And what is still more surprising is that the former servants of the State, the Church, and the Army, no longer rely on their divine vocation, nor even on the philosophic importance of the State as necessary for the manifestation of individuality, but they abandon these supports which so long maintained them, and now seek the support on which the new dominant class stands headed by scientists and artists-which has now found a fresh justification.
If a man of the government now sometimes by old habit defends his position on the ground that he was set in it by God, or that the State is a form of the development of personality, this indicates that he lags behind the age, and he feels that no one believes him. To defend himself effectively he must now no longer produce theological or philosophic supports, but other, new, scientific ones. He has to put forward the principle of national or organic development, and has to curry favour with the dominant order, as in the Middle Ages it was necessary to curry favour with the churchmen, and at the end of the eighteenth century with the philosophers, as was done by Frederick and Catherine the Great.
If now a rich man sometimes, by old habit, speaks of the divine will that chose him to be rich, or of the importance of an aristocracy for the nation’s good, he does so because he lags behind the times. To justify himself effectively he ought to put forward the assistance he renders to the progress of civilization by improvement in methods of production, cheapening articles of consumption, or promoting international intercourse. A rich man should talk the language of science and should offer sacrifices to the dominant order, as was formerly done to ecclesiastics; he should publish newspapers and books, arrange a picture. gallery, musical societies, a kindergarten, or technical schools.
The dominant order consists of the scientists and artists of a certain tendency: they possess a complete justification of their avoidance of toil, and on their justification, as formerly on the theological and afterwards on the philosophic, all justification now rests, and it is these men who now issue diplomas of exemption to other classes.
The class that now has a complete justification for its avoidance of toil is that of scientists, and especially experimental, positive, critical, evolutionary scientists, and the class of artists who follow the same tendency.
If a scientist or artist, by old association, now speaks about prophecy, revelation, or the manifestation of the spirit, he does so because he lags behind the age, and he fails to justify himself: to stand firmly he must somehow associate his activity with experimental, positive, critical science, and must put that science at the base of his activity.
Only then will the science or art he is occupied with be real, and only then will he, in our day, stand on unshakable foundations and be certain of the benefit he confers on humanity.
On experimental, critical, positive science the justification of all who have exempted themselves from labour now rests.
The theological and philosophic justifications are obsolete, announce themselves timidly and shamefacedly, and try to transform themselves into the scientific justification; while the scientific justification boldly upsets and destroys the remains of the former justifications, ousts them everywhere, and lifts its head high, assured of its own invincibility.
The theological justification said that people by their vocation were called-some to command, others to obey, some to live sumptuously, others to live in want; and therefore those who believed in the revelation of God could not doubt the justice of the position of those who by the will of God were called to command and be rich.
The State-philosophic justification said that the State, with all its institutions and grades differing in property and rights, is that historic form which is essential for the due manifestation of the spirit in mankind, and that therefore the position each one occupies in the State and in society in respect of property and rights, should be what it is for the due life of mankind.
The scientific theory says that the others are all nonsense and superstition: the one the fruit of thought of the theological period, the other of the metaphysical period. For the study of the laws of the life of human societies there is only one sure method-that of positive, experimental, critical science. Only sociology, based on biology, based on all the other positive sciences, can give us the laws of the life of humanity.
Humanity, or human society, is an organism, formed or still in process of formation and subject to all the laws of the evolution of organisms. One of the chief of these laws is division of labour among the parts of the organism. If some people command and others obey, if some live in opulence and others in want, this occurs, not by the will of God, and not because the State is a form of the manifestation of personality, but because in societies as in organisms a division of labour occurs which is necessary for the life of the whole: some people in society perform the muscular work, others the brain work.
On that doctrine in our times the dominant excuse is built.
CHAPTER XXIX
A NEW teaching is preached by Christ and recorded in the Gospels. This teaching is persecuted and not accepted, and a story is invented of the fall of the first man and of the first angel and this invention is accepted as being the teaching of Christ. This invention is absurd and quite unfounded, but from it the deduction naturally flows that man may live badly and yet consider himself justified by Christ, and this deduction is so convenient for the crowd of weak people who dislike moral exertion that it is at once accepted as the truth, and even as divine revealed truth, though nowhere in what is called revelation is there even a hint of it-and for a thousand years this invention is made the basis of the labours of the learned theologians on which they construct their theories.
The learned theologians split up into sects, begin to deny each other’s constructions, and themselves begin to feel that they are confused and no longer understand what they are saying; but the crowd demands of them confirmation of the favourite doctrine and they pretend that they understand and believe what they say, and continue to preach it. But a time comes when the deductions prove unnecessary, the crowd peeps into the sanctuaries of the priests, and to its astonishment, instead of the solemn undoubted truths the mysteries of theology had appeared to it to be, sees that there is and has been nothing there except the grossest deception, and it marvels at its own blindness.
The same thing happened with philosophy, not philosophy in the sense of the wisdom of a Confucius, a Socrates, or an Epictetus, but with proffessorial philosophy, when it pandered to the instincts of the idle rich.
Not long ago in the learned educated world the philosophy of the spirit reigned, according to which it appeared that all that exists is reasonable, that there is no evil and no good, and that man need riot struggle with evil but need only manifest the spirit: one man in military service, another in the law-courts, and a third on a fiddle.
There have been many different expressions of human wisdom and those expressions were known to the men of the nineteenth century. Rousseau and Pascal and Lessing and Spinoza were known, as well ‘as all the wisdom of antiquity, but no one else’s wisdom captured the crowd. Nor can it be said that Hegel’s success depended on the symmetry of his theories. There were other equally symmetrical theories: Fichte’s, and Schopenhauer’s. There was only one cause of that theory having become, for a short time, the belief of the whole world; the cause was the same as that of the success of the theory of the fall and redemption of man, namely that the deductions flowing from this philosophic theory pandered to men’s weaknesses. They said: everything is reasonable, everything is good, no one is to blame for anything.
And just as the theologians had built on the theory of redemption, so the philosophers built their tower of Babel on Hegelian foundations (and some backward people still sit in it even now) and their tongues became similarly confused, and similarly they felt that they did not themselves know what they were saying, and in the same way, without sweeping the rubbish out of their house, they laboriously strove to maintain their authority with the crowd and, as before, the crowd demanded confirmation of what suited it and believed that what to it seemed obscure and contradictory was all clear as day there, on the philosophic heights. And again, in the same way, a time came when that theory was worn out and a new one appeared in its place; the old one became useless, the crowd peeped into the secret sanctuaries of the priests and saw that
