The resemblance of the two creeds lies also in this, that propositions once accepted on faith and no longer subject to investigation serve as basis for the strangest theories, and the preachers of these theories, having adopted a method of asserting their right to consider themselves holy in theology and scientific in knowledge-that is to say, infallible-arrive at most arbitrary, improbable, and quite unfounded assertions, which they express most solemnly and. seriously, and the details of which are disputed with similar seriousness and solemnity by those who disagree on particular points but equally accept the basic dogmas.
The Basil the Great of this creed, Herbert Spencer, for example, in one of his first works expresses it thus: Society and organisms resemble one another in the following:
(1) That beginning as small aggregates, they imperceptibly grow in mass till they sometimes reach dimensions ten thousand times greater than their original size;
(2) That whereas at first they are of such simple structure that they may be regarded as deprived of all structure, during their growth they acquire a continually increasing complexity;
(3) That though in their early, undeveloped period there hardly exists any interdependence of parts, their parts gradually acquire a mutual interdependence, which at last becomes so strong that the activity and life of each part is only made possible by the activity and life of the rest;
(4) That the life and development of society are independent of, and more prolonged than, the life and development of any of its component units, which are born, grow, act, reproduce, and die, while the body politic they form continues to live generation after generation and increases in size owing to the perfection of its structure and functional activity.
After that follow points of difference between organisms and societies, and it is shown that these differences are only apparently so, but that organisms and societies are completely alike.
To a new observer the question plainly presents itself: ‘What are you talking about? Why is humanity an organism? Or how does it resemble one?
‘You say that societies according to these four indications resemble organisms, but nothing of the kind is true. You only take a few signs of an organism and place human societies under those signs.
‘You adduce four signs of resemblance, then take signs of differences, but these (in your opinion) are so only in appearance, and you conclude that human societies may be regarded as organisms. But that is nothing but an idle play of dialectics. On such a basis anything you please can be brought under the signs of an organism.’
I take the first thing that occurs to me, say, for instance, a wood as it is sown in the field and grows up:
(1) ‘Beginning as small aggregates,’ etc., just the same occurs in the fields when the seeds gradually take root in them and the fields become overgrown with trees’.
(2) ‘At first the structure is simple, afterwards the complexity increases,’ &c.; just the same occurs with the wood: first there are only birch trees, then willows and hazel bushes; at first they all grow straight, afterwards their branches intertwine.
(3) ‘The interdependence of the parts increases so that the life of each part depends on the life and activity of the rest’; it is just the same with the trees: the hazel bushes warm the trunks (cut them out and the other trees will freeze), the outskirts of the wood protect it from the wind, the seed trees continue the species, tall and leafy trees give shade, and the life of one tree depends on another.
(4) ‘The separate parts may die, but the whole lives’; the same is true of a wood. As the proverb says: ‘The wood does not weep for a tree.’
It is just the same with the example usually adduced by defenders of the theory: that if you cut off an arm the ‘arm perishes. Transplant a tree beyond the shade and the forest-soil, and it dies.
There is also a remarkable resemblance between this creed and the Church-Christian creed and all other creeds founded on dogmas that are accepted on faith, in its imperviousness to logical arguments. Having shown that on their theory you have a right to consider a wood to be an organism, you think you have shown them the incorrectness of their definition-but not at, all!
The definition they give to an organism is so inexact and elastic that they can bring anything they please in under it.
‘Yes,’ they will say, ‘a wood may also be regarded as an organism. A wood is a peaceful interaction of individual parts which do not destroy one another-an aggregate-whose parts can come into closer connexion and like a swarm of bees may become an organism.’
Then you remark that, if so, then the birds and insects and grasses of that wood, which interact and do not destroy one another, together with the trees may also be regarded as an organism.
They will agree even to that. Every aggregate of living things interacting and not destroying one another may, according to their theory be regarded as an organism. You may assert a connexion and co-operation between any things you please, and you may say that by evolution from anything you please may be produced anything you please m a very great length of time.
To believers in the triune nature of God it is impossible to prove that it is not so but it is possible to show them that their assertion is an assertion not of knowledge but of belief, and that If they assert that there are three Gods I with equal right may assert that there are seventeen and a half.
Gods, and the adherents of positive and evolutionary science may be met similarly and yet more indubitably. On the basis of that science I will undertake to prove anything you please. And what is most remarkable is that this same positive science recognizes the scientific method as a sign of true knowledge and has itself defined what it calls ‘the scientific method’. What it calls ‘the scientific method’ is common sense. And just this common sense exposes it at every step.
As soon as those who occupied the seats of the Saints felt that there was nothing saintly left in them and that they were all accused, they immediately (like the Pope and our Synod) called themselves not merely Holy but Most Holy. And as soon as science felt that nothing reasonable was left in it, it called itself reasonable, that is, ‘scientific’ science.
CHAPTER XXXI
DIVISION of labour is the law of all that exists, and so it must exist in human societies. Very likely that is so, but the question still remains: Is the division of labour now existing in human societies quite the division which should exist? For if a certain division of labour appears to men unreasonable and unjust, no science can prove to them that what they consider unreasonable and unjust ought to prevail.
Theological theory proved that power is ordained by God and very likely it is so, but the question remained: Whose power is from God-Catherine’s or Pugachev’s?1 And no finesse of theology has been able to solve that doubt.
The philosophy of the Spirit showed the State to be a form of the development of personality, but the question remained: Should the State of a Nero or Genghis Khan be considered a form of the development of personality? And no transcendental words could solve that problem.
The same applies to the science of the scientists.
Division of labour is a condition of the life of organisms and of human societies; but what are we to consider an organic division of labour in human societies? However much science may study the division of labour among the cells of the tapeworm, such observations will fail to induce a man to consider a division of labour just which his reason and conscience repudiate.
However convincing may be the proofs of the division of labour among the cells of the organisms we investigate, man, as long as he is not deprived of reason, will still say that no one ought to have to weave cotton cloth all his life long, and that such an employment is not a division of labour but an oppression of men.
Spencer and others say there are whole populations of weavers and that therefore the weaver’s activity is an organic division of labour-but in saying this they are in fact saying precisely what the theologians said.
There is a power and therefore it is from God no matter what it may be like. There are weavers, so such is the proper division of labour. It would be all right to say so if the power and the population of weavers had resulted of themselves, but we know that they do not come of themselves but that we produced them. So we have to know whether we
1 Catherine II (the Great) of Russia reigned from 1761 to 1796. Pugachev was leader of a very serious peasant revolt from 1773 to 1775; he captured several towns and overran several provinces.-A. M.
produced that power by God’s will or by our own, and whether we made these weavers by an organic law or by something else?
Men live and support themselves by agriculture as is proper for all men: one man puts up a forge and mends his plough, and his neighbour comes and asks him to mend his and promises to pay him with work or with money. A third and a fourth come and among these people there is a division of labour: a blacksmith is set up. Another
