The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinkerLloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Philosophy
The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinker
Lloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Belief and doubt; Philosophy -- Introductions
truly loyal reformer, as well as the idle or careless transgressor and
the coldly calculating traitor? A life so divided and so variously
impersonated was certainly teeming with duplicity.
Nor have we yet finished with the evidence from history. An age of
science has always been not merely an age with a stream to cross, nor
yet merely an age of classes and double living, but also an age of a
thoroughly conscious utilitarianism. Whether materialistically or
idealistically, all things have been treated and also looked upon as
means to some end, not ends in themselves. For the disrupted society all
activity has been more or less consciously calculating and instrumental.
As we know, the disruption means [p.067] actual, when not also
intentional, division of labour, and surely there never has been
division of labour without eventual development of a distinct sense of
the various special instruments and activities as utilities rather than
things of intrinsic value. For a time, it is true, the several classes
and their activities may maintain the semblance of conservatism and
independence; but their inevitable duplicity is bound sooner or later to
give a consciously conventional or utilitarian character to the
conservatism, and just this makes the activity of the people
instrumental or only mediately instead of immediately worthy. If, as
some are sure to contend, the division of labour always tends to end,
and often does end, in the formation of castes, and in consequence the
instrumental character of the activities is forgotten, it needs only to
be said in reply that an invitation is then given to some outside power
to step in and to make use of, instead of just treasuring or hoarding,
the developed instruments or utilities. Caste in the organization of
society not only induces absolutism at home, but also, and in this way
is fully revealed its real but suppressed utilitarianism, invites
conquest from abroad. The days of Greek science were, almost
notoriously, days of conventionalism and utilitarianism: witness the
Sophists and their teaching, and the life which they waited upon for
pay; while the surviving conservatism, by which, as cannot be
questioned, the life of the time was blind to its own real mission or
purpose, made possible and even historically necessary, first, the
Macedonian, and then the Roman conquest of Greece. What the Greeks,
being too conservative, though [p.068] utilitarian, failed to make full
use of, another people, less hampered by tradition, finally
appropriated. And as for the days of modern science, these, so far as
unfolded to our view, have not been unlike in kind: witness the
Machiavellism, with which they began, and the spirit of commercialism,
which has characterized them throughout.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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