Evil, Non-resistance to; Government, Resistance to; National characteristics, East Indian
New justifications have now appeared in place of the antiquated,
obsolete, religious ones. These new justifications are just as
inadequate as the old ones, but as they are new their futility cannot
immediately be recognized by the majority of men. Besides this, those
who enjoy power propagate these new sophistries and support them so
skilfully that they seem irrefutable even to many of those who
suffer from the oppression these theories seek to justify. These new
justifications are termed 'scientific'. But by the term 'scientific' is
understood just what was formerly understood by the term 'religious':
just as formerly everything called 'religious' was held to be
unquestionable simply because it was called religious, so now all that
is called 'scientific' is held to be unquestionable. In the present case
the obsolete religious justification of violence which consisted in the
recognition of the supernatural personality of the God-ordained ruler
('there is no power but of God') has been superseded by the 'scientific'
justification which puts forward, first, the assertion that because the
coercion of man by man has existed in all ages, it follows that such
coercion must continue to exist. This assertion that people should
continue to live as they have done throughout past ages rather than
as their reason and conscience indicate, is what 'science' calls
'the historic law'. A further 'scientific' justification lies in the
statement that as among plants and wild beasts there is a constant
struggle for existence which always results in the survival of
the fittest, a similar struggle should be carried on among human
beings--beings, that is, who are gifted with intelligence and love;
faculties lacking in the creatures subject to the struggle for
existence and survival of the fittest. Such is the second 'scientific'
justification.
The third, most important, and unfortunately most widespread
justification is, at bottom, the age-old religious one just a little
altered: that in public life the suppression of some for the protection
of the majority cannot be avoided--so that coercion is unavoidable
however desirable reliance on love alone might be in human intercourse.
The only difference in this justification by pseudo-science consists in
the fact that, to the question why such and such people and not others
have the right to decide against whom violence may and must be
used, pseudo-science now gives a different reply to that given by
religion--which declared that the right to decide was valid because it
was pronounced by persons possessed of divine power. 'Science' says
that these decisions represent the will of the people, which under a
constitutional form of government is supposed to find expression in all
the decisions and actions of those who are at the helm at the moment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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