See now, in summary, how modest a suggestion it is, grandiloquent though
it may have seemed. We propose no _’ism_, we make no programme; we
suggest, tentatively, a method. We propose a new start, a new tack, a
new approach,--not to the exclusion of other approaches, but to their
assistance. If this thing should be done, it would not mean that other
gropers toward a better world would have to stand idle; it would but
give light to them that walk in darkness. And it would make possible a
more generous coöperation among the different currents in the stream of
reconstructive thought.
We are a little discouraged to-day; we lovers of the new have become
doubtful of the object of our love. Perhaps--we sometimes feel--all this
effort is a vain circling in the mist; perhaps we do not advance, but
only move. Our faith in progress is dimmed. We even tire of the “social
problem”; we have tried so many ways, knocked at so many doors, and
found so little of that which we sought. Sometimes, in the lassitude of
mistaken effort and drear defeat, we almost think that the social
problem is never to find even partial solution, that it is not a
problem but a limitation, a limitation forever. We need a new
beginning, a new impetus,--perhaps a new delusion?
See, too, how the thought of our five teachers lies concentrated and
connected in this new approach: what have we done but renew concretely
the Socratic plea for intelligence, the Platonic hope for
philosopher-kings, Bacon’s dream of knowledge organized and ruling the
world, Spinoza’s gentle insistence on democracy as the avenue of
development, and Nietzsche’s passionate defence of aristocracy and
power? There was something in us that thrilled at Plato’s conception of
a philosophy that could guide as well as dissect our social life; but
there was another something in us that hesitated before his plan of
slavery as the basis of it all. We felt that we would rather be free and
miserable than bound and filled. Why should a man feed himself if his
feet are chained, and he must never move? And we were inspired, too, by
the demand that the best should rule, that they should have power fitted
to their worth; we should be glad to find some way whereby the best
could have power, could rule, and yet with the consent of all,--we
wanted an aristocracy sanctioned by democracy, a social order standing
on the broad base of free citizenship and wide coöperation. Socrates
shows us how to use Bacon to reconcile Plato and Nietzsche with Spinoza:
intelligence will organize intelligence so that superior worth may have
superior influence and yet work with and through the will of all.
* * * * *
And here at the end comes a thought that some of us perhaps have had
more than once as this discussion advanced: What could the Church do for
the organization of intelligence?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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