The conversation rambled off into some by-paths which I forget. But it was this same night, I think, that he struck the main road of his philosophy, mapped out before me his idea of the country the race has yet to explore.
"The impediment to progress," he said, "is our fool idea of finality. It's funny how humanity has always been looking for an absolute, final court of appeal. The king can do no wrong. The pope is infallible. God is omniscient! Now we have the age of reason. The old gods have been driven from Olympus. And in place of Jehovah and Zeus our college professors have made a god of truth, the absolute, the final! Sooner or later we've got to learn that progress—growth of any kind—is in exact antithesis to this idea of finality.
"A large part of the scientific world and, I suppose, ninety-nine per cent of what is called "the enlightened public," believe that Darwinism is the last work in natural science. There are a thousand question marks strewn about the theory of natural selection. Only those biologists, who have sense enough not to accept the finality of anything, are trying to answer these questions.
"Socialism is a spectacular example. What did Karl Marx do? He stumbled along through the life which was given him, doing kind things and mean things by the way, all of which is, or ought to be, forgotten. The real thing he did—his contribution—was to keep his eyes open, to look at life without blinders. In the long process of thinking, this is the most important, the fundamental thing. And what he saw he pondered over, sweated over, prayed atheistical prayers over—and then he spoke out fearlessly. The people about him were hypnotized by the wonderfully growing industrialism of the day. It was going to solve all the ills of the race. No one had any responsibility any more. Laissez faire! Virtue and happiness and the next generation were automatic. The praise of the machine became an enthusiasm, a gospel. Marx had looked at it harder than the rest, had seen through its surface a glitter. And like Cassandra he shouted out his forebodings, careless of whether the world listened or not. 'It's a sham,' he said, 'this industrialism of yours is fundamentally immoral. It bears within itself death germs. They are already at work. This thing in which you put your trust is already putrid.' I don't know anything more amazing in the history of the human mind than Marx prophecies. Wrong in some details of course. He didn't claim any divine inspiration. But those three volumes in German are stupendous. And the secret of it is that he turned his penetrating eyes on the life about him. He looked!
"But the socialists of today—are they following his example? No. Marx did not believe in finalities; they make a finality of him. He sought new knowledge. They are defending what is already old, and like everything old, some of it is wrong now. Marx was a revolutionist—one of the greatest. The Marxists are conservatives. Think of it. Not an American socialist has tried to analyze Wall Street! Instead of scrutinizing the life about them, they spend their time arguing over his agrarian theory. No country in the world offers such glaring examples of industrial injustice as these United States and the books they circulate are translations from German. Some day they'll wake up—then I'll join them.
"The trouble comes from thinking there are finalities in life—ultimate truths. We've got to get it into our heads that truth itself evolves.
"It's coming to me stronger and stronger that the point of attack ought to be on our ideals of education. My God! You quit college at the end of your freshman year and wasted exactly three years less than I did. I feel so sure that this is the real issue that I'm losing interest in everything else.
"A system of education which wakes up the human mind instead of putting it to sleep! Education which begins where it ought to! At the beginning! the process of seeing, of looking at life with our own eyes—instead of through some professor's spectacles. If we could only teach the trick of original observation!
"The trouble isn't so much that we think incorrectly. We don't see straight. I remember our professor used to tell us that logic is a coffee-mill. If we put coffee in at the top it will come out at the bottom in a more usable form. But if we put in dirt—it stays dirt, no matter how fine we grind it. And then he switched off to train our coffee-mills—a lot of rigamarole about syllogisms, the thirteen fallacious ones—perhaps it was fourteen. But not a single word about how to distinguish dirt from coffee. It's the original assumptions that need questioning. I don't believe Darwin was a better logician than Saint Augustine. But he went out into the world and looked. He used observed facts for his coffee-mill. Saint Augustine ground up a lot of incoherent beliefs and dirty assumptions. Anyone can learn the laws of logic in a three months college course, or in as many weeks from a text-book. But I don't know of any place where they even try to teach original observation.
"Education, everybody says, is the bulwark of democracy. And we Americans really want democracy in a way the most radical European never dreamed of. Yet we are content with our schools! Nobody really worries about improving them. We assume that our system is the best in the world, perfect. Final! Damn finality! I'm not sure that our system isn't the worst. We consistently kill all originality. The minute the kids strike school the process begins. 'This, my child, is what you must believe,' you say. 'This block,' the kindergarten teacher says 'is red.' Of course what she should say is, 'What color is this block?' The college professor says to his senior seminar, 'Goethe is the greatest German poet; if you prefer Heine, you are a barbarian. Milton's epics are the pride of English letters; if you prefer L'Allegro, you show your lack of culture. Shelley was undoubtedly a great poet, but, I regret to say, an incendiary. Of course you must read The Ode to the West Wind and the Clouds, but I warn you against the Revolt of Islam.' From grammar school to university it is all this business of predigested tablets.