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 there was nothing there and never had been anything but very obscure and senseless words. That happened within my own recollection.
When I started life Hegelianism was the basis of everything: it was in the air, found expression in magazine and newspaper articles, in novels and essays, in art, in histories, in sermons, and in conversation. A man unacquainted with Hegel had no right to speak: he who wished to know the truth studied Hegel. Everything rested on him; and suddenly forty years have gone by and there is nothing left of him, he is not even mentioned-as though he had never existed. And what is most remarkable is that, like pseudo-Christianity, Hegelianism fell not because anyone refuted it, but because it suddenly became evident that neither the one nor the other was needed by our learned, educated world.
If we now speak to a modern educated man about the fall of the angel and of Adam, or about redemption, he will not attempt to argue or to prove the falsity of it, but will ask with perplexity:
What angel? Why Adam? What redemption? What use is it to me? Similarly with Hegelianism, a man of our time will not argue about it but will only be surprised. What spirit? Where does it come from? Why does it manifest itself? What use is it to me?
‘Yes, that came about’-say the present-day scientists-’because of the ravings of the theological and the metaphysical periods; now we have critical, positive science which does not deceive because it is based on induction and experiment. Now our knowledge is not shaky, as that was, and only along our path lie the answers to all the questions of mankind.’
But then that is just what the theologians said, and they were certainly not fools, for we know that among them were men of immense intellect; and within my own recollection the Hegelians spoke with no less confidence, and were not less accepted by the crowd of so-called educated people. And they-our Herzens, Stankeviches, and Belinskis, for instance-were not fools either. Why then did this surprising phenomenon occur that clever people should preach with the greatest confidence, and the crowd should reverently accept, such unfounded and empty doctrines? The reason is the same, namely-that the doctrines justify people in their bad lives.
Is not the reason of the confidence of the positive, critical, experimental scientists, and of the reverent attitude of the crowd towards their doctrines, still the same? At first it seems strange how the theory of evolution (which, like the redemption in theology, serves the majority as a popular expression of the whole new creed) can justify people in their injustice, and it seems as if the scientific theory dealt only with facts and did nothing but observe facts.
But that only seems so. It seemed just the same in the case of theological doctrine: theology, it seemed, was only occupied with dogmas and had no relation to people’s lives, and it seemed the same with regard to philosophy, which appeared to be occupied solely with transcendental reasonings.
But that only seemed so. It was just the same with the Hegelian doctrine on a large scale and with the particular case of the Malthusian teaching.
Hegelianism seemed to be concerned only with its logical constructions and to have no relation to people’s lives; and this seemed to be the case with the Malthusian theory also-it seemed solely occupied with statistical facts. But that only seemed to be so.
Contemporary science investigates facts.
But what facts? Why those particular facts and not others?
Scientists of to-day are very fond of saying solemnly and confidently: ‘We only investigate facts,’ imagining these words to have some meaning.
One cannot possibly only investigate facts for the number of facts available for investigation is innumerable (in the exact sense of that word). Before investigating the facts one must have a theory on the basis of which such or such facts are selected from among the innumerable quantity. And such a theory exists and is even very definitely expressed, though many of those engaged on contemporary science either ignore it, that is, do not wish to know it, or actually do not know it, or pretend not to. So it has always been with all reigning, guiding creeds-both theological and philosophic.
The foundations of every creed are always contained in the theory, and the so-called learned people only devise further deductions from the given data, sometimes without knowing them. But there always is a fundamental theory. So now, contemporary science chooses its facts on the basis of a very definite theory which it sometimes knows, sometimes does not wish to know, and sometimes really does not know, though that theory exists.
The theory is this: all mankind is an undying organism, men are the particles of this organism and each of them has his special vocation in the service of the whole.
Just as the cells composing an organism divide among themselves the labour needed for the struggle for the existence of the whole organism strengthen one quality and weaken another, and coalesce with one organ the better to satisfy the needs of the whole organism: and just as among social animals-ants and bees-separate individuals divide the work among themselves: the queen lays eggs, the drone fertilizes her, and the workers labour for the life of the whole-so in humanity and human societies the same differentiation and integration of parts occurs.
And therefore to discover the law of man’s life it is necessary to study the laws of the life and development of organisms; in the life and development of organisms we find the following laws: a law that every phenomenon is accompanied by other consequences besides its immediate one, another law of the frailty of the undifferentiated, and a third law of heterogeneity and homogeneity, and so forth.
All this seems very innocent, but it is only necessary to draw deductions from all these observed facts in order to see at once whither they tend. They all tend to one thing, namely, to the recognition of humanity or human society as an organism, and so to a recognition of the division of activities that exists in human societies as organic, that is to say, as necessary; and as in human societies very many cruelties and abominations are perceptible, these phenomena must not be regarded as cruel or abominable but must be regarded as indubitable facts confirming a
