4. Just as each man individually, so all humanity in the aggregate must change, pass from lower stages to higher development, without stopping its growth, the limit of which is in God. Each state of man is the result of his preceding state. Growth is attained without interruption and imperceptibly, like the development of an embryo, so that nothing breaks the chain of the consecutive stages of this uninterrupted growth. But if man and the entire human race are destined to be transformed, this change must be effected both in the case of the individual and of the entire human race in labor and sufferings.
Before attaining g^ndeur, before passing into light, we must move in darkness, must suffer persecutions, must yield up our body to save our soul; we must die, in order to be bom into a new life, more vigorous and more perfect. And after eighteen centuries, having completed one of the cycles of its development, mankind is again striving to transform itself. Old systems, old social orders, all that made up the world of olden days is being destroyed, and
the nations are living mid wreck and ruin in terror and sufferif^. Therefore we must not lose courage in view of these ruins, and of these scenes of death, either occurring or about to occur. On the contrary, we must take courage. The union of people is not afar off. Lamenais.
FALSE SCIENCE
FALSE SCIENCE
The superstition of science consists in the belief that the only true knowledge needed in the lives of all men is to be found exclusively in that body of information gathered hapha2ard out of the infinite domain of the knowable which has come under the observation of a certain clique of шш in a given period—a clique of men who have set themselves free from the obligation to labor, whereas labor is needful to life, and who therefore lead an immoral and an irrational life.
Wherein is the Supcrstitum of Science?
1. When men accept as indubitable truths that which is o£Fered to them as such by others, without stopping to examine it by the exercise of their reason, they fall into superstition. Such is our modem superstition of science, namely recognition as indubitable truths of what is passed as truth by professors, academicians and men calling themselves scientists in general.
2. Just as there is a false teaching of religion, even so there is a false teaching of science. The false doctrine of science is recognizing as the exclusively true science everything stated to be such by people who in a given period usurp the right of determining what is true science.
And since not that is reputed as science which is needful to all men—but that which has been determined by men who have in a given period usurped the right of determining what is science, such science 'S bound to be false. Even so it has happened in our worid.
same place which centuries ago was held by sacrificial priesthood.
The same recognized sacrificial priests—our professors, the same castes of sacrificial priesthood in our science, academies, universities, congresses.
The same confidence and absence of criticism on the part of the faithful, the same discords among the faithful— yet failing to perturb them. The same unintelligible words, the same self-reliant pride instead of thinking:
"What is the use of arguing with him, he denies revelation !" "What is the use of arguing with him, he denies science!"
4. The Egyptian did not look upon that which his priests presented to him under the guise of truth as mere belief (as we do now), but considered it the revelation of the highest knowledge attainable to man, in other words, as "science": even so the unsophisticated men of to-day who have no knowledge of science accept as undubitable truths all that is offered them by the modem priests of science—they believe it all.
5. Nothing is more subversive of true knowledge than the use of obscure ideas and phrases. Yet this is just the practice of the alleged scientists who make up obscure, fictitious invented words to bolster up obscure ideas.
6. False religion and false science always express their dogmas in high-sounding terms which appear mysterious and significant to the uninitiated. The discussions of scientists are frequently as unintelligible to themselves as they are to others, even as the discussions of professional teachers of religion. A pedantic scientist uses foreign words and made-up terms and transforms the simplest things into something which is hard to understand just as prayers in a foreign language are unintelligible to illiterate parishioners.
Mysteriousness is not a proof of wisdom. The more truly wise a man is, the simpler the langauge in which he expresses his thoughts.
II.
Science Serves as an Excuse of the Present
Social Order
1. It would seem that in order to prove the importance of cultivating that which is known as science we should have to demonstrate that this cultivation is useful. But men of science generally say that since they occupy themselves with certain tasks, these occupations are bound to prove useful.
2. The legitimate purpose of science is the recognition of truths serving to benefit mankind. The spurious purpose is to justify deceptions which introduce evil into the life of man. Such are the sciences of law and political economy, and most particularly philosophy and theology.
3. There is as much fraud in science as in religion, and it springs from the same beginning, namely the desire to justify one's own weakness, and therefore scientific fraud is as harmful as religious fraud. People err and lead an evil life. The proper thing would be for men to realize that their life is evil, to try and change their mode of life and to live better. But here come all sorts of sciences: the science of the state, of finances, theology, criminology, science of police administration, political economy and history, and that most modern of all sciences—sociology—showing the laws by which men live and ought to live, and they prove that the evil life of men is not due to their own self, but to laws, and that it is not the duty of men to cease from evil and to change their life from an evil one to a good one, but to keep on living as they have been, in evil and weakness, but to ascribe these evils not to their own self, but to
the laws as discovered and formulated by the scientists. This fraud is so unreasonable, so contrary to conscience that people would have never adopted it but for the reason that it encourages them in their evil life.
4. We have ordered our life contrary to the moral and physical nature of man, and are fully convinced—^just because everybody thinks so—^that it is the one true mode of life. We dimly feel that what we call our social order, our religion, our culture, our sciences and arts, somehow fails to deliver us from our wretchedness, and even increases it. But we cannot resolve to submit it all to an examination by our reason, because we think that mankind having always believed in the necessity of compulsory social order, religion and science, cannot exist without them.
If the chick within the egg were gifted with human reason and were as little capable of using it as the people of the present age, he would never break through the shell of his egg and he would never know life.
5. Science has become a distributor of licenses to live on the labors of others.
6. The methodical gabble of our higher institutions of learning is merely a conspiracy to avoid the solution of difhcult problems by giving a dubious meaning to words, because the convenient and frequently rational phrase "I don't know" is unwelcome in our academies.