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"BERTRAND "RUSSELL
UNPOPULAR
ESSAYS
SIMON AND SCHUSTER
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BY H. WOLFF BOOK MFG. CO., NEW YORK
PREFACE
MOST of the following essays, which were written at various
times during the last fifteen years, are concerned to combat, in
one way or another, the growth of dogmatism, whether of the
Right or of the Left, which has hitherto characterized our tragic
century. This serious purpose inspires them even if, at times,
they seem flippant, for those who are solemn and pontifical
are not to be successfully fought by being even more solemn
and even more pontifical
A word as to the title. In the Preface to my Human Knowl-
edge I said that I was writing not only for professional philoso-
phers, and that "philosophy proper deals with matters of
interest to the general educated public." Reviewers took me
to task, saying they found parts of the book difficult, and im-
plying that my words were such as to mislead purchasers. I do
not wish to expose myself again to this charge; I will therefore
confess that there are several sentences in the present volume
which some unusually stupid children of ten might find a litde
puzzling. On this ground I do not claim that the essays are
popular; and if not popular, then "unpopular."
BERTRANB RUSSELL
April, 1950
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Three of the essays included in this volume^ Outline
of Intellectual Rubbish, Ideas That Have Helped Mankind,
and Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind were originally
published by Mr. K Haldeman-Julius of Girard, Kansas,
with whose permission they are now reprinted.
B,R.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Preface v
I. Philosophy and Politics i
II. Philosophy for Laymen ^ i
III The Future of Mankind 34
IV. Philosophy's Ulterior Motives 45
V. The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed 58
VI. On Being Modern-minded 65
VII An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish 71
VIIL The Functions of a Teacher 112
IX, Ideas That Have Helped Mankind 124
X. Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind 146
XL Eminent Men I Have Known 166
XII. Obituary 173
UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
Philosophy and Politics
THE British are distinguished among the nations of mod-
ern Europe, on the one hand by the excellence of their
philosophers, and on the other hand by their contempt
for philosophy. In both respects they show their wisdom. But
contempt for philosophy, if developed to the point at which it
becomes systematic, is itself a philosophy; it is the philosophy
which, in America, is called "instrumentalism." I shall suggest
that philosophy, if it is bad philosophy, may be dangerous, and
therefore deserves that degree of negative respect which we
accord to lightning and tigers. What positive respect may be
due to "good" philosophy I will leave for the moment an open
question.
The connection of philosophy with politics, which is the
subject of my lecture, has been less evident in Britain than in
Continental countries. Empiricism, broadly speaking, is con-
nected with liberalism, but Hume was a Tory; what philoso-
phers call "idealism" has, in general, a similar connection with
conservatism, but T. H. Green was a Liberal. On the Continent
distinctions have been more clear cut, and there has been a
greater readiness to accept or reject a block of doctrines as a
whole, without critical scrutiny of each separate part.
In most civilized countries at most times, philosophy has
2 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
been a matter in which the authorities had an official opinion,
and except where liberal democracy prevails this is still the
case. The Catholic Church is connected to the philosophy of
Aquinas, the Soviet government to that of Marx. The Nazis
upheld German idealism, though the degree of allegiance to be
given to Kant, Fichte, or Hegel respectively was not clearly
laid down. Catholics, Communists, and Nazis all consider that
their views on practical politics are bound up with their views
on theoretical philosophy. Democratic liberalism, in its early
successes, was connected with the empirical philosophy de-
veloped by Locke. I want to consider this relation of philoso-
phies to political systems as it has in fact existed, and to inquire
how far it is a valid logical relation, and how far, even if not
logical, it has a kind of psychological inevitability. In so far as
either kind of relation exists, a man's philosophy has practical
importance, and a prevalent philosophy may have an intimate
connection with the happiness or misery of large sections of
mankind.
The word "philosophy" is one of which the meaning is by
no means fixed. Like the word "religion," it has one sense when
used to describe certain features of historical cultures, and
another when used to denote a study or an attitude of mind
which is considered desirable in the present day. Philosophy,
as pursued in the universities of the Western democratic world,
is, at least in intention, part of the pursuit of knowledge, aim-
ing at the same kind of detachment as is sought in science, and
not required by the authorities to arrive at conclusions con-
venient to the government. Many teachers of philosophy
would repudiate not only the intention to influence their pu-
pils' politics but also the view that philosophy should inculcate
virtue. This, they would say, has as little to do with the phi-
losopher as with the physicist or the chemist. Knowledge, they
would say, should be the sole purpose of university teaching;
virtue should be left to parents, schoolmasters, and churches*
PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS 3
But this view of philosophy, with which I have much sym-
pathy, is very modern, and even in the modern world excep-
tional. There is a quite different view, which has prevailed
since antiquity, and to which philosophy has owed its social
and political importance.
Philosophy, in this historically usual sense, has resulted from
the attempt to produce a synthesis of science and religion, or,
perhaps more exactly, to combine a doctrine as to the nature of
the universe and man's place in it with a practical ethic incul-
cating what was considered the best way of life. Philosophy
was distinguished from religion by the fact that, nominally at
least, it did not appeal to authority or tradition; it was dis-
tinguished from science by the fact that an essential part of its
purpose was to tell men how to live. Its cosmological and ethi-
cal theories were closely interconnected: sometimes ethical mo-
tives influenced the philosopher's views as to the nature of the
universe, sometimes his views as to the universe led him to
ethical conclusions. And with most philosophers ethical opin-
ions involved political consequences: some valued democracy,
others oligarchy; some praised liberty, others discipline. Almost
all types of philosophy were invented by the Greeks, and the
controversies of our own day were already vigorous among
the pre-Socratics.
The fundamental problem of ethics and politics is that of
finding some way of reconciling the needs of social life with
the urgency of individual desires. This has been achieved, in so
far as it has been achieved, by means of various devices. Where
a government exists, the criminal law can be used to prevent
anti-social action on the part of those who do not belong to the
government, and law can be reinforced by religion wherever re-
ligion teaches that disobedience is impiety. Where there is a
priesthood sufficiently influential to enforce its moral code on
lay rulers, even the rulers become to some extent subject to
law; of this there are abundant instances in the Old Testament
UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
and In medieval history. Kings who genuinely believe in the
Divine government of the world, and in a system of rewards
and punishments in the next life, feel themselves not omnipo-
tent, and not able to sin with impunity. This feeling is ex-
pressed by the King in Hamlet, when he contrasts the inflexi-
bility of Divine justice with the subservience of earthly judges
to the royal power,
Philosophers, when they have tackled the problem of pre-
serving social coherence, have sought solutions less obviously
dependent upon dogma than those offered by official religions.
Most philosophy has been a reaction against skepticism; it has
arisen in ages when authority no longer sufficed to produce
the socially necessary minimum of belief, so that nominally
rational arguments had to be invented to secure the same result.
This motive has led to a deep insincerity infecting most phi-
losophy, both ancient and modern. There has been a fear, often
unconscious, that clear thinking would lead to anarchy, and
this fear has led philosophers to hide in mists of fallacy and
obscurity.
There have, of course, been exceptions; the most notable are
Protagoras in antiquity, and Hume in modern times. Both, as a
result of skepticism, were politically conservative. Protagoras
did not know whether the gods exist, but he held that in any
case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to
him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of
morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority
and their willingness to believe what they had been taught.
Nothing, therefore, must be done to weaken the popular force
of tradition.
The same sort of thing, up to a point, may be said about
Hume. After setting forth his skeptical conclusions, which, he
admits, are not such as men can live by, he passes on to a piece
of practical advice which, if followed, would prevent anybody
from reading him. u Carelessness and inattention," he says,
"alone can afford us any remedy. For this reason I rely entirely
PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS J
upon them." He does not, in this connection, set forth his rea-
sons for being a Tory, but it is obvious that "carelessness and
inattention," while they may lead to acquiescence in the status
quo, cannot, unaided, lead a man to advocate this or that
scheme of reform.
Hobbes, though less skeptical than Hume, was equally per-
suaded that government is not of divine origin, and was equally
led, by the road of disbelief, to advocacy of extreme con-
servatism.
Protagoras was "answered" by Plato, and Hume by Kant
and Hegel. In each case the philosophical world heaved a sigh
of relief, and refrained from examining too nicely the intellec-
tual validity of the "answer," which in each case had political
as well as theoretical consequences though in the case of the
"answer" to Hume it was not the Liberal Kant but the reac-
tionary Hegel who developed the political consequences.
But thorough-going skeptics, such as Protagoras and Hume,
have never been influential, and have served chiefly as bug-
bears to be used by reactionaries in frightening people into
irrational dogmatism. The really powerful adversaries against
whom Plato and Hegel had to contend were not skeptics, but
empiricists, Democritus in the one case and Locke in the other.
In each case empiricism was associated with democracy and
with a more or less utilitarian ethic. In each case the new
philosophy succeeded in presenting itself as nobler and more
profound than the philosophy of pedestrian common sense
which it superseded. In each case, in the name of all that was
most sublime, the new philosophy made itself the champion of
injustice, cruelty, and opposition to progress. In the case of
Hegel this has come to be more or less recognized; in the case
of Plato it is still something of a paradox, though it has been
brilliantly advocated In a recent book by Dr. K. R. Popper. 1
Plato, according to Diogenes Laertius, expressed the view
Open Society and its Enemies The same thesis is maintained
in my History of Western Philosophy.
6 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
that all the books of Democritus ought to be burned. His wish
was so far fulfilled that none of the writings of Democritus
survive. Plato, in his Dialogues, never mentioned him; Aristotle
gave some account of his doctrines; Epicurus vulgarized him;
and finally Lucretius put the doctrines of Epicurus into verse.
Lucretius just survived, by a happy accident. To reconstruct
Democritus from the controversy of Aristotle and the poetry
of Lucretius is not easy; it is almost as if we had to reconstruct
Plato from Locke's refutation of innate ideas and Vaughan's
"I saw eternity the other night." Nevertheless enough can be
done to explain and condemn Plato's hatred.
Democritus is chiefly famous as (along with Leucippus) the
founder of atomism, which he advocated in spite of the objec-
tions of metaphysicians objections which were repeated by
their successors down to and including Descartes and Leibniz.
His atomism, however, was only part of his general philosophy.
He was a materialist, a determinist, a free thinker, a utilitarian
who disliked all strong passions, a believer in evolution, both
astronomical and biological.
Like the men of similar opinions in the eighteenth century,
Democritus was an ardent democrat. "Poverty in a democ-
racy/ 5 he says, "is as much to be preferred to what is called
prosperity under despots as freedom is to slavery." He was a
contemporary of Socrates and Protagoras, and a fellow-towns-
man of the latter; he flourished during the early years of the
Peloponnesian war, but may have died before it ended. That
war concentrated the struggle that was taking place throughout
the Hellenic world between democracy and oligarchy, Sparta
stood for oligarchy; so did Plato's family and friends, who
were thus led to become Quislings. Their treachery is held to
have contributed to the defeat of Athens. After that defeat,
Plato set to work to sing the praises of the victors by construct-
ing a Utopia of which the main features were suggested by
the constitution of Sparta. Such, however, was his artistic skill
PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS y
that Liberals never noticed his reactionary tendencies until his
disciples Lenin and Hitler had supplied them with a practical
exegesis. 1
That Plato's Republic should have been admired, on its
political side, by decent people is perhaps the most astonish-
ing example of literary snobbery in all history. Let us consider
a few points in this totalitarian tract. The main purpose of
education, to which everything else is subordinated, is to pro-
duce courage in battle. To this end, there is to be a rigid censor-
ship of the stories told by mothers and nurses to young chil-
dren; there is to be no reading of Homer, because that degraded
versifier makes heroes lament and gods laugh; the drama is to
be forbidden, because it contains villains and women; music is
to be only of certain kinds, which, in modern terms, would be
"Rule Britannia" and "The British Grenadiers." The govern-
ment is to be in the hands of a small oligarchy, who are to
practice trickery and lying trickery in manipulating the
drawing of lots for eugenic purposes, and elaborate lying to
persuade the population that there are biological differences
between the upper and lower classes. Finally, there is to be a
large-scale infanticide when children are born otherwise than
as a result of governmental swindling in the drawing of lots.
Whether people are happy in this community does not
matter, we are told, for excellence resides in the whole, not in
the parts. Plato's city is a copy of the eternal city laid up in
heaven; perhaps in heaven we shall enjoy the kind of existence
It offers us, but if we do not enjoy it here on earth, so much
the worse for us.
This system derives its persuasive force from the marriage of
aristocratic prejudice and "divine philosophy"; without the
latter, its repulsiveness would be obvious. The fine talk about
the good and the unchanging makes it possible to lull the reader
1 In 1920 I compared the Soviet State to Plato's Republic, to the equal
indignation of Communists and Platonists.
8 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
into acquiescence in the doctrine that the wise should rule, and
that their purpose should be to preserve the status quo, as the
ideal state in heaven does. To every man of strong political
convictions and the Greeks had amazingly vehement political
passions it is obvious that "the good" are those of his own
party, and that, if they could establish the constitution they
desire, no further change would be necessary. So Plato thought,
but by concealing his thought in a metaphysical mist he gave it
an impersonal and disinterested appearance which deceived the
world for ages.
The ideal of static perfection, which Plato derived from
Parmenides and embodied in his theory of ideas, is one which
is now generally recognized as inapplicable to human affairs.
Man is a restless animal, not content, like the boa constrictor,
to have a good meal once a month and sleep the rest of the
time. Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of
this or that, but hope and enterprise and change. As Hobbes
says, "Felicity consisteth in prospering, not in having pros-
pered." Among modern philosophers, the ideal of unending
and unchanging bliss has been replaced by that of evolution, in
which there is supposed to be an orderly progress toward a
goal which is never quite attained or at any rate has not been
attained at the time of writing. This change of outlook is part
of the substitution of dynamics for statics which began with
Galileo, and which has increasingly affected all modern think-
ing, whether scientific or political
Change is one thing, progress is another. "Change" is scien-
tific, "progress" is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas
progress is a matter of controversy. Let us first consider
change, as it appears in science.
Until the time of Galileo, astronomers, following Aristotle,
believed that everything in the heavens, from the moon up-
wards, is unchanging and incorruptible. Since Laplace, no
PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS 9
reputable astronomer has held this view. Nebulae stars, and
planets, we now believe, have all developed gradually. Some
stars, for Instance, the companion of Sirius, are "dead"; they
have at some time undergone a cataclysm which has enor-
mously diminished the amount of light and heat radiating from
them. Our own planet, in which philosophers are apt to take a
parochial and excessive interest, was once too hot to support
life, and will in time be too cold. After ages during which
the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution
progressed to the point at which it generated Neros, Genghis
Khans, and Hitlers, This, however, is a passing nightmare; in
time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life,
and peace will return.
But this purposeless see-saw, which is all that science has to
offer, has not satisfied the philosophers. They have professed to
discover a formula of progress, showing that the world was
becoming gradually more and more to their liking. The recipe
for a philosophy of this type is simple. The philosopher first
decides which are the features of the existing world that give
him pleasure, and which are the features that give him pain. He
then, by a careful selection among facts, persuades himself that
the universe is subject to a general law leading to an increase
of what he finds pleasant and a decrease of what he finds
unpleasant. Next, having formulated his law of progress, he
turns on the public and says: "It is fated that the world must
develop as I say; therefore those who wish to be on the win-
ning side, and do not care to wage a fruitless war against the
inevitable, will join my party." Those who oppose him are
condemned as unphilosophic, unscientific, and out of date,
while those who agree with him feel assured of victory, since
the universe is on their side. At the same time the winning side,
for reasons which remain somewhat obscure, is represented as
the side of virtue.
to UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
The man who first fully developed this point of view was
Hegel. Hegel's philosophy is so odd that one would not have
expected him to be able to get sane men to accept it, but he
did. He set it out with so much obscurity that people thought
it must be profound. It can quite easily be expounded lucidly
in words of one syllable, but then its absurdity becomes obvious.
What follows is not a caricature, though of course Hegelians
will maintain that it is.
HegePs philosophy, in outline, is as follows. Real reality is
timeless, as in Parmenides and Plato, but there is also an appar-
ent reality, consisting of the every-day world in space and time.
The character of real reality can be determined by logic alone,
since there is only one sort of possible reality that is not self-
contradictory. This is called the "Absolute Idea." Of this he
gives the following definition: "The Absolute Idea. The idea*
as unity of the subjective and objective Idea, is the notion of
the Idea a notion whose objective is the Idea as such, and for
which the objective is Idea an Object which embraces all
characteristics in its unity." I hate to spoil the luminous clarity
of this sentence by any commentary, but in fact the same thing
would be expressed by saying "The Absolute Idea is pure
thought thinking about pure thought." Hegel has already
proved to his satisfaction that all Reality is thought, from
which it follows that thought cannot think about anything but
thought, since there is nothing else to think about. Some people
might find this a little dull; they might say: "I like thinking
about Cape Horn and the South Pole and Mount Everest and
the great nebula in Andromeda; I enjoy contemplating the
ages when the earth was cooling while the sea boiled and vol-
canoes rose and fell between night and morning. I find your
precept, that I should fill my mind with the lucubrations of
word-spinning professors, intolerably stuff y, and really, if that
is your 'happy ending,' I don't think it was worth while to
wade through all the verbiage that led up to it." And with these
PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS II
words they would say goodbye to philosophy and live happy
ever after.
But if we agreed with these people we should be doing
Hegel an injustice, which God forbid. For Hegel would point
out that, while the Absolute, like Aristotle's God, never thinks
about anything but itself, because it knows that all else is
illusion, yet we, who are forced to live in the world of phenom-
ena, as slaves of the temporal process, seeing only the parts,
and only dimly apprehending the whole in moments of mystic
insight, we, illusory products of illusion, are compelled to think
as though Cape Horn were self-subsistent and not merely an
idea in the Divine Mind. When we think we think about Cape
Horn, what happens in Reality is that the Absolute is aware of
a Cape-Horny thought. It really does have such a thought, or
rather such an aspect of the one thought that it timelessly
thinks and is, and this is the only reality that belongs to Cape
Horn. But since we cannot reach such heights, we are doing
our best in thinking of it in the ordinary geographical way.
But what, someone may say, has all this to do with politics?
At first sight, perhaps, not very much. To Hegel, however, the
connection is obvious. It follows from his metaphysic that true
liberty consists in obedience to an arbitrary authority, that free
speech is an evil, that absolute monarchy is good, that the
Prussian State was the best existing at the time when he wrote,
that war is good, and that an international organization for the
peaceful settlement of disputes would be a misfortune.
It is just possible that some among my readers may not see
at once how these consequences follow, so I hope I may be
pardoned for saying a few words about the intermediate steps.
Although time is unreal, the series of appearances which
constitutes history has a curious relation to Reality. Hegel dis-
covered the nature of Reality by a purely logical process called
the "dialectic," which consists of discovering contradictions in
abstract ideas and correcting them by making them less ab-
12 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
stract. Each of these abstract ideas is conceived as a stage in the
development of "The Idea," the last stage being the "Absolute
Idea."
Oddly enough, for some reason which Hegel never divulged,
the temporal process of history repeats the logical development
of the dialectic. It might be thought, since the metaphysic
professes to apply to all Reality, that the temporal process
which parallels it would be cosmic, but not a bit of it: it is
purely terrestrial, confined to recorded history, and (incredible
as this may seem) to the history that Hegel happened to
know. Different nations, at different times, have embodied the
stages of the Idea that the dialectic had reached at those times,
Of China, Hegel knew only that it iw, therefore China illus-
trated the category of mere Being. Of India he knew only
that Buddhists believed in Nirvana, therefore India illustrated
the category of nothing. The Greeks and Romans got rather
further along the list of categories, but all the late stages have
been left to the Germans, who, since the time of the fall of
Rome, have been the sole standard-bearers of the Idea, and had
akeady in 1830 very nearly realized the Absolute Idea.
To anyone who still cherishes the hope that man is a more
or less rational animal, the success of this farrago of nonsense
must be astonishing. In his own day, his system was accepted
by almost all academically educated young Germans, which is
perhaps explicable by the fact that it flattered German self-
esteem. What is more surprising is its success outside Germany.
When I was young, most teachers of philosophy in British and
American universities were Hegelians, so that, until I read
Hegel, I supposed there must be some truth in his system; I
was cured, however, by discovering that everything he said on
the philosophy of mathematics was plain nonsense.
Most curious of all was his effect on Marx, who took over
some of his most fanciful tenets, more particularly the belief
that history develops according to a logical plan, and is con-
PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS 13
cerned, like the purely abstract dialectic, to find ways of avoid-
ing self-contradiction. Over a large part of the earth's surface
you will be liquidated if you question this dogma, and eminent
Western men of science, who sympathize politically with
Russia, show their sympathy by using the word "contradic-
tion" in ways that no self-respecting logician can approve.
In tracing a connection between the politics and the meta-
physics of a man like Hegel, we must content ourselves with
certain very general features of his practical program. That
Hegel glorified Prussia was something of an accident; in his
earlier years he ardently admired Napoleon, and only became
a German patriot when he became an employee of the Prussian
State. Even in the latest form of his Philosophy of History, he
still mentions Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon as men great
enough to have a right to consider themselves exempt from the
obligations of the moral law. What his philosophy constrained
him to admire was not Germany as against France, but order,
system, regulation, and intensity of governmental control. His
deification of the state would have been just as shocking if the
state concerned had been Napoleon's despotism. In his own
opinion, he knew what the world needed, though most men
did not; a strong government might compel men to act for the
best, which democracy could never do. Heraclitus, to whom
Hegel was deeply indebted, says: "Every beast is driven to
the pasture with blows." Let us, in any case, make sure of the
blows; whether they lead to a pasture is a matter of minor
importance except, of course, to the "beasts."
It is obvious that an autocratic system, such as that advocated
by Hegel or by Marx's present-day disciples, is only theoreti-
cally justifiable on a basis of unquestioned dogma. If you
know for certain what is the purpose of the universe in relation
to human life, what is going to happen, and what is good for
people even if they do not think so; if you can say, as Hegel
does, that his theory of history is "a result which happens to
14 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
be known to me, because I have traversed the entire field"
then you will feel that no degree of coercion is too great*
provided it leads to the goal.
The only philosophy that affords a theoretical justification
of democracy, and that accords with democracy in its temper
of mind, is empiricism. Locke, who may be regarded, so far as
the modern world is concerned, as the founder of empiricism,
makes it clear how closely this is connected with his views on
liberty and toleration, and with his opposition to absolute
monarchy. He is never tired of emphasizing the uncertainty of
most of our knowledge, not with a skeptical intention such as
Hume's, but with the intention of making men aware that they
may be mistaken, and that they should take account of this
possibility in all their dealings with men of opinions different
from their own. He had seen the evils wrought, both by the
"enthusiasm" of the sectaries, and by the dogma of the divine
right of kings; to both he opposed a piecemeal and patch-
work political doctrine, to be tested at each point by its success
in practice.
What may be called, in a broad sense, the Liberal theory of
politics is a recurrent product of commerce. The first known
example of it was in the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, which lived
by trading with Egypt and Lydia. When Athens, in the time
of Pericles, became commercial, the Athenians became Liberal.
After a long eclipse, Liberal ideas revived in the Lombard cities
of the middle ages, and prevailed in Italy until they were
extinguished by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. But the
Spaniards failed to reconquer Holland or to subdue England,
and it was these countries that were the champions of Liberal-
Ism and the leaders in commerce in the seventeenth century.
In our day the leadership has passed to the United States,
The reasons for the connection of commerce with Liberal-
ism are obvious. Trade brings men into contact with tribal
customs different from their own, and in so doing destroys the
PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS 15
dogmatism of the untraveled. The relation of buyer and seller
is one of negotiation between two parties who are both free;
it is most profitable when the buyer or seller is able to under-
stand the point of view of the other party. There is, of course,
imperialistic commerce, where men are forced to buy at the
point of the sword; but this is not the kind that generates
Liberal philosophies, which have flourished best in trading
cities that have wealth without much military strength. In the
present day, the nearest analogue to the commercial cities of
antiquity and the middle ages is to be found in small countries
such as Switzerland, Holland, and Scandinavia.
The Liberal creed, in practice, is one of live-and-let-live, of
toleration and freedom so far as public order permits, of mod-
eration and absence of fanaticism in political programs. Even
democracy, when it becomes fanatical, as it did among Rous-
seau's disciples in the French Revolution, ceases to be Liberal;
indeed, a fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic in-
stitutions impossible, as appeared in England under Cromwell
and in France under Robespierre. The genuine Liberal does not
say "this is true," he says "I am inclined to think that under
present circumstances this opinion is probably the best." And
it is only in this limited and undogmatic sense that he will advo-
cate democracy.
What has theoretical philosophy to say that is relevant to
the validity or otherwise of the Liberal outlook?
The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions
are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held
dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a conscious-
ness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their
abandonment. This is the way in which opinions are held
in science, as opposed to the way in which they are held in
theology. The decisions of the Council of Nicaea are still
authoritative, but in science fourth-century opinions no longer
carry any weight. In the U.S.S.R. the dicta of Marx on dialec-
16 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
tical materialism are so unquestioned that they help to deter-
mine the views of geneticists on how to obtain the best breed
of wheat, 1 though elsewhere it is thought that experiment is
the right way to study such problems. Science is empirical,
tentative, and undogmatic; all immutable dogma is unscientific.
The scientific outlook, accordingly, is the intellectual counter-
part of what is, in the practical sphere, the outlook of Liberal-
ism.
Locke, who first developed in detail the empiricist theory of
knowledge, preached also religious toleration, representative
institutions, and the limitation of governmental power by the
system of checks and balances. Few of his doctrines were new,
but he developed them in a weighty manner at just the moment
when the English government was prepared to accept them.
Like the other men of 1688, he was only reluctantly a rebel, and
he disliked anarchy as much as he disliked despotism. Both in
Intellectual and In practical matters he stood for order without
authority; this might be taken as the motto both of science and
of Liberalism. It depends, clearly, upon consent or assent. In
the intellectual world it involves standards of evidence which,
after adequate discussion, will lead to a measure of agreement
among experts. In the practical world it involves submission to
the majority after all parties have had an opportunity to state
their case.
In both respects Ms moment was a fortunate one. The great
controversy between the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems
had been decided, and scientific questions could no longer be
settled by an appeal to Aristotle. Newton's triumphs seemed to
justify boundless scientific optimism.
In the practical world, a century and a half of wars of re-
ligion had produced hardly any change In the balance of power
as between Protestants and Catholics. Enlightened men had
1 See The New Genetics in the Soviet Union, by Hudson and Richens,
School of Agriculture, Cambridge, 1946,
PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS IJ
begun to view theological controversies as an absurdity, cari-
catured in Swift's war between the Big-endians and the Little-
endians. The extreme Protestant sects, by relying upon the
inner light, had made what professed to be Revelation into an
anarchic force. Delightful enterprises, scientific and commer-
cial, invited energetic men to turn aside from barren disputa-
tion. Fortunately they accepted the invitation, and two cen-
turies of unexampled progress resulted.
We are now again in an epoch of wars of religion, but a
religion is now called an "ideology." At the moment, the
Liberal philosophy is felt by many to be too tame and middle-
aged: the idealistic young look for something with more bite
in it, something which has a definite answer to all their ques-
tions, which calls for missionary activity and gives hope of
a millennium brought about by conquest. In short, we have
been plunging into a renewed age of faith. Unfortunately the
atomic bomb is a swifter exterminator than the stake, and can-
not safely be allowed so long a ran. We must hope that a more
rational outlook can be made to prevail, for only through a re-
vival of Liberal tentativeness and tolerance can our world sur-
vive.
The empiricist's theory of knowledge to which, with some
reservations, I adhere is halfway between dogma and skep-
ticism. Almost all knowledge, it holds, is in some degree
doubtful, though the doubt, if any, is negligible as regards pure
mathematics and facts of present sense-perception. The doubt-
fulness of what passes for knowledge is a matter of degree;
having recently read a book on the Anglo-Saxon invasion of
Britain, I am now convinced of the existence of Hengist, but
very doubtful about Horsa. Einstein's general theory of rel-
ativity is probably broadly speaking true, but when it comes to
calculating the circumference of the universe we may be par-
doned for expecting later investigations to give a somewhat
different result. The modern theory of the atom has pragmatic
l8 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
truth, since it enables us to construct atomic bombs: its con-
sequences are what instrumentalists facetiously call "satis-
factory." But it is not improbable that some quite different
theory may in time be found to give a better explanation of the
observed facts. Scientific theories are accepted as useful hy-
potheses to suggest further research, and as having some
element of truth in virtue of which they are able to colligate
existing observations; but no sensible person regards them as
immutably perfect.
In the sphere of practical politics, this intellectual attitude
has important consequences. In the first place, it is not worth.
while to inflict a comparatively certain present evil for the
sake of a comparatively doubtful future good. If the theology
of former times was entirely correct, it was worth while burn-
ing a number of people at the stake in order that the survivors
might go to heaven, but if it was doubtful whether heretics
would go to hell, the argument for persecution was not valid*
If it is certain that Marx's eschatology is true, and that as soon
as private capitalism has been abolished we shall all be happy
ever after, then it is right to pursue this end by means of dicta-
torships, concentration camps, and world wars; but if the end
is doubtful or the means not sure to achieve it, present misery
becomes an irresistible argument against such drastic methods,
If it were certain that without Jews the world would be a
paradise, there could be no valid objection to Auschwitz; but
if it is much more probable that the world resulting from such
methods would be a hell, we can allow free play to our natural
humanitarian revulsion against cruelty.
Since, broadly speaking, the distant consequences of actions
are more uncertain than the immediate consequences, it is
seldom justifiable to embark on any policy on the ground that,
though harmful in the present, it will be beneficial in the long
run. This principle, like all others held by empiricists, must not
be held absolutely; there are cases where the future conse-
quences of one policy are fairly certain and very unpleasant.
PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS 1$
while the present consequences of the other, though not agree-
able, are easily endurable. This applies, for instance, to saving
food for the winter, investing capital in machinery, and so on.
But even in such cases uncertainty should not be lost sight of.
During a boom there is much investment that turns out to have
been unprofitable, and modern economists recognize that the
habit of investing rather than consuming may easily be carried
too far.
It is commonly urged that, in a war between Liberals and
fanatics, the fanatics are sure to win, owing to their more un-
shakable belief in the righteousness of their cause. This belief
dies hard, although all history, including that of the last few
years, is against it. Fanatics have failed, over and over again,
because they have attempted the impossible, or because, even
when what they aimed at was possible, they were too unscien-
tific to adopt the right means; they have failed also because
they roused the hostility of those whom they wished to coerce.
In every important war since 1700 the more democratic side
has been victorious. This is partly because democracy and
empiricism (which are intimately interconnected) do not
demand a distortion of facts in the interests of theory. Russia
and Canada, which have somewhat similar climatic conditions,
are both interested in obtaining better breeds of wheat; in
Canada this aim is pursued experimentally, in Russia by inter-,
preting the Marxist Scriptures.
Systems of dogma without empirical foundation, such as
those of scholastic theology, Marxism, and fascism, have the
advantage of producing a great degree of social coherence
among their disciples. But they have the disadvantage of in-
volving persecution of valuable sections of the population.
Spain was ruined by the expulsion of the Jews and Moors;
France suffered by the emigration of Huguenots after the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; Germany would probably
have been first in the field with the atomic bomb but for Hit-
ler's hatred of Jews. And, to repeat, dogmatic systems have the
2O UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
two further disadvantages of involving false beliefs on practi-
cally important matters of fact, and of rousing violent hostility
in those who do not share the fanaticism in question. For these
various reasons, it is not to be expected that, in the long run,
nations addicted to a dogmatic philosophy will have the advan-
tage over those of a more empirical temper. Nor is it true that
dogma is necessary for social coherence when social coherence
is called for; no nation could have shown more of it than the
British showed in 1940.
Empiricism, finally, is to be commended not only on the
ground of its greater truth, but also on ethical grounds. Dogma
demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the
source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics arid hos-
tility to unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should
inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred. Since
argument is not recognized as a means of arriving at truth,
adherents of rival dogmas have no method except war by
means of which to reach a decision. And war, in our scientific
age, means, sooner or later, universal death.
I conclude that, in our day as in the time of Locke, empiricist
Liberalism (which is not incompatible with democratic social-
ism) is the only philosophy that can be adopted by a man who,
on the one hand, demands some scientific evidence for his
beliefs, and, on the other hand, desires human happiness more
than the prevalence of this or that party or creed. Our con-
fused and difficult world needs various things if it is to escape
disaster, and among these one of the most necessary is that, in
the nations which still uphold Liberal beliefs, these beliefs
should be whole-hearted and profound, not apologetic towards
dogmatisms of the right and of the left, but deeply persuaded
of the value of liberty, scientific freedom, and mutual forbear-
ance. For without these beliefs life on our politically divided
but technically unified planet will hardly continue to be pos-
sible.
II
Philosophy for Laymen
MANKIND, ever since there have been civilized com-
munities, have been confronted with problems of
two different kinds. On the one hand there has been
the problem of mastering natural forces, of acquiring the
knowledge and the skill required to produce tools and weapons
and to encourage Nature in the production of useful animals
and plants. This problem, in the modern world, is dealt with by
science and scientific technique, and experience has shown that
in order to deal with it adequately it is necessary to train a
large number of rather narrow specialists.
But there is a second problem, less precise, and by some
mistakenly regarded as unimportant I mean the problem of
how best to utilize our command over the forces of nature. This
includes such burning issues as democracy versus dictatorship,
capitalism versus socialism, international government versus
international anarchy, free speculation versus authoritarian
dogma. On such issues the laboratory can give no decisive
guidance. The kind of knowledge that gives most help in solv-
ing such problems is a wide survey of human life, in the past as
well as in the present, and an appreciation of the sources of
misery or contentment as they appear in history. It will be
found that increase of skill has not, of itself, insured any in-
2t
22 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
crease of human happiness or well-being. When men first
learned to cultivate the soil, they used their knowledge to estab-
lish a cruel cult of human sacrifice. The men who first tamed
the horse employed him to pillage and enslave peaceable pop-
ulations. When, in the infancy of the industrial revolution, men
discovered how to make cotton goods by machinery, the results
"were horrible: Jefferson's movement for the emancipation of
slaves in America, which had been on the point of success, was
killed dead; child labor in England was developed to a point
of appalling cruelty; and ruthless imperialism in Africa was
stimulated in the hope that black men could be induced to
clothe themselves in cotton goods. In our own day a combina-
tion of scientific genius and technical skill has produced the
atomic bomb, but having produced it we are all terrified, and
do not know what to do with it. These instances, from widely
different periods of history, show that something more than
skill is required, something which may perhaps be called "wis-
dom." This is something that must be learned, if it can be
learned, by means of other studies than those required for scien-
tific technique. And it is something more needed now than ever
before, because the rapid growth of technique has made ancient
habits of thought and action more inadequate than in any ear-
lier time.
"Philosophy" means "love of wisdom," and philosophy in this
sense is what men must acquire if the new powers invented by
technicians, and handed over by them to be wielded by or-
dinary men and women, are not to plunge mankind into an
appalling cataclysm. But the philosophy that should be a part
of general education is not the same thing as the philosophy of
specialists. Not only in philosophy, but in all branches of
academic study, there is a distinction between what has cultural
value and what is only of professional interest. Historians may
debate what happened to Sennacherib's unsuccessful expedi-
tion of 698 B.C., but those who are not historians need not
PHILOSOPHY FOR LAYMEN 23
know the difference between it and his successful expedition
three years earlier. Professional Grecians may usefully discuss
a disputed reading in a play of Aeschylus, but such matters are
not for the man who wishes, in spite of a busy life, to acquire
some knowledge of what the Greeks achieved. Similarly the
men who devote their lives to philosophy must consider ques-
tions that the general educated public does right to ignore*
such as the differences between the theory of universals in
Aquinas and in Duns Scotus, or the characteristics that a lan-
guage must have if it is to be able, without falling into non-
sense, to say things about itself. Such questions belong to the
technical aspects of philosophy, and their discussion cannot
form part of its contribution to general culture.
Academic education should aim at giving, as a corrective of
the specialization which increase of knowledge has made un-
avoidable, as much as time will permit of what has cultural
value in such studies as history, literature, and philosophy. It
should be made easy for a young man who knows no Greek to
atcquire through translations some understanding, however
inadequate, of what the Greeks accomplished. Instead of study-
ing the Anglo-Saxon kings over and over again at school, some
attempt should be made to give a conspectus of world history,
bringing the problems of our own day into relation with those
of Egyptian priests, Babylonian kings, and Athenian reformers,
as well as with all the hopes and despairs of the intervening
centuries. But it is only of philosophy, treated from a similar
point of view, that I wish to write.
Philosophy has had from its earliest days two different ob-
jects which were believed to be closely interrelated. On the
one hand, it aimed at a theoretical understanding of the struc-
ture of the world; on the other hand, it tried to discover and
inculcate the best possible way of life. From Heraclitus to
Hegel, or even to Marx, it consistently kept both ends in view;
it was neither purely theoretical nor purely practical, but
24 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
sought a theory of the universe upon which to base a practical
ethic.
Philosophy has thus been closely related to science on the
one hand, and to religion on the other. Let us consider first the
relation to science. Until the eighteenth century science was
included in what was commonly called "philosophy," but since
that time the word "philosophy" has been confined, on its
theoretical side, to what is most speculative and general in the
topics with which science deals. It is often said that philosophy
is unprogressive, but this is largely a verbal matter: as soon as
a way is found of arriving at definite knowledge on some an-
cient question, the new knowledge is counted as belonging to
"science," and "philosophy" is deprived of the credit. In Greek
times, and down to the time of Newton, planetary theory be-
longed to "philosophy," because it was uncertain and specula-
tive, but Newton took the subject out of the realm of the free
play of hypothesis, and made it one requiring a different type
of skill from that which it had required when it was still open
to fundamental doubts. Anaximander, in the sixth century B.C.,
had a theory of evolution, and maintained that men descended
from fishes. This was philosophy because it was a speculation
unsupported by detailed evidence, but Darwin's theory of
evolution was science, because it was based on the succession
of forms of life as found in fossils, and upon the distribution of
animals and plants in many parts of the world. A man might
say, with enough truth to justify a joke: "Science is what we
know, and philosophy is what we don't know." But it should
be added that philosophical speculation as to what we do not
yet know has shown itself a valuable preliminary to exact sci-
entific knowledge. The guesses of the Pythagoreans in astron-
omy, of Anaximander and Empedocles in biological evolution,
and of Democritus as to the atomic constitution of matter,
provided the men of science in later times with hypotheses
which, but for the philosophers, might never have entered their
PHILOSOPHY FOR LAYMEN 2$
heads. We may say that, on its theoretical side, philosophy
consists, at least in part, in the framing of large general hy-
potheses which science is not yet in a position to test; but when
it becomes possible to test the hypotheses they become, if veri-
fied, a part of science, and cease to count as "philosophy."
The utility of philosophy, on the theoretical side, is not con-
fined to speculations which we may hope to see confirmed or
confuted by science within a measurable time. Some men are
so impressed by what science knows that they forget what it
does not know; others are so much more interested in what it
does not know than in what it does that they belittle its
achievements. Those who think that science is everything be-
come complacent and cocksure, and decry all interest in prob-
lems not having the circumscribed definiteness that is necessary
for scientific treatment. In practical matters they tend to think
that skill can take the place of wisdom, and that to kill each
other by means of the latest technique is more "progressive,"
and therefore better, than to keep each other alive by old-
fashioned methods. On the other hand, those who pooh-pooh
science revert, as a rule, to some ancient and pernicious super-
stition, and refuse to admit the immense increase of human
happiness which scientific technique, if wisely used, would
make possible. Both these attitudes are to be deplored, and it is
philosophy that shows the right attitude, by making clear at
once the scope and the limitations of scientific knowledge.
Leaving aside, for the moment, all questions that have to do
with ethics or with values, there are a number of purely theo-
retical questions, of perennial and passionate interest, which
science is unable to answer, at any rate at present. Do we sur-
vive death in any sense, and if so, do we survive for a time or
forever? Can mind dominate matter, or does matter com-
pletely dominate mind, or has each, perhaps, a certain limited
independence? Has the universe a purpose? Or is it driven by
blind necessity? Or is it a mere chaos and jumble, in which the
26 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
natural laws that we think we find are only a fantasy generated
by our own love of order? If there is a cosmic scheme, has life
more importance in it than astronomy would lead us to sup-
pose, or is our emphasis upon life mere parochialism and self-
importance? I do not know the answer to these questions, and
I do not believe that anybody else does, but I think human life
would be impoverished if they were forgotten, or if definite
answers were accepted without adequate evidence. To keep
alive the interest in such questions, and to scrutinize suggested
answers, is one of the functions of philosophy.
Those who have a passion for quick returns and for an exact
balance sheet of effort and reward may feel impatient of a
study which cannot, in the present state of our knowledge,
arrive at certainties, and which encourages what may be
thought the time-wasting occupation of inconclusive medita-
tion on insoluble problems. To this view I cannot in any de-
gree subscribe. Some kind of philosophy is a necessity to all
but the most thoughtless, and in the absence of knowledge it
is almost sure to be a silly philosophy. The result of this is that
the human race becomes divided into rival groups of fanatics,
each group firmly persuaded that its own brand of nonsense is
sacred truth, while the other side's is damnable heresy, Arians
and Catholics, Crusaders, and Moslems, Protestants and adher-
ents of the Pope, Communists and Fascists, have filled large
parts of the last 1,600 years with futile strife, when a little
philosophy would have shown both sides in all these disputes
that neither had any good reason to believe itself in the right.
Dogmatism is an enemy to peace, and an insuperable barrier to
democracy. In the present age, at least as much as in former
times, it is the greatest of the mental obstacles to human hap-
piness.
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but
is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children
for a picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic
PHILOSOPHY FOR LAYMEN %J
answer as to whether It will be fine or wet, and be disappointed
in you when you cannot be sure. The same sort of assurance
is demanded, in later life, of those who undertake to lead pop-
ulations into the Promised Land. "Liquidate the capitalists and
the survivors will enjoy eternal bliss." "Exterminate the Jews
and everyone will be virtuous." "Kill the Croats and let the
Serbs reign." "Kill the Serbs and let the Croats reign." These
are samples of the slogans that have won wide popular ac-
ceptance in our time. Even a modicum of philosophy would
make it impossible to accept such bloodthirsty nonsense. But
so long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the ab-
sence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure proph-
ets, and It is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant
fanatics or dishonest charlatans. To endure uncertainty is diffi-
cult, but so are most of the other virtues. For the learning of
every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the
learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philoso-
phy.
But if philosophy is to serve a positive purpose, it must not
teach mere skepticism, for, while the dogmatist is harmful, the
skeptic is useless. Dogmatism and skepticism are both, In a
sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the
other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is
certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance. Knowledge
is not so precise a concept as is commonly thought. Instead
of saying "I know this," we ought to say "I more or less know
something more or less like this." It is true that this proviso is
hardly necessary as regards the multiplication table, but knowl-
edge in practical affairs has not the certainty or the precision
of arithmetic. Suppose I say "democracy is a good thing": I
must admit, first, that I am less sure of this than I am that two
and two are four, and secondly, that "democracy" is a some-
what vagtie term which I cannot define precisely. We ought to
say, therefore: "I am fairly certain that it is a good thing If a
28 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
government has something of the characteristics that are com-
mon to the British and American Constitutions," or something
of this sort. And one of the aims of education ought to be to
make such a statement more effective from a platform than the
usual type of political slogan.
For it is not enough to recognize that all our knowledge is,
in a greater or less degree, uncertain and vague; it is necessary,
at the same time, to learn to act upon the best hypothesis with-
out dogmatically believing it. To revert to the picnic: even
though you admit that it may rain, you start out if you think
fine weather probable, but you allow for the opposite possibil-
ity by taking mackintoshes. If you were a dogmatist you
would leave the mackintoshes at home. The same principles
apply to more important issues. One may say broadly: all that
passes for knowledge can be arranged in a hierarchy of degrees
of certainty, with arithmetic and the facts of perception at the
top. That two and two are four, and that I am sitting in my
room writing, are statements as to which any serious doubt on
my part would be pathological. I am nearly as certain that
yesterday was a fine day, but not quite, because memory does
sometimes play odd tricks. More distant memories are more
doubtful, particularly if there is some strong emotional reason
for remembering falsely, such, for instance, as made George IV
remember being at the battle of Waterloo. Scientific laws may
be very nearly certain, or only slightly probable, according to
the state of the evidence.
When you act upon a hypothesis which you know to be un-
certain, your action should be such as will not have very harm-
ful results if your hypothesis is false. In the matter of the pic-
nic, you may risk a wetting if all your party are robust, but
not if one of them is so delicate as to run a risk of pneumonia.
Or suppose you meet a Muggletonian, you will be justified in
arguing with him, because not much harm will have been done
if Mr, Muggleton was in fact as great a man as his disciples sup-
PHILOSOPHY FOR LAYMEN 29
pose, but you will not be justified in burning him at the stake,
because the evil of being burned alive is more certain than any
proposition of theology. Of course if the Muggletonians were
so numerous and so fanatical that either you or they must be
killed the question would grow more difficult, but the general
principle remains, that an uncertain hypothesis cannot justify a
certain evil unless an equal evil is equally certain on the op-
posite hypothesis.
Philosophy, we said, has both a theoretical and a practical
aim. It is now time to consider the latter.
Among most of the philosophers of antiquity there was a
close connection between a view of the universe and a doctrine
as to the best way of life. Some of them founded fraternities
which had a certain resemblance to the monastic orders of later
times. Socrates and Plato were shocked by the sophists be-
cause they had no religious aims. If philosophy is to play a
serious part in the lives of men who are not specialists, it must
not cease to advocate some way of life. In doing this it is seek-
ing to do something of what religion has done, but with cer-
tain differences. The greatest difference is that there is no ap-
peal to authority, whether that of tradition or that of a sacred
book. The second important difference is that a philosopher
should not attempt to establish a church; Auguste Comte tried^
but failed, as he deserved to do. The third is that more stress
should be laid on the intellectual virtues than has been custom-
ary since the decay of Hellenic civilization.
There is one important difference between the ethical teach-
ings of ancient philosophers and those appropriate to our own
day. The ancient philosophers appealed to gentlemen of lei-
sure, who could live as seemed good to them, and could even,
if they chose, found an independent city having laws that em-
bodied the master's doctrines. The immense majority of mod-
ern educated men have no such freedom; they have to earn
their living within the existing framework of society, and they
30 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
cannot make important changes in their own way of life unless
they can first secure important changes in political and eco-
nomic organization. The consequence is that a man's ethical
convictions have to be expressed more in political advocacy,
and less in his private behavior, than was the case in antiquity.
And a conception of a good way of life has to be a social rather
than an individual conception. Even among the ancients, it was
so conceived by Plato in the Republic, but many of them had
a more individualistic conception of the ends of life.
With this proviso, let us see what philosophy has to say on
the subject of ethics.
To begin with the intellectual virtues: The pursuit of philos-
ophy is founded on the belief that knowledge is good, even if
what is known is painful A man imbued with the philosophic
spirit, whether a professional philosopher or not, will wish his
beliefs to be as true as he can make them, and will, in equal
measure, love to know, and hate to be in error. This principle
has a wider scope than may be apparent at first sight. Our be-
liefs spring from a great variety of causes: what we were told
in youth by parents and schoolteachers, what powerful or-
ganizations tell us in order to make us act as they wish, what
either embodies or allays our fears, what ministers to our self-
esteem, and so on. Any one of these causes may happen to lead
us to true beliefs, but is more likely to lead us in the opposite
direction. Intellectual sobriety, therefore, will lead us to scru-
tinize our beliefs closely, with a view to discovering which of
them there is any reason to believe true. If we are wise, we
shall apply solvent criticism especially to the beliefs that we
find it most painful to doubt, and to those most likely to in-
volve us in violent conflict with men who hold opposite but
equally groundless beliefs. If this attitude could become com-
mon, the gain in diminishing the acerbity of disputes would be
incalculable.
lSlLOSOiHY FOR LAYMEN JI
There is another intellectual virtue, which is that of general-
ity or impartiality. I recommend the following exercise; When,
in a sentence expressing political opinion, there are words that
arouse powerful but different emotions in different readers, try
replacing them by symbols, A, B, C, and so on, and forgetting
the particular significance of the symbols. Suppose A is Eng-
land, B is Germany and C is Russia. So long as you remember
what the letters mean, most of the things you will believe will
depend upon whether you are English, German or Russian,
which is logically irrelevant. When, in elementary algebra, yon
do problems about A, B and C going up a mountain, you have
no emotional interest in the gentlemen concerned, and you do
jfour best to work out the solution with impersonal correct-
ness. But if you thought that A was yourself, B your hated
rival and C the schoolmaster who set the problem, your cal-
culations would go askew, and you would be sure to find that
A was first and C was last. In thinking about political problems
this kind of emotional bias is bound to be present, and only
care and practice can enable you to think as objectively as you
do in the algebraic problem.
Thinking in abstract terms is of course not the only way -to
achieve ethical generality; it can be achieved as well, or per-
haps even better, if you can feel generalized emotions. But to
most people this is difficult. If you are hungry, you will make
great exertions, if necessary, to get food; if your children are
hungry, you may feel an even greater urgency. If a friend is
starving, you will probably exert yourself to relieve his dis-
tress. But if you hear that some millions of Indians or Chinese
are in danger of death from malnutrition, the problem is so
vast and so distant that unless you have some official responsi-
bility you probably soon forget all about it. Nevertheless, if
you have the emotional capacity to feel distant evils acutely*
you can achieve ethical generality through feeling. If you have
32 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
not this rather rare gift, the habit of viewing practical prob-
lems abstractly as well as concretely is the best available sub-
stitute.
The interrelation of logical and emotional generality in
ethics is an interesting subject. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself" inculcates emotional generality; "ethical statements
should not contain proper names" inculcates logical generality.
The two precepts sound very different, but when they are ex-
amined it will be found that they are scarcely distinguishable
in practical import. Benevolent men will prefer the traditional
form; logicians may prefer the other. I hardly know which
class of men is the smaller. Either form of statement, if ac-
cepted by statesmen and tolerated by the populations whom
they represent, would quickly lead to the millennium. Jews and
Arabs would come together and say "Let us see how to get
the greatest amount of good for both together, without in-
quiring too closely how it is distributed between us." Ob-
viously each group would get far more of what makes for hap-
piness of both than either can at present. The same would be
true of Hindus and Moslems, Chinese Communists and adher-
ents of Chiang Kai-shek, Italians and Yugoslavs, Russians and
Western democrats. But alas! neither logic nor benevolence
is to be expected on either side in any of these disputes.
It is not to be supposed that young men and women who are
busy acquiring valuable specialized knowledge can spare a
great deal of time for the study of philosophy, but even in the
time that can easily be spared without injury to the learning
of technical skills, philosophy can give certain things that will
greatly increase the student's value as a human being and as a
citizen. It can give a habit of exact and careful thought, not
only in mathematics and science, but in questions of large
practical import. It can give an impersonal breadth and scope
to the conception of the ends of life. It can give to the individ-
ual a just measure of himself in relation to society, of man in
PHILOSOPHY FOR LAYMEN 33
the present to man In the past and In the future, and of the
whole history of man in relation to the astronomical cosmos.
By enlarging the objects of his thoughts it supplies an antidote
to the anxieties and anguish of the present, and makes possible
the nearest approach to serenity that is available to a sensitive
mind in our tortured and uncertain world.
Ill
B
The Future of Mankind
EFORE the end of the present century, unless something
quite unforeseeable occurs, one of three possibilities
will have been realized. These three are:
L The end of human life, perhaps of all life on our planet.
II. A reversion to barbarism after a catastrophic diminution
of the population of the globe.
III. A unification of the world under a single government,
possessing a monopoly of all the major weapons of war.
I do not pretend to know which of these will happen, or even
which is the most likely. What I do contend, without any hesi-
tation, is that the kind of system to which we have been ac-
customed cannot possibly continue.
The first possibility, the extinction of the human race, is not
to be expected in the next world war, unless that war is post-
poned for a longer time than now seems probable. But if the
next world war is Indecisive, or if the victors are unwise, and if
organized states survive it, a period of feverish technical devel-
opment may be expected to follow its conclusion. With vastly
more powerful means of utilizing atomic energy than those
now available, it is thought by many sober men of science that
radio-active clouds, drifting round the world, may disintegrate
34
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND 35
living tissue everywhere. Although the last survivor may pro-
claim himself universal Emperor, his reign will be brief and his
subjects will all be corpses. With his death the uneasy episode
of life will end, and the peaceful rocks will revolve unchanged
until the sun explodes*
Perhaps a disinterested spectator would consider this the
most desirable consummation, in view of man's long record of
folly and cruelty. But we, who are actors in the drama, who
are entangled in the net of private affections and public hopes,
can hardly take this Attitude with any sincerity. True, I have
heard men say that they would prefer the end of man to sub-
mission to the Soviet government, and doubtless in Russia
there are those who would say the same about submission to
Western capitalism. But this is rhetoric with a bogus air of
heroism. Although it must be regarded as unimaginative hum-
bug, it is dangerous, because it makes men less energetic in
seeking ways of avoiding the catastrophe that they pretend not
to dread.
The second possibility, that of a reversion to barbarism,
would leave open the likelihood of a gradual return to civiliza-
tion, as after the fall of Rome. The sudden transition will, if
it occurs, be infinitely painful to those who experience it, and
for some centuries afterwards life will be hard and drab. But
at any rate there will still be a future for mankind, and the pos-
sibility of rational hope.
I think such an outcome of a really scientific world war is
by no means improbable. Imagine each side in a position to de-
stroy the chief cities and centers of industry of the enemy;
imagine an almost complete obliteration of laboratories and li-
braries, accompanied by a heavy casualty rate among men of
science; imagine famine due to radio-active spray, and pesti-
lence caused by bacteriological warfare: would social cohesion
survive such strains? Would not prophets tell the maddened
populations that their ills were wholly due to science, and that
36 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
the extermination of all educated men would bring the mil-
lennium? Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in
such a world hopes could only be irrational. I think the great
states to which we are accustomed would break up, and the
sparse survivors would revert to a primitive village economy.
The third possibility, that of the establishment of a single
government for the whole world, might be realized in various
ways: by the victory of the United States in the next world
war, or by the victory of the U.S.S.R., or, theoretically, by
agreement. Or and I think this is the most hopeful of the is-
sues that are in any degree probable by an alliance of the na-
tions that desire an international government, becoming, in the
end, so strong that Russia would no longer dare to stand out.
This might conceivably be achieved without another world
war, but it would require courageous and imaginative states-
manship in a number of countries.
There are various arguments that are used against the project
of a single government of the whole world. The commonest
is that the project is Utopian and impossible. Those who use
this argument, like most of those who advocate a world gov-
ernment, are thinking of a world government brought about
by agreement. I think it is plain that the mutual suspicions be-
tween Russia and the West make it futile to hope, in any near
future, for any genuine agreement. Any pretended universal
authority to which both sides can agree, as things stand, is
bound to be a sham, like U.N.O. Consider the difficulties that
have been encountered in the much more modest project of
an international control over atomic energy, to which Russia
will only consent if inspection is subject to the veto, and there-
fore a farce. I think we should admit that a world government
will have to be imposed by force.
But many people will say why all this talk about a world
government? Wars have occurred ever since men were or-
ganized into units larger than the family, but the human race
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND 37
has survived. Why should It not continue to survive even if
wars go on occurring from time to time? Moreover, people
like war, and will feel frustrated without it. And without war
there will be no adequate opportunity for heroism or self-
sacrifice.
This point of view which is that of innumerable elderly
gentlemen, including the rulers of Soviet Russia fails to take
account of modern technical possibilities. I think civilization
could probably survive one more world war, provided it oc-
curs fairly soon and does not last long. But if there is no slow-
ing up in the rate of discovery and invention, and if great wars
continue to recur, the destruction to be expected, even if it
fails to exterminate the human race, is pretty certain to pro-
duce the kind of reversion to a primitive social system that I
spoke of a moment ago. And this will entail such an enormous
diminution of population, not only by war, but by subsequent
starvation and disease, that the survivors are bound to be fierce
and, at least for a considerable time, destitute of the qualities
required for rebuilding civilization.
Nor is it reasonable to hope that, if nothing drastic is done 9
wars will nevertheless not occur. They always have occurred
from time to time, and obviously will break out again sooner
or later unless mankind adopt some system that makes them
impossible. But the only such system is a single government
with a monopoly of armed force.
If things are allowed to drift, it is obvious that the bickering
between Russia and the Western democracies wili continue
until Russia has a considerable store of atomic bombs, and
that when that time comes there will be an atomic war. In such
a war, even if the worst consequences are avoided, Western
Europe, including Great Britain, will be virtually extermi-
nated. If America and the U.S.S.R. survive as organized states,
they will presently fight again. If one side is victorious, it will
rule the world, and a unitary government of mankind will have
38 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
come into existence; if not, either mankind, or at least civiliza-
tion, will perish. This is what must happen, if nations and their
rulers are lacking in constructive vision.
When I speak of "constructive vision," I do not mean merely
the theoretical realization that a world government is desirable.
More than half the American nation, according to the Gallup
poll, hold this opinion. But most of its advocates think of it as
something to be established by friendly negotiation, and shrink
from any suggestion of the use of force. In this I think they are
mistaken. I am sure that force, or the threat of force, will be
necessary. I hope the threat of force may suffice, but, if not,
actual force should be employed.
Assuming a monopoly of armed force established by the vic-
tory of one side in a war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.,
what sort of world will result?
In either case, it will be a world in which successful rebellion
will be impossible. Although, of course, sporadic assassination
will still be liable to occur, the concentration of all important
weapons in the hands of the victors will make them irresistible,
and there will therefore be secure peace. Even if the dominant
nation is completely devoid of altruism, its leading inhabitants,
at least, will achieve a very high level of material comfort, and
will be freed from the tyranny of fear. They are likely, there-
fore, to become gradually more good-natured and less inclined
to persecute. Like the Romans, they will, in the course of time,
extend citizenship to the vanquished. There will then be a true
world state, and it will be possible to forget that it will have
owed its origin to conquest. Which of us, during the reign of
Lloyd George, felt humiliated by the contrast with the days
of Edward I?
A world empire of either the U.S. or the U.S.SJEL is there-
fore preferable to the results of a continuation of the present
international anarchy.
There are 9 however, important reasons for preferring a vie-
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND 39
tory of America. I am not contending that capitalism is better
than Communism; I think it not impossible that, if America
were Communist and Russia were capitalist, I should still be on
the side of America. My reason for siding with America is that
there is in that country more respect than in Russia for the
things that I value in a civilized way of life. The things I have
in mind are such as: freedom of thought, freedom of inquiry,
freedom of discussion, and humane feeling. What a victory of
Russia would mean is easily to be seen in Poland. There were
flourishing universities in Poland, containing men of great in-
tellectual eminence. Some of these men, fortunately, escaped;
the rest disappeared. Education is now reduced to learning the
formula of Stalinist orthodoxy; it is only open (beyond the
elementary stage) to young people whose parents are politi-
cally irreproachable, and it does not aim at producing any
mental faculty except that of glib repetition of correct shib-
boleths and quick apprehension of the side that is winning offi-
cial favor. From such an educational system nothing of intel-
lectual value can result.
Meanwhile the middle class was annihilated by mass depor-
tations, first in 1940, and again after the expulsion of the Ger-
mans. Politicians of majority parties were liquidated, impris-
oned, or compelled to fly. Betraying friends to the police, or
perjury when they were brought to trial, are often the only
means of survival for those who have incurred governmental
.suspicions,
I do not doubt that, if this regime continues for a generation*
it will succeed in its objects. Polish hostility to Russia will die
out, and be replaced by Communist orthodoxy. Science and
philosophy, art and literature, will become sycophantic ad-
juncts of government, jejune, narrow, and stupid. No individ-
ual will think, or even feel, for himself, but each will be con-
tentedly a mere unit in the mass. A victory of Russia would,
in time, make such a mentality world-wide. No doubt the
40 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
complacency induced by success would ultimately lead to a
relaxation of control, but the process would be slow, and the
revival of respect for the individual would be doubtful. For
such reasons I should view a Russian victory as an appalling
disaster.
A victory by the United States would have far less drastic
consequences. In the first place, it would not be a victory of
the United States in isolation, but of an Alliance in which the
other members would be able to insist upon retaining a large
part of their traditional independence. One can hardly imagine
the American army seizing the dons at Oxford and Cambridge
and sending them to hard labor in Alaska. Nor do I think that
they would accuse Mr. Attlee of plotting and compel him to
fly to Moscow. Yet these are strict analogues to the things the
Russians have done in Poland. After a victory of an Alliance
led by the United States there would still be British culture,
French culture, Italian culture, and (I hope) German culture;,
there would not, therefore, be the same dead uniformity as
would result from Soviet domination.
There is another important difference, and that is that Mos-
cow orthodoxy is much more all-pervasive than that of Wash-
ington. In America, if you are a geneticist, you may hold what-
ever view of Mendelism the evidence makes you regard as the
most probable; in Russia, if you are a geneticist who disagrees
with Lysenko, you are liable to disappear mysteriously. In
America, you may write a book debunking Lincoln if you feel
so disposed; in Russia, if you write a book debunking Lenin, it
would not be published and you would be liquidated. If you
are an American economist, you may hold, or not hold, that
America is heading for a slump; in Russia, no economist dare
question that an American slump is imminent. In America, if
you are a professor of philosophy, you may be an idealist, a
materialist, a pragmatist, a logical positivist, or whatever else
may take your fancy; at congresses you can argue with men
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND 41
whose opinions differ from yours, and listeners can form a
judgment as to who has the best of it. In Russia you must be a
dialectical materialist, but at one time the element of material-
ism outweighs the element of dialectic, and at other times it is
the other way round. If you fail to follow the developments of
official metaphysics with sufficient nimbleness, it will be the
worse for you. Stalin at all times knows the truth about meta-
physics, but you must not suppose that the truth this year is
the same as it was last year.
In such a world intellect must stagnate, and even technologi-
cal progress must soon come to an end.
Liberty, of the sort that Communists despise, is important
not only to intellectuals or to the more fortunate sections of
society. Owing to its absence in Russia, the Soviet government
has been able to establish a greater degree of economic in-
equality than exists in Great Britain, or even in America, An
oligarchy which controls all the means of publicity can per-
petrate injustices and cruelties which would be scarcely pos-
sible if they were widely known. Only democracy and free
publicity can prevent the holders of power from establishing
a servile state, with luxury for the few and overworked pov-
erty for the many. This is what is being done by the Soviet
government wherever it is in secure control. There are, of
course, economic inequalities everywhere, but in a democratic
regime they tend to diminish, whereas under an oligarchy they
tend to increase. And wherever an oligarchy has power, eco-
nomic inequalities threaten to become permanent owing to the
modern impossibility of successful rebellion,
I come now to the question: what should be our policy, in
view of the various dangers to which mankind is exposed? To
summarize the above arguments: We have to guard against
three dangers: (i) the extinction of the human race; (2) a
reversion to barbarism; (3) the establishment of a universal
slave state, involving misery for the vast majority,, and the dis-
42 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
appearance of all progress in knowledge and thought. Either
the first or second of these disasters is almost certain unless
great wars can soon be brought to an end. Great wars can
only be brought to an end by the concentration of armed force
under a single authority. Such a concentration cannot be
brought about by agreement, because of the opposition of So-
viet Russia, but it must be brought about somehow.
The first step and it is one which is now not very difficult
is to persuade the United States and the British Common-
wealth of the absolute necessity for a military unification of
the world. The governments of the English-speaking nations
should then offer to all other nations the option of entering into
a firm Alliance, involving a pooling of military resources and
mutual defense against aggression. In the case of hesitant na-
tions, such as Italy, great inducements, economic and military,
should be held out to produce their co-operation.
At a certain stage, when the Alliance had acquired sufficient
strength, any Great Power still refusing to join should be
threatened with outlawry, and, if recalcitrant, should be re-
garded as a public enemy. The resulting war, if it occurred
fairly soon, would probably leave the economic and political
structure of the United States intact, and would enable the
victorious Alliance to establish a monopoly of armed force,
and therefore to make peace secure. But perhaps, if the Alli-
ance were sufficiently powerful, war would not be necessary,
and the reluctant Powers would prefer to enter it as equals
rather than, after a terrible war^ submit to it as vanquished en-
emies. If this were to happen, the world might emerge from its
present dangers without another great war. I do not see any
hope of such a happy issue by any other method. But whether
Russia would yield when threatened with war is a question as
to which I do not venture an opinion.
I have been dealing mainly with the gloomy aspects of the
present situation of mankind. It is necessary to do so, in order
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND 43
to persuade the world to adopt measures running counter to
traditional habits of thought and ingrained prejudices. But be-
yond the difficulties and probable tragedies of the near future
there is the possibility of immeasurable good, and of greater
well-being than has ever before fallen to the lot of man. This is
not merely a possibility, but, if the Western democracies are
firm and prompt, a probability. From the break-up of the Ro-
man Empire to the present day, states have almost continu-
ously increased in size. There are now only two fully inde-
pendent states, America and Russia. The next step in this long
historical process should reduce the two to one, and thus put
an end to the period of organized wars, which began in Egypt
some 6,000 years ago. If war can be prevented without the es-
tablishment of a grinding tyranny, a weight will be lifted from
the human spirit, deep collective fears will be exorcised, and
as fear diminishes we may hope that cruelty also will grow
less.
The uses to which men have put their increased control over
natural forces are curious. In the nineteenth century they de-
voted themselves chiefly to increasing the numbers of homo
sapiens, particularly of the white variety. In the twentieth
century they have, so far, pursued the exactly opposite aim.
Owing to the increased productivity of labor, it has become
possible to devote a larger percentage of the population to war.
If atomic energy were to make production easier, the only ef-
fect, as things are, would be to make wars worse, since fewer
people would be needed for producing necessaries. Unless we
can cope with the problem of abolishing war, there is no rea-
son whatever to rejoice in labor-saving technique, but quite
the reverse. On the other hand, if the danger of war were re-
moved, scientific technique could at last be used to promote
human happiness. There is no longer any technical reason for
the persistence of poverty, even in such densely populated
countries as India and China. If war no longer occupied men's
44 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
thoughts and energies, we could, within a generation, put an
end to all serious poverty throughout the world.
I have spoken of liberty as a good, but it is not an absolute
good. We all recognize the need to restrain murderers, and it
is even more important to restrain murderous states. Liberty
must be limited by law, and its most valuable forms can only
exist within a framework of law. What the world most needs
is effective laws to control international relations. The first and
most difficult step in the creation of such law is the establish-
ment of adequate sanctions, and this is only possible through
the creation of a single armed force in control of the whole
world. But such an armed force, like a municipal police force,
is not an end in itself; it is a means to the growth of a social
system governed by law, where force is not the prerogative of
private individuals or nations, but is exercised only by a neutral
authority in accordance with rules laid down in advance.
There is hope that law, rather than private force, may come
to govern the relations of nations within the present century.
If this hope is not realized we face utter disaster; if it is
realized, the world will be far better than at any previous
period in the history of man.
IV
Philosophy's Ulterior Motives
METAPHYSICS, according to F, H. Bradley, "is the find-
ing of bad reasons for what we believe upon in-
stinct." It is curious to find this pungent dictum at
the beginning of a long book of earnest and even unctuous
metaphysics, which, through much arduous argumentation,
leads up to the final conclusion: "Outside of spirit there is
not, and there cannot be, any reality, and, the more that any-
thing is spiritual, so much the more is it veritably real." A rare
moment of self-knowledge must have inspired the initial apho-
rism, which was made bearable to its author by its semi-hu-
morous form; but throughout the rest of his labors he allowed
himself to be claimed by "the instinct to find bad reasons."
When he was serious he was sophistical, and a typical philoso-
pher; when he jested, he had insight and uttered unphUosophi-
cal truth.
Philosophy has been defined as "an unusually obstinate at-
tempt to think clearly"; I should define it rather as "an unusu-
ally ingenious attempt to think fallaciously." The philosopher's
temperament is rare, because it has to combine two somewhat
conflicting characteristics: on the one hand a strong desire to
believe some general proposition about the universe or human
life; on the other hand, inability to believe contentedly except
45
46 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
on what appear to be intellectual grounds. The more profound
the philosopher, the more intricate and subde must his fallacies
be In order to produce in him the desired state of intellectual
acquiescence. That is why philosophy is obscure.
To the completely unintellectual, general doctrines are un-
important; to the man of science, they are hypotheses to be
tested by experiment; while to the philosopher they are mental
habits which must be justified somehow if he is to find life
endurable. The typical philosopher finds certain beliefs emo-
tionally indispensable, but intellectually difficult; he therefore
goes through long chains of reasoning, in the course of which,
sooner or later, a momentary lack of vigilance allows a fallacy
to pass undetected. After the one false step, his mental agility
quickly takes him far into the quagmire of falsehood.
Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, illustrates per-
fectly this peculiar mental temper. He would never so he as-
sures us have been led to construct his philosophy if he had
had only one teacher, for then he would have believed what
he had been told; but, finding that his professors disagreed
with each other, he was forced to conclude that no existing
doctrine was certain. Having a passionate desire for certainty,
he set to work to think out a new method of achieving it. As a
first step, he determined to reject everything that he could
bring himself to doubt, Everyday objects his acquaintance,
the streets, the sun and moon, and so on might be illusions,
for he saw similar things in dreams, and could not be certain
that he was not always dreaming. The demonstrations in math-
ematics might be wrong, since mathematicians sometimes made
mistakes. But he could not bring himself to doubt his own ex-
istence, since if he did not exist he could not doubt. Here at
last, therefore, he had an indubitable premise for reconstruc-
tion of the intellectual edifices which his former skepticism had
overthrown.
PHILOSOPHY'S ULTERIOR MOTIVES 47
So far, so good. But from this moment his work loses all Its
critical acumen, and he accepts a host of scholastic maxims for
which theie is nothing to be said except the tradition of the
schools. He believes that he exists, he says, because he sees this
very clearly and very distinctly; he concludes, therefore, "that
1 may take as a general rale that the things which we conceive
very clearly and very distinctly are all true." He then begins to
conceive all sorts of things "very clearly and very distinctly,"
such as that an effect cannot have more perfection than its
cause. Since he can form an idea of God that is, of a being
more perfect than himself this idea must have had a cause
other than himself, which can only be God; therefore God
exists. Since God is good, He will not perpetually deceive
Descartes; therefore the objects which Descartes sees when
awake must really exist. And so on. All intellectual caution is
thrown to the winds, and it might seem as if the initial skepti-
cism had been merely rhetorical, though I do not believe that
this would be psychologically true. Descartes's initial doubt
was, I believe, as genuine as that of a man who has lost his way,
but was equally intended to be replaced by certainty at the
earliest possible moment.
In a man whose reasoning powers are good, fallacious argu-
ments are evidence of bias. While Descartes is being skeptical,
all that he says is acute and cogent, and even his first construc-
tive step, the proof of his own existence, has much to be said
in its favor. But everything that follows is loose and slip-shod
and hasty, thereby displaying the distorting influence of de-
sire. Something may be attributed to the need of appearing
orthodox in order to escape persecution, but a more intimate
cause must also have been at work. I do not suppose that he
cared passionately about the reality of sensible objects, or even
of God, but he did care about the truth of mathematics. And
this, in his system, could only be established by first proving
48 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
the existence and attributes of the Deity. His system, psycho-
logically, was as follows: No God, no geometry; but geometry
is delicious; therefore God exists.
Leibniz, who invented the phrase that "this is the best of all
possible worlds," was a very different kind of man from Des-
cartes. He was comfortable, not passionate; a professional, not
an amateur. He made his living by writing the annals of the
House of Hanover, and his reputation by bad philosophy. He
also wrote good philosophy, but this he took care not to pub-
lish, as it would have cost him the pensions he received from
various princes. One of his most important popular works, the
Theodicfa, was written for Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia
(daughter of the Electress Sophia), as an antidote to the skepti-
cism of Bayle's Dictionary, In this work he sets forth, in the
authentic style of Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss, the grounds of op-
timism. He holds that there are many logically possible worlds,
any one of which God could have created; that some of them
contain no sin and no pain; and that in this actual world the
number of the damned is incomparably greater than the num-
ber of the saved. But he thinks that worlds without evil contain
so much less good than this world which God has chosen to
create that they have a smaller excess of good over evil than it
has. Leibniz and Queen Sophie Charlotte, who did not consider
themselves likely to be among the damned, apparently found
this type of optimism satisfying.
Beneath these superficialities there is a deeper problem, with
which Leibniz struggled all his life. He wished to escape from
the rigid necessity that characterized the determinisms world,
without diminishing the empire of logic. The actual world, he
thought, contains free will; moreover, God freely chose it in
preference to any of the other possible worlds. But since they
are less good than the actual world, the choice of one of them
would have been incompatible with God's goodness; are we,
then, to conclude that God is not necessarily good? Leibniz
PHILOSO-P.HY.'S ULTERIOR MOTIVES 49
can hardly say this, for, like other philosophers, he believes it
possible to find out important things, such as the nature of
God, by merely sitting still and thinking; he shrinks, however,
from the determinism which this view implies. He therefore
takes refuge in obscurity and ambiguity. By great dexterity he
avoids a sharp contradiction, but at the expense of the diffused
muddle which pervades his whole system.
11
A new method of apologetics was invented by the amiable
Bishop Berkeley, who attacked the materialists of his day with
the arguments which, in our time, have been revived by Sir
James Jeans. His purpose was twofold: first, to prove that
there can be no such thing as matter: secondly, to deduce
from this negative proposition the necessary existence of God.
On the first point, his contentions have never been answered;
but I doubt whether he would have cared to advance them if
he had not believed that they afforded support for theological
orthodoxy.
When you think you see a tree, Berkeley points out that
what you really know is not an external object, but a modifica-
tion of yourself, a sensation, or, as he calls it, an "idea." This,
which is all that you directly know, ceases if you shut your
eyes. Whatever you can perceive is in your mind, not an ex-
ternal material object. Matter, therefore, is an unnecessary
hypothesis. What is real about the tree is the perceptions of
those who are supposed to "see" it; the rest is a piece of unnec-
essary metaphysics.
Up to this point, Berkeley's argumentation is able and
largely valid. But now he suddenly changes his tone, and, after
advancing a bold paradox, falls back upon the prejudices of the
unphilosophical as the basis of his next thesis. He feels it pre-
posterous to suppose that trees and houses, mountains and riv-
50 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
ers, the sun and the moon and stars, only exist while we are
looking at them, whichjs what his previous contentions sug-
gest. There must, he thinks, be some permanence about physi-
cal objects, and some independence v of human beings. This he
secures by supposing that the tree is really an idea in the mind
of God, and therefore continues to exist when no human be-
ing is looking at it. The consequences of his own paradox, if
he had frankly accepted them, would have seemed to him
dreadful; but by a sudden twist he rescues orthodoxy and some
parts of common sense.
The same timidity in admitting the skeptical consequences
of his argument has been shown by all his followers, except
Hume; his most modern disciples have, in this respect, made no
advance whatever upon him. None can bear to admit that if I
know only "ideas" it is only my ideas that I know, and there-
fore I can have no reason to believe in the existence of any-
thing except my own mental states. Those who have admitted
the validity of this very simple argument have not been disci-
ples of Berkeley, since they have found such a conclusion in-
tolerable; they have therefore argued that it is not only "ideas"
that we know. 1
1 The two sides of Berkeley's philosophy are illustrated by the follow-
ing two limericks:
There once was a man who said, "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."
RONALD KNOX
Dear Sir,
Your astonishment's odd;
/ am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
God
MOTIVES 51
Hume, the enfant terrible of philosophy, was peculiar in
having no metaphysical ulterior motives. He was a historian
and essayist as well as a philosopher, he had a comfortable tem-
perament, and he perhaps derived as much pleasure from an-
noying the perpetrators of fallacies as he could have derived
from inventing fallacies of his own. However, the main out-
come of his activities was to stimulate two new sets of fallacies,
one in England and the other in Germany. The German set
are the more interesting.
The first German to take notice of Hume was Imrnanuel
Kant, who had been content, up to the age of about forty-five,
with the dogmatic tradition derived from Leibniz. Then, as he
says himself, Hume "awakened him from his dogmatic slum-
bers." After meditating for twelve years, he produced his great
work, the Critique of Pure Reason; seven years later, at the
age of sixty-four, he produced the Critique of Practical Reason,
in which he resumed his dogmatic slumbers after nearly twenty
years of uncomfortable wakefulness. His fundamental desires
were two: he wanted to be sure of an invariable routine, and
he wanted to believe the moral maxims that he had learned in
infancy. Hume was upsetting in both respects, for he main-
tained that we could not trust the law of causality, and he
threw doubt on the future life, so that the good could not be
sure of a reward in heaven. The first twelve years of Kant's
meditations on Hume were devoted to the law of causality,
and at the end he produced a remarkable solution. True, he
said, we cannot know that there are causes in the real world,
but then we cannot know anything about the real world. The
world of appearances, which is the only one that we can ex-
perience, has all sorts of properties contributed by ourselves,
just as a man who has a pair of green spectacles that he cannot
take off is sure to see things green. The phenomena that we
experience have causes, which are other phenomena; we need
not worry as to whether there is causation in the reality be-
52 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
hind the phenomena, since we cannot experience it. Kant went
for a walk at exactly the same time every day, and his servant
followed carrying the umbrella. The twelve years spent in
producing the Critique of Pure Reason persuaded the old man
that, if it came on to rain, the umbrella would prevent him
from feeling wet, whatever Hume might say about the real
raindrops.
This was comforting, but the comfort had been purchased
at a great price. Space and time, in which phenomena take
place, are unreal: Kant's psychical mechanism manufactured
them. He did not know much about space, having never been
more than ten miles from Konigsberg; perhaps if he had
traveled he would have doubted whether his subjective crea
tiveness was equal to inventing the geography of all he saw. It
was pleasant, however, to be sure of the truth of geometry,
for, having manufactured space himself, he was quite sure that
he had made it Euclidean, and he was sure of this without
looking outside himself. In this way mathematics was got safely
under the umbrella.
But although mathematics was safe, morality was still in
danger. In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant taught that pure
reason cannot prove the future life or the existence of God; it
cannot therefore assure us that there is justice in the world.
Moreover, there was a difficulty about free will My actions,
in so far as I can observe them, are phenomena, and therefore
have causes. As to what my actions are in themselves, pure
reason can tell me nothing, so that I do not know whether they
are free or not. However, "pure" reason is not the only kind;
there is another not "impure," as might have been expected,
but "practical." This starts from the premise that all the moral
rules Kant was taught in childhood are true. (Such a premise,
of course, needs a disguise; it is introduced to philosophical
society under the name of the "categorical imperative.") It
follows that the will is free, for it would be absurd to say "you
PHILOSOPHY'S ULTERIOR MOTIVES 53
ought to do so-and-so" unless you can do it. It follows also that
there is a future life, since otherwise the good might not be
adequately rewarded, nor the wicked adequately punished. It
follows also that there must be a God to arrange these things.
Hume may have routed "pure" reason, but the moral law has,
in the end, restored the victory to the metaphysicians. So
Kant died happy, and has been honored ever since; his doctrine
has even been proclaimed the official philosophy of the Nazi
state.
in
Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid,
and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely
happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems
which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.
The supreme practitioner in this art was Hegel. For him the
course of logic and the course of history were broadly identi-
cal. Logic, for him, consisted of a series of self-correcting at-
tempts to describe the world. If your first attempt is too
simple, as it is sure to be, you will find that it contradicts itself;
you will then try the opposite, or "antithesis," but this will
also contradict itself. This leads you to a "synthesis," contain-
ing something of the original idea and something of its op-
posite, but more complex and less self-contradictory than
either. This new idea, however, will also prove inadequate, and
you will be driven, through its opposite, to a new synthesis.
This process goes on until you reach the "Absolute Idea," in
which there is no contradiction, and which, therefore, de-
scribes the real world.
But the real world, in Hegel as in Kant, is not the apparent
world. The apparent world goes through developments which
are the same as those that the logician goes through if he starts
from Pure Being and travels on to the Absolute Idea. Pure
5-4 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
Being is exemplified by ancient China, of which Hegel knew
only that it had existed; the Absolute Idea is exemplified by
the Prussian state, which had given Hegel a professorship at
Berlin. Why the world should go through this logical evolu-
tion is not clear; one is tempted to suppose that the Absolute
Idea did not quite understand itself at first, and made mistakes
when it tried to embody itself in events. But this, of course,
was not what Hegel would have said.
Hegel's system satisfied the instincts of philosophers more
fully than any of its predecessors. It was so obscure that no
amateurs could hope to understand it. It was optimistic, since
history is a progress in the unfolding of the Absolute Idea. It
showed that the philosopher, sitting in his study considering
abstract ideas, can know more about the real world than the
statesman or the historian or the man of science. As to this, it
must be admitted, there was an unfortunate incident. Hegel
published his proof that there must be exactly seven planets
just a week before the discovery of the eighth. The matter
was hushed up, and a new, revised edition was hastily prepared;
nevertheless, there were some who scoif ed. But, in spite of this
contretemps, Hegel's system was for a time triumphant in
Germany. When it had been almost forgotten in its native
country, it began to control the universities of Great Britain
and America. Now, however, its adherents are a small and
rapidly diminishing band. No subsequent great system has
taken its place in the academic mind, and few now dare to say
that the philosopher, by mere thinking without observation,
can detect the errors of the man of science.
Outside the universities, however, one last great system has
arisen from Hegel's ashes, and has kept alive in wide circles
the happy faith in the power of thought which our professors
have lost. This last survivor of an almost extinct species is the
doctrine of Karl Marx. Marx took over from Hegel the belief in
dialectic that is to say, in logical development by thesis, an-
PHILOSOPHY'S ULTERIOR MOTIVES 55
tithesis, and synthesis, shown in the conrse of human history and
not only In abstract thought. To Hegel, at the head of his pro-
fession and revered by his compatriots, it was possible to re-
gard the Prussian state as the goal towards which all previous
efforts had been tending; but to Marx, poor, ill, and in exile,
it was obvious that the world is not yet perfect. One more
turn of the dialectical wheel that is to say, one more revolu-
tion is necessary before the attainment of the millennium.
There can be do doubt that this revolution will take place, for
Marx, like Hegel, regards history as a logical process, so that its
stages are as indubitable as arithmetic. Faith and hope thus find
a place in Marxian doctrine.
Most of Marx's theory is independent of Hegel, but the
Hegelian element is important, since it contributes the cer-
tainty of victory and the feeling of being on the side of ir-
resistible cosmic forces. Emotionally, belief in Hegelian dia-
lectic, when it exists in those whose present circumstances are
unfortunate, is analogous to the Christian belief in the Second
Coming; but its supposed logical basis gives it a hold on the
head as well as the heart. Its hold on the head is endangered
not so much by bourgeois prejudice as by the empirical scien-
tific temper, which refuses to suppose that we can know as
much about the universe as the metaphysicians supposed. Per-
haps empirical sobriety is so difficult that men will never pre-
serve it except when they are happy. If so, the various irrational
faiths of our time are a natural outcome of our self-imposed
misfortunes, and a new era of metaphysics may be inspired by
new disasters.
Philosophy is a stage in intellectual development, and is not
compatible with mental maturity. In order that it may flourish,
traditional doctrines must still be believed, but not so unques-
56 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
tioningly that arguments in support of them are never sought;
there must also be a belief that important truths can be dis-
covered by merely thinking, without the aid of observation.
This belief is true in pure mathematics, which has inspired
many of the great philosophers. It is true in mathematics be-
cause that study is essentially verbal; it is not true elsewhere,
because thought alone cannot establish any non-verbal fact.
Savages and barbarians believe in a magical connection be-
tween persons and their names, which makes it dangerous to
let an enemy know what they are called. The distinction be-
tween words and what they designate is one which it is diffi-
cult always to remember; metaphysicians, like savages, are apt
to imagine a magical connection between words and things,
or at any rate between syntax and world structure. Sentences
have subjects and predicates, therefore the world consists of
substances with attributes. Until very recently this argument
was accepted as valid by almost all philosophers; or rather,
it controlled their opinions almost without their own knowl-
edge.
In addition to confusion between language and what it
means, there is another source of the belief that the philosopher
can find out facts by mere thinking; this is the conviction that
the world must be ethically satisfying. Dr. Pangloss in his
study can ascertain what sort of universe would, to his way of
thinking, be the best possible; he can also convince himself, so
long as he stays in his study, that the universe means to satisfy
his ethical demands. Bernard Bosanquet, until his death one of
the recognized leaders of British philosophy, maintained in his
Logic, ostensibly on logical grounds, that "it would be hard
to believe, for example, in the likelihood of a catastrophe which
should overwhelm a progressive civilization like that of mod-
ern Europe and its colonies." Capacity to believe that the
"laws of thought" have comforting political consequences is
a mark of the philosophic bias. Philosophy, as opposed to
PHILOSOPHY^ ULTERIOR MOTIVES 57
science, springs from a land of self-assertion: a belief that our
purposes have an important relation to the purposes of the
universe, and that, in the long run, the course of events is
bound to be, on the whole, such as we should wish. Science
abandoned this kind of optimism, but is being led towards an-
other: that we, by our intelligence, can make the world such
as to satisfy a large proportion of our desires. This is a prac-
tical, as opposed to a metaphysical, optimism. I hope it will
not seem to future generations as foolish as that of Dr. Pangloss,
V
The Superior Virtue of the
Oppressed
ONE of the persistent delusions of mankind is that some
sections of the human race are morally better or
worse than others. This belief has many different
forms, none of which has any rational basis. It is natural to
think well of ourselves, and thence, if our mental processes are
simple, of our sex, our class, our nation, and our age. But
among writers, especially moralists, a less direct expression of
self-esteem is common. They tend to think ill of their neigh-
bors and acquaintances, and therefore to think well of the
Sections of mankind to "which they themselves do not belong,
Lao-tse admired the "pure men of old," who lived before
the advent of Confucian sophistication. Tacitus and Madame
de Stael admired the Germans because they had no emperor.
Locke thought well of the "intelligent American" because he
was not led astray by Cartesian sophistries.
A rather curious form of this admiration for groups to which
the admirer does not belong is the belief in the superior virtue
of the oppressed: subject nations, the poor, women, and chil-
dren. The eighteenth century, while conquering America
58
THE VIRTUE OF THE OPPRESSED 59
from the Indians, reducing the peasantry to the condition of
pauper laborers, and introducing the cruelties of early indus-
trialism, loved to sentimentalize about the "noble savage" and
the "simple annals of the poor." Virtue, it was said, was not to
be found in courts: but court ladies could almost secure it by
masquerading as shepherdesses. And as for the male sex:
Happy the man whose wish and care
A lew paternal acres bound.
Nevertheless, for himself Pope preferred London and his villa
at Twickenham.
At the French Revolution the superior virtue of the poor
became a party question, and has remained so ever since. To
reactionaries they became the "rabble 5 * or the "mob." The rich
discovered, with surprise, that some people were so poor as
not to own even "a few paternal acres." Liberals, however,
still continued to idealize the rural poor, while intellectual
Socialists and Communists did the same for the urban prole-
tariat a fashion to which, since it only became important in
the twentieth century, I shall return later.
Nationalism introduced, in the nineteenth century, a sub-
stitute for the noble savage the patriot of an oppressed na-
tion. The Greeks until they had achieved liberation from the
Turks, the Hungarians until the Ausgleich of 1867, the Italians
until 1870, and the Poles until after the 1914-18 war were re-
garded romantically as gifted poetic races, too idealistic to
succeed in this wicked world. The Irish were regarded by the
English as possessed of a special charm and mystical insight
until 1921, when it was found that the expense of continuing
to oppress them would be prohibitive. One by one these vari-
ous nations rose to independence, and were found to be just
like everybody else; but the experience of those already liber-
ated did nothing to destroy the illusion as regards those who
were still struggling. English old ladies still sentimentalize
*5o UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
about the "wisdom of the East" and American intellectuals
about the "earth consciousness" of the Negro.
Women, being the objects of the strongest emotions, have
been viewed even more irrationally than the poor or the sub-
ject nations. I am thinking not of what poets have to say but of
the sober opinions of men who imagine themselves rational
The church had two opposite attitudes: on the one hand,
woman was the Temptress, who led monks and others into
sin; on the other hand, she was capable of saintliness to an al-
most greater degree than man. Theologically, the two types
were represented by Eve and the Virgin. In the nineteenth
century the temptress fell into the background; there were, of
course, "bad" women, but Victorian worthies, unlike St. Au-
gustine and his successors, would not admit that such sinners
could tempt them, and did not like to acknowledge their
existence. A kind of combination of the Madonna and the lady
of chivalry was created as the ideal of the ordinary married
woman. She was delicate and dainty, she had a bloom which
would be rubbed off by contact with the rough world, she
had ideals which might be dimmed by contact with wicked-
ness; like the Celts and the Slavs and the noble savage, but to
an even greater degree, she enjoyed a spiritual nature, which
made her the superior of man but unfitted her for business or
politics or the control of her own fortune. This point of view
is still not entirely extinct. Not long ago, in reply to a speech
I had made in favor of equal pay for equal work, an English
schoolmaster sent me a pamphlet published by a schoolmasters'
association, setting forth the opposite opinion, which it sup-
ports with curious arguments. It says of woman: "We gladly
place her first as a spiritual force; we acknowledge and rever-
ence her as the 'angelic part of humanity'; we give her superi-
ority in all the graces and refinements we are capable of as
human beings; we wish her to retain all her winsome womanly
ways." "This appeal" that women should be content with
THE VIRTUE OF THE OPPRESSED 6l
lower rates of pay "goes forth from us to them," so we are
assured, "in no selfish spirit, but out of respect and devotion
to our mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. . . . Our pur-
pose is a sacred one, a real spiritual crusade. 55
Fifty or sixty years ago such language would have roused
no comment except on the part of a handful of feminists; now,
since women have acquired the vote, it has come to seem an
anachronism. The belief in their "spiritual" superiority was
part and parcel of the determination to keep them inferior
economically and politically. When men were worsted in this
battle, they had to respect women, and therefore gave up offer-
ing them "reverence" as a consolation for inferiority.
A somewhat similar development has taken place in the adult
view of children. Children, like women, were theologically
wicked, especially among evangelicals. They were limbs of
Satan, they were unregenerate; as Dr. Watts so admirably
put it:
One stroke of His almighty rod
Can send young sinners quick to Hell.
It was necessary that they should be "saved." At Wesley's
school "a general conversion was once effected, . . one poor
boy only excepted, who unfortunately resisted the influence
of the Holy Spirit, for which he was severely flogged. . . ."
But during the nineteenth century, when parental authority,
like that of kings and priests and husbands, felt itself threat-
ened, subtler methods of quelling insubordination came into
vogue. Children were "innocent"; like good women they had
a "bloom"; they must be protected from knowledge of evil lest
their bloom should be lost. Moreover, they had a special kind
of wisdom. Wordsworth made this view popular among
English-speaking people. He first made it fashionable to credit
children with
High instincts before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.
62 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
No one in the eighteenth century would have said to his little
daughter, unless she were dead:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year
And worships't at the temple's inner shrine.
But in the nineteenth century this view became quite common;
and respectable members of the Episcopal church or even of
the Catholic church shamelessly ignored Original Sin to dally
with the fashionable heresy that
. . * trailing clouds of glory do we corne
From God who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
This led to the usual development. It began to seem hardly
right to spank a creature that was lying in Abraham's bosom,
or to use the rod rather than a high instincts" to make it "trem-
ble like a guilty thing surprised/' And so parents and school-
masters found that the pleasures they had derived from inflict-
ing chastisement were being curtailed and a theory of education
grew up which made it necessary to consider the child's wel-
fare, and not only the adult's convenience and sense of power.
The only consolation the adults could allow themselves was
the invention of a new child psychology. Children, after being
limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illumi-
nated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have re-
verted to being little devils not theological demons inspired
by the Evil One, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired
by the Unconscious. They are, it must be said, far more wicked
than they were in the diatribes of the monks; they display, in
modern textbooks, an ingenuity and persistence in sinful imag-
inings to which in the past there was nothing comparable ex-
cept St. Anthony. Is all this the objective truth at last? Or is
it merely an adult imaginative compensation for being no
longer allowed to wallop the little pests? Let the Freudians
answer, each for the others.
TH VIRTUE OF THE OPPRESSED 6j
As appears from the various instances that we have con-
sidered, the stage in which superior virtue Is attributed to the
oppressed is transient and unstable. It begins only when the
oppressors come to have a bad conscience, and this only hap-
pens when their power is no longer secure. The idealizing of
the victim is useful for a time: if virtue is the greatest of goods,
and if subjection makes people virtuous, it is kind to refuse
them power, since it would destroy their virtue. If it is difficult
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, it is a noble
act on his part to keep his wealth and so imperil his eternal
bliss for the benefit of his poorer brethren. It was a fine self-
sacrifice on the part of men to relieve women of the dirty
work of politics. And so on. But sooner or later the oppressed
class will argue that its superior virtue is a reason in favor of
its having power, and the oppressors will find their own weap-
ons turned against them. When at last power has been equal-
ized, it becomes apparent to everybody that all the talk about
superior virtue was nonsense, and that it was quite unnecessary
as a basis for the claim to equality.
In regard to the Italians, the Hungarians, women, and chil-
dren, we have ran through the whole cycle. But we are still in
the middle of it in the case which is of the most importance
at the present time namely, that of the proletariat. Admira-
tion of the proletariat is very modern. The eighteenth century,
when it praised "the poor," thought always of the rural poor.
Jefferson's democracy stopped short at the urban mob; he
wished America to remain a country of agriculturists. Ad-
miration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations,
and airplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.
Considered in human terms, it has as little in its favor as belief
in Celtic magic, the Slav soul, women's intuition, and children's
innocence. If it were indeed the case that bad nourishment,
little education, lack of air and sunshine, unhealthy housing
conditions, and overwork produce better people than are pro-
64 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
duced by good nourishment, open air, adequate education and
housing, and a reasonable amount of leisure, the whole case
for economic reconstruction would collapse, and we could re-
joice that such a large percentage of the population enjoys the
conditions that make for virtue. But obvious as this argument
is, many Socialist and Communist intellectuals consider it de
ngueur to pretend to find the proletariat more amiable than
other people, while professing a desire to abolish the conditions
which, according to them, alone produce good human beings.
Children were idealized by Wordsworth and un-idealized by
Freud. Marx was the Wordsworth of the proletariat; its Freud
is still to come.
VI
On Being Modern-minded
age Is the most parochial since Homer. I speak
I not of any geographical parish: the inhabitants of
Mudcombe-in-the-Meer are more aware than at any
former time of what is being done and thought at Praha, at
Gorki, or at Peiping. It is in the chronological sense that we
are parochial: as the new names conceal the historic cities of
Prague, Nijni-Novgorod, and Pekin, so new catchwords hide
from us the thoughts and feelings of our ancestors, even whea
they differed little from our own. We imagine ourselves at the
apex of intelligence, and cannot believe that the quaint clothes
and cumbrous phrases of former times can have invested peo-
ple and thoughts that are still worthy of our attention. If
Hamlet is to be interesting to a really modern reader, it must
first be translated into the language of Marx or of Freud, or,
better still, into a jargon inconsistently compounded of both,
I read some years ago a contemptuous review of a book by
Santayana, mentioning an essay on Hamlet "dated, in every
sense, 1908" as if what has been discovered since then made
any earlier appreciation of Shakespeare irrelevant and com-
paratively superficial It did not occur to the reviewer that his
review was "dated, in every sense, 1936." Or perhaps this
thought did occur to him, and filled him with satisfaction. He
65
66 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
was writing for the moment, not for all time; next year he will
have adopted the new fashion in opinions, whatever it may be,
and he no doubt hopes to remain up to date as long as he con-
tinues to write. Any other Ideal for a writer would seem ab-
surd and old-fashioned to the modern-minded man.
The desire to be contemporary is of course new only in
degree; it has existed to some extent in all previous periods that
believed themselves to be progressive- The Renaissance had a
contempt for the Gothic centuries that had preceded it; the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries covered priceless mosaics
with whitewash; the Romantic movement despised the age of
the heroic couplet. Eighty years ago Lecky reproached my
mother for being led by intellectual fashion to oppose fox-
hunting: "I am sure," he wrote, "you are not really at all senti-
mental about foxes or at all shocked at the prettiest of the
assertions of women's rights, riding across country. But you
always look upon politics and intellect as a fierce race and are
so dreadfully afraid of not being sufficiently advanced or in-
tellectual." But in none of these former times was the contempt
for the past nearly as complete as it is now. From the Renais-
sance to the end of the eighteenth century men admired Roman
antiquity; the Romantic movement revived the Middle Ages;
my mother, for all her belief in nineteenth-century progress,
constantly read Shakespeare and Milton. It is only since the
1914-18 war that it has been fashionable to ignore the past
en bloc.
The belief that fashion alone should dominate opinion has
great advantages. It makes thought unnecessary and puts the
highest intelligence within the reach of everyone. It is not
difficult to learn the correct use of such words as "complex,"
"sadism," "Oedipus," "bourgeois," "deviation," "left"; and
nothing more is needed to make a brilliant writer or talker.
Some, at least, of such words represented much thought on
ON BEING MODERN-MINDED 67
the part of their inventors; like paper money they were origi-
nally convertible into gold. But they have become for most
people inconvertible, and in depreciating have increased nomi-
nal wealth in ideas. And so we are enabled to despise the paltry-
intellectual fortunes of former times.
The modern-minded man, although he believes profoundly
in the wisdom of his period, must be presumed to be very
modest about his personal powers. His highest hope is to think
first what is about to be thought, to say what is about to be
said, and to feel what is about to be felt; he has no wish to
think better thoughts than his neighbors, to say things showing
more insight, or to have emotions which are not those of some
fashionable group, but only to be slightly ahead of others in
point of time. Quite deliberately he suppresses what is in-
dividual in himself for the sake of the admiration of the herd*
A mentally solitary life, such as that of Copernicus, or Spinoza,
or Milton after the Restoration, seems pointless according to
modern standards. Copernicus should have delayed his ad-
vocacy of the Copernican system until it could be made fash-
ionable; Spinoza should have been either a good Jew or a good
Christian; Milton should have moved with the times, like
Cromwell's widow, who asked Charles II for a pension on the
ground that she did not agree with her husband's politics. Why
should an individual set himself up as an Independent judge? Is
it not clear that wisdom resides in the blood of the Nordic
race or, alternatively, in the proletariat? And in any case what
is the use of an eccentric opinion, which never can hope to
conquer the great agencies of publicity?
The money rewards and widespread though ephemeral fame
which those agencies have made possible places temptations in
the way of able men which are difficult to resist. To be pointed
out, admired, mentioned constantly in the press, and offered
easy ways of earning much money is highly agreeable; and
68 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
when all this is open to a man, he finds it difficult to go on
doing the work that he himself thinks best and is inclined to
subordinate his judgment to the general opinion.
Various other factors contribute to this result. One of these
is the rapidity of progress which has made it difficult to do
work which will not soon be superseded. Newton lasted till
Einstein; Einstein is already regarded by many as antiquated.
Hardly any man of science, nowadays, sits down to write a
great work, because he knows that, while he is writing it,
others will discover new things that will make it obsolete be-
fore it appears. The emotional tone of the world changes with
equal rapidity, as wars, depressions, and revolutions chase each
other across the stage. And public events impinge upon private
lives more forcibly than in former days. Spinoza, in spite of his
heretical opinions, could continue to sell spectacles and medi-
tate, even when his country was invaded by foreign enemies;
if he had lived now, he would in all likelihood have been con-
scripted or put in prison. For these reasons a greater energy
of personal conviction is required to lead a man to stand out
against the current of his time than would have been necessary
in any previous period since the Renaissance.
The change has, however, a deeper cause. In former days
men wished to serve God. When Milton wanted to exercise
"that one talent which is death to hide," he felt that his soul
was "bent to serve therewith my Maker." Every religiously
minded artist was convinced that God's aesthetic judgments
coincided with his own; he 'had therefore a reason, independ-
ent of popular applause, for doing what he considered his best,
even if his style was out of fashion. The man of science in
pursuing truth, even if he came into conflict with current
superstition, was still setting forth the wonders of Creation
and bringing men's imperfect beliefs more nearly into harmony
with God's perfect knowledge* Every serious worker, whether
artist, philosopher, or astronomer, believed that in following
ON BEING MODERN-MINDED 69
his own convictions he was serving God's purposes. When
with the progress of enlightenment this belief began to grow
dim, there still remained the True, the Good, and the Beautiful
Non-human standards were still laid up in heaven, even if
heaven had no topographical existence.
Throughout the nineteenth century the True, the Good,
and the Beautiful preserved their precarious existence in the
minds of earnest atheists. But their very earnestness was their
undoing, since it made it impossible for them to stop at a half-
way house. Pragmatists explained that Truth is what it pays to
believe. Historians of morals reduced the Good to a matter of
tribal custom. Beauty was abolished by the artists in a revolt
against the sugary insipidities of a philistine epoch and in a
mood of fury in which satisfaction is to be derived only from
what hurts. And so the world was swept clear not only of
God as a person but of God's essence as an ideal to which man
owed an ideal allegiance; while the individual, as a result of a
crude and uncritical interpretation of sound doctrines, was
left without any inner defense against social pressure.
All movements go too far, and this is certainly true of the
movement toward subjectivity, which began with Luther and
Descartes as an assertion of the individual and has culminated
by an inherent logic in his complete subjection. The subjec-
tivity of truth is a hasty doctrine not validly deducible from
the premises which have been thought to imply it; and the
habits of centuries have made many things seem dependent
upon theological belief which in fact are not so. Men lived
with one kind of illusion, and when they lost it they fell into
another. But it is not by old error that new error can be com-
bated. Detachment and objectivity, both in thought and in
feeling, have been historically but not logically associated with
certain traditional beliefs; to preserve them without these be-
liefs is both possible and important. A certain degree of isola-
tion both in space and time is essential to generate the inde-
JO UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
pendence required for the most important work; there must
be something which is felt to be of more importance than the
admiration of the contemporary crowd. We are suffering not
from the decay of theological beliefs but from the loss of
solitude.
VII
An Outline of Intellectual
Rubbish
MAN Is a rational animal so at least I have been told.
Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for
evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have
not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have
searched in many countries spread over three continents. On
the contrary, I have seen the world plunging continually fur-
ther into madness. I have seen great nations, formerly leaders
of civilization, led astray by preachers of bombastic nonsense.
I have seen cruelty, persecution, and superstition increasing by
leaps and bounds, until we have almost reached the point
where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old
fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age. All this is de-
pressing, but gloom is a useless emotion. In order to escape
from it, I have been driven to study the past with more atten-
tion than I had formerly given to it, and have found, as Eras-
mus found, that folly is perennial and yet the human race has
survived. The follies of our own times are easier to bear when
they are seen against the background of past follies. In what
71
J2 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
follows I shall mix the sillinesses of our day with those of
former centuries. Perhaps the result may help in seeing our
Dwn times in perspective, and as not much worse than other
ages that our ancestors lived through without ultimate disaster.
Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim
explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view
was one which does not now seem very impressive; it was that
some people can do sums. He thought that there are three
kinds of soul: the vegetable soul, possessed by all living things,
both plants and animals, and concerned only with nourishment
and growth; the animal soul, concerned with locomotion, and
shared by man with the lower animals; and finally the rational
soul, or intellect, which is the Divine mind, but in which men
participate to a greater or less degree in proportion to their
wisdom. It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational
animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most em-
phatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of
numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was
quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made
by very clever people. Nowadays, however, calculating ma-
chines do sums better than even the cleverest people, yet no
one contends that these useful instruments are immortal, or
work by divine inspiration. As arithmetic has grown easier, it
has come to be less respected. The consequence is that, though
many philosophers continue to tell us what fine fellows we are*
it is no longer on account of our arithmetical skill that they
praise us.
Since the fashion of the age no longer allows us to point to
calculating boys as evidence that man is rational and the soul,
at least in part, immortal, let us look elsewhere. Where shall
we look first? Shall we look among eminent statesmen, who
have so triumphantly guided the world into its present con-
dition? Or shall we choose the men of letters? Or the philoso-
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 73
phers? All these have their claims, but I think we should begin
with those whom all right-thinking people acknowledge to be
the wisest as well as the best of men, namely the clergy. If they
fail to be rational, what hope is there for us lesser mortals?
And alas though I say it with all due respect there have
been times when their wisdom has not been very obvious, and,
strange to say, these were especially the times when the power
of the clergy was greatest.
The Ages of Faith, which are praised by our neo-scholastics,
were the time when the clergy had things all their own way.
Daily life was full of miracles wrought by saints and wizardry
perpetrated by devils and necromancers. Many thousands of
witches were burned at the stake. Men's sins were punished by
pestilence and famine, by earthquake, flood, and fire. And yet,
strange to say, they were even more sinful than they are now-
adays. Very little was known scientifically about the world.
A few learned men remembered Greek proofs that the earth
is round, but most people made fun of the notion that there
are antipodes. To suppose that there are human beings at the
antipodes was heresy. It was generally held (though modern
Catholics take a milder view) that the immense majority of
mankind are damned. Dangers were held to lurk at every turn.
Devils would settle on the food that monks were about to eat,
and would take possession of the bodies of incautious feeders
who omitted to make the sign of the Cross before each mouth-
ful. Old-fashioned people still say "bless you" when one
sneezes, but they have forgotten the reason for the custom.
The reason was that people were thought to sneeze out their
souls, and before their souls could get back lurking demons
were apt to enter the un-souled body; but if anyone said
"God bless you," the demons were frightened off.
Throughout the last 400 years, during which the growth
of science has gradually shown men how to acquire knowledge
74 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
of the ways of nature and mastery over natural forces, the
clergy have fought a losing battle against science, in astronomy
and geology, in anatomy and physiology, in biology and psy-
chology and sociology. Ousted from one position, they have
taken up another. After being worsted in astronomy, they did
their best to prevent the rise of geology; they fought against
Darwin in biology, and at the present time they fight against
scientific theories of psychology and education. At each stage,
they try to make the public forget their earlier obscurantism,
in order that their present obscurantism may not be recognized
for what it is. Let us note a few instances of irrationality among
the clergy since the rise of science, and then inquire whether
the rest of mankind are any better.
When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the
clergy, both in England and America, with the enthusiastic
support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to
defeat the will of God. For, as all right-thinking people were
aware, lightning is sent by God to punish impiety or some
other grave sin the virtuous are never struck by lightning.
Therefore if God wants to strike anyone, Benjamin Franklin
ought not to defeat His design; indeed, to do so is helping
criminals to escape. But God was equal to the occasion, if we
are to believe the eminent Dr. Price, one of the leading divines
of Boston. Lightning having been rendered ineffectual by the
"iron points invented by the sagacious Dr. Franklin," Massa-
chusetts was shaken by earthquakes, which Dr. Price perceived
to be due to God's wrath at the "iron points." In a sermon on
the subject he said, "In Boston are more erected than elsewhere
in New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully
shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the mighty hand of
God." Apparently, however, Providence gave up all hope of
curing Boston of its wickedness, for, though lightning-rods
became more and more common, earthquakes in Massachusetts
have remained rare. Nevertheless, Dr. Price's point of view, or
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 75
something very like it, was still held by one of the most influ-
ential men of recent times. When, at one time, there were
several bad earthquakes in India, Mahatma Gandhi solemnly
warned his compatriots that these disasters had been sent as a
punishment for their sins.
Even in my own native island this point of view still exists.
During the 1914-18 war, the British government did much to
stimulate the production of food at home. In 1916, when things
were not going well, a Scottish clergyman wrote to the news-
papers to say that military failure was due to the fact that, with
government sanction, potatoes had been planted on the Sabbath.
However, disaster was averted, owing to the fact that the
Germans disobeyed all the Ten Commandments, and not only
one of them.
Sometimes, if pious men are to be believed, God's mercies
are curiously selective. Toplady, the author of Rock of Ages,
moved from one vicarage to another; a week after the move, the
vicarage he had formerly occupied burned down, with great
loss to the new vicar. Thereupon Toplady thanked God; but
what the new vicar did is not known. Borrow, in his Bible in
Spainy records how without mishap he crossed a mountain pass
infested by bandits. The next party to cross, however, were
set upon, robbed, and some of them murdered; when Borrow
heard of this, he, like Toplady, thanked God.
Although we are taught the Copernican astronomy in our
textbooks, it has not yet penetrated to our religion or our mor-
als, and has not even succeeded in destroying belief in astrol-
ogy. People still think that the Divine Plan has special reference
to human beings, and that a special Providence not only looks
after the good, but also punishes the wicked. I am sometimes
shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves
pious for instance, the nuns who never take a bath without
wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no
man can see them, they reply: "Oh, but you forget the good
y6 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
God." Apparently they conceive of the Deity as a Peeping
Tom, whose omnipotence enables Him to see through bath-
room walls, but who is foiled by bathrobes. This view strikes
me as curious.
The whole conception of "Sin" is one which I find very
puzzling, doubtless owing to my sinful nature. If "Sin" con-
sisted in causing needless suffering, I could understand; but on
the contrary, sin often consists in avoiding needless suffering.
Some years ago, in the English House of Lords, a bill was in-
troduced to legalize euthanasia in cases of painful and incurable
disease. The patient's consent was to be necessary, as well as
several medical certificates. To me, in my simplicity, it would
seem natural to require the patient's consent, but the late Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, the English official expert on Sin, ex-
plained the erroneousness of such a view. The patient's consent
turns euthanasia into suicide, and suicide is sin. Their Lord-
ships listened to the voice of authority, and rejected the bill.
Consequently, to please the Archbishop and his God, if he
reports truly victims of cancer still have to endure months
of wholly useless agony, unless their doctors or nurses are
sufficiently humane to risk a charge of murder. I find difficulty
in the conception of a God who gets pleasure from contem-
plating such tortures; and if there were a God capable of such
wanton cruelty, I should certainly not think Him worthy of
worship. But that only proves how sunk I am in moral de-
pravity.
I am equally puzzled by the things that are sin and by the
things that are not. When the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals asked the Pope for his support, he refused
It, on the ground that human beings owe no duty to the lower
animals, and that ill-treating animals is not sinful This is be-
cause animals have no souls. On the other hand, it is wicked to
marry your deceased wife's sister so at least the church
teaches however much you and she may wish to marry. This
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 77
is not because of any unhappiness that might result, but be-
cause of certain texts in the Bible,
The resurrection of the body, which is an article of the
Apostle's Creed, is a dogma which has various curious conse-
quences. There was an author not very many years ago, who
had an ingenious method of calculating the date of the end of
the world. He argued that there must be enough of the neces-
sary ingredients of a human body to provide everybody with
the requisites at the Last Day. By carefully calculating the
available raw material, he decided that it would all have been
used up by a certain date. When that date comes, the world
must end, since otherwise the resurrection of the body would
become impossible. Unfortunately, I have forgotten what the
date was, but I believe it is not very distant.
St. Thomas Aquinas, the official philosopher of the Catholic
church, discussed lengthily and seriously a very grave problem,
which, I fear, modern theologians unduly neglect. He imagines
a cannibal who has never eaten anything but human flesh, and
whose father and mother before him had like propensities.
Every particle of his body belongs rightfully to someone else.
We cannot suppose that those who have been eaten by canni-
bals are to go short through all eternity. But, if not, what is
left for the cannibal? How is he to be properly roasted in hell,
if all his body is restored to its original owners? This is a puz-
zling question, as the Saint rightly perceives.
In this connection the orthodox have a curious objection to
cremation, which seems to show an insufficient realization of
God's omnipotence. It is thought that a body which has been
burned will be more difficult for Him to collect together again
than one which has been put underground and transformed
into worms. No doubt collecting the panicles from the air and
undoing the chemical work of combustion would be some-
what laborious, but it is surely blasphemous to suppose such a
work impossible for the Deity, I conclude that the objection
78 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
to cremation implies grave heresy. But I doubt whether my
opinion will carry much weight with the orthodox.
It was only very slowly and reluctantly that the church
sanctioned the dissection of corpses in connection with the
study of medicine. The pioneer in dissection was Vesalius,
who was Court physician to the Emperor Charles V. His medi-
cal skill led the Emperor to protect him, but after the Emperor
was dead he got into trouble. A corpse which he was dissect-
ing was said to have shown signs of life under the knife, and he
was accused of murder. The Inquisition was induced by King
Philip II to take a lenient view, and only sentenced him to a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On the way home he was ship-
wrecked and died of exhaustion. For centuries after this time,
medical students at the Papal University in Rome were only
allowed to operate on lay figures, from which the sexual parts
were omitted.
The sacredness of corpses is a widespread belief. It was
carried furthest by the Egyptians, among whom it led to the
practice of mummification. It still exists in full force in China.
A French surgeon who was employed by the Chinese to teach
Western medicine relates that his demand for corpses to dis-
sect was received with horror, but he was assured that he could
have instead an unlimited supply of live criminals. His objec-
tion to this alternative was totally unintelligible to his Chinese
employers.
Although there are many kinds of sin, seven of which are
deadly, the most fruitful field for Satan's wiles is sex. The
orthodox Catholic doctrine on this subject is to be found
in St. Paul, St. Augustine, and St, Thomas Aquinas. It is best
to be celibate, but those who have not the gift of continence
may marry. Intercourse in marriage is not sin, provided it is
motivated by desire for offspring. All intercourse outside
marriage Is sin, and so is intercourse within marriage if any
measures are adopted to prevent conception. Interruption of
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 79
pregnancy is sin, even if, in medical opinion, it is the only
way of saving the mother's life; for medical opinion is fallible,
and God can always save a life by miracle if He sees fit. (This
view is embodied in the law of Connecticut.) Venereal disease
is God's punishment for sin. It is true that, through a guilty
husband, this punishment may fall on an innocent woman and
her children, but this is a mysterious dispensation of Provi-
dence which it would be impious to question. We must also
not inquire why venereal disease was not divinely instituted
until the time of Columbus. Since it is the appointed penalty
for sin, all measures for its avoidance are also sin except, of
course, a virtuous life. Marriage is nominally indissoluble, but
many people who seem to be married are not. In the case of
influential Catholics, some ground for nullity can often be
found, but for the poor there is no such outlet, except perhaps
in cases of impotence. Persons who divorce and remarry are
guilty of adultery in the sight of God.
The phrase "in the sight of God" puzzles me. One would
suppose that God sees everything, but apparently this is a
mistake. He does not see Reno, for you cannot be divorced
in the sight of God. Register offices are a doubtful point. I
notice that respectable people, who would not call on any-
body who lives in open sin, are quite willing to call on people
who have had only a civil marriage; so apparently God does
see register offices.
Some eminent men think even the doctrine of the Catholic
church deplorably lax where sex is concerned. Tolstoy and
Mahatma Gandhi, in their old age, laid it down that all sexual
intercourse is wicked, even in marriage and with a view to
offspring. The Manicheans thought likewise, relying upon
men's native sinfulness to supply them with a continually fresh
crop of disciples. This doctrine, however, is heretical, though
it is equally heretical to maintain that marriage is as praise-
worthy as celibacy. Tolstoy thinks tobacco almost as bad as
80 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
sex; in one of his novels, a man who Is contemplating murder
smokes a cigarette first in order to generate the necessary
homicidal fury. Tobacco, however, is not prohibited in the
Scriptures, though, as Samuel Butler points out, St. Paul would
no doubt have denounced it if he had known of it.
It is odd that neither the church nor modern public opinion
condemns petting, provided it stops short at a certain point. At
what point sin begins is a matter as to which casuists differ.
One eminently orthodox Catholic divine laid it down that
a confessor may fondle a nun's breasts, provided he does it
without evil intent. But I doubt whether modern authorities
would agree with him on this point.
Modern morals are a mixture of two elements: on the one
hand, rational precepts as to how to live together peaceably in
a society, and on the other hand traditional taboos derived
originally from some ancient superstition, but proximately
from sacred books, Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, or Bud-
dhist. To some extent the two agree; the prohibition of murder
and theft, for instance, is supported both by human reason and
by Divine command. But the prohibition of pork or beef has
only scriptural authority, and that only in certain religions.
It is odd that modern men, who are aware of what science has
done in the way of bringing new knowledge and altering the
conditions of social life, should still be willing to accept the
authority of texts embodying the outlook of very ancient and
very ignorant pastoral or agricultural tribes. It is discouraging
that many of the precepts whose sacred character is thus
uncritically acknowledged should be such as to inflict much
wholly unnecessary misery. If men's kindly impulses were
stronger, they would find some way of explaining that these
precepts are not to be taken literally, any more than the com-
mand to "sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, 5 *
There are logical difficulties in the notion of Sin. We are
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 8l
told that Sin consists in disobedience to God's commands,
but we are also told that God is omnipotent. If He is, nothing
contrary to His will can occur; therefore when the sinner
disobeys His commands, He must have intended this to happen.
St. Augustine boldly accepts this view, and asserts that men
are led to sin by a blindness with which God afflicts them. But
most theologians, in modern times, have felt that, if God causes
men to sin, it is not fair to send them to hell for what they
cannot help. We are told that sin consists in acting contrary
to God's will. This, however, does not get rid of the difficulty.
Those who, like Spinoza, take God's omnipotence seriously,
deduce that there can be no such thing as sin. This leads to
frightful results. What! said Spinoza's contemporaries, was it
not wicked of Nero to murder his mother? Was it not wicked
of Adam to eat the apple? Is one action just as good as another?
Spinoza wriggles, but does not find any satisfactory answer.
If everything happens in accordance with God's will, God
must have wanted Nero to murder his mother; therefore,
since God is good, the murder must have been a good thing.
From this argument there is no escape.
On the other hand, those who are in earnest in thinking that
sin is disobedience to God are compelled to say that God is
not omnipotent This gets out of all the logical puzzles, and
is the view adopted by a certain school of liberal theologians.
It has, however, its own difficulties. How are we to know
what really is God's will? If the forces of evil have a certain
share of power, they may deceive us into accepting as Scrip-
ture what is really their work. This was the view of the
Gnostics, who thought that the Old Testament was the work
of an evil spirit.
As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to
rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles. Whose
authority? The Old Testament? The New Testament? The
82 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
Koran? In practice, people choose the book considered sacred
by the community in which they are born, and out of that
book they choose the parts they like, ignoring the others. At
one time, the most influential text in the Bible was: "Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live." Nowadays, people pass over
this text, in silence if possible; if not, with an apology. And
so, even when we have a sacred book, we still choose as truth
whatever suits our own prejudices. No Catholic, for instance,
takes seriously the text which says that a Bishop should be the
husband of one wife.
People's beliefs have various causes. One is that there is some
evidence for the belief in question. We apply this to matters of
fact, such as "what is so-and-so's telephone number?" or
*Vho won the World Series?" But as soon as it comes to any-
thing more debatable, the causes of belief become less defen-
sible. We believe, first and foremost, what makes us feel that
we are fine fellows. Mr. Homo, if he has a good digestion and
a sound income, thinks to himself how much more sensible he
is than his neighbor so-and-so, who married a flighty wife
and is always losing money. He thinks how superior his city
is to the one fifty miles away: it has a bigger Chamber of
Commerce and a more enterprising Rotary Club, and its
mayor has never been in prison. He thinks how immeasurably
his country surpasses all others. If he is an Englishman, he
thinks of Shakespeare and Milton, or of Newton and Darwin,
or of Nelson and Wellington, according to his temperament.
If he is a Frenchman, he congratulates himself on the fact that
for centuries France has led the world in culture, fashions, and
cookery. If he is a Russian, he reflects that he belongs to the
only nation which is truly international. If he is a Yugoslav, he
boasts of Ms nation's pigs; if a native of the Principality of
Monaco, lie boasts of leading the world in the matter of gam-
bling.
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 8j
But these are not the only matters on which he has to con-
gratulate himself. For is he not an individual of the species
homo sapiens? Alone among animals he has an immortal soul,
and is rational; he knows the difference between good and evil,
and has learned the multiplication table. Did not God make
him in His own image? And was not everything created for
man's convenience? The sun was made to light the day, and
the moon to light the night though the moon, by some over-
sight, only shines during half the nocturnal hours. The raw
fruits of the earth were made for human sustenance. Even
the white tails of rabbits, according to some theologians, have
a purpose, namely to make it easier for sportsmen to shoot
them. There are, it is true, some inconveniences: lions and
tigers are too fierce, the summer is too hot, and the winter too
cold. But these things only began after Adam ate the apple;
before that, all animals were vegetarians, and the season was
always spring. If only Adam had been content with peaches
and nectarines, grapes and pears and pineapples, these blessings
would still be ours.
Self-importance, individual or generic, is the source of most
of our religious beliefs. Even Sin is a conception derived from
self-importance. Borrow relates how he met a Welsh preacher
who was always melancholy. By sympathetic questioning he
was brought to confess the source of his sorrow: that at the
age of seven he had committed the Sin against the Holy
Ghost. "My dear fellow," said Borrow, "don't let that trouble
you; I know dozens of people in like case. Do not imagine
yourself cut off from the rest of mankind by this occurrence;
if you inquire, you will find multitudes who suffer from the
same misfortune." From that moment, the man was cured.
He had enjoyed feeling singular, but there was no pleasure in
being one of a herd of sinners. Most sinners are rather less
egotistical; but theologians undoubtedly enjoy the feeling that
84 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
Man is the special object of God's wrath, as well as of His love.
After the Fall, so Milton assures us
The Sun
Had first his precept so to move, so shine,
As might affect the Earth with cold and heat
Scarce tolerable, and from the North to call
Decrepit Winter, from the South to bring
Solstitial summer's heat.
However disagreeable the results may have been, Adam
could hardly help feeling flattered that such vast astronomical
phenomena should be brought about to teach him a lesson. The
whole of theology, in regard to hell no less than to heaven,
takes it for granted that Man is what is of most importance in
the Universe of created beings. Since all theologians are men,
this postulate has met with little opposition.
Since evolution became fashionable, the glorification of
Man has taken a new form. We are told that evolution has
been guided by one great Purpose: through the millions of
years when there were only slime, or trilobites, throughout the
ages of dinosaurs and giant ferns, of bees and wild flowers, God
was preparing the Great Climax. At last, in the fullness of time,
He produced Man, including such specimens as Nero and
Caligula, Hitler and Mussolini, whose transcendent glory justi-
fied the long painful process. For my part, I find even eternal
damnation less incredible, and certainly less ridiculous, than
this lame and impotent conclusion which we are asked to ad-
mire as the supreme effort of Omnipotence. And if God is
indeed omnipotent, why could He not have produced the
glorious result without such a long and tedious prologue?
Apart from the question whether Man is really so glorious
as the theologians of evolution say he is, there is the further
difficulty that life on this planet is almost certainly temporary.
The earth will grow cold, or the atmosphere will gradually
fly off, or there will be an insufficiency of water, or, as Sir
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 85
James Jeans genially prophesies, the sun will burst and all the
planets will be turned into gas. Which of those will happen
first, no one knows; but in any case the human race will ul-
timately die out. Of course, such an event is of little importance
from the point of view of orthodox theology, since men are
immortal, and will continue to exist in heaven and hell when
none are left on earth, But in that case why bother about
terrestrial developments? Those who lay stress on the gradual
progress from the primitive slime to Man attach an importance
to this mundane sphere which should make them shrink from
the conclusion that all life on earth is only a brief interlude be-
tween the nebula and the eternal frost, or perhaps between one
nebula and another. The importance of Man, which is the one
indispensable dogma of the theologians, receives no support
from a scientific view of the future of the solar system.
There are many other sources of false belief besides self-
importance. One of these is love of the marvelous. I knew at
one time a scientifically minded conjuror, who used to perform
his tricks before a small audience, and then get them, each
separately, to write down what they had seen happen. Almost
always they wrote down something much more astonishing
than the reality, and usually something which no conjuror
could have achieved; yet they all thought they were reporting
truly what they had seen with their own eyes. This sort of
falsification is still more true of rumors. A tells B that last
night he saw Mr. , the eminent prohibitionist, slightly the
worse for liquor; B tells C that A saw the good man reeling
drunk, C tells D that he was picked up unconscious in the
ditch, D tells E that he is well known to pass out every
evening. Here, it is true, another motive comes in, namely
malice. We like to think ill of our neighbors, and are pre-
pared to believe the worst on very little evidence. But even
where there is no such motive, what is marvelous is readily
believed unless it goes against some strong prejudice. All his-
86 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
tory until the eighteenth century is full of prodigies and
wonders which modern historians ignore, not because they are
less well attested than facts which the historians accept, but
because modern taste among the learned prefers what science
regards as probable, Shakespeare relates how on the night be-
fore Caesar was killed,
A common slave yon know him well by sight
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches join'd; and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remained unscorch'd.
Besides I have not since put up my sword
Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glar'd upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me; and there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,
Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
Shakespeare did not invent these marvels; he found them in
reputable historians, who are among those upon whom we
depend for our knowledge concerning Julius Caesar. This sort
of thing always used to happen at the death of a great man or
the beginning of an important war. Even so recently as 1914
the "angels of Mons" encouraged the British troops. The
evidence for such events is very seldom first-hand, and
modern historians refuse to accept it except, of course, where
the event is one that has religious importance*
Every powerful emotion has its own myth-making tendency.
When the emotion is peculiar to an individual, he is considered
more or less mad if he gives credence to such myths as he has
invented. But when an emotion is collective, as in war, there
is no one to correct the myths that naturally arise. Conse-
quently in all times of great collective excitement unfounded
rumors obtain wide credence. In September, 1914, almost
everybody in England believed that Russian troops had passed
through England on the way to the Western Front. Every-
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 87
body knew someone who had seen them, though no one had
seen them himself.
This myth-making faculty is often allied with cruelty. Ever
since the middle ages, the Jews have been accused of practicing
ritual murder. There is not an iota of evidence for this accusa-
tion, and no sane person who has examined it believes it. Never-
theless it persists. I have met White Russians who were con-
vinced of its truth, and among many Nazis it was accepted
without question. Such myths give an excuse for the infliction
of torture, and the unfounded belief in them is evidence of
the unconscious desire to find some victim to persecute.
There was, until the end of the eighteenth century, a theory
that insanity is due to possession by devils. It was inferred
that any pain suffered by the patient is also suffered by the
devils, so that the best cure is to make the patient suffer so
much that the devils will decide to abandon him. The insane,
in accordance with this theory, were savagely beaten* This
treatment was tried on King George III when he was mad,
but without success. It is a curious and painful fact that almost
all the completely futile treatments that have been believed in
during the long history of medical folly have been such as
caused acute suffering to the patient. When anaesthetics were
discovered pious people considered them an attempt to evade
the will of God. It was pointed out, however, that when God
extracted Adam's rib He put him into a deep sleep. This proved
that anaesthetics are all right for men; women, however, ought
to suffer because of the curse of Eve. In the West votes for
women proved this doctrine mistaken, but in Japan, to this
day, women in childbirth are not allowed any alleviation
through anaesthetics. As the Japanese do not believe in Gene-
sis, this piece of sadism must have some other justification.
The fallacies about "race" and "blood," which have always
been popular, and which the Nazis embodied in their official
creed, have no objective justification; they are believed solely
88 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
because they minister to self-esteem and to the impulse toward
cruelty. In one form or another, these beliefs are as old as
civilization; their forms change, but their essence remains.
Herodotus tells how Cyrus was brought up by peasants, in
complete ignorance of his royal blood; at the age of 12, his
kingly bearing toward other peasant boys revealed the truth.
This is a variant of an old story which is found in all Indo-
European countries. Even quite modem people say that "blood
will tell." It is no use for scientific physiologists to assure the
world that there is no difference between the blood of a Negro
and the blood of a white man. The American Red Cross, in
obedience to popular prejudice, at first, when America became
involved in the last war, decreed that no Negro blood should
be used for blood transfusion. As a result of an agitation, it was
conceded that Negro blood might be used, but only for
Negro patients. Similarly, in Germany, the Aryan soldier who
needed blood transfusion was carefully protected from the
contamination of Jewish blood.
In the matter of race, there are different beliefs in different
societies. Where monarchy is firmly established, kings are of
a higher race than their subjects. Until very recently, it was
universally believed that men are congenitaUy more intelligent
than women; even so enlightened a man as Spinoza decides
against votes for women on this ground. Among white men, it
is held that white men are by nature superior to men of other
colors, and especially to black men; in Japan, on the contrary,
it is thought that yellow is the best color. In Haiti, when they
make statues of Christ and Satan, they make Christ black and
Satan white. Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately
superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the
master is Greek and the slave barbarian. The American legisla-
tors who made the immigration laws consider the Nordics
superior to Slavs or Latins or any other white men. But the
Nazis, under the stress of war, were led to the conclusion that
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 89
there are hardly any true Nordics outside Germany; the
Norwegians, except Quisling and his few followers, had been
corrupted by intermixture with Finns and Lapps and such.
Thus politics are a clue to descent. The biologically pure Nor-
dics love Hitler, and if you did not love Hitler, that was proof
of tainted blood.
All this is, of course, pure nonsense, known to be such by
everyone who has studied the subject. In schools in America,
children of the most diverse origins are subjected to the same
educational system, and those whose business it is to measure
intelligence quotients and otherwise estimate the native ability
of students are unable to make any such racial distinctions as
are postulated by the theorists of race. In every national or
racial group there are clever children and stupid children. It
is not likely that, in the United States, colored children will
develop as successfully as white children, because of the stigma
of social inferiority; but in so far as congenital ability can be
detached from environmental influence, there is no clear dis-
tinction among different groups. The whole conception of
superior races is merely a myth generated by the overweening
self-esteem of the holders of power. It may be that, some day,
better evidence will be forthcoming; perhaps, in time, educa-
tors will be able to prove (say) that Jews are on the average
more intelligent than gentiles. But as yet no such evidence
exists, and all talk of superior races must be dismissed as non-
sense.
There is a special absurdity in applying racial theories to
the various populations of Europe. There is not in Europe any
such thing as a pure race. Russians have an admixture of Tartar
blood, Germans are largely Slavonic, France is a mixture of
Celts, Germans, and people of Mediterranean race, Italy the
same with the addition of the descendants of slaves imported
by the Romans. The English are perhaps the most mixed of alL
There is no evidence that there is any advantage in belonging
90 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
to a pure race. The purest races now In existence are the
Pygmies, the Hottentots, and the Australian aborigines; the
Tasmanians, who were probably even purer, are extinct. They
were not the bearers of a brilliant culture. The ancient Greeks,
on the other hand, emerged from an amalgamation of northern
barbarians and an indigenous population; the Athenians and
lonians, who were the most civilized, were also the most
mixed. The supposed merits of racial purity are, it would
seem, wholly imaginary.
Superstitions about blood have many forms that have noth-
ing to do with race. The objection to homicide seems to have
been, originally, based on the ritual pollution caused by the
blood of the victim. God said to Cain: "The voice of thy
brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground." According
to some anthropologists, the mark of Cain was a disguise to
prevent Abel's blood from finding him; this appears also to be
the original reason for wearing mourning. In many ancient
communities no difference was made between murder and
accidental homicide; in either case equally ritual ablution was
necessary. The feeling that blood defiles still lingers, for ex-
ample in the Churching of Women and in taboos connected
with menstruation. The idea that a child is of his father's
"blood" has the same superstitious origin. So far as actual
blood is concerned, the blood of neither father nor mother
enters the child. The importance attached to blood before the
discovery of genes is therefore a superstition.
In Russia, where, under the influence of Karl Marx, people
since the revolution have been classified by their economic
origin, difficulties have arisen not unlike those of German race
theorists over the Scandinavian Nordics. There were two
theories that had to be reconciled: on the one hand, prole-
tarians were good and other people were bad; on the other
hand, Communists were good and other people were bad. The
only way of effecting a reconciliation was to alter the meaning
AN OTJTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 91
of words. A "proletarian" came to mean a supporter of the
government; Lenin, though bom a noble, was reckoned a
member of the proletariat. On the other hand, the word
"kulak," which was supposed to mean a rich peasant, came to
mean any peasant who opposed collectivization. This sort of
absurdity always arises when one group of human beings is
supposed to be inherently better than another. In America, the
highest praise that can be bestowed on an eminent colored
man after he is safely dead is to say "he was a white man." A
courageous woman is called "masculine"; Macbeth, praising his
wife's courage, says:
Bring forth men children only,
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.
All these ways of speaking come of unwillingness to abandon
foolish generalizations.
In the economic sphere there are many widespread super-
stitions.
Why do people value gold and precious stones? Not simply
because of their rarity: there are a number of elements called
"rare earths" which are much rarer than gold, but no one will
give a penny for them except a few men of science. There is
a theory, for which there is much to be said, that gold and
gems were valued originally on account of their supposed
magical properties. The mistakes of governments in modern
times seem to show that this belief still exists among the sort
of men who are called "practical" At the end of the 1914-18
war, it was agreed that Germany should pay vast sums to
England and France, and they in turn should pay vast sums to
the United States. Every one wanted to be paid in money
rather than goods; the "practical" men failed to notice that
there is not that amount of money in the world. They also
failed to notice that money is no use unless it is used to buy
goods. As they would not use it in this way, it did no good
92 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
to anyone. There was supposed to be some mystic virtue about
gold that made it worth while to dig it up in the Transvaal and
put it underground again in bank vaults in America. In the
end, of course, the debtor countries had no more money, and,
since they were not allowed to pay in goods, they went bank-
rupt. The great depression was the direct result of the surviv-
ing belief in the magical properties of gold. This superstition
now seems dead, but no doubt others will replace it.
Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which
are devoid of truth.
One of the most widespread popular maxims is, "Human
nature cannot be changed." No one can say whether this is
true or not without first defining "human nature." But as used
it is certainly false. When Mr. A utters the maxim, with an air
of portentous and conclusive wisdom, what he means is that
all men everywhere will always continue to behave as they do
in his own home town. A little anthropology will dispel this
belief. Among the Tibetans, one wife has many husbands,
because men are too poor to support a whole wife; yet family
life, according to travelers, is no more unhappy than else-
where. The practice of lending one's wife to a guest is very
common among uncivilized tribes. The Australian aborigines,
at puberty, undergo a very painful operation which, through-
out the rest of their lives, greatly diminishes sexual potency.
Infanticide, which might seem contrary to human nature, was
almost universal before the rise of Christianity, and is recom-
mended by Plato to prevent over-population. Private property
is not recognized among some savage tribes. Even among highly
civilized people, economic considerations will override what
is called "human nature." In Moscow, where there is an acute
housing shortage, when an unmarried women is pregnant, it
often happens that a number of men contend for the legal right
to be considered the father of the prospective child, because
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 93
whoever Is judged to be the father acquires the right to share
the woman's room, and half a room is better than no roof.
In fact, adult "human nature" is extremely variable, accord-
ing to the circumstances of education. Food and sex are very-
general requirements, but the hermits of the Thebaid eschewed
sex altogether and reduced food to the lowest point compatible
with survival. By diet and training, people can be made fero-
cious or meek, masterful or slavish, as may suit the educator.
There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the
creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
Plato intended his Republic to be founded on a myth which
he admitted to be absurd, but he was rightly confident that
the populace could be induced to believe it. Hobbes, who
thought it important that people should reverence the govern-
ment however unworthy it might be, meets the argument
that it might be difficult to obtain general assent to anything
so irrational by pointing out that people have been brought
to believe in the Christian religion, and, in particular, in the
dogma of transubstantiation. If he had been alive in 1940, he
would have found ample confirmation of his contention in the
devotion of German youth to the Nazis.
The power of governments over men's beliefs has been very
great ever since the rise of large states. The great majority of
Romans became Christian after the Roman Emperors had been
converted. In the parts of the Roman Empire that were con-
quered by the Arabs, most people abandoned Christianity for
Islam. The division of Western Europe into Protestant and
Catholic regions was determined by the attitude of govern-
ments in the sixteenth century. But the power of governments
over belief in the present day is vastly greater than at any
earlier time. A belief, however untrue, is important when it
dominates the actions of large masses of men. In this sense, the
beliefs inculcated before the last war by the Japanese, Russian,
94 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
and German governments were important. Since they were
completely divergent, they could not all be true, though they
could well all be false. Unfortunately, they were such as to
inspire men with an ardent desire to kill one another, even to
the point of almost completely inhibiting the impulse of self-
preservation. No one can deny, in face of the evidence, that it
is easy, given military power, to produce a population of
fanatical lunatics. It would be equally easy to produce a pop-
ulation of sane and reasonable people, but many governments
do not wish to do so, since such people would fail to admire
the politicians who are at the head of these governments.
There is one peculiarly pernicious application of the doctrine
that human nature cannot be changed. This is the dogmatic
assertion that there will always be wars, because we are so
constituted that we feel a need of them. What is true is that
a man who has had the kind of diet and education that most
men have will wish to fight when provoked. But he will not
actually fight unless he has a chance of victory. It is very
annoying to be stopped by a policeman, but we do not fight
him because we know that he has the overwhelming forces of
the state at his back. People who have no occasion for war
do not make any impression of being psychologically thwarted.
Sweden has had no war since 1814, but the Swedes are one of
the happiest and most contented nations in the world. The
only cloud upon their national happiness is fear of being
involved in the next war. If political organization were such
as to make war obviously unprofitable, there is nothing in
human nature that would compel its occurrence, or make
average people unhappy because of its not occurring. Exactly
the same arguments that are now used about the impossibility
of preventing war were formerly used in defense of dueling,
yet few of us feel thwarted because we are not allowed to
fight duels.
I am persuaded that there is absolutely no limit to the
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 95
absurdities that can, by government action, come to be gen-
erally believed. Give me an adequate army, with power to
provide It with more pay and better food than falls to the lot
of the average man, and I will undertake, within 30 years, to
make the majority of the population believe that two and two
are three, that water freezes when It gets hot and boils when
it gets cold, or any other nonsense that might seem to serve
the interest of the state. Of course, even when these beliefs
had been generated, people would not put the kettle in the
refrigerator when they wanted it to boil. That cold makes water
boil would be a Sunday truth, sacred and mystical, to be
professed in awed tones, but not to be acted on in daily life.
What would happen would be that any verbal denial of the
mystic doctrine would be made illegal, and obstinate heretics
would be "frozen" at the stake. No person who did not
enthusiastically accept the official doctrine would be allowed
to teach or to have any position of power. Only the very
highest officials, in their cups, would whisper to each other
what rubbish it all is; then they would laugh and drink again.
This is hardly a caricature of what happens under some modern
governments.
The discovery that man can be scientifically manipulated,
and that governments can turn large masses this way or that
as they choose, is one of the causes of our misfortunes. There
is as much difference between a collection of mentally free
citizens and a community molded by modern methods of
propaganda as there is between a heap of raw materials and a
battleship. Education, which was at first made universal in
order that all might be able to read and write, has been found
capable of serving quite other purposes. By instilling non-
sense it unifies populations and generates collective enthusiasm*
If all governments taught the same nonsense, the harm would
not be so great. Unfortunately each has its own brand, and the
diversity serves to produce hostility between the devotees of
96 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
different creeds. If there is ever to be peace in the world,
governments will have to agree either to inculcate no dogmas,
or all to inculcate the same. The former, I fear, is a Utopian
ideal, but perhaps they could agree to teach collectively that
all public men, everywhere, are completely virtuous and per-
fectly wise. Perhaps, after the next war, the surviving politi-
cians may find it prudent to combine on some such program.
But if conformity has it dangers, so has nonconformity.
Some "advanced thinkers" are of opinion that anyone who
differs from the conventional opinion must be in the right.
This is a delusion; if it were not, truth would be easier to
come by than it is. There are infinite possibilities of error, and
more cranks take up unfashionable errors than unfashionable
truths. I met once an electrical engineer whose first words to
men were: "How do you do. There are two methods of faith-
healing, the one practiced by Christ and the one practiced by
most Christian Scientists. I practice the method practiced by
Christ/ 5 Shortly afterwards, he was sent to prison for making
out fraudulent balance-sheets. The law does not look kindly
on the intrusion of faith into this region. I knew also an eminent
lunacy doctor who took to philosophy, and taught a new logic
which, as he frankly confessed, he had learned from his luna-
tics. When he died he left a will founding a professorship for
the teaching of his new scientific methods, but unfortunately
he left no assets. Arithmetic proved recalcitrant to lunatic logic.
On one occasion a man came to ask me to recommend some
of my books, as he was interested in philosophy. I did so, but
lie returned next day saying that he had been reading one of
them, and had found only one statement he could under-
stand, and that one seemed to him false. I asked him what it
was, and he said it was the statement that Julius Caesar is
dead. When I asked him why he did not agree, he drew him-
self up and said: "Because I am Julius Caesar." These examples
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 97
may suffice to show that you cannot make sure of being right
by being eccentric.
Science, which has always had to fight its way against pop-
ular beliefs, now has one of its most difficult battles in the
sphere of psychology.
People who think they know all about human nature are
always hopelessly at sea when they have to do with any abnor-
mality. Some boys never learn to be what, in animals, is called
"house-trained." The sort of person who won't stand any
nonsense deals with such cases by punishment; the boy is
beaten, and when he repeats the offense he is beaten worse.
All medical men who have studied the matter know that
punishment only aggravates the trouble. Sometimes the cause
is physical, but usually it is psychological, and only curable
by removing some deep-seated and probably unconscious
grievance. But most people enjoy punishing anyone who
irritates them, and so the medical view is rejected as fancy
nonsense. The same sort of thing applies to men who are ex-
hibitionists; they are sent to prison over and over again, but
as soon as they come out they repeat the offense. A medical
man who specialized in such ailments assured me that the
exhibitionist can be cured by the simple device of having
trousers that button up the back instead of the front. But this
method is not tried because it does not satisfy people's vin-
dictive impulses.
Broadly speaking, punishment is likely to prevent crimes that
are sane in origin, but not those that spring from some psycho-
logical abnormality. This is now partially recognized; we dis-
tinguish between plain theft, which springs from what may be
called rational self-interest, and kleptomania, which is a mark
of something queer. And homicidal maniacs are not treated like
ordinary murderers. But sexual aberrations rouse so much dis-
gust that it is still impossible to have them treated medically
98 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
rather than punitively. Indignation, though on the whole a
useful social force, becomes harmful when it is directed' against
the victims of maladies that only medical skill can cure.
The same sort of thing happens as regards whole nations.
During the 1914-18 war, very naturally, people's vindictive
feelings were aroused against the Germans, who were severely
punished after their defeat. During the second war it was ar-
gued that the Versailles Treaty was ridiculously mild, since it
failed to teach a lesson; this time, we were told, there must be
real severity. To my mind, we should have been more likely to
prevent a repetition of German aggression if we had regarded
the rank and file of the Nazis as we regard lunatics than by
thinking of them as merely and simply criminals. Lunatics, of
course, have to be restrained. But lunatics are restrained from
prudence, not as a punishment, and so far as prudence permits
we try to make them happy. Everybody recognizes that a
homicidal maniac will only become more homicidal if he is
made miserable. There were, of course, many men among the
Nazis who were plain criminals, but there must also have been
many who were more or less mad. If Germany is to be suc-
cessfully incorporated in Western Europe, there must be a
complete abandonment of all attempt to instill a feeling of spe-
cial guilt. Those who are being punished seldom learn to feel
kindly towards the men who punish them. And so long as the
Germans hate the rest of mankind peace will be precarious.
When one reads of the beliefs of savages, or of the ancient
Babylonians and Egyptians, they seem surprising by their ca-
pricious absurdity. But beliefs that are just as absurd are still
entertained by the uneducated even in the most modern and
civilized societies. I have been gravely assured, in America,
that people born in March are unlucky and people born in
May are peculiarly liable to corns. I do not know the history of
these superstitions, but probably they are derived from Baby-
lonian or Egyptian priestly lore. Beliefs begin the higher social
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 99
strata, and then, like mud in a river, sink gradually downwards
in the educational scale; they may take 3,000 or 4,000 years to
sink all the way. In America you may find your colored maid
making some remark that comes straight out of Plato not the
parts of Plato that scholars quote, but the parts where he utters
obvious nonsense, such as that men who do not pursue wisdom
in this life will be born again as women. Commentators on
great philosophers always politely ignore their silly remarks.
Aristotle, in spite of his reputation, is full of absurdities. He
says that children should be conceived in the winter, when
the wind is in the north, and that if people marry too young
the children will be female. He tells us that the blood of fe-
males is blacker than that of males; that the pig is the only ani-
mal liable to measles; that an elephant suffering from insomnia
should have its shoulders rubbed with salt, olive oil, and warm
water; that women have fewer teeth than men, and so on.
Nevertheless, he is considered by the great majority of philoso-
phers a paragon of wisdom. <
Superstitions about lucky and unlucky days are almost uni-
versal In ancient times they governed the actions of generals.
Among ourselves the prejudice against Friday and the number
13 is very active; sailors do not like to sail on a Friday, and
many hotels have no 1 3th floor. The superstitions about Friday
and 13 were once believed by those reputed wise; now such
men regard them as harmless follies. But probably 2,000 years
hence many beliefs of the wise of our day will have come to
seem equally foolish. Man is a credulous animal, and must be-
lieve something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he
will be satisfied with bad ones.
Belief in "nature" and what is "natural" is a source of many
errors. It used to be, and to some extent still is, powerfully
operative in medicine. The human body, left to itself, has a cer-
tain power of curing itself; small cuts usually heal, colds pass
off, and even serious diseases sometimes disappear without
100 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
medical treatment. But aids to nature are very desirable, even
in these cases. Cuts may turn septic if not disinfected, colds
may turn to pneumonia, and serious diseases are only left with-
out treatment by explorers and travelers in remote regions,
who have no option. Many practices which have come to seem
"natural 53 were originally "unnatural," for instance clothing
and washing. Before men adopted clothing they must have
found it impossible to live in cold climates. Where there is not
a modicum of cleanliness, populations suffer from various dis-
eases, such as typhus, from which Western nations have be-
come exempt. Vaccination was (and by some still is) objected
to as "unnatural." But there is no consistency in such objec-
tions, for no one supposes that a broken bone can be mended
by "natural" behavior. Eating cooked food is "unnatural"; so
is heating our houses. The Chinese philosopher Lao-tse, whose
traditional date is about 600 B.C., objected to roads and bridges
and boats as "unnatural," and in his disgust at such mechanistic
devices left China and went to live among the Western bar-
barians. Every advance in civilization has been denounced as
unnatural while it was recent.
The commonest objection to birth control is that it is against
"nature." (For some reason we are not allowed to say that
celibacy is against nature; the only reason I can think of is that
it is not new.) Malthus saw only three ways of keeping down
the population: moral restraint, vice, and misery. Moral re-
straint, he admitted, was not likely to be practiced on a large
scale. "Vice," i.e. birth control, he, as a clergyman, viewed
with abhorrence. There remained misery. In his comfortable
parsonage, he contemplated the misery of the great majority
of mankind with equanimity, and pointed out the fallacies of
the reformers who hoped to alleviate it. Modern theological
opponents of birth control are less honest. They pretend to
think that God will provide, however many mouths there may
be to feed. They ignore the fact that He has never done so
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 101
hitherto, but has left mankind exposed to periodical famines in
which millions died of hunger. They must be deemed to hold
if they are saying what they believe that from this moment
onwards God will work a continual miracle of loaves and
fishes which He has hitherto thought unnecessary. Or perhaps
they will say that suffering here below is of no importance;
what matters is the hereafter. By their own theology, most of
the children whom their opposition to birth control will cause
to exist will go to hell. We must suppose, therefore, that they
oppose the amelioration of life on earth because they think it a
good thing that many millions should suffer eternal tormeat.
By comparison with them, Malthus appears merciful.
Women, as the object of our strongest love and aversion,
rouse complex emotions which are embodied in proverbial
"wisdom."
Almost everybody allows himself or herself some entirely
unjustifiable generalization on the subject of Woman. Married
men, when they generalize on that subject, judge by their
wives; women judge by themselves. It would be amusing to
write a history of men's views on women. In antiquity, when
male supremacy was unquestioned and Christian ethics were
still unknown, women were harmless but rather silly, and a
man who took them seriously was somewhat despised. Plato
thinks it a grave objection to the drama that the playwright has
to imitate women in creating his female roles. With the com-
ing of Christianity woman took on a new part, that of the
temptress; but at the same time she was also found capable of
being a saint. In Victorian days the saint was much more em-
phasized than the temptress; Victorian men could not admit
themselves susceptible to temptation. The superior virtue of
women was made a reason for keeping them out of politics,
where, it was held, a lofty virtue is impossible. But the early
feminists turned the argument round, and contended that the
participation of women would ennoble politics. Since this has
102 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
turned out to be an Illusion, there has been less talk of women's
superior virtue, but there are still a number of men who adhere
to the monkish view of woman as the temptress. Women them-
selves, for the most part, think of themselves as the sensible
sex, whose business it is to undo the harm that comes of men's
impetuous follies. For my part I distrust all generalizations
about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and femi-
nine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from
paucity of experience*
The deeply Irrational attitude of each sex towards women
may be seen in novels, particularly in bad novels. In bad novels
by men, there is the woman with whom the author is in love,
who usually possesses every charm, but is somewhat helpless,
and requires male protection; sometimes, however, like Shake-
speare's Cleopatra, she Is an object of exasperated hatred, and
is thought to be deeply and desperately wicked. In portraying
the heroine, the male author does not write from observation,
but merely objectifies his own emotions. In regard to his other
female characters, he Is more objective, and may even depend
upon his notebook; but when he is in love, his passion makes
a mist between him and the object of his devotion. Women
novelists, also, have two kinds of women in their books. One
is themselves, glamorous and kind, and object of lust to the
wicked and of love to the good, sensitive, high-souled, and
constantly misjudged. The other kind is represented by all
other women, and is usually portrayed as petty, spiteful, cruel,
and deceitful. It would seem that to judge women without bias
Is not easy either for men or for women.
Generalizations about national characteristics are just as
common and just as unwarranted as generalizations about
women. Until 1 870, the Germans were thought of as a nation
of spectacled professors, evolving everything out of their inner
consciousness, and scarcely aware of the outer world, but since
1870 this conception has had to be very sharply revised.
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 103
Frenchmen seem to be thought of by most Americans as per-
petually engaged in amorous intrigue; Walt Whitman, in one
of his catalogues, speaks of "the adulterous French couple on
the sly settee." Americans who go to live in France are aston-
ished, and perhaps disappointed, by the intensity of family
life. Before the Russian Revolution, the Russians were credited
with a mystical Slav soul, which, while it incapacitated them
for ordinary sensible behavior, gave them a kind of deep wis-
dom to which more practical nations could not hope to attain.
Suddenly everything was changed: mysticism was taboo, and
only the most earthly ideals were tolerated. The truth is that
what appears to one nation as the national character of another
depends upon a few prominent individuals, or upon the class
that happens to have power. For this reason, all generalizations
on this subject are liable to be completely upset by any impor-
tant political change.
To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind
are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple
rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.
If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make
the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mis-
take of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by
the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth
open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought
he knew. Thinking that you know when in fact you don't is a
fatal mistake, to which we are all prone. I believe myself that
hedgehogs eat black beetles, because I have been told that they
do; but if I were writing a book on the habits of hedgehogs, I
should not commit myself until I had seen one enjoying this
unappetizing diet. Aristotle, however, was less cautious. An-
cient and medieval authors knew all about unicorns and sala-
manders; not one of them thought it necessary to avoid dog-
matic statements about them because he had never seen one of
them*
104 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
Many matters, however, are less easily brought to the test of
experience. If, like most of mankind, you have passionate con-
victions on many such matters, there are ways in which you
can make yourself aware of your own bias. If an opinion con-
trary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are
subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking
as you do. If someone maintains that two and two are five, or
that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger,
unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his
opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage
controversies are those about matters as to which there is no
good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not
in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in
theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself
getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard;
you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is
going beyond what the evidence warrants.
A good way of ridding yourself of certain kinds of dogma-
tism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles differ-
ent from your own. When I was young, I lived much outside
my own country in France, Germany, Italy, and the United
States. I found this very profitable in diminishing the intensity
of insular prejudice. If you cannot travel, seek out people with
whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party
that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad,
perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to
them. In this opinion both parties may be right, but they can-
not both be wrong. This reflection should generate a certain
caution*
Becoming aware of foreign customs, however, does not al-
ways have a beneficial effect. In the seventeenth century, when
the Manchus conquered China, it was the custom among the
Chinese for the women to have small feet, and among the
Manchus for the men to wear pigtails. Instead of each drop-
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 105
ping their own foolish custom, they each adopted the foolish
custom of the other, and the Chinese continued to wear pig-
tails until they shook off the dominion of the Manchus in the
revolution of 1911.
For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is
a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a dif-
ferent bias. This has one advantage, and only one, as compared
with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is
that the method is not subject to the same limitations of time
and space. Mahatma Gandhi deplored railways and steamboats
and machinery; he would have Hked to undo the whole of the
industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of
actually meeting anyone who holds this opinion, because in
Western countries most people take the advantage of modern
technique for granted. But if you want to make sure that you
are right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find
it a good plan to test the arguments that occur to you by con-
sidering what Gandhi might have said in refutation of them. I
have sometimes been led actually to change my mind as a re-
sult of this kind of imaginary dialogue, and, short of this, I
have frequently found myself growing less dogmatic and cock-
sure through realizing the possible reasonableness of a hypo-
thetical opponent.
Be very wary of opinions that flatter your self-esteem. Both
men and women, nine times out of ten, are firmly convinced
of the superior excellence of their own sex. There is abundant
evidence on both sides. If you are a man, you can point out
that most poets and men of science are male; if you are a
woman, you can retort that so are most criminals. The ques-
tion is inherently insoluble, but self-esteem conceals this from
most people. We are all, whatever part of the world we come
from, persuaded that our own nation is superior to all others.
Seeing that each nation has its characteristic merits and de-
merits, we adjust our standard of values so as to make out that
T06 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
the merits possessed by our nation are the really Important
ones, while its demerits are comparatively trivial. Here, again,
the rational man will admit that the question is one to which
there is no demonstrably right answer. It is more difficult to
deal with the self-esteem of man as man, because we cannot
argue out the matter with some nonhuman mind. The only
way I know of dealing with this general human conceit is to
remind ourselves that man is a brief episode in the life of a
small planet in a little corner of the universe, and that, for
aught we know, other parts of the cosmos may contain beings
as superior to ourselves as we are to jelly-fish.
Other passions besides self-esteem are common sources of
error; of these perhaps the most important is fear. Fear some-
times operates directly, by inventing rumors of disaster in war-
time, or by imagining objects of terror, such as ghosts; some-
times it operates indirectly, by creating belief in something
comforting, such as the elixir of life, or heaven for ourselves
and hell for our enemies. Fear has many forms fear of death,
fear of the dark, fear of the unknown, fear of the herd, and
that vague generalized fear that comes to those who conceal
from themselves their more specific terrors. Until you have
admitted your own fears to yourself, and have guarded your-
self by a difficult effort of will against their myth-making
power, you cannot hope to think truly about many matters of
great importance, especially those with which religious beliefs
are concerned. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one
of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the begin-
ning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavor after
a worthy manner of life,
There are two ways of avoiding fear: one is by persuading
ourselves that we are immune from disaster, and the other is
by the practice of sheer courage. The latter is difficult, and to
everybody becomes impossible at a certain point. The former
has therefore always been more popular. Primitive magic has
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 107
the purpose of securing safety, either by injuring enemies, or
by protecting oneself by talismans, spells, or incantations.
Without any essential change, belief in such ways of avoiding
danger survived throughout the many centuries of Babylo-
nian civilization, spread from Babylon throughout the Empire
of Alexander, and was acquired by the Romans in the course
of their absorption of Hellenistic culture. From the Romans it
descended to medieval Christendom and Islam. Science has
now lessened the belief in magic, but many people place more
faith in mascots than they are willing to avow, and sorcery,
while condemned by the Church, is still officially a possible sin.
Magic, however, was a crude way of avoiding terrors, and,
moreover, not a very effective way, for wicked magicians
might always prove stronger than good ones. In the fifteenth,
sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, dread of witches and sor-
cerers led to the burning of hundreds of thousands convicted
of these crimes. But newer beliefs, particularly as to the future
life, sought more effective ways of combating fear. Socrates
on the day of his death (if Plato is to be believed) expressed
the conviction that in the next world he would live in the com-
pany of the gods and heroes, and surrounded by just spirits
who would never object to his endless argumentation. Plato,
in his Republic., laid it down that cheerful views of the next
world must be enforced by the state, not because they were
true, but to make soldiers more willing to die in battle. He
would have none of the traditional myths about Hades, be-
cause they represented the spirits of the dead as unhappy.
Orthodox Christianity, in the Ages of Faith, laid down very
definite rules for salvation. First, you must be baptized; then,
you must avoid all theological error; last, you must, before
dying, repent of your sins and receive absolution. All this
would not save you from purgatory, but it would insure your
ultimate arrival in heaven. It was not necessary to know theol-
ogy. An eminent Cardinal stated authoritatively that the re-
108 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
quirements of orthodoxy would be satisfied if you murmured
on your deathbed: "I believe all that the Church believes; the
Church believes all that I believe." These very definite direc-
tions ought to have made Catholics sure of finding the way to
heaven. Nevertheless, the dread of hell persisted, and has
caused, in recent times, a great softening of the dogmas as to
who will be damned. The doctrine, professed by many modern
Christians, that everybody will go to heaven, ought to do away
with the fear of death, but in fact this fear is too instinctive to
be easily vanquished. F. W. H. Myers, whom spiritualism had
converted to belief in a future life, questioned a woman who
had lately lost her daughter as to what she supposed had be-
come of her soul. The mother replied: "Oh well, I suppose she
is enjoying eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn't talk about
such unpleasant subjects." In spite of all that theology can do,
heaven remains, to most people, an "unpleasant subject."
The most refined religions, such as those of Marcus Aurelius
and Spinoza, are still concerned with the conquest of fear. The
Stoic doctrine was simple: it maintained that the only true
good is virtue, of which no enemy can deprive me; conse-
quently, there is no need to fear enemies. The difficulty was
that no one could really believe virtue to be the only good, not
even Marcus Aurelius, who, as Emperor, sought not only to
make his subjects virtuous, but to protect them against bar-
barians, pestilences, and famines. Spinoza taught a somewhat
similar doctrine. According to him, our true good consists in
indifference to our mundane fortunes. Both these men sought
to escape from fear by pretending that such things as physical
suffering are not really evil. This is a noble way of escaping
from fear, but is still based upon false belief. And if genuinely
accepted, it would have the bad effect of making men indiffer-
ent, not only to their own sufferings, but also to those of
others.
Under the influence of great fear, almost everybody be-
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH 109
comes superstitious. The sailors who threw Jonah overboard
imagined his presence to be the cause of the storm which
threatened to wreck their ship. In a similar spirit the Japanese,
at the time of the Tokio earthquake, took to massacring Ko-
reans and Liberals. When the Romans won victories in the
Punic wars, the Carthaginians became persuaded that their
misfortunes were due to a certain laxity which had crept into
the worship of Moloch. Moloch liked having children sacri-
ficed to him, and preferred them aristocratic; but the noble
families of Carthage had adopted the practice of surreptitiously
substituting plebeian children for their own offspring. This,
it was thought, had displeased the god, and at the worst mo-
ments even the most aristocratic children were duly con-
sumed in the fire. Strange to say, the Romans were victorious
in spite of this democratic reform on the part of their enemies*
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce
ferocity towards those who are not regarded as members of
the herd. So it was in the French Revolution, when dread of
foreign armies produced the reign of terror. The Soviet gov-
ernment would have been less fierce if it had met with less
hostility in its first years. Fear generates impulses of cruelty,
and therefore promotes such superstitious beliefs as seem to
justify cruelty. Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can
be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the in-
fluence of a great fear. And for this reason poltroons are more
prone to cruelty than brave men, and are also more prone to
superstition. When I say this, I am thinking of men who are
brave in all respects, not only in facing death. Many a man
will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the
courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is
asked to die is an unworthy one. Obloquy is, to most men,
more painful than death; that is one reason why, in times of
collective excitement, so few men venture to dissent from the
prevailing opinion. No Carthaginian denied Moloch, because
110 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
to do so would have required more courage than was required
to face death in battle.
But we have been getting too solemn. Superstitions are not
always dark and cruel; often they add to the gaiety of life. I
received once a communication from the god Osiris, giving me
his telephone number; he lived, at that time, in a suburb of
Boston. Although I did not enroll myself among his wor-
shipers, his letter gave me pleasure. I have frequently received
letters from men announcing themselves as the Messiah, and
urging me not to omit to mention this important fact in my
lectures. During prohibition in America, there was a sect
which maintained that the communion service ought to be
celebrated in whisky, not in wine; this tenet gave them a legal
right to a supply of hard liquor, and the sect grew rapidly.
There is in England a sect which maintains that the English
are the lost ten tribes; there is a stricter sect, which maintains
that they are only the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. When-
ever I encounter a member of either of these sects, I profess
myself an adherent of the other, and much pleasant argumenta-
tion results. I like also the men who study the Great Pyramid,
with a view to deciphering its mystical lore. Many great books
have been written on this subject, some of which have been pre-
sented to me by their authors. It is a singular fact that the
Great Pyramid always predicts the history of the world ac-
curately up to the date of publication of the book in question,
but after that date it becomes less reliable. Generally the author
expects, very soon, wars in Egypt, followed by Armageddon
and the coming of Antichrist, but by this time so many people
have been recognized as Antichrist that the reader is reluc-
tantly driven to skepticism.
I admire especially a certain prophetess who lived beside a
lake in northern New York State about the year 1820. She
announced to her numerous followers that she possessed the
power of walking on water, and that she proposed to do so at
AN OUTLINE OF INTELLECTUAL RUBBISH III
1 1 o'clock on a certain morning. At the stated time, the faithful
assembled in their thousands beside the lake. She spoke to them
saying: "Are you all entirely persuaded that I can walk on
water?" With one voice they replied: "We are." "In that
case," she announced, "there is no need for me to do so." And
they all went home much edified.
Perhaps the world would lose some of its interest and variety
if such beliefs were wholly replaced by cold science. Perhaps
we may allow ourselves to be glad of the Abecedarians, who
were so called because, having rejected all profane learning,
they thought it wicked to learn the ABC. And we may en-
joy the perplexity of the South American Jesuit who won-
dered how the sloth could have traveled, since the Flood, aE
the way from Mount Ararat to Peru a journey which its ex-
treme tardiness of locomotion rendered almost incredible. A
wise man will enjoy the goods of which there is a plentiful
supply, and of intellectual rubbish he will find an abundant diet,
in our own age as in every other.
VIII
The Functions of a Teacher
TEACHING, more even than most other professions, has
been transformed during the last hundred years from
a small, highly skilled profession concerned with a mi-
nority of the population, to a large and important branch of
the public service. The profession has a great and honorable
tradition, extending from the dawn of history until recent
times, but any teacher in the modern world who allows himself
to be inspired by the ideals of his predecessors is likely to be
made sharply aware that it is not his function to teach what he
thinks, but to instill such beliefs and prejudices as are thought
useful fay his employers. In former days a teacher was ex-
pected to be a man of exceptional knowledge or wisdom, to
whose words men would do well to attend. In antiquity, teach-
ers were not an organized profession, and no control was ex-
ercised over what they taught. It is true that they were often
punished afterwards for their subversive doctrines. Socrates
was put to death and Plato is said to have been thrown into
prison, but such incidents did not interfere with the spread of
their doctrines. Any man who has the genuine impulse of the
teacher will be more anxious to survive in his books than in
the flesh. A feeling of intellectual independence is essential to
the proper fulfillment of the teacher's functions, since it is his
112
THE FUNCTIONS OF A TEACHER IIJ
business to instill what he can of knowledge and reasonableness
into the process of forming public opinion. In antiquity he
performed this function unhampered except by occasional
spasmodic and ineffective interventions of tyrants or mobs. In
the middle ages teaching became the exclusive prerogative of
the church, with the result that there was little progress either
intellectual or social. With the Renaisssance, the general re-
spect for learning brought back a very considerable measure
of freedom to the teacher. It is true that the Inquisition com-
pelled Galileo to recant, and burned Giordano Bruno at the
stake, but each of these men had done his work before being
punished. Institutions such as universities largely remained in
the grip of the dogmatists, with the result that most of the best
intellectual work was done by independent men of learning.
In England, especially, until near the end of the nineteenth
century, hardly any men of first-rate eminence except Newton
were connected with universities. But the social system was
such that this interfered Ettle with their activities or their use-
fulness.
In our more highly organized world we face a new problem.
Something called education is given to everybody, usually by
the state, but sometimes by the churches. The teacher has thus
become, in the vast majority of cases, a civil servant obliged to
carry out the behests of men who have not his learning, who
have no experience of dealing with the young, and whose only
attitude towards education is that of the propagandist. It is not
very easy to see how, in these circumstances, teachers can
perform the functions for which they are specially fitted.
State education is obviously necessary, but as obviously in-
volves certain dangers against which there ought to be safe-
guards. The evils to be feared were seen in their full magni-
tude in Nazi Germany and are still seen in Russia. Where these
evils prevail no man can teach unless he subscribes to a dog-
matic creed which few people of free intelligence are likely to
114 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
accept sincerely. Not only must he subscribe to a creed, but
he must condone abominations and carefully abstain from
speaking his mind on current events. So long as he is teaching
only the alphabet and the multiplication table, as to which no
controversies arise, official dogmas do not necessarily warp
his instruction; but even while he is teaching these elements he
is expected, in totalitarian countries, not to employ the meth-
ods which he thinks most likely to achieve the scholastic re-
sult, but to instill fear, subservience, and blind obedience by
demanding unquestioned submission to his authority. And as
soon as he passes beyond the bare elements, he is obliged to take
the official view on all controversial questions. The result is that
the young in Nazi Germany became, and in Russia become,
fanatical bigots, ignorant of the world outside their own coun-
try, totally unaccustomed to free discussion, and not aware
that their opinions can be questioned without wickedness. This
state of affairs, bad as it is, would be less disastrous than it is
if the dogmas instilled were, as in medieval Catholicism, uni-
versal and international; but the whole conception of an in-
ternational culture is denied by the modern dogmatists, who
preached one creed in Germany, another in Italy, another in
Russia, and yet another in Japan. In each of these countries
fanatical nationalism was what was most emphasized in the
teaching of the young, with the result that the men of one
country have no common ground with the men of another,
and that no conception of a common civilization stands in the
way of warlike ferocity.
The decay of cultural internationalism has proceeded at a
continually increasing pace ever since the First World War.
When I was in Leningrad in 1920, 1 met the Professor of Pure
Mathematics, who was familiar with London, Paris, and other
capitals, having been a member of various international con-
gresses. Nowadays the learned men of Russia are very sel-'
dom permitted such excursions, for fear of their drawing com-
THE FUNCTIONS OF A TEACHER 115
parisons unfavorable to their own country. In other countries
nationalism in learning is less extreme, but everywhere it is far
more powerful than it was. There is a tendency in England
(and, I believe, in the United States) to dispense with French-
men and Germans in the teaching of French and German. The
practice of considering a man's nationality rather than his com-
petence in appointing him to a post is damaging to education
and an offense against the ideal of international culture, which
was a heritage from the Roman Empire and the Catholic
Church, but is now being submerged under a new barbarian
invasion, proceeding from belo\v rather than from without.
In democratic countries these evils have not yet reached any-
thing like the same proportions, but it must be admitted that
there is grave danger of similar developments in education,
and that this danger can only be averted if those who believe in
liberty of thought are on the alert to protect teachers from
intellectual bondage. Perhaps the first requisite is a clear con-
ception of the services which teachers can be expected to per-
form for the community, I agree with the governments of the
world that the imparting of definite uncontroversiai informa-
tion is one of the least of the teacher's functions. It is, of
course, the basis upon which the others are built, and in a
technical civilization such as ours it has undoubtedly a con-
siderable utility, There must exist in a modern community a
sufficient number of men who possess the technical skill re-
quired to preserve the mechanical apparatus upon which our
physical comforts depend. It is, moreover, inconvenient if any
large percentage of the population is unable to read and write.
For these reasons we are all in favor of universal compulsory
education. But governments have perceived that it is easy, in
the course of giving instruction, to instill beliefs on controver-
sial matters and to produce habits of mind which may be con-
venient or inconvenient to those in authority. The defense of
the state in all civilized countries is quite as much in the hands
Il6 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
of teachers as in those of the armed forces. Except in totalitar-
ian countries, the defense of the state is desirable, and the mere
fact that education is used for this purpose is not in itself a
ground of criticism. Criticism will only arise if the state is de-
fended by obscurantism and appeals to irrational passion. Such
methods are quite unnecessary in the case of any state worth
defending. Nevertheless, there is a natural tendency towards
their adoption by those who have no first-hand knowledge of
education. There is a widespread belief that nations are made
strong by uniformity of opinion and by the suppression of lib-
erty. One hears it said over and over again that democracy
weakens a country in war, in spite of the fact that in every im-
portant war since the year 1700 the victory has gone to the
more democratic side. Nations have been brought to ruin
much more often by insistence upon a narrow-minded doctri-
nal uniformity than by free discussion and the toleration of
divergent opinions. Dogmatists the world over believe that
although the truth is known to them, others will be led into
false beliefs provided they are allowed to hear the arguments
on both sides. This is a view which leads to one or another of
two misfortunes: either one set of dogmatists conquers the
world and prohibits all new ideas, or, what is worse, rival
dogmatists conquer different regions and preach the gospel of
hate against each other, the former of these evils existing in the
middle ages, the latter during the wars of religion, and again in
the present day. The first makes civilization static, the second
tends to destroy it completely. Against both, the teacher
should be the main safeguard.
It is obvious that organized party spirit is one of the greatest
dangers of our time. In the form of nationalism it leads to wars
between nations, and in other forms it leads to civil war. It
should be the business of teachers to stand outside the strife of
parties and endeavor to instill into the young the habit of im-
partial inquiry, leading them to judge issues on their merits
THE FUNCTIONS OF A TEACHER 11J
and to be on their guard against accepting ex parte statements
at their face value. The teacher should not be expected to flat-
ter the prejudices either of the mob or of officials. His profes-
sional virtue should consist in a readiness to do justice to all
sides, and in an endeavor to rise above controversy into a re-
gion of dispassionate scientific investigation. If there are peo-
ple to whom the results of his investigation are inconvenient,
he should be protected against their resentment, unless it can
be shown that he has lent himself to dishonest propaganda by
the dissemination of demonstrable untruths.
The function of the teacher, however, is not merely to miti-
gate the heat of current controversies. He has more positive
tasks to perform, and he cannot be a great teacher unless he is
inspired by a wish to perform these tasks. Teachers are more
than any other class the guardians of civilization. They should
be intimately aware of what civilization is, and desirous of im-
parting a civilized attitude to their pupils. We are thus brought
to the question: what constitutes a civilized community?
This question would very commonly be answered by point-
ing to merely material tests. A country is civilized if it has
much machinery, many motor cars, many bathrooms, and a
great deal of rapid locomotion. To these things, in my opinion,
most modern men attach much too much importance. Civiliza-
tion, in the more important sense, is a thing of the mind, not
of material adjuncts to the physical side of living. It is a matter
partly of knowledge, partly of emotion. So far as knowledge
is concerned, a man should be aware of the minuteness of him-
self and his immediate environment in relation to the world in
time and space. He should see his own country not only as
home, but as one among the countries of the world, all with an
equal right to live and think and feel. He should see his own
age in relation to the past and the future, and be aware that its
own controversies will seem as strange to future ages as those
of the past seem to us now. Taking an even wider view, he
Il8 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
should be conscious of the vastness of geological epochs and
astronomical abysses; but he should be aware of all this, not as
a weight to crush the individual human spirit, but as a vast
panorama which enlarges the mind that contemplates it. On
the side of the emotions, a very similar enlargement from the
purely personal is needed if a man is to be truly civilized. Men
pass from birth to death, sometimes happy, sometimes un-
happy; sometimes generous, sometimes grasping and petty;
sometimes heroic, sometimes cowardly and servile. To the man
who views the procession as a whole, certain things stand out
as worthy of admiration. Some men have been inspired by love
of mankind; some by supreme intellect have helped us to un-
derstand the world in which we live; and some by exceptional
sensitiveness have created beauty. These men have produced
something of positive good to outweigh the long record of
cruelty, oppression, and superstition. These men have done
what lay in their power to make human life a better thing than
the brief turbulence of savages. The civilized man, where he
cannot admire, will aim rather at understanding than at repro-
bating. He will seek rather to discover and remove the imper-
sonal causes of evil than to hate the men who are in its grip. All
this should be in the mind and heart of the teacher, and if it is
in his mind and heart he will convey it in his teaching to the
young who are in his care.
No man can be a good teacher unless he has feelings of
warm affection towards his pupils and a genuine desire to im-
part to them what he himself believes to be of value. This is
not the attitude of the propagandist. To the propagandist his
pupils are potential soldiers in an army. They are to serve pur-
poses that lie outside their own lives, not in the sense in which
every generous purpose transcends self, but in the sense of
ministering to unjust privilege or to despotic power. The
propagandist does not desire that his pupils should survey the
world and freely choose a purpose which to them appears of
THE FUNCTIONS OF A TEACHER
value. He desires, like a topiarian artist, that their growth shall
be trained and twisted to suit the gardener's purpose. And in
thwarting their natural growth he is apt to destroy in them all
generous vigor, replacing it by envy, destractiveness, and
cruelty. There is no need for men to be cruel; on the contrary,
I am persuaded that most cruelty results from thwarting in
early years, above all from thwarting what is good.
Repressive and persecuting passions are very common, as the
present state of the world only too amply proves. But they are
not an inevitable part of human nature. On the contrary, they
are, I believe, always the outcome of some kind of unhappiness.
It should be one of the functions of the teacher to open vistas
before his pupils showing them the possibility of activities that
will be as delightful as they are useful, thereby letting loose
their kind impulses and preventing the growth of a desire to
rob others of joys that they will have missed. Many people
decry happiness as an end, both for themselves and for others,
but one may suspect them of sour grapes. It is one thing to
forgo personal happiness for a public end, but it is quite an-
other to treat the general happiness as a thing of no account.
Yet this is often done in the name of some supposed heroism.
In those who take this attitude there is generally some vein of
cruelty based probably upon an unconscious envy, and the
source of the envy will usually be found in childhood or
youth. It should be the aim of the educator to train adults free
from these psychological misfortunes, and not anxious to rob
others of happiness because they themselves have not been
robbed of it.
As matters stand today, many teachers are unable to do the
best of which they are capable. For this there are a number of
reasons, some more or less accidental, others very deep-seated.
To begin with the former, most teachers are overworked and
are compelled to prepare their pupils for examinations rather
than to give them a liberalizing mental training. The people
120 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
who are not accustomed to teaching and this includes prac-
tically- all educational authorities have no idea of the expense
of spirit that it involves. Clergymen are not expected to preach
sermons for several hours every day, but the analogous effort
is demanded of teachers. The result is that many of them be-
come harassed and nervous, out of touch with recent work in
the subjects that they teach, and unable to inspire their stu-
dents with a sense of the intellectual delights to be obtained
from new understanding and new knowledge.
This, however, is by no means the gravest matter. In most
countries certain opinions are recognized as correct, and others
as dangerous. Teachers whose opinions are not correct are ex-
pected to keep silent about them. If they mention their opin-
ions it is propaganda, while the mentioning of correct opinions
is considered to be merely sound instruction. The result is that
the inquiring young too often have to go outside the classroom
to discover what is being thought by the most vigorous minds
of their own time. There is in America a subject called civics,
in which, perhaps more than in any other, the teaching is ex-
pected to be misleading. The young are taught a sort of copy-
book account of how public affairs are supposed to be con-
ducted, and are carefully shielded from all knowledge as to
how in fact they are conducted. When they grow up and dis-
cover the truth, the result is too often a complete cynicism in
which all public ideals are lost; whereas if they had been
taught the truth carefully and with proper comment at an
earlier age they might have become men able to combat evils
in which, as it is, they acquiesce with a shrug.
The idea that falsehood is edifying is one of the besetting
sins of those who draw up educational schemes. I should not
myself consider that a man could be a good teacher unless he
had made a firm resolve never in the course of his teaching to
conceal truth because it is what is called "unedifying." The
kind of virtue that can be produced by guarded ignorance is
THE FUNCTIONS OF A TEACHER 121
frail and fails at the first touch of reality. There are, In this
world, many men who deserve admiration, and it is good that
the young should be taught to see the ways in which these
men are admirable. But it is not good to teach them to admire
rogues by concealing their roguery. It is thought that the
knowledge of things as they are will lead to cynicism, and so
it may do if the knowledge comes suddenly with a shock of
surprise and horror. But if it comes gradually, duly intermixed
with a knowledge of what is good, and in the course of a sci-
entific study inspired by the wish to get at the truth, it wiH
have no such effect. In any case, to tell lies to the young, who
have no means of checking what they are told, is morally in-
defensible.
The thing, above all, that a teacher should endeavor to pro-
duce in his pupils, if democracy is to survive, is the kind of
tolerance that springs from an endeavor to understand those
who are different from ourselves. It is perhaps a natural hu-
man impulse to view with horror and disgust all manners and
customs different from those to which we are used. Ants and
savages put strangers to death. And those who have never trav-
eled either physically or mentally find it difficult to tolerate
the queer ways and outlandish beliefs of other nations and
other times, other sects and other political parties. This kind
of ignorant intolerance is the antithesis of a civilized outlook,
and is one of the gravest dangers to which our overcrowded
world is exposed. The educational system ought to be designed
to correct it, but much too little is done in this direction at
present. In every country nationalistic feeling is encouraged,
and school children are taught, what they are only too ready
to believe, that the inhabitants of other countries are morally
and intellectually inferior to those of the country in which
the school children happen to reside. Collective hysteria,
the most mad and cruel of all human emotions, is en-
couraged instead of being discouraged, and the young are
122 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
encouraged to believe what they hear frequently said rather
than what there is some rational ground for believing. In all
this the teachers are not to blame. They are not free to teach as
they would wish. It is they who know most intimately the
needs of the young. It is they who through daily contact have
come to care for them. But it is not they who decide what shall
be taught or what the methods of instruction are to be. There
ought to be a great deal more freedom than there is for the
scholastic profession. It ought to have more opportunities of
self-determination, more independence from the interference
of bureaucrats and bigots. No one would consent in our day
to subject the medical men to the control of non-medical au-
thorities as to how they should treat their patients, except of
course where they depart criminally from the purpose of med-
icine, which is to cure the patient. The teacher is a kind of
medical man whose purpose is to cure the patient of childish-
ness, but he is not allowed to decide for himself on the basis of
experience what methods are most suitable to this end. A few
great historic universities, by the weight of their prestige, have
secured virtual self-determination, but the immense majority
of educational institutions are hampered and controlled by
men who do not understand the work with which they are in-
terfering. The only way to prevent totalitarianism in our
highly organized world is to secure a certain degree of in-
dependence for bodies performing useful public work, and
among such bodies teachers deserve a foremost place.
The teacher, like the artist, the philosopher, and the man of
letters, can only perform his work adequately if he feels him-
self to be an individual directed by an inner creative impulse,
not dominated and fettered by an outside authority. It is very
difficult in this modern world to find a place for the individ-
ual. He can subsist at the top as a dictator in a totalitarian state
or a plutocratic magnate in a country of large industrial enter-
prises, but in the realm of the mind it is becoming more and
THE FUNCTIONS OP A TEACHER 123
more difficult to preserve independence of the great organized
forces that control the livelihoods of men and women. If the
world is not to lose the benefit to be derived from its best
minds, it will have to find some method of allowing them scope
and liberty in spite of organization. This involves a deliberate
restraint on the part of those who have power, and a conscious
realization that there are men to whom free scope must be af-
forded. Renaissance Popes could feel in this way towards Ren-
aissance artists, but the powerful men of our day seem to have
more difficulty in feeling respect for exceptional genius. The
turbulence of our times is inimical to the fine flower of culture.
The man in the street is full of fear, and therefore unwilling to
tolerate freedoms for which he sees no need. Perhaps we must
wait for quieter times before the claims of civilization can
again override the claims of party spirit. Meanwhile, it is im-
portant that some at least should continue to realize the limita-
tions of what can be done by organization. Every system
should allow loopholes and exceptions, for if it does not it will
in the end crush all that is best in man.
IX
Ideas That Have Helped
Mankind
BEFORE we can discuss this subject we must form some
conception as to the kind of effect that we consider
a help to mankind. Are mankind helped when they be-
come more numerous? Or when they become less like animals?
Or when they become happier? Or when they learn to enjoy
a greater diversity of experiences? Or when they come to
know more? Or when they become more friendly to one an-
other? I think all these things come into our conception of
what helps mankind, and I will say a preliminary word about
them.
The most indubitable respect in which ideas have helped
mankind is numbers. There must have been a time when homo
sapiens was a very rare species, subsisting precariously in jun-
gles and caves, terrified of wild beasts, having difficulty in se-
curing nourishment. At this period the biological advantage
of his greater intelligence, which was cumulative because it
could be handed on from generation to generation, had
scarcely begun to outweigh the disadvantages of his long
infancy, his lessened agility as compared with monkeys, and
124
IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND 125
his lack of hirsute protection against cold. In those days, the
number of men must certainly have been very small. The main
use to which, throughout the ages, men have put their tech-
nical skill has been to increase the total population. I do not
mean that this was the intention, but that it was, in fact, the
effect. If this is something to rejoice in, then we have occasion
to rejoice.
We have also become, in certain respects, progressively less
like animals. I can think in particular of two respects: first, that
acquired, as opposed to congenital, skills play a continually in-
creasing part in human life, and, secondly, that forethought
more and more dominates impulse. In these respects we have
certainly become progressively less like animals.
As to happiness, I am not so sure. Birds, it is true, die of
hunger in large numbers during the winter, if they are not
birds of passage. But during the summer they do not foresee
this catastrophe, or remember how nearly it befell them in the
previous winter. With human beings the matter is otherwise. I
doubt whether the percentage of birds that will have died of
hunger during the present winter (1946-7) is as great as the
percentage of human beings that will have died from this cause
in India and Central Europe during the same period. But every
human death by starvation is preceded by a long period of
anxiety, and surrounded by the corresponding anxiety of
neighbors. We suffer not only the evils that actually befall us,,
but all those that our intelligence tells us we have reason to
fear. The curbing of impulses to which we are led by fore-
thought averts physical disaster at the cost of worry, and gen-
eral lack of joy. I do not think that the learned men of my ac-
quaintance, even when they enjoy a secure income, are as
happy as the mice that eat the crumbs from their tables while
the erudite gentlemen snooze. In this respect, therefore, I am
not convinced that there has been any progress at alL
As to diversity of enjoyments, however, the matter is other-
126 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
wise. 1 remember reading an account of some Hons who were
taken to a movie showing the successful depredations of lions
In a wild state, but none of them got any pleasure from the
spectacle. Not only music, and poetry, and science, but foot-
ball, and baseball, and alcohol, afford no pleasure to animals.
Our intelligence has, therefore, certainly enabled us to get a
much greater variety of enjoyment than is open to animals, but
we have purchased this advantage at the expense of a much
greater liability to boredom.
But I shall be told that it is neither numbers nor multiplicity
of pleasures that make the glory of man. It is his intellectual
and moral qualities. It is obvious that we know more than ani-
mals do, and it is common to consider this one of our advan-
tages. Whether it is, in fact, an advantage, may be doubted.
But at any rate it is something that distinguishes us from the
brutes.
Has civilization taught us to be more friendly towards one
another? The answer is easy. Robins (the English, not the
American species) peck an elderly robin to death, whereas
men (the English, not the American species) give an elderly
man an old-age pension. Within the herd we are more, friendly
to each other than are many species of animals, but in our at-
titude towards those outside the herd, in spite of all that has
been done by moralists and religious teachers, our emotions
are as ferocious as those of any animal, and our intelligence
enables us to give them a scope which is denied to even the
most savage beast. It may be hoped, though not very confi-
dently, that the more humane attitude will in time come to
prevail, but so far the omens are not very propitious.
All these different elements must be borne in mind in con-
sidering what ideas have done most to help mankind. The ideas
with which we shall be concerned may be broadly divided
Into two kinds: those that contribute to knowledge and tech-
nique, and those that are concerned with morals and politics.
IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND 127
I will treat first those that have to do with knowledge and
technique.
The most important and difficult steps were taken before
the dawn of history. At what stage language began is not
known, but we may be pretty certain that it began very gradu-
ally. Without it it would have been very difficult to hand on
from generation to generation the inventions and discoveries
that were gradually made.
Another great step, which may have come either before or
after the beginning of language, was the utilization of fire. I
suppose that at first fire was chiefly used to keep away wild
beasts while our ancestors slept, but the warmth must have
been found agreeable. Presumably on some occasion a child got
scolded for throwing the meat into the fire, but when it was
taken out it was found to be much better, and so the long his
tory of cookery began.
The taming of domestic animals, especially the cow and the
sheep, must have made life much pleasanter and more secure.
Some anthropologists have an attractive theory that the utility
of domestic animals was not foreseen, but that people at-
tempted to tame whatever animal their religion taught them
to worship. The tribes that worshiped lions and crocodiles
died out, while those to whom the cow or the sheep was a
sacred animal prospered. I like this theory, and in the entire
absence of evidence, for or against it, I feel at liberty to play
with it.
Even more important than the domestication of animals was
the invention of agriculture, which, however, introduced
bloodthirsty practices into religion that lasted for many cen-
turies. Fertility rites tended to involve human sacrifice and
cannibalism. Moloch would not help the corn to grow unless
he was allowed to feast on the blood of children. A similar
opinion was adopted by the Evangelicals of Manchester in the
early days of industrialism, when they kept six-year-old chil-
128 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
dren working twelve to fourteen hours a day, in conditions
that caused most of them to die. It has now been discovered
that grain will grow, and cotton goods can be manufactured,
without being watered by the blood of infants. In the case of
the grain, the discovery took thousands of years; in the case
of the cotton goods hardly a century. So perhaps there is some
evidence of progress in the world.
The last of the great prehistoric inventions was the art of
writing, which was indeed a prerequisite of history. Writing,
like speech, developed gradually, and in the form of pictures
designed to convey a message it was probably as old as speech,
but from pictures to syllable writing and thence to the alphabet
was a very slow evolution. In China the last step was never
taken.
Coming to historic times, we find that the earliest important
steps were taken in mathematics and astronomy, both of which
began in Babylonia some millennia before the beginning of our
era. Learning in Babylonia seems, however, to have become
stereotyped and non-progressive, long before the Greeks first
came into contact with it. It is to the Greeks that we owe ways
of thinking and investigating that have ever since been found
fruitful. In the prosperous Greek commercial cities, rich men
living on slave labor were brought by the processes of trade
into contact with many nations, some quite barbarous, others
fairly civilized. What the civilized nations the Babylonians
and Egyptians had to offer the Greeks quickly assimilated.
They became critical of their own traditional customs, by per-
ceiving them to be at once analogous to, and different from,
the customs of surrounding inferior peoples, and so by the
sixth century B.C. some of them achieved a degree of enlight-
ened rationalism which cannot be surpassed in the present day.
Xenophanes observed that men make gods in their own image
"the Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the
Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair: Yes, and if
IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND 129
oxen and lions and horses had hands, and could paint with thek
hands, and produced works of art as men do, horses would
paint the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and
make their bodies in the image of their several kinds."
Some Greeks used thek emancipation from tradition in the
pursuit of mathematics and astronomy, in both of which they
made the most amazing progress. Mathematics was not used
by the Greeks, as it is by the moderns, to facilitate industrial
processes; it was a "gentlemanly" pursuit, valued for its own
sake as giving eternal truth, and a supersensible standard by
which the visible world was condemned as second-rate. Only
Archimedes foreshadowed the modern use of mathematics by
inventing engines of war for the defense of Syracuse against
the Romans. A Roman soldier killed him and the mathema-
ticians retired again into their ivory tower.
Astronomy, which the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
pursued with ardor, largely because of its usefulness in naviga-
tion, was pursued by the Greeks with no regard for practical
utility, except when, in later antiquity, it became associated
with astrology. At a very early stage they discovered the earth
to be round and made a fairly accurate estimate of its size.
They discovered ways of calculating the distance of the sun
and moon, and Aristarchus of Samos even evolved the com-
plete Copernican hypothesis, but his views were rejected by all
his followers except one, and after the third century B.C. no
very important progress was made. At the time of the Renais-
sance, however, something of what the Greeks had done be-
came known, and greatly f acilitated the rise of modem science*
The Greeks had the conception of natural law, and acquired
the habit of expressing natural laws in mathematical terms.
These ideas have provided the key to a very great deal of the
understanding of the physical world that has been achieved in
modern times. But many of them, including Aristotle, were
misled by a belief that science coiid make a fruitful use of the
130 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
idea of purpose. Aristotle distinguished four kinds of cause,
of which only two concern us, the "efficient" cause and the
"final" cause. The "efficient" cause is what we should call
simply the cause. The "final" cause is the purpose. For in-
stance, if, in the course of a tramp in the mountains, you find
an inn just when your thirst has become unendurable, the
efficient cause of the inn is the actions of the bricklayers that
built it, while its final cause is the satisfaction of your thirst.
If someone were to ask "why is there an inn there?" it would
be equally appropriate to answer "because someone had it
built there" or "because many thirsty travelers pass that way."
One is an explanation by the "efficient" cause and the other by
the "final" cause. Where human affairs are concerned, the
explanation by "final" cause is often appropriate, since human
actions have purposes. But where inanimate nature is concerned,
only "efficient" causes have been found scientifically discover-
able, and the attempt to explain phenomena by "final" causes
has always led to bad science. There may, for aught we know,
be a purpose in natural phenomena, but if so it has remained
completely undiscovered, and all known scientific laws have to
do only with "efficient" causes. In this respect Aristotle led the
world astray, and it did not recover fully until the time of
Galileo.
The seventeenth century, especially Galileo, Descartes, New-
ton, and Leibniz, made an advance in our understanding of
nature more sudden and surprising than any other in history,
except that of the early Greeks. It is true that some of the
concepts used in the mathematical physics of that time had
not quite the validity that was then ascribed to them. It is true
also that the more recent advances of physics often require
new concepts quite different from those of the seventeenth
century. Their concepts, in fact, were not the key to all the
secrets of nature, but they were the key to a great many. Mod-
em technique in industry and war, with the sole exception of
IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND 131
the atomic bomb, is still wholly based upon a type of dynamics
developed out of the principles of Galileo and Newton. Most
of astronomy still rests upon these same principles, though
there are some problems such as "what keeps the sun hot?" in
which the recent discoveries of quantum mechanics are es-
sential. The dynamics of Galileo and Newton depended upon
two new principles and a new technique*
The first of the new principles was the law of inertia, which
stated that any body, left to itself, will continue to move as
it is moving in the same straight line, and with the same ve-
locity. The importance of this principle is only evident when
it is contrasted with the principles that the scholastics had
evolved out of Aristotle. Before Galileo it was held that there
was a radical difference between regions below the moon and
regions from the moon upwards. In the regions below the
moon, the "sublunary" sphere, there was change and decay;
the "natural" motion of bodies was rectilinear, but any body
in motion, if left to itself, would gradually slow up and pres-
ently stop. From the moon upwards, on the contrary, the
"natural" motion of bodies was circular, or compounded of
circular motions, and in the heavens there was no such thing
as change or decay, except the periodic changes of the orbits
of the heavenly bodies. The movements of the heavenly bodies
were not spontaneous, but were passed on to them from the
primwn mobile, which was the outermost of the moving
spheres, and itself derived its motion from the Unmoved
Mover, i.e. God. No one thought of making any appeal to
observation; for instance, it was held that a projectile will first
move horizontally for a while, and then suddenly begin to fall
vertically, although it might have been supposed that anybody
watching a fountain could have seen that the drops move in
curves. Comets, since they appear and disappear, had to be
supposed to be between the earth and the moon, for if they
had been above the moon they would have had to be inde-
IJ2 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
stractible* It is evident that out of such a jumble nothing could
be developed. Galileo unified the principles of governing the
earth and the heavens by his single law of inertia, according to
which a body, once in motion, will not stop of itself, but will
move with a constant velocity in a straight line whether it is
on earth or in one of the celestial spheres. This principle made
it possible to develop a science of the motions of matter, with-
out taking account of any supposed influence of mind or spirit,
and thus laid the foundations of the purely materialistic physics
in which men of science, however pious, have ever since be-
lieved*
From the seventeenth century onwards, it has become in-
creasingly evident that if we wish to understand natural laws,
we must get rid of every kind of ethical and aesthetic bias. We
must cease to think that noble things have noble causes, that
intelligent things have intelligent causes, or that order is im-
possible without a celestial policeman. The Greeks admired
the sun and moon and planets, and supposed them to be gods;
Plotinus explains how superior they are to human beings in
wisdom and virtue. Anaxagoras, who taught otherwise, was
prosecuted for impiety and compelled to fly from Athens. The
Greeks also allowed themselves to think that since the circle
is the most perfect figure, the motions of the heavenly bodies
must be, or be derived from, circular motions. Every bias of
this sort had to be discarded by seventeenth-century astron-
omy. The Copernican system showed that the earth is not the
center of the universe, and suggested to a few bold spirits that
perhaps man was not the supreme purpose of the Creator. In
the main, however, astronomers were pious folk, and until the
nineteenth century most of them, except in France, believed
in Genesis.
It was geology, Darwin, and the doctrine of evolution, that
first upset the faith of British men of science. If man was
evolved by insensible gradations from lower forms of life, a
IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND 133
number of things became very difficult to understand. At what
moment in evolution did our ancestors acquire free will? At
what stage in the long journey from the amoeba did they be-
gin to have immortal souls? When did they first become capa-
ble of the kinds of wickedness that would justify a benevolent
Creator in sending them into eternal torment? Most people
felt that such punishment would be hard on monkeys, in spite
of their propensity for throwing coconuts at the heads of
Europeans. But how about Pithecanthropus Erectus? Was it
really he who ate the apple? Or was it Homo fekiniensis?
Or was it perhaps the PHtdown man? I went to Piltdown
once, but saw no evidence of special depravity in that village,
nor did I see any signs of its having changed appreciably since
prehistoric ages. Perhaps then it was the Neanderthal men
who first sinned? This seems the more likely, as they lived in
Germany. But obviously there can be no answer to such
questions, and those theologians who do not wholly reject
evolution have had to make profound readjustments.
One of the "grand" conceptions which have proved scien-
tifically useless is the soul, I do not mean that there is positive
evidence showing that men have no souls; I only mean that
the soul, if it exists, plays no part in any discoverable causal
law. There are all kinds of experimental methods of deter-
mining how men and animals behave under various circum-
stances. You can put rats in mazes and men in barbed wire
cages, and observe their methods of escape. You can administer
drugs and observe their effect. You can turn a male rat into a
female, though so far nothing analogous has been done with
human beings, even at Buchenwald. It appears that socially
undesirable conduct can be dealt with by medical means, or
by creating a better environment, and the conception of sin
has thus come to seem quite unscientific, except, of course, as
applied to the Nazis. There is real hope that, by getting to
understand the science of human behavior, governments may
134 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
be even more able than they are at present to turn mankind
into rabbles of mutually ferocious lunatics. Governments could,
of course, do exactly the opposite and cause the human race
to co-operate willingly and cheerfully in making themselves
happy, rather than in making others miserable, but only if
there is an international government with a monopoly of
armed force. It is very doubtful whether this will take place.
This brings me to the second kind of idea that has helped
or may in time help mankind; I mean moral as opposed to
technical ideas. Hitherto I have been considering the increased
command over the forces of nature which men have derived
from scientific knowledge, but this, although it is a pre-condi-
tion of many forms of progress, does not of itself insure any-
thing desirable. On the contrary, the present state of the world
and the fear of an atomic war show that scientific progress
without a corresponding moral and political progress may
only increase the magnitude of the disaster that misdirected
skill may bring about. In superstitious moments I am
tempted to believe in the myth of the Tower of Babel, and to
suppose that in our own day a similar but greater impiety is
about to be visited by a more tragic and terrible punishment.
Perhaps so I sometimes allow myself to fancy God does
not intend us to understand the mechanism by which He
regulates the material universe. Perhaps the nuclear physicists
have come so near to the ultimate secrets that He thinks it
time to bring their activities to a stop. And what simpler
method could He devise than to let them carry their ingenuity
to the point where they exterminate the human race? If I could
think that deer and squirrels, nightingales and larks, would
survive, I might view this catastrophe with some equanimity,
since man has not shown himself worthy to be the lord of crea-
tion. But it is to be feared that the dreadful alchemy of the
atomic bomb will destroy all forms of life equally, and that
the earth will remain forever a dead clod senselessly whirling
IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND 135
round a futile sun. I do not know the immediate precipitating
cause of this interesting occurrence. Perhaps it will be a dis-
pute about Persian oil, perhaps a disagreement as to Chinese
trade, perhaps a quarrel between Jews and Mohonimedans for
the control of Palestine. Any patriotic person can see that these
issues are of such importance as to make the extermination of
mankind preferable to cowardly conciliation*
In case, however, there should be some among my readers
who would like to see the human race survive, it may be worth
while considering the stock of moral ideas that great men have
put into the world and that might, if they were listened to,
secure happiness instead of misery for the mass of mankind,
Man, viewed morally, is a strange amalgam of angel and
devil. He can feel the splendor of the night, the delicate beauty
of spring flowers, the tender emotion of parental love, and the
intoxication of intellectual understanding. In moments of in-
sight visions come to him of how life should be lived and how
men should order their dealings one with another. Universal
love is an emotion which many have felt and which many
more could feel if the world made it less difficult. This is one
side of the picture. On the other side are cruelty, greed, in-
diiference and overweening pride. Men, quite ordinary men,
will compel children to look on while their mothers are raped.
In pursuit of political aims men will submit their opponents
to long years of unspeakable anguish. We know what the
Nazis did to Jews at Auschwitz. In mass cruelty, the expulsions
of Germans ordered by the Russians fall not very far short of
the atrocities perpetuated by the Nazis. And how about our
noble selves? We would not do such deeds, oh no! But we
enjoy our juicy steaks and our hot rolls while German chil-
dren die of hunger because our governments dare not face our
indignation if they asked us to forgo some part of our pleasures.
If there were a Last Judgment as Christians believe, how do
you think our excuses would sound before that final tribunal?
UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
Moral ideas sometimes wait upon political developments,
and sometimes outran them. The brotherhood of man is an
ideal which owed its first force to political developments.
When Alexander conquered the East he set to work to ob-
literate the distinction of Greek and barbarian, no doubt be-
cause his Greek and Macedonian army was too small to hold
down so vast an empire by force. He compelled his officers
to marry barbarian aristocratic ladies, while he himself, to set
a doubly excellent example, married two barbarian princesses.
As a result of this policy Greek pride and exclusiveness were
diminished, and Greek culture spread to many regions not in-
habited by Hellenic stock. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, who
was probably a boy at the time of Alexander's conquest, was
a Phoenician, and few of the eminent Stoics were Greeks. It
was the Stoics who invented the conception of the brother-
hood of man. They taught that all men are children of Zeus
and that the sage will ignore the distinctions of Greek and
barbarian, bond and free. When Rome brought the whole
civilized world under one government, the political environ-
ment was favorable to the spread of this doctrine. In a new
form, more capable of appealing to the emotions of ordinary
men and women, Christianity taught a similar doctrine. Christ
said "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and when asked
"who is thy neighbor?" went on to the parable of the Good
Samaritan. If you wish to understand this parable as it was
understood by Ms hearers, you should substitute "German" or
"Japanese" for "Samaritan." I fear many present-day Christians
would resent such a substitution, because it would compel
them to realize how far they have departed from the teaching
of the Founder of their religion. A similar doctrine had been
taught much earlier by the Buddhists. According to them,
the Buddha declared that he could not be happy so long as
even one man remained miserable. It might seem as if these
lofty ethical teachings had little effect upon the world; in
IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND 137
India Buddhism died out, in Europe Christianity was emptied
of most of the elements it derived from Christ. But I think
this would be a superficial view. Christianity, as soon as it con-
quered the state, put an end to gladiatorial shows, not because
they were cruel, but because they were idolatrous. The result,
however, was to diminish the widespread education in cruelty
by which the populace of Roman towns were degraded. Chris-
tianity also did much to soften the lot of slaves. It established
charity on a large scale, and inaugurated hospitals. Although
the great majority of Christians failed lamentably in Christian
charity, the ideal remained alive and in every age inspired
some notable saints. In a new form, it passed over into modern
Liberalism, and remains the inspiration of much that is most
hopeful in our somber world.
The watchwords of the French Revolution, Liberty, Equal-
ity, and Fraternity, have religious origins. Of Fraternity I have
already spoken. Equality was a characteristic of the Orphic
Societies in ancient Greece, from which, indirectly, a great
deal of Christian dogma took its rise. In these Societies, slaves
and women were admitted on equal terms with citizens. Plato's
advocacy of Votes for Women, which has seemed surprising
to some modern readers, is derived from Orphic practices.
The Orphics believed in transmigration and thought that a soul
which in one life inhabits the body of a slave, may, in another*
inhabit that of a king. Viewed from the standpoint of religion,
it is therefore foolish to discriminate between a slave and a
king; both share the dignity belonging to an immortal soul,
and neither, in religion, can claim anything more. This point
of view passed over from Orphism into Stoicism, and into
Christianity. For a long time its practical effect was small, but
ultimately, whenever circumstances were favorable, it helped
in bringing about the diminution of the inequalities in the
sockl system. Read, for instance, John Woolnian's Journal.
John Woolman was a Quaker, one of the first Americans to
138 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
oppose slavery. No doubt the real ground of his opposition was
humane feeling, but he was able to fortify this feeling and to
make it controversially more effective by appeals to Christian
doctrines, which his neighbors did not dare to repudiate
openly.
Liberty as an ideal has had a very checkered history. In
antiquity, Sparta, which was a totalitarian state, had as little
use for it as the Nazis had. But most of the Greek city states
allowed a degree of liberty which we should now think ex-
cessive, and, in fact, do think excessive when it is practiced by
their descendants in the same part of the world. Politics was a
matter of assassination and rival armies, one of them supporting
the government, and the other composed of refugees. The
refugees would often ally themselves with their city's enemies
and march in in triumph on the heels of foreign conquerors.
This sort of thing was done by everybody, and, in spite of
much fine talk in the works of modem historians about Greek
loyalty to the city state, nobody seemed to view such conduct
as particularly nefarious. This was carrying liberty to excess,
and led by reaction to admiration of Sparta.
The word "liberty" has had strange meanings at different
times. In Rome, in the last days of the Republic and the early
days of the Empire, it meant the right of powerful Senators
to plunder Provinces for their private profit. Brutus, whom
most English-speaking readers know as the high-minded hero
of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, was, in fact, rather different
from this. He would lend money to a municipality at 60 per
cent, and when they failed to pay the interest he would hire a
private army to besiege them, for which his friend Cicero
mildly expostulated with him. In our own day, the word
"liberty" bears a very similar meaning when used by industrial
magnates. Leaving these vagaries on one side, there are two
serious meanings of the word "liberty." On the one hand the
freedom of a nation from foreign domination, on the other
IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND 139
hand, the freedom of the citizen to pursue his legitimate avo-
cations. Each of these in a well-ordered world should be sub-
ject to limitations, but unfortunately the former has been taken
in an absolute sense. To this point of view I will return pres-
ently; it is the liberty of the individual citizen that I now wish
to speak about.
This kind of liberty first entered practical politics in the
form of religious toleration, a doctrine which came to be
widely adopted in the seventeenth century through the in-
ability of either Protestants or Catholics to exterminate the op-
posite party. After they had fought each other for a hundred
years, culminating in the horror of the thirty years' war, and
after it had appeared that as a result of all this bloodshed the
balance of parties at the end was almost exactly what it had
been at the beginning, certain men of genius, mostly Dutch-
men, suggested that perhaps all the killing had been unneces-
sary, and that people might be allowed to think what they
chose on such matters as consubstantiation versus transubstan-
tiation, or whether the Cup should be allowed to the laity. The
doctrine of religious toleration came to England with the Dutch
King William, along with the Bank of England and the Na-
tional Debt. In fact all three were products of the commercial
mentality.
The greatest of the theoretical advocates of liberty at that
period was John Locke, who devoted much thought to the
problem of reconciling the maximum of liberty with the in-
dispensable minimum of government, a problem with which
his successors in the Liberal tradition have been occupied down
to the present day.
In addition to religious freedom, free press, free speech, and
freedom from arbitrary arrest came to be taken for granted
during the nineteenth century, at least among the Western
democracies. But their hold on men's minds was much more
precarious than was at the time supposed, and now, over the
UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
greater part of the earth's surface, nothing remains of them,
either in practice or in theory. Stalin could neither understand
nor respect the point of view which led Churchill to allow
himself to be peaceably dispossessed as a result of a popular
vote. I am a firm believer in democratic representative govern-
ment as the best form for those who have the tolerance and
self-restraint that is required to make it workable. But its advo-
cates make a mistake if they suppose that it can be at once in-
troduced into countries where the average citizen has hitherto
lacked all training in the give-and-take that it requires. In a
Balkan country, not so many years ago, a party which had
been beaten by a narrow margin in a general election retrieved
its fortunes by shooting a sufficient number of the representa-
tives of the other side to give it a majority. People in the West
thought this characteristic of the Balkans, forgetting that
Cromwell and Robespierre had acted likewise.
And this brings me to the last pair of great political ideas to
which mankind owes whatever little success in social organiza-
tion it has achieved. I mean the ideas of law and government.
Of these, government is the more fundamental Government
can easily exist without law, but law cannot exist without
government a fact which was forgotten by those who
framed the League of Nations and the Kellogg Pact. Govern-
ment may be defined as a concentration of the collective forces
of a community in a certain organization which, in virtue of
this concentration, is able to control individual citizens and to
resist pressure from foreign states. War has always been the
chief promoter of governmental power. The control of gov-
ernment over the private citizen is always greater where there
is war or imminent danger of war than where peace seems
secure. But when governments have acquired power with a
view to resisting foreign aggression, they have naturally used
it, if they could, to further their private interests at the ex-
pense of the citizens. Absolute monarchy was, until recently,
IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND 14!
the grossest form of this abuse of power. But in the modern
totalitarian state the same evil has been carried much further
than had been dreamed of by Xerxes or Nero or any of the
tyrants of earlier times.
Democracy was invented as a device for reconciling govern-
ment with liberty. It is clear that government is necessary If
anything worthy to be called civilization is to exist, but all
history shows that any set of men entrusted with power over
another set will abuse their power If they can do so with im-
punity. Democracy is intended to make men's tenure of power
temporary and dependent upon popular approval In so far as
it achieves this it prevents the worst abuses of power. The
Second Triumvirate in Rome, when they wanted money with
a view to fighting Brutus and Cassius, made a list of rich men
and declared them public enemies, cut off their heads, and
seized their property. This sort of procedure is not possible in
America and England at the present day. We owe the fact that
it is not possible not only to democracy, but also to the doc-
trine of personal liberty. This doctrine, in practice, consists
of two parts, on the one hand that a man shall not be punished
except by due process of law, and on the other hand that there
shall be a sphere within which a man's actions are not to be
subject to governmental control. This sphere includes free
speech, free press and religious freedom. It used to include
freedom of economic enterprise. All these doctrines, of course,
are held in practice with certain limitations. The British for-
merly did not adhere to them in their dealings with India. Free-
dom of the press Is not respected In the case of doctrines which
are thought dangerously subversive. Free speech would not be
held to exonerate public advocacy of assassination of an un-
popular politician. But in spite of these limitations the doctrine
of personal liberty has been of great value throughout the
English-speaking world, as anyone who lives in it will quickly
realize when he finds himself in a police state. '
142 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
In the history of social evolution it will be found that almost
invariably the establishment of some sort of government has
come first and attempts to make government compatible with
personal liberty have come later. In international affairs we
have not yet reached the first stage, although it is now evident
that international government is at least as important to man-
kind as national government. I think it may be seriously
doubted whether the next twenty years would be more dis-
astrous to mankind if all government were abolished than they
will be if no effective international government is established.
I find it often urged that an international government would
be oppressive, and I do not deny that this might be the case, at
any rate for a time, but national governments were oppressive
when they were new and are still oppressive in most countries,
and yet hardly anybody would on this ground advocate an-
anarchy within a nation.
Ordered social life of a kind that could seem in any degree
desirable rests upon a synthesis and balance of certain slowly
developed ideas and institutions: government, law, individual
liberty, and democracy. Individual liberty, of course, existed
in the ages before there was government, but when it existed
without government civilized life was impossible. When gov-
ernments first arose they involved slavery, absolute monarchy,
and usually the enforcement of superstitition by a powerful
priesthood. All these were very great evils, and one can under-
stand Rousseau's nostalgia for the life of the noble savage. But
this was a mere romantic idealization, and, in fact, the life of
the savage was, as Hobbes said, "nasty, brutish, and short." The
history of man reaches occasional great crises. There must have
been a crisis when the apes lost their tails, and another when
our ancestors took to walking upright and lost their protective
covering of hair. As I remarked before, the human population
of the globe, which must at one time have been very small, was
greatly increased by the invention of agriculture, and was in-
IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND 143
creased again in our own time by modern industrial and medi-
cal technique. But modern technique has brought us to a new
crisis. In this new crisis we are faced with an alternative: either
man must again become a rare species as in the days of Homo
Pekiniensis, or we must learn to submit to an international
government. Any such government, whether good, bad or in-
different, will make the continuation of the human species
possible, and, as in the course of the past 5,000 years men have
climbed gradually from the despotism of the Pharaohs to the
glories of the American Constitution, so perhaps in the next
5,000 they may climb from a bad international government to
a good one. But if they do not establish an international gov-
ernment of some kind, new progress will have to begin at a
lower level, probably at that of tribal savagery, and will have
to begin after a cataclysmic destruction only to be paralleled
by the Biblical account of the deluge. When we survey the
long development of mankind from a rare hunted animal, hid-
ing precariously in caves from the fury of wild beasts which
he was incapable of killing; subsisting doubtfully on the raw
fruits of the earth which he did not know how to cultivate;
reinforcing real terrors by the imaginary terrors of ghosts and
evil spirits and malign spells; gradually acquiring the mastery
of his environment by the invention of fire, writing, weapons,
and at last science; building up a social organization which
curbed private violence and gave a measure of security to daily
life; using the leisure gained by his skill, not only in idle luxury,
but in the production of beauty and the unveiling of the
secrets of natural law; learning gradually, though imperfectly,
to view an increasing number of his neighbors as allies in the
task of production rather than enemies in the attempts at mu-
tual depredation when we consider this long and arduous
journey, it becomes intolerable to think that it may all have
to be made again from the beginning owing to failure to take
one step for which past developments, rightly viewed, have
144 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
been a preparation* Social cohesion, which among the apes is
confined to the family, grew in prehistoric times as far as the
tribe, and in the very beginnings of history reached the level
of small kingdoms in upper and lower Egypt and in Mesopo-
tamia. From these small kingdoms grew the empires of an-
tiquity, and then gradually the great states of our own day,
far larger than even the Roman Empire. Quite recent develop-
ments have robbed the smaller states of any real independence,
until now there remain only two that are wholly capable of
independent self-direction: I mean, of course, the United
States and the ILS.S.R. All that is necessary to save mankind
from disaster is the step from two independent states to one
not by war, which would bring disaster, but by agreement.
If this step can be accomplished, all the great achievements
of mankind will quickly lead to an era of happiness and well-
being, such as has ne^er before been dreamed of. Our scientific
skill will make it possible to abolish poverty throughout the
world without necessitating more than four or five hours a day
of productive labor. Disease, which has been very rapidly re-
duced during the last hundred years, will be reduced still fur-
ther. The leisure achieved through organization and science
will no doubt be devoted very largely to pure enjoyment, but
there will remain a number of people to whom the pursuit of
art and science wiE seem important. There will be a new free-
dom from economic bondage to the mere necessities of keep-
ing alive, and the great mass of mankind may enjoy the kind of
carefree adventurousness that characterizes the rich young
Athenians of Plato's Dialogues. All this is easily within the
bounds of technical possibility. It requires for its realization
only one thing: that the men who hold power, and the popu-
lations that support them, should think it more important to
keep themselves alive than to cause the death of their enemies.
No very lofty or difficult ideal, one might think, and yet one
IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND 145
which so far has proved beyond the scope of human intelli-
gence.
The present moment is the most important and most crucial
that has ever confronted mankind. Upon our collective wis-
dom during the next twenty years depends the question
whether mankind shall be plunged into unparalleled disaster,
or shall achieve a new level of happiness, security, well-being,
and intelligence. I do not know which mankind will choose.
There is grave reason for fear, but there is enough possibility
of a good solution to make hope not irrational. And it is on
this hope that we must act.
X
Ideas That Have Harmed
Mankind
THE misfortunes of human beings may be divided into
wo classes: First, those inflicted by the nonhuman en-
dronment, and, second, those inflicted by other people.
As mankind have progressed in knowledge and technique, the
second class has become a continually increasing percentage
of the total In old times, famine, for example, was due to nat-
ural causes, and, although people did their best to combat it,
large numbers of them died of starvation. At the present mo-
ment large parts of the world are faced with the threat of
famine, but although natural causes have contributed to the
situation, the principal causes are human. For six years the
civilized nations of the world devoted all their best energies
to killing each other, and they find it difficult suddenly to
switch over to keeping each other alive. Having destroyed
harvests, dismantled agricultural machinery, and disorganized
shipping, they find it no easy matter to relieve the shortage of
crops in one place by means of a superabundance in another,
as would easily be done if the economic system were in normal
working order. As this illustration shows, it is now man that is
146
IDEAS THAT HAVE HARMED MANKIND 147
man's worst enemy. Nature, it is true, still sees to it that we are
mortal, but with the progress in medicine it will become more
and more common for people to live until they have had their
fill of Hfe. We are supposed to wish to live forever and to
look forward to the unending joys of heaven, of which, by
miracle, the monotony will never grow stale. But in fact, if
you question any candid person who is no longer young, he
is very likely to tell you that, having tasted life in this world,
he has no wish to begin again as a "new boy" in another. For
the future, therefore, it may be taken that much the most im-
portant evils that mankind have to consider are those which
they inflict upon each other through stupidity or malevolence
or both.
I think that the evils that men inflict on each other, and by
reflection upon themselves, have their main source in evil pas-
sions rather than in ideas or beliefs. But ideas and principles
that do harm are, as a rule, though not always, cloaks for evil
passions. In Lisbon when heretics were publicly burned, it
sometimes happened that one of them, by a particularly edify-
ing recantation, would be granted the boon of being strangled
before being put into the flames. This would make the spec-
tators so furious that the authorities had great difficulty in
preventing them from lynching the penitent and burning him
on their own account. The spectacle of the writhing torments
of the victims was, in fact, one of the principal pleasures to
which the populace looked forward to enliven a somewhat
drab existence. I cannot doubt that this pleasure greatly con-
tributed to the general belief that the burning of heretics was
a righteous act. The same sort of thing applies to war. People
who are vigorous and brutal often find war enjoyable, pro-
vided that it is a victorious war and that there is not too much
interference with rape and plunder. This is a great help in
persuading people that wars are righteous. Dr. Arnold, the
hero of Tom Brown's Schooldays, and the admired reformer
148 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
of public schools, came across some cranks who thought it a
mistake to flog boys. Anyone reading his outburst of furious
indignation against this opinion will be forced to the con-
clusion that he enjoyed inflicting floggings, and did not wish
to be deprived of this pleasure,
It would be easy to multiply instances in support of the
thesis that opinions which justify cruelty are inspired by cruel
impulses. When we pass in review the opinions of former
times which are now recognized as absurd, it will be found that
nine times out of ten they were such as to justify the infliction
of suffering. Take, for instance, medical practice. When an-
aesthetics were invented they were thought to be wicked as
being an attempt to thwart God's will. Insanity was thought
to be due to diabolic possession, and it was believed that de-
mons inhabiting a madman could be driven out by inflicting
pain upon him, and so making them uncomfortable. In pursuit
of this opinion/ lunatics were treated for years on end with
systematic and conscientious brutality. I cannot think of any
instance of an erroneous medical treatment that was agreeable
rather than disagreeable to the patient. Or again, take moral
education. Consider how much brutality has been justified by
the rhyme:
A dog, a wife, and a walnut tree,
The more you beat them the better they be.
I have no experience of the moral effect of flagellation on
walnut trees, but no civilized person would now justify the
rhyme as regards wives. The reformative effect of punishment
is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfy-
ing to our sadistic impulses.
But although passions have had more to do than beliefs with
what is amiss in human life, yet beliefs, especially where they
are ancient and systematic and embodied in organizations, have
a great power of delaying desirable changes of opinion and of
IDEAS THAT HAVE HARMED MANKIND 149
Influencing In the wrong direction people who otherwise would
have no strong feelings either way. Since my subject is "Ideas
That Have Harmed Mankind," it is especially harmful systems
of beliefs that I shall consider.
The most obvious case as regards past history is constituted
by the beliefs which may be called religious or superstitious,
according to one's personal bias. It was supposed that human
sacrifice would improve the crops, at first for purely magical
reasons, and then because the blood of victims was thought
pleasing to the gods, who certainly were made in the image
of their worshipers. We read in the Old Testament that it
was a religious duty to exterminate conquered races com-
pletely, and that to spare even their cattle and sheep was an
impiety. Dark terrors and misfortunes in the life to come op-
pressed the Egyptians and Etruscans, but never reached their
full development until the victory of Christianity. Gloomy
saints who abstained from all pleasures of sense, who lived in
solitude in the desert, denying themselves meat and wine and
the society of women, were, nevertheless, not obliged to ab-
stain from all pleasures. The pleasures of the mind were con-
sidered to be superior to those of the body, and a high place
among the pleasures of the mind was assigned to the con-
templation of the eternal tortures to which the pagans and
heretics would hereafter be subjected. It is one of the draw-
backs to asceticism that it sees no harm in pleasures other than
those of sense, and yet, in fact, not only the best pleasures,
but also the very worst, are purely mental. Consider the pleas-
ures of Milton's Satan when he contemplates the harm that
he could do to man. As Milton makes him say:
The mind is its own place, and of itself
Can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell.
and his psychology is not so very different from that of Ter-
tullian, exulting in the thought that he will be able to look out
150 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
from heaven at the sufferings of the damned. The ascetic de-
preciation of the pleasures of sense has not promoted kindliness
or tolerance, or any of the other virtues that a non-superstitious
outlook on human life would lead us to desire. On the contrary,
when a man tortures himself he feels that it gives him a right
to torture others, and inclines him to accept any system of
dogma by which this right is fortified.
The ascetic form of cruelty is, unfortunately, not confined
to the fiercer forms of Christian dogma, which are now seldom
believed with their former ferocity. The world has produced
new and menacing forms of the same psychological pattern.
The Nazis in the days before they achieved power lived labo-
rious lives, involving much sacrifice of ease and present pleas-
ure in obedience to the belief in strenuousness and Nietzsche's
maxim that one should make oneself hard. Even after they
achieved power, the slogan "guns rather than butter" still in-
volved a sacrifice of the pleasures of sense for the mental pleas-
ures of prospective victory the very pleasures, in fact, with
which Milton's Satan consoles himself while tortured by the
fires of hell. The same mentality is to be found among earnest
Communists, to whom luxury is an evil, hard work the princi-
pal duty, and universal poverty the means to the millennium.
The combination of asceticism and cruelty has not disappeared
with the softening of Christian dogma, but has taken on new
forms hostile to Christianity. There is still much of the same
mentality: mankind are divided into saints and sinners; the
saints are to achieve bliss in the Nazi or Communist heaven,
while the sinners are to be liquidated, or to suffer such pains
as human beings can inflict in concentration camps inferior,
of course, to those which Omnipotence was thought to inflict
in hell, but the worst that human beings with their limited
powers are able to achieve. There is still, for the saints, a hard
period of probation followed by "the shout of them that
IDEAS THAT HAVE HARMED MANKIND 151
triumph, the song of them that feast," as the Christian hymn
says in describing the joys of heaven.
As this psychological pattern seems so persistent and so capa-
ble of clothing itself in completely new mantles of dogma, it
must have its roots somewhat deep in human nature. This is
the kind of matter that is studied by psychoanalysts, and
while I am very far from subscribing to all their doctrines, I
think that their general methods are important if we wish to
seek out the source of evil in our innermost depths. The twin
conceptions of sin and vindictive punishment seem to be at
the root of much that is most vigorous, both in religion and
politics. I cannot believe, as some psychoanalysts do, that the
feeling of sin is innate, though I believe it to be a product of
very early infancy. I think that, if this feeling could be eradi-
cated, the amount of cruelty in the world would be very
greatly diminished. Given that we are all sinners and that we
all deserve punishment, there is evidently much to be said for
a system that causes the punishment to fall upon others than
ourselves. Calvinists, by the fiat of undeserved mercy, would
go to heaven, and their feelings that sin deserved punishment
would receive a merely vicarious satisfaction. Communists have
a similar outlook. When we are born we do not choose
whether we are to be born capitalists or proletarians, but if
the latter we are among the elect, and if the former we are
not. Without any choice on our own parts, by the working
of economic determinism, we are fated to be on the right side
in the one case, and on the wrong side in the other. Marx's
father became a Christian when Marx was a little boy, and
some, 'at least, of the dogmas he must have then accepted seem
to have borne fruit in his son's psychology.
One of the odd effects of the importance which each of
us attaches to himself is that we tend to imagine our own good
or evil fortune to be the purpose of other people's actions. If
152 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
you pass in a train a field containing grazing cows, you may
sometimes see them running away in terror as the train passes.
The cow, if it were a metaphysician, would argue: "Every-
thing in my own desires and hopes and fears has reference to
myself; hence by induction I conclude that everything in the
universe has reference to myself. This noisy train, therefore,
intends to do me either good or evil. I cannot suppose that it
intends to do me good, since it comes in such a terrifying
form, and therefore, as a prudent cow, I shall endeavor to es-
cape from it." If you were to explain to this metaphysical
ruminant that the train has no intention of leaving the rails,
and is totally indifferent to the fate of the cow, the poor beast
would be bewildered by anything so unnatural. The train that
wishes her neither well nor ill would seem more cold and more
abysmally horrifying than a train that wished her ill. Just this
has happened with human beings. The course of nature brings
them sometimes good fortune, sometimes evil. They cannot
believe that this happens by accident. The cow, having known
of a companion which had strayed on to the railway line and
been killed by a train, would pursue her philosophical reflec-
tions, if she were endowed with that moderate degree of in-
telligence that characterizes most human beings, to the point
of concluding that the unfortunate cow had been punished
for sin by the god of the railway. She would be glad when his
priests put fences along the line, and would warn younger
and friskier cows never to avail themselves of accidental open-
ings in the fence, since the wages of sin is death. By similar
myths men have succeeded, without sacrificing their self-
importance, in explaining many of the misfortunes to which
they are subject. But sometimes misfortune befalls the wholly
virtuous, and what are we to say in. this case? We shall still be
prevented by our feeling that we must be the center of the
universe from admitting that misfortune has merely happened
to us without anybody's intending it, and since we are not
IDEAS THAT HAVE HARMED MANKIND 153
wicked by hypothesis, our misfortune must be due to some-
body's malevolence, that is to say, to somebody wishing to in-
jure us from mere hatred and not from the hope of any ad-
vantage to himself. It was this state of mind that gave rise to
demonology, and the belief in witchcraft and black magic. The
witch is a person who injures her neighbors from sheer hatred,
not from any hope of gain. The belief in witchcraft, until
about the middle of the seventeenth century, afforded a most
satisfying outlet for the delicious emotion of self-righteous
cruelty. There was Biblical warrant for the belief, since the
Bible says: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." And on
this ground the Inquisition punished not only witches, but
those who did not believe in the possibility of witchcraft, since
to disbelieve it was heresy. Science, by giving some insight
into natural causation, dissipated the belief in magic, but could
not wholly dispel the fear and sense of insecurity that had
given rise to it. In modern times, these same emotions find an
outlet in fear of foreign nations, an outlet which, it must be
confessed, requires not much in the way of superstitious sup-
port.
One of the most powerful sources of false belief is envy.
In any small town you will find, if you question the com-
paratively well-to-do, that they all exaggerate their neighbors*
incomes, which gives them an opportunity to justify an ac-
cusation of meanness. The jealousies of women are proverbial
among men, but in any large office you will find exactly the
same kind of jealousy among male officials. When one of them
secures promotion the others will say: "Humph! So-and-so
knows how to make up to the big men. I could have risen quite
as fast as he has if I had chosen to debase myself by using the
sycophantic arts of which he is not ashamed. No doubt his
work has a flashy brilliance, but it lacks solidity, and sooner
or later the authorities will find out their mistake." So all the
mediocre men will say if a really able man is allowed to rise as
154 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
fast as his abilities deserve, and that is why there is a tendency
to adopt the rule of seniority, which, since it has nothing to
do with merit, does not give rise to the same envious dis-
content.
One of the most unfortunate results of our proneness to
envy is that it has caused a complete misconception of eco-
nomic self -interest, both individual and national. I will illustrate
by a parable. There was once upon a time a medium-sized
town containing a number of butchers, a number of bakers,
and so forth. One butcher, who was exceptionally energetic,
decided that he would make much larger profits if all the other
butchers were ruined and he became a monopolist. By system-
atically underselling them he succeeded in his object, though
his losses meanwhile had almost exhausted his command of
capital and credit. At the same time an energetic baker had
had the same idea and had pursued it to a similar successful
conclusion. In every trade which lived by selling goods to
consumers the same thing had happened. Each of the successful
monopolists had a happy anticipation of making a fortune, but
unfortunately the ruined butchers were no longer in the
position to buy bread, and the rained bakers were no longer
in the position to buy meat. Their employees had had to be
dismissed and had gone elsewhere. The consequence was that,
although the butcher and the baker each had a monopoly,
they sold less than they had done in the old days. They had
forgotten that while a man may be injured by his competitors
he is benefited by his customers, and that customers become
more numerous when the general level of prosperity is in-
creased. Envy had made them concentrate their attention upon
competitors and forget altogether the aspect of their prosperity
that depended upon customers.
This is a fable, and the town of which I have been speaking
never existed, but substitute for a town the world, and for
individuals nations, and you will have a perfect picture of the
IDEAS THAT HAVE HARMED MANKIND 155:
economic policy universally pursued in the present day. Every
nation is persuaded that its economic interest is opposed to
that of every other nation, and that it must profit if other
nations are reduced to destitution. During the First World
War, I used to hear English people saying how immensely
British trade would benefit from the destruction of German
trade, which was to be one of the principal fruits of our vic-
tory. After the war, although we should have liked to find
a market on the Continent of Europe, and although the
industrial life of Western Europe depended upon coal from
the Ruhr, we could not bring ourselves to allow the Ruhr
coal industry to produce more than a tiny fraction of what
it produced before the Germans were defeated. The whole
philosophy of economic nationalism, which is now universal
throughout the world, is based upon the false belief that the
economic interest of one nation is necessarily opposed to that
of another. This false belief, by producing international hatreds
and rivalries, is a cause of w^ar, and in this way tends to make
itself true, since when war has once broken out the conflict of
national interests becomes only too real. If you try to explain
to someone, say, in the steel industry, that possibly prosperity
in other countries might be advantageous to him, you will
find it quite impossible to make him see the argument, because
the only foreigners of whom he is vividly aware are his com-
petitors in the steel industry. Other foreigners are shadowy
beings in whom he has no emotional interest. This is the
psychological root of economic nationalism, and war, and
man-made starvation, and all the other evils which will bring
our civilization to a disastrous and disgraceful end unless men
can be induced to take a wider and less hysterical view of their
mutual relations.
Another passion which gives rise to false beliefs that are
politically harmful is pride pride of nationality, race, sex y
class, or creed. When I was young France was still regarded
156 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
as the traditional enemy of England, and I gathered as an un-
questionable truth that one Englishman conld defeat three
Frenchmen. When Germany became the enemy this belief
was modified and English people ceased to mention derisively
the French propensity for eating frogs. But in spite of gov-
ernmental efforts, I think few Englishmen succeeded in genu-
inely regarding the French as their equals. Americans and
Englishmen, when they become acquainted with the Balkans,
feel an astonished contempt when they study the mutual
enmities of Bulgarians and Serbs, of Hungarians and Ruma-
nians. It is evident to them that these enmities are absurd and
that the belief of each little nation in its own superiority has
no objective basis. But most of them are quite unable to see
that the national pride of a Great Power is essentially as un-
justifiable as that of a little Balkan country.
Pride of race is even more harmful than national pride. When
I was in China I was struck by the fact that cultivated Chinese
were perhaps more highly civilized than any other human
bdngs that it has been my good fortune to meet. Nevertheless,
I found numbers of gross and ignorant white men who de-
spised even the best of the Chinese solely because their skins
were yellow. In general, the British were more to blame in
this than the Americans, but there were exceptions. I was once
in the company of a Chinese scholar of vast learning, not only
of the traditional Chinese kind, but also of the kind taught in
Western universities, a man with a breadth of culture which
I scarcely hoped to equal He and I went together into a garage
to hire a motor car. The garage proprietor was a bad type of
American, who treated my Chinese friend like dirt, contemp-
tuously accused him of being Japanese, and made my blood
boil by his ignorant malevolence. The similar attitude of the
English in India, exacerbated by their political power, was
one of the main causes of the friction that arose In that coun-
try between the British and the educated Indians. The superi-
IDEAS THAT HAVE HARMED MANKIND 157
ority of one race to another is hardly ever believed in for
any good reason. Where the belief persists it Is kept alive by
'military supremacy. So long as the Japanese were victorious,
they entertained a contempt for the white man, which was
the counterpart of the contempt that the white man had felt
for them while they were weak. Sometimes, however, the feel-
ing of superiority has nothing to do with military prowess,
The Greeks despised the barbarians, even at times when the
barbarians surpassed them in warlike strength. The more en-
lightened among the Greeks held that slavery was justifiable so
long as the masters were Greek and the slaves barbarian, but
that otherwise it was contrary to nature. The Jews had, in
antiquity, a quite peculiar belief in their own racial superiority;
ever since Christianity became the religion of the state Gen-
tiles have had an equally irrational belief in their superiority to
Jews. Beliefs of this kind do infinite harm, and it should be,
but is not, one of the aims of education to eradicate them. I
spoke a moment ago about the attitude of superiority that
Englishmen have permitted themselves in their dealings with
the inhabitants of India, which was naturally resented in that
country, but the caste system arose as a result of successive
invasions by "superior" races from the North, and Is every bit
as objectionable as white arrogance.
The belief in the superiority of the male sex, which has now
officially died out in Western nations, is a curious example of
the sin of pride. There was, I think, never any reason to believe
in any innate superiority of the male, except his superior
muscle. I remember once going to a place where they kept a
number of pedigreed bulls, and what made a bull illustrious was
the milk-giving qualities of his female ancestors. But if bulls
had drawn up the pedigrees they would have been very differ-
ent. Nothing would have been said about the female ancestors,
except that they were docile and virtuous, whereas the male
ancestors would have been celebrated for their supremacy in
158 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
battle. In the case of cattle we can take a disinterested view of
the relative merits of the sexes, but in the case of our own
species we find this more difficult. Male superiority in former
days was easily demonstrated, because if a woman questioned
her husband's he could beat her. From superiority in this re-
spect others were thought to follow. Men were more reasonable
than women, more inventive, less swayed by their emotions,
and so on. Anatomists, until the women had the vote, devel-
oped a number of ingenious arguments from the study of the
brain to show that men's intellectual capacities must be greater
than women's. Each of these arguments in turn was proved to
be fallacious, but it always gave place to another from which
the same conclusion would follow. It used to be held that the
male foetus acquires a soul after six weeks, but the female only
after three months. This opinion also has been abandoned since
women have had the vote. Thomas Aquinas states parenthet-
ically, as something entirely obvious, that men are more ra-
tional than women. For my part, I see no evidence of this.
Some few individuals have some slight glimmerings of ration-
ality in some directions, but so far as my observations go,
such glimmerings are no commoner among men than among
women.
Male domination has had some very unfortunate effects.
It made the most intimate of human relations, that of marriage,
one of master and slave, instead of one between equal partners.
It made it unnecessary for a man to please a woman in order
to acquire her as his wife, and thus confined the arts of court-
ship to irregular relations. By the seclusion which it forced
upon respectable women it made them dull and uninteresting;
the only women who could be interesting and adventurous
were social outcasts. Owing to the dullness of respectable
'women, the most civilized men in the most civilized countries
often became homosexual. Owing to the fact that there was no
equality in marriage men became confirmed in domineering
IDEAS THAT HAVE HARMED MANKIND 159
habits. All this has now more or less ended in civilized coun-
tries, but it will be a long time before either men or women
learn to adapt their behavior completely to the new state of
affairs. Emancipation always has at first certain bad effects;
it leaves former superiors sore and former inferiors self-
assertive. But it is to be hoped that time will bring adjustment
in this matter as in others.
Another kind of superiority which is rapidly disappearing
is that of class, which now survives only in Soviet Russia. In
that country the son of a proletarian has advantages over the
son of a bourgeois, but elsewhere such hereditary privileges
are regarded as unjust. The disappearance of class distinctions
is, however, far from complete. In America everybody is of
opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal,
but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from
the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are
equal applies only upwards, not downwards. There is on this
subject a profound and widespread hypocrisy whenever peo-
ple talk in general terms. What they really think and feel can
be discovered by reading second-rate novels, where one finds
that it is a dreadful thing to be born on the wrong side of the
tracks, and that there is as much fuss about a mesalliance as
there used to be in a small German Court. So long as great
inequalities of wealth survive it is not easy to see how this can
be otherwise. In England, where snobbery is deeply ingrained,
the equalization of incomes which has been brought about by
the war has had a profound effect, and among the young the
snobbery of their elders has begun to seem somewhat ridicu-
lous. There is still a very large amount of regrettable snobbery
in England, but it is connected more with education and manner
of speech than with income or with social status in the old
sense.
Pride of creed is another variety of the same kind of feeling.
When I had recently returned from China I lectured on that
l6o UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
country to a number of women's clubs in America. There was
always one elderly woman who appeared to be sleeping
throughout the lecture, but at the end would ask me, some-
what portentously, why I had omitted to mention that the
Chinese, being heathen, could of course have no virtues. I
imagine that the Mormons of Salt Lake City must have had
a similar attitude when non-Mormons were first admitted
among them. Throughout the Middle Ages, Christians and
Mohammedans were entirely persuaded of each other's wicked-
ness and were incapable of doubting their own superiority.
All these are pleasant ways of feeling "grand," In order to
be happy we require all kinds of supports to our self-esteem.
We are human beings, therefore human beings are the purpose
of creation* We are Americans, therefore America is God's
own country. We are white, and therefore God cursed Ham
and his descendants who were black. We are Protestant or
Catholic, as the case may be, therefore Catholics or Protes-
tants, as the case may be, are an abomination. We are male, and
therefore women are unreasonable; or female, and therefore
men are brutes. We are Easterners, and therefore the West is
wild and woolly; or Westerners, and therefore the East is effete.
We work with our brains, and therefore it is the educated
classes that are important; or we work with our hands, and
therefore manual labor alone gives dignity. Finally, and above
all, we each have one merit which is entirely unique: we are
Ourself. With these comforting reflections we go out to do
battle with the world; without them our courage might fail
Without them, as things are, we should feel inferior because
we have not learned the sentiment of equality. If we could feel
genuinely that we are the equals of our neighbors, neither
their betters nor their inferiors, perhaps life would become less
of a battle, and we should need less in the way of intoxicating
myth to give us Dutch courage.
One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which
IDEAS THAT HAVE HARMED MANKIND l6l
men and nations can be subjected Is that of imagining them-
selves special instruments of the Divine Will. We know that
when the Israelites invaded the Promised Land it was they
who were fulfilling the Divine Purpose, and not the Hittites,
the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites,
the Hivites, or the Jebusites. Perhaps if these others had
written long history books the matter might have looked a
little different. In fact, the Hittites did leave some inscriptions,
from which you would never guess what abandoned wretches
they were. It was discovered, "after the fact," that Rome was
destined by the gods for the conquest of the world. Then
came Islam with its fanatical belief that every soldier dying
in battle for the True Faith went straight to a Paradise more
attractive than that of the Christians', as houris are more attrac-
tive than harps. Cromwell was persuaded that he was the
Divinely appointed instrument of justice for suppressing Cath-
olics and malignants. Andrew Jackson was the agent of Man-
ifest Destiny in freeing North America from the incubus of
Sabbath-breaking Spaniards. In our day, the sword of the
Lord has been put into the hands of the Marxists. Hegel
thought that the Dialectic with fatalistic logic had given
supremacy to Germany. "No," said Marx, "not to Germany,
but to the Proletariat." This doctrine has kinship with the
earlier doctrines of the Chosen People and Manifest Destiny.
In its character of fatalism it has viewed the struggle of op-
ponets as one against destiny, and argued that therefore the
wise man would put himself on the winning side as quickly
as possible. That is why this argument is such a useful one
politically* The only objection to it is that it assumes a knowl-
edge of the Divine purposes to which no rational man can lay
claim, and that in the execution of them it justifies a ruthless
cruelty which would be condemned if our program had &
merely mundane origin. It is good to know that God is on our
side, but a little confusing when you find the enemy equally
162 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
convinced of the opposite. To quote the immortal lines of the
poet during the First World War:
Gott strafe England, and God save the King.
God this, and God that, and God the other thing.
"Good God," said God, "I've got my work cut out."
Belief in a Divine mission is one of the many forms of certainty
that have afflicted the human race. I think perhaps one of the
wisest things ever said was when Cromwell said to the Scotch
before the battle of Dunbar: "I beseech you in the bowels of
Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken." But the
Scotch did not, and so he had to defeat them in battle. It is a
pity that Cromwell never addressed the same remark to him-
self. Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man
have come through people feeling quite certain about some-
thing which, in fact, was false. To know the truth is more
difficult than most men suppose, and to act with ruthless
determination in the belief that truth is the monopoly of their
party is to invite disaster. Long calculations that certain evil in
the present is worth inflicting for the sake of some doubtful
benefit in the future are always to be viewed with suspicion,
for, as Shakespeare says: "What's to come is still unsure."
Even the shrewdest men are apt to be wildly astray if they
prophesy so much as ten years ahead. Some people will con-
sider this doctrine immoral, but after all it is the Gospel, which
says "take no thought for the morrow."
In public, as in private life, the important thing is tolerance
and kindliness, without the presumption of a superhuman abil-
ity to read the future.
Instead of calling this essay "Ideas That Have Harmed Man-
kind,'* I might perhaps have called it simply "Ideas Have
Harmed Mankind," for, seeing that the future cannot be fore-
told and that there is an almost endless variety of possible
beliefs about it, the chance that any belief which a man may
hold may be true is very slender. Whatever you think is going
to happen ten years hence, unless it is something like the sun
IDEAS THAT HAVE HARMED MANKIND 163
rising tomorrow that has nothing to do with human relations,
you are almost sure to be wrong. I find this thought consoling
when I remember some gloomy prophecies of which I myself
have rashly been guilty.
But you will say: how is statesmanship possible except on
the assumption that the future can be to some extent foretold?
I admit that some degree of prevision is necessary, and I am not
suggesting that we are completely ignorant. It is a fair proph-
ecy that if you tell a man he is a knave and a fool he will
not love you, and it is a fair prophecy that if you say the same
thing to seventy million people they will not love you. It is
safe to assume that cut-throat competition will not produce
a feeling of good fellowship between the competitors. It is
highly probable that if two states equipped with modern
armament face each other across a frontier, and if their leading
statesmen devote themselves to mutual insults, the population
of each side will in time become nervous, and one side will
attack for fear of the other doing so. It is safe to assume that
a great modern war will not raise the level of prosperity even
among the victors. Such generalizations are not difficult to
know. What is difficult is to foresee in detail the long-run con-
sequences of a concrete policy. Bismarck with extreme astute-
ness won three wars and unified Germany. The long-run re-
sult of his policy has been that Germany has suffered two
colossal defeats. These resulted because he taught Germans to
be indifferent to the interests of all countries except Germany,
and generated an aggressive spirit which in the end united the
world against his successors. Selfishness beyond a point,
whether individual or national, is not wise. It may with luck
succeed, but if it fails failure is terrible. Few men will run this
risk unless they are supported by a theory, for it is only theory
that makes men completely incautious.
Passing from the moral to the purely intellectual point of
view, we have to ask ourselves what social science can do in
the way of establishing such causal laws as should be a help to
164 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
statesmen In making political decisions. Some things of real
importance have begun to be known, for example how to avoid
slumps and large-scale unemployment such as afflicted the
world after the last war. It is also now generally known by
those who have taken the trouble to look into the matter that
only an international government can prevent war, and that
civilization is hardly likely to survive more than one more
great war, if that. But although these things are known, the
knowledge is not effective; it has not penetrated to the great
masses of men, and it is not strong enough to control sinister
interests. There is, in fact, a great deal more social science than
politicians are willing or able to apply. Some people attribute
this failure to democracy, but it seems to me to be more
marked in autocracy than anywhere else. Belief in democracy,
however, like any other belief, may be carried to the point
where it becomes fanatical, and therefore harmful. A demo-
crat need not believe that the majority will always decide
wisely; what he must believe is that the decision of the ma-
jority, whether wise or unwise, must be accepted until such
time as the majority decides otherwise. And this he believes
not from any mystic conception of the wisdom of the plain
man, but as the best practical device for putting the reign of
law in place of the reign of arbitrary force. Nor does the
democrat necessarily believe that democracy is the best system
always and everywhere. There are many nations which lack
the self-restraint and political experience that are required for
the success of parliamentary institutions, where the democrat,
while he would wish them to acquire the necessary political
education, will recognize that it is useless to thrust upon them
prematurely a system which is almost certain to break down.
In politics, as elsewhere, it does not do to deal in absolutes;
what is good in one time and place may be bad in another,
and what satisfies the political instincts of one nation may
to another seem wholly futile. The general aim of the democrat
is to substitute government by general assent for government
IDEAS THAT HAVE HARMED MANKIND 165
fay force, but this requires a population that has undergone a
certain kind of training. Given a nation divided into two nearly
equal portions which hate each other and long to fly at each
other's throats, the portion which is just less than half will not
submit tamely to the domination of the other portion, nor will
the portion which is just more than half show, in the moment
of victory, the kind of moderation which might heal the
breach.
The world at the present day stands in need of tw r o kinds
of things. On the one hand, organization political organiza-
tion for the elimination of wars, economic organization to
enable men to work productively, especially in the countries
that have been devastated by war, educational organization to
generate a sane internationalism. On the other hand it needs
certain moral qualities the qualities which have been advo-
cated by moralists for many ages, but hitherto with little
success. The qualities most needed are charity and tolerance,
not some form of fanatical faith such as is offered to us by the
various rampant isms. I think these two aims, the organizational
and the ethical, are closely interwoven; given either the other
would soon follow. But, in effect, if the world is to move in
the right direction it will have to move simultaneously in both
respects. There will have to be a gradual lessening of the evil
passions which are the natural aftermath of war, and a gradual
increase of the organizations by means of which mankind can
bring each other mutual help. There will have to be a realiza-
tion at once intellectual and moral that we are all one family,
and that the happiness of no one branch of this family can be
built securely upon the ruin of another. At the present time,
moral defects stand in the way of clear thinking, and muddled
thinking encourages moral defects. Perhaps, though I scarcely
dare to hope it, the hydrogen bomb will terrify mankind into
sanity and tolerance. If this should happen we shall have reason
to bless its inventors.
XI
Eminent Men I Have Known
I HAVE known In the course of my life many eminent men
and women, from Victorian times to the present day.
The quality of being unforgettable, or personally impres-
sive, has not, in my experience, been greatest in those who
have made the greatest mark in history, except in a few cases.
My only encounter with Queen Victoria was at the age of
two, and unfortunately I do not remember it, but my elders
noted with surprise that my behavior was quite respectful.
On the other hand, it was at the same age that I first met
Robert Browning, whom many considered the best poet of his
age; I interrupted his discourse by saying in a piercing voice
"I wish that man would stop talking." I met him frequently in
the last years of his life, and found nothing in him to command
reverence. He was a pleasant, kindly old gentleman, very much
rat home at tea-parties of middle-aged ladies, dapper, suave, and
thoroughly domesticated, but without the divine fire that one
expects of a poet.
On the other hand, Tennyson, whom I also saw frequently,
was always acting the poet, and incurred my adolescent scorn
on that account. He used to stalk about the countryside in a
flowing Italian cloak, very emphatically not seeing the people
166
EMINENT MEN I HAVE KNOWN 167
he happened to meet, and displaying the behavior appropriate
to poetic abstraction. Of the other poets I have met, I think
the most unforgettable was Ernst Toller, chiefly through his
capacity for intense impersonal suffering. Rupert Brooke,,
whom I knew fairly well, was beautiful and vital, but the
impression was marred by a touch of Byronic insincerity and
by a certain flamboyance,
Among eminent philosophers, excluding men still alive, the
most personally impressive, to me, was William James. This
was in spite of a complete naturalness and absence of all ap-
parent consciousness of being a great man. No degree of demo-
cratic feeling and of desire to identify himself with the com-
mon herd could make him anything but a natural aristocrat,
a man whose personal distinction commanded respect*
Some philosophers not necessarily the ablest are impressive
through their quality of intellectual honesty. Of these a very
good example was Henry Sidgwick, who was my teacher in
ethics. In his youth fellowships at Cambridge were only open
to those who would sign the Thirty-Nine Articles of the
Church of England. Years after he had signed them, he devel-
oped doubts, and, though not expected to affirm that his beliefs
remained unchanged, decided that it was his duty to resign.
This action hastened the change in the law which put an end
to the old theological restrictions. As a teacher, he showed the
same honesty, and considered objections by pupils as courte-
ously and carefully as if they had been made by colleagues.
This made his teaching more fruitful than that of many abler
men.
Men of science, at their best, have a special kind of impressive-
ness, resulting from the combination of great intellect with
childlike simplicity. When I say "simplicity," I do not mean
anything involving lack of cleverness; I mean the habit of
thinking impersonally, without regard for the worldly advan-
1 68 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
tage or disadvantage of an opinion or an action. Among the
men of science I have known, Einstein is a supreme example
of this quality.
Coming to politicians, I have known seven Prime Ministers,
from my grandfather (who was Prime Minister in 1846) to
Mr. Attlee. Far the most unforgettable of those was Gladstone,
whom those who knew him always alluded to as "Mr." Glad-
stone* The only other man known to me in public life that I
could regard as his equal in personal impressiveness was Lenin.
Mr. Gladstone was embodied Victorianism; Lenin was em-
bodied Marxian formulas neither quite human, but each with
the power of a natural force.
Mr. Gladstone, in private life, dominated by the power of
his eye, which was quick and piercing, and calculated to in-
spire terror. One felt, like a small boy in presence of an old-
fashioned schoolmaster, a constant impulse to say "please, Sir,
it wasn't me." Everybody felt like this. I cannot imagine a hu-
man being who would have ventured to tell him a story even in
the faintest degree risque; his moral horror would have frozen
the narrator to stone. I had a grandmother who was the most
formidable woman I have ever known; other eminent men in-
variably quailed before hen Bot once, when Mr. Gladstone
was coming to tea, she told us all in advance that she was going
to set him right on his Irish policy, of which she strongly
disapproved. He came, and I was present throughout, waiting
breathlessly for the expected clash. Alas! my grandmother was
all softness, and said not a syllable to start the lion roaring; no
one could have guessed that she disagreed with him about any-
thing.
Far the most terrifying experience of my life was connected
with Mr, Gladstone, When I was seventeen, a very shy and
awkward youth, he came to stay with my family for the week-
end. I was the only "man" in the house, and after dinner, when
the ladies retired, I was left tete-a-tete with the ogre. I was
EMINENT MEN I HAVE KNOWN 169
too petrified to perform my duties as a host, and he did nothing*
to help me out. For a long time we sat in silence; at last, in his
booming bass voice, he condescended to make his one and only
remark: "This is very good port they've given me, but why
have they given it me in a claret glass?" Since then I have
faced infuriated mobs, angry judges, and hostile governments,
but never again have I felt such terror as in that searing mo-
ment.
Profound moral conviction was the basis of Mr. Gladstone's
political influence. He had all the skill of a clever politician, but
was sincerely convinced that every one of his maneuvers was
inspired by the most noble purposes. Labouchere, who was a
cynic, summed him up in the saying: "Like every politician, he
always has a card up his sleeve; but unlike the others, he thinks
the Lord put it there." Invariably he earnestly consulted his
conscience, and invariably his conscience earnestly gave him
the convenient answer.
The force of his personality is illustrated by the story true
or false of his encounter with a drunken man at a meeting.
This man, it appears, was of the opposite political party, and
interrupted frequently. At last Mr. Gladstone fixed him with
his eye, and spake these words: "May I request the gentleman
who has, not once but repeatedly^ interrupted my observations
by his interjections, to extend to me that large measure of
courtesy which, were I in his place and he in mine y I should
most unhesitatingly extend to him" It is said and I can well
believe it that the man was sobered by the shock, and re-
mained silent the rest of the evening.
Oddly enough, about half of his compatriots, including a
great majority of the well-to-do, regarded him as either mad
or wicked or both. When I was a child, most of the children I
knew were conservatives, and they solemnly assured me, as a
well-known fact, that Mr. Gladstone ordered twenty top-hats
from various hatters every morning, and" that Mrs. Gladstone
1JO UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
had to go round after him and disorder them. (This was before
the days of telephones.) Protestants supposed him secretly in
league with the Vatican; the rich regarded him (with few
exceptions) as Mr. Roosevelt was regarded by the most reac-
tionary of the American rich. But he remained serene, because
he never doubted that the Lord was on his side. And to half the
nation he was almost a god.
Lenin, with whom I had a long conversation in Moscow in
1920, was, superficially, very unlike Gladstone, and yet, allow-
ing for the difference of time and place and creed, the two
men had much in common. To begin with the differences:
Lenin was cruel, which Gladstone was not; Lenin had no
respect for tradition, whereas Gladstone had a great deal;
Lenin considered all means legitimate for securing the victory
of his party, whereas for Gladstone politics was a game with
certain rules that must be observed. All these differences, to
my mind, are to the advantage of Gladstone, and accordingly
Gladstone on the whole had beneficent effects, while Lenin's
effects were disastrous. In spite of all these dissimilarities,
however, the points of resemblance were quite as pro-
found. Lenin supposed himself to be an atheist, but in this
he was mistaken. He thought that the world was governed by
the dialectic, whose instrument he was; just as much as Glad-
stone, he conceived of himself as the human agent of a super-
human Power. His ruthlessness and unscrupulousness were only
as to means, not as to ends; he would not have been willing to
purchase personal power at the expense of apostasy. Both men
derived their personal force from this unshakable conviction of
their own rectitude. Both men, in support of their respective
faiths, ventured into realms in which, from ignorance, they
could only cover themselves with ridicule Gladstone in Bib-
lical criticism, Lenin in philosophy.
Of the two, I should say that Gladstone was the more unfor-
gettable as a personality. I take as the test what one would have
EMINENT MEN I HAVE KNOWN 171
thought of each if one had met him in a train without know-
ing who he was. In such circumstances Gladstone, I am con-
vinced, would have struck me as one of the most remarkable
men I had ever met, and would have soon reduced me to a
speechless semblance of agreement. Lenin, on the contrary,
might, I think, have seemed to me at once a narrow-minded
fanatic and a cheap cynic. I do not say that this judgment
would have been just; it would have been unjust, not positively,
but by what it would have omitted. When I met Lenin, I
had much less impression of a great man than I had expected;
my most vivid impressions were of bigotry and Mongolian
cruelty. When I put a question to him about socialism in agri-
culture, he explained with glee how he had incited the poorer
peasants against the richer ones, "and they soon hanged them
from the nearest tree ha! ha! ha!" His guffaw at the thought
of those massacred made my blood run cold.
The qualities which make a political leader were less obvious
in Lenin than in Gladstone. I doubt whether he could have
become a leader in quieter times. His power depended upon
the fact that, in a bewildered and defeated nation, he, almost
alone, had no doubt, and held out hopes of a new sort of vic-
tory in spite of military disaster. He seemed to demonstrate
his gospel by cold reasoning, which invoked logic as his ally.
In this way the passion of his followers came to appear, to them
as to him, to have the sanction of science, and to be the very
means by which the world was to be saved. Robespierre must
have had something of the same quality.
I have spoken of men who were eminent in one way or
another. But in actual fact I have been quite as often impressed
by men and women of no eminence. What I have found most
unforgettable is a certain kind of moral quality, a quality of
self-forgetfulness, whether in private life, in public affairs, or
in the pursuit of truth. I had at one time a gardener who could
neither read nor write, but was a perfect type of simple good-
172 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
ness, such as Tolstoy loved to depict among peasants. A man
whom, on account of his purity of heart, I shall never forget,
was E. D. Morel. As a shipping clerk in Liverpool, he became
aware of the horrors in King Leopold's exploitation of the
Congo. In order to make his knowledge public, he had to
sacrifice his position and means of livelihood. Single-handed at
first, he gradually, in spite of opposition from all the govern-
ments of Europe, roused public opinion and compelled reform.
The new consideration which he had thus won for himself
he sacrificed to pacifism in the war, during the course of which
he was sent to prison. He lived until shortly after the formation
of the first Labor Government, from which Ramsay Mac-
Donald excluded him in the hope of causing his own pacifist
past to be overlooked. Worldly success seldom comes to such
men, but they inspire love and admiration, in those who know
them, surpassing what is given to those who are less pure of
heart.
XII
Obituary'
Y the death of the Third Earl Russell (or Bertrand Rus-
sell, as he preferred to call himself) at the age of
ninety, a link with a very distant past is severed. His
grandfather, Lord John Russell, the Victorian Prime Minister,
visited Napoleon in Elba; his maternal grandmother was a
friend of the Young Pretender's widow. In his youth he did
work of importance in mathematical logic, but his eccentric at-
titude during the First World War revealed a lack of balanced
judgment which increasingly infected his later writings. Per-
haps this is attributable, at least in part, to the fact that he did
not enjoy the advantages of a public school education, but was
taught at home by tutors until the age of 18, when he entered
Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming jth Wrangler in 1893
and a Fellow in 1895. During the fifteen years that followed,
he produced the books upon which his reputation in the
learned world was based: The Foundations of Geometry, The
Philosophy of Leibniz., The Principles of Mathematics, and (in
* This obituary will (or will not) be published in The Times for
June r, 1962, on the occasion of my lamented but belated death. It was
printed prophetically in The Listener in 1937.
173
174 UNPOPULAR ESSAYS
collaboration with Dr. A. N. Whitehead) Principia Mathema-
tics The last work, which was of great importance in its day,
doubtless owed much of its superiority to Dr. (afterwards
Professor) Whitehead, a man who, as his subsequent writings
showed, was possessed of that insight and spiritual depth so
notably absent in Russell; for Russell's argumentation, ingen-
ious and clever as it is, ignores those higher considerations
that transcend mere logic.
This lack of spiritual depth became painfully evident during
the First World War, when Russell, although (to do him jus-
tice) he never minimized the wrong done to Belgium, per-
versely maintained that, war being an evil, the aim of statesman-
ship should have been to bring the war to an end as soon as
possible, which would have been achieved by British neutrality
and a German victory. It must be supposed that mathematical
studies had caused him to take a wrongly quantitative view
which ignored the question of principle involved. Throughout
the war, he continued to urge that it should be ended, on no
matter what terms. Trinity College, very properly, deprived
Mm of his lectureship, and for some months of 1918 he was in
prison.
In 1920 he paid a brief visit to Russia, whose government did
not impress him favorably, and a longer visit to China, where
he enjoyed the rationalism of the traditional civilization, with
its still surviving flavor of the eighteenth century. In subsequent
years his energies were dissipated in writings advocating social-
ism, educational reform, and a less rigid code of morals as re-
gards marriage. At times, however, he returned to less topical
subjects. His historical writings, by their style and their wit,
conceal from careless readers the superficiality of the anti-
quated rationalism which he professed to the end.
In the Second World War he took no public part, having
escaped to a neutral country just before its outbreak. In private
conversation he was wont to say that homicidal lunatics were
OBITUARY 175
well employed in killing each other, but that sensible men
would keep out of their way while they were doing it. Fortu-
nately this outlook, which is reminiscent of Bentham, has be-
come rare in this age, which recognizes that heroism has a
value independent of its utility. True, much of what was once
the civilized world lies in ruins; but no right-thinking person
can admit that those who died for the right in the great
struggle have died in vain.
His Hfe, for all its waywardness, had a certain anachronistic
consistency, reminiscent of that of the aristocratic rebels of
the early nineteenth century. His principles were curious, but,
such as they "were, they governed his actions. In private life
he showed none of the acerbity which marred his writings,
but was a genial conversationalist and not devoid of human
sympathy. He had many friends, but had survived almost all
of them. Nevertheless, to those who remained he appeared,
in extreme old age, full of enjoyment, no doubt owing, in
large measure, to his invariable health, for politically, during his
last years, he was as isolated as Milton after the Restoration.
He was the last survivor of a dead epoch.
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