Philosophy and the Social Problem

by Will Durant

This, after all, is a plan for the democratization of aristocracy; it is Plato translated into America. It utilizes superior intelligence and gives it voice, but sanctions no change that has not received the free consent of the community. It gives the aristocracy of intellect the influence and initiative which crude democracy frustrates; but it avoids the corruption that usually goes with power, by making this influence work through the channels of persuasion rather than compulsion. It counteracts the power of wealth to disseminate partisan views through news-items and editorials, and relies on fact to get the better at last of double-leaded prejudice. It rests on the faith that lies will out.

Would the mass of the people listen to such reports? Consider, first, the repute that attaches to the professorial title. Let a man write even the sorriest nonsense but sign himself as one of the faculty of some responsible institution, and he will find a hearing; the reader, perhaps, need not go far to find an example. In recent industrial and political issues the pronouncements of a few professors carried very great weight; and there are some modest purveyors of so supposedly harmless a thing as philosophy whose voice is feared by all interests that prosper in the dark. Will the combined reputation of the most enlightened men in the country mean less? A report published by this Society for Social Research will mean that a large body of intelligent men have from their number appointed three or five or ten to find the facts of a certain situation or dispute; these appointed men will, if they report hastily, or carelessly, or dishonestly, impair the repute of all their fellows in the Society; they will take care, then, and will probably find honesty as good a policy as some of us pretend it to be. With every additional report so guarded from defect the repute of the society will grow until it becomes the most powerful intellectual force in the world.

When one reflects how many pages of misrepresentation were printed in the papers of only one city in the presidential campaign of 1916, and then imagines what would have been the effect of a mere statement of facts on both sides,—the records of the candidates and the parties, their acknowledged connections, friends and enemies, their expressed principles and programmes, the facts about the tariff, the German issue, international law, the railway-brotherhood dispute, and so forth—one begins to appreciate the importance of information. After the initial and irrevocable differences of original nature nothing is so vital as the spread of enlightenment; and nothing offers itself so well to organized effort. Eugenics is weak because it has no thought-out programme; ’isms rise and fall because people are not informed. Let who can, improve the native qualities of men; but that aside, the most promising plan is the dissemination of fact.

Such a society for research would be a sort of social consciousness, a “mind of the race.” It would make social planning possible for the first time; it would make history conscious. It would look ahead and warn; it would point the nose of the community to unwelcome but important facts; it would examine into such statements as that of Sir William Ramsay, that England’s coal fields will be exhausted in one hundred and seventy-five years; and its warnings, backed by the prestige of its expert information, would perhaps avert the ravages of social waste and private greed. Nature, said Lester Ward, is a spendthrift, man an economizer. But economy means prevision, and social economy means organized provision. Here would be not agitation, not propaganda, not moralizing, but only clarification; these men would be “merchants of light,” simply giving information so that what men should do they might do knowingly and not in the dark.

Indeed, if one can clarify one need not agitate. Just to state facts is the most terrible thing that can be done to an injustice. Sermons and stump-speeches stampede the judgment for a moment, but the sound of their perorations still lingers in the air when reaction comes. Fact has this advantage over rhetoric, that time strengthens the one and weakens the other. Tell the truth and time will be your eloquence.

Let us suppose that our Society has existed some three years; let us suppose that on the first day of every month it has spread through the press simple reports of its investigations, simple accounts of socially significant work in science, and simple statements of fact about the economic and political issues of the day; let us suppose that by far the greater part of these reports have been conscientious and accurate and clear. Very well: in the course of these three years a large number of mentally alert people all over the country will have developed the habit of reading these monthly reports; they will look forward to them, they will attach significance to them, they will herald them as events, almost as decisions. In any question of national policy its statements will influence thousands and thousands of the more independent minds. Let us calculate the number of people who, in these United States, would be reached by such reports; let us say the reports are printed in three or four New York dailies, having a total circulation of one million; in other dailies throughout the country totalling some five million circulation; and in one or more weeklies or monthlies with a large or a select circulation. One may perhaps say that out of the seven or eight million people so reached (mostly adult males), five per cent will be so influenced by the increasing prestige of the Society that they will read the reports. Of these four hundred thousand readers it is reasonable to suppose that three hundred thousand will be voters, and not only voters but men of influence among their fellows. These men will each of them be a medium through which the facts reported will be spread; it is not too much to say that the number of American voters influenced directly or indirectly by these reports will reach to a million.[304] Now imagine the influence of this million of voters on a presidential election. Their very existence would be a challenge; candidates would have them in mind when making promises and criticisms; parties would think of them when formulating policies and drawing up platforms; editors would beware of falling into claptrap and deceit for fear of these million men armed with combustible fact. It would mean such an elevation of political discussion and political performance as democracy has never yet produced; such an elevation as democracy must produce or die.

IV
Sex, Art, and Play in Social Reconstruction

SO far our imagined Society has done no more than to seek and give information. It has, it is true, listened to propagandists and Utopians, and has published extracts from their testimony; but even this has been not to agitate but to inform; that such and such opinions are held by such and such men, and by such and such a number of men, is also a point of information. Merely to state facts is the essential thing, and the extremely effective thing. But now there are certain functions which such a Society might perform beyond the giving of facts—functions that involve personal attitudes and interpretations. It may be possible for our Society to take on these functions without detracting from the trust reposed in its statements of fact. What are these functions?

First of all, the stimulation of artistic production, and the extension of artistic appreciation. Our Society, which is composed of rather staid men, themselves not peculiarly fitted to pass judgment outside the field of science, will invite, let us say, twenty of the most generally and highly valued of English and American authors to form themselves into a Committee on Literary Awards, as a branch of the Society for Social Research. Imagine Thomas Hardy and George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells and John Galsworthy and Rudyard Kipling and John Masefield and George Moore and Joseph Conrad and W. D. Howells and Theodore Dreiser and many more, telling the world every month, in individual instalments, their judgment on current fiction, drama, poetry, English literature in general; imagine the varied judgments printed with synoptic coördination of the results as a way of fixing the standing of a book in the English literary world; and judge of the stimulus that would reside in lists signed by such names. Imagine another group of men, the literary élite of France, making briefer reports on French literature; and other groups in Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia; imagine the world getting every month the judgment of Anatole France and Remain Rolland and Gerhardt Hauptmann and Anton Tchekov and Georg Brandes on the current literature of their peoples; imagine them making lists, too, of the best books in all their literatures; imagine eager young men and women poring over these conflicting lists, discussing them, making lists of their own, and getting guidance so. And to the literary lists add monthly reports, by a committee of the Society itself, on the best books in the various fields of science. Finally, let the artists speak,—painters and sculptors and all; let them say where excellence has dwelt this month in their respective fields. There are hundreds of thousands who hunger for such guidance as this plan would give. There are young people who flounder about hopelessly because they find no guidance; young people who are easily turned to fine work by the stimulus of responsible judgment, and as easily lapse into the banalities of popular fiction and popular magazines when this guiding stimulus fails to come. There are thousands of people who would be glad to pay their modest contribution to the support of any organization that would manage to get such direction for them. Half the value of a university course lies in this, that the teacher will suggest readings, judge books, and provide general guidance for individual work. Perhaps the most valuable kind of information in the world is that which guides one in the search for information. Such guidance, given to all who ask for it, would go far to save us from the mediocrity that almost stifles our national life.[305]

And more; why should not the stimulation be for the producers as well as for the consumers? Why should not some kind of award be made, say every six months, to the authors adjudged best in their lines by their qualified contemporaries? Why should such a book as Jean Christophe or The Brothers Karamazov go unheralded except in fragmentary individual ways? Why not reward such productions with a substantial prize?—or, if that be impossible, by some presentation of certificate? Even a “scrap of paper” would go a long way to stimulate the writer and guide the reader. But why should not a money reward be possible? If rich men will pay thousands upon thousands for the (perhaps) original works of dead artists, why should they not turn their wealth into spiritual gold by helping the often impecunious writers of the living day? It is a convenient error to believe that financial aid would detract from the independence of the creator: it would, did it come from men rewarding on the basis of their own judgment; it would not if the judgment of the world’s men of letters should be taken as criterion. And perhaps fewer Chattertons and Davidsons would mar the history of literature and art.