Scientific Man Versus Power Politics

SQIENTIFIC MAN VS.

POWER POLITICS By

HANS]. MORGENTHAU Associate Prqfessor of Palttical Sczence, Umversiry of Chicago

LATIMER HOUSE LIMITED 33 LUDGATE llILL, LONDON, E.C.4

Printed. and bound in Great Britain by Purnell and Sons, Ltd. Paulton, Soxneuet, for

LATIMER HOUSE LIMITED 33

LUDOATE HILL, LONDON, E C

4

Ffrst published in Great Britain, 1947

PREFACE THIS BOOK grew out of a lectUle on "Liberalism and Foreign Policy," given in the late summer or 1940 at the New School for Social Research, New York City, in a series enLiLled "tiberalism Today." Shaken by the fall of France, I started tlus lecture with the following quotatlon from chapter XVlll of Montesquieu's ReflectIOns on the Causes of the Rzse and Fall of the Roman EmpilB: ".It is not fate that rules the world. Ask _the Romans_Y'lho experienced a continuous flow of prosperity as long as they governed themselves in a certain way, ~hen an uninterrupted flow of reverses when they followed a different line of action. TILere are some general causes, ~j1~.r ~oral or physical, which operate in every monarchy, raise it up, maintain it, or cast it down. All accidents arc subordinated to these causes; and if the accideni of one battle, I luean of one particular' cause, has ruined a state, it is because there ~1J.s a g~JlerfJ.t cause which made it in("vitable that this state shoul,d perish in a single battle, In bl'icf, the general course of events entails all particular accidents." This book, while conscious of the role accidents play in history, continues the search for the general causes of which particular events are but the outward manifestations. The particular events demonstrate the inabihty of our society to understand, and to cope with, the political problems which the age poses, especially on the international scene. Con~ sideration of the general causes points to a general decay in the political thinking of the Western world. This decay is represented most typically by the beliefin the power of science to solve all problems t'lnd, more particularly, aU political problems which confront man in the modern age. It is the purpose of this book to show why this belief in the -redeeming powers of science is misplaced, to point to the elements in philosophic and political thought from which this belief has arisen a~d in which it manifests itself, and, finally, to indica1;~

v

vi

f\

PREFACE

those intellectual and moral faculties of man tcfwhich alone the problems of the social world will yield. Part of the argument of this book was submitted in preliminary form to the general public in a series of lectures given in r 944, under the auspices of the Division of the Social Sciences of the University of Chicago, under the title" The Scientific Delusion and the Problem of International Order." I am greatly indebted to the American Philo~ophical Society, which from 1940 to 1942 has supported with a grant from its Penrose Fund the research in preparation for this book. Reports on the different phases of this research are to be found in the Yearbook oj the American Phtlosophical Society, 1940 (pp. 224-5), 1941 (pp. 211- 1 4), and I942 (pP' 188-91). I wish also to thank the SOCl al Science Research Committee at the University of Chicago, which has supported this undertaking from 1944 until the completion of the manuscript. I am deeply grateful to Professor Frank Knight of the University of Chicago and to Professor Paul Weiss of Yale University, who have read the whole manuscript. I have followed many of their suggestions and have taken all their criticisms to heart. Their wise and generous council has helped me greatly in clarifying my own thoughts and in making me more fully aware of what unites me with, and separates me frOth, other thinkers. Many of my colleague& at the University of Chicago have given me encouragement and advice on particular points; I am under great obligation to them. The following publications and publishers have kindly given me permission to use material which I had previously published: American Journal of International Law, Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, Harvard Law Review, International Journal oj Ethics, Universiry of Chicago Law Review, and Tale Law Journal. HANS

J.

MORGENTHAU

CONTENTS pAGE

CHAPT~R

I.

THE DILEMMA OF SCmNTIFIC MAN

9

THE AGI; OF SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL WORLD

17

III.

THE R:CPUDIATION OF POLITICS

42

IV.

THE SCIENCE OF PEACE

70

II.

v.

.

THE CHIM.itRA OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES

r08

THE IRRATIONALITY OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

133

VII.

THE MORAL BLINDNESS OF SCIENTIne MAN

145

VIII.

THE TRAGEDY OF SCIENTIFIG MAN

174

NOTES

191

INDEX

203

VI.

vii

CHAPTER

I

THE DILEMMA OF SCIENTIFIC MAN The Modern Temper Two MOODS determine the attitude of our civilization to the social world: confidence in the power of reason, as represented by modern SCIence, to solve the social problems of our age and despair at the ever renewed failure of sCIentific reason to solve them. That mood of despair is not new to our civilizatIOn, nor is it peculiar to it. The intellectual and moral history of mankind is the story of inner insecurity, of the anticipation of impendmg doom, of metaphysical anxieties. These at e rooted in the situation of man as a creature which, being conscious of itself, has lost its animal innocence and security and i~ now forever striving to recapture this innocence and securIty in religious, moral, and social worlds of its own. What is new in the present situation is not the existence of ~he[~.J!p.~t\es i!l.l?9l?1!lar feeling but their strengthand·con""2 fusion, on the one hand, and their absence in the main currents of philosophy and political thought, on the other. L~~.r'yce quotes the statement "that the American Government and Constitution are based on the theology of Calvin and the philosophy of Hobbes," and he adds, "Compare this spirit with the enthusiastic optimism of the Frenchmen of I 789." He might as well have added, "Compare this spirit with the philosophy of our age." The strangeness to the modern mind of the theology of Calvin and the philosophy of Hobbes testifies to the enormity of the gap which separates the philosophy of our age from the prerationalist tradition. By the same token, this gap separates also the main currents of modern pmlosophy from popular feeling) whose disquiet is thus deepened by the absence of a meaningful response in philosophical thought. Yet the verY_c!i~ts of ~9~.r civil~:atj2n reyeals itself in the !eJl~l/ity which it clings t~dtJwru,w.mptions in the face of

with

9

10

•

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

ever more potent signs that its rationalist philbsophy cannot give meaning to the experiences of the mid-twentieth century. Our civilization assumes that the social world is susceptible to rational control conceived afte;--&e model of the natural sciences, while the experiences, domestic and international, of the age contradict this as sump lion. However, instead of asking itself whether an assumption such as this is in need of revision, the age defends its .1!:-s.sup1.I?tio~ to the utmost and, by doing so, involves itself still deeper in the contradictions between its philosophy and its experience. In the end, the ever widening gap between philosophy and experience paralyses both thought and action. The age becomes unable to accept either its invalid philosophy (for its experience contradicts it) or a more valid alternative (for its insecure philosophy cannot admit of change) ; it can no longer face either its unsolved problems or their solutions. It becomes an age, first, o[~p.easy c.onf!lsion, then, of. cynical despair; and, finally, it risks being overwhelmed by the enemies from within and from withOut. The Crisis of Philosophy

When speaking of philosophy we are referring to the largely unconscious intellectual assJ.lt:r;t.pti~cm.s by which the age lives, its basic convictions as to the nature of man and society, which give meaning to thought and action. The main characteristic of this philosophy is the reliance on reason to find through a series of logical deductions from eithel' postulated or empirical premises the truths of philosophy, ethics, and politics alike and through its own inner force to re~creaie reality in the image of these truths. This philosophy has found its classical realization in the rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yet its influence extends beyond these centuries and, as a mode of thought apart from any particular school of philosophy, dominates the modern mind. While rationalism in the classical sense derives its postulates from a prtori premises, since the latter part of the eighteenth century, philosophy has tended to seek its foundation in experience and to become a science. Aside from the con~ tinuing influence which the q,riginal rationalistic",philosophy

1/

THE DILEMMA OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

11

exerts in ou~ civilization under the guise of scientific termino~ logies, seventeenth~ and eighteenth-century rationalism and the mode of thought prevailing in the nineteenth and twent.ieth centuries have, however, two qualities in common, both of which are rooted in rationalistic assumptions: the conception of the social and the physical world as being intelligible through the same rational processes, however these processes are to be defined, and the conviction that under~ standing in terms of these rational processes is all that is needed for the rational control of the social and the physical world. From the seventeenth century to the present, rational~ ism has maintained the unity under reason of the social and the IPhysical world and the ability of the human mind to mould both 'worlds through the application of the same rational principles. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the beliefin science has been the main manifestation of this mode of thought. This belief in science is the one intellectual trait which sets our age part from preceding periods of history. Whatever different hilosophic, economic, and political beliefs people may hold, they are united in the conviction that science is able, at least otentially, to solve all the problems of man. In this view, the roblems of society and nature are essentially identical and the olution of social problems depends upon the quantitative ex~ emion of the method of the natural sciences to the social sphere. his is the common ground au which Jeremy Bentham and arl Marx, Herbert Speucer and John Dewey take their stand. On the political scene this mode of thought is most typically represented by the political philosophy ofliberalism. Yet it is not limited to the adherents of liberal political principles but permeates non~liberal thought as well and has thus become typical of the political thinking of the age. Whatever else may separate the White House from the Kremlin, liberals from conservatives, all share the belief tha t if not now, at least ultimately, politics can be replaced by science, however differently defined. The rationalist mode of thought has remained virtually unchanged since the turn of the eighteenth century, while conditions of life in the same period have undergone the most profound changes in recorded history. We think in terms of the outgq.ing eighteenth cent~ry and live 1n terms of the lllid.

HI

SOIENTIFta MAN us. POWER POLITICS

twentieth. If the philosophical and political fldeas of the eighteenth century would represent eternal verities under the conditions of a particular time and place, they would be able to guide the thought and action of our time as well as of any other. There have been philosophies which were at least partly of thi~ kind, such as the political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, but the philosophy of the eighteenth century is not among them. It is, on the contrary, a philosophical structure which gives the appearance of eternal verities to certain anthropological, social, and political assumptions which are true, if at ali, only under the conditions of a particular historic experience. The historic experience of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the middle classes has given way to different historic configurations, but the philosophy of that epoch still dominates the Western mind as though its tenets were not subject to the revising processes of history. The philosophy of rationalism has misunderstood the nature of man, the nature of the social world, and the nature of reason itself. It does not see that man's nature has three dimemions: biological, rational, and spiritual. By neglecting the biological impulses and spiritual aspirations of man, it misconstrues the function reason fulfils within the whole of human existence; it distorts the problem of ethics, especially in the political field; and it perverts the natural sciences into an instrument of social salvation for which neither their own nature nor the nature of the social world fits them. As a political philosophy, rationalism has misconstrued the Inature of politics and of political action altogether. The reriod between the two world wars, which saw its triumph ~ theory and in practice, witnessed also its inteUeciual, moral, land political bankruptcy. History, it is. ~rue, has its accidents. Hs. course, if we-can believe P
~

o~ mtfie §aJEbli

;oliic iiLrru;!fl2a~]f fus ~~\

.

THE DILEMMA OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

The Challenge of Fascism It would be tempting yet rash to take it for granted that those who believe in these assumptions were victorious in war because they believe in them. Military victOl y proves only what it actually signifies: that militarily one group of men is superior to another. Those men may also e..xcel in philosophic insight, moral wisdom, and statecraft; but if they do, they do so by virtue of their excellence in these respective fields and not because they have shown themselves to be adept in the art of warfare. The monopoly of the atomic bomb may coincide with a monopoly in virtue; but no necessity makes the latter an attribute of the former. The fact alone that Western civilization could completely misunderstand the intellectual, moral, and political challenge of fascism and be brought to the brink of disaster by th2~e verI. forces,iLhad defeated on the battlefield but twenty years before should raise doubts in the soundness of its philosophy, morality, and statecraft. The very appearance of fascism not only in Germany and Italy but in our own midst ought to have convinced us that the age of reason, of progress, and of peace, as we understood it from the teachings of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen turies, had become a reminiscence of the past. Fascislll is not, as we prefer to believe, a mere temporary retrogression into irrationality, an ~~vI~tic revi~al of autocratic and barbaric rule. In its lllasi.ery of the technological attainments and potentialities of the age, it is truly progressive-were not the propaganda machine of Goebbels and the gas...d!ambers of Hi!!}rn1er models of tES"hnical rationallj;y?--and in its denial of the ethics of Western civilization it reaps the harvest of a ,philosophy which clings to the tenets of Western civilization .without understanding its foundations. In a sense it is; like real revolutions, but the receiver of the bankrupt age that spreceded it. w

;all

The Answer Not only the condition of Western civilization but also the task of its. defender can be l~arned from the experience of

SCIEmIFIC MAN us. POWER POLITICS $

fascism. For the gap between the conditions ot life and the official philosophies, which today threaten to swallow Western civilization, preceded the triumph of fascism in Europe. Man, :ven the most "practical" one who is most contemptuous of enterprises such as the one undertaken by this book, cannot Ilive without a philosophy which gives meaning to his existence, by explaining it in terms of causality, rationalizing it in terms of philosophy proper, and justifying it in terms of ethics. A lphilosophy as a system of intellectual assumptions is static; ~ife is in constant flux. Life is always in a" period of transition," by which standard phrase the age reveals its embarrassment at its intellectual inability to cope with the experience of modern life. In the face of this contradiction between philosophy and experience, it is the easiest thing in the world to stick to one's philosophic guns and, pointing to the intellectual and moral excellence of one's philosophy, to substitute for the creative revisions and revolutions of true philosophy the sterile incantations of a self-sufficient dogmatism. Intellectual victories, however, are not won that way. The dominance of a philosophy over its age and its f~und.iJ,y for the future are not determined by the standards of a seminar in logic or metaphysics but by its relation to the life experiences of the common man. That philosophy wins out in the competition of the market place, which, with greater faithfulness than any other, makes explicit and meaningful what the man in the street but dimly perceives yet strongly feels. Man may continue to live for a while with a philosophy which falls short of this standard. He may still believe in its assumptions, listen to its exhortations, and wonder in con~ fusion what is true and false, good and evil, right and wrong in this conflict between the known dogmas of the old philosophy and the felt experiences of the new life. Yet man will not forever accept a philosophy which is patently at odds with his experience. He will not forever listen to "appeals to reason." when he experiences the power of irrational forces over his own life and the lives of his fellow-men., He will not forever believe in "progress" when the comparison between his oW'll; morall;l.nd social e:xperience and those of his ancestors shows him that t4ere is no such .., thing. He will not forever

THE DILEMMA OF SCIENTIFIC

MAN

15

cherish the ~deeming powers of science which demOllstrates tEoug~.J!Lresult~E:.5>Eal.
~

16

SClE~TIFIC MAN

liS.

POWER POLITICS

The failure of the dogmatic scienlism of our a~e to explain the social and, more particularly, political problems of this age and to give guidance for successful action calls for a re-examination of these problems in the light of the pre-rationalist Western tradHlon. This re-examination must start with the assumption that power politics, rooted in the lust for power which is common to all men, is for this reason inseparable from social life itself. In order to eliminate from the political sphere not power politics-which is beyond the ability of any political philosophy or system-but the destructiveness of power politics, rational faculties are needed which are different from, and superior to, the reason of the scientific age. Politics must be understood through reason, yet it is not in reason that it finds its model. The principles of scientific reason are always simple, consistent, and abstract; the social world is always complicated, incongruous, and concrete. To apply the former to the latter is either futile, in that the social reality remains impervious to the attack of that "qne-eyed l,"ea,sop, deficient in its vision of depth"; or it is fatal, in that it will bring about results destructive of the intended purpose. Politics is an art and not a science, and what is required for its mastery is not the rationality of the engineer but the wisdom and the moral strength of the statesman. The social world, deaf to the appeal to reason pure and simple, yields only to that intricate combination of moral and material pressures which the art of the statesman creates and maintains. Contemptuous of power politics and incapable of the statesmanship which alone is able "to master it, the age has tried to make politics a science. By doing so, it has demonstrated its intellectual confusion, moral blindness, ood political decay. A book such as this C;;tIl picture the disease but Cl;I.p.not cure it. More especially, it must leave the production of 'neat and rational solutions to those who believe in the philosophy against which this book is written. It must deprive the re;:l.der of that ~i1aration which the rational solution of an, oversimplified problem, from the single tax: to tlw outlawry of war, so easily imparts, Yet, if it might lift the veil of oblivion front a truth once known, it would do for the theory and, .in the long l;un,Jol' the practice of :e.olitics all that a book oan do.

CHAPTER

II

THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL WORLD Rationalism

As

RATIOlli;\WSM

sees itol-!he world i~~"Qy~J~ws

w~accessible to"_~man reason. In the last analysis,

tnereeXiSts aTuilc1amentalldentity between the human mind and the laws which govern the world; one and the same reason reigns over both. It is this identity which enables man to understand the causes of events and, by creating causes through his reasonable action, to make himself the master of events. This neW belief in the creative power of reason grew out of the experiences which, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had awakened and, with each new experience, strengthened the confidence of the human mind in itself. It was in the field of physical nature that these experiences occurred. The great geographical discoveries and the new insights of Copernicus, Bruno, Kopler, and Galilee stand out as landmarks; in Francis Bacon they find their philosophical manifestation. The seventeenth century saw in the works of Descartes and Newton, of Leibnitz and Vico the crowning achievements of the new philosophy. When, at the turn of the eight.eenth century, this philosophy seemed to be at the threshold of its full practical confirmation, Laplace could assert that a sufficiently great mathematician, given the distribution of the particles in the primitive nebula, could predict the whole future of the world. In the intellectual atmosphere of this approaching triumph, the first attempts were made to extend the new way of thinking to the social world and to discover the natural laws of social intercourse which, in both their rationality and universality, would correspond to the laws of physics. Man was no longer considered exempt from the subjection to the rational laws which determine the physical world. One body of laws fII

I7

r 18~.

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITI OS

governs man and nature alike and, by learning tl understand those laws, man will not only be able to guide the physical world to his needs but also to mould his destiny intelhgcntly and to become the master of his fate. "Our consideration of' human nat.ure in relation to welfare ... " wrote E. L. Thorndike recently, "has shown that man has the possibility of almost complete control of his fate, and that if he fails it. will be by the ignorance or folly of men." As De Maistre said of the earlier representatives ofthis philosophy: "The eighteenth century, which distrusted itself in nothing, hesitated at nothing." Hugo Grotius is the first to develop, in his philosophy of the" natural system," the idea of a world governed throughout by objective laws whose existence is independent of a divine will and which are intelligible to human reason. Hooker had already anticipated this development, in so far as the peIception of the laws of nature is concerned, by. asserting that they are "investigable by Reason, without the help of Revelation super-natural and divine." Now GlOtius developed the same conception with respect to the origin of the laws of nature by expressing the blasphemous thought that, even if God did not exist, natural law would still exisi. Thus, he took the decisive step from the concept of a theological world, whose divine government is above human understanding as well as action, to the concept of an inherently rational world of which man is a part and which he can understand and act upon. Starting with the same philosophical premises, Hobbes created the picture of a social world which is subject to the same mechanical laws which govern physical nature and, hence, to the same iron necessity of the causal law. It was to this kind of universe that Laplace referred when he remarked to Napoleon ~ "Sire, in this system there is no need of God." The Abbe de Saint-PIerre's suggestion to the king of France that he establish a political academy of forty experts to advise him in the government of the kingdom,is the first practical application of this philosophy to political affairs and, thus, the first step towards a political science in the modern prag~ matic sense.

THE AGE OF .., SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL WORLD

19

The Four Conclusions from Rationalism From the fundamental concept that man and world are governed by rational laws which human reason is able to understand and apply, rationalistic philosophy draws four conclusions. First, that the l~io!1elly E~l.!.t and the ethically ~od ~e)_den!if~a1. Second, that the r~igl}@-lly right action is of necessity th~ successful on~. Third, that education leads ~~Jj!O the rationally right,l...-Qe~c:e, good and &uccessful, .action~ Fourth, that the~~ <:~~~S!?1}1 ~s ~l?p1ied to tl!e soci~I!EJ:1ere, are universal in their application, It was through lack ofreason that evil came into the world. This is the original sin by which man has disturbed the order of the world. Since the essence of world and man is reason, man will perform his task in the world by living up to the commands of reason. The good life is the life conducted in accordance with those commands. It is upon this same relationship to the commands of reason that success and failure of human actions depend. As conformity with the laws of nature guarantees success in the physical world, so in /the social world does compliance with the laws of reason. If all men followed reason, the conflicts which separate them would disappear or, at worst, be resolved in compromise; the wants from which they suffer would be satisfied; the fears which destroy their lives would be dispelled; and harmony, welfare, and happiness would reign. The perfect world is the world in which all obey the commands of reason. This is what both ethics and expediency demand. Goodness and success are the price for conformity to these commands.

I

Ethics An action which falls short of what ethics prescribes and expediency demands indicates a lack of knowledge of the natural laws of reason. Injustice is ignorance applied to hmpan action. The bad as well as the unsuccessful man is the unreasonable man, and the unreasonable man is the ignorant man who can be made good and reasonable by learning what reason requirl1' When ~ acts wrongly, it is

20

SCiENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS l\

not because he is bad or incapable by nature but because he does not know better. "What we fight:' as,~erts Sir l'q~:!:!??:an ~l, "is not evil intention; it is social stu:eidity." John Dewey descl'l nes tb\s conceptiOi1 Ci'F"ei:li1'Cs in 'these words: "B.illn.e roclaims that morals is about to beco~~ 3~E!!ri­ mental science. Just as, a most m our~Mill~ILi!!t~test inailleThoaToi' 'social scienceledIifill !.Q,..D:fQIlll1ll~j;§~,lQgic ~j~-illW!Y:"!2.if[f~~t IDg.ll.Q.f tl).e ~nl~n­ ms.!:lL~ere in search f£:_t~~_org9-noI,1_<2~)~.~~~ll!d ~E~~~~i~lllil~.2i~,tW1Q!h_;B..\nllhillll.nQi~ihat physics has had its Bacon and Newton; that mgllllLhM.,b.ad lts-BaCOn- rn-H~lvetius;l)urStilr awill~\\!.tQ.lli and he

\e:.~~s ~~¥ t§.t;iih~.!P2.~J2;.t.;>L~_ri:b.'7Was

~~~~EI'_~ll~"~~&.!2..,tlIU;he....w~jtl1JK. ni£~~its ~~~.'-'--TIius education and enlightening propaganda become tlie chief weapons in the hands of the already enlightened for the betterment of human affairs. In tlus w,rld of rationalism, emotions, whenever their existence is recognized at all, have only a subordinate role to play. Theirs is no longer a decisive part in the struggle of reason for supremacy, For the pre-rationalistic age, the passions are the exponent of evil, the great antagonist of reason; in the philosophy of rationalism they are "noble," ready to follow the guidance of reason. It is not in them that evil lies but in wrong thinldng\ in lack of reason. The "llhortcomings of man, especially in the field of action, therefore, arc to be remedied not by reforming the domain of the emotions but only by improving the reasoning faculties of man. One is reminded of Rousseau's explanation of Madame: de Warens' moral weakness, which he attributes not to the corruption of her passions but to bad reasoning, that is, to a series of faulty logical deductiQP.s suggested to her by her seducer. It was only one step from this rationalization of ethics to the disa:ppearance of ethics as an autonomous system of norms, distinct from empirical fact. Upon the distinction and strict separation of the ought-to-be and the to-be, the normative and th,e empirical, traditional ethics is founded. The ethical command, cop.eeived in terms of the divine will or of the reaspnable. nature of :than, transce'pds the eml?irical sphere an.d

THE AGE

o.r SOIENOE AND THE SObrAL WORLD

2!

belongs to thc world of norms, ends, and values. The nineteenth century abandons this dichotomy in a development which starts with Kant's formalization of the ethical imperative and ends with Comte's identification of ethical rule and scientific law. The deductive reason of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen~ tudes had fallen victim to Hume's and Kant's criticism, and the normative character of the ethical command follows the deductive method into oblivion. Reason, conceived as empirical science, is supposed to supply the rules of human conduct by showing the different results correlated with different actions. Where ethics is still recognized as an independent sphere, it is relegated to religion, a private domain such as family or art, where man may satisfy his emotional needs. The dual morality of the age has here one afits roots. Yet, this private domain where normative ethics may still find refuge is regarded as a residue from a prescientific age, which will nl:iit survive the coming of the age of scie~ce. With the coming of this age, normative ethics and religion itself will dis~pear, to be replaced by rational science. In scientific ethics, the selective principle by which to distinguish between good and evil, reasonable and unreasonable actions, is the principle of utility. This principle is understood to mean, in a positive sense, the calculable and calculated regularity: of action, the improvement of the conditions of living;<~~md the increase of the expectation of life; in a negative sense, the absence of passionate and violent action, the absence of hardship, sufferance, and want, and, finally, the avoidance of death. Whereas the good of tradi. tional ethics can be achieved only through a struggle within the soul of man or through an act of divine grace, scientific ethics leads man towards perfection through the mere intellectual process of learning what is reasonable and good. Yet, in opposition to the platonic remembrance of the distinction between good and evil, which, like the principles of mathematics, is pre-existent in the human soul, the, ethical perfection of utilitarian rationalism consists simply in acquiring the empirical knowledge ofbow certain effects are co-ordinated with certain actions, that is, what good, in utilitarian terms, to expect from certain action6.

2

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POW~R POLITICS

Education and Progress Since no inherent disability bars man from knowing all that here is to be known in the empirical world, the distance letween the actual state of human affairs and its perfection l of a merely quantitative nature and can be overcome by .ro&ressive accumulation of knowledge. As a physiocrat put tin 1768: "It will suffice to have that amount of capacity and .atience which a child who is good at arithmetic employs, to .ecome a good politician or a truly good citizen." What men lo not yet know they will learn, and they will teach it to the gnora.nt, thus spreading ever more and more knowledge to nore and more people. "What we principally thought of," aid John Stuart Mill in his Autobiography, "was to alter leople's opinions; to make them believe according to evidence, md know what was their real interest, which when they once mew, they would, we thought, by the instrument of opinion, mforce a xl~gard to it upon one another." According to {amsay MacDonald, "The Independent Labour Party ... Jelieves in the class conflict as a descriptive fact, but ... does lot regard it as supplying a political method. It strives to :ransform through education, through raising standards of mental and moral qualities, through the acceptance of programmes by reaSon of their justice, rationality, and wisdoih." I t is, therefore, only a matter of time before man will have acquired all the knowledge necessary to solve the problems of the physical and social world. HAs mankind improve," to quote John Stuart Mill again, "the number of doctrines which are no ionger disputed or doubted will be constantly on the increasej and the well-being ofmal1kind may almost. ~e measured by the number and gravity of the truths which [have reached the point of being uncontested." The number of those truths which thus become the imperishable heritage of manldnd cannot fail to increase. constantly since they are derived from reason itself by a mere process of logical deduction. Reaso.n is everywhere and at all times identical with itself'j l\O are the principles of logical deduction. Men everywhere and at a.ll ti!Q.es partake of both. A principle of reason, such as justice or freedom 01' ch1trity, onee reGognized as true,

I THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL WORLD 1\

~

~3

will alw,lYs be RO recogni:l;ccl. Wh("never a social problem requires solution, the prinei pIe of rC,18(111 will yield it through the mere subsumption of the facts under the principles. Social problems, then, are very much lij,e mathematical probl("ms. They can all be solved and their solution is implicit in the very essence of reason from which it is to be evolved through a chain oflogical deductions. No wonder, then, that this philosophy has an essentially optimistlc outlook. Since man has the faculty of attaining perfection in reason, he has also the faculty of attaining perfection in goodness and success. Most problems confronting man could be solved immediately if only sufficiently instructed men were to apply the laws of reason, and the rest can be solved similarly in the course of time when more instruction and research will have given more useful knowledge to more men. While the pre-rationalistic age looked to the other world Itor salvation, rationalism finds the promise of perI(~ction here and now. The bdicf in inevitable progress 8.nd in the unlimited perfectibility of human nlI'airs is thm the necessary conclusion which rationalistic philosophy reaches and from which it derives h'lith in its soundness na a system o.fphilosophy and in the practicability of its pc)s(.ulntas. "So complote," said John Stuart Mill in his Autohiogwp1!y. "was my f1-tthcr's reliance on the influence ohaason over the minds of mankind whenever it is allowed to. reach them, that he felt as jf all would be gained, if the whole population were taught to read, if aU sorts of opinions were allowed to be expressed to them by word and in writing, and if by means of the suffrage they could nominate a legislature to give effect to the opinions they adopted."

The Political Philosophy of Liberalism This philosophy was transformed into a political theory and applied to actual political problems under conditions which were dominated by the conflict between th~ rising middle classes and the feudal state. It was as the main moral, intellectual, and political weapon of the rising middle classes that rationalistic philosop!ly became the foundation for

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS ("

political theory and practice and, as such, has never lost the imprint of these historic origins. This combination of rational. istic philosophy and the moral, intellectual, and political needs of the rising middle classes was to become a fateful one in both domestic and international affairs; for in this combination lie the strength of this political philosophy and its weakness as well. This political philosophy was victorious wherever there existed a political situation similar to the one which had created it or where the philosophical premises from which it derived were not completely identified with anyone political situation, so that they could be adapted to new ones. Under such circumstances, this combination between rationalism and the interests of the middle classes was a source of intellectual and political strength; for the interpretation of a political situation in terms of the immutable postulates of reason was no less powerful an ideological weapon than the invocation of religion, tradition, and custom by which the feudal order justified its existence. On the other hand, this politkal school failed a.nd wa.s bound to fail wherever it tried to achieve its aims without modification of its original intellectual premises and political methods under conditions which differed essentially from those under which it had originated. Oonvinced that this political philosophy was justified in the light of reason and was, therefore, beyond the reach of historical change, the nineteenth century neglected the fleeting element of historic time and place which had gone into the making of its political thought and upon the presence of which both the theoretical soundness and practical feasibility of this philosophy depended. Forgetful of the historic relativity of all political philosophy, the nineteenth <;entury elevated the product of a unique historic and philosophic configuration iuto an immutable system of rational suppositions and postulates to be applied, regardless of historic conditions, everywhere and at all times. Such a political philosophy could not fail to be out of tune with the realities of the situation wherever the essential conditions o{ its origin were absent. What were those conditions? What were the interests to be defended? Wh~t were the ~mies to be held at bay? '"

,

THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL WORLD

2!l

Rationalism and the Intmsts cd" the Middle Claws The middle classes had developed an economic [lnd sOcl,\l system which was dominated by certain rational laws. Their observance was the essential condition for success within the _~ystem, and very soon a set of mores developed which gave these laws ethical dignity as well. Individual violation from within was obviously stupid, sometimes immoral, and was punished with economic failure and social condemnation. It was different with a social and economic system such as feudalism, which not only refused to follow those rational laws but also interfered with their operation and, through the instrumentalities of the state, endeavoured to take advantage of the fruits of their application. Such an attitude was a negation not only of temporal economic interests but of the very essence of the rational world which the middlc) dasses were building. It was as a defence against this deadly irlt(n'~ ference of the feudal system in the rational proccssfS of th('ir social and economic world that the middle classes built up the political theory and practice of the ninelc011th ct'lIl1l!'Y. This political philosophy is b.lsed upon a dua1l{cnr.l'nHzalioll of the social, economic, and political cxpel'ience of the rising middle classes, interpreted in the light of the philosophy of rationalism. On the one hand, the rationality of this experi~ ence now becomes a logical part and an experimental con~ fil'mation of the rational concept of world and man. It now 'appears to be only a particular manifestation ofthe rationality of the world. As the Oommunist Manifesto puts ILl H It (the bourgeoisie) has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about." Consequently, the feudal order stands condemned, not only as an isolated historic obstacle to the development of t.he middle ciasges but also as the incarnation of all backwardness and ignorance, of all the forces of darkness whieh disturb the rational order of nature and retard the arrival of the golden age of enlightenment and reason. "Aristocratic rule, the government of the Few 4n any of its shapes," said John Stuart Mill of his father's political philo~ sophy, "being in his eyes the only thing which stood between JIlankind and an administrat~on of their affairs by the best

26

SOIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

r

wisdom to be found among them, was the object of his sternest disapprobation.' ) Since, on the other hand, it was by means of the state that feudalism barred the middle classes from the full use of their rational powers, the state became the arch~interventionist that, by its very nature, is unable to build on the foundations of reason but will only destroy what reason has built. Since, finally, the state as social agent makes use of its sovereign political power which asserts itself in political institutions and derives its legitimacy fi'om tradition, the historic hostility against feudalism is transformed into philosophical antagonism to the state, tradition, politics, and violence, as such. The state, tradition, politics, and violence come to be regarded as .something alien to the true order of things, as a kind of outside disturbance like a disease or a natural catastrophe. Society vs. state, law vs. politics, man vs. institutions, reason vs. tradition, order vs. violence-such are the battle cries of liberalism, and this dichotomy between the true, good order of things, dominated by reason, and its political perversion has determined the course of nineteen.th~century political lthought. This hostility to the state so dominates the age that even a thinker critical of the spirit of the times shows its traces. "Life in the state," says the Prussian philosopher li'ichte, "does not belong among the absolute ends of men, whatever a very great man (Hegel) may say about that; but it is a means, existing only under certain conditions, for the establishment of a perfect society. The state, like all human institutions which are mere means, is bent on its own destruction; it is the purpose of all government to make government superfluous." In Emerson's essay "Politics," the dichotomy is transposed into spiritual terms. .. Th educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary." Marxian philosophy poses the same opposition in economic terms; the state appears as the product of the clasa struggle, bound to disappear with the latter. To ollfown day, the symbolic force of these generalizations and id~tUicati()ns hall remained e..ffective in many philosophical

THE AGE O~ SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL WORLD

~7

and political concepts, e.g., in the concept of the intellectual darkness of the Middle Ages taken as symbol of the preliberal world, and of the essential moral and pragmatic inferiority of the state to private initiative. Paine's statement that society is the outcome of our virtues, government of our wickedness, has lost nothing of its convincing power over the liberal mind. What, then, are the means which the middle classes employ to protect their world against the nonconformist from within and the enemy from without'? This world reposes, as we know, in its philosophical postulates as well as in its practical needs, upon the rationality of its elements. As the actual world falls short of this ideal and is ever menaced by irrational forces from within and without, it becomes the main concern of the nineteenth century to hold at bay and destroy the enemies from within and to insulate the rational world against those from without, to restrict their sphere gradually, and to extend the borders of the rational world correspond. ingly. The Rille of Law and tho Liberal Institutions The means by which the nineteenth century essays to achieve these dual ends is the rule of law. The idea of a coherent system of legal rules regulating the relationships of men is intimately related, logically as well as historically, to the general philosophy of rationalism. Such a system of legal rules, coherent, precise, and calculable like the laws of physics, or as Grotius, Leibnitz, and many others preferred to think, like the principles of mathematics, is only the image, created by men and endowed with human sanctions, of the rational order which dominates the world. Ii is in the idea of secularized natural law, as developed by Grotius, that the concept of a coherent system of positive legislation originated in the eighteenth century in France, Austria, and Prussia. Positive law, so to speak, comes to the support of the laws of reason which, in this stage of human development, have only an incomplete chance of being realized by their own inner force all;me; the" positive order" adds to the power of reason, inher., ent in the "natural order," tQe sanctions of state and society.

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

Thus the legal order endeavours to guarant.ee the smooth operation of the laws of reason in the economic and social sphere of the middle classes. With respect to disturbances from within this sphere, the civil and criminal laws fulfil this function. AI> regards interference from without, that is, on the part of the feudal powers and their state, the movement toward constitutional government pursues the same aim, by building, as a member of the English House of Commons put it in 16ro, a "wall betwixt the king and his subjects." The respective spheres of government and citizen are again determined by the principles of natural law as they manifest themselves in the legal instrumentalities of the Bill of Rights and similar constitutional guarantees. For the ~c!vc:~.c~!E~I!!...2f its., ai!ll~i<;;~,J~alisII), ..£kv~ree ~ ~r:!'titutions: W'itten constitutions which would envelop the rational sphere of economic and social endeavour in an armour of legal guarantees and, at the same time, compel the irrational forces of the state into a system of legal chains from which these forces were supposed never to escape; second, independent couris which, as the mouthpieces of reason, would discern the reasonable from the unreasonable in the conflicting claims of less enlightened parties and see to it that legal rules be applied in accordance with the laws of reason; finally, popularly elected parliaments ~h~h would subject apparently confhctmg, VIews and m~ .terests to the test of reason throug!:, intelligent discussion and resolve those conflicts either in a compromise as x:erimental manifesta . t e n ests inherent itt , uman affairs, ,.or il1 EW!.~cision of the _m~jority through ~F~c~Je.MQ!)' asserts it~ainst the une!!,1i/ihtens;d few. "The best test oftrutli;' according to the famous epigram of ,Mr. Justice Holmes, "is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market."

Social Reform These ideas and institutions led liberalism to victory over the feudl;ll state, and the classical liberals were convinced that uPQil "this philosophical ba.llis and with these intellectual

THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL WORLD

~9

tools the libe!al society could safely be built. Within the framework of those liberal safeguards, reason, revealing itself in the laws of economics, would reign supreme and of necessity bring about harmony and the welfare of all. It was at this point that the Gladstonian liberals, the evolutionary socialists, the adherents of the General Welfare State and social reformers of all denominations split from the classical liberals of the Manchester S~hool and addeUQ the liber.e.lIili-ilgsophy another fundamentarTcfea: the ..fQll£e.Q.t..9f..§.Q.£.@lx~form. -Neither this concept nor the possibility of its realization is self-evident. The Middle Ages and even the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries show scarcely a trace of the idea of social reform as a philosophical proposition, let alone as a programme for action. It was from the experience of his actual mastery over physical nature through reason that man gained confidence in the general transforming powers of reason. Similarly, it was not until the triumph of liberal rationality over the forces of feudal darkness had provided experimental proof of the power of reason in social affairs that the abstract concept of progress, inherent, as we have seen, in the philo~ sophy of rationalism, was transformed into the political idea of social reform. And this political experience, which Was the midwife at its birth, should dominate its life in a peculia\' and truly fateful way. We have already pointed out that liberalism identified the historic antagonism between the middle classes and the feudal order with the opposition of metaphysical absolutes: good and evil, light and darkness, reason and ignorance, law and politics, society and state, order and violence. Hence, the destruction of feudalism and the erection of the llberal state meant more for the liberal mind than one historic event among many others; it meant the final victory of the forces of goodness, light, reason, law, and order over those of evil, darkness, ignorance, domination, and violence. With the feudal order those forces had disappeared from the earth, and reason was thus on its way to ultimate victory. Yet, whereas the classical liberals believed in the ability of reason to win this victory through its sheer inner force without human intervention, the social reformers felt that positive

30

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

legislation on a scientific basis was necessary ~o make reason prevai.1 within the framework of the liberal state. The departure from the original liberal position, which the idea of social reform implied, however, was far less great than classical liberals and social reformers alIke supposed it to be. For both agreed that with the destruction of feudalism and autocracy the age of reason WIll come. They only c!iffered with r~1:u:~,in whi~ th\~~.t.d.

Yet even the idea of automatic progress predominant in classical liberal thought is still of the essence of social reform, only, as it were, at one remove. Even though the philosophy of social reform negates the classical conviction that reason would prevail without human intervention, it main tams the belief in the ability of reason to prevail through its sheer inner force, once the legislative process has embodIed in positive legislation the scientific formula which reason suggests for the solution of the social problem. The belief in the redeeming power of the mle of law, whIch through its mere eXlstence reforms the condItions of man, is only the classical belief in the autonomous powers of reason on another level of concretization. The cry for a new piece of legislation as the first and last resort of social reform is but the echo of the appeal to reason pure and simple with which classical liberalism thought to exorcise the problems of social life.

The Scientific Approach For the liberal refonner the domestic problems which 'emained to be llo1ved after the fall of the feudal state were of a 1on-political, rather technical nature, analogous to those with ..,hieh the physicist and the technician have to deal. Like the latter, they would be solved, one after the other, by the inevitable accumulation of more and more knowledge. Social problems, then, become mere scientific propositions which, like mathematical and physical problems, can all be solved rMionally and with finality, once the right formula is qi~<:Qyexed. Darwin, giving experimental proof to the ~,hllp~dphic~l conviction that nature and man are subject to

THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND TUE SOOIAL WORLD

"

3I

the same rational laws, immensely stimulated this trend towards extending scientific methods to social problems. The very field of politics thus becomes a kind of atavistic residue from a prel atlOnal period. Since politics is arbitrariness and chance, just as science is order and regularity, science 5.ts perfectly into this picture of the social world. It becomes :he beneficial force which will solve the problems with which )olitics is unable to cope. It becomes the substitute for politics. t\.ccordmg to John Dewey, "The resource that has not been .ried on any large scale in the broad field of human, social 'elationships is the utilization of organized intelligence, the nanifold benefits and values of which we have substantial ~Vldence of in the narrower fields of science." E. L. rhorndlke advises us that" governments should make more Ise of scientific methods in arriving at their decisions, :specially the method of the weighted average. In doubt.ful ~ases, a person should as a rule make his decisions after otting down the facts pro and con, assigning weights to each, md summing the weights. He may include his intuitions and hunches' with such weight as seems fit. The opinions of. Ither person~ PIO and can may be included with t.hc more Ibjective facts 01' kept as a separate account to be combined at the end. The opinions should be weighted according to the intimacy of t.he person's knowledge, his expertness in the field, and his general good sense. Making such weighted gecisions will on the whole save time and reduce strain and worry." Elton Mayo wonders that" current texts on politics still quote Aristotle, Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the books of other authors. What chemist finds need of quoting Thales and the alchemists? His claims are based on his own skill and his capacity for experimental demonstration. In sociology and political science there does not seem to be any equivalent capacity for the direct demonstration of a usable skill in a particular situation at a given time ...• If our social skills (that is, our ability to secure co-operation between people) had advanced step by $tep with our technical skills, there would not have been another European war." Hence, politics sho'llld be "reformed" and "rationalized." Political manceuvring should be replaced by the scientific

gil

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS 1'1

."plal1," the political decision by the scientific "solution," the politician by the "expert," the statesman by the "brain~ truster," the legislator by t.he "legal engineer." The technical efficiency of the business enterprise becomes the standard for the evaluation of governmental activities, the "business administration" the ideal of governmentftl perfection. Even revolution becomes a "science," the revolutionary leader the "engineer of the revolution." Since Bentham, English liberalism thinks of legislation as an applied science. Ac~ cording to Thomas G. Masaryk, "Modern democracy does not !aim at rule at all, but at administration. • . . How this new 'conception, this new estimate, of state organization can be carried out in practice is no mere question of power; it is a difficult problem of administrative technique." }<'or Oharles A. Beard, "a' thousand experiences of political life bear witness that a treatise on causation in politics woul~ be the most welcome contribution which a scholar of scientific training and t.emper could make." "The principles of democracy are," according to O. Delisle Burns, "merely the principles of science applied to public policy," and "democracy is the discovery of new truth." "Our magazine,'; writes Clarence K. Streit's Freedom and Union, "has taken fOl"its province the great issue, how to raise man's political scien.::e to the level of his scientific and engineering achievements"; and in the hands of John Dewey the problem of morality becomes "an engineering issue." "If six hundred scientists working together can produce the atom bomb," says the chairman of the National Conference of Ohristians and Jews, "then six hundred scientists could be put to work on the job of intergroup hatreds." He predicts that their combiI,led efforts could .end such hatreds within twenty-five years. Art is not immune from the scientific approach either. "The artist," says Jacques Barzun of the spirit of modern art, "must defend himself in pl;'int and show how others are wrong, for all artists are presumably seeking f solutions' to contemporary problems. At anyone time only one solution is valid> hence only one artist has' the answer.' The artist is made into a ,kind of research scientist an,d sociologist combined. To avoid frivolity, art ¥lust teach~ alter the course of

THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL WORLD II

33

history, and regenerate mankind. It deals, in short, with the conduct of the will, ~he improvement of the State and the purification of the soul." Impressionism and expressionism, cubism and surrealism search for the method which will solve the problem of art once and for all. Justice, according to Joseph Joubert, is "truth in action." Even "mercy is scientific," -;Lincoln Steffens wrote on the occasion of the McNamara trial. J( The scienti;6c spirit penetrates even religious thought. In his will es~f.lishing the GiiTord Lectureship in natural theology, ltold Gifford wrote in r881: "I wish the leclures to treat their stll:1ject as a strictly-natural science, the greatest of all possible "~~iences, indeed, in one sense, the only science, that of Infinlle :Being, without reference to or reliance upon any supposcitt special, exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation. P wish it considered just as astronomy or chemistry is. f, ~ As ifin consummation of this wish, an ad vertisement in the;1f;.WashingtolZ Evening Star of April 24, r946, announces thaf" religion becomes demonstrable ~cience" and compares the satisfaction brought by Christian Scicncc to the one derived frlt.he modern uses of electricity. When, in the hour of his dea ,John Quincy Adams looked at the failure of his life, found on the belief in education and science, he doubted not sc~ nce but God. And is it not significant that even so astute~· ritic of this philosophy as Reinhold Niebuhr seems to substj ute a scientific for a dogmatic criterion of religious tru!Ii hen he writes: "It is important to recognize this lack of c tInity to the facts of experience as a criterion of heresy" ? No politic inker can expect to be heard who would not, at least 1 his terminology, pay tribute to the spirit of science and, hy,claiming his propositions to be "realistic," "technical," ~~i" experimental," assume their compliance with scientifi<·gt~ndards. We have a moving account of this intellectual trjp.d by a leading German liberal who, in r866, after Bismarcf had crushed the Prussian liberal party, wrote this me1anchiibly confession: "We unconsciously transferred scientific method to the practice of politics .• _ . After having put our parliamentary motionsIt on a theoretical basis which B

34

SOIENTIFIC MAN us.

POW~R

POLITIOS

could not be disputed from any quarter, we thought that now the truth would win by its own inner force. Thus discussion absorbed our best efforts: had we won in the debate, we were contented, but when the one weak in argu~ ments showed himself to be strong in actions we submitted to it as to an injustice of fate and consoled ourselves with the thought of being at least right. The whole unfortunate policy of resolutions is in a certain way the result of this confusion of science and politics." A contemporary account, rendered by the liberal writer Michael Straight after the American congressional elections of 1942, expresses the same melancholy recognition of this inherent quality of the liberal mind: "Again we are failing. We have learned almost nothing from our previous failures. We are as confused, as isolated, as unorganized as we ever were. We are as willing to sit on the fence and lecture to the grasshoppers about our superior 'objectivity' as we ever were. We are as willing to become again the kept opposition of an outworn but ruthless system as we ever were. We stand now in grave danger of failing again. Millions may pay the price for our final failure." I' This scientific element has become the dominating mode of political thought in the Western world. Where, in times past, the irrational lust for power pursued its violent game, now reason would reign supreme through the medium of the political scientist, the economist, the sociologist, the psycho~ logist, etc. This political philosophy thus ends in a scientific theory of society where politics has, at best, a place as the evil finally overcome. This mode of thought has permeated the thinking of friend and foe alike. Whereas the conserv<;ltive of the modern age turns to the historic past and expects from the science of history the answer to the riddle of the present, the liberal sees in history only a process through which reason realizes itself in time and space. The scientific ap~ proach is common to both. For the liberal, science is a prophecy confirmed by teason; for the conservative, it is the revelation of the past cOllfirmed by experience. ' r ~ M~, in this respect, proves himself to be a true son of the n~;tleteenth century when, ,opposing the, utopian socialists

THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL WORLD

35

in the name of science, he endeavours to chart scientifically the future course of history in whose final stage politics will disappear and be replaced by technical functions. Marxian science aims at combating the irrationality of social organi. zation through rational reform or revolution while liberal science attacks the ignorance of the individual mind through education and meets socialism in its attempts at social reform. Marx simply transfers the liberal confidence in the rational powers of the individual to the class. The individual may be mistaken in his interests, the class never. The latter will act in terms of its class interests, that is, of reason, once it knows what its interest is. With respect to the class, there exists, in other words, a necessary correspondence between knowledge and action. That is what liberalism assumes with respect to the individual. A critic of the scientific tradition like James Harvey Robinson remains within this same tradition when he wants science to become more scientific than it is. "How are mankind's guides and instructors," he asks, "to modernize their outlook in such a way as to free scientific intelligence from the suspicions which still beset it and assure it the influence to which it is entitled? This is the supreme problem of our age." All the blueprints for the good society, the perfect government, the more abundant life, have in this scientific attitude their intellectual roots. Forty years ago, Lester Ward could thus describe the approaching age of science: Legislative bodies "will doubtless need to bc maintained, and every new law should be finally adopted by a vote of such bodies, but more and more this will become a merely formal way ofpulting the final sanction of society on decisions that have been carefully worked out in what may be called the sociological laboratory. Legislation will consist in a series of exhaustive experiments on the part of true scientific sociologists and sociological inventors working on the problems of social physics from the practical point of vieW. It will undertake to solve not only questions of general interest to the State . . . but questions of social improve. ment, the amelioration of the condition of all the people, the removal of whatever privati?ns may still remain, and the

SC!ENTIFIC 1'IAN vs. POWER POLITICS

adoption of means to the positive increase of" the social welfare, in short the organization of human happiness." RobertS. Lynd's Knowledgefor What? is, in our day, a perfect example of this mode of thought. When Alvin H. Hansen in his Fiscal Policy and the Business Cycle analyses the inherent weaknesses of our economic system and the economic cri&es inevitably re&ulting therefrom, his main contribution to the political problem of reform consists in the call for more intelligent action, the "bold social engineering" of scientist philosophy. According to Ferdinand Lundberg, the solution of the problem of thc freedom of the Pres& consists in "putting the Press into the hands of scientific-minded personnel who will operate m accoldance with values laid down by boards of public~minded men of the highest calibre." /' Professor Gallup invents " the new science of public opinion measurement." When Karl Mannheim searches for the principles upon which the reconstruction of ·man and society could be based, his scholarship culminates in an elaborate suggestion for social planning. For him as well as for George B. Galloway scientific planning is the answer to all social problems of our time, "The twelltieth century," says the latter, "is certainly the Plan Age," "The problems of planning in America embrace all the problems of human relations in a mod~rn industrial society." Rare, indeed, is the social scientist who will say, as Bernard Glueck did a few years ago with regard to the problem of alcoholism: "It is difficult not to be somewhat amused by this general tendency to put all faith in more research as the solution. "

Identification

of Ethics, Science, and Politics

This intellectual trend not only made politics merge into science, it also led to the identification of science with ethics. The leading thought of the pre-rationalist age conceived of the convergence of ethics and politics as an ultimate possibility, a goal to be reached through the unceasing aspiration of the individual fot' virtue. For a sophist like Thrasymachus tpere 'Was no possibility of convergence at all since the political sphere was governed exclusively by the rules of the

THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL WORLD

37

political art of which ethical evaluation was a mere ideological by-product. For a realist like Machiavelli convergence was possible only as an accident, if what was required by the rules of the political art-the primary concern of the political actor-happened to coincide with what was lequired by the rules of ethics. Only for nineteenth-century thought is the identity of ethics and politics more than a remote possibility to be achieved at be!>t by the virtuous few; it is an actuality of our daily experience wherever political action conforms to the findings of science. Conformity with the abstract logical sequences of a rational scientific scheme is the first political and ethical postulate of this philosophy. The political polemic takes on the qualities of a scientific disputation. In~ consistency in politics-that is, deviation from the rational scheme-is not only politically unsound but also ethically damnable. Thus the scientific solution of a political problem implies a positive ethical judgment. The scientifically conect, hence politically sound, solution is of necessity the one required by ethics. The morally wrong cannot be poli~ tic ally right. Sincerity-that is, harmony between motive and ... action-and consistency-that is, harmony between the elements of a chain of thoughts or actions-become the highest values of ethics, science, an.d politics alike. A political conflict resolves itself not only in a scientific controversy but also in an ethical antagonism, and the political opponent becomes a scientific and ethical opponent as well. Yet the liberal will feel the full measure of his superiority only when he can prove to the world and to himself the righteousness of his position and the moral baseness of the enemy who must be punished for his crimes. In this, the liberal is entirely sincere, and it is exactly this sincere beliefin the unquestionable justice of his cause, these profoundly serious convictions, unmarred by even the shadow of a doubt, this complete absence of cynical design, which distinguishes the liberal from olher political types and makes him a little bit of a Don Quixote on the political scene. Gladstone, Wilson, and J3riand, for instance bear the unmistakable marks of this quality. It is this political type which Lord Morley must have had (j>

38

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

•

in mind when he wrote of the consequences for England of Carlyle's "poetised utilitarianism, or illumined positivity." "One might Buppose," says he, "from the tone of opinion among us, not only that the difference between right and wrong marks the most important aspect of conduct, which would be true; but that it marks the only aspect of it that exists, or that is worth considering, which is most profoundly false. Nowhere has Puritanism done us more harm than in thus leading us to take all breadth, and colour, and diversity, and fine dIscrimination, out of our judgments of men, reducing them to thin, narrow, and superficial pronouncements upon the letter of their morality, or the precise conformity of their opinions to accepted standards of truth, religious or other. Among other evils which it has inflicted, this inability to conceive of conduct except as either right or wrong, and, correspondingly in the intellectual order, of teaching except as either true or false, is at the bottom of that fatal spirit of parti-pris which has led to the rooting of so much iqjustice, disorder, immobility, and darkness in English intelligence. No excess of morality, we may be sure, has followed this ex~ cessive adoption of the exclusively moral standard. . . . We have simply got for our pains a most unlovely leanness of judgment, and ever since the days when this temper set in until now, when a wholesome rebellion is afoot, it has steadily and powerfully tended to straiten character, to make action mechanical, and to impoverish art."

Lost Teachings oj History From this triple identification of the political, scientific, ...nd ethical stems the enormous self~confidence and conceit with which liberalism gives its adherents intelledtuaI security and a good conscience, Were its followers unsuccessful in politics, they still were convinced of being "right" in both the intellectual and ethical sense; and it could only be because of the particular wickedness of the enemy, the irrationality of politi<,:al interference, and the ignorance of mankind in ~ener.al that they failed. Therefore, they never learn from b~tQl'¥,. For them, history is important only as confirmation I ~

THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL WORLD

.•

39

of) or deviation from, the rational scheme with which they approach the political reality. "Thel'e is)" says Harold J. Laski of the liberals, "no sense of the historical element in politics. Variety of fact is not allowed to disturb their desire for ample and simple conclusions." History, therefore, has provided them in the main with false analogies but has taught them nothing. What Carl L. Becker has said of the eighteenth-century philosophers is true of their nineteenthand twentieth-century heirs: "The eighteenth century Philosophers, like the medieval scholastics, held fast to a revealed body of knowledge, and th.ey were unwilling and unable to learn anything from history which could not . • . be reconciled with their faith." This philosophy recognizes only two forces determining he historic process: reason, and unreason as its counterpart. I t conceives of the historic process as a struggle between those two forces with reason steadily gaining ground and certain of ultimate victory. Reason, however, by its very nature) is not itself a product of the historic process. It is before and above all history. History cannot add to or detract from reason; it provides only a succession of experiences which give man the opportunity to found the domin~on of '''reason over human affairs, That we can speak of historic development at all is due only to the failure of man to make full use of this opportunity. When history, on the one hand, is the scene of reason's march to victory, it is, on the other, the scene of the revolt of ignorance and wickedness against the supremacy of reason. Without this revolt there would be no history at all. "It ought always to be remembered," said Mr. Justice Holmes) "that historic continuity with the past is not a duty, it is only a neces<Jity." Yet, confronted with the realization of this necessity, the nineteenth-century mind is given oulf to expressing its moral indignation and to reaffirming its belief in the powers of reason. For the understanding of the autonomous forces which engender historic necessity in their own right and not as a mere deviation from reason, there is no place in this philosophy of history. Therefore, the adherents of this political school never learn from their failures. They have an inveterate tendency

~

~o

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SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

to stick to their assumptions and to suffer constant defeat from experience rather than to change their assumptions in the light of contradicting facts. Instead of inducing them to revise theory and practice in the light of their experience, failure only calls forth a renewed effort with essentially the same means. Since they are right, they have only to try again; and once the wicked enemies are destroyed, the irrational procedures of politics are transformed into the rationality of tcchnical functions, and education has had its enlightening effect upon the good but ignorant, they arc bound to succeed. The history of modern international thought in particular is in the main the history of this 5terility of the modern mind. What Rousseau said of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre is true of th1s whole trend of international thought: "He figured out nicely that one only needed to convoke a conference and propose the articles of his plan: that they would be signed and everything would be in order. Let us agree that in all projects this honest man saw quite well the effect of things once they had been established; but he was like a child in judging the means to establish them." All the schemes and devices by which great humanitarians and shrewd politicians endeavoured to reorganize the relations between states on the basis of law, have faIled to stand the trial of history. Instead of asking whether the devices were adequate to the problems which they were supposed to solve, the internationalists take the appropriateness of the devices for granted and blame the facts for the fallure. "When the facts behave otherwise than we have predieted/' they seem to say, "too bad for the facts." Not unlike the sorcerers of primitive ages, they attempt to exorcise social evils by the indefatigable repetition of magic formulas. As it was said of Briand, they act like St. Louis while it is necessary to act like Talleyrand. With wearying monotony, unperturbed by failuM and unaffected by criticism, this philosophy, since its very inception, has offered the same remedies and advanced the same argum.;:p.ts. Hume and many after him realized that rationalism is unable tD solve the problems of religion and ethics. Burke, G~e, and the Romantics realized that rationalism is unable t6 $olve the problem of history, William Graham Sumner

THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL WORLD

"41

realized that rationalism is unable to solve the problem of society. In our day, Reinhold NIebuhr has repudiated the claims of rationalism in all its manifestatIOns, and Alfred North Whitehead has called upon rationalism to "transcend itself by lCCUlrencc to the concrete in search of inspiration." Yet, as far as the modern climaie of opinion is concerned, those thinkers might as well never have recorded any of their thoughts. Similarly, Rousseau's polemic against the Abbe de SainL~Pierre contains all the principal arguments which may be advanced against the rationalist position in international affairs. Yet one looks in vain for apy influence of Rousseau's trenchant criticism upon the succeeding development of international thought. To this development we shall turn now.

OHA,P1'ER

m

THE REPUDIATION OF POLITICS

WJ:!lLE domestic liberalism converted public opinion in the eighteenth century and conquered the political institutions of the Western world during the nineteenth, it was not before the end of the Napoleonic Wars that important sectors of public opinion demanded the application of liberal principles to international affairs. And it was not before the turn of the century that the Hague Peace Oonferences made the first systematic attempt at establishing the reign of liberalism in the international field. Yet only the end ohhe first. World War saw, in the League of Nations, the triumph of liberalism on the international scene. " Two streams of thought made this development possible. One originated in the rationalist philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and brought the principles of this philosophy directly to bear on the problems of interM national relations. It is significant, pointing to a more than coincidental relationship between the philosophy of rationM alism and modern international thought, that the two men whom we recognize as pioneers of the philosophy of reason in the social sphere, GrotJus and the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, are also the two great imtiators of this intellectual development. Its influence remained, during the whole eighteenth century, in the realm of pure thought) giving rise to abstract systems of international law and to Utopian blueprints for the perfect international society. Only after it had joined the other stream of thought, represented in the political experie.n,ce of domestic liberalism, were the theory and practice of modern foreign policy born. After rationalist phifosophy, in its liberal manifestation, had passed successfully its domestic trial, the general idea of eXM tending those same principles to the international field was transformed into a. concrete political programme to be put to

TI-ill REPUDIATION OF POLITICS

,. 43

the test of actual realization. Now the promoters of liberal foreign policy found, in philosophers like Grotius, in reformers lIke the Abbe de Saint-PIerre, theoretical confirmation and practical support of their anns. It is important to keep in mind the dual mtellectual source of this foreign policy and the preponderance of the domestic expcnence of a triumphant liberalism. For here lies the clue to the understanding of the theoretical and practical approach of the modern mind to the international sphere; of the conception it has developed of the nature of international relations; of the means it has suggested for the solution of internatlOnal problems; of the failures which have followed its every step on the international scene; and of the final disaster whIch has threatened its very survival in the domestic field as well. ·What, then, is the liberal conceptIon of foreign affairs? What are the means by which hberalism endeavours to master international relations? What is the essence of liberal foreign policy?

Foreign Policy without Polttics Thucydldes, Machiavelli, Richelieu, Hamilton, or DisraclY would conceive the nature of mternational politics as an unending struggle for survival and power. It is true that, even before modern international thought entered the field, this conceptlOn of international affairs was under constant attack. From the Church Fathers to the anti-Machiavelhan writers of the eighteenth century, international politics was made the object of moral condemnation. But modern international thought goes further. It denies not only the moral value of political power which proves nothing as over against the rational values of truth and justice; it denies, if not the very existence of power politics as a matter offact, at least its organic and inevitable connection with the life of man in society. Francis Bacon only prophesied that the empire of man over nature would replace the empire of man over man. For the leading international thought of the nineteenth century, thIS prophecy had come true. "Nations," said Bentham, "are associates and not rivals in the grand social enterprise." This concept of il!ternational affairs found in

SCIENTIFIC MAN os. POWER POLITICS

Liberalism was unable to see the political nature of these intellectualized relations whlch seemed to be essentially different from what had gone, so far, under the name of politics and, therefore, identified politics In its aristocratIC, that is, open and violent fOllU, WIth pOh~lCS as such. The struggle, then, for political power-m domestIC as well as in international affairs-was only a histOlical accident, coincIdent with autocratic government and bound to disappear when the latter would go. The attempts, in the domestic field, to reduce the political functions to technical ones and the international polIcy of non~intervention as conceived and practised by some of the early and most of the latter-day liberals were only two manifestations of the same aspiration: the reduction of the traditionally pohtical sphere to a minimum and its ultimate disappearance. The foreign policy of non~ intervention was the hberal principle oflaisser faire, transferred to the international scene; and the optimlstic trust in the harmonizing power of the "course of events," the "natural development," and the "bws of nature" was the justification of both domestic and mternational inertia.

Pacifist Lzberalism It follows necessarily from this general conception of international pohtics that liberalism is essentially pacifist and ho&tile to war as the outstanding and mo~t consequential manifestation of the lust for power in the international field. War has always been abhorred as a scourge, but within the political philosophy of liberalism this abhorrence takes on a novel meaning. In ancient times and in the Middle Ages, war was regarded as an evil which, with the inevitability of a natural catastrophe, destroys material values and human lives. Not only does liberahsm stand in horror of the gruesome spectacle of war, not only does it condemn war as a moral outrage; it also, and prlluarily, argues against war as against [something irrational, unreasonable, an aristocratic pastime or totalitarian atavism which has no place in a rational workl. War is essentially a thing of the past. It belongs, accordiqg to Ht;:rbet't Spencer? to the age of militarism and

t

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47

will, of necessity, become obsolete in our industrial civilization in which men can appease their greedy instincts by the pro~ ductive inveshnent of capital." Hence war is "dead" and "impossIble." War does not solve anything. }Nar does not pay. It is an unproductive investment; it is, as Emeric Cruce recognized as early as the seventeenth centUly, "without profit." Nobody has ever won a war. War is "The Great Illusion." "There never was," as Benjamin Franklin wrote Ito Josiah Quincy on September I7, 1773, "a good war or a bad peace," Even WellIngton's remark that "there is nothing worse than winning a war except losing it" contains an element of this rationahst pacifism. At the basis of this conceptIon there is again the domestic experience of hberalism. Liberal philosophy, unaware of the limited character of this experience, gave it a universal meaning and transplanted it to the international scene. is the essence of Liberalism, " says L. T. Hobhouse, "to oppose the use of force, the basis of all tyranny.!' The middle classes have an innate aversion to violent action. For them, organized violence is the dreaded enemy. The occupations of the middle classes are primanly of a commercial or a professional nature, whereas their historic enemies, the aristocracy, were brought up in the tradition of the use of arms. Whenever a decision between the mddle classes and the aristocracy depended upon the use of arms, the aristocracy had the initial advantage. Even in the daily life of individuals, this superiority was a constant temptation for the aristocrats to deprive the middle classes of the fruits of their labour by violent means and thus was a constant thleat to the survival and economic welfare of the members of the middle classes. The latter came to experience in violence the negation of all the values which they cherished; and they put the stigma of immorality and irration~ ality on its use. And irrational it actually is from the stand~ point of the philosophical, social, and economic systems which the middle classes developed. These systems are founded upon a mechanical interplay of natural forces, which is subject to calculable rational laws. Peace is a necessary condition for the functioning of these systems and for the realizati~n of their goal, which is the

' It\

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

domination of nature by human reason. From the standpoint of those systems, organized violence indeed does noL pay; it cannot solve any of their problems; and there is nothing to be won by using it. "A war in the midst of different trading nations," Didel'ot noticed, "is a fire disadvantageous to all. It is a process which threatens the fortune of a great merchant and makes his debtors turn pale." According to Kant, "the commercial spirit cannot co-exist with war." . "Panic in the Funds, and great fluctuations," noted John Bright in his diaries during the Crimean War. "War disturbs everything. It has destroyed the session, and will greatly injure, if not disgrace the country. . . . Our carpet trade grievously injured by War raising price of tow (flax)." A typical example ofthis mode of thought is to be found almost a century and a half before in the Spectator's characterization of Sir Andrew Freeport: "He is acquainted with commerce in all its parts; and will tell you that it is a stupid and barbarous way to extend dominion by arms; for true power is to be got by arts and industry. r have heard him prove; that diligence makes more lasting acquisitions than valour, and that sloth -has ruined more nations than the-sword. He . . . says that England may be richer than other kingdoms by as plain methods as he himself is richer than other men. . . . There is a way of managing an argument, which is made use of by states and communiti~s, when they draw up a hundred thousand disputants on each side, and convince one another by dint of sword. A certain great monarch was so sensible of his strength in this way of reasoning, that he writ upon his great guns--ratio ultima regwn. 'The logic of kings'; but God be thanked, he is now pretty well bufIled at his own weapons. When one has to do with a philosopher of this kind, one should remember the old gentleman's saying, who had been engaged in an argument with one of the Roman emperors. Upon his friend's telling him, that he wondered he would give up the question when he had visibly the better of the dispute; '1 am never ashamed,' says he, 'to be confuted by one who is master of iifty legions.'" There is no place for violence in a rational system of society. It is therefore a vital-practical as well as intellectual-:-

THE REPUDIATION OF POLITICS

II

49

conce~n of thc middle classes to avoid outside interference, especially violent interference, with the delicate mechanics of the social and economic system, which stands for the rationality of the world at large. By elevating this concern to' a philosophical and political postulate of absolute validity, liberalism overlooked the singularity as well as the exceptional character of the experience in which it originated. For the absence of organized violence during long periods of history is, in domcstic no less than in international relations, the exception rather than the rule. Furthermore, liberalism is on safe ground when it opposes violence in the domestic field; for there it has replaced to a considerable degree domination by actual violence with a system of indirect domination, originating in the particular needs of the middle classes and giving them the advantage in the struggle for political power. International oHtic how~ ever, has never outgrown the" reh eraI" st.a e. Even where ~l ns 1 e relations of power, power is to be understood in terms of violence, actual and potential; and potential violence tends here always to turn into actual warfare. The' distinction between the latter and peace is no~ one of essence but of degree; it is one of alternative choices, not of exclusive preference, among different means in the pursuit of power. The development towards a sharp distinction between inter~ national war and peace, which in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seemed to equate the international to the domestic situation, was of a superficial, technical nature, concomitant with changing methods of warfare and international politics in general, and did not affect the ever present threat of actual violence, which in the international sphere is inherent in what is called a state of peace. Liberals are unaware of this fundamental difference between domestic and intcJ;national politics in the liberal era. They mistake the increasing definiteness of the distinction between war and peace for a general development towards peace and away from war. Deceived by the apparent similarity between international and domestic peace during this era. and transferring their domestic experience to the international scene, they equate the distinction be.tween war and peace to the

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

one between autocratic violence and liberal rationality. Thus liberalism detached the specific techniques it had developed as instruments of its domestic domination, such as legal pledges, judicial machinery, economic transactions, from their political substratum and transferred them as self-sufficient entities, devoid of their original political functions, to the international sphere. Charles H. McIlwain has said of the doctrine oflaisser faire that it was" surely one of the strangest fantasies that ever discredited human reason." Its application to international affairs led to catastrophic results. Liberals had brought themselves to see in violence the absolute evil and were thus prevented by their moral convictions from using violence where the use of violence was required by the rules of the game. They fought their international battles with weapons which had been effective against the domestic enemy under the conditions of domestic politics. Taken out of their proper political context and transferred to the international arena where violence reigns supreme; those weapons became wooden swords; playthings • conveying to political children the illusion of arms. But liberal condemnation of war is absolute only in the ethical and philosophical sphere and with respect to the ultimate political goal. In immediate political application, this condemnation is qualified and holds true only for wars which are opposed or irrelevant to liberal aims. Thus, aristocratic and totalitarian wars are necessarily to be condemned. When, on the other hand, the use of arms is intended to bring the blessings of liberalism to peoples not yet enjoying them or to protect them against despotic aggression, the just end may justify means otherwise condemned. Hence, wars for national unification and wars against despotic governments are the legitimate wars of liberalism. Their kgitimacy derives directly from the rationalistic premises of liberal political philosophy. For the two main manifestations of unreason, carried over from feudalism to the liberal age, are destroyed when peoples belonging to the aame nation are freed from foreign domination and when despotic governments everywhere are replaced by democratic

ones.

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"No peace can last, or ought to last," declared Wilson in his message to the Senate on January 22, 1917, "which does not recognize and accept the principle that Governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from potentate to potentate as if they were property." Referring to "the principles which call for self-government for all nations on the democratic basis offree and unfettered elections everywhere," the New rork Times of June 7, 1946, stated: "If these principles were applied in eastern Europe as they have been in the West, and if border issues were settled by the free choice of the peoples involved, most of the problems now delaying peace would disappear." When all nations are united under their own governments and all governments are subject to democratic control, war will have lost its rational justification. Reason will reign and make warS impossible. For the reign of reason in international affairs will make impossible those fundamental conflicts for the solution of which it would be reasonable to wage war, and reason will provide instrumentalities by which the remaining conflicts "can be settled peacefully. The war for national unification and for "making the world safe for democracy" is then indeed, as Wilson put it in his message to Congress on January 8, I918, the "culminating and final war for human liberty," the "last war," the "war to end war." In the light of this analysis, those Wilsonian slogans reveal themselves to be more than a clever propagandistic device; they are the expression of an eschatological hope deeply imbedded in the very foundations of liberal foreign policy. , The same eschatological hope, based upon the same intellectual procedure, is to be found in the Marxian concep" tion of the revolutionary war which will do away >¥ith the class war and with the international war arising from it, once and forever. When Marxism demonstrates that the universal triumph of socialism is a precondition of permanent peace, it applies the liberal categories to international affairs. As a matter of principle, socialism is opposed to war as such. In political practice this opposition is qUillified and put into effect only with respect to the imperialistic wars of capitalism.

SCIENTIFIC MAN us. POWER POLITICS

The socialist war against capitalism, however, is justified. Aristocratic government as the source of all evil is replaced by capitalism, and the universal destruction of capitalism is taken to mean the end of evil itself. While liberali~m expects the disappearance of war from the uniformity of governments after the pattern of democratic natlOnalism, Marxism connects the same hope with the universal acceptance of the socialist pattern. "In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to," proclaims the Communist Manifesto, "the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end." The very idea of world revolution as the final struggle to end all struggles, national and international, is in its unhistoric abstractness the perfect counterpart of the national and democratic wars and revolutions, whose successful conclusion will bring about lasting peace.

Democratic Nationalism There is deep significance and inner necessity in Wilson's being the outstanding example of liberalism in foreign affairs and at the same time the standard bearer of those slogans to realize which the peacemakers of Versailles and SaintGermain dedicated their main efforts. And their subsequent self-righteousness and inertia, as well as their moral indignation at any reappearance of the belligerent spirit, had their main source in the sincere belief that with the organization of Europe into national :>tates under democratic governments every reasonable cause for war would disappear. Due to the same misconception of foreign affairs, the liberal statesmen of weste,rn Europe were intellectually and morally unable to resist German expansion as long as it appeared to be justified -as in the cases of Austria and the Sudetenland-by the holy principles of national unification. Since these were the very same principles, eternally true and univeroally valid, in which the liberal statesmen believed and for which their predecessors had fought, they did not see how they could well oppose them when others invoked them in their own behalf. " Self-

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53

determination, the professed principle of the Treaty of Versailles," wrote the London Times with obvious pride on September 28, 1938, immediately after the Czechoslovakian crisis, "has been invoked by Herr Hitler against its written text, and his appeal has been allowed." For the same ideological reason the liberal statesmen hesi ..... tated to make common cause in international affairs with nations which did not seem entirely to meet the liberal standards. "Our political and philosophical fetishism . . . requests," Georges Suarez stated of French foreign policy between the two world wars, "that the community of aspirations and ideas prevail over the community of interests. Some of our leftists and other politicians are Anglophile today and they were Germanophile yesterday, exclusively according to the political party or group being in power in Berlin or London. . . . Thus, Germany no longer interests some of our socialists since she has fallen into the hands of the junkers and generals. Yet, let tomorrow the socialist Hermann Mueller return to power and Leon Blum will be moved again and again by the German tragedy." Why should men fight for a "hybrid" and" absurd" conglomeration of nationalities like the Czechoslovakian state, or for a "slave state" like Ethiopia? How could they make an alliance with a dictatorship like Russia? They wOldd fight for democracy, yes. But wa& England a real democracy? And was not Pilsudski Poland one of the worst dictatorships on earth? They even felt duty-bound to lend active support to foreign interests when-as in the case of the so-called "injustices of Versailles" -the principles of liberal nationalism could be invoked in their behalf. Logical deductions from abstract rational principles replaced in the liberal era the pragmatic decision of political issues according to the increase or decrease in political power to be expected. Political weapons were transformed into absolute truths. Thus, in the domestic field, lhe idea of democracy by which the rising middle class justified its quest for political power lost its concrete political function and survived as an abstract political philosophy which confines itself to claiming equal opporplOity for everybody, powerful

SCIENTIFIO MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

and weak alike, and, more particularly, to postulating the universal right to vote and to be elected. In its abstract formalism it does not see that democracy, as any other political system, functions only under certain intellectual, moral, and social conditlons and that the unqualified principle of majority makes democracy defenceless against its enemies, who will use the democratic processes in order to destroy ithem. Freedom of speech, originally a principle by which rehgious and political minority groups tried to secure inde~ pendence from ~tate interference, outgrew its political origin and belongs today exclusively to the sphere of natural rights whlC:h ought to be enjoyed by everybody within and without the national frontiers, even by the foe who claims the right only in ordl:'r to be able to monopolize it. Freedom of the ipress, origmating as a political weapon against. the powerful 'and transformed into an abstract, unpolitical prinCIple, now becomes a protective device of the powerful against control land competition. While in the nineteenth century the idea Qf the common good was understood in terms of the interests of the middle classes as over against an aristocratic minority, it is now interpreted as an abstract principle available to everybody and particularly to minorities which, by invoking it, try to forestall those very reforms which ill the nineteenth century the middle classe& could identify with the common good. When the Spanish Republic attempted, a hundred years late, to realize some of the liberal reforms against the opposition of a feudalistic minority, the philosopher Ortega y Gasset could invoke the abstract principle of the common good and exclaim: "The Republic e)(ists for everybody." Since all reforms must be paid for by somebody, all reforms Can now be opposed in the name of the common good, abstractly and formalistically conceived. It was the same confusion between political aim and rational truth which prevented the liberal from opposing political aims in the international field when liberal principles were invoked in their support and, on the other hand, from !;Upporting aspirations not based upon national or democratic principles, U uti! the downfall of the czarist regime, all liberals aU dver the world Were invariably opposed to Russia and ~

THE REPUDIATION OF POLITICS

55

tried to influence the foreign policy of their countries correspondingly. Oonversely, the German and especially the Prussian conservatives, during the first decades of the German Empire, supported a foreign policy friendly to Russia because Russia was the mosl conservative of the Great Powers, whereas the Gelman liberals during the same petiod favoured an Anglophile foreign policy, for Great Britain was then the symbol of a parliamentary monarchy. Throughout the nineteenth century, American, British, and German liberals were deeply attached to the cause of Italian, Hungarian, and Polish nationalism. "What has decided me definitely for Poland, on the basis of my latest studies of Polish history," wrote Marx to Engels, "is the historical fact that all revolutions since I 789 measure their intensity and vitality pretty accurately by their conduct towards Poland. Poland is their , external' thermometer." In France, the decree of armed propaganda of November 18, 1792, is the first manifestation of liberalism in foreign affairs. "The National Convention declares in the name of the French nation that it shall accord fraternity and aid to all peoples who want to recover their liberty, and charges the executive power with giving to the generals the orders neces~ sary to bring aid to those peoples and to defend the citizens who are or might be persecuted for the cause ofliberty." On June 4, 1793, the Oonvention declared that "the French nation is the friend and natural ally of the free nations," a declaration which was confirmed by Article 118 of the Mon~ tagnard Oonstitution. Under the ministry of Oasimir Peder, in rSgI, a revolt broke out in Paris because the government did not give assistance to the Polish insurgents. After r848, France was swayed by a wave of enthusiasm in favour of the Hungarian patriots. Michelet proclaimed as the mission of France "the deliverance of the other nations," and he, as well as Victor Hugo and George Sand, dreamed of establishing a universal republic through national revolutions. Palmerstonian interventionism and the "Bulgarian Atro~ cities" campaign in 1879, which led to Gladstone's over~ throw of the Disraeli cabinet, illustrate the practical application of this liberal fallacy. It should be noted that Cobden,

56

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SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

transferring the Manchester principle of lai::,ser faire to inter~ national politics, dId not share this fallacy and opposed it consistently in Palmerston's foreign policy. "I think," said Cobden in one of his speeches, "as a corporate body, as a political community, if we can manage to do what is right and true and just to each other-if we can manage to carry that at home, it will be about as much as we can do. I do not think I am responsible for seeing right and truth and justice carried out all over the world." The foreign policy of the Comintern, based upon an ideological alliance with Communists everywhere, is another example of the same misconception; and its complete failure, from the point of VieW both of international communism and of Russian national interests, proves again the practical impossibility of founding a successful foreign policy upon ideological affinities rather than upon a community of political interests. In the United States, however, the tradition of nonintervention, supported by the technical difficulties of effective intervention, during the nineteenth century prevented popular sympathies from being translated into political action. France did not lose her traditional common sense completely even during the ideological fervour of the Rcvol~ ution. On April 13, 1793, Danton opposed the execution of the decree of November 18, 1792, quoted above, by showing that it could not be the business of France "to bring aid to some patriots who would want to make a revolution in China." It was upon his initiative that the Convention amended the previous decree by declaring that "it would not meddle in any way in the government of other powers." Even a hundred years later, republican France, not yet,deprived of her political instincts, did not hesitate to ally herself with the absolute monarchy of Russia. As for England, the Congress of Berlin had already settled the oriental qu.estion in favour of British imperial interests. Thus, in happy contrast to the 1930's and 1940'S, the liberal fallacy did not then influence actual foreign policy. In Germany, Bismarck knew what foreign policy was about and did not sacrifice Russia's friendship to Polish nationalism.

THE REPUDIATION OF POLITICS 57 Yet it was under his leadership that monarchical sentimentalism started to influence German foreign policy, a sentimentalism which, like its liberal counterpart, chose political associations according to constitutional affinities. The Treaty of the Triple Alliance of 1882 stated that its aim was" to fortify the monarchical principles and thereby to reassure the unimpaired maintenance of the social and political order in their respective states. Bismarck's distrust of England's foreign policy as dependent upon parliamentary consent anticipated the anti-British direction of the foreign policy of Wilhelm II, under whose regime the monarchical and antidemocratic ideology became a determining factor in foreign affairs. The German foreign policy of this period is another example of the all-permeating influence of the liberal fallacy. Its victims are not only the liberal parties, properly speaking, but political groups of all denominations, whose political imtincts are no longer strong. The foreign policy of Wilhelm II simply exchanged the frock coat of the liberal merchant for the mummeries of monarchical romanticism and the rational language of Manchester liberalism for the Wagnerian bombast of a decadent divine.rights philosophy. The essence of the approach to foreign affairs was the same. Here and there, there were the same misunderstanding of international politics and the same principles of association according to the affinities of domestic policies and institutions and not on the basis of a community of political intere~ts. Here and there, a foreign policy based upon an unpolitical principle of association brought upon its protagonists the same disastrous results. The decadence of this liberal approach to foreign alliances becomes obvious by comparison with the principles by which the pre-liberal period was guided in this respect. Francis I, Most Christian King of France, in order to break the supremacy of the Catholic Emperor Charles V, concluded alliances with the Protestant princes of Germany, with Henry VIII, founder of the Anglican church, and with the Moham· medan Sultan Soliman the Magnificent. Richelieu destroyed Protestantism in France but supported it in the international :field wherever such support would hurt the Hapsburgs of

SCIENTIFIC MAN

OJ.

POWER POLITICS

Austria and Spain. As Hanotaux has well said of his policy: "France is not the champion of the Catholic cause; she is not the champion of the protestant cause." If pre-liberal foreign policy disregarded religious affinities, it was not les! unconcerned about the congeniality of domestic policies. Mazarin not only maintained the rdigious melGlliances of Francis I and Richelieu with a consistency which earned him the name of "Turk and Saracen disgmsed as priest"; he also supported Cromwell against the English king even though his domestic aim was the establishment of the absolute monarchy under a king who was the nephew of Charles I of England. _

~ar

Nationalism and liberalism have been intimately associated ever since the French middle classes destroyed the feudal state in the name of the French nation and since the' Napoleonic Wars carried through Europe the idea of national sovereignty and solidarity as opposed to feudal oppression. National freedom came to be regarded as a prerequisite as well as a collective manifestation of individual freedom. For the historic experience of nineteenth-century Europe, oppression of national life and of national aspirations by the aristocratic rulers became the outstanding example of oppression and, therefore, was largely identified with oppression as such. National unity and freedom from oppression became one and the same thing, for the liberal as well as for the aristocratic rulers of the Holy Alliance. While the GeIman liberals cried, "Through unity to liberty," Mazzini's flag of r83! bore on one side the words "Unity and Independence," on the other "Liberty, Equality, Humanity." Metternich's policies, on the other hand, were opposed to the national movement as a manifestation of democratic tendencies. The foreign pollcy of Napoleon III, which favoured the national movement, was ironicall y called H the diplomacy of universal suffrage." The political and legal principles, originally formulated to support and to guarantee the freedom of the individual, were a.pplied to the nation. The nation came to be regarded as a J,dnd of collective personality with peCUliar characteristics and

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39

inalienable rights of its own; and the typically liberal antithesis between individual freedom and feudalistic oppression was transferred to the nation where it was duplicated in the hostility between the national aspirations and the feudal state. The nations should be free from oppression, both from within and from without. The popular will should decide how and by whom the people should be governed, and the determination of the state to which a people should belong, was part of this decision. National revolution as well as national war could thus be justified. The liberal justification of war for democracy and against despotism originated even more directly in the domestic experience of liberalism. The physiocrats believed that the princes could be persuaded to see the light of reason and that nations, regardless of their form of government, could then live peacefully together. Since Rousseau and Kant, who had been preceded by Spinoza, liberal thought has regarded the universality of democratic or republican governments as a prerequisite to permanent peace. By the end of the eighteenth century, the feudal state in its domestic activity had become the symbol and incarnation of all that is despotic, unreasonable) and prone to violence in this world; whereas the people, by their very nature, were regarded as being inclined to reason and peace. "A steadfast concert for peace," declared Wilson in his message to Congress on April 2, IgI7, « can never be maintained except by a partnc:;rship of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common end and prefer the interests of nlankind to any narrow interest of their own." The original refusal of the League of Nations to admit autocratic governments to membership, and a similar attitude on the part of the United Nations, both have their roots in this same philosophy. I tis also at the basis of organizations like the Interparliamentary Union.

6v

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

It was only logical that liberalism should not restrict to the domestic sphere this evaluation and the political consequences to be drawn from it. For liberalism, domestic and foreign policy are aspects of one and the same thing. As Charles A. Beard put it: "Foreign policy is a phase of domestic policy, an inseparable phase," and it is the latter-..which determines the former. The foreign E~l~~a nation is only the function of its domestis~rra~.1!.1i9.h.~la~~!,_~ndO_p}ace ~Eerur. The feudal governments, no less than the democratic peopleq, when moving on the international scene, cannot act contrary to their very nature as it was revealed in the domestic field. Thus the domestic positions were simply transferred to the international scene. Democracy is peace, autocracy is war; the pacifist peoples vs. the warlike govern~ ments such were tIie slogans in Whlcli nie 1l5eraI attitude t';'wards-war expressed itselfand in which it fOllild it§ BQIitjcal :p~e. Here again, Wilson is the most eloquent prophet of the new creed. "National purposes," said he in his New York speech of September 27, 1918, "have fallen more and more into the background and the common purpose of enlightened mankind has taken their place. The counsels of plain men have become on aU hands more simple and straightforward and more unified than the counsels of sophisticated men of affairs, who still retain the impression that they are playing a game of power and playing for high stakes. That is why I have said that this is a peoples' war, not. a statesmen's. Statesmen must foHow the clarified common thought or be broken." If indeed those slogans spoke the truth, was it not imperative, in order to secure peace, to do away with autocratic governments and to set up democratic control over governments "everywhere in the world"? "The destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere:that can separately, secretly, and of its single choice disturb the peace of the world," was one of the war aims proclaimed by Wilson in his Fourth of July speech in 1918. "It is ourinesthnable privilege to concert with men out of every nation who shall make not only the )iberties of America secure but the liberties of every other people as well. " Since autocratic government:; oppress in domestic affairs

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61

and make war ~n the intc:national s.cene, a change in the ~t:.rrn of government IS all that IS needed In order to er~d oppr:ss~oll and war. Public opinion would then exer: Ill' p(\~lfY1l1g \ influence; secret diplomacy and secret treaties, tl:e mstru~ ments of autocratic government in international o.~ulrs, wn.uld be replaced by the democratic control of formgn po hey. "Democratization of foreign affairs" is one of Lhe great liberal aims to which during the first World War, the Western de~ocracies dedicated a great number of bo()l,:~, articles, and organizations (e.g., the Union for Democratlc Control in England). Here again, Wilson is the. perfect interpreter of liberal thought. "I t will be our WIsh and purpose," he said in his message to Congress on January 8, 1918, "that the processes of peace, when they arc begun, l>hall be absolutely open and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any ldnd. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by j so i~ abo the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest ofpal'tklllM governments and likely at some unlooked-fol; motlumt to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now ('[l'ar to the view of every public man whose thoughts
fled.

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER, POLITICS

The eschatological hopes which inspired the liberal wars for national unification and democratic liberation came to naught. In his speech of April 30, 1823, Canning had already warned, however, in vain, that "the general acquisition of free institutions is not necessarily a security for general peace." Whereas domestic institutions and policies, on the one hand, and foreign policies, on the other, are indeed organically connected, the connection is by no means as simple a5 liberalism believes it to be. Liberalism believes that the foreign policy of a country is the mere reflection of its domestic situation, so that, by transforming the latter, one is ablc to change the former at will. Actually, however, the foreign policy of a country is determined by many different factors, of which the form of government and domestic policies are two and, as 'history shows, not the most decisive ones. The fundamental foreign policies of the Great Powers have survived all changes in the form of government and in domestic policies; France, Great Britain, and Russia during the last two hundred years are cases in point. Continuity in foreign affairs is not a matter of choice but a necessity; for it derives from geography, national character, tradition, and the actual distribution of power, factors which no govermnent is able to control but which it can neglect only at the risk of failure. Consequently, the question of war and peace is decided in ;onsideration of these permanent factors, regardless of the form of government under which a nation happens to live and of the domestic policies it happens to pursue at a certain moment of hIstory. Nations are "peace-loving" under certain historic conditions and are warlike under others, and it is not the form of government or domestic policies which makes them so. Veit Valentin has by implication demonstrated the absurdity of the attempt at ,corl-elating the form of government and foreign policy. In an article" Are Republics More Peaceful? " he reverses the liberal position and tries to make history show that monarchies are more peace-loving than are repUblics. 'iGreat monarchies/, wrote the Duke Albert de :BrogliE' in 1863, "honestly at pea.ce have been seen rarely but some· times: great republics, neighbours without being enemies,

THE REPUDIATION OF POLITICS

never!" According to Paul S. Reinsch, "Lord Cromer believes in general that democracies are not peaceful, and he refers particularly to the American democracy for proof; Lord Lytton said, • Government.s are generally for diplomacy, the people for war.''' These authors cannot. fail to be as successful as the opposing school of thought since, indeed, in certain periods of history certain monarchies, in contradistinction to certain republics, have sought to maintain international peace. Whether one tries to make the world safe for monarchy or for democracy, it is not in that way that one makes it safe for peace. The victories in the liberal wars, far from fulfilling the liberal hopes, even brought about the very evils which they were supposed to destroy. Far from being the "last wars," they were only the forerunners and pioneers of wars more destructive and extensive than any the liberal epoch had wItnessed. National unification and democratic liberation, instead of doing away with the only remaining causes of war, intensified international antagonisms and made the broad masses ofthe peoples active participants in them. The unified nations, instead of being deprived of an incentive for war, now had the cohesion and emotional impetus necessary for policies of conquest, colonial and otherwise. International disputes, which formerly had been largely rivalries of princes and an aristocratic pastime, now became controversies between nations, where the interests of the peoples themselves appeared to be at stake and in which the peoples themselves had the opportunity to play a determining part. The triumph of nationalism and democracy, brought about by the liberal wars, therefore strengthened immensely the sovereignty of the statq:', and with it the anarchical tendencies in international society. The particularism of democratic nationalism was thus bound to be the foremost obstacle to the realization of those devices, such as free trade, international law, international organization, by which liberalism endeavoured to secure international peace. In a tragic contradiction of Shakespearean dimensions, liberalism in the international field was to be destroyed by the very forces it had, if not created. at least helped to dominate the Western world.

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A very wise liberal, as early as 1874, gave voice to the liberal disillusionment strangely born of success and failure alike. Lord Morley, after enumerating the national and democratic aspirations of liberalism, continues: "It may be said that the very fate of these aspil ations has had a blighting effect on public enthusiasm and the capacity of feeling it. Not only have most of them now been fulfIlled, and so passed from aspiration to actuality, but the results of their fulfilment have been so disappointing as to make us wonder whether it is really worth while to pray, when to have our prayers granted carries the world so very slight a way forward. The Austrian is no longer in Italy; the Pope ha& ceased to be master in Rome; the patriots of Hungary are now in possession of their rights, and have become friends of their old oppressors; the negro slave has been transformed into an American citizen. At home, again, the gods have listened to our vows. Parliament has been reformed, and the long-desired mechanical security provided for the voter's freedom. We no longer aspire after all these things, you may say because our hopes have been realized and our dreams have come true. It is possible that the comparatively prosaic results before our eyes at the end of all have thrown a chill over our political imagination . . . . The old aspirations have vanished, and no new ones have arisen in their place."

"

~ad81!t Libelalism

Faced by the dangers which the very fulfilment of the liberal aspirations had created, liberalism finally abandoned the exceptions to its pacifist attitude. These exceptions had found their positive expression in the universal requirement of national states under democratic governments as a prerequisite to permanent international peace. The liberal justification of wars for democracy and national liberation was indeed always qualified in practical application by the absolute condemnation of preventive wars. The idea that a nation shot}ld wage war against another nation in anticipation of a war planned by the latter has never been accepted by ) liberal theory and practice. As a rule, liberal governments

i

ITHE REPUDIATION OF POLITICS

have fought their wars not upon a free choice between war and peace, nor at the moment most propitious to them, but upon the initiative of non-liberal governments which were esolved to pursue their aims even at the risk of war. Since merica did not want to fight in 1931 or 1935 or 1938 on lts erms, it had to fight in 1941 on the terms of the enemy. / Liberal wars are generally defensive wars; for only as such can they be justified in terms of liberal philosophy. The influence of this philosophy makes itself felt even in the sphere of military strategy and organization. The specialization of the French army for defence and its inability to attack, in I914 as well as in 1940, was the direct result of the liberal prejudice against aggressive wars. Pearl Harbour has its intellectual background in this philosophy, which was unable to consider seriously even the possibility of enemy attack. The invariable hesitations and vacillations of liberal governments, when faced with a decision implying even the remote danger of war, are due to those inherent traits of liberal phjIosophy. When in the period of liberal virility these pacifist traits clashed with the concern for national, democratic governments, the latter had a good chance of winning out. During the period of liberal decadence the original position of liberalism was reversed. Whereas liberalism in its heyday would intervene and even wage war for the promotion and protection of liberal positions in other countries, the decadent liberalism of the thirties was no longer willing to wage war for any cause, liberal or otherwise. For a foreign policy to take into consideration ideological differences, even for the sake of national survival, would violate the principle of non-intervention which now was interpreted as holding true even in the face of totalitarian intervention. War was now regarded as au absolute evil , not only in the ethical and philosophical sphere but in the realm of political action as well. Hence any political decision avoiding war was better than one leading to war. Any move liberalism would make on the international scene was made with the reservation that it would not lead to war, even if that meant failure of the move itself. Recent history offers two typical examples of this suicidal logic. One is to

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be found in the Baldwin cabinet's attitude during the ItaloEthiopian conflict, which Churchill has charactelized in the following words: "First, the Prime Minister had declared that sanctions roeant war; secondly, he was resolved that there must be no war; and thirdly, he decided upon sanctions. It was evidently impossible to comply with these three conditions." The other example is presented by the attitude of a large sector of American public opinion towards the second World War, which in 1941 was stated thus with classical simplicity: "The country wants to defend itself, aid Britain, and stay out of the war." Here again, it was evidently impossible to comply with these three conditions at the same time; and, here again, liberal pacifism would make Baldwin's choice. Decadent liberalism still was convinced that democracy is peace and that autocracy, now resurgent as fascism, is at least potential war. But whereas classical liberalism had understood this opposition in the sense of different predominant tendencies of a non-exclusive character, decadent liberalism gave this opposition a non-political and absolute meaning. Hence fascism and militarism, on the one hand, and democracy and love for peace, on the other, became synonymous; and democracy could not wage war without betraying its very principles to fascism. Yet, the ideological war of liberalism became thus a self~defeating absurdity. From this suicidal contradiction liberalism was saved only by a new foreign policy which, at least in its practice, followed the principles of political wisdom rather than of liberal philosophy.

Ideology vs. Politics

The liberal reluctance against waging war for other than liberal aims not only reveals the qualified pacifism which liberalism practised in its heroic period; it is also indicative of ~~cuijar intellectual approach to political reality which .,1 . ' teriz~:s. Hsm in all stages of its historic develop" ,!TfUs' _ derives directly from the liberal miseoncc;)ption, of i .onal affairs as something essentially ra.tlQnal, where po);:' s lays the role of a disease to be cured

THE REPUDIATION OF POLITICS

by means of reason. Liberalism, therefore, is able to accept only international aims which can be justified in the light of reason. Smce, however, the rationalist conception of inter~ national affairs does not fit political reality where power is pitted against power for survival and supremacy, the liberal approach to international problems has necessarily an ideo~ logIcal quality. Liberalism expresses its aims in the inter~ national sphere not in terms of power politics, that is, on the basis of the international reality but in accordance with the rationalist prcmises of its own misconception. The liberal plogramme in international affairs is a rationalist ideology of foreign politics. "My objection to Liberalism is this," said Disl'aeli, "that it. i~ the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind-namely politics-of philosophical ideas instead of political principles." The abstract goal replaces the concrete issue; the standard of eternal truth, the consideration of political interests. During the Ethiopian crisis the Italians fought for the new Roman Empire, the English interceded for Article XVI of the Covenant of the League of Nations. In the first World War the Germans fought for Germany's "place in the sun" and the Allies for democracy, national self-determination, and permanent peace. Germany and Japan started the second World War for world domination while their democratic opponents took up arms for a new social order, the federation of the democracies, the four freedoms "everywhere in the world." The Axis fought for empires, the liberal opposes aggression regardless of where, by whom, and against whom it is committed. Our concern for democracy in the Balkans at the end of the second World War is but another instance of the liberal disposition to fight for abstract slogans rather than for political interests. The difference between liberal and non~liberal aims in the international field does not lie in the fact that the former are ideological whereas the latter are not. The ideplogical character is common to both, since men will support only political aims which they are persuaded are justified before reason and morality. Yet while non-liberal political concepts, such as "Roman Empire," "new order," "living space,"

j

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"encirclement," "national security," "haves us. have-nots," and the like, show an immediately recognizable relationship to concrete political aims; liberal concepts, such as "collective security," "democracy," "national self-determination," "justice," "peace" are abstract generalities which may be applied to any political situation but which are not peculiar to any particular one. This difference has far-reaching practical consequences. Since the non-liberal aims are the product of a concrete political situation, they will necessarily disappear and be replaced by others as soon as they have fulfilled their temporary political function; thus, they will be relatively immune from the danger of being at variance with reality and therefore of falling into disrepute. The liberal ideologies, on the other hand, are bound, because of their very abstractness, generality, and claim for absolute validity, to be kept alive after they had outlived their political usefulness and thus to be disavowed by the realities of international politics, which, by their very nature, are concrete, specific, and dependent upon time and place. Collective security, universal democracy, permanent and just peace are in the nature of ultimate, ideal goals which may inspire the actions of men and supply standards for the judgment of philosophy and ethics but which are not capable of immediate complete realization through political action. Between them and the political reality there is bound to be a permanent gap. Yet the liberals believe in the possibility of their immediate realization here and now. I" From the disappointment in this belief and the sudden awareness of the true nature of the liberal ideology stems the process of" debunking" which has corrupted liberal thought and paralysed liberal action in the international field. The recognition that the seemingly political goals of liberalism were actually beyond the reach of immediate political realization brought in its wake the distrust in political ideology of any kind. Since the liberal ideology did not keep its promise and thus revealed itself as mere H propaganda," no ideology in "Ule international £.eld could be trusted. Since, furthermore, political aims are still mostly being rationalized in terms of the liberal ideology~ they meet condemnation for this reason

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69

and regardless of whether they could be justified in terms of political expediency. The disappointed liberal would not fight for Ohina, Ethiopia, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Danzig, because he no longer believed in the liberal ideologies of collective security, universal democracy, permanent and just peace. The" good" liberal would fight for those countries because he still believed in tho'1e slogans. As a matter offact, neither of them, arguing in liberal terms, was able to understand the real issue, which was neither China, Ethiopia; Austria, or any other foreign country, nor coUective security, universal democracy, permanent and just peace, but the influence upon the national interests, expressed in terms of power politics, of violent changes in the territorial status of those countries. Thus, even the enemies of the liberal slogans are still the victims of the liberal fallacy; intellectually they are still liberals since they are able to think only in liberal terms. Yet, whereas they would refuse to act at all) became all action was bound to fall short of the liberal ideals, the II good" liberal would at least act, even though sometimes on the wrong occasions or with the wrong methods and always for the wrong reasons.

J

OHAPTER IV

THE SCIENCE OF PEACE

T HE VOID

created by the repudiation of politics was filled by the liberal mind with the conception of a world which was rational throughout and which contained in itself all the elements necessary for the harmonious co-operation of all mankind. It was for science to detect those elements, variously defined as harmony of interests, laws of economics, free trade, and modern communications; it was for law to apply them where they did not prevail spontaneously; and it was for negotiation and compromise to discover them under the surface of apparent conflict.

Harmony of Interests vs. Struggle for Powel' For liberalism, international relations reveal their true nature in the harmony of interests which still is temporarily deprived of its beneficial effects by the atavisrn of power politics. In order to bring about tlus harmony, Adam Smith still was in need of a supernatural, at least not necessarily rational, element-the "invisible hand "-which in a miraculous way would lead selfish interests towards ptosperity for all. In nineteenth-century liberalism this harmoni~ing element is completely rationalized. All conflicts among nations are considered to be capable of rational solution either through compromise or through adjudication. All men partake of reason and must sooner or later meet on the common ground of reason, discovering that those conflicts are apparent rather than real and can all be dissolved into a rational formula acceptable to all. Were all nations at all times fully aware of w\J.at their real interests are, they would realize that their interests are actually identical, that what is good for one ~ country is of necessity good for all other countries, ar;td that there is only ignorance and error, but :no real conflict at all.

THE SCIENQE OF PEACE

7I

As Mercier de la Riviere, an eighteenth-century French philosnphy, put it: "The order obviously most advantageous to each nation only needs to be known to be observed." Since, however, nations sometimes ignore their true interests and mistake political conflicts for actual ones, they have to be led by persuasion or compulsion to see their mutual interests in the light of reason. According to E. L. Thorndike, " .... injustice and the use of force by nations or by groups within a nation will not disappear until the governments of nations and groups all become reasonable or are somehow coerced by a higher force into abiding by reason." The principle of collective security would then appear to be the protective manifestation of the solidarity of the enlightened nations as opposed to those which still set their particular interests above those of the community of nations. The foremost manifestation of the harmony of interests is in the economic field. The doctrine was first developed by the physiocrats and classical economists and then extended into a general theory of society. The economic sphere seemed to be the perfect model of a harmonious world governed throughout by a system of rational laws. The rationality and calculability of those laws were, in the eyes of Adam Smith and Ricardo, in no way different from the corresponding qualities of the laws of nature; the law of gravity and the law of free competition fulfil the same function in different fields. It was only logical from this point of view to regard economics and politics as mutually exclusive, to bestow upon the former all the positive attributes of which liberalism disposes, and to connect with the latter all that liberal tradition regards as evil. This tendency is implicit in Marxism, even though it is somewhat obscured, on the one hand, by the opposition to capitalism as, in the last analysis, a political deviation from the true laws of economics and, on the other hand, by the conception of politics as a function of capitalistic economics. Yet, throughout, there is the conviction of the essential evil of politics and of the essential goodness of economics in the light of both reaSOn and ethics. The classical antinomy between economics and politics is here formulated in terms of good-that is, socialist and autonomous economics-and eviL-

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS 74 which used military power for politica,l ends and valued economic wealth mainly for the increase of political power. The Manchester School attempted to break this double connection by subordinating general national policy to economic policy and by developing wealth,-by governmental abstention, not by government intervention." International relations were viewed as the relations between groups of manufacturers and merchants who, perchance living under different sovereignties, competed for the markets of the world. These markets, because of differences in need and productive capacity and of ever increasing population, would always consume any possible supply, and thus all economic interests could always be satisfied. "The decisive and irrefutiable argument against war," said Ludwig von Mises in 1927, 'liberalism finds in the division oflabour.... In a period of history where the nations are mutually dependent upon foreign products, wars can no longer be waged." Eighty years before, John Stuart Mill had founded the same expectaftion on the same arguments: "Finally, commerce first taught :nations to see with good will the wealth and prosperity of one another. Before, the patriot, unless sufficiently advanced to feel the world his country, wished all countries weak, poor and illgoverned but his own: he now sees in their wealth and progress a direct source of wea"lth and progress to his own country. It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which are in natural opposition to it. And it may be said without exaggeration that Ithe great extent and rapid increase of international trade, in feing the principal guarantee of the peace of the world, is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the lideas, the lnstitutions, and the character of the human race." For the state, especially in its aristocratic manifestation, to interfere with this harmonious mechanism was sheer folly and the source of aU the evils from which the world suffered .

l

../Free Trade and International Communications vs. War , Whereas the mercantilists trusted in the princes to make

lIeasorr prevail in the field of international economics, free

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75

trade became the shibboleth of liberalism from the physiocrats, through Adam Smith, Cobden, and Bright, to Cordell Hull. "Let us suppress the tariffs," exclaimed Proudhon, ., and the alliance of the peoples will thus be declared, their solidarity recognized, their equality proclaimed." And obden is no less enthusiastic: "Free trade! What is it? hy, breaking down the barriers that separate nations; those , arriers, behind which nestle the feelings of pride, revenge, hatred, and jealousy, which every now and then burst their bounds, and deluge whole countries with blood." Free trade became the classical manifestation of the doctrine of the '<armony of interests in the international sphere. In the .... ords of Cobden, "Commerce is the grand panacea which, ike a beneficent medical discovery, will serve to inoculate ....ith the ... taste for civilization all the nations of the world. Not a bale of merchandise leaves our shores but it bears the leeds of intelligence and fruitful thought to the members of lome less enlightened community; not a merchant visits our ;eats of manufacturing industry but he returns to his own :ountry the missionary of freedom, peace, and good governmene" Consequently, "Free trade is the international law )f the Almighty," and free trade and peace seem to be (lone 3.nd the same cause." When the British Isles were threatened with invasion at the beginning of the second World W.a.r, Punch showed two octogenarians on the wired and barricaded promenade of a seacoast town. "If only we had free trade," lays one of them from his bath chair, "there would be no need for these exaggerated precautions against smuggling." The development of modern communications gave the modern mind confidence in the unifying power of economics and a new argument. The very existence of international communications was regarded as making for international understanding and peace. Saint~Simon meant to reorganize European society by connecting through canals the Pacific with the Atlantic, Madrid with the sea, the Danube with the Rhine, the Rhine with the Baltic. The Saint-Simonist Enfantin suggested for the same purpose a canal between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The American pacifist, Elihu Burrht, embarked upon a successful propaganda campaign

~

· SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

for the universal ocean penny postage, a scheme under which the ocean postage should be reduced to one penny, leaving the determination of the rates of internal postage to the discretion of the different countries concerned; the resulting promotion of international correspondence was expected to have a favourable influence upon the mainten~ ance of international peace. Yet it was upon the railroads that the thirties and forties of the nineteenth century built their main hopes for international peace through international communications. Michel Chevalier could write in 1832: "In the material field the railroads are the most perfect symbol of universal association." "Our miraculous railways ... " exclaimed Cobden, "are the advertisement and vouchers for the value of our en~ lightened institutions"; and in 1846 he expressed his belief that "railroads) steamboats, cheap postage, and our own example in free trade" will "keep the world from actual war." "Every railroad, connecting distant regions," said William Ellery Channing, "may be regarded as accomplishing a ministry of peace"; and it was as an "instrument of universal peace" that the aeroplane was saluted by Victor Hugo. The Communist Manifesto expressed the same confidence: flNational differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of conunerce, to the world's market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto." Since modern communications brought people into closer physical contact, nations would learn to know ea,ch other better; they would become aware of their likenesses; and many causes for conflict, arising from ignorance and mis~' understanding, would disappear. Saint-Simon recommended congresses of scientific societies as a means of promoting international peace. In practical application of this idea, private and public conferences of an international character preceded and accompanied the liberal era of international re1adons. "Between r840 and 1860, twenty-eight inte:rnational congresses were h~d; from 186J to 1870, sixty-nine; froUl 1871 to 1880, one.hundl'ed and fifty; from t8BI to 18go, two hundred and

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77

ninety-five; from r8g1 to Ig00, six hundred and forty-five; from Ig01 to I9ID, seven hundred and ninety. Modern technology, the great achievement of reason in the physical world, was, because of its rationality, good in itself and, therefore, could not fail to be beneficial to the social world as well. This belief in the harmony of interests, economics, free trade, and communications as alternatives to war has its origin in the struggle of the rising middle classes against the interference of the state. When the state defended its inter~ Ference with the argument of general welfare, the middle classes countered by arguing that individual activity, undisturbed by the state, was t.he best guarantee of general welfare; for individual and general interest was identical. It was con~ tended that this was true with respect to individual activity both in the domestic and in the international field; domestic as well as international trade would fare best when the state would abstain from interfering. Free competition in the domestic and free trade in the international field were the two fundamental principles upon whose observance the welfare of nations depended, This was indeed true during a certain period of the nineteenth century when domestic capitalism, on the basis of free competition, seemed to be able to satisfy the minimum wants of the whole population and when the world, on the basis of the division of labour among the economically developed and the backward coun~ tries, seemed to have room for ever expanding foreign trade. Then it seemed to be possible for each nation to expand its sphere of domination-which was understood exclusively in economic terms-without ever clashing with the also expanding interests of any other nation, in the same way in which free competition between individuals would never result in real conflict but, in the end, only in a greater amount of welfare for all. Yet the historical school of economics as well as the experience of the twentieth century have shown that the "eternal" law of classical economics, as laid down in the laws of free competition and free trade, were valid only under certain social and political conditions. " "It is a very common clever device," remarks Friedrich List, "that when anyone has attaint'd th", ""n'lrn;+ ~+' ~-~~ ...---

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

he kicks away the ladder by which he has climbed up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him. In this lies the secret of the cosmopolitical doctrine of Adam Smith, and of the cosmo political tendencies of his great contemporary William Pitt, and of all his successors in the British Government administrations . ../' "Any nation which by means of protective duties and restrictions on navigation has raised her manufacturing power and her navigation to such a degree of development that no other nation can sustain free competition with her, can do nothing wiser than to throwaway these ladders of her great~ ness, to preach to other nations the benefits of free trade, and to declare in penitent tones that she has hitherto wandered in the paths of error, and has now for the first time succeeded in discovering the truth." Here again, liberalism deduced from the limited experi~ ence of a certain age universal laws which were found want~ ing when applied to conditions different from those under whieh they were originally developed. Furthermore, the nineteenth century neglected in this deduction the political element which in the domestic field creates the conditions under which a peaceful economic development can take place but which is absent in the international sphere. In the former, the sovereign power of the state enforces the legal rules which correspond to the eco· nomic needs of the dominating group and sees to it that arbitrariness or violence will not disturb the rational mechanics of economic enterprise. In the international sphere no such sovereign power exists. Instead of creating a rational system of legal rules for the satisfaction of economic needs and the prevention of arbitrariness and violence, the power of the individual nations serves here only the national interests which ,are ever ready to clash with those of other nations; and when they actually do, it is the state power supporting them which tends to transform the precarious balance of opposing powers into the open conflict of armed forces. Thus the liaison of state power and economics in the international field, far from maintaining peace and order, is a source of conffict and war.

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79 As regards the unifying power of modern communications; the conclusion from the domestic experience of liberalism is obvious. The incrC'ase in the power of modern governments, the tendency towards centralization of governmental functions and the resulting integration of the social and political life of nations living under the conditions of modern technology, are indeed due largely to the development of modern com· munications. To reason that a similar unification and integration will be brought about by the development of modern communications on an international scale is to overlook the fact that in the domestic field modern eommunica~ tions have not creai@ polliical unity but 4}l.Ye only strengthened an£.:nodified :p.aljtical unity which e:xist~d before ..§!!ld indeEendently of theslevelopment of modern technol
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the nature of international politics and from giving directions for intelligent action on the international scene. Paradoxically enough, the Western world has developed a political philosophy without a positive concept of politics. As we have seen before, for this political philosophy, international politics in the sense of power politics is an ephemeral phenomenon, coincident ;with a past age in the same way in which war is nothing but 'a "gigantic outdoor relief for the aristocracy" or a totalitarian ,aberration. These atavisms once put out of the way, international problems can be reduced to economic ones, which eco,nomic remedies will be adequate to solve. Hence, liberals from ]9obden to Hull have been looking to free trade and sub!>titutes %1' it as the solution for international political problems. The same exclusively economic outlook is responsible for the optimistic anticipation of perpetual peace, concomitant with the economic and technical development of modern times. This development could not fail to i.nfluence the teeh~ nique and aims of warfare and to transform them according to its OWn conditions. Thus, in the eighteenth ::).nd nineteenth centuries, following the domestic pattern; the open violence of physical ex.termination and enslavement as methods and aims was replaced by a kind of mass-duel, that is, warfare by a limited number of professionals according to a set of rules previously agreed upon, on the one hand, and by the legal transactions of annexation, financial reparation, and economic e~ploitation, on the other. Ohange in property relations largely took the place of open violence. Open violence was resorted to not for its own sake or for the sake of the physical and material destruction following in its wake but as a means litnhed and conditioned by the end of bringing about a change 'n property relations. War became indeed, in the words of oseph Priestley, "less distressing to peaceable individuals whQ do not bear arms." Nowhere has this tendency towards limited warfare characteristic of the liberal era been more clearly perceived than ill Benjamin Franklin's Observations on War: "By the original law of nations, war and extirpation were the punishment of injury. Hll1llanizing by degrees; it a.dmitted slavery instead of death: afurfuer step was the exchange of prisoners instead of slavery:

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8I

another, to respect more the property of private persons under conquest, and be contented with acquired dominion. Why should not this law of nations go on improving? Ages have intervened between its several steps: but as knowledge of late increases rapidly, why should not these steps be quickened? Why should it not be" agreed to, as the future law of nations, that in any war hereafter the following description of men should be undisturbed, have the protection of hoth sides, and be permitted to follow their employments in security? viz. " I. 01lltivators of the earth, because they labour for the subsistence of mankind. "2. Fishermen, for the same reason. "3. Merchants and traders in unarmed ships, who accommodate different nations by communicating and elCchanging the necessaries and conveniences of life. "4. Artists and mechanics, inhabiting and working in open towns.

" It is hardly necessary to add that the hospitals of enemies should be unmolested-they ought to be assisted. It is for the interest of httmanity in general, that the occasions of war, and the inducements to it) should be diminished. If rapine be abolished, one of the encouragements to war is taken away; and peace therefore more likely to continue and be lasting. . . ." He elaborates in one of his letters on this description of the ideal of limited warfare: "In shqrt, I wbuld have nobody fought with, but those who are paid for fighting. If 0 bIiged to take corn from the farmer, friend or enemy, I would pay him for it; tbesamefor the fish or goods oftbe others." /' It is true that in the liberal period the concept of war changed in the sense of becoming limited in methods and objectives, and, therefore, less violent and more humane. Yet, it was a far cry from this limited, commercialized, and legalized concept of war to the conclusion that this reflection of liberal economics on the international scene be only a phase in the continuous progressive humanization of warfare and the prelude to the merger of international politics and war in economic com.petition. Here again, the moderns were

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the victims of their original sin of conceiving of politics and economics as mutually exclusive alternatives between which men have a choice. The liberal choice was economics, and thus they figured that by commercializing international politics and war they could do away with international politics and war altogether.

,./ Science vs. Politics Yet even under these assumptions there would be conflicts between nations. There still would be nations that would covet the territory, the colonies, the markets, the economic resources of their neighbours. Those conflicts, it is said, can be solved by the application of reason. They are due to maladjustments arising from lack of understanding and to the influence of political passions. Were it not for ignorance and emotions, reason would solve international conflicts as easily and as rationally as it has solved so many problems in the field of the natural sciences. Proudhon was among the first to glorify the blessings of science in the international field. "Truth is everywhere identical with itself: science represents the unity of mankind. If therefore science, instead f religion or authority, is takeu in each country as social orm, the sovereign arbiter of interests, with the government mounting to nothing, all the laws of the universe will be in harmony. Nationality or fatherland will no longer exist in the political meaning of the term; there will only be birthplaces. Man, of whatever race or colour he may be, will actually be a native of the Universe; the right of citizenship he will acquire everywhere. In the same way in which in a certain district of the national territory the municipality represents the nation and exercises its authority, each nation of the globe will epresent humanity and in its natural boundaries act for it. armony will reign among the nations, without diplomacy por council: nothing shall from now on disturb it." "The duty of the pacifist today," says C. E. M. Joad, "is above aU things to be reasona.ble. He should, that i& to say, rely on the use of hi!! own reaso:p. in making his appeal and he should assume that other lnen may be brought to use theirs . . . . rruth, in fact, will win out, ifpeople are only given a sllfficient

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chance to find it." Marx was convinced that all workers were able to read Capital and that anyone who read it without prejudice was bound to be convinced. It is with the same confidence in the powcr of reason that Clarence Streit asserts today that" the really big men in the United States Senate and British Parliament will champion the Union, once they understand it." Political history, Lhen, becomes a succession of scientific problems able to be solved by scientific methods but most unreasonably handled by an ignorant and impassioned humanity. Even for so realistic an observer as Homer Lea, the problem of international affairs resolved itself into a problem of knowledge; if the "valour of ignorance" is replaced by the knowledge of the pertinent facts, man will be able to act successfully on the international scene. "The time :an and will come," wrote the famous pacifist Bertha von Suttner, "when the science of politics will have replaced resent day statecraft, when only those will have legislative nd political power ... who sincerely seek only the truth and hrough the truth strive to attain only the good-the universal :ood comprehending all civilized nations." As far as the mere possession of knowledge is concerned, jdtis day, according to Robert S. Lynd, has already arrived. "The diagnosis/' says he, "is already fairly complete, thanks to a long list of competent studies of nationalism, imperialism, international finance and trade, and other factors within our culture that encourage war. The problem of war, more than most others, has engaged the attention of scientists from several disciplines, and the dissection has proceeded to the point where fairly unequivocal knowledge exists. The causes of war are known and accepted by a wide'group ofthoughiful students. But the statement of what is to be done languishes because social science shrinks from resolving the austere find~ ings of scholarly monographs into a bold programme for action, , , . In the case of an issue like this, where the problem does not arise from lack of knowledge, what social science appears to need is the will to mass its findings so that the truth they hold will not continue to trickle away as disparate bits of scholarship. We know enough about W;J r \1,,,.1 ; .." --

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present these findings, point their meanings, and propose action in a way that will hold this damaging evidence steadily and authoritatively before the eyes of the humblest citizen." I It was for this age of reason to replace the old methods of secret diplomacy and war by a new, scientific approach. Territorial claims, sovereignty over national minorities, the distribution of raw materials, the struggle for markets, disarmament, the lelation between the" haves" and the" have-nots," peaceful change, and the peaceful organization of the world in general-these are not "political" problems to be solved temporarily and always precariously on the basis of the respective distribution of power among quarrelling nations and of its possible balance. They are "technical" problems for which reason will find one, the correct solution, to the exclusion of all others, the incorrect ones. Thus, the nineteenth century developed a "science of peace" as a separate branch of scientific knowledge. Scores of books were published bearing this title. One even received first prize in a scholarly competition. The concept of a "natural frontier/, which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had had a strategical and political, but not a scientific, connotation, was introduced by the Conventionals and Napoleon in the senSe of a geographically correct frontier. Friedrich List gave the same concept an economic meaning. In the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century, public opinion in Great Britain discussed seriously the problem of the "scientific frontier," that is, a £i.·ontier which corresponds to reason, which is scientifically correct, and which, conse~ quently, makes all other frontiers in this geographical region scientifically incorrect. In his speech at Mansion House on November 9, IB7S, Disraelijustified the Second Afghan War by saying that the frontier ofIndia was" a haphazard and not a scientific one." The search for such a "scientific" frontier started in the second half of the eighteenth century when, on the occasion of partitions and annexations of territory, the relative value of the pieces of territory to be distributed was determined on the basis of certain" objective" standards, such as fertility, nutnh~ and quality of population, and the like. Following

!

THE SCIENCE OF PEACE thi~ trend, the Congress of Vienna, upon the suggestion of Metternich, appointed a statistical commission which was charged with evaluating the territories under discussion by the "objective" standard of number, quality, and type of populations. The delimitation of territory thus became a kind of mathematical proposition. The idea of the "good frontier," developed in the last decades of the nineteenth century in Germany with regard to Russia's territorial aspira~ tions, has a somewhat similar connotat.ion. The idea of the "scientific tariff" attempted to introduce science into foreign trade. Theory and practice of international plebiscites are other typical manifestations of the same approach to inter~ national problems i here the will of the majority is the scientific test according to which sovereignty over territory is to be determined. In the thirties, Major Lefebure advanced his theories on "scientific disarmament." Geopoli tics endeavoured to put foreign policy as a whole on a scientific basis. It was only after the first World War that this tendency to reduce political problems to scientific propositions won general acceptance. "Reason is at last becoming an independent agency," wrote Lord Allen of Hartwood, "influencing the conduct of men. This is due to the coming of science. . . . Feeling himself now to be the master of nature, his mind is beginning to work rationally instead of superstitiously. When forming an opinion he observes the phenomena around him and draws his conclusions. From that moment mind begins Ito be an independent agency of influence. It can now therefore be considered as a political force, whereas that has never previously been possible in the history of civilization. During the last thirty years this has begun to influence public opinion. a With the end of the first World War there began what can properly be called the age of the scientific approach to international affairs, and the end is not yet in sight. Preceded by the Hague Conferences and hundreds of private peace con~ gresses, the governments themselves embarked on a programme of feverish activity, whose extent was unprecedented in all recorded history, with the purpose of solving all international problems through scientific methods. The governments, the League of Nations, and private groups

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vied with each other in organizing international conferences, in encouraging teaching and research, and in publishing hundreds of volumes to cure the ills of humanity in a scientific way. The widespread efforts, which we have been. witnessing recently, to find a scientific solution for the problems of the postwar world are the latest, but probably not the last, manifestation of this modern intellectual trend.

The Method of the Single Cause r

The age is forever searching for the philosophers' stone, the magic formula, which, mechanically applied, will produce the desired result and thus substitute for the uncertainties and risks of political action the certitude of rational calculation. Since, however, what the seekers after the magic formula want is simple, rational, mechanical, and what .they have to deal with is complicated, irrational, incalculable, they are compelled, in order to present at least the semblance of scientific solutions, to simplify the reality of international politics and to develop what one might call the "method of the single cause." The abolition of war is obviously the fundamental problem confronting international thought. What makes a solution of this problem so difficult for the non-rationalist mind is the variety of causes which have their roots in the innermost aspirations of the human soul. Were it possible to reduce all those multiple causes to a single one capable of rational formulation, the solution of the problem of war and peace would no longer seem to be impossible. This is exactly what liberal foreign policy has been trying to do since its very inception; and since the heyday of the League of Nations it has become a sign of originality, which most people would take for lack of creative thought, nat to have a "constructive" plan as a remedy for the "single cause." Are not the remnants of feudalism the great single cause making for war in this world? Let us do away with aristocratic government everywhere, the c1assicalliberals would say, and we will have peace. In practical politi<::s this general proposi~ tion was frequently )larrowed down to more special remedies

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intended to meet particular situations. Thus, Bentham and the Bentharnites would see in the struggle for colonies the main cause for war; hence they advocated abstention from colonial policy as a remedy for war. "Let the European powers emancipate their Colonies, and they will have nothing to quarrel about," proclaimed Jeremy Bentham in 1793. For others, tariffs were the source of all evils in the international sphere; to them, free trade was, consequently, the source of all good. The suppression of tarim, according to Proudhon, would bring about international federation, solidarity, and equality; and, for Cobden, free trade was "the only human means of effecting universal and permanent peace." Others, again, would abolish secret treaties and secret diplomacy in general and, throltgh popular control of international policies, secure peace. Is not modern war an outgrowth of imperialism which, in turn, is a result of the contradictions of monopoly capitalism? Hence, let us do away with capitalism, the Marxists would say, and we will no longer have war; socialism is peace. The same one-track mode of thought is to be found also in the domestic field. All social evils stem from our ignorance of the economic laws; the "single tax" expresses the essence of those laws and will solve all social problems. Our economic system is out of joint because the government spends more than it collects; balance the budget, and out' economic problems will be solved. Bad linguistic habits are at the root of our social evils; with the acquisition of good linguistic habits our social problems will be solved. Emerson, in "New England Reformers," has thus described this mode of thought: "One apostle thought all men should go to farming; and another, that no man should buy or sell; that the use of money was the cardinal evil; another, that the mischief was in our diet, that we eat and drink damnation. These made unleavened bread, and were foes to the death to fermentation. . . . Others attacked the system of agriculture; the use of animal manures in farming; and the tyranny of man over brute nature; these abuses polluted his food . . . . Even the insect world wag to be defended,-that had been too long neglected, and a society for the protection of ground worms,

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slugs, and mosquitoes was to be incorporated wilhout delay. With these appeared the adepts of homeopathy; of hydropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology, and their wonderful theories of the Christian miracles! Others assailed particular vocations, as that of the lawyer, that of the merchant, of the manufacturer, of the clergyman, of the scholar. Others attacked the institution of marriage, as the fountain of social evils. Others devoted themselves to the worrying of churches and meetings for public worship; and the fertile forms of antinomianism among the elder puritans, seemed to have their match in the plenty of the new harvest of reform." In the domestic field, however, the "method of the single cause" has been of rather limited theoretical and practical importance; for here, except in periods of collective insanity, immediate personal experience reveals the abstrusity of the approach; and the pressure of the affected interests prevents the quack from being mistaken for the saviour. The internationalist, on the other hand, has no direct contact with the international scene. His thought, if it is sufficiently general, can roam over the globe without ever risking collision with the stark facts of politics. He who would proclaim" the four freedoms" for the United States could not fail to learn from his own personal experience and from history, as well as from the reaction of the affected interests, the enormity of the social and political problems which any attempt at realizing those great "'principles would of necessity entail. The proclamation of "the four freedoms" "everywhere in the world" is sufficiently general to avoid contact with historic realities and political facts. It is exactly for this reason thM the champion of the" single cause" in the international field is frequently a person with a social and political conscience, who craves a relatively innocuous outlet for his longing for reform. Behind the world-emoracing gesture of the international reformer is likely to hide an inhibited reformer of domestic affairs. He Who signs a petition, makes a speech, writes an article, or simply attends a meeting in support of international understanding experiences the satisfaction of having done something for a,wol1th~while cause. That the good deed does not entail

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89 any sacrifices, incur any risks, or bring about any changes in the actual conditions of the actor's life makes the action only the more attractive. Oonversely, the international reformer, if he is not exceptionally covrageous and wise, will stay clear of tackling the conditions, ideas, and policies in his own country, upon whose transformation international understanding at least partially depends. One will find that the urgency of domestic reform in a certain period is to a certain extent proportionate to the quantity of panaceas offered for the ills of the world in general, and to the insistence with which they are offered. The decades between the two world wars, and the period around the turn of the century when both domestic social reform and international arbitration were in the limelight of public attention, are also significant for this subtle escapism from specific domestic into general international problems. The reformer without responsibility finds in the armoury of modern international thought what he is looking for. That one panacea remedying the "single cause" is freqqently inconsistent with another one need not trouble him. For since the "single cause" is an arbitrary abstraction from a multitude of actual causes, one abstraction and, hence, one "single cause" is as good as the next one. Since, furthermore, the hunt for the "single cause" derives from a vague desire to contribute something to the betterment of human affairs rather than from a definite resolve to intervene in a definite political situation in a definite way, any general explanation of the ills of the world and any general plan to remedy them will satisty those vague emotions. Hence, the great hunting-ground for the "single cause" and the "scientific formula" remedying it has been the international scene, and their great season the two decades between the world wars. International' society is not organized; thus "international organization"-in its abstra.ct rationality a kind of legal cO\lnterpart to the utopian systems of eighteenthcentury philosophy-became the scientific formula which, since the leading pacifist and Nobel Prize winner, A. H. Fried, propounded it at the beginning of the century, has been the credo of a whole school of thought. Others would look rather

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to material remedies. Are not wars being fought with arms? Let us prohibit or at least reduce armaments, and war will no longer be possible or at least will be less likely. Others, again, would combine different remedies and defend the combination on scientific grounds as the only appropriate one. Thus) one school of thought, represented by French foreign poHcy and its sponsor, the Radical-Socialist party, would advocate as logical successive steps for the establishment of permanent peace "security, arbitration, disarmament";, whereas the French Socialists would reverse the sequence and swear to the exclusive scientific value of the formula" security through arbitration and disarmament." French foreign policy has been especially productive in abstract schemes which, like the "plan Briand," the "plan Laval," the "plan Tal dieux," the "plan Herriot," the "plan Paul-Boncours," pretended to give in one legal formula a scientific solution to the problems of European foreign policy. In other quarters, especially since the crisis of I929, ,the "single cause" of international unrest has been found in the economic field. The restrictions of international trade and the lack of raw materials and of international purchasing~power drive nations to war; let us find' a scientific formula for the conclusion of reciprocal trade agreements, for the redistribution of raw materials, and for the floating of international loans, and there will be peace. In order to meet the danger of war J resulting from the imperialistic aspirations of the thirties, it has been reasoned that, whenever nations cannot change the status quo peacefully, they wi.ll try to change it by war; and thus peaceful change. scientifically defined, will make war unnecessary. Since the United States seems to have been involved in the wars of r8t2 and 1917 because some of her rights as a neutral had been violated, let uS renounce these rights by special legislation and the danger of war will be banned. Since the fear of the bankers for their investments was responsible for our involvement in the first World W~r, let us outlaw loans to belligerents and we shall escape participation in the next one. Recently, it has been discovered that n~t~Qnal sovereignty is responsible for war and that the pooling of the national sovereignties in a world federation or at least

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91

in a federation of the democracies is a scientific solution to the problem of war and peace. Thus the age is always in search of the scientific formula, and an obstinate leality again and again makes the solution of today the fallacy of tomorrow. The scientific era of international relations produced as its inevitable result the substitution of scientific standards for political evaluations and, ultimately, the destruction of the ability to make intelligent political decisions at all. Power, however limited and qualified, is the value which international politics recognizes as supreme. The test to which political decisions in the international sphere must be subject 1efers, therefore, to the measure in which those decisions affect the distribution of power in the international sphere. Thc question which Richelieu, Hamilton (no less than Jefferson, for that matter), or Disraeli would ask before they acted on the international scene was: Does this decision increase or decrease the power of this and other nations? The question of the international "scientist" is different. Since for him the history of international affairs amounts to a succession of scientific problems, solved correctly or incorrectly by informed or misinformed officials, the supreme value for him is not power but truth. The quest for and the defence of power then become aberrations from the scientific attitude, which looks for causes and remedies. Since all that exists is caused by something and can be determined differently by substitution of another cause, it becomes the part of unwisdom to oppose any empirical phenomenon by force. For the scientific mind, what exists is jUstified because it exists. If we do not like the way things are, let us look for their cause and change things by changing the cause. There is essentially nothing to fight for; there is always something to analyse, to understand, and to reform. How had it been possible for the modern mind to make the belief in the all-embracing powers of science the idcc-1orce of its foreign policy? Here again, the answer is to be found in the general premises of rationalistic philosophy, seemingly verified.in its universal assumptions by domestic experience. The victory ofllberalism in the domestic field led to a peculiar narrowing of the political, and the corresponding widening of

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. :POWER POLITICS

the non-political, sphere; and thus the latter, devoid of political import, was open to detached rational examination. Objectives which formerly had been the price of the struggle for political power were now approached in a dispassionate, matter-of-fact way and mastered in accordance with the specific techniques of economics, administration, or law. After the natural sciences and religion had freed theIllselve~ from political domination and had established their autonomy, liberalism, by conquering the state, freed an ever increasing domain from direct political domination and, finally, seemed even to expel politics from the state and to make statecraft itself a science. Commerce and industry were the first to win their autonomy under reason. That which for the physiocrats was still a political programme, unsuccessfully suggested to the political powers of the day, was for Adam Smith already a system of scientific truths verified by experience, the practical implications of which no reasonable man could escape. Political tribunals were replaced by independent courts, composed of scientifically trained judges, to render justice according to the principles of legal science. Antiq,uated and arbitrary election systems favouring certain political groups made way for scientific devices which would secure full and equal representation for all citizens. The civil service sy~tem puts the selection of government personnel on an objective, non-political basis. Legislative reforms are increasingly prepared by committees of experts and seem to be largely influenced by scientific instead of political considerations. Taxation, administration, and insurance become "scientific"; and, finally, there is no field of governmental activity which would not be regarded as a proper branch of "poHtical science. " In this intellectual atmosphere the extension of the scientific approach to international affairs was a logically unavoidable step. But once this step from the domestic to the international field was made in earn~st, the f~llacy of the approach was bound to become obvious. For the conditions which make the application of scientific methods to domestic politics at least a temporary and partial success are ~ntirely and permanelluy absent in the international sphere. Again these con~

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ditions are to be found in the particular historic circumstances under which the middle classes established and maintained the liberal regime. Whenever the middle classes had decided the struggle for power definitely in their favour, traditionally political problems, which had no longer any direct bearing upon the distribution of power, became technical and capable of scientific solution by the dominant group. Whenever the new distribution of power was challenged again or had not been definitely settled at all, the technicalities of the scientific approach would temporarily conceal behind scientific formulas the political issue which was ever ready to reassert itself and reduce apparent technical solutions to theoretical futilities. Since the balance of power is the essence and the stabilizing factor of international relations, the distribution of power is here never permanently settled but always precarious and subject to continuous fluctuations. In the international sphere -the reduction of political problems to scientific propositions is never possible; for the problem of distribution of power is ever present and can be solved only by political decision and not by sci~ntific devices. The generalization of the scientific method in politics, to which the modern mind had been led by its domestic experience, is a political fallacy in domestic affairs where, however, the refined mechanism of political pressure and self-interest serves as an automatic check on exaggeration. In the international field such a mechanism acting directly upon the individual does not exist. It is here, therefore, that the belief in the limitless power of the scientific formula has become particularly prolific and particularly ineffective; for it is here that the devices engendered by this belief have no connection whatsoever with the forces which determine the actual course of events. Events will, therefore, either follow their course as though those devices had never been invented (and this is what usually happens, e.g., the proposals of all those international commissions of experts which have tried their hands at all international problems) or those devices will be applied in an exceptional instance and will then produce effects unforeseen by their promoters and frequently disastrous to them, such as the sanctions against Italy during the !talo-

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs, POWER POLITICS

Ethiopian War and unilateral disarmament. Yet, as a supreme irony, this school of thought monopolizes for itself the quality of being "practical" and treats with disdain the rare attempts to base international action on the understanding of the forces determining political reality rather than on the ideal postulates of abstract reason. The liberal statesman, as a rule, cannot afford to follow the latter course without taking into account the existence of the political forces which determine the course of history. For, at least upon him, those forces exert their daily pressure. Statesmen cannot fail to recognize the reality of international disputes for the solution of which no scientific formula is available. Liberal foreign policy has, therefore, developed two distinct methods of dealing with the two types of inter. national disputes: compromise for the so-called "political" disputes or conflicts of interest and the rule of international law for the so-called "legal" disputes. Compromise

That there is no international problem which cannot be solved by negotiation leading to compromise is the funda~ mental practical idea of liberal foreign policy, expressed a thousand times in word and deed. "The fundamental conception is," says Viscount Cecil, "that if you can only bring disputants into a room and persuade them to talk over their quarrel in a neutral atmosphere the great probabllity is that they will not fight. Each side will feel so anxious to preserve the sympathy of the on-looking world that they will put their case as reasonably as possible, and then either it will be found that between the contentions so reasonably stated there is really very little difference, or one of them will be found to be putting forward what really is an altogether untenable proposition, and will have to give way." Since the Congress of Berlin, whenever a major problem threatened international peace, diplomacy resorted to an interhational conference; and, after the first World War, international conferences rn,ultiplied in proportion to the increase in the number and urgency of conflicts demanding solution.

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This period ofinternational relations was dominated by the idea that there is inherent in the free exchange of conflicting opinions a miraculous power of doing away with the conflict itself. By talking things over, statesmen will become conscious of the common ground of reason upon which they all take their stand. Rational argument will reveal as mi~understand­ ing what uninformed opinion has taken for unbridgeable conflict. Debate will clarify the issue and the position of the disputants, and understanding on the basis of rational settlement must follow. The same philosophy revealed itself in permanent institutions, starting with the less ambitious Conciliation Commissions of the pre-World War I Albitration Treaties and culminating in the League of Nations with the annual and semi-annual meetings of its political and nonpolitical branches, the multitude of its standing and extraordinary committees, and its institutional machinery for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. There is deep significance in Disraeli's "peace in our time," with wluch this period started successfully in 1878 after the Congress of Berlin, and Chamberlain's "peace in our time," with which it ended disastrously in 1938 after the Conference of Munich. These two historic episodes illustrate not only the decadence which corroded political thinking on international affairs in the intervening fifty years but also the conditions under which the method of negotiation can be successful and under which it is bound to fail. Here again, liberalism was led astray by generalizing its domestic experience. This experience was characterized by conflicts among merchants, employers, employees, professlOnal men, politicians, and the like. All the conflicts among such individuals or groups, of which the age was aware, arose within the framework of the liberal society and the liberal state. None of those conflicts challenged the exjste~ce of the liberal order itself; the permanence of the liberal framework was taken for granted j the arguments of the disputants and the possible bettlements bore the mark of their liberal origin. The community of rational interests and values, which this liberal framework provided, tended to minimize the gravity of the conflicts. The disputants could not fail to realize that

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what they had in common was more important than what they were fighting about. They met, indeed, on the common ground of liberal rationality; and their conflicts, since they arose under the conditions and within the framework of the liberal society, could all be settled through the instrumen~ talities of liberal rationality. No sltch community of rational interests and values exists, however, on the international scene, at least not permanently and universally. One might say that it existed to a certain extent among the great European powers in the decades after the Oongress of Vienna and after the Congress of Berlin, when the inierest in the maintenance of the territorial and constitutional status quo and the interest in colonial expansion and exploitation, respectively, provided such a common framework. Within it, conflicts, which took the existence of the framework for granted and arose from the very conditions of the latt.er, could be settled rationally through the give and take of compromise. Yet not all international conflicts are of this kind nor are the conditions which give rise to the Holy Alliance and the Concert of Europe of a permanent and universal nature. The great international conflicts which change the face of civilizations challenge the very survival of the existing framework of interests and values and, through a new distribution of power, create a new political and legal system or preserve an old one within which certain secondary conflicts may again be settled by the rational means of compromise and adjudication. Those great conflicts, such as the one between the barbarians and the Romans, the Arabs and Europe, Napoleol1 and Europe, fascism and the Western world, however, cannot be setded by methods of this kind. The solution is here not the give-and-take of rational compromise but the victory and defeat of political warfare, because the issue is here not the more-Dr-less of political competition but the Aut Caesar aUf nihil of the struggle for absolute power. To enter such a conflict with the equipment of the bargaining negotiator is ~ 'ttl give up the struggle before it has really started. In thjs . confusklll of the domestic conflicts of the liberal era with the gl::eat cCIllttoversies ~f nations lies one of the decisive wealmesse5

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of liberal foreign policy. This weakness was relatively innocuous and might even have had no practical importance at all whenever liberal foreign policy had to deal with international conditions similar to those of its domestic origin. This foreign policy was, however, bound to end in disaster when it had to operate in situations which, like the period between the two world wars, differed essentially from the domestic conditions of its origin. As the New rork Times put it when looking back at this period of liberal foreign policy: ," Compromise, appeasement, is at once our weakness abroad and our strength at home."

l

International Law So dominated is liberalism by its domestic experience of rationality and peace that it regards the methods of negotiation and compromise only as a makeshift; for while they are pacific, they are not wholly rational. Liberal philosophy and practice sees in the judicial process the ideal method of settling international disputes. It is only because this method still falls short of universal acceptance that it is necessary to supplement legal institutions with agencies for compromise. For liberalism, the social structures of international and domestic society are essentially identical. Liberalism, therefore, simply transfers its m.istaken but, under normal domestic conditions, innocuous interpretation of domestic society to the international scene. Peace and order, which domestic society is etUoying in the liberal era, arc believed to rcsult from the pacifying influence of the rule of law, especially when applied by independent courts. Here the destruction of feudalism nd the gradual repression of the concomitant evils of arbiw trariness, strife, and violence coincide with the extension of he rule oflaw. Yet progress is contInuous; it does not stop t national frontiers. The victorious march of the rule oflaw, after bringing peace, order, and happiness to the individuals living under its domestic rule, will not stop before it has :united all mankind and brought the whole globe under its klomination. Through a mere quantitative extension of the domain of the rule of law to an ever widening sphere, through

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submitting more and more human actions to legal regulation the dominion oflaw over the world will finally be established: The more peoples live under democratic constitutions, the • wider is the al'ea where democracy reigns. The more closely their constitutions resemble the model constitution in which all the theoretical elements of democratic constitutions are combined, the more perfect is the democracy those peoples enjoy. "Truth, reason, justice, the rights of man, the interest of property, of liberty, of security are everywhere the same. One cannot see why every nation should not have the same civil, the same criminal, and the same commercial laws. A good law ought to be good for all men as an axiom is true for all men." What Condorcet proclaimed more than a century and a half ago is still today the underlying assumption :Jf our political thinking. "During the last twenty years/' exclaimed Disraeli, "you have introduced a sentimental instead ofa political principle into the conduct of your foreign affairs. You looked upon the English Constitution as a model farm." The Greeks, according to Charles H. McIlwain, '< thought of law in terms of politics, we moderns think of )oIitics in terms of law." - It was in this legalistic spirit, true child of the abstract rationalistn of liberal philosophy, that after the first World War the republican constitutions of Germany, Austria, and Spain were conceived and then hailed as the "freest" and «most democratic" constitutions on earth, because they con~ tained an ~traordinary number of those provisions which liberal thought had come to require of the "perfect" can· stitution. In our day, the insistence upon free elections and democratic institutions everywhere in the world is rooted in the same philosophic assumptions; the question is seldom raised as to whether) for freedom and democracy to be a living reality, more is required than legal rules, the enforcement of which is duly supervised by an international commission. :By the same intellectu
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became the ideal of lawmaking in the international field. In a similar spirit, pacifists and internationallawyets in the first decades of the century used to hail a new arbitration treaty as another 5tep towards peace and to evaluate the chances of peace in different periods of history according to the number of arbitration treaties being in force at the particular time. Here the domestic court procedure served as the model whose application needed only to be extended to the international sphere to extend the domain of peace correspondingly. When two individuals quarrel over their mutual rights or when an individual di~turbs the public peace, a court of law will determme the mutual obligations or the punishment to be meted out and thus preserve domestic peace. That the same procedure would have the same effects in the international field is a widely held conviction of the age. C. D. Broad has pointed to the pervasive influence of this analogy: "Under stress of circumstances he (the GIadstonian Liberal) very easily joins hands with his Tory opponent, who is passionately anxious to:fix the 'responsibility' for a war on a certain nation and to exact 'punishmeqt' for it, naIvely believing that these notions of 'responsibility , anp 'punishment' must apply to communities because they apply to citizens within a community." I A" belief in social control through litigation, " as Max erner put it, a veritable" orgy of idealism and extravagant ith in a perfectibility to be brought about by law," to quote oscoe Pound, swayed the modern mind. La Paix par Ie droit, ~ace through Law, became the great hope of the age. Oon'es)ndingly, the history of international conflicts appears as a lcccssion oflegal incidents where the only thing that matters to fmd out who is right and who is wrong. Thus the German liberals of the sixties saw in Napoleon LI primarily the statesman who had renounced the treaties ~ 1815. The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by ustria...Hungary in Igo8 was for the Italian foreign minister Sonnino chiefly a problem of the legal interpretation of the Treaty of the Triple Alliance, which provided for consultation of the member-states before anyone of them could change the territorial status quo. During the first W odd War, Germany was, in the eyes of the Allied Powers, chiefly the

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violator of Belgium's neutrality and of the rules of maritime warfare. From 1919 to 1939, the great events of international affairs appeared in the legalistic disguise of applications and violatiolls of treaty obligations. On September 26, 1938, the

London Times wrote with regard to the Czechoslovakian c1'isis; "I t must and will be a judgment upon the plain merits and demerits of the German demands ... unimpaired by speculative opinions whether Herr Hitler can be made to yield without fighting and whether his regime can face the strain of war," Two days later the same paper stated with pride: "To the nations of the free Western tradition no solution is tolerable except the way of reason." The end of the second World War witnesses in the trial of war criminals according to the rules of Anglo-American procedure a revival of this legalistic approach to essentially political problems. The rule of law has come to be regarded as a kind of miraculous panacea which, wherever applied, would heal, by vit'tue of its intrinsic reasonableness and justice, the ills of the body politic, transform insecurity and disorder into the calculability of a well-ordered society, and put in the place of violence and bloodshed the peaceful and reasonable settlement of social conflicts. The rule of law had accomplished this in the domestic field, and the rule oflaw would accomplish i.t again in the international sphere, provided it was given a chance. Transfer the rule of law to international affairs and "order under law" will reign supreme there, too. How to effect this transfer remains, then, the only problem to be solved. Persuasion, propaganda! education, scientific proof) and democratization offoreign affairs are the means by which governments and peoples shall be induced to Pl,lt international relations under the dominance of the rule of law. Anyone who is familiar with pacifist literature and the writings on international law since the turn of the century knows that the pattern of thought just analysed is not too simple to form the main intellectual foundation of modern international law. In no field of intellectual endeavour has the impact of the domestic experience of liberalism been so ov~helming as in this. The application of domestic legal e:ltperi~nce to international law is really the main stock in

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trade of modern international thought. This is true for general principles as well as for particular legal institutions. That wars can be abolished through international law follows from the pacifying effects of the medieval truce of God and of the modern legal systems. That the rule of international law can regulate international relations in their entirety and thus make them rational and calculable and, finally, do away with international politics itself, is shown by the "Rechtsstaat" of the nineteenth century and by the de$tructive and restrictive influence which the Anglo-American legal system is exerting on domestic politics. That the codification of international law will secure the universal application of the rule of law in international affairs follows from the similar effects of domestic codifications. That independent states can merge their individual sovereignties into a federal union is obvious from the domestic history of Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States. That a network of legal safeguards is capable of promoting the vital interests of nations can be demonstrated by pointing to the beneficial influence of constitutional, statutory, and contractual instrumentalities upon individual welfare. Since, more particularly, the contract among equals is the foremost manifestation of legal rationality and calculability in the middle-class world, the systeme des traites becomes the main legal instrumentality for the establishment of a permanent international order. The fundamental rights of nations correspond to the fundamental rights of individuals and a bill of rights should codify the former as domestic constitutions have codified the latter. An international bill of rights would reinforce the freedoms of the individual by adding international guarantees to the traditional safeguards of national constitutions. That the organization of the nations under a world constitution can afford the framework for a permanent solution ofinternational problems is proved by the sucCeSS of constitutional government within the nations. The attempt to solve political problems by international conferences and other types of organized discussions is anticipated by the corresponding function of parliamentary institutions. The belief in inter~ national arbitration and jurisdiction originates in, and draws

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support from, the role which the domestic courts and, more particularly, industrial arbitration courts play in the settlement of disputes and the maintenance of internal peace. The idea of an international police force, of international sanctions in general, is inspired by the relationship between organized force and law in the domestic society. The dominating influence of nineteenth-century legalism, a reflection of the normalcy of the Victorian age, reveals itself not only in the "great ideas" of the age but in specific legal institutions and in the all-permeating spirit of its international law as well. Take, fqr instance, the constitutive theory of recognition according to which the new state owes its existence to its recognition as such by other states; and take what is, with respect to the underlying idea, the counterpart of the foregoing theory, the doctrine of non-recognition which assumes the non-recognition of the acquisition of territory, achieved in violation of international law, to be an impediment to the legal effectiveness of this acquisition. Take the belief that the mere declaration to remain neutral in a foreign war and the compliance with certain traditional rules of conduct, called "laws of neutrality," is in itself sufficient to keep a nation at peace. Take the doctrines of non-intervention and of domestic jurisdiction, which are both based upon the idea that, in the international field, too, there exists a kind of natural sphere to which the activities of the state can be confined by the rule of law, which sphere is to be de-limited here not with regard to the activities of the individuals but with regard to the activities of other states. The" canons of interpretation," which are supposed to lend objectivity and stability to the interpretation of international treaties, are adapted from the rules which the Roman law developed and upon which the continental codifications founded their application. Take, finally, as a kind of crowning achievement, the proposition that the outlawry of war in a legal document, the signing of it by all nations) and the invocation of it in the case of threatening or actual War are effective contributions to the prevention of war. Chamberlain's waving a piece of paper with Hitler's peace pledge as guarantee of "peace in our thne ,. is a tragic symbol of this period of intellectual

TIlE SCIENCE OF PEACE

history, which believed in the miraculous power of the lega•. formula through its inherent qualitie, to drive out the evil' and improve the conditions of man. The liberal conception of the function which the rule of law actually fulfils and is able to fulfil in the international sphere reposes upon a threefold misinterpretation of reality. I t misunderstands the general relationship between law and peace; it overlooks the particular conditions which the rule oflaw encounters in the international sphere; and it presumes that all social conflicts, domestic or international, can be settled on the basis of established rules of law. I t is the firm belief of the jurisprudence of liberal reform, as expressed by Bentham, Austin, and many others and shared even by contemporary Marxian practice, that man is able to legi&late at will, that is, to realize through the means of the law whatever aims he may pursue. Legislation becomes the technique by which the findings of liberal "science" are translated into social facts. The lawgiver becomes the "legal engineer" who would design the legal gadgets bridging the gulf between science and life. Experience seems to confirm this theory of legislation. For in the period of history which saw the practical application of this theory in the domestic field, peace, order, and progress -ominated the Western world on an unprecedented scale. ret those who erected this historic experience into a universal rinciple mistook for a relation of cause and effect what was ctually a coincidence or, at best, took for cause what was ctually effect. They believed that the peace, order, and rosperity ofthe Victorian age stemmed from the reign of the ule of law which, wherever established, would of necessity ~ad to similar results. As a matter of fact, it was the peace eigning in the affairs of men which made the peaceful lUctions of the law courts possible, not vice versa. It was ,ecause of the order existing in the social fabric that the orderly Irocesses of the rule of law could give normative directions to Dcial activities, not vice versa. It is because of the existing atisfaction with the essential aspects of the status quo that ~gislation can try to reform it in those aspects which are not ssential. In sum, what we call "order und~r law" is not the

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Icreation of law but of social forces which make both for order tand law. The cry) then, for "order under law" as alternative to the international anarchy of our age is reasonable only under the assumption that the international sphere already contains the social elements making for order and peace. Under this assumption the order and peace inherent in the international situation would be only waiting for the instrumentalities of the law to become effective. Yet those who raise this cry do not even ask the question whether this assumption is correct. Believing in the intrinsic regulative powers of the rule of law, they expect from a system of international law, rational and coherent in itself, the same beneficial results which domestic law had seemingly brought to the Victorian age. The ineffec~ tiveness of the international law of the liberal period reveals the impotence of a legal system which meets the test of rationality yet is supposed to work irrespective of social con~ ditions, that is, in a social vacuum. The Briand-Kellogg Pact outlawing war and the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors are in their respective fields monuments to this kind of legalistic thinking. In the great majority of domestic situations, however, the rule oflaw can at least be maintained as a valid rule of conduct even though it may fall short of the ends for which it was enacted. For, once enacted, the rules of domestic law become operative within the traditional framework of law obael'vance and law enforcement, from which the domestic legal systems derive their vital powers. In the international field such a framew.ork does not exist. A rule of law not supported by the mutual interest which the parties concerned have in its observance can be maintained as a valid rule of conduct only by an ever precarious balance of power. In case of conflict, the emotional forces ofloyalty and group solidarity operate in favour of domestic, and to the detriment of international, law. A rule ofint'ernationallaw which is out oftune with the social situation, then, becomes not only an ineffective but a fictitious rule of law as well. Yet eVen if the rule of law is here effective, its effect is

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different from what it is on the domestic scrne. The legal dccision, by its very nature, is concerned with an isolated case. The facts of life to be dealt with by the legal decision are artificially separated from the facts which precede, accompany, and follow them and arc thus tramfOlmed into a "case" of which the law disposes "on its merits." In the domestic field this procedure is not necessarily harmful; for here executive and legislative decisions, supposedly taking into account all the ramifications of a problem, together with the "spirit of the law" manifesting itself in a judicial tradition of long standing, give the isolated legal decisions that coherence which they by themselves cannot have. On the international scene, however, these regulating and integrating factors are absent; it is for that very reason that here the social forces operate on each other with particular directness and spontaneity and that here the legal decision of isolated cases is particularly inadequate. A political situation presenting itself for a decision according to international law is always one particular phase of a much larger situation, rooted in the historic past and mmifyillg far beyond the ilSsue under legal consideration. There is 110 doubt that the League of Nations was right, according to internationullaw, in expelling Russia in 1939 because of her attack upon Finland. In view of the fact, however, that the political and military problems with which Russia confronted t.he world did not begin with her attack on Finland and did not end there, was it WiS(l to pretend that such was the case and to decide the issue on that assumption? To this question history itself has given the answer; for it was only because of Sweden's refusal to allow British and French troop~ to pass through Swedish territory in order to come to the aid of Finland that Great Britain and France were saved from being at war with Germany and Russia at the same time. Whenever the League of Nations endeavoured to deal with political situations presenting themselves as legal issues, it could deal with them only as isolated cases according to the applicable rules of international law and not as particular phases of an over-aU political situation which required an over-all solution according to political principles. Hence, political problems were never solved but

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only tossed about and finally shelved according to the rules of the legal game. What was true ofihe League of Nations has already proved to be true of the United Nations. In its approach to the Greek, Syrian, Indonesian, Iranian, and Spanish situations, the Secmity Council has remained faithful to the legalistic tradition estabhshed by the Council of the League of NatlOns. These cases have provided opportunities for exercise~ in parliamentary procedure, but on no occasion has even an attempt beer made at facing the pohtical issues of which these situations are the surface manifestations. One shudders to think what would have happened to Europe and to the world if the very similar conflicts which separated Great Britain and Russia in the seventies of the last century had been handled in 1878 by the Congress of Berlin in a similar manner. Conflicts of this kind cannot be settled on the basis of :stablished rules of law; for it is not the established law, its ntcrpretation and application, that is in doubt. The parties ,0 the conflict were well aware of what the law was in the ~thiopian case of 1935, in the case of the Sudctenland in [938) of Danzig in 1939, and of Iran in I946. What they IVanted to know Was whether and how the law ought to be ~hanged. Hence, what is at stake in conflicts of this kind is 10t who is right and who is wrong hut what ought to bt' done .n order to combine the particular interests of individual 1ations with the general interest in peace and order. The :]uestlOn to be answered is not what the law is but what it )ught to be, and this question cannot be answered by the :awyer but only by the statesman. The choice is nQ.1, between legality and illegality but between political wisdom and political stupidity. "The question with me/' said Edmund Burke in his Speech on the Cotlcilzauon with America, "is, not ~hether you have a right to render your people miserable, but ' hether it is not your interest to make them happy. It is not hat a lawyer tells me I may do, but what humanity, reaSon [ nd justice tell me I ought to do." "Lawyers, I know/' the ~ame author said in his Letter to the SherijJs of Bristol, "calj.not ~ake the distinction for which I contend, because they !have their strict rule to go by. But legislators ought to do,

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fwhat lawyers cannot; for they have no other rules to go by, Jbut the great principles of reason and equity) and the general sense of mankind." Law and political wisdom mayor may not be on the same !side. If they are not, the insistence upon the letter of the law 'will be inexpedient and may be immoral. The defence of the limited interest protected by the particular rule of law will injure the larger good which the legal system as a whole is supposed to serve. Therefore, when on the national scene basic issues in the form of economic, social, or constitutional conflicts demand a solution, we do not as a rule appeal to the legal acumen of the judge but to the political wisdom of the legislator and of the chief executive. Here we know that peace and order do not depend primarily upon the victory of the law with the aid of the sheriff and of the police but upon that approximation to justice which true statecraft discovers in, and imposes upon, the clash of hostile interests. If sometimes in our domestic affairs we are oblivious to this basic truth of statesmanship, we pay with social unrest, lawless"'less, civil war, and revolution for our lack of memory. On the international Scene we have not stopped paying for JUr forgetfulness since 19I4, and we seem to be resolved to pay with all we have for the privilege of continuing to disregard the lessons of history. For here our first appeal is always to the law and to the lawyer, and since the questions which the law and the lawyer can answer are largely irrelevant to the fundamental issues upon the solution of which the peace and welfare of nations depend, our last appeal is alway~ to the general. Fiat justitia, pereat mundus becomes the motto of a decadent legalistic statecraft. But this alternative to our legalism we do not dare face as long as we still can choose. iThus, an age which seems to be unable to meet the intell~ctual l~nd moral challenge of true statesmanship or to face in hime the cruel alternative to its political failure takes refuge .n illusions: the illusion of international law as a standard for political action, the illusion of a naturally harmonious social , arId, the illusion of a socIal science lmitating a model of the atural sciences which the modern natural sciences themselves , 0 longer accept. With this last illusion we shall deal now.

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CHAPTER V

THE CHIMERA OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES

THE RELIANCE of the age upon scientific solutions instead of upon political action has its roots in three misconceptions of rationalist philosophy. In three fundamental respects rationalist philosophy has failed to understand its object. It has failed to understand the nature of man; the nature of the world, especially of the social world; and, finally, the nature of reason itself. Reason and Man It has become rather trivial nowadays to point out the fallacy of the rationalistic conception of man, to wit, its depreciation of, if not its complete disregard [or, the spiritual and emotional aspects of human life. Psychology, sociology, as well as political science in its more advanced contributions, all supported by the religious, philosophic, and historic memory of the race, have well-nigh destroyed this conception. Yet, as we have seen, this conception has not lost its power over the thought and action of modern man. The assertion that man is a rational being has in the philosophy of rationalism a dual meaning. It means, on the one hand, that man is capable of understanding, through reason, himself and the world and that his ignorance is a mere quantitative shortcoming which he has at least the innate p.ower to overcome completely in due course of time. It means, on the other hand, that man is capable of acting according to his understanding, that there exists, in other words, an at least potential correspondence between"knowledge and action, and that when action falls short of what is requested of it, the appeal to reason pure and simple will bridge the gap Qetween rational standard and action. l08

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To deal with the first meaning first-the second meaning will be discussed in the next chapter-it is here that the philosophy underlying this discussion differs with the philosophy of rationalism in a fundamental way. It is one of the philosophic assumptions of this discussion that the distinctions among what man knows through science, what he may know through other mediums such as religion, philosophy, and art, and what he does not know at all are qualitative in character and cannot be completely eliminated by the quantitative extension of one domain at the expense of the others. In other words, no quantitative extension of scientific knowledge can solve those perennial problems which art, religion, and philosophy attempt to answer. Within a hundred years, science has conquered time and space, the hidden motives of man, and the very powers of the universe. However, the questions which the ancient Greeks and Hebrews asked are still asked by us, and every new achievement of science, far from bringing us closer to the answer, emphatically poses the ancient questions ever again. Indeed, man knows that when the apple falls, it will fall towards the earth; yet whether and when the apple will fall, he does not know. He knows that the apple will rot when a worm eats its way into it; yet whether the latter will happen, he does not know. He knows that the tree on which the apple grows will die; but when and how, he does not know. The problems of life and death, necessity and chance, matter and sense, man and nature, have not been solved by the Age of Science. From its point of view, those very problems -are specious since they are incapable of solution through science, to be asked only by children and fools. Scientism is unable to' visualize problems, fields of knowledge, and modes of insight to which science has no access. "An economic civilization," observes Henry Adams in Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, "troubles itself about the universe much as a hive of honey'" bees troubles about the ocean, only as a region to be avoided." Yet in those ancient riddles, which scientism does not even recognize as legitimate problems, man becomes aware of the vital problems with which nature and society confront him.

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Scientism assumes that the significance of nature and society for man exhausts itself in isolated sequences of causes and effects, that, in other words, t.his is all man warl.ts to know about his physical and social environment. Bentham is in this respect, no less than in others, the prototype of the liberal phllosopher. "Bentham was," as E. L. Woodward put it, "interested, not in the problems oflife, but in the mechanism ofliving; his reforms were a series of political gadgets." This scientist conception of nature and society, by concentrating upon the discovery of causal connections between natural and social phenomena, has extended the frontiers of knowledge immensely and lightened the burden of living beyond the hopes of even the last generation. However, it has not lightened the burden of life. It has discovered the causes of many isolated things. But it has not even searched for a meaningful connection of all those isolated things, nor for their nature, let alone their purpose and value for man. It has promised man to make him wiser and happier by giving him ever more knowledge of, and power over, the mechanical interplay of natural forces and thus to solve all his problems. Yet, even the problems of living have not been solved, except in the meaning of a mere technical possibility. Art, religion, and metaphysics have endeavoured to give an answer to the problems of life although, from the rationalistic point of view, it was an unverifiable and illusory one. Still, they at least saw problems where the Age of Science sees none. By destroying the confidence of the human mind in the answers that art, religion, and metaphysics could give and by holding out the hope, bound to be disappointed, that it had all answers to all questions, rationalism has left man the poorer and has I made the burden of life harder to bear. 1t is only by indirection that the Age of Science pays tribute to the things beyond the scientific laws. When it speaks of the "free will," the" freedom," and the" choice" of man, of his "good star" and his "luck," of" hazard" and of "chance," it recognizes a domain for which the assumptions of its philosophy do not allow. By embracing, especially in the desperatiol). ofindividual or social crisis, degenerate derivations of art, r~ligion, and metaphysics, such as astrology, prophecy,

THE CHIMERA OF TIlt NATURAL SOlCNCES

III

belief in miracles, occultism, political religions, sectarianism, all kinds of superstitions, and all the lower types of entertain~ ment, the common man of the Age of Sciencc testifies to the limitations of its powers.

Reason and Society Scientism has left man enriched in his technical mastery of inanimate nature, but it has left him impoverished in his quest for an answer to the riddle of the universe and of his existence in it. Scientism has done worse than that with respect to man as a social being, that is, to man living with his fellow-men. The quest for the technical mastery of social life, comparable to his mastcry over nature, did not find scientism at a loss for an answer: the fundamental identity under reason of physical nature and social life suggested identical methods for their domination. Since reason in the form of causality reveals itself most plainly in nature, nature became the model of the social worlel and the natural sciences the image of what the social sciences one day will be. There is only onc truth, the truth of science, and by knowing it man would know all. This was, however, a. fallacious answer. Its univer5al acceptance initiated an intellectual movement and a political tcchnique which retarded, rather than furthered, man's mastery over Lhe social world. The analogy between natural and social world ii, mistaken for two reasons which lie in the domain of practical control and theoretical structure. On the one hand, human action is unable to mould the natural and social world with the same degree of technical perfection. On the other hand, the very concept of physical nature as the p..ill1liligw._
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this tempelature, we can make it boil at will. We know that the human organism reacts to ccrtain drugs in a certain fashion; by administering tho&e drugs in certain quantities and combinations and under cel tain conditions, we are able \ to exert a very high degree of control over those reactions. All [practical knowledge of phy~ical nature and all control over ~it are essentially of this same kind. ~ Scientism believes that the same kind of knowledge and of \contr01 holds true for the social world, and the social sciences 'simply emulate this model. The "method of the single cause" is but a faithful copy of the method of the physical sciences. Yet the results of its application to the social wOlld are similar to those which hampered the progress of the physical sciences when the latter found their causes in abstractions rather than in experience. Wilham Graham Sumner is there. fore right in stating that "social science is still in the stage that chemistry was in when people believed in a philosopher's stone, or medicine, when they believed in a panacea, or physiology, when they believed in a fountain of youth, or an elixir oflife." For in the sqcial sphere the logical coherence of the natural sciences finds no adequate object, and thel"e is no single cause by the creation of which one can create a certain ~effeet at will. Any single cause in the social sphere can entail an indefinite number of different effects, and the same effect can spring from an indefinite number of different causes. It is impossible to foresee with any degree of certainty which effects will be brought about by this particular cause, nor is it possible to state in retrospect with any degree of certainty what particular cause has produced this effect. We know that water boils at a temperature of QIQ degrees Fahrenheit, because whenever we have exposed water to this temperature it started boiling. By raising the temperature of water to this point, we can repeat the same effect innumerable times. This possibility of repeating a certain effect at will by realizing its cause constitutes the experimental character of the natural sciences. The social sphere does not admit of a similar possibility. We may subject a certain group of people to a certain kind of propaganda or to a certain type of legislation, which in the past has induced this group of people

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to perfOllTI a certain type of action. Whether or not we will succeed in cleating that same kind of reaction this time dep('ncis upon a great number of circumstances over which we have only remote contlol or none. Fitst of all, the cause, that is, propaganda or legislation, is itself a product of social interaction-the composite of a multitude ofindividual actions and reactions, themselves subject to a multitude of physical and psychological causes of which we have no knowledge and over whIch we have no control. Two substantially identical causes, for instance, may produce different social results because of a difference in dynamic strength, which is neither detectable nor measurable except by the results. It is this incalculability of social action that Emerson had in mind when he said in "Politics": "The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to fix as persons are organs of moral or supernatural force. UncleI' the dominion of an idea, which possesses the mind of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the powers of persons are no longer subjects of calculation. A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant actiom, out of all proportion to their mcans; as the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have done.'l Hence, the s£c;i~.~'llJ,~e,itllClf is
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Pollock, "that I have no practical criticism except what the crowd wants." Furthermore, the object upon which the social came exerts its influence is equally a social phenomenon, the composite of individual actions and reactions, the exact nature of which at any given time it is impossible to foresee or to determine by deliberate action. A certain group of people may react upon an identical cause in an identical or in a different way according to the pllysical or psychological conditions prevailing in the group, and according to the same conditions it may react upon different causes in an identical way. Since man is largely ignorant of his own future reactions, how can he know more about the reactions of his fellow-men? Detached observation may tell him things about them that he does not know about himself. Yet he will remain forever unaware of what only one's inner consciousness can tell one's self. While the natural sciences have to do with isolated causes operating upon motionless objects, the social sciences deal with interminable chains of causes and effects, each of which, by being a reacting effect, is the cause of another reacting effect, and so forth ad infinitum. Furthermore, the links of such a chain are the junctions and crosqing-poinis of many other chains, supporting or counteracting each other. The scene of this intricate spectacle is what we call the "social world." In view of the essence of this world, it is hardly surprising that the efTorts of the social sciences at planning the future have had no more satisfactory results. The social sciences are able to classify social phenomena. They are also able to discover certain uniformities of social actions and institutions. These uniformities are characteristic of certain stages of social development and are likely to occur under a certain constellation of social causes on the lowest level of social interaction, which in the primitive manifestations of hunger, fear, propagation, and self-preservation is closest to physical nature. The social sciences have even succeeded in isolating the causes which with a very high degree of probability will en.gender one result and no other. Even here, however, the soci.~ sciences are able to formulate such "social laws" only under the assumption that those causes will actually occur

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in the same isolation in which the "social laws" are using them. Where those causes are interwoven with the cross~ currents and intricacies of social causation-as they are in all highly deVeloped societies-the social sciences can, at best, do what is their regular task, that is, present a series of hypothetical possibilities, each of which may occur under certain conditions---;and which of them will actually occur is " anybody's guess. "One of the most difficult things to learn in the social sciences," says Sumner, "is that every act.ion inside of the social organism is attended by a reaction, and that this reaction may be spread far through the organism, affecting organs and modifying functions which are, at the first view of the matter, apparently so l"emote that they could not be affected at all. It is a more simple statement of the same fact to say that everything in the social organism displaces everything else. Therefore, if we set to work to interfere in the operation of the organism, with our attention all absorbed in one set of phenomena and regulate our policy with a view of those phenomena, we are very sure to do mischief." The difference between social and natural sciences in this respect is obvious. The natural sciences are in doubt as to whether or not certain causes will occur; but they foretell with a high degree of certainty that upon a certain typical cause a certain typical effect will follow. The social sciences, on the contrary, are in doubt as to the occurrence not only of the causes but also of the effects, once a Cause has taken place.

Reason and Nature Despite their demonstrable experiences to the contrary, the social sciences continue to claim the ability to foresee the effects of social causes with a high degree of certainty~ to plan social action correspondingly, and to bring about social changes according to plan. The persistence of this claim is due to a concept of the physical world, erected into an idol and emulated as a model, which is pictured as being dominated throughout by rational laws and therefore capable of complete rational determination. The modern age found this picture

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of the physical world in the natural sciences of the nineteenth century. The natural sciences of the nineteenth century, in turn, brought Galileo's, Descartes's, and Newton's conception of the physical world to its logical consummation. The physical world, as this conception sees it, is composed of matter, moving in time and space according to the law of gravitation and evolving in a continual development according to the law of causation. Of this lational, calculable universe little is left today. Matter has been dissolved into electronic atoms; the traditional concepts of time, space, and the law of gravitation have succumbed to the theory of relativity; the quantum theory has transformed causation into statistical probability and replaced determinism by the principle of indeterminacy. What scientist philosophy and, under its influence. nineteenth-century political thought and the social sciences refer to as their object of emulation is a ghost from which life has long since departed. It is, indeed, a kind of folklore of science which receives its dignity from tradition and from the longing for intellectual as well as actual security but not from the inherent truthfulness oHts propositions. Modern scientific thought has long abandoned it. The modern history of the natural sciences is nmrked by an ever widening cleavage between nature as perceived by our unaided sense~ and natul"e as constituted by scientific theory. This process started with Copernicus' hypothesis that the earth revolves around the sun. It progressed when the law of gravitation forced man to admit that he is suspended on his feet and hangs with his head into the universe. Modern science has completed the process by constructing with the aid of mathematical formulas a symbolic unive-rse which is at variance with everything our unaided senses tell us about the external world and which cannot even be expressed in the language of our sensory experience. "Something unknown," says A. S. Eddington, "is doing we don't know what-that is What our theory amounts to." Stephen Leacock has admirably expressed this spirit of modern science in his description of the funeral of "Dead Certainty." "People who know nothing about the subject, or jUllt less th~n I do, will tell you that science and philosophy

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and theology have nowadays all come together. So they have, in a sense. But the statement, like those above, is just a 'statistical' one. They have come together as three people may come together in a picture theatre, or three people happen to take apartments in the same building, or, to apply the metaphor that really fits, as three people come together at a funeral. The funeral is that of Dead Certainty. The interment is over and the three turn away together. ", Incomprehensible,' murmurs Theology reverently. "'What was that word?' asks Science. '''Incomprehensible; I often use it in my litanies.' " 'Ah yes,' murmurs Science, with almost equal reverence, 'incomprehensible! ' "'The comprehensibility of comprehension,' begins Philosophy, staling straight in front of him. "'Poor fellow,' says Theology, 'he's wandering again; better lead him home.' " 'I haven't the least idea where he lives,' says Science. '''Just below me,' says Theology. 'We're both above you.'" Scientist philosophy, modern political theory, and the social sciences, however, have not been present at this funeral. In fact, they are not aware that it has taken place. For them certainty, in both the physical and the social world, is still very much alive. Now it could be said-and it has, indeed, been said-that the discoveries of modern theoretical science do not affect our practical relationship to the external world. Whatever physicists may say about the nature of matter, our practical attitude towards the objects of the external world is determined by our sensory experience of nature. It is upon it that, at least until recently, our mastery of nature was founded, and it is to this nature of our everyday experience, not to the nature of theoretical physics, that the age refers when it endeavours to emulate in the social world the calculability and predictability of the natulal sciences. Yet theoretical science, without invalidating our practical attitude towards nature, makes three statements as to the character of this attitude. These statements have a direct bearing upon the analogy between physical and social world, on which the confidence of modern philosophy and science rests.

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Modern scientific theory shows, first of all, the complicated character of our everyday experience of nature, which contradicts the apparent simplicity and calculability of our technological achievements. " I t has become doubtful," to quote Eddington again, "whether it will ever be possible to construct a physical world solely out of the knowable-the guiding principle in our macroscopic theories. Hit is possible, it involves a great. upheaval of t.he present foundations. It seems more likely that we must be content to admit a mixture of the knowable and unknowable. This means a denial of determinism, because the data required for a prediction will include the unknowable elements of the past. I think it was Heisenberg who said, 'The que&tion whether from a complete knowledge of the past we can predict the future, does not arise because a complete knowledge of the past involves a self-contradiction.''' "The physicist now regards his own external world in a way which I can only describe as more mystical, though not less exact and practical, than that which prevailed some years ago, when it was taken for granted that nothing could be true unless an engineer could make a model of it." " At the present day," says J. W. N. Sullivan, "the scientific universe is more mysterious than it has ever been before in the history of thought. Although our knowledge of natural proces5es is greater than it has ever been, this knowledge is, in a way, less satisfactory, for in every direction we are faced by ambiguities and contradictions." "The aim of science," warns Whitehead, "is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, Seek simplicity and distrust it." Second, modern scientific theory shows that science is unable to determine individual events as such with certainty. Sir ames Jeans formulates thus the two kinds of indeterminacy with which modern scientific theory operates: "We cannot oretell the future because we can never know the present '~h complete certainty . . . . We cannot foretell the future ecause nature herself does not know what is going to happen."

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,Some degree of certainty is possible only with tegard to events which ale taken not individually but as members of a large group of similar events. Hence, when there is certainty in our everyday experience of nature, this certainty has not an absolute, but only a statistical, quality. In other words, this certainty holds good for averages of large numbers of similar objects but not for individual objects as such. The certainty of classical physics is replaced by probabllity of a generally very high degree. Eddington explains this contradiction within the natural" sciences themselves in these words: "Human hfeis proverbially uncertain; few things are more certain than the solvency of a life-insurance company. The average law is so trustworthy that it may be considered predestined that half the children now born will survive the age of x years. But that does not tell us whether the span of life of young A. McB. is already Wl ltten in the book offate, 01' whether there is still time to alter it by teaching him not to run In front of motor-buses. The f'clipse in 1999 is as safe as the balance of a life-insurance company; the next quantum jump o[an atom is as uncertain as your life and mine. . . . The quantum physicist does not fill the atom with gadgets for dIrecting its future behaviour, as the classical physicist would have done; he fills it with gadgets determining the odds on its future behaviour. He studies the art of the boolonaker not of the trainer."

The Certainty oj the Social Sciences Finally, the surprisitlg thing is that what Eddington here explains as 'the structure of the natural world finds its exact counterpart in the social world. The best the so-called "social laws" can do is exactly the best the so-called "natural laws" can do, namely, to indicate cel tain trencl~ and to state the possible conditions under which one of those trends is most likely to materialize in the future. Which of the possible conditions will actually occur and thus help one particular trend to materialize neither tne natural nor the social sciences are able to foretell. Nor are they able to forecast with more than a high degree of probability that in the presence of certain

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conditions a certain trend will materialize. Neither science, can go further without losing itselfin unscientific speculation. A social scientist may find that present-day American society shows a trend towatds preservation of democracy, one towards fascism, and one towards proletarian dictatorship. He may be able to predict that, under certain psychological, economic, and political conditions, trend one, two, or three is most likely t.o prevail. By the same kind of reasoning, he may be able to say further that, given certain other conditions, some of those psychological, economic, and political conditions are most likely to occur as over against others which require other conditions for their materialization, and so forth. Many political writers and political scientist9, however, claim that they can do more than that, and they seem to be actually able to predict social events with a high degree of certainty. In fact, they as well as their public are the victims of one of two delusions. Since the number of possible trends in a given situation is limited-victory or defeat in war and elections, success or failure in policy, and the like-the "prophet" who predicts, in a more or less qualified fashion, the materialization of the few possible trends in successive columns, chapters, books, or speeches is bound to have been right at least once, or in a certain measure all the time, since one of the trends under discussion is bound to materialize. Furthermore, many writings convey the idea of historical necessity, which is the godmother of political prediction, but ate really prophecies after the event. They prove that France was bound to fall in I 940 because of certain trends in hel' social and political structure which were obvious to anyone. Yet nobody was able to predict before the event that those trends would materialize in5tead of others which were quite as much in the public eye. The seeming proof that 'what happened was bound to happen argues post hoc propter hoc and has no scientific value. But it strengthens the tendencies Qf the modern mind to look in social affairs for a certainty in planning and prediction that is as unattainable here as elsewhere. Thi.s pseudo~scientific method is particularly responsible for the reputation for exaGtness and objectivity that certain

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schools of sociology still claim without deserving it. Sociology "proves" that a certain social phenomenon is due to a certain social cause, which is true enough; and it furthermore" proves" the existence of a "social law" according to which this particular social cause will always bring about this particular social effect, which is not true at all. The regression fi:om a certain phenomenon to a certain social cause is not reversible. What can be stated scientificaUy in way of prediction on the basis of a "social law" is merely that, given certain conditions, a certain social trend is more likely to materialize than are others-in other words, that the odds are in favour of one trend as over against others. When, thus, the modern mind elevates the natural sciences into a model to whose certainty politics and social thought must aspire, it claims for the natural sciences marc than they themselves are in a position to claim, even considering the practical success to which the natural sciences can point. The social sciences do not need to be brought to the level of the natural sciences; they are already there as far as the logical structure of their laws is concerned. Thi~ level is, however, not the mythological level of absolute certainty and predictability but that of statisti.cal averages and probability. Any distinction one can make between the kinds of eel tainty of which the natural and social sciences are capnble is therefore bound to be of a merely quantitative nature. We have seen that, with regard to individual events as such, the natural sciences can make no certain statement at all and that whatever eel tainty they were able to achieve deals with averages of groups of si.milar events. The same we have found to be true in the social sphere. The social sciences, however, are to a much greater extent than the natural sciences intere&ted in individual behaviour as such; and, even where the average behaviour of groups is under consideration, the course of events depends largely upon individual behaviour as such. As a rule, the chemist, for instance, is interested only in the way a certain metal-that is, an individual object belonging to a large group of similar objects-reacts to a certain acidthat is, again, an in4iviclual object belonging to a large group of similar objects; in the individual qualities of those objects

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he is normally not interested at all. It is exactly for this reason ( that the technical &ciences have been able to disl'egaid largely the findings of model 11 scientIfic theory and, stal ting with the assumptions of everyday experience, to proceed as though those findings did not eXISt. The political scientist who endcavoUlS to fOleCi:1st the political development of the United Stales could not fail to find the relative strength of the possible trends, such as democracy, fascism, and communism, and of the conditions for their realization to be lalgely dependent upon individual behaviour and individual events as such. In Older to make an intelligent forecast at all, he would need to know who will be the president of the United States, who will be the most influential members of the houses of Congless, of the Supreme Court, of the armed forces, of industry, and oflabour, etc., and what will be their reactions, as individuals, to the problems of the day. These questions arc not of a mere theoretical nature like the question as to the behaviour of an i.ndividual atom as such. The inability to answer them with any degl;'ee of certainty is the measure of the practical weakness of a political science which aims at. emulating the natural sciences. The inevitable emphasis upon individuality as such, which distinguishes the social flom the natural ~ciences, extends the domain of uncertainty immeasurably. The same element of uncertainty flom which the natural sciences suITer aITects the social sciences) only more so. Because of its quantitative extension, it affects here not only theoretical structure but also practical usefulness.

The Unity oj Nature and Society Not only does modern scientific thought correct the picture which the nineteenth century has drawn of nature, it also sheds new light upon the essence of the social world; for it shows that the social world cannot be understood by a mere analogy with what the modern age has thought nature was like. In the words of Eddington, "Those who maintain a determil}istic theory of mental activity must do so as the outC011\O of their study of the mind itself and not with the idea

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"that they are thereby making it more conformable with our experimental knowledge of the laws of inorganic nature." "From this perspective we recognize a spiritual world alongside the physical world. Experience-that is to say, the self cum environment-comprises more than can be embraced in the physical world, restricted as it is to a complex of metrical symbols. The physical world IS, we have seen, the answer to one definite and urgent problem arising in a survey of experience; and no other problem has been followed up with anything like the same precision and elaboration. Progress towards an understanding of the non·sensory constituents of our nature is not likely to follow similar lines, and indeed is not animated by the same aims. If it is felt that this difference is so wide that the phrase spilitual world is a misleading analogy, I will not insist on the term. All I would claim is that those who in the search for trllth stal t from consciousness as a seat of self-knowledge with interests and responsibilities not confined to the material plane, are just as much facing the hard facts of experience as those who start from con· sciousness as a device for reading the indications of spectroscopes and micrometers." Since it is the human mind which mitrors the physical world and which determines the human actions within and with respect to it, the qualities of the mind must in turn be reflected in the picture we have of nature. Thus, the physical world, as we are able to know it, bears in a dual sense the imprint of the human mind; it is in a dual sense its product. We are able to know it only within the limits of our cognitive faculties; that is, we know it only in so far as the structure of our mind corresponds to the structure of the physical world. On the other hand, the relationship between mind and nature is not exclusively cognitive even when the human mind confronts nature only for the purpose of perception. It cannot do so without intervening in its course and thus disturbing it. "We saw," says SIr James Jeans, "nineteenth-century science trying to explore nature as the explorer explores the desert from an aeroplane. The uncertainty principle makes it clear that nature cannot be explored in this detached way; we can only explore it by tramping over it and disturbing it; and

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our vision of nature includes the clouds of dust we ourselves", kick up. We may make clouds of different kinds, but the uncertainty principle shews tll
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" The human mind fulfils the same creative function for the social world. The social scientist as such stands in the streams of social causation as an acting and reacting agent. What he sees anel what he does not see are determined by his position in those streams; and by revealing what he 5ees in telms of his science he directly intervenes in the social process. Mr. Gallup. by forecasting the result of an election, transcends the functions of theoretical analysis and becomes an active agent intervening in the social processes which determine the election returns. Karl Marx, arguing scientifically for the inevitablhty of the class struggle and of the proletarian re~ volution, strengthens through the pelSuasiveness of his scientific arguments the tendencies in modern society towards making the class struggle and the proletarian revolution actually inevitable. Confronted with those hypothetical possibilities in the formulation of which his scientific endeavours culminate, the social scientist does not remain an indifferent observer but intervenes actively as both product and creator of social conditions. It is significant for the unity of the natural and social sciences in this regard that a most illuminating analysis of this situation comes from the pen of a great physicist, rvlax Planck: "Perhaps the mo~t impressive proof that the individual wIll is independent of the law of causality will be found if the attempt is made to determine in advance the subject's own motives and actions on the sale basis of the law of causaIityby a method of intense introspection. Such an attempt is condemned to failure in advance because every application of the law of camality to the will of the individual and every information gained in this way is itself a motive acting upon the will, so that the result which is being looked for JS con~ tinually being changed. Hence it would be a complete mistake to attnbute the impossibility of forecasting the subject's actions on purely causal lines to a lack of knowledge which might be overcome if the individual intelligence were suitably increased. Such an inference is analogous to the process of ascribing the impossibility of simultaneously determining exactly the position and the velocity of an electron to the inadequacy of our methods of measuring. The impossibility

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of foretelling the subject's actions on purely causal lines is'" not based on any lack of knowledge, but on the simple fact that no method by whose application the object is essentially altered can be suitable for the study of1.his object." Since there exists a necessary correlation between the quality of the human mind, on the one hand, and the quality ofthe physical and social world, as we know it, on the other, the irrationality of human action cannot but be reflected in nature and society and in our knowledge of them. Thus, it is in the quality of thc human mind itself that the rationalistic analogy between physical and social world-the very mainstay of our "science of politics "-finds its final refutation. Kepler and Newton, Grotius and the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, and with them the Age of Reason were convinced that the rationality of nature corresponded to the rationality of the human mind and vice versa. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries believed that the rationality of nature could be attained by the human mind in a world of its own, the social world. What was needed was a conscious effort at transplanting the rational methods of the natural sciences to society and in this way creating a planned society in the likeness of a planned nature. Yet, in the same way in which this belief was rooted and found ever renewed confirmation in the mechanical physics of Newton and Descartes, the new physics of relativity and quantum is becoming the point of departure for a thorough revision of this belief. The new physics shows, indeed, that there exists a close correspondence between the human mind, on the one hand, and nature and society, on the other. Modern scientific thought re-establishes the unity of the physical and social world to which the modern age aspired in vain. However, the common element of which mind, nature, and society partake is no longer reason pure and simple but reason surrounded, interspersed, and underlaid with unreason, an island precariously placed in the midst of an obscure and stormy ocean.

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The Problem oj Social Planning

If such is the nature of the social sciences, theh: lack of absolute certainty in prediction cannot fai1 to have an important bearing upon the problem of social planning. A plan is an intellectual scheme which anticipates a chain of causes and effects, partly created by the planner's action, partly taken into account by his social experience. The realization of the anticipated effects then depends upon the control the planner is able to exert upon the causes, as well as upon the reliability of his social experience, which makes him foresee the intervention of other causes not creal ed by him. In order to clarify the problem of social planning, we shall analyse two extreme examples, one of which stands for the relative possibility, the other for the relative impossibility of planning. Let us suppose that I plan to go to a movie tomorrow after~ noon. The anticipated execution of this undertaking is based upon two kinds of assumptions: first, that I shall be able and willing to go downtown, that I shall have the money to buy a ticket, that there will be tickets for sale, that the movie theatre will pe open, that a movie will be shown in the theatre; second, that tomorrow I shall go downtown, buy a ticket, and enter a movie theatre. The realization of this plan requires, on the one hand, the performance of certain actions on my part and, on the other hand, the presence of certain conditions which make both my actions and the desired result possible. The absence of any single one of those elements will defeat the execution of this very simple, ordinary plan. I may fall sick; an important visit or professional obligation may make me change my mind; I may go in the wrong direction; the street where the theatre is located may be blocked; I may forget or lose my money; the tickets may be sold out; the theatre may be closed; there may be no performance at the time of my arrival; and so forth. Under normal conditions, however, the chances of realizing the plan will be extremely high. Let us now analyse an example which is extreme in a. different way, and let us put ourselves in the position of a general who is planning the military campaign of next year.

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Here, again the realization of the plan rrqts upon two kinds of" assumptions; first, that the military leader will perform certain actions, that is, give the ordels necessary for the execution of the plan; second~ that there eXIst, independent of his own action, the condition& upon whIch both his performance and the lealization of the desired result depend, that is, for instance, the anticipated proportlOl1 of number and qualtty of military forces and materiel in the fighting camps, the antici~ pated development of the military situation between the conception and the execution of the plan, the faithful execution of the orders given, the geographical and atmospheric condltions, and so forth. Some of those factors are not at all, others are only within great limitatlOns, subject to the control of the planner; none of them can be foreseen with any con~ siderable degree of certainty; and the absence of any of them is likely to impede the success of the plan. Military discipline constitutes an attempt at eliminating the spon~ taneous actions and reactions of the individual as such, which are, as we have seen, one of the main sources for the un· predictability of social causation. On the other hand, military discipline comtitutes an attempt at reducing illrlivirlual actions and reactions as such to statistical avcrages, allowing a degree of certainty in prediction to which, as a rule, only the natural sciences can lay claim. History abounds in instances in which the absence of one or another of these fl'l.ctors frustrated thc military plall. Orders may be wrongly transmitted, misunderstood, or not carried out, as on the Russian side in the Battle of Warsaw in 1920. The enemy may fail to do something the other side expected him to do, and vice versa, which explains largely the defeat of the Confederates in the 13attle of Gettysburg. In 1944, after the Allied armies had landed in Normandy, the German general Von Kluge arranged -to meet Allied representatives in order to surrender his army. It so happened that im~ mediately before the appointed time the road on which the Allied representatives were to travel was bombed by Allied planes, and, being late, the Allied representatives xnissed the German general and the surrender did not take pl~ce. The losses on either side in prisoners, wounded, and

THE CHIMERA OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES

'-dead, as well as in materiel, may exceed or fall short of expectations. The psychological mfluence of such losses upon the armies and civil populations is an important, yet un~ predictable, factor in aU battles and wars. J A natural cata~ strophe, such as the storm which scattered the Spanish Armada in 1588, may decide the battle. In modern times, a small and incalculable difference in industrial productlOn, technical progress, or speed and reliability of transportation may make the difference between victory and defeat. It is in recognition of those elements of extreme insecurity, inherent in planning for war, that we refer to .xvar as_ a "gambl<:" and that we speak of the" fortunes" and the" goddess" of war. A navy strategist is quoted as having said during the last war: , "We can plan up to a point. We have certain theories we go i by. After that there is the Jesus factor-the unpredictable." Why, then, is it that governments and general staffs plan for war at all? Since the chances of success for execution are so small, will it not do more harm than good to rely upon a plan for guidance in action? This question must be answered in the affirmative if we attribute to milital y planning the functions of the rationalistic blueprint. And what is true with respect to planning for war holds true to a lesser degree for social planning of any kind. Very rarely, if ever, are the social planners justified in saying, "We planned it that way." The good that results fl.·om the execution of theil' plans is generally not the good they anticipated, and the evil that comes from their plans is either not the one anticipated or is not anticipated at all. The purer the intention and the more comprehensive the plan. the wider will be the gap between expected and actual result. This cannot be otherwise, since the more "planned," that is, the more abstract and logically coherent the plan is, the greater will be its incongruity with the con~ tingencies of social life. History abounds with examples bearing out this analysis. ! One might well write a history of the world in terms of plans j which brought about results different from those intended. Let us take at random one of the most important events in Anglo-American legal history, the Statute of Uses which was enacted in 1535 in the reign of Henry VIII. It has dominated

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the law of real property of the English-speaking peoples for' almost four hundled years. Henry VIII intended the Statute of Uses to have four permanent effects: the restoration of the royal revenues, ~he restoration of publicity of conveyancing, the abolition of the devise of land, and the suppression of the passive use. All these effects had disappeared within periods ranging from five years to a little over a century. On the other hand, the statute had the never intended effect of revolutionizing the law of conveyancing and of drawing the whole law of real property into a confusion from which it has not yet emerged although the Statute was repealed in 1925. Harold Greville Hanbury thus summarizes the relation t between planned and actual effects of the Statute: "One set of effects was temporary and transitory, which the framers intended should be permanent and abiding; whIle the other set became permanent and abiding, which the framers never intended should emerge at all, or on which, in all probability, their minds had never dwelt." This criticism of social planning, as derived from rationalistic Ihilosophy, is, however, not the last word on social planning .8 such. The contingent character of social reality embraces only one particular aspect ofsocial life. Social life is contingent, but it is more than that. Its contingencies arc not mere chaos but follow each other with a certain regularity and are subject to a certain order. What to the contemporaneous observer seems to be mere chance-" a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. signifying nothing"-appears in retrospect as a meaningful process, governed, if not by necessity, at least by certain objective laws. It is only under this last assumption that the very idea of a science of history can be conceived at all. If life in society were completely contingent and irregular, only religion and philosophy would be able to give meaning and order to the historic past. This is, indeed, the opinion of those who find that whatever meaning and order there is in history is only the reflection of the historian's own mind. Yet, even to the contemporaneous observer, the contingencies of the present and of the future array themselves in a limited number of tvnical patterns. An historical situation always contains only

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">a limited number of potentialities into which it might develop. The German sltuation in 1932, for instance, contained essentially three such germinal developments: parliamentary democracy, mIlitary dictatorship, and nazijsm. WhIch one of these three possibilitIes would finally materialize depended upon the contmgent elements of the sItuation and therefore could not be foreseen. It was, however, inevitable that one of those three possIbIlities should occur. Within each of those general bends, a limited number of possIble patterns of a more specific nature were again discernible. Under the assumption, for instance, that the potentiality of nazi-ism would materialize, one of three possIble developments could be anticipated: conservative mIlitarism, social revolution, totalitarian party dictatorship. On lower levels of specialization, simIlarly limited patterns of future developments present themselves. Thus, one would, for instance, find a limited number of possible trends in NatlOnal Socialist foreign, economic, labour, or leligious policies at any state of the historic development. The same method of analysis, which perceives history from the point of view of a limited number of potential trends, applies to any other political or social problem at any period of history, be it Napoleon's military policy in 1812, the political problems of the Danubian Basin in 1919, the constitutional and military problems ofIndia in 1946, the outcome of a lawsuit, or the pohtical, military, and economic problems of world peace in an indefinite future. Ultimately, the whole future of the social world appears to the analytical mind as a highly complicated combination of numerous systems of multiple choices which in turn are strictly limited in number. The element of irrationality, insecurity, and chance lies in the necessity of choice among several possibilities multiplied by the great number of systems of multiple choice. The element of rationality, order, and regularity lies in the limited number of possible choices within each system of multiple choice. Viewed with the guidance of a rationalistic, blueprinted map, the social world is, indeed, a chaos of contingencies. Yet it is not devoid of a measure of rationality if approached with the expectations of Macbethian cynicism.

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It is this measure of rationality inherent in the social, world, which gives social plannmg its meaning and justification. Since this rationality consIsts in a limIted number of potential trends, one of which is bound to materialize, social planning, correctly undelstood, is the marshalling of human and material forces in rational anticipation of those potential trends. It will be the more successful, the more it is able either to contIol or to disregard individual actions and reactions as such and to operate instead with statistical averages. Hence military planning will be the more successful, the more its success depends upon the actions and reactions of the planners' own well-disciplined army. The success of economic planning in the domestic field will be proportionate to the degree in which the execution of the plan depends upon the typical actions and reactions of great numbels of people which can be foreseen with a high degree of statistical probability. International planning, in a democracy at least, must take into account not only the individual actions and reactions, as such, offoreigne-rs, e.g., statesmen, diplomats, politicians, and others, but also of ~imilarIy placed members of the planner'b own group; and it lacks therefore a degree of certainty upon which even military planning call usually rely. Social planning, thus understood, is able to provide- 1101. the one correct solution for all the problems of social life but a series of alternative and hypothetical patterns) one of which will supply the rational foundation for an approximate solution of a specific social problem. The planning of an expectant mother for the advent of either a boyar a girl is an extremely simple and primitive example of this kind of social planning. The general staff's preparation for" every eventuality" refers to the same kind of alternative planning for a limited number of potentialities. Wherever planning has been successful, it has followed this pattern. It is for this very reason that military strategy is one in which the legitimacy of social planning is undisputed. It is for the same reason that social planning has been unsuccessful whenever it has emulated the nat1,tral sciences, following in its analysis of reality tb,e "method of the single cause" and in its constructive endeavours the universal blueprints of rationalist philosophy.

OHAPTER

VI

THE IRRATIONALITY OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

Wr. H1\VE tried to show in the preceding chapter that the modern faith in science is founded upon three misconceptions of rationalist philosophy; the misunderstandmg of the nature of man; of the nature of the world, especially the social world; and, finally, of the nature of reason itself. We have now to ask what the actual relation of reason is, on the one hand, to the irrational faculties of man and, on the other, to the social world. The reason of rationalism is a goddess enthroned immovably over man and things. She is today what she has always been and always will be, identical with herself regardless of time and place. She is the sole guide of men. Above other motivating forces, whenever they arc recognized, she governs in splendid isolation and with assurance of final victory. Thus the entire task of man reduces itself to exhausting, in thought and action, the logical possibilities of rational premises. The Irrational Determination of Reason We know that this picture bears no semblance to reality as revealed by modern epistemology, psychology, and sociology of knowledge. Yet long before this modern intellectual develop. ment took place, solitary voices were raised in protest against this rationalistic superstition. Aristotle anticipated this modern problem, as so many others, when he remarked in the Bicomache4n Ethics: "Intellect itself, however, moves nothing." When rationalism was reaping its philosophic triumphs, Hume could say: "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." From this conception, Hume concluded: HAnd as reasoning is not the source, whence I33

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either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect that-i' any logic which speaks 110t to the affections will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles." William James put the same thoug~ in a negative way: "Reason is one of the feeblest of nature's forces, if you take it at only one spot and moment. . . . Appealing to reason as we do, we are in a sort of forlorn-hope situation, like a small sandbank in the midst of a hungry sea ready to wash it out of existence." Reason, far from following its own inherent impulses, is driven towards its goals by the irrational forces the ends of which it serves. Even when we speak of "the pure reason of the natural scientist," we cannot mean a reason divorced from the irrational forces determining human behaviour but only a reason whose cognitive relation to its object is not influenced by its irrational determination. Where reason reigns, it does so owing to irrational forces pressing for this extension of its reign. Clamouring for reason to extend its dominion over all human affairs and expecting it to reach this goal by its own inner force is the most futile, yet most conspicuous, social practice of the age. "Ifirralionality is to be stlbdued to empirical rationality," wrltj':s Charles A. Beard in The Nature of the Social Sciences, ,/ then it will come as the result of purpose and will, of choices, made with reference to the conceptions of desirability. It will not come from the neutral observation of objective data." Reason is like a light which by its own inner force can move nowhere. It must be carried in order to move. It is carried by the irrational forces of interest and emotion to where those forces want it to move, regardless of what the inner logic of abstract reason would l'equire. To trust in reason pure and simple is to leave the field to the stronger irrational forces 'which reason will serve. The triumph of reason is, in truth, the triumph of irrational forces which succeed in using the processes ofreason to satisfy themselves. Those interests and emotional preferences are perhaps not a priori in the same sense in which philosophers like to think of the c<\.tegories of our reasoning as <\. priori. But they are <\. priori with respect to the processes of reason which we apply tp t~e social sphere. In other words, those interests and .

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'''IIllotions are already determined when we start using our reasoning powers in the social sphere; and only within the framework of this determination are we able to use those powers at all. Even when we seem to have anJ-nner experience of reason deciding a conflict between interests and emotions which struggle for dominance within ourselves, we experience in truth the victory of the stronger interests and emotions, which at once lay hold of our reasoning facuIties in order to justify themselves before the tribunal of reason. For even though man is dominated by interests and driven by emotional impulses, as well as motivated by reason, he likes to see himself primarily in the light of this latter, eminently human quality. Hence, he gives his irrational qualities the earmarks of reason. What we call" ideology" is the result of this process of rationalization. "It is not for want of admirable doctrine," exclaims Shelley in the Defence of Poetry, "that men hate and despise and censor and deceive, and subjugate one another." Such is the normal function of reason in the social world, resulting from the normal relationship between reason and the irrational forces dominating human action. Experience, ,..however, confronts us with two extreme situations where this normal relationship is reversed, and, hence) reason fulfils a different social function. Whcl"eas, normally, reason functions as the handmaiden of irrational impulses, showing them the path towards their goal, those irrational impulses, interests or emotions, may be· come so powerful that they refuse to be led by reason and choose for themselves the road they want to travel. Whereas, normally, reason functions as means to an end chosen by nonrational impulses, the latter, in the blindness of passion, may scorn the counsel of reason and determine, to their own satisfaction, ends and means alike. When, thus, passion shakes off the control of reason and man becomes a predominantly irrational being, he may still reach his goal by a mere coincidence between the commands of reason and the steps passion dictates, or he may fail and in his failure destroy himself. The hybris of Greek and Sha.kespearean tragedy, the want of moderation in Alexander, Napoleon, and Hitler, are instances of such an extreme and exceptional situation.

SOIENTIFIC :MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

While here interest and emotion overwhelm reason, 1111'" other extreme shows reason pent~trating the domain of the irrational impulses. The conformity with, and hence the realization of, reR:son may become the main concern of interest and emotion. The irrational impulses may follow the lead of reason and not only with respect to means but also to ends. The irrational sphere may thus become a mere adjunct of reason, the motor which drives reason towards its proper ends. In human beings such as Hamlet and the ivory-tower artist and scholar, this type of man finds his historic concretization. Yet, since this concretization takes place in an environment dominated by passion and not by fully rationalized impulses, this type of man is bound either to fail, like Hamlet, when he goes out to meet the irrational forces on their own ground, or else to preserve his precarious existence in the insulation of the ivory tower. In either case, it is not his will that determines the course of events in the social world. Rationalism and liberalism, in their very intellectual essence and inhercnt inability to cope with the irrational realities of life, belong to this latter type. Ii was a German writer, Heinrich Boerne, who, despairing- of the rationalistic blindness of liberal policies, wrot.e a melancholy comment on the defeated liberal revolution of 1848 with the significant title Germa'!Y Is Hamlet and Hamlet Is GermallY. He who sees man and world dominated throughout by reason is bound to fail no less than he for whom the meaning oflife exhau&ts itself in the struggle of irrational forces. As Samuel Buller put it: "Reason uncorrected by instinct is as bad as instinct uncorrected by reason."

The Role of Reason in the Social World Reason eJ;:ercises, however, permanent cont.rol over the irrational tendencies of human interests and emotions in four respects. Here the findings of the natural sciences and, more generally, the accumulated heritage of rational experience are put at the service of the individual's survival, growth, and sqcialobjectives. Reason fulfils a fourfold harmonizing function for human action. It tenqs towards creating harmony

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'...among several conflicting irrational impulses. It brings ends and means into harmony with irrational impulses. It establishes harmony among several conflicting ends. It brings r} means into harmony with ends. If several incompatible irrational impulses compete for dominance over action, reason will support the one most favourable to the survival, the growth, and the socially approved interests of the individuaL-If an irrational urge has a choice among different objectives, the actual selection is normally controlled by reason, that is, that objective will be chosen which is compatible with other ends already chosen, which is within the reach of technical realization, and which at the same time promises, both during the process of realization and as consummated goal, the highest degree of satisfaction. If, the objective having been selected, several roads seem to be leading towards it, reason will normally choose the one easiesL to travel and at the same time promising the highest degree of satisfaction. In other words, moved by an irrational impulse, reason will normally select the objective from among a group of potential objectives all lying within the sphere of interest of the irrational impulse. Reason will further select the technique by which the objective is to be attained from among a group of potential techniques all equally acceptable to the irrational impulse. Yet even here the limitation of rational choice should be noted. There may be objectives and techniques much more attractive from the standpoint of reason than those actually chosen. Since irrational determinf1.tion does not include them in the group of possible choices, they are, under the circumstances, inaccessible to reason. Thus, to analyse one example among many, the production and distribution of aluminium, its merchandising, economic and social uses, may follow the laws of abstract reason within the irrational limitations of culture and individual preferences; for the interests and emotional urges making for the pro~ duction and use of aluminium are in these respects in agree~ ment with each other as well as with reason. The picture, however, changes completely when it comes to answering the question: Who shall produce aluminium? One private

SCIENTIFIC MAN us. POWeR POLITICS

company? Several privat.e companies? Plivately and publicl).. " owned companies together? One publicly owned company? Or perhaps no company at all but independent entrepreneurs who are ownel'~ and managers at the same time? Here abstract reason is found wanting. For the question, "Who shall produce aluminium?" is itself capable of different interpretations according to the interest or emotion which seeks satisfaction. One may interpret the question to mean that whoever is able to produce the best and least expensive aluminium shall produce It and may then by a mere process of abstract reasoning, arrive at a conclusion which is valid from the point of view of the given premise. Yet one may also start with the premise that whoever is able to produce the greatest quantity of aluminium, regardless of quality and cost, shall produce it; and the answer to our question may differ correspondingly. One may furthermore require that only producers of aluminium who can make use of existing water power shall stay in business, and the answer to our question will differ again. Others may quahfy the question under the point of view of private vs. public enterplise, capitalism vs. socialism, corporate VB. individual ownership, monopoly vs. competition, private vs. public interest, and so forth; and in each parLicuiar instance the use of the same reasoning powers will produce a different answer. Rea.son has not one anSWer to the question, "Who shall produce aluminium?" It has as many answers to offer as there are conflicting interests and emotions striving for different ends. It can easily be seen that our question is but typical and rather too simple than too complicated an example of a social problem. What we have found with respect to the relation be~ tween this question ancl reason holds true therefore for reason as applied to social problems in general. Between the abstract reason of rationalism and the social problems to be solved by it there is a gap which rationalism~ conceiving the social after ihe model of the physical world, refuses to see. Ration~ alism starts with the assumption that society confronts us with problems which seem to evade scientific solution because we do lrlot apply to them the same measure ofreason we are wont to apply to the problems of physical nature. In the physical

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"'Iforld, mere logical deduction seems to lead from the rational premises directly and without qualification to practical conclusions. The same law of gravitation applies, regardless of time and space and the individual characteristics of its object; by knowing it, we know all that is ntcessary to foretell the course of events and to influence it through rational action. ThIs seemingly unproblematical relation between reason and nature is actually due not to intrinsic qualities of reason and nature but to eel tain historical and socml conditions. History and the sociology of science have shown how this seemingly spontaneous conquest of nature by reason was actually stimulated by the emotional upheaval which followed the coUapse of medieval metaphysics and religion and by new economic and social interests. Reason could expand its dominion over nature according to its own inherent laws only because, on the one hand, those emotional forces found in scientific truth a substitute for the lost paradlse of metaphysics and religion and because, on the other hand, those economlC and social interests find satisfaction only through the domination of nature by man. In other words, the triumph of "pure" reason over nature was but a historical coincidence and not a necessary stage in the ever progressing expansion ofreason. Furthermore, the universality of the laws of nature is recognized only because and in So far as universally held interests and emotions are driving reason towards the discovery and application of these laws. The interest in the discovery of the physical laws underlying the construction of the aeroplane is independent of social conditions peculiar to a particular time and space. Yet powerful interests and emotions have at times prevented the universal recognition of the laws of planetary movements and are still preventing universal recognition of the law of evolution. Irrational forces controlling the rationalfaculties oflarge groups of men have opposed there cognition ofthe law of relativity, of the laws underlying immunization and other medical devices. What appears as reason to one group of men is here condemned as unreason by others. Thus irrational determination of leason appears in the domain of the natural sciences to be an exception, operating in our civilization only upon marginal groups and within limited

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areas of scientific endeavour. Its operation throughout is nq;c' recognized as such since by and large the irrational drive towards cognition is here motivated, regardless of time and place, by interestS and emotions shared by all. In the social sphere, however, the laWb of abstract reason are always meaningless unless they are supplemented by the individual data of the particular situation to which they refer. Socially useful reason is socially determined reason. Social science is scientific only under certain premises whose universal acceptance it presupposes but never achieves. In the natural sciences, the universal acceptance of these premises is not a supposition but, at least within vel'y broad limits, a fact; for whatever their ulterior purposes, men searching for the truth in physical nature approach the object of their investigation wilh the same immediate motives and interests, assumptions and methods. Searching for the cause of cancer, different men may be moved by different ulterior purposes, such as curiosity, ambition, humanitarianism, increase in population, eugenics, economics. Yet these motives and purposes do not affect their relation to the medical problem at hand, their assumptions about the nature of the problem, the methods to be used, and the results lo be achieved. In the social sciences, the social conditions determine not only the ulterior purpose but also the object of inquiry, the investigator's relation to it, his assumptions, methods, and immediate aims. In all societies certain social problems cannot be investigated at all, or only at the risk of jeopardizing life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. The basic philosophic assumptions by which a society lives, such as Marxism in Russia, racial inequality in certain regions of the United States, the profit motive and free enterprise in capital~ istic societies, are gem'rally not subjected to critical analysis by the members of these societies. In all societies certain results are beyond the reach of scientific inquiry, or again they can be reached only at grave risks. No Russian economist is likely to arrive publicly at the conclusion that capitalism is superior to communism, nor is an American professor of economics likely to maintain the re",er~e position. Russian political scientists will consider as

THE IRRATIONALITY OF SCIENTIFIC MAN ~cientifically

true the statement that capitalism means waI; socialism, peace; while political scientists in other countries, mindful of the theol y and practice of communist world revolution, will not share this view. Social scientists in monogamic societies do not teach that polygamy is the ideal system of marriage, and the social scientists of a scientific civilization such as ours emphasize the certainties of science rather than it~ dilemmas. What is true of the results of scientific investigation is also true with regard to certain methods of inquiry. In our civilization, the experimental method cannot be applied to religion or sex relations; psychoanalysis and the materialistic interpretation of individual or group actions are not respectable methods of research. The ostracized objects, results, and methods of inquiry differ from society to society yet all societies limit the social sciences in this respect. To these limitations all social scientists within a particular society are equally subject. Each social scientist is, however, also limited in his research by his membership in religious, political, social, and economic groups, which in turn will protect their particular taboos from analytical investigation and the concomitant risk of destruction. The value which a particular group puts upon a certain "truth" which is not to be questioned determines the degree of risk which the investigator runs who sets out to question the " truth " never~ theless. The obsolescence of states' rights will hardly be demonstrated by a member of a state university or the superiority of margarine over butter by a member of an agricultural college. Sunday schools do not consider the social and political implications of religion a proper topic for discussion, nor are Communists yet ready to proclaim Marxism a new religion rather than a science. On the other hand, all societies and all particular groups within a society develop an hierarchy of preferences relative to certain objects, methods, and results of research in the social sciences. The premium of social approval and material advantages will stimulate certain investigations, their absence or relative unimportance will discourage others. While this social determination of scientific investigation is to be found to

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a lesser degree also in the natural sciences, it is there limited'" to stimulation and discouragement according to the recognized degree of social usefulness. It docs not l as a rule, affect the judgment as to we scientific character of the investigation. This conclusion is, however, common in the social sciences. Social research which stands low in the esteem of a pat ticular group or society will be classified as "propaganda/' "meta~ physics," "collection of data," "theory," "ideology," "description," "useless," "vocational," as the case may be; and its scientific value will thus be denied or at least minimized. These social forces exert their influence upon the mind of the social scientists. It is, therefore, in the "personal equation" of the social scientist that the social determination of the objects, methods, and results of social research becomes actual. The mind of the social scientist is the meeting place of all the pressures emanating from particular groups and society as a whole, and his own reaction to thme pressures will determine the objects, methods, and results of his scientific investigation. This reaction, in turn, is the outgrowth of all the biologIcal and psychological factors which have made the social scientist a distinct human personality. These factors are not of his choosing, they ate not. of his making at all. They are the result of hereditary influences and social experknce. Since he cannot choose these influences and experiences, he cnnnot choose his social interests and emotional attitudes. These interests and emotions may indeed change. Here, again, change is, however, not the product of a conscious choice, let alone a rational choice, but of a new social experience which transforms man as a social being. The irrationality of these social pressures to which the social scientist is subject enters into a contest with the irrationality of his social personality. From this contest emel'ges a decision as to what his social science will be like. It is this decision which manifests itself in the conscience of the scientist as a moral choice between two extreme alternatives: the sacrifice of truth to the pressures of society, or the risk of earthly g?ods foJ;' the sake of searching for, and telling, the whole truth. Few will decide for the former alternative, fewer still will 'choose the latter. The great majority of soci<\.l scientists

THE IRRATIONALITY OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

,will try to satisfy society and scientific conscience at the same time. They will remain within the limits of scientific endeavour which society has marked out as safe; and their intellectual courage or lack of it will be measured according to whether they exhaust these limits and advance to fhe signposts which read, "Stop Or advance at your own risk," or whether, fearful even to approach these limits, they conceive of their sphere of investigation more narrowly than even the social limitations would require. In any case, the truth of the social sciences will be less than the whole truth. How much and what part of the whole truth it will be is determined not by the scholar's intellectual ability to recognize the truth but by his moral willingness to know what he is able to know and to tell what he knows. The ultimate decisions which confront the scientific mind are not intellectual but moral in nature. According to Benjamin Farrington, "To he an uncompromising public champion of the conclusions of science is to be a politician, in the widest and noblest sense." When he decides to what extent he will yield to social pressures in selectmg the objects, methods and results of his inquiry, the scholar makes a moral decision. When he selects from among thc "safe" objects, methods, and results, those which he deems significant and hence worthy of scientific attention, he again applies a moral standard which transcends the confines of scientific investigation. The greatness of the scholar does not alone depend upon his ability to distinguish between true and false. His great. ness reveals itself above all in his ability and determination to select from among all the truths which can be known those which ought to be known. He who can do no more than discern truth from falsehood, errs even where he knows; for he does not know which knowledge is needed and which can be dispensed with. By making this distinction or by failing to make it, the scholar, by implication, reveals the moral standards which guide him, or their absence. A system of morally determined scientific knowledge presents a picture of the world which to know is significant and in which to orient one's self is necessary. Scientific knowledge, thus can· ceived, carries with it a moral evaluation to which it owes its

SCmNTIli'IC MAN us. POWER I'OLI'rIOb

very existence. Since, however, this moral decision, too . . . grows out from the personal equation of the socictl scientist and pultakes of ils irrational natUlc, the rationality of the scientific mind and its claim to universality are here subject to yet another qualiftcation. 'The presupposition of universality which the social sciences borrow from the natural ones, then, not only does not strengthen the scientific character of the former but tends to impair it. It does not strengthen it, for the ill'ational deter. mination of the social sciences is incompatible with their universality. Their claim to universality, however, is actually detrimental to their scientific claim, since it obliterates the social and moral determination by which all social science is qualified. It is only through the recognition of this social and moral determination that social science is possible at all. A social science which refuses to recognize this determination and clings to the illusion of universality destroys through this very attitude its only chance for scientific achievement. The truth of the social sciences then, is truth only under the pal'. ticular perspective of the observer, yet under this perspective it is truth. And this is the only kind of truth to be had in the social sphere. Whoever seeks more will get less. For without aWllreness of their social and moral determination, reason and science become empty ideological justifications which any social agent may invoke in his own behalf: Whai in the social sphere seems to be reasonable to one questioner from his point of view is then deemed unreasonable by another from his premises. Truth itself becomes relative to social interests and emotions. Social science, so called, takes over the hetitage of the political philosophies and metaphysical systems of times past. Scientific schools become :religious sects, fighting each other in the name of the fu.ll social truth which each claims to possess, or they are transformed into political parties, each offering its pro· gramme with an absolute claim to acceptance and thus inteUectually preparing for civil and internf1.tional war. And the appeal to reason, ever and ever repeated and never suoc¢~ding, only serves to symbolize the impotence of the scientific.mind confrontin,g the problems of social life.

OHAPTER

VI!

THE MORAL BLINDNESS OF SCIENTIFIC MAN of science misunderstands the nature of man in that it attributes to man's reason, in its relation to the social world, a power of knowledge and control which reason does not have. It misunderstands the nature of man in yet another respect; for it does not see the understanding, and action according to understanding, is not the only dimension in which man faces the social world. Not only does man try to know what the social world is about and to act accOlding to his knowledge, he also reflects and renders judgments on its nature and value and on the nature and value of his social actions and of his existence in society. In brief, man is also a moral being. It is this side of man which the age of science has obscured and distorted, if not obliterated, by trying to reduce moral problems to scientific propositions. Man is a political animal by nalure; he is a scientist by chance or choice; he is a moralist because he is a man. Man is born to seek power, yet his actual condition makes him a slave to the power of others. Man is born a slave, but every~ where he wahts to be a master. Out of this discord between man's desire and his actual condition arises the moral issue of power, that is, the problem of justifying and limiting the power which man has over man. Hence, the history of political thought is the history of the moral evaluation of political power, and the scientism of Machiavelli and Hobbes is, in the history of mankind, merely an accident without consequences, a sudden flash of lightning Uluminating the dark landscape of man's hidden motives but kindling no Promethean fire for a grateful posterity. Even when mankind seem!! to be pre" occupied with the science of man's political nature and con" siders ethics either as an empirical science or considers it not at all, the moral issues raise their voices and demand an THE AGE

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answer. The answers, like the questions, arc ll1umbltl'1, ambiguous, and distorted when scientific prejudices do not allow the moral problems to be seen in their true light and the answelS to be given in their true relation to the questions. Thus it remain~ for every age, and particularly a scientific one, to rediscover and reformulate the perennial problems of political ethics and to answer them in the light of the experience of the age.

The Science of Ethics According to the prevailing school of thought, the aim of moral action is the attainment of the greatest amount of human satisfaction. Moral action itself is the result of a conscious weighing of anticipated advantages and disadvantages connected with certain actions. Moral conflict, then, is at best a rational doubt as to which of two alternatives action is more appropriate to the desired result. Ethics, anticipating through l'ational calculation the relation of certain meal,s to cerLain ends, becomes indistinguishable from science; and moral and successful action are one and the same thing. Goel, then, is always with the stronger battalions, with the party who wins the elections, and With the biggesL bank uccounLs. Lack of success, on the other hand, testiJics to ethical inferiority, which catries with it defeat in war, politics, and business as just rewards. Action falling short of the ethical ideal thus conceived in terms of perfect social adaptation is attributed to ignorance or to lack of experience. Consequently, the remedy is found in education and training for "social living in a changing world." Propaganda replaces moral philosophy, and it is only consistent that in the curricuhun of our institutions of higher learning propaganda analYSIs takes the place of moral philosophy. Verbal allegrance to the non-utilitarian ethical standards of the Hebrew-Christian tradition is still paid in form of moral exhortation from secular and ecclesiastical pUlpits. But either this allegiance has become a ritualistic tribute to empty symbols which are no longer expected to guide human action or the practical results of utilitarian ethicS and the postulates of traditional ethics are supposed to beidentical; consequently, by practising the one and preaching

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tl:ote other, the identity of the two ethical systems will actually be reaffirmed and the harmony between ethical standards and human action the more firmly established. The modern mind, however, cannot beiJ unaware of the existence of ethical conflicts which are solved in defiance of utilitarian standards. Great literature is a monument to such solutions, and under extreme conditions even modern man act~ in accordance with traditional ethics and against hIS own "better" lmowledge. Yet, when he becomes aware of this' contrast between the acknowledged standalds of utilitarian ethics and his own ethical experience, he will resort to one of two extremes. He will either dismiss his ethical experience as a psychological oddity, a queer deviation from the utilitarian norm, or he will forswear the utilitarian standards and with them thc empirical conditions of human conduct altogether and retire into the realm of pure thought, that is, of perfec" tionist ethics. Of the former reaction, Douglas Bush gives a striking example taken from a Freshman class at Harvard. "Three members of it chose to write reports on Lord Jim. Conrad's hero, you willl'emembel', was a young ship's officer who, caught in a crisis for which he was unprepared, saved his own life by abandoning the ship when it waq supposedly sinking with a crowd of native passengers; haunted thereafter, wherever he went, by the fact of his cowardice and the notoriety of his trial, he finally, in another crisis, put the seal upon his inward rehabilitation by the deliberate sacrifice of his life to his honour. Well, two of my three young men, normal, decent, well-disposed young men, were quite unsympathetic toward the idea of a man's being tortured by the loss of his integrity and self-respect. Why, they asked, wasn't Jim 'realistic/ why didn't he forget the whole business and go his way and enjoy life? . . . One wonders how many young men would carry that 'realistic' attitude into private and public and jnternational obligations, how many take the chief end oflife to be self-centred and untroubled prosperity." Where utilitarian "realism" does not do away with the moral problem altogether but leaves at least the awareness of, and the uneasiness at, its e:1cistence alive, education and other techniques of applied psychology will aid the individual to

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l)OWER POLII'lOS

adapt himself to his social cllviIorun('nl; for moral scruplt;s and conflicts of conscience are rcgmded as a kind of psychotic condition arising from a conflict between the individual and his social environment. Thus, Alfred Adler envisages, as the result of universttl psycho-analytical tlcatment, a completely "healthy" society, whose mcmbeu:l, freed from the emotional disturbances produced by the Plcoccupation with problems of ethics, will forever live in peace with themselves and with one another.

Perfectionism The contrast between the ethical consequences of utilitarian philosophy and traditional ethics is thus overcome by treating the vestiges of the latter as a psychological aberration and the former as symptoms of a state of ethical health to be fully realized by the complete elimination of the latter. Ethics as an applied social science plOvides here the solution of the ethical problem; it is only the misguided adhel'cnce to traditional ethics which slands in the way of its full realization. While here the contrast between the ethical theory and practice of the age and traditional ethics is resolved by postulating the exclusiveness of the former and eliminating the laiter, the /:lame result of an apparent solution of the ethical problem can be achieved by the reverse procedure of erecting the principles of traditional ethics into an abstmct, logically coherent system of thought which is supposed to reflect faithfully the ethical demands" of reason. Such was indeed the original solution of rationalism before the utilitarian scientism of the nineteenth century took over the heritage of rationalist philosophy. Since, however, reality is dominated by forces which are indifferent, if not actively hostile, to the commands of reason, an unbridgeable chasm must permanently separate the rules of rationalist ethics from the human reality. The ethical theory and practice of rationalism, in its perfectionist manifes. tation at least, does not recognize the permanency and inevit<\,bility of this chasm. It believes that the reluctance of l'f;lality to conform to the ethical commallds of reason is due to lack of information and to moral inertia. Education ant;!.

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qJ.oral exhortation will in due course of time overcome these obstacles, and it is nothing but the cumulative effect of the quantity and intensity of these intellectual influences which will finally bring about the desired result. Of this belief in the power of a perf{!ctionist ethics to transform the actions of men by its rational force alone, the Wilsonian approach is the outstanding example in modem politics. This belief is, however, not limited to political life. It manifests itself typically in contemporary religion, especially in what is called liberal Protestantism, but also, and most typically, in modern Catholicism, which, although opposed to liberalism as a political philosophy, cannot escape, at least in its evaluation of the contemporary scene, the impact of the spirit of the age. It might even be said that this belief, while on the political scene it is compelled from time to time to compromise and may even alternate with utilitarian expediency, in contemporary religion deVelops its full uncompromising consistency and perfectionism as well as, concomitant with these qualities, its three outstanding results: the incapacity for meaningful political action, the temptation to support the powers-that-be and to justify the status quo, and, consequently, the discredit of the systems of thought leading to such results. In view of the permanent discrepancy between the assump~ tions of perfectionist ethics and the actual conditions of human action, action in accordance with the former is possible only at the risk of irrelevance or of failure or of both. The con~ scientious objector is a case in point. He satisfies the norms of ethics which condemns participation in the irrationality of war. By doing so, he may set an example for others to emulate, but he does not do away with war nor does he even influence the incidence of war. If, by refusing to participate in war, this is his aim, he fails. If, on the other hand, his only aim is the realization of ethical perfection in his own person, he may have realized it. Yet its realization is completely irrelevant, if not actually discreditable. if the communal aim of the prevention of war is applied as a yardstick; for it may be regarded by those who are actively engaged in the political struggle for the prevention of war not only as an

SCIENTIFIC MAN vr. POWER POLITICS

individual demonstration necessarily empty of political resullll but also as a particular kind of personal selfishness which cultivates the peace of one's own conscience bought by abstention from meaningful political action. In view of the forces engaged for good or evil and of the ethical and political risks incurred in meaningful political action, the concern of the conscientious objector for the letter of the moral law seems incongruous, his abstention from meaningful political action for the sake of mar a! purity seems to miss the point. Only a small minority, regardless of what their ethical convictions are, will at any time be satisfied for the sake of their ethical convictions either not to act at all or to act irrclevantJy and ineffectually. The common run of men will either eJ!:change, permanently or temporarily, a system of ethics which imposes upon adherence to its commands the sacrifice of successful action for one compatible with such action. Of this, utilitarian ethics is the outstanding modern example. Or they will interpret whatever the lcttcr of the ethical norms may be so as not to make succes~ful action im~ possible. This attempt at overcoming the chasm between rationalist ethics and reality is exemplilled by certain types of organized religion as well as by all l.otalital,lan political philosophies from Hobbes and Hegel to modern dictatorship. In its extreme manifestation, organized religion glorifies government as a divine institULion and asserts the ethical value of its established order which appears sanctified by its divine origin. While hele the cleavage is o1Jlilerated by a reinterpretation of the political reality in the light of ethical principles, totalitarian phllosophy reformulates ethical principles to fit the political reality. The state as such is, if not the source, at least the manifestation of morality on earth, and whatever is done in the name of the state partakes of the ethical dignity emanating from it. Yet even when the desire to obliterate this cleavage does not go to the totalitarian extreme of identifying ethics and politics, there is still in our civilization a strong tendency to minimize whatever discrepancy might exist between the com~ tnand.s of ethics and the practices of politics. This is achieved either bYi calling attention to the commands of Christian

THE MORAL BLINDNESS OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

)15

1

e¢ics in their most general form without. reference to any concrete political situation or by bemoaning the sinfulness of the world in general, of which politics has its share. In either case, the specific problem of how to be successful in politics without violating the commands of ethics istrevaded either by not facing it at all or by not facing it in its specificness.

The Amoraliry of Politics Secular thought in Western civilization, in so far as it goes beyond mere utilitarianism, seeks in the main to avoid the pitfalls of perfectionist ethics, for it recognizes the chasm which separates political action and ethical standards. Nevertheless, it falls prey to another misunderstanding by setting the political sphere apart from the private one for purposes of ethical evaluation. This misunderstanding reveals itself in three fundamental attitudes: one proclaiming the permanent exemption of polit.ical action from ethical limitations; the second subjecting political action permanently to particular ethical standards, and the third, while recognizing the second alternative as a temporary fact, looking forward to the acceptance, in a not too distant future, of a universal ethical standard of which the private one is thought to be the model. The first attitude is connected with the names of Machiavelli and of Hobbes and is known in the history of ideas as "reason of state." According to it, the state is subject to no rule of conduct but the one whieh is dictated by its own self~ interest. Salus publica suprema lex. When the statesman is confronted with a choice between two actions, the one ethical, the other not, of which the latter has a better chance of bringing about the desired result, he must choose the latter. When he acts, however, in a private capacity, he, as any other private individual, must choose the former; for, while political action is free from ethical limitations, private action is subject to them. The individual as such is mora) by nature; political society is amoral, also by nature. The importance of this conception has been literary rather than practical. Mankind has at all times refused to forgo ethical evaluation of political action. Political philosophy

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from the Greeks to our time has started with the assumptiQn that man in the political sphere is not allowed to act as he pleases and that his action must conform to a standard higher than the standard of success. It has even made this conformity the test of legitimate political power, that is, authority as over against mere usurpation. As the lex Sa/ica pul it: "King thou wilt be if thou follow the law. If thou do not follow the law, thou wilt not be Idng." Political practice, in turn, takes the ethical evaluation of political action for granted. The actors on the political scene, however they may be guided by considerations of expediency, must pay their tribute to these standards by justifying their actions in ethical terms. Domestic measures enacted in the interest of special groups must be capable of interpretation in terms of the common good. The moves and countermoves in the struggle for political power must be intelligible as a dialectic movement towards the realization of justice. However devoid of positive ethical significance the individual political act may be, it is bound to be less than cornpletcly evil and can never be without any ethical significance at all; for the necessity of justifying it in ethical terms carries with it the obligation for even the most cynical of actors Lo choose his measures w that they, however evil, will coincide at least at some point, however limited and superficial, with the standards of ethics and thus will lend at least colour to the positive ethical claims. These claims may be false, but they cannot be completely and absolutely false, as long as the actor is concerned with the appearance of his act as just. The actor may subordinate all ethical considerations to the realization of his political goal; however, his act cannot be beyond good and evil, even not from his own point of view, as long as he makes the apparent harmony of his act with the ethical standards part of the goal to be realized. This curious dialectic of ethics and politics, which prevents the latter, in spite of itBelf~ from escaping the former's judg~ ment and normative direction, has its roots in the nature of mfl,n as both a political and a moral animal. Every ;man is the object of political domination and at the same time aspires towarqs exercising political domination OVer others. His back

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is bent under the political yoke, yet while he bends dotn he triust be aware of somebody, at least in his imagination, who bears the yoke on his behalf. Man is the victim of political power by necessity; he is a political master by aspiration. It is this aspiration which drives him toward ooscuring the fact of his political dependence and giving it an ethical justifica~ tion. Political domination, then, appears as a product of nature itself, which, as in Plato, is to be justified as a particular case of the division oflabour or to be explained, as in Aristotle, by thc natural inequality of men. Or it docs not appear as political domination at all by being presented as the applica. tion of an equalitarian principle, such as the social contract or the consent of the governed. The distinction between legitimate and illegitimate govern· ment fulfils a similar function of at least mitigating the fact of political domination, in the one case, and of demonstrating its intolerable injust.ice, in the other. Thus the people themselves make a distinction between a government which can demand and expect obedience and a tyrannical or usurped rule, which to resist is a right and may even become a duty. The ethical justification of revolution implies a negative ethical evaluation of the government against which the right to revolution is maintained. It is an ethical dhtinction which we make when we distinguish between a ruler and a tyrant, between a political leader and a political boss. It is a difference in ethical quality to which we refer when we put in different categories Alexander and Nero, Edward I and Richard III, Napoleon and Hitler. Whatever some philosophers may have asserted about the amorality of political action, philosophic tradition, historical judgment, and public opinion alike refuse to withhold ethical valuation from the political sphere.

The Dual Standard 'rhus, the main stream of modern thought refuses to de~ prive the political act of ethical significance altogether. In its positive contribution, the modern age reveals, however, its inability to understand and to solve the problem of political ethics with its own intellectual means. While the perfectionists

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as w"ll as the utilitarians and Machiavellians obscure Qr obliterate the problem, it is here fJ.ced; yet its solution' is founded upon the same misunderstanding of human nature and political society of which all political thinking typical of the age partakes .... The argument starts with the observation that man as an actor on the political scene docs certain things in violation of ethical principles, which he does not do, or at least not so frequently and habitually, when he acts in a private capacity. There, he lies, deceives, and betrays; and he does so quite often. Here he does so, if at all, only as an exception and under extraordinary circumstances. From this starting-point the argument leads to the conclusion that man acts differently in the political and in the private spheres because ethics allows him to act differently. In other. words, there is one ethics for the political sphere and there is another ethics for the private sphere, and the former allows hin;t to do certain things there which the latter does not allow him to do here. Political ac:;ts are subject to one ethical standard; private acts arc subject to another. What the latter condemns, the former may approve. "If we had done for ourselves/' exclaimed Oavour, "what we did for Italy, what scoundrels we would have beent" No civilization can be satisfied with such a dual morality; for through it the domain of politics is not only made morally inferior to the private sphere but this inferiority is recognized as legitimate and made respectable by a particular system of political ethics. Hence, the very age that conceived the problem of political ethics in terms of a dual morality has endeavoured either to overcome the duality of standards or to justify it in the light of a higher principle. The attempt at overcoming the cleavage between private and political morality starts with the assumption that the morality of the political sphere, viewed from the standards of individual ethics, is a residu~ from an immoral age which has been overcome in the individual sphere but still leads a ghostlike existence in the realm of politics. Political ethics, in Qther words, is in a retarded stage of development. The particul'at ethics of political action is the manifestation of what

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the sociologists call a "cultural lag." If this is so, the' the conclusion is inevitable that the forward march of civilization will sooner or later subject political action to the same moral standards by which private action is already judged. A deliberate effort at reform will bridge over; the gulf which still separates politi,:::al and private morality. Woodrow Wilson, in his address to Oongress on the declaration of war in 1917, thought that he could detect "the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states." Thus, this conception culminates in a perfectionist ethics which tries to solve the problem of political ethics by minimizing the conflict between ethical standards and political reality and by obscuring its intrinsic relation to the existence of man in society.

The End Justifies the Means It is on a higher level of insight that this cleavage is being recognized as inevitable yet justified in the light of a higher principle. Here harmony is sought not in the reality of actual behaviour but in ethical judgment. The harmony derives from the subordination of certain otherwise immoral acts as means to certain ends in whose moral value the former partake. Since we are under a moral obligation to realize these ends and since we cannot do so without using those in themselves immoral means, we are confronted with the dilemma either of renouncing the attainment of moral ends in order to avoid the evil of the means or of doing what would otherwise be evil in order to attain the good of the end. It is the latter alternative, we are told, that we have to choose. For as the means are subordinated functionally to the end, so they are ethically. A good end must be sought for and an evil end must be avoided-in both cases regardle&s of the means employed. The end taints the means employed for its attainment with its own ethical colour and thus justifies or condemns that which, considered by itself, would merit the opposite valuation.

SOIENTIFIO MAN vs. POWER POLITIOS

TIle end which, above all others, is considered to justify whatever means are employed in its behalf is the state as the repository of the common good. What a man would not be allowed to do for himself, that is, in behalf of his own limited interests as the "end of his action, he is allowed and even obligated t.o do when his act would further the welfare of the state and thus promote the common good. The action which would make him a scoundrel and a criminal there, will make him a hero and a statesman here. Cavour's statement, quoted above as an expression of dual morality, may be quoted here again; and the justification of means by ends, if limited to the political sphere, is indeed identical with, and only a particular manifestation of, the conception of a dual morality discussed above. Actually, however, the tendency to justify otherwise immoral actions by the ends they serve is universal. It is merely most conspicuous in politics. It has been said that there are just wars but no just armies. One might as well say that there are just foreign policies but no just diplomats. The particular discrepancy between ethics and political action and its quantitative dimension cannot escape our attention, and we are all vaguely aware of the problem when we read a dispatch such as the following: "Snapped Lady Astor; I When are you going to stop killing people?' Said Stalin: 'When it is no longer necessary.' To an English newspapcrM man who asked him about the millions of peasants who had died during the collectivization drive, Stalin aI)swered with the questions: 'How many died in tht:' Great War?' Over 7,500,000. Said Stalin: 'Over 7,500,000 deaths for no purpose at all. Then you :must acknowledge that our losses are small, because your war ended in chaos, while we arc engaged in a work which will benefit the whole of humanity.' " What is called the "ethics of capitalism" offers less striking, yet no less typical, examples of the same attempt at reCOIlciling action with ethics. They appear to us to be less striking only because they do not operate in a world seemingly different from our own and in dimensions which qualitatively and quantitatively transcend our own individual experience, bu.t are a familiar part of this very experience. The Puritan

THE MORAL ELINDNESS OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

identification of worldly success with virtue and '1Ivwe blessings is interpreted in such a way as to signify that the means employed on the road to success, whatever they may be, partake of the ethical dignity of the latter. The belief of laisser faire liberalism that the natural parmony of in~ terests, t.hat is, the common good in economic terms, results from the free interplay of the enlightened self-interest of individuals bestows upon individual egotism an ethical value which it would not possess apart from its subservience to the ethical goal of social harmony. The ethical life of the individual himself is a continued series of attempts to justify manifestations of individual egotism in terms of an ethically valuable goal and thus to prove that what has the appearance of egotism transcends actually the individual interest. The promotion of the latter is only incidental, an inevitable step towards the realization of a good of higher ethical value than the interests of any single individual. The harmony thus achieved between ethical standard and human action is, however, apparent rather than real, ambiguous rather than definite. In order to achieve it, one must weigh the immorality of the means against the ethical value of the cnd and establish a fixed relationship between them. This is impossible. One may argue from the point of view of a particular political philosophy, but one cannot prove from the point of view of universal and objective ethical standards that the good of the end ought to prevail over the evil of the means; for there is no objective standard by which to compare two kinds of happiness or of misery or the happiness of one man with the misery of another. That the welfare of one group is or is not too dearly paid for by the misery of another has always been asserted but has never been demonstrated. The analysis of the artificial and partial character of the end-means relation will make this clear. This relation is artificial and partial in a dual sense. On the one hand, the. welfare of the group, for the sake of which the welfare of another group is sacrificed, is an end with a positive ethical quality only for the members of that group and its apologists. The members and the apologists of the other group will look upon the welfare of the latter as the end which

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWr.R POLITICS, SOC1~\ty

ought to promote but actually sacrifices. What is the end for one group of pel sons is used as mcans by anotller, and vice versa. The means-end relation itself therefore has no objectivity and is relative to the social vantage point of the observer. I~ant and Marx havc declied the usc of man by man as a means to an end, plOclaiming the ethical maxim that every man be treated as an end in himself, and the disinherited have taken up the cry. Yet from Plato and Aristotle to Spencer and Hitler, philosophels and practitioners of government alike have maintained the claim that certain men are born to serve as means for the ends of others, and this claim the disinherited themselves support once they have risen to the top and then determine for themselves what is end and what is means. On the other hand, the end-means relation is ambiguous and relative also in that whatcver we call" means" in view of the end of a chain of actions is itself an end if we consider it as the final point of a chain of actions. Conversc!y, what we call" end" is a point at which a chain of actions is supposed to come to a stop, while it proceeds actually beyond it; in view of this" beyond," the end transforms itself into a means. All action is, therefore, at the same time means and end; and it is only by an arbitrary separation of a certain chain of actions from what pro cedes and follows it that we can attribute to certain actions the exclusive quality of means and end. Actually, however, the totality of human actions pre~ents itself as :it hierarchy of actions each of which is the end of the preceding and a means for the following. This hierarchy culminates in the ultimate goal of all human activity which is identical with the absolute good-be it God, humanity, the state, or the individual himself. This is the only end that is nothing but end and hence does not serve as a means to a further end. Viewed from this end, all human activity appears as means to the ultimate goal. In the last analysis, then, the doctrine that the ethical end justifies unethical means leads to the negation of absolute ethical judgments altogether. For if the ethical end justifies uhethical means, the ultimate and absolute good which all human activity serves as means to an end justifies all human

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actions. Among them there may be diflercnccs in dogree, the";:e can be none in kind. Whatever is done ad maJorem dei gloriam partakes of the sanctity of its ultimate goal. The harmony thus established between ethical norm and reality is indeed complete. However, the solution of the problem is again apparent rather than real. For the dilemma which disturbs the consciences of men and raises this problem in their minds concerns primarily not the relation between human action and the absolute good but the relation between human actions and limited objectives, the former presumably evil, the latter presumably good. The question which man is anxious to answer is therefore not, at least not within the context of an end-means discussion, how we can explain the apparently inevitable evilness of all human action in the light of the absolute good but how we can explain the apparently inevitable evilness of some, especially political, actions in the light of the relative good they are intended to serve. In the end-means doctrine, apparent moral unity between different kinds of actions is achieved, and the moral worth of political action is established in view of the end that the action serves. A similarly deceptive harmony and a false moral justification derive from the origin of the aClion, that is, the intention of the actor. The ethical worth of the action is here judged not by its results but by the intention of the actor. If the action re~ulted in evil, if it brought about war and death and misery for millions, the statesmen are not to blame, provided that their intentions were good. Since the intention of the acto!' is nothing but the end of the action as it is mirrored in the actor's mind, it is obvious that the recourse to the intention of the actor as unifying and justifying principle is only a reformulation of the end-means argument in reverse, which shares the latter's weakness. The!'e is, however, another criticism which applies specifically to the justification of political actions by the intention of the actor. A French proverb says that in politics there is one thing worse than a crime, and that is a blunder. In other words, the political actor has, beyond the general moral duties, a special moral responsibility to act wisely, that is, in accordance with the rules of the political art; and for him expediency

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bee mes a moral duty. The individual, acting on hi8 own behalf, Inay act unwisely without moralleplOrtch as lung as the consequences of his inexpedient action concell1 ollly himself. What is done in the political sphere by its very nature concerns others .who must suffer from unwise action. What is here clone with good intentions but unwisely and hence with disastrous results is morally defective; for it violates the ethics of responsibility to which all action affecting others, and hence political action par excellence, is subject. The recourse to good intentions as a unifying and justifying principle obscures this social relevance of political action, which, as such, interferes with the life of others in a way in which private action, as such, generally does not. The wellintentioned political dilettante may indeed work more evil than the ill-intentioned professional politician, and the test of good intention would destroy rather than clarify the ethical significance of their respective actions. "I do the very best/' said Abraham Lincoln, "I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amounllo anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing 1 was right would make no difference."

The Corruption oj Man It is the common mark of all these attempts al solving the problem of political ethics that they try to create a harmony which the facts do not warrant I either because there is no discord in the first place or because the existing discord is final. All these attempts start wilh the assumption that the individual sphere is ethically superior to politics. They ideali2;e the individual sphere and erect it into a model, if not of ethical perfection, at least of approximation to it. In contrast with it, political action appears sinister and evil and in need of being elevated to the ethical level of individual action. At the basis of this juxtaposition there is the optimistic belief in the intrinsic goodness of the rational individual and the pessimistic conviction that politics is the seat of all irrationality and evil. Ohe might note from the outset that the opposition between

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ID'ftn and society, individual and political nction, is DA"frlCre figure o[ speech in so [.tr as the individual actor is conli'onted with a collectivity which is supposed likewise to act. It is always the individual who acts, either with reference to his own ends alone or with reference to the on&s of others. The action of society, of the nation, or of any other collectivity, political or otherwise, as such has no empirical existence .1t all. What empirically exist aI c always the actions of individuals who perform identical or different actions with reference to a common end. The most that can be said concerning the moral character of a private, as over against a political, action is that an individual acting in 0ne capacity may be more or less moral than when acting in the other. Once the opposition between man and society, between private and political aCiion, is reduced to the opposition between different kinds of individual actions, it becomes obvious that the difference in moral character between the two kinds of actions is at best a relative one and is devoid of the absoluteness which contemporary doctrine attributes to it. The examination of the moral character of individual action) furthermore, shows that all action is, at least potenti~ ally, immot'al and that this hnmor,\1ity inherent. in all human action is to a higher degree and more obviously present in political than in private action, owing to the particular con~ ditiollS under which politicAl action pl'oc;eeds. The at least potential immorality of human action, regardless of the level on which it proceeds, becomes evident when we measure, not one action by another one (e.g., the political by the private) but all actions by the intention in which they originate. Such a comparison shows that our intentions are generally good, whereas the consequences of our actions generally are not. As soon as we leave the realm of our thoughts and aspirations, we are inevitably involved in sin and guilt. While our hand carries the good intent to what 8f"emS to be its consummation, the fruit of evil grows from the seed of noble thought. We want peace among nations and harmony among individuals, yet our actions end in conflict and war. We want to see all men free, but our actions put others in chains as others do to us. We believe in the t;:quality of all men) and our very

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER POLITICS

dema),ds on society make others unequal. Oedipus tricS..lo obviate the oracle's prophecy of future crimes and by doing so makes the fulfilment of the prophecy inevitable. Brutus' actions intend to preserve Roman liberty but bring about its destruction. Linl,oln's purpose is to make all Americans fi'ce, yet his actions destroy the lives of many and make the freedom of others a legal fiction and an actual mockery. Hamlet, aware of this tragic tension between the ethics of our minds and the ethics of our actions, resolves to act only when he Can act as ethically as his intention demands and thus despairs of acting at all, and, when he finally acts, his actions and fate are devoid of ethical meaning. "He who acts," Goethe remarks to Eckermann, "is always unjust; nobody is just but the one who reflects." The very act of acting destroys our moral integrity. Whoever wants to retain his moral innocence must forsake action altogether and, following Hamlet's advice to Ophelia, "go . . . to a nunnery." Why is this so with respect to all actions and particularly so with respect to political actiol1S? First of all, because of its natural limitations, the human intellect is unable to calculate and to control completely the results of human action. Once the action is performed, it becomes an independent force crcC\thlg cllllngcs, provoking tJ.ctions, and colliding with other forces, which the actor may or may not havc foreseen and which he can control but to a small degree. These factors, which, lying beyond human foresight and influence, we call" accidents" deflect the action from its intended goal and create evil results out of good inten~ tions. "Our thoughts are ours; their ends none of our own." While, however, good intention is corrupted before it reaches its intended goal in the world of action, it may not even leave the world of thought without corruption. The demands which life in society makes on our good intentions surpass our faculty to satisfy them all. While satisfying one, we must neglect others, and the satisfaction of one may even imply the positive violation of another. Thus the incompatibility, in the light of our own limitations, of the d'emands which morality makes upon us compels us to choose between differ~t 'eq1.tally legitimate demands. Whatever choice we

THE MORAL BLINDNESS OF SOIENTIFIC MAN

IUS rqake, we must do evil while we try to do good j for vi must abandon one moral end in favour of another. While trying to render to Caesar what is Ca(,"sar's and to God what is God's, we will at best strike a precarious balance which will ever waver between both, never completely satisfying citller. In the extreme, we will abandon one completely in order fully to satisfy the other. The typical solution, however, will be a compromise which puts the struggle at rest without puttingcomcience at ease. The same incompatibility of two contradictory ethical demands, ending in one of these three alternative solutions, corrupts good intentions on all levels of human actions. Loyalty to the nation comes into conflict with our duties to humanity. Even though most men will in our age resolve the conflict easily in favour of the nation, the conflict is nevertheless a real one; and there are more individuals than the war literature would let us suspect who bore as a heavy burden the dual duty to ldll in the name of their country and to respect in their fellow-men the image of God, Punishment of children as well as of criminals gives rise to a similar moral conflict between the duty owed to all men to understand their weaknesses and to forgive l'ather than to judge them and the dut.y owed to a certaIn individual or to a group of individuals to prot~ct them against infringement of their rights, By kl1ling the killer, we fulfil the latter dUlY, while our conscience keeps asking whether it was the killer alone who was guilty or whether his guilt was shared by the one whom he killed and perhaps by all other men as well. There is no end to examples of such insoluble conflicts and of the consequent corruption of good intentions. The daughter perceives, like Desdemona, "a divided duty" between parents and husband. The father mugt choose between two children, the friend between two friends; and, finally and above all, a man must choose between himself and others. It is here that the inevitability of evil becomes paramount. I,

Selfishness and Lust for Power Whatever man does or intends to do emanates from himself and refers again to himself. The person of the actor is present

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in a~lntended and consummated action. All act ion, on J..llC other hand, bears positively and negalively upon others. It docs so in u positive sense when the point of 1 efercnce of the action intended or performed is another person, and most actions aee naturally of this kind. But even when the action as such contains no positive reference to another pelson, this very lack of reference connects the action with other persons. For since the moral demands for action which society addresses to the individual are never completely satisfied, an action which has no reference to another person appears, at least from the point of view of the latter, as a deprivation, the violation of a moral duty, and thus carries negative moral sigl1lficance. If the connectedness of the self with others through his action is inevitable, the moral conflict between the self and others is no less inevitable. The individual is under the moral obligation to be unsel£sh, that is, not to sacrifice the interests of others to his own. However, the demands which poverty alone puts to our unselfishness arc so overwhelming that any attempt at even faintly approximating unselfishness would of necessity lead to the sacrifice ofthe indlVidual and would thu& destroy his ability to contribute at least a certain share of umelfhhness to the overwhelming demands of the world. The attempt to do justice to the ethics of unselfishness thus leads t.o the paradox of the ethical obligation to be flclH.sh in order to be able to satisfy the moral obligation of unselfish~ ness at least to a certain extent. Hence unselfish (i.e., good) action intended or performed can hever be completcly good (i.e., completely unselfish); for it can never completC'ly transcend the limitations of selfishness to which it owes its existence. "Concupiscence," said Martin Luther, "is insuperable." Even the action which approximates complete goodness, by either achieving, or just stopping short of, self.sacrifice, partakes paradoxically of evil. Once the very logic of the ethics of unselfishness ha~ thus put its stamp of approval on selfishness) individual egotisms, al\ equally legitimate, confront each other; and the war of every man against every man is on. There are two reasons why, the egoHsm of one must corne into conflict with the

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egotism of the other. Whal the one W
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cont!\rlict us. We went away free from a.ny burden, while those poor miscrables thought themselves happy to carry o~r equipage." On the other hand, Cecil Rhodes experiences the unlimited desire for power as well as the nalure,l limitations which J;Ilake its slltisfaction impossible: "These sLars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we CAn never reach. I would annex the planets if I could. I often think of that. It make~ me sad to sec them so clear and so far away." There is in selfishness an element of rationality presented by the natural limitation of the end, which is lacking in the will to power. It is for this reason that mere selfishness can be appeased by concessions while satisfaction of one demand will stimulate the will to power to ever expanding claims. This limitless character of the lust for power reveals a general quality of the human mind. William Blake refers to it when he writes: '" More! More!' is the cry of a mistaken soul: les.~ than all cannot satisfy man." In this limitless and ever unstilled desire which comes to rest only with the exhaustion of its possible objects, the animus domillandi is of the same kind as the mystical desire for union with the universe, the love of Don Juan, Faust's thirst for knowledge. These four attempts at pushing the individual beyond his nalural1imits towards a transcendent go~\l have also in common that this transcendent goal, this resting-point, is reached only in the imagination but never in reality. The attempt at realizing it. in actual experience ends always with the destruction of the individual attempting it, as tIle fate of all world-conquerors from Alexander to Hitler proves and as the legends of Icarus, Don Juan, and Faust symbolically illustl·ute. By setting in this way the desire for power apart from selfishness, on the one hand, and from the other tramcendent urges, on the other, one is already doing violence to the actual nature of that desire; for actually it is present whenever man intends to act with regard to other men. One may separate it conceptually from the other ingredients of social action; actually there is no social action which would not contain at least a trace of this desire to make one's own person prevail against olibers. It is this ubiquity of the desire for power which, beside!! and beyond any particular selfishness or other evilness

THE MORAL BLINDNESS OF SOIENTIFIC MAN

of purpoqe, constitutes the ubiquity of evil in human/.:clion. I-l'ere is the cleml"nt of corruption and of sin which injects even into the best of intentions at least a drop of evil and thus spoils it. On a grand scale, the transformation of churches into political organizations, of revolutions ~nto dictatorships, of love for country into imperialism, are cases in point. To lh(" degree in which the essence and aim of politics is power over man, politics is evil; for it is to this degree that it degrades man to a means for other men. It follows that the prototype of this corruption through power is to be found on the political scene. For here the animus dominandi is not merely blended with dominant aims of a different kind but is the very essence of the intention, the very life-blood of the action, the constitutive principle of politics as a distinct sphere of human activity. Politics is a struggle for power over men, and whatever its ultimate aim may be, power is its immediate goal and the modes of acquiring, maintaining, and demonstrating it determine the technique of political action. The evil that corrupts political action is the same evil that corrupts aU acti.on, but the corruption of political action is indeed the paradigm and the prototype of all possible corruption. The distinction between private and polilical action is not one between innocence and guilt, morality and im~ morality, goodness and evil, but lies in the degree alone in which the two types of action deviate from t.he ethical norm. Nor is t.he distinction of a normative character aL all. To hold differently, as the school of the dual standard does, is to confound the moral obligations of man and his actual behaviour with respect to these obligations. From the fact t.hat the political acts of a person differ from his private ones, it does not follow that he recognizes different moral precepts in the different spheres of action. There is not one kind of ethical precept applying to political action and another one to the private sphere, but one and the same ethical standard applies to both-observed and observable, however, by either with unequal compliance. That political action and doing evil are inevitably linked becomes fully clear only when we recognize not only that ethical standards are empirically violated on the political

168

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scen~and

this to a particular degree, but that it is unattainable for an aclion at the same lime to conform to the ru'ics of the political act (Le., to achieve political succt'S!!) and to conform to the rules of ethics (Le., to be good in itself). The test of political S4lCcess is the degree to which one is able to maintain, to increase, or to demonstrate one's pOWCl' over others. The test of a morally good action is the deg-ree to which it is capable of treating others not as means to the actor's ends but as ends in themselves. It is for this reason alone inevitable that, whereas non-political action is cver exposed to corruption by selfishness and lust for power, this corruption is inherent in the very natme of the political act. Only the greatest dissenters of the age have been clearly aware of this necessary evilness of the political act. The great non-liberal thinkers writing in the liberal age will find, with Lord Acton, that "power corrupts ... absolute power corrupts absolutely"; or they will see, with Jacob Burckhardt, in politics the "absolute evil"; or they will agree with Emerson that force is "a practical lie" and that "every actual state is corrupt."

The Particular CorrujJtion of Political Man The scope of this cOl'ruption, which, as stich, is a pcrrnat'V;!llt element of human existence and therefore operates regardless of historic circumstances everywhere and at all times, is broadened and its intensity strengthened by the particular conditions under which political action proceeds in the modern nation state. The state has become in the secular sphere the most exalted object of loyalty on the part of the individual and at the same time the most effective organization for the exercise of power over the individuaL These two qualities enable the modern state to accentuate the corruption of the political sphere both qualitatively and quantitatively. This is accomplished by two complementary processes. The state as the receptacle of the highest secular loyalty and power devaluates and actually delimits the manifestations of the jndividual desire for power. The individual, power· hungry for his own sake, is held in low public esteem; and the ~ores and laws ofsociety endeavour to strengthen through

THE MORAL BLINDNESS OF SOIENTIFIC MAN po~itive

r6g

sanctions the moral condemnation of indi~dual asp1rations for power, to limit their mode., and sphere of action, and to suppress them altogether. While, however, the state is ideologically and physically incomp
170

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DS.

POWER POLITICS

qnalilativc element which opens our eyes to the subtlety and at the same time to the immensity of the corruption wrought by the transference of the power impulses from the individual to the state. This corruption spreads in two different dimensions. r While encouraging the diversion of the power drives from the individual to the state, the latter obscures the quantitative corruption which ensues from this diversion. Political Ideol~ ogit's blunt the individual conscience, which tends to become oblivious t.o the corruption of power in the public sphere while still being conscious of its private manifesta~ tions. The dual morality mentioned above, which justifies what is done for the power of the state but condemns it when it is done for the power of the individual, presents but the positive aspect and at the same time the logical consummation of this fOlgetfulness. In the end, the individual comes to believe that there is less evil in the aspirations for state power than there is in the lust fol' individual dominance, nay, that to the former attaches a peculiar virtue which is lacking in the latter. However, 110i all will experience such a complete reversal of ethical valuat.ion, and even those who do will not do so without retaining at least some vestiges of moral scruples. Their consciences will still be uneasy in the presence of power impulses, and their moral misgivings will seck alleviation. Here is the scrne of the ultimate moral corruption through power, for here it is not action that is corrupted or moral judgment which regards as good what it ought to consider evil. What here takes place is a formidable perversion of the moral sense itself, an acquiescence in evil in the name of the very standards which ought to condemn it. An outstanding example of this blind and naive perversity of moral sense is the condemnation of power politics by most spokesmen of our civilization. There is indeed a point of view from which such condemnation could be intellectually and morally justified, that is, the Augustinian recognition of both the inevitability and the eVIlness of the lust for power. Such is, however, not the position taken. The radical evil is, in the wards of ~ant, "a principle which falls completely outside

THE MORAL BLINDNESS OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

ma1!:

the rational world view." A civilization which has this wof\d view its own has deprived itself of the intellectual faculty to master the ra~ical evil of the lust for power. Where the essence of this evil can no longer be denied, it can at least be belittled and its necessary and intimate .connection with human life in society can be denied. Thus, the spokesmen of our civilization do not recognize the ubiquity of the lust for power and of its evilness but assume that the power element and its evilness are particularly attached to certain actions, situations, and institutions and that, by reforming or abolish~ ing them, the lust for power itself could be abolished and the moral problem of power would thus be solved. They fight a sham battle which they can never win, and it would not matter if they could. For in a world where power counts, no nation pursuing a rational policy has a choice between renouncing and wanting power; and, if it could, the lust for power for the individual's sake would still confront us with its less spectacular yet no less pressing moral defects. This sham battle against power politics, however, gives 0111' civili~ zation at leasl the satisfaction of having paid tribute Lo its ethical standards and of being able to continue to live as though those. standards did not ex.ist. It is easy to see why the greatest corruption through power coincides with the greatest shallowness of the attempts to ex.plain this corruption away. Where the lust for power seizes upon the state as the vehicle on which to ride to hege~ monial power among the nations, ab$olute corruption follows in the wake of this drive for absolute power. For here the use of all mankind as a meallS is not wished fo[' in hapless imag~ ination but worked for in actual perfolmance. Only the greatest moral courage and intellectual penetration could comprehend the full measure of this corruption and still not destroy the faculty to live and act. Here the gulf between ethics and politics has become too wide and too inscrutable for the attempts by the perfectionists, the escapists, and the men of the dual standard at bridging it over and filling it in. In the face of the evil of power approaching its consurnma~ tion, it becomes necessary at least to recognize the existence of a problem presented by some kind of contradiction

SOIENTIFIC MAN v•• POWER POLITICS bct"t~en

polilical power and ethics. Yel, where the occasion calls 1'01' the comprehension of one of the great tragic «ntmolnies of human existence, the age hitS nOlhing better to oifer than a narrow and dislOl ted formulation of the plOblem and a sentimental apcl irrelevant solution in the SpiUl of political reform.

The Lesser Evil The lust for power as ubiquitous empirical fact and its denial as universal ethical norm are the two poles between which, as between the poles of an electric field, this antinomy is suspended. The antinomy is insoluble because the poles creating it are perennial. There can be no renunciation of the ethical denial without renouncing the human nature of man. "We," Benedetto Oroce quotes an Italian as saying to a German, "with our bad faith, at least keep the intellect lucid, and we remain bad men, but men: whereas you lose it altogether and hecome beasts." There can be no actual denial of the lust for power without denying t.he very condi~ tions of human existence in this world. The end of Machia vcllianism which Jacques Matitain's loo Oldcrly and 100 progressive mind sees already in our grasp, is not just around the corner. It is not of this world at ~Il. Ifit were, salvation from evil itself would be of this world. There is no escape from 1he' evil of power, r('gardlcss of what one does. Whenever we act wilh reference to our fellow men, we mu~t sin, and we must s1ill sin when we refuse to act; for the refusal to be involved in the evil of action carries with it the breach of the obligation to do one's duty. No ivory tower is remote enough to offer protection against the guilt in which the actor and the bystander, the oppressor and the oppressed, the murderer and his victim are inextricably enmeshed. Political ethics is indeed the ethics of doing evil. While it condemns politics as the domain of evil par excellence, it must reconcile itself to the enduring presence of evil in all political action. Its last resort, then, is the endeavour to choose, since evil there must be, among several possible u<;tiqns the one that is least evil. :(t, is ~ndeed trivial, in the face of so tragic a choice, to M

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in'J,Pkc justice againsL expediency and to condemn wh.l}\.tever political action is chosen became of its lack of justice. Such an attitude is but another example of the supelficiality of a civilization which, blind to the tragic complexities of human existence, contents itself with an unreal ~nd hypocntical solution of the problem of politica.l ethics. In fact, the invo~ cation of justice pure and simple against a pohtical action makcs of justice a mockery; for, since all political actions needs must fall short of justice, the argument against one political actIon holds true for all. By avoiding a political action because it is unjust, the perfectionist docs nothing but exchange blindly one injustice for another which might even be worse than the former. He shrinks from the lesser evil because he does not want to do eVIl at all. Yet his personal abstention from evil, which is actually a subtle form of ego~ tism with a good conscience, does not at all affect the existence of evil in the world but only destroys the faculty of discriminating between different evils. The perfectionist thus becomes finally a source of greater evil. "Man," in the words of Pasc,ll, "is neither angel nor beasL and his lnisery is that he who would act the angel acts the brute." Here again it is only the awareness of the tragic presence of evil in all political action which at least enables man to choose the le~ser evil and to be as good as he can be in an evil world. Neither science 1101' ethics nor politics can resolve the con~ flicl between politics and ethics into harmony. We have no choice between power and the common good. To act successfully, that is, according to the rules of the political art, is political wisdom. To know with despair that the political act is inevitably evil, and to act nevertheless, is moral courage. To choose <\mong several expedient actions the least evil one is moral jud.gment. In the combination of political wisdom, moral courage, and moral judgment, man reconciles his political nature with his moral destiny. That this conciliation. is nothing more than a /nodus vwiendi, uneasy, precarious, and even paradoxical, can disappoint only those who prefer to gloss over and to distort the tragic contradictions of human existence with the soothing logic of a specious concord.

..

OllAPTER VIII

THE TRAGEDY OF SCIENTIFIC MAN The Tragic Moaning of the II' ationality

if Life

misunderstands the nature of man, the nature of the world, and the nature of reason itself. It sees the world dominated by reaSon throughout, an independent and self-sufficient f(~>1'ce which cannot fail, sooner or later, to eliminate the still remaining vestiges of unreason. Evil, then, is a mere negative quality, the absence of something whose presence would be good. It can be conceived only as lack of reason and is inc~pable of positive determination based upon its own intrinsic qualities. This philosophical and ethical monism, which is so characteristic of the rationalistic mode of thought, is a deviation from the tradition of Western thought. In this tradition God is challenged by the devil, who is conceived as a permanent and necessary element in the order of the world. Tlw sinfulness of man is likewise conceived, 110m Puns Scoius and Thomas Aquinas to Luther, not as an
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175

wa-¥, is fateful, sinister, and destructive in human life. our time Sigmund Freud has rediscovered the autonomy of the dark and evil forces which, as manifestations of the unconscious, determine thc fate of man. Freud shows only in the optimism of his purely philosophical wrilin~, founded upon the faith in the ultimate complete triumph of reason over the unconscious, that even he cannot escape entirely the impact of the age. Yet two of his followers, Alfred Adler and Karen Horney, by adapting his psychology to the rationalist standards, illuminate the gap which separates Freud's concept of man from the rationalist philosophy. For both, the darkness of the Freudian unconscIOUS, pregnant with evil, is transformed into a kind of temporaTY lack of visibility, something pUTely negative, which will be overcome with relative ease by the standard devices of the age, such as education and individual and social reform. The prerationalist age is aware of the existence of two forces-God and the devil, life and death, light and darkness, good and evil, reason and passion-which struggle for dominance of the world. There is no progress towards the good, noticeable from year to year, but undecided conflict which sees today good, tomorrow evil, prevail; and only at the end of time, immeasurably removed from the here und now of our earthly life, the ultimate triumph of the forces of goodness and light will be assured. Out of this everlasting and ever undecided struggle there arises-one of the rooiS of what might be called the tragic sense of life, the awareness of unresolvable discord, contradictions, and conflicts which are inherent in the nature of things and which human reason is powerless to solve. The Age of Science has completely lost this awareness. For this age the problems which confront the human mind, and the conflicts which disturb and destroy hltman existence, belong of necessity to one of two categories: those which are already being solved by reason and those which are going to be solved in a not too distant future. This philosophy, therefoTe, is incapable of recognizing the tragic character of human life. This tragic character springs from three elemental experiences. Man) even rationalist man) meets in his contemplative

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. l'OWER POLITICS

expcr{nce the unceasing struggle between good and evil, reason and pa~sion, life and death, health and siekne~s, p~ee and war-a struggle which 50 often ends with the victory of the forces hostile to man. He also meets in his active experience the tramr~rtnation of his good intentions into evil results, often brought about by the very means intended to f\.vert them. As A. C. Bradley put it in his Shakespearean Tragedy, "Everywhere, in this tragic world, man's thought, translated into act, is transformed into the opposite of itself. His act, the movement of a few ounces of matter in a moment of time, becomes a monstrous flood which spreads over a kingdom. And whatsoever he dreams of doing, he achieves that which he least dreamed of, his own destruction." Man-and here we have to exclude the rationalistmeets in his intellectual experience the unceasing struggle between his understanding, on the one hand, and the riddles of the world and of his existence in this world, on the othcra struggle which offers with each answer new questions, with each victory a new disappointment, and thus seems to lead nowhere. In this labyrinth ofunconncctecl causal connections man discovers many little anSWers but no answer to the great questions of h~s life, no meaning, no direction. These three experiences make man aware of his ignorance in the face of the unknown and unknow
THE TRAGEDY OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

177 ,. That frustration, defeat, and ruin might be as int)jnsically interwoven into the plan of the world as success and progress, rationalist philosophy will not admit. Hence its general inability to deal with the problem of death, the most shocking of all failures of human existence. In pre-ra1.ionalist phIlosophy death fulfils a positive function for human existence. It is the ever present reminder of the vanity of human life, the ever present threat of punishment and sufferings in another world, and still the ever present expectation of a crowning fulfilment, the hope of reward, and the promise of salvation. Even apart from these religious implications, death can be conceived as the organic limit of human existence, the natural conclusion of a pre-ordained span of hfe, a warning to the limitless aspirations of man, a tie with those laws of the universe which are beyond man's control. And underneath these interpretative thoughts there is in the minds of believers and unbelievers alike the wonderment at the spectacle of an animal endowed with conscious intelligence coming, as it seems, from nowhere and destined to sink into the night of death as though it had never been. While the believer' does not accept this apparent destiny, the unbeliever, unable either to accept it or to have faith in an alternative, keeps wondering. Rationali&t philosophy docs not even wonder; for it misses the significance of death altogether. It sees in death simply the negation ofhfe, an accident to be avoided and delayed to the utmost. It is a disturbance of the rational order of the world, different in magnitude but not in kind from. the other disturbances with which reason deals with ever increasing success. Hence, death is nothing but a problem to be solved like shipwrecks, unemployment, or cancer; and its signi~ ficance for man consists in nothing else. The Illusion of Rationality The contrast between the actual nature of world and man, on the one hand, and the picture rationalist phIlosophy draws of it, on the other, deals the final blow to the utilitarian manifestation of rationalist ethics and to the rationalist \.

.

SCmNTIJlIC MAN us. POWER POLITICS conc~pt¥;ln

of education. Those conceptions are valid ono/ under the assumption that the essence of world and man IS rationalthroughoutj for only then is it possible to do away with a normative sphere altogether and to rcduce ethics to calculations of utility."', It is only under tIllS sa111e assumption that one can hope to solve all the problems of the modern wodd by a quantitative extension of knowledge throngh education. If, however, the world is conceived as the scene of a tragic struggle bctween good and evil, reason and passion, the mere advice to follow the commands of reason win not measure up to the nature of the problems to be solved. Without recognition of these tragic antinomies of human existence, the counsel of reason becomes the counsel of unreason; the promise of success turns into the certainty of failure; the goodness of the virtuous unmasks itself as the self-righteous egotism of the hypocrite; and education is rcduced to the "objective" communication of facts, unable to distinguish between right and wrong, good ~md evil, true and fahc. On the other hand, the non~utilitarian ethical standards of Western civilization have their roots in the tragic condition of human life. The very existence of a u(u'mative sphere, in contradistinction to the sphere of mere f.tcts, is due to the antinomy between what men are inclined to do under utili~ iarian considerations and what they feel they ought to do according to the btandards of nOIHltilitarian ethics. In other words, the ethical norms which men feel actually bound to follow conform by no means to the rational calculus of utility bUl, on. the contrary, endeavour to satisfy non~utiliiarian aspirations. The Decalogue is a code of ethical norms which cannot be derived from premises of rational utility. The concept of virtue as the sum of human qualities required by ethics bears no semblance to the standard of utilitarian rationality. The modern conception of education and the confidence in its reforming powers stand and fall lIkewise with the rationalist phIlosophy of which they are the logical application. 'This conception of education is bound to fail for the same reasons which are responsible for the failure of the utilitarian . conceptjpn of ethics. Since according to tl,1e rationalist

THE TRAGEDY OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

:Qremises the deficiencies of human action stem flpm lack of knowledge, enlightenment, dissemination of knowledge, education will overcome the "social stupidity" which ,llone stands in the way of progress and reason. Lack of knowledge is indeed the sole gource of failure in all those fields of human action which are" neutral" froUl the point of view of human interests and emotions, that is to say, in all those fields where there is permanent harmony between reason, on the one hand, and interests and emotions, on the other. This holds true to a 111gh degree for those activities which are of a technical nature or which belong in a general way to the natural sciences. Here is, then, the proper domain of this kind of education. In the social sphere, however, the dissemination of knowledge through education can bring no decisive result since the deficiencies of social action are not due to a lack of knowledge, or at least of that sort of knowledge which modern education is able to provide. On the one hand, man is confronted with the intricacies of social 'camation; and all the education and information which the social sciences can offer would perhaps enable him to follow up the threads of social causation a little bit here and a litde bit there yet would bring him no closcr to the solution of the social problem, that is, to unravelling the inextricable maze of intertwining thrc-ads in which form society presents itself to the analytical mind. Thcl'C is no indication that the trained social scientist as actor on the social scene is more competent than the layman to solve social problems, with the exception of technical problems of limited scope. A knowledge of a different and higher order is needed to solve the problems of the social world. On the other hand, however, past and contemporary history alike offer abundant proof of the irrelevance, for success or failure of social action, of the kind of knowledge the social sciences offer. First of all, the practical application of this knowledge is dependent upon the irrational conditions of interests and emotions operating upon the will of man. In other words, man is likely to act according to his interests and emotions even though his knowledge of social causation suggests to him a different course. Thus lawyers and p\ysicians.

II:lO

i:iC:IENTIFIO MAN vs. POWER I'OLITICS

will giv~,cOlUpetent advice to their clients and will act quiv: foolishly when the same problem ariscs in thf'il' own persons, in mcmbcls of lh('ir families, or in friends, that is, whenever interests and emotions interfere with rational judgment. "But certainly plf'jskians," says Aristotle, "when they are sick, call in other physicians, and training-masters, when they are in training, other training-masters, as if they could not judge truly about their own case and might be influenced by their feelings. U The journalist will be a reliable and penetrating reporter of events and situations in which he is not involved through his emotions or interests. Yet when he has to report on labour or monopolies, on France or Russia, he becomes a pa.rtisan who sees at best only part of the truth. No technlcal improvement in news-reporting and no international guarantees of free access to the sources of news everywhere in the world, not even the bestowal of diplomatic status upon foreign eorres~ pondents) will alter this elemental subordination of factual knowledge to interl:'8ts and emotions. The historian and political scient.ist will give the most. brilliant annlysi~ of a political situation which occUl'red in distant times 01' lands, but the records lmow of few if any histoduns or politicnl scientists who have been at the sarl:le time succcssf\tl (;tatcs~ men, that is, able to apply professional knowledge successfully to a situation in which their interests or emotions had a stake. Machiavelli was unsuccessful in politics; yet it was not knowl~ edge, that is, the education of the political scientist, that failed him. Furthermore, while fundamental social problems are im~ pervious to scientific attack, they seem to yield to the efforts of i11~informed men who, while devoid of scientific knowledge, possess insights of a different and higher kind. Lord Rosebcry quotes a remark of Walpole to Henry Fox, upon seeing the latter with a book, to the effect that he! Walpole, had so neglected reading all his life that he could not read even a few pages. Justice Bohnes, according to one of his biographers, found it "extraordinary that a woman like Mrs. Whitman without study, without work, could arrive at large social ,9o;tlqlusi9Ps that he himself had found onl:y e4'ter years 0,11

THE TRAGEDY OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

r8r

conscious search I" ]:.,ord Bryce and many scholars before 'nnd after him had a command of facts on the Ameri~an scene much superior to what De Tocqueville knew in a factual way about America. But the latter's Democlacy in America turned out to be a greater store of knowledge 1than Lord Bryce's American Commonwealth and is still today unsurpassed in its understanding of American society; for while De Tocqueville did not have a great deal of knowledge, he possessed in a large measure those higher faculLies of the mind in which his more scientific successors were lacking. Aristide Briand was more deficient in factual knowledge than most of his contemporaries on the international scene, but he was more successful in politics than most of them. Education in our time has given man a store of factual knowledge in the social field vastly superior to what he has ever known before. Yet man's faculties in the realm of action have not increased correspondingly. It can even be maintained that the reliance upon factual knowledge, far from improving the quality of social action, has actually contributed to the decadence of the ari of poliLics. Of this decadence we are the witnesses and victims l for the liberal belief in the essentially rational nature of social action and the reforming powers of education has obscured the true character of social action and the function education is able to fulfil for it. Had the influence of interesls and emotions upon social action been recognized, it would have been easy to foresee, as Jacob Burckhardt, William Graham SUIl1ner, Vilfredo Pareto, and Thorstein Veblen actually did foresee, that our age was destined to experience a decisive change in the proportional part which reason, on the one hand, and interests and emotions, on the other, have in determining social action. It would also have been easy to foresee that this change would pllt reason at a considerable disadvantage and thus completely shatter the rationalist assumptions of liberal political philo~ sophy. The revival of religious wars in the form of warfare between political ideologies, with the concomitant torture, punishment, and extermination of the dissenters, illuminates the degree to which that change has taken place in our time. As Sumner P21t it almost forty years ago: "The ail-0unt of

xa~

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. POWER l'OLITIOS

superstition is not much changed, but it now attaches to politics, not to religion." Of this decadence of the political art, the rdiance upon factual knowledge is the cause as well as the result. The mistaken belief, roott"l in the philosophy of rationalism, that political problem~ are scientific problems for which the one correct solution must be found through the inv('stigalion of relevant facts is reflected in the political practice of the age. The rare successes ofthi8 political practice have no connection with its fact-finding endeavours, while its frequent failures grow out of the misunderstanding of the nature of political action, of which the scientific collection of facts is the outward manifestation. As it often happens when a mistaken course of action results not from the error of individuals or from the ignorance or misinterpretation of certain facts but from a basic and firmly held philosophic conviction, political failures have only tended to deepen the influence ofscienti&t philosophy upon political practice. Forgetful of the inherent uncertainty of social action ap.cl searching in its social endeavours for a security of which cven the natural sciences know nothing, modern man has taken rduge in a ha51.ioll of facts i for, aller ali, "facts do not lie," and they, at least, arc I'rcal." Wilson, bewildered by the power politics of the Versailles Peace Conference and incapable of meeting the political problems of the peace with political means, cried out. for a settlement on the basis of the facts. The feclel'al government, unable to reconcile its laisser faire philosophy with the exigencies of modern labour conflicts, compiles statistics and appoints fact~finding boards to collect more statistics. As if in facts there were enshrined a secret power of wisdom and of pacification which needs only to be discerned in Older to solve the conflicts of the social world. Actually, the resort to facts is here not so much a source of new knowledge as a device for concealing ignorance. With the knowledge of many irrelevant facts, scientific man tries to banish the fear rising from the urgency of unsolved problems and from the ignorance of that knowledge which counts in the social world. The new realists are undismayed by the wreckage 8urround~ "ing t~er. If they have failed, it was because tli.e quantity of

THE TRAGEDY OF SOIENTIFIC MAN

1 83

facts available to them was not enough. The answer to political flilme is "more facts," and the accumulation of n1'ore facts but leads to more political failures. 'This vicious circle can be broken only by a different philo~ophic approach to the general problem of bacial action.

The Self-mutilation oj Scientijic Man The reconsideration of the problem of social action must start with the recognition of the fundamental distinction which exists between social problems and those with which the natural sciences deal. The latter are either solvable at a particular moment of history or they are not. When they are solved, they are solved once and for all. Thus, the problem of the air-cooled engine was unsolvable under certain technological conditions and became solvable under others. When it was solved, it was solved unequivocably and definitely; and mankind could, as it were, forget about it, cherishing the solution as one of its imperishable possessions. Social problems, such as marriage, education, equality, freedom, authority, peace, are of a different type. They do not grow out of temporary limitations of knowledge or temporary insufficiencies of technical achievement-both of which can be overcome by the progressive deVelopment of theory and practice. They are the result of those conflicts in which the selfishness and the lust for power, which are common to all men, involve all men. One might say that' the attempt at solving those problems is the attempt to resolve those conflicts on a more or less limited scale. Yet social problems are never solved definitely. They must be solved every day anew. As eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, so is the provisional solution of all social problems paid for with never ending effort. No scientific formula has been invented which could relieve us from this never finished task. History has changed the outward manifestations of these :problems but not their essence, which is today what it was at the beginning ofhistonc time. The problem of world peace, for instance, in contradistinction to the p'~blem of the air-cooled engine, is not~loser to.

SCIENTIFIO MAN

flf.

POWBR POLtTIOS

solution today than it was when it £lest presented itself to the hun'tan mind. In contrast to less scientific periods of history, we have today all lhc facts conct'l'lling' war and peace. More books have been written and more intellectual energy has been spent on.:, the problem of international peace during the last hundred years than in all previous history. Yet neither thought nOr actlon has progres~ed beyond its primitive beginnings thousands of years ago. The human forces which gave rise to the problem then in the form of armed conflicts of human collectivities are ~till at work today engendering the same results and posing the same problems. What has changed in the process of history are the techniques of warfare and, perhaps, the rationalizations and justifications but not the thing itself, that is, the murderous conflagration of human collectivities through which the individual egotisms and aggressive instincts find vicarious and morally expedient satisfaction. Nor does the problem of international peace present itself on a universal global scale to be solved once and for all in one gigantic effort through the discovery of the OIle correct formula. Peace is not indivisiblc) either in thcOl'y or in prac~ dee. 1£ it were) then war too, would be indivisible, and war anywhere would of neccs~ity mean Wal' everywhere. Localized wars would become impossible, and every war would necessarily be a world war'. The blindness of statcs~ men may bring this about, yet there is nothing in the l1atUl'C of international affairs to make it inevitable. Actually, the disturbance of peace at. one particular spot mayor may not endanger peace everywhere) and someLimes it may be necessary to buy general peace or peace for one's own country with a localized war between two other countries. Peace is subject to the conditions of time and space and Ipust be established and maintained by different. methods and under different conditions of urgency in the everyday relations of concrete nations. The problem of international peace as such exists only for the philosopher. For the practitioner of the political art there is only the problem of peace between the United States and Argentina, Great Britain and Russia, • France find Italy, Bulgaria and Greece. Wh~ all problems j

THE TRAGEDY OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

x8s

between individual countries, which might otherwise lead to wa'l!' at a particular time, are solved peacefully w~h the part.icular methods appropriate to the1n, then universal peace is preserved at this particular moment in history. New problems will arise, again threatening peace and requiring &imilar solutions, and if these solutions are fO~lhcoming, peace will again be preserved. The temporary and ever precarious solution of this, as of any other, social problem depends essentially upon three factors: social pressure which is able to contain the selfish tendencies of human nature within socially tolerable bounds; conditions of life creating a social equilibrium which tends to minimize the psychological causes of social conflict, such as insecurity, fear, and aggressiveness; and, finally, a moral climate which allows man to expect at least an approximation to justice here and now and t.hus offers a substitute for strife as a means to achieve justice. To bring these three factors to bear on a specific social problem is the task of reason in the social world. This task is infinitely more complicated and its fulfilment. is infinitely more uncertain and precarious than the mode of thought prevailing in our civilization is willing to admit. For while the philosophy of rationalism is founded upon a onedimensional conception of the social world-reason, goodness, and right vs. ignorance, evil, and wrong, with the former necessarily winning out-the primordial social fact is conflict, actual or potential, wilh reason and ignorance, good and evil, right and wrong blended on both sides and with the outcome hanging in the balance. The eventual victory of the better cause is not due to an innate tendency of human nature which needs only to be reminded of its existence in order to make itself prevail. Nor does it depend upon the amount of knowledge imparted through education. It is rather the result of a struggle between moral and social forces which operate both within and between the members of society. As Goethe's wisdom put it: "While trying to improve evils in men and circumstances which cannot be improved, one loses time and makes things worse; instead, one ought to accept ~he evils, as it were, as raw m~erials and then seek to counterbalanc~hem."

106

SOIENTIFIC MAN us. POWER POLITICS

Within man those moral forces will win out which carry wilh ttem the stronger expectation of justic(", of happines';, of sanctions, and of rewards. The vic Lory of conflicting mora.l aspirations is determined by the relative blrength of these factors. The sapte holds true for social action. The social world in motion presents an intricate pattern of pressures and counterpressures, composed of the elements of power, balance, and ethics. There is stalemate, victory, and defeat, but rarely, and then only within the span of cenLuries, is there is a clear~cut solution which decides a coni est definitively and disposes of a problem once and for all. Defeat and victory are likewise provisional, defeat carrying the hope of victory and victory the fear of defeat; for a slight change in the relative strength of opposing forces may reverse the positions, which are always precarious because of the ever-changing pattern of the social fabric. To cope with social problems thus understood) it is not the factual knowledge, the general deductions, and the" correct" solutions of the "social engineer" that are called for, Factual knowledge may be useflll as an instrument ofideology lhrough which antagonistic social pressures justify themselves before the scientific spirit of the age, demonstrating t.heir superiority hefol'e and after the decision. Such is indeed the main political function of statistics and of the scienlific memorandum, For the action and the decision of the conflict itself, this function is largely irrelevant.. It precedes and succeeds action and decision in point of Lime; it adorns, conceals, or elaborates it, as the case may be; but it is not the stua' of which action and decision are made. The idea of" social engineering," by over simplifying and distorting the relation between reason and the social world, holds out a hope for a solution of social problems which is bound to be disappointed over and over again. By encouraging faulty social action or, what is more frequent and also worse, the easy optimism of inaction or of perfunctory action in the face of overwhelming social problems, this idea is retarding rather than advancing man's mastery over the social world.

THE TRAGEDY OF SCIENTIFIC :MAN

The Statesman '{)s. the Engineer To be successful and truly "ratiunal" in social action, knowledge of a different order is needed. This is not. t.he knowledge of single tangible facts but of th~ eternal laws by which man moves in the social world. There are, aside from the laws of mathematics, no other eternal laws besides these. The Aristotelian truth that. man is a poliLical animal is true forever; the truths of the natural sciences are true only until other trut.hs have supplanted them. The key to those laws of man is not in the facts from whose uniformity the sciences derive their laws. It is in the insight and the wisdom by which more-than-scientific man elevates his experiences into the llniversal1aws of human nature. It is he who, by doing so, establishes himself as the representative of true reason, while nothing-but-scientific man appears as the true dogmatist who universalizes cognitive principles of limited validity and applies them to realms not. accessible to them. It is also t.he formet who proves himself to be the true realist; for it is he who does justice to the true nature of t.hings. He is embodied not in the scientist who derives conclusions from postulated or empirical premises and who in the social world has either nothing but facts or nothing but theories but in the st.atesman who recognizes ill the cont.ingencies of the social world the concretizat.ions of eternal laws. "A statesman," sagely remarl~s Edmund Burke in his "Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians/' "differll from a professor in an university; the latter has only the general view of society; the former, the statesman, has a number of circllmstances to combine with those general ideas, and to take into his consideration. Circumstances are infinite, are infinitely combined; are variable and transient; he who does not take them into consideration is not erroneous, but stark mad,-dat operam ut cum ratione insaniat,-he is metaphysically mad. A statesman, never losing sight of principles, is to be guided by circumstances; and, judging contrary to the exigencies of the moment, he may ruin his country forever." As the scientist creates a new nature out of his knowledge of the forces of ~ture, so the statesman creates a ne", society

lUB

SCIEN'J'lFIO MAN

IIY.

POW11R l'OLITICS

out of his knowledge of the nature of man. Tho insight and the wil:'flom or the statesman gauge accura,tely the distribution ~md rda.live strength of opposing forcos and anticipate, how('vel' t.entatively, the emerging pattern of new constdlatiolls. The statesman has no assurance of SUCCC'bS in the immediate task and not ev~n the expectation of solving the long-range problem. Look at Alexander, at Caesar, and Brutus, at Washington and Lincoln, at Napoleon, Lenin, and Hitler. No formula will give the statesman certainty, no calculation eliminate the risk, 110 accumulation of facts open the future. While his mind yearns for the apparent certainty of science, his actual condition is more akin to the gambler's than to the scientist's. In this unsolvable contrast between what he needs and wants and what he is able to obtain, the statesman is indeed the prototype of bocial man himself; for what the statesman experiences on his exalted plane is the common lot of all mankind. Suspended between his spiritual destiny which he cannot fi.llfil and his animal nature in which he cannot remain, he is forever conueJuncd to experience the contrast between t.he longings of his mind and his actual condition us his personal, eminently human tt'agedy. In different ways all ages have tried to CW1.pC tccQgnilion of thi:> tragedy. An age, in particular, whose powers and vistas have been multiplied by science is liable to forget for a moment this perennial human tragedy allelto exalt in the engineer a new mart whose powers equal his aspirations and who masters human destiny as he masters a machine. Yet it can do so only for a moment, aud this moment has passed. The pleasant interlude of the Victorian age has come to an end. Fate, by giving man the experience of his powers through reason, has not for long withheld from him the experience of his limitations. The old h.Jbris hus reappeared in the new vest· ments of a scientific age and has been broken, as it has been ever since Icarus tried to reach the sun, by the very instru~ ments which it had forged for the exaltation of man beyond the limits of his nature. Reappeared, too, has the old despair which, with fierce and feeble passion, hunts for security where there io/'none; accepts nothing but reason a£.. rejects reason

THE TRAGEDY OF SCIENTIFIC MAN

18g

altC\.!lether; and, distrustful o[the higher faculties of the ~uman mind, either sacrifices the fullness ohnan's human heritage on the altar of science or else laments with Herodotus: "Of all the sorrows that afflict mankind, the bitterest is this, that one should have consciousness of much, "but control over nothing." And, finally, there reappears the aristeia of man, his heroic struggle to be and to be more than he is and to know that he is and can be more than he is. Pitting his reason against the secrets of the universe and recoiling from the darkness of his own soul, he triumphantly detects the limits of nature and faces, hapless, the social forces which his own limitless desires have created. A giant Prometheus among the forces of the universe, he is but a straw on the waves of that ocean which is the social world. In his struggle with nature, he is like a god. In his struggle with his fellow-men, he is more powerful than a beast but not so wi~e; for he has exchanged t.he wisdom of nature for a science which, in the social world, sees but does not comprehend, touches but does not feel, measures but does not judge. Having lost the blind security of the wisdom of nature, he has yet to gain the knowing insecurity of the wisdom of man. The experience of this insec1.U'ity is the premise of a life which exhausts the possi~ bilities of human existence. The achievement of the wisdom by which insecurity is understood and sometimes mastered is the fulfilment of human possibilities. As the conditions of insecurity are manifold, so are the ways of wisdom. Where the insecurity of human existence challenges the wisdom of man, there is the meeting-point of fate and freedom, of necessity and chance. Here, then, is the battlefield where man takes up the challenge and joins battle with the forces of nature, his fellow-men's lust for power, and the corruption of his own soul. It is because of his freedom that, unlike god or beast, he is liable to err in the choice of his weapons. Thus, scientific man errs when he meets the challenge of power politics with the weapon of science, and the freedom of man is challenged to renew the fight with other means. Without assurance of victory and w.\th the odds against hinr,' man persists in the struggle, a hero'ather ~

~

190

SCIENTIFIC MAN vs. rOWER POLITICS

than ~,searcher for scientific truth. Above this strug'gle, l.l.ever ended and never deci,led in the pcrpetual chaugc (If victory and defeat, of life and death, a ilanle burns and a light shines, flickering in the vast expanses of l111rnan freedom but never extinguished: lYle reason of man, creating and through this creation illUlning in the triumph and the failure of scientific' man the symbol of lllan himself, of what he is and of what he wants to be, of his weakness and of his strength, of his freedom and of his subjection, of his misery and of his grandeur.

NOTES (Closs-refelences to notes in this book arC given if! italic type.) CHAPTER I PAGE g, LINE "11: The American Commonwealth (New York: Macmillan Co., 1907), p. 306. PAGE II, LINE 14: See, wlth regard to the relations between rationalism and sClentism, George H. Sabine, History of Political Theory (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1937), p. 573: "Yet tIns empiricism had,so to speak, all the bias of rationalism; 1t had the foible of omnisclence and the itch for simplictty. It appealed to the fact but it insisted that facts should speak a predetermined language. Even the new ethics of utility and the new economics, which were the chief addltions made to social theory, were logically incoherent for precisely this 1 cason. They professed to rest on an empirical theory of human mohves but they aqsumed a harmony of nature for which no scientific proof could ever have been given. Thus the popular thought of the eighteenth ccntmy relterated a philosophy which in effect it only half plactised." PAGt: 16, LINt: Ig: Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modem WOlld (New York: Macmillan Co., Ig26), p. 86.

the general topic of this chapter see Paul Weiss, Realit,y (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1938), chap. i.

]"01'

CHAPTER II PAGe 18, LII'II? 8: IJII1n4l1 Nature and the Social Order (New York: Macmillan Co., 194 0 ), p. 957. PAGB 18, LINE I I: Essai sur Ie principe glnlrateur des institutions politiquu (Paris: Societe typographique, 1814), chap. viii. PAGE 18, LINE Ig: Ecclesiastical Polit,y, Book I, chap. viii, § 9, in Tilt Works of Mr. Richard HooAer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, r888), I, 233. PAGE l8, LINt: 38: Kingsley Martm, French Liberal Thought in the Eighteentll Century (Boston: Little, Brown &' Co., r929), p. 61: P AilE Ig, LINE 15: This conception of evil as mere negation of good without any independent power of its own is a secularized version of the Augustinian concept of evil. Augustine, as quoted in Henry Adams, Mont-Saillt-Michel and Chartres (Boston and New York: Houghton Miffiin Co., 1913), p. 370, stated the same thought in these general terms: "Evil is only the prevention of good, an amissio boni; and ••• good alone el
19 1

NOTI~S

PAGE ~, LINE 15: "Ethics," Columbia Univmi~l: Lcctt~m 011 Science, I'lli/osop/I)', and Art, I907-J90Q (New York: Columlml. Ulllvcrsity Prcs$, 19(0),

p.16. PAG!!. 2 I, LIN!!. 35: 1'lato, kImon, 82b-8Ge. PAGe 22, LINE G: Quoted in GeOlges Wcuiel'sse, Lo Uovemmt jJ!!)'sioClatique en Frallce (de I7s
PrClIlsische JaMoucher, XVIII (IU66), 576, 577.

PAGE 34, LINE Q I: "Challe!~ge to Action," New RepubliC, CVIl, No. 23 (December 7, 191!2), 733' PA-GE 35, IJNE QQ: The Humani.titlg qf Kllowledge (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1923), pp. 73, 74; see also The New History (New York: Macmillan Co., 1912), especially pp. 236 ff., and ThH Mind in the Makillg (New York: Harpel' &' Bros., 1921). PAGE 36, LINE 2: Applied Sociology (New York: Ginn & 09., 1906), p. 339. PAGE 36, LINE 9: (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1941), p. 448. PAG!!"' 36, LINE 14: "The Free Press Cartel," Commoll SellSe, XIV (May, 1945), 37· PAG!; 36, LINE 19; See particularly Man and Soclery in all Age of RecolIStruction (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1940). FA!>!!, 36, LINE 24: PLaMing for America (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1941); pp. 4, 34· PM"E3G,~\NE29:Accordingto Time, XXXVII/No. I (January 6, 1941);36. PAQlI ~ LWE 26: Critical Misccltallies, II (LoDdon~ Macmillan & Co., ladS), 2311, 233.

NOTES UllAGE 38, LINe 27: Co!Upare wilh the following: Morley, ibid., p. ~I9: "In a wOld they [the C1ghtecnlh-century philo~ophCls] tried to Ul1dCIstalld 'oci~ty without the aid of histOlY. Uomcqucntly they laid drown the truths which they discovered as ,t!Jso!ule :lrI1d fixed, when they were 110 more than conditional and relative." Sl'C fll~o EarneH Albert Hoolon, Why ~Men Behave Lil,e Apes and Vice Fe/sil (Ptinceton: I'rinccton Univerbity PICSS, 19'/0), p. 165: "Political and social reformcls incorrigibly hope that some new form of governmefl.t or some improved political creed will convert a delinquent nation to a diITclent and bettcr type of behaviour. Again and again these hopes have been proven illUSOlY, but the idealist still goes all concocting ideological panaceas." PAGE 39, LINe 5: Studies in Law lind Politics (New Haveu: Yale Univelsity Press, I93Q), p. ~9· PAGe 39, LINe 13: The Heavenly Ciry oj' Ihe Eighteenth CelltlllY Philosophets (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932), p. 102. PAGE 39, LINE 31: Collected Legal Papers (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920), p. 139. PAG!: 41, LINE 5: Scietlce and the Modem World (New York: Macmillan Co., 1926), pp. ~88, Q89. PAGE 41, LINE 9: "Jugement sur Ie projet de paix perpetuelle de M. l'Abbe :te Saint-Pierre" and "Extrait du projet de paix perpetuelle de M. l'Abbe de Saint-Pierre," Oeuvres comj)l~tes. VI (Paris: Dalibon, 1826), 397 fT., 440 if. CHAPTER III PAGE 12, LINE I I; cr., e.g., Wuller Lippmann, iJII IlIljuiry ill/o the Plit/aijile.! Qllhe Good Sociel)! (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1937), p. 151: "The post-war system of collective security was dcvjsc~l by British aud Amedcf\n publicists and statesmen acting on tbe pl'cconcept.ion$ of the 19th eentlllY." Jan Smu(q, 'rhe Hlture of tho Lell~u8 (Geneva, 19:)8), p. 4: "The Covenant. , . ~il11ply carries into wodd alTail's lhnt outlook of liberal, demoCl'ntic sodety whiclt is Oll() of the f.\'rcnt achievernentq of OUI' human advance." William Y. Elliott, The PllIgll1alic Revolt ill Politics (New YOlk: Macmillan Co., Iq~fl), p. 313: "'1'h(: immediate aftermath of the war, which saw the expamion of tiU! su(]r:lgc I' each its apogee .•• saw also the imposition of the dogma of self-determination and of Wilsonian liberalism in international aHuil'S. True, that doctrine underwent some curious metamorphmt'~ in the actual peace settlement, but it nonetheleqs leavened the loaf, The League of N Mions and the Permanent Court of Inte1'11aliollalJ ustice stand a~ subqtantial witne~ses to the power of this libernl spirit in intc1'11ational ::drai)~." /I.. C. F. Beales, The HiS/DIY of Peace (London: G. Ilt·\l :lIlt! Sons, Ltd., 1931), p. v: "I was surprised to find lbat every single idea CUl'l ell110day about peace and war was being preached by ol'ganiLcd bodies over a century ago, and that the world-wide ramiHcatiom of the present-day peace movement ean be traced back 111 unhlOkcn continuity to a handful of forgottcn QuakelS in England and Am('ric;u at the dose of the Napolconic wU)s . . . . Aftel' 1878 the histOlY of peace becomes an integral part of the history of international rc!atiollS; and arbitration and di~armament, once the nostrums of n fcw Clanks, become the common policies of diplomacy." PAGe 44, LINe 1: "Principl~s of Penal Law," Works (1843), I, 6...1. G

NOTES PMII' 4'1., LINE ~: A typicnl example of this philosophy is to be fm.md in ,Ju(;kson Harvey Ralstoll, Democm01's illternatiolllli Law (Wn"Jhiru~lon: • ' l;yrne & Co" 192~),'p, 14,6: "The democratization of the world has lllinjmiz(~d the eITeets rof the private ambitionu of the rulers, The development of the masses, their glowing intelligence and inH-rcoulse, is making them l'egnrd nil men simply as co-workel's-friendly, not hosl ile rivals-:ip the fruitful vineyard of the wodel, •• , I-lnman nature is not changing, but politeness and the underlying ground ofpo!itencss, sympathy and l'ecognitioll of common needs, is growing more univel'sal. , , • A hesitnnce to condemn men unheard to suffeJ'ing and cleathmen whose lives are equal to our own-is the mainspring of model'll action," PAGE 41, LINE 39: Leges i. 63B; cr. also Eduard Meyer, Gese/iichle des Altertums (Stuttgart:]. G. Cotta, 1902), Vol. V, § 922. PAGE 4,,5, LINE 6: Leitl'es !crites de la mOlliagm (1764), Part II, Letter VII, op. cit. [page 10, tille 20], VII, 407, PAGE 45, LINE 8: Marcel Thiebaut, Ell !isant LBoll Blum (Paris: Gallimarcl, 1937), p. IB6. PAGE 45, LINE 18: F, Th. Bl'atranek, Goetlles Brietwechsel mit den aebrUdem VOII Humboldt (Leipzig: F. A, Brockhaus, 1876), p, 49. PAGE 45, LINE 2 I: Quoted in A. C. F. Beales, A Short History of English Liberalism (1913), p. 195. PAGE 45, LINE 25: Secret Diploma0l (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 192~), p. 15, PAOlI ~7, LINJI 3: cr, The Principles if Social0lf)' (F'iew York: D. Appleton &' Co" 1899), Vol. 11, Parl V, chaps, XVll-XUI:. I'ME 47, LINr~ ,p Guglielmo Fen'el'o, Militarism (London: Ward, Lot:k & Co" Lid" 19(2), pp. 317, 31B, The distinguished Italian historian continues whh this typically Iibcl'al al'gl1menl.ation: II Only BOlpe acccss of insmrity, contagiously cOlIllIlunicttted from one European government to anothC'r, could l'ckindle w<~l' ove!, questions of colonial dominion; and hence al'iscs the necessity of illlcllecttull propaganda with the object of bringing aboul a clearer and more profound understanding of the tl'1.lih among lhe governin~ class," PA
NOTES

195

PAOE 53, LINE 20: Lss hommes malades de fa paix (Paris, 1933), p. 7. PAG.:!' 55~ LINr. 16: Marx and ~:ngels, Historisch-I.ritische GesmlJiausgabt, edited by D. Ryazanov, Part III, "CorresBOm.lence," II (Berlin: MarxEngels Verlag, 19119-31), 157. PAGE 58, LINE 3: His/oile dll Cardinal de RicheliclI (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1903), II, Part II, 487. PAGE 59, LINE 1 7: The Chief WorAs of Benedict de Spino"za (London: George Bell & Sons, 1909), Vol. I, "Tractatus teo!ogico-politicus," chap. xviii, and" Tractatus poJiticus," chap. vii, § 5. PAGE 60, LINE 6: A Foreign Policy for AmClica (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1940 ), p. 9· PAGE 6r, LINr. 39: Thomas Hill Green has most perfectly formulated the liberal philosophy in this respect in Leetmes on the Principles qf Political Obligation (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1895), pp. 170 fr. Cf. also Ralston, op. cit. [page 44, lille .2], pp. 164, 165: "In the present condition of the world's progress in the science of government, we have accepted the democratic principle as, for the present at least, the last word in government. We point out how it benefits the commoll man. Up till now, however, the principles of democracy have not been applied to the international field. Nations are autocratic, brooking no superior. The result has vitiated largely the good we had a right to expect to come from the growth of the democratic principle. If we would progl'CSS, therefore, internationally, conditions must be reversed. Instead of allowing aristocratic and autocratic law to vitiate democracy, democracy must be given its clear chance to purify the domain of what erroneously today is called international law. Democt'acy can only accomplish this purification by stc1'I11y th1'llsling aside the suggestion of the aIel intCl'nalionallaw and forming its own law of nations based upon tllOsefundamcntal principles of right and wrong which democracy recognizes ~\S existing and as appropriate between man and man." PAGE 62, Lmu 37: The Voice of A1iltria, I, No. n (May, 1912), 4. PAGE 63, LINE 5: Op. cit. (flage 45, lille .25], p. 17fJ.· PAGE 64, LINE 24: On Compromise (London: Macmillan & Co., 19~3), pp. 6, 7. PAGE 66, LINE 7: Loudon EVClling Sta/ldard, Jnne 26, 1936. PAGE 68, LINE I I: cr. Hans.]. Morgenthau, "National Socialist Doctrine of World Organization," Proceedings of the Seventh Conference oj Teachers oj Ilitemational Law arzd Related Subjects (Washington: Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, 1941), pp. IDg ff. CHAPTER IV PAGE 71, LINE 3= L'Ol'dre naturel sf essential des socilt8s politiques (1767), as quoted by Kingsley Martin, op. cit. (page 18, line 38J, p. 23 I. PAGE 71, LINE II: op. cit. [page 18, lille 8], p. 961. PAGE 72, LINE 13: Op. cit. [page 59, lille 17], "TractatuB politicus," chap. viii. § g1. Vicowaswel1 aware of this general trend ofSpinoza's thought when he said in "Sulla," OPere di Gio. Battista Vito (Firenze: Poligrafia ltaliana, 1847), I, Part I, 73: "Benedict Spiuoza taiks of the state as a society all mad~up of merchants." ~

Ig6

NOTES

7f}"

rAGE

LINl.I 19:

L4 Globe (Paris), J nnuary

f},0

and

3I

and Pchru!\ry 5,

18 32.

72~LINE 26: "{dee gen.,erale de la revolution au dix-ncuviell1e siecle," Oeuvres (OmJIW~s, IX (1868), 2<)8; see also Proud hall, La G,/clre et til jlaj.\· (Paris: E. Denlu, 1861) . • PAGE 72, LINn 29: Loc. cit. [page 47. line 3]. PAGE 73, LINE 2'l: 'Wealth, Welfare or War; the Changing Role of Eco/wlnies ill National Policy (Pads: Inlernational Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, League of Nations, 1939), p. 30. PAGE 74, LINE 6: Ibid., pp. 34, a5. PAGE 74. LINE 14: Libemlistnlls (1927), p. 95. PAGE 74, Lnm 17: Political Economy, Book III, chap. xviii, § 5 (5th ed. [New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1864], II, 136). PAGE 75, LINE 3: "Deuxieme memoire sur Ia propriete," op. cit. [page 711, line 26J, I (1867),248. PAOE 75, LINE 21: Speeches by Richard Cobden, I (London: Macmillan & Co., 1870), 7g. PAGE75, LINE 22: Political Writings (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1867), PAGE

II,

110.

PAGll 75, LIl'lE 23:

Letter of Aprilx2,

18<[2,

to Henry Ashworth, quoted in l~obel'ts Bros., 1881),

John Modey, Lifo qf Richard Cobden (Boston:

P·I54· 76, LINE 13: Loc. cit. [page 71(, line 19]. PAGE 76, LINI~ QO: The Liberal Gas/Ml as S~t FOl'tlt in the Writings if William Ellery Channing, cillLcd by Charles H. Lytlle (Doston, 19~:»), p. '.1.17, PAGE 77, LIN:C '.I.: According to Christinn Lange, "Ilistoil'o de la doctrine pacifique ct de son inl1ucncc RUI' Ie d6ve\oppemellt clu droit intemational," liague Academy: ReclIcii des COllrs, Xln (r9~G), 399. PAGll 7[\, LINg 15: Tho 'National ,'};'stem qf Political ECOIIOlIIY (Now York; Longmans, Green & Co., 1904), p. ~!)5. PAGll 7[\, LINE 39: This was already recognized by List, ihid., pp. 10'.1., 109: " •.• only the school has omitted to take into consideration thc naturc of nationalities and their special inlerests and conditions, and to hl'ing these into accord with the idea of universal union and an everlasting peace. "The popular school has assumed as being actually in existence a state of tbings wbich bas yet to come into existence. It assumcs the existence of a universal union and Ii state of perpetual peace, and deduces therefrom the great benefits of free trade. In this manner it confounds effects with causes. Among the provillces and states which are already politically united, there exists a state of perpetual peace, from this political union originates their commercial union, and it i$ in consequence of the perpetual peace thus maintained that the.£ommel'cial union has become so beneficial to them. All examples which history can show are those in which the political union haa led the way, and the commercial union has followed. Not a single instance can be adduced in which the latter has taken the lead, and the fonner has grown up from it. That, however, under the existing conditions of the world, the fcsult of general free trade would not pe a universal republic, but,('ll the contrary, Ii universal subjection of the l~ss advanced nations

PAGI'

NOTES

197

to the supremacy of the predominant manufacturing, commercial, and "\la\".\1 power, is a conclusion for which the reasons are very stl'tmg, and according to our views, irrefragable. A uljiversal republic (in the sense of Henry IV and of the Abbe St. Pierre), i.e. a union of the natiolls of the earth whereby they recognize the same conditions of right among themselves and renounce self-redress, can only be re:tlized if a large number of nationalities attain to as nearly the sa~e dcgree as possible of industry and civilization, political cultivation, and power. Only with the gradual formation of this union can free trade be developed, only as a result of this union can it confer on all nations the samc great advantages which are now experienced by those provinces and states which are politically united. The system of protection, inasmuch as it forms the only mcans of placing those nations which are far behind in civilization on equal terms with the one predominating nation (which, however, never received at the hands of Nature a perpetual right to a monopoly of manufacture, but which merely gained an advance over others in point of time), the system of protection regarded from this point of view appears to be the most efficient means of furthering the final union of nations, and hence also of promoting true freedom of trade. And national economy appears from this point of view to be that science which, correctly appreciating the existing interests and the individual ch'cumstances of nations, teaches how every separate nation can be raised to that stage of industrial development in which union with other nations equally well developed, and consequently freedom of trade, can become possible and useful to it." PAGE 80, LINE 33: Lectllres on liis/ory and General Poliry (1788), p. 499. PAGE 8r, LINE r:11.: The Works of Bcrljamin Franklin on Philosophy, Politics, and Morals, IV (Philadelphia: W. Duane, 1809),215, en6. PAGE 8r, LINE r:18: Letter to n. Vaughan, July 10, 17!32, ibid., VI (lflx7),

4:83.

PAOE 82, LINE 33: "Idee genel'ale de la revolution au dix·neuvieme siecle," oj). cit. [page 7R, line R6], p. goo. PAGE 83, LINE I: "Pacifisrn: Its Per~ollal and Social Implications," in Gooch, op. cit. [page RO, liTle I], pp. 61, 63. PAGE 83, LINE 7: UTlion Now with Britain (New York: Harper & Bros.; 194 1), p. I97· PAGE 84, LINE 3: Knowledge for What? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939), p. 241. PAGE 84, LINE 19: Louis Bara, La ScieTlce de lapaix (1872). PAGE 85, LINE 5: See for details Charles Dupuis, Le Principe d'lquilihre sf Ie Concert Europlen (Paris: Perrin et Oie, 1909), pp. 38 fr., 60 fr. PAGE 85, LINE 30: "Pacifism: Its Meaning and Its Task," in Gooch, op. cit• .f.page RO, line r], pp. 22, 23. PAGE 86, LINE 7: cr. Beard, op. cit. [page 60, line 6], pp. 98, 99: "In line with the new interests, the study of international law and diplomacy was encouraged in institutions of learning. Old-fashioned courses on diplomacy-cold, scholarly performances-were supplemented by courses on international relations, in which emphasis was laid on world peace and the means of promoting it. Books, pamphlets, an~rtic1es on pacification wO!Oe writte~, published and widely circulated, . ften with

NOTES the nil! of subventions from peace funds. Intel'national peare conf/;,ren('~ wne organized nml provided oppot,twlities fol' tl':vc\-and extended discourses. Se~dolll had college prcskknts, pro~C'ssor8, clergymen, and leadel'~ among women cnjoy . . d such privileges and I'cceiv~d such marked consideration at the hands of the general public. It looked as if ~ new era of usefulness and distinction had been opened for them in the field of grenll aCrail's, and they made the most of its opportunities," PAGE 87, LINE 6: EmallciJJate Yow' Colonies (London: Robert HewnI'd, 1830), PAGE 87, LINE. r~: In the letter of r[l,12 to Henry Ashworth, lac. cit. [JJage

75, line 2.,9). PAGE 94, LINE 6: As far back as 1877 James Lorimer could write in "Le probleme final elu droit international," Revue de droit intewatiOllal et de lIfgislatioll comparee, IX (1877), 184: "Strangely enough, however, these speculations of English utilitarianism, taken as a whole, al'e of all the dissertations on the subject I know the least useful from the practical point of view." cr. also Beard, op, cit. [page 60, line 6], p. 129: "Nearly every evil that was inconceivable in internationalist ideology in 1919 ~ame to pass within the span of twenty years, It would seem then that this scheme of thought had becn based upon some misconct'ptions respccting the nature and propensities of men and nations or, if this explanation is invalid, that internationalists had not adopted LhccolTcct 'approach' to the goal they had set before themselves. Their image of the world had not corl'esponded with sufficient (!Xactness to its realities or their methods had becn deficient in points of technique. They cOLlld, and some of thero did, ascribe theil' defeats to the madness of men and nations but this was a confession that their former prcmisl"s anu fictions 11ad been founded upon e1'1'018 of calculation. [u any evcnt the verdict was the same, Uiliesa all the blame was to be laid on Americans as the wodel's gl'eatest scapegoats." PAGE 94., LINE 3~: The Wfry of Peace (l,ondon: p, Allen &I' Co., Ltd.) r9~8), p. 75. PAGE fJ7, LINE It: October 5, 19.[0, p. !l. PAGE gO, LIm 13: "Observations of Condol'cct on the Twenty-ninth nook of The Spidt of Laws," in Destuil de Tracy, A Gammelltmy and Review Qf Montesquierl's SPil'iI qf Laws (1811). ACcol'ding to the .Pl'cfm'e to the :Fl'ench edition of 1819, this book was wl'iuen fol' Jell.'ersoll and, according to the Preface to the French edition of 18t7. was used as a text in the College of William and Mnry and in several other American colleges. The translation in the text is ronde ii'om the edition of 1819 (Paris: T. Desoer), p. 4!lO. PAGE 08, LINE. !lI: "The Fundamental Law Behind the Constitution of the United States," The Constitution Reconsidered, edited by OOllyers Read (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), p, 5. PAGe 99, LINE 2~: War Thoughts ill Peace Time (London: OXfOl'd University Press, 1931), PP. !lB, ~7. ... PAGE 99, LINE 24: It Is Later thall You Think (New York: Viking Press, 1939), p, 18. PAGe 99, LINE ~6: "The Rejection of Liberalism," University qf California Chronidc, XXXI (1929), 232. l'A(;E IOIJPLI!IIE II: Loret12; von Stein, the great pioueer of Continental admlAistrative law, pu$lle~ the analogy ern furth-
NOTES transformation of international law into international administrative Cotta,

!?

,.,Jaw!> sec Hll1Idblich der Verwaltllngslehre (2d ed.; Stuttgart: J. 1B7 6 ), P·'97· '

See, for the different topics dealt with in trtis chapter, Quincy Wright, A Study if War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942),jiassim. CHAPTER V PAGE log, LINI: 36: Op. cit. [page 19, line 15), p. 350. PAGE 110, LINE 1l: Tlte Age of Reforlll, 1815-r870 (Oxford: OX.f01d University Press, 193B), p. 34. cr. also John Stuart Mill, DissertatiolH a/ld DiscussiollS: Political, Philosophical, alld HIstorical, I (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1873), 379, 380: "He had neither internal experience nor external. ... He never knew prosperity and advClsity, passion nor satiety: he never had even the cx.periences which sickness gives . . . . He knew no dejection, no heaviness of heart. He never felt life a sore and weary burden. He was a boy to the last." PAGE 1I2, LINE 20: "Liberty and Responsibility," in Earth Hunger and Other Essays (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1913), p. QIB. PAGE 113, LINE 37: "Advancing Social and Political Organization in the United States," in The Challenge qf Facts and Other Essays (New Haven: Yale UniveI"sity Presl>, 1914), p. 3'10. PAGE 114, LINE 2: Holmes-Pollock Letters, I (Cambridge: Hal'vard University Press, 1941), 163. PAGE 115, LINE 20: "Democracy and Plutocracy," oj) cit. [jmge fIJI, line Jlo], P. 28 3· PAGE 116, LINE 20: Cf. O. Eo Ayres, Science: The [i'alsc Messiah (Indhlnapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1927), jiasJim, PAGE 116, LINE 35: The Nature of the Phy~ical World (New York; Macmilhm Co., 1930), p. 2£)1 and cf. also pp. 24 71T.; Sir JamcsJcnns, The Universe around Us (New York: Macmillan Co., 1931), pp. 1[)9tr.; J. W. N. Sullivan, Science .. A New Outlim (New York: T. Nelson & Sons, 1935), p. 155; and Alfred North WhilehclId, The ConcoNo! NCltllre (Oamhddge: at the University Press, IgQO), pp. 1471T., 16gf1'. PAGE 117, LINE Ig: "Commoll Sense and the Universe," Atlantic Monthly, CLXIX, NO.5 (May, 1942), 334. PAGI: ll7, LINE 25: L. T. Moore, The Limitations rifScience (1915), passim. PAGE XI 8, LINE ~ 1: OJ) cit. [page u6, line 351, pp. 2~8, 229, 344. PAGE u8, LINE 27: The Limitatiom of Science (New York: Viking Press, 1933), p. 109. PAGE uB, LINE 3.2: Op cit. [page 1I6, line 35], p. 163. PAGE 118, LINE 39: The New Background if Science (New York: Macmillan ~o., 1933), p. !.l57. PAGE 119, LINE 25: Op cit. [page lIG, line 35], pp. 300, 30~; cf. also Jeans, op cit. [page lI8, line 39], pp. 224ff. PAGE I!l3, LINE .2: Op cit. [page I I6, line 35J, pp. 288, ~8g. PAGE 123, LINE 21 : Ibid., p. 295. PAGE 124, LINE 8: Opcit. [page ull, li/!839J, p. 235. PAQE 124, LINE 3g:"op cit. [p.?ge u6, line 3.5), p. 310.

aoo

NOTES

PAO)?, t!2G, LlNr 4,: Thd)hiloroP"JlofPhysi~r (New YOlk: W. W. NOt'toll & Co.,

193G." pp. 79, 130. FAUn 129, LINr. IS: TiIW,

1 xun., No. Ii (Jantl!lIY 31, 1914), ~8.

'"

.-,

Modem EqllilY (1943), p. 10. The whole range of political science is systematically surveyed and evaluated in Ulu«-les E. Melri,un, SYJtemalir Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945). Thel e is an excellent, however aphoristic, discllssion of the scientific treatment of political problems in James Hart, The O,di1UlIlce MaUng powers of the President of the United Stales (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1925), pp. 2G4, 265.

PAG!:: 130, LlNr. 11.1:

CHAPTER VI PAGl!. 133, LINJl. 24: Ethica Nicomachea vi. lIS9a. PAG!!. 133, LIm:. 28: A Treatise of Human Nature (London: Longmans, Green Sf Co., 1886), II., 195. PAG!!. 134, LINE 3: "An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals," Tile PhilosoJI/tical Works Q/ David !-iume (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1854), IV., 229. PAGE 134, LXN!:: 8: "Remarks at the Peace Banquet," Memories and Siudies (New York: Longrnans, Green & Co., 1(17), Pl'. 299, 300. PAGE 134, LIND 25: (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), p. 00. PAGE 143. LINE I9: SdCl1fe mid Polilics ill the Ancient World (London: G. Allen &' Unwin, Ltd., 1939), p. 711. The most brilliant l'eccnt
or

n.,

CHAPTER VII PAGE 147. LINE 35: "The Problem of COl1nl1.unicatine; IdeM through Formal Education and through Popular Mass Edu~ation," Fifth Conference on Science, Philosophy anci Religion, APPloaches to National UniiJI (New York, 1945), pp. 834-35· PAGt 156, LillE 32: Tim~, XLV., No.6 (Februa.ry 5, 1945),36. PAGE l65. LINE 36: Politics ii. 7. I!l67a. PAGl!. 166, Lum 3: Voyages qf Ptter Esprit Radisson (Boston: Prince Society, 1885), p. Ig8. PI\GE 166, LINE 8: Quoted in Stuart Oloete, Against Thm Three (Boston: -. HQughton Mifllill Co., 1945), p. 186. PAGE t7~, LINJl. 17: Germany alld Europe (New York: Random HOWIe, 1944), p·42. PAGE 172, Lml1..!lt: "The End of Machiavellianism," Review of Pofitics, IV. (l942), Iff'. Th~ubject matter of this chapter has been most illwnitjatingly treated in the books of Reinhold NHlbuhr"

NOTES

1l0I

CHAPTER VIII

PA~ 18~, L\~ 9: Politics iii. 16. lQ87b.

ana

n

PAGE 180, LINE 36: Miscellanies Literary Historital (London: Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., 1921), II., QI7. PAGE 18r, LINE I: Catherine Drinker Bowen, 'Yankee/rom Olympus (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1945), p. 327. " PAGE 182, LINE 2: "Mores of the Present and FutUle," in Wm and Other Essqys (New Havell: Yale University rress, 1911), p. I59. PAGE 18g, LINE 6: History ix. 16. It 3hould be noted that the following books, which are quoted above in their American editions, have also been pubhshed in Great Blitain. Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, WagMr (Seckel' & Warburg). John Morley, Life of Richard Cobden (Macmillan & Co.). A. S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (J. M. Dent and Sons: The Everyman Library). Sir James Jeans, The Universe Around Us (Cambridge University Press). J. W. N. Sullivan, The New Background oj Science (Cambridge University Press). The Philosophical Works oj David Hume (J. M. Dent & Som: The Everyman Library).

Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modem Wotld (Cambridge Univer· sity Press). Lord Bryce) The Americans Commonwealtlt (Macmillan & Co., !;l volB,). Walter Lippman, Good Socie!J (Allen & Unwin), L. T. Hobhouse, Libewlism (Home University Library). John Stuart Mill, PoUtic(ll Economy (Longmans, Green & Co.), Clarence Streit, Union Now with Britain (Jonathan Cape). J, W. N. Sullivan, Science .. A New Outline (Nelson). William James, Memories and Studies (Longmans, Green & Co.).

INDEX Acton, Lord, 168 Adntlls, Brooks, 73 Adams, Henry, JOg, J91 Adams,John Quincy, 33 Adler, Alfred, 140, 175 Alexander tbeGreat, 166 Allen, Lord, of Hartwood, 85 Angell, Sil' Norman, 20 Aquinas, Thomas, 174 Arbitration, international, 99, 101 Aristotle, II, 31, 133, 158, 165, 180, 1

BUl'ritt, Elihu, 75

Bush, Dm1glas, 147 Butler, Samuel, 136

Calvin, 9 Canning, 62 Capi talisl1l: ethics of, 156; and war, 52, 87

Carlyle, 'Thomas, 38 Catholicism, J4.9 Camation, social, 31, 86ff., Il2ff., 179; sec also Social laws, Social probleJl1s, Social sciences Cavour, 154, 156 Cecil, Viscount, 94. Chamberlain, Neville, 95, 102 Channing, William Ellery, 76

87

Art, liS science, 32 Augustine, 170, IN, 191 Austin, John, 103 Ayres, O. E., !WI Bacon, Francis, 17, ~o, 43 Balance ofpowcl', 93, IO!i. 169 Baldwin, Stanley, 66 Barn, Louis, ID'I Barzull,.J acqucs, 3~, 20 X :Baumgarten, II., 192 BClil]CB, A. a, H., 1~)3, J!)t! Beard, Ch:wles A., 32, 60, 131, 197 Bccker, Cnd L" 3g Bentham, Jeremy, It, 2(), 32, 43,

87,

103, 110

• Bismarck, 33, 44-, 56-7 \ ))Jake, William, 166 Blum, Ll!'on, 45, 53 Boerne, Heilll'u:h, 136 Bonn, M. J., 73-4 Boole, George, ii. Bowen, Calhcrine Drinker, 201 Bradley, A. C., 176 Bratranek, F. Th., 194 Briand, Aristide, 37,40, 18l Bright, John, 44,75, 194 Broad, 0. D., 99 Broglie, Duke Albert de, 62 Bruno, Giordano, 17 Brutus, 162 Bryce, Lord James, 9, 181, 201 BUl'Ckhardt,Jacob, 168, 181 Burke, EdII).J..lnd, ii, 40, 106, 187 Burns, C. Delisle, 3~

Ch('valier~ Michel, 7~,

7t

76

Christian ~cicnce, 33 Churchill, Winston, GG (Jivili:r.~\tiotl, c,'j.b of Wcstel'fl, gIr.,

I081I'. ClooLe, S t\lI'lN, 200 Cobden, Richard, 4'111'., 55-6, 75,

00,87,0.01

Collective SI.'l1ul'ity, 60 "9. 7x Colonial p(llky, and wnl', 87 Cominterrl. foreign policy of', 56,

191

Common gooll, 54, 173; see (lIsa Pollidal juslicc1 Sodal iu~tice Communist MantiesLo, ~5, 52, 76 ~ Compromise, 19.28, 70-i, D111: Comte, Auguste, !:lX, 7~ Condol'cet, 98 ConJIict; .fee Moral conflict, Social conUict Congress of Bedin, 56, 94ff., 106 Congress of Vienna, 85, 96 Conscientious objector, perfccti-.'st ethics of, 149""50 ~ Constitution, rationalist conception of, >17-8, 98-9 Copernicus, 17, t 16 Courts oflaw, rationalist conception of, 118, g~, 97, 99 Croce, 1l,!(nedctto"17~ \'Ol'l

INDEX Clonu:" Lord, 63 CfoflIDWJ,lIl,58 Cruce, EIne.V, 47

Cultul"allag, 155 Danton, 56 Darwin, Charles, go Death, problem of, 21, l77 Defensive warS, liberal wars a" 65 Democracy; as abstract prinl,iple and political reality, 53; as science, 32; ancl war, 63 Demotl atic control Offm cign affairs, 60-r; see also Foreign policy Descartes, 17, lI6, I!l6 Destutt cle Tracy, 19B Dewey, John, I I, 20, 3r, 32 Dialectic, of ethics and politics, 152 -3 Diderot,48 Disarmament, scientific, 85-6 Disillusionment, liberal, 64, 68-9 Disraeli, 43, 55, 67, 8'h 91, 95, 9 8 Don Juan, r66 Duns Scotus, 17'~ Dupuis, Oharles, 197

Ethics-con/d. So('ialJll~ti<;e)

; f"-tiollnllstic, (!lIT., I'15ff. (sec 0"0 MOl'(lliC]); scit'ntiHC,"!:lI, 36fT., It!51f.j trnditiollnl

conception of, !2O-1, 17-1 (f. Evil: tollccpl ol~ 174fT. j ns la, k Df u;mon, I 9,~ 174 j see £llso Etba's

FaClual knowledge: importance for socj,\\ actioil, 179fr, lBG; <18 insti"tlment of ideology, 182, IflG Farrington, Benjamin, 143 Fascism, 13. 66; see also State, Totalitadnnism Faust, Dr. 166 Ferrero, Guglielmo, 194Feuclalism, 23, 2,,)-6, 29, 47-8, 58-9 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 26 Fiske, John, 73 ~ Foreign policy; factors dete-rmining, 62-3; relation to domestic policy, HIT., 53--4, Goff.; sea also Democratic control l'rtll1klin, Benjamin, <17, 110-x Free trade, I\S <1UernatLvO to wor, 74-", 771f., Or , • l'rc('(jom; of the pn'ss) ;,1 j of ~pc(l('h, Economics: 8...' altcrnative to polilics, 53 -<\ 7QIT., 81-2, as altcUiativc to Will', Ft'cl1C'h fOl'eign pnlky, (lcculindtli's DO; rationalist con(;eplion of hnvs oi~ 90-1 of~ 7rJf. Fl'codl Rcwohtl[O!l, I\nd Hilt'l"al Eddington, A. S., ltG, nOif., 12':!, Jor('ign policy, 55 II: 124, !
INDfl.X Harmony of interests, 15 G-7

~O,

7off.,

Kant, Immanuel, 17()

Ht\rt,Jam~s, ~oo

Hegel, Q6, I riO Heisenberg, Werner, tla Helvetius, !.1.0 Herodotus, 13D HistOl'Y; liberal conception of, 3nff.; and reason, 39-40, 130-1 Hitler, 158, 166 Hobbes, 9, I a, 3 I, 45, 15 0 , 15 I Hobhol.lse, L. '1'., 47, !20I Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Qa, 39, I I~, 180 Hooker, Richard, 18 Hooton, Earnest Albert, 193 Horney, Karen, 175 Hugo, Victor, 55, 76 Hull, Cordell, 75, ao Hwnboldt, Wilhelm von, 45 Hwne, David, 20, QI, 40, 133,201 JVbris, 135, Iaa

Kepler, 17, Ig6 Knight, Frank, vi

~

Lf\bo\\!' party, Blilish 45 Lnisser fuirc, 46, 50, 56, 157 Lange, Ohristian, Ig6 Laplace, 17, 18 Laski, HaroldJ., 39 Law: dependent 011 soci;!l conditions, I03lf. (see also Natural law) j Greek concept of, g8 Lea, Homer, 83 Leacock, Stephen, 116 League of Nations, 4'2, 59, a5, 86, 95, 105, lOG Lefebure, Victor, 85 Legislation, as science, 31-2, 35--6, 103

Icarus, 166, 18a Ideology: as rationalization, 134-5; and reality inintel'naiional alfain, 66ff.; see also Factual knowledge Immorality, .necessary, of politics, 167ff., !72ff.; sec also Btlues Impel'ialiam, 51-2, 07 Industrial age, incompatible with wa~, 72-3 Intenticm, as moral standat'd in politics, I !i9-60 International con!Ucts, essence of, 96-7, 106iT. Interna.tionallaw, 97ff'.; as alternative to international politics, 99lf., I 04ff.; interp(etation of, 102 International thought, characteristics of modern, 40ff., 53ff'., 06IT. International trade, as alterna.tive to war, 74-5 Interpadiamentary Union, 59

Leibnitz, 17, ').7 Lenin, 194 Lerner, Max, 99 Lesser evil, ethics of, 164'-5, 17::lff. Lex Salica, 15 Q Libernl parlies, foreign policy of, 44, MIT. j sec also Liberalism Liberalism: Gladstoninll, !If), 991 in intemntional aITnil's, 42f1:, 5!2 fi·. , 94 (.I'M also Dcfermive war, InltlrnntiOllrll thought, Liberal Pf.\~·ltcs, PoU"ic", l'revenltve Wl\J:, State); Manchestel', 29; political philosophy of, IX, 2SfI~ 35, $66 also J.aisscl' faire Lincoln, Abraham, lBo, xS:;! Lipplnann, Waiter, 193, ~OI List, Frieddch, 77,8", roG Local'no Treaties, 98 Lorimer, James, 19B Lundbr.'rg, Ferdinand, 35 Luther, Martin, 164. r74, Lynd, Robert S., a6, 83 Lytton, Lord, 63

James, William, 134, :;!OI Jeans, Sir James, 118, 123, 199,20r Jefferson, 9 I, Ig8 Joad, C. E. M., 0101 Joubert, Joseph, 33 Journalism: irrational elements in, 180; as sc;ience, 36 JUlLtice, as ~entifi.c problem, 3~; see al,fo Ethics, Political justice

MacDonald, Rammy, 22 Machiavelli, 31, 37, 43, 145, "Gi, 154, 180 McIlwain, Oharles H., 50, 98 Maistre, de, 18 Majority rule: abuse of, 53-.H rationalist conception of, 28; see also Democracy Mannh~, Karl';> 36

cr.

~()!\

INDEX Marilaill,Jacques, 17~, 1!11 M
~

1'Iind, crealive relation to nature: and ~odclY, II!QIl: Minority righL~, nbu5c of, 53-'~ Miscs, Ludwig von, 74.

Montesqllicu, v. Moore, L" T., 109, 201 Moral con{Jicl, inevitability of, IG!.! If. ; sec also Btllies Moml philosophy, n:p!act'rl Ly pl'llpngnllda nnalysia, '4(i Momlity, as C!\flineel'itlg, 30.- a MOl'genthnu, Han3 J., ~95 Morley, Lord John, :31, 64, 1l)3, ~Ol

Munich Conferellce, 95 Myrdal, Gunnar, ~oo Mysticism, r66

!

Nnt~lr~: modl'rn concept of; 115Ir.: trnditinunl cOHee'pt oj; II~) Jji

Nfl'liislll, potenti,ditit's uf! I:P Neutl'lIlity ll'gish~ti(llI, lIq ,lltern.ljive to war, qn Newtun, Isnllc; r7,!lO, Ilti, 12ti Nil'buhr, Rrillhold, :Jo, ,tn, !lOll Nonintervention, ,~G, fJ(i, till, l\I\l

Oedipus, ,62 "Ont' world," cOIler'pl of, 79 Ortrga y a"sset, 5.~ OutlaWlY OfWlIl', 16, 102, 104Pacifism, 46ff., 61ff. Paine, Thomns, 27 Palmerstonian foreign policy, >14, 55-G Pm-elo, Vilfrcdo, XSI Parliamentary government, rationalist conerplion of, ~B Pascal, 12, 173 Passions, nltkHlalist c:mlccplioll nf. ~()j see a{jQ Ralio!lflli~ll1, RCilhOll. Sodlll Sci('!l(,C3 Peal'll, problr:m QI~ 1!l,~ .5

Pctll'cfl.ll ('hange', 00 PedC(:til'llism, 14!lll'., I!,!] Philo~()phy, cdai~ ol~ lOll',; I :l!l~

,,\.~k

ot;

PhYHi()(']'ntH~

71, {l2 Pl;lIwk; Mllx, !1I'i l'!llllning, w'o\lO\ilic:, FIO·j j lutf·I'. natiollal, 130-1; Ihilttflthms ur, l2(1...fJi mlHtlUY, 1~7-B, ISH 1.1;

problem of, 127IT.; scienuOc, Sli,

U5

Plato,

Il, Ill,

31,41, 150, TOil

Plebiscites, intc1'llational, B5 Political ethics; !ice E1hics Political justice, pwblcHl of, I 7::l- 3; Napoleon 1,72,84 se6 al;o Ethics, Justice . Napoleon III 58, 99 ~ Political science; modern: beginNational uni~cation, and war, 63 Ilin!?s of, 19; devclopmcnt "r, Nationalism, 50ft; ami individual 91ft.; see also' Social sciences ~rty, 58-9 • Polilical thoughtl decadence of Natural frontier, 84-5 modern, vi, 5311., 80, gxfF., 96-7, 18~if. Natural law, '1.7 Natural sciences, irrational deter- ~ Politics: amomlity of, 151 If, (J68 mination of, Iggfi',; see also aho Ethics); liberal hostility (0, Nature, Science, Social problems, 26, 46; nature of, 12, XO j ~67fI~ Social sciences (see also Ethics, PQwel;.Politlcs); to "W ~tura1 system," lIhUosop.fY of, 1 B be transformed into admitlistrl\~

!.I06

INDBX

Politics-rOll/d. Ro~eb('l'Y, Lord, IBo tiWl, 32; l!',\mlurmiltion of, iU10 b RO\lS~Call, 20, .1 0- 1,
Pound, Roscoe, 99 • of, 2711: 97, IOOlf.; see also Rationalism Power, lust for, 164ff.; of individual trnruferred to state, 167IT.; limitless chnrl:1('tcl' or, IG,o-6; ubiquity of, IGGff. Sabine, George 11., 191 POWf'l', moral pl'oblem of, 1'~5-G; Snmt.l'icl'lc, Abbe dc, IS, 40fl:, 72, see also E thies 126, 192, 191 l'owcr politics: 16, 66-7, 74, So, 91 Samt-Simon, 75-6 (~ee also Balance of power); conSand, George, 55 demnation of, 17oIT. Science: a~ alternative to war, 82ff.; Prevcnuve war, liberal condemnabelief In redeeming power of, 12, tion of, 65 30ff., 109ff., 176 (see also International thought, Liberalism, Priestley, Joseph, 80 Political thought, Rationahsm, Progre9s, philosophy of, 14, 15, !Ill Scientism); lillllt3tions of, IOglf. ff·,3 0 ScientJsm, 16, I 08ff. j see also Science Protestantism, liberal, 119 Ploudhon, Pierr e Joseph, 72, 75,82, . Secret diplomacy, 61, 84 Shaicespeme, 176 196 PUl'Itanism, 38, 156-7 Shelley, 135 Smith, Adaln, 70-1, 75, 78, 92 Race hatred, as scientific ploblem, Smul~, Jail., 193 Social conllic:.t, nature or, J BG '32 Rfldbson, Peter, 165 Sucial cIIginc(·rtllg, f,lll,ICY 01; 1fi7ff. Social jURtke, problem uf, 185; Me Rahton, ,Jac-icson Harvey, 19'1 also Bthics Rathcnau, Waltel', 73 Rationalism: lolf., I 7I},. , t33, 136, Social laws, cOl)e<'pt of, x14-15, 119, I!H I38, 174, T77; r"uun: of, 4o·-t, lOOfl'., 13~, I 74f1'. ; as pohtical Soclill pwblem9: difrerent from prolJletm of'mltural SciCllCCR, 183philosophy, 23[1'.; see also UOlll't9, Democraoy, Liberalism, l'arlia1; irrational nature e)f, 137fr., mental'Y Boverllment, Rule of 183£):'. law, Success Sodal reform, philosophy of, ~a1r. Rationality of man, dual meaning Social sciences, beginnings of, 18 i of, 108-9 essence of, 139ft; mistakcll anReason: determined by interests find alogy with natural scicnce~, 111 emotions, 134fT., lSI; sodal funcff., 117-10, 123, 126; moral tions of, Ig6ff., ISSH: j soe abo element in, 14::lff,; prediction in, History, Rationalism, Rational. llgff., 13Iff.; problem of uni· ity, Science, Social sciences, versality in, 143-4; as pseudoWisdom religion, 144; as a science of "Reason of state," 151; soe also trends, 1"1-15, lIgff., 125, 13Iff.; Ethics similarity to modern natural aciences, llg, 121ff., 126; social Reinsch, Paul S., 45, 63 Religion, scientific spirit in, ~3 limitations of, 140ff. j trutl1""i!rl, ResponsibiHty, political ethiCS of, 143-4; see also Oausation, Social 159-60; see also Ethics problems, Social scientist, Social Revolution, 9,9, 61, 153 world Rhodes, Ceell, 166 Social scientist, a~ social agent, Riqardo,71 1'.;14-5 Riehelieu, -jA, 57-8, gt, 195 Social world: contingency of, I 30ff. ; Robinson, J l\Illes 'Harvey, 35 rationp,Iity of, "SQff.

INDEX Socialism, 22, 2B-9, 51-::1; ~,lrx\~m D Sociology, I,\,!

r:.~)'7

ICO

also

Son nino, 99 Sovf'rcignty, abolition of; ns alternative to war, 90-1 Spectator, 'l7 Spencer, Herbert, I 1,44,46,7'1., 158 Spinoza, 59, 72, 195, 195 Stalin, 156 State: liberal 11O~tility to, 26-7 (see also Liberalism); worship 01; 150, 16Bfl'.; see also Fascism, Totalitarianism Statesman, natme and task of the, 16,93-4, 187-90; seB also Wiqdom Steffens, Lincoln, 33 Stein, LOlenz yon, 198 Straight, Mit-hael, 31 Sueh, Olarence K., 32, 83, !lOI Suavez, Georges, 53 Success, rationalistic philoqohy 01; 19, q6-7, 156-']; ~e6 also Rationaliqm Sullivan,]. W. N., uO, ID(), 201 Sumner, William Gl'al~arn, 40, 112-13, !lB, l!lt Suttner, DCllha von, 83

Ullion ft.)1 D,'mocl'atil' (:0111101, hI Unit".d N"tiol\~, ')<), loG

Uqcq, Htntult' of, ·I..l<) '10 '" 151, l77-H

Vtilit,~(.\Il18ll1, ~1, ! f(ltl:,

Valentin, \"'It, 6!.! VI'blen, '1'hl\r~dn, IIlI Vi co, 17, J()5 Violence, in dOIllC·,tll! and dOllnl .lf1:1i ri, .lli11:

int~rn,l­

Walpole, IBo lor democracy, !jon:, 591T.; distinction b(·twt't'JI, ,llld P('
~"War:

Defensive wa[', DClllOt'I,U:y, r1n'c

trnde, ImpcIiallsm. Indlllitrial agc, Inlemtltional thonght, International twdl', Li be r<\Jisl'll , Marxism, National unHiraliOll, Neutlailt.y, l'{jhtil,\l tl\ollKitt,l'IC'vcntivc W,U, HdC'1lI C', SodllliliIll, T('chnol,'gy War tdcrt'lldulU, til Wnrd, l.,·Qtet, ')'i

Wcis" 1'lIul, vi; 'j()l Wtllingloll, Dukc' 01; '17 WCII!C·tqql', (k(lqr,t·~. rq\.l

Talleyrand, 40 Whitc'hc'ad, Allie'cl NUl'rh, _p, If II, Tariff, scientific, 81-5 H)I, l!)I), !.HII Technology, as altel'untivc to Will', Wllhdnl tl. rl'; 75-6,79-80 "'Wil~n~l, Wmult·o\\" !17, 1·t, fit'":!, Thi6baut, Marcel, 194 !iUII., qt), l!i[h IUl.\ Thomas, St., 191 "WisdoUl, dhtlut't front Hdetltifi\'~ Thorndike, E. L" 18, 31, 71 kn()wk~lge! IU7n~; .Mit (/lso Slllte~. Thrasymachus, 36 man Thucydidcs, 43 Woodwal'd, B. L.) no Tocqueville, de, 181 Wright, Quincy! 199 Totalitarianism, ISO-I; see also Fascism, State Zeeland, Paul VRIl, 73 Triple Alliance, 57, 99 Zinoviev, x9(~