Part 2 (1/2)
At present the future of mankind is dark. ”Stop, look, and listen”-the prudent caution at railroad crossings-must be amended to read ”stop, look, listen, and THINK”; not for the saving of a few lives in railroad accidents, but for the preservation of the life of humanity. Living organisms, of the lower and simpler types, in which the differentiation and the integration of the vital organs have not been carried far, can move about for a considerable time after being deprived of the appliances by which the life force is acc.u.mulated and transferred, but higher organisms are instantly killed by the removal of such appliances, or even by the injury of minor parts of them; even more easily destroyed are the more advanced and complicated _social_ organizations.
The first question is: what are to be the scientific methods that will eliminate diverse opinions and creeds from an a.n.a.lysis of facts and ensure correct deductions based upon them? A short survey of facts concerning civilization will help to point the way.
Humanity, in its cradle, did not have science; it had only the faculties of observation and speculation. In the early days there was much speculative thinking, but it was without any sufficient basis of facts.
Theology and philosophy flourished; their speculations were often very clever, but all their primitive notions about facts-such as the structure of the heavens, the form of the earth, mechanical principles, meteorological or physiological phenomena-were almost all of them wrong.
What is history? What is its significance for humanity? Dr. J. H. Robinson gives us a precise answer: ”Man's abject dependence on the past gives rise to the continuity of history. Our convictions, opinions, prejudices, intellectual tastes; our knowledge, our methods of learning and of applying for information we owe, with slight exceptions, to the past-often to the remote past. History is an expansion of memory, and like memory it alone can explain the present and in this lies its most unmistakable value.”(2)
The savage regards every striking phenomenon or group of phenomena as caused by some personal agent, and from remotest antiquity the mode of thinking has changed only as fast as the relations among phenomena have been established.(3)
Human nature was always asking ”why”? and not being able to answer why, they found their answer through another factor ”who.” The unknown was called, G.o.ds or G.o.d. But with the progress of science the ”why” became more and more evident, and the question came to be ”how.” From the early days of humanity, dogmatic theology, law, ethics, and science in its infancy, were the monopolies of one cla.s.s and the source of their power.(4)
The first to break this power were the exact sciences. They progressed too rapidly to be bound and limited by obscure old writings and prejudices; life and realities were their domain. Science brushed aside all sophistry and became a reality. Ethics is too fundamentally important a factor in civilization to depend upon a theological or a legal excuse; ethics must conform to the _natural_ laws of human _nature_.
Laws, legal ideas, date from the beginning of civilization. Legal speculation was wonderfully developed in parallel lines with theology and philosophy before the natural and exact sciences came into existence. Law was always made by the few and in general for the purpose of preserving the ”existing order,” or for the reestablishment of the old order and the punishment of the offenders against it.
Dogmatic theology is, by its very nature, unchangeable. The same can be said in regard to the spirit of the law. Law was and is to protect the past and present status of society and, by its very essence, must be very conservative, if not reactionary. Theology and law are both of them static by their nature.(5)
Philosophy, law and ethics, to be effective in a dynamic world must be dynamic; they must be made vital enough to keep pace with the progress of life and science. In recent civilization ethics, because controlled by theology and law, which are static, could not duly influence the dynamic, revolutionary progress of technic and the steadily changing conditions of life; and so we witness a tremendous downfall of morals in politics and business. Life progresses faster than our ideas, and so medieval ideas, methods and judgments are constantly applied to the conditions and problems of modern life. This discrepancy between facts and ideas is greatly responsible for the dividing of modern society into different warring cla.s.ses, which do not understand each other. Medieval legalism and medieval morals-the basis of the old _social_ structure-being by their nature conservative, reactionary, opposed to change, and thus becoming more and more unable to support the mighty social burden of the modern world, must be adjudged responsible in a large measure for the circ.u.mstances which made the World War inevitable.
Under the flash of explosives some of the workings of those antiquated ideas were exposed or crushed. The World War has profoundly changed economic conditions and made it necessary to erect new standards of values. We are forced to realize that evolution by transformation is a cosmic process and that reaction, though it may r.e.t.a.r.d it, can not entirely stop it.(6)
The idea that organic species are results of special creation has no scientific standard whatever. There is not one fact tending to prove special or separate creation; the evidence, which is overwhelming, is all of it on the other side. The hypothesis of special creation is a mere fossil of the past. Evolution is the only theory which is in harmony with facts and with all branches of science: life is dynamic, not static.
Philosophy, as defined by Fichte, is the ”science of sciences.” Its aim was to solve the problems of the world. In the past, when all exact sciences were in their infancy, philosophy had to be purely speculative, with little or no regard to realities. But if we regard philosophy as a Mother science, divided into many branches, we find that those branches have grown so large and various, that the Mother science looks like a hen with her little ducklings paddling in a pond, far beyond her reach; she is unable to follow her growing hatchlings. In the meantime, the progress of life and science goes on, irrespective of the cackling of metaphysics.
Philosophy does not fulfill her initial aim to bring the results of experimental and exact sciences together and to solve world problems.
Through endless, scientific specialization scientific branches multiply, and for want of coordination the great world-problems suffer. This failure of philosophy to fulfill her boasted mission of scientific coordination is responsible for the chaos in the world of general thought. The world has no collective or organized higher ideals and aims, nor even fixed general purposes. Life is an accidental game of private or collective ambitions and greeds.(7)
Systematic study of chemical and physical phenomena has been carried on for many generations and these two sciences now include: (1) knowledge of an enormous number of facts; (2) a large body of natural laws; (3) many fertile working hypotheses respecting the causes and regularities of natural phenomena; and finally (4) many helpful theories held subject to correction by further testing of the hypotheses giving rise to them. When a subject is spoken of as a science, it is understood to include all of the above mentioned parts. Facts alone do not const.i.tute a science any more than a pile of stones const.i.tutes a house, not even do facts and laws alone; there must be facts, hypotheses, theories and laws before the subject is ent.i.tled to the rank of a science.
The primal function of a science is to enable us to antic.i.p.ate the future in the field to which it relates. Judged by this standard, neither philosophy nor its kindred-the so-called social sciences-have in the past been very effective. There was, for example, no official warning of the coming of the World War-the greatest of catastrophes. The future was not antic.i.p.ated because political philosophers did not possess the necessary basis of knowledge. To be just we must admit that philosophy has been but little aided financially because it is commonly regarded as unnecessary.
The technical branches of science have been strongly backed and generally supported by those to whom they have brought direct profit; and so they have had better opportunities for development.
Ethics in the stifling grip of myth and legalism is not convincing enough to exercise controlling influence. Such is the situation in which we find ourselves. Being still in our childhood and thinking like savages, we looked upon the World War as a personal creation of a ”war-lord,” because those interested in it told us so. We neglected to use our common sense and look deeper into its origins; to perform for ourselves the duty which political philosophy did not perform for us-the duty of thinking in terms of facts and not in terms of metaphysical speculations. Knowledge of facts would have told us that the war lords were only the representatives of the ruling cla.s.ses. A system of social and economic order built exclusively on selfishness, greed, ”survival of the fittest,” and ruthless compet.i.tion, must cease to exist, or exist by means of war. The representatives of this system determined to continue to exist, and so war was the consequence.
The ruling cla.s.ses carried the whole system under which they lived to its logical conclusion and natural issue, which is ”grab what you can.” This motto is not peculiar to any one country; it is the motto of our whole civilization and is the inevitable outcome of our stupid philosophy regarding the characteristic nature of man and the proper potentialities of human life. Where are we to find the true doctrines? Where the true philosophy? If we go back over the history of civilization, we find that in all ”sciences,” except the exact ones, private opinions and theories have shaped our beliefs, colored our mental processes and controlled our destinies; we see, for example, pessimism opposed to optimism, materialism to spiritualism, realism to idealism, capitalism to socialism, and so on endlessly. Each of the disputatious systems has a large number of followers and each faction looks upon the others as deprived of truth, common sense and knowledge. All of them play with the words ”natural law”
which they ignorantly presume to have as the basis and content of their own particular doctrine.
It is the same in the realm of religions; there are approximately 291 million Confucianists, or Taoists, 261 million Roman Catholics, 211 million Mohammedans, 209 million Hindus, 177 million Protestants, 157 million Animists, 137 million Buddhists, 115 million Orthodox Christians-to speak only of the most important religions. Each group, and they are rather large groups, believes its theory or its faith to be infallible and all the others to be false.
Bacon seems a bit remote, but the idols and medieval fetishes which he so masterfully describes are equally venerated to-day.
(_Novum Organum_, by Francis Bacon.)
34. ”Four species of idols beset the human mind, to which (for distinction's sake) we have a.s.signed names, calling the first Idols of the Tribe, the second Idols of the Den, the third Idols of the Market, the fourth Idols of the Theatre.
40. ”The information of notions and axioms on the foundation of true induction is the only fitting remedy by which we can ward off and expel these idols. It is, however, of great service to point them out; for the doctrine of idols bears the same relation to the interpretation of nature as that of the confutation of sophisms does to common logic.