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Man,
it would seem, has descended from arboreal apes. They lived a happy life in tropical
forests, eating coconuts when they were hungry, and throwing them at each other when they
were not. They were perpetually occupied in gymnastics, and acquired an agility which to
us is truly astonishing. But after some millions of years of this arboreal paradise, their
numbers increased to the point where the supply of coconuts was no longer adequate. The
population problem set in, and was dealt with in two different ways: those who lived in
the middle of the forest learned to throw coconuts with such accuracy as to disable
adversaries, whose consequent death relieved the pressure of population, but those who
lived on the edge of the forest found another method: they looked out over the fields and
discovered that they yielded delicious fruits of venous kinds quite as pleasant as
coconuts, and gradually they came down from the trees and spent more and more time in the
open on the ground . . . they soon discovered that if you live on the ground it is easy to
pick up stones, which are more effective missiles than coconuts. (N.H.C.W.p16) I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having
changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting
that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change
their opm~ons when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is
assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths. The
creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicaea. Where nobody knows anything, there is
no point in changing your mind. (D.M.M.M.preface)
Owing to the identification of religion
with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most
intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of
educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made
illegal. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of
intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more
closely than in some others. (E.S.O.p14/5)
If you think that your belief is based upon
reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it
if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize
that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of
persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called
'education.' This last is peculiarly dastardly since it takes advantage of the
defenselessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practiced in a greater or less
degree in the schools of every civilized country. (H.S.E.P.p220/1)
Punctuality is a quality the need of which
is bound up with social co-operation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul
to God, or with mystic insight, or with any of the matters with which the more elevated
and spiritual moralists are concerned. One would be surprised to find a saint getting
drunk, but one would not be surprised to find him late for an engagement And yet in the
ordinary business of life punctuality is absolutely necessary. (E.S.O.p34/5)
To modern educated people, it seems obvious
that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient
authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the
seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although
he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his
wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is
in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles both had to run out and look at the
weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog
will not go mad, but any other animal will (Hiss. Am., 704a); that the bite of the
shrewmouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant (ibid., 604b); that
elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive
oil, and warm water (ibid., 605a); and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who
have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle
for his fidelity to observation. (I.S.S.p7)
It is not altogether true that persuasion
is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion, even many of which everybody
approves, are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say
to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow
up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion.' Instead of
this we say: 'The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the
evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the
Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we
consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a
knife., There may, for ought I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife,
but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of
appreciating them. (P.:A.N.S.A.p268/9)
In universities, mathematics is taught
mainly to men who are going to teach mathematics to men who are going to teach mathematics
to.... Sometimes, it is true, there is an escape from this treadmill. Archimedes used
mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve 3 the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery,
modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on
this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of
State support. (H.S.E.P.p54)
Until the time of Galileo, astronomers,
following Aristotle, believed that everything in the heavens, from the moon upwards, is
unchanging and incorruptible Since Laplace, no reputable astronomer has held this view.
Nebulae, stars, and planets, we now believe, have all developed gradually. Some stars, for
instance the companion of Sirius, are 'dead'; they have at some time undergone a cataclysm
which has enormously diminished the amount of light and heat radiating from them. Our own
planet, in which philosophers are apt to take a parochial and excessive interest, was once
too hot to support life, and will in time be too cold. After ages during which the earth
produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which
it generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitters. This, however, is a passing nightmare; in
time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return. (U.E.p8/9)
Generalizing, we may say that Dr. Dewey,
like everyone else, divides beliefs into two classes, of which one is good and the other
bad. He holds, however, that a belief may be good at one time and bad at another. A belief
about some event in the past is to be classified as 'good' or 'bad,' not according to
whether the event really took place, but according to the future effects of the belief.
The results are curious. Suppose somebody says to me: 'Did you have coffee with your
breakfast this morning?' If I am an ordinary person, I shall try to remember. But if I am
a disciple of Dr. Dewey I shall say: 'Wait a while; I must try two experiments before I
can tell you.' I shall, then, first make myself believe that I had coffee, and observe the
consequences, if any; I shall then make myself believe that I did not have coffee, and
again observe the consequences, if any. I shall then compare the two sets of consequences,
to see which I found the more satisfactory. If there is a balance on one side I shall
decide for that answer. If there is not, I shall have to confess that I cannot answer the
question. But this is not the end of our trouble. How am I to know the consequences of
believing that I had coffee for breakfast? If I say 'the consequences are such-and such,'
this in turn will have to be tested by its consequences before I can know whether what I
have said was a 'good' or a 'bad' statement. And even if this difficulty were overcome,
how am I to judge which set of consequences is the more satisfactory? One decision as to
whether I had coffee may fill me with contentment, the other with determination to further
the war effort. Each of these may be considered good, but until I have decided which is
better I cannot tell whether I had coffee for breakfast. (H.W.P.p825)
The date of the creation of the world
(according to the orthodox view) can be inferred from the genealogies in Genesis, which
tell how old each patriarch was when his oldest son was born. Some margin of controversy
was permissible, owing to certain ambiguities and to differences between the Septuagint
and the Hebrew text; but in the end Protestant Christendom generally accepted the date
4004 B.C., fixed by Archbishop Usher. Dr. Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of
Cambridge, who accepted this date for the Creation, thought that a careful study of
Genesis made even greater precision possible; the creation of man, according to him, took
place at 9.00 A.M. on October 23rd. This, however, has never been an article of faith; you
might believe, without risk of heresy, that Adam and Eve came into existence on October
16th or October 30th, provided your reasons were derived from Genesis. The day of the week
was, of course, known to have been Friday, since God rested on the Saturday. (R.S.p51/2)
The first German to take notice of Hume was
Immanuel Kant, who had been content, up to the age of about forty-five, with the dogmatic
tradition derived from Leibniz. Then, as he says himself, Hume 'awakened him from his
dogmatic slumbers.' After meditating for twelve years, he produced his great work, the
Critique of Pure Reason; seven years later, at the age of sixty-four, he produced the
Critique of Practical Reason, in which he resumed his dogmatic slumbers after nearly
twenty years of uncomfortable wakefulness. (U.E.p51)
Children are made to learn bits of
Shakespeare by heart, with the result that ever after they associate him with pedantic
boredom. If they could meet him in the flesh, full of jollity and ale, they would be
astonished, and if they had never heard of him before they might be led by his jollity to
see what he had written. But if at school they had been inoculated against him, they will
never be able to enjoy him. The same sort of thing applies to music lessons. Human beings
have certain capacities for spontaneous enjoyment, but moralists and pedants possess
themselves of the apparatus of these enjoyments, and having extracted what they consider
the poison of pleasure they leave them dreary and dismal and devoid of everything that
gives them value. Shakespeare did not write with a view to boring school-children; he
wrote with a view to delighting his audiences. If he does not give you delight, you had
better ignore him. (N.H.C.W.p201)
Fichte laid it down that education should
aim at de-, straying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be
incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as
their schoolmasters would have wished. But in his day this was an unattainable ideal. What
he regarded as the best system in existence produced Karl Marx. In future such failures
are not likely to occur where there is dictatorship. Diet, injections, and injunctions
will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of
beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers
that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will
believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so. (I.S.S.p50)
Boys and young men acquire readily the
moral sentiments of their social milieu, whatever these sentiments may be. The boy who has
been taught at home that it is wicked to swear, easily loses this belief when he finds
that the schoolfellows whom he most admires are addicted to blasphemy. (H.S.E.P.p76)
Dread of disaster makes everybody act in
the very way that increases the disaster. Psychologically the situation is analogous to
that of people trampled to death when there is a panic in a theatre caused by a cry of
'Fire!' In the situation that existed in the great depression, things could only be set
right by causing the idle plant to work again. But everybody felt that to do so was to
risk almost certain loss. Within the framework of classical economics there was no
solution. Roosevelt saved the situation by bold and heretical action. He spent billions of
public money and created a huge public debt, but by so doing he revived production and
brought his country out of the depression. Businessmen, who in spite of such a sharp
lesson continued to believe in old-fashioned economics, were infinitely shocked, and
although Roosevelt saved them from ruin, they continued to curse him and to speak of him
as 'the madman in the White House.' Except for Fabre's investigation of the behavior of
insects, I do not know any equally striking example of inability to learn from experience.
(N.H.C.W.p132/3)
You may, if you are an old-fashioned
schoolmaster, wish to consider yourself full of universal benevolence, and at the same
time derive great pleasure from caning boys. In order to reconcile these two desires you
have to persuade yourself that caning has a reformatory influence. If a psychiatrist tells
you that it has no such influence on some peculiarly irritating class of young sinners,
you will fly into a rage and accuse him of being coldly intellectual. There is a splendid
example of this pattern in the furious diatribe of the great Dr. Arnold of Rugby against
those who thought ill of flogging. (H.S.E.P.preface,p9)
Until very recently, it was universally
believed that men are congenitally more intelligent than women; even so enlightened a man
as Spinoza decides against votes for women on this ground. Among white men, it is held
that white men are by nature superior to men of other colors, and especially to black men;
in Japan, on the contrary, it is thought that yellow is the best color. In Haiti, when
they make statues of Christ and Satan, they make Christ black and Satan white. Aristotle
and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified
so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian. (U.E.p88)
Male superiority in former days was easily
demonstrated, because if a woman questioned her husband's he could beat her. From
superiority in this respect others were thought to follow. Men were more reasonable than
women, more inventive, less swayed by their emotions, and so on. Anatomists, until the
women had the vote, developed a number of ingenious arguments from the study of the brain
to show that men's intellectual capacities must be greater than women's. Each of these
arguments in turn was proved to be fallacious, but it always gave place to another from
which the same conclusion would follow. It used to be held that the male fetus acquires a
soul after six weeks, but the female only after three months. This opinion also has been
abandoned since women have had the vote. Thomas Aquinas states parenthetically, as
something entirely obvious, that men are more rational than women. For my part, I see no
evidence of this. (U.E.p158)
Some 'advanced Thinkers' are of opinion
that anyone who differs from the conventional opinion must be in the right. This is a
delusion; if it were not, truth would be easier to come by than it is. There are infinite
possibilities of error, and more cranks take up unfashionable errors than unfashionable
truths. I met once an electrical engineer whose first words to me were: 'How do you do?
There are two methods of faith-healing, the one practiced by Christ and the one practiced
by most Christian Scientists. I practice the method practiced by Christ.' Shortly
afterwards, he was sent to prison for making out fraudulent balance-sheets. The law does
not look kindly on the intrusion of faith into this region. (U.E.p96)
I knew an eminent lunacy doctor who took to
philosophy, and taught a new logic which, as he frankly confessed, he had learned from his
lunatics. When he died he left a will founding a professorship for the teaching of his new
scientific methods, but unfortunately he left no assets. Arithmetic proved recalcitrant to
lunatic logic. On one occasion a man came to ask me to recommend some of my books, as he
was interested in philosophy. I did so, but he returned next day saying that he had been
reading one of them, and had found only one statement he could understand, and that one
seemed to him false. I asked him what it was, and he said it was the statement that Julius
Caesar is dead. When I asked him why he did not agree, he drew himself up and said:
'Because I am Julius Caesar.' (U.E.p96)
The demand for certainty is one which is
natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children for a
picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic answer as to whether it will be fine
or wet, and be disappointed in you when you cannot be sure. The same sort of assurance is
demanded, in later life, of those who undertake to lead populations into the Promised
Land. 'Liquidate the capitalists and the survivors will enjoy eternal bliss.' 'Exterminate
the Jews and everyone will be virtuous.' 'Kill the Croats and let the Serbs reign.' 'Kill
the Serbs and let the Croats reign.' These are samples of the slogans that have won wide
popular acceptance in our time. Even a modicum of philosophy would make it impossible to
accept such bloodthirsty nonsense. But so long as men are not trained to withhold judgment
in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely
that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans. To endure
uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues. For the learning of every
virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the
best discipline is philosophy. (U.E.p26/7)
Those who have a passion for quick returns
and for an exact balance sheet of effort and reward may feel impatient of a study which
cannot, in the present state of our knowledge, arrive at certainties, and which encourages
what may be thought the time-wasting occupation of inconclusive meditation on insoluble
problems. To this view I cannot in any degree subscribe. Some kind of philosophy is a
necessity to all but the most thoughtless, and in the absence of knowledge it is almost
sure to be a silly philosophy. The result of this is that the human race becomes divided
into rival groups of fanatics, each group firmly persuaded that its own brand of nonsense
is sacred truth, while the other side's is damnable heresy. Arians and Catholics,
Crusaders and Moslems, Protestants and adherents of the Pope, Communists, and Fascists,
have filled large parts of the last 1,600 years with futile strife, when a little
philosophy would have shown both sides in all these disputes that neither had any good
reason to believe itself in the right. (U.E.p26)
When the journey from means to end is not
too long, the means themselves are enjoyed if the end is ardently desired. A boy will toil
uphill with a toboggan for the sake of the few brief moments of bliss during the descent;
no one has to urge him to be industrious, and however he may puff and pant he is still
happy. But if instead of the immediate reward you promised him an old-age pension at
seventy, his energy would very quickly flag. (A.I.p38)
Herd pressure is to be judged by two
things: first, its intensity, and second, its direction. If it is very intense, it
produces adults who are timid and conventional, except in a few rare instances. This is
regrettable, however excellent may be the moral standards by which the herd is actuated.
In Tom Brown's Schooldays there is a boy who is kicked for saying his prayers. This book
had a great effect, and among my contemporaries I knew one who had been kicked at school
for not saying his prayers. I regret to say that he remained through life a prominent
atheist. (E.S.O.p96/7)
Dr. Arnold, the hero of Tom Brown's
Schooldays, and the admired reformer of public schools, came across some cranks who
thought it a mistake to flog boys. Anyone reading his outburst of furious indignation
against this opinion will be forced to the conclusion that he enjoyed inflicting
floggings, and did not wish to be deprived of this pleasure. (U.E.p147/8)
Men of science are being increasingly
compelled to pursue the ends of governments rather than those proper to science.... The
scientist who discovers how to injure others is therefore at least as much honored as the
one who shows us how to benefit ourselves. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake,
which was once the purpose of science, is lost sight of; there are even philosophers who
tell us that there is no such thing. A physicist who wishes to study uranium can have
access to any amount of public money, but if he wished to devote equal skill and equal
labor to the study of (say) carbon, he would have to persuade his government that he was
on the track of a method of inventing robots. (B.D. Sep
1948, p14/5)
In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms,
one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness, by which I mean the habit of
basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of
local and temperamental bias as is possible For human beings. To have insisted upon the
introduction of this virtue into philosophy, and to have invented a powerful method by
which it can be rendered Fruitful, are the chief merits of the philosophical school of
which I am a member. The habit of careful eracity acquired in the practice of this
philosophical method can be extended to the whole sphere of human activity, producing,
wherever it exists, a lessening of fanaticism with an increasing capacity of sympathy and
mutual understanding. (H.W.P.p836)
I was a solitary, shy, priggish youth. I
had no experience of the social pleasures of boyhood and did not miss them. But I liked
mathematics, and mathematics was suspect because it has no ethical content. I came also to
disagree with the theological opinions of my family, and as I grew up I became
increasingly interested in philosophy, of which they profoundly disapproved. Every time
the subject came up they repeated with unfailing regularity, 'What is mind? No matter.
What is matter? Never mind.' After some fifty or sixty repetitions, this remark ceased to
amuse me. (P.F.M.p3/4)
I think the first thing that led me toward
philosophy (though at that time the word 'philosophy' was still unknown to me) occurred at
the age of eleven. My childhood was mainly solitary as my only brother was seven years
older than I was. No doubt as a result of much solitude I became rather solemn, with a
great deal of time for thinking but not much knowledge for my thoughtfulness to exercise
itself upon. I had, though I was not yet aware of it, the pleasure in demonstrations which
is typical of the mathematical mind. After I grew up I found others who felt as I did on
this matter. My friend G. H. Hardy, who was professor of pure mathematics, enjoyed this
pleasure in a very high degree. He told me once that if he could find a proof that I was
going to die in five minutes he would of course be sorry to lose me, but this sorrow would
be quite outweighed by pleasure in the proof. I entirely sympathized with him and was not
at all offended. Before I began the study of geometry somebody had told me that it proved
things and this caused me to feel delight when my brother said he would teach it to me.
Geometry in those days was still 'Euclid.' My brother began at the beginning with the
definitions. These I accepted readily enough. But he came next to the axioms. 'These,' he
said, 'can't be proved, but they have to be assumed before the rest can be proved.' At
these words my hopes crumbled. I had thought it would be wonderful to find something that
one could prove, and then it turned out that this could only be done by means of
assumptions of which there was no proof. I looked at my brother with a sort of indignation
and said: 'But why should I admit these things if they can't be proved?' He replied,
'Well, if you won't, we can't go on.' (P.F.M.p14/5)
There are some simple maxims which I think
might be commended to writers of expository prose. First: never use a long word if a short
word will do. So, if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put
some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your
sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end. Take, say,
such a sentence as the following, which might occur in a work on sociology: 'Human beings
are completely exempt from undesirable behavior patterns only when certain prerequisites,
not satisfied except in a small percentage of actual cases, have, through some fortuitous
concourse of favorable circumstances, whether congenital or environmental, chanced to
combine in producing an individual in whom many factors deviate from the norm in a
socially advantageous manner.' Let us see if we can translate this sentence into English.
I suggest the following: 'All men are scoundrels, or at any rate almost all. The men who
are not must have had unusual luck, both in their birth and in their upbringing.' This is
shorter and more intelligible, and says just the same thing. But I am afraid any professor
who used the second sentence instead of the first would get the sack. This suggests a word
of advice to such of my readers as may happen to be professors. I am allowed to use plain
English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose. Take the
statement: 'Some people marry their deceased wives' sisters.' I can express this in
language which only becomes intelligible after years of study, and this gives me freedom.
I suggest to young professors that their first work should be written in a jargon only to
be understood by the erudite few. With that behind them, they can ever after say what they
have to say in a language 'understand of the people.' In these days, when our very lives
are at the mercy of the professors, I cannot but think that they would deserve our
gratitude if they adopted my advice. (P.F.M.p213/4)
prevented from pursuing his work largely
because he Oppenheimer is disgraced and doubted the practicability of the hydrogen bomb at
a time when the doubt was entirely rational. The F.B.I., which had only the level of
educating policemen, considers itself competent to withhold visas from the most learned
men in Europe on grounds which every person capable of understanding the matters at issue
knows to be absurd. This evil has reached such a point that international conferences of
learned men in the United States have become impossible. (P.F.M.p137)
Those who advocate common usage in
philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.'
They may admit that in organic chemistry there is need of long words, and that quantum
physics requires formulas that are difficult to translate into ordinary English, but
philosophy (they think) is different. It is not the function of philosophy - so they
maintain- to teach something that uneducated people do not know; on the contrary, its
function is to teach superior persons that they are not as superior as they thought they
were, and that those who are really superior can show their skill by making sense of
common sense. No one wants to alter the language of common sense, any more than we wish to
give up talking of the sun rising and setting. But astronomers find a different language
better, and I contend that a different language is better in philosophy. Let us take an
example, that of perception. There is here an admixture of philosophical and scientific
questions, but this admixture is inevitable in many questions, or, if not inevitable, can
only be avoided by confining ourselves to comparatively unimportant aspects of the matter
in hand. Here is a series of questions and answers.
Q. When I see a table, will what I see be still there if I shut my eyes?
A. That depends upon the sense in which you use the word 'see.'
Q. What is still there when I shut my eyes?
A. This is an empirical question. Don't bother me with it, but ask the physicists.
Q. What exists when my eyes are open, but not when they are shut?
A. This again is empirical, but in deference to previous philosophers I will answer you:
colored surfaces.
Q. May I infer that there are two senses of 'see'? In the first, when I 'see' a table, I
'see' something conjectural
about which physics has vague notions that are probably wrong. In the second, I 'see'
colored surfaces which cease to exist when I shut my eyes.
A. That is correct if you want to think clearly, but our philosophy makes clear thinking
unnecessary. By oscillating between the two meanings, we avoid paradox and shock, which is
more than most philosophers do. (P.F.M.p168-72) |
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