But is it not a worse madness that people who have emancipated themselves from labour on the plea that they would provide spiritual food for those who have reared them and who feed and clothe them, should afterwards have so forgotten this obligation that they do not know how to prepare food fit for the people, and should consider this abandonment of their duty a merit?
‘But it is so everywhere,’ is what is said in reply. It is very irrational everywhere; and it will remain irrational as long as people, under the pretext of a division of labour and a promise to serve the people with spiritual food, continue merely to devour the people’s labour. Service of the people by sciences and arts will only exist when men live with the people and as the people live, and without presenting any claims will offer their scientific and artistic services, which the people will be free to accept or decline as they please.
CHAPTER XXXV
To say that the activity of science and art helps humanity’s progress, if by that activity we mean the activity which now calls itself by those names, is as though one said that the clumsy, obstructive splashing of oars in a boat moving down stream assists the boat’s progress. It only hinders it.
The so-called division of labour, that is, the seizure of the labour of others which in our time has become a usual condition of the activity of men of science and art, has been and still remains the chief cause of the slowness of humanity’s forward movement. The proof of this is seen in the confession made by men of science that the achievements of the arts and sciences are inaccessible to the labouring masses on account of the unequal distribution of wealth.
And the unfairness of this distribution is not diminished in proportion to the successes achieved by the sciences and arts, but is only increased. Nor is it surprising that this is so, for this unjust distribution of wealth results simply from the theory of the division of labour which is preached by the men of science and art for their personal selfish ends. Science defends the division of labour as an immutable law, sees that the division of wealth based on the division of labour is unjust and pernicious, and asserts that its activity, which accepts the division of labour, will result in benefit to mankind. It appears that some men make use of the labours of others, but that if they go on for a very long time and to a still greater extent making use of the labour of others, then this un-just distribution of wealth-that is, this exploitation of other people’s work-will come to an end.
Men are standing at an ever-increasing spring of water and are busy diverting it from thirsty people, but assert that it is they who produce the water and that very soon so much of it will be collected that there will be enough for everybody. But this water, which has flowed and flows unceasingly and supplies drink to all humanity, is not only not the result of the activity of these men who standing round the spring turn the water aside but on the contrary, flows and spreads despite their efforts to prevent its flowing.
There always was a true church, in the sense of people united in the highest truth accessible to man at any given period, and this has always been other than the church
which called itself so; and there have always been science and art, but they have not been the activities that called themselves by those names.
To those who regard themselves as the representatives of the science and art of a particular period, it always seems as though they had done and were doing, and above all were Just about to do wonderful miracles; and that apart from them no real science or art has existed or does exist. So it seemed to the Sophists, the Schoolmen, the Alchemists, the Cabalists, the Talmudists, and so it seems to our scientific scientists and art-for-art’s sakists.
CHAPTER XXXVI
‘BUT science and art! You are denying science and art: that is you are denying that by which humanity lives.’ People constantly make this rejoinder to me, and they employ: this method in order to reject my arguments without examination.
‘He rejects science and art, he wishes man to revert to a state of savagery-why listen to him or discuss with him?’
But this is unjust. Not only do I not repudiate science, that is, the reasonable activity of humanity, and art-the expression of that reasonable activity-but it is just on behalf of that reasonable activity and its expression that I speak, only that It may be possible for mankind to escape from the savage state into which it is rapidly lapsing thanks to the false teaching of our time. It is only on that account that I speak as I do.
Science and art are as necessary to man as food and drink and clothing-even more necessary but they become so not because we decide that what we cal science and art are essential, but only because Science and art really are essential to humanity.
If people prepared hay for man’s bodily food, no conviction of mine that hay is human food would cause it to become so. I must not say: ‘Why do you not eat hay when it is your necessary food?’ Food is necessary, but perhaps what I am offering is not food.
And this is just what has happened with our Science and art. It seems to us that if we add the termination logy to some Greek word and call it a science, it will be a science; and if some nastiness, such as the dancing of naked women, is called by a Greek word, and we say it is an art, it will be art. But however much we may say this, the things we occupy ourselves with-counting up the beetles, investigating the chemical constituents of the Milky Way, painting water-nymphs and historical pictures, or composing stories and symphonies-will not become either science or art till it is willingly accepted by those for whom it is being done. And up to the present it is not so accepted.
If certain people had the exclusive right to produce food and all others were forbidden to do so, or it were made impossible for them to do so, I imagine that the quality of our food would deteriorate. If the people who had the monopoly of food production were Russian peasants, there would be no other food than rye-bread, kvas, potatoes, and onions-the food they are fond of, the food which pleases them. And this would happen to the highest human activity-science and art-if a single caste were to monopolize it,-but with this difference, that in bodily food there can be no great deviation from what is natural: both rye-bread and onion, though not very tasty foods are nevertheless wholesome; but in mental food there may be very great deviations and some men may feed for a long time on mental food that is quite unnecessary for them, or is even harmful and poisonous. They may slowly kill themselves with opium and spirits and may offer this same food to the masses.
That is what has happened among us. And it has happened because scientists and artists occupy a privileged position, and because science and art in our world are not the whole reasonable activity of the whole of mankind without exception, devoting its best strength to the service of science and art, but are the activity of a small circle of people having a monopoly of these occupations and calling themselves scientists and artists, and who, therefore, having perverted the very conception of science and art, have lost the very meaning of their calling and are merely occupied in amusing a small circle of idle consumers and saving them from the ennui that oppresses them.
Since men first existed they have always had science in the plainest and widest sense of the word. Science, in the sense of all man’s knowledge, always has existed and does exist and life is inconceivable without it: it calls neither for attack nor for defence. But the point is that the domain of knowledge is so various, so much information of all kinds is included in it-from the knowledge of how to obtain iron, to the knowledge of the movements of the celestial bodies-that man loses himself amid these various kinds of knowledge unless he has a clue to enable him to decide which of them all is most important for him, and which is less so.
And therefore the highest aim of human wisdom has always been to find that clue, and to show the sequence in which our knowledge should rank: what of it is of the first and what is of lesser importance.
And just this knowledge, that guides all other knowledge, is what men have always spoken of as science in the strict sense. And right down to our own times such science has always existed in human societies after they have emerged from the primeval, savage conditions.
Since humanity existed always among all peoples teachers have appeared who have produced science in that strict sense-the knowledge of what it is most necessary for man to know.
That science has always dealt with the knowledge of what is the destiny, and therefore the true welfare, of each man and of mankind. And that science has served as the clue in determining the importance of all other knowledge, and of the activity which gives it
