, and the way made straight for the ad- 
 vance of popular sovereignty (as against the ab- 
 117 
 
118 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 solutism of Hobbes), free speech, reasonable reli- 
 gion, and social amelioration. The dominance 
 of the social interest is not so easily shown in the 
 case of Leibniz ; but let it be remembered none 
 the less that epistemology was but an aside in the 
 varied drama of Leibniz' hfe, and that his head 
 was dizzy with schemes for the betterment of this 
 "best of all possible worlds." Bishop Berkeley 
 begins with esse est perdpi and ends with tar- 
 water as the solution of all problems. David 
 Hume, in the midst of a life busied with politics 
 and the discussion of social, political, and eco- 
 nomic problems, spares a year or two for episte- 
 mology, only to use it as a handle whereby to deal 
 a blow to dogma ; he "was more damaging to reli- 
 gion than Voltaire, but was ingenious enough not 
 to get the credit for it." ^ The social incidence of 
 philosophy in eighteenth-century France was so 
 decided that one might describe that philosophy 
 as part of the explosive with which the middle class 
 undermined the status quo. This social emphasis 
 continues in Comte, who cannot forget that he was 
 once the secretary of St. Simon, and will not let 
 us forget that the function of the philosopher is 
 to coordinate experience with a view to the re- 
 moulding of hvmian life. John Stuart Mill is 
 radical first and logician afterward ; and the more 
 lasting as well as the more interesting element 
 in Spencer is the sociological, educational, and 
 political theory. In Kant the basic social interest 
 
 1 Professor Woodbridge : class-lectures. 
 
NIETZSCHE 119 
 
 is buried under epistemological cobwebs ; yet not 
 so choked but that it finds very resolute voice 
 at last. The essence of the matter hel*e is the 
 return of the prodigal, the relapse of a once ad- 
 venturous soul into the comfort of reUgious and 
 political absolutes, categorical — and Potsdam — 
 imperatives. Here is "dogmatic slumber" over- 
 come only to yield to the torpor and ahttisement of 
 "practical reason" ; here is no "Copernican revo- 
 lution" but a stealthy attempt to recover an 
 anthropocentricism lost in the glare of the EnHght- 
 enment. It dawns on us that the importance of 
 German philosophy is not metaphysical, nor 
 epistemological, but political ; the vital remnant 
 of Kant to-day is to be found not in our over- 
 flowing Mississippi of Kantiana, but in the Ger- 
 man notion of obedience.^ Fichte reenforces this 
 notion of imquestioning obedience with the doc- 
 trine of state socialism: he begins by tending 
 geese, and ends by writing philosophy for them. 
 So with Hegel : he starts out buoyantly with the 
 proposition that revolution is the heart of history, 
 and ends by discovering that the King of Prussia 
 is God in disguise. In Schopenhauer the bubble 
 biu-sts; a millennium of self-deception ends at 
 last in exhaustion and despair. Every Hilde- 
 brand has his Voltaire, and every Voltaire his 
 Schopenhauer. 
 
 1 Cf . FrofeasoT Dewey's German Philosophy and Politics, 
 New York, 1915. 
 
120 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 II 
 
 Biographical 
 
 "In future," Nietzsche once wrote, "let no one 
 concern himself about me, but only about the 
 things for which I Uved." We must make this 
 biographical note brief.' 
 
 Nietzsche was born in Rocken, Germany, 1844, 
 the son of a "noble young parson." He was 
 brought up in strict piety, and prepared himself to 
 enter the ministry; even at boarding-school he 
 was called "the little minister," and made people 
 cry by his recitations from the Bible. We have 
 pictures of him which show him in all his boyish 
 seriousness; it is evident that he is of a deeply 
 religious nature, and therefore doomed to heresy. 
 At eighteen he discovers that he has begun to 
 doubt the traditional creed. "When I examine 
 my own thoughts," he writes, "and hearken into 
 my own soul, I often feel as if I heard the buzzing 
 and roaring of wild-contending parties." ' At 
 twenty-one, while studying in the University of 
 Leipzig, he discovers the philosophy of Schopen- 
 hauer ; he reads all hungrily, feeling -here a kin- 
 dred youth; "the need of knowing myself, even 
 of gnawing at myself, forcibly seized upon me." ^ 
 He is ripe for pessimism, having both religion 
 and a bad stomach. Because of his defective 
 
 ' Forster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, London, 1912, 
 p. 98. 
 
 ' Ibid., p. 162. 
 
NIETZSCHE 121 
 
 eyesight he is barred from military service; in 
 1870 he burns with patriotic fever, and at last is 
 allowed to join the army as a nurse ; but he is 
 almost overcome at sight of the sick and wounded, 
 and himself falls ill with dysentery and dyspepsia. 
 In this same year he sees a troop of cavalry pass 
 through a town in stately gallop and array ; his 
 weakened frame thrills with the sight of this 
 strength : " I felt for the first time that the strong- 
 est and highest Will to Life does not find expression 
 in a miserable struggle for existence, but in a Will 
 to War, a Will to Power, a Will to Overpower ! " ^ 
 Nevertheless, he settles down to a quietly ascetic 
 life as professor of philology at the University of 
 Basle. But there is adventure in him; and in 
 his first book ^ he slips from the prose of philology 
 into an almost lyrical philosophy. Illness finds 
 voice here in the eulogy of health ; weakness in 
 the deification of strength; melancholy in the 
 praise of "Dionysian joy" ; loneliness in the exal- 
 tation of friendship. He has a friend — Wagner 
 — the once romantic rebel of revolution's barri- 
 cades ; but this friend too is taken from him, with 
 slowly painful breaking of bond after bond. For 
 Wagner, the strong, the overbearing, the ruthless, 
 is coming to a philosophy of Christian sympathy 
 and gentleness ; qualities that cannot seem divine 
 to Nietzsche, because they are long-familiar ele- 
 ments in his own character. "What I am not," 
 he says, most truthfully, "that for me is God and 
 > Ihid., p. 235. ' The Birth of Tragedy, 1872. 
 
122 PHILOSOPHT AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 virtue." * And so he stands at last alone, borne 
 up solely by the exhilaration of creative thought. 
 He has acquaintances, but he puts up with them 
 "simply, like a patient animal"; "not one has 
 the faintest inkling of my task." And he suffers 
 terribly "through this absence of sympathy and 
 understanding." ^ 
 
 He leaves even these acquaintances, and aban- 
 dons his work at Basle ; broken in health he finds 
 his way hopefully to the kindher climate of Italy. 
 Doctor after doctor prescribes for him, one pre- 
 scription reading, "a nice Italian sweetheart." 
 He longs for the comradeship, but dreads the 
 friction, of marriage. "It seems to me absurd," 
 he writes, "that one who has chosen for his 
 sphere . . . the assessment of existence as a 
 whole, should burden himself with the cares of a 
 family, with winning bread, security, and social 
 position for wife and children." He does not 
 hesitate to conclude that "where the highest phil- 
 osophical thinking is concerned all married men 
 are suspect." ' Nevertheless he wanders humanly 
 into something very like a love-affair; he is al- 
 most shattered with rapid disillusionment, and 
 takes refuge in philosophy. "Every misunder- 
 standing," he tells himself, "has made me freer. 
 I want less and less from humanity, and can give 
 
 • Thus Spake Zarathustra, p. 129. 
 
 ' F5rster-Nietzsohe, TAs Lonely Nietzache, London, 1915, 
 pp. 291, 212, 77. 
 » Ibid., p. 313. 
 
NIETZSCHE 123 
 
 it more and more. The severance of every indi- 
 vidual tie is hard to bear ; but in each case a wing 
 grows in its place." ' And yet the need of com- 
 radeship is still there, hke a gnawing hunger : 
 many years later he catches a passing smile from 
 a beautiful young woman, whom he has never seen 
 before; and "suddenly my lonely philosopher's 
 heart grew warm within me." " But she walks off 
 without seeing him, and they never meet again. 
 
 The simple Italians who rent him his attic 
 room in Genoa understand him better perhaps 
 than he can be understood by more pl:etentious 
 folk. They know his greatness, though they can- 
 not classify it. The children of his landlady call 
 him "II Santo"; and the market-women keep 
 their choicest grapes for the bent philosopher who, 
 it is whispered, writes bitterly about women and 
 "the superfluous." But what they know for cer- 
 tain is that he is a man of exceeding gentleness and 
 purity, that he is the very soul of chivalry; 
 " stories are still told of his politeness towards 
 women to whom no one else showed any kind- 
 ness." ' Let him write what he pleases, so long 
 as he is what he is. 
 
 He lives simply, almost in poverty. "His little 
 room," writes a visitor, "is bare and cheerless. 
 It has evidently been selected for cheapness rather 
 than for comfort. No carpet, not even a stove. I 
 found it fearfully cold." * His publisher has 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 181. » Ibid., p. 424. 
 
 • Ibid., p. 297. * Ibid., p. 195. 
 
124 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 made no profit on his books ; they are too sharply 
 opposed to the "spirit of the age" ; hence the title 
 he gives to two of his volumes : Unzeitgemdsse 
 Betrachtungen, — Thoughts Out of Season. There 
 is no money, he is now informed, in such untimely 
 volumes ; hereafter he must publish his books at 
 his own cost. He does, stinting himself severely 
 to meet the new expense ; his greatest books see 
 the light in this way.* 
 
 He works hard, knowing that his shaken frame 
 has but short lease of hfe ; and he comes to love 
 his painful soUtude as a gift. " I can't help seeing 
 an enemy in any one who breaks in upon my work- 
 ing summer. . . . The idea that any person 
 should intrude upon the web of thought which I 
 am spinning around me, is simply appalling. I 
 have no more time to lose — unless I am stingy 
 with my precious half-hours I shall have a bad 
 conscience." * Half-hours ; his eyes will not work 
 for more than thirty minutes at a time. He 
 feels that only to him to whom time is holy does 
 time bring reward. "He is fully convinced," an 
 acquaintance writes of him, "about his mission 
 
 1 Chronology of Nietzsche's chief works, with initials 
 used in subsequent references: Thtmghis Out of Season 
 C'T. O. S.") (1873-6); Human All Too Human ("ff. H.") 
 (1876-80); Davm of Day (" D. D.") (,1881) ; Joyful Wisdom 
 i"J. W.") (1882) ; Thus Spake Zarathustra ("Z.") (1883-4) ; 
 Beyond Good and Evil ("B. 6. E") (1886); Genealogy of 
 Mortds ("G. M.") (1887); TwiligU of the Idols CT.I.") 
 (1888); Antichrist ("Antich."); Ecce Homo {"E. H."), and 
 Wia to Power ("W. P.") (1889). 
 
 * Lonely N., p. 104. 
 
NIETZSCHE 125 
 
 and his permanent importance. In this belief 
 he is strong and great; it elevates him above 
 all misfortune." ^ He speaks of his Thus Spake 
 Zarathustra in terms of almost conscious exaggera- 
 tion : "It is a book," he says, "that stands alone. 
 Do not let us mention the poets in the same 
 breath ; nothing perhaps has ever been produced 
 out of such a superabundance of strength." ^ 
 He does not know that it is his illness and his 
 hunger for appreciation that have demanded this 
 self-laudation as restorative and nourishment. 
 He predicts, rightly enough, that he will not be- 
 gin to get his due meed of appreciation tillJlQOl.' 
 His "unmasking of Christian morality," he says, 
 "is an event unequalled in history." * 
 
 All this man's energy is in his brain ; he oozes 
 ideas at every pore. He crowds into a sentence 
 the material of a chapter ; and every aphorism is 
 a mountain-peak. He dares to say that which 
 others dare only to think : and we call him witty 
 because truth tabooed is the. soul of wit. Every 
 page bears the imprint of the passion and the pain 
 that gave it birth. "I am not a man," he says, 
 "I am dynamite" ; he writes like a man who feels 
 error after error exploding at his touch ; and he 
 defines a philosopher as "a terrible explosive in 
 the presence of which everything is in danger." * 
 "There are more idols than realities in the world ; 
 and I have an 'evil eye' for idols." • 
 
 »I6id.,p. 195. 'S. ff.,p. 106. >J.W.,i 371. 
 
 *E. H., p. 141. *Ibid., pp. 131, 81. • T. I., pref. 
 
126 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 What is this philosophy which seemed to its 
 creator more important than even the mightiest 
 events of the past? How shall we compress it 
 without distorting it, as it has been distorted by so 
 many of its lovers and its haters? Let us ask the 
 man himself to speak to us ; let us see if we cannot 
 put the matter in his own words, ourselves but 
 supplying, so to speak, connective tissue. That 
 done, we shall understand the man better, and 
 ourselves, and perhaps our social problem. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Exposition 
 
 Morality as Impotence 
 
 From a biological standpoint the phenomenon 
 morality is of a highly suspicious nature.' Cui 
 bono f — Whom shall we suspect of profiting by 
 this institution? Is it a mode of enhancing life? 
 — Does it make men stronger and more perfect ? — 
 or does it make for deterioration and decay? It 
 is obvious that up to the present, moraUty has 
 not been a problem at all ; it has rather been the 
 very ground on which people have met after all 
 distrust, dissension, and contradiction, the hal- 
 lowed place of peace, where thinkers could obtain 
 rest even from themselves.^ But what if morahty 
 
 ' W. p., § 400 (all references to W. P. will be by sections). 
 • J. W., § 345 (all references to J. W. by section unless 
 otherwise stated). 
 
NIETZSCHE 127 
 
 be the greatest of all the stumbling-blocks in the 
 way of human self -betterment ? Is it possible that 
 morality itself is the social problem, and that the 
 solution of that problem lies in the judicious aboU- 
 tion of morality? It is a view for which some- 
 thing can be said. 
 
 You have heard that moraUty is a means used 
 by the strong to control the weak. And it is true : 
 just consider the conversion of Constantine. 
 But to stop here is to let half the truth be passed 
 off on you as the whole ; and half a truth is half 
 a he. Much more true is it that morality is a 
 means used by the weak to control the strong, the 
 chain which weakness softly lays upon the feet of 
 strength. The whole of the morality of Europe 
 is based upon the values which are useful to the 
 herd.' Every one's desire is that there should be 
 no other teaching and valuation of things than 
 those by means of which he himself succeeds. 
 Thus the fundamental tendency of the weak and 
 mediocre of all times has been to enfeeble the 
 strong and to reduce them to the level of the 
 weak ; their chief weapon in this process was the 
 moral principle.* Good is every one who does 
 not oppress, who hurts no one, attacks no one, does 
 not take vengeance but hands over vengeance to 
 God ; who goes out of the way of evil, and de- 
 mands little from life; like ourselves, patient, 
 meek, just. Good is to do nothing for which we 
 are not strong enough.' Zarathustra laughed 
 
 » W. P., 276. » Ibid., 345. • O. M., p, 46. 
 
128 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 many times over the weaklings who thought 
 themselves good because they had lame paws!' 
 Obedience, subordination, submission, devotion, 
 love, the pride of duty; fatalism, resignation, 
 objectivity, stoicism, asceticism, self-denial; in 
 short, anemia: these are the virtues which the 
 herd would have all men cultivate, — particularly 
 the strong men.* And the deification of Jesus, — 
 that is to say of meekness, — what was it but 
 another attempt to lull the stjong to sleep? 
 
 Democraey 
 
 See, now, how nearly that attempt has suc- 
 ceeded. For is not democracy, if not victorious, 
 at least on the road to victory to-day ? And what 
 is the democratic movement but the inheritor 
 of Christianity?' Not the Christianity of the 
 great popes ; they knew better, and were building 
 a splendid aristocracy when Luther spoiled it all 
 by letting loose the levelling instincts of the 
 herd.* The instinct of the herd is in favor of the 
 leveller (Christ).^ I very much fear that the first 
 Christian is in his deepest instincts a rebel against 
 everjrthing privileged ; he lives and struggles un- 
 remittingly for "equal rights." ' It is by Chris- 
 tianity, more than by anything else, that the 
 poison of this doctrine of "equal rights" has 
 
 > Z., p. 166. « W. P., 721 ; T. I., p. 89. 
 
 • B. O. E., § 202. * J. W., 358 ; Antich., S 361. 
 
 • W. P., 284. • Antich., 5 46. 
 
NIETZSCHE 129 
 
 been spread abroad. And do not let us under- 
 estimate the fatal influence! Nowadays no one 
 has the courage of special rights, of rights of 
 dominion. The aristocratic attitude of mind 
 has been most thoroughly undermined by the he 
 of the equality of souls.' 
 
 But is not this the greatest of all lies — the 
 " equaUty of men ' ' ? That is to say, the dominion 
 of the inferior. Is it not the most threadbare and 
 discredited of ideas? Democracy represents the 
 disbehef in all great men and select classes; 
 everybody equals everybody else ; "at bottom we 
 are all herd." There is no welcome for the genius 
 here; the more promising for the future the 
 modern individual happens to be, the more suffer- 
 ing falls to his lot.* If the rise of great and rare 
 men had been made dependent upon the voices 
 of the multitude, there never would have been any 
 such thing as a great man. The herd regards 
 the exception, whether it be above or beneath its 
 general level, as something antagonistic and dan- 
 gerous. Their trick in dealing with the excep- 
 tions above them — the strong, the mighty, 
 the wise, the fruitful — is to persuade them to 
 become their head-servants.' 
 
 But the torture of the exceptional soul is only 
 part of the villainy of democracies. The other 
 part is chaos. Voltaire was right: "Quand la 
 populace se mMe de raisonner, tout est perdu." 
 
 > Ibid., § 43. • Ibid., 885, 281. 
 
 » W. P., 464, 861, 748, 752, 686. 
 
 K 
 
130 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Democracy is an aristocracy of orators, a com- 
 petition in headlines, a maelstrom of ever new 
 majorities, a torrent of petty factions sweeping 
 on to ruin. Under democracy the state will de- 
 cay, for the instability of legislation will leave 
 little respect for law, until finally even the police- 
 man will have to be replaced by private enter- 
 prise.* Democracy has always been the death- 
 agony of the power of organization : " Remember 
 Athens, and look at England. Within fifty years 
 these Babel governments will clash in a gigantic 
 war for the control of the markets of the world ; 
 and when that war comes, England will pay the 
 penalty for the democratic inefficiency of its 
 dominant muddle-class.' 
 
 This wave of democracy will recede, and recede 
 quickly, if men of ability will only oppose it 
 openly. It is necessary for higher men to declare 
 war on the masses. In all directions mediocre 
 people are joining hands in order to make them- 
 selves master. The middle classes must be dis- 
 solved, and their influence decreased ; * there must 
 be no more intermarrying of aristocracy with plu- 
 tocracy ; this democratic folly would never have 
 come at all had not the master-classes allowed 
 their blood to be mingled with that of slaves.* 
 Let us fight parliamentary government and the 
 power of the press ; they are the means whereby 
 
 • H. H., §§ 428, 472. » T. I., p. 96. 
 
 » Q. M., p. 225 ; written in 1887. * W. P., 861, 881. 
 
 • B. G. M.. p. 233. 
 
NIETZSCHE 131 
 
 cattle become rulers.' Finally, it is senseless and 
 dangerous to let the counting-mania (the custom 
 of universal suffrage) — which is still but a short 
 time under cultivation, and could easily be up- 
 robted — take deeper root ; its introduction was 
 merely an expedient to steer clear of temporary 
 difficulties ; the time is ripe for a demonstration 
 of democratic incompetence and a restoration of 
 power to men who are born to rule.* 
 
 Feminism 
 
 Democracy, after all, is a disease ; an attempt 
 on the part of the botched to lay down for all the 
 laws of social health. You may observe the dis- 
 ease in its growth-process by studying the woman 
 movement. Woman's first and ^ast function is 
 that of bearing robust children.' The emanci- 
 pated ones are the abortions among women, those 
 who lack the wherewithal to have children (I go 
 no farther, lest I should become medicynical).^ 
 All intellect in women is a pretension; when a 
 woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally 
 something wrong with her sex. These women 
 think to make themselves charming to free spirits 
 by wearing advanced views ; as though a woman 
 without piety would not be something perfectly 
 obnoxious and ludicrous to a profound and god- 
 
 I W. p., 753. « 0. M., p. 223. 
 
 « B. O. E., p. 189. * E. B., p. 65. 
 
132 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PEOBLEM 
 
 less man ! ^ If there is anjrthing worthy of laugh- 
 ter it is the man who takes part in this feminist 
 agitation. Let it be understood clearly that the 
 relations between men and women make equality 
 impossible. It is in the nature of woman to take 
 color and commandment from a man, — unless 
 she happens to be a man. Man's happiness is "I 
 will," woman's happiness is " He will." * Woman 
 gives herself, man takes her : I do not think one 
 will get over this natural contrast by any social 
 contract.' Indeed, women will lose power with 
 every step towards emancipation. Since the 
 French Revolution the influence of woman has 
 declined in proportion as she has increased her 
 rights and claims. Let her first do her proper 
 work properly (consider how much man has suf- 
 fered from stupidity in the kitchen), and then it 
 may be time to consider an extension of her ac- 
 tivities. To be mistaken in this fundamental 
 problem of "man and woman," to deny here the 
 profoundest antagonism, and the necessity for 
 an eternally hostile tension, to dream here of 
 equal rights, equal training, equal claims and ob- 
 ligations : that is a typical sign of shallow-minded- 
 ness. On the other hand, a man who has depth 
 of spirit as well as of desires, and has also the 
 depth of benevolence which is capable of severity 
 and harshness, and easily confounded with them, 
 can only think of woman as Orientals do : he 
 must conceive of her as a possession, as confinable 
 « B. e. E., pp. 96, 189. • Z., p. 89. • J. W„ 363. 
 
NIETZSCHE 133 
 
 property, as a being predestined for service and 
 accomplishing her mission therein — he must 
 take his stand in this matter upon the immense 
 rationality of Asia, upon the superiority of the 
 instincts of Asia.' 
 
 Somaiism and Anarchism 
 
 All this uprising of housekeepers is, of 
 course, part of the general sickness with which 
 Christianity has inoculated and weakened the 
 strong races of Europe. Consider now the more 
 virulent forms of the disease : socialism and anar- 
 chism. The coming of the "kingdom of God" 
 has here been placed in the future, and been given 
 an earthly, a human, meaning ; but on the whole 
 the faith in the old ideal is still maintained. 
 There is still the comforting delusion about equal 
 rights, with all the envy that lurks in that delu- 
 sion. One speaks of "equal rights" : that is to 
 say, so long as one is not a dominant personality, 
 one wishes to prevent one's competitors from grow- 
 ing in power.'' It is a pleasure for all poor devils 
 to grumble — it gives them a little intoxicating 
 sensation of power. There is a small dose of re- 
 venge in every lamentation.' When you hear one 
 of those reformers talk of humanity, you must not 
 take him seriously ; it is only his way of getting 
 
 » B. G. E., pp. 188, 184, 189. « W. P., 339. 86. 
 
 « T. I., p. 86. 
 
134 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PEOBLEM 
 
 fools to believe that he is an altruist ; beneath the 
 cover of this buncombe a man strong in the gre- 
 garious instincts makes his bid for fame and fol- 
 lowers and power. This pretense to altruism is 
 only a roundabout way of asking for altruism, 
 it is the result of a consciousness of the fact that 
 one is botched and bungled.' In short, socialism 
 is not justice but covetousness.* No doubt we 
 should look upon its exponents and followers with 
 ironic compassion : they want something which 
 we have.' 
 
 From the standpoint of natural science the high- 
 est conception of society according to sociahsts 
 is the lowest in the order of rank among societies. 
 A socialist community would be another China, 
 a vast and stifling mediocracy; it would be the 
 tyranny of the lowest and most brainless brought 
 to its zenith.* A nation in which there would 
 be no exploitation would be dead. Life itself is 
 essentially appropriation, conquest of the strange 
 and weak ; to put it at its mildest, exploitation.' 
 The absence of exploitation would mean the end 
 of organic functioning. Surely it is as legitimate 
 and valuable for superior men to command and 
 use inferior men as it is for superior species to com- 
 mand and use inferior species, as man commands 
 and uses animals.* It is not surprising that the 
 lamb should bear a grudge against the great birds 
 
 » /. W., 377 ; W. p., 350, 315, 373. « H. H., § 451. 
 
 » W. P., 761. * Ibid., 51, 125. 
 
 « B. G. B., p. 226. « W. P., 856. 
 
NIETZSCHE 135 
 
 of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the 
 great birds of prey.' What should be done with 
 muscle except to supply it with directive brains? 
 How, otherwise, can anything worthy ever be 
 built by men ? In fact, man has value and signifi- 
 cance only in so far as he is a stone in a great 
 building ; for which purpose he has first of all to 
 be solid ; he has to be a "stone." ^ 
 
 Now the common people understand this quite 
 well, and are as happy as any of the well-to-do, 
 so long as a silly propaganda does not disturb 
 them with dreams that can never be fulfilled.' 
 Poverty, cheerfulness, and independence — it is 
 possible to find these three qualities combined in 
 one individual ; poverty, cheerfulness, and slavery 
 — this is likewise a possible combination : and I 
 can say nothing better to the workmen who serve 
 as factory-slaves.^ 
 
 As for the upper classes, they need be at no loss 
 for weapons with which to fight this pestilence. 
 An occasional opening of the trap-door between 
 the Haves and the Have-nots, increasing the 
 number of property-owners, will serve best of all. 
 If this policy is pursued, there will always be too 
 many people of property for socialism ever to sig- 
 nify anything more than an attack of illness.* 
 A little patience with inheritance and income 
 taxes, and the noise of the cattle will subside.' 
 
 >■ G. M., p. 44. 2 J. W., 356. ' LoTidy N., p. 83. 
 
 < D. D., § 206. ' W. P., 125. 
 
 • Wanderer and His Shadow, § 292 (H. H., ii, p. 343). 
 
136 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PKOBLEM 
 
 Notice, meanwhile, that socialism and despotism 
 are bedfellows. Give the socialist his way, and 
 he will put everything into the hands of the state, 
 — that is to say, into the hands of demagogue 
 politicians. 1 And then, all in the twinkling of 
 an eye, socialism begets its opposite in good 
 Hegelian fashion, and the dogs of anarchism are 
 let loose to fill the world with their howling. And 
 not without excuse or benefit ; for poUticians must 
 be kept in their place, and the state rigidly re- 
 stricted to its necessary functions, even if anar- 
 chist agitation helps one to do it.* And the anar- 
 chists are right : the state is the coldest of all 
 monsters, and this he creeps out of its mouth, "I, 
 the State, am the people." ' So the wise man 
 will turn anarchism, as weU as socialism, to ac- 
 count ; and he will not fret even when a king or 
 two is hurried into heaven with nitroglycerine. 
 Only since they have been shot at have princes 
 once more sat securely on their thrones.* 
 
 Anarchism justifies itself in the aristocrat, who 
 
 feels law as his instrument, not as his master; 
 
 but the rebeUion against law as such is but one 
 
 more outburst of physiological misfits bent on 
 
 levelling and revenge.^ It is childish to desire 
 
 a society in which every individual would have as 
 
 much freedom as another.^ Decadence speaks in 
 
 the democratic idiosyncrasy against everything 
 
 1 H. H., i, § 473. « D. D., § 179. 
 
 « Z., p. 62. * W. P., 329. 
 
 » T. I., p. 86 ; E. H., p. 66 ; Antich., S 57. 
 • W. P., 859. 
 
NIETZSCHE 137 
 
 which rules and wishes to rule, the modern mis- 
 archism (to coin a bad word for a bad thing). ^ 
 When all men are strong enough to command, 
 then law will be superfluous ; weakness needs the 
 vertebrae of law. He is commanded who cannot 
 obey his own self. Let the anarchist be thankful 
 that he has laws to obey. To command is more 
 difficult ; whenever living things command they 
 risk themselves ; they take the hard responsibiU- 
 ties for the result.* Freedom is the will to be re- 
 sponsible for ourselves ; ' when the mob is capable 
 of that, it will be time to think of dispensing with 
 law. The truth is, of course, that the anarchist 
 is lulled into nonsense by Rousseau's notion of the 
 naturally good man. He does not understand 
 that revolution merely imlashes the dogs in man, 
 till they once more cry for the whip.* Cast out 
 the Bourbons, and in ten years you wUl welcome 
 Napoleon. 
 
 That is the end of anarchism ; and it is the end 
 of democracy, too. 
 
 The truth is that men are willing and anxious 
 to be ruled by rulers worthy of the name. But 
 the corrupted ruUng classes have brought ruling 
 into evil odor. The degeneration of the ruler 
 and of the ruling classes has been the cause of aH 
 the disorders in history. Democracy is not rul- 
 ing, but drifting; it is a political relaxation, as 
 if an organism were to allow each of its parts to 
 
 1 0. M., p. 91. » Z., p. 159. 
 
 • T. I., p. 94, * H. H., S 463. 
 
138 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 do just as it pleased. Precisely these disorganizing 
 principles give our age its specific character. Our 
 society has lost the power to function properly ; 
 it no longer rids itself naturally of its rotten ele- 
 ments ; it no longer has the strength even to ex- 
 crete,' 
 
 Degeneration 
 
 What kind of men is to be found in such a 
 society? Mediocre men; men stupid to the point 
 of sanctity; fragile, useless souls-de-luxe; men 
 suffering from a sort of hemiplegia of virtue, — 
 that is to say, paralyzed in the self-assertive in- 
 stincts; men tamed, almost emasculated by a 
 morality whose essence is the abdication of the 
 will.* Now, as a rule, the taming of a beast is 
 achieved only by deteriorating it ; so too the moral 
 man is not a better man, he is rather a weaker 
 member of his species. He is altruistic, of course ; 
 that is, he feels that he needs help. There is no 
 place for really great men in this march towards 
 nonentity; if a great man appears he is called 
 a criminal." A Periclean Greek, a Renaissance 
 Florentine, would breathe like one asphyxiated 
 in this moralic acid atmosphere; the first condi- 
 tion of life for such a man is that he free himself 
 from this Chinadom of the spirit.* But the num- 
 
 • W. P., 760, 874, 65, 50. 
 
 « B. O. E., p. 173 ; W. P., 823, 851, 871, Jl. 
 
 • W. P., 397, 12, 736. * E. H., p. 136. 
 
NIETZSCHE 139 
 
 ber of those who are capable of rising into the pure 
 air of unmoralism is very small ; and those who 
 have made timid sallies into theological heresy 
 .are the most addicted to the comfort and security 
 of ethical orthodoxy. In short, men are coming 
 to look upon lowered vitality as the heart of 
 virtue; and morahty will be saddled with the 
 guilt if the maximum potentiality of the power 
 and splendor of the human species should never 
 be attained.* 
 
 Men of this stamp require a good deal of reli- 
 gious pepsin to overcome the indigestibility of 
 life ; if they leave one faith in the passing bravery 
 of their youth they soon sink back into another.* 
 God, previously diluted from tribal deity into 
 substantia and ding^n-sich,' now recovers a re- 
 spectable degree of reahty ; the imaginary pillar 
 on which men lean is made stronger and more 
 concrete as their weakness increases. How much 
 faith a person requires in order to flourish, how 
 much fixed opinion he needs which he does not 
 wish to have shaken, because he holds himself 
 thereby, — is a measure of his power (or more 
 plainly speaking, of his weakness).* 
 
 The same criterion classifies our friends the 
 metaphysicians, — those albinos of thought, — who 
 are, of course, priests in disguise.^ The degree of 
 a man's wiU-power may be measured by the extent 
 to which he can dispense with the meaning in 
 
 • G. M., p. 10. ' T. O. S., i, p. 78. » Antich., § 17. 
 
 * J. W., 847. » Antich., § 17 ; C D., § 542. 
 
140 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 things ; by the extent to which he is able to endure 
 a world without meaning; because he himself 
 arranges a small portion of it.' The world has no 
 meaning : all the better ; put some meaning into 
 it, says the man with a man's heart. The world 
 has no meaning : but it is only a world of appear- 
 ance, says the weak-kneed philosopher; behind 
 this phenomenal world is the real world, which 
 has meaning, and means good. Of the real world 
 "there is no knowledge; consequently there is 
 a God" — what novel elegance of syllogism!* 
 This belief that the world which ought to be is 
 real is a belief proper to the unfruitful who do not 
 wish to create a world. The "wiU to truth" is 
 the impotence of the "will to create." ' Even 
 monism is being tiu'ned into medicine for sick 
 souls; clearly these lovers of wisdom seek not 
 truth, but remedies for thdr illnesses.* There 
 is too nfticn beer ancf midnight oil in modern 
 philosophy, and not enough fresh air.' Philoso- 
 phers condenm this world because they have 
 avoided it ; those who are contemplative naturally 
 belittle activity.' In truth, the history of phi- 
 losophy is the story of a secret and mad hatred 
 of the prerequisites of life, of the feelings which 
 make for the real values of life.' No wonder 
 that philosophy is fallen to such low estate. 
 Science flourishes nowadays, and has the good 
 
 ' W. P., 585. » G. M., p. 202. » W. P., 585. 
 
 « Ibid., 600 ; D. D., § 424. « /. W., 366. 
 
 • D. D., § 41. ' W. P., 461. 
 
NIETZSCHE 141 
 
 conscience clearly visible on its countenance; 
 while the remnant to which modern philosophy 
 has gradually sunk excites distrust and displeas- 
 ure, if not scorn and pity. Philosophy reduced 
 to a "theory of knowledge," a philosophy that 
 never gets beyond the threshold, and rigorously 
 denies itself the right to enter — that is philoso- 
 phy in its last throes, an end, an agony ; some- 
 thing that awakens pity. How could such a phi- 
 losophy rule!' 
 
 6 
 
 NihUiam 
 
 All these things, democracy, feminism, social- 
 ism, anarchism, and modern philosophy, are heads 
 of the Christian hydra, each a sore in the total 
 disease. Given such illness, affecting all parts of 
 the social body, and what result shall we expect 
 and find? Pessimism, despair, nihilism, — that 
 is, disbelief in all values of life.^ Confidence in 
 life is gone; life itself has become a problem. 
 Love of life is still possible, — only it is the love 
 of a woman of whom one is doubtful.' The 
 "good man" sees himself surrounded by evil, 
 discovers traces of evil in every one of his acts. 
 And thus he ultimately arrives at the conclusion, 
 which to him is quite logical, that nature is evil, 
 that man is corrupted, and that being good is an act 
 of grace (that is to say, it is impossible to man 
 
 > B. G. E., p. 136. « W. P., § 8. tj. W., p. 7. 
 
142 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 when he stands alone). In short, he denies life.^ 
 The man who frees himself from the theology of 
 the Church but adheres to Christian ethics neces- 
 sarily falls into pessimism. He perceives that man 
 is no longer an assistant in, let alone the culmina- 
 tion of, the evolutionary process; he perceives 
 that Becoming has been aiming at Nothing, and 
 has achieved it ; and that is something which he 
 cannot bear!* Suffering, which was, before, a 
 trial with promised reward, is now an intolerable 
 mystery ; if he is materially comfortable himself, 
 he finds soiu"ce for sentiment and tears in the pain 
 and misery of others; he concocts a "social 
 problem," and never dreams that the social 
 problem is itself a result of decadence.' He does 
 not feel at home in this world in which the Chris- 
 tian God is dead, and to which, nevertheless, he 
 brings nothing more appreciative than the old 
 Christian moral attitude. He despairs because he 
 is a chaos, and knows it; "I do not know where 
 I am, or what I am to do ; I am everything that 
 knows not where it is or what to do," he sighs.* 
 Life, he says at last, is not worth living. 
 
 Let us not try to answer such a man ; he needs 
 not logic but a sanitarium. But see, through him, 
 and in him, thedestructiveness of Christian morals. 
 This despicable civilization, says Rousseau, is to 
 blame for our bad morality. What if our good 
 morality is to blame for this despicable civiliza- 
 
 1 w. P., § 351. « Ibid., § 12. 
 
 > Ibid., § 43. < Antich., f 1. 
 
NIETZSCHE 143 
 
 tion? 1 See how the old ethic depreciates the joy 
 of living, and the gratitude felt towards Uf e ; how 
 it checks the knowledge and unfolding of life; 
 how it chokes the impulse to beautify and ennoble 
 life.* And at what a time ! Think what a race 
 with mascuhne will could accomplish now ! Pre- 
 cisely now, when will in its fullest strength were 
 necessary, it is in the weakest and most pusillani- 
 mous condition. Absolute mistrust concerning 
 the organizing power of the wiU : to that we have 
 come.' The world is dark with despair at the 
 moment of greatest hght. 
 
 What if man could be made to, love the Hght and 
 use it? 
 
 The Will to Power 
 
 Is it possible that this despair is not the final 
 state in the exhaustion of a race, but only a tran- 
 sition from beUef in a perfect and ethical world 
 to an attitude of transvaluation and control?* 
 Perhaps we are at the bottom of our spiritual to- 
 boggan, and an ascending movement is around 
 the corner of the years. Now that our Christian 
 bubble has burst into Schopenhauer, we are left 
 free to recover some part of the joyous strength 
 of the ancients. Let us become again as little 
 children, unspoiled by religion and morality ; let 
 us forget what it is to feel sinful; let the thou- 
 
 » D. D., I 163. ' W. P., 266. 
 
 • Ibid.. 20. * Ibid.. 585. 
 
144 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 sandfold laughter of children clear the air of the 
 odor of decay. Let us begin anew ; and the soul 
 will rise and overflow all its margins with the joy 
 of rediscovered life.' Life has not deceived us! 
 On the contrary, from year to year it appears 
 richer, more desirable, and more mysterious ; the 
 old fetters are broken by the thought that life 
 may be an experiment and not a duty, not a fatal- 
 ity, not a deceit ! ^ Life — that means for us to 
 transform constantly into light and flame all that 
 we are, and also all that we meet with ; we cannot 
 possibly do otherwise.' To be natural again, to 
 dare to be as immoral as nature is; to be such 
 pagans as were the Greeks of the Homeric age, 
 to say Yea to life, even to its suffering; to win 
 back some of that mountain-air Dionysian spirit 
 which took pleasure in the tragic, nay, which in- 
 vented tragedy as the expression of its super- 
 abundant vitaUty, as the expression of its welcome 
 of even the crudest and most terrible elements of 
 life ! * To be healthy once more ! 
 
 For there is no other virtue than health, vigor, 
 energy. All virtues should be looked upon as 
 physiological conditions, and moral judgments 
 are symptoms of physiological prosperity or the 
 reverse. Indeed, it might be worth while to try 
 to see whether a scientific order of values might 
 
 > Z., pp. 193, 315 ; ^. ff., pp. 71, 28. « /. TT., § 824. 
 
 »/6i(i., p. 6. 
 
 •W. P., 120, 1029; AnhcA., §55; E. B., pp. 72, 70; 
 
 Birth of Tragedy, paaaim. 
 
NIETZSCHE 145 
 
 not be constructed according to a scale of num- 
 bers and measures representing energy. All other 
 values are matters of prejudice, simplicity, and 
 misunderstanding.' Instead of moral values let 
 us use naturalistic values, physiological values; 
 let us say frankly with Spinoza that virtue and 
 power are one and the same. What is good? 
 All that enhances the feeling of power, the will to 
 power, and power itself, in man. What is bad? 
 All that proceeds from weakness. What is happi- 
 ness ? The f eehng that power is increasing, that 
 resistance is being overcome.* This is not ortho- 
 dox ethics; and perhaps it will not do for long 
 ears, — though an unspoiled youth would under- 
 stand it. A healthy and Adgorous boy will look 
 up sarcastically if you ask him, "Do you wish 
 to become virtuous?" — but ask him, "Do you 
 wish to become stronger than your comrades?" 
 and he is all eagerness at once.' Youth knows 
 that ability is virtue; watch the athletic field. 
 Youth is not at home in the class room, because 
 there knowledge is estranged from action; and 
 youth measures the height of what a man knows 
 by the depth of his power to do.* There is a better 
 gospel in the boy on the field than in the man in 
 the pulpit. 
 
 Which of the boys whom we know do we love 
 best in our secret hearts — the prayerful Aloysius, 
 or the masterful leader of the urchins in the 
 
 ' W. P., 255, 258, 710, 462, 392, 305. 
 » Antich., § 2. ' W. P., 918. ' T. 0. S., p. 76. 
 
 L 
 
146 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 street? We moralize and sermonize in mean ef- 
 forts to bring the young tyrant down to our 
 virtuous anaemia ; but we know that we are wrong, 
 and respect him most when he stands his ground 
 most firmly. To require of strength that it should 
 express itself as weakness is just as absurd as to 
 require of weakness that it should express itself 
 as strength.^ Let us go to school to our children, 
 and we shall understand that all native propensities 
 are beneficent, that the evil impulses are to a far 
 view as necessary and preservative as the good.^ 
 In truth we worship youth because at its finest it 
 is a free discharge of instinctive strength ; and we 
 know that happiness is nothing else than that. 
 To abandon instinct, to deliberate, to clog action 
 with conscious thought, — that is to achieve old 
 age. After all, nothing can be done perfectly so 
 long as it is done consciously ; consciousness is a 
 defect to be overcome.' Instinct is the most in- 
 telligent of all kinds of intelligence which have 
 hitherto been discovered.* Genius lies in the 
 instincts; goodness too; all consciousness is 
 theatricality.^ When a people begins to worship 
 reason, it begins to die.' Youth knows better: 
 it follows instinct trustfully, and worships power. 
 And we worship power too, and should say so 
 were we as honest as our children. Our gentlest 
 virtues are but forms of power : out of the abun- 
 
 > G. M., p. 45. « /. W., § 4. 
 
 » Anlich., § 14. « B. G. B., p. 162. 
 
 ' W. P., 440, 289. • E. H., p. 10. 
 
NIETZSCHE 147 
 
 dance of the power of sex come kindness and pity ; 
 out of revenge, justice; out of the love of re- 
 sistance, bravery. Love is a secret path to the 
 heart of the powerful, in order to become his mas- 
 ter; gratitude is revenge of a lofty kind; self- 
 sacrifice is an attempt to share in the power of 
 him to whom the sacrifice is made. Honor is 
 the acknowledgment of an equal power; praise 
 is the pride of the judge ; all conferring of bene- 
 fits is an exercise of power.* Behold a man in dis- 
 tress : straightway the compassionate ones come 
 to him, depict his misfortime to him, at last go 
 away, satisfied and elevated ; they have gloated 
 over the imhappy man's misfortune and their 
 own; they have spent a pleasant Sunday after- 
 noon.* So with the scientist and the philosopher : 
 in their thirst for knowledge lurks the lust of gain 
 and conquest. And the cry of the oppressed for 
 freedom is again a cry for power.* 
 
 You cannot understand man, you cannot under- 
 stand society, until you learn to see in all things 
 this will to power. Physiologists should bethink 
 themselves before putting down the instinct of 
 self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an 
 organic being. A living thing seeks above all to 
 discharge its strength: self-preservation is only 
 one of the results of this. And psychologists 
 should think twice before saying that hapfiiness 
 or p leasur e is the motive of all action. Pleasure is 
 
 > W. P., 255, 774, 775 ; D. D., § 215 ; J. W., 13. 
 « D. D., § 224. » W. P., 376, 776. 
 
148 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 but an incident of the restless search for power ; 
 happiness is an accompanying, not an actuating, 
 factor. The feeling of happiness lies precisely in 
 the discontentedness of the will, in the fact that 
 without opponents and obstacles it is never satis- 
 fied. Man is now master of the forces of nature, 
 and master too of his own wild and unbridled feel- 
 ings ; in comparison with primitive man the man 
 of to-day represents an enormous quantum of 
 power, but not an increase of happiness. How can 
 one maintain, then, that man has striven after 
 happiness ? No ; not happiness, but more power ; 
 not peace at any price, but war ; riot virtue, but 
 capacity ; that is the secret of man's longing and 
 man's seeking.^ 
 
 Let biologists, too, reexamine the stock-in- 
 trade of their theory. Life is not the continuous 
 adjustment of internal to external relations, but 
 wiU to powet, which, proceeding from within, 
 subjugates and incorporates an ever-increasing 
 quantity of "external phenomena." All motive 
 force, all "causation" whatever, is this will to 
 power ; there is no other force, physical, dynam- 
 ical, or psychical.^ As to the famous "struggle 
 for existence," it seems at present to be more of an 
 assumption than a fact. It does occur, but as an 
 exception ; and it is due not to a desire for food 
 but d tergo to a surcharge of energy demanding 
 discharge. The general condition of life is not 
 
 ' W. p., 650, 657, 685, 696, 704; Antich., § 2. 
 « Ibid., 681, 688, 689. 
 
NIETZSCHE 149 
 
 one of want or famine, but rather of riches, of 
 lavish luxuriance, and even of absurd prodi- 
 gality ; where there is a struggle it is a struggle 
 for power. We must not confound Malthus with 
 Nature.^ One does indeed find the "cruelty of 
 Nature" which is so often referred to, but in a 
 different place : Nature is cruel, but against her 
 lucky and well-constituted children ; she protects 
 and shelters and loves the lowly. Darwin sees 
 selection in favor of the stronger, the better- 
 constituted. Precisely the reverse stares one in 
 the face : the suppression of the lucky cases, the 
 reversion to average, the uselessness of the more 
 highly constituted types, the inevitable nia^ety 
 of the mediocre. If we drew our morals from 
 reality, they would read thus: the mediocre are 
 more valuable than the exceptional creatures; 
 the will to nonentity prevails over the will to life. 
 We have to beware of this formulation of reality 
 into a moral .^ 
 
 No ; morality is not mediocrity, it is superior- 
 ity ; it does not mean being like most people, but 
 being better, stronger, more capable than most 
 people. It does not mean timidity : if anything 
 is virtue it is to stand unafraid in the presence of 
 any prohibition.' It does not mean the pursuit 
 of ends sanctified by society; it means the will 
 to your own ends, and to the means to them. It 
 means behaving as states behave, — with frank 
 
 » T. I., p. 71 ; W. P.. 649. 
 > W. P.,685. » Z., p, 398. 
 
150 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 abandonment of all altruistic pretence. Cor- 
 porate bodies are intended to do that which 
 individuals have not the courage to do : for this 
 reason all communities are vastly more upright 
 and instructive as regards the nature of man than 
 individuals, who are too cowardly to have the 
 courage of their desires. All altruism is the pru- 
 dence of the private man; societies are not 
 mutually altruistic. Altruism and life are in- 
 compatible : all the forces and instincts which are 
 the source of life lie stagnant beneath the ban of 
 the old morality. But real morality is certainty 
 of instinct, effectiveness of action ; it is any action 
 which increases the power of a man or of men ; it is 
 an expression of ascendent and expanding life; 
 it is achievement ; it is power.* 
 
 8 
 
 The Superman 
 
 With such a morality you breed men who are 
 men ; and to breed men who are men is all that 
 your "social problem" comes to. This does not 
 mean that the whole race is to be improved : the 
 very last thing a sensible man would promise to 
 accomplish would be to improve mankind. Man- 
 kind does not improve, it does not even exist. 
 The aspect of the whole is much more like that 
 of a huge experimenting workshop where some 
 things in all ages succeed, while an incalculable 
 
 » W. P., 880, 716, 343, 423, 291. 
 
NIETZSCHE 151 
 
 number of things fail. To say that the social 
 problem consists in a general raising of the aver- 
 age standard of comfort and ability amounts to 
 abandoning the problem ; there is as little pros- 
 pect of mankind's attaining to a higher order as 
 there is for the ant and the ear-wig to enter into 
 kinship with God and eternity. The most fun- 
 damental of all errors here lies in regarding the 
 many, the herd, as an aim instead of the individual : 
 the herd is only a means. The road to perfection 
 lies in The bringing forth of the most powerful 
 individuals, for whose use the great masses would 
 be converted into mere tools, into the most intel- 
 ligent and flexible tools possible. Every human 
 being, with his total activity, has dignity and 
 significance only so far as he is, consciously or 
 unconsciously, a tool in the service of a superior 
 individual. AU that can be done is to produce 
 here and there, now and then, such a superior 
 individual, I'uomo singulare, the higher man, the 
 superman. The problem does not concern what 
 humanity as a whole or as a species is to accom- 
 plish, but what kind of man is to be desired as 
 highest in value, what kind of man is to be worked 
 for and bred. To produce the superman : that 
 is the social problem. If this is not understood, 
 nothing is understood.' 
 
 Now what would such a man be like? Shall 
 we try to picture him? 
 
 » E. H., p. 2 ; D. D., I 49 ; Londy N., p. 17 ; W. P., 269, 
 90, 766, 660. 
 
152 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 We see him as above all a lover of life : strong 
 enough, too, to love life without deceiving himself 
 about it. There is no memento mori here ; rather 
 a memento vivere; rich instincts call for much 
 living. A hard man, loving danger and difficulty : 
 what does not kill him, he feels, leaves him 
 stronger. Pleasure — pleasure as it is understood 
 by the rich — is repugnant to him : he seeks not 
 pleasure but work, not happiness but responsi- 
 bility and achievement. He does not make 
 philosophy an excuse for living prudently and 
 apart, an artifice for withdrawing successfully 
 from the game of life ; he does not stand aside 
 and merely look on ; he puts his shoulder to the 
 wheel ; for him it is the essence of philosophy to 
 feel the obligation and burden of a hundred 
 attempts and temptations, the joy of a hundred 
 adventures; he risks himself constantly; he 
 plays out to the end this bad game.' 
 
 To risk and to create, this is the meaning of life 
 to the superman. He could not bear to be a man, 
 if man could not be a poet, a maker. To change 
 every "It was" into a "Thus I would have it !" 
 — in this he finds that life may redeem itself. He 
 is moved not by ambition but by a mighty over- 
 flowing spendthrift spirit that drives him on ; he 
 must remake; for this he compels all things to 
 come to him and into him, in order that they may 
 flow back from him as gifts of his love and his 
 
 > E. H., p. 138; T. 0. S., ii, p. 66; Z., p. 222; W. P., 
 934, 944 ; J. W., p. 8 ; T. I., | 40 ; B. G. E., p. 138. 
 
NIETZSCHE 153 
 
 abuhdance; in this refashioning of things by 
 thought he sees the holiness of life ; the greatest 
 events, he knows, are these still creative hours.* 
 
 He is a man of contrasts, or contradictions; 
 he does not desire to be always the same man ; he 
 is a multitude of elements and of men ; his value 
 Ues precisely in his comprehensiveness and multi- 
 fariousness, in the variety of burdens which he 
 can bear, in the extent to which he can stretch 
 his responsibiUty ; in him the antagonistic char- 
 acter of existence is represented and justified. He 
 loves instinct, knows that it is the fountain of all 
 his energies ; but he knows, too, the natural deUght 
 of aesthetic natures in measure, the pleasure of 
 self-restraint, the exhilaration of the rider on a 
 fiery steed. He is a selective principle, he rejects 
 much; he reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, 
 with that tardiness which long caution and de- 
 liberate pride have bred in him; he tests the 
 approaching stimulus. He decides slowly; but 
 he holds firmly to a decision made.* 
 
 He loves and has the qualities which the folk 
 call virtues, but he loves too and shows the quali- 
 ties which the folk call vices ; it is again in this 
 union of opposites that he rises above mediocrity ; 
 he is a broad arch that spans two banks lying 
 far apart. The folk on either side fear him ; for 
 they cannot calculate on him, or classify him. 
 
 • Z., pp. 199, 103, 186 ; W. P., 792. 
 
 • W. P., 881, 870, 918; B. G. E., p. 154; E. H., p. 13; 
 Z>. D., S 5S2. 
 
154 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 He is a free spirit, an enemy of all fetters and 
 labels ; he belongs to no party, knowing that the 
 man who belongs to a party perforce becomes a 
 liar. He is a sceptic (not that he must appear to 
 be one) ; freedom from any kind of conviction is a 
 necessary factor in his strength of will. He does 
 not make propaganda or proselytes ; he keeps his 
 ideals to himself as distinctions; his opinion is 
 his opinion : another person has not easily a right 
 to it ; he has renounced the bad taste of wishing 
 to agree with many people. He knows that he 
 cannot reveal himseK to anybody ; like everything 
 profound, he loves the mask ; he does not descend 
 to familiarity ; and is not familiar when people 
 think he is. If he cannot lead, he walks alone.* 
 He has not only intellect; if that were all it 
 would not be enough; he has blood. Behind 
 him is a lineage of culture and ability; lives of 
 danger and distinction; his ancestors have p a ,if 4 
 the price for what he is, just as most men pay the 
 price for what their ancestors have been. Natu- 
 rally, then, he has a strong feeling of distance ; he 
 sees inequality and gradation, order and rankj 
 everywhere among men. He has the most 
 aristocratic of virtues: intellectual honesty. 
 He does not readily become a friend or an enemy ; 
 he honors only his equals, and therefore cannot 
 be the enemy of many; where one despises one 
 cannot wage war. He lacks the power of easy 
 
 »Tr.P., 967, 366-7, 349; Z., p. 141; ATUich.. | 65; 
 B. G. E„ pp. 64, 67. 
 
NIETZSCHE 155 
 
 reconciliation; but "retaliation" is as incompre- 
 hensible to him as "equal rights." He remains 
 just even as regards his injurer ; despite the strong 
 provocation of personal insult the clear and lofty 
 objectivity of the just and judging eye (whose 
 glance is as profound as it is gentle) is untroubled. 
 He recognizes duties only to his equals ; to others 
 he does what he thinks best ; he knows that jus- 
 tice is found only among equals. He has, that 
 distinctively aristocratic trait, the ability to 
 command and with equal readiness to obey ; that 
 is indispensable to his pride. He will not permit 
 himself to be praised; he does what serves his 
 purpose. The essence of him is that he has a 
 purpose, for which he will not hesitate to run all 
 risks, even to sacrifice men, to bend their backs 
 to the worst. That something may exist which 
 is a hundred times more important than the ques- 
 tion whether he feels well or unwell, and therefore 
 too whether the others feel well or unwell : this 
 is a fundamental instinct of his nature. To have 
 a purpose, and to cleave to it through all dangers 
 tiU it be achieved, — that is his great passion, 
 that is himself.^ 
 
 9 
 
 How to Make Supermen 
 
 It is our task, then, to procreate this synthetic 
 man, who embodies everything and justifies it, 
 
 ' W. P., 969, 371, 356, 926, 946, 26 ; Z,, p. 430 ; E. H., 
 pp. 23, 19, 128 ; G. M., p. 85 ; D. D., § 60, 
 
156 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 and for whom the rest of mankind is but soil; 
 to bring the philosopher, the artist, and the saint, 
 within and without us, to the light, and to strive 
 thereby for the completion of nature. In this 
 cultivation lies the meaning of culture : the direc- 
 tion of aU life to the end of producing the finest 
 possible individuals. What is great in man is 
 that he is a bridge and not a goal ; his very essence 
 is to create a being higher than himself ; that is the 
 instinct of procreation, the instinct of action and 
 of work. Even the higher man himself feels this 
 need of begetting ; and for lesser men all virtue 
 and morals lie in preparing the way that the super- 
 man may come. There is no greater horror than 
 the degenerating soul which says, "All for my- 
 self." In this great purpose, too, is the essence of 
 a better religion, and a surpassing of the bounds 
 of narrow individualism ; with this purpose there 
 come moments, sparks from the clear fire of love, in 
 whose light we understand the word " I " no longer ; 
 we feel that we are creating, and therefore in a 
 sense becoming, something greater than ourselves.* 
 
 How to make straight the way for the superman ? 
 
 First by reforming marriage. Let it be under- 
 stood at once that love is a hindrance rather than 
 a help to such marriages as are calculated to breed 
 higher men. To regard a thing as beautiful is 
 necessarily to regard it falsely ; that is why love- 
 marriages are from the social point of view the 
 
 • W. P., 866; t. 0. S., a, p. 154; Z., pp. 8, 104; T.I., 
 p. 269. 
 
NIETZSCHE 157 
 
 most unreasonable form of matrimony. Were 
 there a benevolent God, the marriages of men 
 would cause him more displeasure than anything 
 else ; he would observe that all buyers are careful, 
 but that even the most cunning one buys his wife 
 in a sack ; and surely he would cause the earth to 
 tremble in convulsions when a saint and a goose 
 couple. When a man is in love, he should not be 
 allowed to come to a decision about his hfe, and 
 to determine once for all the character of his 
 hfelong society on account of a whim. If we 
 treated marriage seriously, we would publicly 
 declare invaUd the vows of lovers, and refuse 
 them permission to marry. We would remake 
 pubUc opinion, so that it would encourage trial 
 marriage; we would exact certificates of health 
 and good ancestry; we would punish bachelor- 
 hood by longer military service, and would reward 
 with all sorts of privileges those fathers who 
 should lavish sons upon the world. And above 
 all we would make people understand that the 
 purpose of marriage is not that they should 
 dupUcate, but that they should surpass, them- 
 selves. Perhaps we would read to them from 
 Zarathustra, with fitting ceremonies and solemni- 
 ties : " Thou art young, and wishest for child and 
 marriage. But I ask thee, art thou a man who 
 dareth to wish for a child ? Art thou the victori- 
 ous one, the self-subduer, the commander of thy 
 senses, the master of thy virtues ? — '■ or in thy 
 wish doth there speak the animal, or necessity? 
 
158 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Or solitude? Or discord with thyself? I would 
 that thy victory and freedom were longing for a 
 child. Thou shalt build living monuments unto 
 thy victory and thy liberation. Thou shalt 
 build beyond thyself. But first thou must build 
 thyself square in body and soul. Thou shalt not 
 only propagate thyself, but propagate thyself 
 upward ! Marriage : thus I call the will of two 
 to create that one which is more than they who 
 created it. I call marriage reverence unto each 
 other as unto those who will such a will." * 
 
 In a word, eugenic marriage ; and after eugenic 
 marriage, rigorous education. But interest in 
 education will become powerful only when belief 
 in a God and his care have been abandoned, just 
 as medicine began to flourish only when the belief 
 in miraculous cures had lapsed. When men begin 
 at last to believe in education, they will endure 
 much rather than have their sons miss going to a 
 good and hard school at the proper time. What is 
 it that one learns in a hard school ? To obey and 
 to command. For this is what distinguishes hard 
 schoohng, as good schooling, from every other 
 schooling, namely that a gobd deal is demanded, 
 severely exacted ; that excellence is required as 
 if it were normal; that praise is scanty, that 
 leniency is non-existent; that blame is sharp, 
 practical, and without reprieve, and has no regard 
 to talent and antecedents. To prefer danger to 
 comfort ; not to weigh in a tradesman's balance 
 
 ' W. P„ 804, 732-3 ; Z., pp. 94-6 ; D. D., § lSO-1. 
 
NIETZSCHE 159 
 
 what is permitted and what is forbidden ; to be 
 more hostile to pettiness, slyness, and parasitism 
 than to wickedness ; — we are in every need of a 
 school where these things would be taught. Such 
 a school would allow its pupils to learn produc- 
 tively, by living and doing ; it would not subject 
 them to the tyranny of books and the weight of 
 the past ; it would teach them less about the past 
 and more about the future ; it would teach them 
 the future of humanity as depending on human 
 will, on their will ; it would prepare the way for 
 and be a part of a vast enterprise in breeding 
 and education.' But even such a school would 
 not provide all that is necessary in education. 
 Not all should receive the same training and the 
 same care; select groups must be chosen, and 
 special instruction lavished on them ; the greatest 
 success, however, will remain for the man who 
 does not seek to educate either everybody or 
 certain limited circles, but only one single indi- 
 vidual. The last century was superior to ours 
 precisely because it possessed so many individually 
 educated men. 
 
 10 
 
 On the Necessity of Exploitation 
 
 And next slavery. 
 
 This is one of those ugly words which are the 
 verba non grata of modern discussion, because they 
 
 » H. H., § 242 ; W. P., 912 ; B. G. E., p. 129 ; D. D., § 194 ; 
 " Schopenhnuer as Educator" (in T. O. 3.), passim. 
 
160 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 jar us so ruthlessly out of the grooves of our think- 
 ing. Nevertheless it is clear to aU but those to 
 whom self-deception is the staff of life, that as the 
 honest Greeks had it, some are born to be slaves. 
 Try to educate all men equally, and you become 
 the laughing-stock of your own maturity. The 
 masses seem to be worth notice in three aspects 
 only : first as the copies of great men, printed on 
 bad paper from worn-out plates ; next as a con- 
 trast to the great men ; and lastly as their tools. 
 Living consists in Uving at the cost of others : the 
 man who has not grasped this fact has not taken 
 the first step towards truth to himself. And to 
 consider distress of all kinds as an objection, as 
 something which must be done away with, is the 
 greatest nonsense on earth; almost as mad as 
 the will to abohsh bad weather, out of pity to 
 the poor, so to speak. The masses must be used, 
 whether that means or does not mean that they 
 must suffer; — it requires great strength to live 
 and forget how far life and injustice are one. 
 What is the suffering of whole peoples compared 
 to the creative agonies of great individuals ? ' 
 
 There are many who threw away everything 
 they were worth when they threw away their 
 slavery. In all respects slaves live more securely 
 and more happily than modern laborers; the 
 laborer chooses his harder lot to satisfy the vanity 
 of telUng himself that he is not a slave. These 
 men are dangerous ; not because they are strong, 
 
 1 T. 0. S., ii, pp. 84, 28 ; W. P., 369, 965 ; E. H„ p. 135. 
 
NIETZSCHE 161 
 
 but because they are sick ; it is the sick who are 
 the greatest danger to the healthy ; it is the weak 
 ones, they who mouth so much about their sick- 
 ness, who vomit bile and caU it newspaper, — it 
 is they who instil the most dangerous venom and 
 scepticism into our trust in life, in man, and in 
 ourselves ; it is they who most undermine the Ufe 
 beneath our feet. It is for such as these that 
 Christianity may serve a good purpose (so serv- 
 ing our purpose too). Those qualities which are 
 Avithin the grasp only of the strongest and most 
 terrible natures, and which make their existence 
 possible — leisure, adventure, disbelief, and even 
 dissipation — would necessarily ruin mediocre 
 natures — and does do so when they possess them. 
 In the case of the latter, industry, regularity, 
 moderation, and strong "conviction" are in their 
 proper place — in short, all "gregarious virtues" ; 
 under their influence these mediocre men become 
 perfect. We good Europeans, then, though 
 atheists and immoralists, will take care to support 
 the reUgions and the moraUty which are associated 
 with the gregarious instinct ; for by means of them 
 an order of men is, so to speak, prepared, which 
 must at some time or other fall into our hands, 
 which must actually crave for our hands.' 
 
 Slavery, let us understand it well, is the neces- 
 sary price of culture ; the free work, or art, of some 
 involves the compulsory labor of fathers. As in 
 
 1 Z., pp. 84, 64 ; H. H., 5 457 ; G. Af ., 156-7 ; B. O. E., 
 §§ 61-2; W. P.. 373, 901, 132. 
 u 
 
162 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 the organism so in society : the higher function 
 is possible only through the subjection of the 
 lower functions. A high civilization is a pyra- 
 mid ; it can stand only on a broad base, its first 
 prerequisite is a strongly and soundly consoU- 
 dated mediocrity. In order that there may be a 
 broad, deep, and fruitful soil for the development 
 of art, the enormous majority must, in the service 
 of a minority, be slavishly subjected. At their 
 cost, through the surplus of their labor, that 
 privileged class is to be relieved from the struggle 
 for existence, in order to create and to satisfy a 
 new world of want. The misery of the toilers 
 must still increase in order to make the production 
 of a world of art possible to a small number of 
 Olympian men.' 
 
 11 
 
 Aristocracy 
 
 The greatest folly of the strong is to let the 
 weak make them ashamed to exploit, to let the 
 weak suggest to them, "It is a shame to be happy 
 — there is too much misery !" Let us therefore 
 reaffirm the right of the happy to existence, the 
 right of bells with a full tone over bells that are 
 cracked and discordant. Not that exploitation 
 as such is desirable ; it is good only where it sup- 
 ports, and develops an aristocracy of higher men 
 
 • H. H., § 439 ; W. P., 660 ; Aniich., § 67 ; Lonely N., 
 p. 7. 
 
NIETZSCHE 163 
 
 who are themselves developing still higher men. 
 This philosophy aims not at an individuaUstic 
 morality but at a new order of rank. In this age 
 of universal suffrage, in this age in which every- 
 body is allowed to sit in judgment upon every- 
 thing and everybody, one feels .compelled to re- 
 establish the order of rank. The higher men must 
 be protected from contamination and suffocation 
 by the lower. The richest and most complex 
 forms perish so easily ! Only the lowest suc- 
 ceed in maintaining their apparent imperish- 
 ableness.* 
 
 The first question as to the order of rank : how 
 far is a man disposed to be solitary or gregarious? 
 If he is disposed to be gregarious, his value consists 
 in those qualities which secure the survival of his 
 tribe or type ; if he is disposed to be solitary, his 
 qualities are those which distinguish him from 
 others ; hence the important consequence : the 
 solitary type should not be valued from the stand- 
 point of the gregarious type, or vice versa. Viewed 
 from above, both types are necessary ; and so is 
 their antagonism. Degeneration lies in the ap- 
 proximation of the qualities of the herd to those of 
 the solitary creature, and vice versa; in short, in 
 their beginning to resemble each other. Hence 
 the difference in their virtues, their rights and their 
 obligations ; in the light of this difference one comes 
 to abhor the vulgarity of Stuart Mill when he 
 says, "What is right for one man is right for an- 
 
 > G. M., pp. 160-1 ; W. p., 287, 854, 864. 
 
164 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PEOBLEM 
 
 other." It is not; what is right for the herd is 
 precisely what is wrong for their leaders; and 
 what is right for the leaders is wrong for the herd. 
 The leaders use, the herd is used ; the virtues of 
 either lie in the efficiency here of leadership, 
 there of service. Slave-morality is one thing, and 
 master-morality another.^ 
 
 And leadership of course requires an aristoc- 
 racy. Let us repeat it : democracy has always 
 been the death-agony of the power of organization 
 and direction; these require great aristocratic 
 families, with long traditions of administration 
 and leadership ; old ancestral lines that guarantee 
 for many generations the duration of the necessary 
 will and the necessary instincts. Not only aristoc- 
 racy, then, but caste ; for if a man have plebeian 
 ancestors, his soul will be a plebeian soul ; educa- 
 tion, discipline, culture will be wasted on him, 
 merely enabling him to become a great liar. 
 Therefore intermarriage, even social intercourse 
 of leaders with herd, is to be avoided with all 
 precaution and intolerance ; too much intercourse 
 with barbarians ruined the Romans, and will ruin 
 any noble race.* 
 
 In what direction may one turn with any hope 
 of finding even the aspiration for such an aristoc- 
 racy? Only there where a noble attitude of mind 
 prevails, an attitude of mind which believes in 
 
 > W. P., 886, 926. 
 
 •r. /., p. 96; W^. P., 957; B.O. E., p. 239; T.O.a..u, 
 p. 39. 
 
NIETZSCHE 165 
 
 slavery and in manifold orders of rank, as the 
 prerequisites of any higher degree of culture. 
 Men with this attitude of mind will insistently 
 call for, and will at last produce, philosophical 
 men of power, artist-tyrants, — a higher kind of 
 men which, thanks to their preponderance of will, 
 knowledge, riches, and influence, will avail them- 
 selves of democratic Europe as the most suitable 
 and subtle instrument for taking the fate of 
 Europe into their hands, and working as artists 
 upon man himself. The fimdamental belief of 
 these great desirers will be that society must not 
 be allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as 
 the foundation and scaffolding by means of which 
 a select class of beings may be able to elevate 
 themselves to their highest duties, and in general 
 to a higher existence: like those sun-climbing 
 plants in Java which encircle an oak so long and 
 so often with their arms that at last, high above 
 it, but supported by it, they can unfold their tops 
 in the open light, and exhibit their happiness.^ 
 
 12 
 
 Signs of Ascent 
 
 Are we moving toward such a consummation? 
 Can we detect about us any signs of this ascending 
 movement of life ? Not signs of "progress " ; that 
 is another narcotic, like Christianity, — good for 
 slaves, but to be avoided by those who rule. Man 
 
 1 W. P., 464, 960; B. O. E., p. 225. 
 
166 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 as a species is not progressiag ; the general level of 
 the species is not raised. But humanity as mass 
 sacrificed to the prosperity^of the one stronger type 
 of M^n, — that would be a progress.* 
 
 Progress of this kind, to some degree, there has 
 always been. The ruling class in Greece, as seen 
 in Homer and even in Thucydides (though with 
 Socrates degeneration begins), is an example of 
 this kind of progress or attainment. Imagine 
 this culture, which has its poet in Sophocles, its 
 statesman in Pericles, its physician in Hippoc- 
 rates, its natural philosopher in Democritus; 
 here is a yea-saying, a gratitude, to life in all its 
 manifestations; here life is understood, and 
 covered with art that it may be borne ; here men 
 are frivolous so that they may forget for a moment 
 the arduousness and perilousness of their task; 
 they are superficial, but from profundity; they 
 exalt philosophers who preach moderation, be- 
 cause they themselves are so immoderate, so 
 instinctive, so hilariously wild; they are great, 
 they are elevated above any ruling class before or 
 after them because here the morals of the govern- 
 ing caste have grown up among the governing 
 caste, and not among the herd.'' 
 
 We catch some of the glory of these Greeks in 
 the men of the Renaissance : men perfect in their 
 immorality, terrible in their demands ; we should 
 
 ■ W. P., 4A, 684, 909 ; G. M., p. 91. 
 ' D. D., §§ 165, 168 : W. P., 1052 ; B. O. E., p. 69 ; /. W.. 
 p. 10. 
 
NIETZSCHE 167 
 
 not dare to stand amid the conditions which 
 produced these men and which these men pro- 
 duced ; we should not even dare to imagine our- 
 selves in those conditions : our nerves would not 
 endiu-e that reaUty, — not to speak of our muscles. 
 One man of their type, continuator and develop- 
 ment of their type, brother (as Taine most rightly 
 says) of Dante and Michelangelo, — one such 
 man we have known with less of the protection 
 of distance ; and he was too hard to bear. That 
 Ens Bealissimum, synthesis of monster and super- 
 man, surnamed Napoleon ! The first man, and the 
 man of greatest initiative and developed views, of 
 modem times; a man of tolerance, not out of 
 weakness, but out of strength, able to risk the full 
 enjoyment of naturalness and be strong enough 
 for this freedom. In such a man we see some- 
 thing in the nature of "disinterestedness" in his 
 work on his marble, whatever be the number of 
 men that are sacrificed in the process. Men were 
 glad to serve him ; as most normal men are glad 
 to serve the great man; the crowd was tired of 
 "equal rights," tired of being masterless; it 
 longed to worship genius again. What was the 
 excuse for that terrible farce, the French Revolu- 
 tion? It made men ready for Napoleon.' 
 
 When shall we produce another superman? 
 Let us go back to our question : Can we detect 
 about us any signs of strength? 
 
 1 T. I., pp. 91, 110; /. W., § 362; Q. M., pp. 56, 226; 
 W. P., 975, 877 ; B. G. E., pp. 201, 53. 
 
168 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Yes. We are learning to get along without 
 God. We are recovering from the noble senti- 
 ments of Rousseau. We are giving the body its 
 due; physiology is overcoming theology. We 
 are less hungry for lies, — we are facing squarely 
 some of the ugliness of life, — prostitution, for 
 example. We speak less of "duty" and "princi- 
 ples" ; we are not so enamored of bourgeois con- 
 ventions. We are less ashamed of our instincts ; 
 we no longer believe in a right which proceeds 
 from a power that is unable to uphold it. There 
 is an advance towards "naturalness": in all 
 political questions, even in the relations between 
 parties, even in merchants', workmen's circles 
 only questions of power come into play; what 
 one can do is the first question, what one ought to 
 do is a secondary consideration. There is a cer- 
 tain degree of liberal-mindedness regarding moral- 
 ity; where this is most distinctly wanting we 
 regard its absence as a sign of a morbid condi- 
 tion (Carlyle, Ibsen, Schopenhauer); if there is 
 anything which can reconcile us to our age it is 
 precisely the amoimt of immorality which it allows 
 itself without falling in its own estimation.* 
 
 Modern science, despite its narrowing specially 
 zation, is a sign of ascent. Here is strictness in' 
 service, inexorability in small matters as well as 
 great, rapidity in weighing, judging, and con- 
 demning ; the hardest is demanded here, the best 
 is done without reward of praise or distinction ; it 
 > W. P., 109-34, 747. 
 
NIETZSCHE 169 
 
 is rather as among soldiers, — almost nothing but 
 blame and sharp reprimand is heard; for doing 
 well prevails here as the rule, and the rule has, as 
 everywhere, a silent tongue. It is the same with 
 this "severity of science" as with the manners 
 and pohteness of the best society : it frightens the 
 uninitiated. He, however, who is accustomed to 
 it, does not like to hve anywhere but in this 
 clear, transparent, powerful, and highly electri- 
 fied atmosphere, this manly atmosphere.* 
 
 In this achievement of science Ues such an 
 opportunity as philosophy has never had before. 
 Science traces the course of things but points to 
 no goal : what it does give consists of the funda- 
 mental facts upon which the new goal must be 
 based. All the sciences have now to pave the 
 way for the future task of the philosopher ; this 
 task being understood to mean that he must 
 solve the problem of vaVm, that he has to fix the 
 hierarchy of values. He must become lawgiver, 
 commander; he must determine the "whither" 
 and "why" for mankind. All knowledge must 
 be at his disposal, and must serve him as a tool 
 for creation.'' 
 
 Most certain of the signs of a reascending move- 
 ment of Hfe is the development of mihtarism. 
 The mihtary development of Europe is a delightful 
 surprise. This fine discipline is teaching us to do 
 
 « J. W., 293. 
 
 ' T. I., p. 260 ; 0. M., p. 58 ; B. G. E., p. 151 ; Lonely N., 
 p. 221. 
 
170 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 OUT duty without expecting praise. Universal 
 military service is the curious antidote which we 
 possess for the effeminacy of democratic ideas. 
 Men are learning again the joy of living in danger. 
 Some of them are even learning the old truth 
 that war is good in itself, aside from any gain in 
 land or other wealth ; instead of saying "A good 
 cause will hallow every war," they learn to say 
 "A good war hallows every cause." When the 
 instincts of a society ultimately make it give up 
 war and conquest, it is decadent : it is ripe for 
 democracy and the rule of shopkeepers. A state 
 which should prevent war would not only be com- 
 mitting suicide (for war is just as necessary to the 
 state as the slave is to society) ; it would be hostile 
 to life, it would be an outrage on the future of man. 
 The maintenance of the military state is the last 
 means of adhering to the great traditions of the 
 past; or where it has been lost, of reviving it. 
 Only in this can the superior or strong type of 
 man be preserved.^ 
 
 A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six 
 or seven great men, and then to get around them.. 
 The state is the organization of immorality for 
 the attainment of this purpose. But as existing 
 to-day the state is a very imperfect instrument, 
 subject at any moment to democratic foundering. 
 What concerns the thinker here is the slow and 
 hesitant formation of a united Europe. This 
 
 » W. p., 127, 728-9; 6. M., pp. 88, 226; /. W., 283; 
 Z., p. 60 ; Lonely N., p. 15. 
 
NIETZSCHE 171 
 
 was the thought, and the sole real work and 
 impulse, of the only broad-minded and deep- 
 thinking men of this century, — the tentative ef- 
 fort to anticipate the future of "the European." 
 Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew 
 old, did they fall back again into the national 
 narrowness of the "Father landers" — then they 
 were once niore "patriots." One thinks here of 
 men like Napoleon, Heine, Goethe, Beethoven, 
 Stendhal, Schopenhauer. And after all, is there 
 a single idea behind this bovine nationalism? 
 What possible value can there be in encouraging 
 this arrogant self-conceit when everything to-day 
 points to greater and more common interests ? — 
 at a moment when the spiritual dependence and 
 denationalization which are obvious to all are 
 paAdng the way for the rapprochements and 
 fertiUzations which make up the real value and 
 sense of present-day culture ? ' 
 
 What an instrument such a united Europe 
 would be for the development . and protection 
 and expression of superior individuals ! What a 
 buoyant ascent of life after this long descent into 
 democracy ! See now, in review, the two move- 
 ments which we have studied and on which we 
 have [strung our philosophy: on the one hand 
 Christian mythology and morality, the cult of 
 weakness, the fear of life, the deterioration of the 
 species, ever increasing suppression of the privi- 
 leged and the strong, the lapse into democracy, 
 
 1 B. G. E., p. 94 ; W. P., 717, 748 ; G. M., pp. 223-4. 
 
172 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 feminism, socialism, and at last into anarchy, — 
 all terminating in pessimism, despair, total loss 
 of the love of life ; on the other hand the reaflSr- 
 mation of the worth of life, the resolute distinction 
 between slave-morality and master-morality, the 
 recognition of the aristocratic valuation of health, 
 vigor, energy, as moral in all their forms, and of 
 the will to power as the source and significance 
 of all action and all living ; the conception of the 
 higher man, of the exceptional individual, as the 
 goal of human endeavor ; the redirection of mar- 
 riage, of education, of social structure, to the 
 fostering and cherishing of these higher types ; — 
 culminating in the supernational organization of 
 Europe as the instrumentality and artistic expres- 
 sion of the superior man.* 
 
 Is this philosophy too hard to bear? Very 
 well. But those races that cannot bear it are 
 doomed ; and those which regard it as the greatest 
 blessing are destined to be masters of the world.* 
 
 IV 
 
 Criticism 
 
 What shall one say to this? What would a 
 democrat say, — such a democrat as would be a 
 friend to socialism and feminism, and even to 
 anarchism, — and a lover of Jesus ? One pictures 
 such a man listening with irritated patience to 
 
 > W. P., 712. > Ibid., 1053. 
 
NIETZSCHE 173 
 
 the foregoing, and responding very readily to an 
 invitation to take the floor. 
 
 There are lessons here, he begins, as if brushing 
 away an initial encumbrance. There is some- 
 thing of Nietzsche in all of us, just as there is 
 something of Jesus (almost as there is something 
 of man and of woman in all of us, as Weininger 
 argued) ; and part of that crowd called myself 
 is flattered by this doctrine of ruthless power. 
 Nietzsche stood outside our social and moral 
 structure, he was a sort of hermit in the world of 
 thought ; and so he could see things in that struc- 
 ture which are too near to our noses for easy vision. 
 And as you listen to him you see history anew as a 
 long succession of masterings and enslavings and 
 deceivings, and you become almost reconciled to 
 the future being nothing but a further succession of 
 the same. And then you begin to see that if the 
 future is to be different, one of the things we must do 
 is to pinch ourselves out of this Nietzschean dream. 
 
 And a good way to begin is with Nietzsche's 
 own principle, that every philosophy is a physi- 
 ology.' He asks us to believe that there is no such 
 thing as a morbid trait in him,^ but we must not 
 take him at his word. The. most important point 
 about this philosophy is that it was written by a 
 sick man, a man sick to the very roots — if you 
 will let me say it, abnormal in sexual constitution ; 
 a man not sufficiently attracted to the other sex, 
 1 /. W., p. 5. » E. H., p. 63. 
 
174 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 because he has so much of the other sex in him. 
 "She is a woman," he writes in Zarathustra, 
 "and never loves anyone but a warrior"; that 
 is, if Nietzsche but knew it, the diagnosis of 
 his own disease. This hatred of women, this 
 longing for power, this admiration for strength, 
 for successful lying,* this inability to see a 
 tertium quid between tyranny and slavery,* — all 
 these are feminine traits. A stronger man 
 would not have been so shrewishly shrill about 
 woman and Christianity ; a stronger man would 
 have needed less repetition, less emphasis and 
 underlining, less of italics and exclamation points ; 
 a stronger man would have been more gentle, and 
 would have smiled where Nietzsche scolds. It is 
 the philosophy, you see, of a man abnormally 
 weak in the, social instincts, and at the same time 
 lacking in proper outlet for such social instincts 
 as nature has left him. 
 
 Consequently, he never gets beyond the individ- 
 ual. He thinks society is made up of individuals, 
 when it is really made up of groups. He supposes 
 that the only virtues a man can have are those 
 which help him as an isolated unit ; the idea that a 
 man may find self-expression in social expression, 
 in cooperation, that there are virtues which are 
 
 ' W. p., 544, with footnote quoting Napoleon: "An al- 
 most instinctive belief with me is that all strong men lie when 
 they speak, and much more so when they write." 
 
 ' "Far too long a slave and a tyrant have been hidden in 
 woman : . . . she is not yet capable of friendship." — Z., 
 p. 75. 
 
NIETZSCHE 175 
 
 virtues because they enable one to work with 
 others against a common evil, — this notion 
 never occurs to him. He does not see that sym- 
 pathy and mutual aid, for example, though they 
 preserve some inferior individuals, yet secure that 
 group-solidarity, and therefore group-survival, 
 without which even the strong ones would perish.* 
 He does not imagine that perhaps the barbarians 
 who invaded Rome needed) the gospel of a "gentle 
 Jesus meek and mild " if anything at all was to 
 remain of that same classical culture which he 
 paints so lovingly.* He laughs at self-denial; 
 and then invites you to devote yourself forever 
 to some self -elected superman. 
 
 This philosophy of aristocracy, of the necessity 
 of slavery, of the absurdity of democracy, — of 
 course it is exciting to all weak people who would 
 like to have power, — and who have not read it 
 all before in Plato. In this particular case the 
 humor of the situation hes in the very powerful 
 attack which Nietzsche makes on the irrehgious 
 religious humbug which has proved one of the chief 
 instruments of mastery in the hands of the class 
 whose power he is trying to strengthen. "I hope 
 to be forgiven," says Nietzsche, "for discovering 
 that all moral philosophy hitherto has belonged 
 to the soporific appliances." ' "Discovering" — 
 
 ' Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, New 
 York, 1911, p. 25. 
 
 * There is something verging on a recognition of thia in 
 W. P., 403-4. 
 
 » B. O. E., p. 173. 
 
176 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 as if the aristocracy had not known that all along ! 
 "Here is a naive bookworm," these "strong men" 
 will say among themselves, "who has discovered 
 what every one of us knows. He presumes to 
 tell us how to increase our power, and he can find 
 no better way of helping us than to expose in 
 print the best secrets of our trade." 
 
 Just in this lies the value of Nietzsche, as 
 Rousseau said of Machiavelli : he lets us in 
 behind the scenes of the drama of exploitation. 
 We know better now the men with whom democ- 
 racy must deal. We see the greed for power that 
 hides behind the contention that culture cannot 
 exist without slavery. Grant that contention : so 
 much the worse for culture ! If culture means 
 the increasing concentration of the satisfactions of 
 life in the hands of a few "superior" pigs, their 
 culture may be dispensed with ; if it is to stay, it 
 will have to mean the direction of knowledge and 
 ability to the spread of the satisfactions of life. 
 Which is finer, — the relationship of master and 
 slave, or that of friend and friend? Surely a 
 world of people hking and helping one another is a 
 finer world to live in than one in which the instincts 
 of aggression are supreme. And such a coopera- 
 tive civilization need not fear the tests of survival ; 
 selection puts an ever higher premium on solidar- 
 ity, an ever lower value on pugnacity. Intelli- 
 gence, not ready anger, will win the great contests 
 of the future. Friendship will pay. 
 
 The history of the world is a record of the 
 
NIETZSCHE 177 
 
 patient and planful attempt to replace hatred by 
 understanding, narrowness by large vision, oppo- 
 sition by cooperation, slavery by friendship. 
 Friendship : a word to be avoided by those who 
 would appear blasS. But let us repeat it ; words 
 have been known to nourish deeds which without 
 them might never have grown into reaUty. Some 
 find heaven in making as many men as possible 
 their slaves; others find heaven in making as 
 many men as possible their friends. Which type 
 of man will we have? Which type of man, if 
 abundant, would make this world a splendor and 
 a deUght? 
 
 The hope for which Jesus lived was that man 
 might some day come to mean friend. It is the 
 only hope worth Uving for. 
 
 ITietzsche Replies 
 
 " It is certainly not the least charm of a theory," 
 says Nietzsche, "that it is refutable." ' But 
 "what have I to do with mere refutations?"^ 
 "A prelude I am of better players." ' "Verily, 
 I counsel you," said Zarathustra, "depart from 
 me and defend yourselves against Zarathustra ! 
 And better still, be ashamed of him. Perhaps he 
 hath deceived you. The man of perception must 
 not only be able to love his enemies, but also to 
 hate his friends. One ill requiteth one's teacher 
 
 1 B. G. E., p. 25. 'G.M., p. 6. • Z., p. 303. 
 
 N 
 
178 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 by always remaining only his scholar. Why will 
 ye not pluck at my wreath ? Ye revere me ; but 
 how if yoiir reverence one day faUeth down? 
 Beware of being crushed to death with a statue ! 
 Ye say ye believe in Zarathustra? But what is 
 Zarathustra worth? Ye are my faithful ones; 
 but what are all faithful ones worth? When ye 
 had not yet sought yourselves ye found -me. 
 Thus do all faithful ones; hence all belief is 
 worth so Uttle. Now I ask you to lose me and 
 find yourselves; not until all of you have dis- 
 owned me shall I return unto you." ' 
 
 VI 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 "Look," says Rudin, in Turgeiiev's story, 
 "you see that apple tree? It has broken down 
 with the weight and multitude of its own fruit. 
 It is the emblem of genius." "To perish beneath 
 a load one can neither bear nor throw off," wrote 
 Nietzsche, — "that is a philosopher." * I shall 
 announce the song of the lightning, said Zara- 
 thustra, and perish in the announcing.' 
 
 Insanity with such a man is but a matter of 
 time ; he feels it coming upon him ; he values his 
 hours like a man condemned to execution. In 
 twenty days he writes the Genealogy of Mords; 
 in one year (1888) he produces The Twilight of the 
 Idols, Antichrist, The Case of Wagner, Ecce 
 » Z., p. 107. » T. I., p. 2. * Z., p. 10. 
 
NIETZSCHE 179 
 
 Homo, and his longest and greatest book, The 
 Will to Power. He not only writes these books ; 
 he reads the proof-sheets, straining his eyes 
 beyond repair. He is almost bhnd now; he is 
 deceived, taken advantage of, because he can 
 hardly see farther than his touch. "If I were 
 blind," he writes pitifully, "I should be healthy." * 
 Yet his body is racked with pain : "on 118 days 
 this year I have had severe attacks." " "I have 
 given a name to my pain, and call it 'a dog' — it 
 is just as pitiful, just as importunate and shame- 
 less; and I can domineer over it, vent my bad 
 humor on it, as others do with their dogs, servants, 
 and wives." ' 
 
 Meanwhile the world lives on unnoticing, or 
 noticing only to misimderstand. "My foes have 
 become mighty, and have so distorted my teach- 
 ing, that my best beloved must be ashamed of the 
 gifts that I gave them." * He learns that the 
 libertines of Europe are using his philosophy as a 
 cloak for their sins : "I can read in their faces that 
 they totally misunderstand me, and that it is 
 only the animal in them which rejoices at being 
 able to cast off its fetters." ^ He finds one whom 
 he thinks to make his disciple ; he is buoyed up 
 for a few days by the hope ; the hope is shattered, 
 and loneliness closes in once more upon him. 
 "A kingdom for a kind word !" he cries out in the 
 depth of his longing; and again he writes, "For 
 
 » /. W., 312. « Ibid., p. 69 ; referring to 1879. 
 
 » Ibid., 312. * Lonely N., p. 206. ' Ibid., p. 218. 
 
180 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 years no milk of human kindness, no breath of 
 love." 1 
 
 In December, 1888, one whom he has thought 
 friendly writes that his brother-in-law is sending to 
 a magazine an attack on him. It is the last blow ; 
 it means that his sister has joined the others in 
 deserting him. "I take one sleeping-draught 
 after another to deaden the pain, but for all that I 
 cannot sleep. To-day I will take such a dose that 
 I will lose my wits." * He has been taking chloral, 
 and worse drugs, to pay for the boon of sleep; 
 the poison tips the scale already made heavy by 
 his blindness and eye-strain, by his loneliness, by 
 the treachery of his friends, by his general bodily 
 ailments; he wakes up from this final draught 
 in a stupor from which he never recovers; he 
 writes to Brandes and signs himself "The Cru- 
 cified" ; he wanders into the street, is tormented 
 by children, falls in a fit; his good landlord 
 helps him back to his room, sends for the simple, 
 ignorant doctor of the neighborhood; but it is 
 too late; the man is insane. Age, forty-four; 
 another — the only name greater than his among 
 modern philosophers — had died at that pitifully 
 early age. 
 
 The body hngered eleven years behind the mind. 
 Death came in 1900. He was buried as he had 
 wished: "Promise me," he had asked his sister, 
 many years before, "that when I die only my 
 friends shall stand about my coflfin, and no inquisi- 
 > ZMidy N., p. 289. » Ibid., p. 391. 
 
NIETZSCHE 181 
 
 tive crowd. See that no priest or anyone else 
 utters falsehoods at my graveside, when I can no 
 longer defend myself; and let me descend into 
 my tomb as an honest pagan." ' 
 
 After his death the world began to read him. 
 As in so many cases the life had to be given that 
 the doctrine might be heard. "Only where there 
 are graves," he had written in Zarathustra, "are 
 there resurrections." * 
 
 » Ibid., p. 65. « IWd., p. 167. 
 
PART II 
 SUGGESTIONS 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 
 
 I 
 
 The Problem 
 
 And so we come through our five episodes in 
 the history of the reconstructive mind, and find 
 ourselves in the bewildering present, comfortably 
 seated, let us say, in the great reading room of 
 our Columbia Library. An attendant liberates 
 us from the maze of "Nietzsche's Works" lying 
 about us, and returns presently with a stack of 
 thirty books purporting to give the latest develop- 
 ments in the field of social study and research. 
 We are soon lost in their graphs and statistics, 
 their records and results ; gradually we come to 
 feel beneath these dead facts the lives they would 
 reveal ; and as we read we see a picture. 
 
 It is the picture of one life. We see it begin- 
 ning helplessly in the arms of the factory physi- 
 cian; it is only after some violence that it con- 
 sents to breathe, — as if it hesitates to enter 
 upon its adventure. It has a touch of consump- 
 tion but is otherwise a fair enough baby, says the 
 factory physician. It will do, — not saying for 
 185 
 
186 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 what or whom. Luckily, it is a boy, and will 
 be able to work soon. He does; at the age of 
 nine he becomes a newsboy ; he is up at five in 
 the morning and peddles news till eight ; at nine 
 he gets to school, fagged out but restless; he 
 gives trouble ; cannot memorize quickly enough, 
 nor sit still long enough; play^ truant, loving 
 the hard lessons of the street; school over, he 
 has a half-hour of play, but must then travel 
 his news route till six; after supper he has no 
 taste for study; if he cannot go down into the 
 street, he will go to bed. At fourteen, hating 
 the school where he is beaten or scolded daily, 
 he connives with his parents at certain false- 
 hoods which secure his premature entrance into 
 the factory. He works hard, and for a time hap- 
 pily enough; there is more freedom here than 
 in the school. He discovers sex, passes through 
 the usual chapter of accidents, and finally achieves 
 manhood in the form of a sexual disease. He falls 
 in love several times, and out as many times but 
 one; he marries, shares his disease with his 
 wife, and begets ten children, — nearly all of 
 them feeble, ahd two of them blind; he does 
 not want so many children, but the priest has 
 told him that religion commands it. He works 
 harder to support them, but his health is giving 
 way, and life becomes a heavy burden to him. 
 The factory installs scientific management, and 
 he finds himself performing the same operation 
 every ten seconds from seven to twelve and from 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 187 
 
 one to six ; — some three thousand times a day ; 
 he protests, but is told that science commands 
 it. He joins a union, and goes out on strike; 
 his family suffer severely, one of the children 
 dying of malnutrition; he wins a wage-increase 
 of five per cent ; his landlord raises his rent, and 
 a month later his wife informs him that the prices 
 of food and clothing have gone up six per cent. 
 His country goes to war about a piece of territory 
 he has never heard of; his one fairly strong boy 
 rushes off to the defence of the colors, returns 
 (age twenty) with one leg and almost an arm, 
 and sits in the house smoking, drinking, and 
 dribbling in repetitious semi-torpor his memories 
 of battle. Then comes street-corner talk of 
 socialism, capitalism, and other things new and 
 therefore hard to understand; a glimmer of 
 hope, a cloud of doubt, then resignation. Four 
 of the children die before they are twenty; two 
 others become consumptive weaklings. The 
 father is sent away from the factory because he 
 is too old and feeble ; he finds work in a saloon ; 
 drink helps him to slip down ; he steals a bracelet 
 from the factory-owner's kept woman, is arrested, 
 tries to hang himself, but is discovered when half 
 dead, and is restored to life against his will. He 
 serves his sentence, returns to his family, and 
 becomes a beggar. He dies of exposiu-e and 
 disease, and his widow is supported by two of 
 his daughters, who have become successful 
 prostitutes. 
 
188 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 It is the picture of one life. And as you look 
 at it you see beyond it the hundred thousand 
 lives of which it is one ; you see this suffering 
 and meaninglessness as but one hundredth part 
 of a thousandth part of the meaningless suffering 
 of men ; you hear the angry cries of the rebeUious 
 young, the drunken laughter of the older ones 
 who have no more rebeUion in them, the quiet 
 weeping of the mothers of many children. 
 Around you here you see the happy faces of 
 young students, eloquent of comfortable homes; 
 at your elbow a gentleman of family is writing a 
 book on the optimism of Robert Browning. And 
 then suddenly, beneath this world of leisure and 
 learning, you feel the supporting brawn of the 
 wearied workers; you vision the very pillars 
 of this vast edifice held up painfully, horn- 
 after hour, on the backs of a million sweat- 
 ing men; your leisure is their labor, your learn- 
 ing is paid for by their ignorance, your luxury is 
 their toil. 
 
 For a moment the great building seems to trem- 
 ble, as if rebelHon stirred beneath and up- 
 heaval was upon the world. Then it is still 
 once more, and you and I are here with our 
 thirty books. 
 
 One feels guilty of sentiment here (after read- 
 ing Nietzsche!), and hurries back to the sober 
 features of those crowded volumes. Here, in 
 cold scientific statement, is our social problem: 
 here are volumes biological on heredity, eugenics, 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 189 
 
 dietetics, and disease; volumes sociological on 
 marriage, prostitution, the family, the position 
 of woman, contraception and the control of pop- 
 ulation; volumes psychological on education, 
 criminology, and the replacement of supernatural 
 by social religion; volumes economic on private 
 property, poverty, child labor, industrial methods, 
 arbitration, minimum wage, trusts, free trade, 
 immigration, prohibition, war; volumes political 
 on individualism and commimism, anarchism 
 and socialism, single tax, Darwinism and politics, 
 democracy and aristocracy, patriotism, imperial- 
 ism, electoral and administrative methods; 
 methodological volumes on trade-unions and craft- 
 unions, "direct action" and "political action," 
 violence and non-resistance, revolution and re- 
 form. It is a discouraging maze ; we plunge into 
 it almost hopelessly. Several of these authors 
 have schemes for taking the social machine 
 apart, and a few even have schemes for putting 
 it together again; hardly one of them remem- 
 bers the old warning that this machine must 
 be kept going while it is being repaired. And 
 each of these solutions, as its author never sus- 
 pects, is but an added problem. 
 
 Let us listen to these men for a while, let us 
 foUow them for a space, and see where they bring 
 us out. They may not bring us out at all ; but 
 perhaps that is just what we need to see. 
 
190 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 II 
 
 ." Solutions '; 
 
 1 
 
 Feminism 
 
 And first, with due propriety, let us listen to 
 the case of woman vs. the status quo. We imag- 
 ine the argument as put by a studious and ap- 
 parently harmless young lady. She begins gently 
 and proceeds crescendo. 
 
 "The case for woman is quite simple; as 
 simple as the case for democracy. We are 
 hiunan beings, we are governed, we are taxed; 
 and we believe that just government imphes 
 the consent of the governed. 
 
 "We might have been content with the old 
 life, had you masters of the world been content 
 to leave us the old life. But you would not. 
 Your system of industry has made the position 
 of most young men so hopeless and insecure 
 that they are year by year putting back the age 
 of marriage. You have forced us out of our 
 homes into your factories; and you have used 
 us as a means of making still harder the compe- 
 tition for employment among the men. Your 
 advocates speak of the sacredness of the home; 
 and meanwhile you have dragged 6,000,000 
 English women out of their homes to be the slaves 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 191 
 
 of your deadening machines.^ You exalt mar- 
 riage; and in this country one woman out of 
 every ten is unmarried, and one out of every 
 twenty married women works in your unclean 
 shops. The vile cities born of your factory-sys- 
 tem have made life so hard for us, temptations 
 so frequent, vice so attractive and convenient, 
 that we cannot grow up among you without 
 suffering some indelible taint. 
 
 "Some of us go into your factories because we. 
 dread marriage, and some of us marry because 
 we dread your factories. But there is not much 
 to choose between them. If we marry we be- 
 come machines for supplying another generation 
 of workers and soldiers ; and if we talk of birth- 
 control you arrest us. As if we had no right to 
 all that science has discovered ! And the horror 
 of it is that while you forbid us to learn how to 
 protect ourselves and our children from the evils 
 of large families, you yourselves buy this knowl- 
 edge from your physicians and use it; and one 
 of your societies for the prevention of birth- 
 control has been shown to consist of members 
 with an average of 1.5 children per family.* 
 Your physicians meet in learned assemblies and 
 vote in favor of maintaining the law which for- 
 bids the spread of this information ; and then we 
 find that physicians have the smallest average 
 
 ' Mrs. Gallichan, The Truth about Woman, New York, 1914, 
 p. 281. 
 
 * Jos. McCabe, Tyranny of Shams, London, 1916, p. 171. 
 
192 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 family in the community.' One must be a liar 
 and a thief to fit comfortably into this civiliza- 
 tion which you ask us to defend. 
 
 "But we are resolved to get this information; 
 and all your laws to prevent us will only lessen 
 our respect for law. We will not any longer 
 bring children into the world unless we have 
 some reasonable hope of giving them a decent 
 life. And not only that. We shall end, too, 
 the hypocrisies of marriage. If you will have 
 monogamy you may have it; but if you con- 
 tinue merely to pretend monogamy we shall find 
 a way of regaining our independence. We shall 
 not rest until we have freed ourselves from the 
 sting of your generosity; until our bread comes 
 not from your hand in kindness but from the 
 state or our employers in recognition of our work. 
 Then we shall be free to leave you, and you free 
 to leave us, as we were free to take one another 
 at the beginning, — so far, alas ! as the categorical 
 imperative of love left us free. And our children 
 will not suffer; better for them that they see 
 us part than that they live with us in the midst 
 of hypocrisy and secret war. 
 
 "Because we want this freedom — to stay or to 
 go — this freedom to know and control the vital 
 factors of our lives, therefore we demand equal 
 suffrage. It is but a little thing, a mere begin- 
 ning; and beware how you betray yoxir secrets 
 in your efforts to bar us from this beginning. 
 
 • Dr. Drysdale, The SmdU Family System, London, 1915. 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 193 
 
 Are you afraid to share with us the power of the 
 ballot ? Do you confess so openly that you wish 
 to command us without our consent, that you 
 wish to use us for your secret ends ? You dare not 
 fight fair and in the open ? Is the ballot a weapon 
 which you use on us and will not let us use on you ? 
 It is so you conceive citizenship ! Or will you 
 ask us to believe that you are thinking not of 
 your own interests but of posterity? 
 
 "But we shall get this from you, just as we 
 get other things from you, — by repetition. 
 And then we shall go on to make the world more 
 fit for women to live in : we shall force open all 
 the avenues of life that have been closed to us 
 before, making us narrow and petty and dull. 
 We shall compel your universities to admit us 
 to their classes ; we shall enter your professions, 
 we shall compete with you for office, we shall 
 win the experiences and dare the adventures 
 which we need to make us your rivals in litera- 
 ture and philosophy and art. You say we can- 
 not be your comrades, your friends; that we 
 can be only tyrants or slaves; but what else 
 can we be, with all the instructive wealth of life 
 kept from us? You hide from us the great 
 books that are being written to-day, and then 
 you are surprised at our gossip, our silly scandal- 
 mongering, our inability to converse with you 
 on business and politics, on science and rehgion 
 and philosophy;, you will not let us grow, and 
 then you complain because we are so small. 
 o 
 
194 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PEOBLEM 
 
 But we want to grow now, we want to grow! 
 We cannot longer be mothers only. The world 
 does not need so many children; and even to 
 bring up better children we must have a wider 
 and healthier life. We must have our intellects 
 stimulated more and our feeUngs less. We 
 have burst the bonds of our old narrow world; 
 we must explore everything now. It is too late 
 to stop us; and if you try you will only make 
 life a mess of hatred and conflict for us both. 
 And after all, do you know why we want to grow? 
 It is because we long for the day when we shall 
 be no longer merely your mistresses, but also 
 your friends." 
 
 Socialism 
 
 Another complainant: a young Socialist: 
 such a man as works far into almost every night 
 in the dingy office of his party branch, and de- 
 votes his Sundays to Das Kapital; bright-eyed, 
 untouched by disillusionment ; fired by the vision 
 of a land of happy comrades. 
 
 "I agree with the yoimg lady," he says; "the 
 source of all oiu- ills is the capitalist system. It 
 was born of steam-driven machinery and con- 
 ceived in laissez-faire. It saw the light in Adam 
 Smith's England, ruined the health of the men 
 of that country, and then came to America, 
 where it grew fat on 'liberty' and 'the right 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 195 
 
 to do as one pleases with one's own.' It believed 
 in competition — that is to say war — as its 
 God, in whom all things hved and moved and 
 sweated dividends; it made the acquisition of 
 money, by no matter what means, the test of 
 virtue and success, so that honest men became 
 ashamed of themselves if they did not fail; it 
 made all life a matter of 'push' and 'pull,' 
 Uke the two sides of a door in one of those busi- 
 ness palaces which make its cities great mazes 
 of brick and stone rising hke new Babels in the 
 face of heaven. Its motto was. Beware of small 
 profits; its aim was the greatest possible happi- 
 ness of the smallest possible number. Out of 
 competition it begot the trust, the rebate, and 
 the 'gentleman's agreement'; out of 'freedom 
 of contract' it begot wage-slavery; out of 
 'hberty, equality and fraternity' it begot an 
 industrial feudalism worse than the old feudalism, 
 based on the inheritance not of land, but of the 
 Uving bodies and souls of thousands of men, 
 women and children. When it came (in 1770) 
 the annual income of England was $600,000,000 ; 
 in 1901 the annual income of England was 
 $8,000,000,000 ; the system has made a thousand 
 millionaires, but it has left the people starving 
 as before.^ It has increased wages, and has in- 
 creased prices a trifle more. It has improved 
 the condition of the upper tenth of the workers, 
 
 • Winston Churchill in Parliament, quoted by Sohoon- 
 maker, The World-War and Beyond, New York, 1915, p. 95. - 
 
196 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 and has thrown the great remaining mass of 
 the workers into a hell of torpor and despair. 
 It has crowned all by inventing the myopic science 
 of scientific management, whereby men are made 
 to work at such speed, and with such rigid imi- 
 formity, that the mind is crazed, and the body 
 is worn out twenty years before its time. It has 
 made the world reek with poverty, and ugliness, 
 and meanness, and the vulgarity of conspicuous 
 wealth. It has made life intolerable and dis- 
 graceful to aU but sheep and pigs. 
 
 "There is only one way of saving our civiliza- 
 tion — such as there is of it — from wasting 
 away through the parasitic degeneration of a 
 few of its parts and the malnutrition of the rest ; 
 and that is by frankly abandoning this laissez- 
 faire madness, and changing the state into a 
 mechanism for the management of the nation's 
 business. We workers must get hold of the 
 offices, and turn government into administrac- 
 tion. Without that our strikes and boycotts, 
 our 'direct action' and economic organization, 
 arrive at little result; every strike we 'win' 
 means that prices will go up, and our time and 
 energy — and dues — have gone to nothing 
 but self-discipline in solidarity. We can control 
 prices only by controlling monopohes; and we 
 can control monopolies only by controlling gov- 
 ernment. That means politics, and it's a scheme 
 that won't work until the proletariat get brains 
 enough to elect honest and sensible men to office ; 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 197 
 
 but if they haven't the brains to do that they 
 won't have the brains to do anything effective 
 on the economic or any other field. We know 
 how hard it is to get people to think; but we 
 flatter ourselves that our propaganda is an edu- 
 cative force that grows stronger every year, 
 and has already achieved such power as to de- 
 cide the most important election held in this 
 country since the Civil War. 
 
 "Already a large niunber of people have been 
 educated — chiefly by our propaganda — to un- 
 derstand, for example, the economic greed that 
 lies behind all wars. They perceive that so 
 long as capital finds its highest rate of profit 
 in the home market, capitalists see to it that 
 peace remains secure; but that when capital 
 has expanded to the point at which the rate of 
 interest begins to fall, or when labor has ceased 
 to be docile, because it has ceased to be unor- 
 ■ganized and uninformed, capitalists then seek 
 foreign markets and foreign investments, and 
 soon require the help of war — that is, the lives 
 of the workers at home — to help them enforce 
 their terms on foreign governments and peoples. 
 Only the national ownership of capital can 
 change that. We thought once that we were 
 too civilized ever to go to war again; we begin 
 to see that our industrial feudalism leads inevi- 
 tably to war and armaments, and the intellectual 
 stagnation that comes from a militaristic mode of 
 national life. We begin to see aU history as a 
 
198 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Dark Age (with fitful intervals of light), — a 
 long series of wars in which men have killed and 
 died for delusions, fighting to protect the prop- 
 erty of their exploiters. And it becomes a httle 
 clearer to us than before that this awful succes- 
 sion of killings and robberies is no civilization at 
 all, and that we shall never have a civilization 
 worthy of the name until we transform our indus- 
 trial war into the cooperative commonwealth, 
 and all 'foreigners' into friends." 
 
 Eugenics 
 
 "My dear young man," says the Eugenist at 
 this point, "you must study biology. Your 
 plan for the improvement of mankind is all shot 
 through with childish ignorance of nature's 
 way of doing things. Come into my laboratory 
 for a few years; and you will learn how little 
 you can do by merely changing the environment. 
 It's nature that counts, not nurture. Improve- 
 ment depends on the elimination of the inferior, 
 not on their reformation by Socialist leaflets 
 or settlement work. What you have to do is 
 to find some substitute for that natural selection 
 — the automatic and ruthless killing off of the 
 unfit — which we are more and more frustrating 
 with our short-sighted charity. Humanitari- 
 anism must get informed. Our squeamishness 
 about interfering with the holy 'liberty of the 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 199 
 
 individual' will have to be moderated by some 
 sense of the right of society to protect itself 
 from interference by the individual. Here are 
 the feeble-minded, for example; they breed 
 more rapidly than healthy people do, and they 
 almost always transmit their defect. If you 
 don't interfere with these people, if you don't 
 teach them or force them to be childless, you 
 will have an increase in insanity along with the 
 development of humanity. Think of making 
 a woman suffer to deliver into the world a cripple 
 or an idiot. And further, consider that the lowest 
 eighth of the people produce one-half of the next 
 generation. The better people, the more Adgor- 
 ous and healthy people, are refusing to have 
 children ; every year *the situation is becoming 
 more critical. City-hfe and factory-life make 
 things stm worse; young men coming from the 
 country plunge into the maelstrom of the city, 
 then into its femalestrom; they emerge with 
 broken health, marry deformities dressed up in 
 the latest fashion, and produce children inferior 
 in vigor and ability to themselves. Given a 
 himdred years more of this, and western Em-ope 
 and America will be in a condition to be overcome 
 easily by the fertile and vigorous races of the 
 East. That is what you have to think of. The 
 problem is larger than that of making poor people 
 less poor; it is the problem of preserving our 
 civilization. Your socialism will help, but it 
 will be the merest beginning; it will be but an 
 
200 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 introduction to the socialization of selection, — 
 which is eugenics. We wiU prevent procreation 
 by people who have a transmissible defect or 
 disease; we will require certificates of health 
 and clean ancestry before permitting marriage; 
 we will encourage the mating, with or without 
 love, of men and women possessed of energy 
 and good physique. We will teach people, in 
 Mr. Marett's phrase, to marry less with their 
 eyes and more with their heads. It will take us 
 a long while to put all this into effect; but we 
 will put it. Time is on our side; every year 
 will make our case stronger. Within half a 
 century the educated world will come and beg 
 us to guide them in a eugenic revolution." 
 
 Anarchism 
 
 A gentle anarchist : 
 
 "You do well to talk of revolution; but you 
 do wrong to forget the individual in the race. 
 Your eugenic revolution will not stop the exploita- 
 tion of the workers by the manufacturers through 
 the state. Give men justice and they will soon 
 be healthy; give them the decent life which is 
 the only just reward for their work, and you will 
 not need eugenics. Instead of bothering about 
 parasitic germs you should attend to parasitic 
 exploiters; it is in this social parasitism that 
 the real danger of degeneration lies. Continued 
 
SOLTJTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 201 
 
 injustice of employers to employees is splitting 
 every western nation into factions ; class-loyalty 
 will soon be stronger than loyalty to the com- 
 munity; and the time will come when nations 
 in which this civil war has not been superseded 
 by voluntary mutual aid will crumble into 
 oblivion. 
 
 "And yet men are willing to be loyal to the 
 community, if the community is organized to 
 give them justice. If exploitation were to cease 
 there would be such bonds of brotherhood among 
 men as would make the community practically 
 everlasting. All you need do is to let men co- 
 operate in freedom. They long to cooperate; 
 aU evolution shows a growth in the ability to co- 
 operate ; man surpassed the brute just because of 
 this. Nor is law or state needed ; coercive govern- 
 ment is necessary only in societies founded on in- 
 justice. The state has always been an instrument 
 of exploitation ; and law is merely the organized 
 violence of the ruling class. It is a subtle scheme ; 
 it enables industrial lords to do without any pangs 
 of conscience what but for their statute-books 
 might give them a qualm or two. Notice, for 
 example, how perfectly Christian such slaughters 
 as those in Colorado or Virginia can be made to 
 appear — even to the slaughterers — by the 
 delightful expedient of the statute-book. They 
 kill and call it law, so that they may sleep. 
 
 "And then we are told that one must never 
 use violence in labor disputes. But obviously 
 
202 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 it is precisely violence that is used against labor, 
 and against the free spirit. As a matter of his- 
 tory, rebels did not begin to use violence on the 
 authorities until the authorities had used violence 
 on them. We feel ourselves quite justified in 
 using any means of attack on a system so founded 
 in coercion. The whole question with us is one 
 not of morals but of expediency. We have been 
 moral a little too long." 
 
 IndividiuUism 
 
 "Precisely," says the Stirnerite anarchist; 
 "it is all a question of might, not of right ; and 
 we exploited ones may be as right as rectitude 
 and never get anywhere unless we can rhyme 
 a little might to our right. Each of us has a 
 right to do whatever he is strong enough to do. 
 'One gets farther with a handful of nught than 
 with a bagful of right.' He who wants much, 
 and knows how to get it, has in all times taken 
 it, as Napoleon did the continent, and the French 
 Algeria. Therefore the only point is that the 
 respectful 'lower classes' should at length learn 
 to take for themselves what they want." 
 
 6 
 
 Individtuiliain Again 
 
 And lastly, Adoocatus Didboli, Mr. Status 
 Quo: 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 203 
 
 "I agree with you right heartily, Sir Stirnerite 
 anarchist ; it is time you children came to under- 
 stand that everything is a question of power. 
 Let the fittest survive and let us all use whatever 
 means we find expedient. I am frank with you 
 now ; but you must not be surprised if to-morrow 
 I write out a few checks for the salaries of the 
 liars whom I have in my employ. Why should 
 we tell the truth and go under? Surely you 
 will understand that not all knowledge is good for 
 all men. If it gives you satisfaction, for example, 
 to spread information about birth-control, you 
 will not feel hurt if it gives us satisfaction to 
 oppose you, for the sake of the future armies of 
 unemployed without which our great scheme 
 of industry would be seriously hampered. 
 
 "And I agree with your fellow-anarchist, 
 that the state is often a nuisance. I can make 
 use of a little government; but when the state 
 begins to tell me how to run my business then 
 I feel as if your criticism of the state is very just 
 — and convenient. I am an individualist, — 
 a good old American individualist, — like Jef- 
 ferson and Emerson. The state can't manage 
 industry half as well as we can. You know — 
 as our Socialists do not — that government 
 ownership is only ownership by politicians, by 
 Hinky-Dinks and Bath-house Johns; and I 
 can tell you from intimate knowledge of these 
 people that they will do anything for money 
 except efficient administrative work. 
 
204 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 "Your scheme of having the workers take 
 over the industries is a good scheme — for the 
 millennium. Where would you get men to direct 
 you? They come to us because we pay them 
 well ; if your syndicalist shops would pay them 
 as well as we do, they would be the begin- 
 ning of a new aristocracy; if you think these 
 clever men will work for 'honor' you are 
 leaning on an airy dream. Destroy private 
 property and you will have a nation of hoboes 
 and Hindus. 
 
 "As to exploitation, what would you have? 
 We are strong, and you are weak ; it is the law 
 of nature that we should use you, just as it is 
 the law of nature that one species should use the 
 weaker species as its prey. The weaker will 
 always suffer, with or without law. Even if 
 all bellies are full, the majority will envy the 
 intellectual power of their betters, and will suffer 
 just as keenly on the intellectual plane as they 
 do now on the physical. The alternative of 
 the under-dog is to get intelligence and power, 
 or 'stay put.' 
 
 "My advice, then, is to let things be. You 
 can change the superficial conditions of the 
 struggle for existence and for power, but the 
 fundamental facts of it will remain. Monarchy, 
 aristocracy, democracy, — it's all the same. 
 The most powerful will rule, whether by armies 
 or by newspapers ; it makes no difference if God 
 is on the side of the biggest battalions, or the 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 205 
 
 side of the biggest type. We bought the battal- 
 ions ; we buy the type. 
 
 "Come, let us get back to our business." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Dissolutions 
 
 Here is a reductio ad dbsurdum of our social 
 'isms; and here is the history of many a social 
 rebel. From dissatisfaction to socialism, from 
 sociahsm to anarchism, from anarchism to Stir- 
 nerism, from Stirnerism and the cult of the^go 
 to Nietzsche and the right to exploit ; — so has 
 many a man made the merry-go-round of thought 
 and come back wearily at last to the terra firma 
 of the thing that is. We sail into the sea of social 
 controversy without chart or compass or rudder ; 
 and though we encounter much wind, we never 
 make the port of oiu- desire. We need maps, 
 and instruments, and knowledge; we need to 
 make inquiries, to face our doUbts, to define 
 our purposes; we shall have to examine more 
 ruthlessly our preconceptions and hidden pre- 
 mises, to force into the light the wishes that 
 secretly father our illegitimate thoughts. We 
 must ask ourselves questions that will reach 
 down to the tenderest roots of our philosophies. 
 
 You are a feminist, let us say. Very well. 
 Have you ever considered the sociological conse- 
 quences of that very real disintegration of the 
 "home" which an advancing feminism implies? 
 
206 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Granted that this disintegration has been begun 
 by the industrial revolution. Do you want it to 
 go on more rapidly? Do you want women to 
 become more like men? Do you think that the 
 "new woman" will care to have children? It 
 is surely better for the present comfort of our 
 society that there should be a considerable fall 
 in the birth rate ; but will that expose the people 
 of Europe and America to absorption by the 
 races of the East? You argue that the case for 
 feminism is as simple as the case for democracy ; 
 but is the case for democracy simple ? Is democ- 
 racy competent? Is it bringing us where we 
 want to go? Or is it a sort of collective deter- 
 mination to drift with the tide, — a sort of 
 magnified laissez-faire? And as to "rights" 
 and "justice," how do you answer Nietzsche's 
 contention that the more highly organized species, 
 sex, or class, must by its very nature use, command, 
 and exploit the less highly organized species, 
 sex, or class? 
 
 You are a Socialist ; and you yearn for a Utopia 
 of friends and equals; but will you, to make 
 men equal, be compelled to chain the strength 
 of the strong with many laws and omnipresent 
 force? — will you sacrifice the superiority of 
 the chosen few to the mediocrity of the many? 
 Will you, to control the exploiter, be obliged to 
 control all men, even in detail? — will your 
 sociahsm really bring the slavery and servile 
 state that Spencer and Chesterton and Belloc 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 207 
 
 fear? Is further centralization of government 
 desirable? Have you considered sufficiently the 
 old difficulty about the stimulus to endeavor in 
 a society that should restrict private property 
 to a minimum and prohibit inheritance? Have 
 you arranged to protect your cooperative com- 
 monwealth by limiting immigration — from Eu- 
 rope and from heaven? * Are you not, in gen- 
 eral, exaggerating the force of the aggregative 
 as against the segregative tendencies in human 
 nature? And do you think that a change of 
 laws can make the weak elude the exploiting 
 arm of the strong? Will not the strongest men 
 always make whatever laws are made, and rule 
 wherever men are ruled? Can any government 
 stand that is not the expression of the strongest 
 forces in the community? And if the strongest 
 force be organized labor, are you sure that or- 
 ganized labor will not exploit and tyrannize? 
 Will the better organized and skilled workers 
 be "just" to the unskilled and imperfectly or- 
 ganized workers? And what do you mean by 
 "justice"? 
 
 And as to the eugenist, surely it is unnecessary 
 to expose his unpreparedness to meet the ques- 
 tions which his programme raises. Questions, for 
 example, a's to what "units" of character to 
 breed for, if there are such "units"; whether 
 definite breeding for certain results would forfeit 
 
 ' Carver, Essays in SodaZ Justice, Ne^r York, 1916, p, 
 261. 
 
208 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 adaptive plasticity; whether compulsory sterili- 
 zation is warranted by our knowledge of heredity ; 
 whether serious disease is not often associated 
 with genius ; whether the native mental endow- 
 ments of rich and poor are appreciably different, 
 and whether the "comparative infertility of the 
 upper classes" is really making for the deteriora- 
 tion of the race; whether progress depends on 
 racial changes so much as on changes in social 
 institutions and traditions. And so on. 
 
 And the anarchist, whom one loves if only for 
 the fervor of his hope and the beauty of his 
 dream, — the anarchist falters miserably in the 
 face of interrogation. If all laws were to be 
 suspended to-morrow, all coercion of citizen by 
 state, how long would it be before new laws 
 would arise? Would the aforementioned strong 
 cease to be strong and the weak cease to be weak? 
 Would people be willing to forego private prop- 
 erty? Are not belief and disbelief in private 
 property determined less by logic and "justice" 
 than by one's own success or failure in the acquisi- 
 tion of private property? Do only the weak and 
 uncontrolled advocate absolute lack of restraint? 
 Do most men want liberty so much that they 
 will tolerate chaos and a devil-take-the-hind- 
 most individualism for the sake of it? Can it 
 be, after all, that freedom is a negative thing, — 
 that what men want is, for some, achievement, 
 for others, peace, — and that for these they will 
 give even freedom? What if a great number 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 209 
 
 of people dread liberty, and are not at all so sen- 
 sitive to restraint and commandment as the 
 anarchist? Perhaps only children and geniuses 
 can be truly anarchistic? Perhaps freedom 
 itself is a problem and not a solution? Does 
 the mechanization, through law and custom, of 
 certain elements in our social behavior, like the 
 mechanization, through habit and instinct, of 
 certain elements in individual behavior, result 
 in greater freedom for the higher powers and 
 functions? Again, to have freedom for all, all 
 must be equal ; but does not development make 
 for differentiation and inequality? Consider 
 the America of three hundred years ago; a 
 nation of adventurous settlers, hardly any of 
 them better off than any other, — all of a class, 
 all on a level; and see what inequalities and 
 castes a few generations have produced! Is 
 there a necessary antithesis between liberty and 
 order, freedom and control ? — or are order and 
 control the first condition of freedom? Does 
 not law serve many splendid purposes, — could 
 it not serve more? Is the state necessary so 
 long as there are long-eared and long-fingered 
 gentry? 
 
 As for your revolutions, who profits by them? 
 The people who have suffered, or the people who 
 have thought? Is a revolution, so far as the 
 poor are concerned, merely the dethronement 
 of one set of rulers or exploiters so that another 
 set may have a turn ? Do not most revolutions. 
 
210 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 like that which wished to storm heaven by a 
 tower, end in a confusion of tongues ? And after 
 each outbreak do not the workers readapt them- 
 selves to their new slavery with that ease and 
 torpid patience which are the despair of every 
 leader, until they are awakened by another quarrel 
 among their masters ? 
 
 One could fling about such questions almost 
 endlessly, till every 'ism should disappear under 
 interrogation points. Every such 'ism, clearly, 
 is but a half-truth, an arrested development, 
 suffering from malinformation. One is reminded 
 of the experiment in which a psychologist gave a 
 ring-puzzle to a monkey, and — in another room 
 — a like puzzle to a university professor : the 
 monkey fell upon the puzzle at once with teeth 
 and feet and every manner of hasty and hap- 
 hazard reaction, — until at last the puzzle, 
 dropped upon the floor, came apart by chance; 
 the professor sat silent and motionless before 
 the puzzle, working out in thought the issue of 
 many suggested solutions, and finally, after 
 forty minutes, touched it to undo it at a stroke. 
 Our 'isms are simian reactions to the social 
 puzzle. We jump at conclusions, we are impinged 
 upon extremes, we bound from opposite to oppo- 
 site, we move with blinders to a passion-colored 
 goal. Some of us are idealists, and see only 
 the beautiful desire; some of us are realists, 
 and see only the dun and dreary fact; hardly 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 211 
 
 any of us can look fact in the face and see through 
 it to that which it might be. We "bandy half- 
 truths" for a decade and then relapse into the 
 peaceful insignificance of conformity.^ 
 
 It dawns on students of social problems, as it 
 dawned long since on philosophers, that the be- 
 ginning of their wisdom is a confession of their 
 ignorance. We know now that the thing we 
 need, and for lack of which we blunder valiantly 
 into futiUty, is not good intentions but informed 
 intelligence. All problems are problems of edu- 
 cation; all the more so in a democracy. Not 
 because education can change the original nature 
 of man, but because intelligent cooperation 
 can control the stimuli which determine the inju- 
 
 * The "experimental attitude . . . substitutes detailed 
 analyses for whosesale assertions, specific inquiries for temper- 
 amental convictions, small facts for opinions whose size is 
 in precise ratio to their vagueness. It is within the social 
 sciences, in morals, politics, and education, that thinking still 
 goes on by large antitheses, by theoretical oppositions of 
 order and freedom, individualism and socialism, culture and 
 utility, spontaneity and discipline, actuality and tradition. 
 The field of the physical sciences was once occupied by similar 
 'total' views, whose e motional appea l wa g iy^ Y'"'°'''y ''° thdr 
 i ntellectual clarity. Jjut with the advance of the experi- 
 mental method, the question has ceased to be which one of 
 two rival claimants has a right to the field. It has become a 
 question of clearing up a confused subject matter by attack- 
 ing it bit by bit. I do not know a case where the final result 
 was anything like victory for one or another among the pre- 
 experimental notions. All of them disappeared because they 
 became increasingly irrelevant to the situation discovered, 
 and with their detected irrelevance they became unmeaning and 
 uninteresting." — Professor John Dewey, Neva Republic, 
 Feb. 3, 1917. 
 
212 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 riousness or beneficence of original dispositions. 
 Impulse is not the enemy of intelligence; it is 
 its raw material. We desire knowledge — and 
 particularly knowledge of ourselves — so that 
 we may know what external conditions evoke 
 destructive, and what conditions evoke construc- 
 tive, responses. We do not, for example, expect 
 intelligence to eradicate pugnacity; we do not 
 want it to do so; but we want to eradicate the 
 environmental conditions which turn this impulse 
 to wholesale suicide. Men should^ fight ; it is 
 the essence of their value that they are willing to 
 fight; the problem of intelligence is to discuss 
 and to create means for the diversion of pugnacity 
 to socially helpful ends. Character is per se 
 neither good nor bad, but becomes one or the 
 other according to the nature of the stimuli 
 presented. What we call moral reform, then, 
 waits on -information and consequent remould- 
 ing of the factors determining the direction of 
 our original dispositions. We become "better" 
 men and women only so far as we become more 
 intelligent. Just as psychoanalysis can, in some 
 measure, reconstruct the personal life, so social 
 analysis can reconstruct social life and turn into 
 productive channels the innocent but too often 
 destructive forces of original nature.* 
 
 ' All this has been indicated — with, however, too little 
 emphasis on the reconstructive function of intelligence — by 
 Bertrand Russell in Principles of Social Reconstruction (Lon- 
 don, 1916) ; and more popularly by Max Eastman in Under- 
 
SOLUTIONS AND DISSOLUTIONS 213 
 
 Our problem, then, to repeat once more our 
 central theme, is to facilitate the growth and 
 spread of intelligence. With this definition of the 
 issue we come closer to our thesis, — that the social 
 problem must be approached through philosophy, 
 and philosophy through the social problem. 
 
 standing Germany (New York, 1916) ; it has been put very 
 briefly again and again by Professor Dewey, — e.g., in an 
 essay on "Progress" in the International Journal of Ethics, 
 April, 1916. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE BECONSTBUCTIVE FUNCTION OP PHILOSOPHY 
 
 I 
 
 Epistemologs 
 
 Now there are a great many people who will 
 feel no thrill at all at the mention of philosophy, 
 — who will rather consider themselves excused 
 by the very occurrence of the word from continu- 
 ing on the road which this discussion proposes 
 to travel. No man dares to talk of philosophy 
 in these busy days except after an apologetic 
 preface; philosophers themselves have come to 
 feel that their thinking is so remote from practical 
 endeavor that they have for the most part aban- 
 doned the effort to relate their work to the concrete 
 issues of Ufe. In the eyes of the man who does 
 things philosophy is but an aerial voyaging 
 among the mists of transcendental dialectic, or 
 an ineffective moralizing substitute for super- 
 natural religion. Philosophy was once mistress 
 of all the disciplines of thought and search; 
 now none so poor to do her reverence. 
 
 There is no way of. meeting this indictment 
 214 
 
THE RECONSTRUCTIVE FUNCTION 215 
 
 other than to concede it. It is true. It is mild. 
 Only a lover of philosophy can know — with 
 the intimacy of a partioeps criminis — how 
 deeply philosophy has fallen from her ancient 
 heights. Looking back to Greece we find that 
 philosophy there was a real pursuit of wisdom, 
 a very earnest effort to arriye by discussion and 
 self-criticism at a way of life, a pMlosophia vitm 
 magistra, a knowledge of the individual and social 
 good and of the means thereto, a conscious direc- 
 tion of social institutions to ethical ends ; philos- 
 ophy and life in those days were bound up with 
 one another as mechanics is now bound up with 
 efficient construction. Even in the Middle Ages 
 philosophy meant coordinate living, sjTithetic 
 behavior; with all their reputation for cobweb- 
 spinning, the Scholastics were much closer to 
 life in their thinking than most modern philos- 
 ophers have been in theirs. 
 
 The lapse of philosophy from her former 
 significance and vitality is the result of the exag- 
 gerated emphasis placed on the epistemological 
 problem by rnodern thinkers; and this in turn 
 is in great part due to the difficulties on which 
 Descartes stumbled in his effort to reconcile 
 his belief in mechanism with his desire to placate 
 the Jesuits. How minor a r61e is played by the 
 problems of the relation between subject and 
 object, the validity of knowledge, epistemological 
 realism and idealism, in a frankly mechanist 
 philosophy, appears in Bacon, Hobbes, and 
 
216 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Spinoza ; ^ these men — deducting Bacon's 
 astute obeisance to theology — know what they 
 want and say what they mean; they presume, 
 with a maturity so natural as to be mistaken for 
 nalveU, that the vaHdity of thought is a matter 
 to be decided by action rather than by theory; 
 they take it for granted that the supreme and 
 ultimate purpose of philosophy is not analysis 
 but synthesis, not the intellectual categorizing 
 of experience but the inteUigent reconstruction 
 of Ufe. Indeed, as one pursues this clew through 
 the devious — almost stealthy — course of mod- 
 ern speculation it appears that no small part of 
 the epistemological development has been made 
 up of the oscillations, compromises, and obscuri- 
 ties natural in men who were the exponents 
 and the victims of a painful transition. Civihza- 
 tion was passing from one intellectual basis 
 to another; and in these weird epistemologs the 
 vast process came uncomfortably to semicon- 
 sciousness. They were old bottles bursting with 
 new wine ; and their tragedy was that they knew 
 it. They clung to the old world even while the 
 new one was swiroming perilously into their 
 ken ; they found a pitiful solace in the old phrases, 
 the old paraphernalia of a dead philosophy ; and 
 in the suffering of their readjustment there was, 
 quite inevitably, some measure of self-deception. 
 And that is why they are so hard to under- 
 
 1 This is not a defence of mechanism or materialism ; it 
 is a plea for a better perspective in philosophy. 
 
THE RECONSTRUCTIVE FUNCTION 217 
 
 stand. Even so subtle a thinker as Santayana 
 finds them too difiicult, and abandons them in 
 righteous indignation. There is no worse con- 
 founding of confusion than self-deception : let 
 a man be honest with himself, and he may lie 
 with tolerable intelligibility and success; but 
 let him be his own dupe and he may write a thou- 
 sand critiques and never get himself understood. 
 Indeed, some of them do not want to be under- 
 stood, they only want to be believed. Hegel, 
 for example, was not at all surprised to find that 
 no one imderstood him; he would have been 
 surprised and chagrined to find that some one 
 had. Obscurity can cover a multitude of sins. 
 Add to this self-befoggery the appalling his- 
 torismus (as Eucken calls it), the strange lifeless 
 interest in the past for its own sake, the petty 
 poring over problems of text and minutise of 
 theory in the classics of speculation ; — and the 
 indictment of philosophy as a useless appanage 
 of the idle rich gains further ground. We do 
 not seem to understand how much of the past is 
 dead, how much of it is but a drag on the imagina- 
 tive courage that dares to think of a future differ- 
 ent from the past, and better. Philosophy is 
 too much a study of the details of superseded 
 systems ; it is too httle the study of the miraculous' 
 living moment in which the past melts into the 
 present and the future finds creation. Most 
 people have an invincible habit of turning their 
 backs to the future; they like the past because 
 
218 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 the future is an adventure. So with most philos- 
 ophers to-day; they Hke to write analyses of 
 Kant, commentaries on Berkeley, discussions of 
 Plato's myths; they are students remembering, 
 they have not yet become men thinking. They 
 do not know that the work of philosophy is in 
 the street as well as in the library, they do not 
 feel and understand that the final problem of 
 philosophy is not the relation of subject and object 
 but the misery of men. 
 
 And so it is well that philosophy, such as it 
 chiefly is in these days, should be scorned as a 
 busy idler in a world where so much work is 
 asking to be done. 
 
 Philosophy was vital in Plato's day; so vital 
 that some philosophers were exiled and others 
 put to death. No one would think of putting a 
 philosopher to death to-day. Not because men are 
 more delicate about killing; but because there 
 is no need to kill that which is already dead.^ 
 
 II 
 
 Philosophy as Control 
 
 But after all, this is not a subject for rhetoric 
 so much as for resolution. Here we are again in 
 
 ' It would be invidious to name the exceptions which one 
 is glad to remember here ; but it is in place to say that the prac- 
 tical arrest of Bertrand Russell is a sign of resuscitation on 
 the part of philosophy, — a sign for which all lovers of philos- 
 ophy should be grateful. When philosophers are once more 
 feared, philosophy will once more be respected. 
 
THE EECONSTRtJCTIVE FUNCTION 219 
 
 our splendid library; here we sit, financially se- 
 cure, released from the material necessities of life, 
 to stand apart and study, to report and help and 
 state and solve ; under us those millions holding 
 us aloft so that we may see for them, dying by 
 the thousand so that we may find the truth that 
 will make the others free; and what do we do? 
 We make phrases like "esse est percipi," "syn- 
 thetic judgments d priori," and "being is noth- 
 ing"; we fill the philosophic world with great 
 Saharas of Kantiana ; we write epistemology for 
 two hundred years. Surely there is but one 
 decent thing for us to do: either philosophy is 
 of vital use to the community, or it is not. If it 
 is not, we will abandon it ; if it is, then we must 
 seek that vital use and show it. We have been 
 privileged to study and think and travel and 
 learn the world; and now we stand gaping 
 before it as if there were nothing wrong, as 
 if nothing could be done, as if nothing should 
 be done. We are expert eyes, asked to point 
 the way; and aU that we report is that there 
 is nothing to see, and nowhere to go. We are 
 without even a partial sense of the awful responsi- 
 biUty of intelligence. 
 
 It is time we put this problem of knowledge, 
 even the problem of the validity of knowledge, 
 into the hands of science. How we come to 
 know, what the process of knowledge is, what 
 "truth" is, — all these are questions of fact; 
 they are problems for the science of psychology, 
 
220 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 they are not problems for philosophy. This con- 
 tinual sharpening of the knife, as Lotze put it, 
 becomes tiresome — almost pathetic — if, after 
 all, there is no cutting done. Like Faust, who 
 found himself when, blinded by the sun, he turned 
 his face to the earth, so we shall have to forget 
 our epistemological heaven and remember mother 
 earth; we shall have to give up our delightful 
 German puzzles and play our living part in the 
 flow of social purpose. Philosophers must once 
 more learn to hve. 
 
 To make such a demand for a new direction of 
 philosophy to hfe is after all only a development 
 of pragmatism, turning that doctrine of action as 
 the test and significance of thought to uses not 
 so individual as those in which William James 
 found its readiest application. If philosophy has 
 meaning, it must be as life become aware of its 
 purposes and possibilities, it must be as life cross- 
 examining life for the sake of life ; it must be as 
 specialized foresight for the direction of social 
 movement, as reconstructive intelligence in con- 
 scious evolution. Man finds himself caught in a 
 flux of change ; he studies the laws operating in 
 the flux; studying, he comes to understand; 
 understanding, he comes to control; controlling, 
 he comes face to face with the question of all 
 questions. For what? Where does he wish to go, 
 what does he want to be? It is then that man 
 puts his whole experience before him in synthetic 
 test ; then that he gropes for meanings, searches 
 
THE RECONSTRUCTIVE FUNCTION 221 
 
 for values, struggles to see and define his course 
 and goal; then that he becomes philosopher. 
 Consider these questions of goal and course as 
 questions asked by a society, and the social func- 
 tion of philosophy appears. Science enlightens 
 means, philosophy must enlighten ends. Science 
 informs, philosophy must form. A philosopher 
 is a man who remakes himself ; the social function 
 of philosophy is to remake society. 
 
 Have we yet felt the full zest of that brave dis- 
 covery of the last ceiitery, — that purpose is not 
 in things but in us? 'What a declaration of in- 
 dependence there is in that simple phrase, what 
 hberation of a fettered thought to dare all ven- 
 tures of creative endeavor ! Here at last is man's 
 coming-of-age ! Well : now that we have won 
 this freedom, what shall we do with it? That 
 is the question which freedom begets, often as its 
 Frankenstein ; for unless freedom makes for life, 
 freedom dies. Once our sloth and cowardice 
 might have pleaded the uselessness of effort in a 
 world where omnipotent purpose lay outside of 
 us, superimposed and unchangeable; now that 
 we can believe that divinity is in ourselves, that 
 purpose and guidance are through us, we can no 
 longer shirk the question of reconstruction. The 
 world is ours to do with what we can and will. 
 Once we believed in the unchangeable environ- 
 ment — that new ogre that succeeded to the 
 Absolute — and (as became an age of laissez- 
 faire) we thought that wisdom lay in meeting all 
 
222 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 its demands; now we know that environments 
 can be remade; and we face the question, How 
 shall we remake ours? 
 
 This is preeminently a problem in philosophy ; 
 it is a question of values. If the world is to be 
 remade, it will have to be under the guidance of 
 philosophy. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Philosophy as Mediator between Science and Statesmanship 
 
 But why philosophy? — some one asks. Why 
 will not science do? Philosophy dreams, while 
 one by one the sciences which she nursed steal 
 away from her and go down into the world 
 of fact and achievement. Why should not 
 science be called upon to guide us into a better 
 world? 
 
 Because science becomes more and more a frag- 
 mentated thing, with ever less coordination, ever 
 less sense of the whole. Our industrial system 
 has forced division of labor here, as in the manual 
 trades, almost to the point of idiocy : let a man 
 seek to know everything about something, and 
 he will soon know nothing about anything else; 
 efficiency will swallow up the man. Because of 
 this shredded science we have great zoologists 
 talking infantile patriotism about the war, and 
 great electricians who fill sensational sheets with 
 details of their trips to heaven. We live in a 
 world where thought breaks into pieces, and co- 
 
THE RECONSTRUCTIVE FUNCTION 223 
 
 ordination ebbs; we flounder into a chaos of 
 hatred and destruction because synthetic think- 
 ing is not in fashion. 
 
 Consider, for example, the problem of monop- 
 oly: we ask science what we are to do here; 
 why is it that after we have listened to the econo- 
 mist, and the historian, and the lawyer, and the 
 psychologist, we are hardly better off than 
 before? Because each of these men speaks in 
 ignorance of what the others have discovered. 
 We must find some way of making these men 
 acquainted with one another before they can 
 become really useful to large social purposes; 
 we must knock their heads together. We want 
 more uniters and coordinators, less analyzers 
 and accumulators. Specialization is making the 
 philosopher a social necessity of the very first 
 importance. 
 
 This does not mean that we must put the state 
 into the hands of the epistemologists. Hardly. 
 The type of philosopher who must be produced 
 will be a man too close to life to spend much time 
 on merely analytical problems. He will feel the 
 call of action, and will automatically reject all 
 knowledge that does not point to deeds. The 
 essential feature of him will be grasp: he will 
 have his net fixed for the findings of those sciences 
 which have to do, not with material reconstruc- 
 tions, but with the discovery of the secrets of 
 human nature. He will know the essentials of 
 biology and psychology, of sociology and history, i 
 
224 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 of economics and politics; in him these long- 
 divorced sciences will meet again and make 
 one another fertile once more. He will busy 
 himself with Mendel and Freud, Sumner and 
 Veblen, and will scandalously neglect the Abso- 
 lute. He will study the needs and exigencies of 
 his time, he will consider the Utopias men make, 
 he will see in them the suggestive pseudo- 
 podia of political theory, and will learn from 
 them what men at last desire. He will sober 
 the vision with fact, and find a focus for im- 
 mediate striving. With this focus he will be 
 able to coordinate his own thinking, to point 
 the nose of science to a goal; science becom- 
 ing thereby no longer inventive and instructive 
 merely, but preventive and constructive. And 
 so fortified and unified he will preach his gospel, 
 talking not to students about God, but to states- 
 men about men. 
 
 For we come again — ever and ever again — to 
 Plato : unless wisdom and practical ability, phi- 
 losophy and statesmanship, can be more closely 
 bound together than they are, there will be no 
 lessening of human misery. Think of the learn- 
 ing of scientists and the ignorance of politicians ! 
 You see all these agitated, pompous men, making 
 laws at the rate of some ten thousand a year; 
 you see those quiet, unheard of, underpaid seekers 
 in the laboratories of the world ; unless you can 
 bring these two groups together through coordi- 
 nation and direction, your society will stand still 
 
THE EECONSTRXTCTIVE FUNCTION 225 
 
 forever, however much it moves. Philosophy 
 must take hold ; it must become the social direc- 
 tion of science, it must become, strange to say, 
 applied science. 
 
 We stand to-day in social science where Bacon 
 stood in natural science : we seek a method first 
 for the elucidation of causes, and second for the 
 transformation, in the light of this knowledge, of 
 man's environment and man. "We live in the 
 stone age of political science," says Lester Ward ; 
 "in politics we are still savages." ^ Our political 
 movements are conceived in impulse and de- 
 veloped in emotion ; they end in fission and frag- 
 mentation because there is no thought behind 
 them. Who will supply thinking to these in- 
 stincts, direction to this energy, light to this 
 wasted heat? Our young men talk only of ideals, 
 our politicians only of fact ; who will interpret to 
 the one the language of the other? What is it, 
 too, that statesmen need if not that saving sense 
 of the whole which makes philosophy, and which 
 philosophy makes? Just as philosophy without 
 statesmanship is — let us say — epistemology, 
 so statesmanship without philosophy is — Ameri- 
 can pohtics. The function of the philosopher, 
 then, is to do the listening to to-day's science, 
 and then to do the thinking for to-morrow's 
 statesmanship. The philosophy of an age should 
 be the organized foresight of that age, the inter- 
 preter of the future to the present. "Selection 
 
 • American Journal of Sociology, March, 1905, p. 645. 
 
226 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 adapts man to yesterday's conditions, not to 
 to-day's";* the organized foresight of conscious 
 evolution will adapt man to the conditions of to- 
 morrow. And an oxmce of foresight is worth a 
 ton of morals. 
 
 1 Bosa, SocUU Control, New York, 1906, p. 9. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 
 
 I 
 
 The ITeed 
 
 Intelligence is organized experience ; but in- 
 telKgence itself must be organized. Consider the 
 resources of the unused intelligence of the world ; 
 intelligence potential but undeveloped; intelli- 
 gence developed but isolated ; intelligence allowed 
 to waste itself in purely personal pursuits, un- 
 asked to enter into cooperation for larger ends. 
 Consider the Platos fretting in exile while petty 
 politicians rule the world; consider Montaigne, 
 and Hobbes, and Hume, and Carlyle, and the 
 thousand other men whose genius was left to grow 
 — or die — in soUtude or starvation; consider 
 the vast number of university-trained minds who 
 are permitted, for lack of invitation and organized 
 facilities, to slip into the world of profit and loss 
 and destructively narrow intent; consider the 
 expert abihty in all lines which can be found in 
 the faculties of the world, and which goes to 
 training an infinitesimal fraction of the com- 
 munity. The thought of imiversity graduates, 
 227 
 
228 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 of university faculties, of university-trained in- 
 vestigators, has had a rapidly growing influence 
 in the last ten years in America ; and because it 
 is an influence due to enlightenment it is funda- 
 mentally an influence for "good." It was this 
 influence that showed when President Wilson 
 said that the eight-hour day was demanded by 
 the informed opinion of the time. The sources 
 of such influence . have merely been touched ; 
 they are deep ; we must find a way to make in- 
 formed opinion more articulate and powerful. 
 "The most valuable knowledge consists of 
 methods," said Nietzsche ; ^ and the most valuable 
 methods are methods of organization, whether of 
 data or of men. Organization's the thing. Eco- 
 nomic forces are organized ; the forces of intelli- 
 gence are not. To organize intelligence ; that is 
 surely one method of approach to the social 
 problem; and what if, indeed, it be the very 
 heart and substance of the social problem? 
 
 Now a very easy way of making the propounder 
 of such an organization feel unusually modest is 
 to ask him that little trouble-making question. 
 How? To answer that would be to answer 
 almost everything that can be answered. Here 
 are opera basilica again ! — for what are we doing, 
 after all, but trying to take Francis Bacon seri- 
 ously? Of course the diSiculty in organizing in- 
 telligence is how to know who are intelligent, and 
 how to get enough people to agree with you that 
 
 > Will to Power, § 469. 
 
ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 229 
 
 . you know. If each man's self -valuation were 
 accepted, our organization would be rather bulky. 
 Are there any men very widely recognized as in- 
 telligent, who could be used as the nucleus of an 
 organization? There are individual men so rec- 
 ognized, — Edison, for example, and, strange to 
 say, one or two men who by accident are holding 
 political office. But these are stray individuals ; 
 are there any groups whose average of intelligence 
 is highly rated by a large portion of the com- 
 munity ? There are. Physicians are so rated ; 
 so much so that by popular usage they have won 
 almost a monopoly on the once more widely used 
 term doctor. University professors are highly 
 rated. Let us take the physicians and the pro- 
 fessors ; here is a nucleus of recognized intelligence. 
 There are objections, here, of course ; some one 
 urges that many physicians are quacks, another 
 that professors are rated as intelligent, but only 
 in an impractical sort of way. Perhaps we shall 
 find some scheme for eliminating the quacks; 
 but the professors present a difficult problem. 
 It is true that they suffer from intellectualism, 
 academitis, overfondness for theories, and other 
 occupational diseases; it is true that the same 
 people who stand in awe of the very word pro- 
 fessor would picture the article indicated by the 
 word as a thin, round-shouldered, be-spectacled 
 ninny, incapable of finding his way alone through 
 city streets, and so immersed in the stars that he 
 is sooner or later submerged in a well. But what 
 
230 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PHOBLEM 
 
 if this quality of detachment, of professorial 
 calm, be just one of the quahties needed for the 
 illumination of our social problem? Perhaps we 
 have too much emotion in these questions, and 
 need the colder hght of the man who is trained 
 to use his "head" and not his "heart." Perhaps 
 the most useful thing in the world for our purpose 
 is this terribly dispassionate, coldly scrutinizing 
 professor. We need men as impartial and clear- 
 eyed as men come ; and whatever a professor 
 may say, yet he sees his field more clearly and 
 impartially than any other group of men, what- 
 ever. Let the professors stay. 
 
 And so we have our physicians and our profes- 
 sors, — say all physicians and professors who 
 have taught or practised three years in institu- 
 tions, or as the graduates of institutions, of recog- 
 nized standing. And now let us dream our dream. 
 
 II 
 
 The Organization of Intelligence 
 
 These men, through meetings and correspond- 
 ence, organize themselves into a "Society for 
 Social Research " ; they begin at once to look 
 for an "inspired millionaire" to finance the move- 
 ment for six months or so ; they advertise them- 
 selves diligently in the press, and make known 
 their intention to get together the best brains of 
 the country to study the facts and possibilities 
 of the social problem. And then — a difficult 
 
ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 231 
 
 point — they face the task of arranging some 
 more or less" impersonal method of deciding who 
 are the intelligent people and who not. They ask 
 themselves just what kind of information a man 
 should be expected to have, to fit him for com- 
 petent handling of social questions ; and after 
 long discussions they conclude that such a man 
 should be well trained in one — and acquainted 
 with, the general findings of the others — of what 
 we may call the social disciplines : biology, psy- 
 chology, sociology, history, economics, law, poli- 
 tics, philosophy, and perhaps more. They formu- 
 late a long and varied te»t for the discovery of 
 fitness in these fields ; and they arrange that every 
 university in the country shall after plentiful 
 advertisement and invitation to all and sundry, 
 give these tests, and pay the expenses incurred by 
 any needy candidate who shall emerge successful 
 from the trial. In this way men whose studies 
 have been private, and unadorned with academic 
 degree, are to find entrance to the Society. 
 
 It is recognized that the danger of such a test 
 Ues in the premium which it sets on the bookish 
 as against the practical man : on the man whose 
 knowledge has come to him in the classroom or 
 the study, as against the man who has won his 
 knowledge just by living face to face with life. 
 There are philosophers who have never heard of 
 Kant, and psychologists who have been Freud- 
 ians for decades without having ever read a book. 
 A society recruited by such a test will be devoid 
 
232 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 of artists and poets, may finally eliminate all but 
 fact-gathering dryasdusts, and so end deservedly 
 in nothing. And yet some test there must be, 
 to indicate, however crudely, one's fitness or un- 
 fitness to take part in this work ; the alternative 
 would be the personal choice of the initial few, 
 whose prejudices and limitations would so become 
 the constitution and by-laws of the society. 
 Perhaps, too, some way may appear of using the 
 artists and poets, and the genius who knows no 
 books. 
 
 Well : the tests are given ; the original nucleus 
 of physicians and professors submit themselves 
 to these tests, and some, faiUng, are eliminated ; 
 other men come, from all fields of work, and from 
 them a number survive the ordeal and pass into 
 the Society. So arises a body of say 5000 men, 
 divided into local groups but working in unison 
 so far as geographical separateness will permit; 
 and to them now come, impressed with their 
 earnestness, a wealthy man, who agrees to finance 
 the Society for such time as may be needed to 
 test its usefulness. 
 
 Now what does our Society do? 
 
 It seeks information. That, and not a pro- 
 gramme, is the fruitful beginning of reform. 
 "Men are willing to investigate only the small 
 things of life," says Samuel Butler ; this Society 
 for Social Research is prepared and resolved to 
 investigate anything that has vital bearing on the 
 social problem ; it stands ready to make enemies. 
 
ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 233 
 
 ready to soil its hands. It appoints committees to 
 gather and formulate all that biologists can tell 
 of human origin and the innate impulses of men ; 
 all that psychology in its varied branches can 
 tell of human behavior ; all that sociology knows 
 of how and why hmnan societies and institutions 
 rise and fall ; all that medicine can tell of social 
 ills and health; it appoints committees to go 
 through all science with the loadstone of the 
 social purpose, picking up this fact here and that 
 one there; committees to study actual and pro- 
 posed forms of government, administrative and 
 electoral methods; committees to investigate 
 marriage, eugenics, prostitution, poverty, and the 
 thousand other aspects and items of the social 
 problem; committees to call for and hsten to 
 responsible expressions of every kind of opinion ; 
 committees to examine and analyze social experi- 
 ments, profit-sharing plans, Oneida communi- 
 ties ; even a committee on Utopia, before which 
 persons with schemes and 'isms and perfect cities 
 in their heads may freely preach their gospel. 
 In short this Society becomes the organized eye 
 and ear of the community, ready and eager to 
 seek out all the facts of human life and business 
 that may enlighten human will. 
 
 And having found the facts it publishes them. 
 Its operations show real earnestness, sincerity, 
 and ability; and in consequence it wins such 
 prestige that its reports find much heralding, 
 synopsis, and comment in the press. But in addi- 
 
234 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 tion to that it buys, for the first day of every 
 month, a half-page of space in several of the more 
 widely circulated periodicals and journals of the 
 country, and publishes its findings succinctly and 
 intelhgibly. It gives full references for all its 
 statements of fact ; it makes verification possible 
 for all doubters and deniers. It includes in each 
 month's report a reliable statement of the year's 
 advances in some one of the social disciphnes, so 
 that its twelve reports in any year constitute a 
 record of the socially vital scientific findings of 
 the year. It limits itself strictly to verifiable in- 
 formation, and challenges demonstration of hu- 
 manly avoidable partiality. And it takes great 
 care that its reports are couched not in learned 
 and technical language but in such phraseology 
 as will be intelligible to the graduates of an aver- 
 age grammar school. That is central. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Infonnation of Panacea 
 
 Without some such means of getting and spread- 
 ing information there is no hope for fundamental 
 social advance. We have agreed, have we not, 
 that to make men happier and more capable we 
 must divert their socially injurious impulses into 
 beneficent channels ; that we can do this only 
 by studying those impulses and controlling the 
 stimuli which arouse them ; that we can control 
 those stimuli only by studying the varied factors 
 
ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 235 
 
 of the environment and the means of changing 
 them ; in short, that at the bottom of the direc- 
 tion of impulse lies the necessity of knowledge, of 
 information spread to all who care to receive it. 
 Autocracy may improve the world without spread- 
 ing enlightenment ; but democracy cannot. De- 
 lenda est ignorantia.^ 
 
 This, after all, is a plan for the democratiza- 
 tion of aristocracy; it is Plato translated into 
 America. It utilizes superior intelligence and 
 gives it voice, but sanctions no change that has 
 not received the free consent of the community. 
 It gives the aristocracy of intellect the influence 
 and initiative which crude democracy frustrates ; 
 but it avoids the corruption that usually goes 
 with power, by making this influence work 
 through the channels of persuasion rather than 
 compulsion. It counteracts the power of wealth 
 to disseminate partisan views through news-items 
 and editorials, and relies on fact to get the better 
 at last of double-leaded prejudice. It rests on 
 the faith that lies will out. 
 
 Would the mass of the people listen to such, 
 reports ? Consider, first, the repute that attaches 
 to the professorial title. Let a man write even 
 the sorriest nonsense but sign himself as one of 
 the faculty of some responsible institution, and 
 he will find a hearing ; the reader, perhaps, need 
 not go far to find an example. In recent indus- 
 trial and political issues the pronouncements of 
 
 • Barker, Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, p. 80. 
 
236 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 a few professors carried very great weight; and 
 there are some modest purveyors of so supposedly 
 harmless a thing as philosophy whose voice is 
 feared by all interests that prosper in the dark. 
 Will the combined reputation of the most en- 
 lightened men in the country mean less? A 
 report pubUshed by this Society for Social Re- 
 search will mean that a large body of intelligent 
 men have from their number appointed three or 
 five or ten to find the facts of a certain situation 
 or dispute; these appointed men will, if they 
 report hastily, or carelessly, or dishonestly, impair 
 the repute of all their fellows in the Society; 
 they will take care, then, and will probably find 
 honesty as good a policy as some of us pretend it 
 to be. With every additional report so guarded 
 from defect the repute of the society will grow 
 until it becomes the niost powerful intellectual 
 force in the world. 
 
 When one reflects how many pages of misrep- 
 resentation were printed in the papers of only 
 one city in the presidential campaign of 1916, 
 and then imagines what would have been the 
 effect of a mere statement of facts on both sides, 
 — the records of the candidates and the parties, 
 their acknowledged connections, friends and 
 enemies, their expressed principles and pro- 
 grammes, the facts about the tariff, the German 
 issue, international law, the railway-brotherhood 
 dispute, and so forth — one begins to appreciate 
 the importance of information. After the initial 
 
ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 237 
 
 and irrevocable differences of original nature 
 nothing is so vital as the spread of enlighten- 
 ment; and nothing offers itself so well to 
 organized effort. Eugenics is weak because it 
 has no thought-out programme; 'isms rise and 
 fall because people are not informed. Let who 
 can, improve the native qualities of men; but 
 that aside, the most promising plan is the 
 dissemination of fact. 
 
 Such a society for research would be a sort of 
 social consciousness, a "mind of the race." It 
 would make social planning possible for the first 
 time ; it woiild make history conscious. It would 
 look ahead and warn ; it would point the nose of 
 the community to unwelcome but important facts ; 
 it would examine into such statements as that of 
 Sir William Ramsay, that England's coal fields 
 will be exhausted in one hundred and seventy- 
 five years ; and its warnings, backed by the pres- 
 tige of its expert information, would perhaps avert 
 the ravages of social waste and private greed. 
 Nature, said Lester Ward, is a spendthrift, 
 man an economizer. But economy means pre- 
 vision, and social economy means organized 
 provision. Here would be not agitation, not 
 propaganda, not moraHzing, but only clarifica- 
 tion; these men would be "merchants of light," 
 simply giving information so that what men 
 should do they might do knowingly and not 
 in the dark. 
 
 Indeed, if one can clarify one need not agitate. 
 
238 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Just to state facts is the most terrible thing that 
 can be done to an injustice. Sermons and 
 stump-speeches stampede the judgment for a 
 moment, but the sound of their perorations 
 still hngers in the air when reaction comes. 
 Fact has this advantage over rhetoric, that 
 time strengthens the one and weakens the 
 other. Tell the truth and time wiU be your 
 eloquence. i5 
 
 Let us suppose that our Society has existed 
 some three years ; l6t us suppose that on the first 
 day of every month it has spread through the 
 press simple reports of its investigations, simple 
 accounts of socially significant work in science, 
 and simple statements of fact about the economic 
 and political issues of the day; let us suppose 
 that by far the greater part of these reports have 
 been conscientious and accurate and clear. Very 
 well : in the course of these three years a large 
 number of mentally alert people all over the coun- 
 try will have developed the habit of reading these 
 monthly reports ; they will look forward to them, 
 they will attach significance to them, they will 
 herald them as events, almost as decisions. In 
 any question of national policy its statements 
 will influence thousands and thousands of the more 
 independent minds. Let us calculate the number 
 of people who, in these United States, would be 
 reached by such reports ; let us say the reports 
 are printed in three or four New York dailies, 
 having a total circulation of one million ; in other 
 
ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 239 
 
 dailies throughout the country totalling some five 
 million circulation ; and in one or more weeklies 
 or monthlies with a large or a select circulation. 
 One may perhaps say that out of the seven or 
 eight million people so reached (mostly adult 
 males), five per cent will be so influenced by the 
 increasing prestige of the Society that they will 
 read the reports. Of these four hundred thousand 
 readers it is reasonable to suppose that three hun- 
 dred thousand will be voters, and not only voters 
 but men of influence among their fellows. These 
 men will each of them be a medium through 
 which the facts reported will be spread ; it is not 
 too much to say that the number of American 
 voters influenced directly or indirectly by these 
 reports will reach to a milUon.' Now imagine 
 the influence of this million of voters on a presi- 
 dential election. Their very existence would be 
 a challenge ; candidates would have them in mind 
 when making promises and criticisms; parties 
 would think of them when formulating policies 
 and drawing up platforms ; editors would beware 
 of falling into claptrap and deceit for fear of these 
 million men armed with combustible fact. It 
 would mean such an elevation of political discus- 
 sion and political performance as democracy has 
 never yet produced ; such an elevation as democ- 
 racy must produce or die. 
 
 1 Perhaps this million could be reached more surely and 
 economically through direct pamphlet-publication by the 
 Sodety. 
 
240 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 IV 
 
 Sez, Art, and Play in Social Reconstruction 
 
 So far our imagined Society has done no more 
 than to seek and give information. It has, it is 
 true, listened to propagandists and Utopians, and 
 has published extracts from their testimony ; but 
 even this has been not to agitate but to inform ; 
 that such and such opinions are held by such 
 and such men, and by such and such a number 
 of men, is also a point of information. Merely 
 to state facts is the essential thing, and the ex- 
 tremely effective thing. But now there are cer- 
 tain functions which such a Society might per- 
 form beyond the giving of facts — functions that 
 involve personal attitudes and interpretations. 
 It may be possible for our Society to take on these 
 fimctions without detracting from the trust re- 
 posed in its statements of fact. What are these 
 functions? 
 
 First of all, the stimulation of artistic produc- 
 tion, and the extension of artistic appreciation. 
 Our Society, which is composed of rather staid 
 men, themselves not peculiarly fitted to pass 
 judgment outside the field of science, will invite, 
 let us say, twenty of the most generally and 
 highly valued of English and American authors 
 to form themselves into a Committee on Literary 
 Awards, as a branch of the Society for Social 
 Research. Imagine Thomas Hardy and George 
 Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells and John Gals- 
 
ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 241 
 
 worthy and Rudyard Kipling and John Masefield 
 and George Moore and Joseph Conrad and W. D. 
 Howells and Theodore Dreiser and many more, 
 telling the world every month, in individual in- 
 stalments, their judgment on current fiction, 
 drama, poetry, English literature in general ; 
 imagine the varied judgments printed with synop- 
 tic coordination of the results as a way of fixing 
 the standing of a book in the English literary 
 world ; and judge of the stimulus that would re- 
 side in lists signed by such names. Imagine 
 another group of men, the literary 61ite of France, 
 making briefer reports on French literature ; and 
 other groups in Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, 
 Scandinavia; imagine the world getting every 
 month the judgment of Anatole France and 
 Romain RoUand and Gerhardt Hauptmann and 
 Anton Tchekov and Georg Brandes on the current 
 literature of their peoples ; imagine them making 
 lists, too, of the best books in all their literatures ; 
 imagine eager young men and women poring 
 over these conflicting Hsts, discussing them, 
 making hsts of their own, and getting guidance 
 so. And to the literary lists add monthly reports, 
 by a committee of the Society itself, on the best 
 books in the various fields of science. Finally, 
 let the artists speak, — painters and sculptors 
 and all ; let them say where excellence has dwelt 
 this month in their respective fields. There are 
 hundreds of thousands who hunger for such guid- 
 ance as this plan would give. There are young 
 
242 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 people who flounder about hopelessly because 
 they find no guidance; young people who are 
 easily turned to fine work by the stimulus of 
 responsible judgment, and as easily lapse into 
 the banalities of popular fiction and popular 
 magazines when this guiding stimulus fails to 
 come. There are thousands of people who would 
 be glad to pay their modest contribution to the 
 support of any organization that would manage 
 to get such direction for them. Half the value 
 of a university course lies in this, that the teacher 
 will suggest readings, judge books, and provide 
 general guidance for individual work. Perhaps 
 the most valuable kind of information in the world 
 is that which guides one in the search for infor- 
 mation. Such guidance, given to all who ask 
 for it, would go far to save us from the mediocrity 
 that almost stifles our national life.^ 
 
 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 quaUfied contempo- 
 raries ? Why should such a book as Jean Chris- 
 
 ' Some students — e.g., Joseph McCabe, The Tyranny of 
 Shams, London, 1916, p. 248 — are so impressed with the dan- 
 gers Ijdng in our vast production of written trash that they 
 favor restricting the circulation of cheap fiction in our public 
 libraries. But what we have to do is not to prohibit the evil 
 but to encourage the good, to give positive stimulus rather 
 than negative prohibition. People hate compulsion, but they 
 grope for guidance. 
 
ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 243 
 
 tophe or The Brothers Karamazov go unheralded 
 except in fragmentary individual ways? Why 
 not reward such productions with a substan- 
 tial 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 (per- 
 haps) 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 beUeve 
 that financial aid would detract from the inde- 
 pendence 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 im- 
 plication and attached rather to excellence in art 
 and science, the change would have almost in- 
 estimably far-reaching results. Men worship 
 money, as has often been pointed out,* not for 
 its own sake, nor for the material good it brings, 
 
 ' B.g., by G. Lowes Dickinson, Justice and Liberty, p. 133. 
 
244 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 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 wUl 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 conununity.' 
 The art impulse, as is generally beheved, is a 
 diversion of sex energy. An organism is essen- 
 tially 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 be- 
 come 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 pug- 
 nacity (which was another factor in the drama of 
 reproduction), and rivalry in games and arts en- 
 croaches more and more on the emotional field 
 once monopolized by strife for mates and food. 
 
 ' Cf. Kussell, Principles of Social Reconstruction, p. 236 : 
 "The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, 
 should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish 
 the impulses and desires that center round possession." 
 
ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 245 
 
 The game — a sort of Hegelian synthesis of hos- 
 tility and sociability — takes more and more the 
 place of war, and artistic creation increasingly 
 replaces reproduction. 
 
 If all this is anything more than theoretic skat- 
 ing over thin sheets of fact, it means that one 
 "way out" from our social perplexities hes 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 under- 
 stand that play is an important matter in a 
 nation's hfe; 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 inter- 
 national 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 milUons in making rivalry absorb 
 the dangerous energy of pugnacity. Olympic 
 games should not be Olympic games, occurring 
 only with Olympiads ; not a month should pass 
 but great athletes, selected by eliminative tests 
 from every part of every country, should meet, 
 now here, now there, to match brawn and wits 
 in the friendly enmity of games. Let men know 
 one another through games, and they will not for 
 
246 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 slight reasons pass from sportsmanship to that 
 competitive destruction and deceit which our polit- 
 ical Bamums call "the defehce of our national 
 honor." 
 
 Education 
 
 This diversion of the sexual instinct into art 
 and games (a prophylactic which has long since 
 been appUed to individuals, and awaits applica- 
 tion 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 clarifica- 
 tion. Here is an abundance of 'isms and a dearth 
 of knowledge. Most teachers use methods which 
 they themselves consider antiquated, and teach 
 subjects which they will admit not one in a 
 hundred of their pupils will ever need to know. 
 Curious lessons in ethics are administered, which 
 are seldom practised in the classroom, and make 
 initiative children come to believe that com- 
 mandment-breaking is heroic. Boys and girls 
 bursting with vitality and the splendid exuber- 
 ance 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. 
 
ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 247 
 
 And so forth : the indictment against our schools 
 has been drawn up a thousand times and in a 
 thousand ways, and needs no reenforcement 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 Re- 
 search should appoint a great Committee on 
 Education to hire expert investigators and make 
 a thorough attempt to clarify the issues in educa- 
 tion. 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 rficognized, but the importance of biology 
 and pathology has not been seen in fit perspec- 
 tive. Why should not a special group of men 
 be set aside for years, if necessary, to study the 
 applicability of the several sciences to educa- 
 tion? 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 re- 
 search. One concerns the effect, on national 
 character and capacity, of a system of education 
 controlled by the government. The point was 
 made by Spinoza, as may be remembered, that a 
 
248 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 government will, if it controls the schools, aim 
 to restrain rather than to develop the energies of 
 men. Kant remarked the same difficulty. The 
 function of education in the eyes of a dominant 
 class is to make men able to do skilled work but 
 unable to do original thinking (for all original 
 thinking begins with destruction) ; the function of 
 education in the eyes of a government is to teach 
 men that eleventh commandment which God for- 
 got to give to Moses : thou shalt love thy coimtry 
 right or wrong. All this, of course, requires 
 some marvellous prestidigitation of the truth, as 
 school text-books of national history show. The 
 ignorant, it seems, are the necessary ballast in 
 the ship of state. 
 
 The alternative to such schools seems to be a 
 return to private education, with the rich man's 
 son getting even more of a start on the poor boy 
 than he gets now. Is there a tertium quid here? 
 Perhaps this is one point which a resolute effort 
 to get the facts would clarify. What does such 
 governmentally-regulated education do to the 
 forces of personal difference and initiative? Will 
 men and women educated in such a way produce 
 their maximum in art and thought and industry ? 
 Or will they be automata, always waiting for a 
 push? What different results would come if the 
 nationally-owned schools were to confine their 
 work absolutely to statements of fact, presenta- 
 tions of science, and were to leave "character- 
 moulding" and lessons in ethics to private per- 
 
ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE 249 
 
 sons or institutions? Then at least each parent 
 might corrupt his own child in his own pet way ; 
 and there might be a greater number of children 
 who would not be corrupted at all. 
 
 Another problem which might be advanced 
 towards a solution by a little light is that of 
 giving higher education to those who want it but 
 are too poor to pay. There are certain studies, 
 called above the social disciplines, which help a 
 man not so much to raise himself out of his class 
 and become a snob, as to get a better under- 
 standing 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 tothe community ; 
 he will vote with more intelligence, he will work 
 better in cooperation, he will be less subject to 
 imdulations 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 Ught would 
 
250 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 show. It would betray the lack of coordination 
 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, per- 
 haps, of the now infrequent seminars and con- 
 ferences between departments whose edges over- 
 lap, 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 intelli- 
 gence ; 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 vmiversities are 
 the foundation of civil and moral doctrine, from 
 whence the preachers and the gentry, drawing 
 such water as they find, use to sprinkle the same 
 upon the people, there ought certainly to be 
 great care taken to have it pure." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE KEADEK SPEAKS 
 
 I 
 
 The Democratization of Aristocracy 
 
 And now we stop for objections. 
 
 "This plan is a hare-brained scheme for a new 
 priesthood and a new aristocracy. It would put 
 a group of college professors and graduates into a 
 position where they could do almost as they 
 please. You think you avoid this by telling the 
 gentlemen that they must limit themselves to the 
 statement of fact; but if you knew the arts of 
 journahsm you would not make so naive a dis- 
 tinction 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 pubHc 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 guaran- 
 tee to prove anything I like, or anything I don't 
 251 
 
252 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 like, just by stating facts. So with your Society 
 for Social Research; it would become a great 
 political, rather than an educational, organiza- 
 tion; 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 pubUc 
 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 nomi- 
 nations, 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 pubKshed which misstated 
 facts, or omitted important items, the fault 
 would at once diminish the repute and influence 
 of the Society. Let merely the suspicion get 
 about that these reports are unfair, and the 
 
THE READER SPEAKS 253 
 
 Society would begin to decay. That is, the 
 power of the Society would grow with its fairness 
 and fall with its unfairness, — a very happy 
 arrangement. The fear of this fall in influence 
 would be the best incentive to impartial reports. 
 Every committee would feel that the future of 
 the Society depended on the fairness of its own 
 report; and every man on every committee 
 would hesitate before making himself responsi- 
 ble for the disrepute of the Society; he would 
 feel himself on trial before his fellow-members, 
 and would halt himself in the natural sHde into 
 partiaUty. 
 
 Not that he would always succeed; men are 
 men. But it is reasonable to expect that men 
 working under these conditions would be con- 
 siderably more impartial than the average news- 
 paper. Again, who is as impartial as the scien- 
 tist? One cannot do much in science without a 
 stern control of the personal equation; to de- 
 scribe protozoa, for example, as one would hke 
 them to be, is no very clever way of attaining 
 repute in protozoology. This is not so true in 
 the social as in the physical sciences, though even 
 in this new field scientific fairness and accuracy 
 are rapidly increasing. One can get more reliable 
 and impartial reports of an industrial situation, 
 — e.g., of the Colorado troubles, — from the 
 scientific investigators than from either side to the 
 controversy. The very deficiencies of the student 
 type — incapacity for decisions or for effective 
 
1 
 
 254 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 methods in action — involve a compensatory 
 grasp of understanding and impartiality of atti- 
 tude. 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 
 facihties for enlightening and converting the 
 majority. Democracy, ideally, means only that 
 the aristocracy is periodically elected and re- 
 newed; and this is a plan whereby the aristo- 
 crats — the really best — shall be more clearly 
 seen to be so. Furthermore, the plan avoids the 
 great defect of Plato's scheme, — that philoso- 
 phers are not fitted for executive and administra- 
 tive work, that those skilled to see are very sel- 
 dom also able to do. Here the philosopher, the 
 man who gets at the truth, rules, but only 
 indirectly, and without the burden? of office 
 and execution. And indeed it is not the phi- 
 losopher who rules, but truth. The liberator is 
 made king. 
 
THE HEADER SPEAKS 255 
 
 II 
 
 The Professor as Buridon's Ass 
 
 "You have anticipated my objection, and 
 cleverly twisted it into an argument. But that 
 would be too facile an escape; you must face 
 more squarely the fact that your professors are 
 mere intellectualist highbrows, incapable of under- 
 standing 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 in- 
 tellectual 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 com- 
 promise himself and fractm-e 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 
 biuied under facts. You should call your organi- 
 zation a Society for Talky-talk." 
 
256 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 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 pro- 
 grammes, much less execute them ; we ask our pro- 
 fessors merely to do for a larger public, and more 
 thoroughly and systematically, what we are glard 
 to have them do for a small number of us in 
 college and university. Action is ex hypothesi 
 left to others; the fimction 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 fore- 
 thought 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 hne offers the greatest resistance. 
 
THE READER SPEAKS 257 
 
 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 in- 
 vestigators, 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." ' 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. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Is Information Wanted? 
 
 "But your whole scheme shows a very amateur 
 knowledge of human nature. You seem to think 
 you can get people interested in fact. You 
 can't; fact is too much against their interest. 
 If the facts favor their wish, they are interested ; 
 if not, they forget them. The hardest thing in 
 the world is to listen to truth that threatens to 
 frustrate desire. That is why people won't listen 
 to your reports, unless you tell them what they 
 want to hear. They will — and perhaps excus- 
 
 > Reason in Common Sense, New York, 1911, p. 96. 
 S 
 
258 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 ably — prefer the bioscope to your embalmed 
 statistics; just as they will prefer to read The 
 Family Herald rather than the subtleties recom- 
 mended 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 in- 
 formation is spread every week in Europe and 
 America ; — the world remaining the while as 
 "wicked" as it probably ever was. PubUc 
 opinion is still, it seems, as Sir Robert Peel de- 
 scribed it to be : "a compound of folly, weakness, 
 prejudice, wrong feeling, right feehng, obstinacy, 
 and newspaper paragraphs," » — particularly the 
 paragraphs. Once we thought that the printing- 
 press was the beginning of democracy, that 
 Gutenberg had enfranchised the world. Now it 
 appears that print and plutocracy get along very 
 well together. Nevertheless the hope of the weak 
 
 ' Quoted by Walter Weyl, The New Democracy, p. 136. 
 
THE READER SPEAKS 259 
 
 lies in numbers and in information; in democ- 
 racy and in print. "The remedy for the abuses 
 of pubHc opinion is not to discredit it but to in- 
 struct it." ' The cure for misstatements is better 
 statements. If the newspapers are used to 
 spread falsehood that is no reason why news- 
 papers should not be used to spread truth. After 
 all, the spread of information has done many 
 things, — killed dogma, sterilized many mar- 
 riages, 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 noth- 
 ing. But indeed nothing else effects anything. 
 Whatever is done without information and dis- 
 cussion is soon imdone, must be soon undone; 
 all that bears time is that which survives the 
 test of thought. All problems are at last prob- 
 lems in information : to find out just how things 
 stand is the only finally effective way of getting 
 at anything. 
 
 As to the limited number of persons who 
 would be reached by the reports, let us not ask 
 too much. There is no pretence here that the 
 great mass of the people would be reached; no 
 doubt these would go on living what Wells calls 
 the "normal social life." But these people do 
 not count for constructive purposes ; they divide 
 about evenly in every election. The men who 
 
 ' Robs, Social Control, New York, 1906, p. 103. 
 
260 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PEOBLEM 
 
 do count — the local leaders, the clergjonen, 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 milUon voters (that is^ a general circulation 
 of five milhon) ; would such a periodical have 
 power? — would not millions be given to control 
 it? WeU, here we have more power, because 
 not so concentrated in a few editorial hands, not 
 so easily purchaseable, and based on better in- 
 tellect 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 noth- 
 ing to elevate the moral and political Hfe 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 appropria- 
 tions for public buildings, of a plain statement of 
 the population and size of the towns which require 
 such colossal edifices for their mail. Pubhcity, 
 
THE READER SPEAKS 261 
 
 it has been said, is the only cure for bad motives. 
 Consider the stimulus which such reports would 
 give to poKtical discussion everywhere. Hardly 
 a dispute occurs which is not based upon insuffi- 
 cient 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 wovdd be less of cross-purpose in the world. 
 And information is affirmation. It would not 
 open the wounds of controversy so much as offer 
 points of contact ; and in the light of fact, enemies 
 might see that their good lay for the most part 
 on a common road. If you want to change a foe 
 into -a friend (or, some cynic will say, a friend 
 into a foe), give him information. 
 
 IV 
 
 Finding Mncenas 
 
 "Well; suppose you are right. Suppose in- 
 formation, as you say, is king. How are you going 
 
262 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 to do it? Do you really think you will get some 
 benevolent millionaire to finance you? And will 
 you, like Fourier, wait in your room every day 
 at noon for the man who will turn your dream 
 into a fact?" 
 
 What we tend to forget about rich men is that 
 besides being rich they are men. There are a 
 surprising number of them — particularly those 
 who have inherited money — who are eager to 
 retiu-n 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 poiu* water into a leaking 
 cask. What such men want is a way of increas- 
 ing intelligence; they know from hard experi- 
 ence that in the end intelligence is the quaUty 
 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 investi- 
 gations 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 wotild find itself supported by rather a 
 group of men than by one man; it might con- 
 
THE READER SPEAKS 263 
 
 ceivably find itself helped by the state, at the 
 behest of the citizens. What would prevent a 
 candidate for governor from declaring his inten- 
 tion 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 dema.nd 
 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 "conserv- 
 ative" 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 revolu- 
 tionary, 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 sepa- 
 rated in the dark will see one another, and one 
 another's purposes, more clearly, and with saner 
 imderstanding than before. The most disastrous 
 thing you can do to an evil is to describe it. Let 
 
264 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 truth be told, and the parasite will lose his strength 
 through shame, and meanness will hide its face. 
 Only let information be given to all and freely, 
 and it will be a cleansing of our national blood ; 
 enmity will yield to open and honest opposition, 
 where it will not indeed become cooperation. 
 All we oeed is to see better. Let there be light. 
 
 The Chance of Philosophy 
 
 "One more objection before you take the 
 money. And that is : What on earth has all this 
 to do with philosophy? I can imderstand that 
 to have economists on your investigating commit- 
 tees, and biologists, and psychologists, and histo- 
 rians, would be sensible ; but what could a philoso- 
 pher 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 reenforce 
 the indictment brought above against the philoso- 
 pher 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 un- 
 
THE READEE SPEAKS 265 
 
 quenched by scholastic inflexibilities of discipHne 
 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 Uke 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 poUtics, 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 hfe, and full of it ; he would jump 
 into campaigns, add his influence carefully to 
 movements he thought good, and help make the 
 times Uve up more nearly to their possibiUties. 
 He would not shut himself up forever in labora- 
 tories, Ubraries, and lecture rooms ; he would Hve 
 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. 
 
266 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 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 acquaint- 
 ance 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 nourish- 
 ment 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 enhghten- 
 ment 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 posi- 
 tion 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. 
 
THE EEADER SPEAKS 267 
 
 zigzag, and fruitless, and turns away from life 
 men whom life most sorely needs. There are 
 some among us, even some philosophers among 
 us, who are eager to lead the way out of bickering 
 into discussion, out of criticism into construction, 
 out of books into life. We must keep a keen eye 
 for such men, and their beginnings ; and we must 
 strengthen them with our little help. Philosophy 
 is too divinely splendid a thing to be kept from 
 the most divine of things, — creation. Some of 
 us love it as the very breath of our lives ; it is 
 our vital medium, without which life would be 
 less than vegetation ; and we will not rest so long 
 as the name philosopher means anything less 
 aspiring and inspiring than it did with Plato. 
 Science flourishes and philosophy languishes, be- 
 cause science is honest and philosophy syco- 
 phantic, because science touches life and helps it, 
 while philosophy shrinks fearfully and helplessly 
 away. If philosophy is to live again, it must re- 
 discover life, it must come back into the cave, 
 it must come down from the "real" and tran- 
 scendental world and play its venturesome part 
 in the hard and happy world of efforts and events. 
 It is the chance of philosophy. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 See now, in summary, how modest a suggestion 
 it is, grandiloquent though it may have seemed. 
 We propose no 'ism, we make no programme ; we 
 suggest, tentatively, a method. We propose a 
 new start, a new tack, a new approach, — not to 
 the exclusion of other approaches, but to their 
 assistance. If this thing should be done, it would 
 not mean that other gropers toward a better 
 world would have to stand idle; it would but 
 give light to them that walk in darkness. And 
 it would make possible a more generous coopera- 
 tion 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 las- 
 situde of mistaken effort and drear defeat, we 
 almost think that the social problem is never to 
 find even partial solution, that it is not a problem 
 268 
 
CONCLTTSION 269 
 
 but a limitation, a limitation forever. We need 
 a new beginning, a new impetus, — perhaps a 
 new delusion? 
 
 See, too, how the thought of our five teachers 
 lies concentrated and connected in this new 
 approach: what have we done but renew con- 
 cretely the Socratic plea for intelligence, the Pla- 
 tonic 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 passion- 
 ate defence of aristocracy and power? There 
 was something in us that thrilled at Plato's con- 
 ception 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 cooperation. Socrates shows 
 us how to use Bacon to reconcile Plato and 
 Nietzsche with Spinoza : intelligence will organ- 
 ize intelligence so that superior worth may have 
 
270 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PKOBLEM 
 
 superior influence and yet work with and througji 
 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 news- 
 paper 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 organi- 
 zation of intelligence a focus for their labor? — 
 what if they should not only themselves under- 
 take the studies which would fit them for mem- 
 bership in the Society, but should also make it 
 their business to stir up in all who might come to 
 them the spirit of the seeker, to incite them to 
 read religiously the reports of the Society, to call 
 on them to spread abroad the good news of truth 
 to be had for the asking? What if these men 
 should make their churches extension centers for 
 the educational work of the Society, — giving 
 freely the use of their halls and even contributing 
 to the expense of organizing classes and paying 
 for skilled instruction? What if they should see 
 
coNCLtrsioN 271 
 
 in the spread of intelligence the best avenue to 
 that wide friendship which Jesus so passionately 
 preached? What better way is there to make 
 men love one another than to make men under- 
 stand one another? True charity comes only 
 with clarity, — just as "mercy" is but justice 
 that understands. Surely the root of all evU 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 civiliza- 
 tions : 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 pyra- 
 mids 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 won- 
 derful peoples, greater perhaps, wiser and nobler 
 perhaps, than the peoples of our time; and we 
 
272 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 almost choke with the heavy sense of a vast 
 futiUty encompassing the world. Some of us 
 turn away then from the din of effort, and seek 
 in resignation the comfort of a hving deiath; 
 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 milhons 
 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 : 
 
 Edena 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 perfec- 
 tion. We will remake. We will wonder and de- 
 sire 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 wiU 
 harness the genius of the race and renew creation. 
 We will remake. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America. 
 
'HE following 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., $i.go 
 "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 stimu- 
 lating 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 dis- 
 tribution of wealth, his discussion centers mainly in the problems 
 of thtse."— Outlook. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMI^ANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 I'ifth Avenue ITew York 
 
The Great Society 
 
 A Psychological Analysis 
 By GRAHAM WALLAS 
 
 Author 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 pulalication being, perhaps, " Human Nature in Politics.'' 
 
 The present work, a portion of which was defivered 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 con- 
 sideration 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 philo- 
 sophic factors in history ; his focusing of a theory into the tiny sun- 
 spot 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 COMPANY 
 
 Fublishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
The Social Problem 
 
 A CONSTRUCTIVE ANALYSIS 
 
 By CHARLES A. ELLWOOD, Ph.D. 
 
 Professor of Sociology in the University of Missouri, Author of "Sodol- 
 
 ogy in Its Psychological Aspects," "Sociology and Modem Social 
 
 Problems,'' etc. 
 
 CMh, i2mo, 2S5 PP; $1-25 
 
 This work is a brief analysis of the social problem in Western civiliza- 
 tion. 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 in- 
 adequate 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 posi- 
 tive and constructive toward all the essential values of our civilization. 
 
 " 'The Social Problem' by Professor Charles A. EUwood 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, how- 
 ever, 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 COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
AMERICAN SOCIAL PROGRESS SERIES 
 
 The City Worker's World in America 
 
 By MARY KINGSBURY SIMKHOVITCH 
 
 Director of Greenwich House Cloth, i2mo, $ 1.2^ 
 
 A new volume in the American Social Progress Series edited by Samuel McCune 
 Lindsay, LL. D. 
 
 A plain description of the facts of the city dweller's life, with some indications of the evolu- 
 tionary process going on at the city's heart. 
 
 Social Reform and the Constitution 
 
 By frank J. GOODNOW izmo, $1.50 
 
 " The work is well worth not only reading but study and is a decided contribution to the 
 literature of the subject." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 The New Basis of Civilization 
 
 By SIMON N. PATTEN T2mo, $1.00 
 
 *' The book is valuable and inspiring in its general conception and guiding principles. 
 Social workers will welcome it, and moralists should greatly profit by its teachings. 
 
 — Chicago Evening Post. 
 
 Standards of Public Morality 
 
 BY ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY i2mo, $1.00 
 
 "The book is worth reading not only once, but twice." — JVew York Times, 
 
 Misery and Its Causes 
 
 By EDWARD T. DEVINE i2mo, $1.25 
 
 " One of the most vital and helpful books on social problems ever published " 
 
 — Cdngregationalist and Christian World. 
 
 Governmental Action for Social Welfare 
 
 By JEREMIAH W. JENKS i2mo, $1.00 
 
 *' Professor Jenks' little book ought to be in the hands of every member of every legislature 
 in the country." — Review of Reviews, 
 
 The Social Basis of Religion 
 
 By SIMON N. PATTEN T2mo, $i.2S 
 
 " It is a work of deep thought and abundant research. Those who read it will find their 
 ideas and thoughts quickened and will be sure that their time has been profitably spent." 
 ^^ — Salt Lake Tribune. 
 
 The Church and Society 
 
 By R. FULTON CUTTING tzmo, $i^s 
 
 " A stimulating and informing little book." — Boston Herald. 
 
 The Juvenile Court 
 
 BY THOMAS D. ELIOT i2mo, $1.25 
 
 "Another volume which will repay careful reading — the most useful treatise on youthful 
 criminology." — Providence Journal. 
 
 Social Insurance : A Program for Social Reform 
 
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