Evolution Social and OrganicLewis, Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow)
Philosophy
Evolution Social and Organic
Lewis, Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow)
Evolution; Socialism; Sociology
A second thought will show that they may do neither. There is a type of
brain the specimens of which are very numerous, which seems to possess
the faculty of keeping different kinds of knowledge and contradictory
ideas, in separate, water-tight compartments. Thus, as these ideas
never come together there is no collision.
The most conspicuous example of this is the man who accepts and openly
proclaims the truth of the materialistic conception of history--the
theory that, among other things, explains the origin, functions, and
changes of religion, just as it does those of law--yet the very man
who boasts of his concurrence in this epoch-making theory, using one
lobe of his brain, will, while using the other lobe, and with still
greater fervency, maintain that the Socialist philosophy has nothing
to do with religion at all, but is an “economic” question only. The
left lobe knows not what the right lobe is doing. Dietzgen described
these Comrades as “dangerous muddle-heads.” He might have omitted the
adjective. A brain of this order renders its possessor harmless.
These well-meaning friends have offered a great deal of advice as to
how to conduct our meeting without “driving people away.” Yet strangely
enough our audience grew by leaps and bounds, until from seventy-five
at the first lecture we are now crowding and often overcrowding one
of the largest and finest theaters inside the loop. Meanwhile they
followed their own advice and saw what was at the beginning a fine
audience of five hundred grow less and less until it is less than fifty
and sometimes falls below thirty. This does not seem to justify the cry
that the working class is hungering for Christian Socialism.
Further volumes of these lectures will carry the theories of Socialism
into yet other fields of science and philosophy.
In conclusion let me ask a certain type of correspondents to save my
time and their own. They say they agree with my views entirely; there
is no question but I am right. And the lectures would be in place
if delivered before university men. But workingmen (my top-lofty
correspondents not included of course) have so many ignorant prejudices
that fearless scientific teaching is not acceptable to them. The size
of my audience is sufficient disproof of the last statement. As to
the rest, it is just the existence of ignorant prejudices that makes
the fearless teaching of science necessary. Again, I have yet to
be convinced that there is any kind of knowledge which is good for
university men, but unfit for workingmen. Moreover, I positively refuse
to have one kind of knowledge for myself, and another to give out to
my audience. This is the fundamental principle of priestcraft, and the
working class has had far too much of it already.
On this ground--that there is nothing higher than reality, that
Socialism is in harmony with all reality and that in the end reality
must triumph--the future lectures of these courses will stand or fall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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