The most inadequate and prejudiced treatment in the _Britannica_ of any
modern philosopher is to be found in the biography of Nietzsche, which
is briefer than Mrs. Humphry Ward’s! Not only is Nietzsche accorded
less space than is given to such British philosophical writers as
Dugald Stewart, Henry Sidgwick, Richard Price, John Norris, Thomas Hill
Green, James Frederick Ferrier, Adam Ferguson, Ralph Cudworth, Anthony
Collins, Arthur Collier, Samuel Clarke and Alexander Bain—an absurd and
stupid piece of narrow provincial prejudice—but the biography itself is
superficial and inaccurate. The supposed doctrine of Nietzsche is here
used to expose the personal opinions of the tutor of Corpus Christi
College who was assigned the task of interpreting Nietzsche to the
readers of the _Britannica_. It would be impossible to gather any clear
or adequate idea of Nietzsche and his work from this biased and moral
source. Here middle-class British insularity reaches its high-water mark.
Other important modern thinkers, however, are given but little better
treatment. Lange receives only three-fourths of a column; Paulsen, less
than half a column; Ernst Mach, only seventeen lines; Eucken, only
twenty-eight lines, with a list of his works; and Renouvier, two-thirds
of a column. J. C. Maxwell, though, the Cambridge professor, gets two
columns—twice the space given Nietzsche!
In the biography of William James we discern once more the contempt
which England has for this country. Here is a man whose importance is
unquestioned even in Europe, and who stands out as one of the significant
figures in modern thought; yet the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, that
“supreme book of knowledge,” gives him a biography of just twenty-eight
lines! And it is Americans who are furnishing the profits for this
English reference work!
Perhaps the British editors of this encyclopædia think that we should
feel greatly complimented at having William James admitted at all when
so many other important moderns of Germany and France and America are
excluded. But so long as unimportant English philosophical writers are
given biographies, we have a right to expect, in a work which calls
itself an “international dictionary of biography,” the adequate inclusion
of the more deserving philosophers of other nations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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