CIVILIZATION, INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY, AND LOVE

JOHN NEF HIS IS ONE OF A SERIES of Occasional Papers about significant -T issues involved in the maintenance of a free society. These Occasional Papers and related materials are published by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Santa Barbara, California. The Center is now the main activity of the Fund for the Republic, Inc. The studies of the Center are devoted to clarifying basic ques- _ tions of freedom and justice, especially those constitutional questions raised by the emergence of twentieth century institutions. Among the areas being studied are the political process, law, communications, the American character, war as an institution, the economic order. John Nef is chairman of the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago. He is the author of several distinguished books, including "Cultural Foundations of Industrial Civilization." The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions is a non­ profit educational enterprise established by the Fund for the Republic to promote the principles of individual liberty expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Contributors to publications issued under the auspices of the Center are responsible for their statements of fact and expressions of opinions. The Center is responsible only for determining that the material should be presented as a contribution to the qiscussion of the Free Society.

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Copyright© 1961 by the Fund for the Republic, Inc. There are no restrictions on the use of this material.

Single copy free; prices for additional copies available on request. CIVILIZATION, INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY, AND LOVE

HEN we use the word "civilization," it is ordi­ tively tender human relations, and of restraints on total W narily understood to mean something very dif­ war which the Europeans supposed had raised them and ferent from what its originators intended. When did their kinsmen overseas, both as individuals and as mem­ people begin to write of "civilization," and what did the bers of societies and countries, to a higher level of tempo­ term signify to them? ral purpose and of conduct than had been reached before It is now supposed that the word first appeared in on this planet. For them there were not, as with Gobi­ print in a work of the Marquis de Mirabeau published neau, Spengler, Toynbee: civilizations. There was civili­ in 1757, L'Ami des Hommes ou traite de Ia population. 1 zation. It was something in the making, and the Euro­ It is also found in the title of another of his works, which peans were making it. They felt that they were united, never got into print, but where I find it particularly ap­ as Burke expressed it, in a single "great republic," above propriate, L'Amy des Femmes ou Traite de Ia Civilisa­ the rest of mankind in elevation and achievement. tion.2 What gave them this confidence? The text, which I read some years ago in manuscript, As men of learning, they derived it partly from the bears out the impression conveyed by this title - that progress of technology and the advance of science that Mirabeau associated civilization especially with women ~ had already taken place in Europe before the period at And although the Marquis was, by reputation, a bad hus­ which we were taught to suppose the industrial revolu­ band, although the spinster archivist who helped me find tion began-which is to say the period that started in this volume told me he treated women terribly, the text the mid-eighteenth century, in 1760 when George III shows that he was impressed by their civilizing role in became king of England. Long before that, seeds of in­ European society. It is worth inquiring, therefore, dustrialism were being sown in human beings, who are, whether it may not be women, and a new concept of after all, the makers of history. (For if they don't make their role in history, that have civilized us. history, who does?) These seeds were varied and of Whether or not Mirabeau invented the word, "civili­ numerous strains. Among them some have been revealed zation" was clearly intended in his time, and for some­ by economic historians. These specialists were obsessed thing like two generations afterwards, to describe a for a long time, partly under the influence of Marx, with condition of humane laws, customs, and manners, of rela- the notion that the amassing of large capitals, and all 1. Lucien Febvre, Civilisation, le mot et /'idee (Publications du stimuli which led persons to employ them productively, Centre International de Synthese), Paris, 1930, pp. 8ff; E. were the fundamental sources of the astounding growth Benveniste, "Civilisation: Contribution a l'histoire du mot," of output and of the multiplication of our species that in Eventail de l'histoire vivante (hommage a Lucien Febvre), Paris, 1953, p. 48. have taken place during the last 17 5 years. This study 2. Archives Nationales (Paris), M. 780, No. 3. of economic history has been followed by the study of

3 the history of science and the history of technology, and used in brewing. The need here was urgent because beer in each study important sources of industrialism have was then the great national drink, to the point of being been discovered. almost a food, and coal-dried malt was so nauseous that I propose to begin by discussing certain aspects of the beer brewed from it was undrinkable. At the beginning technological origins of the industrial revolution, and of the eighteenth century, in 1709, Abraham Derby tried then to consider the limitations of technology (and also coke successfully at his blast furnace in Shropshire. This of science and economic history) as means of accounting was another important step on the road to cheaper iron. for the extraordinary world in which we live. But the problem of converting pig iron to bar iron en­ tirely with coal fuel remained to be solved. Meanwhile, The Coming of Modern Technology with the substitution of coal for wood fuel in a number of other industries, the timber shortage in England had At the juncture of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen­ been considerably eased. As much charcoal was still turies new demands in Great Britain for fuel, for wood required as fuel in ironmaking, the ironmasters found it as building material, and for iron ore raised at least three easy to follow the line of least resistance and set up their technological difficulties which had never before any­ blast furnaces near to the forests, which they needed in where in Europe been anything like as pressing: any case to provide fuel for the fineries and chafferies. First, how could iron ore be converted into cast and Similar partial and piecemeal results were obtained in bar iron with coal fuel, which abounded in Great Britain, Great Britain during the same period, lasting from the in place of wood or charcoal, which were growing scarce? late sixteenth to the late eighteenth century, about 1580 Secondly, how could the power contained in a jet of to about 1780, in the use of steam power and in trans­ steam be used to drive machinery for draining coal mines, port over railed ways. the intensive development of which was leading the A few persons had perhaps known in classical times miners to depths below the earth's surface where floods of the possibility of generating power with steam. But it were a continually increasing handicap to their opera­ was in Great Britain, at about the beginning of the seven­ tions and even a menace to their lives? teenth century, that the need for such power first seems Thirdly, how could a raw material like coal, so heavy to have become acute enough to have busied a good many and bulky in proportion to its value (and which ulti­ with solving the problem. Many models of steam engines mately went up in smoke), be carried cheaply over land were constructed by a number of "inventors" during the and sea, now that it was needed at ever-increasing dis­ next hundred years, among them one by a Frenchman, tances from the mines? Dennis Papin. Early in the eighteenth century the dif­ During the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, many ficulties of draining great quantities of water from the mechanics, like David Ramsey clockmaker, and many mines were partly met. Then Newcomen constructed a amateur inventors, like Dud Dudley (who came of an steam engine that actually worked. One of his engines aristocratic Staffordshire family) and the Marquis of was draining a coal mine in Staffordshire at least as early Worcester, set to work to solve one or another of these as 1711. So steam engines entered into history well before problems. In each case the roads to satisfactory solutions the industrial revolution. They were very crude; they turned out to be long and difficult. lacked rotary motion and consumed lots of coal, but they Success in the production of cheap iron resulted from were operated with some success at an increasing number a persistent series of attempts to introduce coal or coke of collieries in England and Scotland. By the mid­ in the English blast furnaces and in fineries and chaf­ eighteenth century many such engines were pumping up feries at which pig iron was converted to bar iron. Dud water in Great Britain and their use had spread to the Dudley claimed in 1665 that the problem had been Continent. There were hundreds in Europe before the solved, and some recent researchers have been at pains Marquis of Mirabeau introduced the word civilization. to show what a liar he was-for research more often takes A nice cozy economy of steam-pumping engines and of the form of finding what isn't so than what is. But, as a charcoal-consuming blast furnaces distinguishes the matter of fact, account books of the seventeenth century Europe of Goethe's childhood and youth from the show that coal was sometimes mixed with charcoal in the Europe of Thomas Aquinas or of Petrarch. fineries and chafferies. On the eve of the English Civil Another technological distinction was brought about War, moreover, coke began to be made from coal in by attempts to solve the thirsf of the three problems, the Derbyshire, not for smelting but for drying malt to be transportation of coal. Tracks of parallel rails fastened

4 to the ground, known in the beginning as wagon-ways At this very moment, 17 84-17 85, Watt's recently in­ because horse-drawn wagons were fitted to run along the vented steam engine, with a rotary motion, entered freely rails, were introduced in Nottinghamshire and Shropshire into commerce. Steam began to replace the power of at the juncture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, water, horse, and wind, as well as of muscle, in the multi­ on the eve of the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. They were plying factories. By 1814 The Times was actually printed tried soon afterwards in the north of England, around in steam-driven presses. At about that time steam began Newcastle, the traditional home of the early coal industry. to drive locomotives and ships, first river boats and then By the mid-eighteenth century, before steam power was transatlantic liners. If the wagon-ways were already there adapted to drive factory machines or locomotives, there inviting the substitution of metal for timber rails and of were railways galore in Great Britain. There were others steam engines for horses to make possible the nineteenth­ in the Low Countries, in France, and in Germany. Sev­ century railway carriages for passengers and cars for eral thesis subjects might be found, in our own age of freight, and which soon after spanned this country over "doctor's degrees" and specialized research, on the rail­ the Santa Fe and the Oregon trails, this was because an way before the railway age! These early railways were urgent need for cheaper traction over rutty soggy ground leading to the modem railroad age, much as the attempts had arisen in the times of Shakespeare and John Donne. to industrialize the burning of coal were leading to the age So, after many trials and not a few false starts, a machine of iron and steel, and as the attempts to drain the coal economy and transport with steam power took hold first mines were leading to the age of steam. But, even after in England, then in Belgium, France, and Germany, then all this progress, the output of commodities in Europe in North America, during the nineteenth century. was still moderate. Something more was needed. What To recapitulate: The intensive orientation of inventive happened to bring it into being? efforts to solve three acute problems in Great Britain The flood of technological experiments, many con­ began between about 1590 and 1640. The urgency of ceived by mechanics in the mines and workshops of Eng­ these problems was brought about by an expanding land and Scotland, some by British gentlemen-inventors industrial economy in England during the preceding on their landed estates, others across the Channel in the half century, from about 1540 to about 1590. I once mines and workshops of central and northern France, called the hundred years from 1540 to 1640 an age of Belgium, and the Ruhr, led to a new admiration for early industrial revolution in Great Britain, and what­ mechanics. Voltaire wrote about 17 50 of a mechanic in ever name is eventually given to this fresh orientation of Lorraine whose inventions were so remarkable that he inventive effort it was an indispensable preliminary for deserved to be called "a philosopher." eventual success in solving three of the basic technological These experiments bore full fruit at much the same difficulties that stood in the way of an industrialized time. The decisive decade of realizations was the seven­ world like ours. The new urgency with which these prob­ teen-eighties, on the eve of the French Revolution, when lems presented themselves helped to attract the improving Gibbon was finishing his Decline and Fall. landlords and merchants towards production for the Cort fully solved the problem of converting pig into sake of quantity. And when the new blast furnaces, the bar iron with coal. The commercial success in 1784-85 new steam power and machinery and railroads were of his puddling process made possible the general use of realized, production for the sake of quantity moved their mineral fuel in the production of both cast and bar iron. late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century successors in the Production leapt. Thenceforth the world output of iron direction of mass production. and later of steel mounted in something approaching geo­ My argument concerning the influence exercised by metrical progression. Eventually it became practicable to the intensive exploitation of coal and iron ore upon the substitute metal in almost unlimited quantities as the ma­ evolution of technological ingenuity suggests that his­ terial of engines and machines, and then of rails. Metal torical inquiry supports the thesis that men's actions and entered increasingly into almost all construction work in even their thought processes are determined by material place of wood, as timber everywhere in the world became conditions that they do not control. It may even lend dearer. The day when steel, in contrast to lumber, was support to the view that technological development, once to become "cheaper than dirt," to use the words of a under way, runs men, and even women, and that they recent president of the United States Steel Corporation, can do nothing about it. There is of course always a was foreshadowed by this union of coal with the smelting sense in which this is true. But history, like poetry, is of iron ores in the seventeen-eighties. rich in meaning. Similar technological problems arose

5 in China four hundred years before. Why did that of inquiry and in the objectives of the natural sciences. expansion not lead, as it did in Great Britain, directly It is coming to be pretty generally agreed that the period to industrialism? of most decisive change in scientific methods and ob­ Necessity has often been the mother of invention. jectives coincided in time with the early industrial Even the greatest poets and painters can be influenced revolution of 1540-1640. Whitehead and others have on occasion by mercenary considerations-though not written of "the scientific revolution," and the phrase has on the basic issues which govern their poetry and their a much wider currency for the period I have been talk­ art. And, if poets and other artists can be occasionally ing about than "the early industrial revolution." The influenced in such ways to the detriment of their art, question that naturally confronts us is: What relations such influences are likely to be much more compelling were there between the two early revolutions-the one in persons whose profession is not art but the earning of a in industry, the other in science? living by trade and industry. If the English merchants In science some men conceived and established the and landlords worked to further their private interests methods of dealing with their problems that have been during the seventeenth century, they only acted like used with such extraordinary results ever since. First merchants and landlords at any time in history. The of all, the processes of experimenting and observing, changes in the character of trade and industry, especially although by no means new, came to be recognized for in Great Britain and Holland, when Donne and Milton the first time as the only valid bases for verifying scien­ and Dryden were writing their poetry, when Rubens, tific discoveries and validating scientific laws. Secondly, Rembrandt, and Ruysdale were painting their pictures, precise and ever more precise measurements of physical certainly played an important part in determining the and biological phenomena came to be recognized as nature of the interests of these merchants and landlords. indispensable for the advance of scientific knowledge. Yet to derive from these facts the idea that the coming Thirdly, with novel discoveries in the realm of mathe­ of industrialism was a process in which the individual matics (as for example the theory of tangents by had no share through the independent use of his mind Fermat), it was found that great mysteries concerning and heart, and of the imaginative insight that, for the the physical universe might be written in mathematical Christian believer, is a gift of God, gives a false view language, and that, when this was the case, mathematical of history. The poets and the painters were hardly discoveries could reveal the scientific laws which might touched by coal and iron. One need only look at their then be verified by observations and measurements. landscapes or read their poems aloud to see and hear These three momentous developments in scientific their natural independence. They were not driven into methods were brought about by a few individuals, among worlds of fancy or abstraction like Chagall and Picasso. them Galileo, Gilbert, Kepler, and Harvey and, in They were not haunted by the populous London streets mathematics, Descartes, Desargues, and Fermat. All of like Eliot. Material necessity alone would never have these men achieved their major results at the end of the created this industrialized planet, with the almost un­ sixteenth century or during the first sixty years of the believable speed of travel and communication, com­ seventeenth. bined with the very great multiplication of the human This was the very time when the need for coal-burning powers of production and destruction. blast furnaces, steam engines, and railed ways was first Let us examine what was happening in some men's felt intensely. It is therefore tempting to suppose that minds in the times of Shakespeare and Descartes. And the thought of the scientist may have been determined then go on to consider how a relatively decent world­ by the new needs of mining and manufacturing. Histo­ as it seemed to some-was created, in which men felt rians of science have been so tempted, among them the they could let their minds work freely, with good con­ Soviet historian Hessen who tried to show years ago sciences. For it is not only what we know but what we that Newton's mind was pushed to its epoch-making are willing to exploit that determines the kind of world results by the mechanical problems that were arising in in which our descendants live. industry. But there seems to be little sound evidence to support such a view. The exploitation of coal and iron The Change in the Sciences ore in Great Britain, and the early industrial revolution which accompanied it under Elizabeth I and the early The industrialization of the world could hardly have Stuarts, do not account adequately for the novel prob­ taken place without fundamental changes in the methods lems with which the learned men of Europe then

6 grappled or the novel methods they employed in grap­ dred years after the mechanics had set to work, inde• pling with them. pendently of science, to solve problems connected with Take the cases of Harvey and Ferne!. They both the smelting of iron ore. worked at the same physiological problems, problems The capital inventions that precipitated the industrial that had interested scientists for centuries. The great revolution at the end of the eighteenth century were difference between them was in methods, and attempts made largely without recourse to scientific knowledge, to show that Harvey's methods owed anything im­ by persons who in England (if not in Voltaire's terms) portant to the new technological problems of his times were considered mechanics rather than "natural phi­ seem to me unconvincing. Furthermore, the scientific losophers." The practical application of new inventions revolution was a pan-European movement, while the in the seventeen-eighties, and the explosion of popula­ early industrial revolution was localized mainly in Great tion which alarmed Malthus in the seventeen-nineties, Britain. The early modern scientists studied each other's owed little to knowledge derived from modern science. work, exchanged letters and conversed about it, and It is since the eighteenth century, and especially during created among themselves a new intellectual world of the last fifty years, that the debt of economic progress scientific speculation. The source of their inspiration on all fronts-in mining and manufacturing, transporta­ was the whole man, including his internal life, in the tion, communication, and, alas, most sensationally of all context of an environment in Europe and in the Amer­ in destruction-to advances in scientific and mathemati­ ican colonies which was hardly yet industrialized at all. cal knowledge has grown in geometrical progression. There were, it is true, clairvoyant men who recog­ I do not suggest that admiration for the intellects of nized that the new sciences-what we now call the great men of science was new in the twentieth century. scientific revolution-foreshadowed immense material Voltaire tells us that Newton was treated in England progress. Some Europeans-first and foremost two great as a kind of uncrowned king. And Voltaire (like Bacon philosophers, Bacon and Descartes-became aware early and Descartes long before) was aware of the practical in the seventeenth century of the unprecedented possibil­ importance of man's discoveries in pure science. That ities for increasing production and lengthening man's was one of the reasons that great scientists were re­ life span inherent in the new learning of their age. The garded as benefactors of the human race. Montesquieu, first great English scientific institution, the Royal Society, Burke, Gibbon, and other eighteenth-century Europeans was spoken of in the dedication to Charles II as "a per­ so regarded them. They also regarded the age which petual succession of inventors." Robert Boyle saw that bred these scientists as enlightened beyond all past ages. the knowledge of the chemist had practical value for the What was behind the extraordinary confidence these trades of his time. But even then, even in the second half men and others like them felt in the course European of the seventeenth century, the scientists' concern with history was taking in the eighteenth century? What was trade and industry was mainly to satisfy their curiosity behind the invention of the new word "civilization"? about the physical and the biological world. One important source was certainly the progress of sci­ It was long after men like Gilbert, Galileo, Kepler, ence, which was not very effectively used for destruc­ Harvey, and Descartes had launched scientific inquiry on tion in their times and so appeared to be almost entirely its extraordinary modern career that their scientific dis­ constructive. These eighteenth-century men recognized coveries and still more those of their successors (who the role of the mind in the technological and scientific worked in the same abstract universe to which they had advances that had taken place already in Europe, and penetrated) began to be employed to solve effectively for which, since the sixteenth century, there had been practical technological problems raised in connection no equivalent in North Africa, the Near East, or Asia, with ind~stry, transport, and communication. Cyril where earlier great societies had grown up. But they Smith's inquiries into the history of science and tech­ thought of this progress as indicative of the progress of nology suggest that evidence of direct connections be­ the whole man. All of them seem to have taken for tween pure science and important technological progress granted that it was inseparable from an improvement hardly begins before Reaumur's applications of his scien­ in the standards of conduct between human beings and tific knowledge to the production of iron and steel in the even between states. "Commerce" was a word stretched early eighteenth century.3 That was more than a hun- in their times to cover an immense area, extending from industry, transport, and trade to human communi­ 3. Reaumur's Memoirs on Steel and Iron, Chicago, 1956, pp. cations of every kind. Commerce in this broad sense XX, xxii.

7 seemed to be steadily replacing total war as a means that a similar concern in Great Britain caused the Scot­ of satisfying men's competitive instincts. They saw com­ tish inventor of logarithms, John Napier, to hide the merce as part of what Montesquieu called "tender man­ scientific knowledge behind even more powerful weap­ ners." The interrelation between the two is a theme ons capable, he claimed, of wiping life from the earth's of his great historical inquiry into political thought: surface within a circumference of several miles-weap­ De l'Esprit des Lois. "Wherever there is commerce ons which he offered the government of Queen Eliza­ there are tender manners, and wherever there are tender beth I to help repel the Spanish invaders. manners there is commerce," Montesquieu wrote. Until recently natural science was almost always Gibbon was less guarded than Montesquieu in his closely associated with philosophy. In Great Britain optimism. As he saw it, the price of mastering the means in Napier's time and after, during the late sixteenth and of conquest, which the Europeans possessed by virtue seventeenth centuries, scientists were called "natural of their advancing technical and scientific knowledge, philosophers." As I have said, it was then that scientific was to cease to want to conquer. This reassured him inquiry into the physical universe and into living organ­ against any mortal danger to Western Europe in the isms was launched on its modern course. Under the stim­ future from other world powers, for instance Russia, ulus of a search for truths about the tangible world, any which he named specifically in his famous history. He and every method of inquiry was welcomed by innovat­ wrote these words before Napoleon had been heard of, ing and enterprising scientists, including the vivisection on the eve of the French Revolution in the seventeen­ of insects, fish, and animals, the examination of many eighties, at the very time when the general use of Cort's substances under the microscope and of the heavenly puddling process and Watt's new rotary steam engine bodies under the telescope. The new penetration of changed the pace of economic growth. nature and nature's laws helped to break down the reserve concerning tangible observations and measure­ The Creation of "Civilization" ments which had held back progress in the physical and biological sciences. I am not attempting here to give a complete account The restraints upon the application of new knowledge of the birth of industrialism, but I do not wish to leave to technological improvements were somewhat slower the subject with the suggestion that men's minds, as to yield. Yet only a few years after Napier's death, his exemplified by their successful search for scientific truths, somewhat younger contemporary John Donne took a combined with material factors in history, tell the whole novel view that the spread of more deadly weapons story behind the coming of the extraordinarily changed might be turned to human benefit. " . .. They have found world in which we live. The mind in itself has been no out Artillery," he wrote in a sermon of 1621, "by which doubt an important element in changing our environ­ warres come to quicker ends then heretofore, and the ment. But it would hardly have had such scope for great expense of bloud is avoyded : for the numbers of development without the heart. The heart was a great men slain now, since the invention of Artillery, are force in the creation of "civilization," whether or not the much lesse then before, when the sword was the execu­ inventors of the word recognized this. And without the tioner."4 By the mid-eighteenth century, after the times framework of "civilization," in their meaning of that of Newton, many scientists began to believe that tangible word, it would hardly have been possible for the works realizations derived from new knowledge would benefit of the mind to have played as effective a role as they more than they would harm the human race. In the have in the development of industrialism. nineteenth century, with an age of more peaceful, orderly, Philosophical views have had important influences on and humane conditions than had prevailed before in science and the applications of science to material im­ Europe, or perhaps anywhere in the world, confidence provement. The dangers to which the concrete realization grew that the application of scientific ideas to practical of ideas exposes men and women, through the evil that material problems was likely to improve human rela­ lurks in human nature, were plainest perhaps in con­ tions. And once the reserve in the presence of material nection with the use of scientific knowledge for destruc­ realizations broke down, once the practical possibilities tive purposes. Archimedes is said to have concealed the that applied science offered began to be revealed, men discoveries that enabled him to arm the forces of . moved on to the almost incredible triumphs of drugs and Syracuse with secret weapons to repel the Roman in­ 4. Donne's Sermons, ed. Logan P. Smith, Oxford, 1919, pp. vaders under Marcellus. Some eighteen centuries after 100-101.

8 other chemicals, of machinery and automation, which it and extend what Burke believed Europe already to be, have prolonged life and changed the conditions of living "a single great republic," to all the world. In spite of all over the planet. the quarrels among nations, in spite of the evil, the sense Could this have happened without changes in the of inadequacy, and the suffering which always beset hearts of men, without a growing optimism concerning human beings in their everyday living, in the presence the promise of human nature such as had never before of poisoners and other assassins, bearers of false witness, existed in the world? How did men achieve this con­ sadists, liars, and hypocrites, th~ edifice of civilization fidence? was, in principle (and in so far as some Europeans could Notwithstanding the framework of royal absolutism, make it in practice), at the disposal of all men and France was perhaps the leading source of a new em­ women on equal terms. In other words, some persons phasis on the virtues of charity and compassion among were making an enormous effort to be better than they those who lived in the world, of style and elegance, were, in the sense in which Marivaux wrote in La Vie combined with reasonableness and good sense in the de Marianne, each of us has to be better than he is in art of living, of voluntary limits on violence and political order to be great. authority. The decisive changes, in so far as the heart "One would have to be a liar or a fool," wrote Georges was concerned, began in France during the reigns of Bemanos during the War of 1939-45, "to suggest that Henri IV and Louis XIII, which is to say during the the modest armies of Louis XIV subjected Europe to first half of the seventeenth century, at the same time as French classicism as a form of slavery. Civilized human­ the scientific revolution and the concentration upon ity chose it because she found herself at home, because technological problems of coal and iron production, but she could breathe more freely in it. We French made by no means because of them. The age of Louis XIV no effort to hoard it, the doors were left wide open, was a sort of fulfillment of the promise contained in the . .. and the greatest tribute which can be paid us is to lives and the work of a number of innovators. Under say that, in it, no one who is truly human has ever found the leadership of saintly persons such as Fran~ois de himself a stranger."5 Sales, Jeanne de Chantal, and Vincent de Paul, of artists The rise of "civilization"- which involved more ten­ such as Poussin, Racine, and Moliere, of mistresses of der manners, the discovery of woman and her virtues social perfection such as Madame de Rambouillet, as a spiritual force, new limitations on total war within Madame de Lafayette, and Madame de Sevigne, of states and between independent sovereign nations - theologian-historians such as Bossuet and Fenelon, and provided an indispensable framework for the growth and of philosopher-mathematicians such as Descartes, Fer­ spread of industrialism in the nineteenth century, es­ mat, and Pascal, a new hope was born in men's power pecially in the era between the Napoleonic Wars and to order their lives so as to maintain at least a minimum the so-called World Wars of our own time. The emerg­ of decency in the relations among individuals and even ence of this "civilization" engendered the hope, and among sovereign states. sometimes the conviction, that man's intelligence was Thus influential men and women, whose views were getting the upper hand over his violent propensities. shared by many of the leading statesmen of the eight­ As a result, scholars in all sectors, including the eenth century-among them in America the founding natural sciences, were swept along by a kin,d of glow fathers who assembled in Philadelphia in 1787 to pre­ of assurance, which their predecessors through Newton .pare the Constitution of the United States - nourished had hardly shared. They ceased to believe that there the hopes that, like their immediate ancestors, they were could be any serious danger to the human race in participating in the formation of a society more humane probing the secrets of the physical world and revealing and tender, as well as more just, than any known to all they knew. history. In the minds and hearts of the persons who For many decades the experience of history seemed nourished these hopes, civilized society extended poten­ to the unwary to lend support to this reassuring thesis. tially beyond the nations to which they belonged. They The national expenditures on armaments-above all in believed that it extended potentially beyond Europe the so-called Anglo-Saxon countries of Great Britain, and the American colonies. Their hopes were not na­ the United States, Canada-were increasing only very tional but human and universal. They believed that slowly. With rapidly mounting production for peaceful civilization was contagious, and that once distant, un­ 5. Georges Bernanos, "Redevenir Humain," La nouvelle Releve, civilized societies were exposed to it they would embrace no. 1 (1941), pp. 10-11.

9 purposes, unequaled in any previous age, the proportion scrapers, and the airplanes, is hidden from public view. of the national dividend spent on arms and on soldiers It is hardly too much to say that the development and tended to diminish. A curious belief in moral standards, success of the natural sciences have changed men's derived from the Gospel of Christ, often by persons who conceptions of the nature of truth. The great successes forsook the Christian faith, and what seemed to be achieved led learned men to suppose that the methods notable improvement in the weight given to decency in employed by the scientists and mathematicians might the conduct of political affairs, led men to discount the be fruitfully adapted to the study of men and women. power of evil. There have been enormous changes in the ways of In this same era Darwin published his Origin of inquiring into the nature of human behavior during the Species in 1859 and his Descent of Man in 1871. The past century and a half. The old ways of comprehending theories that he put forward, which gained an enthusias­ the human being and human nature have been almost tic audience among some of the most influential men of stood on their heads. Some three hundred years ago, in the time, were felt to liberate man, but at the same time 1674, a great French philosopher, Father Malebranche, his "descent" tended to obliterate his Christian hopes published a book called Search for Truth. It is the fruit of "rising." It discredited the main source, the Christian of an impressive inquiry, and it aroused so much interest source, of the ethics from which "civilization" had that Malebranche was inundated with letters from all sprung. If Darwin was right, was it not necessary to over Europe. His was a time when the work of the regard the first chapter of the Bible, the story of Adam learned was not considered esoteric. There were no and Eve, as total invention? As a result of the Reforma­ radio or television programs, no popular magazines or tion and the rise of printing, the Bible was a work every­ even newspapers to compete with books, and learned one was encouraged to read and meditate upon. In it men sometimes had a more abundant popular corres­ the New was bound to the Old Testament as two integral pondence than heads of states. parts of one whole. To discredit any part was to dis­ For Malebranche the study of man was fundamentally credit the rest. So as persons, who came to be regarded different from the study of nature. The natural sciences, as enlightened, cast out the story of Adam and Eve and which were already headed in his time on their modem substituted Origin of Species, they repudiated the idea course, seemed to him related to a world that leaves that man is born in sin. "Men are neither naturally aside most of what is close to our heart. Almost the last moral nor immoral," people grew fond of saying in the thing Malebranche would have thought possible was to early twentieth century, "they are just amoral." have the methods of proof used by the natural scientist For a time, even in the face of dwindling faith in the applied to the study of man. "Astronomy, chemistry and Divinity of Christ, there seemed to be a strengthening of almost all other sciences," he wrote in the preface of the sense of individual responsibility for the realization Search for Truth, "are suitable as diversions!" But let of Christian ethical principles in the temporal world. So not the truly objective, disinterested man (the man for the novel methods of intellectual inquiry and the novel whom Diogenes hunted in vain) be seduced by their hopes in men's capacity to perfect themselves (originally glamour into preferring them to "the science of man." derived from the Christian faith) converged in the What was this "science of man"? It had nothing to nineteenth century to draw knowledge into the service do with the objective tangible proofs which are now of material improvement as never before. The rise of widely regarded as the only means of establishing any "civilization" in Europe and America in the seventeenth truths. On the contrary, for Malebranche this "science" and eighteenth centuries, and the spread of some belief came straight from the inner life of the ·human person, in this "civilization" even to the ends of the earth, helped purified from all "false and confused evidence provided to make possible the triumph of industrialism. by the senses or the imagination," and illuminated by How far was the belief of our ancestors in this civili­ the answers received from God.6 The science of man zation justified? How far is it linked to its Christian then, for Malebranche, depends on religious faith. source in love and compassion, which modem men, in­ Consider what has since happened to God, as men cluding many of the clergy, are inclined to forget? conceive of Him in the Western world, when they think The progress of the natural sciences, combined with of Him at all in connection with their learned work. In the freer and defter practical application of new scienti­ the copious diary which the Goncourt brothers kept, fic knowledge, has had remarkable consequences for the 6. Malebranche, La Recherche de Ia verite, Paris, 1880, vol. i, life of the mind which, unlike the engines, the sky- pp. 23-4.

10 there is an instructive entry dated 1853. This is what beings have so often been. Yet in so far as this phil­ we read: "Every day science swallows a piece of God. osophy dominates thought it is fundamentally defeatist Probably the time will come when our thought processes and demoralizing. It is perhaps in the realm of faith, and will be explained in scientific terms as we now explain above all of faith in Christ and His example, that this thunder."7 defeatism has been most damaging to the sublime ,hopes One is led to the conclusion that the study of man, of our race. From the time the Christian religion began as it has come to be pursued in recent times, however to spread in the first century of our era, it was increas­ important may be the facts it has unearthed and the ingly assumed that the messages of the Founder, such as theories it has evolved, has not dealt with the deeper His admonition "to love them that hate you," could problems left on one side by the natural sciences. If have little or no relevance to life in the temporal world. this is so, then the mere increase of the sums spent in Within the Christian churches across twenty centuries developing the social and behavioral sciences and the of time the spirit of the Lord has been too little tried. humanities along the lines they have been following will Under the influence, to no small extent, of such idealistic not help to humanize science. Nor will it help man as a philosophies as the Platonic, clergy and laymen have person to gain initiative in trying to influence human followed the line of least resistance, and thrown up their nature for the better. It leaves untouched the funda­ hands in despair over the wickedness of the world. They mental matters of human decency. have thrown up their hands even more over the absence of the love, which is the essence of Christ to a degree that is not true of any prophet including Buddha, or in Of Art, Faith, Wisdom, and Love our own time Gandhi. It has sometimes seemed as if History suggests that the search for scientific truths is clergy and laymen felt that the divine teachings of our no more likely to di]ninish the cruelty and ugliness Lord are as debased by attempts to realize them in the manifested by human beings in society than the search world as, for the Platonist, are pure ideas. for beauty, of which there have been many examples For these reasons ethics and the Christian religion, as before and since the example offered by the Greek city­ conceived and practiced in the temporal world, have states. But this is no reason for abandoning either sci­ done much less than each is capable of to orient human ence or art. Of the two it is the search for beauty that effort towards the good. The case of religion is particu­ is undervalued in the universities of the world today. larly discouraging, and the more so because potentially Some time is spent on the study of works of art - books, it offers the possibility of that union of wisdom with pictures, buildings, musical compositions. In so far as love, in the inner life of men and women, upon the reali­ this effort arouses a genuine love of art, the time is zation of which a race of better human beings depends. excellently spent. Yet true delight can seldom be con­ It is partly on that account that the Western world, veyed by instruction. The scientific approach to these which gave birth to it, has lost touch with the older subjects too often gets in the way of it. The great thing "science of man" as understood by Malebranche. I do is discriminative enthusiasm. In the arousing of this not suggest that the answer to our problem of raising there is no substitute for the artist - literary or other­ the level of decency is to be found in a return to his who is at work as a creator. Yet historical experience philosophy. The need is to move in directions that men suggests that little is done to strengthen the good in have never fully explored before. But must we, in strik­ human nature merely by fashioning works of beauty. ing out afresh, abandon altogether the Christian view of What we seek are approaches to beauty that hardly men in which our ancestors so profoundly believed? exist today and that hardly existed in the past. It is not If the old science of man has seemed austere and beauty as an end in itself that the world so greatly needs, sterile, is it not partly because of that very dehumaniza­ and for the want of which civilization may die, it is tion of faith which Erasmus and some of his contem­ beauty in the service of wisdom. poraries, among them Leonardo and Titian and Rabe­ The distrust that the Platonic philosophy had for lais some generations before Malebranche, set about to material realizations, including objects of delight, was redress? If this is the case, may not the hope for better not unnatural in view of the kinds of persons human human beings be related to a humanization of faith of which so many men and women have felt the need ever 7. These observations were reported by the Goncourt as having been made by their friend, the painter Gavarni (Journal des since Erasmus's time, and no doubt long before? Goncourt, Paris, 1887, vol. i, p. 47). Here it is necessary to tread warily, remembering

11 that it is men and women everywhere that we are seek­ the young among them, are seeking as never before is ing to help. Many of the very decent among them, in human brotherhood that will keep violence within Europe and America, distrust any religious effort to bounds. The road to that is through that rarest and most bring about international understanding. And if many precious of human potentialities, love. The possibilities Westerners, of Christian origin, find the prospect of in the hope, which Christ sanctifies, have never been trying to Christianize the world distasteful, is such an tried. It matters not from what races or nations or creeds effort likely to recommend itself to the Jews, the Mos­ the example comes. The great matter is to have the lems, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Russians, or the example. Perhaps the brotherhood and sisterhood of members of rising African nations? men and women, joined wherever possible in love, is not The consequences of leaving Christ standing outside a final end of existence. But without an approach to it the arena of life, combined with those of treating the life on earth will always be basically sorrowful. It is highest norms of human conduct as unrealizable, led difficult to believe that an attempt to make it more joyful eventually to pleas, like that of Theodore Roosevelt, for is in conflict with the fatherhood of God. "realizable ideals." What has never been really attempted The work of the social scientists, the behavioral sci­ is to achieve on earth, in spite of endless reverses, the entists, and the scientific humanists (in spite of the most sublime ideals of conduct, to build a society on enormous amount of valuable knowledge with which love. Perhaps nothing less than such an effort can save this work is providing us) leaves aside the matter that the world as it has developed with the industrialization seems to me of compelling importance: Was the con­ of the past 150 years. fidence of those eighteenth-century men who invented We have an overwhelming need to break with certain the word "civilization" justified? Can there be moral prejudices. The first is that human nature is incapable progress? Can men and women become better than they of improvement and that the visions of perfection which are? Our inquiry into the roles of technological ingenuity religious prophets have had are impractical, that attempts and scientific progress suggests that for both to flourish to realize them do the human race more harm than good. and to achieve revolutionary practical results men and The second prejudice, which is closely related to the women had to behave in more civilized ways than their first, is that ideals must be adjusted to human nature ancestors. But the conditions we find in the world today at its most mediocre, if not its most base. suggest that civilization was not won once and for all by If we are to reach into the most precious realm of our ancestors. It has to be rebuilt in every age, just as the inner lives of human persons, it is upon conduct each of us has to make a new beginning every morning under the guidance of art, of faith, and of wisdom that of each day. In the future the very existence of life may each of us must depend. The religions of Asia and the depend on our building an edifice of civilization such Near East, the religion of the Jews, are not in fundamen­ as never existed before. If industrial society could not tal conflict with each other or with the religion of Christ have been created without the framework of "civiliza­ in its purity. What human beings generally, dedicated to tion," it can hardly endure save within the framework of the cause of peace and human fulfillment, particularly a better civilization that remains to be created.

August 1961

12 Other POLITICS AND THE CORPORATION by Andrew Hacker, assistant professor of government, Cornell Occasional Papers University. An analysis of corporate and democratic citizenship. 16 pages. Published by the THE CONDITION OF OUR NATIONAL POLITICAL PARTIES Center for by Stephen K. Bailey, Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. Proposals to reform America's the Study of political parties. 24 pages. Democratic PRIVATE GOVERNMENTS AND THE CONSTITUTION by Arthur S. Miller, professor of law, Emory University. A study Institutions calling upon constitutional law to recognize the existence of "private governments" in society. 16 pages.

BROADCASTING AND GOVERNMENT REGULATION IN A FREE SOCIETY discussions by Newton N. Minow, Clifford J. Durr, James Lawrence Fly, Rosel H. Hyde, and others about how the Federal Communica­ tions Commission discharges its regulatory responsibilities. 40 pages.

TO PAY OR NOT TO PAY by Robert W . Horton, journalist. A survey ofthe problems surround­ ing the adoption of subscription television. 12 pages.

WHO OWNS THE AIR? Testimony before the FCC by Frank K. Kelly, Staff Director of the Center's Study of the Mass Media. 8 pages.

THE RELATION OF THE WRITER TO TELEVISION A discussion by Robert Aurthur, Rod Serling, lrve Tunick, and others on the problems facing the writer of plays for television. Introduction by Marya Mannes. 32 pages.

ETHICS AND THE POLITICIAN by Stephen K. Bailey, Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. Some of the ethical problems that confront the elected political executive, by a former mayor of Middletown, Connecticut. 12 pages.

TRAGEDY AND THE NEW POLITICS A discussion by Scott Buchanan and others. The relation of politics to the new global situation. Illustrated. 24 pages.

THE U.S. AND REVOLUTION by K. E. Boulding,. William 0. Douglas, Harry V. Jaffa, Clinton Rossiter, William V. Shannon, and Harvey Wheeler. Answers to the question of what the American attitude toward revolution should be. 20 pages.

CONSUMERS OF ABUNDANCE by Gerard Piel, publisher, Scientific American. Technological dis­ employment and a non-productive work force continue to increase as the U.S. economy grows ever more abundant. 8 pages. CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA Board of Directors The Fund for the Republic, Inc.

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JOHN C. ELLIOTT HARR ISON BROWN Los Angeles, Calif. Professor of Geochemistry, California Institute of Technology CRANE HAUSSAMEN New York, N.Y. SCOTT BUCHANAN Former Dean of St. John's College ALFRED E. HELLER Grass Valley, Calif. EUGENE BURDICK Associate Professor of Political Science, ROBERT M. HUTCHINS University of California President, The Fund for the Republic, Inc. WILLIAM 0. DOUGLAS FRANCIS J. LALLY Associate Justice, Editor, The Pilot Supreme Court of the United States Boston, Mass. ERIC F. GOLDMAN HERBERT H. LEHMAN Professor of History, Princeton University New York, N. Y. ROBERT GORDIS M. ALBERT LINTON Associate Professor of Bible, Director Jewish Theological Seminary of America Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co. Philadelphia, Pa. CLARK KERR President, University of Cailfornia J. HOWARD MARSHALL President, Union Texas Natural Gas Co. HENRY R. LUCE Houston, Texas Editor-in-Chief, Time, Life, Fortune

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HENRY PITNEY VAN DUSEN ROBERT M. HUTCHINS President, Union Theological Seminary President of the Fund for the Republic, Inc. New York, N.Y. serves as Chairman of the Consultants

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